Jeb opened his door, confused about why someone was banging on the door. After all, it had only been a few hours, right?

  “Oh good, you’re alive,” his sister said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Jeb asked, confused.

  “It’s been more than a day since you went into your room? The family was about ready to open the door.”

  Jeb froze.

  His sister saw that, and immediately realized what had happened. “You muted all your notifications, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I did, why?”

  “Jeb, you always got lost in your projects before. One of the major benefits a Class gives you is better focus. Of course you’d get completely lost in whatever project you take up now.”

  Jeb remembered the number of times that he had missed someone talking to him because he was too focused on whatever project he was working on. “Oh, that makes sense.”

  “Before you go any further, did you miss any important Notifications while you were focused on your project?”

  “I’m not sure, let me check.” Jeb pulled up his Status, which immediately prompted him:

  The plural was interesting. Jeb mentally accepted the prompt, and a the Notifications appeared one after another.

  That explained the increase in his focus, at least.

  That sounded like a nice Skill. Those requirements were really specific, though. Wait, was the Glyph not also a First Tier Glyph?

  Jeb was about to check. Then he saw his sister looking at him, so he kept going through the Notifications.

  Jeb had questions about what a Synergy Skill was, but that certainly sounded useful.

  That felt like a double-edged sword if anything. After all, he hadn’t meant to meditate. Then again, being able to focus through distractions sounded nice.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Oh, so it was a Third Tier Spell. That was confusing. Why would the Glyph be so much higher Tier just for becoming efficient?

  Before he could ponder it too much, his sister interrupted his musings, “I take it you got a few new Skills?”

  “Four new Skills and two Achievements,” Jeb said. “Is that a lot?”

  Jeb’s sister paused for a few seconds. “It’s possible that it isn’t a lot for a Mage, but that sounds like a lot to me,” she said. “Anyways, you should freshen up, then come down for lunch.”

  Jeb smelled himself. He certainly did need to freshen up.

  After his ablutions, Jeb went down to lunch. The meal was fairly sparsely attended, since most of his family was doing their work. His family accepted his excuse of getting lost in a Glyph fairly easily. After all, Jeb had always been easily hyperfocused.

  “I don’t know if anyone has time to really help you plan right now,” his mother said as they cleaned the kitchen. “But your grandfather said you should come see him tonight, if you were down by then. Do you have something to help occupy your time until then?”

  “I have some questions about the Earth Primer,” Jeb said. After all, why would they present a Third Tier Glyph right away in the book? “So I can spend some time reading through that and planning some next steps to bring to Grandfather.”

  “That seems like very reasonable idea,” his mother said.

  Jeb went back upstairs and opened the Earth Primer. Paging back to the beginning to the chapter, he saw where he went wrong.

  There were a couple of things Jeb took from that. The first was that he really needed to actually read the Primers, not just skim until he found the Glyph. As he thought about it, though, the fact that the different Spell Glyphs a person learned affected the Classes they were offered made Jeb think about what he had been doing more generally.

  He’d just accepted that he was a Mud Mage. Why wasn’t he learning Air and Fire Magics? They weren’t within the Quests he’d been given, but that was no reason to ignore them.

  After all, being able to dry a harvest more effectively could be incredibly useful to him as a Farmer Mage.

  Finally, Jeb realized how beneficial it might be to remain at a low Tier for at least a little longer. After all, a First Tier Spell would only benefit him until he was Third Tier, which he could probably reach fairly quickly. As he paged through the book, however, Jeb noted that there were only three other First Tier Spell Glyphs in the book.

  There was one he needed to learn, Least Create Earth, and what was clearly its opposite, Least Destroy Earth. Finally, there was the opposite Glyph to the one he already knew, Least Hold Earth. Jeb was curious how much the added benefits from his Least Mud Magic, Mana Manipulation, Glyph Grokking, and Spell Glyphing might help him learn a First Tier Glyph.

  He was still a little hesitant about how time had escaped him before, so he lit a candle. That way he would have some way to gauge the passage of time.

  He flipped to the page for Least Create Earth and started to pull the Glyph into his mind. The mental model he had seemed almost useless. The light flowed between the points almost before he had a chance to line the points up.

  When he looked, he saw that the candle had barely reduced, but his Status confirmed that he had learned Least Create Earth. Since that went quickly enough, Jeb quickly learned both Least Destroy Earth and Least Hold Earth before walking over to his grandfather’s shop.

  He knocked on the door, and his grandfather opened the door.

  “Come in, Jeb,” he said, “let’s talk about your Class.”