"Admit it, you're feeling pretty good about yourself right now, aren't you?"

Silence.

"After all, it can't be every day that someone in your position gets to do the right thing. I mean, think about it. You'll actually be able to sleep the sleep of the righteous tonight, knowing you made a difference."

Silence.

"All your little will be so proud. You can go home and tell them that Daddy had a difficult choice to make today, and he chose appalling yet entirely justified violence. "

"Little man, will you please shut the fuck up?"

Lowe glanced at his saviour's face and wisely closed his mouth. He was still not entirely clear on the series of events that had manifested Latham directly behind the guy about to blow a fairly giant hole in his torso with some sort of ball-lightning Skill, but he wasn't going to complain. Although now he had the chance to think properly about it, presumably the Warder had also been there when the Lowe himself had killed had been breaking jaws and tearing off ears, so it wasn't all gratitude pie right now.

Speaking of pie . . .

Lowe pulled one of Mylaf's more exotic creations out of his inventory. He currently had a 25% increase in overall HP running, thanks to his delightful breakfast, and that would be a buff he'd be anxious not to swap out. However, he'd used up all his Mana with Slugger, and he had a history of long and painful experiences of being glad he had enough of the blue stuff sloshing around for Roll with the Punches to kick in when shit got real. As his go-to move was, most usually, to accept a pasting - sometimes survival trumped dignity - he needed a speedy Mana boost.

According to Mylaf, the cookie he was holding would refresh the HP and Mana of whoever ate it back to 100%. Using such a prize with his current pathetic stats hardly seemed worth it. Potions that could do the same thing were currently far outside his price range, but at least they were actually purchasable for a handful of gold.

The cost of a consumable which - regardless of Level - would restore you to peak fighting weight . . .

Well, that was insane.

Being in possession of Mylaf's baked goods was the closest thing to guaranteed immortality a person could achieve. At least without spending close to the GDP of a medium-sized Petty Kingdom in some prestigious, high-end .

The image of Gianna D'Avec's shredded corpse popped into his head. It appeared, regardless of buffs, there was always a bigger fish.

He had one last examination of it before munching down.

Item Name: Starlight Solace Cookie

Tier: Legendary

Description: This ethereal cookie is imbued with the radiant essence of starlight, captured during the rare celestial alignment of five moons. Its delicate, shimmering surface pulses with a soft, comforting glow, casting faint shadows that dance in rhythm to unknown cosmic melodies.

Effects:

Complete Restoration: Instantly refreshes all Health Pools (HP) and Mana Pools (MP) to full, regardless of the consumer's Level or condition.

Celestial Blessing: Grants a temporary aura that increases damage resistance and mana regeneration by 20% for 1 hour after consumption.

Usage Restrictions:

One-Time Use: Once consumed, the cookie crumbles into stardust, leaving behind a faint scent of vanilla and cosmos.

Sacred Rarity: Due to its powerful properties and the difficulty of its creation, only one Starlight Solace Cookie can exist at a time in the universe.

Yeah, using this at his Level and with his stats was complete overkill. However, if he didn't eat it, Mylaf couldn't make another one, and she obviously enjoyed doing that. So, he was probably honour-bound to eat it, wasn't he?

Even he couldn't look himself in the face after that bit of selective moral reasoning. Nevertheless, Lowe crunched down on it, instantly feeling like he could take on the world. It had been so long since he'd truly been able to forget what Mana exhaustion felt like that, for a moment, he could ignore the two corpses lying at his feet.

But only for a moment.

"Any idea who these guys were?" Lowe asked the between bites of cookie.

Latham wiped the blood-red blade of his massive sword on the back of the smaller of the two bodies. "Standard hired muscle. Nothing worth worrying about."

Lowe thought that was pretty rich, considering how the encounter had been going before the Warder bothered to intervene. "I don't know, mate. They were giving me plenty to think about. I don't think I'd be telling tales out of school to say I was having more than a few moments of worry about what was occurring."

"I had your back."

"They tore my fucking ear off!"

"And it grew right back. Stop your whining. Oh, and you're glowing, by the way."

Lowe bit down his rising indignation at Latham's insouciance over his loss of body parts. That was right, wasn't it? He'd levelled up with that punch, hadn't he?

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"I didn't think I was that close to my next threshold. What Level was the big guy who was brutalising me whilst my buddy stood and watched?"

Latham prodded the larger corpse with his foot. "No one mentioned you were such a whiner. He was a , Level 46."

Lowe coughed out his final bite of cookie. "Level 46!!!'"

"Yup!"

"I shouldn't have been able to cut his hair, much less punch his heart out of his chest."

"True."

So, what the fuck happened!"

"Well, you're in my aura, aren't you? What else would you expect?"

Lowe flapped his mouth like a goldfish that had been given a particularly challenging algebra problem. His brain quickly tried to make sense of what Latham had said.

It was a fairly open secret that the various guards employed around Soar received significant bonuses when operating within the city limits. The , , , and the rest of them were charged with keeping order in a world where the entire population had access to an almost unlimited range of powers.

It had not taken too many incidents before the Mayor had needed to take action, and my word, action he had taken.

Overnight, all those directly employed in the city's defence became no longer bound by their individual Levels. Whilst they were going about the lawful business, they had the equivalent of Level 99s

Surprisingly, crime levels dropped reasonably quickly after that.

"So, just to check. I'm a Level 99 now?"

