Chapter 3: Classes
“Let's talk about what we've got going for us.” Theo was again trying to lead us. We let him, for now. “My class is Advisor. I got a point of Spirit and two chants, which are spells for the Spirit stat. My chants are Forward!!! and Duck!!!. I... don't know what they do.”
Brian speaks up next. “Hello, my name is Brian, and I'm a bog standard human fighter. I got a Ki point and have no idea what it does.”
Jose says, “I took Sharpshooter. I know what it does. I got a little bit of Ki and Luck.”
Theo begs for more information.
“Sharpshooter gave me a zoom function with my eyes.” Jose points at his eyes and we all watch as his irises actually spin in his head. We all agree that it is very cool.
“I took Synergist,” I say. “It's essentially a class about-”
“You fucking multiclassed at level 1, didn't you?” Brian asks, exasperated.
“Yeah, kinda,” I reply.
Brian grumbles. We've been playing tabletop RPGs during our breaks for about a year now and I always multiclass, or find a way to bootleg multiclassing into the game. Regardless of the system, regardless of the setting, regardless of how effective it turns out to be. Often it results in me being initially weak and then getting very, very strong. I'd kind of, let's say, broken entire systems and occasionally made combat irrelevant. And ruined Brian's fun fights in the process.
“You shit.” Brian stands in front of me, staring me in the eyes. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“Well,” I say, backpedaling. “It's just basic Mage stuff right now. Yellow Ray, Dark Mote and Hydrate are my spells.” Speaking of, my hand is still glowing. I say “Yellow Ray” and it turns off.
Brian closes his eyes and holds a hand over his face. “Jun you- oh sweet Jesus I found the menu! Guys, I think you just have to close your eyes!”
We all do it and find, after a few seconds of eye closure, black and white menus on the insides of our eyelids. It looks like a video game menu circa 1990. The options are:
Inventory
Techniques
Chants
Spells
Invocations
Status
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Classes
Party
Options
Sleep
I think about the Spells menu. It closes and another list opens.
Dark Spells
Dark Mote... Basic... 1 AP
Water Spells
Hydrate... Basic... 1 AP
Light Spells
Yellow Ray... Basic... 1 AP/10 minutes
Back
I think about Yellow Ray.
Yellow Ray
Emit a yellow light from your hand. Not bright enough to blind people.
Sustained
Range: Cone, 30 ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per 10 minutes.
Proficiency: 1%
Nobody's talking so I guess we're all just going through menus. I continue.
Dark Mote
Release a speck of darkness that circles you for 1 minute until you come within 15 ft of a foe, at which point it buries itself in the foe.
Duration: 1 minute or impact
Range: Personal / 15ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per mote
Proficiency: 0%
Per mote, eh? So theoretically I could have multiple motes at once.
Hydration
Touch a creature and fill its stomach with water.
Range: Touch
Cost: 1 Arcana Point
Proficiency: 0%
A weird one. So it doesn't help if your mouth is dry? Lame. Useful, but lame.
I go back and check my status. My attributes are pretty much the same, but now I have Arcana, and Arcana Points, or AP. 2 of them to be exact. Apparently those are linked to my Intelligence so I recover 31 AP per hour. Or 1 every two minutes. Not too bad at all!
“Guys,” Theo says, “My chants are amazing. Forward lets our entire party move at 1.25x speed as long as we're moving in the same direction. And Duck lets me actually force you to dodge an attack if I see it coming and you don't.”
“Damn, that is good,” I say. “I got a tiny homing dart attack, a flashlight and the power to make you less thirsty.”
“You already made women less thirsty,” Brian says, to which I give a sarcastic haw-haw. I can feel Nat's eyes rolling from here.
She finally says, “so my class is Ninja,” to which we all go oooh. “Right, anyways, I got a shadow teleport, and don't get excited because I don't have the Chakra to cast it yet, extra sneak attack damage, wall running, and expertise with light blades, throwing weapons and whips. Also a ninja pet but it says it can't reach me inside the dungeon.”
Brian voices all our opinions precisely. “THE FUCK? All I got was a Ki powered heavy strike! And what the hell is Chakra?”
“Obviously it's for ninjas. Does the international hit anime Naruto sound familiar?” Nat seems like she couldn't possibly understand his incredulity. “Chakra's a combination of Ki and Spirit. Which unfortunately means I have to increase both to get more Chakra.”
Nat was the otaku of our little group. Despite her insistence that she wasn't a geek or nerd, she'd seen several thousand episodes of anime, had a robust manga collection and was a connoisseur of all things Japanese. So her being a Ninja was actually spot on.
“Hey, it's quiet.” Jose brings us out of our nerd wars and back to the unreality of our situation. It is quiet. The dog stopped barking. But so did the screams. We don't hear human voices anymore, aside from our own.
“You think that means everyone escaped without us?” I ask.
“Naw, man.” Jose shakes his head. "I think anyone out there is dead.”