I drove slowly as I read my options of skills. Most of them seemed fairly interesting but I only had 3 skill points. Before picking my class skills I pulled into an alley on the edge of the city and hopped off my bike.

Class Skill: Soulbound Weapon

Spellblades rely both on martial abilities and magic, to some that means always having a weapon at the ready. Soulbinding your weapon to you allows you to call from and return it to a dimensional sheath and make sure it will always return to you.

+ 50% damage with soulbound weapon

Gives weapon auto repair ability

Gives weapon recall ability

Class Skill: Mana Drain

Slinging spells as quickly as spellblades tend to require a lot of mana. One way to fix that is to take the mana of your opponents, you need it more than they do.

Drain 50 MP over 10 seconds per strike. Stackable up to 5 times

Class Skill: Unwavering

With the mental focus needed to cast as many spells as the spellblade can, it's important to build a strong mental defence.

+ 20 mental defence

+ 5 mental focus

Class Skill: Mana Shield

With a hand free always needing to be free to cast spells, spellblades needed some form of defence. By Channelling mana outward from their hands they can create barriers to block both physical and magical damage.

Blocks 1.1 points of damage for 1 point of mana

Adds Constitution bonus to MP

Class Skill: Mana Step

With light steps and a bit of mana, spellblades learned to close distances quickly able to keep the pressure on their opponents.

10 % mana efficiency

Class Skill: Mana Blade

Instead of a physical blade, some spellblades chose to wield a blade of pure mana that can bypass some physical defences.

There were several more skills I couldn’t read with various prerequisites so I picked the ones I liked the most, Mana Step, Soulbound Weapon and Mana Shield. The rest seemed decent enough but these all seemed like they would help me now, seeing as how I keep barely making it out alive of all these battles. Then I took a look at my class once more.

Class: Spellblade

Abilities: Soulbound Weaponlevel: 1 (MAX)

Mana Step level: 1

Mana Shield level: 1

+ 2 INT per level

+ 3 DEX per level

+ 1 END per level

+ 3 skill points every 2 levels

I focused on the Soulbound Weapon skill and it pulled up a window asking me to select a weapon with only one option, my evolving blade. As I selected it, it began to faintly glow a deep blue for a moment and I began to feel a connection to it forming. A second ago it felt like a piece of refined metal in my hand, but now it felt like I was holding a missing piece of myself that I was finally reunited with. As I explored this feeling I started to notice something else. It felt like another presence as if the blade possessed a will, a mind of its own. I could feel as if it wanted to communicate with me, but it was being limited somehow. Then it noticed me trying to sense it, and I was overcome with the feeling of gratitude and a prompt appeared in my vision.

This weapon seems to be a lot more than just an ordinary blade. What could its secrets be?

New quest: Evolving Soulbound Weapon. Find out what lies beyond the metal.

Is my weapon sentient, a living weapon? With only more questions I couldn’t answer I set it aside, for now, and looked at my stat distribution. Being a hybrid magic and physical class, I would need a lot of stats, with a bonus of 6 points on top of my 5 free points I could probably make it work. Since my class would give me intelligence, I didn't think I needed to put too many points in it. Thanks to Mana Shield, my constitution would be added to my mana as well as my health in whatever weird way the system calculates it.

However comma intelligence is spell strength as well, but the class does provide some of it too. It also seems to want dexterity, focusing more on skill and magic over brute strength, probably making strength my dumb stat. I should probably round out my stats where I can in the early levels and then focus on my main stats of INT and DEX when levelling up becomes more difficult.

I knew I couldn’t ignore stats too much, this wasn’t a game and I needed to keep myself alive first and foremost. As I stared at my stats, I put 5 points into strength and 10 points into constitution and the remaining 10 points in dexterity.

With that taken care of, I decided to try out my skills. They were fairly easy to grasp, Mana Step was a short-range teleport that would help my mobility in fights once I got the hang of it. However, the mana cost of it was quite high at only level 1 so I would be levelling that one up fairly soon. Mana Shield was a decently sized disk that projected from and followed my hand. That seemed to be the only place I could make it come from, but my hand would already be free since I was going to be casting spells with it. The features of the Soulbound weapon were very interesting. I could throw my weapon and it would fly back to my hand when I called it, as well “sheathing” it and bringing it back felt much faster than using my inventory. I was almost instant whereas I physically had to place and remove my blade from my inventory.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I went to grab my bike and suddenly my vision blurred. I leaned against it and realized that I hadn’t slept since got up for my shift yesterday and had been fighting a lot. I walked out of the alley to see several abandoned houses. I looked at my phone and realised it was almost 2 pm.

I can probably hide out in one for a night, I’ve been awake almost 24 hours, and I’ve been fighting for my life. Adrenaline coming and going from my system has probably drained me completely.

I pushed my bike into some tall bushes, walked up to the closest house and tried to open it. It was locked but I slammed the hilt of my sword into the lock and removed it, letting myself in. I snooped around the house and found some blankets to cover the windows of one of the bedrooms to block the sunlight. I pulled out some canned soup and cooked it on the stove, ate and quickly fell fast asleep in some stranger's bed.

