New Blood

A town guard walked by an ordinary alley, turning his head as he noticed a vile smell. Cautiously walking towards the rancid odor, he gripped his spear tight. He knew this smell well - it was death.

Approaching the source of the smell, it got worse as he got closer to a shocking mess.

It disgusted the guard as he looked over a blossoming flower of desiccated flesh surrounding a pile of ash-white bones.

Ugh, his face twisted. He couldn’t hold back his vomit. Leaving the alley, he wondered if he should report it or not.

Hmm… Probably just some new adventurers testing out their skills. It’s not a human corpse so I won’t bother reporting it, but we should mention not to practice spells like that in town. Interesting skill though.... Explosive magic, maybe? I hope I never cross them, he thought. Even though he had only walked around the corner, a shiver ran up his spine as he had an instant flashback of what he just witnessed.

On the other side of town, Jay suddenly had the urge to grin mischievously.

“Huh, weird.” Jay shrugged.

***

It was early morning of the 9th and not afternoon of the 7th, as Jay had previously thought. After he missed his ‘day of awakening’, and slept through the rest of yesterday to recover, he had lost his only chance to access a mana conduit and gain his class - yet he had become a necromancer.

However, he could do nothing but accept this class, and the problem facing him now was if he wanted access to the dungeon maps or to sell any loot, he would need to register as an adventurer, meaning they would find out about his forbidden class.

Thoughts kept running through Jay’s head, as he wondered if he should even bother going to the guild at all.

Will they even realize I wasn’t there yesterday, and then reject me for not being there to touch the mana conduit? Will they think I don’t have a class and ban me from quests or training? He thought, frowning as he went.

Jay knew he had to lie his way into the guild, to get access to all the dungeon locations, quests, and other services. Though he was quite unsure of himself.

With a sigh, he plodded to the guild. The sun had a comfortable warmth and the early morning air was still crisp, which Jay appreciated as he made his way around the dirt trail curving up the mountain; at least something was lifting his mood. His excitement of becoming an adventurer was gone, but remaining a lonely butcher was out of the question.

Finally, the adventures association came into sight. It was more like a small castle rather than a functional organization building.

A wooden palisade wall surrounded the compound, along with an occasional large rock or boulder making up part of the wall.

To provide vision, they had cut down the nearby fir trees, using their wood used to construct the 30-foot high walls.

Large floating boulders formed the gate arch, each of them rippling with a pale blue aura and deep blue glowing veins which kept them floating, ready to deposit them into the gate if need be.

Who needs an iron gate when you can simply enchant some boulders?

Jay thought the wooden palisade walls around the compound betrayed the fancy floating boulder gate. However, it was near a small town and he expected little to begin with. No one would take small villages like this into consideration regarding defense or war so they wouldn’t receive any sort of military budget, especially not this far south.

Besides, the country was only at war with one of the other six races, and the war front was on the north side of the country, while Jay’s village, Losla, was on the deep southwestern side of the continent, where nothing exciting ever happens. It was more like a retirement village.

Approaching the gate, Jay saw a familiar face - Paul, a regular customer of his butcher shop, and Jay fought to hide a cunning smile.

Heh, this will be easy, Jay thought as his lips curled.

“Hey Paul, how are you?” Jay waved.

“Yeah, good mate. You’re here to start your classes, huh? What’d you get?”

Jay feigned a smile. “A melee class, I’m a swordsman. Pretty keen to get started,” he lied with a nod.

As they were chatting, a few other people lined up behind Jay, while some just continued walking past and entered through the gate, ignoring him completely.

Noticing the queue, Paul cut the chatter and returned to his duties.

“Ah, good on ya, mate. Well, the melee instructor is right over there. He’s loud, but he means well. I hope it goes well. See you later mate.” he gestured to Jay to enter.

“Thanks Paul, I’ll catch you around.” Jay held back a nervous sweat and a smile of delight, resulting in a straight face.

He wasn’t used to lying, but successfully doing it gave him a strange feeling of elation and excitement.

Jay felt like he was better, even superior to his fellow man - despite being level 1 while Paul was level 24.

Wow, I should lie all the time, Jay carelessly thought.

Walking under the floating boulder gate, Jay felt a little cautious, as the enormous stones could crush him into a meat paste. Thankfully, they didn’t respond to his necromancer class at all.

At least the gate doesn’t think I’m a monster.

The courtyard area was about the size of a park. A cobblestone path led to the main building a few hundred yards away, and this was where Jay went.

The main building was a three story tall wooden barrack, with a large cobblestone tower protruding from the back left corner of the compound. A large dark window was on the top floor, overlooking the courtyard.

