Chapter 14: Chapter 14: Earning a Class

I knelt in front of the pool of nectar, stabbing at any roots that strayed too close while simultaneously throwing up. It was an interesting feat of coordination, especially given how badly my hand was shaking. Or maybe I was staying still, and it was the room that was vibrating? It was hard to tell through my fever addled brain.

I was trying to let whatever disease infested the spider corpses run its course. It seemed to have plateaued now, so hopefully would die down before long, and it was well worth it for the levels; I'd had three already. I'd also got one more of makeshift crafter from repairing my armour, and integrating a half dozen spider claws into it, which I managed to finish before the disease symptoms had started kicking in. Now my feet had claws.

Now I just needed to hold on until my fever broke and I stopped shaking, and I could begin the final item on my to-do list for this reset; learn a second scouting skill. Possibly. The logic was... unsound. The scout class description said it covered perception skills, so I was hoping that if I tried sensing monsters without looking, I might earn a skill for it.

Which was where the second part of this plan came in. Dismantling the spider corpses, all the acid sacs aside from one were empty. That wasn't a huge surprise, given that all except the first one I'd killed had used up their acid shots in the fight, but it meant I only had a limited quantity to get my last few levels of corrosion tolerance. I'd be best off applying the acid in small amounts to soft targets. Such as my eyes.

I wondered what the next highest class rank was after 'rare'. Perverted masochist was surely going to get an upgrade after this...

It took another couple of hours for my trembling to die down, time which I mostly spent wondering where Katie had gone. She'd been a perfectly normal university student with a self-proclaimed inability to kill a kitten. She liked the occasional computer game, but had never expressed any particular desire to get trapped in one. I, on the other hand, was here trying to max out my character build, making plans on how best to use my limited amount of acid to do the most damage to myself. I'm pretty sure those two states of mind had very little in the way of overlap. When I'd wished for my life to not be in danger, perhaps I should also have wished to maintain my sanity? Not that it particularly mattered right now, but presumably I would at some point get back home. How was I supposed to explain the sudden change to my parents?

It wasn't even as if I'd got very far yet. I still hadn't cleared the first floor! But my last batch of skill grinding had shown great results, and I'd managed to take out nine spiders before dying again. That showed it was worth it to continue, but I still had a long road ahead of me before I got my hands on the holy sword.

Dipping a spider claw into the acid sac and watching it drip a few times, I took a deep breath and held it over my face.

Corrosion tolerance advanced to level 8
Pain resistance advanced to level 12

Expecting the pain, I managed to stifle the scream, and thanks to pain resistance it only took a few seconds to die back down to an ignorable level. And sure enough, I was now completely blind. Time to see if I could earn a monster perception skill!

I couldn't. I heard a splash, but completely failed to dodge the root before it caught me around the knee, leading to a rather swift death.

And so continued my next couple of resets, giving me yet another level of pain resistance. Disease resistance hit ten but didn't evolve, as did makeshift crafter. Poison and corrosion tolerance proved more cooperative.

Evolution conditions met: Poison tolerance ranks up to poison resistance
Poison is everywhere. It may be in the darts of an assassin looking to score a silent kill. In the traps of a hunter. In the fangs or claws of a predator. Even in the flesh of would-be prey. Any adventurer needs to be prepared for it if they wish to survive. After consuming powerful drugs and even bathing in pools of poison, its ubiquitousness is something of which you are well aware, allowing this upgrade from tolerance to resistance. This skill reduces the effects of natural, artificial and magical poisons, and aids your body in expelling or breaking down the toxins more quickly.

Evolution conditions met: Corrosion tolerance ranks up to corrosion resistance
Though not as common as poisons, some creatures or adventurers choose to use strong acids or alkalis, digestive enzymes, other corrosive agents or even rare decay magic. Just another danger of this world that any adventurer needs to be prepared for if they wish to survive. And somehow you did survive, despite having a powerful corrosive agent injected directly into your bloodstream. For such a feat, your tolerance has been upgraded to resistance. This skill aids in holding yourself together in the face of any sort of corrosive attack, as well as helping to purge corrosive agents from your body.

Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on that spider for eating me. It counted as an achievement for evolving two of my resistance skills, even if the skill description claiming I'd survived was factually inaccurate. Poison was no surprise either, given that I've literally been swimming in a pool of it, albeit very briefly. It was a shame I hadn't got any dodging levels from my swims, but I'd never managed to evade the roots while in the pool.

I wasn't sure what to do as an achievement for makeshift crafter, and disease tolerance probably needed something stronger than the short-lived bout of food poisoning a single portion of spider meat caused.

And the payoff for all that effort? Not one of my available classes changed, and I earned only one new one.

