Chapter 13 - Class Options Acquired

He’d told them all to keep as quiet as possible while they moved ahead, and Trey had just heard something from around the corner. Night vision had already been activated but the other humans and dwarves behind him couldn’t see in the pitch black. They were inching forward with their hands on one another’s backs and Trey was doing his best to guide them.

Motioning for the others to stop and turning around the corner, he saw that there was a U-turn in the hallway. Coming around and peering down the tunnel he then saw three figures, although the features were indistinguishable at this distance so he couldn’t be sure if they were culn or not. The three potential enemies were standing on the other side of the wall directly across from where he’d left the freed prisoners in the dark, and they appeared to be talking to one another under the torchlight. Trey silently slunk back towards his newfound group and tugged on Farthom’s robe to lead the way forward. As silently as they could, the men and women rounded the corner, gathering up at yet the next turn on their right. The torch that’d been lit down the hall gave off faint light that didn’t quite penetrate to where the escapees sat huddled.

Trey’s targets were a ways away and they would see him coming if he charged head on. He’d wanted to try something new anyways so he motioned for the group to stay there and watch the guards after he estimated the distance down the tunnel relative to the opposite side he had just traversed.

Trey silently retreated back down the tunnel until he stopped at what he thought was the right spot, where the guards were hopefully on the other side of the wall. He pulled out his claws and smirked, thinking about what he was about to do and hoping it would work. Truth be told, he’d never enjoyed killing this much. He was even having fun!

Why was that?

He dragged his claws along the wall with his left hand and scraped them loudly across the rock. It made a screeching noise like nails on a chalkboard but much louder and deeper, reverberating down the stone walls.

He heard the faint talking of his enemies stop abruptly at the noise, and knew they’d be looking down and away from his chosen approach. Trey and Sithis simultaneously let out a sinister, demonic laugh that echoed throughout the tight corridors for intimidation’s sake.

Somehow... Trey could literally smell their fear, and he recognized what it was through internal prompts Sithis was sending his way. Or perhaps it was the fear of the people he was helping. He couldn’t know for sure.

“Let's go.”

Envisioning what he wanted to do before he cast the spell - Trey vaporized and immediately rematerialized mid air on the other side of the wall. He was dead on, appearing right behind the three victims just as he had hoped he would. Black wisps of flaming shadow engulfed his person as his claws were held out to either side. Glowing red eyes and razor teeth smiled from ear to ear wickedly behind the three demons a couple feet above them.

It took Trey a four seconds to decapitate all three of them, his claws were splendidly sharp and even cut through bone without much of a problem. They didn’t have any time to react, never even seeing him coming, and their bodies slumped to the floor. Killing them had made little to no sound, and Trey looked pleased that his idea had worked.

“You have gained XP. You have gained the Assassination skill. Congratulations.”

Again Trey felt a lust overcome him and pleasure coursed through his body upon successfully executing the kills. An instant later and he had another surge of hunger too, so without wasting anymore time he flipped over one of the bodies. Pulling off a large iron breastplate that he tossed to the side, he excitedly ripped out the heart to eat...

5 minutes later.

“...Trey?”

Trey looked up, snapping out of his feasting trance and saw the entire group watching him. He looked back down to his hands, threw the colon to the ground and wiped his hands on his already bloodstained clothes.

“Sorry about that,” replied Trey looking to Farthom and smiling sheepishly with a hand scratching the back of his head. “I keep getting carried away. It’s kind of hard to resist...”

The older man smiled and actually began to chuckle, though it definitely seemed forced. “Very strange. But I do not judge you. Without you we wouldn’t stand a chance, so no need to apologize. Shall we continue?”

Trey gave a thumbs up with both hands and stood up. He then handed the torch to Farthom after taking it down from the wall. “If I see anyone else as I scout ahead, I’m going to have you extinguish the torch. But until then it’d be easier to navigate for all of you with this and we’ll make better time.”

Farthom promptly agreed.

A startling bell sound indicated the All Spirit’s presence as another pop up notification shot into view. This one hadn’t been summoned, and Trey’s brows furrowed as he looked the screen over.

