Packaged with his [Status] was one of the most intense, sudden onset headaches that Merrick had ever felt in his entire life. Out of reflex, he stumbled backwards and fell into the purple chair he’d just vacated, legs draped over one of it’s arms as his arms flailed to maintain his odd posture on the seat.
After making sure he wasn’t going to fall to the ground, his arms stopped windmilling, and his hand went straight to his eyes where he applied pressure to make sure they weren’t about to pop out of his skull like they felt.
Amidst the sensation of someone shoveling the grey matter out of his cranium, Merrick began trying to decipher what he was feeling. His [Status] had popped up but been illegible, almost instantly petering out just to flicker in and out of his vision. He then noticed that it wasn’t just his [Status] but also the analog [Skill Log] that his innate skill granted him.
Between shouts and cries of pain, Merrick theorized that perhaps the two different functions were fighting for control. He’d never heard of something like that before, but he’d also never found any sign that any other skill gave someone the same level of verbose output that his [Skill Log] did. He’d not even found a hint of anyone having a function remotely close to their [Status] page, the idea of a skill displaying the information in a similar readable format was unheard of.
With nothing else he could do, Merrick realized he just had to wait out the pain. Vaguely, he thought that he could feel the strange bramblekin cat creature licking away his face and decided he would focus on that.
‘One lick, Two licks, OW, ….’ So on and so forth until finally, the pain in his head subsided. Strangely enough, neither of the two different abilities fought its way to the forefront of his mind, seemingly waiting for him to acknowledge one or the other first.
“[Skill Log],” Merrick said aloud. He didn’t usually have to say a skill’s name out loud to invoke it, but he found that it helped focus his intent and usually resulted in a shorter response time. Considering how shell-shocked he was feeling in that moment, he didn’t want to risk accidentally thinking about both functions at the same time and restarting the violent cycle.
[Unknown contaminant redetected, deploying containment and countermeasures.]
[Unknown energy source captured. Security alert sent.]
[Connection request received. Admin Remote Access Granted]
[Event contained. Holding energy source in quarantine pending Class Selection or Rejection.]
[Please refrain from further events until next long rest. Also, you’ve only got about five minutes until you need to vacate this trial. Use your time wisely.]
Merrick blinked twice slowly shook his head, almost dislodging the cat that had made its way over to stand on his chest while he was draped across the chair.
The weird errors were already back after having just experienced them not thirty minutes prior while trying to over-extend his innate skill. Annoyingly, when he looked above the most recent entries in his [Skill Log] the only message remaining from the previous incident was ‘[Chaos Roll! Catastrophic Failure diverted. Critical Success! Polymorphic Ferreofolium Groveberry merged. See More…]’.
One of the entries he’d just received also felt like a very personalized message, compared to the efficient output of the other lines. He started to get the feeling that the so-called “Admin Remote’ might be another person, or perhaps something stronger than that.
He didn’t like the implications that might have for his innate skill, but there also wasn’t much he could do about that. The church had long-since argued that the innate skills weren’t just granted randomly, as much as the kids liked to call the process a ‘grab-bag’ or ‘luck check’, and that one or more gods were collaborating to pass out blessings to chosen individuals.
Lacking visible evidence for that theory, Merrick had never bought into it the way someone like James had. If anything, the attitudes displayed by the individuals who thought themselves ‘blessed’ by the innate skills had made him shy farther away from that theory. Why would gods choose such pompous jerks to bless, he’d think to himself.
Still, if this Admin Remote thing that had now appeared in his [Skill Log] was, in fact, a thinking entity that had some variety of access to his innate skill, something he was told was tied to his very soul, he couldn’t think of much else it could be other than a god. Merrick scribbled a note to subtly dig into the name, or perhaps title, for more information.
“Unknown contaminant again, though? That’s just plain weird. I didn’t even drink any weird potions this time,” Merrick frowned at the messages, determined to digest them properly this time and memorize them to the best of his ability. He hadn’t realized his [Skill Log] had the ability to erase prior entries, doubly so without his consent, but he felt more validated than ever for his rigorous note keeping habits.
“[Status],” Merrick intoned after deciding he’d spent too much time on the memorization already. The log had warned him that he only had five minutes left in the trial. Assuming the trial meant whatever the dungeon was doing to justify his kidnapping, using context clues of course, he wanted to figure out why his head had almost split itself open and still have time to investigate the awfully ‘treasure-y’ looking chest that had appeared.
