The thought of playing as an Apothecary terrified Eli. Almost as much as the idea of being a Bard, playing an instrument, and singing in front of everyone did. He could live with not being a Fighter or a Mage, but dealing with brews and stuff? No way. Playing support, he was fine with. In his experience, they often filled the most important roles.
Eli opened his status screen, and the class selection, which had been trying to get his attention since he woke up in this strange new world. Without going through all the options, he selected Healer and confirmed. Anything to escape the other classes.
Energy surged through him and his HP and MP both increased significantly. Green health bars popped up above everyone's heads.
Barbara sniffed. "I'm very disappointed in you, Mr. Davis. We have to work together to create optimized workflows, and your stubborn petulance does not become you."
"Lay off, Barbara," Mr. Thomas interrupted. "At least he's not another Mage or Commander, like the rest of you," he added, scowling at the others.
A shimmer surrounded Mr. Thomas. When Eli inspected him, he saw that The Dragon had selected his class.
"There. Now there’s no issue, is there?" Mr. Thomas asked, glaring at Barbara.
"What?" she asked. "You've selected the Mage class."
The Dragon looked down on himself in confusion as he equipped the traditional Mage's robe. "Oh. I meant to select Apothecary. How do I change my class?"
"I don't think you can, sir," Eli said, doing his best to keep a laugh from bubbling out of him. "May I suggest selecting fire as your element?"
Barbara crossed her arms and straightened her back. "Enough of this. If you don’t see fit to discipline your subordinate, that’s your decision, Mr. Thomas. Mr. Davis, you may leave."
"What about the goblins?" Eli asked.
Barbara dismissed the threat. "We’ll take your warning under consideration. There are quite a few of us, after all. They’re small and green—what challenge could they possibly pose?"
"We don’t know anything about this world," Eli said. "That goblin, Solomon was over level 20, and I doubt he's the strongest of the lot. You’d be making a mistake if you don’t take this seriously."
"We are taking it seriously," Mr. Thomas said firmly. "I’ll talk to you after this meeting."
"Fine," Eli mumbled, and left, ignoring those still waiting outside as he headed down to his desk, unsure where else to go.
Finally able to look over his character sheet, he found the details:
Elijah Davis
Class: Healer (Level 2)
Unallocated Stat Points: 5
Inspecting the different attributes, he found no real surprises:
Strength: Determines melee weapon damage, increases physical power and carrying capacity.
Dexterity: Determines ranged weapon damage, increases agility, speed and reflexes.
Intelligence: Boosts magic damage and increases maximum mana points.
Wisdom: Improves mana regeneration, increases experience gain, and enhances some skills and spells.
Constitution: Increases health points, health regeneration and damage reduction.
Charisma: Influences interactions, lowers purchase prices, and enhances some skills and spells.
He focused on the wisdom stat to get more information, specifically the 'some skills' text.
Skills and spells improved by wisdom include healing type spells, charm spells and most buffs. For more information regarding stat scaling, read the description of specific skills and spells.
Eli allocated all five points to Wisdom, putting it equal with Intelligence. As he inspected the skills menu, he found picking his class had taught him three new skills.
Pitiful Heal (Level 1):
Mana Cost: 5
Cast time: 1s
Cooldown: 0s
Description: Heal your target for a tiny amount of HP and close minor wounds. Undead type beings are vulnerable to this spell and take double damage. Scales with Wisdom.
Light in the Dark (Level 1):
Mana Cost: 5 per minute (toggle)
Cast time: 1s
Cooldown: 10s
Description: Summon an orb of pure light to illuminate your surroundings.
Lesser Cure (Level 1):
Mana Cost: 10
Cast time: 2s
Cooldown: 10s
Description: Removes lesser ailments, curses and conditions from target.
The skills weren't anything fancy, but creating his own light would be important in a world without electricity. The description on Pitiful Heal mentioned damage to the undead. This meant he might be able to do some damage of his own and not just support others. He immediately used his one skill point from leveling up to increase Pitiful Heal to level 2.
