I had been studying magic for a little bit less than 5 years by this point, which is not a terribly long time compared to many others, but perhaps having that otherworldly perspective is what allowed me to get past the cognitive biases associated with having been born in a world where people believe that lizardfolk are at these set strengths, and goblins are at these set strengths, and humans are dynamic, and that's just how it is.

Is that why I am possibly the only person, or perhaps just one among a relatively small number, who would give serious consideration to these thoughts when a native of this world would simply dismiss those hypotheses as being stupid, or insignificant, or simply irrelevant?

The why of it probably does not matter too much: But if these hypotheses have any truth to them, they might reflect some interesting ramifications. For instance, why are the Lizardfolk warrior and shaman classes inherently weak? Is it possible that they really do draw on their ancestors as a power source, and that having such a small pool for power is the reason that the limitations are so quickly felt? Listen, I am not trying to suggest that your grandpa was weak, I am sure he was an amazing warrior or shaman or whatever, but do you really think he would compare favorably to the literal god of war powering that priests’ spells?

If correct, does this template hold true for the entire class system? Are all warriors and fighters and barbarians and so on simply a medium through which some other magical forces are unwittingly channeled? Is the level 20 limit real, and if not, what might the bottleneck for progressing beyond level 20 be? Is any form of progression possible?

And with those and many other questions in mind, and with my hypotheses firmly in hand, I continued to persist in failing to unlock a special class. Not yet. I can't pick a class yet. Not until I had a chance to do some practical experimentation with my hypotheses. Class unlocks generally require a combination of both theoretical knowledge and some form of application. If all else fails I will either go priest or mage or both, but I see no reason to constrain myself by the traditional roles of my new family. Especially since I know those roles require trading off my future in exchange for a relatively small temporary advantage.

It did bother me, being the weakest person in my age group. It bothered me that I would be mocked for using unnecessarily complex verbiage, for bringing up funny sounding ideas and questions, that I was abysmally bad at weapon use due to my attribute allocation and having failed to preselect an appropriate racial class with which to wield them, that I was so weak I would pass out after only one strike from an angry clutch mate, and so on.

Racial classes are an exception to the rule of having to wait until you were an adult to select them, and I'd been paying for my lack of selection for a very long time. I have been mocked and bullied relentlessly for years, because by lizard folk standards, I am a complete and utter failure. I am not strong at all.

I did not wait until I was nearing middle age to be weak in this life, I started off and persisted in my weakness practically from the moment I was born. Perhaps that is why I found the idea of having to kneel and beg the way that priests do for even the most rudimentary of powers to be distasteful. I would prefer to be a mage in charge of my own power and destiny if it comes down to it, it is just that the ability to heal sounds extremely tempting in a world where monsters are real. It still feels surreal that I am one of them. But I do not intend to be a weakling who is merely waiting for their turn to get destroyed by the significantly more terrifying humans, not forever, and the keys to survivability are, I think, versatility and adaptability, both of which require far greater intelligence and wisdom than Lizardfolk will typically possess.

Hence my goal. If I can come up with a way to get the best of all the magics, a medium which can accept them all, and a non-class reliant release methodology, I would be invincible! Hopefully. But I need to get a class to even start the process, and thus far I am not satisfied with the classes I have found. They are amazing, far beyond the bounds of what I would have been able to consider back on earth. But Mental Me spoke, and he saith unto me, “Be not a Baker!”

I might be stretching his intent a little bit, but considering that he is the only reason that I am not living through the second worst form of eternal torture I could imagine and am instead only having to worry about getting bullied around and beat up, oh and of course there’s the whole “he’s clearly some sort of god level being” thing, I feel that I should heed his advice to the best of my ability, even if it means going a little bit beyond what a normal person might consider reasonable. Like choosing attributes that will make a better future available to me even if it means struggling in the early years, so be it. My class choice will be very important. If I must settle on mage or priest, I will. But not until after I have exhausted the possibility of finding something that I think would be better.

