A pulsing, hard heartbeat beat away, my heartbeat almost drowning out the sound of footsteps. I tried to swallow as quietly as possible, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Cursing the lack of a moon, I tried to peer into the absolute darkness that reigned. Trying to peer at the areas around the bioluminescent flowers didn’t help in the least.

Struggling to listen closer, I tried to track the sound of the footsteps. My stomach plummeted when I realized that they were slowly growing louder. I debated with myself for a split second whether to stay hidden or run. It didn’t take me long to decide. I’d always hated the idea of hiding, and I had no doubt that anything that lived in this swamp at night had some way to see through the dark.

Forcing myself to swallow down some of the fear rising up, I rose as silently as I could to my feet. I focused one more time to make sure I would be running away from the footsteps instead of towards them. As soon as I had the direction fixed in my head, I leaped up and out of my hiding place in the hollow.

I didn’t wait to see if the source of the footsteps would notice that, I instead immediately bolted in the opposite direction. In the pitch black, I could only make out the vaguest shapes looming out of the dark. Dodging around a tree and over it’s roots as best I could, I tried to use the glowing plant life to help guide me as well.

My heartbeat nearly doubled when I realized the footsteps were trailing me, and they weren’t falling behind. I only devoted a split second of attention to find that while they weren’t falling behind, they also weren’t catching up.

I tried to increase my own pace when I discovered something I’d overlooked. While my body might be fixed, and nominally in fit shape, I wasn’t actually used to running. My breath was rasping through my lungs already, my legs starting to ache in an unfamiliar way. In contrast to my growing struggle with maintaining pace, I hadn’t heard a single hitch in my pursuers stride. I took a moment to glance over my shoulder, and blanched white as I saw my pursuer pass through the glow of one of the flowers.

Stained black and brown bone, fixed in place and with rough, leathery stretching muscle spanning the gaps, a horrific skeleton was chasing me. It’s skull was empty of any sign of life, but the jaw bounced up and down with every step. Hanging from a tight grip in its hand, was a rusted sword.

I had to turn back to keep from falling, panic and fear swelling up again. I was gasping for breath, and my muscles burned with the unfamiliar surge of activity. Even as I weaved around another tree, I could feel myself slowing down. I desperately wanted to curse, but couldn’t muster the breath for it.

Glancing ahead of me, there was a split second where I tried to understand why there was a glow coming up from the ground when I couldn’t see the plant. My stomach dropped as I saw the yawning void that stretched ahead of me. Without the time to doubt what I saw, I tried to stop my momentum. It was working for a moment, before the mud slipped out from beneath my feet, causing me to topple to the ground.

In my panic at seeing what could only be a chasm or ravine ahead of me, I had somehow almost forgotten about the obvious undead skeleton chasing me. Either luckily or unluckily, as I fell to the ground, I barely managed to see the rusted sword sweep through the air where I had occupied just a moment ago.

I impacted the ground with a heavy thump, and a gasping wheeze of the air being knocked out of me. Struggling to breathe in fresh air, I started clawing at the ground and roots to haul myself back to my feet.

In my desperation, I managed to rip out a portion of root before I managed to stand myself back up. Looking back towards where the skeleton’s momentum had carried it, I watched as it finally managed to stop, just short of falling into the pitch black abyss of the ravine. As it turned and began to move towards me again, I adjusted my grip on the piece of ripped out root.

I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at the horrible position I was in. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t try hiding again, I was next to a ravine and an undead skeleton was trying to kill me. Nervous laughter started bubbling out of me as I stiffly held the root section out ahead of me, hoping to anything that might be listening that I would survive.

As the skeleton neared me and swung it’s sword down towards me hard, I barely managed to interpose my root between the edge and me. I heard a heavy thunk, and I realized that the root was much stronger than I’d assumed. I could only guess I’d managed to accidentally rip it at an already weak section.

Desperately taking advantage of the moment that it’s sword was stuck in the root, I lashed out with my fist and foot. My fist struck towards its hand and wrist in an attempt to take the sword from it, while my foot just tried to slam it away from me. To my utter shock, it worked.

