Skills come in many shapes and forms, as the term is often used as a catch-all term for all abilities bestowed by the system. The two most common ones are spells and physical skills. Like most system-granted things, all skills are given a tier to organize them according to their power. This ranges from the weakest skills at F-tier to devastating skills at EX-tier. Among them, S-tier is quite special. It represents a sort of threshold between powerful skills and the truly game-changing ones. Both physical skills and spells can be upgraded by using them, but they will stall at S-tier. It is impossible to upgrade a skill beyond S-tier through use; instead, the upgrades must be earned through quest rewards or by performing an astonishing feat.
As such, even though they are powerful, every traveler is in possession of several S-tier skills. After all, all they need to do to get one, is use their lower-tiered skills a lot. What truly sets travelers apart are their skills at SS-tier and above. That is even more true for EX-tier skills. Rare even among travelers, these skills set apart the strong from the truly powerful.
While nothing but an unfounded rumor, it is said that it's impossible to ascend to the rank of Nineteen without at least having three or four EX-tier skills, which causes fierce competition for any quests promising a skill-upgrade reward.
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I took my time getting back down from space, enjoying my newfound freedom. There had always been a ceiling above me on Suigoss, no matter how much it looked like there wasn't, so knowing I could freely go as high up as I wanted felt nice. Since void teleport could take me to any place I'd been to before within reason, a single spell could've put me back into my room at the guild, but why rush things? So I spent the next hour or so gliding over the massive city below me, occasionally greeting another flying traveler or waving at some poor guy stuck in a skyscraper's office.
Eventually, though, I landed back on the ground. I found myself in the middle of a bustling area with tons of foot traffic and no idea how to get back to the guild. I briefly considered wandering around for a bit, but eventually decided against it. Luckily, even if I decided against teleporting earlier, it was still an option. I teleported back to the guild, but a sudden lurch deposited me in the guild's lobby, instead of my room like I wanted to. I was confused for a few seconds, looking around the barren reception area, before realizing that there must be some kind of countermeasures in place against teleporting into the guild.
That made a lot of sense as a measure against intruders, of course, yet I'd still ask if it was possible to exclude me from that somehow. Even so, landing in the lobby instead of my room wasn't the biggest inconvenience ever, so I'd hardly complain if it wasn't possible. Unperturbed, I went to the elevator and back to the common room. I could've simply gone to any store outside to sell the few things I'd brought with me to sell, and while my contract didn't say anything about giving the guild first dibs, it still felt like the right thing to do.
The common room was once again empty, aside from the colorful butterfly going from plant to plant. I was about to call out to Liam, assuming he was still taking care of the plant, when the butterfly noticed me and flew over.
“Gary,” a female voice called out, saving me the embarrassment of mixing up River and Liam again. “How are you, darling? Getting used to everything alright? I know it can be a lot for a new arrival.”
“Hi, River,” I gave her a little wave as she somehow landed on the empty air in front of me, which I decided not to question. There were skills aplenty, and whichever one that was, wasn't even that weird. “I think I'm getting used to being here decently fast. Things may be quite different from what I'm used to, but a lot of it is similar to my home planet, although on a larger scale. It helps that I spent some time in a different society from mine on my tutorial planet.”
“That's great to hear,” River's tiny head nodded approvingly. “If you encounter any problems at all, I want you to know that you can always talk to me, and I'll try my best to help you out.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” I said earnestly. Aside from maybe El Mosco, all of the guild members seemed really nice and willing to help, which felt nice and welcoming. “Which actually brings me to why I'm here in the first place. I thought it would be nice to go out and try the food available on the hub, but well, I don't have any money yet. So I thought I could maybe sell a few things that are collecting dust in my inventory, but wanted to see if the guild maybe wanted first dibs on anything I want to get rid of.”
“Certainly, the guild is always interested in buying any useful things we come across during quests,” River confirmed. “That, or they find the best way to sell it for maximum profit, while taking a commission.”
“I had an inkling that it would be something along those lines. Who should I go talk to about this, then?”
“It's usually Jorm that takes care of these deals,” River laughed for some reason. “He has quite the eye for money and boasts a large network of contacts to extract the most value possible. If only he was so enthusiastic about his other duties…”
“Yes, I've heard Chantalle has to pick up the slack for him,” I winced, remembering the ant absolutely buried in busy work. “You wouldn't happen to know where I can find him?”
“This time of day, he's usually sunbathing on the roof,” River gestured upwards, which was hard to catch since her limbs were absolutely tiny. “I think I heard him talk about being able to store sunlight as energy at some point, but I'm not entirely certain if that's true. Word is has no such skill, and simply likes lazing off in the sun… But you haven't heard that from me.”
“Of course,” I chuckled. It would seem that River enjoyed a bit of tea every now and again, and I wouldn't deny her fun. “I'll go check up there, then. Thanks a lot.”
“See you around, Gary,” River took to the air again, fluttering towards a hanging plant nearby. “Do come by to talk, I'd love to hear about your tutorial sometime.”
“Will do,” I promised. Talking about my time on Suigoss could be nice, but what I was really looking forward to was comparing my own experiences to the others. As far as I could tell, my first main quest was quite unusual, in comparison.
I left the communal room and went back to the elevator. It didn't go to the roof, but there was a hidden roof access close to where it let you out on the third floor. It didn't take long for me to emerge, and just as River had said, Jorm was on the roof basking in the sun. That was just as expected, what I hadn't expected was that Jorm would be taking up most of the roof. I'd gotten to know him as a fairly large snake, but it would appear that he could adjust his size, similar to how I could. As he was right now, he dwarfed me completely, my entire field of view blocked by his body.
“Uh… Hello? Jorm?” I called out tentatively. I wasn't certain how he'd react to having his precious sunbathing time interrupted, but if River sent me up here without mentioning anything, it should be fine… right?
