Messenger (Basic)

You spend many hours a week running and spend just as much time ensuring communication networks work flawlessly. You feel a deep responsibility to those who have entrusted you with information. Increases speed on your feet and will passively protect information in your care when delivering a message. Your endurance and dexterity stats receive a 1.1x multiplier.

Scholar (Basic)

You are naturally inquisitive, leading you to learn for knowledge's sake. You find joy in learning, are not concerned if it will help you achieve your goals. You will process new information quicker and have more breakthroughs when researching topics. Your intelligence and wisdom stats receive a 1.1x multiplier.

Athlete (Basic)

You spend hours each week with the sole purpose of staying physically fit. You have only faltered in your routine due to illness or injury. You will find it much easier to increase physical statistics manually. Your strength and endurance stats receive a 1.1x multiplier.

Computer Scientist (Basic)

You spend dozens of hours on a computer each week on programming and related topics. You are seen as a peer by other professionals in your chosen field. You will find computers and programming more intuitive than before and are able to leverage your skills to compromise protected devices and networks more easily. Your intelligence stat receives a 1.2x multiplier.

While they were all descriptive of the life he lived, Eli was disappointed. They seemed to barely scratch the surface level of his life and interests, creating a facsimile of who he was. While considering which options seemed the most appealing, he realized that he had absolutely no idea what classes were and how they worked. He suddenly understood how big of a restriction it was that he was unable to interface with his implant for the next week. He considered looking online for information about how it all worked from people who had chosen other options when it came to their implants, but when he couldn't figure out how to dismiss the notification he just decided to select a class as carefully as possible and find out how badly he screwed up later.

Starting at the top, Messenger seemed useless. It was an amalgamation of various aspects of his life with no regard to if they were related whatsoever. Yes Eli ran often, did he work on communication systems? From the right angle and if you squinted hard enough, sure. But to conflate hosting a few website with less than a thousand combine hits per month to going for a daily run was absurd. He still wasn't sure how leveling worked, and didn't want to pigeonhole himself into being a courier in a small town with a population of barely 10,000 people. He mentally discarded the class all together; there was probably a use case he was missing, but if it didn't come to him right away, then it was too much of risk given what little information he had.

Scholar was immediately more attractive to him; Eli liked the idea of being a bookish researcher, spending most of his time by himself and studying what fancied him at the moment. He could think of a lot worse ways to spend his time gaining levels, whether fighting in a war or slaving in a factory. What worried him was how general the class was. It seemed almost too good, and was worried about the downsides. How would he level up? If he had to be on the cutting edge of a field and make discoveries to make any progress then he was screwed. Or if he needed to learn so much that he wouldn't have any time to commit to the other things he enjoyed. It was definitely a strong choice though, which he was glad for after the nightmare of an option that Messenger was.

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Athlete felt like the wrong word to describe him. He never felt particularly athletic, but could understand how he fell into that category given the obesity epidemic in America. He wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth though, and dove into evaluating the class. This seemed like the best option he had for a physical class, not that beating out Messenger was difficult. It had all same generality problems that Scholar did, which put it on even footing on that front. Given his nearly average stats across the board, the idea of increasing them definitely appealed to his vanity. And getting natural steroids to help him was just a cherry on top. His greatest fear was injury; to be stuck at a low level and unable to advance further due to a bum knee worried him. Eli had never been truly injured since a broken arm in elementary school, but he didn't want to be left behind by his friends and family in this new world. So Athlete sat comfortably in second place; he knew it was irrational, but he couldn't just shake his fears, no matter how unfounded.

Computer Scientist seemed most applicable to his current life, and probably the easiest to level up given his current routine. He was unsettled by the part about compromising devices and networks, that didn't feel like him. Eli wasn't entirely a goody two-shoes, but given how much effort he had put into trying to make sure his own data was protected, the thought of him removing that sanctity for someone else felt dirty. While the temptation of easy levels would not sway him, he feared that the bonus would lead to future choices that would leave him stuck with a class he resented. If he had worse options, it would be much harder to brush aside a class that this specific and tailored for him. But in the end, he was going to pass on Computer Scientist.

While it wasn't the easiest decision he had ever made, but Eli selected Scholar. It was definitely the most conservative option, but not knowing how this class system worked was a huge impediment and it paid to be careful. Eli was just excited he didn't have to pick a class like Laborer, he didn't think he had to fortitude to stick with a class like that. But before he started to pat himself on the back, he wanted to see if anyone had posted how these classes worked online.

Eli booted up his computer and searched for information about classes, surprisingly almost everyone posted the exact same thing, word for word. While interesting, it was something he'd come back to after he figured this all out. After his research, he discovered a couple surprising things: there was no limit on the amount of classes you could take; secondly, you could upgrade your class at level 50, and every multiple of 100 thereafter, but only if all your classes were at the threshold; and finally, there was a way to remove a class, but there wasn't any information on how it was done, just some vague warning about the consequences.

[Scholar is now level 2]

Eli wasn't expecting a level from the small amount of research he did, so maybe his leveling rate wasn't going to be too bad. He just hoped it wasn't some absurd exponential that started comically low and increased to unreachable heights within a few levels. He focused on his skills, armed with better knowledge of how classes worked, and dove in.