By cross referencing the history book and the encyclopedia Nate gave his first conscious steps to understanding his new reality.
This planet’s name was Urdden. Though, in fairness that word was just a contraction of ‘all’ and ‘land,’ so not much difference from ‘Earth’ in originality.
None of the books contained a complete map of the globe, but the encyclopedia did contain a comprehensive map of the continent… Well, the civilized part of it at least.
Much like between Europe and the rest of the Euro-Asian continent, there seemed to be an arbitrary division at play somewhere to the east.
To confuse things further, the continent was also referred to as Urdden.
“Come on! Even if I understand the words these kinds of redundancies are a pain in the ass!” he sighed when he figured out the misunderstanding after five minutes of going back and forth between the books.
Pain in the ass or not, Nate read on.
Sadly, he quickly had to abandon the history manual, unable to make heads or tails of it between the complicated heraldry, dynasties and all the other alien sounding proper nouns.
Nevertheless, he did pick up on terms that translate to baron, marquee, duke and king,so maybe this country – whose name he wasn’t sure if it was Nudstrad, Varia or Corsettta, might have an aristocracy similar to the French one before the second half of the eighteen century.
The pictured encyclopedia, however, proved significantly clearer and much more useful.
Nate confirm the people of this world had a somewhat anachronistic mixt of technologies; muskets and horse drawn carts, steamboats, trains and zeppelins – airships they called them, but no electricity nor telegraph. They were familiarized with magnets, but didn’t have compasses.
As he read, Nate found some explanations for these people odd technological development.
There was a key difference between Earth and Urdden; skills.
For one, people could use skills to circumvent the need for technological advancement.
For example, Nate read that the air-tight balloons of the zeppelins were hand woven by skilled craft men instead of industrial grade machinery. This had thrown him for a loop, after all, the textile revolution was the start of Earth industrialization.
Had he been wrong on his first assessment of this world? Were this people not going through an industrial revolution at all?
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After further reading, Nate confirmed that, yes, these aliens actually were in the middle of an industrialization-like process, but with a big caveat; contrary to his world, they weren’t actively seeking new technologies to simplify and streamline labor. Instead, these people were learning to compound the laborer’s different skills to achieve similar results to those first carbon powered factories.
Nate gulped. The book tried to sugar coat it, but it was quickly becoming apparent factories here had nothing to envy their Earth analogs in the dehumanizing department.
“These so-called bronze funerary compounds sound an awful lot like mass ditches to me… Wait, what is this? Apprentice healers buy off fresh human body parts from factories?! Why is this a common practice!? What is going on inside there…?!”
But human where far for the only beneficiaries of skills. In fact, a sizable section near the end of the encyclopedia was something of a bestiary, dedicated to Skilled Creatures or monsters;
From big cats’ species that could go invisible, to a moss with hyper accelerated grow and a penchant to get inside the humid wholes of living animals, and flying whales that could liquify someone’s brain with their ultrasonic cries. Nate came to realized that there was a good reason why mankind hadn’t civilized this planet yet.
“What the…?! Saw-imps are potatoes compared to some of this crap! Were the fuck did I land myself in…?!”
*Ding*
-New Skill Available-
-Do you want to learn
[READ]? -
-Y/N-
Nate pursed his lips at the sudden system note.
“Oh, yeah… I had forgotten about this… So, Gold Tier. This should be my ticket to the comfortable life of an aristocrat, but after seeing the brat’s troubles for myself, somehow, I don’t believe it is that straight forward anymore… Yeah, let’s keep my skill count a secret for now. At least until I understand better what being Gold Tier means to this society.”
Nate robbed his chin looking at the floating letters.
“Well, if I am planning to play incognito, a skill like Reading sounds inconspicuous enough. Moreover, if it works anything like Eavesdropping it can help me gather the world of information I need. And besides, if later I change my mind, I know for a fact that there is a way to get rid of it...”
The Erasers where briefly discussed in the encyclopedia; People with a Golden Skill that allow them to ‘clear up someone’s skill slot’ so to speak. The key word here was briefly. Apparently, Erasers, and all Gold tiers for that matter, where extremely cagy about their ‘skill set’ as they called it.
If Nate was reading things right, their skill wasn’t called Erase or something like that; the name Eraser was just a man-made denomination for people with similar skill sets. A ‘class’ if you will.
“My only complaint with this skill is that, after the attack and now that I know what is out there, I verry much want some offensive skill. Something I can defend myself with… but, what am I saying? This isn’t a game. Realistically speaking, the best I can do is stay well away from those monsters…! More over if your roll in life is defined by your skills in any shape or form, well… A clerk with supernatural reading capabilities sounds like someone valuable you would want to hire... and keep well the fuck away from those butcher-factories… Yeah, let’s go with Read.”
*DING*
-Congratulations: You have learnt the skill [READ]
-
-[READING] is level 1-
“Ok, that is that. This should make my skills:”
-[CLEAN] level 1-
-[EAVESDROPPING] level 3-
-[READ] level 1-
“Umm… Eavesdropping is the only one that leveled up, and twice in a row no less. I verry much don’t like the asymmetry of these numbers…” Nate smirked, “Let’s hook for some information on skills while we try to bring this last acquisition up to snuff…”
