2. OP Classes, Activate!

We regrouped, recentered and reoriented. Rushing back into the shack, we talked it over.

“We’ll never have this chance again,” I argued. “These things don’t just drop from the sky every day, you know.”

“Well, obviously they do!” Thwain replied, almost shouting. At the look the two of us gave him, he lowered his voice. No sense tempting fate again. “We should just put it back where it came from. Toss it into the muck.”

Pyro scoffed. “Who just dumps shit into the river without checking? Ain’t no way. Ain’t. No. Way. They weren’t trashing it, they were stashing it. If we’re gonna pretend we don’t have these… That we actually crossed Floor 1 without them, we’re gonna need to be smart about it. I say we absorb them and burn the box, then figure out a plan depending on what we get.”

Thwain shook his head vehemently, looking pained. “I want to, trust me, I do. I just think it’ll put us in too much shit. Rope us into some gang politics or something. What’ll we say? Oh, we just got lucky and manifested powers? Spontaneous Awakening? No. We’ll be dead or conscripted within a week.”

I didn’t disagree entirely. “You’re not wrong-wrong, but you’re maybe a little over-eager with the whole insta-death thing. They’re somebody’s. We absorb these and stay here, we’re as good as shackled, if the wrong gang catches us with their shit. But will they? They're always at war with each other,” I argued. “They’re probably too busy fighting each other to bother with anyone like us.”

“So we get classes, lie about crossing the floor, then what?” Pyro asked.

I gave a weak shrug. “We throw them away, we die anyway. The Slums are getting worse. Even water is getting hard to find. We could take these and, well… Climb? Clear? Really make a difference, you know. Really climb. Clear the floors. Not just farm for meat.”

Thwain threw his hands up in exasperation. “Climb? CLEAR? Do you hear yourself, Théo?” He asked. “We’ve been digging in sewage to afford food. How can we climb, let alone clear?”

“Exactly. How can we afford not to climb?” I asked, pointing at the box. “Like I said, if we stay here, we’re dead anyway. If we climb, at least we could make a bit of a difference. Maybe even delay the total collapse of Floor 0 for a few days. Weeks, even, if we’re any good. Months if we luck out.”

“Delay it for what?” Thwain asked. “For someone to actually help the situation? For a festival or a Tower event to come around and shake things up again? For a Tower update to save us just in time? They’ve had years to help. Why would they help now? It’s always been the same. The powerful are on top because they have the resources and the skills to stay on top. The rest of us don’t have enough of either to make headway into any of the floors.” We had had that same argument for years, actually. I was still hopeful that someone would see reason and step up. Sure, there were scrubs trying their luck with farming the first floor, but there was always someone ready to pounce if you looked like your luck was too good.

I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I've never seen anybody actually step up and succeed, let alone stick around and help. Never, not once. Sure, people pop into Floor 1 for some loot on the fringes. But to actually clear a chunk out? Not in my lifetime. Not around here, at least. And that’s why we should. We pop these and go help, or go out in a blaze of glory.”

“More like a slow, painful death where slimes suck out our life force bit by bit while nobody actually cares enough to do anything about it,” Pyro chimed in helpfully. “What about our families?”

“If we wait too long, there won’t be anybody left to miss us, either way. We already barely have anyone left. How long until the rest of our families fall sick like all the rest?” I grabbed one of the three Awakening stones, thanking whatever Tower Gods were listening for the opportunity. Obviously, it would have been less politically complicated to find an Awakening stone manifestation and snag the item out of the white haze that they all formed from, but those were random and always got mobbed by the gangs before the common folk got a hand on them.

The others tensed, Thwain in apparent fear, Pyro, in anticipation.

I sat in the shack’s only chair, gripped the pearl, threw it into my mouth and swallowed.

Pain erupted in my everything as I convulsed. Was it supposed to rip my molecules apart, atom by atom? Well, it was doing so proficiently. Even thinking hurt. I opened my mouth to scream, but everything went black. I floated in nothingness. My whole existence was a single prompt.

