Nick stared at the list in wonder, the options were almost overwhelming. He needed to refine them, so he thought about filtering them somehow. Much to his surprise a filter system appeared above the list. He checked a little box next to ‘Combat Classes’ and the list changed, next he set it to ‘Sort from most to least popular’ and lo and behold, the list changed again.

The most popular combat classes were Warrior, then Scout, then Knight. Nick looked through the options at the top of the list but nothing was really jumping out to him. He really should have talked to someone about the classes before he got here, any information would have been awesome. Well, more information than provided by the little flavour text each class had.

Class: Warrior

A fighter who knows how to take a hit and strike out hard.

Are you sure?

Yeah he was sure he didn’t want that. The basic flavour text just didn’t intrigue him in the slightest. He flicked through the top classes and they were cool but didn’t really catch his eye.

Class: Scout

An agile and observant fighter who is proficient with ranged weapons.

Class: Knight

A fighter with integrity whose armour holds strong against blows.

Nick began to pick up a pattern. From what he knew about Scout it had a passive skill that boosted agility and perception. The flavour text seemed to directly convey that in agile and observant, so maybe the text was related to the skills of the class? Like with Knight, if it came with a skill that buffed armour he could link it to Logan. Logan’s armour seemed to be far sturdier than everyone else's, while looking the same quality. Now he didn’t know if Logan was actually a Knight, but it was certainly something to work with. Nick then found a class that was just called Tank.

A fighter who can take heavy punishment and return it back to their attacker.

Now that definitely sounded like Logan. Nick had seen the man absolutely flatten some of the ghouls with his blows. Nick just kept scrolling, but there wasn’t anything leaping out at him. There was another pattern that Nick noticed though. Classes that seemed more general like Warrior or Scout tended to be more popular than similar sounding classes that were more specific like Swordsman or Archer. Was that to do with gear availability? Was there something that made the general classes better than the others? He could understand in cases like Tank and Defender. Being stuck as just a defender didn’t sound like a very fun time at all. A more general Tank seemed like a safer option.

Nick made it quite far down the list before he found something that drew him in. Brawler.

A rough unarmed fighter whose words strike just as deep as their blows.

Now that sounded good to Nick. While he had considered taking a class with weapons, deep down he knew that he wanted to play to his strengths. He was a trained boxer, that was his advantage over others here. It just didn’t feel right to give up on it. Then he found the list changing with his thoughts. Now the classes were unarmed focused. Boxer, Grappler, Martial Artist. They all sounded very cool to him and he found himself getting excited by all the options. He then realised that the energy inside him was reacting to the classes as well. It would burn intensely as he considered some of the classes and subsided on others.

Nick found himself drawn to Brawler again, and the energy agreed with him. It burned more intensely than with any of the other classes. It was also one of the more general classes, which seemed like a better choice in the public consensus. Wait, was it public consensus? What was deciding what made a class popular? Nick had assumed that it meant the amount of times the class was chosen but did that make sense? Was there a system keeping track of these things? Nick decided to not think too hard about it, he really wasn’t in a position to find any meaningful answers right now.

Class: Brawler (Level 2)

A rough unarmed fighter whose words strike just as deep as their blows.

Are you sure?

Nick knew he probably should have talked this over with at least one other reasonable person. He couldn’t even get a grasp of what potential skills came from the class, would his words physically hurt people? He didn’t care though, it just sounded cool.

Brawler -

Skill 1 - Brawlers Constitution - Passive

During a fight, gain durability based on strength. After a fight, gain recovery based on endurance and injury severity.

Skill 2 - Deep Blows - Passive

Your unarmed strikes penetrate your opponent, dealing internal damage.

Skill 3 - Jeer - Active

Your next words debuff all opponents that hear you. Debuff to all attributes.

Skil 4 - Punishing Blows - Passive

The bigger your combination of blows, the more damage each consecutive hit does.

Oh my. There was absolutely no regret at all. Nick shuddered as he felt something change in his body. He quickly focused on the energy inside him to enter the internal focused mindstate and tried to look for what was happening. It took a second but he finally noticed something was off. It was another layer to this ethereal space inside him, one that now felt very full. He watched as a little trickle of energy emerged from a rectangular shape inside this space. He suddenly panicked and was pulled from the state. What the hell was that shape? He tried to refocus internally but his mind was racing. He felt like he’d stumbled onto something big.

He finally managed to clear his head and focus. He realised that there were two of those shapes inside him, where he was almost certain one of them was new. He wasn’t sure about the other, he watched the energy inside him grow larger. It trickled from the new shape, and then combined with his existing energy which started to give him an idea.

The shapes were his classes, or they were at least related to his classes in a tangible way. Gareth had referred to his energy as the start of an aura, which Nick knew came from an evolved class. Whatever had happened to him while Reggie had been crushing him must have triggered his own aura early. Nick couldn’t project his aura like Maddy had described but he had managed to bring the energy out into the external world, even if just as a response. Nick wasn’t 100% sure but he certainly felt like he was onto something here.

