POV: Kara
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The moment the City Lord fired Kara, she could barely contain her tension and excitement. She expected the System to chime immediately but it didn't. Instead, a small blue box appeared only for her.
> Wait until after the meeting is over. I got yer sixes, fam.
Kara had no idea what or where her sixes were. She only understood she had to wait. So, wait she did. Alice said her threats, the Lord got a massive debuff from the System, and they were free to go.
The City Lord's condition was none of Kara's business but she couldn't not worry. The debuff he was hit with for lying seemed permanent. It shouldn't be as bad as the fearsome Oathbreaker one but still… she could only watch him board his carriage and go.
The Secretary of Finances was waiting outside for them. Without even greeting them, he handed them a bank deposit receipt. It was their payment for the expedition. Kara used her Validate Document Perk on both hers and George's receipts and confirmed they weren't counterfeit.
She adjusted her hood to cover her skin. Her hair still refused to grow and she had massive burns on her body. A lot of the gold she earned as payment would go into healing her wounds.
George was much better in that aspect. He was further inside the tunnel, had more HP than her, and a magical amulet to protect him from the heat.
Her right ear itched. The skin had melted and it was now an ugly, misshaped, and itchy lump of scar tissue. Kara didn't have the guts to scratch it. So, she endured.
George and she went on several errands, and then, she finally could be alone in her new bedroom. With a sigh, Kara looked at herself in the mirror.
Her pride swelled when the System acknowledged her as the perfect example of what a Guard should be. But it also planted the seeds of doubt. That the city didn't deserve her. That she would be betrayed and cast away. It was prophetic. But she still had no idea what it meant.
> Your Trait, I'm not Batman, yet… has been activated and consumed. You won't lose the bonus Endurance.
> Your Classes have been fused, changed, and upgraded. You became a level 37 Silver-Age Vigilante (Epic). All previous Class and subclass features have been retained.
> Class Experience: After delivering a criminal to justice, you gain Experience equal to their kill value. Halve any negative level differences.
> You gained the Trait, Alternate Identity. You may have several alternate identities. For each alternate identity, set a shift up or down by up to 20% for each Attribute. The sum of all changes must add to zero. Once set, it cannot be changed without discarding that identity. You have a Vigilante identity for free. For each Sub-Class you have, you gain another identity. Abandoning a subclass means abandoning the respective identity. Switching identities takes 10 seconds and carries a 10-minute cooldown. Switching identities only affects Attribute efficiency and what is stated in other Features.
> You gained the trait, Justice Pays. For every 1000*N levels of wrongdoers you arrest, you gain a new subclass slot. N starts at zero and is equal to the number of subclasses gained by this trait. This is a Parallel Progression.
> Justice Pays granted you a subclass slot. N has increased to 1.
> You have three open subclass slots.
> You gained the Trait, Cape, and Cowl: you can set an outfit, complete with gear, armor, and weapons for each identity. When you change identities, all currently worn items, including non-storage weapons (thank George for that) held in your hands are sent to a pocket dimension and associated with the swapped identity. The gear associated with the assumed identity is brought forth, if any. Each new identity comes preloaded with basic cotton clothes and leather shoes. If you abandon a subclass, the associated equipment immediately drops to the ground.
> You gained 185 Attribute Points and 40% Attribute Efficiency to distribute.
> You gained the Stealth Skill. Rank I benefit: When skulking around, increase the effects of all Attributes, except for Clarity, by 10% per rank for purposes of avoiding detection.
> Your next Class Skill is at level 170.
Kara couldn't believe it.
*
*
POV: George.
Once our duties at the temple were over and we were paid, we decided to go to Kara's new home and get her things. She was renting an apartment and I had plenty of space back home.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
But before we left, Alice stopped us at the foot of the temple steps for some last-minute talk. "I don't expect them to be stupid enough to try anything but here. Take these with you." She conjured some winged eyes that could turn invisible and had them follow us.
People saw her conjure these monsters, including some Guards who were making sure the temple avenue was free of criminals. As if.
"Those are called 'eyes of Cerebellon' and report what they see to me. So, no naughty business until you are back home."
Kara didn't like it but I stayed the fuck out of that silent argument. Immortality begets boredom, as they say. Alice wasn't immune to that; creating drama was how she kept herself entertained.
My improved mental Attributes, especially Charisma, made me notice the motivation behind her behavior.
The Lord came out of the temple and went straight to his carriage. The crowd of Guards had dispersed.
Our first stop was to get the remaining chests for my quiver. Everything went fine and I could see that the design of the latest ones was improved from the prototype. It was good to have some variety and even bigger chests because, with all the Strength points I gained, I could lift so much more.
Then we went to Kara's apartment and gathered all her things, including what furniture she salvaged from her old house, the one Alice destroyed.
Kara was spacing out. I felt like she had something to tell me but I couldn't force her to spit it out. She would do it on her own time.
*
*
It happened faster than I expected. The same day, after dinner.
"George, honey," she started, then bit her lip. "I have something to share with you. Is now a good time?"
