I woke mid-morning the next day. The three remaining gemstones had somehow lodged themselves in various parts of my body. I had to dig them out and rub out the resulting dents in my skin.

The staff was still on my bed, tightly gripped in my left hand. It wasn’t a dream, I had definitely succeeded. Learning to enchant felt like a game to me, which when I considered the feeling more was an out of place thought: to me the entire world was a game. Still, this was like a game within a game. It became clear to me now though, enchanting wasn’t something I could just brute force my way through.

The most basic of enchantments was already so difficult to learn. Every added gemstone made it harder and harder. Melding five or six together on an item and then imbuing them sounded like a nightmare. The cost of failure skyrocketed as well.

Maybe I should at least see what my class options are? I had truly thought that I would give up on leveling. My eyes had been opened these past two weeks though.

With every incremental success in enchanting I felt a sense of accomplishment. But that brief happiness was different to my overall discouraged state of mind. It wasn’t the same. My body couldn’t lie to me. It still desired to go further, to grow stronger, but my mind didn’t want anything to do with it.

Well… it wouldn’t hurt to class change. It should make learning enchanting a bit easier…This idea was an easy way for me to begin to think again about levelling. Something to push me a bit further away from apathy. And my thinking that a class skill would help with my new interest wasn’t exactly wrong.

More MP meant more attempts. There were also the natural skills I would learn from gaining a new class. It couldn’t hurt me in any way at all. For the first time in days, I left the inn for the Adventurers’ Hall, as I knew nothing about class advancement.

“You want to know where to change classes?” asked a clerk.

“Yes please.”

“Name, level, class please.”

“Joseph, thirty, Mage.”

“It’s too early for you to be changing classes…” he said. Would he believe me if I told him I was ready now? That I had the stats of someone of a much higher level? I didn’t know, but it seemed a class change was a bigger deal than I was expecting.

I was stumped on how to respond, so he continued talking. “In order to change your class you have to register for an appointment. You’ll be brought to the class changing stone and once there you can change class.”

“Does it cost anything?”

“It doesn’t cost anything.”

“Can you allocate me a time slot?”

“I’ll warn you now. This isn’t a joke. If you’re thinking of taking up a slot just to have a peek out of curiosity, it won’t end well.”

“I’m not.”

“How are you not? You’re level thirty, you just said so yourself.”

“That’s right, I’m level thirty.”

“Well, no one has ever changed classes below level thirty-five, let alone thirty.” He seemed reluctant to even humor me. “The process is dangerous. If you don’t have the requisite attributes, it can even be lethal.’

“If I’m unable to cope, I’ll shoulder the consequences.”

He gave me a long look, let out a snort and then filled in my name. “Next slot is in two hours.”

I decided to wait in the lobby and found a seat off to the side. The clerk stole random glances at me the entire time. I guessed he was expecting me to run off at any moment.

When the two hours were up he came to get me in the company of two guards. “Are the guards necessary?” I asked. It felt like they were present at the clerk’s special request. Like he was sure I was lying and up to no good.

He walked me through the front desk area and through a room filled with paper work and files. Every shelf and crevice was completely filled to the brim with documents. We had no choice but to walk single file through stacks of boxes.

Beyond the storage room were little office sections where clerks at their desks were filling out information. It shouldn’t have been any surprise to me. Obviously, an enterprise like the Adventurers’ Hall, that kept track of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Adventurers, had to have a mind-boggling number of employees.

The entire room was full of small desks in spaces tighter than a cubicle. Hundreds of employees had their heads down, they were digging through documents and jotting down information. The manpower required to record and update all this information was impressive.

On the far side of the office room was a hallway with many doors on each side that led to who knew where. None of them were our destination. We kept walking along the hallway, ignoring them all until coming upon a double door that was chained solidly shut.

Nor was this a typical lock: it was magical. The clerk cast some form of spell and the chain unwound, allowing us access. Inside was a modestly sized room. The very center had a platform, and on the platform was a stone raised off the ground.

The stone was on its own little peninsula. Only one person could walk up to it and stand on the platform at a time. There was an outer circle for spectators to watch if they pleased. I felt the nudge of guards from behind, stepped into the room with them right behind me, and the door closed.

The stone wasn’t anything too grand. It was the size of a bowling ball, definitely something that could be picked up and hauled off. Was that what the guards were for?