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“Based upon your actions, circumstances, and recent events, you have qualified for the Dark Paladin class: this class emphasizes a high defense and the black magics. Please see the following for maximum caps on abilities:

- Dark Paladin

o 8 spells

o 8 sacred arts

o 8 miracles

o Enables one to pledge towards a specific deity but only if that deity grants favor,

allowing a pledged priest / priestess / paladin to transcend into a higher form of being.

Based upon your actions, circumstances, and recent events, you have qualified for the Warlock class: this class emphasizes sustained high damage output at the cost of defense and emphasizes the black magics, allowing a single minion. Please see the following for maximum caps on abilities:

- Warlock

o 20 spells

o 1 sacred art

o 4 miracles

o Enables only 1 minion of demonic, fallen or enslaved classes.

o Spell damage amplification bonuses

If you wish to accept any of these classes please refer to your status page, select the class, and press ‘accept.’ Choosing a class will unlock skill trees that would otherwise be unavailable, and add additional stats or traits correlating with your choice. Otherwise you may remain as you are and choose at another time. Be warned, though classes are not permanent choices if you switch off your original class to pick another one: it results in a reduction of total levels by half and results in a 1 month wait period prior to choosing the new class. So choose wisely.”

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The mechanical feminine voice Trey had come to recognize so well faded away as did the message once he had finished reading it.

Class options? Oof! Now this got Trey’s blood pumping. Pulling up his status page he clarified that both ‘Dark Paladin’ and ‘Warlock’ were options he was able to select at any time. Pondering this for a little while he shook his head and closed the page. He wanted to select both of them, they both sounded like viable options and it took a lot to keep it under wraps… but he didn’t want to regret his decision later and have to switch only to lose half of the levels he’d gained. That would be a huge penalty to face, and he wanted to be sure he was making the right call when he did choose. He would get out of Oblivion and look around to find out what other people knew of this before he decided.

Quite frankly he didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten an option for the ‘assassin’ class after that last stunt he’d just pulled, but it didn’t matter to him too much. At the very least he was glad to have some choices now.

***

They came across many storage rooms just as Farthom had told Trey they would. The escapees stocked up on supplies, mostly food rations, as Farthom had stated it would probably take many days if not weeks to get to the portal site by foot. Thankfully they encountered no more traps.

“I must say Trey, those are some very rare and useful abilities you have. I’m a scholar and have heard of two of them, but others you have I don’t think I’ve even heard of ‘Chains of Chaos’ before. And I’ve made a living from knowing about various things like that.” Farthom looked forward again. “Scrolls, tomes or grimoires with any of those three spells would cost a fortune.”

About a hundred yards away and down the tunnel Trey thought he saw something move… a small humanoid figure in the distance, and then two more. Trey motioned for the light to be extinguished and everyone to form a line again. The cave about them dripped moisture onto his head as he slowly crawled forward. As he crept closer, the moving figures began to grow in number and went up one of the far tunnels to disappear from sight. Leading the group forward he took them down the same pass minutes later that went upwards and entered a large room.

Trey then saw the large gate that Farthom had mentioned earlier. In front of it were three minotaurs wielding giant axes like the one he’d fought before, and there were four culn as well. One of the culn wore robes and bore no weapons, and Trey was quick to question Farthom about it.

“That a mage?” asked Trey curiously as he pointed into the dimly lit room towards the culn demon wearing robes. He scratched both of his ears and leaned sideways to get a better look.

Farthom shrugged. “I can’t identify him from this far away. I’m not sure.”

Trey sighed and bit his lip before looking past the gated “dungeon” and on to a set of stairs beyond. There was no way that they would be able to sneak past without being noticed. If it were one or two? Maybe. But not 36 others aside from Trey.

“Yeah there’s no way sneaking by is going to work.” said Trey bluntly. He faced Farthom and the others, putting a finger up to his mouth as if to say keep quiet. “Do not. Make. A sound. No matter what happens. If I somehow die… well I tried, and I’ll respawn a few days after that. However, I don’t know if you all would be safe waiting around for me either. So that’s for all of you to decide if it happens.”

Farthom frantically interrupted him, pointing back into the room. “Look!”

