“Actually, that reminds me,” Jason said. “I have a bunch of monster cores. Apparently they can raise abilities up.”

Rufus’s head snapped sideways to look at him.

“You didn’t use any, did you?”

“No, I was waiting to ask you,” Jason said. “I thought there might be side effects. After that reaction, I’m assuming there are.”

Rufus let out a breath.

“I’m glad. I should have thought to tell you, but I forgot you had an ability to loot monsters. You’re lucky; it’s a rare power.”

“It’s not just me that can do that, then?”

“No, but it’s a highly coveted ability. I’m starting to get envious,” Rufus said.

“Don’t humans have their abilities go up faster than everyone else?” Jason asked. “Everyone else including me, since I’m not human. Which still seems harsh.”

“Being human does have its perks,” Rufus acknowledged.

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” Jason asked. “How about you tell me how to raise my abilities so I can start catching up to you three.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Rufus said. “There are two ways to raise your abilities. One is to use monster cores. Every core increases your abilities a little, but only a little. It takes hundreds of iron-rank cores to reach bronze rank, and that’s for humans. For everyone else, it takes even more. It takes iron-rank cores when you’re iron rank, bronze when you’re bronze, and so forth. But you should never, ever use this method.”

“Do you turn into a monster or something?”

“No,” Rufus said. “I said there were two ways of raising your abilities. Every time you use a monster core to raise your abilities, it makes the other method a little less effective. The impact is minimal, at first, but every core you use eats into your potential. If you used cores to get to where I am, the top end of bronze rank, then cores would the only thing that works anymore. And bronze rank isn’t that high.”

“Couldn’t you just hunt up more monsters for cores?” Jason asked.

“You could,” Rufus said, “and some do. In the city we’re going to, Greenstone, almost everyone uses cores. So long as you have the money to buy them you can reach bronze rank without ever facing a monster. But every rank requires more and more cores. By the time you reach silver rank, things slow right down as the costs go up significantly. Most core users don’t make it to gold.”

“If people know this, why would anyone use cores?” Jason asked.

“Because it’s easy and you can buy the cores instead of risking your own neck,” Rufus said. “Most aristocratic families only have a few truly powerful adventurers, while the rest use cores. Do you have aristocracy in your world?”