Class Shift 3- Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Chapter 1- You Aren’t Supposed to be Here

Tim sighed. The caravan was slower than he’d ever imagined. He had known it would be slow. It was just he didn’t know anything could move this slow. They hadn’t even made twenty miles progress in the past two days. Now, the sun was long up, and they weren’t moving yet for their third day.

Worse, more people were joining them. Initially, he had only wanted to take a group of sojourners, but Caesar and his generals had insisted on a military presence. It would be dangerous for the flats, Tim knew that. The monsters he had encountered before in the untamed lands were nothing to sneeze at. Now, he would have to worry about protecting them.

Actually, he needed to try and not call them flats, even in his own mind. They were fellow humans; they just didn’t have the blessings of a sojourner. The differences between the two were so great as to make it seem like they weren’t even the same type of beings. Sojourners were magical beings who couldn’t be killed unless all of their HP were depleted. Even chopping off their heads wasn’t enough.

Oh sure, it would kill them eventually as their HP drained away but it wouldn’t be instantaneous like with a flat or rather a normal. And truthfully, once you removed all of those physical advantages, they really were the same. Flat or sojourner, he had discovered they all had hopes, fear, friends and family.

Well, that was all but him. He was a man alone. Since Cal-Dakota had brought him here, without his consent he might add, Tim had struggled with those feelings of loneliness. Not even the other sojourners could keep up with his power now that he was free from the Law of Fours. And they all acted strangely around him.

Maybe he was partially to blame for that. He had been rather intense or rough around the edges lately, but then again, he had severed body parts of the woman who he had hoped to eventually call a girlfriend. They were packed away inside his soul pouch with the hope that someday he would be able to resurrect her. No one seemed to know if that was possible.

Tim was pulled from his musings when one of the knight-captains came riding up next to him. Tim didn’t need a horse. His superhuman Hardiness let him run all day and combined with his Flexibility made him as fast as a horse, or darn close.

“What is it, Captain Tanner?”

The man was uncomfortable. Whatever he had to say wasn’t going to make Tim happy. That much was obvious.

“Uh, well it’s really two things, Sir.”

Tim shook his head. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me, Sir. I’m not an officer in your army. Tim is just fine, or my mother used to call me Timothy when she was mad at me. I knew it was really bad when she’d use my whole name, Timothy William Stein.”

The captain looked at him for a moment. He paused and then seemed to muster the courage for whatever it was that he had on his mind. His next words weren’t about problems though.

“I’ll call you Tim, as soon as you start calling me Jakob. I figure if we are really buddies hanging out that would suffice, but otherwise titles and honorifics help provide structure for the men. That can make all the difference during hard times.”

Tim nodded. He was willing to concede the point even if it annoyed him. “I suppose hard times are unavoidable where we’re going. So, what are these two issues?”

“First, we’ve had three more groups arrive wanting to join the caravan. One is a blacksmith and several apprentices. He claims you know him. His group was traveling to the capital to meet with you, something about an investment. He said his name is Steven, although truthfully, his wife spoke most of the time. She was a rather fierce woman.”

Tim chuckled remembering the first time he had met them. “You said, they had a bunch of apprentices with them?”

“Yeah, I gathered that was a sore spot. His wife insisted that he hire them and even brought along some enchanters. I can say that having a blacksmith with us would be good for morale. Other than a lack of food, nothing kills an army’s morale faster than broken gear,” Jakob said.

“Fair enough. I’ll find some time to meet with Steven, but not till we get this caravan moving. At this rate we are gonna stop for lunch before we even start the day. What about the other groups.”

“One was a group of sojourners. Most of them were Iron Rank, but there were a few golds and mithril according to what they told us.  You said not to turn away sojourners, but the thing is that they are Asmarians.”

Tim shrugged. “Everyone has a right to fight to save the world.”

“Is that what you truly believe we’re doing, Sir?”

“Without a doubt. Can’t say there won’t be another threat, but if we don’t deal with the build up in the Abyss, it is going to explode and there are worse things than dungeon monsters.”

Tim’s grim tone made Captain Tanner sweat but he maintained his bearing and kept his unease to himself. Tim added, “Ask Alin to meet with the Asmarians. The decision about whether they stay is hers to make. I’ll meet with them if she approves of them.”

“Okay, I turned the third group away. The men aren’t going to be happy because he had casks of ale with him and slave girls to provide other forms of entertainment.”