Trey quickly turned and saw three minotaurs along with two of the culn walking in their direction. These minotaurs were certainly bigger than he was, but only about half the size of the one he’d fought earlier. Trey motioned for his allies to back up and stayed where he was, watching his enemies approach from where the ground just dipped into the tunnel. Eventually he heard the culn soldiers speaking as they drew closer.

“What the hell are they doing?” spat the bigger culn demon as he strode forward angrily. “My guess would be they’re slacking off again. They had one job! Just to feed the mortals to the larvae in the spawning pools. That’s it. It shouldn’t take them hours to do it.”

His companion gritted his teeth angrily. “We are going to be the ones that get yelled at if they don’t hurry up.” He glanced back to the minotaurs with irritation evident upon his features. “HURRY UP, YOU DUMB COWS!”

Those were the last words he said as a chaos ball caught him full on in the back of the head and sent his brains searing off in multiple directions. The other culn man exploded immediately afterwards as Trey’s other hand had simultaneously let loose a second ball of red and black flames encircled by lightning. As the two culn vaporized, the blasts caught the bystanding minotaurs with splash damage.

The surprise attack had caught them completely unawares.

The remaining demons shielded their eyes and wailed, which grew even louder as Trey lunged forward through the dissipating mana to slice off the foot of one before swinging his sword around to slice into the neck of the next. Chaos chains raced downwards from above to bind the two minotaurs in the back. Then the chains swiftly contracted, pulling them up into the air flailing about and slamming them forcefully into the ceiling before dropping them to the ground two hundred feet below.

As they fell, Trey undercut the massive legs of the confused panicking minotaur in front of him with a swift kick to it’s legs and used the momentum of the spin to continue full circle and slice off one of the muscular forearms of his opponent with his Oth’nune Longsword.

The blade whipped around one more time as the minotaur screamed and tried to scramble away before it came down into the back of his opponent. A loud crunch was heard as the sword pierced through the spine, which was followed with loud thuds as the two other minotaurs crashed to the ground. The remaining culn mage and culn soldier left back at the gate were outwardly stunned in the small amount of time the fighting had gone on, but recovered their senses as they ran forward to attack.

Before they reached him, Trey finished off one of the two minotaurs that had fallen from the ceiling and somehow managed to survive. The sword sank deep again into the spine of his opponent and he turned to smile wickedly with a cackle at his last two living enemies.

Trey’s confidence was slightly shaken a moment later though when the Culn mage, black robe flowing about it, summoned a multitude of ice shards that went soaring towards him. They came forward at such speed that he didn’t have time to dodge in time, and although Sithis shadowstepped out of the way to avoid most - Trey was still hit with two of them. One pierced all the way through Trey’s right arm had left a small hole through his bicep, while the other had grazed his hip and had left a large gash.

“Shit!”

He noticed that the status icon for bleeding appeared next to his health bar and he had lost 10% of his hp. Then he took a brief second to try and get a read on the asshole who’d landed the hits.

Name: Culn Overseer

Race: Culn, Lesser Demon

Class: Generalized Elementalist

Level: 7

HP: 132/132

MP: ???

SP: ???

He snarled and prepared to rush the mage but was surprised as he was intercepted by the mage’s compatriot. The culn warrior wore a set of armor unlike the others, it was a dark teal color and he wore a helmet to boot that was decorated with intricate carvings and had wings coming off the side. He was also a good bit taller than the others standing at 9 feet, and although he had been surprised by the vanishing act Trey had just performed - he adapted quickly.

Without hesitating the warrior turned to strike out at Trey with a large emerald sword coming in an arc.

Trey’s enhanced reflexes and speed were put to work as he dodged, dodged again, and rolled to flip backwards - trying to get some distance between himself and his large opponent.

As he cleared a decent amount of distance he was struck with another shard of ice. Luckily he had brought up his gauntlet-like claws to protect him from some of the damage and the black jaws mask he had gained negated one of the shards too by deflecting it off and to the side. If it hadn’t been for the mask, that piece of ice would have pierced his skull.

