The Royal Palace of the Grand Toymaker was kind of a letdown. First, most of it was just a picture drawn on walls, with another set of letter blocks that spelled Toymaker’s Palace in an arch. When we travelled through the portal and then the tunnel, we found ourselves in a long room with the walls filled with paintings of all the types of toys we’d come across, and some we hadn’t, along the way.

The portraits included clockwork mice, teddy bears, toy soldiers, living dice, toy dragons, toy knights, and marionettes. Halfway down the long hall the last two portraits opened on concealed hinges, and six knights filed out to form a line between us and the door at the far end of the room.

“Halt! None may see the Grand Toymaker!” The toy knight painted in green called out in a grave voice.

“Halt! The Grand Toymaker will see no one!” The toy knight painted in blue called out.

We didn’t stop our walk down the hallway.

“This is your last warning, turn back or face justice for our fallen brethren!” the toy knight painted yellow called out, but he sounded eager to thrash us.

“Let’s just kill them!” The knight painted black cried and charged with his sword.

I activated Tides of Woe upon him and transparent stars danced above the head of the black knight as he suddenly turned around and swung his sword at the blue knight. Unprepared for such immediate violence, the blue knights helmet tumbled across the floor at the textbook beheading.

“Confusion? I like it.” Derrick muttered, and threw two objects across the floor. When they stopped between us and the knights, I heard a soft click. The yellow, red, blue, and green knights all circled around the black knight and charged us, while the purple knight closed in to hold the attention of the black knight with his big purple tower shield.

The yellow knight stepped on one of Derrick’s traps, and a pillar of fire shot up, catching the unlucky toy ablaze. It screamed and flailed, but the observant green knight kicked the fumbling yellow knight to fall over the other trap, and set off another blaze. The yellow knight smoldered on the ground after the second blaze trap died down.

Green dashed in to swing a two handed mace at Derrick, who didn’t even try to block it and instead rolled out of the way. He left a parting gift behind, and the green knight got caught in another pillar of fire.

I met the blue knight and his axe head on. He was slow enough I easily dodged his attacks, and just rained a series of light blows upon him until roots reached up from the floor and locked him in place. It was only a twenty percent chance to activate afflictions with hits, but when I threw ten punches in rapid succession, uncaring on if they did real damage, just that they hit, those odds were greatly in my favor.

I rolled out of the way to catch the red knight off guard, and kicked his knee joint from the side before I rolled out of reach of his counterattack.

A deluge of light daggers turned the blue knight into a pin cushion, before a force spell detonated each of the light daggers in powerful blasts.

“Nice combo!” I hollered to Lilith and Aisha, and focused on dodging the much faster attacks of the short sword wielding red knight.

Derrick hadn’t re-engaged with the green knight, and instead threw a weirdly shaped throwing knife into the still burning toy. The flames flared, and it smelled like an oil fire. I wanted to know how that worked, but the red knight kept swinging his sword at me, and I had to keep dodging. I triggered Dragonfly Strike to land a blow into his back and throw him off balance, and cast Tides of Woe too.

The red knight suddenly looked different, as if he had contracted a horrible disease. His wooden body, under the metallic paint, began to slowly rot, but he still tried to slice me. I focused on dodging, and my patience was rewarded when two bolts of raw magic struck the green knight. Aisha and Lilith, seeing the utter devastation their combo had caused to the blue knight, opted to cast basic magic blasts with their staves instead. It was more efficient, and the blasts were enough to finish off the red knight.

Another trap detonated, this time catching both the black and purple knights. It didn’t finish either one off, but combined with the damage they had done to one another already, it had been very close. I teleported in, and finished off the black knight with a blow to the back of the head. The wood the knights were made from was quite solid, and my palm stung a little, but it killed the black knight.

The purple knight held his ground, or attempted too, but I teleported behind him and struck him forward, and Derrick jumped in while he was off balance and stabbed his wind enchanted sword through the purple knights chest.

“That was a good showing,” I praised everyone. I wanted to rub my hand, but didn’t, or Lilith would bring up how unpractical it was to fight barehanded, but Momma did it, so why couldn’t I? I just needed to toughen up my hands, or get some protective gloves.

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“Oh, hey. These knights all dropped gold coins!” Aisha cheered, and when she looted them we all got our loot as well. One of the many advantages of the system.

“Oh man, this is way more than my allowance. I might actually be able to afford some better traps!” Derrick practically jumped for joy at the seventy gold.

“Gold only drops from level ten on,” Lilith said with a grin.

“We’re so going to level up after we take down this Toymaker!” Aisha cried as she understood Lilith’s implication.

“Everyone ready?” I didn’t want to waste our momentum, and strode up the steps to throw open the door to the throne room as soon as everyone chimed in with a yes.

The throne room went a solid forty meters deep, and twenty meters wide. Whole legions of toy knights and soldiers stood inert behind red velvet ropes at the far sides of the room, and upon a throne sat a man with six arms, a crown, and a monocle.

