Arron was really getting tired of having dirt in his mouth.

Strangely enough, a large man appearing out of nowhere, flying through the air and tumbling face first in the middle of the street, didn’t draw as much attention as you would think.

“Da hell?” Arron questioned, spitting out the soil and pushing up to his knees.

Looking back to where he knew respawn to be, he raised his hands and his voice, “What the hell, you crazy, feathered Rhonda Rousey!”

Predictably, there was no response.

Brushing himself off, he continued to curse under his breath as he turned back toward the clearing and his party.

Torbin’s voice echoed from across the street, “Hey, boyo! What happened? You decide to gossip with the Valkyrie?”

“I’m not sure, actually,” Arron called, walking over to meet the group. “I was there, chatting with you all, and then I was dead and headed to respawn. I got here, and the Valkyrie pretty much threw me out.”

“That checks with what we saw,” Sonya replied, her smooth voice causing a passing player to pause before he kept walking. “You just, fell over dead. We headed back to town while we waited for your respawn, and you came flying through the air. It was quite amusing, actually.”

Remembering his newly discovered notifications, Arron accessed the screen, searching for answers.

Level Up – You are now Level 5!

Your clever use of Skills has helped you progress on your path.

While each step is meaningful, this one is actually important…

Congratulations – Class Assigned!

Congratulations on being assigned your Class! See your Character Sheet to learn more! Stubbornness can have its own rewards.

You Have Died – Deadly Rage Activated!

You have died, but your fury won’t let you rest!

Slay your enemy! Hell hath no fury like… well, you.

You have defeated The Beast of Unfettered Rage!

Through determination and iron will, you have slain The Beast!

Run, run, as fast as you can, I’m still gonna get ya.

Achievement Unlocked!

– Deadly Determination –

You have defeated a creature while spending greater than 80% of the fight at critical Health levels.

Not sure if it was wise, but in the end, it worked out.

Deadly Rage Expired – You Have Died!

Respawning at last selected node.

An adventurer always pays his debts. Gotta pay the piper. Don’t write a check your ass can’t cash. You get the idea.

Arron let out a whoop, throwing his fist in the air. He’d unlocked his Class!

Everything he knew indicated that unlocking your Class was when you really started to handle yourself in the game. Leveling up was important, but primarily because it increased the power of your Class. He was beyond ready to be able to defend himself and dish out as good as he got. Excited to see what the game assigned him, he went to his new Class.

Congratulations!

You have been assigned the Class: Hammerhead

Epic levels of stubbornness and a penchant for hitting things in the head with a hammer.

This Class almost chose itself.

– Benefits of this Class include –

Blunt Force Drama: Your ability with Hammers is greatly improved, increasing damage and proficiency. Your affinity for solving things quickly and with overwhelming force results in a loss of Charisma.

Mindless Fury: In combat, you enter a state of uncontrollable fury. Your vision narrows to focus on a single enemy, increasing your damage and causing you to ignore injury. You are 50% more resistant to attempts at mental manipulation.

Learn Through Pain: Upon your death, the % XP lost is equal to your pain threshold.

Deadly Rage: Your stubbornness has reached the level that it affects the world around you. When you are in the state Mindless Fury, you will continue to fight after death. When in this state, you cannot be healed. You cannot use Skills. Upon ending Mindless Fury, you will die.

“Whoa,” Arron said, reading over the details.

“I know that look,” Iris said. “Gratz, Arron!”

The whole group patted him on the back, each with their own take on the word ‘congratulations.’ Even several of the players passing by on the street chimed in.

“Well?” Torbin prompted. “Let us have it then. What did you get?”

“Uh, Hammerhead?” Arron replied.

“I’ve never heard of that lot!” Torbin said, already hardly able to contain his excitement. “Iris? Sonya?”

Both ladies shook their heads and shrugged.

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All but giggling in excitement, Torbin turned to Mercutio. “Hit it with that Bardic Knowledge, Merc!”

Mercutio stared at Arron for a long moment, and then, much to Arron’s surprise, and annoyance, he broke into verse.

I’ve heard tale on the wind,

Blowing gale about him,

Whose ire you should dread.

Beware the Hammerhead!

The first of its kind

Stands the Hammerhead at dawn.

True glory can he find,

Through trips to respawn!

The Bard paused briefly, his voice dropping, taking on a sadder tone.

