One of the things I hadn’t mentioned to Ash yet was that there was no reason to expect all of our classes to be different. We’d almost certainly have overlapping options, especially as we were leveling from the same events. Some of these, especially anything beyond the common tiers, would likely persist as options on greater levels too. But there was no reason to break her hope again so soon.

  Instead, I pulled up my own class list and found two of the expected repeated classes. Both Dog-Tamer and Student had made my options. The other three, though, were new.

  __________

  Class

  Spider-Slayer

  Type

  Fighter

  Rarity

  Common

  The Spider-Slayer is a common Fighter-based class. It specializes in combat against all types of spiders. As the class grows, so does the application of the abilities within the class to other similar creatures, eventually growing beyond the arachnid entirely.

  Key Ability

  Araneae Stalker

  Araneae Stalker allows the Spider-Slayer to detect the various traps spiders use against their foes or in hunting their prey. It gives them a sixth sense for whenever a spider trap is near, and as their perception grows, it will eventually provide even more detailed information about the spider in question.

  Class

  Sword Adept

  Type

  Fighter

  Rarity

  Uncommon

  The Sword Adept is an uncommon Fighter-type class that isn’t new to the world of wielding a sword. It’s something they have practiced with, honed, but haven’t yet mastered. This is the start of the path toward that mastery. Few have the dedication to walk that path, and even fewer have the perseverance to finish it.

  Key Ability

  Path of the Sword

  As long as the Sword Adept is wielding a sword, they gain a bonus to all of their combat abilities based on the attribute most associated with their current action. At higher values, each attribute unlocks further special abilities of the Sword Adept, guiding their class advancement.

  Class

  Runic Guardian

  Type

  Paladin

  Rarity

  Rare

  The Runic Guardian is a Paladin-type class that specializes in using the magical runes inscribed into weapons to defend those under their care. Utilizing a runic weapon, they are able to greatly enhance their own capabilities, as a bond grows between wielder and weapon.

  Key Ability

  Well of Power

  Inscribing a rune into their weapon allows the Runic Guardian to invest some of their own soul directly into it. When needed, they may draw on this energy to enhance their own body. The type of runes they have access to are governed by their levels and their attribute values. Higher attributes can potentially unlock new types of runes, including synergized inscriptions.

  __________

  Runic Guardian wasn’t all that different from one of the many classes I had used at one point in my life. And given a different situation, I’d likely have chosen it without a second thought. But now I had a far greater, more specialized need, and despite the paladin typing of it, whatever healing abilities it may have weren’t core enough to it that I was willing to risk the choice.

  At least, I wasn’t yet. With it being a rare class, I’d almost certainly see it stick around for the next few choices, and the fact that I had even gotten a rare class option already boded well for what I’d see at level twenty-five, if I was forced to wait that long.

  “Looks like nothing that will help right now for me either,” I said, watching her face droop slightly before I continued. “Let’s go check these houses for survivors and see what we can do about food. I know at least we have got some food that’s going to go bad if we don’t get through it soon.”

  “If the spiders went after me, do you think they went after everyone else in the neighborhood?” Ash asked.

  There wasn’t a lot of the neighborhood left, so at the very least, that had limited how many people the spiders could have grabbed. But I doubted they had gone for the others as quickly as they had us. We likely had something special, something that no one else did, something that had drawn their attention.

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  “Probably not immediately, and with what I did in the forest, maybe not at all. But that only applies to the spiders. There are a ton of monsters stalking the world now. The spiders likely came after us first, because the sword came back to life,” I explained.

  “Just how powerful are these monsters? You said they were pulled in from somewhere?” she asked. The questions were starting to really hit her brain. The sight of our house was giving her a tiny measure of stability again, even if we both knew it was only temporary.

  “The void, at least that’s the theory. Supposedly, some people have gone there and returned alive, but I’ve never personally met anyone who has. It’s a gamble for a creature of the void to come through. They lose a lot of their power when they enter System space, but they can, and will, gain it back over time.”

  While I hadn’t personally verified anything about the void and what lived inside it, this was something I had been willing to believe without much questioning. I had seen people far more powerful than any height I had ever reached, determined to go investigate the truth of it, only to never return. Supposedly, there were a few godkings out there that had done it, but those were not people whose brains I had ever felt safe picking.

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Yes, but not exactly the same,” I replied, watching her carefully step over a large crack the acid slugs had left behind.

  There were a dozen houses still near us. But only eight of them, including our own, were in one piece. The back half of four of them had been cut straight through as the Earth had been remade. What had used to be backyards and another row of houses was now a rapidly flowing, dark blue river.