Tim started to growl under his breath. He might not be a beastial currently, but that feral instinct still rose up. Captain Tanner held up his hand. “Don’t worry. I’m only reporting it to you. I followed your orders strictly. No slaves are allowed as part of the caravan.”

Tim felt himself calm down. He simply nodded to show his approval. He didn’t trust himself to say anything else. They stood there in silence, the captain on his horse and Tim next to him while they both contemplated what Tim’s decision about slaves meant for the future.

Tim didn’t know what the man thought, but most seemed to accept slavery as just a way of life. The simple fact that Captain Tanner didn’t fight him about it was a mark in the man’s favor as far as Tim was concerned.

“Was there another issue?”

“Oh yes. This is actually the reason we haven’t moved yet today. The scouts reported citing some strange monsters a few miles ahead. I’ve taken the liberty of dispatching one of the sojourner teams to deal with them. I believe it was the Silver Eagles turn this time.”

Tim shook his head and grinned. If there were monsters to fight, he wanted in on that action. “You might have led with this.”

“They told me to stall a bit so that they could take care of it without bothering you. Did I do wrong, Sir?”

“They just wanted to steal all the fun. Get everyone ready to move. As soon as I deal with these monsters, we need to get these wheels moving. Now where did you say the scouts sighted them?”

Tim only waited long enough to get a basic idea where to look on the map. It looks like they weren’t on the main road but rather were near one of villages ahead. Maybe it was just some myemar stragglers, but the scouts should recognize myemar.

Once he had the information he needed, Tim left the captain in charge of the camp and ran for it. He missed the wings he’d had when he was a beastial. Just escaping the meetings in the capital had been a challenge. He hadn’t had much time to think about what else to do.

Now though with the slow pace of the caravan he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t try to make another controlled change. Flying would give him so much mobility. For now, running at a pace which would have left an Olympic sprinter drooling would have to suffice.

Tim ran through his skills and gear. He hadn’t been in a fight since the battle with Magnor. Even remembering that made him glower. Focus. He needed to focus.

He went through the skills backwards focusing on the combat ones first.

Chains of Celestial Light Rarity: Rare

Pre-requisites: Sojourner, Spiritualist, Level 16

Mana: (16) mana and (3) mana per minute

Description: Great chains of solid light extend out from your body and bind your target. They can hold a creature with Hardiness equal to or less than 2x your Sagacity. They may also drain the creature of 1% of physical stats for each point of Acuity or inflict damage of 1.5 x Acuity every minute. Range: 4 feet per Sagacity. Cool down: 30 seconds.

This was his control spell for holding weaker opponents and draining more powerful ones. He hadn’t looked at the description since getting his new hat. The increase in damage was nice, but the reduction in mana cost and cool-down was what was most important. Only having to wait thirty seconds to use it again would be killer and the cost now was negligible.

Master Power Strike and Penetrating Cleave were his go to attacks for when something absolutely positively had to die right away. Power Strike sacrificed accuracy but added 300% extra damage. With his level of Hardiness that was impressive enough.

Against a number of smaller opponents cleave was a great way to literally mow down the opposition. Penetrating Cleave was simply an evolved version of that common skill. What made it so special was that it could be used against not only multiple targets but also could be used to strike at a single target which had particularly thick armor. The battle with Magnor had convinced Tim of the need for something like this.

Valorous Battle Cry and Blood’s Potent Rage were his buffing abilities. The first buffed him but more so his allies. Its effect was truly staggering. The ability was a rare one to begin with but then with his inflated stats it made the ability amongst the most powerful in his arsenal. It had a relatively low-level requirement but many of those who might have wanted to use it wouldn’t be able to meet the Sagacity requirement.

Valorous Battle Cry  Rarity: Rare

Pre-requisites: Sojourner, Tank or Damage Deal Tree, Level: 8, Sagacity: 20

Mana: 15

Description: Shout out and raise the morale and fighting prowess of your allies. Range: 3’ x Sagacity. Duration: 15 seconds x Sagacity. All allies within the area of effect have 75% resistance to Fear effects. All those same allies receive 20% of your Hardiness and Flexibility as buffs for the duration. Temporary HP gained this way are lost first.

As it stood now, the skill gave more Hardiness to his allies than they had. The Iron Body trait he had ripped from Magnor’s corpse was responsible for that along with the boosts he had from consumption. The only real downside was the sort duration.

In contrast the next ability was on which helped him personally. Unfortunately, the boosts he got from it didn’t seem to increase the stats given by his shout, but that would have just been broken.

