“Of course you have no idea of what a level is. Have you never played a virtual game at any point in time?” Cato said, leaning forward as his stride ate up the snowy earth beneath us. He made walking up the hill look like we were going up a tiny incline.
I mean, it was a tiny incline, but I was getting real tired. I was still sore from yesterday’s business, and my hunger was getting stronger by the moment. My stomach gargled like it was gonna grow jaws and try to gnaw its way out of me.
Virtual games, huh? Was it no longer video games? Maybe videos were archaic.
“Uh, no?” I said. My brother had liked the games with the little 2D man in the red hat. Levels in that sense meant that you’d run until you hit the little flag after stomping on all the fluffy beavers. Then you’d get a new map --or level--to do it all over again, except harder.
In that context, I had no idea how I could gain a level.
“A level means that you have collected enough experience that you may improve your stats, and, with time, earn new skills. Since you likely have no concept of what either of those words mean, I shall reduce it to something even you can comprehend. It is how your power increases so you are capable of beating this game, instead of becoming one of the Raid’s many victims. Bring up your heads up display. Surely, when you were looking for the debuffs, there was a notification alerting to you that you have points to allocate.”
I brought up my HUD. My HP was still at 16/20, and there was the snowflake debuff in the corner, along with that little skull. It hadn’t changed at all. There was a new icon there--a small stick man, bent over, hands on his knees. There was a tiny 1 near its foot. I had a guess as to what that meant before I hovered over it.
EXHAUSTION - Insufficient rest, water, or food. Sprint speed reduced by 2%. 50 possible stacks. A damage over time effect starts at Max Stacks.
“So, I’ve got a stack of Exhaustion,” I finally said, “but I don’t see this notification--” Even as I said it, I noticed. It was in my bottom right. It looked like an open scroll, and it had a little 1 next to it as well. “Is it the scroll?”
“You have acquired exhaustion already?” Cato clicked his tongue, a snap of noise. “How exceedingly typical. Yes, it is the scroll. Select it.”
I did, and stumbled to a stop, because a floating screen abruptly took up the majority of my vision. It was all in orange text. At the top, in bright orange text, it said PALADIN - SPIRIT MELEE HEALER. Beneath the text, there was a row of small boxes--ten in total. Only three were filled with little icons, tiny art pieces.
The first box had what looked like my shovel, holding a little fire. Not sure how much I liked the little fire part of that. So far, when I’d used the spade, it had just glowed with light. The icon next to it, my shovelhead gleamed like it was molten metal. Then, there were six black boxes. There was a seventh black box, but it was edged and gold. Finally, there was the last icon of a woman in armor, hands on her hips, wreathed in fire.
Below these boxes, there was a line, and below that, a list. Each item in the list was followed by a long ellipsis and a number.
It went, in order:
HEALTH……………………………..…..20
CONVICTION…………………….……..??
-
SPIRIT HEALING POWER………...….5%
MAGIC HEALING POWER…....…..….0%
PHYSICAL HEALING POWER…….…0%
-
SPIRIT RESISTANCE…………….……2%
MAGIC RESISTANCE…………...….…0%
PHYSICAL RESISTANCE……….……1%
-
SPIRIT DAMAGE…………………..…..0%
MAGIC DAMAGE…………………...….0%
PHYSICAL DAMAGE……………...…..0%
Another little dialogue box popped up, on top of this one. You have 1 point to allocate. Would you like to allocate it now?
“What…is this?”
“I rather think it is entirely self explanatory,” Cato said. “Keep moving. We must put as much distance between us and that forest before nightfall.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “I have a point. I assume the point makes the numbers go up. I don’t know what any of this means. I mean, I get Health. And I get there’s a split between Healing and Resistance and Damage, and it says I’m a Healer? But what does that actually mean?”
“Good God,” Cato snapped. “What did you do during the tutorial? Stare plaintively at the sky? Crouch in a corner and lick sand?”
“I didn’t have one!” I burst out. For the first time, I felt the real heat of anger, a flush up my neck. My mouth twisted, pulling at my scars, and an abrupt spasm of pain shuddered through the once-burned flesh.
