Alex sat floating in the void, perplexed. The three options seemed to float in front of him. He’d been staring at them for a while now.

It seems obvious.

It did seem obvious – [Magic Missile] would unlock the [Mage] class, increasing Alex’s stats by the largest flat amount. His high base INT meant that the +20% bonus would be optimal, awarding three point four additional points to the stat and carrying him to a score of over twenty. If he could find an item to bind with an additional bonus, then the potential was even higher.

Hell – my ring is a [Lesser] grade item and already gives +10% to a stat. I could pump INT up to over fifty if I continue at this rate.

It was really everything he’d hoped for. He knew that the bonus would make his mind work faster, his memory clearer. By the time he raised his INT to twenty-five, Alex would be a veritable genius. He was already nicely above average.

Alex envisioned himself blasting his way down corridors, blue-white bolts of energy shearing into goblins with deadly precision and exploding into showers of blood and mana.

I’d have to get some cool robes to match.

But despite the appeal of the image, he’d been here a while. More than anything, [Lesser Illusionism] was still giving him pause. He’d even considered [Lesser Blunt Mastery] seriously for a few minutes – it did seem interesting and effective. But his stamina score was too low to make full use of it, and the stat bonuses just weren’t justifiable.

Alex’s pause over [Lesser Illusionism] came largely from its flexibility. [Magic Missile] was an attack spell, plain and simple. Sure, there might be some interesting use cases, and the control over power and direction would be useful… but that flexibility existed within a very specific category: making things explode. He would hardly be able to ride a magic bolt to achieve flight or use the spell to brush his teeth. Beyond the description writ literally in his mind, the baser impression he got from the glyph itself seemed to confirm this.

But when he looked at [Lesser Illusionism], it practically exuded the impression of flexibility. Sure, it did zero damage. Sure, the stat boosts were marginally worse. But every time Alex felt like he was about to take [Magic Missile], he found himself imagining another use case for illusions. He could fabricate fake walls or pit traps to control enemy movement. He could fabricate fake weapons to intimidate creatures more effectively. He could draw diagrams, show images to allies, summon smokescreens. He couldn’t get past the fact that it would be very cool. And just as useful outside the depths as in.

But, the more sensible part of him reflected, I can’t just pick a skill because it’s ‘very cool’. And I don’t know how I feel about the matching class’s name… it sounds shifty.

He tried to take a step back. OK. What do I know for sure? The skill manual back at the guild had demonstrated that these ‘lesser’ skills were usually the first step in an upgrade chain. Iril had upgraded her [Lesser Pyromancy], after all. [Magic Missile] was a common choice, popular among those who developed magic-based classes.

So: it’s a long-term upgrade path in an at-will skill with broad applications versus a strong, on-cast combat ability with slightly better stat bonuses. Both options were good, but they were very different. Let’s see. Stats…

He imagined that [Magic Missile] would effectively scale in strength with his WIS score, as that would govern the amount of MP he could load a shot with. His INT as well, perhaps? There was also the matter of the particular stats his class options boosted. Was it better to increase physical scores like DEX for a rounded approach, or to boost his already high mental scores?

Fuck, my education is lacking. The minute I get back, I’m inventing the printing press and industrialising this shithole world.

How does a printing press work?

Hmmmmm. Should have paid more attention in class.

Distracted again, Alex turned his attention back to the skills on offer. Berin and Isabelle would be getting impatient by now.

Ah well. Fuck ‘em. They’re nice enough, but this indecision is their fault as much as anyone’s. They can wait.

That was a little unfair, he knew. They’d been the only two to volunteer, and while he got the sense that Isabelle was only doing so for the guild credits, Berin had stuck up for him a few times now.

The timing of the whole thing is what’s really fucked me. That and the assassin. Ideally I’d have had months to plan this out.

Alex thought back to the assassin and his [Invisibility] skill. Was that the type of power he might achieve if he followed the illusion path? The guy had had a real chance of taking out the most powerful figures in Linosa with barely a fight.

Then he remembered how quickly the man had been fried by Eleanor’s damage-oriented mage skills once he’d been spotted. Although… it wasn’t as if a high INT would have helped the assassin dodge any quicker.

How common is [True Sight]? How would it synergise with illusions?

Ugh. Alex groaned internally, turning back to the decision at hand. He’d been given this new lease on life, but he had no clue what to do with it. Who am I? Who do I want to be?

Isabelle sat against the wall of the treasure room, idly tossing her knife. Not one of the knives from her skill, but rather her actual iron knife. The thing had cost a fortune, and she’d saved for it before becoming reborn. Her family were clerks, but she’d had no aptitude for the work. Like many reborn, she wasn’t particularly close with her parents anymore. Running off to accept one of the deadliest positions in Misceterian society did that to a relationship.

