The sun was in the morning position as Heather sat on a tombstone and stared at her monitor.
“So pick something already,” Frank insisted.
“I’m trying!” she replied as she looked through the hundreds of options.
Heather sighed and shook her head. This was harder than picking the right dress for a date, and worse once chosen, it would be final. Now that she had a class at third level, she couldn't change her classes around. Whatever she picked would be permanent.
“Why do there have to be so many choices?”
“So you can be whatever you want,” he replied.
“How am I supposed to know what I want if I haven't looked at them all yet?”
He scratched at the top of his head and sighed. “I suppose you need more time to look.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a snarky tone and went back to her screen. A few taps later, and she was looking at women with bows and arrows in hand.
“What does it mean when it says this class has subclasses?”
Frank looked over her shoulder and squinted.
“That's the main archer type. As you level, you will pick a more specific type. Like one type is a master at hunting, while another is a master of long-range shooting.”
“Can't I just hunt with long-range shooting?”
He tilted his head as if the question was silly. “I guess so.”
She frowned and tapped at another class. This one was simply called [A Lady] Heather read the description of a class whose entire feature set gave her bonuses and abilities to manage a household. She could motivate servants and read the body language of others. She had skills related to gossiping and prying out information while also hiding her own information. She also had bonuses to seduce men, a skill Heather wasn't sure she cared for.
“All you have to do is show some skin, and they are hooked,” she laughed. “I bet that succubus class could lure every man for a mile just by winking.”
“You really want to play the succubus, don't you?”
Heather suddenly remembered Frank was behind her and blushed.
“No!” she shouted.
“You keep bringing it up, and you used it to lure that one group in,” he pointed out.
Heather took a calming breath. She was determined to be kinder to Frank and not let her anger get the better of her. She was in a strange world, with strange rules and she wasn't going to vent on one of her only friends.
“I was just saying the succubus had skills I didn’t appreciate,” she said.
She moved on to one called [Madcap]. It was a class based around confusion and random attacks. The images all wore makeup and had a wide arrange of silly powers.
“Why would I ever want to throw a cloud of red dust? Or make somebody insane?”
Frank looked at the class and scratched his head again.
“They drop a bunch of balls to make people stumble,” he said. “It’s like they based the class on cartoons.”
“So, can I play a colorful pony?” Heather teased as she poked around.
“A pony would be a race,” he said. “The closest you could come would be a centaur.”
Heather tapped back to the character sheet and looked at the race options to see what a centaur was.
“Oh!” she said in surprise.
“Their's one called a Faunil that's the same, but its a deer.”
“I don’t think this is for me,” Heather said with a shake of her had.
“There’s another one that’s half spider.”
“Spider!” Heather said in shock. “Who would want to play that?”
“They can climb on walls and lay traps with webbing,” Frank pointed out.
“I don’t even want to know what they look like,” Heather replied with a head shake.
She went back to classes and looked at one of her earlier picks.
“Hello,” Quinny called as she walked into the graveyard.
Heather was grateful for the break and put the panel away as Quinny walked over.
“Did you level up your forest?” Frank asked as she arrived.
“Uh, huh!” she said excitedly. “I upgraded the mass grave. It will spawn twice as many skeletons now, and it has a rare chance to spawn a blue one.”
Heather raised a brow and looked at Frank for clarification.
He read the look and answered for her. “Almost all spawn buildings can be upgraded. Some of them will produce rare spawns that are either slightly more powerful or have a special ability.”
“Mine has a little more hp and can cast a frost touch spell every few minutes,” Quinny said.
“So, I can upgrade my tomb that spawns skeletons?” Heather asked.
“I am sure you can,” Frank said. “You probably have all sorts of upgrades.”
“Did you upgrade your tower yet?” Quinny asked.
“Heather shook her head no. “I was trying to pick my last class or decide if I want to be a different race.”
“She wants to be a succubus,” Frank said.
“I do not want to be a succubus!” Heather cried.
