“Please select your class.”

Dren blinked as he stared at the message in front of him. Then he glanced around. What he found was a dusty old room of stone. Ancient crumbling bricks trapped him within, with no exits in sight. While the air was stale and musty. Making him click his tongue trying to get rid of the taste. It wasn’t a great place to be.

Once again he turned back to look at the text box floating in front of him. Then ignoring it he wiggled his toes and hopped in place before bursting out into a grin. His legs worked. His arms too. He waved them around wildly while laughing fully. Closing his eyes he remembered those magical words that had freed him from his crippled shell of a body.

“System Integration of Earth has begun. Newest experimental system version deploying.”

Breathing heavily with excitement he shivered in anticipation as he approached the floating text box. Once he was close to it, the text box seemed to snap into a fixed position in his gaze. It all just made Dren grin bigger. It was just like he had read countless times before. His heart thudded loudly in his chest. It was real. A real system integration.

Grinning he focused on the text menu and it shifted to give him his choices.

Archer

Assassin

Defender

Healer

Mage

Pretty much what he expected. This was classic system stuff. Yet, he frowned. Archer and Assassin being two separate things instead of a single class was a bit odd. He expected them to be merged into something like a rogue or scout. Also, there seemed to only be a defensive melee option. He wondered if the choices were unique to him or not.

Dren shrugged. Every system story seemed to have its own small differences. So why not his?

Still, with little hesitation, he focused on Assassin. It sounded perfect for what he wanted. He was sure to be stuck alone early on.

Assassin:

A blade in the dark. Dealer of Death. Speed and stealth are your allies.

A melee combatant that forgoes heavy armor and utilizes only light armor. Favoring stealth and evasion for survival. Wielding only light weapons they rely on the skillful placement of their blows to deliver devastating damage.

Armor Skills: Light Armor

Weapon Skills: Light Melee. Throwing Weapons

Class Passive: Deadly Blows

Class Active: Assassin’s Eyes

Attributes per level: Two Agility. Two Dexterity

Multipliers: Agility 100%. Dexterity 100%

Ignoring the weapons and armor, as they were self-explanatory, he focused on the class passive.

Deadly Blows: Critical strike damage increased 500%

That sounded good. It was hard to tell how good that was without knowing more about the system but it did sound awesome.

Moving on to the next bit of interesting information.

Assassin’s Eyes: Highlights critical zones on enemies. Stamina cost: minor.

“Welp. They are going all in on the whole critical attacks thing.” Dren just shrugged and focused on the next line.

Attributes.

Agility: Increase movement speed and balance. Primary determination of evasion rate.

Dexterity: Affects hit chance with weapons as well as critical damage. Minor impact on casting speed. Useful in many crafting skills.

Endurance: Determines maximum stamina.

Intelligence: Determines maximum mana. Impacts magic potency. Can improve many mental skills as well as useful in many crafting skills. Provides resistance to mental debuffs.

Spirit: Increases regeneration rate of health, mana, and stamina. Provides mental damage reduction.

Strength: Affects base damage for melee weapons.

Toughness: Provides physical damage reduction.

Vitality: Determines maximum health. Provides resistance to physical debuffs.

“Ok. A lot there but all pretty much what I expected from a system’s attributes.” Dren muttered after reading them all. There was a bit of inherent knowledge as well. The multiplier was just what it sounded like. For the assassin they not only got two points of agility and dexterity every level up. But even better, each point was worth two compared to anyone without a multiplier.

Every five levels one got an increase of one to all stats. Still, any other class would need four times as much agility or dexterity to equal him. Pretty powerful. But he assumed the other classes got something similar.

“Ok. How do I lock in my class?” Dren said. Instantly getting a response.

Select Assassin as your class? Yes/No

Dren nodded at the words and thought yes. The menu closed and a new one popped up. This time with more options. A lot more options.

“Select your profession.”

