Chương 6: Classes

We spend the next several hours practicing and upping our skills. I was right about Alertness; Vinny picks it up pretty quickly when he starts trying to hear me sneak up on him. I'm successful in my sneaking more often than I'm not, but my level of the skill is a bit higher than his. It only takes me about twenty minutes to gain Sneak 5, and by the time Vinny is up to Alertness 3, my Sneak is up to seven. When we stop our practice, I'm faced with a prompt asking me if I want to become a rogue.

I accept, because why wouldn't I? I'm not qualified for any other classes, and I want to see what it means to be a rogue. New Class: Thief. Progress: Pick locks 3/6, Scrounge 2/5, Sneak 7/8, Throwing 4/5 New Class: Pathfinder. Progress: Animal Harvesting 3/3, Alertness 1/3, Bow 0/3, Scrounge 2/5, Sneak 7/8, Tracking 0/3. New Class: Investigator. Progress: Alertness 1/3, Pick Locks 3/5, Scrounge 2/5, Throwing 4/6.

As a Rogue, your thrown weapons use your agility rather than strength (whichever is higher) for determining damage. Your rogue abilities will improve more easily and will be more effective when used. Okay, that's pretty cool. My strength is higher, but it's good to know that I can focus on agility. That'll raise my defense while I'm at it, and that makes the points I spend doubly effective. I like that. Anything else? Sneak Attack: As a Rogue, your sneak attack now deals x3 maximum damage.

Gain sneak attack any time an enemy is unaware of you or is flanked by your ally. That leaves me with a lot of options, such as letting someone else practice their stealth while I try to be aware of it, and a need to get my hands on a bow. Throwing knives are all well and good, but their range is really short. More than twenty feet or so and they become wildly inaccurate, losing the power to do any real damage when they hit anyway.

And they only do 1-4 damage to begin with, which really isn't all that much, even with the agility boost or the strength boost. A bow would be able to fire for three or four times that range, and with pretty good accuracy. The girls have all learned the dodge they need, but want to keep practicing to get ready for their higher level classes. Like me, they unlocked three new classes when they achieved their initial classes.

So they want to keep practicing, at least for a while, to improve their sword skills and their dodge skills. I can't think of a better skill to have than dodge, and we do have that skills quest, so I'm all for helping them out. My agility is not as high as I want it to be. That much is clear after the third time I'm slapped with the flat of a long sword. I want to parry or defend myself some other way, but I'm dodging duty, so I don't even have a weapon in my hand.

I do pick up the levels of dodge pretty quickly, at which point I realize I am exactly one skill point away from completing that quest. Once we've all go thirty skill points, I think it'll be fair for us to go out hunting again, to see what a difference being in a class makes and to try to complete the other quests that we still have. The time is running out on the tutorial level, and I'd like to finish as many of the quests as possible, in case those quests don't follow us to the next world.

Or in case they do, but can never be completed. That would be annoying, to say the least. My thirtieth skill point ends up being in dodge, which I'm okay with. I don't need dodge for any of my classes, but I imagine it will help me in combat enough that I don't care. Plus it means I'm two levels of sword away from qualifying for fighter, in case I want to multiclass or change classes, depending on what's allowed. I know I'm going to get those two levels, so I'm not really concerned about training them just yet.

When I complete the skillful quest, a new quest pops up in its place. Quest: Skill Mastery. Learn 75 skills. Progress: 30/75. Reward: 2000 experience That's going to take a while, and is not something I'm willing to sit here and work on. I need out of this pizzeria. We have one day and four hours left of the tutorial, and I don't intend to spend them all just sitting around practicing skills. It might be a good strategy, danger wise, but it's not one that I'm going to champion.

There's a lot to be said for grinding skills. Higher skills make us more dangerous in combat, and make combat less dangerous for us. If we go ahead and get all our skills to really high levels, we could qualify for bigger and better classes, which presumably have more and better abilities. We could potentially leave the pizzeria being effectively several levels higher than we actually are, at least when it comes to comparing skills.

