Liam got his last kill and final level-up of the day just as the sun began to set.

Level up!

You have reached level 3. You have unlocked the ability to gain a class. You may select one of the following foundation classes or choose to wait for your next level-up to select one. When you pick a class, you cannot change it until it evolves. Gaining a class allows you to gain skills.

F-rank classes grant 2 active skills and 1 passive skill OR 1 active skill and 2 passive skills.

Selecting a class at F-rank grants you an additional 1 point to each stat it focuses on upon a level-up. Selecting a class gives you marginally increased stat points for all levels.

Warrior [F] - A common frontline fighter without frills that excels in frontline combat. With their basic training in martial techniques, they form the backbone of any fighting force. Focuses on [Strength] and [Dexterity].

Rogue [F] - A common rogue that excels in subterfuge, speed, and precision. Masters of evasion and surprise, they specialize at sneaking behind enemy lines and delivering devastating critical strikes. With their skills in lockpicking, disguise, and traps, they are invaluable for assassinations. Focuses on [Dexterity] and [Perception].

Mage [F] - A common mage with the ability to harness simple magical powers. They specialize in casting a variety of elemental spells, have a basic understanding of arcane knowledge, and are versatile in both offense and support roles, providing crucial magical assistance in any situation. Focuses on [Mana] and [Perception].

Berserker [F] - A common berserker that channels rage into overwhelming physical attacks. At the cost of their sanity they can endure significant damage and thrive in the heat of battle, becoming more dangerous as their fury intensifies. Focuses on [Strength] and [Vitality].

Archer [F] - This class is not available to you due to your lack of the requisite equipment. Focuses on [Dexterity] and [Perception].

Spellsword [F] - A common fusion class that takes the best of two worlds without excelling in either. Spellswords have a broad variety of options, making them a jack of all trades and a master of none. Focuses on [Strength] or [Dexterity] and [Mana].

Scout [F] - A common scout class that is hard to catch and harder to kill. Though not flashy, they are critical parts of any organized group. Focuses on [Perception] and either [Vitality] or [Dexterity].

Healer [F] - A common healer that is the cornerstone of a well-balanced party, even at this rank—perhaps especially at this rank. Focuses on [Vitality] and [Mana].

“More of these RPG classes,” he commented, eyeing the list critically. “Are you picking a class?”

Bianca, who had leveled up at the same pace he had without needing to lay a finger on any of the wild animals, was almost untouched except for a splatter of blood on her blouse when she’d gotten too close to a dying wolf to take the finishing blow on it.

“Yes,” she said. “My inherent allows me to take an advanced version of the Healer class, which I can use to give myself some combat options through self buffs.”

Liam couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy at that. He hadn’t gotten anything like that at all. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten a skill from killing the incredibly aggressive wildlife here, while everyone else seemed to have them already.

“What about you?” she asked.

Liam sighed. “I need to think about it. Let’s head back to the center for the time being. I’d rather not get stuck here at night time.”

“Of course.”

He also sorely needed to bathe, but they hadn’t found any running water during their ventures. Liam looked like he’d put his clothes into a blender alongside half a butcher shop, and the poorly skinned deer corpse he was dragging with him wasn’t helping.

The archbishop had said there’d be water back at the location where they’d started, which meant the bus. That gave him one thing to look forward to, at least.

The gaggle of people gathered around the bus, however, did not spark any confidence. By the time they’d worked out the path they’d taken and returned to the clearing where the bus had been summoned, the sun had fully gone down.

It was easy enough to spot the bus. Andy, the ginger with an inherent that gave him fire magic, was entertaining a gaggle of his friends with his tricks, and they had a roaring bonfire going. Over a dozen people were still here, which meant there were quite a few more that had ventured into the forest like he and Bianca had.

Cheery conversation came to an abrupt halt as he and Bianca came into view.

“Woah, there,” Andy said, walking out to greet them both. He looked at Bianca, then raised his eyebrows as he connected her face as he remembered who she was. “Bianca, was it? Is this man bothering you?”

“Oh, we’re alright,” Bianca said, her voice a half octave higher than it had been around Liam. “We were out hunting.”

Liam couldn’t be bothered to say anything to Andy about his terrible attempt at manipulation. “Do you have food reserves? If not, then this should be enough to feed this many people.”

