Devourer Class

Galahad walked down to the first floor and used the shower on the forging floor. He could have used the bathroom on the third floor, but the building wasn't the most sophisticated or newest structure in Teramore.

The water piping that rose through the building could barely exert any pressure on the water dispensers to the third and fourth floor; so most of the time, Galahad would use the facility shower on the forging floor.

After showering and grabbing a pink fruit from the pantry, he started walking to the outer limits of the city. A benefit to working as a dungeon adventurer was the amount of free time spent outside of the dungeons, he could make plans to go anywhere on short notice, as long as he and his team went to dungeons at least twice a week. Galahad finished eating the fruit by the time he arrived at his destination.

A very long U-shaped building that was two stories tall composed of intricate marble and stone architecture. 'The Teramore School of Combat and Magic' read across a large sign at the building entrance.

There was a reason for such an unnecessarily flashy name and building. The school's name was only meant to entice families into having their children attend the school for both educated citizens and less casualties in the dungeons.

The Count of the city was once an adventurer and he knew what happened when the uneducated and ill prepared went into the dungeons with nothing but ambitions. He had the school constructed to help the people grasp the world in a more intelligent light, something very noble on his part.

Because of the schools training for all types of adventure classes, the city very rarely had deaths in the dungeon. The worst night Teramore ever experienced was nearly a decade ago, where an entire team vanished with still no trace of what exactly happened to them.

Galahad walked up to the building and saw a group of first year students lined up along the pavilion that was surrounded by the building. Each one wore a tight fitting robe and pants styled for practicing martial arts. Unfortunately the clothing was very breathable and the early morning sun had not yet warmed the air, so they all stood there shivering from the wind while the muscular brown-haired instructor ignoring them and only spoke loudly.

'Not something any normal person would put their twelve-year-old through.' Galahad thought while he went into the heated building.

Galahad had entered through the entrance on the right side of the school, each section was broken off to three of the main classes of adventurers found. Creation Classes (Center), Battle Classes (Right), and Magician Classes (Left). There was only one type of class they never taught for due to the rarity of their existence.

Each room he passed was filled with students that were either listening to a lecture, or in a lab learning about a particular subject through an experimental procedure. Eventually Galahad made it around the corner and spotted a familiar door on the left side of the hallway.

The door had a little silver plaque on it, reading: "Mr. David Thorne - Intro Adventure System Class"

Galahad waited in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the hallway; while sitting near to the slightly ajar door, he could hear Mr. Thorne's lecture to the class.

Mr. Thorne spoke in a very nonchalant manner to the class, like he was talking casually among friends rather than students. That's because he didn't see them as kids, he would always say he saw them as future defenders of the city. This didn't mean he'd let any misdemeanors slide during his class though. He could be just as cruel as he was calm.

"Now the differences on the board are quite noticeable, Dwarves have the high percentage for creation classes while Humans are a majority of battle class. "

"A lot of the old theories about this trend will go one of two ways. One way is adventurers' race, personality, and teachings are all determining factors to a class type, and that is what causes us to develop into how we behave in the future. The other is our classes were picked out the moment we were born and that is the reason for our behavior since the beginning."

"So the question really is; which came first, the class types or the race characteristics?"

"Yes, question?" Thorne asked.

A rather quite female voice asked. "Why have you written just the human percentages and dwarf percentages. Is it because of the only ones available to the class is from the Dwarven-Human Prosperity Treaty"

"You'd be correct, a lot of people know the treaty exist, but not what exactly that treaty entails. The DHP Treaty was founded to decrease our hostilities with one another by sharing information between the Etherite Kingdom and the States of Norkellia."

A much louder male voice spoke immediately. "I'm just curious, Summoners have such a low chance, but they are still their own category. Aren't they just a type of magician with a different application of mana use?"

Galahad chuckled, he remembered Rosetta ask that same question a few years back, just not so out of the blue.

"I could see why you think that. Have you ever met a summoner before?"

"..."

"I'm not trying to belittle you or anything." He quickly said to clarify, "It's just that if you met one, the first thing you'd hear is complaining about never being able to be use mana."

The class was murmuring amongst themselves.

"It wasn't until a few decades ago that when mana reading gauges were invented, we learned the truth about the Summoners class. They give off no mana when using their skills; they were pulling their summons from somewhere else. The magic study resulted in the discovery of two very unique things."

He paused for a little dramatic effect.

"One is that's not so surprising is that there are actually a few different forms of energy each adventurer class uses. Can anyone tell me what they are?... go ahead."