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Next were talents. Selecting the Healer class had given him a new talent: Creature of Life. It provided extra maximum HP, an experience bonus for killing the undead, and proficiency with cloth armor and staff weapons.
Remembering the equipment he'd been given, Eli opened his inventory. Soon, found himself in a gray and white healer's robe with a short cloak over his shoulders and sturdy leather boots. His staff was a simple piece of treated wood, taller than him and about half as thick as his wrist.
The description was disappointing:
Staff - Item Rarity: Common
Damage: 4-7 (Bludgeoning)
At least he could use it to hit someone over the head if necessary. In addition to the basic gear, he'd received five health potions, making his total eight, five mana potions, five water bottles, and five unspecified meals.
His stomach growled, reminding him how long it had been since he ate. He summoned one of the meals from his inventory, along with a bottle of water and, to his surprise, a pizza materialized in front of him, warm and complete with the box, like it'd just been delivered. Ham and mushrooms, his favorite. He tore into the pizza, ignoring the nagging thoughts about what would happen when their food supply ran out. Hopefully, management would organize hunting parties to keep everyone fed. If not, Eli would have to find his own source.
Eli honestly didn’t have much faith that management would get their act together and sort this all out. He was only level 2, pathetically weak, and he needed to level up. If they ever wanted to get back home, staying powerless wasn’t an option. The truth about why they’d been pulled into this strange new world wouldn’t be found in the confines of this building. He glanced at the quests again as he finished his pizza. The riddle—that had to be it. The answer would bring them home.
He knew he needed to learn more about this world and how they ended up here. A good place to start would be with Event Horizon Dynamics. They were at the heart of all this, after all. Most of the people from that company must have been sucked into this world, too. Surely, they knew more than he did.
A new quest appeared: Find and rally other humans from Earth (0/5).
“What does that mean?” Eli muttered to himself. Did he have to find five people? Another mystery. On top of that, he needed to figure out how this strange, game-like system worked. More importantly, Eli needed to find his sister. He was sure she was out there somewhere, he just knew it.
Another quest appeared: Find your sister.
Quests just for thinking? Usually, quests were something you got from talking to NPCs or completing objectives, not from sitting and eating pizza. Well, regardless, if he wanted to complete any of those quests, he needed to get stronger and explore.
He walked to the glassless windows along the northern office wall to look out. Narrowing his eyes, he spotted something unusual. Eli thought saw a fenced in area with a small church-like structure in the middle. Was that a graveyard? That meant there might be undead monsters nearby. That'd be a good opportunity to learn and grow stronger.
But something else drew his attention. A flash of light appeared and disappeared near a grove of trees on top of a small hill. It was too far to make out what was happening, but it piqued his curiosity. Eli decided to investigate.
Descending the stairs, he stopped on the floor below and stumbled upon an unexpected scene. Amy was sitting at her desk with Rufus at her side. Four rats scurried around in front of her, performing acrobatics: jumping into the air, flipping, and even balancing on top of one another, creating a tower of rats.
“What the…?” Eli asked, bewildered.
Amy’s face lit up with excitement. “Hey, Eli! Look at this! I made the rats dance!”
“I can see that.”
Amy continued, “Rufus here isn’t too pleased, but it’s great, isn’t it? I tamed some rats, and I even leveled up doing it!” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “My animal taming skill is at level 2 already! It makes taming creatures easier!”
“Where did you find the rats?” Eli asked, still trying to process what he was seeing.
“They’re everywhere!” Amy said, grinning. "Once I tame one, I can sort of sense where it is and what it's doing."
“That’s… definitely cool,” Eli agreed, a bit uncertain. “I was thinking of going out to a graveyard I spotted nearby, and I saw some flashing lights near it. I was going to go investigate. Wanna come?”
Amy bit her lip. "A graveyard, like with zombies and skeletons?"
"Sure," Eli said, trying to sound confident. "My heal skill can hurt them, so we should be fine."
