Alright, class.

  I nudged Bizzeki awake.

  She blinked, looking about in surprise.

  I woke up on a long, flat, white bed, feeling different. I looked down at my ice-pale fingers and swallowed nervously. I wasn't me anymore, not really. I'd let some strange alien AI remake me into, well, whatever this is.

  "Is there a mirror?"

  Bizzeki was asleep in her chair, vape on the floor beside her. Actually, I'd found one earlier, when I'd thought she was dead. I moved the fern on the sideboard. There I was, Crawler Madison Pomegranate, Level 1, Tundra Elf, Class not yet assigned. I had shrunk several inches, now about five-one. I had ice-blue eyes, and my almost-black hair had become short, white, and floofy. My ears rose like spikes, but otherwise were mostly human. I was a bit slimmer, but not a lot. I still looked fairly normal.

  I hoped Lacie's tastes really were different than mine. There was hope. I'd never been curvy, not like her, yet she'd still apparently been interested.

  Standing there staring at myself, I felt like such an idiot. I was gonna die. I should have picked the tarantauran and become an assassin like the AI wanted. If that really was living. The idea of that, it felt a bit like cheating during a game.

  You had to be good to get away with cheating, but if you cheated you stopped being the person who got to where they were good enough to cheat without getting caught. I had to just stay focused on what I wanted, which was to finish my first date with Lacie.

  That was it, I realized. That was my mantra, the keystone I'd call back to when I wavered. Not next ten steps—well, maybe that too—but also, 'Finish Your Date With Lacie.'

  She blinked, looking about in surprise. "Oh, you're done. Well, here's your class options, now that you've selected a class that doesn't qualify for Midnight Ballroom Dancer, which was the build the AI was trying to give you."

  "Why didn't you say that earlier?"

  "I'm only allowed to answer questions and give minimal advice, not actually steer you." She sucked on her vape, then mumbled, "You didn't ask the right questions."

  Her attention was entirely gone. Fine. I loaded up the scratchpad and made a table. All together, there were fifty-one options, so I was going to treat it like studying and make a list of the important details. I skimmed through the recommended classes—Traceuse, which was apparently a female parkourist; Thief, which sounded kinda improper; Multi-Sport Athlete, which would mean I'd have to pick some new, sports-related class each floor—then continued into the rest.

  The list was very straightforward: Anything that wasn't entirely basic was an earth class that I only had access to because I had at least a five in the relevant sport.

  Baseball and softball unlocked Steroid Slugger and No-Hitter Ace. Volleyball unlocked Libero. Tennis unlocked Dink and Tennis Ace (it was almost identical to No-Hitter, except for the description). Track unlocked Anchor and Pacer. Basketball unlocked Dime-Drop Baller.

  Soccer unlocked Foot God, accompanied by an unhinged series of insults about it not being called soccer and some seriously weird stuff about feet. Basically every team sport gave me access to Glue Girl. Hockey had Goon, which included some inappropriate and incorrect comments about me being a Gooner in the description, which seemed to reinforce the comments in the achievements.

  I hated that the Goon was pretty good. It would let me kill things by running into them, and between having my runnin' skill (it was written like that in the notifications) leveled really high and the +25% speed from being a Tundra elf, it seemed like it would be quite powerful.

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  I spent the next three hours going through every other class. The Goon was obviously powerful, but I hated the feel of it and was worried about colliding with monsters messing with my dodge.

  I poked Bizzeki until she woke up. "For the No-Hitter Ace, it has these pitching abilities. Do those apply to throwing anything, like this knife, or does it need to be a ball?"

  She blinked a bit, said, "Works on the knife," then nodded off again.

  That was very tempting. However, I also really liked one of the AI recommendations. I spent a solid 20 minutes just staring at it:

  Multi-Sport Athlete

  This rare subclass is an offshoot of the Athlete class. It can only be obtained by Crawlers who enter the dungeon with at least a 5 in at least 10 earth-sports skills, and not boring sports like golf.

  An all-star in both baseball and American footbaall (not the far-more-impressive futbol which you uncultured hicks don't follow), as well as a college track-and-field star, Bo Jackson was one of the most versatile athletes in history.

  Not the most versatile, just the most versatile you know of. Jim Thorpe won two olympic gold medals in track and played football, baseball, and basketball at a professional level, but you've never heard of him. And let's be honest, you'd need four floors more to hit four sports, and that's not happening. Bo Jackson's trio, that's plausible.

  Because sports are so varied, this class can make Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity all equally important. It's difficult to master, but it can be extremely powerful.

  In addition to the following benefits, the most distinct aspect of this multi-faceted class is the Level-3 Bo Jackson Wannabe skill. This skill increases in level only upon descent to the next floor.

  Additional benefits:

  +5 Strength

  +5 Constitution

  +5 Dexterity

  +15% faster growth in the skills of sports-oriented earth classes.

  This is an Earth Class. As an incentive to choose an Earth Class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.

  I looked at Bizzeki.

  She was twitching, as if caught in a nightmare, "No names. They're just numbers. No names. Forget the numbers when they die. No names. No names."

  I'm not sure why it took me so long, but in that moment she became a real person, not just a part of this nightmare. She was in here, having to talk me through this mess, watching me make choices she thought would kill me. I was about to make another, and she'd have to help me do it, then send me out the door to probably die.

  All the same, I woke her up.

  "Pick anything yet," she asked.

  "This one, the multi-sport athlete, based on what I see, it has the strictest requirements. I'm not sure it's the most powerful, but I feel like almost nobody will be at a 5 in 10 separate sports. Am I right about that?"

  She focused for a moment, presumably looking the class over. "It is a highly restricted class, and those tend to be better. The downside here will be that you'll be stuck picking a new class each level, and you won't have any guidance for those. The upside is that, as you get to lower floors, those classes get progressively stronger. Be warned that you should pick something that works with that knife, this floor."

  "About that, there's the no-hitter ace class with fastball and breaking ball. Do those work with throwing the knife?"

  She focused a bit longer. "Yes."

  No-Hitter Ace

  Experts in throwing things, the No-Hitter Ace can send a fastball past their target's defenses with ease.

  Although this relies on Dexterity to aim its throws, Strength is what makes them damaging.

  +10 Strength

  +10 Dexterity

  Level-5 Fastball skill

  Level-5 Breaking Ball skill

  No-Hitter benefit

  I selected multi-sport athlete, then no-hitter ace. Instead of what I'd expected, the pop-up instead said:

  No-Hitter Ace

  Level-5 Fastball skill.

  Level-5 Breaking Ball skill.

  "Hey, what happened?"

  "Remember when I said you needed to ask questions for me to give you information? You should have asked more questions, or at least read that Bo Jackson Wannabe skill more thoroughly. Based on that skill's level, which is always the level of the floor, you only get some of the skills and abilities of the class, not all of them." As she spoke, her voice grew quieter and her eyes slid slightly aside, as though she realized talking too much would make me memorable.

  "Well, thank you anyways, and sorry for being so much trouble." I tried—and failed—to not sound snippy. "When I get out there, what should I do?"

  "Die," slipped out. She twitched as if surprised she'd said it. "Sorry. You need to go kill some things. Get out of the town, but not far, and look for a lone red dot. Kill it. Repeat until you're somewhere past level 10, which is really the lowest you should be on this floor. Better yet, find literally anyone that will let you join their party."

  "Thank you."