Roads perceived in twain,

Marching two paths, both different but the same.

Following a quest beyond their grasp,

For the future, for their lives,

for their missing half.

The group turned to Arron, an array of awe and shock in their stares.

Arron was less impressed. “What does that prove? The Bard can write a crappy poem.”

“No, Arron,” Torbin replied, his short, stocky frame beginning to bounce up and down in barely contained excitement. “Mercutio didn’t write that. The game did. His Bardic Knowledge Skill is directly tied to his Class. It can’t lie!”

“Oh.”

“You got an original Class, Arron!” Torbin threw his arms up, shuffling around in a strange jig. “That’s huge!”

“It is?” Arron asked. “Why?”

“Because the evolution of your character type hasn’t been mapped yet!” Torbin replied, fairly jumping up and down now.

Arron leaned away from the flailing dwarf, both brows raised in confusion.

Realizing he was maybe a bit too excited, Torbin stopped jumping and visibly calmed himself. “Look, I was a Forest Walker. That’s the Class I started with at Level 5. The forums have a bunch of information about being a Forest Walker. Its strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and progressions. For example, everyone knows it can progress into Animal Friend, or an Arborist, or a bunch of other Classes, most having to do with nature and the forest, obviously. Or it can progress into a Scout or a Ranger, like me. Ranger can then evolve into a bunch of different Classes, from Legendary Marksman, which I’m working toward, to Nature’s Protector, Bandit, even some Assassin-like ones. That’s not to say you can’t move sideways, but usually, that involves taking steps that feel backward in progression.”

“Oh, ok. Your Class turns into other Classes as you get stronger? That makes sense,” Arron mused.

Torbin grimaced. “In a basic sense, yes. It gets more complicated if you start trying to play outside your Class though, but let’s not worry about that right now.”

“Alright, so what does a Hammerhead progress into?” Arron asked.

“That’s just it,” Torbin shimmied into his dance again. “Nobody knows! Like I said, the forums are full of info on the game. But with an original Class, there won’t be any information! And the community keeps the forum very up to date—”

“Like that Level 2 hanging around the Black Keep over the last few weeks,” Mercutio interrupted. “Apparently, people started rerunning the Keep just to mess with the newb.”

Torbin waved off the Bard. “Yes. It was on the front page for three days. We all read the story.” Turning back to Arron, he said, “An excellent example of my point, actually. The community stays pretty invested in the forums, so they include plenty of info on their Classes, especially as more players play them. But nobody has played a Hammerhead! There is no telling how powerful your Class could be. And others won’t be able to plan for what you bring to the table in a scrap!”

Torbin went into a bit of a tangent, thinking aloud how Arron’s original Class could help the guild.

Through the squat dwarf’s ramblings, it was starting to dawn on Arron just how big a deal this could be. If he was the first, then nobody else knew what his abilities were. Since nobody knew what he would progress into, it could make it more difficult to evolve, but that very notion meant he’d be free from having to play the game in any “expected” way.

He’d been swimming in cloudy waters ever since he logged in. This might just even the playing field a bit.

“Pray tell us, noble hero of unsung glory, what are the specifics of your newfound majesty?” Mercutio prodded.

Arron looked at the group, feeling slightly wary of giving away his new advantage.

Reading his gaze, Iris stepped in, “Don’t worry, Arron, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to. But it does make our group stronger if we can plan for the advantages you bring.”

“Aye,” Torbin said seriously, “and Sonya can lay down a binding to keep anyone from spilling the beans if our party were to break up.”

Sonya nodded, sincerity in her eyes like the rest of the group. Arron thought for a moment before shaking himself. These were the people helping him get to Bella. He would have to trust someone, and thus far, they’d been good allies.

Sighing, he made his decision. “It looks like I get a bonus to using hammers and some sort of focus enhancing thing against a single opponent.”

“I’ve heard of something like that,” Sonya said. “Like a Barbarians Rage, I’ll bet.”

“Nice,” Torbin nodded. “Go on, Arron. What else?”

Arron reread the rest of his Class Benefits again, furrowing his brow as he tried to understand them.

“Honestly, I don’t really know what these do,” he said, reading Learn Through Pain to the group. They immediately started shouting ideas to each other and recommendations to Arron.

