The boy silently gaped. This was incredible, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Infinite mana, that was insane, no one ever had infinite mana. The usual person would have one hundred base mana with a regeneration of one mana a second when they first received a class. To have infinite mana was unheard of. Even the most powerful mages could never hope to achieve anything close. Even more than this, the boy had received a class that no one had ever seen before. Blade God? What even was that? The boy was somewhat disappointed that he had not received the warrior classification, but perhaps, blade god was some other type of combat classification. As the boy focussed in on his class, a small tooltip appeared below it. The tooltip read: “Capable of becoming a master of every weapon, a BladeGod uses cold steel, agility and strength to cleave through opposition.”

The boy grinned, a combat classification it definitely was. He was sure to find work now, even if he had to join an army. Moving onwards and reading down the list, the boy took in his stats. The average person would start with about ten of every statistic at base level before upgrading them. He was happy with what he saw. He was about average when it came to every statistic, better in some cases. He could have been handicapped much more from the start.

The boy’s happiness plummeted however, when he saw his luck value. A zero? Seriously! He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t even have a single piece of luck. This perhaps explained the boy’s orphaned status, inability to find work and loss of his home. It might also explain how the boy was caught in his act of theft. A zero in any statistic just didn’t occur. But here the boy was, with no luck and a powerful knight ready to imprison him. It seemed, the whole universe was against him.

The boy cursed his fortunes and cursed the universe, how could he ever hope to level his character and escape capture or even survive, when it seemed the whole universe was stacked against him.

Not giving into despair, the boy rallied himself. He had survived on the streets sixteen years, he had lived with zero luck for his whole life. He could survive. He would survive.

Moving down the list, the boy stared at the prompts inviting him to respectively choose his skills and to choose a name. Deciding he couldn’t think of a name at this moment and that there were definitely better times to be opening mail, the boy ignored that prompt and instead focussed his will on the prompt inviting him to choose skills. Upon doing this, a list of different skills caught the boy’s eyes:

Bladelock: Prevents a single strike from doing any damage with a powerful block. This skill has a three minute cooldown and costs 30 mana.

Blademaster: (passive) instantly gain +10 points in usage of all bladed weapons

Ethereal armoury: Gain the ability to summon twin swords from the ether. These swords are of average quality and are magic resistant.

Disarm: all bladed weapons within a ten foot radius explode violently, costs 150 mana per use and has a two day cooldown.

Bladesinger: (passive) +10 dexterity +10 agility +2 swordskill

StrongCut: when activated, bladed weapons will deal double damage. This skill has a two minute cooldown and costs 5 mana per second.

(You have two skill points available and may choose two of these skills.)

After carefully reading the selection, the boy was practically buzzing with elation. These skills were no basic abilities that most people received after their class. These were incredibly powerful skills, ones that the boy would desperately need to escape his current predicament.

Examining the list slowly once more, the boy quickly ruled out two skills. Bladelock, although useful, would be no help if the boy had no swords and couldn’t fight with them in any case. Often offence was much more important than defence in the lower levels. In the same way StrongCut: was a waste of time when the boy was too slow to use a sword and didn’t have one anyway. Blademaster would be interesting and very useful as a passive, perhaps allowing the boy to defend himself much better. However, the boy decided that Bladesinger, giving the boy incredibly increased agility and dexterity would be much more powerful than blademaster. The boy also knew that without swords he was almost certainly defenceless. As interesting as disarm sounded in his situation, allowing the boy to easily defeat larger numbers of people, the boy knew that he needed weapons. Therefore, he exerted his will on Bladesinger and Ethereal armoury, deciding they would be the most important skills.

A message appeared in the boy’s vision:

“You have learnt ethereal armoury and bladesinger. No free skill points are left to assign.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The boy hoped he would have the opportunity to learn disarm in the future. It could be an incredibly useful skill. One he was sorry he couldn’t learn presently. After doing this, the boy had one more cursory look at his status screen, taking in his increased agility and dexterity statistics, before closing it. The boy did not know how he closed the screen, he only had an awareness that he could open and close it at will.

Opening his eyes, the boy once again took in his surroundings. His vision still had a purple tinge, but it was not nearly enough to inhibit his eyesight. Eight priests flanked the altar that had once only housed one priest. Staring at the priests, the boy watched each of them recoil in shock. It was almost comical. Confused, the boy looked down at himself to see that his appearance was unchanged. He wondered what had caused the shock.

