NOVEL WEB Chapter 15 - Choosing a class is hard!
Chapter 15
Choosing a class is hard!
Class sheet
Level 10 class choices
1) Survivor:
You have survived an integration. You have faced adversity and prevailed. This new world is cruel, and you must be strong to survive. This class is tailor-made for a survivor. You gain two points to dexterity and two points to constitution along with your usually freely distributable stat points you receive with each level gain.
You also gain the ability dash, which, when used, gives you a 50% increase to your movement speed for thirty seconds at the cost of two hundred mana. This ability will increase your speed by an additional 25% if you are running away from something. You also gain the ability Flash Bang. The ability Flash Bang, when activated, allows you to release an extremely bright flash from the palms of your hands at the cost of eighty mana per us.
2) Warrior:
You are a warrior. You are the front line. You lead the charge, and no enemy is safe. You are the heart of the army, a member of a team, and as a team, you can accomplish anything.
The class of a warrior gets one point for strength, dexterity, and constitution with every level, along with your usually freely distributable stat points you receive with each level gain.
You also gain the ability Stand Strong. Stand strong when activated increases your constitution by an extra 25% of the points you have invested into your constitution attribute for a cost of twenty-five mana per second.
You also gain the ability Stand Together. Stand Together, when activated, gives a 25% attack speed bonus to you and your allies within twenty feet when fighting with three or more allies at the coast of ten mana per second and thirty stamina.
3) Disciple of the spear:
From time immemorial, wielders of the spear have changed the shape and face of battle in its very essence. The masters of this art are terrifying animals of destruction on the battlefield and can change the tide of a battle with one thrust of the spear.
At the highest of mastery, sages of the spear have been said to cut the very fabric of reality itself with one strike. Cutting their enemies and letting the void devour them. You have been seen as carrying a small amount of proficiency with the spear, and if you choose to, you may begin embarking on the path of the disciple of the spear. Proceed down this path with caution, for many have fallen on their road to mastery. You gain three points to strength and three to dexterity with every level along with your usually freely distributable stat points you receive with each level gain. You also gain the ability Spear Dance.
When spear dance is activated, you gain plus 30% of the points you have invested into your dexterity attributes and your attack speed increases by 125% at the cost of ten mana per second.
You also gain the ability, Invoke the Spirit. Invoke the Spirit, when activated, fill your body and mind with the spirits of old masters of the spear that have lived throughout the history of the multiverse for twenty-five seconds a week at the cost of three hundred mana. You may use this ability to cause havoc on the battlefield and gain hints of insight to advance your techniques.
4) Path of the Pole Arm:
You are a strike, quick and true. You are the weapon, fast and sharp, strong and ever-attacking. You may not have much in this world, but that does not detour you from striking out at your future in a never-stopping, never-ending wave of pure will and determination.
Let your pole arm guide you through the carnage of battle and beyond. Path of the pole arms gives you plus two to strength and plus three to dexterity with every level, along with your usually freely distributable stat points you receive with each level gain. You also gain the ability, Step Lightly. Step Lightly, when activated, gives you the ability to move up to ten feet so fast that it may appear as if you have teleported to people with a dexterity of less than twenty-five and an intelligence of less than twenty. Anyone with a dexterity over twenty-five and an intelligence over twenty will see you move, but you will move at 300% of your normal movement speed. Step Lightly, coasting fifty mana and twenty stamina to activate.
You also gain the ability Pinpoint. Pinpoint increases your accuracy by 125%. This ability can be activated at the cost of ten mana and five stamina per second, allowing you to land critical hits more often and deal more damage with each strike.
Wow, okay, that was kind of a lot to take in. I already knew which class I wanted, but I just wasn’t sure it would be the right choice once I had read through my choices a second time. I had more or less made up my mind, and I decided it was about time to check back in with Beth and Janet and see what their options were.
Beth was sitting at the table just eating. She had finished looking through her class choices already and was just waiting for Janet and me to finish looking at our options. She looked over at me when she saw I was loosed again and gave me a smile. “So, anything good?” Beth asked me in that way where someone asks you something because they really want you to ask them the same questions. At second glance, Beth was almost shaking with anticipation, and she was literally on the edge of her seat.
“Yeah, got some good choices. How about you?” I asked her.