A more sharper female voice spoke very clearly to the class. "Most battle classes use Chi to exert their physical prowess to the fullest extent, Magician classes produce mana to create or manipulate elements they tend to specialize in."

"Great, now do you know what the guild named the energy Summoners use?"

"No, sorry."

"Don't be, no one ever mentions it cause the energy was recently identified and very rare to witness. They officially named it 'Realm Energy' about twelve or so years ago.

And that leads to point number two; the kingdom discovered that Endora isn't the only world to exist, we live in one of the many."

The class became even more fidgety at that statement. How could nobody tell them that their were other worlds, now they wanted to go see them. A couple of students starting asking how no one ever told them about this.

"A world like Endora is uniquely inhabited by various races, but not all worlds can allow various species like ours to thrive. A Summoner who pulls fire sylphs from one of those other worlds had told me that she gets a glimpse into their world every time she uses realm energy.

"Their tiny world is nothing but burning grounds and flaming skies, and they can't survive long outside of the hot conditions. It would be more accurate to say these uninhabitable worlds are more like large incubators that they pull their summons through."

"Going back to the first question, the Summoners class adventures themselves like a mix of battle class and magician classes. They don't fully exert their physical abilities with Chi or manipulate the world with mana; they're a balance between the two with a different type of energy altogether. To put it simply; if battle classes are North and magicians are South, then Summoners would be a point between."

"Anyway, we can't keep spending all of class talking about the abnormalities in summoners. Today was only the first session to the course and we will have plenty of time to talk about the different adventurers. Please read the first thirteen pages for next the next class, we will start with how the leveling systems work next time."

"If you don't have access to the book, you can head to the library and borrow them. Have a good rest of the day, class dismissed."

The room echoed with chairs scraping against the floor. Soon after, a bunch of students began flowing out of the room. No one really took notice of Galahad sitting in the chair against the wall with his coat in his l.a.p.

After the last few trickled out of the room, Galahad stood up and knocked lightly against the door frame. "Not sure it's professional to call the summoner class complainers about mana, especially since your main reference about summoner knowledge is your wife."

A tall man standing behind a desk with a handful of papers looked up at Galahad through a pair or wired-rimmed glasses, without skipping a beat he replied.

"She'll definitely be the most hard-headed summoner you'd ever met. That's certainly factual enough." Thorne chuckled. He set down his papers, then took his glasses off the bridge of his nose. "Back so soon I see. Come to tell me about all the new heroic tales that you experience with much more speed?"

"Really? Do tell?" He said while leaning against the desk and propped his grey and black hair covered chin against his hand.

Galahad walked into the lecture room and sat at a table on the front row. On the board, he saw the statistics the girl and boy were asking about in the beginning, scrawled in yellow chalk.

Human Race:

Summoners 0.5%

Battle 53.3%

Magicians 28%

Creation 18.2%

Dwarven Race:

Summoners 0.3%

Magicians 17%

Creation 62.5%

It only took him a few minutes to explain to Thorne what happened in his dream. The black-and-white setting, the blue growing tree, and the explosion.

"Huh... a skill tree exploding? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing happening when someone tried manipulating their dreams. What else happened?"

"That was pretty much it, the tree grew and exploded before I could make any real changes to it. I thought I should come discuss this with you and then woke up."

"Huh," he pondered that statement for a moment. "So you thought that while still dreaming, right? You were fully conscious about what you were doing?"

"Yeah, it felt real and everything, if not for the weird colors and remembering that I went to bed, I could have mistaken it for reality."

"As far as know, the skill tree dreams were more like abstract chain of dreams and images, never has it been completely lucid."

"How did they know that the dreams were special?"

Because they felt the changes the moment they woke up, and the improvements were drastic enough to notice when they used their skills. Give me a few days, I will look into before I'll have to start grading assignments in about a week or two. I'll scry your plate when I figure something out."

"Perfect, thank you for your help. Let me know if you need help with anything this semester." Galahad stuck out his hand to shake Thorne's.

"No problem." He said while shaking back. "Are you leaving so soon? I have some tea ready for brewing in the back."

"That's alright. I have dinner with the team tonight and an errand to run real quick before we get together. Invitation for dinner is always open to you and the misses."

Thorne shook his head with a sad decline. "We are temporarily heading down to the count's new village project after the semester ends. So the next couple weeks are preparations and planning, thank you though. Tell everyone I said hello."

"Of course, let me know how everything goes." Said Galahad at his exit. He put on his coat and ended up walking out of the school with more questions than answers about his dream.