Rather than fully populate his [Status] as he’d attempted to, Merrick’s vision was instead filled with a sight that he’d seen a few times previously.
[Class Offering(s):
Bramblekin Herder. See More...
Wooden Warrior. See More...
Grove Tender. See More...
Anima Channeler. See More...
Druid of the Mulberry Grove. See More…]
It’d been a while since the last time his [Status] tried to impress a class upon him, but Merrick still remembered the basics about class selection.
Essentially, class selection was supposed to act like the great equalizer between those who received innate skills and those who didn’t, allowing anyone who qualified for a class to gain bonuses in related skills by aligning them with a path.
A path was, as it sounded, a metaphorical guideline for someone’s class progression. If a baker was offered and then accepted a class related to baking, then all of his skills relating to creating baked goods would level easier and he’d find himself drawn more and more into the hobby. A side effect would be him having a harder time attaining or leveling a sword-based skill, as it wouldn’t synergize with his new path.
Class selection was also how one was supposed to increase their ‘level’, which is the way the [Status] measured an individual’s ability to impress their existence on their surroundings. A peerless swordsman with a high level would feel like a naked blade when someone looked at him and could potentially slice a leaf in half by looking at it by leveraging his sword path.
Merrick was one of the few people who awoke an innate skill and one of the fewer still who had an associated path with said skill, and that had made his class selection somewhat impossible to date.
In an ideal world, he would have been offered and then selected a class that aligned with his innate skill’s path. Accepting anything other than that would have an adverse effect either on his innate skill or his class granted skills. Someone who had an innate ‘baking’ skill and accepted a class based on swordplay would likely be average, at best, at both of those paths, for example.
As for Merrick, his status read ‘Path: Hybrid/Crafting’, but he’d not been able to figure out what exactly the hybrid part stood for which prevented him from rashly accepting any of the classes he’d qualified for.
Obviously, he knew hybrid was a mix of one or more categories, but he had always feared accepting a class like alchemist, which had been his most recently offered one, and locking himself out of ever effectively using his innate skill. He could be a great alchemist, he knew, but he believed that someone’s innate skill was something awoken within them not granted externally. Whatever his innate skill was, it was part of his soul, and he didn’t want to neglect that.
All that being considered, Merrick had never had so many classes offered to him at once. Usually, it was one at a time, offered through the [Status] when someone reached a bare minimum threshold for base qualifying skills or accomplished some sort of related feat. Crafting a perfect potion would offer the Alchemist class just the way leveling the base skills up to 10 would.
Having five offered at once must have been due to the feat of finishing whatever the ‘trial’ had been designed for him to do. Perhaps it was even part of his reward from the dungeon, like those mythical tales of a god snatching up a mortal to go through a series of tests and then granting them a divine class.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Either way, Merrick wasn’t exactly hopeful that any of the classes would align perfectly with his path. He was even less likely to accept a class now that he knew part of what his innate skill was supposed to do. With leads to chew on and several more terms in his [Skill Log] to decipher, he wasn’t willing to commit himself to anything until he knew the extent of what he could do.
Still, it wouldn’t do good to ignore the proffered class descriptions, so Merrick triggered them one at a time to determine of any were powerful enough to convince him to forgo, if not entirely, his innate skill.
[Bramblekin Herder: Through might, magic, breeding or bribery, you have proven yourself capable of doing what only the most knowledgeable of foresters would claim to be able. You have managed to tame the bramblekin, forcing the incarnated will of the unruly, prickliest, shrubs to bend to your will.
Accepting this class would allow you to bind bramblekin to your will, allowing for more complex commands to your tamed beasts.
Unlocked Skill(s): Nurture Bramblekin, Bind Bramblekin, Splice Bramblekin, Propagate Bramblekin
This class would have you following the path of a Tamer/Warrior with possible evolutions down the line based on performance and skill growth.]
Merrick couldn’t help but wonder what he’d done to qualify for the specific class. Obviously it was a no-go, since even if removing bramblekin from the dungeon was strictly prohibited, he didn’t intend on staying in the Steelhearth Stronghold. One way or another, Merrick was skipping town as soon as possible.
“Mew,” his feline friend began licking at his chin again, almost as if able to sense that Merrick was thinking about it’s kin. Briefly, Merrick wondered if the creature was considered by his [Status], or whatever power governed it, to be tamed by him. Perhaps in some twisted way, his merging the different horns together was considered ‘breeding’ the monster.
