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Bobby, one of the old hands in the crew and a decent enough guy – if you could look past the near-constant belching – grimaced as he downed the last of the potion and let the bottle drop from his fingers. It shattered against the floor with a hiss of steam, and one of the new guys scurried over with a broom to sweep the shards into a large {Loot Bag} before they melted through the floor.
With a grunt, Bobby shook his head and coughed into his hand. “That stuff tastes awful, boss. My tongue feels like I just licked up a mud puddle.”
Sacre’s brow furrowed and his free hand tightened into a fist as he took his cigar from his mouth and glared at Bobby.
“Did I ask you how it tasted, moron? Do you think I care if it tastes like dog crap?”
“No, boss.”
“Exactly. What’s important is if you feel any different.”
“Not really. Everything seems – wait, actually, my stomach is kind of starting to hurt!”
With a huge burp, the big man tumbled to his knees. His entire body shuddered, and then he was retching like crazy. His eyes turned purple, and his skin started turning gray. Bobby looked up, panicking.
“Boss, it’s not right! Help me!”
“It must have been contaminated,” Taglion shouted as Bobby sprouted two – no, three – new sets of arms. “Quick lads, silver knives! Be quick about it!”
Walnut looked down at the weapon in his hand. It gleamed with terrible purpose, and he choked down his revulsion at the thought of turning it against someone he considered a friend. Well, as close to a friend as anyone could really be in this line of work.
“Sorry, buddy,” Walnut said as he readied the weapon.
The monster that had once been Bobby screamed as his comrades surrounded him and put their blades to work.
Sacre glowered at Taglion as his former underling’s body turned to ash and blew away. The boss' voice was utterly devoid of emotion.
“Now we gotta sweep the floor. Make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
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Christopher ‘Walnut’ Ryder’s eyes snapped just as the sun peeked through his dirty blinds. His breath was coming in short, rapid bursts, and his forehead was caked in sweat. Another nightmare. Well, actually, it was the same nightmare, just repeated.
Groaning, he rolled over and checked his clock, seeing that it was, once again, just after five in the morning. Gawain’s balls, he was glad for that. The routine was reassuring.
Wiping his face, he reached for a smoke and sat up, fiddling with the box and telling himself that he was fine as he shook his head and brought the slender white stick to his lips.
“Don’t even know why I was worried,” he muttered as he let a tendril of smoke float up toward the ceiling. “Thanks to [Early To Rise], I couldn’t sleep in if I wanted to.”
At the sound of his voice, Brietta made a little noise and rolled over next to him, her bare shoulders and upper back visible above the mess that was their blankets. She smiled up at him with sleepy eyes and brushed a curly lock of black hair back behind her ear.
“You say somethin’, Chris?”
She was the only one who still called him Chris. He smiled; that was one of his favorite things about Brietta. She still remembered the kid he’d been before he’d gotten mixed up in all this crap. Leaning down to kiss her on the forehead, he said, “Nah, just thinking out loud. Don’t worry about it, babe. Go back to sleep. It’s still early, but I’ve got to go to work.”
“You should take a day off once in a while,” Brietta said. She wiped a bit of makeup away from her eyes and reached up to rub his arm. “The old man’s got you working too hard lately. We never get to spend any time together anymore.”
She purred and pulled herself closer to him. “Take the day off, huh? We could waste it together.”
Christopher snorted and twisted away. “I’d love to Brie, you know I would, but things are busy right now. That fat cat across town has got us all jumping when he says the word, and the boss says I need to work even harder to make sure that things don’t get too hot out there. I can’t afford to take the day off.”
His longtime-girlfriend’s face tightened, and with a huff she pulled the covers up until they nearly reached her chin. Her glare was piercing.
“Come on, baby,” Christopher said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Some heat came into her voice. “Things are always busy, Chris. If it’s not one thing with the cat, it’s another thing with someone else.”
Christopher couldn’t argue with that, though he was starting to get irritated that she was picking a fight with him today of all days. She knew what he did for a living, knew that things were fluid, and that he wasn’t in charge of his circumstances.
