Chapter 7

The twins mulled over that revelation for quite a long time and, realizing this was a big deal for them, I gave them some privacy.

Of course, I still kept an eye on them and once they were finished talking, I came back after a handful of minutes.

They were sitting at the table, waiting for me, staying silent as I took place in front of them.

“So, what’s on your mind?” I finally asked them.

“We talked and, well…” Lana started.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that this doesn’t change anything. You’re not one of the four heroes, you haven’t done anything bad and you’ve literally only helped us since we arrived here.” Kael said.

“If we’re being entirely honest, we’re even a bit interested. We knew you could make us stronger, but now if we stick with you we could get the opportunity to take revenge on the bandits that attacked our village, and even the true instigator behind that, the Paladin Hero.”

“So it won’t be a problem that your new master is a hero?” I asked one last time, just to be sure, and they both nodded sharply.

“Good. Now to the other matter. I am not a catfolk.” I said, and the twins frowned.

“You mean you’ve Evolved?” He asked, but I shook my head.

“No, I mean that I’m a Demi-monster, and not at all a catfolk. I don’t know why but, when I got summoned to this world so long ago, I appeared as a Demi-mimic.” I explained.

“So… You’re a Demi-human?”

“Yes. I look like a catfolk because I wanted to put you at ease when we first met. Lana was in an extremely stressful situation and I needed her to believe me, so I… crafted this look to make me appear reliable and familiar.”

“You mean you’re some kind of metamorph?” Kael asked and I nodded positively.

“Yes. Let me just show you…” Supported by my manyfold minds, I quickly changed my appearance.

First I simply took this form and made it look younger, around the same age as the twins. From there I changed my sex, then mimicked a humanfolk, then an elf and an ogre, before going back to the form I used to present myself to the twins.

At first they had been surprised, shocked even but, soon enough, Kael’s look morphed into one of curiosity, Lana's into wonder.

They’re not afraid.

Let’s switch to my original form then.

I wanted to really drive the point home so I quickly changed again, turning into an average-height humanoid with no hair, eyes or mouth, a blank slate of a body, but even that didn’t overly unsettle them.

“Are you not afraid?” I asked them, a mouth quickly morphing in and out.

“Well, it’s a bit… strange? But it’s really cool!” Lana said with enthusiasm.

“Indeed, it’s a fascinating ability. Demi-humans really are something else.” Kael added with a nod.

“Aren’t you disgusted? I am part monster, a Demi-human.” Of us three I was the most unsettled.

Lana shook her head. “One of our neighbors was a nice Demi-slime lady! And besides, Mom and Dad had adventurers friends that were Demi-humans too.” She explained.

“I do know that some people hate Demi-humans, just like some hate us animalfolks, but we don’t care.” Kael added.

For the first time since I fell into this dungeon, a genuine smile appeared on my face. It was weak and tiny, I was still overwhelmed by pain, but right now the relief I was feeling was enough for me to show a bit of happiness.

“Well then, I guess that won’t be a problem either. You’re ready to have a Hero Demi-human as a master, then?”

“Well, changing and acquiring classes is a big deal, and I don’t want to die,” Kael answered.

“I don’t want either, and you’re nice anyway. Just go ahead and do your thing, we’ll manage!” Lana added.

“Here I go, then.” I touched their management window once more and let the system work.

Soon enough, I felt both Lana and Kael being linked to me through the slave contract.

* Lana Denian has become your Pledged.

* Kael Denian has become your Pledged.

* Party creation successful. Lana Denian and Kael Denian have been added to your Party.

* XP sharing is now in effect.

* Status sharing is now in effect.

Windows quickly appeared before my eyes and, by the look of it, Lana and Kael had received them too.

Pledged.

Not slaves.

What’s going on?

I’m not exactly sure.

I quickly opened the party management window and, sure enough, I found the twins in there. I was the party leader, and they were part of it as Pledged.

The twins just lost their Slave Curse. One mind suddenly announced.

Yes, it turned into Pledged to the Lost.

The Lost?

They’re both pledged to us, are we the Lost?

