“The plan is simple,” Vin explained as they ran toward the magical border separating the citadel fragment from his camp’s fragment. Luckily, breaking out of the citadel had been far easier than breaking in; especially when all the guards were distracted chatting with one another about what that huge explosion from within the holy district might have been, and it looked like someone was burning a dozen tons of Skittles. He’d expected at least a few of them to finally throw caution to the wind and attempt to enter the holy district after what they’d done, but it seemed not even an explosion as powerful as that one had been enough to break the faith they had in their divine classes.

  “We don’t know exactly when the monsters will spawn, but my guess is it will be sometime during the night. After all, if the gods let them spawn too close to the incoming wave of humans, all the fresh level 1 people would be turned into monster munch.”

  “I used to stay at a tavern that sold monster munch,” Scule piped up, currently sitting on Vin’s shoulder. They’d realized rather quickly that while Reginald could sprint faster than Vin, he couldn’t maintain Vin’s long-distance pace for more than a few minutes. And so it was that Vin found himself now running with a tiny man on his shoulder and a rat comfortably snug in his shirt’s front pocket with its head sticking out. “Used pieces of real monster too! At least, that’s what the tavern keeper always said to try and sell it. You know, up until one of his regulars went crazy and put a knife through his chest.”

  ‘Monster is tasty when prepared correctly, but you have to be careful not to eat too much of it in a single sitting,’ Alka explained as he ran. ‘I’ve even heard rumors that eating monsters beyond a certain level of power can have permanent effects on people.’

  “Huh, interesting,” Vin muttered, wondering if he should start eating monster before shaking his head at his lack of focus. He could only hope that the crazy blast that sent them flying earlier hadn’t left him with a concussion. “Regardless, assuming we don’t run into any problems, we should get back to camp by midafternoon. We need to let Spur know everything that’s coming, and hopefully that will give our crafters and combat classes time to prepare. I’m imagining some hastily built spike walls or things like that.”

  “Sounds like as good a plan as any,” Shia nodded, easily keeping up with Vin’s pace thanks to her staff’s convenient wooden cat mode. Not for the first time, he found himself watching the strangely realistic cat made from branches and brambles lope around beside him like a living creature. Vin didn’t know how long it could do that, but Shia didn’t seem overly concerned about running out of juice halfway to his camp, so he decided not to worry.

  “I figured this went without saying, but I’ll do what I can to help your people,” the elf added, flashing him a pointed smile.

  “Thanks,” Vin said, returning the smile. Huh… I wonder when I stopped getting freaked out by her teeth?

  “Don’t expect too much from me, but Reginald and I will do what we can as well,” Scule said, giving him a mocking salute. “I have a feeling my poisons won’t work as well on monsters however, so I’ll probably be running interference more than doing any actual hunting.” Scule’s declaration was joined by a tiny squeak from Vin’s pocket, sounding Reginald’s resolve.

  “Thanks guys, I appreciate it,” Vin nodded, a small weight lifting from his chest. The newly minted Determined Rogue claimed he wouldn’t be doing all that much, but as far as Vin knew he was still one of the highest leveled people Vin had met on this world, and that had to mean something.

  Other than the insane artifact guardian of course, but he didn’t really count.

  “This might shock you, but I’ve decided to come and help as well,” Alka said, floating out of his body and rolling her eyes as she drifted along beside them. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I just have this strange desire to never go further than a quarter mile from you. It’s uncanny.”

  “We’ll see if we can’t get that looked at by a doctor or something when we have the time,” Vin grinned, earning a snort from the ghost.

  Their plan in place, Vin tried to ask Shia about her own experience chatting with the Gods, but the Druid acted strangely subdued when he brought it up, seeming to withdraw into herself almost. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it for whatever reason, and Vin wasn’t about to force her.

  Hopefully she hadn’t gotten one of the rude Gods or something like that.

  With nothing else to do but watch the landscape quickly go by as they ran, Vin pulled up his interface and looked at the treasure trove of points he had to spend. After so many back to back level ups, he now had nine attribute points, a passive point, and two skill points, all sitting around collecting dust.

  He was about to dump his attribute points directly into magic and focus like he’d been doing, when he paused, thinking back to their recent encounter.

  “Hey Alka, how was that guy able to move so quickly anyway? I barely even managed to see him move. Was it just a high strength score?”

  “Speed is actually more attributed to dexterity than strength,” Alka explained, pretending to run alongside them despite the fact that her feet never actually touched the ground. “Unless you want to just launch yourself forward blindly at a target of course, that’s all strength. Granted, being really fast and nimble doesn’t really do you any good if you can’t put any force behind your blows, so most fighters try to raise both.”

