Victor sat alone in his quarters at Queen Kynna’s palace. He was tired—tired from the stress leading up to his duel with Obert, tired from the fight, and tired from the aftermath. When he’d gotten back to the palace, it had felt like a blanket of dread had been lifted off the city, and everyone had been given leave to live and celebrate—something they’d been denied for, apparently, years. Of course, Victor had been expected to attend the Queen’s celebratory banquet. He’d had to stand at the high table and tell a story to entertain the guests—another reason for his current mental exhaustion.
The dinner had gone fine, of course. He hadn’t had any trouble coming up with a story to tell; he had a thousand fights he could describe, but feeling alone among all those strangers, he’d chosen a story about the Great Bone Mine and how he’d first seen Lam fly, descending among a horde of mad beetles to save him and the other delvers. The feat itself wasn’t impressive to the nobles gathered around Kynna’s table, but the way Victor described his awe and how the event became the key to unlocking his inspiration-attuned Energy had kept their rapt attention.
The dinner had taken hours and hours, and, as far as Victor knew, the feast was still ongoing; Kynna had proclaimed a week-long national holiday. He’d finally begged off, claiming exhaustion, and though his many new fans among the nobility had protested, Kynna excused him, and now he sat alone. His chair was comfortable; the little parlor in his suite was luxurious with fine, high-grade leather furniture that fit his frame like a glove. His little bar was stocked with potent liquors, and his view was incredible.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see over the city's rooftops below and beyond to the rolling green countryside. Great forests covered much of Gloria, and to Victor sitting there, the expanse of tree-covered hills looked almost primeval, so unmarred was their wild majesty. He could see the road leading away from the city, but in just a few miles, it was swallowed by the forests. From there, he saw nothing but green all the way to the distant, towering purple mountain ranges. For someone who grew up in Arizona, Victor found himself easily enthralled by a view like that.
Still, his mind wandered, and he found himself wishing he had someone to talk to, someone familiar. He was half tempted to summon Arona from her phylactery again, but she wasn’t the voice he wanted. He knew Bryn was standing guard outside his door, and the thought of making her take a drink with him and suffer through some teasing was an amusing proposition that he toyed with for a while but ultimately set aside. It was bad enough that the poor woman had to stand guard and watch over him; he shouldn’t torment her to boot.
No, he had to admit, the truth was, he missed his friends, and, most of all, he missed Valla. When he’d sat down with a glass of something called “Turnback Rye,” he’d intended to go through his Class refinement, but his mind kept returning to the simple promise he’d made before the duel: if he won, he’d write to Valla. So, with a troubled heart and a not-insignificant buzz, he took out his Farscribe book and turned to the latest message she’d sent him:
> Victor,
>
> I wish you’d write to me, but I know you need time. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. In any case, I have something I wanted to share with you. I’m leaving for a new world tomorrow—an ocean world populated by aquatic people who live on islands and swim and breathe freely under the water. It’s called Crydagh, and there are rumored to be creatures living in those waters that rival dragons! Fantastic beasts called Booraghi roam the oceans, unafraid of anything—even your mentor, Ranish Dar, would think twice about crossing one of them. If treated with respect, they’re peaceful, though, and will sometimes speak to lesser beings who visit them. I’m going to seek one out; rumors have it that they’ll grant boons to visitors they take a fancy to. Even if they refuse to speak to me, which I’m told happens often, I believe the trip will be worthwhile. Wouldn’t seeing such a creature be a reward in itself?
>
> Despite my excitement, I’m sorry to leave Fanwath. Uvu found his way home shortly after you left, and I’ve been spending time with him daily. He’s gotten a bit feral, though; I think he has a mate out in the wild, so he’ll likely be fine when I leave again. Of course, I’ll miss Rellia, but she’s so busy governing that I doubt she’ll remember I’m gone most of the time.
>
> Please write soon,
>
> Love,
>
> Valla
Victor had received the message nearly a week ago, and, reading it again, he felt a surge of guilt for putting a response off. He knew he’d feel worse if he went back and read through the other four messages she’d sent him. With a resigned sigh, he took up a pen, and, mustering courage on par with what it took him to face the lord of the dungeon near Great Bone Mine, he began to write:
> Valla,
>
> I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to write to you. It’s not right, I know. You probably know from Lam or Edeya that I’ve left Sojourn, but—
>
> Victor groaned and put the pen down. He didn’t know how to do this. Grimacing, he returned to the note, skipping a line:
>
> Look, I’m not going to sit here and write a bunch of bullshit about how nice the world is, or how the people here are all giants, or that we had a big feast after I won my first duel. None of that really matters for shit. The truth is that I’m still raw as hell on the inside. I think about you all the time. Before my duel, I wanted to talk to you. When I saw my quarters, I thought about how much you’d like how everything was in shades of blue and purple—the sheets, the wallpaper, the vases, even the upholstery and carpet. When I was training back on Sojourn, I couldn’t sleep in the bed ‘cause I kept picturing you in it. I couldn’t enjoy the lake ‘cause I kept seeing you soaring over it.
