The building had gone through a transformation when Ranic went through his threshold. There was now another floor and the simple brickwork had become an elaborate mosaic. The building’s base was also somehow 50% wider, which should have slammed into the neighbouring building, but it hadn’t. The architecture had gone from simply functional to a piece of art, a building that demanded respect. The scroll above the door was also now twice the size and gold again. “The scholars are going to show you how.” I started laughing and took a swig from the bottle.
Sweet ambrosia tickled my tongue.
This stuff was good.
I walked more or less in the direction of my inn since it was the only place I remembered how to reach, occasionally skipping when the giddiness overcame me. As I passed by another random inn, a familiar tune began to play.
I froze for half a second then my stupid grin got bigger. “I love this song.”
I turned and stumbled to the door and made my way in as the first line of “I See Fire” began to play. The tavern was filled with polished wooden chairs and tables, and despite it being mid-afternoon, dozens of patrons sat watching the stage. Each of them had an instrument beside them and a drink in their hand.
I took it all in as I turned to the stage and saw a familiar face.
Malia sat on a stool leaning over her guitar, gently playing as she sang. Her voice fell silent for a few moments and then she moved into the second verse.
In my drunken state, I was quite sure she wouldn’t mind if I joined her. Besides, I’d discovered during the threshold party that my singing had improved significantly after my charisma increase, so when I began to sing, my key actually matched the one she was using.
Malia looked up in surprise, searching the crowd until her gaze fell on me. I grinned happily. She smiled, gave me what I was sure was a wink, and raised her voice to match my volume.
One of the people seating nearby turned and offered me his lute with a smile. I gave him a look as I continue to sing, trying to express exactly how drunk I was without having to stop to explain. The guy chuckled and nodded, putting the instrument back down before standing and gently shoving me towards the stage.
Well, if the crowd wanted me on the stage, who was I to deny them?
I wobbled my way forward until I was beside Malia. Belting out the words, I put my arm over her shoulder to keep the world from swaying. The crowd began joining in on the second chorus, and by the end, everyone was smiling, singing, and enjoying themselves.
The song came to a close, and as the last note faded, I shouted out, “Ain’t no party like a threshold party because a threshold party don’t stop.”
The crowd cheered.
Malia turned her striking gaze up towards me and smiled. “You sing a lot better when you're drunk.”
“I do a lot of things better when I’m drunk.”
She laughed. “So, you were having a threshold party. Was it yours?”
“Nope, it was Ranic’s. He passed through his third threshold with my help.” I raised my bottle. “Glory to his health!”
The whole room turned and raised their drinks. “Glory to his health!”
Malia put a hand over my shoulder and guided me off the stage. “How long have you been going for?”
“Three days; the scholars gave me a potion called Socialite and now I can’t sleep.”
Malia paused as I said “Socialite” and then laughed, leading me past the others. “Scholar threshold parties are the best.”
I nodded. “You’ve got that right…hey, these stairs. Where are we going?”
“My room?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see if you are lying about being better at things when you are drunk,” she said, and then she leaned in and kissed me hard. Shock froze me for a second and then my buzz let me relax and go with flow, following the pleasant new sensation, accepting it as what we were doing now.
There were plenty of catcalls and howls. Neither of us paid any attention to them. The kiss went on until we were both too heated to continue in a public setting.
I grinned as I pulled back. “Ain’t no party like a threshold party because a threshold party don’t stop.”
Malia grabbed my hand and dragged me up to her room.
Her hand felt so much better than the ghost’s.
It was evening before Malia let me head back to the inn where the scholars were partying. The rowdy crowd welcomed me back to the party with a cheer and a toast, pulling me on to the dance floor before dragging me off to play games. Another three days went by in a sleepless, drunken blur of happy giddiness. Malia showed up several times, dragging me upstairs to have a bit more fun, before leaving me. In my state, I didn’t care. Life was great. I never wanted it to stop.
But all at once, the party ended.
A wave of clarity washed through me and everyone else in the tavern as a prompt simultaneously appeared before us all.
Well done, you have successfully passed the rite of the socialite and gained the Socialite ability. As the potion you drank was aged for more than a century and you managed to remain intoxicated for the full week, you have gained access to the full ability.
Socialite
Cooldown: None
Trigger: Alcohol consumption
Effects: Consuming alcohol in any quantity no longer impedes your ability to think or reason. Half of the stamina received from consuming alcohol is now used to power an aura that causes yourself and those around you to become happier and have more fun.
I stared at the prompt for several seconds, riding the wave of sobriety that tingled through me. Everyone began cheering.
I looked around, confused, unsure what had happened, and spotted Ranic with his arm around some woman’s shoulder. The two of them were cheering along with everyone else. Scholars, in varying states of dress, started walking over to him to shake his hand and congratulating him one more time before heading for the door. The inside of the inn was a mess of broken tables, empty bottles, and no small amount of BO that was at war with scented candles.
