> “I’m over level 30 in the class. I’ve been tailing you for an hour, and you didn’t have even a smidgeon of a clue I was even there. I have a dozen Talents raring and ready to conk you over the head with and take your stuff. Just give me your coin purse, and make this easier for the both of us, wouldja?”

* Saul Guilehands, of Lynndon

“I have to level, Helena.”

“I get that you’re a few levels lower than everyone else, Greg, but you don’t have to do something so--”

“Three levels. I’m three levels lower than you, and eight levels lower than Zara. I think Bim too might edge me out by a level or two. Please. For me?”

“Ugh, fine. But I’m going to feel like an idiot if I stick an arrow through you.”

The arrow was knocked, and flew-- Greg sidestepped it cleanly, easily. “Try harder. Use a Talent, if you can.” Greg pressed.

Exasperated, Helena quickly drew, knocked, and fired, chanting “.” He dodged it, but only just-- the point nicked a hair’s breadth of skin from his side and left a slash in his shirt. No blood, though. He spun around, then leapt at Helena. “!” She yelped, drawing and firing at him instinctively. An arrow plowed into his chest, cracking a rib and splintering bone, sending blood spraying everywhere.

Greg collapsed to the ground, and after a moment of hesitation, Helena scrambled to help him. He held up a hand, waving her off, and got to his feet. Pulling the arrow free, he said, grinning: “It had to be real.”

Level 22 earned!

Talent — earned!

“You’re an idiot. You’re going to get yourself killed if you do that again.” Taken aback by his ploy, Helena’s concern hardened to ice cold ire at his foolishness.

“But it worked, didn’t it?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Great. You gained a level, in exchange for practically flipping a coin to see if you die. What stellar planning.”

“Oh, so I should just sell my soul to the Demiurge’s misbegotten brats, then, and get ahead that way?”

Helena’s icy glare got even colder. “If you get to level 24 with the methods you’re using currently, you’re going to wind up dead. I may have made a horrible decision-- I worry more and more about it every day-- but at least I’m alive and powerful. You’re no use to anyone dead.”

Greg’s wounds closed as he closed his eyes, focused, and let assert itself. “True enough. It’s just that even Zara, our powerhouse, our champion, who’s almost level 30, is still at least ten levels lower then Stillbottums. We need to move quickly, level quickly, before things get much worse.”

Helena sniffed, then sneezed. “D-do you smell that?” She asked, after recovering.

Greg sniffed the air curiously. “I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary. Why?”

Her nose wrinkled. “It smells awful, like vomit and pus and feces and coal fumes all rolled into one. And it’s getting stronger. I think it’s coming from deeper into the city.”

🟌

The sat on the cobblestones, toying with its golden crown, dozens of people, black blood flowing from their eyes and noses, bodies bulging and shifting, warped like cancerous masses, surrounding it in a loose crowd.

It had been mere hours since it had gained its new Class, and yet more than two hundred and fifty souls had been overtaken by its Corruption, their wills weak and malleable, their lust for power, wealth, purpose, clarity, etc. overtaking their better morals. The Demon had leveled thrice, and gained a new Talent, which it quite liked:

“Are you hungry, my children?” The Demon asked, its voice an oily, slime-coated gasping rattle that slithered through the air and into the minds of its thralls. “We will feed on this city, and make its people part of us. And soon enough, our Corruption will spread all across this world, and we will be a true King of all that is.”

A man in lush blue fur robes stood several blocks away, cool as could be among the screaming and weeping and running of the soon-to-be-Corrupted citizenry, and smiled a cruel, cold smile.

🟌

Zara and Bim had been in town, at the market, gathering information and supplies. They heard the screams first, and then had to push through the many panicked, sprinting people crowding the street in order to get a glimpse of the swarm of stomach-turning Corrupted proto-Demons that lurched and surged towards them. Just as they got to the end of the crowd and fully took in the heinous mob that was fast approaching, Bim collapsed into unconsciousness against Zara.

That was when the real trouble started.