Never heard of that anywhere before.

My minds quickly rummaged through my own status window and found something pretty fast.

We have a new sub-menu.

* The Lost

2/?

First Milestone: Pledged don’t suffer the Lost’s Curse.

Second Milestone: Pledged receives the normal bonus from the Lost’s Class.

Third Milestone: Locked.

Something new had appeared in my Status Window, something… interesting.

However, I couldn’t gather much from it, apart from the fact that I was somehow cursed, and that it wouldn’t affect Lana or Kael, and that I received bonuses when people were… pledged to me?

I had companions before, my own party, slaves too, and that never happened, so I was clueless.

I was curious and interested, but decided to shelve it for the time being.

“There, it’s done.” I simply said to the twins. For now, I wouldn’t say anything about this whole Lost business. It wouldn’t help them in any way, only add complexity and, right now, they didn’t need that.

“That’s it?” Lana asked.

“That’s it. There’s nothing more to it.” I answered with a nod.

“Then you can give us new classes now?” Kael asked, excited, and I nodded at him too.

“I’ll get right to it.” I said and, as promised, directly opened their management window.

“Okay. Right now, I can give you the Assassin Class, Kael, most likely because you killed me, and I can upgrade your class into a higher version, hum, Heroic Commoner.” I lied. It was Pledged Commoner, but neither class existed in my knowledge so it didn’t change anything for him.

“Oh! I-I’m not sure about Assassin, but Heroic Commoner sounds good!” He said.

“Why wouldn’t you take Assassin? It’s a class with a very correct rarity, proper stats growth and some nifty skills and class abilities.”

“W-well, I’m not sure I want to take that route. I want to be a mage, you see…” He said, unsure.

I shrugged. “You can be a mage too. As soon as you’ve learned your first spell, I can give you the class.” I said, unbothered, but Kael frowned, as did Lana.

“But he would have three classes then. Isn’t it bad to have too many?” Lana asked, and I realized what they were worried about.

“Oh, you’re concerned about that.” I struck my palm with my fist.

“You’re right about the fact that, the more classes you have, the harder it is to level them up, in particular because of the experience growth debuff, buuuut…” I scoffed slightly. “We’re in a dungeon, and you have me, so it’s a non-problem. You’ll be fighting high Threat Range enemies all the time, so it’s actually better to have a lot of classes.” They weren’t convinced, so I explained further.

“You see, classes are good mostly for two things: skills and stats growth, and Class Abilities. In both case, a more powerful class will be better. Normally, you focus on one or two classes so you can get stronger at a reliable and realistic speed, and be safe. After all, normally you won’t be able to level up many classes at once if you don’t throw yourself recklessly toward danger. However, this also means you lock yourself out of some of your potential. Having better classes sooner means more stats growth and better class abilities. Now, to unlock better classes, you need stats, titles, feats and skills, and if you have many classes you’ll gain more of all those things while all your classes stay at a lower level, meaning you’ll be able to evolve them sooner in term of level.” I looked to see if they were still following, then continued.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You won’t be able to break out of here by doing it the normal way, so what we are going to do is make you eligible for multiple classes, then raise your feats, train your skills and all to evolve your class as fast as possible. Of course, this is possible only because we’re sitting on a gigantic pile of XP, I’m here to support you, and I can change and add classes at will. Also…” The ghost of a smile touched my mouth. “I’m crazy enough to try it. So yes, Assassin is a good second class, and we’ll get you that mage class yet.”

He nodded and I turned my head towards Lana.

“As for you, your Commoner class mutated after your first fight, becoming Survivor, and it seems I can make it Evolve into Heroic Survivor, just like your brother’s class could become Heroic Commoner. I think it has something to do with being my slaves, but I’m not sure. As for the classes I will give you, it’s Ravenous Warrior, because of your cursed blade most likely, and Berserkr of the Weak. I don’t really know about those two but it sounds powerful.” I stopped for a second, scrolling through the rest of the list of classes available to her.

