CHAPTER 3 MY FIRST CLASSES
I woke up with a start, seeing Illesea standing over me gently shaking my shoulder.
“Good, it’s time to get up. Eat and get dressed, I’ll be waiting outside your door when you’re ready.” She briskly turned around and walked back out of the room not giving me a second look.
‘Definitely a lot less friendly than when I was her prisoner’ I thought to myself idly while putting on the tunic she had given me previously. On the table was some sort of porridge filled with various ingredients that I didn’t recognize, but it tasted similar enough to an oatmeal porridge from Earth. In fact it was pretty damn good, I hadn’t always been the biggest fan of any porridges but this stuff was amazing.
I quickly finished eating and opened the door to my room where Illesea was standing outside, she just gestured to me to follow her and walked off. I struggled to keep pace with her, now that I took a proper look at her she was a decent bit taller than I was. I’m not tall by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not short either. I’m sitting right in the middle at just under six feet tall. She was probably 6’4” at least. Most elves were relatively tall, but not a single one was lanky or disproportionate. I always poked fun at my short friends for being, well, short. And now here I was the midget amongst giants.
“Where are we headed, how does one even acquire a class in the first place? If I had to make a guess, there’s probably criteria you have to meet depending on the class and affinity for said classes.”
“That’s right, although probably not exactly in the way you’re thinking. Everyone has access to a set number of classes in the beginning that they can choose from without too much work put into it. This ensures that people always have access to a class should they need one. But some of the more rare classes have requirements to be able to select them. I’d bet you’d have some pretty interesting classes to choose from that would have to do with your world. As for where we are going, we are headed out of the city, you’ll need a place where you can fire off magic and kill some lower level creatures to level up a bit. The guards barracks does have a training ground, but if you got accidentally hit you’d probably die instantly.”
“Instantly? What level is the average guard here?” I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, with no class most people could probably kill me instantly with no effort.
“You can’t see levels? Ah, you don’t have identify. You should get that, in fact try to get it now. Focus really hard on me like you’re trying to read my status.”
I facepalmed, ‘Of course, identify! I can’t believe I forgot about such a staple of places like this. I feel like an idiot.’
I concentrated all my effort on trying to identify Illesea, and sure enough…
‘Ping’ You’ve unlocked the general skill - Identify
[Level 7547]
What the fuck is that? Why was there a tiny little 7 up there?
“What’s up with your level? It’s got that tiny little seven in the corner.”
“That’s my ascension tier… I figured you would have known what it meant on sight, like practically everything else you’ve come across so far.” She glanced back at me, but didn’t stop walking, leaving me having to do that weird half-jog thing to keep up with her sometimes.
“Uh-huh… Right. What’s an ascension tier exactly?”
“Every tier has a level cap, you would be considered a tier zero. So when you get your first class your level cap would be ten. Once you hit level ten you’ll have an option to ascend yourself, evolving your classes and resetting back to level one. With this usually comes big passive and active benefits, but they aren’t usually the same for everyone. One that is the same for everyone is that you’ll see people with a third class. Continuing on from that at tier one, the cap is twenty-five, then fifty, then one-hundred, then two-fifty, and you get the idea. So I’m a tier seven at level 754.”
“I see, and I’m guessing the benefits progressively get more powerful the more you ascend?”
“Pretty much, although levels multiply the base with the base of your power being your classes. If you have bad classes you can end up weaker than someone in a lower tier than you. On the other hand, if you have amazing classes with impressive requirements you can end up stronger than creatures in tiers above you. Although I can’t really recommend trying to fight higher tier creatures either way.”
As she finished up we reached the outside gate of the citadel before stopping and letting me pull up next to her. The gate was completely open. Rather, there was no gate at all. There was an arch where a gate could’ve been.
Illesea placed her hand on my shoulder, “Here, with the enchantments in place I’m going to have to guide you in and out of the city otherwise you won’t be able to make it through.”
I was gently pulled forward and she started walking. As we crossed over the threshold of the arch, I felt something wash over my skin. Probably enchantments, which explains why they didn’t feel the need for a gate. The enchantments in place were probably ridiculously strong.
The forest outside of the Citadel was thick, but not overbearing. The trees here were also extremely tall, but at least here I could see the sky, coincidentally there was only one sun and one moon that I noticed. For now. I squinted while looking up expecting any second for an illusion to pop and there be five suns up in the sky or something ridiculous.
After putting a little more distance in between us and the Citadel, Illesea finally came to a stop and turned to face me.
“Alright, time for you to select your first class. Go ahead and sit down, you’re probably going to be on this for a while.” I did as she told me and sat down while she began explaining how to pull up my class list, “Focus on pulling up your status, once it’s in front of you from there you should see your class slots. Both of them should be empty, go ahead and focus on one of them and it should pull up a list from there. The rest should be intuitive. Read through the classes you have and then just select whichever one you like.”
