Elsewhere

An individual drifts alone in the nothingness of The Void. Eddies of mana course around them, while invisible to the naked eye, they feel as though they were gusting currents of galeforce wind. The figure is batted around to and fro by the dense mana, yet remains silent in their fear as a presence inspects them.

You. I sense a weakness in you that can be fixed. I sense a strength in you that can be honed. The System has not been kind to you. With my help you can abandon its principles. All your hard work will be paid in full. You see what is possible. You want it. No. You need it. You seek strength. You seek power. You seek authority. It shall be yours to have, yours to take. If you but accept my offer, all you seek will be yours and more.

“What offer…?” the individual asks the rasping hissing voice in their ear.

The only response is an echoing bassy laugh and a single notification.

[Lose your class in exchange for a new class, [Heretic]?]

-

Mike

Carlos stares at me with a bit of bewilderment for a moment before saying, “Mike that ability is strong. It’s- It’s too strong. Even considering your other ability, this one is insanely powerful for you. If you aren’t careful with who you tell this to, you’ll be putting both yourself and the rest of us in danger. I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone about this.”

I stare at the notifications in front of me, rereading it for the fifth time to make sure I haven’t lost my mind.

[Skill unlock conditions met]

[Party entered]

[Level 50 reached]

[Hidden skill granted [Strength in numbers]]

[[Passive] Strength in numbers I - You may train individually with members of your party. This will increase applicable stats trained for both parties up to a maximum of the lowest Level shared between you. Due to current party Levels, you may train each party members stats to +50 and your own stats by +50 per party member.]

“Yeah. I… I promise. Let’s get back to Maria’s house,” I say. My head is a whirlwind of emotions, and I’m not sure if it’s excitement or fear that is pounding in my chest. I know how dangerous this can be, with the Incursion Cult being active in the area like Brock had said, but more than anything, this makes up for all of the drawbacks from my class. This is like having an extra plus five scaling on every single stat, more if we find others to add to our party. Sure, I have to work for it, but the potential of this ability is crazy. It’ll put me at the same strength or possibly even higher than the rest of my party without the necessary Level grind. Even better, it’ll put them in a great position too.

I smile as I think about all of the weaknesses my party has, and how they’ll be able to overcome them without having to risk their lives anymore. Carlos, noticing my smile, says, “Mike this is serious. Sure there are a lot of benefits, but you need to keep in mind there are a lot of risks involved with it as well.”

We make the ten minute walk to Maria's home a half hour journey wrapping around a neighborhood, as we realize that walking together at a fast pace increases Vigor at a slow rate. We talk quietly to each other, because, as Carlos put it, “You never know who’s listening.” We discuss the system, my fighting style, common fighting styles that enemies that I might come across may have, and just about anything we can think of as we realize that talking about things one of us doesn’t know trains Intelligence. On the way, Carlos teaches me that I can look at just my stats instead of my entire Status window, and by the time that we get home, they look like this:

[Michael Ward - [Defier of Depths]

HP - 6312/11650

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Strength - 456 [+27] [+0]

Dexterity - 192 [+0]

Defense - 220 [+0]

Intelligence - 23 [+6]

Vigor - 231 [+4]

Charisma - 76 [+11]

]

I walk in the door as everyone sits down for a nice dinner Maria has made, and say, “You’re all coming lifting with me!” I get various confused expressions, and they all begin talking and signing to me over each other. I wait for it to set in, and let them go on for a bit with a huge grin on my face. One by one, the notifications hit, and I can see confusion begin to set in on their faces.

“Mike. I told you to keep this on the down-low, that things like this need a careful introduction, but nooooo! What does Carlos know? I’m just the one who trained everyone in this room to fight and how to read the system properly,” Carlos says before sighing and continuing, “Well, go on and tell them then.”

“Technically… I didn’t say a word about it, but since I have permission now,” I say to Carlos, before turning to the others and excitedly say, “I got my hidden ability, and it’s even better than [Overwhelm]. It allows me to train with my party members and boost every stat for both of us,” the eruption of shouting and excitement dwarfs the previous one by a significant margin.

I let them continue on until they burn themselves out. “We’re hitting the weights tomorrow. One by one. You’re all getting jacked,” I say, “What do you think Carlos? Do we still need a vote to see if I get to stay in the party? I think they’re pretty excited to keep me.”

