The trip through the car park was mostly uneventful, though Nick did spot strange shapes lurking in the darkness.
Unlike the other floors that had the manpower to keep their floors clear most of the time, the 72nd certainly didn’t. Nick had been intimidated by the hundred strong legion of scrap armour goons when he had seen them, now he knew they weren’t anything special. He’d seen more fully geared people just walking around on the 75th floor than the entire 72nd floor had to offer. Tony just didn’t have the manpower to keep the entire floor safe and secured.
The group finally made it back to the hotel and Tony sat down at the bar. No one else in the group moved so Nick just stood there as well, awkwardly waiting for something to happen. Sebas came up and debriefed Tony on how the clearing of the floor went. There had been a couple of injuries and no casualties, but Maddy was sent off with Sebas towards the Quarters to heal them up.
Then Tony made himself a drink and let out a long sigh.
“I did it. Finally got the level up. Now we can focus on getting you guys strong enough to get to the better floors.” Then Tony’s eyes changed, a deep anger boiling through them. “Nick, you can leave. I need to talk to the team about why they were using class gems behind my back.”
Nick could hear the anger rumbling within the man and decided to make himself scarce. He simply nodded and moved off towards the Quarters. He didn’t feel much sympathy for the team he was leaving to get punished. While he totally understood why they’d done what they did, they had to have known they were playing with fire.
Nick didn’t bother letting himself run the possibilities of what Tony was going to do, he had a family to get back to. Nick was very happy with his map skill, the sheer convenience of it was unparalleled in a place like this. Nick noticed that his family had tied a phone’s charging cable around the door handle, better than nothing I guess.
Nick swung open the door and swaggered in.
“The hero returns!” He cried out triumphantly.
He heard a snigger from another doorway, someone must have just come out of their room. Nick blushed but continued his swagger into the room.
“Hey slave boy.” Lily called out from the sofa. “Fun day of indentured servitude?”
“Oh you know it, I’ve got quite the info dump that you’re going to love.”
“Well that makes the two of us, I spent the day talking to Mindy and her friends. I have to say Nick, I definitely got the short end of the stick.”
Nick raised an eyebrow.
“Mindy and her friends all talk like people from a 2000s teens show, I was there for hours Nick. Hours.” Lily looked exhausted. “OMG this, LOL that. They use LOL Nick. LOL!”
Nick threw himself onto one of the other sofas.
“I sympathise, all I really had to deal with was the talks of war, mental breaks and oh yeah, pissing off the self-proclaimed king of the hotel. Just another day I guess.” Nick said, adding a yawn for effect.
Lily sat up straight, her eyes keen, all signs of exhaustion wiped away. Nick grinned, he knew his sister couldn’t play down her interest in something like this. Instead of reacting, Nick just rolled over and yawned again.
“Quite tired though, might take a wee nap.”
“Nick.”
He ignored her.
“Nick.”
He shuffled himself into a more comfortable position.
“NICK!” Then he was struck by a flying cushion. Not a normal small, little, decorative cushion. No, Lily had pulled out the seat cushion and lobbed it at him.
“Damn, what’s a man gotta do to get some sleep around here.” he groaned.
“He can start by spilling the beans!”
Nick sat up with a grin and began recounting the day he’d just been through. He certainly embellished a few of the details, glossing over his flaws, but made sure to not miss any of the actually important details. He knew his sister had an excellent noggin on her shoulders and he held nothing back. She was concerned when he described his mental breakdown but he assured her it was okay.
“I think we both might have overlooked this detail. We’ve been more focused on working and gathering information, we need to slow down a bit and properly come to terms with what’s happened to us.”
Nick disagreed.
“We can stop and process things later. We have immediate threats we have to deal with first.”
Lily didn’t look sold but could tell Nick had more to say. Nick continued his story and finished with his own interpretations and thoughts of everything.
“We have to get out of here before Tony gets done in, I’m sure it’ll splash back on everyone unlucky enough to be on this floor. The 71st won’t be a permanent solution but it’s gotta be better than this.”
Lily nodded along.
“I agree Nick, from what you’ve said we need to move quickly. You’re missing something important though. Look at Maddy’s sister, now I won’t say anything conclusive, but that could be related to the same feeling you went through. Look at yourself. You completely broke down, now you are under a lot of pressure right now but this stuff builds up. It’s not just you and me, it’s dad and Benny too.”
Nick went quiet for a moment. He hadn’t even considered the impact everything was having on the little guy. His dad was a big man, he’d be able to cope. Benny was just a kid though, a kid that had been thrown into a completely new environment.
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“Where are they now?” He asked, realising they weren’t in the room.
“Benny found another group of young lads to hangout with, they all ran off together. Dad’s out drinking with Gareth I think. They’re holding together Nick, but we should address this.”
Nick sighed in relief, his sudden panic had made him jump to drastic thoughts for a second there. Nick suddenly activated Treasure Sense, testing something out. He felt the brightest, most distinct feeling he’d felt from his skill yet. He saw the figure of Benny a couple of rooms away, moving around. He also saw the figure of a large man in the other direction, it wasn’t as bright but still a clear marking. Neat.
The real treasure was the family we had all along it seemed.
Nick burst out laughing at his own corny joke. This completely shattered the serious and slightly sombre mood that had settled over Lily.
“What’s so funny Nicky?”
Nick then realised he hadn’t really explained his class to his family yet. He started explaining it to Lily but she stopped him. Apparently she’d gotten the full low down from Gareth already. It seemed he might have told her something Nick hadn’t known either, Lily started looking uncomfortable.
