Recommendations

* Blood Blade

* Monster Truck Driver

* WWE Champion

* +328 more...

Wow. That was a lot.

"That's a lot," Bannon said, echoing my thoughts. "Probably a bunch of tank classes because your Constitution is so ridiculously high. Don't get too excited; a lot of them will be redundant or crap."

I started going through my recommendations.

Class: Blood Blade

Cardiovascular mages are among the strongest magic users in the game. They have a nigh-limitless bag of tricks, including making an enemy's heart beat so fast that it literally catches fire...which is both awesome and gross. Grawesome? Whatever.

Of course, not everyone is cut out to be a mage. One time, long, long ago, one little dilettante managed to learn a few bits of Cardio before getting kicked out of totally-not-Hogwarts. Next he tried to be a cleric but got bored and quit after learning some minor stuff. Then he started studying how to bash things with a pointy metal stick and discovered he had finally sunk to his proper level. He managed to put all the various bits of learning together into something that didn't get anywhere near grawesome but maybe made it to grool. (Gross + cool, get it?)

+3 Constitution

+5 to the spell Transfusion

+1 to the spell Hematic Transmutation

+1 to the spell Blood Sword

+1 to the Blood Bomb skill

+(Constitution)% to damage caused by your blood

+3 to the skill Regeneration whenever you have at least half a gallon of blood in your stomach

The descriptions were as gross as I had expected.

Transfusion

Look how generous you are! You can transfer hit points from yourself to another, and all you have to do is force your own lifeblood into their veins! (Good news! Having this spell at level 1 converts you into a truly universal donor. Screw blood types, your blood can go into a silicon-based lifeform and do just fine.)

Hematic Transmutation

Transmute any liquid into blood! Oh, the liquid needs to be inside your body, so you'll want to drink lots of fluids. Yes, you'll heal yourself when you use this spell but it won't stop you from needing to pee every ten minutes given how much water you'll be guzzling.

Blood Sword

Forgot to bring a weapon? No problem! Cut a vein open and your blood will fountain out to create a sword that you can wield. The resulting sword has durability, duration, and damage based on the level of Blood Sword. When the spell expires, the sword returns to its liquid state.

That was gross. I was going to have to self-harm every time I got in a fight?

Blood Bomb

You're a blast! Well, your blood is. Your blood can be converted into explosives and either thrown or planted as a trap. Triggering options depend on your level of skill in the spell. Larger amounts of blood result in enhanced damage.

"That's disgusting," I said.

"That's effective," said Bannon. "What they don't tell you is that Blood Sword is pretty generous about what it considers a sword. Make one with a cup hilt a meter wide and you've got a shield with a spike on it. Make a short one with a weird-shaped tip and you've got a key. That package of spells gives you healing, utility, and damage; there aren't a lot of classes that can do all three so you'd be welcome in any group. The important point is that pulling blood out of yourself costs hit points, which is why it's such a good choice for you with that massive Constitution."

"It can't be good for my social numbers though, can it? Splashing blood around like that is gross."

He waffled one hand in a 'yes and no' gesture. "It's definitely niche appeal, but the people who go for it really go for it. It's the old question: Is it better to have a quintillion viewers or a trillion favorites?"

Given my current social numbers the question was completely irrelevant. I didn't want to bring that up; I wasn't sure if Bannon could still see my social numbers but if he could then I didn't want to draw attention to their more-than-anemic values. Best to move on quickly.

"Let's come back to it," I said, waving for the next option.

Class: Monster Truck Driver

Yee-haw! Time to put your baseball cap on, grab a chaw of 'baccy, and climb up into your ridiculously giant-wheeled truck. Maybe you can get some cornbread and fried Oreos on the way to bang your sister!

+3 Constitution

+1 to the Second Fuel Tank skill

+1 to the Rush skill

+1 to the Pathfinder skill

+1 to the Speed is Life skill

Immunity to wind spell damage

+10% resistance to the Buzzed and Shit-Faced debuffs (only from beer)

This is an Earth Class. As an incentive to choose an Earth Class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.