[https://i.imgur.com/cBIwVJp.png]

Théo. Do you harness the power of your enemies or do you end them from afar? Choose.

What the shit? More info! “More info! Mas informasas. Pluz d’anfoe.” No? I tried to sigh, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel my arms, nor my breath, my tongue or my eyes. I tried forcing myself in every way that I could imagine. Nothing. Resigned, I figured there were worse things than being forced into choosing magical powers. Plus, if I was lucky, one of the options would be a super, mega, legendary, Tower-breaking class. Now, which one was it?

Harnessing the power of my enemies sounded ominous. Open-ended. Was it a sort of debuff? Drain? Control? Ending enemies from afar wasn’t much more specific, but it sounded pretty straightforward. Artillery, spells, arrows, that kind of thing. But, did I want straightforward? Pyro would no doubt pick to end his enemies from afar. Thwain, I wasn’t as sure about. Pyro would leap into any chance to blow stuff up and didn’t like ambiguity.

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I, on the other hand… There was just something about harnessing power that called to me. I sent it.

“Harness the power of my enemies,” I said with the entirety of my being. Another prompt appeared:

[https://i.imgur.com/BR1gS8y.png]

Class granted: Summoner, rank 1.

Skill gained: Soul Echo, rank tied to class rank. Passive. Effect: absorb a portion of your opponent’s essence upon their death, adding it to your Bestiary.

Skill gained: Manifest, rank 1. Active. Cost: variable. Effect: manifest the power of the souls in your Bestiary.

The text scrolled across my vision. It took me a second to realize that I was, indeed, seeing again. With my eyes. I could move, I was back. But… Why did I feel wet? As I looked down, I realized my mistake. Apparently, I couldn’t influence the prompt, but I had still had some modicum of control over my body. I was completely soiled. Not just in an I-shat-my-pants sort of way. No, there definitely was a brown package, signed, sealed and delivered in my underwear. But I was also covered in a thick layer of grime. It was the consistency of tar and it smelled almost as bad as the sludge in the river. Bile rose in my throat as I cleared it and my nose of the gunk. I looked around for something, anything to help clean myself off with. Curiously, I was alone in the shack.

I got up and stumbled outside. There, Thwain and Pyro were standing back, looking distinctly greener than usual. They took a few steps back and motioned for me to stay away.

“Théo, I am warning you,” Thwain said threateningly. “If you get any closer, I’ll probably hit you.”

Pyro looked equally squeamish, but curiosity got the better of him. “Alright, spill, man! What did you get?”

I stopped my zombie shambling long enough to process what he meant. Right! The class! “It’s a summoner-type class with a sort of Bestiary.” I read them the full description from the status menu that I could now intuitively access at will.

They both looked impressed, but Pyro moreso. The older man, well into his twenties, dropped his shorts and started taking off the rest of his clothes.

“Are you insane?” Thwain asked.

“Hey. I might be dumb, but I ain’t stupid,” Pyro said. "I’m gettin’ me one of them and I ain’t shittin’ myself for it. If I’m takin’ a deuce, it’ll be on the ground. Better yet, on a pile of leaves.” With that, he finished stripping completely naked and waltzed into the shack, returning a moment later with an Awakening stone. “Any advice?” He asked.

I rubbed my face, shaking my head. “Just don’t, errrr, don’t force it. It’ll all happen naturally.”

Pyro layed down on the ground and swallowed his Awakening stone, going completely still.

Thwain sighed dramatically. “Ok! Fine! It’s not like I can let you two go off alone. If we die, we die as a team.” He rolled his eyes as if it would lessen the cheese-factor of his declaration before following in Pyro’s footsteps.

While the others went through their Awakening, I fished some water from a rain barrel and did my best to scrub the filth from my body. I grabbed my only other set of clothes from the shack and put them on, despite my still wet frame.