Available class: Symbiont of the devourer (Rare)
You have established a symbiotic relationship with an angelica vorax. You have done your best to satiate its eternal hunger, you have swum in its nectar, and even tangled with its roots. In return it has, somehow, offered you comfort and healing. It isn't what those eternally hungry, flesh consuming trees are generally known for, but you wouldn't be offered a rare class if what you were doing was sane.
Unlock requirements: Possess poison resistance. Continuously feed a specimen of angelica vorax for a protracted period of time. Get something back in return.
Class features: No angelica vorax will consider you to be food. Immunity to all poisons in their nectar. You produce their nectar. You may act as an incubator for their seed, spreading their terror to new lands.
Skill domain: Special

Those first two class features were actively harmful to my so-called symbiosis! And just how, exactly, would I produce the nectar? And incubating a seed?! That set off all my alarm bells ever... These rare classes were horrific!

Should I just take berserker and be done with it? No, I still wanted to hold out for a better one. There had to be a decent rare class somewhere. Perhaps my problem was that I'd earned these rare classes by doing ridiculous self-harming actions, instead of by doing the things that I want the class to actually help me with. What did I want a class to help me with? If combat ability was all I wanted, I should take berserker.

I didn't just want to be a better fighter; I wanted to have fun. Back when I first set out on this adventure, when I was silly and naïve and didn't know there was a wolf waiting to bite my leg off just around the corner, I'd been looking forward to a risk-free romp through this cave system, exploring and sight-seeing as I went. I had expected it to be entertaining. It had swiftly turned out not to be, and what I wanted from my class was something to reverse that. A class that aided my victory in combat would be nice, but what I wanted more was something to twist this adventure closer to the game world I'd wanted it to be. This place was based on my wish, right? Then surely it should take my opinions into account.

I wanted the exact opposite of the masochist class; I wanted the pain nullification skill it mentioned. I wasn't sure what else it was that I wanted, but I would know it when I saw it. Respawn on demand, maybe? Magic would be nice, too. What sort of class would offer those features? Quite possibly none of them.

I still had plenty of spider meat left... Perhaps if I ate as much as would fit in my stomach all at once, I could get the disease tolerance evolution. What about fear tolerance? That one was actually tied into my wishes that had created this world, so evolving it would be far more likely to give me a class that linked in somehow. How was I supposed to scare myself? I looked at the long, thick strands of silk, and began to form the inklings of an idea so horrifying it was utterly certain to get me my last two levels. I gobbled up the spider, then set about weaving a bunch of silk into a long, thick rope.

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Evolution conditions met: Disease tolerance ranks up to disease resistance
Dirty water, contaminated food or infected wounds are all things that an adventurer needs to be wary of, even before considering even worse things like undead blight or magical plagues. For surviving a bout of necrotising virus that punched holes through your stomach, flooding your chest cavity with your own stomach acid, your tolerance has been upgraded to resistance. This skill boosts your immune system, helping your body fight off foreign living contaminants.

The fact that I was reading the message while lying flat on my back in my respawn cave suggested that once again its definition of 'surviving' was a little different to my own, but whatever. At least it had worked. Which left me with fear.

Carrying my new rope and a pile of shorter, sticky threads, I returned to the large cavern, and wandered along the cliff edge, looking for an area that was concave. I layered the sticky threads over the gap, thickly enough that they could easily take my weight. Then I tied one end of the rope to the middle of my artificial web, and the other around myself, while resisting the urge to hyperventilate.

Fear tolerance advanced to level 9

Bungy jumping was something I'd never done back on Earth, and for very good reason. I wasn't acrophobic, but like any sane individual, I wasn't exactly a fan of jumping off tall cliffs for the fun of it.

I jumped.

Evolution conditions met: Fear tolerance ranks up to... Error. Conflict with blessing [Wish Fulfilment]. Compensating.
Evolution conditions met: Fear tolerance ranks up to friend of fear
You have experienced the despair of failure, the belief that your actions had caused the death of untold millions. The panic of being bound without air, with no escape but to drown. The horror of being held captive in darkness and silence, left waiting in utter helplessness for your executioner to painfully claim its prize. Perhaps these memories of despair, panic and horror took as their payment a part of you, yet they have no hold over what is left. Fear is your friend and your guide, but not your ruler. With this skill you still feel the full force of fear, both magical and mundane, but it no longer affects your judgement.

That skill certainly had an interesting effect. Despite screaming my head off and being completely unable to stop, I had no difficulty calmly reading the text.