“Oh my god, this is so cool. I got some good choices, but I think I know what I’m going to pick already. It has some great abilities, too. Want to hear what it is? Or, well, you get anything you're thinking of choosing.” She blushed a little at how much she had gotten so carried away but looked at me eagerly.
I laughed at the look on her face, “Why don’t you tell me about the class you’re thinking about choosing.” I said. That was all Beth needed to start talking about the class she liked. As she started to explain, Janet came back from Screen Town and asked us if we were talking about the classes without waiting for her, and we both got quiet.
Then I looked at Beth, and she looked back at me. We both turned back to look at Janet and said together in unison, “No, of course not.” Then we looked at each other and started laughing. Janet just stared daggers at the both of us.
After we finally got ourselves under control, we explained to Janet that, yes, we had been about to discuss our classes and that Beth was about to tell me about the class choice she liked the best. Janet said she wasn’t mad anymore and for Beth to just get on with it and Janet and I waited for Beth to share.
“OK, the options I got were all good, and honestly, I would have picked any of them under different circumstances, but the one that stood out to me most was called Fledgling Knight.
It gave her two points into strength and three points into constitution with every level, along with the usually freely distributable stat points she receives with each level gain. She also told us that She would get two abilities with the class. One was an ability called all for one. All for One, when activated, gave her 15% of the stats of every ally in a ten-foot diameter added to her own for thirty seconds.
Beth's second ability was called Shield Bash. Shield Bash was pretty self-explanatory. When activated, she would slam her shield into her forward, releasing a wall of force ten feet by eight feet that would push forward five feet.
It seemed like a great class, and I wouldn't blame her if she chose it. Janet said she wanted to be next, so I let her go. She liked a class called Brawler. Janet was super juiced about it, and she was actually dead set on it. She didn’t even tell us any of her other opinions. She told us It gave her four points into strength and one point into constitution with every level along with the usually freely distributable stat points she receives with each level gain.
It also gave her two abilities, like the class Beth was thinking about taking. The first was called I’m So Strong. I’m So Strong let Janet take one point of wisdom and one point of intelligence and trade them to add one point into strength for a duration of five minutes.
She also got an ability called Empower Strike. Empower Strike, when activated, empowers your strikes with a burst of force right before impacting the target, making your strikes hit harder and deal more damage for the next three strikes.
Once Janet was done with her class description, I told Beth and Janet about the class I had decided to take. It had been a hard choice, but I was pretty happy with my choice. I chose Path of the Pole Arm.
I explained my choice to Beth and Janet, and they both thought it sounded like a great choice. Beth said I shouldn’t worry about regretting my choice. Everything was new. Janet said that we really had no idea what a good class option was at this point. ts offered and abilities, for all we knew, these classes could be crap.
That definitely made me feel a bit better, and we all decided we were going to go ahead and pick our classes. I pulled up my class options, and before I could overthink it or change my mind, I picked my class, Path of the Pole Arm.
After I had confirmed my choice, I closed my class sheet, and I began to feel a tingling sensation all over my body. Moments later, my skin began to glow, and fractals became superimposed over my skin.
The fractals were starting to glow brighter till they were almost blinding, and then the burning started. It felt like every cell In my body was being scrubbed clean, and there was pain, so much pain then it was all over in less than a second.
Once my little light show had settled down, I looked at my skin, and there were lines running over me. As I looked at the lines, I knew they were a mere representation of something tied to me, much deeper.
As I watched, they melted into my body and disappeared from view. When I looked up, the two women were going through a light show of their own. We all stood there in the tree house quiet for a little. Then Beth said she needed some air and walked out onto our impromptu deck.
Janet jest watched Beth walk outside and then walked over to the kitchen area and pored herself a drink. I noticed she was shaking as I watched her pour a shot and then slam it back. I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t, I was starting to shake. I could feel what felt like echoes of the pain I had just experienced starting to rush through me, and I was beginning to sweat.
I also just felt generally sick, so I went and laid down on the bed, suddenly exhausted and trying to focus on letting my body deal with the trauma from the pain of gaining my class. A few minutes later, we could hear Beth throwing up, and a little after that, I passed out.
I woke up around dusk, and I felt a whole hell of a lot better, like, there we go. I looked around and saw Janet asleep in the comfy chair, passed out with a bottle on the side table next to her. Beth was in the bed next to me, passed out, clothes still on, shoes too.
That pain had been fucking horrible. It had only lasted a brief moment, but even thinking about it now was making me sweat. “Bleh,” I said as I shook my head back and forth. Fuck that. Not going there, okay, so I have a fucking class. Let’s see what’s going on with my stat sheet.