“Hey,” Andy said, finally bothering to acknowledge Liam. “Aren’t you the guy with the only shitty pull out of us?”

“Do you want the deer or not? I’m happy to start a fire of my own if you don’t want to cook it.”

There were people staring at him now, which was probably because of all the animal blood covering him. They were whispering about him like he couldn’t hear them.

“…killer… missing people… how could he…”

Liam could guess the general bent of their conversation from that.

“That’s a deer?” Andy said, looking at the bloody meat Liam had been lugging around. “How am I supposed to know you didn’t go and skin one of the poor guys that went into the forest and didn’t come back?”

“Because,” Liam sighed, dropping the carcass on the grass, “I’m the guy who got the only shitty pull. Bianca’s been with me this whole time.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

And, he noticed, was pointedly not saying anything. She was waiting to see where the cards fell.

He looked at her, mouthing the word really?

Bianca raised a finger as if to say hold on.

“I think you should get out of here before someone else gets hurt,” Andy growled, fire burning to life in his hands.

“Wait a second,” Bianca said, raising her hands placatingly. “He didn’t hurt anyone. I was with him, like he said.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s covered in blood,” Andy said. “Besides, he’s got the worst skill of all of us.”

Murmurs of agreement came from behind him.

“Yeah, fuck off!” one of the college-age girls shouted. She sounded drunk.

Liam stared at Andy.

[Andrei Jensen (F) - lvl 4]

So unfair, he thought. From the looks of it, Andy hadn’t even left the bus area and had just leveled up by practicing with his magic.

“If anything, he’ll slow us down,” Andy continued, emboldened by his impromptu cheer squad. “Let’s say you spent the whole day killing deer.”

“You make it sound like I didn’t.”

“Let’s say you did. All that, and you still can’t keep up with us? I don’t know, man. I don’t think you’ll fit in well here.”

“Everyone has their place,” Bianca said. “You need the food, don’t you?”

“Not him,” Andy fired back. “Fucking psycho.”

Liam didn’t flinch. He could see the angles both of them were playing. Andy’s motivation was more than what he said it was. It wasn’t that Liam was genuinely going to be useless, though it was true that he was very behind in terms of skills. It was fear in Andy’s eyes.

Bianca, on the other hand, was playing the reasonable middleman. She hadn’t decided her allegiance yet. To be honest, she probably should have just joined up with Andy. He had the bulk of the people here on his side, and it would only do Bianca good to ingratiate herself with the stronger group.

Liam was actually quite sure that the only reason she hadn’t done so was because of their pre-existing friendship. It wasn’t much, but he was a touch heartened that she cared at all. If it was anybody else, she would have done the calculus and decided to ditch them.

It wouldn’t even have been a hard decision. It was a fact that he was the weakest here by a long shot, and he wasn’t going to get into a fight to prove them right. His inherent was utterly useless.

Unless it wasn’t.

He’d gotten an idea during the day that had only increased in intensity as more and more of those damn flies had gone for him.

“Alright,” Liam said, looking over the crowd of people looking at him. “Do you mind if I use the water here?”

“Do I—yes, we fucking mind,” Andy said.

Nobody disagreed. Liam was heartened to see that at least the only person with an S-rank inherent was Bianca, which meant the other two were outside and hadn’t joined in on this, but he couldn’t be bothered.

People were a pain. They were unreliable, inconsistent, and illogical. Liam had enough to survive on his own. This wasn’t the end of the world.

Especially if he was right.

“I hope you’re happy with your decision,” he said. Liam turned and left without another word

Then again, if I’m wrong, I won’t know.

It was dark now and just chilly enough that Liam knew sleeping outside would result in an awful night, albeit not a fatal one.

He didn’t need to sleep tonight. If he was wrong, he would sleep forever anyway.

Liam did need to see, though, so once he found his way to the closest tree, he tore off a low-hanging branch and cut off a piece of his torn, bloodied shirt, wrapping the cloth around the top of the stick.

The tinderbox he’d gotten from the starter item selection included a flint and steel alongside its namesake tinder. Liam had done wilderness survival courses as part of his local Scouts group growing up, so he was familiar enough with the process to strike sparks into the tinder. It took a few attempts thanks to the breeze, but he got a small fire going and managed to light the cloth.

With the blood hampering the flame, it would burn slowly, and his makeshift torch was enough of a source of light for him. Liam wished he had real torches or a flashlight, but the latter item hadn’t been offered and the former had been on the list but hadn’t included a way to light it.