In the clerk’s eyes I was up to no good. If he suspected my goal was to steal the class changing stone… then the guards made sense. That or he wanted to leave me no way from the challenge I said I was ready for.

“Alright, go ahead and put your hand on the stone. You’ll receive a prompt to change your class.”

“Is there anything I should expect?”

“Typically you’ll have two or three class change options. It will be up to you to decide which you take.”

I nodded in understanding and started to walk forward. Arriving at the center of the room, I reached out my hand and placed it on the stone. It was extremely cold to the touch. The stone was so cold that it should have lowered the temperature in the whole room, but perhaps it was locked in its own little space.

There was a brief moment where nothing happened, and then I received a prompt.

Class options: Soul Harvester.

There was only one class available for me to choose from, I was stumped. Where was my wizard option, or my sorcerer option? Soul Harvester?

I stood there in silence for several moments. There was no description of the class at all. I didn’t even know what the class did.

“What’s the matter?” the clerk asked from behind me. His voice had a bit of a snarky tone to it.

“Didn’t you say there should be at least two options here?” I asked.

“The reason why you have no options is because you aren’t read—” I could hear a clink of armor as the guards took several steps towards me.

“No, there’s just a single option.”

“Then what’s the issue? Pick it.”

“Well… there’s no information on what the class is or does.”

From the contempt in his voice, I could tell the clerk didn’t believe me, but he humored me anyway. “There’s never been a case where holding off on your class change alters the outcome for future choices. You get what you get the first time, or the last time.”

That was all I needed to hear. I presumed my new class had to be a Soul Harvester, whatever that did.

“Alright, get him off the platform.” The clerk suddenly said behind me and the guards came closer. It was at that moment I chose my class.

The stone resting beneath my palm suddenly grew incredibly hot. It glowed like a miniature sun and rays escaped between the webs of my fingers. The guards stopped in their place and even the clerk seemed stupefied.

Congratulations! You have become a Soul Harvester. Your HP and MP values have been adjusted accordingly.

You have learned the skill Harvest Soul.

You have learned the skill Patient Reaper.

You have learned the skill Mana Scythe.

Three new skills? That was a pleasant surprise. Not to mention the three of them sounded absolutely giga-badass. I opened my stats and checked to see my new HP and MP values.

Current EXP: 84550/99000 LEVEL: 30 Soul Harvester Formidable

HP: 1652/1652 MP: 582/582

STR: 27

AGI: 21

DEX: 35 +5

VIT: 30 +5

INT: 54 +24

Available: 0

What in the actual fuck? I had lost 500 HP and 200 MP. What kind of shitty scam was this? I had become WEAKER? I was so engrossed with studying my character sheet that it took me a while to notice the shocked look on the clerk’s face behind me.

I started to read my new skills.

Harvest Soul: Killing an enemy allows you to harvest their soul. Souls grant you a permanent increase in HP and MP. You must deal significant damage to the enemy in order to harvest their soul.

Interesting, I guessed this was why my HP and MP had gone down instead of up. Did this mean I had infinite scaling? The stipulation on the skill was obviously there to prevent power levelling or parties from carrying me. How much of the damage did I need to do to harvest a soul?

Mana Scythe: Spend a percentage of your mana to form a scythe of mana. Spending more mana produces a stronger and more pronounced blade. Enemies slain by Mana Scythe replenish a small amount of mana.

Was this a scythe that I could send out or something I applied to my weapon? I would have to find out in actual battle. I checked the last skill I received.

Patient Reaper: Mark a target for death—applies a curse that drains a percentage of your target’s health every second. A smaller portion is granted to you in the form of life.

“E-e-excuse me.”

I turned around to see the clerk looking at me meekly, “Yeah?”

“You said you were only level thirty…”

“I am level thirty.” His actions were starting to get annoying so I simply added him to a party to let him see for himself.

“Soul…Harvester?” He seemed completely stumped.

“Is this enough? I can go now right?”

He couldn’t find the words and simply nodded his head up and down before ungrouping.

On our way out, the guards kept a respectful distance. And the clerk, apologizing first, knocked at one of the rooms we had passed and then went inside at the curt command to enter. There was some muttered conversation and I could just about hear fragments of it: ‘managed to change class at level thirty… unknown… Soul Harvester…’