Tang smiled and turned to lead the group up to the balcony where Everett Garcia was.
Adam glanced at Michael, “This guy a student of yours?”
He nodded, “Yeah. Everett’s a good guy. Last I knew, he was studying to be a teacher.” The crow lines besides his eyes scrunched as he let out a low laugh, “I actually know him from my summer courses. This last July, I ran an outdoor survival course that focused on primitive technologies and he was there. We ended the course with an actual survival test and he excelled.” Michael turned and followed Tang up the steps, closely followed by the others.
As they passed, Adam took in the additions to their group. Tang Cook, Dimitri Stoinov and Shawn Jackson were all athletes that had passed through Professor Greymore’s classes at some point in the last year since he started working under him.
I hope he’s okay. He thought.
Pushing his concerns about his boss and friend to the back of his mind, he focused again on the three athletes as he followed them towards the second floor balcony.
Tang was an incredibly personable man of Pacific Islander descent. Adam couldn't quite remember where he was from exactly, but knew that he moved to the Oregon coast this fall after joining the new wrestling program as a walk-on athlete. I think Henry said he used to be a rugby player? Doesn’t matter now. He had close cropped black hair, hazel eyes, and prior to Otto’s Physique, would have towered over everyone else in the auditorium with his six and a half foot frame. Walking behind him were Dimitri and Shawn. While they were not related in any way, they had multiple similarities in their appearance, likely due to running in the same circle. While Dimitri was the more vocal of the two, he was only a first year at the college and Shawn was a second year. They both had short hair cut in a similar faded style, though Dimitri’s was dark brown and straight while Shawn’s was blond and curly. Dimitri's chiseled jawline and perfect smile caused Adam to feel a hint of jealousy, now that he had tusks ruining his once straight teeth.
Braces were a flippin’ waste. He grumbled internally.
He was more familiar with Shawn than the others though. The muscular man was part of the nursing program and as such, Adam had seen him around the Health and Science building for months. The man's carefully sculpted beard had lost its structure, becoming frazzled, mirroring Adam’s current feelings.
If this Everett guy had managed to acquire a class even before they had, how strong was he exactly?
He was pulled from his musings when he noticed that Shawn had fallen to the back of the group as the others ascended.
“Have you seen any of my classmates since this happened?” he asked in a soft voice that didn't match his rough exterior.
Adam just shook his head.
The blond man cursed under his breath, “Dammit. I hope they all are safe.” He paused for a moment before asking in a gentler voice, “Ms. Stewart?” he asked.
Shawn caught Adam’s arm as he tripped on a stair. When they locked eyes, understanding bloomed in the young athlete’s gaze. “I'm so sorry.”
“Thanks.” Adam said, his voice hollow and distant.
Doors opened in front of them as the group made it to the balcony.
Think about the future now. Mourn when you have time for it.
A gentle breeze drifted through the space that once was the second story balcony over the Arts Building’s lobby. With so much of the exterior wall being made of large planes of glass during the building's construction, it was easy to see that the internal balcony and the external balcony, that once looked out over the campus, had essentially combined now that the glass had broken and been washed away. Metal balustrades wrapped around the edges of the space, reinforced by bits of broken theater sets, providing cover for anyone that wished to hide from outside forces.
Sitting on a small stool, just outside of the auditorium, was a man with shoulder length black hair tied back and a horrible sunburn. Beside him was a makeshift bucket full of golf ball sized stones and pieces of broken cement. As Adam watched, the man cupped a piece of cement between his hands and twisted back and forth. A small wave of heat seemed to flow from the motion as dust poured from his moving hands across his lap.
He looked up as he set the piece of cement, now spherical, into the bucket beside the other balls he had made.
Tang made an exaggerated coughing noise and fanned the air in front of his face, “I wish you didn’t make such a mess every time you do that, you monster.” a real cough mixed with a chuckle as he clasped hands with the sitting man, “It’ll take ages to clean this carpet now.”
The sitting man stood and brushed his hands off as he shyly smiled at the man's humor, “Better out here than inside with all the normal people.” he said as he scanned the group. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Otto and Adam. Adam thought he felt the man's eyes brush across his skin before Michael stepped up to his old student, “Being normal is a thing of the past, Rett. don’t let your uniqueness bother you.” He gestured to Adam and winked, “Trust me, this guy is weirder than anything you are.”
Adam, taking that as his cue to introduce himself, stepped forward. “Hey there, I’m Adam Abrams.”
Everett shook his hand, “Nice to meet you, I'm Everett Garcia.”