“Did Gareth tell you about the going crazy bit? Old dog didn’t even tell me.” Nick sighed loudly. “Pretty sucky huh?”
Lily just nodded slightly.
“Well all I know is that levelling the class up is going to make me lose my marbles, do you have much more on that?”
Lily let out a long sigh of her own.
“I guess it’s my turn to tell you everything I managed to pick up today. I’ll loop back around to the Explorer stuff, cause uh, yeah.” Lily paused for a moment before sucking in a deep breath, a more serious look filling her eyes.
“Well everyone here has at least one class. Kids can take them but it’s pretty frowned upon from what I saw, something to do with them not understanding the consequences of choices yet. And no, you can’t get rid of a class once you’ve taken one.” Lily stopped Nick’s question dead in its tracks. “I don’t know much about how these class things actually work or where any of this stuff comes from. Mindy’s group weren’t the type to really question these things. Though apparently there are groups in the Parklands that study this ‘lame stuff’ and probably have a decent answer or at least something.”
“Did you manage to learn much about the Parklands?” Nick asked, he definitely wanted to know more about the enemy of this upcoming war.
Lily waved him off.
“Yes I did, but I’m on class stuff right now. I’ll get to it.” She glared at him.
Nick knew that look, Lily was in her groove right now. No more questions, just let her go.
She went on to explain what she’d found out about classes. Some of it was stuff he had heard himself but it was good to hear it all grouped up.
So people could have two classes. Classes could be levelled up with gems, with the better gems coming from deeper floors. Though there was a rumour of buttons that could grant level two classes right off the bat. That was something Nick certainly wanted to investigate, sadly from what Lily had heard they were just rumours. Nick would love to give his family a jump start.
Level three was a big milestone for classes, apparently they evolved somewhat. Nick was listening with rapt attention as Lily explained what she had heard.
“So it seems that the classes names change, they gain an adjective at the start that then changes the skills slightly. Mindy and that didn’t really know the details as they were only level ones themselves. Gareth though must be a level three at least, he had far too much knowledge on it.”
That was surprising to Nick, Gareth having a level three class? Why was he here? Nick’s theory of him being some sort of retired hero resurfaced. Gareth was a man of mystery it seemed.
“Gareth said that at level three you get a choice, you choose a direction you want your class to go. Cryptic but better than nothing.” Lily paused for a bit.
Nick suddenly felt the drive to get to level three, he wanted to know what that all meant. Then he remembered he only had one class and he didn’t want to level it up. What a sucky dilema, it was time to think about what second class he was going to take.
Lily then hit him with an interesting bit of information. Almost everyone had the same class. Healthy Individual, a real basic name. Nick quickly understood why everyone had it though. Lily explained the three skills and they sounded very appealing. Healthy body, Strong body and Recover. The first gave a person a slight regeneration passive. The second gave a buff to Strength and Endurance stickers, which seemed like the same kinda passive skill Maddy got from Scout. The last skill was really cool sounding though. Basically it was a mini-hibernation that made people heal quicker. That was awesome sounding to Nick. Literally the skill version of ‘Nothing a little sleep can’t fix.’.
“Damn, I want that class.” Nick complained.
It literally let people heal on their own, it might not be as effective as a Healer’s heal but damn. The general buff passive seemed pretty great too.
“Yeah it’s pretty great sounding from what I heard.”
Then Lily paused, she looked at Nick then continued speaking.
“So, skills and mental states. I didn’t get much other than what Gareth told me. It’s not all negative but I won’t lie. It doesn’t sound great for you, for us.”
Nick tensed. This was it.
“Classes change how people think. Apparently it’s very weak until level three, it just empowers certain thoughts or ideas that we were already having.”
Nick thought about his own experiences. He’d always been curious and loved adventure, what young man didn’t? Looking back he did realise that he’d been a bit more curious than usual, he’d chalked it up to the literal fantastical new world he’d found himself in, but maybe there was more to it.
“At level three things change though.” Lily continued. “The adjective you choose changes your personality. You change the way you act to fit more inline with the direction you’ve chosen is the way Gareth put it.”
Well that didn’t sound too bad right?
“Well I just choose something like Badass Explorer, and boom, I don’t change at all. Easy fix right?”
Lily smiled for a moment but it didn’t last. Nick’s own smile dropped at that. Never that easy huh?
“The adjectives you get are related to your class and apparently your actions up until that point. Apparently Explorer’s usually get things like Profitable, Lucky and Daring as their options. The adjective itself isn’t the problem though. From what Gareth said, Explorer’s tend to then get caught up in the search for treasure, that Treasure Sense skill of yours becomes a compulsion.”
That was problematic sounding.
“Well. I can see where the problems lie.” Nick said.
“Yeah. You’ll just start wandering off to hunt treasure apparently.” Lily sighed. “Not too bad at the start, but Explorer’s tend to become people focused completely on that. Exploring.”
Nick didn’t think it was too bad a fate honestly. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but people who just wanted to go out and find new things didn’t seem too bad. Then he remembered where he was. He wasn’t on the beach, digging around for dropped coins, was he? He was in a nonsensical landscape filled with nightmare creatures where the better stuff was deeper down into the dark.
Nick’s thoughts were beginning to enter a negative spiral. How badly had he been screwed over? Was his fate sealed? Was there anything he could even do?
Then Lily grinned. A mischievous looking thing it was.
“Wanna know how Tony got his nickname?”
Nick was instantly hooked.