‘If we try to engage the warrior from afar with magic, the mage will counterattack. We may wait for the shadowstep cooldown to end to engage the backline but until then we should keep the warrior inbetween us and the caster.’ The words flew from Sithis into Trey’s mind so fast that it kind of startled him, but it was all understandable.

Trey acknowledged the advice and closed with the warrior. As he stepped forward, the warrior hastily drew a shield from his back to block the incoming attacks from Trey’s longsword. Meanwhile Trey was careful to keep the mage on the opposite side of the frontline opponent so that the culn caster didn’t have a good shot.

The result was a quick back and forth movement as Trey tried to keep the mage on the opposite side of the warrior, while the mage was running around in the back trying to get a good line of sight to fire from.

Block, dodge, block, counterstrike. A flurry of movements found Trey was losing ground. His movements were faster because he lacked the heavy armor this culn warrior wore, but he lacked the skill to use this weapon and in comparison the culn warrior made him look ridiculous. The obvious difference in skill caused Trey to almost trip more than once as Trey exerted himself to keep up. Sparks of metal flew as the blades clashed against each other, putting Trey’s stamina to the test. This warrior was definitely the hardest opponent he had come across since acquiring the essence, except for maybe the large minotaur he had first encountered.

He couldn’t use a chaos ball up close, otherwise he would be caught in the explosion and risk exposing himself while he tried to cast. So instead, he tried casting arcane chain bindings on both of his enemies. The warrior grunted as a solidified chain of chaos magic shot out from a random point in space and glanced off his shield. He roared in defiance as he swat another of the chains out of the air, breaking it cleanly with his sword, and charged Trey in a mad rush.

The warrior rammed into him with his shield and sent Trey sprawling backwards, scrambling to get a solid footing agian. Unfortunately, Trey was also now in the line of sight for an attack from the mage. The caster took advantage of it immediately, sending out a small blast of fire in his direction. Without a moment to spare and with some quick thinking, Trey used the three already-summoned arcane chains to quickly wrap into a sphere-like shield in front of him, blocking the attack entirely.

‘Impressive!’ stated Sithis. ‘But we are running low on mana, be careful.’

The chains then unwrapped and shot out to wrap themselves around the warrior. The armored culn soldier struggled valiantly, trying to resist the bindings that attached to his legs and sword arm, but this time he was less successful in warding them off. He began bashing the chains with his shield and free arm, roaring out frantically.

In the meantime Trey was rushing the mage. The mage sent out yet another blast of fire and hit Trey full in the chest. The impact sent Trey backwards in a violent crash and cried out as a small chunk of flesh was severely burned along the left pectoral muscle.

These motherfuckers! He quickly got up, and now he was pissed.

The mage staggered somewhat, tripping over his own feet when moving backwards and giving Trey room to move freely without worrying about further attacks. As the mage picked himself back up he summoned a third purple ball of energy in front of him, but his panic caused him to misfire. The magic missile soared harmlessly over Trey’s head, far above his intended target.

Realizing he was about to be within melee range of his pursuer, the mage panicked and frantically tried to run. Trey grinned, continuing to sprint forward and when he was within ten yards he shadowstepped.

Trey used his momentum to plow into the culn man, plunging a claw deep into the cervical spine and throat of his opponent. The force toppled the mage and Trey in turn landed on top of his back, ripped out a piece of the spine of the terrified culn with brute force and screamed in laughter.

His laughter was cut short as a sword was narrowly avoided, grazing his left cheek in the process. Trey lunged forward into a roll and stood up to look at his assailant. The warrior had broken free of his chains, but had somehow missed his intended target.

Seeing that a bolt had lodged itself in the side of the culn warrior’s knee, Trey quickly realized one of the previous prisoners had found a crossbow and had shot the warrior mid-stride. This had caused him to stumble in his attack.

The armored soldier got up, tripped under the pain of having taken an arrow to the knee, and made a last ditch effort to attack Trey before Sithis lifted Trey’s hand and sent him into an obliterated pile of metal and mush with another more concentrated chaos ball. Sithis had pooled the last bit of remaining mana to charge the attack for a more powerful version of the spell, and it had worked splendidly.

