Some more bread, and some water. "So the thing Eden truly, really is, at its core, is a facilitator of these relationships and a sponsor of people's power growth. They've got streamlined processes to help you become more powerful that incidentally involve helping the world at large—well, not that incidentally, it's the point—and they sponsor academies and lounges and professionals all around, and then when something like Surt shows up they have the two hundred most powerful people on Midgard available to take their call and mount up a task force to keep the demons at bay while they scramble to get existing armies to build something that can hold on in the longer term without needing to rely on those two hundred people."

"...well. That does make them the obvious choice, if I want to do something bigger than whatever quests I can find on the road."

The cheeses arrive. It is time for cheese.

Ooh cheese!

"I don't think I'd ever seen you enjoy food like this before, you know."

"When I was limited in my knowledge and availability of foods I did not know what I had been missing. Academy food is alright but it is not this."

"That I'll grant you."

"Oh, speaking of, yeah, so, the typical start of the Eden pipeline is that they have a handful of academies around the world that have instructors dedicated to teaching you the very basics of how to be an adventurer, first aid, how to get Skills and Stats, et cetera, and which also have representatives from major guilds on retainer. That's where Taharqi and Annika and I met."

"Well, that'll be fun." Peach wine! Oh that is good. "I suppose I should stop by to see if there's anything I missed, even though I'm not likely to need most of it."

"Yeah, you're probably good, honestly, if you've survived this long on your own, but there might be things they can teach you.

"Do you know about guilds, should I go over them?"

"They're... groups of people who do the same kind of Skills and teach people to do the same if they swear loyalty? Is my understanding."

"Yesish. The loyalty part varies and it's not always the right, ah, mood. Like, the Church of Odin all but requires you to be devout, the Mages' Guild will not turn you away if you decide to just show up and listen to a lecture or read a book, and the Archers' Guild requires you to show aptitude and be a proper member in good standing but doesn't particularly want you to feel any which way about it. And the Wizards' Guild only takes you in if you're really really good and they like you."

"Ah. Inconvenient that the ones who can help me are the assholes."

"It's a problem! Though honestly I feel like everything they teach really should be possible to reverse engineer, I don't know why it hasn't been done. —well, the answer is that it's probably harder than it looks and I am too sure of myself and wouldn't be able to do it as well as I think if I tried, but. I don't in fact see where the problem is."

"...well, if you'd like to reverse engineer Heal, you've got it. If that is what I have."

He looks extremely tempted but...

He shakes his head. "No. It'd take years. At least months. Probably definitely more than weeks. I'm overestimating myself. I can't do it. Maybe I can do it but I'll only do it if I know I can, thousands of people have tried."

"Were any of them prodigies?"

"Almost certainly!!!"

"I'm not saying we should do it in a week without sleeping or eating - I could, but it sounds boring as shit. But if we're going to kill Surt, we're going to be spending a while together, and I'll be healing for a lot of it. So, if seeing it cast over and over makes you think you can replicate it, let me know what else you need!"

"No, no, what I'd need is—well, yes, seeing it cast over and over but not in combat, I'd need to do a whole thing of getting you enchantments and analysing how it behaves on different kinds of wounds and with different amounts of mana in you and—okay this is kind of tempting but I'm really not sure—it'd be so cool though.

"Argh."

"So what you're saying is that you want to hurt me in new and interesting ways, make me heal while exhausted and overcharged and wearing strange things, all while you stare at me with that look on your face."

"...well. Yeah."

"I am very much at your service."

"We'll leave that for later, though. If nothing else I've got a ton more classes to take at the Guild to learn to do what I need to do."

"And I've got my own learning to do."

The meal concludes. (Arik demands a croquembouche tower for the table in no uncertain terms; it arrives flambé, and he claps like a schoolboy.)

"So - where would I apply to become a warrior of Father Church? And is there one of those adventurer-schools nearby?"