I inhaled a breath through my nose. Shit. Don’t get angry, Teddy. Anger was never worth it. I hated being angry. I breathed shallowly for a few moments, and saw that Cato had come up on my side, visible in the small part of my peripheral vision that wasn’t completely dominated by the screen. Those gold eyes of his studied me, his hair whipping in the wind.
“There are fifty classes in the Raid,” he said abruptly. “Your class is selected for you based upon your Soulcode. Each class is defined by three criteria. These criteria are type, combat style, and position. There are four types, three combat styles, and three positions. Spirit is your type, Melee is your combat style, and Healer is your position.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“You knew what I was already?”
“Of course. Most Paladins are Spirit Melee Tanks. You happened to select your position when you chose the shovel instead of either the sword and shield or the hammer.”
“Oh,” I said. My calm was settling back, a reassuring, heavy blanket. The pain in my scars still stung, but I could breathe through it. “What are you…?”
“Warlock, Glitch Hybrid Tank,” he said. “Healer is self-explanatory, I imagine Tank is not. Tanks are leaders of Raider parties, generally, though not always. Whatever the party is fighting, the enemy should be focused on the Tank, and not the Damage, or Healers. Tanks have the Health and Resistances to absorb a staggering amount of injury. Hybrid means that I may fight at melee or range, as I choose.”
God, if only the man could explain shit this straightforwardly without the constant insults all the time.
“Okay.” I said, “There isn’t Glitch on my list--”
“There are four Glitch classes in the whole of the Raid,” Cato said. “It is not an accessible typing for anyone other than those four classes. Glitch classes are also targets, so should anyone ask my class of you, you will say that I am an Illusionist, which is a Magic-type class. Is that clear?”
My brow furrowed. “…Why do you have it, then?”
“My soul was judged worthy,” Cato said, with such perfect, smug arrogance that I rolled my eye. Right, that sounded pretty typical. Who wanted to bet Glitch classes were reserved for the aristocratic and wealthy?
How the hell had we gotten stuck together, again? I’d woken up and wandered for thirty minutes, and he’d essentially been right there. Yanked my frigid ass out of the snow and been a dick point-two seconds right after I’d met him. Cato probably knew, but there was more important stuff to figure out, at the moment.
“So, when we get into a fight, what should I do?” I said. Like this. Figuring out how we should be fighting was probably gonna be real important for just about everything.
“It should be like it was with the Herald. You assist by healing, buffing me, and debuffing the enemy, and contributing what minimal damage you can. Paladins are not high-damage Healers. I shall be making sure the enemy attacks me, while harming them. Warlocks, on the rare occasion they are Tanks, are notably high-damage Tanks.”
I nodded. The cold wind was stinging my face, but it was also numbing it. The pain was fading now, and I resisted the urge to rub at the scars. “…I didn’t know I was a healer,” I said after a moment. “How do I heal?”
“It would be in your skills, which should be on the screen you currently see. The top--”
“The lil’ boxes?”
“…The icons, correct. I suggest you exercise what literacy you possess and read them, so you are aware of what you are capable of. As a Paladin, your resource will depend entirely upon mental resilience. I would suggest ignorance, but you declined that earlier. I can not imagine why. It seems to be your default mode of existence.”
Yeah, okay, we were back to Prickly Asshole. But I understood this all a little better. I was a Healer, huh? I could heal people, somehow. The party I’d fought the Herald with had died not an hour ago. Could I have saved them, if I had just known?
“Could I have--”
“No,” Cato said, so quickly and so flatly, that it brooked no argument. “If you had been capable of Shielding, perhaps, but Shield Healing is extraordinarily rare. We will be lucky to encounter a handful, and most will reach the final Wings of the Raid before their inevitable demise.”
“What’s Shielding?”
