Waking up the next day, Lee brings out some pastries from the nice breakfast shop he found. He hands Neia and Ruvan each a strudel as they break down their camp. Neia looks towards Lee and asks. “What are you going to do once you hit level five? Are you going to do the same things?” Lee pauses and looks at her. “No, I'm teaching the clinic and some of the scholars healing magic, then I'm going to go and travel to other areas of the world, teaching them healing magic as well. That’s the plan at least. I don’t even know if I will make it out of this forest.”

Neia smiles softly. “You will, it’s a long trip to the kingdom of Thexis, but it gets safer and safer the farther you go. Neldam is so far into the forest that the levels of the monsters are higher than average.”

Ruvan joins into the conversation. “Neia’s correct, we usually have to go deep into the wilds to hunt rarer monsters. The experience around here isn’t much to what we both need. Once you do some of your class quests and work on your profession you will level fast for a while, those levels should make you relatively safe.” They all finish with the camp and start to head out, searching for monsters to hunt.

While following Neia, Lee asks some more questions. “Do you think me having this title will cause issues in other places?” Without turning around, Neia responds. “I do not know. What I do know is that having a title already places great attention on you. Be careful with how you go about sharing your knowledge. There will be people who will seek you out to abuse your power for their own gain.”

Ruvan jumps into the conversation. “You must remember that very few people ever get to reach level five. Those that do are vastly stronger than those that do not. As long as your own level is high, you should be relatively safe from most physical means of abuse. You wouldn’t catch a simple farmer strong-arming you into healing, but you might find that level one hundred adventurers can. Not that you’d find any of those in Thexis.”

Having listened to Ruvan, Lee gets another question. “What do you mean I won’t run into any? I read in the consortium that a high level person is level seventy to level one hundred and twenty. Surely they would have a few.” Ruvan smiles a bit and side-eyes Lee, “That is true, but how many of those high levels are still alive after a hundred years? Not very many. They either seek danger for experience or they die from old age. There are some truely high level humans, but most people don’t go and search for higher level monsters to fight. Most people will do their professions and class quests.” He looks at Lee with a smirk. “We Elves tend to not die from old age as much. Our average levels are vastly different.” He loses his smirk and looks at Lee with some seriousness. “If you want to not be used for your healing powers, you will have to get stronger. You may be kind to those who are kind in turn, but if someone threatens you, you will have to be fierce. I would level a lot if I were in your position.” He glances away with a solemn look. “You might have to kill another person in the future to save your own life. You thought killing that goblin was bad…” He trails off silently.

Lee realizes how dangerous the world is. This isn’t Earth, they won't be as civil as I am used to. What were the stereotypes in stories? Peasants, and nobles. Highwaymen and bandits. Trying to come to terms with the danger he has forgotten, Neia stops the group after an hour of travel. She looks at the ground and around the area for a moment before she looks back. “We got some goblins again. Not nearly as many as that bigger group from before.” Looking towards Lee she continues. “You can try to kill them yourself if there aren't too many. Let's see how many of them there are.” Neia crouches and creeps along the forest floor.

After another fifteen minutes or so, Neia stops the group and waves them forward. Lee and Ruvan approach and peak through the trees. A small group of four goblins are traveling away from them, back shown. Lee looks at Neia and Ruvan and nods with determination. He lifts his hood up, just in case it would provide some type of armor for his head, and slinks off after them. Having Stealth as a skill, really proves its worth at times like these. Lee closes the gap, merely ten feet away from the goblins, and unleashes his spell Glacial Cascade.

A rolling nova of freezing cold and icy frost spread out from Lee, enveloping the unaware goblins in but a moment. Lee, now suffering from a headache from using almost all of his mana, takes off running back towards Neia and Ruvan. After only a few seconds he sees Neia and Ruvan both come out of their own cover, snickering.

Lee slows down from a sprint with a look of confusion. Slowly, Lee looks back towards the goblins and sees four statues frozen solid. All of the goblins are dead, killed so fast that they didn’t even realize that death was upon them. They were still in the motions of moving through the forest.

Lee looks shocked. I expected that spell to do a lot of damage, with it using all my mana and being expert tier but holy shit. Glancing at Neia, Lee asks. “With you being a well known mage, you don’t seem to use magic very much. Couldn’t you blow away all the monsters you see?”

Neia raises a single eyebrow and smirks. “I very much could. Ask yourself this, why do I not?” Lee seems to think this is some sort of test, he begins to think. After a few seconds he guesses. “Training? I don’t actually know your profession or class. You seem to dance through every battle with grace, so obviously you’re very skilled with those blades of yours. Do you not have much mana?”

Neia laughs. “I have plenty of mana. Let me ask you a question. If Ruvan and I were not here, and that spell failed to kill them, what would you have done? You have no weapon, all you’re doing is relying on your magic. I could end most groups of monsters without any hassle, but what about Ruven? He would get nothing for not having participated, and I would grow complacent.” She stares at Lee with seriousness showing through her glowing green eyes. “I understand you’re not well suited toward melee combat. If you truly feel that magic is the way you want to go towards, make sure to pick your class wisely.”

Lee nods. “I have one more question. How important are classes in the long run? If I choose, say, the Mage class, would I be forever locked out of melee?” Ruvan answers instead of Neia. “No, but classes provide passives and can have spells of their own. Some skills are locked behind specific classes. You might be able to get some from class quests. For example, my class is a variant class of Archer, with it, I get increased penetration with my arrows and some other things. How much XP did you gain?” Ruvan winks.

Lee checks his XP.

“I got two hundred, fifty per goblin.” Lee says, as he quickly examines the Goblin statues and goes towards them to loot.

Lee loots the corpses once he gets close, receiving eleven copper and one silver coin. “I’m only thirty five XP from level five.”

Neia and Ruven smile warmly. “Don’t stress too much about your choices once you get level five. Usually the higher rarity the class, the better it is, but that doesn’t mean to pick a legendary class about being a clown over an uncommon class of being a healer.” Neia says, as she looks around the perimeter. “It’s almost noon, we should be able to get you level five today. Let us continue.”

Lee is excited about potentially reaching level five today. He begins to follow along once again, returning onto the hunt of monsters.