It was an interesting thought, since that would mean that monster taming was one of the categories rolled into the ‘hybrid’ reflected in his [Status]. He couldn’t imagine that his skill would work as a taming/breeding skill in any scenario outside of a dungeon spawn though, considering the high level of symmetry required for the [Merge] components.
“Moving on…”
[Wooden Warrior: They say that the best way to fight fire is with fire, which has proven to be scientifically true, some of the time. You heard that and decided that applying the same-on-same logic in new scenarios was worth testing and discovered the path of wood on wood. Your fingers mold wood as if it were clay and set it as though it were iron.
If this class is accepted, you’ll be able to turn any stick into a weapon, transform a log into a wonderful workbench, or weaving the weakest twigs into a basket several times hardier than it should be, enhancing every aspect. Never again will you want for gear as you survive off the land, needing not humanity nor its destructive crafting.
Unlocked Skill(s): Fletching, Whittling, Carving, Mold Wood, Harden Wood, Transmute Wood
This class would have you following the path of a Woodworker/Hybrid with possible evolutions down the line based on performance and skill growth.]
“Interesting, so this classes’ restrictions seem to be based on the materials I use. If I’m interpreting it correctly, anything I do with wood would be enhanced greatly. I wonder if that applies to merging wood products as well, or if it’d just be the crafting…” Merrick trailed off as he became acutely aware of how uncomfortably his brambleblade was pressing into his side with his weird posture.
Perhaps if he wanted to live as a ranger like Rod and his father, which he’d considered heavily while planning to skip town, the class would be worth accepting. He could even see it allowing him to work with plants, eventually, like he’d done during the dungeon trial, or even evolving to be some sort of offshoot of the ranger class considering the combat ability implications.
Still, it was eliminated from the running for the same reason he’d decided he wanted to migrate to a frontier settlement rather than live in the wilds around the stronghold. He was a sucker for his creature comforts and confining himself to a woodsman’s life wasn’t for him.
He also wanted to see what kind of nonsense his innate skill could get up to with materials that weren’t plant based and the class description’s several references to wooden materials told him that there’d almost certainly be a negative impact on anything he attempted to work with or on with tools made out of anything other than wood.
“What a shame, all around enhancement classes are considered pretty rare and are always powerful. Especially the ones that are based on an element, though only the eastern human strongholds really consider wood to be an element... Oh well, on to the next one. I’m running out of time as it is,” Merrick said aloud for his feline friend.
He’d been reading the class descriptions out loud for the cat as well, since he figured from the heavy purring that the creature enjoyed the interaction. He was thankful again for his [Speed Reading] skill, which he was pretty sure was close to leveling. Reading a status was almost always instantaneous, since the knowledge was literally printed into his brain, but the comprehension speed bonus from his skill made sure he was able to digest the nuances of the class descriptions rather quickly.
Merrick stood up from the chair, keeping the cat cradled in his left arm this time, and rolled his shoulders as he walked toward the weird ivory colored platform of runes. He had plenty of time to check the last three class descriptions as he walked and decided his head felt better enough that he could multitask and ‘read’ while he walked.
[Grove Tender: Through unconventional means, you’ve proven yourself a great caretaker of plant life. Even specialized classes of the highest tiers would find it difficult to bring out the latent potential in their surrounding nature the way you managed to. There are truly few in this realm that could pour their mind, heart, and soul into the work like you do.
Accepting this class would increase the efficiency in which you are able to encourage hybrid growth and evolution within your own grove.
Unlocked Resource(s): Static Domain
Unlocked Skill(s): Whispers of the Woods, Sanctuary, Dragon Vein Eyes
This class would have you following the path of a Druid/Hybrid with possible evolutions down the line based on performance and skill growth.]
Merrick almost stumbled again as he processed what the description was telling him. A class that unlocked a resource pool was always something considered to be the gold standard of classes. He even knew what the ‘Domain’ resource was, having run across the description a few times.
“It’s a shame that it’s a static domain effect, rather than anchored or egocentric. See, little kitty, a static domain is one that is attached to a specific area in the world. In this case, I’d likely need to stake out a claim on a wooded area and grow it to walk farther down my path. Unfortunately, that means if anything happened to my ‘grove’ then my path would falter and my path would suffer greatly. Of course, the inverse is also true. As long as I was willing to live in my grove, I’d be almost unstoppable there. It’d essentially artificially inflate my level, making any of my skills or spells in the area significantly stronger than my adversaries.