That was until, the boy gazed at his right arm. The boy wore a sleeveless tunic which although was ragged and dishevelled after weeks of the streets and the prison, the boy had still valued as one of his best and only pieces of clothing. His right arm, bare to the world, now had a massive snaking mark around it. It looked like a tattoo in that it was black and decorative. It looked like a wreath of snakelike flames had encircled the boy’s arm. Peering closer, the boy realised that the tattoo was an elaborate mosaic depicting an explosive wreath of fire. However, the tattoo itself was made up on hundreds of thousands of tiny swords, each elaborately sketched and positioned to create the illusion of fire.

It was a masterful piece of artwork, beautiful in its simplistic complexity. But the boy stared down at it in confusion. It wasn’t the small mark that depicted a class that every other person possessed. He was forever marked as different. The realisation that he could never be normal suddenly struck him. His zero luck had struck again.

The guard beside the boy remained stoic, his eyes betrayed no emotion, his face no hint of surprise or astonishment. Signalling the boy to get up, the guard gave the priests a hard look, before instructing the boy to follow him once again.

The guard walked through the street briskly, half dragging the boy. Even with his increased agility the boy found it hard to match the guard’s long strides. A strange amethyst haze had overtaken the boy’s vision, covering the streets of the city in a light purple shade. The boy, after glancing at the few people he and the guard passed by, noticed that the purple seemed to be stronger and darker around humans. He wondered if all living beings would be as accentuated by the purple as humans, it would make hunting much easier. The boy also noticed, his guard had a much darker shade of purple secreted from his skin compared to the rest of the people he passed. Musing to himself, the boy decided that it might be to do with both the knight’s strength, class and level. The purple was faintly starting to annoy the boy at this point, his normal vision was easier to comprehend, at the thought, the purple tinge vanished and vision snapped back to normal.

Slowing and eventually stopping to a halt, the guard in front of the boy signalled that they had reached their destination. Paling visibly, the boy gulped. They were at the town square. A hundred or so people had gathered there. Each staring upwards at a wooden stage. The stage was flanked by ten guardsmen, discouraging any hint of rebellion. The guardsmen all looked young, most bearing the warrior or spearman class. The stage had one man on it and was bare except for one object. An executioner’s block. It was made of jet black stone, the sides rough and jagged; the top as smooth as polished marble. It was covered in reddish brown stains.

The crowd was baying for blood. As they saw the boy arrive in shackles, they shouted ever louder. Demanding his death. A few rotten pieces of food were thrown towards the boy. However, an angry glare from his guard convinced the crowd to quieten. No one wanted to risk accidentally hitting the knight it seemed.

The boy felt dejection envelop him in waves. It was an almost entirely hopeless situation, one that he knew he had little chance of escaping from. Even with increased agility and weapons he could never hope to defeat a knight that had obviously spent a massive amount of time levelling.

Wondering bitterly who was to be his executioner, the boy looked towards the stage. A boy about his age stood to the right of the executioner’s block. He was pale and fair haired. His eyes were a deep sapphire shade, a few purple flecks within just visible. In his right hand, the boy’s apparent executioner held an ornate sword. Its blade was sharp shining steel, bending and refracting sunlight to create a deadly glow. The handle of the blade was a metal faintly resembling gold with red gems embedded into it to create a spiralling pattern of wealth and strength. Staring at his executioner, the boy noticed the mark on his right wrist, an omega symbol, the mark of a mage. The boy’s eyes rose in surprise, mages were powerful, deadly in many respects. It was an incredibly rare class, not one the boy wanted to trifle with, even now he had received a new class, a completely unique one. Magic classes were different to other classes in one crucial aspect. Each possessed a passive skill which drastically decreased the mana cost for manipulating life essence to create feats of magic. Every class had the ability to use magic to create shields and weapons as well as to enchant objects, but the cost of mana was so high that even a person with a thousand mana would be unlikely to create little more than a strong shield without the special passive. Their mana would simply be drained much too quickly. Maybe the boy could learn to channel magic he thought, he could probably become more powerful than most mages, especially with his apparently infinite mana. There were definitely more pressing concerns though, the boy thought as he was thrust back into reality by a pressure on his shoulder.

The boy was pushed up to the stage by his guard, stumbling every few steps. The guard then gestured for the boy to kneel at the executioners block. When the boy refused to comply, the guard kicked the boy, forcing him to fall to both knees. This done, the guard held the boy in position, pushing the boy’s head down onto the block.