Jorm's massive body began to shift almost immediately, and a giant head rose from somewhere in the center, zeroing in on me. As soon as he spotted me, the head came closer, which was quite intimidating. Luckily, I knew that he wasn't my enemy and didn't have to worry about fighting him, yet, being stared down by a tier eighteen snake was not exactly a relaxing experience.
“Hello, Gary,” Jorm's voice had become deep and rumbling, changed with his larger appearance. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“River told me I should talk to you if I wanted to sell some things,” I said, trying to stay calm. I knew I'd get squished like a bug if I tried fighting him, but a tiny part of me wanted to experience what it was like to duke it out with an existence as powerful as his. Maybe he'd agree to a spar sometime?
“You wanted to do something, but realized you lack the funds,” Jorm nodded sagely. “Let me tell you, you've come to the right snake. I'll help you sell anything for the most advantageous of prices, for a small fee, of course.”
“That would be much appreciated,” I replied honestly, watching as Jorm rapidly shrank in front of me until he reached the size I knew. “Do a lot of monsters have skills to change their size?”
“Certainly not all of them,” Jorm shook his head. “But a lot of us do. It's simply more convenient to move around when you're not the size of a building or… a mountain.”
We both looked toward the distant Awotwi, easily towering over everything save the spaceship docks. I couldn't help but agree, suddenly very happy about my own size-changing skill. Voidlings could become positively, massively huge. Which, should I end up like that, would make things difficult for me if I were the size of a planet. It made me wonder about the true size of Polly, or the other guild members.
“That wasn't even my full size, by the way,” Jorm preened, obviously taking joy in bragging to the newest member.
“Just how big is your true form, then?” I played along to entertain the snake, seeing no harm in stroking his ego a bit.
“Maybe you'll find out at some point,” Jorm winked at me, which I was fairly certain regular snakes couldn't do. Surely, mutating eyelids was cheap enough to justify the expenditure. I certainly would be annoyed if I couldn't close my eyes anymore. “Now, why don't we get down to business? What juicy things do you have to sell?”
“Should we do this up here?” I asked, looking around the empty roof.
“Good a place as any,” Jorm shrugged by lifting parts of his body to either side of his head. “If you're worried about getting spied on, nobody would dare with me around, and don't even mention stealing. Most of what you have is probably not valuable enough for somebody to risk offending me.”
“I guess so…” I couldn't help but agree with him.
I started by taking out the four lava fruits I'd harvested on the sixth floor of Suigoss. Eating them would provide you with the Lava Diver passive, which was pretty nice, but could also be upgraded to Heat Immunity down the line. Maybe. I still wasn't sure if that was a regular upgrade path or if the system did whatever it pleased when upgrading passives. Next were various things I'd taken with me from the Asphons. That was mostly books about monsters that they'd happily given me for free, along with other curiosities such as common tools they used for analyzing monsters. Which were fairly useless to me, but could probably be sold for a pretty penny, unless traveler tech was more sophisticated than that.
They'd also given me about a hundred kilos of a special alloy they'd invented, an assortment of weapons and armor suitable for tier-five to tier-nine combatants, some random jewelry, and a whole bunch of alchemical materials that I had no clue about. All of this was practically thrown at me when I mentioned that I would probably hurt for money once I left Suigoss, citing that it was the least they could do for me after all I did for them. After some polite reluctance, I took most of what they offered. It was, after all, free money.
I also informed Jorm about the literal ton of gelatinous acid I had, only taking out a small sample, for obvious reasons. Last, but not least, I unequipped the deep sea gem I got back on the fifth layer of Suigoss. While the stuff provided by the gem was nice, they were barely ever relevant to me, which meant I should look for some better-fitting equipment to fill the slot as soon as possible. A fully aquatic traveler would get tons more use out of it, which meant it would probably sell for a pretty penny as well. The horn of the goblin general I decided to keep for now, since the equipment might work with my future voidling subordinates. The snake, after making sure I was done, took a good look at everything I took out, only occasionally asking clarifying questions, until I'd shown him everything I had.
“You have a few nice things here,” Jorm eventually said. “And I can definitely get all of it sold; some of them might take me a day or two to get the best price for them. The weapons, armor, jewelry, and alchemical materials are easy enough to sell off, but for the fruits, the alloy, the books, and the gem, I'll have to ask around to get the best price. I'll ask around the guild first to see if anybody wants one, if you don't mind. I'd actually recommend that you keep one of the fruits for yourself and eat it.”
“Why?” I asked curiously. “Sure, the lava diver passive is useful, but I don't see myself jumping into lava on the regular.”
“It's better to have excess skills when you reach tier ten,” Jorm said cryptically. “The more, the better. You'll see. So just keep one and eat it. Of all the things you took out, the fruits are going to be the most expensive. It'd be a shame if you lost out on the opportunity just for a bit more cash. You're a voidling, sure, and you'll have lots of it eventually, but right now, you don't.”
“Are you going to go into more detail about the whole reaching tier ten thing?” I asked, curiously latching on to that little tidbit.
“No.”
“Okay then,” I rolled my eyes, fully intending to ask someone else about it. “Keep your secrets.”
“Why don't we do it like this?” Jorm asked, taking a last look over everything lying around. “I'll give you a T2 credit right now, so you have money to spend, and I'll get back to you once I've sold everything to make up the rest. Minus my commission, of course.”
“Sounds good to me,” I easily agreed, fully trusting that Jorm wouldn't screw me over. Not only was I a member of his guild, but for a tier eighteen, the money coming in from the sale would be a tiny fraction of his wealth.
“Then, we're in business,” Jorm extended his tail, and I awkwardly shook it with my hand tentacle.