Didier Shaw went to sleep like he did almost every night; drunk as hell and tucked up in a single-sized bed with the tv flickering in front of him. He kept the sound on low because he didn’t want to really listen to it, he just liked the white noise. It helped him sleep in when the whiskey didn’t. He usually woke with a hangover bad enough to fell an elephant, but not that morning. That morning, when he awoke, he wasn’t in his bed anymore.

He awoke on a dirty stone floor. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, and wondered if this was some kind of prank. Had one of his buddies picked the lock of his apartment and carried him away somewhere during the night? No. Surely, he’d have woken up. He was a pretty shitty sleeper.

He looked around and saw that he was in a dimly lit oval room with stone walls and a stone floor. The ceiling was low enough that he could touch it. Three other people sleeping on the stone floor. There was a short guy with long black hair that reached to his waist, a girl with red flowing locks, and an older man with a thick grey beard and dozens of piercings on his right ear.

A stream of text appeared in front of him.

Welcome to the wave fighter dorms. As this is a level 1 room you have the basic fittings; a level 1 armory, potion cabinet and mana well.

What the hell? Armory? Potions? What was this?

He stood up. He tried to move, but his feet were frozen in place.

Please choose a class:

Assassin

Mage

Warrior

Rogue

He tried to move, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t understand what he was being asked to do, or why. Who was responsible for the text in front of him? And what was the deal with that, anyway; was it some kind of hologram effect?

 Movement locked until class chosen.

By now the people around him had woken up. A couple of them reacted the same way he did at first. The guy with the beard looked around like he was trapped in a nightmare, with wide eyes and a scared-looking expression on his face. The redhead girl didn’t show any sign of confusion.

“Mage,” she said, confidently.

With that, she strode across the room and went over to what Didier supposed was the mana well. She reached her hands into it and a blue light gathered over her palms. She lapped it on her face as if it was water.

He wasn’t going to be able to move until he chose a class, so he guessed he better get on with it.

Please choose a class:

Assassin

Warrior

Rogue

Mage was missing from the class list now, so that meant when someone picked a class, it was gone. He was lucky enough to have a choice out of three, so he needed to get the one he wanted before the other guys got their shit together. The question was, which to pick?

He’d played plenty of video games, and if that was the way things were panning out, he didn’t want warrior. He’d been a warrior so many times in so many different games that he was sick of it. Rogue wasn’t quite right for him, either. He might have been an asshole, at times, but he wasn’t a thief.

“Assassin,” he said.

Class selected. Character screen generating…

Name: Didier Shaw

Class: Assassin

Level: 1

HP: 100 / 100

Mana: 50 / 50

Stamina:  100 / 100

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Strength: 7

Endurance: 6

Perception: 4

Agility:  8

Intelligence: 2

Base Skills:

 Bleeding – When cast, any melee attacks that cut skin will cause a bleeding effect, causing your enemy to lose HP at a steady rate. In later level can be combined with poison knowledge.

Critical Wound: Studying an enemy gives you greater chance to cause a critical wound on them. The greater your perception, the less time you need to study an enemy, and the greater understanding you will have on their weaknesses.

When he was done looking at the character screen the text disappeared, it appeared that it was somehow it tune with his mind. Experimenting, he willed the character screen to appear again, and there it was.

 The first thing that stuck out to him was that his base skills were a little off-kilter. He guessed that he’d be fighting a lot with blades, so having decent strength and endurance made sense. But if his Critical Wound skill depended on perception, then he’d need to raise it.

Confirm class creation: Y/N

“Can I alter my stats a little?”

Stat points available for redistribution:

Unspent points: 25

Strength: 4

Endurance: 5

Perception: 8

Agility:  6

Intelligence: 2

This time he took a little off his strength and endurance to add to perception, whilst keeping as much of his agility as he could. He was going to have to figure a way to shape his class, and his initial thoughts were to go for perception and agility. If he could boost his Critical Wound skill and then up his speed, then strength wouldn’t be as important for him.

Confirm class creation: Y/N

“Confirm,” he said.

It seemed like the other two guys were still creating their classes from the faraway looks on their faces, so he walked passed them without speaking as he crossed the room. Instead he joined the girl, who was stood by the armory now. She picked a large wooden staff from a weapons rack and tested the weight in her hands. It made a smacking sound as she moved it from palm to palm.

“Any idea what the hell is going on?” he said.

“You’re a newbie, aren’t you?” she answered.

“And from that, I take it that you aren’t?”

“I’ve been here before. Never thought they’d bring me back.”

“They? Who’s they?”

“You’ll find out,” she said. “All you gotta know right now is that soon, those doors over there are gonna open, and we’ll have to fight our first wave. So, when they do, be a big boy, grab a weapon, and kill whatever waits for us in the fighting pit.”

The doors she was talking about were ahead of him. They were twelve-foot-tall and made of solid black metal. There didn’t seem to be any other way out of the room.

“What are we supposed to be fighting?”

“Wave one will be something small,” she said. “Goblins, maybe, although I heard they’re phasing them out. Whatever it is, it’ll be designed to be tough, but we should have a decent chance as long as you and the other two aren’t completely useless. What’s your name?”

“Didier. You?”

“Angelina, but most people end up calling me Bitch. Listen, Didier. Forget about why you’re here, or what’s waiting for you back home. The only thing you gotta know is this; you’ve really pissed someone off. Over the coming months, we’re gonna have to go out into the fighting pits and fight waves of things. Creatures at first, and then people. Go out there enough and kill enough, and somebody will take a liking to you and buy you a pass home. But if you annoy the people who are watching, they’ll pay to add things to the pit against us, so be careful what you do.”

He decided he better get himself a weapon before the other guys did. The selection on the rack was pretty limited. There was an axe, a shortsword, and a dagger. The axe and the sword were out straight away; you didn’t emphasize an agile character and then choose something too heavy to swing.

He picked up the dagger. It was light enough that he’d be able to use it quickly, but it was blunt. If only there was a way of sharpening it up.

To the left of the armory he saw a large rectangle block of stone. When he was a kid, before he left and never came back, Didier’s father had taken on plenty of hunting trips. He knew what this stone was; it was a whetstone.

He started sharpening his dagger on it.

Skill Gained: Blade Sharpening LVL 1

With enough time, you can sharpen a blade enough to get an attack bonus.

It took him ten minutes, but with enough care he managed to get a finer point to the blade of his dagger.

Dagger Att increased from 5 to 6!

Blade Sharpening LVL 1 inc to 25%!

“Is there anywhere we can go level up before we face whatever this first wave is?” he asked.

Angelina faced him holding her staff. A dim orange flame burned at the top of it.

“Not yet. You always face the first wave blind, ignorant and unprepared.”

Blind, ignorant and unprepared wasn’t his style. He might not have been able to level up before the rifts wave but surely, he could do something?

He took his dagger to the whetstone and started sharpening it again.

Blade Sharpening skill too low; max attack reached.

Damn. So that wasn’t the way to do it. He went over to the armor again and picked up the axe. He sharped this as well as he could, and then moved onto the shortword. With both weapons as sharp as his skill would allow, he checked his stats again.

Blade Sharpening LVL1 – 75%

That mean he needed to sharpen just one more blade before levelling up his skill, but there were no more weapons. It seemed that everything in the room was designed for the four of them; four classes, and four weapons.

But hang on. Maybe there was something he could do.

He held his dagger and faced the stone wall. He struck the stone with his dagger, lightly at first, then harder when he realized it was working. Before long, a message appeared.

Blade damaged! Durability 3/4

After this he went back to the whetstone and started sharpening it…and then grinned.

Blade Sharpening Level up to level 2!