A town guard walked by an ordinary alley, turning his head as he noticed a vile smell. Walking towards the rancid odour, he approached cautiously, gripping his spear tighter. He knew this smell well – it was death.

He quickly found the source of the smell, and it only got worse as he got closer.

At first, he was shocked. It was like a blossoming flower of desiccated flesh surrounding a pile of ash-white bones.

He couldn’t hold back his vomit. Leaving the alley, he wondered if he should report it or not.

“Hmm… I won’t bother reporting it, it’s only a rat after all. Probably just some new adventurers testing out their skills.”

“Interesting skill though…. Explosive magic maybe? I hope I never cross them in the wild” he thought, a shiver ran up his spine as he had an instant flashback of what he just witnessed.

On the other side of town, Jay suddenly had the urge to grin mischievously.

“Huh, weird.” he shrugged.

—

It was early morning, not afternoon as Jay had previously thought. He knew he missed his chance to access a mana conduit and acquire his class – yet he had become a necromancer. However this wasn’t the problem – he would still need to register as an adventurer, and they would find out his class if he did.

Thoughts kept flashing through Jay’s head:

“Will I be rejected for not being there to touch the mana conduit?”

“Will they even realise I wasn’t there?”

“Will they assume I don’t have a class, and hence, cannot participate in quests or training?” he frowned slightly.

“I guess I should be more scared of them discovering my class and executing me on the spot…” he frowned.

Jay simply had to lie his way into the guild – then he would get access to all the dungeon locations, quests, and other services.

He slowly walked to the guild. The sun had a comfortable warmth and the early morning air was crisp, which Jay appreciated as he made his way around the dirt trail curving up the mountain; at least something was lifting his mood. His excitement for becoming an adventurer was gone, but remaining a lone butcher was out of the question.

The adventures association came into sight. It was more like a small castle rather than a functional organisation building.

A wooden palisade wall surrounded the compound, along with an occasional large rock or boulder making up part of the wall.

The nearby fir trees had been cut to provide vision, as well as to construct the 10 metre walls.

The gate arch was composed of large floating boulders, each of them rippling with a pale blue aura and deep blue glowing veins which kept them floating, ready to deposit them into the gate-gap if need be.

Who needs an iron gate when you can simply enchant some boulders?

Jay thought the fancy floating boulder gate was betrayed by the wooden palisade walls around the compound, however it was situated near a small town after all, and he didn’t expect much in the first place.

Small villages like his were not even taken into consideration in regards to defence or war so they wouldn’t receive any sort of military budget.

Besides, the country was only at war with one of the other six races, and the war front was on the north side of the country; Jay’s village, Losla, was situated on the deep south western side of the continent, where nothing exciting ever happens. It was more like a retirement village.

Approaching the gate, Jay saw a familiar face – It was Paul, a regular customer of the butcher shop.

“Heh, this will be easy” Jay thought to himself as his lips began to curl._.

“Hey Paul, how are you?” Jay waved.

“Yeah good mate, you’re here to start your classes huh? What’d you get?”

Jay feigned a smile “Melee, I’m a swordsman. Pretty keen to get started” he lied with a nod.

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.

As went to the exit he noticed a colourful map on the wall – it was a dungeon board showing all the closest dungeons to the village.

This was probably only meant to be seen by the new adventurers after enough training. He was level 1 so he knew he probably shouldn’t bother looking, but he did anyway.

“It wouldn’t hurt to know,” he smiled.

Looking at the map, he found a single level 1 dungeon: Stink-Rat Marsh.

“Hmm, perhaps they get people to train up in the courtyard so they don’t have to go there? Obviously marshes stink, and rat’s stink, so stink-rat marsh must be an absolute shit-hole.

“It would be a stain in any adventurer’s memory to start here. But I suppose I have no choice.” Jay sighed.

“The less attention I draw, the better, and there will be no one there to witness my class in action.”

A small smile appeared on his face, thinking about his bone goblin skeleton tearing the rats to pieces.

There were various other dungeons on the map but they were not ‘instanced’ dungeons – meaning anyone would be able to go into the dungeon and find you there, whereas the instanced dungeons would create separate pockets of reality in which only you and your party could enter.

Jay added the location to his map, along with a level 5 dungeon named ‘Wolf’s Quarry’.

“Gosh, I wonder what kind of monsters will be at WOLF’S quarry?” he chuckled to himself in the lobby.

His poor attempts at humorous sarcasm had no restraint. Thankfully, it fell of deaf ears as no one was in the lobby today.

