It was the first time I had seen my oldest friend – or really anyone – in almost a year. I was finally returning home after a long week and she was there, sitting on my porch. I brought her in and we sat down at the table. It was awkward.
My displeasure was settling in openly on my face, I sat arms crossed on my singular dining chair as my unwelcome visitor fidgeted awkwardly on my bar stool. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them, adjusted her position and sat up tall. Her slender and tall figure could’ve been mildly intimidating if she hadn’t lost her confidence and posture when she attempted eye contact again.
I rubbed my temple and ran my hands through my hair with a sigh, she flinched ever so slightly. “Why are you here Caroline?” It was strange seeing her act that way and although I hadn’t seen her in a year she had always been cool, confident, but today she was unnerved.
“W-well,” she winced as she stuttered out her response. “I just had to come and make sure you were alright.” She followed her words with a smile that was strained briefly before it naturally settled into a more genuine one, if I hadn’t known her most of my life I wouldn’t have noticed it.
I sat in silence, I was unconvinced. Things had been uncomfortable between the two of us for a while sure, but not to the point of her acting shady like this. I looked her over, she’d gained some weight on her skinny frame and she was nicely toned. At first glance she looked put together, but I could tell she must have been having a rough time. I sighed, stood up and grabbed a couple glasses from my cupboard.
“Water or juice?”
“Water… please.”
“You don’t look like yourself, have you been having a hard time? Did you borrow Reid’s clothes?” I tried to ask casually, despite myself I was worried about her. A small ember of anger echoing She just shows up on my doorstep like this after a year? As if nothing happened? In my head as it was fanned into a small flame.
“How has this last week treated you, things have been a bit crazy right?” I asked.
Silence.
“God, I nearly killed myself trying to grind some levels in the Underhollow.” I paused to give her a chance to jump in, wondering if she just came to listen to me talk. I tried to make conversation. I was doing my best to ease the awkwardness and she wasn’t giving me anything. “What? Why are you acting like this? I’m trying to be nice despite everything. Did you just come here because you and Nicole had a falling out or something? Like seriously this is-”
Caroline’s hands came crashing down on the table suddenly as she nearly lept off of her perch on the stool. Her pale face was getting more and more red as she screamed. “You are so stupid! I knew you were reckless, but seriously Mia! What the hell? A week? It's been a day! We became Candidates this time yesterday, and the first thing I did-” she choked as her words got caught in her throat.
I stared, blinking a few times as I tried to process what she was saying. Yesterday? There’s no way it’s been just a day. I thought, but Caroline wasn’t the type to lie about something like that. I pursed my lips as I pondered over the events I’d been through that past week, or day…
~~*~~
I had gotten caught up in painting again and a notification from an idle farming game on my phone brought me out of it. “Your animals miss you!! - 2:48 A.M.”, before I knew it the early hours of the morning had crept up on me. With a sigh my brush found its home in an old stained plastic cup of water. My head cocked to the side as I studied the piece, yet again I failed to bring out her likeness. Defeated, I changed into a different old t-shirt and went to brush my teeth and clean my supplies before flopping into bed. It didn’t take long before I was out.
I looked bleary eyed at the system window that had suddenly appeared. It was floating in mid-air, just a few inches from my face. The words “Congratulations! You have been selected as a Candidate.” were displayed in bold, white letters on it.
“What the…” I muttered to myself, as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. When I opened them again, it was still floating there glowing slightly. As the grogginess from sleep began to lift I had to admit to myself that this strange occurrence wasn’t a dream. I sat up again and looked at the window bewildered.
Without thinking about it I instinctively reached out to touch the window in front of me, and as soon as my hand made contact with it a heavy pressure hit me. It felt like the earth was trying to swallow me up, as if its gravity was consistently increasing on my body. As my vision began to blacken, I wondered if I was going to die.