Blood’s Potent Rage Rarity: Unique

Pre-requisites: Berserker, Trait: Crucible of Consumption, Level: 19

Mana: 10 + 5/minute

Description: You push yourself into a rage. The longer you are in battle the greater the benefits. If at any point, there are no enemies who are not disabled with 100 feet of you then the ability will fade after one minute. As long as you are in battle you gain one Hardiness per 16 seconds cumulatively with a maximum of 50% of your starting total Hardiness. You also loose Acuity at the rate of 1 point per minute until you reach 50% of your starting Acuity. Your pain resistance is immediately boosted by 50% and increases by 1% per minutes up to a maximum of 90% pain resistance. While raging you are immune to any non-divine magic or ability which causes a mental status.

Just looking at the ability made him smile. It really was broken. With it he could get well over 200 Hardiness. Then he looked at a couple of his abilities which had become mainstays. Nature’s Greater Heal was a rare spell but essentially was only an upgraded version of the lesser version.

Nature’s Greater Heal Rarity: Rare

Pre-requisites: Sojourner, Sagacity: 22, Level 17

Mana: 20

Description: Heals target for 16 health per second for 1 second per Sagacity. Can be stacked on target up to 1 time per 4 Acuity of caster. Range: 30’/4 Sagacity. Cast Time: 1 second. Cool Down: 1 second.

Electrical Arc of course was simply there because with his hat it provided him with decent spell damage output. Since it had four different modes it could be anything from a stun to an AoE which he could use even if his allies were fighting in close since it would only target enemies.

His true crowd control spell was another unique one. Tim had spent far too much time with the skill rod watching Burke frown at him as he kept trying to get skills to evolve. Here is had paid off.

Taunt of Frenzy Rarity: Unique

Pre-requisites: Sojourner, Tank Class Tree, Level 16

Mana: 15

Description: This ability works by shouting a taunt at your foes. There is some division about whether the quality of the taunt matters for how effective this ability will be but the 1st gen, Ugland, who first came up with the ability was often overheard saying that the taunts needed to be entertaining.

The taunt will affect all enemies with a Sagacity less than the user who are within 2’/Sagacity. Those affected will s

eek to attack the user with all their might. They will not hold back but will race toward the user and feverishly try to kill them. If they are blocked even by their own allies from reaching the user, they will try to strike down anyone in their way. Duration: 10 seconds/Sagacity.

He still had his unique identification skill in his first slot. Despite the fact it didn’t add any combat ability the information it provided him had been invaluable. Or rather what had been invaluable was the information which he had obtained from Master Assess and now Tim’s Augur was even more potent.

The cool thing was that despite it being a unique skill he had been able to pass it on to three of his scouts so far. The skill was fascinating because not only did the scout get the information on what they were identifying with this skill, but Tim also got a copy of it in his logs.

He’d been forced to minimize all of that as the scouts had a field day identifying everything. But it dawned on him that he could search through his logs and see if the one of the equipped scouts had been the ones to find the new threat. He scanned up and down the list ranging from identifying various herbs to checking out the new girl.

Unfortunately, the there was no message identifying a new monster, so he had to assume the scouts to whom he’d given the skills were not amongst the ones who found this supposed threat. But as he was going through the list, he found something completely unexpected.

It threw him off so much that he almost tripped over his own feet and face planted. Only his inflated Flexibility stat provided him with the reflexes and agility necessary to stay upright. Tim was both pissed that the scout had been using this powerful skill to scope out girls and thankful for this new information.

Cecelia Age: 18

Human Ht: 5’3” Wt: 106 lbs.
 Affiliation: Patronite Hair: Blonde Eyes: Blue

Class: Merchant Level: 2

HP: 10

Hardiness: 6

Flexibility: 9

Acuity: 10

Sagacity: 7

Personality: optimistic, emotional, brave, faithful

Romantic Interest: Sojourner Timothy Stein- infatuation level 6.

 Measurements and other information available with one more minute of scanning.

The level of detail in this information was beyond anything he’d ever gotten with Master Assess but it felt like a violation of a person’s privacy to just go around using it. He had passed this skill on to those scouts as a tool to keep the caravan safe, not so they could perve on girls.

All Tim could do was shake his head. Now they’d have to turn the caravan around while he took Cecelia back to her father. Atticus would be worried sick. He mumbled to himself, “What were you thinking, Cecelia. You aren’t supposed to be here.”