“Since you’ve already absorbed a bunch of skills like Spear Mastery, Club Mastery and the like from those Hobgoblins you slayed, the system also propose classes like Apprentice Spearwoman, but they’re underwhelming compared to the two options I listed first, so we’ll disregard them for now, and I’m pretty sure your Ravenous Warrior will evolve in a way to include such Masteries in the end. It’s still a Warrior class after all, just one focused solely on the Greatsword for now.”

“W-well, I don’t have as much experience with classes as you, so I’ll leave it to you for now?” Lana answered, slightly overwhelmed by the downpour of information she just received, and I nodded.

“You’ll learn. Anyway, are you both ready and ok with the evolution and new classes I’ll give you?”

Lana seemed to trust me but Kael was still… skeptical? confused? Unsure?

“Hm… Are you sure this is the best way of doing it? I mean, getting whatever good classes we can, and adding more as we go?” Lana asked after a time. She had sensed that her brother was still bothered, and had asked in his stead, to try and reassure him.

“Better than getting one class too high in levels and having your threat range adjusted so much so that you can’t level up anything else.”

“...Then, okay.” Kael said. “Yes, let’s go!” Lana added, before making a double-take. “W-wait, before we start! How will it feel?” She was coming out from a painful experience, after all, so she wanted to ready herself in case it would feel like bad again.

“Don’t worry, the classes you’ll get will be at level 1. You will get a few skills, maybe a class ability or two, and most likely no stats adjustment, so it shouldn’t feel like anything. However… just in case, I’ll give them one by one, and leave you a few minutes between each change to adjust. After all, it’s not normally done like that, so better safe than sorry.”

***

It took only fifteen minutes for me to finish changing and evolving their classes, since there wasn’t a lot going on anyway.

Evolving a class was a big deal overall, since it would mean better growth moving forward, but you didn’t gain any power right away, and it was the same for gaining new classes.

I may have been overly cautious with the five-minute timer to be sure that they adapted properly, and in the end it looked like they didn’t need it, but you never know.

“Good. Now let’s see what those classes are all about…” I used my operator privileges to take a peak at the classes’ description of the twins.

“Okay, so, Lana. Heroic Survivor, just like Survivor, is a mutated Commoner class that focuses on, you guessed it, surviving. You’ll get a bunch of Constitution Growth, alongside some resistance and survival skills. You’ll most likely get something like Starvation Resistance and such, and since it became Heroic you may even get rarer things like Regeneration and such, but I’m not exactly sure.” I started explaining.

“Ravenous Warrior is a simple warrior class with weapon proficiency skills, and it seems the class skill will let you consume your stamina at a fast rate in exchange for bonuses. Sorry, it’s a bit fuzzy since it’s a Generated Class, so I’m not exactly sure what the system has in store for you beyond that.” I apologized.

Generated Classes were classes created by the system to fill a very specific niche when the right conditions were gathered, which happened more often than one could imagine.

It was a sub-system created to handle edge cases, and it worked pretty well from what I remembered.

“Your next class is also Generated. Berserkr of the Weak. The class skill will most likely be one declination of Rage or another, since it’s a Berserkr, and you can expect a lot of Strength growth I think. Both are pretty good classes.”

Lana was nearly drinking my words, amazement in her eyes. Getting a new class was already quite a big deal, but two? And rare Generated classes at that? Then you throw the Evolution of her already mutated Commoner class, and you could understand why she was elated.

“As for you, Heroic Commoner is still a pretty bland class, but the Heroic prefix will provide stable growth across the board, enhancing the base Commoner gives you. Aside from that, I’m not sure. Commoner is mostly useful for its Class Skill, Job, but I don’t see you getting one of those soon, so I’m not sure what you’ll get out of it. Honestly, if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass to recover that class, I would have said to ditch it entirely, but I’m not yet willing to take that away from you.”

Without the Commoner class, it was pretty hard to live a ‘normal’ life. You had a harder time getting any base skills like Cleaning and such, and its Class Skill was what let you become a Baker or Cobbler without committing to the full class of those jobs. Also, you wouldn’t get all the tiny things that were useful to take care of a house, cook, raise children and such, which was quite hard.