She still visited, of course. And gave gifts. Her parents would ooh and ahh at her skills and physical abilities, even while they tried to cover for sadness and anxiety around the risks their daughter was taking.

But Isabelle knew she was different to most reborn. She looked up at Berin, who was busy infusing two [Lesser Crystal Phial] items in the centre of the room. The cistern there contained the golden healing mist, and the emptied phials were some of the only items that could extract it safely. Now, Berin… he was the kind of guy who would die in the depths, Isabelle thought to herself. He was slow, plodding, and fairly useless – content to run a clinic in Linosa, with no ambition to move to deeper levels.

Sure, he was a decent person, and he could heal others well enough. And she still wasn’t quite sure what skill he’d used in that last fight to endure three magic missiles to the face. He’d refused to answer when she’d asked. But honestly? It was his attitude that’d get him killed. Eventually, something would break through to the back lines and that would be the end of him. You only needed to die once.

But Isabelle had ambition. Once they were done with this stupid escort mission, she would finally have enough guild credit to enact her plan. She would petition for a spot on the ranging party next time, finally earning her level twenty skill and class evolution. Something stealthy or defensive, preferably. Then, she was out of here. She’d buy a posting at the guild chapter in Dravin’s ford, or Melledor. Strong cities with level thirty or forty obelisks where she could continue to grow.

Both she and Berin glanced up as the room’s portal frame flashed and the newbie appeared.

“About time,” she muttered. It had been over half an hour - he must have had a difficult choice. To be fair, she didn’t blame him for taking the time. Most reborn had to study for a year before they were allowed to take the zeroth-floor trials, and she knew that many would prepare for far longer. The kid was a curiosity, and while she actually didn’t mind him, she suspected he wouldn’t last the year. Ah, well. She was being paid regardless.

“Welcome!” exclaimed Berin from over at the cistern. He hadn’t minded the delay – the crystal phials took a while to infuse with healing mist. Occasionally, they would even break. Linosa bought them from Dravin’s ford, where the local beasts would drop them on occasion. “How did it go? Are you happy with your skill?”

The young man nodded slowly. “I think so.”

“What did you pick?” Isabelle cocked her head, curious.

The boy extended his hand, muttering something. A radiant flash of blue-white power streaked from the raised hand and shot across the treasure room, exploding with a crash against the far wall.

“Huh. Nice. [Magic Missile]. I’m guessing that gave you [Mage]. A good pick. There are a lot of successful mages out there.” Berin was nodding in approval. “Iril and a couple of the others all started as mages. Remember Iril? She’s one of our most promising.” The healer smiled encouragingly, if a little patronisingly.

The boy nodded, seemingly conflicted. “Yeah. Iril did seem strong.”

But even Isabelle had to agree. [Magic Missile] was a solid pick, and no-one could argue that the [Mage] class was ineffective. Well – most of them had horrific defences. She was sure she’d beat nine mages out of ten for that reason – a well-placed knife was all you needed when flashy robed idiots failed to grasp the importance of picking barrier spells.

“Do you think we’ll make it to the tenth floor?” asked the boy. He still seemed a little hesitant, probably thrown by the choice he’d had to make.

Isabelle thought for a minute. It was certainly doable. With [Magic Missile] in their arsenal, she wouldn’t even be the only one spending MP and SP on offense. Although the boy’s casting would probably be quite inefficient without practise. “Hmmmmm. I think it’s possible.”

“OK. I’d prefer not to, actually.”

She raised her eyebrows, a little surprised. It suited her and Berin well enough. They might make a little less money this delve, but they’d already fulfilled the guildmistress’s request to get the boy a class. Plus – as much as Isabelle hated to admit it – the tenth floor would be dangerous for their party of three. Especially the boss fight. Raiding chests on level six or seven should be at least vaguely profitable… if a little unambitious.

“I’d like to search for treasure and trap rooms again,” the newbie elaborated. “And can one of you explain to me what these coins are actually good for? And why there aren’t huge issues with inflation? And why is this room called the ‘treasure room’? I don’t see any treasure.”

So many questions! Tetchy as he was, the kid did seem a lot more confident now – perhaps his new class had helped with that. And what did he mean by ‘inflation’?

Before she could speak, Berin jumped in to explain the mechanics behind loot generation and shop chambers. Zoning out with a sigh, Isabelle returned to playing with her iron dagger. She kept forgetting how little the newbie knew. But her job was done now, and the next two days would be slow ones given her current company.

Preoccupied, neither Berin nor Isabelle noticed the complete lack of impact or scorch marks on the wall the ‘missile’ had impacted.