She didn’t know what he needed to do this morning, but Christopher wasn’t going to tell her. It was probably for the best that she didn’t know, if things went bad.
“Look, I’ll talk to the boss later and see if I can get a break next week or something, eh?”
“Might as well be next year,” Brietta said in a clipped voice.
“Come on, Brie. Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t be like what? I’m not being like anything!”
“Yes you are.
“Forget you, Chris,” she said with a huff. “Go to work.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Walnut watched her roll away and snuffed his smoke. “Fine, forget you too, Brie.”
Kicking himself free of the last of his blankets, the gangster stumbled over to the bathroom. When he looked into the mirror, he thought for a moment that he was maybe still trapped in a nightmare. When had his cheeks gotten so hollow? How long had he had those bags beneath his eyes? Was that cut near his lip new, or had it been there for a while without him noticing it? It didn’t have scab, but it wasn’t sore to the touch.
He looked like crap. He felt like crap, too. Not for the first time, he wished he could reach through the mirror and give the man looking back at him a good punch. Or vice versa. He glared at his angry, bitter reflection and frowned.
“How’d you ever let your life get like this, huh stupid?”
Spitting into the sink, Walnut ran the water for a few seconds before splashing himself in the face. The chilly water did nothing to shake off his bad thoughts. It never did, when he got like this.
A careful glance over his shoulder revealed that Brie was still facing away from him, so Walnut carefully reached down to the straight razor haphazardly teetering on the edge of the sink and nicked his finger on the blade. He waited until the crimson droplet it produced was almost as big as a sunflower seed, then pressed it into the blood lock drawer hidden on the side of the medicine cabinet.
The blood lock drawer was an old, cruel thing. Walntu didn’t like it. It was a relic of a different time, when skills and classes hadn’t been quite as simple and clean* as they were now. Power came at a cost back then, which hadn’t really changed if you thought about it, but it wasn’t quite so explicit these days. That was probably why the boss liked stuff from back then so much. He was obsessed with relics and artifacts from the era, and he passed them out to all his best men to use as safes, since most people wouldn’t know how to open or use them.
With a groan that almost sounded like a person’s voice, the drawer slid open, and Walnut drew out the small glowing bottle sitting inside. His fingers trembled as he let the drawer shut and brought the bottle to his chest.
The old brown glass felt oily, and he was extra careful as he spun the bottle so that he could see the faded label. The name had been long since lost to time, but the image was still mostly visible. It depicted a man looking into his own reflection, and Taglion’s – Sacre’s In-house [Appraiser] – [Careful Assessment] had determined that like most of the bottles they’d pulled out of the old madman’s workshop, it possessed some sort of “instant class” power. Of course, what class that would be was a total crapshoot, as was whether or not it’d come without any nasty side effects.
Like turning into a giant monster and needing to be put down.
Walnut tried to not think about Bobby’s last moments, but he failed pretty miserably. He wasn’t entirely sure that he trusted the [Appraiser]’s new safeguards. He wasn’t drinking anything.
“Come on Walnut…don’t be a wuss. This is the life you signed up for,” he muttered as he pulled on a fresh shirt and pair of pants. He tucked the bottle into his pocket.
“It’s too late now to try and do something different. Hands like you’ve got ain’t never getting clean.”
That cold reality steadied him, like it always did, and after wolfing down a bite of bread and grabbing a swig from the near-empty bottle of booze in the kitchen, Walnut put on his leather jacket and headed out into the street. The little bottle felt like a brick in his pocket as he squeezed through the jagged hole in the fence next to his place. Moving quickly, Walnut headed toward the old abandoned park where he’d gotten into his first fight. The benches were rotten, the swings were broken, and the pipe dome was covered in rust. Other than a couple of the usual bums who weren’t ever any trouble and plenty of trash, it was empty. Just like always.
His neighborhood hadn’t been lost to the fiends, but boy howdy it sure felt like it could have been sometimes.
Walnut shooed the derelicts away, threatening violence if they didn’t skedaddle.
Once they were all gone, The [Enforcer] took out the bottle and gave it a long, hard stare.
