Ank

“So? Did our little adventurers had fun?”, the [Healer] asked, as she touched my back and emanated a soothing light that filled my HP bar again. She even managed to make lost limbs grown back.

Anyway, I exchanged a glance with my already healed sister, before replying:

“We… We were just trying to hunt something. As a thank you for taking care of us.”

“Sure, sure!” The woman whose eyes were always closed laughed. And my sister and I sighed; it looked like we failed to fool her, but she didn’t care to begin with. “And it does look like you managed to kill something”, she had a very excited look on her face while she asked: “did you two leveled up?!”

“Now that you mention…”, I opened my menu, a floating green screen, and checked: “Yes, I’m [level: 2] now.”

“Me too.”

“Oh, my! Oh my! Then, what kind of build will you chose?”, Taffy puffed her chest up, adding: “Don’t fear to ask me for help if you get any doubts! What kind of warrior, mage or rogue do you want to be?”

“Well… The truth is: we still don’t have a class, so we don’t know”, I replied. And the woman whose eyes were always closed looked shocked.

“N- No [class]? At your age?”

“Back in our village, we were supposed to choose our first [class] only when we married. So the couple could match their classes, and cover for any necessity the village could have; like, if one of the two became a [Hunter], the other would become a [Leatherworker]”, I explained.

“But a plague wiped out all the unmarried young people, but us siblings, so we stood classless. This is also why we were just [level: 1]; we were kept as observers all the time, so we wouldn’t steal the EXP of professions already occupied”, my sister added.

Obviously, just landing the last hit didn’t mean much; the name of the thing was self-explanatory [Experience Points], not [Killing Points]. People got better at things they practiced. At best someone would unlock [Coup de Grace] or [Executioner] [classes], or something along these lines.

“Kids these days… I remember when they were born carrying weapons of war to fend of unspeakable horrors during their fierce and short lives…”

“Are you one of the first humans, or something?”, I asked, bothered by the most over the top ‘back in my times’ I’ve heard.

“If you weren’t allowed to chose a [class] before marrying, you should have just married each other.”

“Shut up!” I didn’t even want to hear that kind of thing… Again.

Because we were the only two of our age in the village after the plague, we were always together, and it didn’t take long before rumors started spreading. People may have thought that kind of thing was romantic because [Gods], and nobles were marrying their siblings all the time, and even fictitious heroes, but that was weird, right? Incest was illegal in so many countries!

I mean, sure, Hunah was cute and our personalities matched, and, yeah, we may have kissed once or twice, a done a little bit more, but…

I looked at my sister. And noticed her gaze right as her blushed face turned away.

“A- Anyway!”, I opened my menu before my racing heart jumped off my mouth. “Let’s chose our classes right away”, I selected the menu option I’ve never touched in my entire life and saw the selection the [System] had made just for me:

[Classes available:

Berserker Tree( )

Avenger Tree ( )

Apostate Tree ( )

Painslave Tree ( )

...

]

The list was enormous.

I scrolled it down, went through dozens of [classes], read many descriptions, and pondered every option.

After half an hour of thinking, I looked up to the retired [Healer], but it didn’t look like she would give her opinion about that choice in particular. I thought it might have been something quite particular to chose a [Class] for her, differently from our village.

I closed my eyes, and thought about the first battle I had. Every movement, how things developed, why we won, why we suffered so much damage. Then I thought about my revenge plans. How did I want to do it, when, what message did I want to pass with it…

I needed overwhelming strength, but strength that would allow me to fight opponents even stronger than I, just like those birds did (yeah, I remember that their level was higher than ours, but my sister and I - kinda - had weapons, and were way more intelligent). And I didn’t want my class to revolve around the [Gods], I wanted to step on their crying faces with my peasant fucking foot.

Then I choose my [class]:

“[Summon Tree]”, I said, as I opened my eyes, and looked to my sister.

“[Item Specialist Tree]”, she said back.

We smiled at each other, sure that we made the right choice, and I turned to the retired [Healer]:

“So… thank you for everything until now, but we want to, uh, go back home. We plan to go away tomorrow morning.”

“Sure, I don’t mind”, she replied. Smiling in an apologetic way, however, she added: “But, even if your [classes] are a little rare and match you well, I don’t think you will be able to do it.”

“What do you mean?”, Hunah asked.

“You see, this house is 60 Km away from the nearest city, and many monsters live in the wild surroundings, including some high-level ones. Plus, I go to the city only once a year or so, and I don’t need anything from there now. It’s simply impossible for a pair of [level: 2] youngsters to make through the jungle.”

“Powerful monsters? It’s true we were beaten last time, but it was by a bunch of [level: 2] creatures”, I pointed, doubtful.

“Oh, my!”, the woman whose eyes were always closed laughed, covering her mouth. “This is due to my [Aura] skill. It’s a generic one, anyone can unlock it, but the [Gods] really mastered it, you see? They extend their auras through frontiers, cities, and roads, and keep the strongest and smartest monsters away from them (most of the time). The weakest and dumbest ones are unaffected, though. Oh, and the [Gods]’ [Auras] also serve for them to show off for their kind who is the most powerful. If a [God] is taken as weak, it has its domain invaded by the others, so they need sacrifices to keep getting EXP through their racial skill, [Cosmic Children], that gives them huge experience amounts in exchange for the lives of sapient beings.

And, well, the strongest monsters of the jungle ended up cornered right in between my [Aura] and the [Aura] of some weak [God] in the road ahead, and in the middle of the path you two are looking for; with three especially strong of them completely dominating one section of 20 Km of jungle each, territories also in your path, and these ones I have named ‘The Three Kings’!”

So, basically: we would not only see progressively stronger monsters as we tried to get out of this jungle, but there were also 3 especially strong monsters roaming around at each “section” of 20 Km of jungle.

We didn’t even have the proper equipment… And we were at [level: 2]…

We wanted to get stronger, but resources that only the Adventurer’s Guild could offer, like weapons armor, and spellbooks would be useful you know? Maybe I should ask the retired [Healer] for some weapons later.

Anyway, even with my head full of concerns, it was exponentially hard to take bath with Hunah when comparing it to last night (pun intended), but we needed a rest. It looked like would have some adventures ahead, after all.