Gasping, I woke up looking around in a panic. A completely empty white space surrounded me, though rather than feeling sterile and cold like a hospital it was warm and comforting. It was strange but being here actually calmed me down. As I searched for a landmark of some kind or another window I noticed I was floating.
It was a strange feeling, not being grounded at all. No pressure on my body to indicate being held up off of the ground; it felt like being in space drifting aimlessly, but somehow I could tell I wasn’t drifting or moving at all, just hovering there in an endless white void. I tried to concentrate on moving or flying but only ended up flailing around.
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” chuckles stating that they knew the Candidates would want to fly.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” encourages you to be patient as not every Candidate has connected yet.]
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” states that adding flying functionality to the candidate room would be a waste of resources.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” scoffs, reminding “Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” that they had advised adding flight in this space.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” rebuts saying that this is a very briefly used space and does not warrant that ability.]
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” reminds them that the space has already been constructed so changes are not possible at this point.]
Several windows began to appear in succession before me each with different designs to them, the windows that belonged to “Traveling Spring Painter” were a light green decorated with wildflower adorned borders, “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask’s” windows were a dark blue with an elegant design reminiscent of a theater from the early 1900’s, lastly “Seeker of Magic and Knowledge’s” windows were off white with only a small single line border in each of the corners.
A chat room? And it seemed like whoever they were they could see me. How long had they been watching me?
As I read through their conversation my opinion of what was happening shifted and ended up on the fence between death and some sort of supernatural selection, for what? I had no clue. The window had mentioned being a candidate so it seemed that they brought me here for a reason, but at that point they were just rambling amongst themselves.
“Hold on, stop, stop, can you guys explain what’s going on here please?” I ran both of my hands through my hair as I asked, as I usually did when I felt overwhelmed or exasperated.
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” touches their chin as if considering what to say.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” considers for a moment then lets you know that soon you will go through the process of becoming a Candidate and advises you to wait for the prompt to show up on the system window.]
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
After waiting for a bit I decided that the other chatter wouldn’t be chiming in on my question and posed a new one, “So what am I becoming a candidate for? What does a candidate even do? Why did I get selected?” a pause as I looked down at my floating body yet again, “Did… Am I dead?”
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” taps his notebook and asks his friends if the long or short version would be best.]
Long or short? Can’t you just answer at least the last one with a yes or no?!
[“Traveling Spring Painter” and “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” share a look before telling “Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” to keep it short.]
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” replies with a sigh and explains that after you go through the Candidate class selection you will be sent back to your world. He adds at the end that you will need to work hard and level up so you won’t die.]
Class selection? Leveling up? I groaned inwardly with frustration, why couldn't they just give me a straight and complete answer? Well, while I don’t know exactly what is going on at least I’m a Candidate? Clearly some sort of danger was going to befall the world, not that I was too worried about that; there were plenty of hero types, they’d handle the saving and lap up the attention while they were at it and I’d take advantage of that to stay out of their limelight.
The thing that concerned me most was that I would have to work hard to not die. Working hard itself was already bad enough but with the goal of survival I would have to actually be diligent. As I dreaded the undoubted grueling days ahead of me, the system window finally made its appearance. “Please tell us about your preferred abilities, classes will be offered based on your explanation”
A long pause of silence followed the appearance of the window, while I stared at the words dumbfounded. I… I get to choose?! A sigh of relief escaped that I was unaware I was imprisoning.
“Traveling Spring Painter”, “Seeker of Magic and Knowledge”, and “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” began encouraging me to start and giving suggestions on what I should ask for.
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” excitedly states that becoming an archmage is a respectable path with many practical uses.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” suggests plant magic or healing abilities.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” says the most practical ability for a world containing humans is psychic abilities, like mind control.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” admonishes “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” for their evil intentions.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” argues that evil is subjective and psychic abilities have many uses.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” questions the specificity of mind control if Whispering Playwright behind a Mask’s intentions were innocent.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” states that their moral compass is irrelevant and that it was up to how you chose to use your skills.]