And so it was that my 10th birthday finally arrived, my hypothesis still having failed to manifest a new class option. My clutch mates and I were sent out to hunt in celebration of our newly achieved adulthood. If we were still on earth, I don’t think I’d agree with 10 years old being the age of adulthood. Could you imagine what kind of laws you could con a bunch of 10-year-olds into voting for? But this isn’t earth. This is a humid, hot swamp, east of Diamond Lake.

We were each provisioned with a spear and a shield, and I chose to bring a sling with some smooth rocks since I know I am completely useless anyhow. As we leave the lizardfolk village of Metro (I’m not sure if this was intended to be ironic or if the founding folk merely liked the sound of the word), I gave a glance back at the hulking brutes guarding the crude wooden fence that surrounded the village. They glared back at me. I suspect they may be hoping I don’t return.

The criteria which must be met is that we must prove our fitness by returning with one animal each. Although you are sent as a group, the animal you return with is considered to be a direct reflection on your capabilities and helps to establish your initial social standing. For that reason, even though we only need to return with a snake or similarly innocuous creature, it is common for a group of clutch mates to leave for their first hunt and never return, as they seek out and find something that is simply too strong for them tackle, even working together, but which they attempt to challenge anyhow.

Since it is my 10th birthday, my final attributes have unlocked, allowing me to finish bringing up my intelligence and toughness to my racial maximum. Every year, those have been my priority; intelligence first, then toughness, with wisdom and willpower getting an approximately equal split when I had already reached the current maximum allowable for my race and my age in the categories I considered most important, and agility only receiving a boost when I was at my maximums for all of my mental attributes, which has only happened once. Even now I feel clumsy and slow compared to when I was a human, even compared to the old man version of myself, but with the system in play, that extra agility would have limited value for me.

After assigning attributes they take effect immediately. The change is, frankly, rather unimpressive to experience. I know I will be just a little bit smarter now since I was able to go from a 15 intelligence to a 16 which is the highest I can take it, and I'm a little tougher now too, with my toughness going from 19 to 20 which is the highest it can go, and I put the rest of the points into Willpower and Wisdom bringing me up to a cool 13 on both; but despite the changes being absolutely massive, when upgrading attributes I never really seem to feel anything overt. Maybe it's because I never pick the one with the most obvious of impact, strength. I imagine that if I did I would probably feel super charged or something, but I'm sticking true to my plan and staying the course on surviving more intelligently.

At current, my status looks like this:

Name:

Braza

Class:

Adult, No Class

Level:

0

Race:

Lizardfolk

Derived Attributes:

Defense:

Health:

Attack:

2

6

0

Primary Attributes:

Strength:

Agility:

Toughness:

Intelligence:

Wisdom:

Willpower:

8

10

20

16

13

13

Languages:

Common

Draconic

Goblin

Giant

Orc

Special Qualities:

Cold Blooded

Night Vision

Claw

Bite

Natural Armor

Exceptional Lungs

Natural Swimmer

Exceptional Balance

Skills:

LOCKED

When I say I’m useless, although it has a lot of truth to it, it's also somewhat tongue in cheek, I’m not *entirely* useless. To give you what I can for perspective on these attributes, I've been told that the "average" for a human is between 8 and 12 for any given attribute. I take that with a grain of salt though, because I'm also told that the average human fighter will have a strength of around 14. Would it really make sense that this was the "average" when 50% of a population base was so far from the alleged mean? I could be wrong, maybe it's common for a human to have a 6 strength, but I doubt it. Even with an 8 I often find it difficult to perform some pretty common or easy tasks, like climbing a tree or carrying a large sack of food. With a 6 I imagine a person would be barely functional.

Regardless, it's a nice upgrade. I should be able to stay conscious for a single attacked some of the time, as long as I only take a small amount of the damage or generally just get lucky. Prior to this upgrade I only had 5 health, and up to now almost anyone would be able to knock me out with one claw, even Krielziss would usually knock me out in one hit, and she's the only one of my clutch mates that would occasionally fall a little bit shy of that target, so hopefully this helps me more than reaching maturity will have helped them. Whether we were actually born on the same day or not, we are clutch mates, and as far as the tribe is concerned, or the system for that matter, we are considered to have the same birthday. I got a nice boost, but so did they.

