My lips were pulled taut into a wide smile as I poked a finger at my status screen, using it like an immaterial touchscreen to return to the initial menu.
[Danielle Starcrossed]
[Level: 1]
[Primary Class: Rogue]
[Status: Lightly Injured, 0/20 AP]
—
[Abilities: 1/5 slots assigned]
[Equipment: 2/5 slots assigned]
[Class Pool]
[Action Log]
I prodded a finger at the Abilities header, still unsure as to if my gesture did anything or if the weird gem was just responding to my intentions. Either way, a new page opened up.
[Abilities]
> Action 1: [Swift Strikes] (Rogue) - Make two attacks with briefly enhanced speed and dexterity. Can only be used with Skill weaponry. One minute cooldown.
> Action 2: Unassigned
> Action 3: Unassigned
> Passive 1: Unassigned
> Passive 2: Unassigned
“Well, plenty of room to grow, at least,” I said to myself. “I wonder if it’s a level-based system or if we earn abilities some other way?”
Fallon didn’t respond, not that I had really been directing the questions at her, or at anyone besides myself. She was busy poking through her own menus, so I continued doing the same. I backed out to the base menu, and opened the equipment tab instead.
[Equipment]
> Primary Weapon: [Basic Skill Weaponry] (Rogue) - Conjure starter light weapons, designed for use with the Skill class tree. Daily conjurations limited to: 1 [Shortbow], 20 [Wooden Arrows], 3 [Iron Daggers].
> Secondary Weapon: Unassigned
> Armor: [Light Armor] (Rogue) - Conjure light-weight leather armor. Provides 20 Armor Points (AP). Armor is destroyed once all points are consumed and can be conjured once per day.
> Accessory: Unassigned
> Accessory: Unassigned
I very firmly reminded myself that, despite any evidence to the contrary, this world was not a video game. It was truly, terribly, all-too-real. Despite that, I couldn’t help but get more and more intrigued as I read through my new abilities and equipment. The rules didn’t read quite like any game I had ever played, but they were close enough that I found myself with a similar feeling to starting to peel back the first layers of a new system.
“Only one tab left,” I told myself.
“Slow down,” Fallon complained, not looking up from her own, still-invisible, screen. “I’m still trying to figure out how my new spells work.”
Right. Fallon had used the cleric crystal, and apparently earned some spells in the process. “Take your time,” I told her, still grinning. “I’ll be here to help you when you’re ready.”
When she offered no response besides sticking out her tongue in my general direction, I returned to my own screen, and the last tab I had unlocked.
[Class Pool]
[Grade One Classes]
> Rogue
[Grade Two Classes]
> Archer (Locked)
> Thief (Locked)
“Hmm,” I hummed thoughtfully. “Grade One and Grade Two… So Rogue can promote to two different jobs. There must be more grades I can’t see, too. Wouldn’t be much of a system if you capped off that early.”
I turned my attention to the two remaining crystals still sitting loose on the altar. They could unlock warrior and mage, supposedly. Two more classes, with their own trees… did they cross over, too?
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That was always where my interest lay when I was playing games that bore some passing resemblance to this system. Staying with one class might’ve been easy, but it was when you started mixing and matching that really interesting things happened.
With Fallon still distracted, I couldn’t help myself. I reached forward to grab the mage crystal, sending it my mental assent just as I had given it to the rogue crystal minutes before.
Nothing happened.
I tried again, once more with absolutely zero results.
I scowled bitterly down at the crystal, and to my grand disappointment, that didn’t work either.
I turned my attention back to my little screen, and flicked back to the action log to see if it knew what was wrong.
> You have attempted to use [Identity Crystal: Mage].
> Attempt has failed. New classes cannot be unlocked until level 5.
> [Identity Crystal: Mage] is not consumed by this failed attempt
“Okay,” I told myself, “I need to be level five to unlock a new class, that makes sense.” As much as anything else did, at this point.