He retraced his steps, hoping he could find the flies again.

Earlier today, he and Bianca had run into a swarm of the things, and one of them had landed on him. It had looked different from the rest, with one of its wings visibly a crimson red. About ten minutes after Liam had killed it and dropped it into his filthy pocket, figuring he might be able to gain some usage out of an esoteric fly later, another one of the bastards had flown over to him and crawled into that same pocket.

It had also had one red wing. After it had flown away, Liam had reached around inside his pocket and found that the bug he’d stowed away earlier was gone.

Now, that could have been coincidence, but combined with the strange flavor text, he suspected that there was more to them than met the eye.

Liam had recorded the spot he’d seen the swarm of them in his memory, though it was much harder to find in the darkness with only a dim, flickering torch for light. The animals stayed away at night, at least, though he wondered how much of that was because he was covered in the blood of other predators.

After a few missed turns and about three hours of doubling back, he finally found the area where the flies had been. He’d made sure to mark the trees there with an extra symbol, and it had paid off.

Sure enough, even in the dead of night with only a weak torch and the rare beams of moonlight that made it through the tree cover, there were flies buzzing around the area. Liam had wondered why there had been so many of them without a water source, but they’d left the area before they could be bothered more by the swarm.

Now, he could see why. They had a hive of some sort, built out of a strange ashen material that didn’t look like anything else in the area. It looked eerie in the dark, illuminated by a flame that threatened to go out with every strong breeze, and it was crawling with the flies. Fewer of them were moving now, though, and the bulk of them appeared to be asleep.

Large quantities of insects were one of the few things that made Liam’s skin crawl, but he did his best to disregard his discomfort. It was about to get a lot worse.

One of the many problems with his inherent, [Hollow], was that it didn’t tell him how he actually got the skill. All it said was that he would get one skill from the enemy that killed him.

That meant that he had one shot to get a skill that would work. The archbishop had apologized to him and promptly ignored him like he was trash, and that short interaction had told him everything he needed to know. There was precedent for people having the same inherent as him, and they’d all been useless too. If they hadn’t been, he would have been treated as a much more valuable resource. There was simply nothing they could reasonably hope to be thrown at and die to that would grant him a power that would let them come back to life.

But nobody would die because of a simple fly, especially one that didn’t bite.

From there, the only thing he needed to figure out was the manner of death. If they didn’t bite, he wouldn’t be able to die that way.

Liam got closer, surprised that not many of them reacted to his presence. That gave him more reason to believe that they had a special power. If they were all this dumb and had no way to react, they wouldn’t have been able to continue as a species.

He ignored the flies flitting at his face and flying away as he approached, wincing as he got a better view of the sleeping masses on the face of the ashen hive. A branch crunched under his foot as he stepped forward, and he cringed, sure that it would wake them.

When it didn’t, he steeled himself and grabbed a fistful of them, crushing many of them in his closed palm.

That agitated the waking ones, but the bulk of them stayed asleep.

This part is going to suck.

He shoved the flies into his mouth and fought down the urge to instantly vomit, then grabbed another fistful and did the same.

Then, defying everything his brain was telling him not to do, Liam inhaled as hard as he could.

That was too much for his gag reflex to handle, and he did start to hurl.

Biology was not going to be his friend here. As it turned out, suicide by suffocation was not something the body naturally wanted.

He forced more bugs into his windpipe, sucking more of them down and retching as they started to crawl within him. His vision started going black at the edges, and he started twitching.

Liam wanted to think something pithy as darkness descended on him and he collapsed, unable to breathe, but the oxygen flow to his brain had been cut off, so his last thoughts were babbling, incoherent jumbled messes combined with the word fuck repeated quite a few times.

You have died.

Inherent [Hollow] has triggered on your killer: [Fallen Fly].

[Fallen Fly] only has one skill.

You have gained the passive skill [Eternal Damnation Cycle].

[Eternal Damnation Cycle]

Rank: SS+

Level: This skill cannot be leveled.

Effect: When you are killed, your soul is ejected to the nearest fallen fly hive and a new body is recreated from the ashes of the hive. This body will be created without your skills. Returning to the point of death within 24 hours will recover your skills. If you cannot return to the point of death after 24 hours, they will be permanently lost.

Your body is being recreated.