The next morning Nick got up early and made his way back to the restaurant, sushi for breakfast sounded like a really good idea to his sleepy brain. As he stumbled his way into the room he found Jamie sitting in one of the booths and took a seat across from him.

“Good night?” Nick asked with a smirk.

“Yeah, not too bad,” Jamie didn’t sound convinced, “it’s just hit me how real it all is ya know?”

“Yeah look man, I’ve been there. It doesn’t make much sense, all of this,” Nick gestured around them. “I mean, monsters, strange buildings, it’s all a lot to take it. But we’re here, and we’re living it. At least I think we’re still alive, I feel alive. When I look at the people around me, they feel alive, well most of them. While I’m still breathing I’m not going to just lie down and take it, I’m going to live it to its fullest. Whatever this happens to be.”

Nick wasn’t quite sure where that had come from and it felt more like he was trying to convince himself than Jamie. It seemed to do something for Jamie though and he grinned at Nick. “You’re right, nothing good comes from sitting around and having a mope. Wanna help me go get a class?”

“Sure,” Nick said, “let me get some breakfast first though.”

After Nick had chowed sufficiently down, the duo walked off into the hotel together. Nick’s map had the location of the button room so it wasn’t too hard to make their way towards it. Nick was a little cautious as he moved through the hallways, the drips of water and echoing footsteps kept him constantly on edge, he hated it. Jamie didn’t seem fussed at all, Nick chalked it up to the fact he hadn’t experienced being almost killed by bandits.

“Clare said that there isn’t anyone else on the floor right now dude, her companions, the three brothers, keep a pretty tight track of that sort of stuff,” Jamie said, giving Nick a quizzical look.

“Uh-huh,” Nick said, “and you didn’t think to tell me this before we set off?”

Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know man, I thought you’d know. She described this floor like a flyover state. Nobody really comes here, it’s just her and the brothers most of the time.”

“Damn that sounds lonely. Why do they stay here then?” Nick asked.

“She didn’t say. She avoided the topic pretty hard when I asked, so I dropped it.”

Nick suddenly felt bad for the group, he absolutely hated this place and couldn’t imagine staying here for a long period of time. He was very curious about why they’d stay here of all places, all alone. Were they hiding from someone? Avoiding something? There were a lot of possibilities, but like usual pure speculation wouldn’t get him very far. It wasn’t his business at the end of the day, it wasn’t him confining himself to this hellscape of a floor.

After Nick relaxed a bit, the pace sped up a fair bit and the duo made it to the button room pretty quickly. The room was much the same as the others Nick had encountered during his time in the Complex, and thankfully it wasn’t tiled. Before Jamie hit the button Nick gave it a tap to check out his own status.

Name

Nicholas Jones

Stickers

+1s (4/4)

Please find better stickers!

Endurance x1

Intelligence x1

Strength x1

Agility x1

Please find better stickers!

Classes

Violent Explorer (Level 3)

Gritty Brawler (Level 4)

Skills

Treasure Sense - Active (46%)

Lucky - Passive (6%)

Hasten - Active (44%)

Map - Active (2: 50%)

Fight for your Treasure - Active (6%)

Gritty Constitution - Passive (77%)

Deep Blows - Passive (26%)

Jeer - Active (7%)

Punishing Combos - Passive (21%)

Endurance Sap (4%)

Intolerable Weakness Evolved (5: 60%)

Not bad, not bad at all. His skills were developing pretty well, he was not far off from levelling up Gritty Constitution, which was pretty awesome. Nick finally got to see what had happened to Intolerable Weakness. It had evolved and was even level five, which was insane. What made it different from skills like Hasten, which had just changed names? Why did it instead have ‘Evolved’ tagged onto the end? Nick tried to mentally click on the skill to see what it was about.

Skill 6 - Intolerable Weakness - Active

Purge yourself of an ailment and return to fighting condition.

Evolution: Passive resistance against any external factors trying to corrupt you.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Well, that explained a lot. Nick now had a pretty amazing passive in his back pocket. So, what Paimon or Paige had done to him had somehow triggered an evolution in the skill, which protected him from them. Surely that meant the other skills could be evolved under the right circumstances, right? That was something Nick really wanted to talk to someone about, though he wasn’t sure how rare of a situation it was, he didn’t want to out himself as too much of an outlier. First his aura, now this, Nick was getting a little freakish. Though he didn’t see much wrong with that. Overall, he was extremely happy with how his status page was coming along.

Nick then turned around to Jamie. “Did Clare talk to you about classes at all?”

“Yeah, a bit. I can get two, they level up and give me cool skills and stuff. Different classes do different things and the names are the best indicator of what they do. Is that about it?”

“Yeah, you’ve got it. Anything you’ve got in mind yet?” Nick asked.

“Not at all, I’m just going to do a bit of browsing and pick whatever sings out to me,” Jamie said with a grin.

“A most excellent way to do it. I can’t tell you anything about most of the classes, but if you have any questions I can try and help,” Nick replied.

Jamie then smacked the button and patiently waited. Nick could tell when the screen popped up in front of him because the man’s head jerked back. Jamie then started looking through his options and Nick sat down against the wall, happy to wait for the guy to find what felt right for him. It didn’t take long for Jamie to ask a question though.

“Hey dude, do you know much about Knight?”

“That’s the one that has a description about armour or something right?” Nick queried.

“Yeah,” Jamie replied. “‘A fighter with integrity whose armour holds strong against blows.’ that’s what it says. Do you know much else about it?”

Nick thought about it for a moment and remembered that Logan, the bulky guy he’d been on the 72nd Roamers with, had been running that class, alongside Tank. “Yeah, I ran with a guy that had it for a bit. His armour was pretty nutty, shit barely got even got scratched up. He also absolutely demolished whatever was in front of him. Though he also had the Tank class, I’m not sure what the overlap was.”