Class sheet
Path of the pole Arm
Level 1
plus 2 stat points to strength each level up
plus 3 stat points to dexterity each level up
Abilities
Step Lightly
When activated, it gives you the ability to move up to ten feet so fast that it may appear as if you have teleported to people with a dexterity of less than twenty-five and an intelligence of less than twenty. Anyone with a dexterity over twenty-five and an intelligence over twenty will see you move, but you will move at 300% of your normal movement speed. Step Lightly, coasting 50 mana and 20 stamina to activate.
Pinpoint:
Pinpoint increases your accuracy by 125%. This ability can be activated at the cost of ten mana and five stamina per second, allowing you to land critical hits more often and deal more damage with each strike.
Stat sheet
Travis Mullins
Level: 10
Race: Human
Class: Path of the Pole Arm
Experience needed to next Level: 11,130/11,280 XP till next Level.
Titles: Lucky Bastard (+2 to luck)
Explorer 1 (+3 to all stats)
First in the world to:
Complete a dungeon run (+8 to all stats)
Resistances:
Element of fire: 5%
Strength: 33
Dexterity: 30
Intelligence: 25
Wisdom: 25
Constitution: 27
Luck: 22
You have three unassigned stat points to distribute.
Yep, sure enough, my points were there. I still had my three free points from my last level up to distribute, but where do I put them? I could probably just save them up. I had a fuck ton of stats points now, and I’m sure were the strongest people, if not in the world, probably at least in the area.
If I saved them up, I could drop a fuck ton of points into something if I needed a little boost. Fuck it, I was totally saving these three free points. Shit! You know, with abilities costing mana and stamina to use, maybe I should invest in intelligence and wisdom or constitution.
Fuck! This is killing me, save them or spend them, damn it! Ok fuck it, one in intelligence, one in wisdom, and one in constitution, here we go. My Intelligence was now 26. My Wisdom was 26, and my Constitution was 28. I really hope I was doing the right thing here. I hadn’t done a status check in a while now, so I called it up.
We had never disbanded our Official party, so I could still cycle through Beth and Janet's status as well as my own active HP, Mana, and Stamina. I saw that I now had 520 points in Mana, 610 Health Points, and 580 points of stamina. Everyone was at full everything except for Beth and I who had about 100 points of our HP grayed out. I was assuming that was because of our missing limbs. That kind of sucked, but with my mana levels, that meant that I could use Step lightly a bunch or Pinpoint for, um… well, a little while at least. I’d do the math later.
That day was pretty chill. Honestly, after the experience of obtaining a class, it had kind of sucked a lot. Great upgrade to stats and power in general, but fuck that shit really hurt, and I wasn’t going to forget it any time soon.
We ate breakfast, then Beth cleaned up and read a bit while Janet read for a bit and then just passed out on the bed. We had some dinner, skipped lunch and no one was tripping about it, and then we cleaned up and hit the sack early. The next day, Beth’s and my limbs were starting to grow back, which was insane.
I mean, I was fucking growing a lim back. It was tipping me out. It was I had eaten a couple of Senzuketa Beans the day before, but after the first three, they seemed to just kind of stopped working, and it wasn’t worth wasting them to just have a snack. I was spreading them out a little bit more today, and by bedtime, I was able to eat a fourth.
The Senzuketa Beans were really assisting Beth and me immensely, and on the morning of the third day, I was just a hand away from a full arm. I was healing so quickly. Beth was already almost one hundred percent. She was just missing the tips of a few fingers.
The plan was to get everyone back to full health and then go out and practice some of our abilities. Oh, remember that armory I had been looking for in the dungeon? Turned out the boss must have been holding the armory in its bag of holding. It was a twenty-slot bag, and most of it was full of armor and weapons, probably enough to outfit at least seventy-five soldiers. Even give some other soldiers a weapon or two at least.
We would go on gear for a while. Oh, and speaking of gear, we let Janet keep the boss's axe, and it was fucking nice. She was gonna owe us for a good long while for that one.
Axe of growing anger:
This axe was created by a smith and a warrior who lived for the song of battle. It’s not the best axe in the World, but it’s one of the many axes this warrior Smith created on his journey of carnage throughout his world. Plus, one to strength.
