NOVEL FROG Chapter 2: Classes
Chapter 2 Classes
“Let's talk about what we've got going for us.” Theo was again trying to lead us. We let him, for now. “My class is Advisor. I got a point of Spirit and two chants, which are spells using the Spirit stat. My chants are Forward!!! and Duck!!!. I... don't know what they do.”
Brian speaks up next. “Hello, my name is Brian, and I'm a bog-standard human fighter. I got a Ki point and have no idea what it does.”
Jose says, “I took Sharpshooter. I know what it does. I got a little bit of Ki and Luck.”
Theo begs for more information.
“Sharpshooter gave me a zoom function with my eyes.” Jose points at his eyes and we all watch as his irises actually spin in his head. We all agree that it is very cool.
“I took Synergist,” I say. “It's essentially a class about-”
“You fucking multiclassed at level 1, didn't you?” Brian asks, exasperated.
“Yeah, kinda,” I reply.
Brian grumbles. We've been playing tabletop RPGs during our breaks for about a year now and I always multiclass, or find a way to bootleg multiclassing into the game. Regardless of the system, regardless of the setting, regardless of how effective it turns out to be. Often it results in me being initially weak and then getting very, very strong. I'd kind of, let's say, broken entire systems and occasionally made combat irrelevant. And, as he's the guy running the games, I'd pissed off Brian on multiple occasions.
“You little shit.” Brian stands in front of me, staring me in the eyes. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“Well,” I say, backpedaling. “It's just basic Mage stuff right now. Yellow Ray, Dark Mote and Hydrate are my spells.” Speaking of, my hand is still glowing. I say “Yellow Ray” and it turns off.
Brian closes his eyes and holds a hand over his face. “Jun you- oh sweet Jesus I found the menu! Guys, I think you just have to close your eyes!”
We all do it and find, after a few seconds of eye closure, black and white menus on the insides of our eyelids. It looks like a video game menu circa 1990. The options are:
Inventory
Techniques
Chants
Spells
Invocations
Status
Classes
Party
Options
Sleep
I think about the Spells menu. It closes and another list opens.
Dark Spells
Dark Mote... Basic... 1 AP
Water Spells
Hydrate... Basic... 1 AP
Light Spells
Yellow Ray... Basic... 1 AP/10 minutes
I think about Yellow Ray.
Yellow Ray
Emit a yellow light from your hand. Not bright enough to blind people.
Range: Cone, 30 ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per 10 minutes.
Proficiency: 1%
Nobody's talking so I guess we're all just going through menus. I continue.
Dark Mote
Release a speck of darkness that circles you for 1 minute until you come within 15 ft of a foe, at which point it buries itself in the foe.
Duration: 1 minute or impact
Range: Personal / 15ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per mote
Proficiency: 0%
Per mote, eh? So theoretically I could have multiple motes at once.
Hydration
Touch a creature and fill its stomach with water.
Range: Touch
Cost: 1 Arcana Point
Proficiency: 0%
A weird one. So it doesn't help if your mouth is dry? Lame. Useful, but lame.
I go back and check my status. My attributes are pretty much the same, but now I have Arcana and Arcana Points, or AP. 2 of them to be exact. Apparently those are linked to my Intelligence so I recover 31 AP per hour. Or 1 every two minutes. Not bad at all!
“Guys,” Theo says, “My chants are amazing. Forward lets our entire party move at 1.25x speed as long as we're moving in the same direction. And Duck lets me actually force you to dodge an attack if I see it coming and you don't.”
“Damn, that is good,” I say. “I got a tiny homing dart attack, a flashlight and the power to make people less thirsty.”
“You already made women less thirsty,” Brian says, to which I give a sarcastic haw-haw. I can feel Nat's eyes rolling from here.
She finally says, “so my class is Ninja,” to which we all go oooh. “Right, anyways, I got a shadow teleport, and don't get excited because I don't have the Chakra to cast it yet, extra sneak attack damage and wall running. Also a ninja pet but it says it can't reach me inside the dungeon.”
Brian voices all our opinions precisely. “THE FUCK? All I got was a Ki powered heavy strike! And what the hell is Chakra?”
“Obviously it's for ninjas. Does the international hit anime Naruto sound familiar?” Nat seems like she couldn't possibly understand his incredulity. “Chakra's a combination of Ki and Spirit. Which unfortunately means I have to increase both to get more Chakra.”
Nat was the otaku of our little group. Despite her insistence that she wasn't a geek or nerd, she's seen several thousand episodes of anime, has a robust manga collection and is a connoisseur of all things Japanese. So her being a Ninja was actually spot on.