>
> I don’t know if I’ll ever get over you and the missing piece of my heart that you took with you, but I’m going to try. I’m going to try to remember that no matter what, I love you, and I don’t want you to be gone from my life. So, yeah, I’ll try to be better about writing, but I can’t do it every day, every week, or even every month. I have to give myself room to breathe, to experience life without you, ‘cause that’s what you wanted, and it’s too hard to let you go if I’m constantly reminding myself about how much I miss you.
>
> It sounds like an amazing place you’re going to, and I hope you really enjoy it. I hope you’ll write to me about it after you’re done, but let’s wait until then, all right? In the meantime, I’ll try to live my life and experience something worth sharing, too.
>
> -Victor
Victor closed the book with a heavy sigh and a feeling of finality that he wasn’t sure he liked. “Well, it’s done.” He could go back in and cross out the words, but there wasn’t any guarantee Valla hadn’t already read them. Even if he ripped the page out, it would still be there in her book. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. I meant it all.” He tucked the book back into storage, sat back in his chair, and downed his glass of, if he were honest, extremely potent whiskey.
He wanted to keep talking to himself, but he felt strange doing so without his usual crutch, so he reached into his high-quality storage ring and summoned Lifedrinker, allowing her massive, incredibly heavy axe-head to rest on the carpet before him while tilting the handle so he could grasp it as he reclined. “Hey, chica.”
Is it time, at last? Will you carry me into battle again?
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“Sorry, not yet.” Victor chuckled at how his tongue felt thick in his mouth. Whatever else you said about Ruhn, they made good booze. “I still have to fight with that pinché spear for a while. It’s a tough weapon, but nothing like you. I’m saving you for when the fights get hard.”
I yearn to feel your hands as I smash bones, spill blood, and drink the Energy of your foes.
Victor arched an eyebrow as he looked down at the enormous axe. Her dark blade was like glass with its depthless, black, mirrored sheen, but as he stared, he saw the thousands of tiny motes of light deep in those unknown depths, almost like he was looking through a window into space. It was mesmerizing, and he nearly forgot what he was going to say. As her handle vibrated with impatience in his hand, he startled out of his reverie, chuckling and reaching for the bottle of whiskey to refill his glass. “I miss fighting with you too. It’ll be soon, though. Things are going to keep getting crazier and crazier around here.”
She was quiet after that, and Victor enjoyed the simple comfort of her presence for a while. He sipped his whiskey, watched the view outside, and after a while, he opened his status sheet and selected the Class refinement option, looking over his new options:
***Class refinement option 1: Warlord - Legendary. Prerequisites: 1. Prior Class levels in Battlemaster, Martial Sage, or Combat Savant. 2. Sufficiently advanced bloodline. 3. Sufficiently advanced weapon skills. 4. Sufficiently advanced attributes. 5. A sufficiently advanced Core with appropriate affinities. 6. A history of leading followers into large-scale conflicts and achieving victory. Class attributes: Vitality, Intelligence.***
***Class refinement option 2: Colossal Spirit Champion – Legendary. Prerequisites: 1. Titan, giantkin, leviathan, behemoth, or colossus bloodline. 2. A significant portion of your total Energy earned from solo combat. 3. An affinity for glory, valor, justice, or honor. 4. Sufficiently advanced will attribute. 5. Sufficiently advanced Spirit Core. Through your many victories against difficult odds, you’ve gained the favor of your ancestors, and they see you as a living champion of their ideals. You embody titanic power, standing for glory, justice, and honor. Through your Spirit Core, your ancestors will unleash their fury on those who defy the might of their bloodline. Class attributes: Will, Vitality, Intelligence.***
***Class refinement option 3: Berserker of Unstoppable Momentum – Legendary. Prerequisites: 1. Epic-tier bloodline with a storied history of warriors or berserkers. 2. Rage, fury, or related affinity. 3. A significant portion of your total Energy earned from combat with heavy melee weapons. 4. Berserk or berserk-like ability. 5. Sufficiently advanced strength and vitality attributes. So long as you hold this Class, your strength, speed, and resilience will be fueled by combat. Every wound you take, and every blow you strike will drive your battle lust to new heights. The enhancements of this “battle momentum” will stack with traditional berserk-type abilities, but so will the madness. Class attributes: Strength, Vitality, Agility, Dexterity.***
***Class refinement option 4: No Refinement - You are pleased with the path on which you find yourself and choose to continue until your next refinement option.***
“Damn, chica, three legendary options.” Lifedrinker pulsed under his hand, and Victor took that to mean she was listening. He read the options aloud, and though he could feel Lifedrinker’s presence and attention, she didn’t speak. It didn’t bother him; she was an axe of few words, and her company was enough for him.
