Rune Seeker
Chapter 3: Advanced Classes

Hiral ignored the comment—as well as the others chuckling—and turned his attention to the interface. “Let’s find out what he has to say?”

“Sure…” Seena said, one hand in front of her mouth.

“Dr. Benza, Tutorial,” Hiral said, forcing himself to only look straight ahead, and to not smile.

For the first time in his life, having other people laugh at him… felt good. This wasn’t like up on Fallen Reach. It wasn’t mockery of the Everfail. They laughed because they cared and felt comfortable enough to let their guards down, not to hurt him.

It’s kind of nice.

“Accessing PIMs,” Dr. Benza said, his voice oddly flat. “Access complete. All zone-dungeon clears detected. Introductory-three and Introductory-four Tutorials unlocked. Please make a selection.”

“Let’s do them in order?” Seena suggested, and the others nodded.

“Introductory-three Tutorial, please, Dr. Benza,” Hiral said.

The image shimmered, and then Dr. Benza was pacing back and forth in front of them. “Is it recording yet? What? Why didn’t you say something? Oh, fine. Whatever.” He stopped, smoothing out the long robes he wore, then turned his attention towards the party. One second ticked by, two, three… four… five, and then he finally spoke again. “You made me forget my line!” he snapped. “Where’s the script?”

“You guys think he’s okay?” Yanily asked.

“No. No, I don’t,” Hiral said, but he clapped his mouth closed when Dr. Benza started again.

“You know what? I’m just going to wing it! Yeah, you heard me right. And what you do mean it’s still recording?” Dr. Benza facepalmed. His shoulders rose and fell, like he was taking a deep breath, and then he lowered his hand and looked straight ahead. “Alright, before we start in on Introductory-three,” he said, holding up his hands for air quotes, “there’s something I want to explain to you first.

“Now, I need to tell you about this before it leads to things like segregation, paranoia, or oppression. What is that thing? First, go ahead and open up your status windows. Go on, I’ll give you a second.” Dr. Benza crossed his arms and tapped his foot.

“Should we?” Nivian asked.

“Might as well,” Hiral said, his status windowopen.

“Everybody got their window open?” Dr. Benza asked. “Good, now what’s the first thing you see after your name?”

“My last…” Yanily started.

“Not your last name,” Dr. Benza said, like he could predict having somebody like Yanily in the room. “Under that.”

“Race?” Hiral and Seena said at the same time.

“Probably says Race,” he said, again with air quotes. “Big R, small a, small c, small e, right? Well, that’s not what it’s supposed to say. What it should say is R.A.C.E. Stands for Role Affinity Classification Engine.

“That’s right! You’re all the same race. Surprise! The intern doing the input didn’t pay close enough attention, and I hope you’re hearing this before anything major happens because of it.” Dr. Benza shook his head at that.

“Anything major, like, say, living on separate islands?” Yanily asked.

“Shush,” Seena said, then looked over at Hiral and kind of shrugged.

“The R.A.C.E. tag was meant to help streamline what classes people would have access to through their PIMs,” Dr. Benza continued. “It turns out everybody has a kind of affinity, which the classification engine reads during the first interface. Kind of like how the PIM—oh, sorry, I guess I’m not supposed to talk about PIMs much until Introductory-four.

“Back to the main topic, now that we’ve gotten the race thing out of the way. This Tutorial is about classes and dungeon access. I’m sure you’ve been wondering by now why it takes at least two people from different races to access the dungeons, and it’s simple: cooperation. While we all have the same origin, we worried that grouping people by their affinities would create cliques and specialized parties.

“That was a problem. There’s the old adage, specialization breeds weakness, and we believe the opposite is needed to defeat the Enemy. We need cooperation, adaptability, and variety to win this war. With that in mind, we made it so that at least two of the four ‘races’ needed to be present to access the dungeon. They’d need to work together to grow stronger. As a pleasant side effect, the nature of magic—which I’ll explain more in introductory-four—made it a more impactful dungeon experience. But I’ll get to that later.

“Back to cooperation. The most important part was that it’d hopefully also make sure we all focus on the Enemy instead of each other.”

“Didn’t work so well,” Wule said and looked at Seeyela, clearly referencing how she’d been captured by the Shapers.

“It didn’t,” Seeyela agreed.

“And that’s it for dungeon access,” Dr. Benza said. “On to classes. If you’re seeing this message, that means you’ve cleared at least two E-Rank dungeons, so you must be working your way to level twenty and D-Rank. I hope you’ve been enjoying your classes up until this point, but”—the image paused, the man’s lips parting in a knowing grin—"did you know you’ll have an opportunity for a class evolution once you reach D-Rank?”

“What? Really?” Hiral asked, looking at the Growers to see if they’d known.

By the expressions on their faces, this was news to them too. While there were no A-Ranks on Fallen Reach, there were a few dozen B-Ranks, as well as plenty of C- and D-Ranks. How had Hiral never heard of class evolutions? Was it a secret to those with classes? No, that didn’t make sense. He was the exception, not the rule. So why…

His eyes settled on the interface.

“Of course,” he said. “The class evolutions must need the dungeons somehow.”