Quinny looked puzzled a moment and then shrugged. “It would probably make a great necromancer, and you would have wings so you could fly. That has to be really fun.”
Heather paused a moment to consider the bat wings the race had and looked up imagining what it must be like to fly.
“Of course they can only feed by having sex,” Quinny added.
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Heather snapped back to reality and firmly crossed that race off her list for good.
“Why did they even model that in this game?” she asked as she searched for a nun class.
Quinny shrugged. “Human nature, I guess.”
“People can keep their nature to themselves,” Heather protested.
“What if you picked something with shadow powers,” Frank suggested. “Necromancy and dark magic would probably go hand in hand.”
“I think Necromancers get some dark magic anyway,” Quinny said. “It is a minor field for them.”
“I thought they only got access to necromancy and thaumaturgy?”
“I looked at Necromancer when I was setting up my character,” Quinny said. “They have access to three sub-schools of magic. I am pretty sure one of them was dark magic.”
“I wonder if one was blood magic?” Frank asked.
Heather shook her head as they chatted on about things she still didn't understand. Eventually, she went back to a previous build and looked over the stats.
“So, you don't mind what I pick?” Heather asked.
Frank and Quinny stopped talking for a moment so he could respond.
“You should pick whatever makes you happy,” he said.
Heather nodded and dismissed her panel. “I want to think about it more.”
Frank shrugged and sat on a tree stump as Quinny sat on a grave.
“What should we do then?” Quinny asked.
Heather shrugged as Frank scratched at his head.
“We just wait in the graveyard,” he said.
“Boring!” Quinny replied. “The road is too slow to wait.”
“We are monster classes, we are supposed to stay near our lairs,” he replied.
“Not anymore,” Quinny said with a smile. “Heather can give us binding stones so we can wander about.”
“And do what?” Frank asked.
Heather pondered that a moment and an idea formed in her head. “Why can’t we go on an adventure?”
Frank and Quinny looked at her with a curious expression.
“Because we're supposed to be here,” he said.
Heather shook her head. “We are still players. Why can’t we go explore something of our own?”
“Yeah, why can't we?” Quinny asked.
Frank shrugged. “Because I wanted people to come here instead.”
“But it's so sloooooow!” Quinny insisted.
“We need a town,” Frank replied.
“Well, we don't have one,” Heather said. “So, let's go on an adventure.”
“To where?”
Heather looked around and finally saw the expanse of green over the stream.
“What's on the other side of the stream?” Heather asked.
Frank looked across the stream and studied the distant fields.
“More grassland, I guess.”
“You have never been over there?” Heather asked.
“Why would I go over there?”
Heather shook her head in disbelief. “How do you know there isn’t a town just out of sight across the field?”
“Why would there be?”
She wanted to scold him for his simple outlook but decided to control her words and speak softly.
“That's the point. Anything could be out there. We could go and see and have an adventure of our own. For all we know, there are other monster players there.”
“Or dragons, or carrion worms, or giant spiders, or...”
“Ok, I get it!” Heather snapped. “I will bring all my skeletons to help. It will be a proper adventure.”
“She can heal us!” Quinny said. “You will be our tank, I will be a DPS, and she is our healer with back up pets.”
Frank shook his head and looked back out over the field. “I suppose it won’t hurt to go look.”
“I even have a weapon now,” Heather replied with a smile.
“Let's find some stones so we can respawn if we die,” Frank said. “Then we can go see what's out there.”
Quinny skipped off to search for two stones as Heather ran to her tower and collected her scythe. She tied her hair back with some ribbon to keep it out of her face and stood in front of the mirror. She looked old fashioned in her yellow and cream dress. Her scythe was curled over hear head framing her image. She briefly thought of that old painting of the farmer and his wife standing there holding a pitchfork.
“I know what's missing!” she said and ran to her table. She swept up her sunbonnet with a blue ribbon and tied It around her chin.
“Hmm, the colors clash, but I like the look,” she said with a smile.
