They rushed downstairs as Bradley thought of a plan, “They seemed fast, but I think I’m faster, what I’m going to do is apply my Grease spell to the floor as it charges at us, then it will slip. At that point I need you to stab it while I prepare a firebolt to finish it off.”
Devin nodded, “If anything goes wrong I’ll be there to cover you since my health stat is way higher than yours.”
Bradley quickly hopped over the garage staircase, landing on the same level as the curious Goblin. It charged at Bradley and Bradley fired off the Grease spell onto the floor. The Goblin immediately slipped and almost slammed into Bradley. He dodged quickly to the side, and began to prepare his Firebolt. Devin came crashing down on the body, “Eclipse Thrust!” and slammed downward on the stumbling Goblin. He easily pierced through its skull, blowing its head off, and killing it in an instant.
Bradley was still holding onto his Firebolt, “Cancel! Damn bastard, making me look bad.”
A notification appeared for first kill and a gain of 15 xp for Bradley, 25 xp for Devin, and 10 xp for Ben. “I guess all party members split xp based on contribution and since Ben isn’t here he got the lowest.” Bradley groaned, annoyed that Ben got any when he wasn’t here.
“Normally there’s loot on corpses in games right?” Devin asked, looking at the deheaded corpse. Bradley nodded, “Do you have a knife on you? I got a weird feeling I should cut this fucker open.”
Devin nodded, and handed him a pocket knife.
“Magic Weapon!”
Bradley sliced from gut up, and peeled back the putrid green flesh. The gross smell faded, as Bradley focused. “I fucking knew it.”
Bradley pulled out a Spell Crystal from the gut of the creature, and deposited it into his inventory. “That’s the cost of me upgrading your spear with Magic Weapon. That fair?”
Devin nodded, “Good to know we have a supply of those for you to work with.”
They both returned up the steps to the shock of the armored guard who was ready to slam the door if things went wrong. “Thanks for watching our backs bud,” Devin patted the man on the shoulder, and felt the pressure Devin could now emit. It felt shortly like a boulder was planted on the soldier’s shoulder.
The guard led them back to the Head Manager’s office. “We killed it, here’s your proof,” Bradley threw the Goblin’s ears onto the table. “I hope we can strike up a bargain now.”
The once angry and proud manager shrunk and nodded. “As the deal stated I will teach a group of guards how to use their abilities, and enchant a set limit of ammo per day for any squad outside of the walls, as the spell runs out of power after a while. I will also continue to work as a weapon repair person as I don’t know the consequences of firing magic bullets out of a non-magic gun. In return I need those passes, some glock ammo, some 556 ammo, and I want a glock and a rifle. We will also escort your group until they are strong enough to handle themselves without magic bullets as it seems that the best way to kill these creatures is with skills and abilities.”
HM wanted to argue, “Isn’t that two guns, why would I give you something outside of our deal?” Bradley smiled, “Because you waited too long, my services have a higher cost now that I know more.” HM sighed, “Whatever, it’s not like they have a use anymore to people other than you.” Bradley turned to HM, “What’s your class?” HM slumped, “Classless.”
Bradley nodded, “We’ll do our best to support your company, so please keep your head up.” They exited the room with the head assistant, the woman who kicked on the projector, to get their updated passes, and to organize their new work schedules. “So how is the company going to pay us for our work hours? Isn’t money pointless right now?”
The secretary sighed, “I don’t know, I think it's a promise to pay if we make it out or something. And it still works at places with goods, so I’m not too sure.” Bradley looked around as he walked down the office corridors, “What class are you?” The girl looked shy, “I haven’t checked yet, I was worried that I’d get classless like the Head Manager.”
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Bradley thought a moment, “It seems like you don’t awaken your power until the first time you say Status, so even if you get Classless, there’s a chance to boost stats past a normal human limit for safety. I’d recommend it.”