I peeked over at my two friends (not like that, you weirdo). They were both ridiculously still except for the slowly seeping goop that exited their bodies from every pore. After a few minutes, Pyro stood, followed by Thwain a few seconds later. They both looked horrendous, but satisfied.

“So?” I asked.

Thwain was the first to answer.

“I can… Uh… I can do… This!” He stuck his arm out to the side, palm up. A tiny purple portal opened above his palm and ejected a pistol right into his hand. He twirled it with a flourish before almost dropping the firearm. With a sheepish grin, he went off to wash up and get dressed.

Pyro and I cheered at the display before Pyro also went to get clean and dressed. When they were done putting on cleaner clothes, Thwain and I looked at Pyro expectantly.

“Ok! Ok!” He said. “Let me see if I can…” His skin rippled, turning to what looked like stone. His entire body was covered within a few seconds. He flexed, showing off his earthen armor.

“Test?”

“Test.”

BANG! A muted shot rang in the clearing.

My eyes shot to Thwain as I ducked for cover. “What the actual fuck, dude!?” I yelled, staring daggers at my friend.

“Well, I needed to know if it made lots of noise,” Thwain shrugged sheepishly. “And he needed to know how good his armor is. Can't use it quietly, got it.”

“Thwain!” I chided. “We're kinda sorta hiding this shit, remember?”

“Ok! Ok. I got carried away.” Thwain raised his arms in surrender. “It’s all just so new. I’m not going to shoot off randomly or anything. It was for science. But we should really go test these, for real.” He twirled his pistol playfully, but his features turned serious.

I tried my best not to deadpan. “You WANT to climb, now?” I cocked an eyebrow. “Mr. we-shouldn’t-climb. Mr. throw it back in the river. Mister...”

“Hey,” Thwain retorted. “Now that we have classes, we kind of need to climb. We sure can’t stick around, waiting for people to notice that we have skills.”

“Hey, speaking of classes,” I said. “What are yours called? I know what you guys can do, but, like… Gimme the deets.” I was intensely interested to see the differences.

We talked it out at length. I was a Summoner, whatever that meant. Well, I wasn’t a dumbass. Summoners summoned. I just didn’t exactly know how. Legends told of classers that could befriend spirits or animals, tame fierce beasts, and even some that could raise the dead. Many worked in similar ways, but there were always some odd ones sprinkled in with the rest.

Thwain was, predictably, a Gunner. He could conjure a pistol every hour, and the six-shot firearms would last 24 hours. He could also spend some of his own energies to empower his shots. Conjurers were a fairly uncommon subsection of classes, from the stories older people told when sufficiently motivated. Conjurers, as opposed to Summoners, could create permanent or semi-permanent items that could last for years under the right conditions, though always at a cost.

Pyro was a Geomancer, focusing on defensive earth magic. Standard elemental manipulation. He could turn his skin to stone and control the earth to a certain degree. Elemental Manipulators often took on aspects of their elements far faster than other classes and could improve their skills a lot easier than other classes on the same floor, provided both parties were stuck on the same floor and that the Elemental Manipulator had ample access to their element.

That sorted, we ironed out a game plan. Everyone was technically allowed to ascend to Floor 1. Only those that exited the floor into Floor 2 would Awaken, except for those like us who had used Awakening stones. That meant that the portal to Floor 1 wasn't blocked, necessarily, as everyday nobodies were almost guaranteed to get hurt or die trying to clear Floor 1. You just had to be careful when exiting with loot, is all. There were a lot of people without a lot to lose who kept an eye on what people brought back. Bring something too shiny out... Well...

We would go to the first floor, test our abilities, and come back with minimal loot. Ascending and returning was bound to bring attention, but returning with not much more than a couple of scrapes should be enough to throw people off. Unless some thugs somehow linked us to their missing stash of Awakening stones earlier than expected and caught us. In that case, we’d be… in a bind, to say the least.