Chapter 3

Lock blearily stared at the wooden ceiling of his bedroom, his alarm clock ringing in the background. He sprang up, divested himself from the several layers of blankets enveloping his body and shut the thing up.

He went to his window, opened it, and looked down to the ground beneath. Well, ground was a misnomer, it was more of a pond really.

A pond he then proceeded to jump into from his second story room. A splash resounded throughout the empty yard, and Lock resurfaced after spending some moments appreciating the songs of the deep.

It may have been summer, but the time he woke up at was always a few minutes before sunrise. Which meant that the water was quite cold. His body started shivering as he watched the sun slowly rise.

He'd taken a subpar room as his bedroom just to do what he'd just done. Jumping out of a window, a dozen meters high up as it was, delivered enough adrenaline into his body to wake him up. The cold water also helped. if he didn't do this he would simply grunge around in bed for another hour.

The pond also served as a place where he warmed up, swimming some laps as he watched the sun slowly peek over the mountains and then rise above them fully.

"A crown of golden heat,

Where the mountains meet the sky,

A spectacle that's hard to beat,

To wake up to, so say I."

Lock presented the poem he'd just created spontaneously. He heard some claps from higher up, and turned around to see Abraxas watching him from the open living room's window. "I don't know much about poetry, but at least I know poems are supposed to rhyme. Good job on that part," the old man commented. He was noticeably tired, which made sense. Abraxas was nearing ninety years old. Lock had never seen his grandfather wake up so early before.

"It's a beautiful morning, no clouds in sight to prevent me from gazing upon the sun's glory. There is many a reason to break into song; be happy I was able to contain myself to poetry." Lock grinned. "My singing voice is quite horrid, or so I've been told."

So-so, was the hand gesture his grandfather made.

"I must leave to do my morning tribulations now, grandfather, I'll be back in an hour or so. Will you prepare something to sate our hunger in the meanwhile?" Lock asked.

"Terribly long way of saying you're gonna train and will be hungry after," Abraxas commented, still leaning on the windowsill.

"Verbosity is often seen as a sign of great wisdom, and being perceived as such is always useful."

"Respect opens many doors. You seem... quite more..." Abraxas paused before saying the next word, as if tasting it on his tongue, "verbose than usual, though."

"I see you noticed the discrepancy. The issue I am momentarily experiencing is a too high level of energy within my body. It is like this every-time I wake up. Training will fix the issue," Lock said and made to leave towards the part of the yard where he always trained in the mornings.

"I think you're just yanking my chain because of your misplaced sense of humour," Abraxas muttered as he watched his grandson stray further away. "Be prepared for a busy week. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve!" he shouted after him, receiving a wave in return.

-/-

Training the body was quite a dull action after you'd repeated it often enough. It gave Lock time to think about the decision he had to make, about which one of his classess to funnel his grandfather's exp into.

The fact that Alchemist was a non-combat class immediately disqualified it, since it wouldn't gain exp from killing. This left Vanguard and Assassin. The two suffered under the opposite constraints from Alchemist, only being capable of leveling up with combat.

It made for a pitiful sight, his two combat classes at level one, while his Alchemist one was already nearing level 10, where it would receive its first big upgrade. The only downside was that points gained through leveling Alchemist could not be placed into the Endurance stat.

He was stuck with a large mana pool due to dumping all stats from Alchemist into Wisdom, and nothing to use it on. Well, to say it was worthless was going a bit far. The more mana a person had, the slower they aged, which, while not the reason for why he'd picked up alchemy, was still a nice bonus.

Lock still preferred Endurance over Wisdom, though. While Wisdom directly translated into mana, and that directly translated into aging speed, Endurance also made you feel younger, stronger, and hardier. The mana would come in handy soon, though, once he managed to become a Healer.

But that was the future, and his was the now, Lock thought to himself as he ran around the small clearing.

Okay, stat distribution didn't matter between his two choices. Both Assassin and Vanguard could put points into physical stats, namely the only physical stat that he cared about. Endurance. Endurance was made up of several smaller factors such as vitality, stamina, resistance to debuffs, and so on.

