Soon after Brock left cal left the astral space and sure enough, the meat had been a little burned, but after a quick inspection cal decided it was still edible. He quickly took it off the fire and went back into the astral space. after entering his astral space he walked over to the bookshelf and found the book about status'. He took both the book and his meal over to the desk and sat down,

he took a few bites and almost threw up, the meat tasted terrible, and the fact that he didn't have any seasonings and that it was burnt did not help. After a few more bites that he could barely stomach, cal decided to start reading. However, before he could open the book, he suddenly felt a pain in his stomach and a prompt appeared in front of him.

[You have been poisoned by the tier one poison mutated wolf’s meat, you take nine damage a minute for five minutes].

Cal grunted and dropped the book. He quickly opened his status, and just as the prompt had said, he was down nine health. There was another sharp pain in his stomach, and he went and lay on his mattress to wait out the poison. After the five minutes had passed he sat up and checked his status again, he was now down 45 health. He worried for a while and sat and watched his status for ten minutes after the poison’s effects should have ended.

During those ten minutes, nothing happened and cal decided that there was nothing he could do, so he closed his status and decided he would still try to read the book. He picked up the book and once again sat down in his desk chair. after getting comfortable, he opened the book to its first page.

there was a note from his grandpa explaining the contents of the book. It said it was split into fifteen chapters and that cal should read the first one first then read whichever chapters he felt like after that. Cal smiled at this he had thought that his grandpa had just left him a set of books but it was comforting to know that they were written by him.

Cal started reading the first chapter. The chapter briefly described each part of the status. An awakeneds level was displayed at the top of their status, so it described that first. A persons level could be used to roughly determine a persons strength, however, every twenty-five levels awakened had a boost in power, so a level 20 may be close to fighting evenly with a level 24, but a level twenty-four would have an extremely tough time fighting against a level 28.

Next was a person’s health, it showed how much damage a person could take before dying and was determined by your strength and endurance. Then it was a person’s mana, which was how much magic energy was stored within them, it was determined by their wisdom and spirit. After that was stamina, which showed how much longer a person could go without resting.

Next was the person's name, which is decided by what most people think of you as and not by what you thought of yourself as. After that is a person’s race which shows what a person’s species is, and gives them a few innate abilities.

Then it shows a person’s skills, which are things a person has learned how to do without magic, such as shooting a bow. Next is a person’s abilities which are things that a person can do that don’t fall under either the spell or skill category. a good example would be resistances, it is not something a person can learn to do without mana, but it is also not a spell and therefore falls under the abilities category. Then it is spells which are ways of manipulating mana outside your body to cause some sort of reaction.

Next is a person’s class or classes (most people only have a single class, while a rare few have two, and a person with three is considered a rarity that might come once every thousand years). A person’s class gives them new abilities or spells every twenty-five levels.

Next is familiar slots about a quarter of awakeneds have a single familiar slot, and a quarter of people with a single familiar slot have two, that ratio continues, with the highest amount of familiar slots ever being recorded being 6. A familiar slot allows an awakened to bond with an awakened beast or monster, which allows the two to increase each other’s power.

Finally, there are a person’s stats, there are six stats. Strength, which increases how much power a person's body has. Endurance, which increases how long it takes for a person to recuperate. Dexterity, which determines how fast a person can move their body. Wisdom determines how much mana a person can have in their body. Spirit increases the potency of a person's mana. Finally, intelligence increases how quickly a person regains mana.

After cal finished, he took a second to absorb what he had just read. He had an unheard-of amount of class slots and a higher than average amount of familiar slots, this made him both happy and a little wary. He knew that having all this potential would be good for him and make it more likely for him to get revenge,

although, cal thought that if he became too strong too quickly, others might see him as a threat and kill him before he could gain too much power. Deciding not to worry about it, cal went to read the chapter on classes, after all, he did have that class stone lying there, waiting to either be used or cast aside.

After reading the chapter, he quickly went over and grabbed the stone. According to the book, the classes had a ranking system. It started at common which only had 9 classes which were. Mage, druid, warrior, crafter, rogue, ranger, performer, priest, and soldier.

Then it went up to uncommon which were more specific versions of common classes, there was an unknown amount of them because each common class could be split up into thousands upon thousands of specialties but a few examples are life mage which is a more specialized version of mage and squad leader which is a more advanced version of soldier.

Then there were rare classes that were a mix of two common/uncommon classes, for example, spellsword, which is a mix of warrior and mage. Then there are epic classes that are outside the domain of any of the common classes, two examples are merchant and beast tamer.

The second to last tier is mythical which are harder to categorize but it is generally thought of as a more powerful version of epic classes. that is not a perfect description but it is fairly close to true. however, it is true that all mythical classes are very powerful. one of the few commonly known mythical classes is dragon master which is said to give a person the power of dragons.

The final type of classes are unique, unique classes are the most difficult to obtain that is because only a certain amount of people can have that class at a given time and they all have extremely odd and demanding requirements to get. one of the only commonly known unique classes is the ripper class which can only be gained by killing the previous owner. little is known about what it does for the owner but it does offer massive increases in power.

the book then talked about how a person will gain a few skills upon gaining a new class and every 25 levels after that they will gain more. it also talked about how some classes required you to reach certain requirements before you could get them. even if you had a class stone.

