Dunner watched the proceedings silently from the nearby branch of the orchard’s granny smith. What is this fool doing?

Earlier when he went by the tavern to check on the kid, he was expecting someone depressed, but he was starting to wonder if Harold wasn’t truly demented. Who manages to antagonise twenty five wasps when sneaking up on an orchard?

Dunner was not who the two guards thought he was. His real name was Kalle. He was actually the adopted son of the old couple at the farmstead. Sitting in the tree he wasn’t wearing the disguise either; he’d been watching the moon and the bats through the trees when he noted Harold’s frantic approach and surmised his intentions.

Now the question was if Harold would notice him up in the old tree, or if Kalle would even be recognised. Despite not being the real Dunner, Kalle really was a [Warlock], or a kind of one. He got his chance at the Class when he found the old man Dunner’s hermit cave on a solitary exploration of his, a couple of years back.

The man had been an unpopular figure, rumoured to have often taken advantage with offers of strange Spells and other ultimately unfair deals, according to some of the older folks. Kalle's own parents didn't care to comment.

Kalle picked up the dark wooden wand laying by the bedding, and despite some trepidation, attempted casting some Spells. On the third go a ghastly scream interrupted the silence of the dwelling, emitted by a grey and green skull, trailing a thin smoky essence. It struck a nearby tree and was subsumed. Kalle stood frozen, heart beating like a sprinting hare's.

As the seconds passed, he relaxed gradually and took a few steps to get a closer look. He couldn’t tell if anything had happened, and returned back to the wand he had dropped earlier. But as he glanced back again, he noticed the branches of the stricken tree had started drooping, and the colour of the leaves looked significantly aged compared to its neighbours. What a strange spell, it seemed it did not do much. But it would at the very least freak somebody out.

Kalle wasn’t planning on accepting the Class at that time, he had just wanted to try the 1st Skill offered by the System. The enticer-Spell in this case. This was what one did, being Classless. Every opportunity for a Class came with a Skill, depending on the nature of the Class it could vary a great deal. But the real kicker was this; once you accepted, you were locked in forever, but you received nine more Skills on top of the enticing one, of varying qualities.

It made being Classless for any duration, once you qualified at age sixteen, a real test of character. Who could resist 10 new extraordinary ways of interacting with the world, permanently, on the mere premise that maybe some rarer Class down the line would be a better fit?

Such a windfall of Skills and Spells came only once in life. Subsequent Class upgrades had far fewer Skills to offer, despite the capstone surges every 10th level.

Of course, there were myths regarding such matters. That the ten Skills and Spells gained when accepting a Class was to show the Aspirant how the sky was the limit. But most people, no matter how hard they said they worked, got three Skills on reaching a new capstone. The lucky ones got four, while it was said that the occasional great leaders and the like could gain five consistently. And then there was the famous [Sage] who it was said had gained six on more than one occasion, but at that point you were talking about legends.

More than that was no longer considered myth and legend but fairy-tales rather, around these parts at least.

Kalle had all this in mind as he picked up a bangle of sorts, with thick red wire forming a pattern across a stiff leather. He recognised it, the one possession everyone knew as magic, besides the old man’s wand. The only question was what it did, the secret had never been pried from the [Warlock] as far as he knew. Maybe now it wouldn’t ever be.

Kalle turned the thing around, looking for clues. Eventually he decided to put it on, the old man may have had a bad reputation but he wasn’t wanted by the law, so to speak, and despite being magic Kalle was certain the item couldn’t be doing anything too bad.

He thought he felt something, but it took him fifteen minutes to figure it out, when he’d gone over to the old man’s watering hole and received the shock of his life. I’m the old man!? No, no wait... That’s ridiculous. It must be a bangle of disguise of some sort, a rogue’s item, did he use it to hide his age?

This was the craziest day. The body looked like it perished years ago, how could these items just be left lying here?

Kalle sat down heavily, his mind churning. Could this be it? Should he take the Class and start working towards a future he hadn’t imagined before? He had never felt compelled to take any of the Classes that he had chanced upon in his life thus far, and the one enticer-Skill his Aspirant status provided had been plenty to help around the farmstead, when you could take another each season, as you hadn’t locked in.

Over a year had passed, he was turning eighteen. This could not be merely chance. It did not feel like it. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but maybe that was enough, wishing it.

Eventually a decision was made and the prompt had shown up.

[Class Aspirant detected. Warlock. Wailing Bolt. Yes/No?]