CVETKA KRALJ
The group had a party: People got horribly drunk. Ron hurled into the desert sand. Rush and a few others played poker. Birthday Girl Rose was in an animated discussion with Cvetka about the latest entertainment series. Rose had very different ideas about who should end up with whom than her. Both knew that this was not actually important, but stuck on Tsanh and waiting for the integration, they had to distract themselves. They had started training together after Sarah had returned to the compound. The idea that suddenly a group of scorpions empowered by a competing system could attack made them feel uneasy. As such, the group preferred to stick together, no matter how badly they could stand each other.
A new system-day approached and as it did, the group shouted “Happy Birthday!” to Rose. Vic produced a cake with one burning candle and put it in front of Rose. Just as she was blowing out the candle, a message appeared in front of Cvetka:
Welcome to the system of Unlimited Potential!
You have been given the ability to rise and fall based on your own merits. To gain new strengths, abilities and skills as you defeat monsters and rise in levels. Monsters will arise and threaten the stability of your life, but with your willpower, strength, agility and cunning, you can rise over the others.
Initialisation patch found. Adjusting your initial stats.
Please choose your class:
* Life Mage
* Lightworker
* Wielder of Influence
* Yanigal
She had expected the first 3 class choices. She had been told to choose “Wielder of Influence”. No one had mentioned that there would be a fourth option called Yanigal. She checked the internet for the class. There were no hits. She then just looked for the word itself and found some hits in the language of the Keani. She checked an automatic translation: The word itself meant “Thus I Resist” and it was the name for keani who could withstand being on land for a short time. It was also the nickname or title or honorific (she was not sure and would not ask Teki about this. It seemed to be of a deep cultural significance) of a Forerunner after initialisation.
Cvetka knew what was expected of her, but the fact that a new option arose and that it was in red seemed intriguing. She selected the option because she was aware that she would for all of her life worry what this option would have been.
“Status!” she mentally called out.
Name: Cvetka Kralj
Species: Human
Level: 1
Class: Yanigal
Coordination: 2
Impact: 2
Resilience: 4
Skilled Practice: 5
Synergy: 7
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Please be aware that the average of an unlevelled Human is 3
HP: 10/10
MP: 21/21
Skills: Yanigalean Resistance
“Did any of you also get these weird red classes?” someone asked.
Rush looked up from his game: “Yeah, anyone stupid enough to choose one? I am not, I chose the one, I have been training for my entire life.”
There was an awkward silence. Then Rose said: “Given that the better classes are normally the lowest ones in the list, I chose the red one. Muruguna or however it is called.”
Cvetka responded: “I chose Yanigal for a similar reason, but also because I would love to document a new class. It seemed interesting to be getting a class named after a Keani title”
Roy glanced towards Rush: “I did as well. I couldn’t find anything in regard to the class, so I decided to take it.” He put his cards onto the table.
Cvetka looked around: “Did anyone find out a lot about the origins of the class names?”
The others only had vague notions but noticed that none of the names were human names – except for a Sygian one. The network had very sparse information about the origins of the names. Those that existed had to be machine translated and were generally hard to read.
Rush then looked around: “So, is anyone in the mood to kill some spawns?”
TEKI
Teki saw that the system went up and he checked at the initialisees, the initialisation fragments went into action well. Each of the youths gained their improved stats. He looked at the assigned classes and felt a shiver running down his spine. Yanigal. The word was censored on the network unless you misspelt it. The name and title of a famous anti-integration activist who the system so far decided to remove from history. Why did it name a class after it now? And was it even the system’s action? He thought of the weird reactions of the system around this planet. This planet had already been named Tsanh before any integration happened. The plane had always been named the Kha Zha plane even before anyone had ever set foot there. Could this system have been compromised a long time ago? Teki made a scared noise. He rolled up in a ball for a few minutes.
Then he unrolled and realised, it didn’t matter. He would be the fall guy no matter the result. He was led into a huge mess. This mess could only blow up and all he could do was to duck and hope that the metaphorical faecal matter in the stream would drift by.
SKIPS-ONE-STEP
Skips and Shivers had been spending the evening in the settlement. Skips had spent most of the day showing Shivers different colours and textures. Afterwards, they worked on the farm. It was the first time that Skips saw the snails which were large enough to reach up to her waist, their eyestalks being as wide as two fingers. To Shiver’s surprise (and admittedly to Skips’ as well), she really liked the slow, friendly creatures.
As the settlement was preparing to retire for the night after a shared meal and a few shared songs, she saw a message in front of her eyes. A system message:
Welcome to the system of Unlimited Potential!
You have been given the ability to rise and fall based on your own merits. To gain new strengths, abilities and skills as you defeat monsters and rise in levels. Monsters will arise and threaten the stability of your life, but with your willpower, strength, agility and cunning, you can rise over the others.
Please select your class:
* Messenger
* Endurance Hunter
* Travelling Skilled Practitioner
* Solidarity’s Longstrider
Skips felt a sense of confusion. Solidarity was the name of the system here on Tsanh. Why would the system offer a class that references the other system? She decided to select it. She didn’t expect that she could be initialised, but now that this happened, she chose the option that named the system that she preferred.
She wanted to see her status and called it up. For a moment, there was an overlap, then the screens separated. She was in both systems. She had a weird feeling about this. The systems seemed to be, in some way, aware of each other. Or at least Solidarity seemed to be aware of the Unlimited Potential and had probably subverted it.
She turned to Shivers: “Our system has started. We need to make sure no monsters can invade the settlement.”
Shivers nodded: “Absolutely. I have made a sharp stick for this purpose. Let’s go!”