I’m also able to cause a small amount of harm via weaponry or even my claws, but my coordination is lackluster in this body and it's made worse by the system, so I tend to struggle to connect whether using weapon or claw, and when I do hit I’ll rarely do more than cause a bit of scuffing on the armor or carapace or whatever it is that I managed to connect with, which is why I lean towards using the sling.

A sling is not a good weapon mind you, it's complete garbage even in a world where fists don't fell trees. But when your strength score is low, you are better off leaning into mechanical advantages, like the centrifugal force you can exert from a sling. Obviously things like crossbows would be a major upgrade, but those aren't readily accessible here, so a sling is what I'm left with.

On earth a good sling throw would be more than enough to kill someone outright if it caught them directly in the head, which is admittedly not very easy to do. Here? Well, it still won’t hit hard compared to what everyone else is doing, but it can at least bloody someone up a bit, which is quite a lot better than I can usually accomplish with my claws, teeth, or spear.

We travel through the day, my 4 clutch mates and I. Roark is our de facto leader. He is very stupid. He is also petty and vengeful and a complete ass of a lizard, but he is strong, and in Lizardfolk society strength is the only metric that matters. Beside him are his 2 lackeys who follow him everywhere. They are also strong, only falling shy of Roarks own strength by a small margin. Their names are Slathric and Drosk, but I usually think of them as minion 1 and minion 2, or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And finally, there’s Krielziss. She’s much stronger than I am, everyone is, but she is still the second weakest person on this expedition. Her personality? Honestly it’s not a particularly bad one, she's easy to get along with since she generally leaves me alone, but her mentality is nonetheless very much in line with the lizard folk norms. Or at least that’s the opinion that I had.

It was Roark who broke the silence first. “Hey, Braza. What do you plan to kill?”

“I know full well that I’m not qualified for better than small game. I’m just planning to hang back and try not to get in your way. I can grab a rabbit or snake or something on the way back.” I replied.

“Hah! I told you this coward would wimp out before he started!” decried Krielziss.

At this point Slathric interjected “He’s with the shamans. He will not be the same strong as us, but he may become stronger than all of us except Roark. You should mind what you say. He is good at remembering things.”

Roark hissed in the affirmative and Krielziss, shocked, snapped her mouth which had previously been half open in mockery shut in consternation.

Honestly, I was just as shocked as Krielziss was by that exchange. Probably more than her. Roark and posse were never ones to defend me, in fact they would usually be the first ones to launch into a verbal tirade cursing or mocking my weakness. They'd be more prone to physical violence too, if it weren't so inconvenient due to my inability to stay conscious after being struck. Don't get me wrong they've caused many a broken bone, but the older we've gotten the less often that happens. Apparently, though I am light compared to a normal lizardfolk, carrying me around is not as much fun as it could be.

Roark very much believes in survival of the fittest, and as far as I was aware his minions were the same way. By contrast, while Krielziss never seemed to have much in terms of personality, she would do what she was expected to do, up to and including offering Roark her first mating rights when she becomes ready to lay her own eggs. She had never been particularly nice to me, but she had never been uncommonly cruel either. I simply wasn’t worth paying attention to, which was more than enough for me to have maintained a favorable opinion of her. Seeing Slathric come to my defense means that Roark had told them to leave me alone, and I think I just heard the reasoning he provided, too. Well, no reason to turn my nose up at an olive branch.

“So what about you, Roark, what do you plan to kill?” I ask.

“Whatever is out here is my prey. If nothing is out here, perhaps I will end up with a rabbit too.” He replies, cracking his mouth open to show that he was telling a joke.

Krielziss picking on me? Roark, joking? With me? The day started off disappointing since I was hoping to have a cool class in time for this hunt, but I'm not disappointed anymore. Things took a turn, and now I'm just not sure what to make of the situation. This is turning into a really weird day.