Dren looked down over what must have been more than a hundred options. “What the hell. Why are there so many options? Wait. Belly Dancer? Ok, what the hell?”

His first instinct was just to pick something and move on. He was getting impatient to get started. But he forced himself to take a deep breath. This was important. There was just too much detail and information.

“Filter?” He said out loud in a joking tone. To his surprise, a filter menu popped up. It would allow him to search by a few things. Attributes provided by the profession and recommendations.

He selected it to sort by professions that would give both agility and dexterity.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The list shrank. With the first one at the top being… Belly Dancer.

Dren felt his eye twitch some. “The hell? No.”

He glanced at some of the others before selecting recommendations.

His eyes fell on a familiar set of words that seemed just a little bigger and the text slightly glowing.

Belly Dancer.

“NO!” Dren snapped. Was the system or whatever fucking with him?

To his surprise, the words shrank down to the same size as all the others and lost the slight glow.

Still frowning he took in the much smaller list and his eyes fell on the top choice.

Alchemy: Produce restorative potions, potent flasks, or deadly poisons.

Requires: Components and a crafting station.

Attributes per level: Two Intelligence. Two Dexterity

Multipliers: Intelligence 100%. Dexterity 100%

Poisons. Nothing went better with the whole assassin theme than poisons. Better yet it gave Dexterity. He wondered how the modifies stacked too.

As if the system was listening in he saw the display change.

Alchemy: Produce restorative potions, potent flasks, or deadly poisons.

Requires: Components and a crafting station.

Attributes per level: Two Intelligence. One Dexterity

Multipliers: Intelligence 100%. Dexterity 50%

More inherent knowledge came. There were diminished returns on stacking modifiers and he would get a reduced amount per level. If he picked one of the professions that did both agility and dexterity. It would only give him one point in each and an increase of just 50% compared to the two points and a 100% increase if he choose a profession that did two new ones.

Dren huffed annoyed. He had wanted to min-max his attributes. Min-max was a term common in many of the stories he read. Where one maximized their most important stats even if it required them to minimize others. It made him want to pick a profession that modified at least his dexterity but at the same time, he felt like he was losing out on too many raw stats. The ability to get double benefits from two other stats would be good too. Especially if he was stuck alone at the start.

Sitting down cross-legged he started to look up at the text box in thought only to find it moving down to eye level. “Min-max or diversify?” He said out loud.

Part of him really wanted to min-max. But, that was also dangerous. He didn’t want to be some nobody in the story that died right away. Glass cannon builds were a death sentence more often than not. Unless he got some super powerful boost early on. As most of the main characters of system stories did. But he couldn’t count on that. Could he?

He glared at the menu trying to get an answer but nothing came. Part of him was even wishing he had gone healer or defender now the more he thought about it. Glass Cannon was just too risky. But he would definitely need to kill. That was a mainstay of everything he had read involving systems. No matter how different the systems might be.

Shaking his head he decided to at least look at the other recommendations.

Belly Dancer.

Nope, he wasn’t even going to open it.

Instead, he glanced down the list and spotted something else.

Enchanting: Offense, Defense, or Utility? There is an enchantment for them all.

Requires: Mana. Catalysts (optional)

Attributes per level: Two Intelligence. Two Spirit

Multipliers: Intelligence 100%. Spirit 100%

“Hmm. Versatile. Boosts two stats. Intelligence isn’t that great for me but Spirit might not be bad. It impacts health and stamina regeneration as well as mana. Also, it looks like it doesn’t need anything to do other than mana to do. I hadn’t even considered that with alchemy. How common will herbs and stuff be? It always seemed to vary so much in the different stories.” Glaring at the menu didn’t give him any information on that.

Dren flipped back to check a few other professions. Belly Dancer not being one of them. All the others required components and most required workstations of some sort. The more he thought about it the more he liked the idea of enchantments. It seemed like something he could do right away to boost his power. Since he didn’t know how common the crafting materials and these workstations would be. It just sounded like the safe bet.