Plus, if we somehow manage to get another forty five levels of abilities over the next day or so, we could all level up at least once, if not twice over. But it's so boring. Yeah, that's the basis of my argument. Sitting around and training each other in skills might be an effective way to avoid danger and to boost our potential for survival, but it's boring. Another thing that makes us more likely to survive is leveling up, and that only happens when we kill monsters.

Or, at least, it happens more quickly when we kill monsters. We also are more likely to get better equipment, find more treasure, and generally grind our way to more power. Grinding is an okay thing to do, but we should grind for experience, not just skills. I'm all ready to make cogent arguments about this, to bring up points and precedence from games and movies, to plead my case with passion and with aplomb. But when I say "I think we should go back out there," I don't get a sea of disagreement.

I don't get four faces that I have to persuade. Instead, I get nods of agreement.

"Yeah, I was just thinking that," El says, stretching her neck out.

"I'm itching to get a few more kills under my belt before this tutorial thing ends." So much for an argument. We head out. Instead of looking to the next building, we start looking around specifically for monsters. I look around at the ground, trying to find some sense of their tracks, hoping to get the tracking skill for my efforts even if I don't actually find anything.

We start following scrapes in the pavement that look to me like they may have been made by giant mantis claws, listening to the air for that chittering sound that they make. I don't know what they smell like; last time I fought any of them, I was so covered in lynxith blood that there was no other scent making it to my nose. But I try to focus on the world around us, and try to follow the trail in the hopes of landing us a giant mantis we can defeat. Giant Mantis, level 5 Common Advanced monster. HP: 75.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. They've leveled up? Well, I guess that makes sense. We've leveled up too. And there are three of them and five of us, so I think we can take them. The only real problem with them leveling up is that they have more hit points than they used to, while our attacks don't do all that much more damage. Although, my sneak attack dealing triple damage when I'm flanking an enemy is a pretty significant change, so maybe it all balances out.

"Spread out and flank them!" I say, drawing my sword. I don't think we're going to need me to work on ranged attacks until there's just one of them remaining. The ranged attacks don't do nearly as much damage as the melee strikes do, and we're not running into any issue of being crowded, so I don't feel bad. I wait until I'm directly behind one of the mantises, the one that Ashley is taunting by banging on her shield, so that it pays attention to her rather than me. It's a perfect set up, really.

The mantis keeps looking at her when she bangs the shield, and that means it's not looking at me. So I hit it for 63 damage, and when it turns all its attention to me, Ashley takes it out.

"Nice combo," she says, turning her attention to another of the mantises and starting to bang her shield. I realize that the shield banging isn't just a tactic. It has to be some kind of ability like sneak attack. Maybe it forces the enemy to pay attention to her, or at least makes it more likely to focus its attacks on her, leaving me with the option of sneaking around back and absolutely decimating the thing with one good strike, killing it completely if I take the time to do a back swing strike.

The third one falls easily enough, the others having whittled away at it while Ashley and I took out the other two. I check my quest log. That's only five of these things that I've killed. Good to know that I got credit for all three of them, though. I wonder how many the rest of the gang needs to kill. Am I on the low end, or am I average? I know that they don't seem to be a real threat to us, as long as we outnumber them.

And they seem to travel only in groups of three or fewer, so it's not hard for us to keep going, tracking them down and wiping them out. Within about three hours, we've killed enough of them to complete the quest. And while we were at it, my sword skill improved to 5 and my Tracking skill was both learned and improved to level 2. And speaking of levels, I gained one of those too. At level seven, I have four stat points to spend. I decide to put one into Vigor and the rest into Agility.

This improves my hit points to 105 and my Defense score to 26. And leaves me about eight hundred and fifty experience away from the next level. I don't know why I do that. Rather than basking in the fact that I'm level seven, and still the highest level of our group, I just focus on the next level, on how much it's going to take for me to reach level eight. I should really be just proud that I'm level seven, and not worry about the next one. After all, everyone else is just level five at this point.

I'm still two whole levels ahead of them. I won't be forever, but I'll always be a good chunk of experience ahead of them, at least if we keep traveling together. Yet I'm not here celebrating that. I'm just waiting for the next level, to see what else I can get, to see what I can do to make myself even stronger. That's the nature of games, though. When you gamify something like personal ability, then you can see the ladder. And climbing up one rung just shows you the rungs that you haven't seen yet.