Delve time remaining: 42:16:24

Alexander James Patel Overview Affiliations Linosa Town Level 0 Class Charlatan Status HP 120/120 SP 70/70 MP 180/180 Attributes STR 11 CON 12 DEX 15.6 END 7 INT 17 WIS 18 LCK 0

They’d been creeping around the sixth floor for some time now, slowly mapping out the area they were in. At Alex’s insistence, the party had been avoiding the bands of goblins that roamed the floor with varying success. He was hoping the other two would simply mistake his reluctance for fear.

He’d only been forced to fire off ‘magic missiles’ four or five times – missing the first few deliberately and then impacting one or two harmlessly against already-damaged goblins’ chests. Isabelle had adopted a fairly foul mood at his uselessness and his claims that he was ‘low on MP’, but Alex was secretly pleased.

These fake missiles cost barely anything.

They were around fifteen MP each, and he could reclaim about half of that if they dissipated nearby. He still wasn’t sure why he kept up the pretence of being a [Mage] in front of his two minders, but he’d decided to persist. He’d done it on instinct, initially, half as a joke.

…and maybe because I was a little embarrassed about my choice.

But like most good lies, it was getting more and more difficult to broach the truth with his two companions. He’d dug himself a hole, here.

Plus… the act is kinda fun.

He was hardly a compulsive liar or anything, but Alex found himself enjoying the sense of intrigue of the whole scenario. The shift worried him a bit, and he wondered what impact his changing mental stats were having on his psyche. The increase in wisdom had him feeling more perceptive than ever, and he was almost certain it made him a better liar. He could read Berin and Isabelle’s faces far better than he’d ever been able to. As a result, he found himself revelling in every chance he could find to exercise the advantages his new highest stat afforded him.

Even better, all this extra DEX is really helping me in combat.

Between the ring and the class bonus, his accuracy with his club had improved, and he’d actually dodged a magic missile from a goblin shaman earlier. Weaker versions of the boss monster had begun showing up occasionally now that they were on the sixth floor. They seemed to lack the [Lesser Barrier] spell the boss had used, opting instead for weaker magic missiles.

The decision to avoid goblins had led the party through a number of trap and treasure rooms, the last of which had taken a couple hours to bypass after they’d been sealed inside. The floor had been covered in pressure plates which had needed to be activated in a specific order to unlock a door leading to a treasure chest and exit. Needless to say, the pressure plates which hadn’t been part of the pattern had been viciously booby-trapped.

Alex mentally checked his coin pouch. He had forty-three gold now, around half of which had come from the boss monster. They’d been splitting drops this floor according to contribution. Apparently, Berin and Isabelle simply hadn’t been bothered with the paltry amounts on the lower floors. But with every goblin dropping close to one whole gold and treasure chests yielding close to fifteen, the professional delvers had decided to muscle in on their share.

I’d love to find one of those shops Berin mentioned.

Before they’d left the safe-room, Berin had explained how the rooms in the depths functioned. Firstly, there were the basic corridors that linked the place together. It was there that they would find most beasts or monsters. Second, there were the trap and reward rooms. Sometimes, such rooms would also lead to different areas or unique monsters, but just as often they would lead nowhere. They offered challenges which could be lethal if failed, but profitable if passed. A lot of classes specialised more in bypassing these rooms than they did at direct combat. Third were the boss rooms. These were almost always located every five floors, and even then, were fairly rare.

After that, Berin had explained that there were a lot of room types which weren’t fully understood. Shops would show up occasionally, with strange, silent ‘keepers’ who would exchange gold coins for magic items. There was rumoured to be a grand bazaar on floor fifty, where the guild would exchange its own coins for items, facilitating its credit system. But very few were that high-level outside the capital, and the guild wasn’t in the habit of distributing that kind of information for fear of foreign interference.

Apparently, the depths were linked, and travel between obelisks was possible down here.

Portals back to the nearest obelisk chamber would shift position with every solstice. Indeed, it was theorised that enormous chunks of the depths themselves would shift. That was why most guilds were assigned a [Navigator] or [Pathfinder] of some sort – as Alex was learning, finding stairwells became quite a trial by the lower floors.

And this is why it takes so long to level – three days isn’t enough to push very far down.

The obelisk, of course, assisted by allowing delvers to resume each solstice from any floor they’d been to previously, as long as it was within twenty levels of their current level.

What I need, Alex had begun to reflect as they walked, is a chance to try out these illusions without the other two noticing.

Part of him knew that his insistence on dodging or running from goblin packs was due to his hesitance to display his actual class. But he remembered one of the pieces of reasoning which had pushed him over the edge when he’d made his choice.

