We got rid of the cape with hoods that Rik had given us. They dropped on the floor in a squelch of blood and bowels. Our camouflaged garb underneath hadn’t been spared either, so we got rid of those too. Which only left us with a t-shirt and shorts, and walking boots drenched in blood.

We wiped them off on the few dry spots of the dirty clothes on the ground, opened the door to the nest, and started to rise towards the last floor.

We had taken a long time to reach it, and every step forward I feared hearing the flap of wings coming back, or Bonnie announcing that it had spotted the [Dark Crow] getting back to its nest.

But not everything went awry, and the most important part of our plan seemed to be going well. The nest was just a giant room of stuff. With a roof largely missing its upper part. My sister shone the flashlight around as I placed explosives a bit randomly everywhere. The ground was dirty and smelled bad, giant piles of black goo everywhere. Everything was covered in hay, but as we got to the centre of the open-ceiling room, the light started to reflect plenty of shiny things all over the place.

A piece of metal, some sort of glass, a copper key, a beautifully lustred half-broken table…

“It’s like a magpie.” Gaëlle whispered.

I put a small packet of explosives under the table, then went to the big pile of branches and hay in the middle. That was where it slept. The remaining explosives would definitely be going there.

We climbed over the nest, it reached my neck in height, and as the flashlight shone inside, I almost fell because of the blinding reflections.

“Look at all those crystals! We’re rich! Oh wait, we’re already rich.” Elle spoke out loud.

“Well.” I picked up a beautiful deep purple stone. “Yes, we’re rich, but no, that would not have gotten us a penny: That’s amethyst. It’s basically worthless.”

“What really?! No, it has to be some sort of super rare magic stone in this world.”

“I very much doubt it.” I sighed. I knelt down to hide my backpack under a pile of hay and shiny crystals. I dug around, placed the bag, verified that all the packages inside seemed operational, and covered it all back up.

“…Nielle…” I could almost hear the smile in my sister’s voice. I had the discomforting flashback of a very embarrassing story of my middle school past.

“Don’t tell me you found porn mags, please.” I pleaded.

“Almost as good.” She giggled.

I double-checked my hidden backpack. “Flashlight please!” I asked my sister. As the light shone on it, I nodded. No way it could be spotted, and I couldn’t smell it either because of the guano everywhere.

Satisfied, I looked up with resignation to see what my sister had found.

She pointed the flashlight back to what she was holding. It was a book with one of the shiniest covers I had ever seen. Completely covered in gold and in…glitter? Or very small precious stones.

“Don’t tell me…” I started asking.

She rudely interrupted me. “This, my dear sister, seems to be a Class Book for the Ascensus class.” Her grin was over to her ears.

That brought an infectious smile to my face.

“Well, that’s a very nice find. Where was it?”

She pointed at the ground. “In the nest.”

“Uh uh? I don’t think Henry gave it to the [Dark Crow] voluntarily. Maybe he hasn’t perfect control over it?”

“It doesn’t matter now. Let’s get out and blow it up.” She put the book in her backpack.

I nodded. I half expected her to use the book on the spot, but with our precedent of losing consciousness while testing the System, I was happy she refrained. We left in a hurry, avoiding the pool of blood on the floor below.

“Should we pick up the clothes?” I didn’t like to leave a mess but…

“Why? Is it going to make a difference with the dismembered Hulk next to it?” Gaëlle responded.

“…Yeah, no.”

We exited the tower a few minutes later.

Going through the streets in our current clothes was a bit chilly, and we would definitely have looked out of place, but fortunately, with the complete absence of light sources, it wasn’t an issue.

Bonnie guided us with the drone, and after ten minutes of walking around the narrowest streets and dodging a few guards, we arrived at the back of Rik’s house.

It had an outdoor toilet and a little overgrown garden that stopped directly on the palisade wall. I knocked on the back door and heard some activity happening inside the house

A shadow appeared in front of me as the door opened.

It was Rik’s dad.

“Is it done?”

I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me well, and probably wouldn’t understand the gesture either. “Yes.”

“Get in. Didn’t you have capes?”

“Had to get rid of it.” I said as he let me in. There was a single candle lit up in the middle of the room. The place was a mess. It didn’t seem to have been cleaned in forever, and there was barely any furniture inside. Just the strict minimum. A table and two chairs. Some sort of archaic kitchen, and beds in the back, disconnected from the rest of the room by curtains, just like at Anna and Grognar’s place.

