Chapter 103: Second Winter in Tyros

POV Eliza

After I had told Luna about my decision to live with my vampire existence and make the best of it, my mind was at rest. My next goals had to be to increase my mental self-control so that I never lost control. When in doubt, I had to look for fights in time. Besides that, the fight against the hero idiots was coming up at some point. Now that I had an unplanned second class, I should also increase it. As far as I could tell from my status, either all or at least half of the next EXP went to the second class. To increase my EXP I needed a dungeon and luckily I had one nearby. For my mental health, I'm going to visit Lirella and Weyn. The two of them will help me get over my loneliness, as they have done so many times before. In addition, my 17th birthday was coming up in a few months.

I spent the next weeks until the turn of the year alternating between three activities. The first activity was regular visits to the dungeon, which for some reason I found much easier than before. I fought much more aggressively than before and since my regeneration was higher, I progressed much faster. I also only started on floor 12, as I skipped the slimes on floor 11 like the others. But the biggest difference was that my strength was twice as high thanks to the second class. Previously, I did significantly less damage and often needed several hits. That was different now. The second class increased all my characteristics, including strength.

I found myself on floor 13 particularly often, as the spiders were just as unpopular with adventurers because of their poison. As a result, I had no shortage of monsters to fight here.

The second activity was tasks for the guild. I concentrated on the quests that could be completed in Tyros or in the dungeon. I didn't want the quests to take too long and still bring in enough income. Since many adventurers were spending the winter in Tyros, there weren't many quests that fulfilled these conditions and were still free. The only quest was the hunt for the poison sacks of the poison spiders from floor 13, which I was fortunately able to combine with my first activity. For this I needed the skill Butchery on advanced, which luckily I already had. The higher the level of the floor, the higher the Butchery skill should be in order to get the best possible material from the corpses. Unfortunately, only a small part of most of the monsters in the dungeon could be used. Apart from the magic stone, these were usually just one more thing. In the case of wolves and bears, these were the fur and fangs. The meat was generally unusable as it was either inedible or even poisonous. The material that was not taken slowly degenerated and disappeared over time. If the magic core was removed, the remains disappeared within the next hour. Otherwise it took about 4-6 hours. Nonetheless my main source of income was the magic stones from the defeated monsters. I didn't need all of them to pay my living expenses, despite the hours I spent practicing with the magic teacher. So I was able to save some for myself.

The third job was by far the best. I visited Lirella about twice a week. I usually visited them from midday onwards. Before that, I had practice sessions with the magic teacher. On the one hand, I was able to upgrade Air Magic, which also allowed me to learn new spells. On the other hand, I also had to improve and upgrade my Magic Control so that I could take full advantage of the better Air Magic. Unfortunately, I couldn't upgrade my Dark Magic with him. So I had to wait until I could ask Master Freyna.

During my time with Lirella, I also looked after Weyn and kept him busy. I also learned to cook better in the evenings. All in all, it was a nice family time. On days when it snowed heavily and the weather was too bad, I stayed in Tyros and devoted myself to my new hobby. I had discovered wood carving for myself.

My birthday was coming up and I was really looking forward to it. Lirella had already announced that she would bake me another cake. Lirella was a gifted cook and the last cake was really delicious. As no one was on the streets in the empire once it got dark, we had our peace and quiet in the evenings and lots of time together. It was the only day of the year when Weyn was allowed to stay up late. Just like last year, he hadn't been able to sleep the night before and was quickly tired. Neither Lirella nor I complained about this, after all he was only 11 and still had many opportunities in later years. We spent several more hours chatting over a good bottle of wine.

It was then that I found out what requirements were necessary for the first promotion of the class. I needed eight skills at advanced rank and 10 development points. The skills were used to decide which class you were promoted to. In the case of Lirella, who was an explorer, the skills were Spears, Air Magic, Sense Presence, Sense Danger, Identify Monster, Cooking, Survival and Foraging, but she knew from other adventurers that there could be other skillsets that still led to the same progression.

To develop the class further, you had to concentrate. Then you chose the skills you wanted to use in your mind. This step was only skipped if you had exactly 8 skills on advanced. Then you were shown the classes you could choose from. For most basic classes, there were a lot of evolutions. The development itself had two effects. On the one hand, someone recognized with appraisal that you had developed an advanced class. In addition, you were allowed to develop the skills you had selected for development to expert rank, if you were not already allowed to do so. In most cases, you stayed in the same profession group (pure fighter, pure mage and mixed class). However, there were exceptions. Most times this applied to two professions with magic. But it didn't matter to me yet, because I didn't want to choose my new class with the skills I already had at advanced.

That evening, I was allowed to spend the night at Lirella's place. As soon as she had gone to bed, I looked out of the window and saw the full moon. As always, I was fascinated and could hardly take my eyes off it. I wondered if my thirst for blood could also be calmed by the moon. I was only so calm and peaceful when the moon was full. That's why I didn't get to sleep until very late.

After that, I went back to the same rhythm I had before. In the dungeon, I had switched to fighting the floors with the wolfves, orcs and bears because of the higher EXP. I also had my own theory about the strength of the individual monsters, which Lirella had confirmed. The level of the monsters seemed to be about twice the level of the floor on which they were found. The exceptions were the boss monsters, which had a higher level. Since you couldn't tell the level of the monsters with Identify Monster, you could only speculate. This meant that I could theoretically tackle a floor 20 boss for the first time. Nevertheless, I decided against it. The treants on floor 20 were too heavily armored for my current dagger due to their hard bark. I could fight with a spear, but I didn't feel comfortable doing so as I preferred to fight with daggers. So I put that off until later and preferred to fight the other monsters on the previous floors.

The next few weeks were spent alternating between the dungeon, studying and Lirella. In the dungeon, I spent more time on floor 16 with the butterflies. I attracted the butterflies on my own again to train my mind resistance. The only problem was their new ranged attack, which wasn't strong enough to do more damage than my regeneration.

It was also time to take a closer look at my class promotion. That's why I specifically increased the skills that I wanted to include in my upgrade but were not yet at advanced. I had already improved Air Magic and Magic Control. Dark Magic inevitably remained at basic, as I couldn't get to Lightburgh at the moment.

Thanks to Master Freyna and Lirella, I knew of two possible further developments of Scout, Spy and Explorer. One development was urban-oriented and the other was rural. Neither of them really appealed to me yet, but as far as I knew, I could experiment a bit depending on which skills I chose. But first I wanted to level up my second class before I went into that.