The inn’s staff, seeing that everyone had finally stopped, slumped into the nearest chair to rest their exhausted bodies. Blue crystals of experience began to appear in their hands, causing all of them to show tired grins.
Despite their high levels of energy, the leaving scholars all looked like they had seen better days. Most were half-naked, wearing clothes covered in food and beer stains. A few were only wearing sheets tied up in togas.
Through a random opening of the door, I felt a breeze and I looked down for the first time. I was wearing a dress. I shook my head, trying to remember when I’d changed into it. Maybe it was after going into the foam room or the room they had set up for that weird bath drinking game. It certainly wasn’t in the orgy room. I remembered opening that door and quickly backing out.
Damn, it had been one hell of a party. Memories from the past week began coming back to me faster and faster, leaving a big grin across my face. Scholars really did know how to party. It was like every frat house movie I’d ever seen turned up to eleven.
I waited until most of the scholars had thanked Ranic and left before going over to him. The woman he’d been with was now gone, leaving him at a table by himself. He had a happy smile on his face.
His features had changed since he passed through his threshold and leveled. His hair was a little thicker and now possessed a silver sheen rather than the snowiness from before. A few of his wrinkles had disappeared and his eyes looked brighter, more aware. He’d gone from looking like a man in his late nineties to a fit man in his seventies. His movements were stronger and he didn’t have the same frailty as he had in the past.
I looked at him shaking my head. “What the hell happened?”
Ranic chuckled. “I threw the biggest damn party that the scholars of Weldon have ever seen. That’s what happened. I’m a bloody legend!”
The remaining scholars cheered.
“What’s with this ability I received?” I
asked once the noise died down.
Ranic sighed and then straightened his back. “You kept your end of the bargain. I suppose I should start keeping mine.” He cleared his throat, trying to appear professional, but failed due to the pink ribbons tied in his hair. “Socialite is an ability that is usually only able to be acquired by the noble and bard classes. It allows those who possess it to drink without becoming intoxicated and produces an aura around them that makes everyone else happier. There are two versions of the ability that can be acquired by those outside of the noble and bard classes. The more basic version makes you immune to alcohol. Instead of becoming intoxicated, it gives you energy and makes you happy, turning drinking into a quick way to replace stamina. Then there is the true version which gives you all of the first’s benefits, plus the aura that makes those around you happier. The second is far harder to achieve and involves a rite of passage that is a weeklong bender and a potion that takes more than a century to age. It’s rare for someone to get their hands on more than a couple of potions at a time as there are only a few thousand sold each year, so most people just sit at an inn cheerfully drinking for a week…but that’s most people. I’ve had the time and the money to acquire several hundred so I threw the biggest and longest damn party anyone in the city has ever seen.”
Ranic’s grin grew bigger.
My heart began to sink, even if my mood didn’t. “Wait, was I projecting this aura?”
Ranic nodded.
“Is that why Malia slept with me?” My gut twisted and I began to feel terrible. Had I…
Ranic snorted. “No, the aura doesn’t work that way. It just makes you happy. It doesn’t interfere with anyone’s reasoning beyond that. The young lady who kept showing up was simply using you.”
“Huh?”
It was clear that Ranic was trying not to laugh. He reached out and patted my shoulder. “It’s quite well-known, especially among bards, that men and women who are passing through the socialite rite have rather impressive stamina. The kind of stamina you only find in high-level adventurers. Mix that with an improved mood and it makes for great sex.”
“Are you sure?”
Ranic finally laughed, shaking his head. “You go to all the trouble to gain my expertise and now you doubt me. Yes, I’m sure. Describe how you feel right now.”
I paused, thinking through my feelings. “Pretty good; I mean I’m happy, but I’ve had a lot of fun…if that makes sense.”
Ranic nodded. “Does that make you want to jump in bed with me?”
“Ah, um, no.”
“See, you can make your own decision while under the aura’s effects. You were the only one compromised in your liaison.”
“Oh.”
Ranic grinned as he slapped the table. “Now, when did you want to leave? I have a lot I need to organise before we are off and I would like a deadline.”
Reality caught up to me. “Shit, my order was ready three days ago. I need to find out where it’s at.” I turned, heading for the door.
As my hand caught the door handle, Ranic shouted. “That outfit does wonders for your legs, but maybe you should change before meeting with someone you are doing business with.”
I looked down at the dress I was wearing and then at the door handle I was holding. It was almost a mile to the inn where I kept my clothes. And I was pretty sure I’d seen scholars walking out wearing the ones I’d arrived in.
Damn it.
I was going to have to do the walk of shame.
Chapter Seventeen
LOSING WHAT LITTLE WE HAVE
“Damn it, Arnold,” Ranic snapped, finally losing patience. “Getting through a threshold is not an easy thing to do. I realise you hate farming. I realise you are from another world. But that doesn’t change how your class works. You will need to have a farm—and a big one—if you want to get through your thresholds. Yes, you can bypass your first one by planting a heritage seed or joining the militia and surviving a battle, but that’s the only threshold that can be easily circumvented. Every other threshold is going to require farming, if not by you, then those under you. You can’t get away from it.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me giving up 100 of my mana and stamina.”