  “Unless you use poisons!” Scule grinned, waving one of his needle-like daggers up in the air.

  “Unless you use poisons,” Alka nodded, looking thoughtful. “But even then, unless you have a magical weapon, you’ll eventually get to the point where your strength isn’t high enough to penetrate the hide of whatever you’re fighting.”

  Scule lost his grin, looking down at his dagger with a frown. Vin swore he could hear Reginald squeaking quietly from his pocket, almost as if the rat was laughing.

  “So if I’m looking to get faster, then raising dexterity is the way to go?” Vin asked, wanting to confirm before he made his selection. No matter how hard he tried to keep shoving the memory down, the sensation of his arm being sliced from his body due to his lack of speed continued to float to the front of his mind again and again.

  “Yeah…” Alka said, her transparent eyes flicking toward Vin’s missing arm for a moment. “Vin-”

  “I’m fine,” he lied, quickly allocating his points so he didn’t have to dwell on it. He shoved six points into dexterity, raising it from 14 to 20, and the remaining three into focus, bringing it from 20 to 23. No point in being faster if his brain couldn’t comprehend what it needed to react to after all. Sighing in relief as he felt his tendons and joints grow stronger and more limber, he suddenly lurched forward, windmilling his arms to stay balanced before realizing his running pace had already increased a good bit.

  “Probably should have stopped running before allocating those,” he said, forcing a laugh. Alka was still looking at him funny, but the ghost seemed content to let the topic drop for now. “Now, let’s take a look at passives…”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Pulling up the list of passives, Vin was surprised to see it was a bit longer than he remembered.

  “Do you get more options for passives as you level?”

  “Yeah. Other than the basic ones, most passives actually have requirements you have to meet before they even show,” Scule said, still turning his dagger this way and that in thought. “Take my first passive, Animal Companion. I’m pretty sure the System only offered it to me because I’d already invested a skill point into Animal Training and had been working hard to train Reginald.”

  “You were offered Animal Training as a class skill for a Rogue?” Shia asked, perking back up at the unexpected reveal. “Seems a bit odd.”

  “Oh you have no idea,” Scule chuckled, finally sheathing his dagger. “It seems like Rogues can be built in tons of different ways, because our class skill list is long.”

  “So what does Animal Companion actually do?” Vin asked, curious about another class’ passive. He definitely hadn’t been offered that one, so Scule was probably on to something about the requirements needing to be met before certain passives appeared.

  “Feels like a lot of random things,” Scule shrugged. “Training Reginald started going much faster, and he grew far more intelligent than a regular rat. It’s hard to explain, and it’s not telepathy, but we also gained some sort of… empathic link? We can understand what the other one of us wants to do, to a degree, as well as what they’re feeling.”

  Reginald let out a pleased squeak of agreement, earning a chuckle from the petian. “For example, I can tell you Reginald is currently feeling quite happy. I can sense his satisfaction at not having to run, and how pleased he is to sit in your pocket.”

  Vin glanced down, seeing the rat nod in agreement.

  “Alright, that’s a pretty amazing passive,” he decided, going back to his own passive list with a more critical eye. Distance Runner was certainly useful, and he couldn’t exactly fault it when he was benefiting from it literally at this very moment, but it wasn’t all that impressive. Being able to run forever sounded far less cool when a possible alternative was making a sentient animal friend. In the same vein, Polyglot was ungodly useful, but again, not all that flashy. For his newest passive, he wanted something a bit more magical. Something to increase his survivability if at all possible. Something like…

  Vin paused, his eyes resting on a new passive option that definitely hadn’t been there back at level 5.

  “Hey Alka…” He said, grabbing the Slayer’s attention. “Ever heard of Threat Detection?”

  “I have,” she nodded. “If I remember correctly, I think it does exactly what it sounds like. Gives you some sort of sixth sense that alerts you to certain dangers before they strike. It’s not infallible, but it’s still pretty popular with high level Slayers on my world.”

  Welp, that’s an instant buy, Vin thought, thanking Alka before purchasing his newest passive. With how often he got into dangerous situations, that passive would pay for itself in no time flat.

  Hell, it was probably his penchant for finding himself in such situations that he unlocked it in the first place.

  After making his selection, Vin tensed, wondering if he was about to get bombarded with unexpected information like he did with his skills other than the mysterious Dungeoneering. But to his surprise, nothing seemed to change. Assuming that meant he wasn’t currently being threatened, he shrugged, turning to his skill points.