“You have gained XP. You have gained 1 overall level.” the mechanical voice said as his status page began to flash, and Trey briefly gave it a look and saw that he had leveled up again. He was slightly surprised, but then again he was doing quite a bit of killing lately… however he absolutely knew that he’d not have been able to accomplish all of this without the newfound powers he’d gotten.

“I didn’t realize we could improve our spells by channeling extra mana into them, but it makes sense,” laughed Trey as he bent down to see if anything was salvageable from the warrior’s corpse. He pulled at the emerald sword he had seen earlier, but unfortunately it was in pieces. In fact, all of the armor was in pieces along with the shield. ‘Chaos Ball’ was definitely overpowered, but Trey wasn’t going to complain.

‘Only to a small extent , going too far beyond what the original spell allows will result in an unstable spell that can fail or preemptively explode. How I’m aware of this… I’m not sure, and I’m sorry about the mess.’ Sithis commented in an amused chuckle.

“Indeed.” replied Trey with a raised eyebrow before turning back to the mage.

He then stopped in his tracks.

Behind the prison gate, a crowd of starved and dirty onlookers - mostly humans - stood gawking. Soon they began to cheer in excitement. The group that Trey had originally helped also came out of the tunnel cheering and a couple gave the man who had shot the culn soldier claps on the back. They were incredibly excited about Trey winning and some even began to cry. More shouts of excitement rang out when the two groups saw each other, and some of the 36 originals Trey’d been helping ran over to the gate to embrace their comrades through the bars. Emotional greetings, hugging, talking and laughter were all exchanged in a growing frequency.

“Are these some of the other people from your town that you were talking about?” asked Trey to Farthom.

Farthom looked beaten. “Yes… I had no idea they were being kept here though. And to think… I wanted to sneak past and run away…”

Trey smiled softly and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. He then looked down at the burned and bleeding wound in his chest and grimaced. Soon he walked over to the mage who he assumed had the key, based on his title of ‘Overseer’, and dug around in the pockets of the demon’s robe. Trey ended up pulling out three items: a red potion in a glass vial, a long irregular key as Trey had expected, and a flat circular stone the size of a small dinner-plate with a strange white rune on it.

Major Healing Potion

Item Tier: (7) Rare

Bonuses: none

Requirements: none

Durability: 20/20

Special: Recover 800 HP over 60 seconds

Negaizer Prison Key

Item Tier: (5) Common

Bonuses: none

Requirements: none

Durability: 149/150

Special: Opens Negaizer prison gates

Enchanting Stone

Item Tier: (7) Rare

Bonuses: none

Requirements: Enchanting level 25

Durability: 80/80

Special: ???

Trey turned the enchanting stone and major healing potion into shadowform. He’d ask about the enchanting stone later. He waved the key around in the air and made his way through the crowd until he came to the front of the gate. Seeing the keyhole, he inserted the long strange looking key into it and turned - which produced an audible click.

The enormous iron gates briefly flickered with red light and then opened quietly. Soon members from the two groups were embracing each other without the barrier of the gate in the way, laughing and crying as they did. Trey wormed his way inside and got many stares along with some smiles and pats on the back, even a few hugs. He smiled awkwardly at an attractive brunette girl slightly younger than him who’d come over to hug him, but he continued his way in until he was within the room’s back area. After having made certain there was nothing of value in here, he turned back and made his way over to Farthom.

“This makes 129 of us now Trey,” said Farthom in a low tone, holding his granddaughter’s hand as Trey approached to look around. “I think we barely have enough food to get back to the portal after scavenging.”

“Good,” said Trey impatiently. “Let’s go?”

A few of the new people tried to come up and talk to Trey, but Trey quickly held up his hands and shrugged again with a frown. Farthom quickly interjected and explained to them the situation, much to Trey’s relief. Soon he held up his own hands and began yelling at the top of his voice until all 129 of them had become quiet.

“Tell them the situation and what the plan is, I’ll wait.” Trey crossed his arms and yawned, and many of the crowd stared curiously as Farthom slowly explained. It took a good ten minutes of Q&A after the original explanation for everyone to be satisfied, but eventually they all look expectantly to Trey.

As soon as Farthom did the same, Trey waved his hand and enthusiastically said: “Alright, time for a road trip!"