“Done,” Jamie said.

“That was a quick choice. Mind sharing the skills and stuff? I’ve never seen them before,” Nick said.

“Knight just sounds awesome dude. I’m a Knight in the depths of Hell, there’s just something biblically awesome sounding about that. And sure, how do I do that?”

“Haha,” Nick laughed, “I can’t knock you for that one. Just think about sharing it.”

Knight -

Skill 1 - Empowered Weapon - Active

Your weapon deals greater damage and is more durable for a short period. Buff based on strength.

Skill 2 - Armoured - Passive

Any armour you wear is made stronger based on endurance.

Skill 3 - Knight’s Code - Passive

When defending others, strength and endurance is buffed.

Nick looked it over for a moment and thought it was pretty sick looking. Empowered Weapon seemed like it could do some really nasty work, especially if someone was stacking strength stickers. Jamie looked like he was already plenty strong on top of that. The next two passive skills were a bit too shakey for Nick’s liking. Armoured sounded good, but it was reliant on actually having armour on, if you got caught with your pants down then it wasn’t going to help you at all. Knight’s Code was weird, cool, but still weird. A conditional buff that meant that he wouldn’t be as effective alone, which made sense when Nick remembered that flying solo wasn’t the common practise down here.

“So, how do you feel about it, dude?” Nick asked.

Jamie was already pulling out the level two gem. “Pretty sick dude, I’m a Knight now. That’s like every kid’s dream.”

The gem then disappeared into the man’s hand and his eyes widened. “Woah. Pretty neat.”

Nick didn’t even have to ask, Jamie shared the new skill he’d gotten with Nick.

Skill 4 - Heroic Roar

Let out a loud roar that briefly weakens all nearby enemies and sharply boosts your own and your allies' strength

“Holy shit, that’s sick,” Nick exclaimed. It was an awesome-sounding skill. A large-scale debuff and buff. While only for a brief period, when stacked with his Empowered strike it could be an insane skill in practice. It also just sounded awesome, Heroic Roar? Why couldn’t his skills sound that good? Intolerable Weakness sounded pretty good but when compared to Heroic Roar? It wasn’t even close.

“My dude, wanna go beat some shit up?” Jamie asked with a wide grin.

“You know I do,” Nick replied with his own grin.

Nick wanted to see what the man could do against a Brute with all his cool skills but realised it wasn’t actually the best place to be playing around. Jamie was still only level two and the monsters here were the equivalent to level five to six. Jamie also didn’t have any gear other than his bat. Nick decided to take Jamie to a nearby Horde room, which would give him the best chance at fighting something weaker. When they reached the room Nick made a decision, he hesitated a bit but pulled out the metal armour and the sword the large bandit had been using. Thankfully Nick had cleaned the gear up, the chest plate had a few dents from his strikes, and the helmet had been so deformed that Nick didn’t bother bringing it out of his bag.

“Where the hell did you pull of this stuff from? How the hell did it fit in that bag? Why do you even have it?”

“Magic bag. This is the gear from a guy that tried to kill me. I’ve just been lugging it around, might as well put it to good use,” Nick said with a weak smile.

“Hell yeah then, let’s get the most out of it.”

Jamie put the armour on and gave Nick his bat to put away. The armour fit, but it was a little small on him. Jamie really was a pretty giant dude. He wasn’t Frank, the behemoth of a man that he was, but he was still big. Nick hadn’t really paid much attention so far but now as he put the armour Nick was impressed. Jamie was a few inches taller than Nick, but he had far more mass to him. Nick had a pretty athletic body, all the action he’d been facing over the last few weeks had been toning him up on top of that. Standing next to Jamie he felt tiny though. The lad was built like a brick shithouse. He did look the part though.

As Jamie picked up the large sword and wielded it in both hands, he looked like the sort of rugged knight you’d find in a period piece. It was pretty impressive really, if Nick didn’t have a bunch of levels and skills on the guy he’d definitely never even entertain the idea of getting in a fight with him. He just had that intimidating aura about him, especially dressed in full plate metal. He didn’t look too comfortable holding the sword though.

“You’ve got no idea how to use that thing do you?” Nick said with a laugh.

“Nope. Do you?” Jamie asked.

“Not at all, I use my hands. Brawler things.” Nick laughed.

Jamie tried to swing the sword around a bit but they were still standing in the hallway so he was pretty limited. “Well, I guess it's just a sharp bat?”

“You know, I’m sure if any swordsmen heard you say that you’d have a line of honour duels on your hands.”

Nick then went into the challenge room and hoped it would be more of the terrible crabs. As Jamie followed him in, Nick saw that it wasn’t crabs they’d be dealing with. The door closed and five large black beetles appeared across the room from them. They had smooth black shells, without a hint of red at all, which made Nick relax. At least he wouldn’t be burning his hands this time around. The beetles didn’t move very fast and Nick was relieved, this was probably the type of Horde that just relied on having tough armour. Which made them easy pickings for Nick.

He looked over at Jamie and the man looked pretty calm, confident even.

“Ready dude?” Nick asked.

“Always,” Jamie nodded.

Nick used Hasten and dashed forward, a little too eager to show off how easy these opponents were going to be for him. He dropped a punch straight through one of the beetles and then swung it into another beetle that was scuttling towards him, pushing it back. He used the space to dispatch another of the beetles before finishing off the one he’d pushed away. Three beetles in less than five seconds, not bad. Nick then backed off and let Jamie handle the last two of the beetles.

Time to see what the big guy was made of.