Most of the courtyard was dirt with small patches of trampled grass, barely holding onto their plot of land. Today, aspiring adventurers filled this courtyard, being trained in their various disciplines; melee, ranged and mana craft.

There were about 300 recruits all up, most of them being a melee-type class. There were a lot of people to deal with as there were many more adventurers this year, but some of them would leave here today and go back to their quiet civilian life.

The new recruits had bright, excited eyes and sunny looks on their faces, even as their new trainers yelled at them. They were currently being told to forget everything they previously knew about their respective disciplines.

In this way, Jay stood out, as he was the only recruit who had a look of seriousness, similar to the veteran trainers. Little did they know it was because he was currently hiding something, though most would assume he simply didn’t want to be there or wasn’t happy with whatever his class may be.

Among the three disciplines were subclasses (e.g., Melee had swords, axes, spears); each with its own respective abilities, health, and mana pool sizes.

People could learn different disciplines to evolve their class and merge them (e.g. A melee class such as a [Swordsman] could learn mana craft, and evolve their class into a [Spell sword], a [Mage Slayer], or even a [Quint Blade] if they had other prerequisites.)

They could also gain new abilities through personal testing, discovery, or finding a rare skill scroll.

There was also a chance of attaining a unique class. These classes were rare, having a 0.7% chance of acquiring. In the group of new recruits and aspiring adventurers, only two people so far had attained a unique class, or so they thought.

Unique classes were usually considered special, but were not always blessings; for example, the [Trypto-Ornamentalist] class.

This was a mage-craftsman type class which had a peculiar ability to craft objects which would ‘follow’ the current owner around. Though not very practical, it would creep some people out when they unknowingly purchased one of these ‘goods’.

A victim of such a merchant would sit in a pub on a rainy night, enjoying a drink quietly in the tavern’s warmth. Staring out at the rain, they wondered when the storm would end. Suddenly a flash of lightning cracked and his trypto-ornament in the shape of a tiki doll’s head would appear in the window they were looking through, making them figuratively shit themselves and ruin their calm mood with high blood pressure. Buyer beware.

The two unique-class adventurers were not present at practice today. They possibly had special lessons, or were quickly sponsored and sent off to a more advanced guild in a thoroughly developed city, closer to the capital.

Jay ignored other adventurers, mimicking confidence in his walk so as to not draw suspicion while he approached the main building and slipped in, entering the lobby.

There was no one at reception, perhaps because everyone working here was busy handling the paperwork from the awakening.

“Oh, it seems they’re understaffed.” Jay pursed his lips, seeing no one around.

As he went to leave, he noticed a colorful map on the wall - it was a dungeon board showing all the closest dungeons to the village.

This was probably only meant to be seen by the new adventurers after basic training. As a level 1, he knew he probably shouldn’t bother looking, but he did anyway.

It wouldn’t hurt to know, he shrugged.

Looking at the map, he saw a number of dungeons around Losla, most of them around level six and seven, but after some searching he found a single level 1 dungeon: Stink-Rat Marsh.

Jay pressed his finger against it, looking closer. Hmm, perhaps they get people to train up in the courtyard so they don’t have to go there? Obviously marshes stink, and rats stink, so stink-rat marsh must be an absolute shit-hole… It would probably be a stain in any adventurer’s career to start here, but I suppose I have no choice, Jay thought with a sigh.

The less attention I draw, the better, and there will be no one there to witness my class in action.

A small smile appeared on his face, thinking about his undead goblin tearing the rats to pieces.

There were various other dungeons on the map but they were not ‘instanced’ dungeons - meaning anyone could go into the dungeon and find you there, whereas the instanced dungeons would create separate pockets of reality in which only you and your party could enter. Essentially, instanced meant it was private, suiting Jay’s needs.

Jay added the location to his map, along with a level 5 dungeon named Wolf’s Quarry.

“Gosh, I wonder what monsters will be at WOLF’S quarry?” he chuckled to himself in the lobby.

His poor attempts at humorous sarcasm had no restraint. Thankfully, it fell on deaf ears, as no one was in the lobby today.

Jay decided he would grind to level 4 in stink-rat marsh, then head to the quarry to level up some more before returning to the adventurer guild in a few days. He hoped that by then, he would have a better lie, perhaps about missing paperwork.

I may as well get some free training in while I’m here, he thought, as he exited the building. No one had questioned him so far, so he felt comfortable sneaking in to train with the other young adventurers.

Looking around the courtyard, he noticed the people with swords, clubs, shields, and hatchets were on his right, sparring with each other or attacking helpless training dummies.

Others nearby did push-ups and sit-ups under the guise of their trainer.

Hmm, perhaps they’re being punished for losing? Jay guessed.

