Chương 62: [B2] Chapter 20: Classes

Team Solace stepped into their room in the same way they had on the floating island: as a unit, without discussion, each of them finding a position in the common area that left the others room without anyone having to ask for it. Ren came first, unhurried, the same steady attention he'd carried at the island back at the Shattered Peaks.

Behind him, Tova, the golem, had to angle her shoulders to clear the doorframe, stone-and-clay bulk settling into a seated position against the far wall that put her at roughly eye level with everyone else. Sable, the dark elf, half Tova's height with a carved wooden flute belted at her hip, immediately found a spot slightly behind Ren's left shoulder. Lastly, Finn, the halfling with a collapsed polearm slung across his back entered.

"You're alive," Ren said.

"Good. That was the first thing."

"Was there a second thing?" Viria asked.

"Several, actually. But the first one mattered most." Ren settled into a chair across from them.

"We finished the second leg on day nine, but your slot stayed empty on the board for a long time after that." Miho's ears shifted, catching the specific thing he hadn't said outright.

"You were watching our slot?"

"We check the boards. Yours in particular." Ren didn't dress it up.

"58th is a fine placement, though it is also considerably later than where you finished World 1, and the gap was long enough to be worth asking about in person rather than assuming."

"So… what happened to the rankings?" Yukito asked.

"We were preoccupied with the jungle actively trying to kill us."

"The top of the board changed less than you'd expect." Ren counted them off without needing to consult anything.

"Axiom is still, well, Axiom. Carrion is still Carrion, though they also placed considerably lower without any teams around them to take advantage of. And Throne is… still unpredictable.

"That matches World 1," Miho said.

"It does. What's new is the teams that have become worth naming since." Ren held up three fingers.

"To start with, there's Team Paragon."

"I've seen them on the leaderboard," said Viria. Ren nodded.

"They're well-coordinated, and seem genuinely decent to the teams around them. We've had two exchanges with them so far, and both were fair." Ren paused, and something in his face shifted toward a careful kind of honesty.

"Their leader is called Caspian. I want to be clear that I have nothing concrete to back up my gut feelings. He's polite, generous with information, and he's never given us a reason to suspect anything. But something about him reads wrong to me, and I've stopped ignoring that instinct since it started being right."

"Wrong… how?" Zero asked.

"If I could answer that, it would be concrete." Ren shook his head.

"I've spent time around people who perform sincerity. He doesn't perform it. It's more that his sincerity doesn't seem to cost him anything, and in my experience it costs everyone something. Take it as you will." Zero mentally noted the information.

"Second," Ren continued.

"Team Jewel. It consists of Ruby, Crystal, Jett, and Citrina. We've established friendly ties with them, and I'd extend the same recommendation to you. They're trustworthy, honor exchanges, and they've helped two teams that had nothing to offer in return. If you need a second team at your back at some point, they're the ones I'd approach."

"Noted," Miho said.

"The third team is… different." For the first time, Ren looked faintly amused.

"Team Fortune: All four of them are unnaturally lucky, but not skilled, per se. We watched their scout walk backward off a ledge and land on the one outcropping in forty meters of sheer drop. Their leader is fickle, and changes his mind about alliances halfway through conversations, so I would not rely on any agreement he makes. But they don't seem threatening, unless being near that much coincidence is a threat on its own."

"That's a real question," Finn said, speaking for the first time.

"I've been building a case that it isn't a class at all. Nobody's luck scales that hard."

"So what did your leg look like?" Ren asked.

"Ours was a scaled thing in a lush ravine system. Level 64, took most of a day."

"Ours was a Midnight Jaguar," Yukito said.

"Level 70." The words, Zero noted, were entirely true. He watched the same recalibration ripple through Team Solace that he remembered from the riverbank, the silent redistribution of information through four people who had learned to update together. Tova's head tilted fractionally. Sable's fingers went still on her flute.

"Level 70," Ren repeated.

"With what classes?"

"We haven't picked them yet," Viria said. The recalibration stopped being subtle.

"You haven't–" Finn sat forward so fast his polearm nearly knocked against the wall.

"You killed a level 70 apex predator while classless? All four of you?"

"That's correct, none of us have classes yet," Zero said.

"That… shouldn't be possible." Finn looked at Ren, then back.

"I mean it. Class skills are most of a build's ceiling below level sixty. Doing that on base kit alone is–" he made a frustrated gesture, "--that's not a good story, that's a math error." Nobody at Team Zero's side of the table said anything. Even Viria, who normally could not leave a silence unfilled for more than three seconds, took a slow drink of water and said nothing at all.

"We got lucky," Miho said finally, which was also, in a narrow and specific sense, true. Finn looked deeply unsatisfied by this. Ren watched all four of them for a moment longer than the answer required, and then, visibly, chose not to push.

"Well," he said.

"Then we arrived at a useful time. Show us what you've been offered." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Viria went first, flicking her selection window open without ceremony. Class Advancement — Viria Class: Rift Huntress Grade: Rare Stats Per Level: +3 INT, +1 WIL, +1 AGI, +3 Free Points Class Skills: Swift Shot Lv. 1, Tracker's Eye Lv. 1, Spatial Shot Lv. 1 Effect: Spatial Affinity improvement Finn made a small strangled noise.

"Rare? Wow."

"Is that unusual?"

"One in ten contestants sees a Rare option at all." He leaned in to read the skills' descriptions.

"Spatial Shot. It routes the arrow through subspace and it exits from a random vector. You'll want a quiver that feeds directly from whatever subspace inventory you have or you'll be reaching for arrows you've already fired."

"Already have one," Viria said. Finn stared at her.

