"When I said 'drop in any time', I am now wishing that I had added some parameters."

Arebella, her heart pounding, closed the door behind the battered and bleeding little group. She pulled down the blind in her window, a mix of relief and worry etched on her face. Lowe, admiring her dedication to anonymity, couldn't help but feel the puddles of blood Charl had been leaking since they'd portalled to the ground floor of the Tower of Law, slightly giving the game away.

The big man groaned, his head slipping forward as he dropped back into unconsciousness. Tenia sagged under the full weight of her friend. "Lowe, make with the healing." She started to summon , but he shook his head emphatically.

"Sorry, Bella," he offered, freeing himself from Charl's arm and stretching out his back. "We had no other place to go."

Either the Skills of the confirmed the truthfulness of his statement, or it was the amount of body fluids currently ruining a very attractive rug he remembered them spending a nice afternoon hunting for at the market by her house.

Ignoring that inconveniently nostalgic memory, he settled down next to Charl and put his hands on his chest. Tenia went to cast her again, but he shook his head. "No, hang on. Let me try something."

The flashing gold of his skin had given him an idea. He was nowhere near his next Level, so something else must have happened, and he had a notion of what it could be.

He pulled up his status screen and, as he thought, where a fourth technique slot should be was a flashing gold bar. But that wasn't the most interesting thing.

That was that he could select it.

Mentally pressing down on it, he was presented with three options—three new Skills to choose from.

Lowe searched his brain, wondering if he had ever heard of a Classless gaining a new Skill. It didn't take him long to run out of examples. The Classless were a rare enough species in the first place, let alone ones that lived long enough even to have a chance to unlock new powers.

Putting those thoughts away, he concentrated on his options.

Where on earth had they come from? He had no god to offer him choices, and obviously, he didn't have a Class with a whole host of built-in selections to make.

"Lowe, we haven't got a lot of time." Hel's voice interrupted his thinking. "Patch Charl up, and then we need to come up with a plan."

He ignored her.

The first new Skill available to him was called Masochist. He didn't need to avail himself of all of his deductive abilities to work out this was likely to be a technique whereby he could hurt himself to gain access to greater power. Unsurprisingly, he did not find this particularly attractive. Sure, it was what he'd been doing with Tenia's curse to get hold of his mana, but he already had a Skill that encouraged people to inflict pain on him. He hadn't especially enjoyed his time in Mr Law's torture room, and the thought of actively choosing to maim himself on a regular basis - regardless of how much extra power it gave him - wasn't his idea of a good time.

The second available Skill was, potentially, a better shout. With a name like Circling the Drain, he presumed it was a last-ditch revive Skill to save the truly fucked. Lowe had been in enough bad situations where a friend or a colleague passed away in lieu of the immediate presence of a healer, and he could see this as a life-saver. Literally. The thing is, it was such a shock to be able to add another Skill to his repertoire that it seemed a bit of a waste to use it on something he would only be able to use in dire extremes. If he had twenty or thirty Skills, it would be different . . .

So, with a touch of trepidation, he clicked on the third one. And grinned instantly. Unless whatever system labelled Skills was playing with him, then Medic! would be precisely the healing Skill he was looking for.

Of course, he assumed - as he hoped it was a pure healing ability - that there would be an initially crappy mana-to-healing rate. Still, if he could use it without stabbing himself or needing the recipient to be moments from death, then it was the sort of utility technique he could get right behind.

Without overthinking it, he selected Medic! and felt a massive surge of joy as it transferred to his fourth technique slot.

However, even as he triggered it and started pouring mana into Charl - as he suspected, it appeared for every 500 mana used, there was a return of 250 HP. Not terrible, but hardly an Elixir of Resurrection - a new notification grabbed his attention.

<<>>

Without even thinking, Lowe pushed all of his points into Wisdom. The number rolled upwards as before, the colour changing again - as with his Intelligence - to gold when it hit 200. A further message appeared.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

<<<>>>

Lowe split them into Strength and Dexterity, feeling light-headed as his Mana Regen went through the roof. This allowed him to press out Medic! even faster into Charl, who was starting to look much healthier.

A glance at his Primary attributes brought a satisfied smile to his face - particularly the gold colour around Intelligence and Wisdom.

* Strength: 120

* Dexterity: 90

* Intelligence: 265

* Wisdom: 218

* Charisma: 60

* Constitution: 75

Then he realised that no one was speaking. "What?"

Arebella looked at Hel, who looked back at her and then at Tenia. The shrugged and seemed happy to be the spokesman. "You've just done the weirdest Leve-up thing."

"How do you mean, 'weirdest'?"

"Flashing lights, choral music, smoke pouring around you. What happened, Jana?" Arebella said, moving to put - he couldn't help but notice - the desk between them.