My LCK sucks. Coins are nice, but I’m not going to get anything rare from farming basic monsters. Better to focus on utility and skills which will be useful on the surface.

He still didn’t want to be a support, though.

Damn. Why couldn’t I have been offered something more powerful? [Insta-Kill Creature]? [Generate Gold]? [Infinite Stat Regen]?

He was currently playing with his illusions as subtly as he could, playing tricks like manipulating the way his shadow looked on the ground or conjuring small pebbles. He’d noticed a couple of things.

First, the skill wasn’t much good with detail. He’d tried ‘inscribing’ tiny pictures onto the surface of his club while walking behind the other two but found them to be fairly low-resolution and blurry. They tended to shift when he lost focus on them, blurring, and fading a little. He found that when working with shadow or basic light (like his fake ‘magic missiles’) he was at his most convincing. Detail wasn’t required in those cases.

But that’s alright. Detail I can work on.

Indeed, he already found himself improving a little as they walked. He was focused on trying to make the index finger of his shadow waggle slightly.

This led to a second realisation: it was difficult to make illusions of this calibre move realistically. He could create a stationary object like a rock or a coin and move that around physically, but to have the object itself move felt nigh impossible with his current level of focus.

Hmmmm. Maybe with higher INT? Or an upgraded version of the skill. God, I really hope I don’t regret this choice.

Tossing an illusory rock casually in his palm led to Alex’s third realisation: his illusions had weight. Not much, but they did have a little. What he was doing reminded him of Isabelle’s [Phantom Knives] skill, which he’d begun paying more attention to. Like her, he was shifting his aura into a shape, then imbuing that shape with MP to solidify it in the real world.

But unlike Isabelle, Alex’s [Lesser Illusionism] was a passive and far more flexible skill, with a level of control over the nature of his own aura that he could exert at will.

This is probably why Iril never needed to speak to activate her basic fire manipulation, Alex realised. Same principle.

Isabelle’s knives were also solid and did damage. That would have been nice to have.

While the initial realisation of weight had been a source of some excitement, Alex quickly realised that his skill was totally unable to create a meaningful level of substance. It he pushed against his illusory rock with more than a modicum of force, he found his finger would slide straight through it.

I guess I’m not becoming a [Creation Mage] anytime soon. I wonder if that class exists. Now they probably have the [Generate Gold] skill.

The one thing Alex wanted to check was the size of the illusions he could make. He was getting a feel for it but creating something large would doubtless give him away. He considered coming out with the truth to his two companions, but at this point it had been almost twelve hours and he didn’t want to deal with their reactions.

I’ll tell Eleanor later. I actually respect her.

Also, she’s kinda hot.

Alex turned his attention away from the much older guildmistress and back to his current situation. The party had just stopped wandering for a rest break in the entrance to a trap rooms they’d disarmed, having looped back a little after reaching a dead-end. Alex’s HP was full, but he was glad to take some time to let his SP climb back up from 26/70. Amazingly, his almost constant experiments over the last few hours had only drained his MP to 102/180.

I guess illusions are pretty mana-efficient. It made sense – they were barely more than visible aura. Energy-wise, they were just light and a little force.

While they rested, Alex decided to play around with the auditory component of his skill. Isabelle was resting in her favoured position: back to the wall with the door in full view. Berin had laid down across the room, intending on taking a short nap. While the golden pool in the treasure room had restored their wakefulness, it had been a while since then and the phials Berin had filled were too valuable on the surface to waste during delves. Except during emergencies, apparently.

So as Berin lay there, Alex sat and pooled aura in front of himself. Manifesting objects had been easy – intuitive, even – because of his [True Sight]. He could see the aura move as he formed the object out of it, and then he simply had to allow the fabricated object to pop into existence. It was even obvious to him that he was looking at an illusion once he did. Sounds? He had no clue.

Alex though back to his physics classes. Sounds were all about waves; frequencies; wavelengths.

Should I vibrate the aura?

He tried for a while. After around fifteen minutes, Alex managed to make the blob of aura he’d formed hummmm a little.

Isabelle’s head whipped toward the noise. “What was that?” the [Rogue] whispered sharply. They were still trying to stay quiet.

Alex shrugged and smiled innocently. “Just humming to myself. Sorry – bad habit.”

Isabelle gave him an odd look and slumped back against the wall. “Well cut it out.”

Alex nodded.

Goddammit. I’m not going to get to use any of this shit properly this run, am I? He contemplated waking Berin with a bang but decided against it. Magic missile would have been nice, but the more Alex experimented, the more he realised he’d barely scratched the surface of what he could do with illusions.

The depths had sounded fun, but now he couldn’t wait to get back to the surface.