Seemed easy enough, this was exciting. I was going to get access to magic, something I’d always dreamed about since I was a kid.
‘Ah, this is gonna be awesome. Alright, what should I pick?’
Class List -
[Laborer], [Reader], [Cook], [Musician], [Teacher], [Apprentice], [Scientist], [Construction Worker], [Architect], [Actor], [Adventurer], [Farmer], [Botanist], [Student], [Chemist]...
There were a dizzying number of choices to choose from, the more mundane ones happened to be towards the top. I hesitated briefly looking at [Musician] and [Teacher]. At one point in my life I had wanted to be a music teacher and had been studying for that. It never really panned out for me, half of it seemed to be the world conspiring against me to make it as hard as possible to take the classes with various circumstances constantly coming up. The other half was I just stopped caring. Whatever, that’s in the past now. Nothing would stop me from playing instruments anyways, even if I have a combat oriented class. In fact, I’m sure higher stats would make it easier to play as well. A lot of difficulty for playing instruments came with coordinating your hands and eyes, getting your fingers to do exactly what you were reading on the sheets, so with higher dexterity it should become easier in the future to play more complicated arrangements.
Out of curiosity I focused on [Scientist].
[Scientist] -
Requirements: Have a passing understanding of basic sciences and understand the scientific method.
Science is at the heart of innovation and you seek to understand it.
+1 Vig, +1 End, +1 Str, +3 Dex, + 1 Agi, +5 Int, + 5 Wis per level.
Huh. Those were some… extremely disproportionate stats. I mean. It kind of makes sense? That the class would be primarily focused on the mental side of stats along with the one physical side that allowed you to perform your procedures with precision and care.
The chemist class seemed to be locked and I wasn’t able to see what the requirements were to unlock it. Which was kind of disappointing. It’d be cool if I could look at locked classes and work towards their requirements so I could more generally gear myself towards the style that I wanted.
But I guess I would just have to do this naturally. I’d have to focus on doing things purely towards the class setups that I wanted and then go from there.
I scanned a few more of the insane class lists and I could see towards the bottom some grayed out classes that were very clearly hard-locked behind higher tiers or impossible requirements. I couldn’t tell what those requirements were unfortunately, but I could get ideas from the class names.
[Dragon Slayer], [Quantum Physicist], [God Slayer], [Ili’kithari’s Plaything], [Pandemonium], [Entity of Shards], [Posthumous]
These had some extremely interesting names and I really wanted to know how to acquire some of the more unique sounding ones. [Entity of Shards] sounded pretty cool, but alas I had no idea how to acquire it. It was possibly related to some knowledge I had, but I wasn’t quite sure as to what, nor how to acquire it.
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‘I’m getting distracted, focus Alex.’ I mentally berated myself. If I kept having monologues about these classes I was gonna be stuck here all day, the sooner I picked my classes the better.
As interesting as all these other classes were, I was primarily focused on combat classes. I wanted something that allowed me to actively fight stuff rather than having me sitting back and passively working towards goals like a scientist would. Regardless of how good the later classes might be.
I focused to see if I could make the list be organized by combat oriented classes, and sure enough the list shifted around revealing my selection of classes.
‘I’m getting distracted, focus Alex.’ There were tons of classes being offered, tons being locked behind prerequisites, like [Chemist] I had to go through [Scientist] to get to. Plenty of options existed out there, and all of them had plenty of pro’s and cons going for them. And if this had been the world I’d been born in I might’ve been interested in a lot of them depending on my family, or if I was still living on Earth I might have chosen a music based class to represent my passions. But now that I was here? I wanted pure, raw, combat potential. Plain and simple. As such I focused my attention to filter the list to only show the classes I was interested in trying to pick and also filtered out the ones I technically didn’t qualify for. I wasn’t interested in drooling over things like a dragon slaying class that I had to be level 500 for and had killed 6 dragons or something. I couldn’t do that right now, and probably not anytime soon either. So no point in getting myself excited for something years in the future.
[Martial Artist], [Taekwondo Practitioner], [Mage Initiate], [Ranger’s Apprentice], [Trainee], [Brawler], [Survivor of the Waves], [Shock Enthusiast], [Flame-Touched], [Blade User], [Hunter]
Honestly, I was kind of expecting more. Maybe not better classes, but just more miscellaneous options to have. I was fine with this though, the less I had to choose from the less I’d agonize over my decisions. I already had an idea set up in my head, although it was really just what I preferred to make whenever I played rpg’s in general. I wasn’t going to let it dissuade me from choosing a different class setup if I found something genuinely good though.