"Of course you do. Good sponsor, huh?" Viria nodded.

"The question isn't whether to take it," Ren said.

"It's what taking it commits you to. Rift Huntress builds toward Intelligence, not Strength. You will never be the person who wins a fight by drawing a heavier bow. Everything you gain from here scales off precision and positioning." Viria considered that for exactly as long as it took to remember three days of shaky hands and a bow she'd refused for five years.

"Good," she said.

"I've had enough of doing things because someone assumed I'd be strong at them."

Yukito's window drew a longer silence. Class Advancement: Yukito Class: Shadow Arbiter Grade: Rare+ Stats Per Level: +5 Shadow Energy, +3 Free Points Class Skills: Shadow Hold Lv. 1, Umbral Step Lv. 1, Shadow Switch Lv. 1 Effect: Shadow Affinity improvement"The plus means every point goes to the unique stat, not necessarily that it's rarer," Ren said.

"Which means your physical stats are entirely dependent on where you distribute your free points. You'll be a glass cannon, essentially. A good hit could ruin you."

"Umbral Step handles that," Yukito said.

"Short-range teleport through dim light."

"Through dim light," Tova said. Her voice was low and unhurried, the first thing she'd contributed, and everyone turned to hear it.

"In a bright room, or an open field at noon, you will have no exits. Personally, I would want to know that before I chose it, not after."

"That's fair," Yukito admitted.

"It is also survivable," Tova admitted, "if the people beside you know it. I am the wall for my team. Someone must be the wall for yours, and after this, it cannot be you." Zero registered that as the single most useful thing anyone had said in the last hour.

Miho's window was the one that stopped the room. Class Advancement — Miho Class: Moonfox Avenger Grade: Epic+ Stats Per Level: +10 Qi, +5 Free Points Class Skills: Adaptive Hallucination Lv. 1, Moonslice Lv. 1, Illusion Blade Arts Lv. 1 Effect: Qi regeneration improved Sable made a soft sound. It was the first noise she'd made since sitting down.

"Epic," Ren said quietly.

"That's roughly one percent. Your team's lineup is crazy."

"Illusion Blade Arts…" Miho said wistfully.

"That's the name my clan uses to— used to—describe sword techniques that were integrated with illusion work." Her hand had gone still on the table.

"My grandmother always said she'd teach me once I got my second tail."

"Then you should know what it costs," Ren said after giving Miho a moment of silence. There was something in his voice that Zero recognized as one cultivator speaking to another.

"You get ten points per level, all into Qi. Nothing into your body aside from your free points. You are a duelist, Miho; you close distance, you hold a line, you take hits that would cripple other people. This class does not make you better at any of that. It makes you a caster who happens to hold a sword."

"I have a Rare option that spreads out stats," Miho said slowly.

"It has physical scaling and a footwork skill. I would have picked this class a month ago without hesitating."

"I'd like to hear your argument," said Ren.

"If you don't mind sharing, of course." Miho was quiet for a long moment.

"In the jungle," she said, still looking at the window, "the thing that actually mattered wasn't my blade. It was my illusion that allowed us to survive." Her third tail shifted behind her, still uncertain of itself.

"I spent my whole life being told the sword was the pinnacle of my clan's power, and illusions were auxiliary at best, but none of the sword forms I was taught were what allowed us to be in this room." She looked up.

"I'll be fragile. I'd rather be fragile and be the reason a plan works than be durable and be a wall we already have."

"Then take it," Ren said.

"But drill your footwork every day you're not fighting. Qi will not catch a blade for you."

"I know."

They came to Zero last, and Zero had already decided how this part would go.

"I'm still weighing mine," he said.

"You've had the same night we have," Finn said.

"What's the holdup?"

"I have three options and none of them resolve cleanly against the others. I'd rather spend a few hours on it than commit badly." He let the pause sit exactly long enough.

"I don't intend to make a decision that permanent in a room this crowded." This was the first time Zero had ever outright lied. He was no stranger to not telling the whole truth, but he had never said something untrue while knowing it to be so. Until now. Ren looked at him for a moment. Zero swore he could hear his heart thumping, even though his ears were currently at the baseline.

"That's reasonable," Ren said at last, though Zero was not certain whether he'd been believed. However, he had not pressed further, which was ultimately the outcome he wanted. As the rest of Team Solace left, Sable paused at the threshold to say quietly, to Miho, without quite making eye contact, "Illusion Blade Arts sounds cool." Then she flushed, glanced at Ren's back, and hurried after him. The door shut behind her.

Zero went to his room. He opened the window, alone. The class option that he hadn't shown anyone was still waiting where it had been since he woke. Class Advancement — Zero Class: Trait Devourer Grade: Legendary+ Stats Per Level: +15 Anima, +10 Free Points Class Skills: Devour Lv. 1, Trait Memory Lv. 1, Trait Cohesion Lv. 1 Effect: Anima Quality improvement He read the skills' description. Devour was for assimilation of specific traits from a slain target.

Trait Memory was the bio-memory of how that trait had been used, transferred with it. Lastly, Trait Cohesion improved the efficiency of multiple traits operating in tandem. He thought about the laboratory, which had spent nearly two decades trying to make him precisely this, and had failed. Zero then thought about how he was ultimately the one who managed to bring about the change. He selected the option, and the window expanded.

Class Advancement Confirmed: Trait Devourer System Trait: Race Evolution: Prerequisite Met Chimerian (Modified Being) → Changeling Species rank advancement initiated. Please do not resist. Zero had time to register the phrase do not resist, and note, with the detached clarity that had followed him through every worst moment of his life, that nobody had asked whether he consented to this part, before his skin began to move all at once.