Chapter: 9

As they were chatting a few other people lined up behind Jay, while some just continued walking past and entered through the gate.

Noticing the queue, Paul decided to cut the chatter and return to his duties.

“Ah, good on ya mate. Well, the melee instructor is right over there. He’s a bit loud but he means well. I hope it goes well, see you later mate.” he gestured to Jay to enter.

“Thanks Paul, I’ll catch you around.” Jay held back a nervous sweat as well as a smile of delight, resulting in a straight face.

He wasn’t used to lying, but successfully doing this also gave him a strange feeling of elation and excitement.

Jay felt like he was better, even superior to his fellow man – despite being level 1 while Paul was level 24.

“Wow, I should lie all the time.” Jay carelessly thought.

Walking through the floating stone gate, Jay felt a little cautious as the huge stones could crush him into a meat paste. Thankfully, they didn’t respond to his necromancer class at all.

The whole courtyard area was about the size of a park. A cobblestone path led to the main building a few hundred meters away, and this was where Jay headed.

The main building was a 3 story tall wooden barrack, with a large round cobblestone tower protruding from the back left corner of the compound. A large black window was on the top floor, looking over the courtyard.

Most of the courtyard was dirt with small patches of grass that had been trampled over the years. It was filled with aspiring adventurers being trained in their various disciplines; melee, ranged and mana craft.

There were about 300 recruits all up, the majority of them being a melee-type class.

The new recruits had bright, excited eyes and sunny looks on their faces – even as they were yelled at by their new trainers. They were being told to forget everything they knew previously about their respective disciplines.

In this way, Jay stood out as he was the only new recruit who had a look of seriousness, similar to the veteran trainers. Little did they know it was because he was currently hiding something, though most would assume he simply didn’t want to be there or wasn’t happy with his class.

Among the three disciplines were subclasses (eg, Melee had swords, axes, spears); each with its own respective abilities, health and mana pool sizes.

People could learn different disciplines to evolve their class and merge them (eg. A melee class such as a [Swordsman] could learn mana craft, and evolve their [Swordsman] class into a [Spell sword], a [Mage Slayer], or even a [Quint Blade] if they had other prerequisites.

New abilities could also be acquired through personal testing, discovery or finding a rare skill scroll.

There was also a chance of attaining a unique class. These classes were rare, having a 0.7% chance of acquiring. In the group of new recruits and aspiring adventurers, only two people so far had attained a unique class, or so they thought.

The unique classes were usually considered special, but were not always blessings; for example the [Trypto-Ornamentalist] class.

This class was a mage-craftsman type class which had a peculiar ability to craft objects which would ‘follow’ the current owner around. Though not very practical, it would creep some people out when they unknowingly purchased one of these ‘goods’.

A victim of such a merchant would be sitting in a pub on a rainy night, enjoying a drink quietly in the warmth of the tavern. Staring out at the rain, he wondered when the storm would end. Suddenly a flash of lightning strikes and his trypto-ornament in the shape of a tiki doll’s head would appear in the window he was looking through, making him figuratively shit himself and ruin his calm mood with high blood pressure. Buyer beware.

The two unique-class adventurers were not present at practice. It seemed they were given special lessons, or shipped off to a more advanced guild in a thoroughly developed city.

Jay mimicked confidence in his walk as to not draw suspicion while he approached the main building and entered the lobby.

There was no one at reception because everyone working here would be busy handling the paperwork from yesterday.

“Oh yeah…” Jay pursed his lips.