"Don't be fucking stupid," Latham was pulling the bodes into a suitably dark alley off the main road, carrying one in each hand as if they were bags of flour, "when you're under my aura, you will have an Equaliser bonus which will allow you to fight on a relatively equal level with your opponents.

"That sounds pretty cool!" Lowe was already thinking of the advantages such a buff would give him. Presumably, what had just happened would merely be the first of many such visits from people who would rather he did not properly investigate the death of Gianna d'Avec. He might get quite a lot of use from Slugger . . .

"Don't get too excited, little man. You're Classless, so anyone of a reasonably high Level you find yourself in a confrontation with will have any number of Skill advantages." Latham casually tossed the body of the away. "Trash like this? He hadn't even raised a basic shield. If he had done, your punch would have just bounced right off him."

Lowe let that sink in. "So, basically, unless I'm being massively disrespected, there's going to be no benefit to having your aura on me?"

"Think on the bright side. Anyone who looks at you or knows anything about you will assume you're a bottom feeder. Disrepect is going to be your superpower. You'll probably get lucky again a few more times."

"Cheers for the pep talk."

You're welcome."

*

The bodies sufficiently hidden, they continued on their way towards the Temple. As they walked, Lowe tried to decide what to do with his new Progression Points.

Typically, when a citizen of Soar hit Level 20, their patron God would give them an opportunity to evolve their Class. Unfortunately, possessing neither a patron nor a Class meant crossing his threshold was rather more underwhelming for Lowe.

He was actually surprised by how much that fact stung. He assumed he had made peace with what had happened the preceding year. But Level 20 was when most people moved from being considered background noise to being worthy of notice. It was oddly painful not to be able to count himself amongst them.

Nevertheless, as he kept telling himself, in many ways, Lowe was himself reasonably extraordinary in having reached Level 20 with no Class Skills whatsoever.

His three Skill slots had undoubtedly helped with that, but even then, he should not have been able to continue to function in a world where might was very much right.

"Are you going to do anything with your Progression Points? The flashing light is giving me a migraine.

Lowe ignored Latham's snark and continued exploring his limited options.

The centre of his core was, obviously, a blank space where his Class should sit. It was a solid grey in his mind, and he could do nothing with it.

Nestled around that hard, unyielding centre, though, were his three Skills: Roll with the Punches, Grid View, and Slugger. All three were softly glowing blue, indicating their Rare status.

Should he wish, it looked like he could use his Level-up bonus to push one of those Skills into the Epic tiers. That was probably the way he was going to go.

He'd once enquired of a , long before he lost his Class, how much gold it would take to do that with Roll with the Punches and had laughed at the answer, assuming it was a joke. Not so much.

So, that was a rather attractive place to put his new Progression Points. In fact, it was an absolute no-brainer.

It was sometimes challenging to work out how a Skill would change in moving from Rare to Epic - such information was carefully, some may say obsessionally, guarded in Soar - but it would hardly make him more squishy, would it?

Lowe selected Roll with the Punches and was about to evolve it when Latham grabbed his arm and twisted it.

"What the fuck!"

"That would be a real waste."

Lowe tried to pull his arm free, but the fingers dug into the flesh of his bicep.

"Mate, it's not like I'm overburdened with options!"

"Open your stat sheet."

Unsure what Latham was getting at, Lowe pressed down on the hard grey of his core to access his statistics. As always, the pain of their paucity hit him anew. Without all the bonuses which come with possessing a Class, there was something pathetic about the sight.

Character Name: Inspector Jana Lowe

Level: 20

Class: None

Unused Progression Points: (5) plus (10) Threshold bonus

Primary Attributes:

* Strength: 70

* Dexterity: 65

* Intelligence: 85

* Wisdom: 78

* Charisma: 40

* Constitution: 75

Secondary Attributes:

* Perception: 80

* Willpower: 74

* Luck: 43

Health Points (HP): 1150

* Regeneration Rate: 2 HP/min (natural); 15 HP/sec (via Roll with the Punches)

Mana Points (MP): 400

* Regeneration Rate: 1 MP/min (natural); increased to 2 MP/min when Mana falls below 10%

Stamina Points (SP): 550

* Regeneration Rate: 5 SP/min

"Stick it all in intelligence." Lathan still hadn't let go of his arm, and Lowe was having to actively push Mana into Roll with the Punches to repair the damage.

"What's the point? A Level 8 with the lowest Class will still have more than me. It's got to be better to have an Epic Skill."

Latham let him go and spun him round to face him. "Classes are overrated."

Lowe opened his mouth to protest that, for sure, when you were a , it was easy to look down on a game you'd already won, but the expression on the man's face gave him pause. "Go on."

"Class relies on someone else: a god, the Council, a benevolent master. We talk about evolving Classes, but all we mean is that someone more powerful than us chooses who we are allowed to become. There's a reason the number of Classes is infinite and growing. Because those in charge are endlessly capricious. The only way to fight that system is to use your Progression Points on your core stats. That way, no one can ever take them away from you. You can spend the rest of your life being a human punching bag - and making Roll with the Punches Epic will help with that, or you can stick two fingers up to them all and take control of your own stats."

" You want me to dump all 15 points in Intelligence?"

"Little man, I couldn't care less. I'm just telling you what I'd do in your shoes."

Lowe paused momentarily, then stuck everything into where Latham had suggested.

The effect was ... interesting.