After some amount of bobbing up and down, not to mention bashing into the cliff face, I climbed my way back up with shaky arms and a bloodied nose, lying panting at the top for some time before I regained enough motor control to check my list of available classes. I could have just jumped without the rope, but without knowing what was at the bottom, I hadn't wanted to risk it. Plus, I still had some mental resistance to jumping off a cliff, even if I knew I'd respawn. It was a mental barrier I'd quite like to keep; if I returned to Earth, then randomly jumped off a cliff one day because I instinctively considered death to be the quickest route home, I was going to end up on the front page of the Darwin awards. At least Earth didn't have any murder trees sitting in pools of poison for me to unthinkingly swim in.

It hadn't even been a particularly long leap, all things considered. I'd thought I'd made a decent length of rope, enough that I'd been worried that its elasticity wouldn't be enough to keep me safe from the deceleration, but the lights at ground level hadn't looked any closer than they had at the top of the cliff. Just how deep was it?

When I did check my class list, I was happy to find that my efforts had not been in vain.

Available class: Princess of undying laughter (Unique)
When all injuries and pain are but temporary, washed away whenever you desire, why does anything matter? Why fear loss at the claws of a monster when you can be back an hour later for another attempt? You are an isekai protagonist, and for you, life is a game, played in a world of no consequences. For everyone else, the consequences are very real, and they will soon learn to fear your mad laughter wherever they may hear it.
Unlock requirements: Be immortal. Possess friend of fear. Possess five second tier resistance skills, each earned through self-inflicted activities. Take revenge on your own murderer. Laugh in the face of danger, death and the world itself.
Class features: Carried items are transferred on respawn. Increased physical abilities. Gain trigger respawn as a free skill. Class counts as an achievement for the purposes of evolving pain resistance.
Skill domain: Special

Well... That was new. All of my other classes had referred to how I'd somehow survived my various experiences, while this one explicitly called out the fact that I didn't. That first unlock requirement was pretty steep... And that first class feature... I'd never have to worry about losing my armour again! Or would I? I suspected there was a gap between my death and respawn, so if my belongings got stolen between the two, would they still be transported?

The other class features... Other classes had referred to increased strength, dexterity and endurance, but I didn't have a complete list of how things were broken down, and what counted as physical abilities. Would perception count? In any case, it was certainly the best boost of any class I'd been offered. Berserker might have higher strength and endurance, but this affected everything. At the least, that would include dexterity. And trigger respawn would be perfect for when my poison resistance grew too high for my pet murder tree, or when I was stuck mummified, experiencing my insides being liquidised.

It didn't give me immediate pain immunity, but it did offer another evolution, and pain resistance was pretty darn good already. That was worthwhile. And given what happened to my fear tolerance when the usual evolution to fear resistance was blocked, it raised another alarm bell for perverted masochist. Would I have ended up with a friend of pain skill that turned pain into pleasure or something? Would I have ended up addicted to feeding myself to spiders, to enjoy the great orgasmic pleasure of being melted and eaten alive? Despite the no consequences bit in the description of this class, in some ways, mere immortality would do precious little to protect me from this place...

It wasn't quite a class that would let me adventure with impunity, without fear of anything I might encounter, but it was getting there. I wouldn't need to worry so much about losing my equipment if I went too far behind enemy lines, nor worry about being immobilised with no way to commit suicide. I might need to fear being knocked out, or anything that messed with my mind, but it would be hard to keep that up forever. It made me a little stronger and faster. Plus, it called me a princess, and was labelled unique. That had to be good, right? In terms of straight combat, it probably wasn't as good as berserker, but it was still the one I was going for.

Primary class set to princess of undying laughter

I waited for a moment, but nothing seemed to happen. My body didn't feel stronger or faster. I should have done some weight lifting before taking it so I could quantify the difference. So, what did my status look like now?

Name: Katie
Primary class: Princess of undying laughter (level 1)
- Class skills -
Trigger respawn
{Empty} [+]
{Locked}
{Locked}
{Locked}
{Locked}
- Combat skills -
Unarmed dabbler: Level 5
Novice dodger: Level 7
Spear dabbler: Level 9
Novice blocker: Level 2
Dagger dabbler: Level 6
- Resistance skills -
Friend of fear
Pain resistance: Level 13
Poison resistance: Level 10
Corrosion resistance: Level 10
Disease resistance: Level 10
- Crafting skills -
Makeshift crafter: Level 10
Artistry: Level 4
- Scouting skills -
Novice stealth: Level 2

It was a far cry from when all it showed me was my name. I noted that my two newest skills had no level, and I had locked skills with no indication how to unlock them. My class had a level, so probably just levelling that? Not that there was any indication of how to do that, either.

Not for the first time, I considered that this game needed an instruction manual. What I did know was that I could get up to 5 class skills, excluding the trigger respawn freebie, and even better, I could pick my first one right now. Hopefully, doing so wouldn't take me as long as picking a class.

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