“Wait, what’s a Pain Threshold?” Arron asked, trying to get in a word. The entire group stopped, that irritatingly familiar look of ‘are you freaking kidding me?’ in their eyes.

“My God, boy, you aren’t using the Pain Threshold?” Torbin asked.

Arron shrugged.

“No, of course not,” Torbin huffed. “Why would someone who skipped the tutorial know about using the Pain Threshold?”

Torbin wiped his face with his hand in exasperation. “Ok, Pain Threshold allows you to diminish the sensation of pain in the game. Getting stabbed by a sword is a little bit of pressure, but it doesn’t actually feel like getting stabbed. You didn’t find it weird that all these people were completely fine with running into a dragon’s lair to have their skin flash fried? Just how masochistic do you think we are?

“You control how much of the pain is dulled in your System Options. I keep mine at about 85%. That way, the game doesn’t dull the other physical sensations, like the ground under my feet or the feel of my rifle at my shoulder. Normally, there’s no downside to having your Pain Threshold high. When you do, the game just feels like a game. But for you, the lower the threshold, the less XP you lose when you die. That’s huge! Being able to respawn without losing XP, especially at higher Levels, is an insanely big deal!”

Torbin paused, his gaze sweeping over the group. They all seemed to share the same thought.

“But, so is playing with full pain,” he continued. “It could literally drive you crazy. Like torture. It’s a cool ability, but the cost… the cost might not be worth it.”

Arron nodded, completely understanding. He immediately went to his System Options and turned the setting clear up to 100%. The pain he’d been experiencing in-game had been genuinely horrific. If he could find Bella without having his mind crushed under the anxiety of being literally torn in half repeatedly, he would prefer that.

Shaking off the sober moment, Arron read off Deadly Rage.

The group fell silent, like an author who’d run out of things to say. Briefly, they contemplated the ramifications of Arron’s ability, and started yelling back and forth once again, this time louder than before.

“But with Learn Through Pain he can—” Iris shouted.

“No! We will not be pushing for that,” Torbin cut her off. “Ya heard what I just said.”

“Either way, fighting beyond death!” Sonya interjected.

“I’m going to make so much money off the song!” Mercutio giggled, losing his strange faux British accent momentarily.

“Hey!” Arron yelled. “Any chance I can get in on this conversation completely about me!”

They at least had the decency to look sheepish.

“Ah. Of course, lad.” Torbin coughed. “What would you like to know?”

“If I’m understanding this right, Deadly Rage lets me keep fighting after I die?”

“Yes and no…” Torbin pursed his lips. “We discussed how your Mindless Fury is similar to a Barbarian’s Rage? Well, when you’re in that state, ya keep fighting even if you die. It doesn’t change that you died, and when the time runs out, or your Fury ends, you will head to respawn. It also means you can continue to deal it out to whatever it is you’re fighting in the meantime.”

“The synergy…” Iris prompted, getting a patting motion from Torbin.

“Yes, yes. There are clear synergies with your Learn Through Pain ability. Turning the pain all the way up, so not to worry about losing XP, then attack a creature that is bigger than you knowing you will fight even after you die, at least for a while. That’s powerful. But it’s also pretty dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Arron asked.

“Aye. Like I said, the pain in this game could put stress on your mind. The game is designed to be realistic, and you can’t adjust any setting, including your Pain Threshold, when you’re in the middle of combat.”

“Which means… if I fell into a fire while in combat, I’d have to wait until the fire killed me to turn off the pain?” Arron clarified.

Torbin nodded. “Feeling yourself cook the whole while.”

“Well, that’s annoyingly tempting yet terrifying,” Arron concluded, making everyone in the group chuckle.

“Honestly, lad, I’m not sure what you did in your first four Levels to get this Class, but whatever it was, it’s going to be interesting to watch you evolve. I’m glad you’re on our team.”

The others nodded their agreement.

“Anyway,” Torbin said, handing over another glowing gem. “I picked up your loot from the Beast. Give it a gander. Tell us how you fared.”

Arron reached to get the gem, and as soon as he touched it, the thing disappeared. Growling his frustration, he looked to see if anything popped up in his notifications, no luck.

“Where do I see this… loot?”

“It should be in your inventory,” Torbin said, furrowing his brow. “Is it not?”

“Inventory?”

Torbin wiped his face again, shaking his head in dismay.