From the way that Gareth had talked about it, whatever was going on with him wasn’t common. It was so unusual that Gareth assumed he’d found a piece of gear or had a skill that let him do it. Nick wasn’t sure what sort of benefits he could get from his breakthroughs but they’d already saved his body from being pulverised and helped him get a class early. Whatever he was doing it was working and he wasn’t going to stop.

Nick then focused on his class. Particularly on the skills, he’d gotten three passive skills and one active. They all sounded awesome to him. The passives would let him deal actual damage to his opponents without having to get his hands on a weapon. The other passive would make him more durable and even give him a form of self heal, which was absolutely amazing. While he wasn’t sure how strong of an effect either would have, it was infinitely better than not having one at all. The active skill was a very interesting one to him, he could debuff his enemies by speaking to them? Now that was something he was just dying to try. He tried activating the skill immediately but nothing happened. It must have been like Hasty Escape, there needed to be a trigger event or something.

Nick had a pretty good idea of what the trigger event would be and luckily he was itching for a fight. He had a whole bunch of skills that were begging to be tested out. Nick couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. It was time to engage in a little violent tomfoolery.

Nick left the strange hallway and activated his skill, focusing on the idea of a challenge room. He felt the skill activate a little differently than usual, like it was searching for something particular, unlike the wide scale sweep it usually did. Oh yeah, it’s coming together now. Nick now knew he had to try and use his skills in different ways to level them quicker, and oh boy he was certainly going to give it a try.

The skill came back with nothing but Nick was determined. He started walking off in a random direction and just kept activating the skill. His map would let him find his way back eventually. After walking for a while and finding nothing Nick identified two major problems in his plan. Firstly, he had absolutely no idea what the time was. Secondly, he really needed to use the toilet. His hunger and thirst concerns were always quickly satisfied by an oven or cupboard. While he didn’t particularly like junk food or soft drinks, he didn’t bring any alternatives.

Nick didn’t really have a clue how long he’d been down here on the 71st floor, surely only a few hours at most? He’d just head back as he started to feel tired, that would probably line up alright. He decided to try and get his skill to focus on finding two things in particular for him, a toilet and a challenge room. He really didn’t want to have to pee on the carpet like some sort of untrained dog. That would certainly piss off the cleaners around here. Nick grumbled at his own pun, he was better than such cheap comedy!

Nick kept walking for what he felt was a few minutes, he was attempting to keep track now, before his skill finally found something. Focusing on what it was, it didn’t look like a door and Nick quickly broke into a jog. Nick practically kicked down the door and was incredibly relieved to find a neat little bathroom, just like any other you’d find in a hotel. It didn’t have any urinals so Nick charged into a stall and got to work.

He let out a heavy sigh of relief as he did his business, it was crazy how good the simple things in life could feel when you were desperate. Nick’s moment of paradise was interrupted by the sound of a door opening. There was a shuffling of very heavy sounding feet and the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck stood on end. Nick’s stream came to an end and he stood there frozen in shock, johnson still in hand. There shouldn’t be anyone else out this deep into the floor. He hadn’t seen another person in hours.

The feet shuffled through the small room and then stopped. He heard the sound of plastic rattling and papers being ruffled. Then the click of something closing before the feet began to shuffle away again. The heavy footsteps headed back out and Nick heard the door close.

He cautiously pulled his fly up, flushed the toilet and poked his head out of the stall. He hadn’t even closed the door in his rush, his back had been completely exposed to who, or whatever had come into the room. Nick looked around the room for anything different and quickly identified what had been making those sounds. The paper towel dispenser had been refilled.

“Well that was nice of them.” Nick joked out loud.

He then washed his hands, as any responsible person should, and left the bathroom. In the room he’d run through to get to the bathroom he encountered whatever had caught him with his pants down. A cleaner in a blue uniform, with legs like an elephant’s. Nick was only a few metres from it, them? Whatever the heck they/it was, they were unsettling to look at. The cleaner was slowly pushing it’s cart towards a door, their footsteps heavily reverberating through the floor. This cleaner was quite the heavy lad it seemed.

Nick decided to give them an incredibly wide berth and went through the door opposite to the direction the cleaner was heading. It meant he was back tracking a bit, but there was plenty of hotel for him to explore, well out of the way of the creepy staff.

After nervously jogging for a while his skill finally gave him something to work with, and this time it did feel like a door. Nick’s pace quickly rose and he found the door in no time. It wasn’t one of the special ones, just a plain old door. Nick listened for a moment, a trick he picked up from Joshua. He heard heavy footsteps and grinned. It meant that the monster inside was probably a Brute, like the demon rhino thing or the giant gareth had made him fight.

Joshua had given him the tip before they went into the wave survival challenge room. If you listened carefully you could usually hear the sounds of what monsters would be in the room, even if when you opened the door nothing had spawned yet. The spider things had spawned when he had declared himself ready for round one, the giant had just been standing in the room. Apparently the rooms had different ways of going about their business.

None of that mattered to Nick right now. Any concerns like: should I be fighting things alone? What if I’m injured and can't make it back? Or, what if I die? Were all thrown to the wind as Nick flung open the door and charged in.

Nick really needed his violent tomfoolery right now.