“Ah, you know, this was probably all explained to you already before you even got sent to the dungeons,” Dr. Benza went on after his dramatic pause. “Maybe we should just skip this part?”

“No!” six voices said in unison, and everybody looked sheepishly at each other. Sᴇaʀch* Thᴇ NøvᴇlFirᴇ(.)nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

“Don’t worry—I’m kidding,” Dr. Benza said. “Obviously I can’t trust somebody else to explain something this important without mucking it up. So, class evolutions. Yup, we’re getting to the good stuff now.

“When you reach D-Rank, a lot of new options will open up to your PIMs, and class evolutions will be one of the biggest and most impactful. Now, I have to warn you, not everybody will have this chance, and class evolutions are only available in D-, B-, and S-Ranks. That’s right—while the unluckiest of you may potentially never see a class evolution, some of you may even go through three of them. Those that do… well… We’ve done some calculations on their potential strength, and I have to say, it’s a little absurd.

“From our math, a thrice-evolved S-Rank would be about as far above a non-evolved S-Rank… as that same non-evolved S-Rank would be above a B-Rank. Some people around here are calling the once-evolved S-Ranks, S+Rank. Twice-evolved are SS+Rank, and the ultra-rare thrice-evolved are SSS+Rank. It’s a mouthful, I know. Don’t worry—the evolutions don’t do weird things like make your hair glow and stand on end…” He trailed off, looking past the party like he tended to do.

“Okay, I’ve just been corrected. It’s believed that some of the evolutions might do just those things. Guess we’ll find out when somebody gets there.” He shrugged.

“At least Hiral and Yanily won’t have to worry about the crazy hair,” Wule said.

“It’ll grow back!” Yanily said, rubbing his hand over his still perfectly smooth head, then glanced at Hiral’s scalp. “How do you keep it so shiny?”

“The fancy special effects aren’t what make the S+Ranks so desirable, though,” Dr. Benza went on, thankfully saving Hiral from having to address Yanily. “Some of the classes do get additional attribute points to distribute, but only some. No, the common theme amongst the evolved classes is clearly the more advanced abilities and ability evolutions. It’s not an across-the-board-type thing where all the abilities evolve at the same time, but each of the evolved—or advanced—classes tend to focus on a strength.

“As you can imagine, considering what I just said about specialization breeding weakness, this made us nervous at first. It’s one of the reasons we developed benefits to working in groups, but… but… the theoretical power of the advanced classes, especially when as a member of a party, far outweighed the risks. Really, if any of you watching this get an evolved class, it will be a big step towards victory in our war against the Enemy.”

“Okay, that’s great and all…” Nivian said. “I mean, Yanily is literally drooling over there…”

“Not because he’s thinking about your cooking,” Wule said quietly.

“… but how do we get these evolved classes?” Nivian continued while scowling at his twin.

“Let’s ask,” Hiral said. “Dr. Benza, how do we get evolved classes?”

The image in front of him didn’t even shimmer, though Dr. Benza’s lips curled up in another smile, like he’d purposely put in a second dramatic pause to make somebody ask the question. “You’re probably wondering about how to get an advanced class, right? There are a few ways to do it, though none of them are guaranteed. This goes back to saying that some of you may get one.

“The advanced classes need to be… let’s call it… unlocked. This unlocking process will happen through your own actions and choices while in D-, B-, or S-Ranks. Skills you choose to use, how you approach battles, or perhaps how you solve dungeon encounters. All these things will feed into the PIMP and its calculations, judging whether or not you’re eligible for an advanced class. Understand this though: the PIM system was built to make the strong stronger, not to gift the lazy with easy progress.

“If you don’t work for an advanced class, you won’t get one. It’s that simple.” Dr. Benza stood straighter and crossed his arms. “And that concludes our Introductory-three Tutorial. I’ll see you in number four.”

The doctor’s image shimmered and reverted back to him standing calmly with his hands clasped in front of him.

“How much work do you think it is to get one of those advanced classes?” Seena asked.

“I’d say it’s probably doable,” Hiral said.

“Maybe for you, Mr. Overpowered,” Yanily said.

“No, seriously,” Hiral said. “You already learned that Dancing Spear Style from the Lizardmen we fought, and you’re working on a new technique, right? It sounds like those are exactly the kinds of things considered for the class evolutions. And, I may not be an expert on it, but I’d say nobody here is average. You’ve all been working hard to improve. I’d honestly be more shocked if we didn’t see several class evolutions.”

“Hiral’s right,” Seena said. “I’ve known you all our whole lives. If anybody can get these evolutions, it’s you guys.”

“Thanks, boss,” Nivian said. “So, should we jump right into the fourth Tutorial? That was a lot of info.”

“It was, but pretty straightforward. Let’s hear what he has to say about PIMs, then we can… Well, we’ll have to talk about Fallen Reach. That issue isn’t going away. I know we all needed some time to decompress, but…”

“No, you’re right,” Seeyela said. “One way or another, we can’t hide from what we heard. Putting it off will only make things worse. First PIMs, then Fallen Reach.

“Dr. Benza, Introductory-four Tutorial please.”

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