Having run up against a roadblock in getting the class skill I wanted, I’d opted to stay inside my class space and poke around. According to Cal, there were secrets to be found if I could find them. Theoretically, I was supposed to be pretty good at finding secrets nowadays. I wasn’t sure if all those skills translated to my class space, but still. Couldn’t hurt to take a look, could it?

“All right. If I were a magical secret, where would I be?” I retraced my steps back to the central room, opting to search there first.

“Floor?” I paced the entirety of the room, kicking downwards on every step. If there was some sort of trapdoor, at the very least it wasn’t pressure activated.

“Okay, walls.” I did my best to repeat the process around the circumference of the room to similar results.

“Door? Weird little purple icons?” I tapped on the doors, and after a few unsuccessful attempts, managed to climb one of them high enough to push on the icon above it. After that, I pushed all three sets of doors fully closed and reopened them.

Nothing.

“Why is this making me feel kind of stupid?”

Well, it had been worth a shot. Truthfully, if there were actual secrets, I’d expect them to be in the rooms with the skills, though, so I didn’t let my lack of success deter me. At random, I decided to start with the Weaponmaster room.

“All right. My money’s on the weird floating weapons.” I approached the first pedestal, above which a simple crude blade hovered in the air.

Starting with the obvious, the first thing I did was grab the blade. I pulled on it, hoping to remove it, but it was locked in place.

“Well, it’s the weapon associated with Bind Weapon. Let’s try binding it?” I focused on making the weapon soulbound to me, and!

Nothing.

I poked around the pedestal. Tried to push it over. Kicked it. Shouted “alakazam!”.

Once again, nothing.

An unpleasant thought occurred to me right around then. “This wasn’t just a prank that Cal was playing on me, was it?” She wouldn’t do something like that wou-

Well, no, she definitely would. Crap.

It wasn’t like she had hidden cameras set up in my class space though: No reason not to keep trying for now, and if it turned out she was lying, no one ever had to know I’d wasted my time here.

I went around to each weapon skill and did everything I could think of to no avail. When that was done, I did the same with the Armorist room. Feeling fairly defeated, I then made my way to the Augmenter room.

“All right. Mana Feet. Pal. Buddy. Level with me here. Do me a solid.” I grabbed the pair of boots from its resting place and pulled.

And just like that, they came free.

I stared at the pair of boots in my hand incredulously for a moment before coming to my senses.

“Wow. Okay. Really feels like there’s only one thing to do here.” Without further hesitation, I slipped the boots on and secured them fast to my feet. Then, once the boots had been fastened-

Well, nothing really happened.

“All right. Can I use the skill?” I channeled some mana into the boots, finding that Mana Feet was working as expected, making my steps quicker than normal. “Check. So what does that give me? Water walking — no good, there’s no water here. Vine boots — don’t think that’s doing much on solid stone. Being fast — probably nothing? Jet step — ehh, maybe I’ll see something if I jump really high?

While there was a ceiling in the starting chamber, the three skill rooms lacked one, instead just growing foggier as I looked above me. Not giving it too much thought, I activated jet step and jumped as high as I could.

For my troubles, I got a faceful of fog, and then I fell back down.

“Okay. Maybe if I exit my class space with them on, they’ll come with me?” It was a thought, but I’d leave it until the end. Deciding to continue playing around, I left the Augmenter room, curious to see if I’d be allowed to leave while wearing the boots.

As it so happened, I was. That, however, wasn’t really what caught my attention.

When I returned to the central chamber, there, where nothing but solid stone had been before, was now a large stone staircase, leading down below.

“All right. Sorry for doubting you, Cal.” I was pretty sure this qualified as a “secret.”

Seeing no good reason not to, I descended the steps.

Things were fairly normal for a while — at least as normal as anything could be when walking down a hidden stairway inside of a strange, armory-themed pocket dimension. When I reached the bottom of the stairs and took a step forward, however, all of a sudden, I felt like shit.