Amy gave him a thoughtful look. "A Healer, huh? Actually… it kind of fits you. Tried casting a spell yet?"
"Not yet."
"Go on then!" she encouraged. "Pop that cherry!"
Eli decided to try out his healing spell first. He activated it, finding it as simple as focusing his thoughts. Targeting Amy, he noticed her health bar was already full, but a golden shimmer still briefly surrounded her.
“That actually felt pretty great,” Amy said, looking up in surprise. “Was that some kind of buff?"
“Just a heal,” Eli said, casting the spell on himself. Immediately, he felt the soreness in his legs from climbing the stairs disappear. It also cleared up the beginnings of a headache.
“This is even better than coffee,” Eli breathed. “My tiredness just vanished.”
“Not bad,” Amy agreed.
Eli conjured a small orb of light next. It hovered before him, and with a thought, he increased and decreased its brightness, and was even able to make it move around.
Amy looked thoughtful for a moment before asking, “You said you have a cure spell too, right? Something to remove curses or ailments?”
Eli nodded, glancing at her status. His heart skipped a beat. “You don’t think…?”
“Maybe,” Amy said softly.
“You wanna try?”
She gave a miniscule nod.
Eli cast Cure on her, hope rising. His chest tightened as tears welled up in Amy’s eyes, but she shook her head. “No… it didn’t work.”
Eli sighed, feeling defeated. “I was hoping… I could fix it. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Amy replied, smiling gently and wiping at her eyes. “Let’s just get going to that graveyard."
“Do you know anyone who's a Fighter?” Eli asked.
Amy raised an eyebrow. “A Fighter?”
“Yeah, we’re both support classes. We need someone to stand between us and the army of undead.”
Amy nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. That might be a good idea. Let’s see if we can find someone.”
They headed down and soon reached the 10th floor. There, they heard a commotion. A scream followed by roars and grunts from deeper inside the office. People nearby seemed nervous but weren’t moving to investigate.
Eli and Amy ran toward the noise, stopping outside a conference room just as an older, balding guy who'd picked the rogue class held out an arm to stop them.
“No emergency here,” the man said calmly.
“What do you mean?” Eli asked.
“That’s just the barbarian,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “She’s been in there for an hour, shouting to level her skills."
Amy's eyes widened in recognition. “That must be Charlotte!”
Eli raised an eyebrow. “The barbarian from the stairs?”
“Why not?” Amy replied.
They entered the conference room and spotted Charlotte leaning back in a chair, bare feet propped up on the table, hands behind her head, making loud, random sounds as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Charlie!” Amy called out.
The woman sat up, her muscular frame towering over the table. “Amy! Thought that was you on the stairs. What’s up?”
“We’re heading out to a nearby graveyard,” Eli said. “Want to come?”
The barbarian—easily seven feet tall and built like a muscled warrior out of legend—looked apprehensive. “Graveyard?”
“Yeah,” Eli said. “We need someone to fight.”
Charlotte hesitated. “I don’t know. Graveyards are kinda creepy.”
Eli found it strange hearing that from someone so imposing, dressed in little more than a leather loincloth and a thin strap across her chest for cover. “It’ll be fine. I’m a Healer, Amy’s a Shepherd. You'll be our muscle and we'll keep you safe.”
Charlotte made up her mind. “Yeah. Sure, I guess. Can’t sit around here all day, anyway.”
“I’ll create a party,” Amy said.
"Too late!" Charlotte roared.
“Wow, that’s cool,” Eli remarked, noticing the two dots on his map representing his companions, after he accepted Charlotte's party invite.
“Can we make a guild this way?” he asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “Nope. Tried that. You need a thousand gold coins.”
Eli winced. “That’s a lot.”
Amy nodded. “Let’s worry about that later.”
“Alright. Ready to go?” Charlotte asked, grabbing her metal slab-like sword from where it rested, leaning against the wall.
Eli and Amy exchanged looks. “Ready.”