He was saved from coming up with an explanation by Charl suddenly sitting up, letting out a spectacular fart and looking around blearily.

"Did we win?"

*It turned out, despite being in the presence of several pretty beefily levelled mercenaries, not a one of them had a decent cleaning spell. They, therefore, needed to spend a solid bell cleaning up Arebella's office and trying to remove the long streaks of blood that led from the portal stone on her floor directly to her door.

"Okay. I feel it is about time I get an explanation." All things being considered, Arebella had been pretty understanding thus far. Lowe figured he owed her the whole story.

He was just getting to the bit when he chose to lead an unstoppable Advanced Class psychopath straight to her place of work when he realised that everyone was looking at him like he was mad.

"So, all this happened, and you didn't even have anything to tell him?" Hel's expression was dark.

"I prefer to think that I manfully resisted horrific torture and did not share any crucial information."

"Because," Tenia clarified, "you don't know anything."

"I mean, you could look at it that way. I prefer the version where I come across like a hero."

Arebella sat down in the chair next to him. Due to the cramped condition, her arm rested against his. He found it oddly comforting.

Without further interruption, he filled them in about cracking the healing code and then, after a deep breath, explained what he knew about Essence Transmutation Theory.

"Show me your stats," Hel said, "I've never heard of anything like it."

Feeling like he was in a office, half-dressed and being asked to bend over, Lowe shared his details with her. She glanced at them and then pushed them out to Tenia and Charl. Both of them whistled.

"This is fucked up," Tenia said.

"How do you mean?"

"You're a Level 25 without a Class," Hel said, taking over, "You're basically road kill."

"Cheers!"

"No offence, but she's right." Charl's deep voice rumbled around the space. "Level 25, no god and no Class. I should be able to one-shot you with my cock."

"Thanks for the visual. And 'you're welcome' for the life-saving heals, by the way."

"But," Tenia chimed in, "your stars are all wrong. And I've never seen anyone with this Rank 2 bullshit, let alone a 'Title'. You're an odd little man. Don't take this wrong way," she looked over to Arebella, "but I presume he's telling the truth?"

The blushed and then nodded.

"Fuck. Okay." Hel started pacing. "From what the has said, you've basically got the Intelligence and Wisdom of a Level 50. 'Rank 2' attributes are effectively twice as strong as their Rank 1 equivalent. And no one will ever be able to tell that by looking at you. So, say your smart mouth and general air of punchability doesn't get you zeroes and you somehow make it to Level 50. You'll be, in real terms, a Level 100. That's absolutely insane. You won't need a Class by then. With your particular set of Skills - even if you can't add any more - you'll be pretty much unkillable by anything short of a god."

"Awesome. That is, of course, assuming I survive the next few hours."

"Who else knows about this Essence Transmutation Theory?" Arebella said, her arm being really quite distracting.

"I presume lots of people," he replied to her, "Latham told me about it."

"The more important question is, who knows about you being a walking, talking advertisement for taking the road less travelled?" Hel's eyes were filled with storm clouds.

"No one."

"You didn't tell - what did you call him - Mr Law?"

"I didn't. I kept that under wraps." Mostly because he didn't ask, Lowe thought, but he sounded more stoic saying it this way.

There was a beat, and then Tenia smirked. "He didn't ask you about it, did he?"

No one needed Arebella's assistance to see the truth, as Lowe blushed a deep scarlet. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"Okay," Hel crossed to the office door and checked no one was in the corridor listening. "Well, I will tell you to keep it schtum around anyone else. In a previous life, I'd recommend you kill everyone you've already told, but I'm working on being a better person. I would advise getting Strength and Agility to Rank 2 and seeing what happens next. Maybe nothing. Maybe more spectacular bullshit. Do you need any gold to raise your latest Skill to Rare?"

Lowe shook his head. "I couldn't possibly . . . "

Tenia pulled a heavy bag from her inventory and threw it at him. He caught it, the money inside being instantly added to his balance. He blanched at the amount. "You broke me out of there. If anything, I owe you!"

"You saved Charl. And if there's one thing secret government hit squads are not short of, it's cash. Rank it up the expensive way. You hold on to your Progress Points." Hel's voice brooked no argument.

"Look," Arebella's face had grown increasingly pale throughout the discussion. "I cannot pretend to have followed most of this, but none of the danger has gone away, has it? Mr Law is still out there, and you're no closer to solving d'Avec's murder. He's just going to keep coming for you!"

Lowe stood and brushed down his rumbled clothes. It was a bit of a losing effort. "I think we can do something better than hang around and wait for the inevitable."

Hel and Tenia exchanged a glance. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm going to go straight to him."