The skeleton stumbled back as I recoiled back, holding the root with the sword stuck in it. I spent a moment staring astonished between the skeleton and the sword, before cursing my momentary inaction. As I tried to pry the sword out of the root, the skeleton managed to lash out with its hands before I could get away.

Crying out as the sharp bone slashed across my back, the moment of pain and adrenaline was enough to wrench the sword out. I almost tossed the root aside before throwing it at the skeleton instead at the last second.

I heard a hollow thud as it impacted, but I was already trying to run around the skeleton and towards the ravine. The barest framework of a plan was shimmering into existence in my mind as I ran for it. Stopping just short of the edge, I almost slipped in the mud again, my heart wrenching in my chest before I managed to right myself.

Turning back, I managed to see the skeleton running for me again, jaw bouncing and bony feet slapping the ground as it charged me. Just before it would have hit me, I threw myself to the left, even as I swung the sword as hard as I could to the right.

The impact of the sword against the skeleton shuddered up my arm, but I felt a flood of sudden victory as I watched the impact and momentum of its charge send the skeleton careening off the side of the ravine. Not a few moments later, I heard a sharp crack as it impacted the far side and continued to fall.

A few seconds later, I heard a heavy shattering sound. For a long minute, I simply stared at the ravine, the rusty sword still held in my hands. Without warning, the adrenaline from the short vicious fight seemed to leave all at once. I almost collapsed to my knees, dropping the sword as my hands started to shake. Taking large shuddering breaths, I tried to fill my lungs to keep from hyperventilating.

My shuddering was interrupted by a sharp dinging sound that had my head shooting up.

[Ding!] You have defeated a Level 15 Undead Skeleton! You have gained bonus experience from defeating an enemy 15 levels above you! Due to having no classes, you lose the bonus experience, but the normal experience has been saved!

I stared at the small blue text box in my vision for a long, long time.

“No. I can’t. I can’t deal with this right now.” As soon as I spoke, the box disappeared. I swallowed hard before reluctantly picking up the sword. With minimal effort, I trudged to the nearest bundle of roots and laid down. I knew I should be doing something about the cuts on my back, but I didn’t know what I could do. More than that, sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical, was tugging at me. With barely any fight, I passed out where I lay.

When I woke up again, it was to a horribly wet and clinging nest between two large roots. A low groan escaped my lips before I started to right myself. Trying to ignore the way the mud clung to me, I glanced around, the area lit by the dawning rays of sunlight. As I went to shift my knee, it banged against something hard and metallic. Glancing down in confusion for a moment, I stared stupidly at the sword laying next to me. It was only after a short moment that memories of the last night rushed back to me.

I sat up and brought my knees to my chest, hanging my head between my knees. A disbelieving chuckle escaped me as I thought about it.

For the first time, I really thought about what it meant that Yuilana had said we were to be her 'heroes'. I couldn't exactly say what I'd thought she meant by that before, but I certainly hadn't thought that we'd end up on a world with actual undead skeletons... Let alone... Another chuckle came out when I remembered the strange ephemeral text box that had popped up when the skeleton had died. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to believe it had really happened, but I figured that just ignoring the possibility would be stupid. Hesitantly, I tried to think about bringing it back into my vision. When it quickly reappeared

[Ding!] You have defeated a Level 15 Undead Skeleton! You have gained bonus experience from defeating an enemy 15 levels above you! Due to having no classes, you lose the bonus experience, but the normal experience has been saved!

I just looked at it for a long moment, reading each part of the message carefully. "Huh. Guess it's too late to pretend it didn't happen now.." I muttered to myself. I remembered some games I'd played a long time ago had seemed to have similar mechanics to what this said. With another thought, the window disappeared just as easily as it had appeared. "Well at least it's easy to deal with..." I sighed before making the inevitable decision to commit to following this seeming path of lunacy. "Didn't those games have some kind of status screen?" The words were barely out of my mouth when it appeared.

