[System Decay] Chapter 20: Class Selection (Patreon)

Class selection initiated.

Your elements are: [Storm], [Space], [Corruption], [Death], [Poison] (unaffixed), [Time] (unaffixed).

The empty room around Will expanded, giving him enough room to walk around and take a look at the options thrown up on the empty void around him.

Windows like the ones that displayed his status popped up all around him, overlapping and saturating the space around him. Each window expanded when he mentally selected it, giving him the option to explore what each class did.

There were so many more than he’d expected. Will had assumed that this would have been like Dungeons and Dragons or Final Fantasy—pick from a limited set of pre-determined classes like wizard, fighter, druid, and the like.

Admittedly, he should have realized that something was off when Caiyeri’s class had been listed as Gambler. That definitely didn’t fit into the traditional mold that he’d grown to expect.

Will couldn’t count all of them, but at a rough guess, there had to be hundreds of the windows.

A number of them were already greyed out. He brought a few of those to the forefront, expanding them in size. Every time he opened a window, it expanded the list of benefits that the class would give him, then displayed a life-size portrait of an example of the class.

The greyed-out ones looked to be race-specific classes, judging by the red text that told him why he couldn’t get them.

“Why does the system show me a class if humans don’t even get access to it?” Will asked.

Helper: Some Users are given the opportunity to change their race.

That option didn’t seem present to Will. He sifted through the screens for a while, eventually pulling up an interface that looked distinct from the others.

You are currently not eligible for a race change due to excess amounts of corruption.

“That’s fine,” Will said, slightly disappointed. “I like having two arms and two legs. Though it would’ve been nice to be an elf, I guess. They all looked like models.”

Helper: They were clones, remember?

“Yeah, but still. Those were some damn good genes. I don’t think you can even make a human look like that without eight hours in a makeup trailer.”

Helper: Appearance is an elven racial trait, but the effect of reaching bronze rank helps as well. A large portion of the impurities in your body will be expelled or converted into mana.

“That’s good to know. Any other hidden secrets that I should know about? Any more information that you care to divulge for me while I have access to you?”

Helper: None that I am at liberty to disclose at the moment.

“Your boss is real heavy-handed, hmm?”

Helper: Let’s not speak of that. Time is currently accelerated for you and I while you select your class, but you don’t have unlimited time to select your class. Though you’ve already passed the tutorial, a class will be automatically selected for you if you don’t finish by the time all tutorials end.

The tutorial failure timer no longer said “time until tutorial failure,” but it was still there, slowly counting down. Will estimated that he had about five seconds in here for every second that ticked down.

“Okay. So I have, like, five hours? Five or so hours to pick a class.”

Helper: Just about. Start looking.

#

You have advanced to Unformed 12!

Lev was completely and totally spent. He thanked himself for having the wherewithal to form and fight with a party.

Before the apocalypse, Lev had been a bit of a flake. He’d spent a little too much time clubbing and maybe too little time helping the people who needed him to pull through. Lev deeply hoped that Will was doing alright. If his last words to his friend were a pair of texts excusing his shitty behavior, Lev was never going to forgive himself.

After the advent of the system, though, he’d made an effort to improve. He had always been told that he was a born leader, and when he hadn’t been avoiding his responsibilities, Lev had proved that to be true.

Now, operating as the frontline support for the party of other students from his university that had ended up in the same region, Lev was proving it true again and again.

He refused to leave anyone else out to dry.

The system had messaged everyone in the four-person party shortly after they’d come out of their tutorial, informing them of what would come next. The dungeon they’d just completed was one small part of the biggest change to their world.

What had formerly been recognizable as a small town had been broken and replaced by a strange, uncanny desert environment. Though there were still buildings that Lev recognized, the town had nearly doubled in size, bringing with it beings that were humanoid but looked like they were straight out of one of those old fantasy movies Lev’s friends adored.

And the dungeons. He couldn’t forget about those.

“You good?” Allie asked, settling next to him and handing him a bottle of water from his inventory. With the Sword, Wind, and Radiance elements, she was their makeshift party’s other frontliner, bold and flashy with every strike of the magical sword she’d earned during their tutorial.

“I’m alright,” Lev said, gratefully chugging the water down. “Christ. I can’t believe we made it out of that in one piece.”

