Allen looked over at Amelia with a smirk. “Shut up. You know how bad the burn was, you don’t need to make it worse.”

Amelia giggled again. “It wasn’t that bad,” she said, stealing a glance at Allen’s stomach. “Most of your internal organs were still intact. You probably would have survived on Earth if you had gotten to an ER within an hour or so.”

“That sounds bad,” Allen deadpanned.

“Not compared to the second time I had to heal you,” she claimed, a rare smirk on her face. “You had a ten-centimeter nail in your head, multiple hemorrhaging, a concussion, five broken ribs, and…” she trailed off as she counted the injuries on her fingers. “…And your leg was so messed up that any other healer below level two-hundred would have needed to amputate it.”

The Healer’s serene and otherwise cheerful expression was at odds with what she was saying. It would have been frightening to the Allen of ten years ago, but the version of him walking with Amelia then only smiled back and gave her a thumbs up.

“The morbidity only makes me like her more,” he thought to himself. “Did you have a background in medicine on Earth?” he asked, immediately remembering that she would have been no older than sixteen.

Amelia chuckled at the question. “I guess,” she began wistfully, “I know its cliché, but I wanted to… I was going to be a doctor when I grew up. I studied anatomy and physiology on top of biology in school… but then I nearly passed out when I had to dissect a frog for class,” she finished with a cynical smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Huh, I wanted to be a programmer but calc hit me harder than the truck that supposedly sent me here.” Allen bit his lip and grinned to himself. “Now you can just heal with a spell, so I guess all your studying paid off,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

Amelia shot him a glance and pouted. “That’s not how it works,” she said, batting him on the shoulder. “If I just let the Heal skill do everything on its own then you… it would have taken a day to heal you and you wouldn’t have ended up with a working brain or leg afterwards. At this level I’m only supposed to be able to heal cuts and broken bones.”

Allen’s eyes widened a little as he looked back at Amelia. “Oh,” he managed before laughing compulsively. “Clearly I know nothing about how healing actually works. I guess she’s awesome then.”

Allen turned his attention to his stats. “What job are you getting?” he asked in an attempt to keep the conversation alive. He knew that they would both slip into silence if nobody said anything for just a few seconds.

Allen squinted his eyes as he looked up the hill ahead of them. They should be able to see the town in the distance from the top of it.

“Oh… um, I’m going to evolve Arcane Healer to Arcane Regenerator,” Amelia replied.

“That’s a good choice,” Christopher said, reminding Allen that he was still there in his wheelchair. “I would have suggested you take another job at this level, but you should focus on improving your healing as much as you can.”

Allen nodded. After what she had just said, he couldn’t agree more. “I’m going to get the Striker job for more damage,” he said. With a moment of thought, he put fourteen points into strength, ten into endurance, eight into intelligence, five into wisdom, and the remaining eight into focus.

“Striker is a good choice, though I’m not very familiar with that tree,” Christopher replied.

“You seem familiar with a lot of them though,” Allen added.

The professor looked back at him with a glint in his eyes. “You’re talking to a former level seven-hundred Scholar. I’m familiar with many things,” he said.

“Damn, that’s the highest level I’ve heard of for the Scholar class,” Allen said, genuinely impressed. “That’s actually sort of scary, even though Scholars have zero combat ability… I think.” He put his thoughts behind him and chose the Striker job.

Job: Striker

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Class: Rogue/Warrior – Type: Basic – Tier 1

Description:

The Striker hits fast and hits hard. They fight at the front lines and relish in the thrill of a close battle. Use skills and instincts to inflict heavy damage and bring a swift end to the enemy.

Requirements: None

Modifiers: None

He pulled up his status to check on everything, finding his secondary stats adjusting how they should. “The skills are going to be the hard part. Maybe I should sleep on it,” he thought. “I can’t make the wrong choice or the skills the System offers will go off in the wrong direction.”