“What did you just try to do?” Fallon’s sudden question was like a whip crack.
I was boggled by her waspish tone. “I wanted to see if I could get another class,” I said, as if it was no big deal, because it obviously wasn’t. “It didn’t work, by the way. We need to level up first.”
Fallon sighed. “Okay. I guess we’ve got plenty to figure out for now at least, right?”
“I’ve got one new ability and a couple equipment choices. Light armor and some suitably rogue-ish weapons. What about you?”
“No weapons or armor,” she replied, her face crinkled by a frown. “Just two spells, and the thing that lets me cast them.”
“That’s what you get for choosing the most boring class in every single system ever,” I pointed out, earning another stuck out tongue for my absolutely correct opinion.
“Show me what you got instead, then,” Fallon suggested.
“You can’t handle what I’ve got, Fal.”
The girl replied with a flat look that only made me smile wider.
“Alright, let’s try a dagger!”
I held an empty hand out in front of me, and promptly felt like a dweeb as absolutely nothing happened.
“Well?”
“Give me a sec.” I focused on the shape of a dagger in my mind, and nothing continued to happen.
I scowled at my empty hand. “I had one really good moment, but now I’m getting real sick of anticlimaxes.”
“Performance issues?” Fallon suggested, in a tone mocking enough that I just had to glare at her for a second. That continued to produce nothing in the way of noticeable results, but it made Fallon smirk, which I liked.
“Conjure, dagger!” I said, staring at my hand expectantly. It was still empty. “Equip dagger?” Empty. “Dagger, appear!” Nope.
“This is starting to get sad.”
“I thought I asked you to give me a second?”
Fallon arched a golden brow, and mimed zipping her mouth shut.
I spent another moment’s concentration trying to glare at her, but I felt too silly to make it very convincing. Abandoning the effort as fruitless, I closed my eyes and turned inward instead, mentally prodding my brain in a sensation very similar to counting my own teeth with my tongue.
Only in this case, one of my teeth was made of gold, and that made it pretty easy to find. Burning away, somewhere between my conscious mind and my physical body, was a lump of energy, a condensed form of the same rush I had felt when I had first unlocked my new class. I pulled at this with my thoughts instead, and I could feel a little piece of the vague mass separate from it, floating off towards my body like a bubble of power. That bubble desperately wanted to have shape and form, it just needed some help.
“There we go…”
I opened my eyes at Fallon’s whispered words, and I saw the gray light that had begun to accumulate in my open hand. It didn’t take nearly as much effort to finish the process as it had to start it, and that light quickly condensed, becoming thicker and heavier and more defined, until I wrapped my hand around the soft hilt of a dagger.
Six inches of polished iron gleamed in the light of the dazzling crystals around us. The blade was straight, and I felt confident that the edge would be as razor sharp as if the dagger was fresh from a grinding wheel. Its shape reminded me of those military knives that they always had at smoke shops for some reason. I hefted it a little, and found that the dagger felt perfectly comfortable in my hand, as if it had been weighted specifically to my new body.
“Wow. That was almost worth the wait,” Fallon said, her intrigued smile giving lie to the understatement.
I felt the corner of my mouth twitch, and I couldn’t keep myself from pivoting, facing away from Fal and making a few slashes at the air. The dagger whistled as it cut through the empty light of the crystals, and my muscles rejoiced with the quick, sudden movements. “Alright, I can work with this.” I said. “Now it's the peanut gallery’s turn.”
I turned to give Fallon a superior grin, ready to watch her fumble the same way I had–and blanched as I saw light already congealing around her spread fingers. It took only seconds for her weapon to coalesce, revealing… a crystal remarkably similar to the one I had carried with me from the cave I first woke up in, if a bit more whole.
Fallon gave me a pleased look, which I responded to with another scowl. “Beginner’s luck.”
“Dani, we’ve both had our classes for literally the exact same amount of time.”