The two of them continued to argue while I was considering what to ask for. “I like time abilities, uhh psychic abilities would be nice too like mind reading or telekinesis. Oh also the ability to summon creatures or make familiars or something like that would be awesome, really would take a load off me. Using magic would also be good or being able to copy or steal abilities or stats. Uhh yeah…”
“Processing your preferences, while your skill options are being generated feel free to look over your status window”, beneath these words on the system window was a spinning white loading wheel.
Hesitantly I squeaked out a “status window” aloud, I felt a little silly and fought the urge to scan the surroundings for people. Of course no one else was there but me, well… me and the mosaic of chat windows where “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” and “Traveling Spring Painter” continued their argument.
My status window was blue and plain like the system windows that I’d seen up to this point, and contained several details about myself.
Status Candidate Mia Burke Level 1 Title -- XP 0/100 Health 60/60 Mana 70/70
Strength
4
Dexterity
5 Constitution 6 Intelligence 7 Unallocated Stat Points 0 Skills -- Passives -- Titles --
There’s less here than I expected, it seems like my strength is pretty low, no surprises there. I wonder- my thoughts were cut off when “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask’s” dark blue chat box caught my attention.
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” smiles and nods praising your base stats.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” snickers while pointing out that your strength is below average.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” shoots a look at them and says that the skills you requested aren’t strength based anyways.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” jeers at “Traveling Spring Painter” stating that strength is still important even if it isn’t the main stat you’ll be using.]
Before they could begin another argument I had to jump in, “So if 4 is below average, what's the average?”
[“Seeker of Magic and Knowledge” states that the average for any stat is 5, but it is not the norm for people to have 5 in each stat and having two stats above average is rare.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” reminds you that you have the right to be proud of your status window.]
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” sighs complai-]
Before I could read the rest of what “Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” had to say several windows appear detailing various generated options, above all of them is a window that read “Please select a class below:”
I skimmed through the various windows: time manipulation, psychic abilities, summoning, skill copying, magic and various windows with a mixture of the original abilities either with two or three skills from multiple categories. It was a little overwhelming how many options there were. The classes were catered towards what I asked for but none of them felt right. The main thing I was looking for in a class was ease of use, flexibility, and survivability. If the class isn't flexible enough it would make it hard for me to exploit any loopholes I found. I couldn’t help but feel like the options I had either had low early combat power or wouldn’t have much room for growth later on.
~~*~~
Familiar Master
Skills:
Familiar Creation: User is able to create familiars that will obey them. The user and familiars all share a soul bond and can communicate through it. The familiars will have their own soul and are independent living creatures with their own skill progression. User can view familiars’ status windows by saying “familiar status window”.
Familiar Evolution: Alternative to Familiar Creation. User manually evolves a familiar, giving it a boost in stats by 3 points and acquiring a new skill.
Description: Every 50 levels the user is able to create a new familiar or can choose to evolve an existing familiar. The familiar will take shape based on the user’s preferences. Experience is shared between user and familiar. The familiar does not need mana to maintain its form as it is a living creature, if the familiar runs out of mana it will substitute the user's mana. Familiars cannot be revived upon death, a new familiar will be created when activating Familiar Creation again.
~~*~~
Base Familiar Status Familiar Name Level 1 Experience 0/100 Health 30/30 Mana 30/30 Strength 3 Dexterity 3 Constitution 3 Intelligence 3 Unallocated Stat Points 2 Skills -- Passives Continuous Evolution
My eyes must have lit up when I read through this class, most of the other classes were not well rounded at all. Some people might prefer to be excellent at one thing, but that just really wasn’t attractive to me, trust some people I barely know with my life? Die because I focused on one role? No thank you.
“Hey, isn't this a little lacking compared to the others? The rest of them get three or more skills but this one you only really have one skill and it's just getting a new familiar every 50 levels?” I asked half expecting a response and half not. After a moment a new window popped up in front of me.
[ Processing Request. ]
A small loading wheel displayed under the text.