“Hey, it's quiet.” Jose brings us out of the nerd war and back to the unreality of our situation. It is indeed quiet. The dog stopped barking. But so did the screams. We don't hear human voices anymore, aside from our own.
“You think that means everyone escaped without us?” I ask.
“Naw, man.” Jose shakes his head. "I think anyone out there is dead.”
-----
We discover, in order: 1) We have no weapons. 2) The metal legs of a break room chair aren't strong enough to actually be used as a weapon. 3) A chair can be used to break the glass on a drink vending machine. 4) It is really, really easy to cut yourself when trying to make a shiv out of the broken glass from a vending machine. 5) We do not have band aids.
We are now armed up with the best equipment a Get! store break room can offer. Natalie has two shivs made from broken glass and leftover holiday tablecloth. Jose has bits of glass that he swears he can throw but I doubt the efficacy of. Brian has a whole ass chair that he's supposed to use as a shield I guess? Theo has his stainless steel water bottle. I have magic.
I've been in worse situations but not worse equipped.
We gather around the door, Brian in front, Nat right behind. I'm in back. I say “Dark Mote” twice and two dime sized specks of darkness float from my open palm and begin to lazily circle me. Theo nods and Brian opens the door.
The dog is gone. “Hey dog!” I shout down the hall. Everyone curses at me. “What?” I say. “Better to take it out at a bottleneck.”
The others consider this for just a second before the barking of our four legged friend starts up. We can hear it charging down the hall. Brian steps into the hall and raises his chair. Theo and Nat stand right behind him.
From inside the room I see the dog crash into them from the right. It's barely held at bay and gnashing its teeth at Brian. Jose flips glass at the beast which makes small cuts in its hide. Very small cuts. My Dark Motes fly forward like slingshot bullets. When they impact they disappear, leaving dime sized holes in the beast's flank. Those holes start bleeding, but not terribly quickly.
Brian pushes forward against the weight of the dog but he's not terribly strong. The dog pushes and paws at the chair until it knocks it aside, then Brian gets bit on the hand and drops the chair. This dog is pretty smart. The dog's front legs get tangled in the chair legs. I may have overstated the dog's Intelligence. The dog is tangled just long enough for Nat to lunge forward and swing down with her shivs held underhand. The blades sink into the dog's shoulders and blood flows from the wounds. She pulls the blades towards the dog's head and long gashes are torn into its back. The dog turns its head to snap at her. Dog blood sprays. She leaves the shivs in the dog and jumps back, reeling her hands away from the snapping jaws.
The bloody dog charges forward and tries to bite Theo's leg. The jaws sink in but Theo takes advantage of the situation and starts beating the dog's head and neck with his water bottle.
Theo's muscular arms are used to doing reps at the gym. His arms while holding the water bottle act like pistons driving the steel tube water bottle into the dog over and over and over again. Each blow stuns the beast just long enough for him to rear back and land the next blow.
The dog's teeth are knocked out. Its jaw is dislocated. Its right eye explodes in a spurt of black goo. And still Theo doesn't relent. He's a gym machine that can only bring death. Eventually the dog falls down but Theo just takes a step closer and keeps swinging. By the time the dog stops moving its back and side are covered in blood and its head finally caves in, sending more black goo onto the floor.
Theo stops slamming his water bottle into the dog. Then he stumbles backwards and leans against the wall, panting. His pants are torn and bloody.
Brian is trying not to scream in pain, but holding his bleeding hand. Nat pulls her shivs from the dog's corpse. Her face is cold, and she says, “but I'm a dog person.” Then she loses it and starts crying right there. Brian tears the right sleeve off his shirt with his teeth and wraps his hand. The red shirt won't show the blood. That's smart. Theo eventually stops hyperventilating, then looks at the dog's crushed head, and vomits off to the side.
Jose and I are still standing in the break room. We're totally fine and not even really upset.
“What,” Brian asks, turning to us. “Is wrong with you two? We just went through hell and you're just- Jose are you eating cheetos?”
“Flamin’ Hot, ” comes Jose's flat response.
I shrug. “We met in the army. In Afghanistan. We've seen worse.” I'm not lying either. This doesn't even rise to the level of concerning.
I hadn't talked it over with Jose, but I think we both decided to take a back seat for the dog fight. The others just looked so eager. Wait, maybe that was terror on their faces. I dunno, my Wisdom isn't great.
Theo wipes the vomit from his mouth and then comes back into the break room. He goes to the sink to clean up. After he washes, he seems calm again and tells us legitimately great news. “While I was puking I had my eyes closed and I saw that I had leveled up. You guys should check too.”
Once we're all back in the safety of the break room we check our menus and sure enough, at the top of the main menu is a new option.
LEVEL UP