  While that left us with a potential means of travel, I didn’t like the looks of it from here. Water you couldn’t see to the bottom of was never safe. But with the mana flow slowly working its way into everything, any traditional vehicle wasn’t going to work for much longer.

  As the mana flow grew, it was going to start disrupting anything not designed to work with it. The newer technologies of Earth would go first, as the mana interfered with their integrated circuits. It was something I had seen before on countless planets at a similar stage of development.

  Their small, perfectly controlled electrical systems suddenly became flooded with a new type of energy they had never conceived of, and immediately, it all fried. The power was already clearly out to the remaining houses. While that was likely mostly due to the power lines breaking somewhere nearby, it was for the best as it mitigated the dangers of any transformers exploding.

  Older cars would likely work for now, at least until the fuels got enough exposure that they didn’t perform correctly in the engines. Not that any of that part truly mattered. With how much the roads had been destroyed across the planet, most cars weren’t going to be much use anyway.

  I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind for now. We had time to decide how we wanted to start the journey to find Heather and Rich. There were several more options that could open up as the integration progressed, and once I was able to get more information on who we were up against.

  Walking up to the door of the house next to ours, I didn’t spot any obvious signs of trouble. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. With the slugs coming up from below, anything could already be inside.

  I knocked on the door. At the best of times, stealth hadn’t been my usual way of doing things, and now didn’t seem like the right place to learn it.

  “Norm, you in there? It’s Adam and Ash!” I called through the door.

  There was a small scuttling sound but no reply. Moving my head to the window next to the door, I tried to see inside, but the curtains blocked too much of my view to get a good idea of what was going on. There was something in there, I was sure of that, but I had no clue if it was human or not.

  A low growl from Floof pulled me away from the window. He was looking directly at the door with his teeth bared. There was something in there he didn’t like.

  “Dad…” Ash whispered, looking at me with worry in her eyes.

  “I know, stay here on the porch unless I call you inside, got it?” I asked, looking at her seriously.

  She nodded in return.

  I hefted the sword over my head, bringing it down hard into the solid wooden door in front of us. It split into several pieces as the blade was forced through it by a combination of my strength and its magic.

  “Stay!” I ordered Floof right before pushing my way through the broken door into the darkened living room.

  With the blinds closed, the only light was coming from the now-empty front doorway. Whatever I had seen before was gone, but there was more of the strange scurrying sound coming from deeper into the house.

  “Norm, or anyone else for that matter, if you can hear me yell!” I called out. As far as I knew, he lived alone, but that didn’t mean someone else hadn’t taken shelter here after last night.

  Again, there was no answer, other than the damned scurrying sound somewhere in the distance. What the hell even sounded like that? Rats, maybe?

  Ignoring the living room I had entered in, I headed for the hallway that connected to the kitchen. It was possible that it was just some mudane animal, and not a monstrous rat.

  I hated fighting vermin, especially those of the rodent type. They always came in giant swarms that quickly engulfed you as you fought them off. The taste of a rat trying to force its way down your throat was something you never forgot, and never wanted to repeat.

  There was the noise again, louder this time. I was on the right track, if nothing else. Quickening my pace, I dashed into the kitchen just in time to catch something that looked like a tail as it vanished through a cracked door.

  “Damn,” I muttered. Now I was sure it was rats.

  That had been the door to the basement.

  “I don’t understand how we can’t find anyone at all, Alecks. Everyone can’t be dead, can they?” Adam asked, eating some of the scraps of food they had found in the village in between his questions.

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this. There’s the weird voice in our head, and every time we fight something, we keep getting stronger. And now there are the classes. But no, I agree, it doesn’t make any sense that we could fight the things in this village, and the adults couldn’t. Some of them actually knew how to use weapons!” his brother replied, frustration coming out in his tone.

  “Do you think there was a bigger monster that left after it was done?” Adam didn’t like the idea of that, but he couldn’t think of any other ideas.

  “I told you I don’t know, and I don’t even think it’s a good idea for us to try to find out,” he replied.

  “Then what’s next? We can’t survive alone.” Adam was still worried about how they would get food. He hadn’t learned to hunt yet, and he knew his brother had just started.

  “Before we decide anything, we both need to get some real rest. The frogs are gone, we’ve got some food, and this place has a cellar that seems secure enough. So let’s spend tonight down there, and we can make our plans tomorrow,” Alecks said, finishing off a loaf of bread.

  —Memories of Adam Miller before he found Earth