As they introduced themselves, Adam came to a realization. Everett was a Forerunner. His hands were oddly firm, and upon closer inspection, his skin wasn't sunburned. It had changed colors just like Otto’s skin. However, rather than taking on a teal sheen like his giant friend, Everett’s skin had a ruddy red tone. Other than that, the only other alterations that Adam could see were two stalks that extended about six inches upward from his hairline. Had Adam not had the chance to see them up close, he might have assumed that they were horns, but luckily his close proximity allowed for him to see exactly what they were: two antennae that were encased in a red exoskeleton so dark, it almost appeared black.
While he was inspecting Everett, the other man was busy inspecting him, lingering on the sight of his tusks sticking up past Adam's upper lip. A sense of stiffness seemed to dissipate from around the man as he once again looked over Adam before inspecting Otto a couple steps away.
“I feel as if the three of us have much that we could talk about,” he said.
Before anyone could say much of anything though, Sylvia spoke up, “What did you do to us when we first walked out here? I felt your mana touch me.” Her voice was hard and of everyone, she was the only one that was on guard against the man.
Everett blinked in surprise, “You felt my mana?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did,” she shifted her staff in front of her, its point flaring with a pale red light, “Now, what did you do to us?”
Adam thought to himself, So the feeling I had before was mana? Interesting.
Michael stepped between Everett and Sylvia, pushing the staff down gently and looked between the two of them. “Sylvia, Rett is a friend. While I can understand being nervous, accusing him of anything nefarious might be a bit much." He waited for the glow of mana to dissipate before gesturing to some crumbling furniture, “Why don’t we all just have a seat and talk.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” said Henry. Rather than moving to the furniture, he plopped down where he was at and looked at Everett again, “I hear you have a Class! What is it? How does it work? Is that how you made those bombs earlier?”
The abrupt changes in the tone of the conversation gave Adam whiplash. However, the flood of questions from his friend helped him to focus on their purpose for finding the man: Class Selection.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Everett took a half step back away from everyone before he, and everyone else, also took seats on the ground. Eight sets of eyes bored into him, waiting for his responses.
“First,” he directed his gaze to Sylvia, “my apologies for upsetting you before.” A red hand scratched the back of his head, causing his antennae to twitch. “I used one of my Identify skills to scan all of you when you showed up. So far, aside from killing monsters, using that skill has helped me the most for leveling up. Identifying new people or creatures gives me a hint of experience,” he explained. “It's not as effective now that I have my class, but everything adds up right?”
Henry slapped his hands down on the ground and leaned towards the man, “You have the Identify skill?!” he quietly exclaimed, “What’s your pursuit?”
“I chose Path of the Seeker,” said Everett. “I haven’t met anyone else that is a Seeker yet though so maybe it's kinda rare?”
“I was offered Seeker, but it didn’t say anything about magic so I skipped it,” said Sylvia. Knowing what he had done seemed to placate her anger, leaving room for blatant curiosity. “What does it show you when you scan us?”
He sighed, clearly happy that she wasn’t so on edge with him anymore, “All I can see when I scan a creature is its name and level.” Everett's face, scrunched in concern, turned to Tang, “You know just as much about class selection as I do, why didn’t you just tell them?”
Tang gave Everett a look that screamed ‘seriously?’ before saying, “Hearing the information from you is way better than hearing it second hand from me.”
Adam nodded, “I would have been happy to hear it from anyone, but knowing that someone had already gone through it, I would much rather hear it from you.”
Based on some of his first comments upon meeting them, Adam was pretty sure that Everett stayed away from other people. With his new appearance, he probably felt like he was some kind of monster. Its one thing to have your body changed, it's something else to know that only a couple of people had similar changes to themselves. Adam tried to imagine what it would have been like if he had not been with his closest friends when he came back, and shuddered.
Poor guy.
“So, now that we got that settled, Rett, would you care to answer some of our questions now?” asked Michael.
“Start with mine from before,”said Henry, “What's your class?”
Everett took a deep breath and sighed. As he exhaled, the temperature around the group rose. Adam couldn’t help but be reminded of cruising with Dante in highschool. The feeling of sitting in a car with the heat on and the windows down so you had a cool breeze AND all encompassing warmth. The space around Everett warmed to a comfortable temperature while the breeze blowing in off the balcony kept it comfortable.
“Alright then,” he first looked to Henry, “I'll start by answering some of your questions. My class is called Hearth Shepherd. It’s kinda hard to describe it but the gist is that I am a shepherd. The system said that my class will grant me abilities that will allow me to protect, find and effectively move with groups of creatures. The ‘hearth’ part of the class is likely due to my Fire Affinity.”