Sacre’s face filled his thoughts. Drink the thing before you come in tomorrow, Christopher. I need you to show the others that what happened with Bobby was a onetime thing, you understand me?
But what if Taglion is wrong and it happens to me too, boss?
It won’t. You’re stronger than that belching idiot ever was. You think I’d let you risk yourself if I wasn’t sure that you’d be okay? We need some more muscle, Christopher, and you’re going to get it. Now, promise that you’ll [Do As I Say].
He’d given his word; because of course he had. He’d been powerless to refuse, as the boss’ skill had kicked in at the same time [Sure Thing, Boss] did. But now, as he stood there by himself in the slush, he wondered if he really had to.
For the first time since starting to work for Sacre fifteen years ago, he was thinking that it might be time to go back home, grab Brie, and get the heck out of town. The bandits were mostly gone now so the roads should be safe, and he had enough money squirreled away that they could travel without having to worry for a while. Sacre wouldn’t bother chasing them forever.
Could he just drop the bottle on the ground and pretend it was an accident?
It was tempting. Really.
But deep down Walnut knew he couldn’t do it. The boss was like a father to him, and Walnut was nothing if not a loyal henchman. He was Sacre’s [Left Hand Man], after all! Kicking his imagined defiance down the stairs of his mind and grabbing a bat to shut it up permanently, Walnut uncorked the bottle and gave it a swirl.
The liquid inside was thick, and it reminded Walnut of old milk. Still, he’d made his choice and put the bottle to his lips. Tilting his head back, Walnut drank it all down.
Truthfully, it didn’t taste awful. Kind of like cashews, actually.
A ticking tingle spread across his limbs and torso. It was weird but not painful, though after a few seconds Walnut was thrown to his knees by what felt like a dozen pairs of invisible hands. They examined his soul’s mirror, patting and proding like they were looking for weapons or something, and when they finally finished, a voice started booming inside his skull.
[BEHOLD! You have been evaluated and you have been given new strength!]
[You are now a Walnut Wrecker, Level 1]
[Ruthless Desire + 3…unknown stat…converting.]
[Conversion Complete!]
[Brutality + 2]
[Might +1]
[Constitution + 4…unknown stat…converting.]
[Conversion Complete!]
[Toughness +2]
[Endurance + 2]
[You can now use Shelled Skin!]
[You can now use Cracking Hug!]
Walnut didn’t get up until the voice faded completely. His left arm and leg felt a little funny as he straightened back up, and when he looked down he saw that his skin had been entirely replaced by a ridged brown shell. He could still move his fingers, but they felt like he was wearing a heavy glove.
He made a fist and punched the nearest wall as hard as he could. It didn’t hurt at all, though tiny cracks spread up his arm. When he removed his hand, he saw that he’d left a crater of sorts almost six inches deep, and a grim smile spread across Walnut’s features.
The second test was wrapping his arms around one of the old benches and activating [Cracking Hug]. Wood splintered and broke into pieces in his grip.
This new class could be useful, Walnut decided, if he could just figure out how to control [Shelled Skin]. That shouldn’t be a problem.
Whistling, Walnut headed for Angelino’s. Once he was done with work for the day, he’d get Brie some flowers.
*Singing voice IS THE WAY THAT YOU’RE MAKING ME FEEL, TONIGHT! IT’S HARD TO LET IT GO!
Christopher ‘Walnut’ Ryder
Primary Class: Left Hand Man (Angelino Sacre), Level 33
Secondary Class: Brute (Angelino Sacre), Level 29
Tertiary Class: Enforcer (Angelino Sacre), Level 28
Additional Class: Walnut Wrecker (%#$%^&#), Level 1 (+1)
Might: 53 (+1)
Wit: 18
Faith: 12
Ambition: 41
Loyalty: 50
Endurance: 36 (+2)
Toughness: 44 (+2)
Intimidating Presence: 29
Patience: 13
Citizenship: 2
Deceptiveness: 20
Charisma: 6
Devious Mind: 26
Brutality: 43 (+2)
Greed: 44
Regret: 36