“Select Enchanter as your profession? Yes/No”

The menu went away and another one popped up. Another one with lots of things on it.

“No affinity found. Select an affinity.”

Dren looked at the long list and sighed. “Recommended.” He said.

The list shrank down. He looked over it and quickly found two he liked the name of.

“Shadow and Death. That seems like two you can’t go wrong with for an assassin.” He grinned and checked them both.

Shadow gave agility and intelligence. It also gave him an active ability to hide in shadows. It seemed pretty powerful. More a magical invisibility than a stealth skill. But it required him to be in shadows and would break if he moved or attacked. It also cost mana but that wasn’t that big of a deal he figured. The assassin was certain to be a stamina class. Right? Dren frowned feeling the pressure. How many times had he dreamed of being in this situation? Now that he was, he was so unsure.

Death gave Dexterity and Strength. It gave him an activated ability that increased the base damage of an attack while turning the damage to necrotic. The only problem was it didn’t say how much of an increase. It also costs health. Dren wasn’t sure if he liked that. There wasn’t enough information. Was necrotic a good damage type? Better than other types or maybe just situationally better? How much did it increase and how much did it cost? He got the feeling he was going to be squishy. Somewhere in his character creation, he had gained the inherent knowledge that his health would only go up with increases to vitality. He would get one to all stats every fifth level. So it wasn’t like he wouldn’t gain health. But he still felt he would be squishier than others even with that. Since he wouldn’t get a multiplier to his vitality.

Thinking about that he returned to the recommendation list and selected one he had ignored mostly because it didn’t seem to fit the idea of an assassin.

Life. It would give vitality and endurance. Just like a class, he would get two of each per level and a 100% multiplier. It also came with a Life Surge ability. Allowing him to store extra health when he was at full health. Up to his maximum health that could be spent at once. If it was full it could bring him from the brink of death and would even activate on its own should his health fall to zero while it stored any health points.

“But would that be spreading too thin? At that point, I’d get multipliers in everything but strength and toughness.” It definitely wasn’t min-maxing. But the more Dren thought about it the more he liked it. He wanted all the stats. Plus that life surge sounded like a get-out-of-death-free card. It seemed really powerful to him. He went back to the list of affinities and looked at a few others before finding himself back on the Life affinity.

“Fuck it.” He shrugged and glared at the menu.

“Select Life for your affinity? Yes/No”

The menu went away and then popped back up.

Class: Assassin

Profession: Enchanter

Affinity: Life

Confirm this selection? These choices can not be changed later. Only evolved.

Well, now that opened a whole new batch of questions. But Dren was too impatient by this point to do something like start digging into anything new.

“Yes!” He exclaimed impatiently.

The menu went away and a new one popped up.

“As a final bonus, a trait will be given randomly.”

A spin wheel appeared on the text box below those words and started spinning. Dren kinda wanted to face palm having thought he was finally going to get to do something fun. But resisted the urge to complain. Maybe he would get something good?

It clicked slowly before finally coming to a stop.

Blood of Dragons. Your blood gifts you with the might of a dragon and skin as tough as dragon scales.

Attributes per level: Two Strength. Two Toughness

Multipliers: Strength 100%. Toughness100%

Dren wanted to laugh. So he did. With that, he now had multipliers in all attributes and gained some through every level. Though he was now curious how that worked. He got the feeling that his class and profession leveled separately. Did that mean he got two of every attribute at every level?

He dismissed the menu and started to move towards a door that now appeared on the wall before he was stopped by a new text box.

Achievement obtained. Equilibrium

You have achieved perfect equilibrium with your attributes. A difficult feat. All attributes gain an additional 50% modifier.

Dren couldn’t help but grin. Was this the legendary overpowered main character ability? Sure he would still be behind someone who min-maxed a few attributes. But all his attributes would be higher than normal now. That had to be something right?

Still grinning he moved towards the door.