Chapter 37: Class Change

Chapter 37: Chapter 37: Class Change

Allan kept his voice low. "We have two threats here and here’s how we don’t die to either, so listen to me and heed my orders clearly."

He dragged a finger through the dirt, sketching the fork in the trail ahead. The lines were rough but clear enough. "Cave sits half a klick east of the split. Bitterbone flowers grow in the damp near the mouth. They look pale. Bone-colored. Sharp smell when you crush them. You get that paste on a blade, whatever you cut with it stops healing. Diva, that’s yours. Use this info wisely."

Diva flexed her sword hand once. "How much do I need?"

"Use it all. This is a level hundred beast and a hybrid one, so coat however much you can before the beast is on top of you. Don’t wait for a moment. There won’t be another chance."

She nodded, with no questions. She could have asked whether his information was accurate, or how he got this data, but no. The others shifted their weight, already adjusting straps and checking grips.

Allan looked at each of them in turn. "We will run tighter, but we will split. Me and Lira will go one way, the rest of you go with her. Whatever you hear, whatever it sounds like, you don’t turn back for me. Understood?"

A round of confirmations. Some of them met his eyes. Most didn’t.

"Lira." He called. "Take off everything..."

"Huh? What?" She turned, confused. "What do you mean..."

"Trust me..." He said, his stare adamant.

After a while.

Lira’s eyes cut toward the trees. The crashes were closer. The lighter footsteps had now settled into a rhythm. "Both closing in. Two minutes and they will reach us."

Allan nodded, raising his hand as everyone got ready, their feet itching to run.

"Move!"

They ran. They ran like their whole lives depended on it, the beast and the hooded figure right at their tail, the beast’s claw almost reaching one of them. But right in time, at the fork, the party split without a word.

Diva’s group cut right toward the trail and the cave while Allan and Lira went left into undergrowth to swallow sound. Branches whipped at their faces. Roots tried to trip them but they kept the pace anyway.

Behind them the Corrupted Beast stomped into the section. Its body now clearly visible, it was a wall of muscle and blackened hide, bigger than it had looked from the ridge. A second later the hooded figure appeared on the rise above it. He lifted one arm, pointed at Diva’s group, and the beast’s head swung. It went crashing after them, destroying everything in its path.

The hooded man watched it go, then turned down the path Allan and Lira had taken.

"Huh, so this is your plan. Ditch your comrades. I guess you are no player..."

It didn’t take long until they reached a dead end. They stopped at a cluster of boulders where the trail narrowed.

Lira, who had been hooded since long ago, climbed the rock face without looking, making her trail like she was running away, then folded herself into the leaves above. Below, Allan stood in the open and waited, his hood low as well.

The hooded figure finally reached them, calm as ever. Stopped ten paces off. He smiled under his hood. The expression did not reach his eyes, as no one could see it.

"Allan Oakwood. What a disappointment. All those rumors. They were wrong. All of them were wrong..."

Allan said nothing. He kept his weight where it was and let the silence stretch.

"Playing the silent game, are we? Honestly." He took a step closer. The leaves under his boots made no sound. "You were never a Player. A true Player knows everything that matters. He bends the System of the world and shapes it according to his will. You had pieces of that in you but you wasted every single one." A pause, gentle. "Even your lover left you when it counted. That tells me everything already."

He kept coming, one step at a time, savoring it. The scars along his jaw showed when the light shifted.

"But even still, you have enough talent, in the ways of making money I suppose. There’s a place for those of us who understand what we are," he said, now close enough that Allan could see the way his mouth moved under the shadow of the hood. "We don’t serve this world. We just crush it. Build something that deserves the System’s attention. You could still matter, if you chose right. Put down the pretense. Walk with us. Shape this empire."

He reached up and pulled his hood back. The face underneath was lean, the eyes bright with nothing but certainty.

***

Below the boulders, fifty yards off, the ground convulsed with impact. Diva’s first strike landing hard, but the beast didn’t budge.

They had done everything Allan told them, found the gap, found the cave, got the poison. But even striking the beast with her poison-coated sword, the beast’s roar was loud and clear.

"Did he lie to us?" the mage asked. "Maybe we were just a diversion so he could escape..."

"Shut up," another one yelled. "Yes, he is ruthless and slightly cold, but he isn’t that cold, right? Diva?"