  Vin looked at his list of skills warily, wondering what to do with them. He still wasn’t sure how smart his last two purchases had been. Dungeoneering had yet to do anything for him at all, still sitting untouched at level 1. And even after leveling it a few times, he had absolutely no idea what benefit Resistance was giving him. The skill had even gone up two more levels while within the Divine Sanctum, probably due to his body going into shock from blood loss, and he still wasn’t sure what it did. If he had to guess, he’d venture it increased his resilience to ongoing effects, like when Scule had poisoned him, or when he’d given himself a migraine by accident.

  Sighing, he skimmed through the skill list a second time, trying to think of what would be useful. Unlike his passives, the Explorer skill list sat unchanging from the last time he’d gone over it, and he’d be willing to bet the general skill list hadn’t changed either. Even so, he was already sitting on two skill points, and he was a hair's breadth from level 18 where he’d get yet another one, so he really felt like he should spend one.

  Realizing he had a new sounding board to bounce ideas off of, Vin glanced at the petian standing on his shoulder. To his surprise, the tiny man was now wearing a cape of all things; the dark fabric fluttering behind him in the wind as they ran. It took Vin a moment, but he laughed as he realized the cape was actually the magical bag the Rogue had swiped from the colosseum. He’d somehow managed to transform the drawstrings into something of a clasp, and he was turning this way and that, giving the pouch-cape some experimental tugs.

  “Love the new look,” Vin said, earning a snort from the tiny man.

  “I know it’s a little silly, but its usefulness outweighs the ridiculousness,” the Rogue argued. “It’s far too big to attach to my hip, and this way I can reach over my shoulder into the bag if I need to store or retrieve anything.”

  “Honestly it’s smart,” Vin admitted. “Anyway, I already asked Shia and Alka this question earlier, but I figured I’d hit you with it as well. I’m struggling to decide what to spend my skill points on. Any recommendations?”

  “Skills huh?” Scule sighed, sitting down on his shoulder. “Tricky question. While there are a few skills that are good for just about anyone, I tend to fall into the camp of people who think you should just go with your gut. It’s more important you pick a skill that you’ll actively level and use than one that might be useful in certain situations.”

  “That’s fair… much better advice than what I received from a certain combat hungry ghost.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault you have terrible taste in skills!” Alka argued, rolling her eyes. “If you’re struggling that much, why not just save them until you prestige?”

  “Wait, what?” Vin said, glancing at the sheepish looks the ghost and elf were giving him. “What do you mean?”

  “Sorry Vin, it’s easy to forget you don’t know the basic ways the System works,” Shia said, her face reddening. “After your first prestige, you can use skill points to manually level your skills. Most people end up purchasing a solid four or five skills before devoting the rest of their points toward leveling them. Many skills will also offer an evolution at certain points, usually level 20, and those cost skill points as well.”

  “Seriously?” Vin took a deep breath, shaking his head. He wasn’t exactly happy his companions had forgotten to inform him of something so important, but he couldn’t really fault them. They hadn’t even been working together all that long to be fair.

  “Don’t worry about it, thanks for telling me now.” Looking over his skills, the only one even remotely close to level 20 was Spellcraft, so he’d be sure to keep a skill point in reserve for that in case he could upgrade it. But that still left him with one he felt he should spend.

  Sighing, he went back to the only skill on his original list of interests that was still unpurchased. There was no question he’d use the skill, so he may as well grab it if only for the experience gains.

  Finally purchasing the Running skill, Vin felt a textbook of running knowledge slam itself into his head. Immediately, he realized there were dozens of small things he could be doing better. Switching how his weight landed on his feet, adjusting how he swung his arms, even correcting his posture and how far forward he was leaning. Within seconds after purchasing the skill, he decided he’d made the right choice. His gait already felt smoother, and when combined with his Distance Runner passive, he had no doubt he’d be leveling up the skill insanely fast.

  Grinning, he focused on maintaining his new form as the miles flew by, growing ever closer to the location of his people’s new camp.

  I wonder if I can hit level 18 by the time we get there.

  Vinnie Stone

  Explorer: Lvl 17

  Titles: Human Vessel (Lesser)

  Exp. 152,220/153,000

  Strength: 13(10)

  Dexterity: 20(6)

  Endurance: 36(4)

  Vigor: 20(4)

  Focus: 23(2)

  Magic: 22

  Attribute Points: 0

  Skill Points: 1

  Passive Points: 0

  Vows/Boons: Vow of Benevolence/Grace of Gods (Boon)

  Capstone: Runic Recalibration

  Passives: Mental Map, Polyglot, Distance Runner, Threat Detection

  Skills: Tracking lvl 5, Spellcraft lvl 17, Meditation lvl 11, Dungeoneering lvl 1, Resistance lvl 5, Running lvl 1

  Spells: Sense Stone, Sense Life, Sense Magic, Renewal, Replenish, Entangle, Concealment