A large part of that had been thanks to the healing he could provide from his Life element, but even then, it had been a close thing.

“You can say that again,” Allie said, sighing deeply. “Seriously, that thing was an absolute beast.”

“That it was,” Lev agreed. “A bronze rank boss is insane.”

It had been a “solo boss,” but that fight had been anything but solo.

“It’s unbalanced as hell,” she said, then frowned. “Or maybe we’re just slow.”

Before either of them could interrogate that thought more, the walls of the dungeon started rumbling around them.

“Come on,” Allie said, helping Lev to his feet. A note of alarm tinged her words, though she tried to hide it. “Let’s loot this place and get out of here.”

#

Class: [Warrior]

Elements: [Any element bound to Power or Speed] (primary), [Any element bound to Perception or Resistance] (primary)

Common

A basic but reliable class, [Warrior] is the first step to a wide variety of class evolutions. Notably, it is one of the few classes that offer two primary elements.

Common first evolutions: [Paladin], [Battlemaster], [Spellblade], [Samurai].

Universal Ability: [Enhanced Attribute] - Grants a 10% increase to [Power] or [Speed] based on your affixation.

Universal Ability: [Enhanced Growth] - Accelerates growth of your [Resistance] or [Perception] based on your affixation.

Skill: Select up to four of the following skills depending on your affixation.

Will waved the rest of the class away. It was nice to get an idea of what the classes were like, but he had no interest in taking something common.

Helper seemed inclined to agree.

Helper: The rarity of a class doesn’t necessarily indicate how useful it is. The Spear Sovereign, one of a very few to not only survive a combat with a Dread Executor but win, began as a simple [Warrior]. However, given your unique set of elements, it is almost certainly better to find something that suits you more. I would ignore the common classes entirely.

“I assume you can’t tell me anything about the Dread Executors?”

Helper: Actually, I can. They are agents of chaos, and though their true purpose is unknown, many speculate that they are either employed by the system to strike down problematic elements of the cycle or are actively working against them.

“So you don’t know.”

Helper: Not exactly, though there are theories. The important part is that Dread Executors are strong. They are at the peak of the sovereign tiers at minimum, and many of them have reached the emperor rank; and even then, they are significantly more powerful than other Users at the same ostensible power level.

“That sounds like a track I’d like to follow. Do those passive universal abilities have anything to do with that?”

Helper: To some extent. The abilities aren’t shown in your stats directly, but if one User has [Enhanced Attribute] and battles against another User with the exact same profile but no enhancement, the former will almost certainly win.

“Then should I be looking for those passives?”

Helper: It all depends. Nearly every class is viable, but some are better than others. What makes them better varies.

“Guess I’ll get to looking, then.”

Will still went through the common classes even though Helper had told him to set them aside, skimming through them in case there was something broken that they’d both missed. Unfortunately, he didn’t appear to be living in a shitty isekai anime where there was an obvious exploit that the system administrator had overlooked.

The uncommon classes that were available to him were far fewer in number. Once he filtered out the common ones, he could actually see the individual windows without having to sort through overlapping class options.

Even amonst those, there weren’t many that were that interesting. There were a few highlights that he filed down for later, though. He wasn’t sure if they’d be that useful, but they were interesting enough that he wanted to give them a second chance.

Class: [Collector]

Elements: [Any element bound to Affinity] (primary), [Any element], [Any element]

Uncommon.

Requirements: Kill at least one creature with each of at least three separate items before class selection.

Collect items. Have them grow with you.

Common first evolutions: [Archiver], [Armorer], [Relic Hunter].

Universal Ability: [Increased Affinity] - Due to your [Corruption] binding, you already have this ability.

Skill: [Enhance Item] - A high-cooldown skill that allows you to permanently increase the power of an item.

Skill: [Destructive Synthesis] - You already have this skill. You will instead gain significant growth for this skill.

Skill: [Weapons Free] - You already have this skill. You will instead gain significant growth for this skill.

Rather than the generic armor-clad warrior portrait that had appeared for the other class, the image was of a man with a living armory surrounding him, from which he took a sword and shield.

Enhance Item was very attractive—the issue was that he already had three-quarters of what this class could provide. It wasn’t a great value proposition, but Enhance Item was really, really good.

