John used his stat points and put them into dexterity, then he looked at the subclasses.
Rogue subclasses.
1. Spy.
2. Serial killer.
3. Mist blade.
4. ranger.
5. archer.
6. swashbuckler.
7. spell knife.
8. assassin.
9. reaper.
10. inquisitor.
He didn't see descriptions, so he thought it out, spy, he doubted it was like team fortress two spy, but maybe it did have a shapeshifting ability, Serial killer was probably something edgy and might have something to do with dagger skills, Mist blade was an unknown, ranger was probably something to do with bows so did archer clearly, Swashbuckler is probably something to do with head to head combat. Spell knife is clearly a mix of wizard and rogue, assassin could be interesting, probably has something to do with the sneak skill, reaper sounded like one of those vampiric classes that got health from attacks, and inquisitor was clearly a church based assassin subclass that likely dealt in mind reading or healing magic or something.
He decided to go with Mist blade, he wasn't sure what it was, he didn't know what any of the subclasses did for a fact, for all he knew assassin summoned unicorns that shit rainbows that dealt a trillion damage. He found that there was a description and he was just being an idiot, when he pressed the class it popped up with as little information as humanly possible, it showed a prompt that said the mist blade fought using illusions. He smiled and pressed the accept button, he didn't know why but if felt like something drew his finger to yes, no, like something assured him this was the best fit for him.
Mist blade class received, common chest received.
He took it out of his inventory, it was rather small about the size of a bread box, he opened it up and inside he saw a wheel of fortune, he spun it and it landed on a small green section, hardly the smallest but it wasn't the biggest either, he received a was a cloak.
[Mist cloak, uncommon item.]
[When obscured by fog, mist, or smoke you become transparent making it harder to see you.]
He glanced at it, it seemed pretty good, if his class was an illusionist he'd probably have a fog spell. He equipped it, the cloak falling down around him, it was see through and folds and made it look like water.
He checked his skills and saw he had spell slots, that was interesting, he looked around, seeing Leo equipping something, a fancy looking sword. "What'd you get?" John asked.
"Excalibur." Leo said grinning.
"What?!" John and several others shouted.
"Joking, it's the sword of mage king Alant, semi weapon." Leo clarified after snickering like a kid who got away with putting a tack on the teachers chair. "I chose spellblade as my class. it was my class in the beta."
"lucky fucking bastard." John said jokingly, he was a little suspicious of these drops, first the subclass then the mist cloak, it almost felt like something in the game was trying to assist him, and not just him, that sword was practically tailored to Leo's aggressive magic fighting style, maybe he was imagining it, but he doubted it, his instincts were screaming at him that there was something more to this.
Leo started looking thoughtful, then gestured for them to follow. "Come on, let's go check out one of the lower level dungeons nearby." He said.
"We ready for that?" Tyrese asked, equipping a new metal tower shield.
"The enemies are a little stronger than us which means we'll get more experience." Leo said.
"Well, it should be a good way to level fast, let's go." Lenda said, looking at a new spell tome.
They walked and walked and walked, passing rolling green hills and clusters of trees, until finally they came to a tower as wide as a mountain and so tall that spiraled up into the sky, a dark shadow fell over them and they looked up seeing massive dragon the size of a sky scraper circled around the dungeon way up in the sky. "Uh.... you sure, that this is a low level dungeon? because... that looks like the main dungeon of the area." John said.
Leo patted the air. "as long as we stay on the first floor, we'll be fine, last I played it was just kobolds."
"What about the dragon?" Lenda asked raising an eyebrow.
"Well, as long as nobody is dumb enough to shoot arrows at it we should be good." Leo said.
"What about us? we're like level 4." One of the guild footmen asked.
"We'll be there too, you'll be fine, just fight but stay back, try to form a shield wall or a phalanx, you should get a ton xp, one of those little scaly rascals should have you leveled up instantly." Leo said, he unsheathed the longsword and walked up to the massive ornately decorated metal dungeon doors, one side a dragon another a man with a sword, He shoved the door open and walked inside everyone moved in behind him.
John looked around, and saw burning braziers giving the stone halls a scorching interior, he immediately hated it in here, and he could see many others shared the sentiment.
Leo walked through like he had done it a hundred times before, and they soon came across a bunch of little scaly red creatures, all of which were jabbering at each other in a strange language, they looked like they were fighting over a small gold coin, but stopped when they saw the group, though one did use the distraction to snatch the coin, opportunistic little bugger. John chuckled at the little runts antics.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"They haz zhiny!" One shouted in a weird accent, and leapt at Leo's sword, which was pointed at it. "They'll try to steal your weapons and use them against you, so watch out." Leo said.