On the left side were people with javelins, daggers, whips, and bows. They were all attacking targets from their respective distances.

Some of the more talented rangers would attempt to attack flying wooden birds that an assistant mage had created, while the ranged trainer looked on, periodically giving pointers to the slightly more inept.

The assistant mage looked bored as her entire job was to collect scraps of wood from the melee training dummies, add magic to them, and convert them into the wooden birds which she sent to fly around the archery range.

Damn, some magic sure is cool. Sucks to do something so boring with it though, Jay wearily smiled, continuing to look around.

Hmm, I wonder where the mana craft training is, Jay thought before noticing something in the far right corner of the compound, hidden behind some weapon racks filled with training swords.

Beyond the 150-strong mass of melee disciples was a small garden where people were sitting as still as statues.

There were about 60 of them, sitting cross-legged while their trainer was floating cross-legged with closed eyes, and a few small rocks floated around him, defying gravity.

As soon as Jay looked at the trainer, he suddenly heard a voice in his head.

“Stop being lazy and start training, recruit.” The voice was blunt and to-the-point, but much louder than everything else in the courtyard.

It startled Jay, and he immediately looked away from the trainer, hopefully breaking ‘mind-contact’ or whatever that spell was, though he still felt like eyes were on him, and he felt that he had to obey. He took three steps forward, pretending to listen to the voice’s instructions as he considered where he should go.

He had to think fast so as to not look suspicious with hesitation.

Desperately wanting to go to the mana craft area, he knew he could not show his skills, which were grotesque to say the least; not to mention they would get him killed.

Jay went with his original plan and joined the melee training, as even a simpleton could do push ups, and he had been cutting up meat since he was a kid, so he was good enough with a knife.

As he walked away from the main building, he felt a pair of eyes as sharp as daggers staring straight at his back from the building behind him. A cold sweat came across him as the tangible pressure mounted. Deciding not to turn around, he resolutely made his way to the melee area.

However, as he went to grab a wooden short-sword, someone rudely slapped away his hand.

“Just what do you think you’re doing? This has to be EARNED,” a snooty, vitriolic voice blurted in Jay’s face.

“Uh, I’m here for training..?”

“EARN it,” he sneered. “You can’t just start with a wooden sword. You don’t deserve it yet.”

Jay realized this was the same prick in the carriage who smiled gleefully as he tumbled down the hill into the mud.

The same little shit who smirked at him as he fell. It was because of this sniveling brat that he got a monster class.

Knowing he couldn’t smack someone who was a noble, Jay simply clenched his jaw as he death-stared at the melee trainer, letting his raged anger out a little.

The melee trainer had heightened senses compared to most, and immediately responded as he sensed the passive threat level rising.

“You there!” he pointed at the brat. “Quit talking and get back to sparring! And you!” He pointed at Jay and glared for a moment.

“You’re late, so you’re doing push-ups, jogging, then dummy training! No sparring today since you’re LATE!” Some spit left his mouth as he screamed, “We don’t tolerate tardiness!”

The noble brat sneered with a smug smile as he went back to the sparring area.

Jay immediately felt thankful for the trainer, even though they were yelling at him with a vein popping out of their head. He went to the push-up area and began working out.

Jay began doing push-ups near the other recruits as the trainer continued to bark at them. Jay became amazed at his own body, as it was not tired in the slightest. The only thing that changed for him was that his energy status went down from 25 to 23, even though he had just done 200 push-ups.

The standard training regime for new melee-recruits was to do 200 push-ups then jog around the outside of the compound twice, and then repeat until the instructor was pleased - however, as Jay got up, the instructor winced and screamed at him once more.

“YOU! I didn’t say you’re finished! You’re doing four-hundred to make up for being late!”

Ah he doesn’t need to embarrass me like this. This is all that noble douches fault anyway, pushing me down the hill yesterday, Jay thought as he gritted his teeth in frustration, deciding to channel his rage into his push-ups.

After the first rage-filled push-up, Jay instantly received a notification:

[New passive skill unlocked!]

<[Stress Response]>

[You get stronger when you’re stressed, and angry when you exercise]

[+5% melee damage bonus when stressed or angry]

Sweet, Jay smiled. As his mood turned positive again, he lost the passive buff.

The trainer seemed angry as he saw Jay enjoying what was supposed to be a punishment, and Jay continued to smirk to himself as he finished the extra 200 push-ups.

After the pushups came the running. After another yell from the trainer, he had to do 4 laps around the compound, lowering his energy to 17/25.

Thankfully, he unlocked another passive, though he wasn’t that impressed this time.

< [Running level 1] >

[You can run faster, further, and use less energy doing so.]

