Chapter 2: 2 Years, 6 Months and 9 Days

“HAPPY Monolith Day EVERYBODY!” The announcer was way too chipper for Marcus’ taste. “It is now 18 years to the day, that the monoliths appeared all over the world and changed humanity over night!” Marcus put his training bike into a higher gear and tuned out the announcer from the television on the gym wall. He watched the speed meter slowly creeping higher and a faint smile appeared on his face.

Smack!

“HAPPY Monolith Day you big lump!” Marcus turned his head without slowing down and the wide grin of Frank greeted him. Then the man shook his hand as if it was hurting badly. “What is your ass made off?”

Once Marcus had become a regular in the gym, two years ago, he and Frank made friends in no time. While Frank was more than ten years older than him they hit it off on day one, “Somebody has to look after the kid, no?”. Marcus finished his routine and stepped off the bike. He took a towel and removed most of his sweat while watching himself in one of the big mirrors.

There was not much left from the scrawny kid that first stepped into this gym. He had grown by nearly a head’s size but more importantly he had bulked up immensely. Marcus had achieved in two and a half years what would take a normal human at least 10 years of dedicated work. He had more than doubled his weight and most of it was muscles. Beyond that he had also kept up his cardio and even if Frank teased him about it, he worked on his stretching and flexibility.

“If you would cut that wool on your head you wouldn’t sweat so much.” Frank was apparently not yet finished with his teasing. “So, I look like a total knucklehead, like you?” Marcus shot back. “You wound me sir!” Frank reacted with an overly dramatic performance and stroke his bald head.

Marcus went back to strength training and Frank assisted him, not that he needed it. Just two decades ago his performance would have been good enough for international events, but with the arrival of the classes, pressing a few hundred kilos was nothing noteworthy anymore. Not when a raged up Berserker can lift several tons or punch through concrete walls as if it was paper tissue. “Looking good!” A blond woman watched them as Marcus went through his routine. “Thanks.” Marcus answered without much energy, concentrating on the last repetitions.

“Do you have a class?” the woman’s eyes gleamed. “He sure does, he is a Fighter.” Frank answered for him. “Ohhh.” A shadow moved over her pretty face. “Well, that sounds nice”. She waved and vanished into the labyrinth of training machines in the main area. “Even a girl like her knows Fighters are trash.” Frank said half joking. This was not the first time people got interested in him only to change the topic as soon as they hear that he is a Fighter. And Marcus could understand why.

The Fighter was one of the earlier classes that were discovered, studied and at first everybody had really high hopes for it. When the Monoliths appeared 18 years ago, and the first people touched them to be elevated with a class it all sounded like one of those fantastic “reality has become a game” stories that were popular back in the day. But life is not that kind.

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There are no character screens, no inventories, no skills you can just activate and if you want to know how good a weapon is you better learn how to use and try it for yourself. A LOT! The only thing really, that is known, is that there exist crests which boost five attributes and that you can level up and for every level up you gain a crest that you can spent freely. Besides that humanity also figured out that there is a direct relation between the attributes and the power of the class abilities depending on the class.

The classes, their names and abilities, everything had to be found out (and named) by trial and error. There are massive online information dumps about all classes. Test data, comparisons, strategy guides etc. Of course, It was no different with the “Fighter” one of the pure melee classes. But soon after the first tests it became clear that the Fighter was lacking in every way. Without the flexibility of long range types and the uniqueness of mage type classes the Fighter had to directly compete with heavy hitters like the Berserker which easily outperformed them. Things became even worse when soon after the first Paladin was discovered and just months later the Blood Knight made its entrance. After this the Fighter quickly became a footnote in history. Without any interest, or money invested, experimentation and testing in the Fighter dropped to nearly zero and it became branded as a “trash class”.

“It is okay. I got used to it.” Marcus pushed up the weight one last time. “Besides. I did just beat my goals.”, “Are you for real?” Frank clapped his hands. “We have to celebrate and I don’t accept a no for an answer.” Marcus looked at his friend and sighed. There was no getting out of this one, he knew from experience. And when he was honest to himself this really was a reason to celebrate. He had reached his goals just two weeks before his 18th birthday which had been the deadline he had set himself. “Alright. But you pay this time.” Frank just laughed and shrugged his shoulders as if he did not know what Marcus was talking about.

It was after midnight when Marcus pushed open the door to his apartment. As expected he had to carry drunk Frank home after paying for all the booze. Still, now that he had reached his preparation goals there was no reason for him to go back to the gym and if things would work out as planed he would soon move away from here. He would not see Frank again.

For a long moment Marcus stood still in the middle of his dark apartment. He had made it, he had finally reached the true starting line. He clenched his fists and looked at his muscled arm. Then he let out a deep sigh and moved to his bed. He reached underneath, opened a hidden compartment and removed a hand sized object.

The small cylindrical object had an unusual design and looked positively alien. With well practiced movements Marcus placed three fingers in grooves on the side of the object and a small light beam appeared at the top of it. Marcus aimed the light at the wall in the dark room and a circles with several colored areas became visible. Each area was populated with smaller symbols, with many overlapping sitting on corners of two areas.

Each symbol represented a class and the areas are the attributes they scaled with. It had taken Marcus some time to identify every class symbol based on public information of other so called “Pearls of Wisdom” humanity had found over the years on other worlds. But in the end he was able to identify all that were depicted here.

His eyes fell on the one lonely class symbol that sat smack in the middle of the blue area. It was a weird depiction of a man or thing wrapping arms around a long squiggly log. Marcus had no idea what it actually meant but thanks to some other sources he knew it was the “Fighter”.

He lowered the device and turned it off. With his hand over his heart he concentrated and faint light appeared in the darkness turning into a red symbol. He swiped the symbol several times until it turned blue.

He took a deep breath and spent all his five crests on vitality.