AKA 2-04

[CENTER]A Kitsune's Ascent 

[/CENTER] [CENTER]2-04: The System Isn't Racist You Idiot

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Zack woke up the next day with a smile, having taken her fox form so as to not disturb Tsukuyomi and Wizard Tim, who she set up in her bed.

It was funny really, the look on Tsukuyomi's face as she transformed. It was like the older kitsune suddenly had all of her maternal instincts shot into overdrive. Needless to say, Tsukuyomi transformed as well, and picked her up to sleep with the two of them in a fox pile.

Of course, Zack knew they had to wake up and get them settled into a new home, so she tried to slip out of the pile and—

…She tried to slip out of the pile, but Tsukuyomi looked at her, freezing her in place with a glare like she was doing something naughty. But it was morning and it was time to eat breakfast so they could get to the realtor on time! And she had afternoon classes, so…

"Kon!" she declared, conveying that it was time to get up and pointing her nose at the alarm that was about to go off.

The silver fox looked at the alarm, probably not able to read nor understand it, and looked back at her in confusion. Well, she'd probably get it once it—

It beeped, loudly, startling Tsukuyomi out of bed and causing her to transform back to her human form on the spot.

"Aaaah!" she yelled, slicing the alarm in half with her hand in the form of a sword.

Of course, physics didn't like having a still electrically connected wire hooked up to an alarm clocked that had been split in two, and thus, sparks and flame.

Zack transformed back, unplugging the burning alarm clock and putting it into the nearby sand bucket made specifically for when she broke them herself in her sleep. Who would have thought that being a kitsune with a Gravity affinity meant that you might actually crush an alarm clock that annoyed you enough in the mornings?

"…What was that?" Tsukuyomi asked with a hesitant voice.

"That… was my alarm clock," Zack sighed. "It tells me when I need to get up to be ready for things. I did try to get up and turn it off so it wouldn't spook you, but you pretty much managed to stop me long enough for it to beep."

Wizard Tim grunted, sitting up. "I usually just cast barrier and zap her with a lightning bolt." He yawned. "Coffee. Now."

"It's already brewing, I have an automated coffee brewer," Zack said, pulling a towel from her drawer with a smile. "I'm going to shower and brush my teeth, and then if Jaq hasn't cooked us a traditional Phillip breakfast, I'll cook us some eggs and bacon."

"Eggs!?" Tsukuyomi asked, her eyes wide. "Are you so rich as to have Eggs stored here, on site?! Those require special care and attention, so as to not rot in the cold storage before they can be eaten! Such luxury, such extravagance!"

Wizard Tim facepalmed. "You say that every single time, Tsukuyomi. Every. Single. Time. Even when we are in a place that has fresh eggs daily, more than we could possibly eat, you say that. You just want eggs you gluttonous fox."

"I understand completely," Zack nodded. "Eggs are delicious."

"Am I going to have to start hiding the eggs from you two?" Jaq called out from the kitchen. "Because I can't make half the food we eat here if you eat all the eggs."

"Yes," Wizard Tim said, utterly deadpan.

"…Right," he claimed, clearly distracted. "You two going to be staying long? I have Zack house-trained but I don't think I'm strong enough to house train your fox."

"Hey! You didn't house train me!" Zack called out to him.

"Woman, I had to stop you from chewing on the couch last week," Jaq rebutted. "Seriously, your fox form is cute, but destructive as the black skillet."

"Sounds familiar," the wizard said, earning a scowl from Tsukuyomi. "You know it's true, fox. Or did you forget the time you ate my rare reagents and ended up the size of a fairy for a week?" 

"Hey! Not my fault you didn't label your shrink shrooms," Tsukuyomi yapped. "Those things smell and taste just like chicken, I swear!"

"Who the heck eats shrink shrooms!? They're vibrant pink!" Tim swore at her.

"You know what else is vibrant pink?" Tsukuyomi asked. "That's right, chicken meat!"

Wizard Tim scowled, but didn't reply, just looking away. He brightened when the coffee machine dinged. "Not the types I'm used to, but that smells ready to me." The wizard went to get himself a cup of coffee, but ignored the cabinets, instead summoning his own mug that said, '#1 Wizard'.

"…I'm going to go shower now!" Zack ran towards the bathroom with a small smile.

"I shall come too!" Tsukuyomi ran after her.