Rik was sitting on one of the chairs. He rose to his feet as he spotted us. “How did it go? You took way more time than expected.” He sounded excited and worried at the same time.

“Things went awry, but it’s done.” The switch was in my sister’s backpack, and Bonnie could activate the explosives as well. “We’re ready and set. Tomorrow, well, this morning, when the [Dark Crow] is back and people are all around, we’ll blow the top of the tower up.” Gaëlle told them.

Kan, Rik’s dad, gave a terrifying half-crooked smile. His scar was the reason why he couldn’t smile normally, but that was the least scary part of the expression.

“Oh, there will be people around. They will know everything. When he comes back from the whorehouse this morning, he’ll find the whole village waiting for him to be judged.”

I shivered at the bloodthirsty tone but couldn’t stop yawning as the long hours of the night and the previous hunting attempts caught up to me.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Go to the back, you two can take my bed and Rik’s. We have much to organize.”

Me and Gaëlle nodded. It would be nice to have my own bed for once, but I doubted Gaëlle would be able to cope the whole night without me next to her.

Me and my sister stood up as Rik’s dad left the house, simply gesturing us good night with a bow of the head. The remaining [Wood Elf] grabbed my arm for a second. “I washed the sheets on my bed, but I’m not sure my ida did.”

That came a bit out of nowhere, but looking at his face, it probably was important.

The bedroom, if you could call it that, was just two beds separated by a curtain, as I had guessed. It was very dark, of course, but spotting whose bed was who’s was evident. The difference was in the pungent smell of alcohol.

“You want to…which bed…” Elle began uncomfortably.

“Don’t act tough L. I know you can’t sleep without you touching me. Oh my god that sounds so wrong.”

She laughed but was too sleepy and it died out in her throat.

“Also, Rik’s dad has an alcohol problem, we’ll take the bed on the left.” I explained.

“I can’t smell a thing…Damn I’m jealous of those stats of yours.”

We both removed our boots and socks, but Gaëlle took out the class book in her backpack. “Let’s do it now.” She sat down next to me in the single person bed, and I tried to take a comfortable position despite the lack of space.

“Yes.” Gaëlle said out loud. I looked, dazed, at the book dissolving in a cloud of ephemeral glittery dust.

Your twin has accepted the Class Book: [Ascensus]

You are now a level 1 [Ascensus]

Class Skills unlocked.

“Wait, wait, wait. I got the class as well!?” I mouthed out exit to make the pop ups disappear.

“What? Well, we share books so…Is that normal? Did we find an exploit!? Finally? We can get infinite classes? Or… [Help] [Classes]. Urgh, that’s just a wall of text. Do I really need to read this tonight?” Gaëlle complained.

“No, we can look at it tomorrow…” I began.

“Fuck that I’m too excited. Go tell me what kind of skill you got while I try to make sense of all this.”

“Well, fine.” I sighed. “System? [Status][Skills].”

[Rage] levelled up

You have unlocked Innate Skill [Basic Hydromancy]

You have unlocked General Skill [Sneaking]

[Sneaking] levelled up

You have unlocked level 1 Class Skill: [Move]

“Ooh, that sounds cool. We’ve got a new Innate Skill and a Class skill. And the General Skill [Sneaking] but I was expecting that one already. The interesting ones are [Basic Hydromancy] and [Move].” I paused to comment on something. “It’s a bit weird seeing a shiny box in front of your face, but nothing getting illuminated by it at the same time.”

“That’s why I was feeling uncomfortable! Now that you say it, that’s such a mindfuck.” Gaëlle exclaimed. “Hydromancy and Move hey? Feels like the start of my mage build…I’ve got bad news by the way.”

“Lay it on me.” I sighed.

“Well, the very helpful [Help] skill doesn’t make it seem impossible to get multiple classes. So no exploit for us. It doesn’t tell how much experience is needed to level up a class, but if you’ve got two classes, your experience gets distributed evenly between those two classes and your main level. By taking my class and forcing you to take it with me, I basically made your all-around experience gain thirty-three per cent lower…”

“…Fuck. And I still have shit all in Hydrology control, so I probably won’t even be able to use the skills…”

“Oh, yeah, that too. I guess you’ll have to put all of your stats in control for a while.”

“Can I even equalize my stats? Let me check. [Status]”

The large blue screen of my status, that I was slowly getting used to, popped up in front of me.