Jay decided to grind to level 4 in stink-rat marsh then head to the quarry to level up some more before returning a few days later, he thought that hopefully by then he will have a better chance at succeeding when he would have to lie about his adventurer paper work being lost.

“I may as well get some training in while I’m here” he thought as he exited the building.

Looking around the courtyard, he noticed people with swords, clubs, shields and hatchets were on his right, sparring with each other while some of them attacked helpless training dummies.

Others nearby did push-ups and sit-ups under the guise of their trainer.

“Hmm, perhaps they’re being punished for losing?” Jay reckoned.

On the left side were people with javelins, daggers, whips and bows. They were all attacking targets from their respective distances.

Some of the more talented rangers would attempt to attack wooden birds that an assistant mage had summoned while the ranged trainer looked on, periodically giving pointers to the slightly more inept.

The assistant mage looked bored as her whole job was to collect scraps of wood from the melee training dummies, add magic to them, and convert them into wooden birds which she sent to fly around the archery range.

“Damn, some magic sure is cool. Sucks to do something so boring with it though” Jay wearily smiled, continuing to look around.

“Hmm, I wonder where the mana craft training is being held” Jay thought before noticing in the far right corner.

Beyond the 150-strong mass of melee disciples was a small garden where people were sitting as still as statues.

There were about 60 of them, sitting cross-legged while the trainer sitting cross-legged floating, a few small rocks seemed to defy gravity around him.

As soon as Jay looked at him, he suddenly heard a voice in his head.

“Stop being lazy and start training, recruit.”

The voice was blunt and to-the-point.

Jay shivered and immediately looked away from the trainer, hopefully breaking ‘mind-contact’ or whatever that spell was. He took three steps forward, pretending to listen to the voice’s instructions as he considered where he should go.

He had to think fast so as to not look suspicious.

Desperately wanting to go to the mana craft area, he knew he would not be able to demonstrate his skills, which were grotesque to say the least; not to mention they would get him into trouble or even killed.

Jay went with his original plan and decided to join the melee training, as even a simpleton could do push ups, and he has been cutting up meat since he was a kid, so he was good enough with a knife.

As he walked away from the main building, he felt a pair of eyes as sharp as daggers staring straight at his back from the building behind him. He felt a cold sweat as the tangible pressure mounted on him. Deciding not to turn around, he resolutely made his way to the melee area.

As he went to grab a wooden short-sword, his hand was rudely slapped away.

“Just what do you think you’re doing? This has to be EARNED” A snooty voice resounded with vitriol in Jay’s face.

“Uh I’m here for training..?”

“You have to EARN it” he said with a sneer “You can’t just start with a wooden sword, you don’t deserve it yet.”

Jay realised this was the same prick in the carriage who smiled gleefully as he tumbled down the hill into the mud.

The exact same little shit who smirked at him as he fell.

Knowing he couldn’t smack someone who was a rich noble brat, Jay simply clenched his jaw as he death-stared at the melee trainer, letting his rage out a little.

The melee trainer had heightened senses compared to most, and immediately responded as he sensed the passive threat level rising.

“You there!” he pointed at the brat, “Quit talking and get back to sparring! And you!” He pointed at Jay and glared for a moment.

“You’re late so you’re doing push-ups, jogging, then dummy training! No sparring today since you’re LATE!” Some spit left his mouth as he screamed “We don’t tolerate tardiness!”

The noble brat sneered with a smug smile as he went back to the sparring area.

Jay immediately felt thankful for the trainer, even though he was yelling at Jay with a vein popping out of his head. He went to the push-up area and began working out.

Jay began doing push-ups with the other recruits as the trainer continued to bark at them. As he began working out, he was amazed at how his own body now was not tired in the slightest, the only thing that changed for him was that his energy status went down from 25 to 23, even though he had just done 200 push-ups.

The standard training regime for new melee-recruits was to do 200 push-ups, jog around the outside of the compound twice, and then repeat until the instructor was pleased – however, as Jay began to get up, the instructor winced and screamed at him once more.

“YOU! I didn’t say you were finished! You’re doing four-hundred to make up for being late!”

“He doesn’t need to embarrass me like this. This is all that noble douches fault anyway, basically pushing me down the hill yesterday” he thought as he gritted his teeth in frustration, deciding to channel his rage into his push-ups.

After the first rage-filled push-up, Jay instantly received a notification:

[New passive skill unlocked!]

<[Stress Response]>

[- You get stronger when you’re angry, and angry when you exercise.]