Zack tried to close the door on her, but found that it was all in vain. Because locked doors meant nothing to a Kitsune who could shapeshift parts of her body into inanimate objects.

Or so she learned that day.

[CENTER]~~~~

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Wizard Tim glanced around at the 'dwelling' they'd been brought to. Zack had said it was a pretty standard apartment.

'Standard'.

Tim snorted. The dwelling was practically luxurious by peasant standards, and would rival upper class merchant and nobles in lower magic areas, although he'd seen rivalry in the magitech of the dwarves and island nations. Two bedrooms, a devoted kitchen with what she called 'modern appliances', running water, a cold box not dissimilar in function but different in effect to the stasis box he designed back in his world, a void to scream into in the living room called a TV but he wouldn't be tricked, and furniture.

It'd more than fulfill his needs. Hells, he could make do with a hut in the mud, not that he liked it. It also didn't compare to his Wizard's Tower, but that wasn't a fair comparison.

Nothing compared to a proper Wizard's tower.

As for Tsukuyomi's thoughts? Well…

"It comes with Eggs on Demand!?" Tsukuyomi exclaimed, looking at the fridge. "And what manner of food is a Baconado?! I want to try that!"

"Hmm. Indeed," Wizard Tim said, turning back to Zack. "This is more than sufficient for our needs. Should be able to get the proper calculations to get us back within a month, so the hospitality and dwelling is more than sufficient."

"Well, I own the building now, so feel free to make the modifications you need to it," Zack explained. "We'd be grateful if you left easy instructions on maintenance though, if you started doing anything too crazy."

Wizard Tim nodded. "Naturally, not like those sorcerer fucks who install an everlasting flame in some peasant's house and don't give instructions on how to actually put the thing out beyond 'feel the flame with your soul', the useless fucks. Fuckin dickheads, I swear," he muttered. "Incidentally, remind me. What was your class again? Runner or Messenger of some sort?"

"Eh? Class?" Zack asked, looking as though she wasn't entirely sure what he had just said. "Like in an RPG or FPS? Like, Tank, Healer, Mage, DPS, Scout, Engie, Driller, Gunner, so on?"

Tim slowly facepalmed. "Right, forgot how new to all this you were. Magic for not even a year. Okay, guessing you need a run down on the way classes actually work. They're easy, simple enough even someone like Tsukuyomi could explain them," he said, poking Tsukuyomi with his staff.

"It's like a Ranking Board!" Tsukuyomi grinned. "Here! I'll poke you in the belly and you'll get the Samurai class! Then you can see how much you stack up against me!"

She poked Zack in the stomach unnecessarily, though it was fairly obvious she just wanted to check Zack's muscles to see if she was built well enough to swing a sword.

"Waaa!" Zack flailed a little, before looking around the room like she was watching her Status Panel update.

Tsukuyomi did much the same when it was going on, and made much the same fox sounds. What was it that they saw?

Tim rolled his eyes. Kitsune always got the system to fox around with them when it updated, probably had a fox screaming at them or something. He much preferred how the System was blunt and up front with changes in his menu, but it knew he'd zap it if it tried too much silly shit. Still others got informed of changes like a voice from the heavens, or even their own deity, depending on their involvement with it and how strong their connection was.

"Building off what Tsukuyomi said, the System basically quantifies your abilities within a certain skillset under the domain of a class. There's literally thousands of classes possible, but it mostly just recognizes your attempts to be something, and then quantifies your progress in it. I had to beat the System into accepting Wizard way back when, for instance, but it recognizes it now. Plus, like it said, it offers a way to compare your skill to others," Tim explained to Zack.

"Wait… The System is Racist against Wizards?!" Zack asked, tail puffing up. "But in my TTRPG campaign, Wizards could cast transmute liquid on a lake, and turn it into NaK! They're so broken! Why would they not include it as a class to rank people by…"

"I…" Tim trailed off, trying to process all of that and eventually concluding either the translation was off or he was seriously missing cultural context. "Okay, no idea what those things are. But Wizards? The system isn't racist you idiot," he said, bonking Zack on the head with his staff.

"Owie!" Zack held her head, looking down with her eyes crossed, her tongue sticking out cutely.

"He didn't even hit you hard enough for it to hurt, silly," Tsukuyomi grinned, patting the red-furred kitsune on the head. "Just sit down and listen, okay?"