After that, it finally talked about class stones, a class stone was exactly what it sounded like: a stone that contained a class. They are difficult to obtain because they can only be found as rare drops in dungeons, but they all contain at least rare classes. this had heavily influenced cal's decision to use the shadowblade class stone.

the book also had an explanation of how to view what classes you could choose. he had checked the list and he currently had 8 choices. there were six of the common classes excluding priest, crafter, and soldier. then there was hunter which with what he could tell from the book was uncommon.

after that, there was a class called stormcaller which he guessed was either an uncommon version of mage or a rare mix of druid and mage, either way, he decided not to take the gamble. cal had decided that he would only accept rare or above classes and that way gain as much power as he could. Cal grabbed the stone and once again the prompt appeared

[would you like to receive the class darkblade]

after answering yes cal opened his status to look at the changes.

Level 1 (27/200)

Health 280/325

Mana 150/150

Stamina 168/168

Name: Calaeris Windlab

Race: Winterwraith

Name: Kelaris

Race: Windwalker

Name: Calee-aris

Race: frost Spirit

Skills:

[Archery: 25] [Small blade: 17] [Forestry: 12] [Swords: 22] [Pain tolerance: 7] [Acting: 9]

Abilities:

[ice magic:max] [cold immunity:max] [flurry:max] [water magic:max] [wind magic:max] [feather weight:max] [shadow magic:max] [corporeal shadow:max] [fire immunity:max] [spell school of water:1] [spell shool of shadow:1] [spell school of wind:1] [abelard:1] [brock:max] [heartless:1] [imbue strike:1] [unending barrage:1]

Spells:

[teir one splash] [teir one gust] [teir one miniature shadow summon]

Shadowblade: epic

Class slot (empty)

Class slot (empty)

Class slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Familiar slot (empty)

Stats:

Strength: 12

Endurance: 14

Dexterity: 13

Wisdom: 13

Spirit: 12

Intelligence: 16

Free points: 3

Cal quickly read through his status and smiled at what he saw. His intelligence and strength stats had increased by a small amount, and with them, his stamina and health pools got larger. He also noticed that his class was epic. he knew that it would be at least rare but having it be epic was even better. He also gained two new skills

[imbue strike]

and

[unending barrage]

cal quickly examined both of them. imbue strike was a fairly straightforward skill it allowed him to cast spells out of the blade of his sword however it would cost more mana to cast spells with the skill its main use was to use long-range spells at short range. Unending barrage was an odd skill that was not of as much use to cal currently. It had a passive effect of increasing his intelligence stat by 1 point for every spell he used during a single battle and the buff would end once he fully regained his mana.

After examining those skills cal tried to examine his new class. Just as he hoped an explanation appeared and it was longer than the explanations for most other things. Shadowblade was an epic class with the requirements for getting it being having a level 50 or above shadow magic ability and having the sword’s skill at least level 20. Shadowblades rely on there ability to cast extremely dense spells through there swords while in the middle of combat.

After reading the explanation cal was glad he had excepted the class it seemed to play towards his strengths. He even exceeded the requirements he had shadow magic maxed (though he didn’t know what level max would be for the shadow magic ability) and the sword skill was at level 22, which was 2 levels higher than it needed to be. Realizing that he could examine his classes cal felt foolish and went back to his class choices. He quickly examined all of them.

All of the common classes were simple and the requirements were things like having a weapon skill or having at least 1 level in any magic affinity. Like he had thought the hunter class was uncommon, and the requirement for getting it was having the forestry skill.

However, to his absolute shock stormcaller was a mythical class. The explanation for it was also surprising. It was meant for mass destruction it would give him spells of mass destruction and the requirements for getting were having at least four maxed out magic affinities and three of them had to be for wind water and ice. Cal was all for having a powerful class like this but what its use was caused him to hesitate. He didn’t think killing a lot of people at once was something he particularly wanted to do.

he eventually accepted the class and it appeared in his status. He had decided to accept it because of his imbue strike skill he figured that area of effect magic spells might be extremely powerful if he used them with imbue strike. just like his previous class cal had gained three stat points (2 wisdom and 1 spirit) along with 1 ability and 1 spell.

the ability was.

[Insta-cast]

its explanation was it allowed him to cast spells without an incantation and it removed all cooldowns from his spells. the book had been right about the strength of mythical classes that, skill almost seemed too powerful.

The spell he got was called

[teir 3 boreas's rage]

After examining it cal was utterly shocked at what the spell could do. it created a snowstorm. however, each snowflake would take 1 health and mana from whoever it landed on except the person who had cast it.

I could kill armies with this was cal’s first thought after reading the description. A single snowstorm would have thousands upon thousands of individual snowflakes and each one would take away a hitpoint from whoever it landed on. He suddenly had an even more terrifying thought if he were to use this with imbue strike he could take down an extremely strong opponent with a single attack.

After the shock wore off cal was exhausted by what had happened in the last day. He had gotten 2 classes, leveled up, fought a mutated wolf, and talked to brock. Cal lay down and as he shut his eyes to sleep he whispered into the room. “Even if you did break your promise to me I will avenge you, grandpa.”

unbeknownst to cal, a prompt appeared after he spoke those words.

[you have acknowledged threynar windlab as an oathbreaker he will now be branded with the mark of an oathbreaker]

as the prompt disappeared somewhere hundreds of miles away from cal’s clearing. A goblin winced and looked down at the back of his hand and watched as an intricate design was burned onto it.