Status:

Jeremiah Allen Durand

Human – Rogue – Level 15

XP: 3019/4169 (34083)

Stat Points: 0, Skill Points: 9, Job Points: 0

Jobs:

Assassin

Basic – Tier 1

Striker

Basic – Tier 1

Stats:

HP: 104/200

Regen: 30/min

SP: 162/600

Regen: 10/min

MP: 71/225

Regen: 23/min

Primary:

STR: 30

INT: 15

VIT: 9 (10)

WIS: 16 (15)

END: 16 (20)

FCS: 23

Secondary:

DEX: 82 (69)

PER: 10

RES: 10

STB: 20

SPD: 37 (34)

LCK: 6

---

The most immediately noticeable was the vast increase in dexterity. Allen could feel his entire body stabilize under his command as he smoothly stepped though the grass. His balance fell perfectly under control despite the sloped terrain and the loose dirt.

He was just about to pull up the list of available skills when he was interrupted by a voice from the top of the hill they were climbing. It sounded confrontational, but with a more official sounding tone. “Ah, the town watch is here,” Allen thought. “Took them longer than I would have expected, with that cloud of smoke and everything.”

Ty and Camila were the first to respond when they reached the top about a dozen steps ahead the other three.

“Hello,” Ty said with a slightly forced wave.

“What do you want?” Camila asked bluntly.

Allen reached the top of the hill a moment later, finding a group of seven men dressed in light armor with an unfamiliar crest on the left breast.

“Odd, I was going to ask the same thing,” said the man in the front of the group. A red mark on the side of his helmet indicated his rank as a captain or something similar. His helmet was open at the front, revealing an expression somewhere between annoyance and disinterest.

Name: [Unknown]

Human – Warrior – Level 179

“He’s bored, this won’t be a problem then,” Allen thought. “Sorry sir, we were just on our way through from one of the smaller villages around here,” he said, feigning a serious attitude. “We tried going off the roads to avoid bandits but ran into some level twenty ogres instead. We were able to kill them all and burn their camp down.”

The watch captain smirked and turned to Allen. “Yeah, that’s great. It’s the last part I have a problem with. You retards didn’t start a brush fire did you?”

“What? No, of course not. It was the fire mage ogre that started the fires,” Allen said.

“We contained the magical flames to the camp, and I smothered them before we left,” Christopher added.

The captain looked dubiously at the professor in his wheelchair, as did a few of the others behind him. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, “…but I suppose you saved us a day of work, so I’ll let you through the gate tonight. Just know that if we have to put out some shit fires because of you assholes then… I’ll be really disappointed,” he finished, narrowing his eyes at Allen and his group.

“He’s honest at least.”

“Nope,” Ty said, “No fire here.”

The captain ignored Ty entirely and looked over his shoulder at his subordinates. “Two of you go check out the camp. Report back to base in half an hour from now.” He cleared his throat as two Rangers quickly moved off in the direction of the ogre camp. “You five can follow me back to Hillford."

“Do we get any money for the ogres?” Camila asked flippantly, she smirked back at the watch captain when he gave her a look.

“I’ve got no idea where Hillford is… maybe I can get him to tell me.”

“Fuck no,” the captain replied, already turning to leave with his remaining entourage. “I’m going to report this incident as handled by my squad and claim the paycheck we were supposed to get for clearing that camp ourselves.”

“Please shut up Camila.” Allen quickly put himself between the Berserker and the watch as they walked down the hill and towards the town in the distance. “How much are train tickets to the capital?” he asked.

The captain grunted. “Out of town runs around fifty coppers, you’ll have to take another line South to get to Rotherham though.”

“Rotherham is the capitol of the East Sylvan Federation,” Allen thought, taking a moment to remember his geography. “Shit. That puts us on the wrong continent.”

The group continued walking through the hills for the next twenty minutes. Thankfully, Camila didn’t say anything else during the rest of the hike. As for Allen, he just stayed in his own thoughts for the entire time, satisfied with thinking about how he would spend his skill points.