My vision spun. My legs went weak. My head felt filled with molasses and fog. Nearly feeling like I was about to hurl, I hastily took a step back and the feeling disappeared.

Step forward, bad.

Step backward, fine again.

I repeated the process a few times, trying to figure out what was happening. I even tried to cast a healing spell on myself, but to no avail. Whatever rules governed the class space seemed to prevent me from doing so.

“Some sort of debuff?” I didn’t see anything in my battle notifications. I pulled up my character sheet to get a better idea of what was happening, happy to find out it still worked.

Immediately, I saw what was happening.

As soon as I stepped forward, all of my stats shot down to 10.

“Wait. This is what it feels like to be normal? This is horrifying!” How had I lived like this for my entire life?

For a moment, I considered just leaving the class space then and there. Was whatever lay ahead really important enough to have to feel that?

I quickly quashed that line of thought. It sucked, but I wasn’t going to be a baby about it. I was just going to mentally complain and groan about it the entire time and be really cranky.

Resolved, I stepped past the invisible “de-stat” line one last time, pausing to let my body reacclimate to the unpleasant sensation of being a level one again. Experimentally, I tested out a few skills, finding that absolutely none of them worked. The only thing I seemed to be able to use was Mana Feet.

“Well, might as well get it over with.” Before me lay a slate-gray tunnel, slanting ever so slightly downwards. It was thankfully rather wide, keeping me from feeling claustrophobic, and while I spotted no lights, I found that I could easily see. Whether that was some strange quirk of the class space, or my new Illuminated Sight, I wasn’t sure.

I walked along it for a time, the entire experience feeling fairly underwhelming. Can’t something just happen already?

As if the class space had been waiting for that thought, I immediately felt a light tremor all around me.

Earthquake? Something burrowing through the walls? Weird labyrinth where the walls move and shift around?

The tremors started to get stronger and stronger, accompanied by a sound which I very belatedly realized was coming from behind me.

How the hell did I not pick that out before?

I cursed, having forgotten that all the points I had in Perception were no longer active. Hopefully whatever was behind me would be manageab-

I turned around, and then I saw it.

A giant god-forsaken boulder was busy rolling my way.

Not needing any further encouragement, I ran, shouting as I did so.

“That’s-” Hell, running was so much harder than it had been lately. “That’s not even fantasy! That’s some Indiana Jones type crap!”

Remembering a bit too slowly exactly where I was, I activated Mana Feet, channeling light mana into the boots in order to become as fast as I possibly could.

Sadly for me, it wasn’t enough.

I’d realized what was happening too late. My running speed was too low. I hadn’t used my skill fast enough. As I worked my body for all it was worth, the boulder inched closer and closer, bridging the gap between us. For all I could tell, the tunnel might have been infinite, as no end was in sight.

I huffed and puffed as the sound of it increasingly encompassed me.

And then, at last, too out of breath to even cry out, I was caught. Slammed to the ground as the boulder rammed into my back, the only thing I could be thankful for was that it was blissfully brief.

I shot up from the ground, gasping, sucking in air with large greedy gulps. The tunnel. The boulder!

Oh. They were gone.

I looked around, finding myself back in my tent.

My breathing returned to normal. My heart settled down before it could truly even get too fast.

I was calm.

“Cool. Not dead.” Always a nice surprise when I didn’t die from something. “Don’t think I enjoyed that, though.” Well, whatever. No reason to dwell on it.

Honestly, Trauma Suppression had struck me as kind of iffy when I’d gotten it, but I was coming around to it. Made this whole “near-death experience” thing much more pleasant. Was still a little jittery, but then again, it was only level 12.

Hoping for some sort of explanation of what I’d just been through, I opened my notifications, immediately finding my answer.

You have failed a class trial!

Class space locked for 12 hours.

And that was it.