[- +5% melee damage bonus when stressed or angry]

“Sweet” Jay smiled as his mood turned positive again and he lost the passive buff.

The trainer seemed angry as he saw Jay enjoying what was meant to be a punishment, and Jay continued to smirk to himself as he finished the extra 200 push-ups.

“Hopefully being an underdog always plays out like this.”

After the pushups came the running. He had to do 4 laps around the compound, lowering his energy to 17/25.

Thankfully, he did unlock another passive, though he wasn’t that impressed:

<[Running level 1]>

[- You can run faster, further, and use less energy doing so.]

[- +1% speed]

Coming back to the trainer, he was greeted with a light smile.

“Good job recruit, take a wooden weapon and start on the dummies.”

The trainer seemed less annoyed now that Jay had put in the effort without complaining, he seemed to respect hard work.

Jay was encouraged, and happily went back to the weapon rack and grabbed a wooden short-sword. Jay smirked proudly as he noticed the brat glance at him before going back to sparring another recruit, not willing to test the trainer’s booming voice.

Jay happily went to one of the training dummies which was closest to the mana craft garden. He started sparring lightly – and whenever he heard the mana craft instructor teach the lucky few in the mana craft group, he approached the dummy, pretending to inspect his damage as he tried to glean any scraps of mana craft training he could get, listening intentively:

– “…twist and pull the rope in, making it a part of yourself..”

– “…imagine you are the tree, make your bark, your shell, stronger..”

“…It sounds like some bullshit a fortune teller would say,” he thought with a raised brow.

Nevertheless, he committed each and every piece to memory as he pretended to ‘analyse’ the training dummy nearby.

After a few hours of training Jay levelled up, gaining 5 attribute points to spend.

He realised that his base class attributes had most points in energy, which increased mana, so he put them all into energy, raising it to 30 and his mana pool to 39.

His dexterity was quite high, but he assumed it was due to his skills with the butchering knives rather than his class, but he couldn’t be sure as he checked his status.

<[Necromancer level 2]>

HP: 48/48

MP: 39/39

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 25

Vitality: 15

Energy: 20/30

<[Skills]>

[Raise Feeble Creature level 1]

[Stress Response] (Passive)

[Class Utility] (Passive)

[Running level 1] (Passive)

“Awesome. I’ll have an easier time when I visit the dungeon” Jay smiled in satisfaction.

After training till mid-day, a bell sounded from somewhere in the main building and the recruits were dismissed, told to come back tomorrow at sunbreak for more ‘lessons’.

Jay looked at his trainer who nodded back, then began making his way home for some lunch. As he left, he noticed a familiar guard on the way out – Paul.

“How was your training mate? Ready for tomorrow?”

“It was ok, it seems like they drill us pretty hard but I think they mean the best for us. I’ll get used to it.” Jay answered, tactfully ignoring the second question.

Paul lightly chuckled “heh, they won’t let it get easy mate. If you get used to it they’ll just make it harder.” he smiled with a nod, “But hang in there, it’ll be worth it, and you’ll be glad for going through it some day.”

“Yeah,” Jay nodded and looked at the ground knowingly “I’ll uh, I’ll keep coming back, don’t worry. Anyway I’m exhausted so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah that’s fair enough, see you tomorrow mate.”

Jay walked down the hill as the douche-brat’s carriage whizzed past once again – this time, without Jay slipping.

“Asshole,” he thought.

“I’ll out-level him soon enough by getting a head start on these dungeons tonight. I’ll leave this loser in my past where he belongs.” Jay grinned.

—

After walking home sprightly, Jay cooked himself up some sausages and tomatoes seasoned with ground bondtussle root, and enjoyed his meal. Surprised, he noticed he got a passive buff from consuming the bondtussle root.

[Mana Regen buff 1%] – lasts for 1 hour(s).

“Oh, how did I not know about this?” Jay was surprised.

“Shouldn’t this be common knowledge?”

In all his years of working as a butcher he had never heard anything about this herb.

“Well, I guess most adventurers leave this hole when they level up enough, and food-buffs are probably only effective to high level people anyway. I suppose it didn’t affect me before since I wasn’t an adventurer? Oh well, I’ll take it.” he shrugged, scoffing down the rest of his food.

Planning ahead, he packed some extra bondtussle root into his knapsack along with water, mushrooms and some wild nuts to snack on; some small easy-to-eat rations.

“Well, time to make my way to stinky stink-rat marsh.” he smiled.