He sat down on a log and took a break from jogging. He had been keeping a pretty good pace for about a week now. It was when he was finally into the real forest that he let himself rest. The trees here were way bigger than the ones right outside of the village. They looked to be one hundred meters, three hundred and thirty feet, tall and were fairly thick. The forest was interspersed with coniferous and deciduous trees, shielding the ground from the sun. All that grew on the forest floor were mushrooms, as far as he could see. He had yet to come across any monsters yet but had seen some deer that ran away at the sight of him.

It was too bad that he had to skedaddle before anyone found him. He would have liked to learn a class first, then he would gain EXP. EXP levels, classes and, affinities up. Of course, he can’t gain any EXP without a class because it had nowhere to go. People may be thinking about why the affinity did not level up. The answer is that you need to use the affinity, like using mana in a skill or spell, for it to gain EXP. Why would the affinity deserve anything if it was not used and just sat there like a turd on a pillow? This is also why magical classes can level their affinities faster, the affinity’s mana does more work, which equals more rewards.

Take a defense shield spell for example. Once it is deployed, the mana is used and fixed, the spell will not continue to drain mana once cast. It will not dissipate but stay in that form until the requirements of the spell for breaking are met. Let’s say a Mage casts a defense spell. Almost all spells like that have a certain amount of damage they can take until they dissipate. But until that amount of damage is dealt, it will stay active. But a mage is limited to how many spells like this they can cast, or else a mage would be invincible given enough time to cast thousands of defensive spells around themselves. Spells like a ball of light or summoning a creature, have a time limit. So people are unable to create a perpetual existence like an ever-glowing ball of light.

His perpetual mana is still limited by those rules. If he would cast a ball of light spell, it would still wear out, it would just be that he would die in the process and the ball would be extra shiny due to excess mana. Where it was not limited, however, is in spells that continually draw mana from the user to power themselves. They are not about preparation, but immediate actions. They continually draw mana from the user to create an immediate effect, like a fireball. A fireball would continue to fly until the mana was cut off. His mana would make it fly forever in a straight line, pretty useless. Where this mana came from, a black hole? He had no freaking clue. How did he know about all that stuff beforehand? A gut feeling. That’s right, he got all of that info from a gut feeling. That was how affinities worked. As they level up, he would get a stronger gut feeling of how to apply his mana in parallel with the law his affinity represented.

Skills also fall into the category of continuously using mana to power themselves. For example, a sense skill that uses mana continuously to sense things until the user cuts off the mana. He could use that skill to sense stuff forever, but he would have died. He was not sure how he could sense stuff yet be dead, did not make a lot of sense to him.

Spells were like a mug. What you would fill it with would be your respective affinities. When a spell is used the mana just pours into it. Affinities are like different flavors of mana that create varying effects that the person would kind of get a feel for with their gut feelings. Fire and earth, Punch and coffee, combine in a glass to create a cup of coffee with a fruit wedge floating in it, creating a magma affinity. His perpetual affinity was like an overflowing glass of lemonade, too sweet to the point of tartness. He was hoping that the Blight affinity, the lid in this scenario, would stop the cup from overflowing and trap the mana inside, letting spill only a little before the lid was on, to be drunk and create a spell without him dying. He hoped this weird scenario made as much sense in real life as it did in his head.

“Now to figure out which class I want”

He pulled all of the class books out of the spatial bag and set them down on the log. He began to flip through them one by one learning which class they would give him. Class books only gave minimal information to the reader. It was only if he accepted the class would he get a chance to explore more about the class. Every time he flipped the pages to look at more information about the class, the words would become garbled and impossible to read. This was a way for the class book to keep its secrets unless he committed to the class in question. He was able to get a general outline of the class’s he had to choose from.

There was one physical class book which was a Paladin class.

The paladin class was pretty good, but it was exclusive to Churches usually. He had a chance to get a good class without being beholden to the church. But, he will not be able to hide his class that easily. If people saw that he was a paladin and not church-affiliated, they could report him. He did not want to draw even more attention to himself than he already was, plus he wanted a magical class.

He burnt the class book. If he sold it, that would also draw attention, so yeah, burning it was the best option.

He took out the one other class book that was in the bag. It was a magical class of Golemnist. A golemnist created golems, basically personal soldiers. Golems were often made of hard materials and were fairly strong. The reason this class was not that popular was that the person had to supply mana constantly to keep it running. Going on adventures required people to haul around a heavy load or provide magic to keep the golem walking on its own. It was very draining on mana at the beginning stages. But of course, higher affinity levels mean more mana to play around with, which allows golems to run longer. But it is just very hard to level up at the beginning due to lack of mana. So people who choose a class usually choose other options that are just as good.

