Lament of the Slave

Chapter 39: Mess up Feelings

When I met the old librarian, my impression of him was that he was a native Castianan. Now I knew that wasn't true. It was unlikely that he was from the Sahal either, but I did not intend to inquire, even though I was curious.

"Anything else on your mind?" He asked, his previous enthusiasm gone. I blamed myself for it, but I could change his past as much as my own. So I thought about my next question, and since I couldn't shake the thought of slaves, it led me to my class and classes in general.

"I've been thinking for some time about what the system shows me when I look at someone. What I see is not people's class, is it?"

"It is, and it is not," he said, leaning toward me. "I wonder what you see, miss Grey when you look at me."

I didn't have to think about that, "Librarian."

"Like most people and quite right. I'm the Labyrinth City Librarian," he said.

His answer shocked me, not because of his class, but because I didn't expect him to say the full name of it to me just like that. My overall impression was that people were trying to keep information about their classes and skills hidden. I was no exception. Like them, I didn't want others to know more about me than they did, and they knew a lot already.

"What kind of librarian would I be if I tried to hide information," Mr. Sandoval said and laughed when he saw my gaze. "Besides, you told me about your mutations. It would be rude of me not to return a little of that trust."

"Thank you, I appreciate it," I told him immediately.

The old man nodded and smiled, "It's really refreshing to see someone your age behave politely, given what happened to you. Most people who come to the library are quite rude, especially seekers," he complained, but before I could ask him, why the seekers went to the library, he continued, "Back to your question. What the system shows you is very simplified information about the class. Rather, you could say which category it fits into, as its actual name and even purpose may, sometimes differ significantly from what you see."

"Okay, hmm... what do you see when you look at me?" I asked, wondering what people had actually seen, what the system had told them about me.

"[Slave]," he said.

Well, I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed, but I wasn't really expecting anything else.

"If you wanted to see more, you would have to have skills like [Identify], [Appraisal], [Pry] or similar," the librarian added.

I had doubted what the system was showing me for a long time, and Mr. Sandoval only confirmed it to me. I wasn't crazy, nor was my system glitching, as I thought might be possible because I was from another realm. No, it worked correctly, at least in that regard.

It was good to know that there were skills capable of telling me more about the others, though. But right now, they wouldn't be very useful to me, since I would have to sacrifice another for such a skill.

Still, I was curious, "How can I get them? Or...are they class skills?"

"They can be both class skills and general skills. [Identify] is the most common. People will get it a year or two after they got a class. All you have to do is look at the people around you. [Appraisal] is focused on objects and is difficult to get. You have to have good eyes, to know the quality of the objects, what it is made of, recognize flaws... I mentioned it because at a higher level, it can also be used to appraise people." he explained to me.

As it turned out, both skills were out of my reach for now.

"What about [Pry]?" I asked. If he hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have asked.