She made her way downstairs to find Frank and Heather, each with a stone in hand waiting.
“Are you going to wear that?” Frank asked when he saw her.
“What’s wrong with it?” Heather questioned. “I don’t want the sun in my eyes.”
“You’re a necromancer!” he argued. “You’re supposed to wear a black dress with a hood.”
Heather shook her head. “I can wear whatever I want. I didn't see any rule in the class that said I had to wear all black.”
“Did you look at the example pictures at all?” Frank asked. “They are covered in black and silver or white bones.”
“I am not wearing bones,” Heather protested.
He threw up his hand and held out his stone. “Fine, let’s just get the stones made.”
“I forgot about this part,” Heather said as Frank cut himself. She turned her head and made “ew ew ew!” noises as she dabbed the blood with a finger and wrote his name on the rock. Quinny was even more disturbing as her blood was pitch black and flowed like thick honey.
The stones were buried inside the graveyard while Heather washed her hand. She assembled her group of skeletons, and they set out in search of adventure.
Frank led the way across the stream and into the grassland beyond. They decided to walk straight across it using the tower behind them as a landmark to find their way back.
They walked for twenty minutes as the land dipped and rolled in gentle hills.
“What are you hoping to find out here?” Frank asked as they climbed another hill.
“I don’t know, something to see,” Heather replied.
“We should be in our lairs in case some players show up.”
Heather turned to glare at him and shook her head.
“You're supposed to be the gamer. Don't you want to adventure and see the world?”
“I can be killed too easily and reset,” Frank said. “Once I have the dungeon heart, I will be free to do more exploring.”
“We’re not going far,” Heather replied. “Just a look around at what else is out there. You must have looked around before to know Moon's town was there.”
He was silent a moment and then answered.
“I knew her town was there because I was fleeing south to get away from the city. I had to pass it to get to where the graveyard is now. I did check on it a couple of times, but only because I already knew it was there.”
“Well, there might be something out here worth checking on,” Heather replied.
“Something that can probably eat us,” Frank replied.
“I think this is fun,” Quinny interrupted. “I assumed I would get to do some adventuring even though I played a zombie.”
“See,” Heather said cheerfully. “She has the right idea.”
There was a sudden stomping noise, and they all froze. They heard it again from just over the rise of the hill they were climbing, and Heather smiled nervously.
“See adventure?”
“Go adventure over the hill and tell me what it is,” Frank whispered.
“Me?” Heather whispered back. “You’re the one with the claws.”
“You have a scythe,” he argued back, getting louder.
“Keep your voices down,” Quinny whispered harshly.
Heather nodded, and they crept low, practically crawling up the hill. When they could see over the top, they saw what looked like a reddish lizard the size of a cow. It had an unnaturally long tail but a very short neck. Its head was broad and flat with two bumps that held eyes.
“What is that?” Quinny asked.
“I don’t know,” Frank replied.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Heather quipped.
“I don’t know everything about this world. It’s too big and always changing. There were so many races and classes even back when I joined that I didn’t look at them all.”
“I wonder if it’s a dragon,” Quinny said.
“I know it's not a dragon,” Frank said. “Those I looked at before coming in. They are five times as big and have wings.”
Heather sighed and leaned over her arms to get a better look.
“I wonder what it is then,” she said. She leaned a little too far, and a stone rolled down the slope of the hill. The creature below suddenly twisted to look at the sound as the three of them ducked.
“Sorry!” Heather whispered as Frank gave her a disapproving glare.
“It can’t be more dangerous than a carrion worm,” Quinny suggested.
“We need to back away from it and get away,” Frank said.
Heather nodded, and they carefully started to crawl backward. Everything was going well until Heather, in her panic, stumbled into one of her skeletons.
She let out a short “eeeh!” before clamping a hand over her mouth.
Behind them, they heard growling and looked back as the broad head of the beast came over the hill. It's broad head separated sideways into two scissor-like jaws as it made a terrible roar.
The sound of three screams filled the air as they fled across the grasslands.