“Ye’ll never have me kingdom! Fight! Fight me boys!” The Toymaker cried madly at the inert toys. Four of his hands suddenly held marionette jigs, but there was no marionette at the end of them. Two knights, and two soldiers, vaulted over the red velvet ropes, and it was impossible to not notice these versions of the knights and soldiers were about double the size of their previous versions, or were adult human sized.

The Toymakers other two hands remained empty, but each finger of the empty hands was decorated with a number of flashy rings that seemed very suspicious to me.

“Derrick, put pressure on the boss,” Lilith commanded.

I dropped Tides of Woe on the first knight, and it turned to stone while vaulting over the red rope. When it landed, it shattered into a lot of pieces. I activated Dragonfly Strike to appear behind the other one, and hit it down into the ground, then flipped off its shoulder to slide and make a sharp turn.

Lilith pointed at Derrick and I, and with a victorious smirk shouted, “Divine Providence!”

Powerful light glowed around both of us, and I could feel my strength and speed get buffed. In the fading light of the buff, Aisha cast Light Bind on the two soldiers. A snake of light flew across the room to wrap around the first limb it could of each soldier. The left one got an arm bound, while the right got a leg bound, and it forced them to stumble to the ground in a pile.

A small black ceramic sphere that sizzled bounced into the pile of two enemies, before it blew up. The bomb didn’t kill the soldiers, but it did cost each of them an arm, and delayed them getting to their feet, even while Derrick and his wind-blade closed in on the boss.

I cast Tides of Woe on the boss. Ice cascaded from his feet over his body, and gusts of cold filled the room.

“He’s Frozen! Slowed movement and attacks!” I didn’t know how good Aisha or Derrick were with reading battle-field status debuffs. I circled the last knight, dodging and hitting between its attacks, then hit it with Tides of Woe, and its eyes filled with stars.

“Attack your boss,” I commanded it, and it tottered to attack it’s slowed down boss, who just lost an arm to Derrick’s wind-blade.

“Incoming spell!” Aisha cried.

Blue butterflies, formed entirely from energy, formed out of thin air around the Toymaker. One by one, each butterfly that materialized dive bombed the boss, and left charred, blackened flesh and armor where they struck him, and the final butterfly landed a stun on the boss. The short lived stun allowed Lilith’s spell to strike. A swarm of multi-hued locusts flew down upon boss like an awful hailstorm, pounding it again and again for five seconds. When the spell ended, the locusts vanished, and revealed a very haggard boss.

“Hee-ya!” Derrick stabbed the boss in the gut, and then I appeared from behind and punched it in the back of the head as hard as I could.

My eyes filled with glitter and confetti.

Dungeon Complete!

Congratulations on reaching level ten! You have gained +2 to Agility, +1 to Vitality, +1 to Will. You may now choose a class from the following choices.

I expected a list of four or five options, maybe ten at most. Instead screen after screen after screen of choices appeared before me. Some had no relevance to me, such as Agile Alchemist, while others were close, such as Blight Sprinter, but not really what I was looking for in a class. I would’ve asked Lilith for help, but when I looked around I noticed that time had frozen once I pulled up the selection menu.

Crap.

Every class had its own gimmick, too. Some were simple, like building up a stacking buff, others required balancing competing resources, and some were just absurd, like the music based ones. I’d never really been into music, so I don’t know how I even got those.

“Hey, Libby, can you rearrange the list in terms of matching my personality instead of alphabetically?” Momma called the System Libby, so I did the same.

Done.

Holy crap! Libby did what I asked!

The first choice was a class called Kaleidoscope Kineticist, the second was called Speed Demon, and the third was Flash Reaper. I chose Kaleidoscope Kineticist after I read through it and the top five.

Class: Kaleidoscope Kineticst

Class Feature: Chromatic Kinesis, Rainbow Rush

Chromatic Kinesis: Manipulate Energy and Matter in a Spectrum of colors representing different forces. Color correlations are as follows.

Red = Heat, Orange = Kinetic, Yellow = Light, Green = Life, Blue = Cold, Indigo = Gravity, Violet = Void, Pink = Psychic, White = Purity, Black = Shadow, Cyan = Water, Magenta = Mystical, Turquoise = Wind, Amber = Earth, Gold = Electric, Silver = Magnetism.

Rainbow Rush: Double your speed, leaving a colorful trail of energy behind you with effects based on your active Kinesis.

Class Ability: Chromatic Pulse

Aurora Burst: Unleash a nova of color, enemies caught in the nova gain a random status ailment, allies caught in the nova have a status ailment removed, or gain a random buff if no ailments are present.

Class Trait: Spectrum Surge

Spectrum Surge: Every time you utilize a kinesis you generate a stack of Spectrum Surge, which grants a 5% increase in movement speed and attack power. Each stack lasts 30 seconds.

“I am the most awesome person to ever live,” I cried out with joy as power blossomed inside of me and expanded outward, engulfing me in a brilliant rainbow.