“If it was an Anchored Domain unlocked, it means it’d be attached to an object. You mostly see those with weapon-based classes, like a sword savant having a soul bound sword. They tend to be able to improve their weapons over time, either through killing or crafting, and their skills that channel or leverage their weapon are exponentially stronger than the otherwise would be.
“Finally, there’s egocentric domain. I’m not sure if I’d actually want that one, even if it is considered the strongest. Your domain attached to your soul, basically, and it tends to warp the way someone views themselves. You’d have to be extremely self-confident to leverage it correctly, but almost anything you do just does more. It doesn’t sound like it makes sense, because it doesn’t really. I hear that one mostly pops up with things like cult leader classes and other social classes,” Merrick finished lecturing his good little student and kept walking.
That was two classes in a row now that would have him benefit from living in the wilderness, three if you counted the fact that the first would be encouraging him to stay in the dungeon where the other two would work as well. It was to be expected, considering it was the dungeon trial completion that qualified him for the three, but it was still slightly annoying because none of them seemed to have anything to do with the path his innate skill wanted to set him down.
Just from the name of the fifth one, he had the feeling it would be more of the same. Still, he was skipping the queue. He mentally triggered the fourth class description, the one he was most excited about due to the title.
[Anima Channeler: Messing with the soul is never advised for those who are a low level. Although one of the most powerful sources of energy to be harnessed, the soul is extremely fragile and prone to irreparable damage.
You have managed to tinker with the building blocks of your own soul and survive the folly, even if only by the skin of your teeth.
Accepting this class would grant you formal access to your Anima reserves, ideally preventing another near self-termination. It would also grant you the ability to better interact with the anima of those surrounding you, with or without their consent.
Be wary, a connection of souls will always flow both ways, no matter how lopsided the tether.
Unlocked Resource(s): Anima, Egocentric Domain
Unlocked Skill(s): Channel Anima, Soul Trance, Soul Tether, Harvest Anima
This class would have you following the path of Self-Determination with possible evolutions down the line based on performance and skill growth.]
“Anima,” Merrick whispered the word to himself. He’d seen the word before a few times, but only ever within his [Skill Log]. Anima dust was one of the components he occasionally received when failing to merge components of organic origin, like fruits and vegetables. It was also one of the primary ingredients in his rejuvenation potion.
He’d never managed to find the word written down in any publicly available texts and he realized why almost instantly. If the class description wasn’t lying, and as far as he was concerned they weren’t able to, then anima had strong ties to the soul. A taboo subject for any commoner who worked outside of the church.
A side-eye at the unlocked skills gave a strong indication as to why as well. Not only did the entire description read as something between a strong chastisement and a blatant warning sign, the skills unlocked looked like Anima Channeler might just be two shakes short of an outright necromancer. Walking around eating souls to get stronger, didn’t sound like his idea of a good time either.
Still, he was going to tentatively mark down ‘anima’ in his lexicon as ‘soul energy’ and he was giddy to know that the ‘unknown resource’ pool, as he’d been referring to it, was an anima pool. He also knew his [Status] would be able to track it so he could quantify it, eventually. He even had leads on how to manually unlock the resource pool, he thought to himself as he made note of the associated skill names.
Finally, Merrick prompted the final class to display itself, ready to read his way through it quickly and move on to the loot chest before his so called ‘trial’ ended. He imagined it was going to be his fifth and final rejection based on its name, though he was curious as to why the name of the dungeon was transcribed in the class name.
[Druid of the Mulberry Grove: Become the Dungeon Lord of the Mulberry Grove, binding your soul tightly with it’s core.
Accepting this class will bind you to the Mulberry Grove, growing as it does and faltering where it falls. Having proven yourself capable of elevating the dungeon beyond its natural capabilities, it is willing to offer you an equal share of its power.
Unlocked Resource(s): Dungeon Influence
Unlocked Ability(-ies): Dungeon Spawn Interface, Dungeon Layout Interface
Unlocked Skill(s): Channel Leyline, Spawn, Modify
This class would have you following the path of a Management/Dungeon Lord. Any evolutions to this class would be tied to evolutions to the host dungeon.]