“Now, Assassin is a pretty powerful class already. I guess the system judged that killing me was an assassination proof good enough to bypass the previous classes. You’ll get a metric shitton of Agility out of that one and many useful skills for the dungeon, like Hide, Silent Movement and of course, the class skill, Assassinate, which is pretty great to take out targets outside of your weight league. However…” I frowned, looking at his Status Window, then at his sister’s.

“I’m not sure if that will be enough to keep up with your sister. You need at least one more class, if not two, and a weapon on your own.” I finished.

My words seemed to make him feel down, self-conscious of his own weaknesses.

Lana didn’t say anything but she took his hand.

“You don’t want your sister to leave you in the dust, right? I’m not even talking about ego, pride or anything like that. It’s simply just about being strong enough to be useful on the battlefield, to fight alongside her.”

“Y-yes!” I had been quite direct, touching the core of the issue. He was slightly shaken but didn’t give up.

“S-she is always protecting me…” He said, biting his lips, avoiding his sister’s gaze. “She’s always the strong one. I can’t just let her do all the work. We’re the same age and I’m her brother, we should be doing things side by side!” My direct approach seemed to have pushed him to be honest about what was on his mind, things that he buried far away.

I even had the feeling that he wasn’t only speaking about those last few hours. No, this was about a long-running issue…

“You and her aren’t good at the same things, so you shouldn’t compare. What you should do is push your strength. You’re clever, you’re fast, those traits will be useful if you can nurture them. Look at me, you two.”

Lana who was watching her brother, and Kael, who was evading her gaze, turned their head to look at me.

“You’re not the same person even if you’re twins. You can train and become better together, grow in the fields that you’re good at. Don’t turn this into a competition, don’t look at how good the other is in their own field. Instead, think about how you can help each other. That’s what’s important, as fellow warriors and siblings, the ways you can be there for each other.” I said with a hint of emotion appearing in my voice.

Don’t turn this into a competition.

Don’t look at how good the other is in their own field.

Sentences I had used word for word with my little brother when he started to feel inadequate, when he didn’t succeed at the fields I had excelled in.

“Right now, Lana is a step further down the road of survival, so let’s get you up to speed. That way, next time, you will be there for her.” My voice may have been emotionless, but Kael’s reaction was anything but. You could nearly see tears in his eyes, ready to fall down.

“Here.” I said, taking a weapon out of storage, a strange bow of weaved red and black.

“Your agility is pretty good, better than your sister even. As such, Assassin is a good class for you to start, able to sneak in the shadow to deliver incredible blows to your foes. While your sister take the spotlight, you’ll be able to hit the weak points of monsters, in melee or from afar, and I have just the weapon for you.”

I moved the red and black bow, showing it to the siblings.

“This is Azurfall. Just like your sister’s sword, it is a cursed weapon. You will be bound to it, but it can change between two form, bow or daggers, which makes it perfect for you. Just as well, since you want to become a mage, being locked to one weapon is not a problem. You’ll be able to use Mana Catalysts just fine, and those are the bread and butter of mages, no need for anything else, and until you become a mage and start using Mana Catalyst, Azurfall will work well enough with your classes and stats. However, as it’s still a cursed weapon, so I won’t force you to take it. It’s your choice.”

Silence greeted the end of my explanation as both Lana and Kael wondered at the strange bow I was presenting to the young boy.

Azurfall was mostly black, seemingly made out of one piece of liquid that had been frozen in motion. Red could be see in the grooves of the bow, glowing.

Kael started extending his hand to grab Azurfall but stopped midway. “What is the curse of this weapon?” He asked, cautious and curious.

“It’s a vampiric weapon, made out of the remain of an Old Vampire. It will suck your blood all the time you’re using it, empowering your attacks the more blood you give it. That’s as much as I know.” I answered.

“Isn’t that dangerous? What if it bleeds me dry?” He retorted, furrowing his brows.

“A good question, but I wouldn’t give you a weapon I thought would kill you, right? It would be counterproductive.”