"Huh," Bannon grunted. "Silver box? That's a little weak. It's usually a Gold and a stat point or two. More of the same with the short timers, I guess."

"Short timers?"

"Yeah, it's usually a week-ish for the first floor and then they add about five days to each floor down—it should have been ten or twelve days for the second floor and fifteen or twenty for this one. The showrunners are using really short timers this season. No idea why."

Argh! One more thing he hadn't mentioned before now, presumably because he had decided that we didn't need to know it. Which, granted, we didn't—the time we had was the time we had, regardless of whether it was longer in other crawls. Still.

"That Pathfinder skill is huge," Bannon said, gesturing with his pointer. "It opens your map up in a big area, even at level one. It trains slowly, so you'll probably need to find a training guild to boost it. On the other hand, 'training' it just means keep it opened all the way, so you can be doing it 24/7 with no effort. As it levels up the area it shows gets bigger; if you get it to level 15 you'll see basically the entire floor." He shrugged. "Still, even at level one it's amazing. It'll let you find the stairwells much more easily and that's going to start being important. They won't be as available as they were on the training levels."

"Training levels?!"

"Sure. What, you didn't think that—"

He cut himself off as the world shook around us. The level countdown in the corner of my display blinked and reset itself to eight days.

The second floor had collapsed.

Welcome, Crawlers, to the third floor! We have just over 700,000 crawlers remaining. You will have eight full days to complete this floor. We will have a longer announcement later, but we know most of you are currently dealing with your game guides. We are looking forward to seeing what races and classes everyone picks. We have some new, exciting classes available this season! Good luck to everyone!

Seven hundred thousand.

Thirteen million people had entered the dungeon and now, eleven days later, we were down to seven hundred thousand. My mind tried to conceive that amount of murder and simply bounced. It was unreal.

Bannon cleared his throat. "Stay focused. You need to get done with this and get back out there."

"Sorry." I turned back to the description of Monster Truck Driver and checked the abilities again. Bannon had already sung the praises of Pathfinder.

Second Fuel Tank: Absorbs a percentage of the damage from every hit you take. Every attack you receive has a chance of triggering this ability; when triggered, damage will be reflected back on the attacker. Will activate at most once per fight. Trains up based on the amount of damage absorbed.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It would have been helpful if it specified what the percentage was, or how fast it leveled up, or how higher levels of it mattered. More damage absorbed and reflected? Higher chance of triggering? More than one use per fight? The ability could either be incredibly powerful or utterly useless, and without the relevant information I couldn't tell which.

Rush: Once per 30-hour day you may use your body as a battering ram, throwing you forward at high speed. You are invulnerable while this ability is active. You may be thrown slightly off-course from the direction you are facing when you activate it. Higher skill means more precise aim and higher impact damage.

That...sounded painful. Potentially useful, but if I could only use it once every thirty hours then it would be very slow to train.

Speed is Life: Gotta go fast, gotta go fast! You receive a bonus to your Constitution depending on how fast you are moving. The increased Constitution raises both your maximum and current hit points for the duration of the bonus. Damage taken while the bonus is in effect will be removed from the bonus hit points first.

How was that even useful? The dungeon didn't provide a lot of opportunities to move fast for long periods of time. Maybe I could learn to fight while running in circles around my opponent?

"Not bad," Bannon said. "Flat immunity to a damage type, even if it's something limited like wind? Good thing. Also, that Speed is Life skill will help a lot with falling damage. Definitely a solid choice."

I looked at him askance but let it go; I didn't want to argue unnecessarily and maybe one of the other choices would be good enough that I wouldn't have to. I moved on to the final recommendation.

Class: WWE Champion

The roar of the crowd! The echoing voice of the announcer! The funny costumes and weird catchphrases! WWE was proof that you people were able to invent at least one cool thing before we destroyed your world and murdered most of your species.