From what I knew about classes from what the elders had told me they had the usual rarity class type categorization. [Common], [Uncommon], [Rare], [Epic], [Legendary], [Unique]. According to the elders I was more likely to see a unique class over a legendary one. Uniques weren’t necessarily better than legendary, they just had the potential to be better due to the fact legendary classes were usually tied to a specific thing like being the ruler of a nation or a hero of a powerful god. Stuff like that. Unique covered such a broad scope of possibilities. Imagine being the ruler of a powerful nation but accomplishing something no other ruler had managed to do? That would qualify you for a unique class way stronger than the legendary one.
I focused on [Taekwondo Practitioner] to start with, ‘Let’s see what you have for me’
[Taekwondo Practitioner] -
Requirements: Taught by a Black Belt, Trained for at least a year, Earned a white-belt.
Dedication. Discipline. Decisive.
You always put your best foot forward, and your hard-work has been rewarded.
+1 Vig, +2 End, +3 Str, +2 Dex, +4 Agi, +1 Int, +2 Wis per level.
Pretty lackluster requirements for what is supposed to be a rare class. Although this is baby level stuff. I’m sure higher ascension classes will have steeper requirements to get into. Next!
[Survivor of the Waves] -
Requirements: Has nearly drowned twice, Has saved someone else from drowning, Has swam more than a mile without resting.
The waters are an unforgiving force of Nature. You refused to bend even when not only your life was on the line, but others as well.
+5 Vig, +3 End, +1 Str, +1 Dex, +2 Agi, +5 Int, +2 Wis per level
What the hell? Those requirements seem absurd! Especially since most people unlock their classes really early on in life. I guess that definitely falls more in line with what a rare class is though. Technically I would’ve earned this class before the age of 10 on Earth if we had this System… I don’t necessarily have trauma associated with water, but it definitely does have some unpleasant memories associated with it, gonna hard pass on this one.
[Shock Enthusiast] -
Requirements - Willingly shocked yourself for your own amusement, Have experienced electric shock at least 10 times, Studied the currents and know how to manipulate them.
You laughed while others cried. Well, not really. But it did hurt, and you smiled while it happened.
+4 Vig, +1 End, +1 Str, +3 Dex, +2 Agi, +4 Int, +3 Wis per level.
[Flame-Touched] -
Requirements - Willingly burn a part of yourself until that part turned black, Set fire to more than 100 items.
You’ve stood unflinching in the face of fire. Now that you’ve withstood its fury, you can unleash it upon others.
+2 Vig, +1 End, +1 Str, +4 Dex, +3 Agi, +4 Int, +4 Wis per level.
I mean… I guess those things had happened, although I feel like the System was overplaying what had happened. When I burned myself I was 1 years old. So it’s not like I was super invested in self-preservation at the time. Either way that covered all the classes that had colors to them. The descriptions didn’t tell me a whole lot about what kind of class these were. I mean, I knew they were mage classes or melee classes and whatnot. But with the mage classes I didn’t know if they were short range or long range based. I wonder if I took [Martial Artist] or [Taekwondo Practitioner] along with [Survivor of the Waves] could I become like some sort of water bender from Avatar? That’d be pretty cool.
Water wasn’t really my favorite element though, and I needed to also think about the stat allocation from each class. I briefly looked at the [Martial Artist] and [Brawler] classes, but they didn’t really provide anything the blue one could and I wasn’t really interested in taking the martial route to begin with. There definitely was an appeal to beating the shit out of things with your bare hands, but that wasn’t always going to be my first choice. I instantly ruled out the two ranger classes, I just was not even slightly interested in using a bow. It just seemed so boring.
[Blade User] -
Requirements - Own a blade, Have trained under a teacher.
Having spent time training with a blade, you’re ready to expand your abilities even further beyond.
+3 Vig, +3 End, +2 Str, +3 Dex, +4 Agi, +1 Int, +1 Wis per level.
I feel like that wasn’t quite really what happened. During a few of my Taekwondo classes I had messed around a little bit with one of the black belts who was training a sword pattern. Either way this was something I was probably more interested in.
[Mage Initiate] sort of fell into the same situation as the two common martial classes as well. I was definitely planning on taking a mage class and if that's the case I might as well go with one of the better three options available rather than the general focused base class. In fact I think I had pretty much made my decision for my classes.
If there was one thing the System had gotten right was that I liked electricity.
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired your first class [Shock Enthusiast] Level 1 - +4 Vig, +1 End, +1 Str, +3 Dex, +2 Agi, +4 Int, +3 Wis.
‘Ping’ You acquire a new skill - [Jolt] A close ranged shock attack. Deal increased damage and increase the range by 1 ft per level.
‘Ping’ You acquire a new skill - [Shocking Grasp] Make contact with your opponent to deliver a high damage surge. Deal increased damage and reduce mana cost per level
‘Ping’ You acquire a new skill - [Paralyzing Shock] Hit your opponent with a jolt of electricity to paralyze them (5% success rate). Increase chance to paralyze by 1% per level.