[+1% speed]

Coming back to the trainer, and to Jay’s surprise, they greeted him with a light smile.

“Good job recruit. Take a wooden weapon and start on the dummies.”

The trainer seemed less annoyed now that Jay had put in the effort without complaining. He respected hard work.

Feeling encouraged, Jay happily went back to the weapon rack and grabbed a wooden short-sword, smirking proudly as he noticed the noble brat glance at him. But the brat couldn’t do anything but sneer, and bounced back to sparring with another recruit, not willing to test the trainer again.

Jay happily went to one of the training dummies, picking one closest to the mana craft garden.

He started sparring lightly, but paused whenever he heard the mana craft instructor teach the lucky few in the mana craft group. Cunningly, he approached the dummy, pretending to inspect his damage as he tried to glean any scraps of mana craft training he could get, listening intensively:

- “... twist and pull the rope in, making it a part of yourself..”

- “... imagine you are the tree, make your bark, your shell, stronger..”

It sounds like some bullshit a fortune teller would say, Jay thought with a raised brow. Nevertheless, he committed every piece to memory as he pretended to inspect the training dummy.

After a few hours of training, Jay leveled up, gaining five attribute points to spend on his class. Unfortunately, he had no one to guide him through the level-up process, but he had no choice except to forge his own path. He quietly swung his sword as he went through his class.

Looks like I also gained some mana from leveling, I wonder if that will always happen… He thought, and realized that his base class attributes had the most points in energy, which increased mana, so he put them all into energy, raising it to 30 and his mana pool from 25 to 35, while his level up had given him an additional four mana.

MP: 25 > 39

Energy: 25 > 30

It looks like I gain two mana per energy point? But I started with twenty-five energy, so it’s odd that my mana wasn’t fifty.

His dexterity was also quite high, but he assumed it was because of his skills with the butchering knives rather than his class, but knew he couldn’t be sure about anything as he checked his status.

< [Necromancer - Level 2] >

HP: 48/48

MP: 39/39

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 25

Vitality: 15

Energy: 20/30

<[Skills]>

[Raise Feeble Creature level 1]

[Stress Response] (Passive)

[Class Utility] (Passive)

[Running level 1] (Passive)

Awesome. I’ll have an easier time when I visit the dungeon, Jay smiled in satisfaction.

After training till mid-day, a bell sounded from somewhere in the main building and the trainers dismissed the recruits, telling them to come back tomorrow at sunbreak for more ‘lessons’.

Jay looked at his trainer, who nodded back, then began making his way home for some lunch. As he left, he noticed a familiar guard on the way out - Paul.

“How was your training, mate? Ready for tomorrow?” Paul smiled.

“It was alright. It seems like they drill us pretty hard, but I think they mean the best for us. I’ll get used to it.” Jay answered, tactfully ignoring the second question.

Paul lightly chuckled. “Heh, they won’t let it get easy, mate. If you get used to it, they’ll just make it harder.” he smiled with a nod, “But hang in there, it’ll be worth it, and you’ll be glad for going through it some day.”

“Yeah,” Jay nodded and looked at the ground knowingly. “I’ll uh, I’ll keep coming back, don’t worry. Anyway, I’m exhausted, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’s fair enough. See you tomorrow, mate.”

As Jay safely exited through the floating boulder gate, he began to smile.

That wasn’t bad at all… No one even asked about my class except Paul, and no one even cared that I was looking at their map. It seems pretty safe.

Jay walked down the hill as the douche-brat’s carriage whizzed past once again - this time without Jay slipping.

Yeah, fuck you asshole, he thought, as the carriage rolled by.

I’ll out-level him soon enough by getting a head start in these dungeons tonight. I’ll leave this loser in my past where he belongs, Jay grinned.

***

After walking home sprightly, Jay cooked himself up some sausages and tomatoes seasoned with ground bondtussle root, and enjoyed his meal. Yet he got an odd notification. To his surprise, he got a passive buff from consuming the bondtussle root.

[Mana Regen buff 1%] - lasts for 1 hour (s)

Oh, how did I not know about this? Shouldn’t this be common knowledge?

In all his years of working as a butcher, he had heard nothing about this herb giving a buff. He simply used it for its taste as he couldn’t afford finer seasonings.

Well, I guess most adventurers leave this hole when they level up enough, and food-buffs are probably only effective on high-level people, anyway. I suppose it didn’t affect me before since I wasn’t an adventurer? Oh well, I’ll take it, he shrugged, scoffing down the rest of his food.

Planning for the trip, he packed some extra bondtussle root into his knapsack along with water, mushrooms and some wild nuts to snack on; some small easy-to-eat rations.

Well, time to make my way to the stinky stink-rat marsh.