Strength: +3

Constitution: +2

Charisma: +1

+2 to the The People's Elbow skill

+1 to the spell Taunt

+1 to the spell Second Wind

+5% to all physical stats for 10 minutes if you use a catchphrase and flex at the start of combat

This is an Earth Class. As an incentive to choose an Earth Class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.

"Ooh," Bannon said, eyebrows raised. "That's surprisingly good. The People's Elbow is a high-damage spell and it scales quickly. Doesn't cost a lot of mana but it requires you to drop prone such that your elbow lands on the opponent. Taunt is essential for the party's tank which is what you're going to be since you can't deal much damage but you can soak it up like nobody's business. Second Wind is a completely broken restoration spell. It reduces or eliminates most debuffs, heals you, and restores a percentage of your mana points—which is ridiculous, since it means Second Wind effectively has a negative casting cost. The only drawbacks are that it levels very slowly and it's got a cooldown of twelve hours. Still, broken."

I thought about that. "It seems like a purely melee class. Am I really going to be able to just punch my way through everything?"

"No, but that's what teams are for. Yappy Girl has some good stealth skills and you're going to be linking back up with Crossbow Chick if you can find her. If not, grab a mage and a healer from somewhere and you're good to go. They're always looking for meatshields to stand between them and the bad guys."

I struggled not to cringe at that. Was I really going to be nothing more than a meatshield? I could contribute more than that, couldn't I?

"I know you aren't allowed to make recommendations about what I should pick," I said carefully, "but which of these would you choose if you were choosing for yourself?"

His tongue lolled out in amusement at my circumvention of the rules. "Of these three? Depends entirely on what you're assuming. If, in this hypothetical scenario that is entirely hypothetical, I was a member of a large team with diverse skill sets then WWE Champion would be my pick. All I would need to do would be to soak up damage and dish it out while my teammates handled the other jobs. If I was running solo or with just one or two obnoxious teammates with lousy social skills who were definitely going to annoy the viewers, then I'd go Monster Truck Driver for the Pathfinder benefit and try to find a mount in order to make hay on that Speed is Life skill."

"Not Blood Blade?"

He shook his head. "It's more powerful on paper but you weren't wrong about the social issues. Too much of a gamble for my tastes. If, in this entirely hypothetical situation, I got picked up on the right forums then I'd be swimming in good loot. If I didn't, my social numbers would flatline and I'd eventually die."

I nodded. "Let's see what else there is."

After much filtering and careful examination I came to the conclusion that there was no point in choosing anything but one of these three. The other classes on offer were lackluster at best—they got only stat bonuses and no special abilities, or they had disqualifying drawbacks, or the special abilities were so situational as to be useless, or they were based on random chance, or some combination of all of it.

I went back and looked at the recommendations again. Bannon had been clear: If I managed to link up with Hekla again then WWE Champion was the way to go, but if I didn't then it would get me killed.

Maybe Hekla knew where she was and I could figure out my chances of connecting. I pulled up my chat system to ask.

Bzzt! No using the chat system until you leave this room! And no, you can't leave the room until you've finished selection and your rebuild. Nice try.

Darn.

With a sigh, I clicked on Monster Truck Driver.

There was a burst of trumpets and a pop of confetti from midair, just like there had been when Eva finished her selections.

New Achievement: Earthling!

You have chosen an Earth class! Good little crawler, you can follow hints when they're applied with a cluebat upside the head.

Reward: A Silver Earth Box

I crossed my fingers for luck and tapped on 'Open Loot Boxes'.

The box shimmered into existence in front of me; it was the size of a steamer trunk and the silver was spray paint, not metal. The top flipped back and the box angled itself to make it easy for me to see the contents: A small yellow potion bottle, carefully nestled in black velvet.

Earth Hobby Potion.

Per subsection 1256-C of the Indigenous Species Protection Act, this particular reward is required by the Syndicate Government to be awarded to all Crawlers who have chosen a domestic class.

Taking this potion is optional, however it may not be sold or transferred to other Crawlers or entities.