The Wizard sighed. "First off, you misunderstood my comment. The System recognizes classes similar to how people recognize distinct jobs. AKA, before I made my debut, it recognized mages as those who study magic, sorcerers as those born into magic who can practice it innately, and half a dozen others, but wizard was a folk tale thing, not really a class. But I changed that with my efforts, and it's now recognized. I imagine once your world is properly processed there will be a few hundred new 'classes' relating to everything unique here, but that takes time."

"Secondly, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but your comment made it sound like you believe the classes give a bonus or something of that nature to people using them, right?" he grumbled, looking right at Zack.

"They don't?" Zack asked, tilting her head with a wag of her tail.

"Nope," Tim said simply. "Like I said, it simply quantifies your experience and focus in one area with associated skills and knowledge into a given class you are trying for. Only advantage it gives is the ability to compare yourself to others and see your progress with a given skill or technique you are trying to master. Nothing else." He huffed. "Better this way, too."

"So what was the alternative like if this way is better?" Zack asked, a curious expression on her face.

Wizard Tim, instead of directly responding, reached into his hat, took out a dark bottle of the hardest liquor he'd ever gotten from the Dwarves, and took a swig. Gasping, he said, "Okay, needed that because this was just fucking depressing."

"So the way our System works, it allows near infinite freedom, creativity, focus, etc. You can work on whatever class you want and it shows you how good you are. Not that she would, but Tsukuyomi here could decide to be a mime if she wanted and there wouldn't be any loss. She'd just be starting the mime class from scratch, but wouldn't lose her skills with the sword, techniques, and so on. But, back in my early days, I grew up in a place that could best be described as the piss end of Existence," Tim explained.

"Literally," Tsukuyomi grinned. "He ended up in the Urethra Path of The Great Fox."

"Don't remind me," Tim groaned, stroking his beard for comfort. "But I lived there for years, and wanna know my thoughts on that world? Don't answer that, it's fucking rhetorical," he grumped. "The people, my people, had hacked their damn System, somehow. Maybe they found the corpse of a god or a locus point or something, I don't know as that was ancient history by that point and way before my time, but they did. What did they do with this hack? Why, they gave the classes benefits," the wizard spat.

"Going by your expression here, that doesn't sound too bad, and it doesn't! At first. The problem is when you give System incentives to the classes, you suddenly discourage creativity and choice. They become engrained castes people pursue and rarely if ever change, often 'min-maxing' their skills and training to get maximum productivity in their class, and the worst part? It makes sense. Why should a fighter ever try to learn more than a basic spell when his own class rewards him far greater for studying the blade more and more? If anything, it punished people who tried stuff outside their classes with negatives and an enormous lack of buffs to their skills such even a basic flame spell to make a campfire came to be seen as a wasted skill slot. Oh they had those too," Tim groaned.

"The end result was a world that was static. People pursued the same classes, kingdoms encouraged the same types of mages, the same types of knights, and nothing ever changed in a meaningful capacity. Hell, even their mages were locked into certain spells. I can make a new spell if I need to. Them? They had some who could rival my power, but could never make a spell to help a garden flourish, to make flowers bloom. They were locked into their roles and it was a nightmare. Glad I fucking left when I did," he said, finishing his rant.

And yes, it was very much a rant, but that place still pissed him off, particularly because it had so much potential and hacking the System itself must have been done by people with intelligence even he could respect, but what did their descendants do with it? Fucking nothing, no less than nothing, they were diminished from their ancestors and always would be.

"Huh," Zack said, looking a little stunned. "…Lunch break?"

"Gladly. Need to get this foul taste out of my mouth anyway. What is this about pizza I heard?" Tim asked.

"Pizza is delicious!" Zack grinned. "Let me show you to my favorite place…"

[CENTER]~~~~

[/CENTER] [CENTER]AN:

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[/CENTER] HiddenMaster: I love writing Wizard Tim lecturing stuff. Like this is just too much fun just having his unique perspective on everything.

Kitsu: He's exactly the type of wizard to say "I don't care how big the room is, I said I cast Fireball, so I'mma fuckin' do it."

HiddenMaster: Indeed. Only difference between a younger Wizard Tim doing that and the current older Wizard Tim is beard length and general ability to survive it.

Kitsu: Wizard Tim really likes his beard. A foxxo understands the beard.

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