Name: Alexander Ashford

Title: None

Primary Class: None - (7 Available)

Empty Skill Slots: 10

Secondary Class: None - (7 Available : Locked)

Empty Skill Slots: 10

General Skills:

Solar Affinity : (Perfect)

Identify : Level 1

English : (Language)

Aethrum Common : (Language)

Status:

Strength: 12 (12)

Dexterity: 17 (17)

Vitality: 14 (14)

Attunement: 21 (21)

Intelligence: 17 (17)

Attribute Points: 0

Health: 678/700

Mana: 1050/1050

I took a few minutes to carefully go over the sudden wealth of information. After a few minutes a thought occurred to me and I snorted, "Why do I feel like this is something that others had explained to them, instead of trying to figure it out in a swamp..." Chuckling without humor, I found a number of things of interest. First, I tried to see if I could examine any part of the screen in closer detail. As my first test subject, I decided on the Solar Affinity skill, I was curious about it anyways.

Solar Affinity : (Perfect)

Someway, you have communed with the sun itself. You have brought a glimmer of that essence, and made it a part of yourself. All solar based skills and classes will have their effects increased by 100%.

Enhancement Skill : Internal : Mana : Passive

Reading through it, I laughed. "Turns out, being thrown through a star has its merits!" I said in between my laughter. I couldn't decide if I really found it funny, or if I was just finding a way to cope with the insanity. What I did know was that the answer wasn't something I necessarily wanted to know, and that it wasn't the most important thing at the moment anyways. I turned my attention to Aethrum Common. If it was what I thought it might be, then I might have at least one question answered.

Aethrum Common : (Language)

You know how to speak the common language across Aethrum. While there are many different languages, this common dialect will allow you to communicate with the vast majority of peoples across the world.

Well hey! I was in luck! I now knew the name of this world, Aethrum, and apparently I should be able to communicate if I meet people! I count that as two wins! Glancing around at the swamp and mud around me, I smirked. I should be taking all the wins I could get. Shaking my head, I looked over my 'attributes' next. Five of them, strength, dexterity, vitality, attunement, and intelligence. For strength and dexterity, I could easily enough guess that they governed those same aspects of my physical body. Overall, I agreed with the scores, I wasn't the strongest, but I was pretty spry apparently. After that, it took me some mental math to deduce that my health was equal to 50 times my vitality, and the same was true for mana and attunement.

There was probably more to it than that, but I decided to leave it at that for now. For the life of me, I could not find what intelligence did. And despite repeated attempts to call up more information about it, nothing worked there. With a bit of frustration, I tacked it onto a list of things to do later. Having looked through almost everything else, my eyes kept flicking up to the class section. Instead of allowing myself to get drawn into that, I made myself check the description of the Identify skill.

Identify

You may identify creatures, people, and objects. Identifying a creature will provide its level and name. Identifying a person will provide their highest class’s Role Foundation, and their level. Identifying an object will tell you its name, and depending on the object, certain properties of it. You may only identify up to 20 levels above your own.

Utility Skill : Internal : Mana : Active

Huh. That sounded... incredibly useful. I could only assume the 'Active' part of it's description meant I had to intend to use it, and that was why it hadn't triggered before. As a test, I glanced down at the sword one of my hands rested on and thought about using it.

Rusted Iron Sword - Poor Quality - An ancient sword, once sharp.

"Alright then.. Nothing particularly new there, aside from the 'poor quality'.." I murmured before looking at the tree whose roots I rested between. Activating the skill again, I felt my eyebrows rise.

Ancient Swamp Cypress Tree - Level ??

I was taken aback by the level for a moment, before I reconsidered. Trees were alive, so I guess that they counted as creatures instead of objects... That was fair enough. Besides, I reflected wryly, given how things were shaping up there would be some kind of tree monster somewhere. I patted the root next to me gently. With a short amount of testing complete, I turned back to the screen and let my eyes drag upwards. "Seven classes available huh? Well.. Let's get started." With a quick thought, a small list of the available classed appeared before me.

Rogue : (Basic)

Warrior : (Basic)

Ranger : (Basic)

Mage : (Common)

Light Mage: (Uncommon)

Solar Mage : (Rare)

Sunborn Warrior : (Exotic)

Glancing over the options, two thoughts came to mind. First; that the basic ones were probably offered to most people and were almost certainly mediocre. Second; there was definitely a requirement system for the class options. Given my fun experiences with this planets sun, almost all of the classes that weren't basic or common, were related to light or the sun.