He put it into his think about it more list.

Class: [Storm Sorcerer]

Elements: [Storm] (primary), [Any element bound to Soul], [Poison] or [Space]

Uncommon.

Foment the power of the gathering storm. Storm Sorcerers can bring down armies with the right setup, focusing primarily on large areas of effect.

Simple but effective, Storm Sorcerers are the epitome of powerful backline mages.

Common first evolutions: [Stormweaver], [Storm Sage], [Thunderlord].

Universal Ability: [Enhanced Attribute] - 10% boost to [Soul].

Skill: [Heart of the Storm] - You can breathe underwater and are not affected by intense weather conditions if the humidity is above 50%. Each time you cast an area-of-effect spell, you can add a lightning charge to it.

Skill: [Hand of the Storm] - Increases your strength and reflexes while in your own area-of-effect spells.

Skill: [Storm Surge] - Summon the storm.

Storm Sorcerer showed an androgynous figure cloaked in blue, riding a cyclone as a thunderstorm raged around them.

Badass.

Will didn’t bother expanding the skills menu for every class, but he did read through the interesting sounding ones quickly to get an idea.

“These are some pretty stringent requirements on some of these classes,” he said aloud. “Are there that many classes that they can do that?”

Helper: Yes, but also, some of these classes are accessible through other means. For instance, [Storm Sorcerer] can be achieved with the Water, Wind, and Lightning elements, or a few other combinations. In that case, one of those elements might evolve into Storm, or you could get an entirely new element altogether. It’s the higher rarity classes that tend to be stringent on what you can apply to them.

Sure enough, by the time Will got to the rare classes, that was proven true.

Class: [Chronopoisoner]

Elements: [Time] (primary), [Death], [Poison]

Rare.

Requirements: Kill a creature using afflictions before class selection.

Poison is slow to kill. A Chronopoisoner addresses this by increasing the speed at which seconds pass. Those who make use of this class are devastating assassins and have a nasty track record of toppling empires.

These poisoners are widely sought after, and though they are weak against large groups of monsters, nobody wants to face a Chronopoisoner in single combat. Even if they fall on the battlefield, the other combatant tends to suffer a slow, painful death at home.

Common first evolutions: [Temporal Alchemist], [Plague Weaver], [Chronophage].

Skill: [Accelerate] - Drastically increases the rate by which afflictions affect the target. Increases their metabolism.

Skill: [Delayed Poison] - Create a poison that will not be activated until you will it to be.

Skill: [The Bell Tolls] - You already have this skill. You will instead gain significant growth for this skill.

It was accompanied by an image of a slight young woman who wouldn’t have seemed out of place as an NPC selling trading wares. The only sign that she was a User of some kind was the glowing marble of power in her hands, which she closed a fist around. In the background, a monster fell, suffering from the combined effects of what looked to be half a dozen poisons.

This one seemed interesting. Accelerate was the primary draw here. Will had no need for Delayed Poison, and he did already have The Bell Tolls, but being able to increase the rate at which corruption and bleed affected his enemies? He could imagine using that on the Carrion Lord. It would have trivialized the fight.

Plague Weaver and Chronophage also sounded like sick class evolutions, although the class menu didn’t let him see what they were.

Interestingly enough, the rare class wasn’t a straight up upgrade over the similar Chronomancer class available at uncommon. Just like Helper had said, they weren’t objectively superior to each other, just more specialized.

Will was fine with specializing. He had learned already that he could use items and loot to patch up his weaknesses, and he was nothing if not adaptable.

Helper: [Chronopoisoner] is one of the classes that can evolve into Dread Executor eventually, for what it’s worth.

“Oh, shit. Does the system mention that?”

Helper: For the most common ones, yes, but less so for the “mundane” ones like [Chronopoisoner]. The system is cagey about revealing details, but this bit of information is somewhat common after the two most famous ones of my cycle became Dread Executors less than a century later.

“Huh. That makes me want to pick it more, for some reason.”

Helper: Understandable.

To Will, that sounded like a sign of potential. He bumped Chronopoisoner up a few tiers in his estimation.

Class: [Void Knight]

Elements: [Space] (primary), [Poison], [Corruption] or [Chaos].

Epic.

