Elijah now had a choice before him. They had already decided what to do with the tower. Now, this was a choice he hadn’t expected to have to make until this World Boss Event had finished. The top of the tower—for whatever reason—counted as a safe zone, and he’d hit level twenty at some point during the fight to the top.

  He told Bo, only planning on bragging to his friend that he’d made it to level twenty and gone up a tier. They were in the middle of an event, a large fight with hundreds of players involved; he didn’t expect all of that to stop just for him.

  Bo had disagreed immediately. “No dude, now that you’ve reached Journeyman, the perks you’ll receive every ten levels are huge. They could make or break our little mission here. We can afford the time if it means the difference between success and failure.”

  Annika nodded in agreement. “Beginner and Apprentice-tiers are meant for learning how you want to play the game, but Journeyman tier and higher are about responsibility. Specifically, about taking responsibility for how you want to level up and get stronger in your own hands.”

  Elijah balked at her words, not just that she was agreeing with Bo, but that she implied he hadn’t been taking responsibility for his decisions from the very beginning.

  He had been responsible for his own decisions so far. His decision to choose the difficult start, his decision to use the debug menu, his decision to absorb the Dragontooth King class.

  He’d taken responsibility for all of those actions and grown into a player worthy of them.

  Above all else, it had been his personal decisions that had led him here. Even the decision that had left every player trapped in the game. That was the heaviest weight on his sense of personal responsibility.

  He cleared his mind of those thoughts and let himself relax as he finally opened up the new ‘Tier-Up Menu’.

  [Journeyman Tier]

  You have achieved level 20. You are now a Journeyman adventurer. Please select a path for leveling. NOTE: These changes do not have an immediate effect; only which perks become available.

  1. Tank Specialization Path

  2. Damage Specialization Path

  3. Utility Specialization Path

  That explained why Benjamin had mentioned nothing about these paths when he’d reached level twenty. This would be a long road to travel rather than an instant power-up like he had originally assumed when he saw the menu flashing in his vision.

  Each option was a role that he had played within Sasha’s Babysitting Service. He was the party’s secondary tank after Nicholas. That was why his constitution had been the first of his skills to reach level twenty.

  In the Dragontooth Fort, when he’d gone in with his friends, he’d played guard for Sasha and Benjamin. Then the second time they faced off against the Acolyte, he’d taken an even more active role in being a tank, standing up against it while trying to change its stats after he’d poisoned it.

  Again in the Dev Room, he’d played rear guard while they worked their way down the long staircase beneath the forgotten cemetery, and again inside when he’d taken Nicholas’ place and stood front and center against Tom and Arturus.

  But the most important aspect for him when it came to tanking had been in the Heartwood Glade.

  He’d shared the burden with his friends during the first trial, the maze of the heart. Benjamin and Sasha were pure casters with barely any health points, and Bo was working on his dexterity build. If it hadn’t been for him, Nicholas would have had to bear the weight of the trial almost exclusively on his shoulders.

  Then again, in the third trial, he and Nicholas had led the defense of the dryads, and he had protected Sasha when they had stampeded.

  Being a tank was an obvious choice if he only looked at his actions. When he considered the mental toll it had taken on him—the trauma, stress, and phantom pains that shouldn’t be there but were—he wasn’t sure it was the best choice anymore. Especially not after what he had just endured.

  Damage specialization was also an interesting choice for him. He could dish out a significant amount of damage now between his sword and the various summons he had.

  Still, the idea didn’t exactly appeal to Elijah. It would also rely heavily on his much-neglected strength stat.

  In both his battle with Tom and the battle with the Spellsword, he’d used trickery and luck to deal the final blows.

  He enjoyed large-scale combat, like with the grey goblins or even against the Reapers in the trial chamber, but he wasn’t skilled enough with his sword to effectively utilize it against a single strong opponent or when he had to worry about his allies.

  Plus, being a front-line damage dealer meant being in harm’s way again, and that just wasn’t as appealing to Elijah anymore.

  He considered the third option, the utility specialist. Utility was definitely an interesting choice and more in line with how he had played originally, and the lie he had told Alastor and Nicholas all the way back during his first day. Buffs and debuffs were a fun way to play, and if it could give him the actual ability to buff his allies before he reached Celestial, then it could be a good option.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He could minimize the amount of danger his friends were in, while maximizing their ability to dish out damage. That seemed oddly fitting, especially after everything he’d been through. His friends were his focus, his primary responsibility. Yes, he had a responsibility to everyone in this game to fix what he had broken, but he owed it most to his friends, who had been there for him since the beginning and put their own bodies on the line for him.

  Looking over his list of spells and skills. His summons—the Bitters, and the Dragontooth Bats—likely worked as utility spells. Especially his scouts and teleportation. He liked the idea of having more summons with different abilities.

  Part of him wondered if that path would allow expansion of his ‘Bitter Dominion’ spell to allow even more familiars. Could he have an entire army of goblin-like creatures?

  He didn’t want to waste too much time; he couldn’t hum and haw about it like he had with his tutorial selection.