On one hand, I was rather annoyed at the limited options presented. On the other hand though, I understood it. It wouldn't make sense to offer classes to just whoever, regardless of who they were or what they did. I reached up to rub my eyes before seeing the dirt smeared across my fingers. With a sigh, I lowered my hand. Cracking my neck, I settled in for some reading and requested the class descriptions with a thought.

Rogue : (Basic)

The Rogue is often the first step along a path shrouded in shadow. Use skills to enhance your stealth and fight from the shadows.

Role Foundation - Rogue

Warrior : (Basic)

The Warrior is often the first step along a path of blood and sweat. Use skills to enhance your strength and fighting prowess.

Role Foundation - Warrior

Ranger : (Basic)

The Ranger is often the first step along a path of whistling arrows and nature. Use skills to enhance your archery and nature based magic.

Role Foundation - Ranger

Mage : (Common)

The Mage is often the first step along a path of spells and knowledge. Use skills to attack with magic and enhance your magic’s effects. The Mage offers potential for both specialization and generalization.

Role Foundation - Mage

Light Mage: (Uncommon)

The Light Mage wields beams and rays of light as their weapons in the place of other mages elements. What light magic might lack in impact, it more than makes up for in intensity and speed. It is a rare opponent that can strike faster than the Light Mage.

Role Foundation - Mage

Solar Mage : (Rare)

The Solar Mage uses the very power of the sun in their magic, making sunlight into a weapon. Solar magic is rare, and equally powerful. The sun’s power can be used for multiple purposes, offering combat power, healing, or wide-ranging area of effect spells. No matter what, the Solar Mage is a beacon on the battlefield.

Role Foundation - Mage

Sunborn Warrior : (Exotic)

The Sunborn Warrior is a mighty combatant, calling on both sword and sun to powerful effect. Using solar magic, the Sunborn Warrior can stride across a battlefield with nigh impunity while striking down their foes. After all, what could they possibly do to one who was reborn through the very sun itself?

Role Foundation - Mage

I mostly glanced over the basic and common level classes. I knew I should probably read them all thoroughly, but the last ones were begging to be read first. Even as I did so, a number of thoughts crowded through my head. After taking a good five minutes to read through the descriptions, and then reread them all, I leaned back against the wood. Staring out into the swamp, I practiced identifying things while I thought.

The basic and common classes did indeed seem to be mostly a basic class, meant as a starting point. I figured there was some kind of evolution or repick system, otherwise people would be doing stupid things without classes to try and get better ones. The Solar Mage seemed to be just a better version of the Light Mage, which seemed to in turn be a specialized Mage. What intrigued me more than anything, was that the Sunborn Warrior, was considered a type of Mage. I found this odd, given it had the word warrior in the name. After a few minutes thought, I decided to shelve it for later.

For all my guesswork, I didn't really know what the differences were between a basic and exotic class. I didn't even know what each class would bring specifically. Really, I felt like I was being asked to spear a fish while blind. The thing that convinced me to actually choose a class right away instead of waiting, was that the tree had had a level. Just from me randomly identifying things around me, I could tell that this system or whatever it was, was inherent in everything. I had almost no doubt that me having defeated the skeleton had been a once off fluke. In the end, I doubted I would last long without a class and level of my own. I smiled to myself, "Second chances, yeah?" Glancing up at the sun rising in the sky for a moment, I grinned. "Ah fuck it. I know equally nothing about all of this. When in doubt, go big!" Even as I spoke, I mentally selected the Sunborn Warrior.

Sunborn Warrior

Strength +5

Dexterity +5

Vitality +10

Attunement +20

Intelligence +20

All Solar Skills and Magic are improved by 200%

Natural Health Regeneration is increased by 50%

Natural Mana Regeneration is increased by 100%

Sleep, food, and water needed to sustain yourself is decreased

Deferred Experience is now granted!

[Ding!] You have leveled up to Level 2! You have gained +3 Attribute Points!

[Ding!] You have leveled up to Level 3! You have gained +3 Attribute Points!

Would you like to select a Skill and allocate your Attribute Points?