Requirements: Survive in a corrupted space for at least 1 hour. Survive a spatial displacement of more than 1,000 miles.

Harness the powers of the vastness of the void and spatial distortions to disorient, trap, and annihilate. Void Knights are an esoteric bunch, able to take on nearly any role besides healer. Outside of combat, they often serve as ambassadors or executors of the will of empires; some are known to work directly for the system.

Void Knights are the only first-level class that can survive in deep space.

Common first evolutions: [Void Warden], [Void Reaver], [Astral Knight].

This class can evolve into Dread Executor.

Universal Ability: [Call of the Void] - You no longer need to breathe. You can survive in a vacuum.

Skill: [Null Zone] - Nullify magic at your level or lower within a certain radius.

Skill: [Warp Slash] - Extend the reach of your weapons through barriers and around corners.

Skill: [Cosmic Chains] - Warp space around an enemy, rendering them unable to escape with movement abilities and potentially immobilizing them.

This portrait was of another fully armored figure, their dark cloak rippling with stars. Magical rifts opened as they slashed with their sword, striking foes from impossible distances.

Void Knight was one of only three epic-rarity classes that Will had access to, and the other two seemed odd—what would a baker want with the death element? And why was it being offered to him?

The line that told him this class could evolved into Dread Executor caught his attention once more. This one didn’t work as well with his existing skills, and he was fairly sure that he wouldn’t actually have benefited from these skills aside from Warp Slash against the goblins, who were all higher rank than him, but if Will could get ahead of his enemies in terms of raw power, this would make him a force to be reckoned with.

“Still,” he mused, “seems kind of win-more.”

Helper: It is. [Void Knight] tends to be taken by the most arrogant. Those who can make use of it make great use of it, but those who can’t outrun everyone else, including those with centuries-long head starts tend to find an early grave.

Past epic rarity, there was, to his surprise, a single legendary class.

Will didn’t feel like he’d done anything to deserve a special class, but he supposed his tutorial experience had been harder than most—and the circumstances were pretty rough, too.

Class: [Reaper]

Elements: [Corruption] (primary), [Death], [Space]

Legendary.

Requirements: Carry the sigil of an Ascendant or higher being. Survive more than 24 hours in a corrupted space. Kill at least 50 creatures above your rank.

95% of Reapers die before they reach their first class evolution. Of the 5% that survive, almost every single one has become a Dread Executor. Selecting this class ensures that you will be a target for the rest of your life, but it carries great potential—perhaps the greatest.

A Reaper uses the tools of the great enemy to purge the world of its wrongs. It is not an enviable task, nor one that the purveyor of those wrongs are keen to let pass.

Common first evolutions: [You may not view the class evolutions at this time.]

Universal Ability: [Marked for Death] - No matter your alignment nor how much you suppress your aura, detection skills will always identify you as evil. Beings of a higher tier than you will know of your existence, and will know your location and identity if you are close enough to them. Killing another User grants increased experience.

Skill: [Attune Corrupted Item] - You may attune to and enhance corrupted items, taking their corruption on for yourself.

Skill: [Decaying Touch] - Inflict a level of [Corruption] on a target you make full contact with.

Skill: [Wraith Cloak] - Grants increased speed and limited invisibility in areas with little to no light.

There was no image.

These three skills were all strong—Enhance Item in particular—but they weren’t broken. Will was tempted to select it right off the bat, but the text on it, plus that universal ability… he held off.

“Why is this a corruption primary and not death? It sounds like death.”

Helper: I do not control what the system decides.

“Fair enough. Man, this is going to be hard to pick.”

Helper: Take your time deciding. You were thrown into an unfair situation. I would personally take [Chronopoisoner] or [Storm Sorcerer] of the classes you seem most focused on to maximize my chances of survival, but I am not you.

“No,” Will said. “You’re not.”

He sat down and thought.

#

This is not good, Lev thought. Shit.

The rumbling, as it turned out, had come from two primary sources. First was the dungeon beginning to collapse, which Allie guessed was because of the ambient mana overloading because they’d killed all the monsters in it or something—Lev wasn’t entirely sure, and in the moment, he didn’t care.

The second and certainly more pressing cause appeared when they made it out of the dungeon.