Name: [Nielle Templier]

Race: [Homo Chimera Sapiens]

Age: [29 years old]

Level: [90]

Statistics:

[Strength=110] [Constitution=110] [Perception=115] [Agility=115]

[Hydrology power=1] [Hydrology control=1]

Class: [Berserker = 6]

[Ascensus = 1]

Innate Skills:

[New Species]

[Identical Twins]

[Help]

[Basic Hydromancy]

Skills: (+)

“[Race].” I continued. I checked back on the racial stats and… “I need two hundred and ten stat points…”

“That’s erm… forty-two levels?”

“…Shit.”

“I’m sorry Nielle.”

“Not your fault.”

“Hey, maybe killing the [Dark Crow] will give us insane exp and we’ll get those levels.” She tried.

“I doubt that. Bonnie, how much experience do I need to gain forty-two levels according to our equation?”

“47 616 000 Experience.”

“So forty-seven level 300 [Tooth-Bears].” I calculated.

I felt L squirm next to me.

“What?”

“Well, that’s if you didn’t have any classes.”

“Oh fuck, I need three times as much, don’t I? One-hundred and fifty million exp.”

“Exactly.”

“And double that if it’s with you.”

“No, remember? The bonus XP isn’t shared.”

“Well, that’s that. That’s still an absurd amount of experience. I won’t be able to use them. Class skills only work here, anyway.”

“Sorry.” Gaëlle repeated.

“Hey, don’t be.”

She hugged me.

“No, I was too excited. I didn’t think about the consequences. We could have asked Rik before, but I couldn’t wait.”

“The more we ask the more suspicious we become. It’s better like that. You know what, I’ll kill one-hundred and fifty [Tooth-Bears] with you. No problems then. Just need to camp in the woods for a while.”

She chuckled. “Dumbass. We’ll never survive that many encounters. We can barely get rid of a level 68 that got his brains sucked out by the bastard.”

“We’ll be fine, we came here to have fun, didn’t we?” I comforted her awkwardly.

“Yeah, soo much fun. We could have died dozens of times. Makes me ask if we should continue. We kill the [Dark Crow], then what? Do we really go on an epic quest to save the children, assassinate the bad prime minister who lives in the ocean on the sky? We don’t know them, even according to your criteria, we are not obligated to help.” Her tone was serious, and I thought a bit before answering.

“First of all, it was your plan. Your sick desire to meet cat girls that brought us here…”

“There are no cat girls, that’s not why I chose this place.”

“I wasn’t finished. But really? I was certain it was something anime or totally perverted that pushed you to choose this one.”

“…Who do you think I am? I would never.”

I was 90% certain this was a lie.

“Anyway, you are right, we don’t need to do anything for strangers. It always has been a completely arbitrary decision on your part.”

“So…”

This time, I didn’t let her chime in. “But you were right about that too, L. We…We’re not okay. We’ll probably never be, I’ve got Lila, but the person I see in the mirror is much worse for me than it is for you.”

“It’s not easy…”

“Gaëlle. You know what I mean.” I knew it hadn’t been the perfect thing to say, but I believed she understood beyond the surface of my words.

“I…I guess.”

“So, sure, we almost died, we’re in a brand-new world where everything is fresh, and nothing follows your video game rules.”

“Sometimes it does. Just to sike you out afterwards.”

I didn’t let myself be phased by my sister’s comments, as I continued explaining.

“But that arbitrary decision and those events, they are helping us. You can hold on without me longer, and we’ve identified how badly I could become.”

“Identifying the problem. First step.” She said.

“You remember that, uh?” I smiled, myself recollecting a word I had learned that day. Desiderium, the ardent longing for something lost forever.

“Of course.”

The silence grew for a moment.

“As long as we’re doing something we believe in, we’re climbing back from where he put us.” Gaëlle said softly.

“And we’re in such a different world, we can be new people. It doesn’t matter how we look if it’s the first time for everyone. In this world, how I look now is how I always looked. It’s not a reminder of what Benedict did to us, it’s who I am.”

“So. We continue because we need this. We need it to stay sane. We’ll kill people, people will suffer, horrible stuff will happen to us. But we can’t leave because it’s our lifeline.”

I clenched my teeth. “That doesn’t sound very healthy.”

L turned her head around to look at me.

“But isn’t it the truth? This world hasn’t given us many breaks. I don’t expect us to get many in the future either. Look at tonight. Think about tomorrow. We’re going to see a crowd rip a man to shreds because we decided it.”

I hesitated, but finally answered: “Yeah.”

This time, the silence grew longer, our conversation clearly finished.

“Good night sis.” Gaëlle whispered as she hugged me.

I sighed. “Good night.”