John was loving this game more and more by the minute, he just wish he didn't have to pay with his life to get it, but hey, that's the IRS for you, always taking something extra. He picked an illusion spell, decided to go with fog cloud to test out his new cloak, frankly if it worked well enough with the class he might just keep using it forever, granted there were probably better cloaks. he was immediately shrouded by a fog and his form seemed to become transparent and what was more his outline was hazy and bladed with the fog, the players around him looked confused, and were looking around trying to find their targets... "Woops. probably should have warned them." He muttered, he came up behind a small shadow and attacked at where it's head seemed to be, it mist, heh, and the target turned and attacked him with it's spear, it lunged at him, note to self, get skill that lets him see in fog, actually scratch that it would mean others would be able to see through it too. new note, hope to god nobody can find a skill that lets them see in fog. He immediately turned incorporeal and the creature ran right through him, and he attacked again once he was corporeal again, his hit struck it's back and a critical was gained, he watched it land from where it lunged at him and roll across the ground, it got back to it's feet and tried to attack again, this time it was more careful and didn't lunge, and stabbed it's spear at him, he only saw the shadow but that was enough, he caught the spear by the shaft right below the head, much like he would handle a snake trying to bite him, he brought his dagger up onto the shaft.
[Error, strength level too low to break weapon.]
"Well shit." He muttered, then what felt like a scaly child leapt up onto his back, and started attacking him with a dagger. incorporeal and it fell through him but he lost fifty health over two thirds of his health. He retreated back behind the frontline of shields, phasing through all of them which freaked many of them out, before he became corporeal again, Lenda gave him a heal and he nodded his thanks to her. He watched as the shield wall was holding up against the rabid kobolds and the fog spell slowly faded, though it was a pretty cool sight to see tendrils of fog slowly drift over and under the shield wall.
Lenda smacked him upside the head with her big ass tome. "That was stupid of you."
"Yeah, I know, I just wanted to test my cloaking ability. what subclass did you pick?"
"Cleric, why?" She asked.
"I chose mist blade, it has some cool illusion stuff, and with my incorporeal ability, it can really fuck with people's heads when they attack me and think I'm an illusion too, and if I can make several illusions of myself..." John said.
"Leo said that mist blade wasn't all that good because it didn't have many offensive abilities, but you may have just cracked that code." Lenda said, before she cast a spell at one of the soldiers whose defense was slowly being pushed back by a couple kobolds. "But if you really want to scare the shit out of people, he said that's the one you use. apparently for Halloween a couple mist blades got together and made a haunted house in the city and apparently it was pretty fucking terrifying, you should ask him about it, maybe we can do something similar next year."
John laughed. "Man, I remember hearing about that on the news, yeah we'll definitely have to do that."
"Well, you're good to go, now get out there and kill shit." She said, patting him on the back, he smiled and gave her a peck on the cheek. "You got it honey."
Rin smiled and started boosting the frontline when Tyrese told her to either get a move on. "Yeah yeah, I'm getting to it."
John took the bow from his back and shot an arrow over the shield wall, He got the message of a critical hit. "Lucky shot..." John muttered to himself. He pulled his bow string back again and shot another, aiming for the same spot, it missed so he drew his daggers.
Leo leapt above the shield wall and sent a red slash across the air and it cut into a pair of kobolds, sending them skidding back like they just got hit by a truck.
Tyrese broke ranks from the shield wall and they closed back in around each other to close the gap made. Tyrese swung his sword at the kobolds Leo had attacked and a shield slam later they exploded into red pixels, the last three started at him, though John leapt over the shield wall and slammed his knife down on a rather wounded kobolds head, it exploded into red pixels. Leo leapt at the last two and slashed both of their throats with his sword and they exploded into pixels.
Rin spoke up. "Looks like I got a good chunk of XP for supporting the team Another group like this and I'll level up."
The foot soldiers in the group cheered, saying they got three levels from the fight.
John raised an eyebrow. "That's handy." He looked to Leo. "Leo, what's the boss of this dungeon?"
"Iligsir the red dragon." Leo responded. "And no, the beta testers did not manage to beat it, it was like level 50 and had like 3 phases to his fight, not to mention it was fighting organically like the other monsters, that means no attack patterns, one second it was flying around raining fire on us like magic napalm the next it it was throwing us off the tower with a tail swipe, it was honestly, pretty horrifying." Leo said.
John nodded. "Probably worse than that time they released dark souls three in VR."
Leo laughed. "I remember that, people were harping on players who ran into walls trying to get away from the bosses."
Rin smiled. "That was before full dive right?"
Leo nodded. "Yeah, it ended in a lot of people getting hurt so they took it off the VR, I think they were planning to bring it back on fulldive, too bad we won't be able to play that, it sounded fun..." Leo trailed off of that, a sad look on his face. "We're really dead aren't we."
John shrugged. "Maybe we are, maybe we aren't, I don't know what happened with the headsets."
Eventually they came to another group of kobolds and they leveled up again after fighting them, They were celebrating and John set a couple points into intelligence, their celebration was until they heard when they heard heavy footsteps at the end of the hall.