The Guildmaster sits behind his desk, watching the young man get half carried out of his office. Reaching out, he grabs the recently soul-bound document. With a wave of his free hand, he channels Source through his body and into the paper. In the blank spaces on the paper words rise to the surface, as if they’d been hiding there all along. Which they had.

The Guildmaster sighs in contentment. Another one who would profit the Guild, one way or another. This one more than most perhaps, it isn’t every day that an Awakened is willing to blindly sign a contract with their blood. A rare few get caught in this trap, in fact the Guildmaster usually doesn’t even try.

Seeing the fresh face of a newly summoned Awakened reminds him of his own beginnings here. He too had arrived here without knowing anything. All his power, ripped from him. Reduced from a god to a lowly mage, a bitter experience. Lowest tier of his class, indeed.

Reaching out with the Source he summons a bottle of whiskey. Frivolous and expensive, this whiskey is a guilty pleasure. The cost of researching what you can use to make whiskey in this world, building distilleries, and then fine tuning the product, is astronomical.

He sips and he remembers. He remembers becoming a powerful adventurer through dedication, smart business deals, and timely betrayals. He remembers overthrowing the previous Guildmaster in a decisive coup, not so very long ago. A smug look of satisfaction on his face, he remembers making the other guilds bow before his will with plots and daggers in the dark. The main source of money and materials in this city is the Dungeon. Control Dungeon access and everything else falls into place.

From many guilds to one. All the wealth in this city flows through him. A monopoly on the Dungeon and a monopoly on everything else. Even the Awakened here belonged to him, in a way.

In his past world there had been a fascinating mining company that he based his current system on. The company controlled all the wealth in a given city, which was populated by their miners. The miners never quite earned enough to buy everything that needed to support themselves and their families. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the company provided a store where they could buy what they needed on credit.

The miners, given their economic situations, were forced to make use of this feature. At the end of the day, all of their pay, plus some, would disappear into this Company Store, as it was called. The Guildmaster has been actively working on implementing a similar feature over the past few years, with moderate success.

It helps that he possess overwhelming personal power, as well as an enforcer to seek out and destroy those with a rebellious mindset. Of course, with such diverse Awakened, such a plan is not perfect, but it is a work in progress.

In his past world, he had been the god of Wealth. In this world, not much had changed.

***

Honey strides through the halls towards the barracks. Her hips may sway and she may have a gentle grace in her step like a dancer, but her face is reminiscent of an approaching storm front. The graceful sway is nothing but an optical illusion, caused by her extreme amounts of dexterity and uncanny flexibility. Such a stride on anyone else would be no more than a furious stomp.

Her dark complexion fiercely conflicts with her long white hair, up in a messy bun. A short, furry tail flows along behind her as she barges into the barracks.

A brief pause in the doorway to scan for her victim. Her dark and foreboding eyes scan the room from left to right, searching the many beds. Locking onto a human with short brown hair and abnormally average features, she nimbly stalks forward toward her victim. Her victim, a human that looks like the base average for all humans everywhere, sleeps on, unaware of his fate.

At least, that’s how it would seem to everyone else. To Honey she feels she is the victim. Like so many had become recently, she is in debt to the Guild. Forced to borrow from the Guild to become stronger. Forced to become stronger to take on more profitable quests in the Dungeon to pay off the Guild. A deadly cycle.

Trying to break free, she volunteered to train newbies for a reduction of her debt. Each successful newbie she trains would be another fraction of her debt gone. Key words here being successful and fraction.

Her anger, in part, stems from this word. She has been saddled with the most useless Awakened ever. A piece of shit that goes by ‘Snowflake.’ Everyone else had starting stats of at least 10 in every category, not to mention race and class bonuses.

This one has 1 stat in each category. The same as a single level up, minus bonuses. The chances of him becoming successful are so low they may as well be the same chances of a ‘snowflake’ surviving a sandstorm. Gritting her teeth into a snarl, she wordlessly storms over and kicked him off his bed, with beauty and grace of course. That is, if your definition of beauty includes sharp teeth, a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude, and serious anger issues crammed into a tiny package.