Part of Victor wanted to seek out advice. He wanted to write to Dar or Kethelket. He wanted to break out the ancestor shard and speak to Khul Bach. Still, another part of him rebelled at the idea. He was alone on a massive world, about to embark on a series of brutal single combats. He’d be tested physically and mentally as he struggled to navigate the murky waters of negotiations, subtle deceit, and overt hostility. Wasn’t it time he began making decisions for himself? He chuckled, shaking his head. No one ever made him choose a Class, but he’d certainly always felt like he had to hear other peoples’ opinions.
So, determined to figure out the best choice on his own, he thought about each option, beginning with number four—should he keep his current Class? It was something he’d never done before. He didn’t even know what would happen; would he gain further Class abilities if he kept it beyond the requisite ten levels? The question reminded him of the veritable library he had in his storage ring, so Victor perused his books, looking for a title that might give him the answer.
He found several promising candidates, spent another hour skimming through the pages, and came up with a resounding “maybe.” Sometimes, when kept beyond the first ten levels, a Class would grant more Class-specific abilities, but sometimes, it wouldn’t. That same book took Victor down a rabbit hole, reading about how difficult it was to predict what unfamiliar Classes would grant in terms of skills, spells, passive abilities, and even titles.
There were some well-documented Classes, like the basic “fighter.” He read the account of a man named Goh, who took sixty levels as a fighter, always foregoing a Class change. He gained a few skills in the first ten levels but didn’t begin seeing new ones until he’d reached his forty-second level as a fighter when the System granted him something called “martial mastery,” which boosted every single one of his weapon abilities by an entire tier. As he closed the book, Victor told Lifedrinker about what he’d read. “So, that would be cool, but I’m not sure I want to stick with the same Class for that long. I couldn’t, really—I have to start building my own at level one hundred.”
Class this, and Class that—all you need is me.
Victor snorted, choking on a sip of whiskey. She had a point. After he’d cleared his airway, he looked back to the Class refinement screen. It seemed the System wasn’t done offering him Warlord. It was tempting, but considering his current situation, he didn’t feel it was the best option; he wouldn’t be fighting many—or any—large-scale conflicts. If he was reading them correctly, the other two, newer options, were both geared toward the kind of fighting he’d be doing.
“Well, my first instinct is that the Colossal Spirit Champion is the smart move here. I think the Berserker of Unstoppable Momentum is another rage-based Class, I think, and I’ve been working to keep my head during fights. Do I want a passive ability that will force me to build up to a berserk state? If I need to cast Iron Berserk or Volcanic Fury on top of that, how insane would I get? I can’t even imagine being more crazy than Volcanic Fury already makes me.”
Lifedrinker remained reticent, and since no one was there to do it for him, Victor voiced the contrary opinion, “But that passive ‘battle momentum’ sounds damn nice when you think about a duel. When you think about the fact that I don’t want to be using many abilities until I have to, wouldn’t it be nice to have one that just sort of made me stronger and faster the longer I fought? What would it look like to other people? Would they think I went berserk, or would they just think I was getting pissed off?” He supposed it wouldn’t matter; if they thought he was berserk, they’d have a big surprise coming when he actually did.
In the end, the fact that he was level seventy helped him make the decision. He’d learned from Arona and Arcus that levels got progressively slower and, specifically, that gaining levels in the seventh tier took a fraction of the Energy for levels in the ninth. If he was going to experiment with a dangerous-seeming Class choice, it was probably now or never. The thought of that battle momentum in a one-on-one fight was too tempting, and Victor reasoned that if he hated it, he only had to make it to level eighty to change it out.
So, perhaps a little impulsively and perhaps a little too loose of inhibition, thanks to the strong whiskey he continued to sip, he selected the option he had initially dismissed.
***Congratulations! You have refined your class: Berserker of Unstoppable Momentum.***
***Congratulations! You have earned a Class Feat: Furious Battle Momentum.***
***Furious Battle Momentum: Every wound you take and every blow you strike will drive your battle lust to new heights. Your strength, vitality, and speed will increase with your lust for battle, as will your fury and hunger for violence. These enhancements will stack with traditional berserk-type abilities, but so will the madness. Unless altered or improved, this feat will be removed if your Class changes.***
For the first time, Victor felt his Class change as it occurred. He felt something inside him changing, burning from his Core out through his body. It was almost painful, but he could feel the euphoria of Energy masking the pain, twisting it into an almost pleasurable experience. Looking inward to see what was happening, he saw a slender pathway running parallel to his thick, well-developed Energy pathways. Intuitively, he knew what it was; it was meant to carry his rage into his body without interfering with his other spells and abilities. It was meant to feed his “Furious Battle Momentum.”
When he tried to push Energy into the new pathway, he couldn’t, driving home the point that this “ability” wouldn’t be something he could control. “Shit, chica. I hope I didn’t just mess up.”
Can you still wield me?
Victor downed the last of the “Turnback Rye” and laughed. “Hell yeah, I can.”
Then all is well.