I don't know how high levels go, but I know that they go at least to level eight. And presumably, when I get to level eight, I'll find out that they go at least to nine, and so on. Hopefully forever, or at least long enough that I never know what the top level of anything is. The sun is setting when we finish leveling up, and we have to decide what to do as far as sleeping.

Do we go into another apartment building and try to sleep in beds, or do we keep going into the city and just break into another building and find somewhere defensible for us to stay.

"All we need to make sure we do is keep watch," Vinny says.

"I say we try to find that occult book store, see if it's defensible. Then we can maybe have a place to stay and I can try to gain a few levels of spellcraft."

"Sounds like a plan to me," El says.

"Maybe we'll find a lynxith or twelve on the way."

"I wonder if I could cook one of those," Ashley says, adjusting her shield and her sword as she walks.

"Which way to the store?" I take point and start to lead everyone towards the occult store. I'm only halfway sure I know where it is. I'm pretty sure I know the street, but I couldn't tell you where on the street it is. I just hope that when we get to that row of shops, we'll be able to find the occult store without any difficulty. We're at the corner of Lyndale and Lake.

There are two sex stores clearly visible, which makes me think we should consider looking there for some leather, either materials or straight out armor. There's a jewelry store, which we might want to ransack for the jewels within as a sort of additional funding source. We don't know what the silver pieces are worth, but we do know that more valuable things, more money, is better than less. And then, next to the jewelry store, is the occult shop. But we'll get there after we've looted these other three stores.

The first of the sex stores, the Smitten Kitten, seems to be a more delicate and friendly sex shop. Which is to say that while they do have some items made of leather, they aren't the full body gimp suits that we find in the second store, Bondesque. The Kitten has a few whips, which none of us feel qualified to use, and a few leather hoods, but not much else that can actually be used for our purposes. There are plenty of dildos and other sex toys, but those aren't going to help us.

Well, they're not going to help me. I don't care if the others took a toy or two; I'm not here to judge. Bondesque seems more designed for the hard core fetishist. There are shackles and cuffs, pillories and full body leather clothing. It's the full body clothing that matters. Leather pants, leather vests, leather bracers. There are leather dresses and skirts as well. I take all the leather clothing I can find, hoping to spend some time tonight to turn what we have into something actually useful.

"You ever notice how everyone in the post apocalyptic wasteland is dressed like they raided a shop like this?" El says as she gathers a bunch of chains and ropes for us to pick through later and see if they are useful.

"It's one of the only places to find leather worked into the shape of clothing," I point out.

"It's the easiest armor that people can find."

"Or it's the kinksters who survive the apocalypse," El says, laughing to herself. At the jewelry store, we find another safe. It's actually a wall of safes, six of them each with key holes that look like they take a special kind of key. I get to work picking locks while the others go with smash and grab techniques, taking everything out of the display cases and laughing as they do it. I've always wanted to do a smash and grab. I hope no one cuts themselves on the glass.

I get the first door open, and just move on to the second door, figuring I'll loot the whole thing when I'm done, when the system tells me that I've finished picking the lock. It's ridiculous to expect to get two hundred and fifty experience for each of the locks, isn't it? That's enough for me to level just from unlocking the safe. I pause for a second after I finish the second lock, but there is no notification, no thrum of the world that tells me that I've leveled up. So I get back to it.

Once the third lock comes undone, the others fall relatively quickly. I don't know whether it's just because I'm getting better at picking locks – my skill goes up to 5 – or it's because I'm getting the hang of these locks, or just that the last few locks I played with are easier to undo, but I do get the rest of the locks open one after another, each one seemingly faster than the last. You have opened a Steel chest! You gain 500 experience. Gold pieces x10, Silver pieces x50, gems x50, Magic crystals x3.

It's a different kind of chest. So it is worth more experience than an iron chest, but not as much as six of them. I'll definitely take the experience that I get, and we'll see how people want to share out the loot that I found compared to the loot that they got from the fun of smashing the cases. I guess we'll figure it out once we clear out the occult store.