Snowflake indeed. Fragile and likely to melt at any moment. Honey watches her protégé kick and struggle in his blankets. His pathetic struggles make her feel a bit better and so she devises a training program. A program that will cost much effort and be wrought with pain. Not on her part, of course. Despite being an effective program, it is mostly to make her feel better about having to put up with this shit.

Inwardly sighing to herself she thinks, ‘I guess I’m just going to have to make him into a Snowman.”

***

I open my eyes to see a dark-skinned beast-kin glaring down at me. Yesterday I passed out from being drained, but right now I’m about to pass out from being in pain. Damn these beds are stiff, but getting knocked to the ground aggravates my weak body in a way that the bed didn’t.

I rapidly blink my eyes to help clear the sleep out of them. My cleared eyes refocus long enough to catch a glimpse of a bundle being thrown on to my chest.

“Get up,” she barks. “Get dressed. I don’t have a lot of time to whip you into shape.”

Stolen story; please report.

My mind snaps into focus. This must be the training the Guildmaster talked about! Good. I need to level up fast. Get on track with the whole shitty stats thing.

I unfold the bundle. Finding a simple outfit of grey pants, a white shirt, and black leather boots, I put it on. Standing up, I realized that the beast-kin woman is much shorter than I had first thought. Five feet tall, tops. She is very pretty with a firm looking body and curves in all the right places. The way she has her hair all messy really does it for me. I wish she would stop staring at me while I get dressed though.

Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I’m not getting any ‘I’m attracted to you’ vibes off her. More like ‘I’ll skin you alive if you waste my time’ vibes. I shudder as she eyes me like prey. I look at my outfit and hers. I see we match, cute. I feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing. And the wolf is upset at me for stealing its clothing. And also the wolf is leading me out of the barracks towards god knows where. Probably the slaughter house.

I follow her outside to what looks like an athletic compound. The compound seems surreal. Massive fields surrounded by a wall in the middle of a city. Towers that scrape the sky, dwarf the wall. The Dungeon dwarf the towers. Walking through the compound, the beast-kin lectures me.

“My name is Honey,” she begins. “I will be your trainer. Since you are a special case, I will take special measures to make you competent.”

My interest peaks, I stop gawking around at walls and thinking about dwarves to concentrate on her words.

“Normally we give out combat training to the newly arrived. You are too weak for this. I will run you through drills to increase your base stats during the morning and into the afternoon. For lunch, we’ll break and I’ll answer the questions you have. In the evening, I will beat you until you learn to defend yourself. Any questions?”

Lacking an immediate question, but filled with plenty of concerns, I open my mouth.

“Yeah, um, that sounds like a lot of work.” The words flow out of my open mouth.

“It will be.” Her curt response.

“That may be a problem. You see, I’ve never had to work for anything before so… Yeah.” What can I say? I was written super over-powered. I was practically a god.

Not bothering to respond to me, she points forward. We had arrived at the structure.

Looking over at me she says, “Run this obstacle course until you can’t run anymore. If you slow down, I will punish you.”

“Punishment? Isn’t just doing this punishment enough?” Shooting her a look of derision I jog towards the first obstacle. Halfway there I am knocked off my feet by what felt like a punch to the back. I land on the ground. Hard. I lay there for a half a second before the pain reaches my brain.

FUCK THAT HURT. Forget a punch, it was like a giant came after me with a mini flail! I sit up and turn to object. Something flashes past my head.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins I look at Honey. She is pointing at me, something condensing out of the air at her fingertip.

“Run,” she says. The blue ball on her finger shoots towards me. I roll to the side. It hits the ground where I was, causing a small eruption of mud.

She is shooting water projectiles at me!

Afraid of the pain, I ran.