My first thought when I woke up was to check to make sure everything that had happened wasn’t all just a bad dream. Pulling up my character sheet told me it was all too real and I stared at my level blankly for a long moment. I looked at my phone which I had managed to remember to put on a charger. I had somehow managed to sleep 12 hours which meant it was nighttime again. I sighed slightly and dropped back into the bed.

I guess I was never much of a morning person. I wonder how the rest of the world is doing with all this.

I hopped out of the bed, remembering I came here to help anyone I could. But by now, most people would have been either evacuated or killed. Those that were left would probably be those trying to level up and survive like me. I was basically on the edge of the city still so I probably wouldn’t really see anyone till I went further in.

I left the house and pulled my bike out of the bushes and started the engine. As I did I heard the sound of chewing nearby. Loud vicious chewing, like a beast tearing into its victim. I walked my bike forward a bit looking between houses, and I saw a large beast with a tail like a scorpion.

Is that…?

Manticore Youngling

Body of a lion, face of a man, wings of a dragon and tail of a scorpion, the manticore is a vicious hunter with a taste for blood.

HP: 807

MP: 120

I stared at it for a moment as it tore into what looked like a human corpse.

Can I take it? I have a few new skills I would like to test in battle.

I looked at my healing pool from ‘Their Death Fuels Us’ and my eyes widened.

Their Death Fuels Us

HP: 546

I remembered that I hadn’t used the ability since the rats at the warehouse. I also still had a couple of healing potions left. I pulled out the mana ring I had dismissed earlier and put it on. Now that I had a reason to use mana it might be useful when it charged up. I made a plan in my head about how I wanted to fight this thing and readied myself.

I cast flame bolt at it, and they all struck its backside. The manticore yelped and immediately spun around. It locked eyes with me and started charging and I began casting Create Wall. I felt some kind of resistance and moved my off-hand in the spell pattern, my god eye buzzed gentle and a window popped up. I quickly minimized it as the spell completed. The wall popped up and the manticore slammed into it, I teleported behind it and drove my blade into its side. I quickly mana stepped back and fired another flame bolt at it. The beast pushed off the wall and faced me again and lunged at me with its claw. I blocked it with my mana shield and pushed it back and it swung its tail down at me piercing my shoulder.

You’ve been poisoned. You lose 8 HP/s for 30 seconds.

The wound was superficial but the poison was no joke. I swung my blade at its front left leg as it pulled its tail back and tried to regain its balance. I pressed the attack and slashed its belly several times while it was still reared back, then I kicked it back trying to force it onto its back. It followed through with the force and flipped back landing back on its legs. Wasting no time it launched itself at me, fangs bared. I held up my blade, driving it into the tip into the roof of its mouth, locking it open. I started rapidly casting flame bolt as I pushed it back and slammed it into the wall. I pulled my sword out of its mouth and started stabbing the manticore's belly several times before jumping back as its tail came right for my head.

The beast fell back on its legs again and its eyes glowed green and a rune appeared in front of it. My right eye buzzed to life analyzing the pattern, and a window was automatically minimized. The manticore looked at me with rage in its eyes and ran at me, faster than before. I was still able to block with my mana shield again and I glanced at my MP to see it was almost down to 50%. I dropped my shield to swing my blade at it again, but its claw was faster than I was and it got a clean hit across my chest. I teleported forward getting a few feet behind it and turned to face it. I was running through mana too quickly and needed to end this fight before I bottomed out. The beast looked around not realizing I was behind it. I blinked forward and slashed its tail and it flew clean off. It screamed in pain and I slashed at its back legs. It turned to swing at me with its claws and I jumped back and cast flame bolt twice. As the bolts all struck it, I jumped forward and drove my blade down into its forehead. The beast finally fell limp and I took a long breath and immediately looted it and downed a health potion.

Stat stolen! Endurance.

The next set of prompts I pulled up had the voice of a robotic entity.

Mana network is unrefined for one-handed casting. Spell, Create Wall resistance rate 22%. Requirements for class skill Quick Cast not met, please learn one more spell. Requirements for generic skill Mana Control met, skill learned. Updating mana vision.

Was this voice from whatever god the eye came from, or the eye itself? Either way that was kinda weird

Eye of the Analytical God skill updated! Mana reading can now gain spells from other casters. Spell learned, Haste.

I stared at the prompt for a long time. This item was extremely good, and the system had just given it to me for killing a rat. This started to seem too good to be true like someone or something was going to come looking for it. Providing me with skills and spells so easily. I know the system said the drop rate was higher for that but this thing was crazy. I shook my head and moved on to the next window.

Evolving Weapon Upgrade! +5% damage to beast-type enemies.

I looked at the loot from the manticore and had gained 500 more Coin and a vial of green liquid.

Manticore venom. Causes 8 damage per second for 30 seconds. 10 doses.

It wasn’t all that impressive but then again, the amazing drop rate had ended some time ago so I wasn’t going to find more amazing treasures like my eye and sword. I sighed and walked back over to my bike and started heading deeper into the city.