So the Stats made no difference. The only difference would be the Skills he could gain from leveling the Class. While you had to manually learn a specific set of skills to learn a Class, like the combination of stealth and backstab for Assassin, leveling it up afterwards granted Skills that directly translated to the brain.

These were mostly Skills that one would have a hard time learning naturally. Supernatural skills, so to say. Being stealthy and practiced at killing people from behind was all humanly possible. The game giving a small buff to the damage like a successful backstab did wasn't very impressive.

Some of the Skills one could unlock as a level five Assassin, though, were not something easily achievable by humans. Blend In for example was a skill that, supposedly with the help of bending light, let the user seemingly merge with shadows, significantly increasing the effectiveness of stealth.

It was the Skill Shink had used to disappear from his view after their transaction. Which had been comedic, since he'd still had to wait for Lock to leave before doing so himself. Being harder to see did not mean one could stealthily open doors, after all.

Another possibility was Sanguine Spray, which made any wounds he inflicted more prone to bleeding, and semi-cursed to resist the body's natural healing and even low-level magical healing.

The skill he was most interested in was that one. He would become a tank after all, which meant that his fighting style would be a battle of attrition. Any wounds inflicted on the enemy sapping their strength even faster would be useful.

The problem with him funneling the Exp into his Assassin Class, though, was that he really needed a skill in the Vanguard Skill Tree.

Bulwark was a skill that would close one fatal weakness that he would attain through only putting points into Endurance. He was tougher than he was strong. It did not matter how many hits you could take, if even one of them at sufficient strength was powerful enough to send you flying.

Bulwark fixed that issue by makings its user immune to any knock-back effects whenever one so desired. Lock would still take the damage, but he would not be moved, not even if a dragon flew into him. He would probably die, but he would be able to stand his ground until he was crushed to death and the Skill disabled.

The only problem, and why the decision between Assassin and Vanguard even had to be made, was that Bulwark was a Skill that required level ten to get, not five. And while he was sure that he would get five levels from killing his grandfather, he wasn't quite sure about ten. The worth of exp tapered off in five level increments.

The choice of skills one had upon reaching level five in Vanguard was quite subpar to say the least. One could choose between Shield Bash and Power Strike. The Shield bash was a simple movement skill that aimed to stun the enemy by running at them with a shield. And Power Strike was not something applicable to his skill set, requiring a two-handed weapon to use. He would be forced to take Shield Bash, which didn't fit him very well either, since the Skill mostly relied on the Strength of the person using it.

Lock finished a pull-up and collapsed on the ground, looking at the sky and watching some lonely clouds pass by. The choice didn't matter all too much in the end really. Adventuring for a few months should be enough to get both Classes to level ten.

He was prepared for that type of life, and unlike many others, he could hardly imagine himself failing at any point.

But he liked to make the best possible decision in every situation. Sanguine Spray was a useful skill, one that he should get as early as possible so he could start leveling it. While Bulwark was something that did not level up, being a permanent effect, he still needed it so he could get used to having it.

He whimpered. His head hurt.

He didn't need Sanguine Spray per se. He was an alchemist; he could cheaply produce poisons and apply them to his daggers. It would strengthen his ability to slowly bleed out his enemies, sure, but he could technically do without it for a while.

But Shield Bash was worthless to him. He only needed a shield before he got Bulwark, so he had something heavy to anchor him to the ground while he took heavy hits meant for his party.

Wait, the longer he needed to level Vanguard, the longer he would be forced to lug around that hideous shield. So from a time perspective, it was better to level up Vanguard so he could throw away the cumbersome thing earlier.

Decision made, the pressure in his head abated. Lock sighed in relief. "So many choices, but we only feel comfortable after we've made one."

The fact that he'd been training while trying to decide probably hadn't helped matters, but at least both were done now. The most unpleasant activities of the day behind him, Lock smiled and headed back to the house, his growling stomach guiding him.