I dumped the dishes in the sink and turned around. "Sure is. What's on your mind?"
"When I gained my promotion to Guard Paragon, I also gained a strange Trait. One that did nothing until I was fired from my job. No, I lie. It gave me fifty free points of Endurance. I also couldn't speak about it until I was unjustly fired."
"Which just happened. Don't worry about the secrecy requirement. The System does it all the time," I sighed.
"You too?" She asked with a surprised face.
"Yeah. I've had entire conversations with the System."
She chuckled. "Anyway, now that I was fired from my job, my Class changed because of that Trait. I'm no longer associated with the Guard."
Only one thing mattered. "Are you happy with your new Class?"
Nervous, she laughed. "Happy? Yes. That trait was consumed but my new Class came with a new Skill, new Traits, and it absorbed my Lawyer Class! George, it bumped me to Epic! I have three open subclass slots!
I grinned. "Same here. No, not the subclass slots. The promotion to Epic. What can your class do?"
"Hunt criminals. I became a Silver Age Vigilante." Kara stood up and went around the table. She leaned to whisper in my ear. "It granted me a Parallel Progression. As I hunt criminals and deliver them justice, I gain extra non-combat subclass slots and bonus Experience."
"Bahhhhh!" William voiced his apprehension. Given that he was now a Phantom Thief, I feared our family dynamics would become very, very complicated.
I let my mouth hang. Kara made a smug smile. "I have a Parallel Progression too. It was granted to me because of Scout's Oath."
She was surprised, then became thoughtful. "So that's why you seemed stronger than your level suggested. I overheard the Knights speculating about your level back in the Dungeon. They concluded that your level should be between sixty and eighty."
"Damn. Did they manage to measure my Attributes this close to their actual values? What rarity did they think I was?"
"I didn't hear that part of their conversation. But I believe Scout is an uncommon Class, right?"
I nodded. "Though mine had a modifier and was granted by the Heirloom. It got bumped up a notch. Tell me more about your new Features."
Kara read her whole Status Sheet to me. It was a massive amount of trust. At one point, I got rather envious. She gained whole subclass slots! Though she needed to pay the Experience for these slots, while my Parallel Progression delivered the points straight to me. The amount of levels was also staggering. But would I trade fifty Attribute points for one more subclass? It was the comparison because her PP needed a thousand levels for the next subclass slot. Absolutely. But then I realized that it scaled. The next slot would cost two thousand levels, then three, and so on and so forth. She would become really strong and versatile but it would take an increasing amount of effort down the line.
"I am so happy for you. Unfortunately, I got stuck on level thirty-four. One more level to get my second subclass slot."
"What do you think you'll pick?"
"Probably Marksman, to increase my ranged damage and add some tricks to my repertoire. But not right now. If I fill the slot now, I'm going to get an itch to level it up and we promised to stay quiet while we heal."
Kara raised a hand to her left ear, the melted one, and stopped right before she touched the scarred skin. She sighed.
"I'm going to take that Class Hector wanted. The one with regenerative powers."
My first reaction was to say no but I held back. "Know what? You should. So long you bring the Skill to rank ten before you drop. You can afford to use your subclass slots that way. And we should think about your Attribute efficiency and your identities thing. Does the Trait lock you out of any of your Class options?"
"No. I honestly don't think it is that good," she said.
"Oh. No. It's perfect. You can have disparaging Attribute sets for each occasion. And think of how much equipment you can stow away in that mystical wardrobe of yours."
"It's called Cape and Cowl."
Most likely another of the System's shenanigans.
"Let's strategize."
We spent the rest of the evening going over plans for her Attributes. Kara could min-max her build like crazy.
*
*
Late that night, William stopped pretending to sleep. He checked around him and used his Traits, becoming incorporeal and then, invisible.
He darted through the streets, through the buildings, through people. They couldn't see him, touch him, hear him, smell him. Probably not even taste him but William was unwilling to put himself in people's mouths to check and much less let them eat him.
No, today he was on a mission. A self-imposed one. Crossing the castle walls was no problem. They had no protection against incorporeal intruders. Why care? It wasn't like the town had any previous problems with such things. He moved down the corridors; invisible, intangible, and without making a sound.
William found what he was looking for after an hour of wandering around. He used his Traits and had his spectral appendage remove the trophy from the wall and put it in his storage. It was a very convenient thing to have a way to keep items without carrying them on his back. Though he missed the simpler days of wandering around with his saddlebags. He also had a fainter grasp of reality and the intricacies of life. Back then, he only concerned himself with following his former master, eating, sleeping, and getting shelter from predators.
And yet now here he was, pilfering objects of art from the corrupt City Lord. As William pondered, staring at an empty wall, he decided he should leave his mark. He wanted people to know who had brought justice to them. Yes, because they didn't own that object.
He used his horns and carved an X on the wall. The mithril-enhanced horns had no trouble scratching the stone bricks.
Satisfied, he just walked out.
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The end of Book 1.