“Healers, more than any other position, are heavily restricted by type. This was not the case in the first Raids, but the System determined that healing had far too much influence over the ultimate outcome of the Raid. As a Spirit Healer, you will be able to heal those that have Spirit or Magic or Glitch typing, and not Physical. Physical is the most common type in the entire raid. Shielding, since it essentially generates more Health Points and places them on top of the Raider’s already existing Health Points, is not type-limited.”
That made…some amount of sense. I scratched at my jaw--on my good side. “So…I should put points into Spirit Healing Power, I guess?”
“I would recommend that, or Health.”
I hit Yes on the dialogue that was asking me if I wanted to distribute. Several of the items in the list began to flash, but all of the damage options were greyed out, as was CONVICTION.
Then again, Cato had just said that Paladins, apparently, weren’t really known for doing a lot of damage. I still didn’t entirely understand typing, and if I was a Spirit Healer, I didn’t know why I had access to Magic or Physical Healing Power, but whatever.
I deposited the point. The 5% became 6%.
“So what do these…what are these, actually?” I squinted.
Cato turned away from me and began to climb back up the hill. “Very descriptive. Fortune favors you, however, for I am capable of grasping what your insufficient inquiry refers to. Those are your statistics. Or ‘stats,’ as you will hear the gibbering masses refer to them. I presume you will be adopting that effect.”
I let the HUD fall away and began to trudge after him. The wind was calming down, that was nice. The sun was climbing higher. It was like any winter sun, dim and weak, but I was thankful for the little warmth that it could offer.
“Okay, so stats,” I said, “What do they do?”
“Healing Power and Damage affect your skills. Resistances will affect some skills, but primarily determine how you take damage. All Paladins are decently hard to harm. After reaching twenty percent in Spirit Healing, I would begin to work on your Physical Resistance.”
“Uh,” I said. “Why?”
Cato’s spectacles had slid about halfway down his nose. He flicked me a glower through them. Something about the glass made his stares seem harsher. “The indignity of having you forced upon me, and having you be utterly without even the most basic of knowledge is staggering. How long were you kept within the System’s storage?”
I opened my mouth, but before I could respond, he flapped a hand at me. “I do not actually care. Do not bother. Types, at their most basic, work like thus: Spirit is most effective against Magic, Magic is most effective against Physical, and Physical is most effective against Spirit. Most classes have Physical typing, and, as such, you will be weak to their skills. Physical resistance will give you armor against Physical-type damage.”
Dollars to fuckin’ donuts--God, I would probably kill a man for a donut right now--there was a lot more to how all this worked, but I had a basic idea. That was a hell of a lot better than where I’d been a few minutes ago.
Wait, Yap-man had missed one in his little circle. “Where’s Glitch in that list?”
“Glitch is a neutral typing. The three other types are neither effective nor ineffective.”
I nodded. We were finally heading down the incline, thank God.I trudged down, trying not to slip. Cato didn’t even change his stride, the bastard.
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. I understood some of what was happening a lot better now.
Cato’s entire face twisted, like he’d decided to shove two unpeeled lemons in his mouth simultaneously. “Do not thank me. Either I educate you, or suffer the loss. As I refuse any outcome that is not victory, I do what I must. Therefore, none of this is for you.”
“Sure,” I said, “But thanks anyway.” This man had some real hangups. Hopefully, with time, he’d mellow some. I studied him. I couldn’t quite decide what to make of him, to be honest. He was nasty as all get-out, and he’d no interest in helping anyone that didn’t benefit himself. Not a trait I liked in anyone--but he’d been religious about helping me, even if it was only for his own benefit. He could’ve just been a selfish asshole, but there could also have been real depth there. Time would tell.
A puzzle for another day, because my stomach was beginning to cramp now.
“So, is there another inn on the way?” I said. “Because this no-hunger, no-provisions thing, in a frozen wasteland, is a death sentence. You realize that, right?”
“I was rather under the impression that you could partake of nourishment from the sun, and warm yourself by will alone--yes, I am keenly aware of the magnitude of our predicament,” he snapped.
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth lifted. “Alright, so what’s the plan then, Yap-man?”
Ah, there it was. Cato’s face was turning that familiar, furious puce color.