“Guess you’re the lucky class. Congratulations, you won a brain to absorb you.”

He opened the book again and tried to read it to get the class. It was still garbled.

He stared at the garbled words, trying to will himself to learn.

“Fuuu, how do you do this?”

He tried to read the book upside down. Didn’t work. He looked away from the pages, then quickly turned back to read them. Didn’t work. He tried reading it from closer and farther away. Didn’t work.

“Fuck me.”

He slapped the book across his face.

Congratulations!

You can learn class: Golemnist

Accept?

“That worked!?”

He was very surprised. But now he wanted to test if the Interface could read his thoughts.

You have gained class: Golemnist Hp: 31/31 Mp: 10/10 Str:15 Ag:15 End:19 Dex:13 Int:11 Class: Golemnist Lv:1 Affinity: Perpetual/ Blight Lv:1 / Lv:1 Skills: Identify Entity Engraving Circles: Flex Command

Affinity increased Mp as it leveled up. But not Blight because that is a weird one, instead it had increased his health and other physical stats. He assumed that Blight upgraded those through modification of the body, like the baseline of a human is lower than that of a monster. Since he was becoming more monsterlike, some of those stats would come from his physically superior body, not his class. That was how the races of this planet got even with monsters, through their classes giving them stats.

“Time to try this out.”

He searched for a stream or a river nearby as he continued his trek eastward. He came across a small stream where he began to search for clay to build his first golem. When he thought of golems, the first thing that had popped into his head was a clay golem, so he was going to start with that.

He found some clay on the streambank and dug it out. It was wet and stuck together fairly well, enough for his purposes anyways. He scooped it onto dry ground and started molding a laying-down human-like body with his hands. It took about two hours to finish. He was not very proud of his work. He was not a potter in his past life, nor an artist of any kind, so this was new territory for him. It looked to be one meter by one meter, three feet by three feet, in a box-like shape. With short little legs and arms, and a big blocky head.

“This sucks. I’m gonna name you Shit.”

He dug the word, shit, into the clay on its chest.

“Now time to bring you, ALIVE!.. Kind of.”

He got ready to activate his new skill, Entity Engraving. A skill that allowed him to engrave golem circles into a golem and have the circles affect the golem.

He activated the skill and began engraving the Command circle. This would allow him to command the block of clay that was his golem, Shit. He began the engraving and felt his mana activate. The perpetual affinity mana went from his body through the knife he was engraving with into the circle he was drawing. He drew it from the memory that had just appeared in his brain when he got the class. The circle had many intricate and weird symbols drawn throughout, and he was very meticulous to not mess anything up. He could feel his mana pouring out of him like a neverending tide. He began to feel close to mana depletion, so he tried to stop it.

The mana continued to flow out of him as he was becoming weaker and weaker. Then he felt a hungry force arise in himself that tried to stop the outflow of mana. It took a few seconds, but the hungry force overpowered the perpetual affinity and stopped the mana flow. He was so surprised and happy that he did not die that his hand slipped.

“Shi-”

BOOM!

He was thrown back and hit his head on a tree which knocked him out.

He awoke sometime later to find he had severe burns all over his body. Luckily, he had covered his eyes with his arm before the blast, so he was still able to see.

“Ouchie. That fucking hurt!”

His once golem was now just a small, smoking crater in the ground.

He lay there on the ground, waiting for his endurance stat to do its work and recover his HP. It took two days in which he just lay there, not moving. He did not want to move for fear that he would open the wounds as they were healing.

He sat up and took out some water and food. The burns still hurt, but they wouldn’t burst open if he moved now.

“I’m fucking thirsty.”

He gulped the water out of the satchel and then took out some Boonce bread from the spatial bag. His clothes were ruined, but the spatial bag looked just fine.

He got out some spare clothes and put them on.

“As they say, second times the charm. Ha.”

He dug out more clay and began to shape the golem again. It looked a bit better, not as blockish as before and with longer legs and arms. About the same size overall though.

He dug the name “Shitty” into the chest. He then proceeded to engrave another Command circle into the chest. He was very careful this time and slowly engraved it. When the Blight came to stop his mana, he was not even a quarter done the circle. But he could sense that his mana was almost depleted, so he couldn’t try again.

He put the knife back into his bag and went out to collect some firewood. He came back only to see the clay starting to fall apart.

“Ahhh! You stupid clay.”

He kicked the lump of clay.

“Ow.”

It felt like he stubbed every single toe at once. Needless to say, it was very painful. Not as painful as getting burnt, but it still hurt like hell.

“Fuck it. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

He was tired and his mana was almost depleted. He needed to sleep. So he unrolled his bedroll and went to sleep, still fuming about all his failures.