“Mom, Rowan’s home!”

“How’s our little Gardener? Find a job yet?”

Rowan scowled. “Thanks, mom.”

His mom peeked around the corner, a long-stemmed rose in one hand. Curly dark hair flourished around her ears, as untamable as his own mop. “You aren’t going to be one of those live at home slackers, I’ll tell you what! This house isn't rent free. Have you spoken to your father yet? I know he’s a Landscaper, but if you apprentice under him, you should be able to evolve Gardener to Landscaper within a few years.”

“Thanks, mom. I’m tired, okay? Later.” He hurried past the living room, toward the staircase in the back of the house.

“You can’t be tired forever! Eventually, you have to get out there and earn some EXP!” his mom called after him.

Mom’s a Florist. Dad’s a Landscaper. I was stupid to ever think I could be something more than a support class. Scowling, he kicked a stray shoe.

In the dining room, his sister sat behind a pile of books, chewing a pencil. She glanced up, and big topaz eyes met his. “Rowan, when did the System appear? Was it after the monsters, or before?”

“Fifty years after the monsters,” Rowan grumbled.

“And that was…”

“A hundred years ago, ish. Read the encyclopedia yourself, I’m not going to do your homework.”

Ashe hummed to herself, tipping her head. She took after her father, with straight hair in a lighter shade of brown, though her face resembled a distant maternal aunt, according to their mother.

“Or don’t bother studying. It doesn’t matter. You’ll end up as a support class anyways,” Rowan complained.

She glanced at him and stuck her tongue out. “I’m gonna be an intellectual class, I know it. Don’t be bitter ‘cuz you weren’t good enough.”

He flipped her off.

Ashe gasped. “Mom! Rowan made a nasty gesture!”

“Stop provoking him, Ashe. You know he’s sore about his class. And Rowan, while you’re in my house, you’ll obey my rules, got it? No middle fingers at your sister!”

He turned and started to raise his hand again, but caught his mother’s glare and froze mid gesture. He lowered his hand.

Leaning around the corner, his mother smiled, then frowned at herself and ducked back out of sight. Under her breath, she muttered, “Where’d I put the damn baby’s breath?”

Ashe’s book slipped, revealing a magazine underneath. She grabbed it back up quickly, but not quickly enough.

Rowan tiptoed around behind her to get a better look at the article. A man with long, dark hair gazed intently at him from the page. Grinning, he read aloud, “N. Kaidu, hottest Hairdresser ever? Three question marks?”

Ashe slammed the magazine shut and slipped it under a pile of books. She glared at him and raised a finger to her lips.

Their mother peered around the corner. “What was that, Rowan?”

Ashe stared furiously, lips pressed together. She shook her head.

“Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself,” Rowan chuckled. He winked at Ashe. “Reminding someone that two can play the snitch game.”

Ashe grimaced at him, wrinkling her nose.

“What?” Their mother paused, a sprig of baby’s breath in hand, glancing from Ashe to Rowan and back again.

“Nothing, mom. Goodnight.”

She shook her head and turned back to her bouquet.

Quietly, Rowan whispered, “Scan.”

Azalea Promet. ??/F. Class: Florist. Level: 11.

How long has she worked as a Florist? And she’s only level eleven. Rowan stared at his hands, then clenched them. If I worked for ten years, put in the hard work… would I have hit level five?

Support classes just don’t earn EXP. It’s hopeless. Unlike combat classes, we aren’t given the strength to fight mobs. Unlike intellectual classes, the work we do doesn’t yield enough EXP for us to level. The System is stacked against us.

That’s why… someone has to end it. If no one else will, then I’ll do it myself. I’ll climb the tower and take down the Hero-King, once and for all.

I can level faster than any support class should be able to. I still have that EXP, I just have to figure out how to access it. My class is shit, but it isn’t impossible to use. Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to climb the damn Tower.

In his room, Rowan plopped onto his bed. He closed his eyes and called up the system, looking over his stats.

HP: 39 (+9)

STR: 6 (+1)

MAG: 1 (+0)

SKL: 6 (+1)

SPD: 8 (+3)

LUK: 4 (+1)

DEF: 5 (+0)

RES: 3 (+0)

CHA: 5 (+0)

Earlier, he’d been too caught up in the moment to notice, but now that he had a moment, he could finally check how much his stats had grown. Not much. I’m still a support class, but… it’s better than nothing.

Looks like… fifteen points total. Three stat-ups per level, give or take. He pressed his lips together. Don’t combat classes get five to seven stat-ups per level? Three’s way too stingy!

Look at those numbers, too! Nine points in HP? What kind of shitty deal is that? That’s almost all my skill points! Where’s my magic? My defense? And only one point in strength? Damn, support classes have it rough. Can I only grow HP, or something?

He laid there for a second, thinking. His eyes drifted to the lower right hand corner of his screen, where red text still blared: Account Locked!, then up to the upper right, where a lock icon was superimposed over his over-full EXP bar. How the hell did I access that EXP, anyways? What was the trigger? The poison? Low health? The frogs, maybe? Or… was it the exclusion zone?

He scratched his hair and rolled over on the bed, frowning. Too many variables. Not enough data. I need to repeat the experiment. Isolate the variables and figure out what it is that triggered the EXP release.

Probably not the frogs. That… there’s no correlation. Rowan reached out and grabbed his notebook, jotting down notes. Low health, exclusion zone, poison… those are all real possibilities. Still, I can’t rule anything out. No one fully understands how the System works. He scribbled on, adding inconsequential details. Nighttime. Wednesday, September 14. Kicked out of the Tower. Combat classes nearby.

He frowned at the memory. Should I report them? But... what would the Guards do about it? I came out unscathed, and Guards are a combat class, too. They'd just laugh it off as a little prank by some harmless combat classes. I can hear them already: "What, you think that's bad? You should try the Tower... If you could."

Rowan sighed, exhausted just thinking about it. No, no point reporting them.

Lost in his thoughts, his pen paused. Picking it up again, he added, Jude. Medic/combat class. Maybe nice? Shitty fashion sense.

Rowan took a deep breath and put down his pen. I’m stalling. I need to just do it.

He grabbed his phone and navigated to the quest board. Staring at everyone else’s postings, requesting parties for quests handed out by the System, raids on exclusion zones, or whatever else, he swallowed. A thousand times, he’d made it this far. Always, always, he’d reconsidered at the last second.

Not this time. Before he could doubt himself, Rowan navigated to the third tab. Party Requests for Tower Climb. He clicked the +, and an automatic post popped up, already half filled.

Wanted: Party members for Tower Climb. Combat classes only. Goal: Floor Two.

Rowan laughed. His fingers darted over the prompt, changing the defaults to his own whims. No combat classes. And I'm not stopping short.

With a smile, he regarded the finished product: his first, and last, post on the quest board.

Wanted: Party members for Tower Climb. Support classes preferred. Goal: Tower End.