That was a lie. I totally understood why I had to give it up. Ranic wanted me to be able to access my farming interface, so I could accumulate farming points, and the stamina and mana was the cost of gaining that ability. I just didn’t want to do that.
Ranic grabbed the fabric of his robe and squeezed it, balling it up in frustration. He was a lot sharper now that he’d leveled and increased his attributes. He didn’t need his stimulant powder and he’d lost a bit of the bug-eyed-ness. Unfortunately, the increase in mental faculties actually made him harder to deal with, not easier. He was always thinking two steps ahead and not connecting the dots for those of us who couldn’t keep up.
The carriage jumped sharply.
We grabbed the side of our seats to steady ourselves. I turned and glared behind me at the wall. Ranic’s driver had a bad habit of hitting potholes whenever the two of us began arguing too loudly. I was pretty sure it was his way of telling us both to settle down without actively doing so.
I dropped the glare as I turned back. “Why can’t I hold off getting this ability until after I’ve received a few blessings? I don’t care about the mana so much, because I can’t really use it as a farmer, but I don’t like the idea of running around with the same amount of stamina I had at level one. Luring monsters is dangerous.”
Ranic continued to scowl. “That’s exactly why you need access to your farming points. You’ll be able to upgrade your capabilities.”
“In what way? I thought you said that farming points just made it easier to farm.”
Ranic clenched his teeth. “They do, but technically that isn’t all they do. There is an upgrade that you can purchase called Dawn to Dusk. Its description says that it halves the stamina cost for farming activities on your farm. But what it actually does is halve the stamina cost for anything done on your farm, as anything you do on your farm is classified as farming activities. In your case, this would include trapping monsters. There is another upgrade called Thorny Resistance. That upgrade description says that it will make you less likely to take cuts from thorny plants, but in essence, it gives resistance to piercing damage. That’s the kind of damage you get from a wolf biting your leg.”
My jaw dropped. “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place? Of course I want that.”
Ranic's teeth started grinding. “I’m not a scholar who specialises in combat, Arnold, and what you are doing on your farm is basically that. I know the theory of past attempts. I can recite all the notes, but I am predominantly a farming scholar. If you want to know the best way to grow a wheat crop in a given village I’m your man, but you want me to help you optimise luring monsters to your farm, and that’s going to take me more than three days to get my head around.”
“So you don’t find what I’m doing interesting?”
He sighed. “I didn’t say that. I actually find what you are doing fascinating. I’m just not entirely sure where I can be of help. And I’m having trouble with understanding what you do and do not know. I keep running into gaps in your knowledge that any farmer’s child would know, and your eyes glaze over whenever I try to explain something that you consider to be mundane farming information.”
“So it’s my fault,” I said, beginning to get annoyed again.
“Yes. You’re a farmer who doesn’t want to farm. No, you’re worse than that. You’re a farmer who doesn’t want to know anything about farming that doesn’t involve luring and killing monsters on your farm. You want to know the parts which support your area of interest and actively ignore the rest.”
Damn it. When he said it like that, he made me sound like a far-left Democrat or a far-right Republican. And the frustrating part was I knew that it was exactly what I was doing.
“I’ll try to pay more atten
tion,” I said halfheartedly. “But you have to try not to skip important steps in your explanation.”
Ranic took a slow breath. I think he was trying to stop himself from taking a swing at me. It only kind of worked because he pulled out a flask and took a swig. Within seconds of swallowing, a bit of the tension faded as his socialite ability kicked in.
“I’ll try,” he said through gritted teeth.
“So what do I have to do to receive this ability? The books I read lacked details on the subject. They only said I have to find a scholar who has access to the ones I needed.”
“Are you actually interested in learning the technicalities of what I do, or would you prefer the abbreviated version?”
I thought about that for a second. “Abbreviated.”
“Basically, to give a farmer an ability they don’t have, I take an ability crystal and perform the required ritual to infuse it with the ability you’ve requested. After that, all you need to do is touch the crystal and accept the prompt asking you if you want to gain the ability.”
“So you can just have these ability crystals lying around waiting to be used.”
“If I want to waste gold, yes.”
“Huh?”
Ranic sighed. “Ability crystals need to be charged after they are infused. The magic required is dependent on the ability: basic abilities will only require a crown, but some require hundreds. Having an infused ability crystal just lying around is a waste of gold.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” A thought occurred to me, and I realised I hadn’t told Ranic something that could be important. “Um, I’ve got the master rank with pitchforks. Does that do anything?”
Ranic stared at me for a second and then shook his head. “First of all, how did you manage to gain a master’s rank with a pitchfork? That should have taken you a decade.”
“You know the troll I told you about, the one that I managed to chase away? Well, I used a spear to blind the first eye but didn’t have a second one on hand, so I threw my pitchfork at the other eye and managed to blind it. I went from initiate to master.”
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 19