  [Utility Specialization Path]

  Path selected. Future perks will allow a choice between utility-focused perks.

  ~~~

  [Utility Perk Unlocked]

  Reality Awareness

  Description: Receive insight into puzzles and quests through physical awareness of the underlying code. This replaces the instinctive code awareness inherent in your class.

  As the text boxes cleared from his vision, he saw the world in a brand new way. If he focused hard on a specific spot, he could see the underlying code behind it. It wasn’t quite like the debug menu of his ‘Reality Warp’ skill; it was a more instinctual awareness of what things were and how they worked.

  The last thing to do was to open his stat menu and assign his points.

  [CHARACTER STATS]

  Name: Elijah

  Class: Reality Warper

  Level: 20 (4030 / 4470 XP)

  Health: 100 / 100

  Mana: 100 / 100

  Strength: 10 (Apprentice)

  Intelligence: 20 (Journeyman)

  Dexterity: 19 (Apprentice)

  Constitution: 20 (Journeyman)

  He brought his Dexterity up to almost Journeyman and put the last point into his intelligence. Even as he accepted the changes, he worried about leaving his strength behind, but at least for now his Celestial-tier weapon would help to balance that out. He could decide later if he wanted to raise it.

  As it stood now, he’d only be able to get two skills up to Celestial tier by the time he reached level ninety-nine and unlocked his redemption quest. His third skill would be very close, but that would only be if he left his strength exactly where it was now. He knew it would be a tough battle. The Big Badda Boss Babe had been significantly stronger than its level, level five, would suggest. And it would be level ninety-nine when Elijah fought it again. He didn’t know how many chances he would have, but if it was only one chance, he would have to succeed on the first try or all hope would be lost.

  He noticed his skills absent from this screen now. But some sense told him he could pull them up the same way he pulled open his stats. He did so. There was nothing for him to change, but he wanted to look over them one more time before they continued on.

  [Skills]

  ~~Class: Reality Warper~~

  - Reality Warp - 19

  - Mass Warp - 4

  ~~Class: Dragontooth King~~

  - Dragontooth Swarm - 12

  - Dragontooth Teleport - 9

  - Dragontooth Scout - 9

  - Bitter Dominion - 16

  - Dragontooth Bombs - 5

  ~~Class: Dungeon Core Guardian~~

  - Core Breaker - 8

  - Reality Awareness - Perk

  His new perk being listed underneath his Core Guardian class instead of his Reality Warper class interested him. It seemed like it was a weird choice by the game, but mechanically it made little difference.

  ”Okay, I’m ready now,” he told Bo and Annika. Together, they found the controls to restrict the flow of mana being pumped from underground into the sky above. It was easy when Elijah’s perk translated the information of the control to let him know that it only had three modes: full, which it was already on, half, and none. He figured the ‘none’ option was the one that had blown up Arturus and Kyle’s tower, assuming that they hadn’t just used some spell to do it.

  The Mana Overload debuff escalated as the iris door at the top of the tower constricted. “Let’s go. Back to the plateau,” Elijah shouted. The poison that they had fed him was working to prevent the overload from damaging him, but he could see Annika was struggling to keep up.

  A flurry of bats whisked them away back to the staging area as Bo gripped his shoulder. Annika appeared shortly after them in her own flowery teleport and gave Elijah a big smile. “So? On to the next tower now.”

  Elijah shook his head. “No, I’m going to go collect my team, and then we’ll work on the towers ourselves.” He looked over at the battlefield. He could see that half of the towers had been dealt with now, though one had been solved the incorrect way.

  ”What are you talking about, Elijah? We did so well on the last one, why would you want to stop working with me now?”

  Even Bo was giving him a confused look, but he had settled his mind on this course of action already, and he wasn’t taking it back. “Working together requires trust, or at the very least that trust hasn’t been broken. You broke my trust with that kiss.”

  Annika scoffed. “We had to get the mana poison in you somehow, or would you have preferred I let you die?”

  At the time, he would have preferred her letting him die, but that wasn’t the issue here. “I understand that much, but that’s not where I am holding you at fault.” He was trying to hold back his anger, but every second she argued with him, he felt his control slipping. “My issue was the tongue.”

  Bo moved immediately between Elijah and Annika, his dagger out and body tensed for a fight. “I think it best you go now,” he snarled.

  Elijah felt goosebumps prickle up along his arms and the back of his neck. Bo had to know that he stood no chance against Annika if she pushed the issue, but he was protecting Elijah against someone who had assaulted him regardless. He didn’t think he’d ever had a friend as devoted to him as Bo and the other members of Sasha’s Babysitting Service.

  She looked like she wanted to argue, and to be honest, she looked like she wanted to attack Bo right then and there. But when she saw Elijah was not only not backing down but ready to back up Bo, she sagged her shoulders and turned away from them. “Fine, if you want to be that way, then so be it.”

  She pointed up at the next tower counterclockwise of the one they had just finished clearing. “Keep going anticlockwise of the first. Try not to die.”

  With that, she disappeared in a puff of flowers. Something about the magic felt angry to Elijah, but he tried to put that out of his mind as Bo turned to him.

  ”Alright, ready? Let’s go get the band back together,” he told Elijah, holding out his hand.