Pretty versatile for a starter. I was expecting one ability I’d just have to spam to get anywhere. But with this I’ve got versatility. Even if the stun attack has a 95% chance of failure, hopefully I can level it up by just using it in general. I almost went ahead and selected my second class but stopped, maybe Illesea had a suggestion on when I should choose it.
“Hey Illesea, I’ve chosen my first class. Should I just go ahead and take my second now? Or is there some reason I should wait to choose it?” I glanced over to her, she had been idly leaning against a tree just watching with an unreadable expression on her face.
“Are you looking for advice on the class itself or have you already made up your mind?”
“I guess I’ve made up my mind but I’d be open to criticism. You might actually have a good suggestion on how my idea pans out. Essentially I want to make a spell-sword. Someone who utilizes magic either with or through a weapon. Is there any reason I shouldn’t do that? I figured that eventually I’d unlock a class that would be what I wanted as long as I stuck going through with this. Ah, something I guess I didn’t consider is where I’ll get a sword from, I don’t exactly have any money…”
I fell into thought as I tried to think of a solution for my problem. No money meant I couldn’t really buy anything, and it’s not like the elves would exactly need me to do anything for them. If there was something they couldn’t do I definitely wouldn’t be able to do it. While mulling over the problem I heard something slam into the ground in front of me shocking me out of my thoughts.
It was a wooden sword. The same one Illesea used.
“You can have that one. I formed it with my magic but it’s permanent, I can always make myself as many as I like.’ As she said that she formed another blade in her hands, roots swirled up from the ground until it reached her hand and then stretched out into the form of her sword. She grasped the hilt and swung it around a few times, doing a couple of fancy tricks before placing it on her back where she had kept her previous one.
I stared at it for a second before breaking out into a childish smile and laughing.
Illesea frowned at me, “Why do you laugh?”
“Because I’m having fun. For my entire life I’ve fantasized about magic and sorcery. A world as beautiful as this forest that’s around us, full of elves and dragons. For once I’m finally motivated to do something with my life other than sit around and cry about the fact that I’m an uninteresting person with nothing going for himself. I don’t know why, but it’s only finally starting to sink in. And maybe there are some shitty circumstances surrounding me showing up here. Like not being able to see my family anymore or my friends wondering why I no longer talk to them. But if I ever manage to go back and I get to tell them about this world and show them the magic in it, I think they’ll forgive me for disappearing on them.”
I let out a contented sigh before reaching forward and grabbing the sword, pulling it onto my lap, “Thank you for the sword, Illesea.” I gave her the first genuine smile I’d had since coming here.
She blinked slowly, before turning her head and waving a hand dismissively. I looked at her a little longer.
‘It really is unfair how hot she is.’ I pushed a breath of air out of my nose before focusing back on my class and selecting my second one.
‘Here goes nothing.’
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a second class [Blade User] Level 1 - +3 Vig, +3 End, +2 Str, +3 Dex, +4 Agi, +1 Int, +1 Wis.
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill - [Trained Physique - Passive] - You have a stronger body that lasts longer and is more resilient to physical attacks, reduces incoming damage and stamina loss by (5%). Increased reduction by 2% per level.
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill - [Slash] - A quick slash that deals heavy damage. Increased damage per level.
‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill - [Parry] - You can redirect an incoming attack from opponents of a similar size. Increased efficiency per level.
Alright, I could work with that. That damage reduction was going to come in handy I could already tell. In fact, this seemed to line up a little too well with what I had been thinking in my head. Whatever, all that really mattered was the fact that I had classes now, and it was most definitely time for me to cast my first spell. I stood up and stuck my hand out to try and cast my first spell.
“Alright how do I-”
FWOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire ground shook, I heard tree’s fall over and a heavy concentration of mana fell on my shoulders crushing me. I turned back to the explosion and saw a giant pillar of fire erupting over the citadel. I didn’t even have time to process what was happening when I felt Illesea grab me. And she was moving fast. I felt several of my ribs instantly break along with the shoulder she had grabbed and then they instantly fell back into place as what I assumed to be healing magic flowed through me.
The distance to the citadel closed faster than I could blink and before I knew it I was standing in front of the massive tree I had originally woken up in, Illesea standing in front of me.
“Go inside, do not come out. You will be safe there.” She instantly turned around and disappeared, the ground shattered under her steps and a shockwave emanated from where she had been standing blasting me backwards.
I slowly stood back up before glancing at the pillar of fire that slowly started to fade away, I could feel its heat even through the barrier. Whoever or whatever was attacking here was strong, or incredibly stupid.
“And here I thought everything was going too smoothly for me.”