This whole time my Narrator had been... Well, he’d been narrating my every move. A little annoying, but I got good at zoning it out. Faced with something I didn’t really want to think about, I make a decision. I’ll let Mr. Narrator do the honors for this one.

This is a hard world. A world where power must be earned. A world where destiny must be grasped. A world where one must fight tooth and nail to succeed. In this world, our hero struggles. His blood and tears do not go unanswered for he does succeed. Congratulations Snowflake. You’ve gotten over the first obstacle.

‘First of all, fuck you. Secondly, make it longer. I need to zone out till it’s over.’

Have it your way.

Snowflake struggles over walls, across ropes, through mazes, and all sorts of horrendous obstacles. Whenever he falters by even a half a step, he is chased forward with a projectile. One pain overshadows the other. The hours crawl by as he pushes past his limits. Nearing lunch, he is duly rewarded for his efforts.

Strength +1

Dexterity +1

Stamina +1

Halfway through scrambling up a giant log, the messages flash before my eyes. I pause to read them, a grin plastered on my face. At this rate, it’ll just take me a couple weeks to raise my stats to what they should be! I’ll match up to everyone else in no time!

True to her word, Honey punishes any slacking. Knocked off the log by a fist-sized projectile I lay on the ground wheezing. The air has departed my lungs and is reluctant to come back.

“Gain some stats?” Honey asks as she strolls over to check on me on light feet.

“Yes,” I gasp out as she crouches beside me.

“Don’t get cocky. Exercise has diminishing returns. Come on. Let’s grab lunch. I’ll explain the stats to you.” She said, deflating my positivity.

Not waiting for me, Honey strolls away towards a building near the barracks. The mess hall I assume. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and scramble to get up and follow. Dry heaving aside, I am damn hungry.

I enter the hall, hot on her heels.

“Grab as much food as you’d like,” Honey tells me when I catch up to her. “Come find me when you’re ready.”

Noting the direction, she left in, I go to the buffet line and help myself. There are all sorts of delicious foods and I am not shy about piling it on. After a brief search, I find Honey sitting at an empty table, sipping out a mug.

“Is it okay to eat this much?” I ask, sitting down.

“It’s fine,” she replies. “Food is part of your Guild tab. Don’t worry about getting fat either. You’ll be doing far too much running for that. Besides, I’m pretty sure your body uses calories to heal.”

Grimacing at the mention of running and missing a look of dark delight from Honey, I shove my face full of food.

“Okay, let me explain your training while you eat,” she says after a long drink out of her mug. “The obstacle course will help you for when you begin your quests. After about 2 weeks you should cap out what you can get in physical stats in a short period.”

Seeing me open my mouth to say something, she motions me to be silent.

“Any gains more than that will take months if not years of dedicated training. That will be on you to do for yourself if you want to.”

My question answered I close my mouth and go back to eating. I mean, I had to open my mouth again to take another bite but… whatever. Fuck it.

“After a few more hours at the course we’ll move into defense and Source training.” She continues, her monologue obviously not finished. “That should help raise your Intelligence and Wisdom stats. Any questions?”

Oh? That was shorter than I thought. I swallow my mouthful and ask something that had been bugging me.

“My Intelligence stat is so low, but I don’t feel like I’m any dumber than I’ve always been. Why is that?”

“Good question,” she says in a dry manner. “Your personality and natural intelligence, whatever it may be, stayed the same from when you were written. The ‘powers that be’ decided that the Intelligence stat doesn’t affect your intelligence. It dictates how you can affect the world around you using Source.”

Nodding at the thorough and succinct explanation, I ask about the wisdom stat. Apparently, that one has to do with potential Source usages and detecting changes in the energy. Done with her explanation and whatever it is she is drinking, Honey urges me to finish eating.  It is time to start the defense training.

Or in her exact words, “I’m going to hit you until you learn to block or dodge. Then I’m going hit you more, because you need to toughen the fuck up.”