Affect:
While wielding The Axe of Growing Anger, you build a rage. With every kill, you will receive a 5% bust to your attack speed, maxing out at 100%. This will dissipate after you disengage from combat.
Honestly, I almost wanted to switch weapons just so I could keep it, but with Beth and mine classes, it just made the most sense to let Janet keep it even though it fucking killed my little loot hamster to do so. By lunchtime on the fourth day, my last finger finished regrowing, and we were all finally back to one hundred percent.
It was time to test out some new shit. Janet, Beth, and I were walking through the forest in a different direction than the dungeon this time. The forest seemed to have gotten denser and more wild, and even the roads that had twisted throughout the woods pre-integration were starting to disappear and be reclaimed.
We only had to walk for about fifteen minutes before we ran into some wildlife that looked like it might be a good target to test out some of our new abilities. We had been walking on the top of a ridge, and when we started to descend to the other side of the ridge, we saw a small pack of what looked like someone took a mole and genetically fucked with it and got it to grow to four feet tall and gave it metal teeth.
We could hear the metal teeth clacking together as we got closer. We saw them from a little way down the ridge and had been sneaking closer using some bushes as cover. We had managed to get about five feet away from the mole-like things without being spotted, or so we had thought.
We were crouched down behind a bush. We were just sitting there quietly. We hadn’t talked before about how we were going to engage our quarry, which I was starting to think was kind of a fuck up, but here we were, just sitting in silence. I was about to ask Janet and Beth what now when Janet stood up from where we had been counseled.
I was a little shocked at her sudden action, but then I saw the look in her eyes and knew Janet was in the zone. I think she had activated I’m So Strong. All at once, her muscles bulged out. She looked like a muscle head from Muscle Beach, and it was kind of gross.
I wondered how many points she had traded for her boosted strength. Janet just started walking forward at an even pace, like she had all the time in the world. The mole things didn’t seem the least bit surprised that Janet was there. It kind of looked like they were just waiting for her to make a move. When Janet popped up and started toward them they had all turned to her, like yes and?
They didn’t seem to be worried about Janet in the slightest. One was even still eating some leaves off a bush. Janet frowned at their lack of reaction, and then she just smiled and lined up a shot with her axe at one-mole things head. I could tell she must have activated Empower Strike at the last minute.
As she brought her axe down on the creature's head, it looked up at her, and in the last millisecond, before her axe hit, a barrier popped out of nowhere and started to expand.
It pushed Janet’s axe back and then pushed her back till we all were getting pushed back. At the end of the barrier expansion, we were twenty feet away, and they were still grazing in the same spot, untouched and unimpressed with Janet’s powered-up attacks.
Fuck, these things were way stronger. “Good thing they don’t seem aggressive, or we would probably have been fucking dead,” I said.
“Let’s pick something that’s more killable next time,” I said, holding back a laugh that was fighting to push past my lips. Janet had gone into the fight all badass and had basically been told by the creatures to fuck off and stop bothering them. Janet must have seen that I was enjoying her plait, and she started to stare daggers at me.
“Fine, you find Janet more to kill.” Janet basically spit at me. I flinched a little at her words, but it was more at the thought of getting spit on more than anything else. I looked at her and thought about what she had said for a second. It didn’t seem like Janet was doing the whole fucked up speech pattern thing on purpose. Then I remembered how her new ability worked. She had probably put too many points into strength and was now incredibly strong but dumb.
Fuck this could be dangerous. If Janet saw us as her enemies, we might not be able to stop her till her abilities timer ran out.
“All good Janet, I will find you something to kill, don’t you worry,” I told her, and she smiled at me dumbly, then out of nowhere she reached out and patted me on the head.
“Travis is good guy. Me like Travis. Janet like Travis lots.” Janet said, Beth and I just kind of stood there. I was shocked at her rapid change in personality. I just told Janet that I liked her lots, too, while Beth was trying not to laugh. I led the two ladies back up, then down the other side of the ridge.
We walked for another five minutes until we hit a creak, then followed the creak east for another ten minutes. Janet’s skill had ended by the time we hit the creak, and Beth had definitely been poking fun at her, and Beth was loving it.
Beth kept asking her things like Janet tired? Janet wants rest now? Or Janet looks so strong, Janet like Beth? Beth like Janet. It was honestly hilarious, and it only made it funnier that Janet would blush every time Beth fucked with her. She was clearly embarrassed at her brief time as a cavewoman.