Upon drinking this, you will immediately obtain a Level Three skill ability in a unique, Earth-based hobby. The benefit is chosen at random, however you will not receive a skill that you currently have.

Gods, I hate it when the lawyers make me put their crap into the descriptions. Don't you? Anyway, this could be something useful like Parkour or Jiu-jitsu, or you could get fucked and receive some useless crap like Stamp Collecting or Kombucha Brewing. Don't get your hopes up. The fact your planet was filled with so many boring assholes with inane, ridiculous hobbies tips the scales way out of your favor.

I gulped down the potion because why not.

You have gained a skill!

You are now Level 3 in the Gear Head skill.

Knowledge flooded into my brain and suddenly I knew what a carburetor was, how an intake manifold differed from an exhaust manifold, how to change the oil in everything from a Dodge Dart to a Peterbilt 389, and much more.

"Get anything good?" Bannon asked.

"Not sure," I replied. "Gear Head?" I explained the details.

He grunted. "Could be good, could be useless. On the next floor you'll be able to buy a personal space and crafting tables. If you can find the right tables and the right parts you could maybe build some kind of vehicle. It would work well with your Speed is Life skill."

"Is there going to be room for a vehicle? Some of the corridors are pretty tight."

"Nah. You're done with corridor-based dungeons, at least for a while. Each floor from now on is going to have a different theme—might be ice fields, caves, who knows. This floor, and also the sixth, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, and eighteenth, the theme is going to be something open world. It'll look like you're outside—sky, grass, trees, that kind of stuff. There's a whole storyline about it...supposedly the world consists of a giant volcano and we're at the top of it. There was an entity named Scolopendra who decided to destroy the world because reasons, so she used a giant spell that devasted all six levels of the world—six because in this story the other levels don't exist. I'm assuming she's the final boss on the eighteenth floor but my briefing packet didn't include that.

"Anyway, if you look up on the Scolopendra floors you'll see sky, but there's actually a ceiling above you, and probably not that far above you. Some levels will have higher ceilings but it's not predictable in advance so be careful to check it before you try to fly or superjump or whatever. Throw a rock, send up a balloon, that kind of thing."

"You left a lot out of our briefing, you know that?"

He snorted. "You didn't need to know it before now. I would have told you when you woke up from your rebuild."

"Okay. What else should I know?"

"Sixth floor is going to be full of hunters. They're people from outside the dungeon who have paid a fee to come into the dungeon so they can hunt and kill crawlers. They'll start off higher than any crawler—usually around level 30 or so—and they'll train up. Regular dungeon levels are built when the first crawler goes down the stairs to them, but all of the Scolopendra levels were created when the dungeon opened, so the hunters are going to have plenty of time to level up before you get there. The one piece of good news is that they aren't protected. If you manage to kill one of them then they're really dead. It doesn't actually help that much but it's satisfying." He smiled and jerked one thumb towards his chest. "Personally, I got fifteen of them, six of them in one group. I had gotten my Shredding skill up to twelve and I was moving so much faster than them that they were sitting ducks. I used Pick Control and carved them to ribbons. You could say that I literally shredded them." The smile got wider as he waited for me to...laugh? It was probably a joke but I didn't get it.

After a moment of my blank stare he cleared his throat and let it go. "The ninth floor is the faction wars. Various Syndicate nations, megacorporations, and so on have bought the right to bring an army into the dungeon. They train until you get there, then they go to war. The whole thing is a nightmare and you don't want to be involved. Keep your head down and get out the moment you find a staircase. Much better to be in stasis for however long instead of trying to fight against people with artillery and sometimes tanks."

I nodded gratefully. "I will. Anything else?"

He thought for a moment. "Not really. Nothing you need right now anyway. Don't worry, I'm still here for the rest of the floor and I'll answer whatever questions you come up with if I'm allowed to. Now, let's distribute those stat points and then you go lie down. We need to get that rebuild done so you can get out the door."