The Doom Raider contingent ended up being Laurence himself, Bradley, and Xander. Tom Arlin had volunteered, but was unanimously voted down. This was going to be a dangerous run and he was still a minor.

The Frires provided four of their own, nearly half their guild. Frire Duck, who Laurence had already met; Jeff Harrison, a level 8 ranger-fighter; 'Podge' whose real name was Mike Rodger, a level 9 fighter; and Eric Steele, also a level 9 fighter, but the best equipped out of the group.

For his own team, Bradley had reached level 6 and Xander was level 7, both fighters.

That made them a bit fighter-heavy, but with a solid frontline and Laurence and Jeff to deal ranged damage he figured they should be fine.

Laurence shook his head as he thought back to when they'd all thought Ranger and Fighter were the only options; the heated debates over single class vs dual class, the rampant speculation about what stat points were and how to use them, or if they would be automatically applied somewhere...

"Anyone here know how to use stat points?"

Xander and Bradley raised their hands as expected. The Doom Raiders were good about sharing information, and once they'd gone through Levi's tutorial it would have disseminated quickly.

The Frire contingent grumbled and glared, clearly frustrated to be one-upped by their longtime rivals.

"It's a pretty simple process, but unintuitive at first until you get used to it. First, bring up your stat sheet and focus on the area where it says you have unused stat points. Now, while remaining focused on the ‘unused stats’ area, you need to think about the color blue shifting to a deep black. Keep thinking that until you feel a jolt."

Confusion, but after a moment one of the Frires - Jeff - stiffened and stared at Laurence with wide eyes. "How in the world did you ever figure that out?"

Laurence smiled briefly. "I can't take the credit for it, someone else showed me too. Now, quickly, you need to picture that black turning to green. Not too fast, make sure you're envisioning the whole shift."

Jeff nodded, brow furrowed in concentration. Then he relaxed, letting out a quick surprised laugh. "It works! Oh, wow, that is so weird."

"It'll get more natural the more you practice it," Laurence assured them. "By now, I hardly even have to think to bring it up, it'll become second nature. For ability points, it works the same way but you'll want to use red to black to gold."

"That doesn't make any sense, though?" Steele frowned. "Why would it be a color thing?" But Laurence could see he was focusing off hazily, and he'd bet anything Steele was bringing up the assignment menus even as he spoke.

"The ways of the system are mysterious. Color is mostly for personal upgrades. When you get to class evolutions, there'll be an immediate prompt like for levels, but if you want to use a previously unlocked one it'll require an orange to white fade, then calculating the cube root of 343."

As he walked them all through navigating the basics of the system, he couldn't help but wonder at the alien logic underlying its operation.He really wanted to meet this 'Theo' Levi had mentioned. If he was the foremost expert on system use, then he and Laurence should be working together.

"Now, if you want to find the mage spells you'll need to go to the center bottom of the main screen and focus there with curiosity or uncertainty, and it should bring up the help menu. Before you start assigning things, remember that your regens will be closely linked to your stat choices, so even if you don't think you need much stamina, putting a few points into it will dramatically reduce the time required to regenerate what you do have. In fact..."

He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a couple copies of their brochure. He passed one to Bradley and Xander, the other to the Frires. "This should explain the basics. Also, before you assign your ability points, I’d appreciate it if you could let me know what your options are. We think they’re the same for everyone, but our sample size is too small to be certain."

The single class options were, as expected, identical. The interesting part came with Jeff’s ability options, as he had Ranger as his main class and Fighter as his subclass. Laurence had expected he would have a mix of both Ranger and Fighter abilities to choose from, but he hadn’t anticipated the hybrid ability options.

“There’s an option to use my sword as an arrow and then yank it back to me, and one that increases the strength of all mana weaponry I utilize.”

Laurence started taking notes as fast as he could write. If there were hybrid abilities for all class combinations, this opened up a whole new field of study.

“We should have as many people cross-class as possible. We should get at least a fighter-medic and fighter-mage, anyone want to learn some new skills?”

The next several hours were spent answering questions, debating class choices, and generally furthering the understanding of his little team. It would delay their quest by a little, but not by as much as if he took unprepared people into a higher level dungeon.

In the end, Podge and Xander agreed to subclass into Mage, while Frire Duck and Bradley would spec into Medic. (Once the Frires saw the Doom Raiders taking special secondary classes, they were quick to follow suit so as not to be left behind.) Steele wanted to try for scout in hopes of getting an assassin hybrid build.

As for Laurence himself… for the sake of experimentation, he should take a subclass, but he couldn’t quite persuade himself to break his pure mage build, regardless of the research potential.

For now, he abstained from deciding either way. It wouldn’t matter until he had another level to assign.

"Now, who's up for a serious challenge?"

They looked at one another, but all nodded agreement.

"Good. Because this is going to take a bit of time and effort to set up. First, there's a dungeon we need to visit. And I want to be clear: This is going to be extremely dangerous. There's every possibility that we could all die if anyone slips up or if we're not at our absolute best. Understand?"

"If you can handle it, we can handle it."

Laurence wasn’t sure he could handle it, but he couldn’t very well admit it when he was supposed to be the leader.

“How long will this little trip of yours take?” asked Steele.

"It'll be about five days, I think.”

Nods, mutters, and general assent.

"Good. We're going north a bit to Crestline, Ohio. That’s where the dungeon I plan for us to level is. Then we’ll head east to catch Charles before he gets far.”