Diva struck again and paced back. She didn’t reply. She could still remember the time at the dungeon where she was an inch away from death, the dragon almost taking her head clean off. Allan had saved her. Even thinking about it made her heart warm up.

But the way he acted here, he was different. Like he would use and manipulate anything and everything to survive. She struck again. Even now the beast was lively, scraping and destroying the tiny entrance.

Diva paused, despair and rage burning from her insides, her eyes turning red.

"Maybe he did betray us." She said, a part of her broken, as her hair flared red like fire. She stepped up, going near the entrance, her adventurer card falling behind.

"Diva, what are you doing? Are you mad!?" someone yelled, picking up the card. But something was changing. The mage saw it. Her class should have been a simple swordswoman. But it was changing into something more.

[Class: Swordswoman > Berserker.]

"...huh?"

***

The hooded man did not glance that way. He reached for Allan’s hood.

"Stop hiding under that hood and just accept your fate already..." he said, taking it off.

At that instant the System flared hot across Allan’s vision.

[Investment Opportunity Available.

Target: Diva.]

"Use instant reward."

[Instant Reward Skill Activated.]

[Analyzing Individual]

He did not think about it. He poured in everything, every free stat point, every coin, every scrap the System would take. All of it funneled down the link in one motion and, somewhere in the trees, Diva’s sword found an angle mid-strike, cut deeper than the swing should have carried, and the beast staggered and screamed instead of roaring.

The hooded man pushed forward. But instead of seeing Allan, he saw a woman, her face clearly visible in the light. His eyes went wide as his smile finally left.

"What the fuck?! Where’s Allan?"

"He is...behind you," she said, not moving even a single millimeter, because she did not need to.

Allan dropped from the rock above with the System detonating a reward across his vision at that moment.

[SSS Class Individual Detected]

[Investment Return: 500x.]

It hit him mid-fall. Stats screamed upward. New skill data burned in hot enough to hurt: Berserker.

Heat rolled down his arm into the blade until the edge glowed red. His eyes matched it.

The man finally turned back. Too slow by a second. He knew it. Lira watched something in his face give way. Something she had been facing the whole time.

Fear.

The burning violent sword went through him in one pass, shoulder to hip, piercing through five layers of protection enchantments. For a heartbeat the two halves stayed standing like the body had not gotten the news yet. Then they came apart, slowly, and hit the dirt, wet and final.

His final words. "It’s not...possible." And he was gone.

The burning in Allan’s eyes started to fade before the blood had finished spreading. He stood over what was left, breathing hard, hand shaking around the hilt, not from the kill. From how easy it had been.

From the direction of the cave came one last broken roar, cut off clean, as silence settled over the trees.

Allan let out a breath. "She did it..."

He offered her a hand up. She hesitated a bit but took it anyway. She had questions, burning questions, but neither of them said anything about that.

***

Silence.

Diva stayed standing to make sure it was not getting up. Then the heat left her all at once. The fire burning low. Her arms suddenly felt heavy. The blade tip dragged in the dirt. She looked at the others. Two were down. One was not moving. The rest were breathing hard, hurt, but they were still standing.

She cleaned the blade on the creature’s skin, her thoughts going astray. She could still feel it, when she was burning like fire, she had felt a sudden connection with him, felt it to her bone. The sudden boost of strength, yes, her newly awakened Berserker class had boosted her up, but whatever Allan did, it doubled, no, it tripled even.

Was everything his plan? My rage? My awakening? Everything? She thought as she waited.

After a moment or so, footsteps came from the trees, two people closing fast. It was Allan and Lira. Both of them were breathing hard. Allan’s eyes still had a glow that was disappearing as she watched.

Allan’s eyes went first to the creature, then to the bodies, then to Diva. "Status?"

"Alive. Two of us down." She nodded at the fallen. "Poison didn’t work, but that wasn’t it." She said, pointing her sword at Allan. "Your help came at the right time, and finally I could slice deeper into the beast."

He nodded once. "The man in the hood is dead as well. Bravo to us, I guess."

Lira looked at the cave entrance, then back at the bodies. "We need to move before something else smells the blood."

Allan looked at the sky through the leaves. Light was already starting to go. "We take what we can from the creature and the flowers. Then we leave. Diva, you lead until the Berserker power is gone. Lira, you watch the back. Everyone else stay close. We will finish the mission, no matter what."

No one argued. They had seen what happened when people argued with the plan, and they had seen what happened when they agreed to it.