The girl took a deep breath, closed her eyes and yelled, “Status!” she quickly glanced around and then gasped, “I got Paladin? Is that good?” Bradley thought for a moment, “Yes, it is very good. It deals good damage, has good defense, and can heal. It was definitely worth awakening. I recommend joining the training sessions that the designated squad will be involved in for developing such a strong class.”
The girl nodded, and brought them to the designated grounds, gave them their badges, including the badge for Ben, and then showed them their new work schedule. Bradley was finally being forced to work a 40 hour shift.
After that long orientation, Bradley said bye to Devin and went home to Ben. When he arrived Ben seemed really excited, “Did something good happen to you?” Ben smiled, “I finally learned Mana Circulation.” Bradley smiled, “About damn time, at least you're good for something now. Your arrows should absolutely tear through goblins if you have the mana to activate the crystal.”
Ben brought out the dinner plates, “Also I saw that we all got xp? Did you guys kill something?” Bradley nodded and slurped down his food, “Yea, a goblin hitched a ride on a USDC truck so we got our deal pushed through for killing it. It was super easy, I think they are just a low tier mob, but they require you to use your class or something.”
Bradley just shrugged, deciding that killing goblins wasn’t that hard.
“Ohh I got something for you,” Bradley ejected a rifle and some 556 ammo out of his inventory. “Managed to sweeten the deal and get you a secondary weapon, since its more likely that your arrow will do better than some magic bullets. Only reason why I’m bothering to use my magic pistol is because it has 3 magic spells per shot, and that might be enough to make a bullet work right.”
Bradley pulled out his Magic Gun, “What do you think? It might survive a couple shots, and if any of the glock segments bust I can scrap the other one I got for more parts.”
Ben laughed, “It looks way too sci-fi for a setting with goblins dude. Why not create a slingshot that uses rocks or something, might even work better than bullets.”
Bradley sighed, “Because I don’t have any experience with slingshots, I have an easier access to gun parts, and because slingshots are lame as fuck.”
Bradley scraped the last of the food down his gullet, “Also we both gotta be up at like 8am tomorrow. I got you a job, and we need you to meet this Paladin chick to figure out if a Paladin is a good class for the system and having someone there to help check classes on all the squad members we will be training will be pretty important.”
Ben groaned, but agreed. If he was gonna have a job, why not be an RPG based job.
The next morning Bradley ripped Ben out of bed and headed to work. They met Devin at the front entrance, flashed their badges and immediately headed up to the training center. They went through checking the classes on the soldiers, teaching them the code words and way to move through their system panels, and secretly discussed who they wanted on their squad. After that, those who were classless were forced to exercise intensely, and those with classes had their skills combed through by Ben, and told which skills to spend the most time on practicing. Surprisingly, most were either classless or melee based builds, so there was little need to relocate to a new spot except for a few.
Ben, Bradley, and Devin picked out a few to pull to the side. Those being: The Paladin Secretary Kathy Rochester, The Shielder Betty Blanks, The Knight Kevin Gordan, and finally The Magician Don Urban.
This crew had the best class distribution, as well as a really good level 1 stat base. Betty Blanks had the highest stats, as she was one of the only female squad members, and pushed herself to the limit to make the cut. The system doesn’t discriminate, and levels stats off no matter the gender. Meaning her small yet buff frame was just as tanky as Devin who had been training for several weeks.
This group was pushed the hardest, doing both exercise and skill practice. They were also forced to do simple practice combat drills with Devin. Whenever someone got hurt Kathy could use an area heal spell to manage the damage.
All members of the squad were added as a friend, but this group was added to the party for the sake of exp sharing, to build these people up.
After a few days of training, the first mission was sent down. Drones were able to find a water source northwest about a mile into the forest from the closest road. Our mission was to clear out neighboring goblins, set up a fence line all the way there, set up a pump station about a half mile out, and fill two tankers up and return.
We would be escorting the engineering professionals for setting up the station and the pumps. Before the mission Bradley had filled several of his leftover Spell Crystals with pure mana to suck in later during the mission.