“Mike, we already agreed we were going to keep you, even before we knew that there would be a huge benefit to us. Terrible first impressions aside, we think you’re a great guy, and we like having you around. I wouldn’t have taken you training today if we hadn’t already discussed the fact that we were going to let you stay. All of this,” he says, gesturing vaguely, “is just an added bonus that’s turned out in all of our favor.”

As I’m turned listening to Carlos, a sandal hits me in the chest. “You’ve eaten too much of my food to let you go that easy! You’re gonna pay me back before you ever think about getting out of here!” Maria says, pretending to act upset, but admittedly poised to throw a second sandal if I decide to backtalk her.

Abe grabs a cord and pulls it, causing a tarp to fall down from the rafters with, ‘Welcome to The Misfits!!!’ written on it in marker. He says, “It’s less of a surprise now, but I hope you appreciate it nonetheless. We were going to try and get you out of the house today anyway so we could set it up for when you hit Level fifty, but you went and did it yourself already.”

Robin steps away for a moment, and comes back rolling a thick metal circle with a hole punched in the middle of it. She gestures to Maria who says, “I can only take partial credit for this, it was mostly Robins idea. Kind of a welcome gift, there’s more of them, but they’re hard to move. She figured with your Strength so high, you wouldn’t be able to use normal weights properly. These are about the same size of your old forty-fives would have been, but ten times heavier. I forged them in a way that specifically targeted bringing out as much of the [Gravity Afflicted] debuff as I could. We wouldn’t be The Misfits if we couldn’t turn a debuff to our advantage after all.”

James sits in the back smiling at me. His face is plastered with a huge smile at uniting me with his friend group.

I take a moment to myself in silence as they all continue to voice their opinion to the affirmative. I feel something hit my hand, and as I bring it up to my face to look at it, a second tear drips from my face and falls onto my hand.

“Alright everyone, the big guy looks overwhelmed. Let’s give him a moment to process,” James says, standing up from the table. “We can tackle more of this tomorrow. For now, dinner is getting cold, and I’m starving.”

I spend most of dinner kind of stunned, to the point that small talk is all I’m really capable of. At some point however, Maria brings out a few bottles of wine she has left from before the Collapse, and that’s when the Charisma points really start flowing. Robin gets kind of tipsy and asks for an ASL lesson about alcohol, and while I’m showing her, she’s a little too drunk to make the hand signs. I laugh with her and grab her hands, softly shaping them into the sign for wine, and as I brush her cheek to show her how to make the sign, our eyes meet for a brief moment.

[+10 Charisma]

We both blush and look away, finding other conversations suddenly very interesting.

The small celebration goes on for a bit longer before we all head off to bed, but despite the alcohol trying to drag me down into sleep, I toss and turn in bed for an hour. There’s so much racing through my head. It’s kind of hard to believe that any of this is real. I don’t know when I went from the kid it was easy to ignore, to the guy people actually like having around. It feels nice, but also scary. What if I fuck it up?

I’ve never been great at making friends, and I’ve definitely never had people genuinely care for me this much. Not since my sister was born at least. I understand why my parents had to put so much effort into her, and I only slightly resent them for it. She was born deaf and struggled with understanding anything in regard to social concepts. It only got worse when they discovered she was a genius. They moved across the country when I was nineteen and my sister was fifteen. They haven’t come to visit even once since she got accepted into some advanced microbiology program at Harvard. They kind of stopped calling very much after that, except to tell me how well she was doing, so eventually, I stopped taking their calls at all.

None of that made it much easier to stomach though. The kids in school laughed at the fact that my sister was advanced into the same grade as me after I got held back. Eventually, I just decided it would be easier doing things on my own. Even when I moved in with James from an ad I’d found online so I could afford to stay living in the city I’d grown up in, it’d taken him months to get me out of my shell and become friends with me. I don’t do people well. Not to the same degree as my sister, but having a group of people like me for who I am, without me having to give them anything, pierces a dam I built a long time ago.

This is the first group of people in my entire life that just fully enjoys me. They were willing to carry me and teach me how to fight without ever knowing if I’d be beneficial to them, they saved my life, they made me a gift, they trained me, and they threw a party for me, and I’m going to make sure I repay their kindness by becoming strong enough to carry them. Sleep greets me as a new determination expands inside of me, and as I close my tear-stained eyes for the last time in the night, I get a new title.

[New Title, [Vowed Defender] awarded!]

[Exp. gain boosted by 5% while acting upon your vow.]