“Wait, you have an affinity already?” asked Sylvia, interest painted across her face.
His relaxed face stiffened again, “Yes, I have an affinity. Does no one else have one?” His eyes went straight to Adam and Otto.
Otto shook his head, “No one in our group has awakened their affinity.”
Everett frowned, “I assumed that the two of you would have awakened affinities too.”
“Why? Because they also look different now?” asked Shawn from the side.
“Well yeah, since they are Forerunners as well, I thought they might have affinities too.”
A silence fell over the group as they allowed for Everett to get his thoughts in order.
“What about the explosions?” asked Sylvia.
The new question pulled the man back to the conversation with a small grin as he picked up one of the round cement balls, “I don’t really know how to use my affinity so, I just shoved fire affinity mana into these and threw them as hard as I could. Turns out, the added mana makes my ammunition unstable, causing them to explode when they hit stuff.”
Henry sighed, “So cool.”
Chuckles filled the air as they all laughed at Henry’s statement.
“Anyways, my class has some adjustments to it that seems to be due to my awakened affinity. Since my affinity was awakened by my Physique, I think it affected my class choices.”
That made sense to Adam. Having specialty skills would probably allow for specialty classes. Everett continued.
“I was offered three different classes when I went through the selection process, but it was pretty easy for me to choose this one, as Hearth Shepherd is a ‘rare’ class.”
Michael massaged his temples, “So classes have rarities? I should have listened to my grandson and played some video games before this. Does a higher rarity class make it better than a lower one?”
Everett shrugged, “Honestly Mike, I have no clue. While my class IS a rare one, I chose it because the other options didn’t seem like they would help me out right now. One was Harvester, a class that was built around gathering food from nature. It seemed really useful and honestly, I wouldn’t have minded choosing it. Its initial skill was a storage skill that preserved items that I personally harvested. The other was Watcher, a class that was focused exclusively on watching others. Both of them were labeled as ‘common’ classes. I ruled them out because they didn’t have any skills or abilities that were associated with fighting.” He shivered, “I was the first person in the building to notice the whiprats outside and I watched as they shredded some of the people here so I knew I needed some skills to help me fight monsters.”
Once again, Adam found himself agreeing with the choices that Everett had made. Given the available options, he too would have chosen Hearth Shepherd.
“The system gives a short run down on the way that classes are ranked when you start the process so the four of you should check that out when you start.” He looked between Adam, Michael, Henry and Sylvia.
Adam turned to Otto, surprised, “Wait, are you not level five yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” he replied, disappointment etched across his brow.
Sensing Otto's disappointment, Everett continued with his information. “Once you start the Class Selection process, the system will give you a basic description of how the process works. The system offers you your class options by materializing chests that represent each of the classes you are offered. Each of the chests has the class name etched into the locking mechanism and a description of the class can be found in an associated system window. Additionally, the rarity of the class is marked by the color that the chest emits. Oh, and lastly, you gain another stat that is associated with your chosen class.”
When he stopped talking, Henry just looked at him, “You know, you’re really good at describing stuff so that it's easy to understand. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a ton of questions, but that was smooth.”
“I was technically in school to be a teacher so I'll take that as a compliment.”
He gestured to everyone and said, “I got nothing else that's going to be helpful, so why don’t you guys choose your classes?”
Adam, Henry, Michael and Sylvia exchanged excited looks.
“Let's give them a bit of space,” said Tang as he ushered everyone but them to the doorway. With the five others moved to the doorway to the auditorium, Adam, Henry, Michael and Sylvia spread out across the small space.
“Alright, let's start all together,” prompted Michael.
Adam and the others pulled up the system message prompting them to start the Class Selection process.
Michael counted down from three and they all willed to start the process at the same time.
An energy seemed to fill the space around them as the air before each of them ripped open, depositing a series of glowing chests before them.
Three chests each thumped to the ground before Michael and Sylvia, while two fell before Adam and Henry.
A system message flared to life before them all.
While white light was the most common light emitting from the chests, there was a blue chest in front of Michael and a green chest before Henry and Sylvia.
Getting a high rarity class was something that should have caused them all to jump for joy. Two of them had the chance to select an Uncommon class and Michael could even select a Rare class like Everett!
However, there was something else that had left them all confused.
Henry broke the silence when he asked, “What does that mean? It's not on the list of options for me.”
Adam didn’t know what to say. Two chests had landed in front of him, one was barely bigger than a shoebox that emitted white light. The other was a chest the size of a small dresser that dwarfed the common class chest beside it.
And this one was glowing with a bright pink light.
What the hell does this mean?