A giant rampaged after them, crushing small trees and leaving massive footprints as it chased them. Trevor, one of the other students they’d picked up, had a spell called Swift Escape active on all of them, and it was the only reason they were able to escape at all.

Even then, it was closing. Lev had caught a single look at the ugly fifteen-foot-tall creature, and its description terrified him.

Ung, Cave Ogre. Level: Bronze 3.

This is a squad boss.

Cave ogres are simple beings, but tough to deal with. Especially for those a rank lower. Be careful—they possess resistances to almost every form of mundane damage.

The town may have had more people in it, but the dungeon was nowhere near the center of the town. Help wasn’t coming.

All they could do was run.

#

Helper: Congratulations on making your choice.

“Thanks,” Will said. “Glad I got over my decision paralysis.”

57 seconds remaining.

Helper: It’s been a pleasure, biped.

“I’m going to miss having a Wikipedia to look up.”

Helper: One last choice to make before we go.

“Location, yeah?”

A globe appeared before Will’s eyes. He couldn’t recognize half the continents on it, and the familiar ones were… different. Entirely.

“I don’t think anywhere I select matters,” he said. “I kind of doubt things will be the same.”

Helper: Major landmarks will be the same. The system adores putting dungeons there.

“Hmm. Is there a way I can choose people?”

Helper: There is.

“Are my mother and father there?”

Helper: Let me check your ancestry.

Helper: No. They chose to become non-Users.

Will breathed a sigh of relief, then went down the list of people he knew and cared about. It didn’t take long to get a hit.

Helper: Levy “Lev” Anderson is in what was formerly Midwestern America and now appears to have been overrun by an elf faction. He is currently engaged in combat.

“Oh, fantastic. I’m sure he’s in need of help. Again.” Will said the words with exasperation, but he did like Lev. The fact that he’d chosen to become a User was proof enough that when it really came down to it, he could do the shit that others couldn’t.

Helper: Likely.

“Can I go to him, then?”

Helper: Yes. I will arrange this now.

“Thank you.”

The world around Will began to change, strange colors dancing through the air. It reminded him of the teleportation using the goblin daggers, though with an entire vibrant spectrum instead of just lime green.

“I’m going to miss you,” Will admitted.

Helper: I don’t plan on this being our last interaction.

“What?” That actually took him aback. “How so? I thought you were a non-User now. Aren’t you limited to this?”

The colors accelerated, dancing around him and coalescing into shapes. The text started to fade away.

Helper: Contact Caiyeri. Find Awakening Shards of the Beyond. You need to—[REMOVED] [REMOVED] [REMOVED].

Helper: Shit.

The text fritzed, and from the bits of her voice that made it through, Will got the impression that Helper was in pain.

Helper: I’m going to [REMOVED} [REMOVED] leave now. Fuck.

Helper: My name was Ayla.

[REMOVED]

You have lost access to your tutorial helper.

You have gained your class.

All skills advancing to bronze rank. All attributes advancing to bronze.

Initiating teleport…

#

A sudden gunshot-like crack turned everyone’s heads. Lev looked, then stopped running. Even the ogre turned to stare.

Hanging in the air, a dark blue rift opened just long enough to deposit a single human being. He was bloodied, dirtied, and looked as if he’d seen far more combat than any one of Lev’s party. Two belts were wrapped around his chests, one of them strapped full of daggers like a bandolier. He exuded a powerful presence, as if his very existence was telling Lev to kneel.

Deep in his bones, Lev knew that what he was seeing was a great evil.

But it couldn’t be. The new arrival—underneath all the grime, he was a familiar face.

“Bronze 3, huh?” the man said. “This is a squad boss? The hell?”

“W-Will?” Lev asked hesitantly.

Will turned and grinned. It faltered as his eyes crossed over Lev’s party, but it returned soon enough. “Let me handle this, and you can catch me up on what’s happened.”

The ogre moved.

“Behind you!” Allie shouted.

“Oh, I know,” Will said, turning. He ducked under the ogre’s massive club with ease.

Lev could only sit there and stare.

#

Will couldn’t believe his luck nor what had just happened, but one of these was a more pressing issue than the other.

Welcome back to Earth, he told himself, pushing thoughts of Helper—no, she had said her name Ayla—aside. It’s about time you show this planet what you can do.