“O-of course…” He seemed ashamed to think that I would give him something that would kill him, now that I addressed it.

“You want to become a mage, right? I’ll just heal until you’ve learned some healing spells so you can heal away anything you sacrifice to your bow. That way you’ll train many skills at once and still be able to draw a massive amount of power out of that cursed weapon, thus keeping up with your sister for now. We’ll most likely need to figure something up at some point since she’ll eat and integrate new skills non-stop, which… well.” I turned my gaze toward Lana.

“You’ll most likely get crazy powerful super fast with that kind of weapon. You’ll need to train them a lot to master them, but you…” I turned my gaze back to Kael. “I’ll have to think of something. Not that it’s that soon, anyway, you’ve still a lot of growing to do before the difference in power gets noticeable, and by that time I’m pretty sure we’ll have thought of something.

“...Okay. I’ll believe you.” He nodded and slowly took the bow from my hands.

Directly, hundreds of tiny cuts appeared on his arms, creeping toward his torso and face, visibly bleeding him from consequant amount of blood.

I started working right away, raising a hand to signal Lana that I had it under control. I blanketed him with healing spells, focusing on renewing his blood while avoiding closing the cuts, letting the bow draw its share.

I didn’t stop it because it was most likely the way for the curse to settle, linking them together, and messing with the process could have unknown consequences down the road.

The bow really drew an ungodly amount of blood, though, and I had to add stamina-recovery spells by the fifth minute, then had to keep this up for another then minute or so.

By fifteen minutes the bow must have drawn more blood in total than Kael had in his whole body, but the young boy was still alive, if not serene, thanks to my spells.

“How do you feel?” I finally asked him, when he snapped out of the pain-induced daze that had shrouded his mind soon after touching the cursed weapon.

“...Strange? I feel weak, but I guess that’s because of all the blood I gave. I didn’t know I had so much blood…”

Better not tell him he didn’t, in fact, have so much blood.

“...Also…” He moved the bow around, closed his eyes, then put it down. He seemed to be focusing on something. He rose on his feet and used his hand to stay near the table, taking a step or two and, with perfect precision, took back the cursed weapon.

“This is so strange, it’s like… as if it’s part of my body? You know, when you feel where your hand is even when you have your eyes closed? Like that, but with the weapon.” He finally explained, opening his eyes.

“Peculiar. That feeling is called proprioception, the sense that lets you know the location, movement and action of your body. The weapon is literally an extension of your body…”

That’s super interesting.

It also hints at a pretty deep link.

At least as deep as what Lana has with Terrenacht.

Yes, but more… physical?

Indeed. Terrenacht is about feelings, and Azurfall about the body.

“Could you try to transform it?” I asked him as his sister watched him silently, still a bit worried but more curious than anything, now that Kael seemed out of danger.

The boy didn’t even answer me as, in his hand, Azurfall seemed to fold and flow, shadow warping around it until, suddenly, Kael had two bacl daggers in his hands.

Just like the bow, Azurfall’s grooves were glowing red.

“Cool…” He said, fascinated by his new weapon until, suddenly, his legs betrayed him.

He would have fallen on the ground if not for his sister’s quick reaction, catching him in her arms.

“Kael?!” She exclaimed, carrying him bridal-style.

“Urgh, sorry. I’m tired…”

“You can’t rest yet,” I said, putting a bowl of soup on the table. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and, although I healed you, your body still used quite a lot of nutrients. You need to eat, but you’re still not strong enough.” I said, coming closer to the twins.

“Lana, help your brother kill me again and then feed him what he can, okay?” I asked her.

“You’re sure we should kill you so soon?”

“Don’t worry, I only lose levels and stats when I die, and both are as low as I can get, so you can kill me at your heart’s content. And your brother needs the level up if he wants to survive.” I explained, getting on my knee to help them cut me down.

“Okay.” She quickly nodded when she heard Kael’s survival was at stake and, without a trace of remorse, or even a hint of hesitation, she moved Kael’s hand and impaled one of his daggers right through the side of my head.

A jolt, then pain disappeared and, in the void before Death, I smiled.

Good kids.