Not even a level in Trauma Suppression? I knew that its leveling speed was apparently supposed to slow down considering it wasn’t class-related, but damn. If getting crushed by a boulder didn’t count for a level, what was the world coming to?

Well, it was good to know that death in the class space wouldn’t actually kill me. Still kind of sucked. At least all my stats were back to normal though.

Feel like I could use a drink.

I got up, stretching my limbs and heading out of my tent, only to remember that there was only one place in the city to get drinks from. Notably, it was a place I was not super welcome at.

Ugh. This is a perfect Cal situation. I definitely would have bugged her to go grab some wine for me, but with her doing god(s) only knew, I was out of luck.

It was past lunch-time, right? The bar was probably open. Maybe I’d be able to convince someone else to grab it for me.

With that thought in mind, I navigated over to the dining area hoping to find a familiar face to rope into helping me. When at last I made it out of the woods and into the central housing area, there weren’t many people around. Despite that, I was rewarded with the sight of the perfect person.

“Barb!” I called out.

The white-haired Battle Barber was sitting on one of the benches, enjoying a late lunch. While I usually saw him either with Kex or Jason, this time it was just him.

He turned my way, a smile crossing his face. “Tess! A delight to bump into you. How goes it?”

I crossed the distance between us and grabbed a seat next to him. “To be honest? Not… Not so hot? Just went to my class space and got crushed beneath a giant boulder. Feeling… Bad-ish.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that for all the good it had done me, Trauma Suppression really wasn’t taking all the trauma away. Maybe I’d overloaded it with these past couple days, but I was feeling pretty high-strung.

He paused from eating his meal, taking the time to face me fully with a deep frown. “That sounds quite unpleasant. Are you okay? Anything I can do for you?”

I waved my hand. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I mean, actual adventurers probably dealt with this kind of stuff all the time. I wasn’t going to make Barb think I was some sort of baby or force him into playing therapist for me. I was honestly starting to feel bad for even bothering him with something like this.

“Honestly not all that serious. It happens, right? But… no chance I could convince you to steal me some wine from the bar, is there? Doesn’t have to be right now if you’re busy. Just thought maybe I might want a drink, but also no biggy if not.”

His frown deepened as his eyes seemed to burrow into me, making me feel like a child before him. I wasn’t entirely sure he liked what he saw in this instance, but he didn’t ask any questions. He’d been with me the first time I’d gone to the bar — he knew why I was asking, at least.

Instead, he eventually just sighed.

“I would be happy to, dear. I’ve had a chat with Jason, and from the sounds of it, boulder or no, you’re more than due for a few sips of wine. One moment.” With that, he got up, scarfing down the last of his meal as he made his way to the serving area to drop off his bowl. On returning, he addressed me once more.

“If you wait just a moment, I’ll go this very instant! Perhaps I’ll even grab a bit of moonshine, and we can use it to spike some tea, hmm? Not very proper, per se, but some rules are meant to be broken, even when it comes to tea.”

Honestly, this was more than I’d really expected. I did kind of want a drink now-ish, but I wasn’t going to push him into dropping everything for me instantly. Admittedly, there wasn’t much to be doing in the first place, but I found myself more touched than I would have expected.

“Thanks Barb. Really.”

He bowed his head. “Think nothing of it.” He started off in the general direction of the bar, only to turn back, hesitating for a moment. “And… I am aware that the Lady Calilah and one of your other friends are temporarily indisposed. I do not mean to be presumptuous, and I recognize that you may have spent more time with them than with us, but… Do not hesitate to come to the rest of us with things like this, yes? This is what friends are for!”

Before I could respond, he carried on, dramatically raising his voice. “Now! I’m off on a heroic journey to grab some wine! Wish me luck!” He donned a goofy grin and took off at a jog, whistling a tune as he ran.

As he disappeared, I sat there mulling over his words, feeling a kind of unexpected warmth.

Damn. He’s kind of a good guy, isn’t he?