Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Think Noble Thoughts

My mother was a sewing machine. Not a mechanical one, though she may as well have been. Her hands blurred at incomprehensible speeds, her needle buzzing as she worked; the System imbued her with speed and accuracy that veered past the realms of the mechanical and into the realms of magic.

Her needle wove through the cloth with supernatural precision, bending to align itself or twisting in midair to perfect a stitch, the sound louder than a sewing machine.

Our house was a sewing machine, too, though it no longer worked. Like all things in our town, it had fallen into a state of disrepair. It was through no lack of effort on our own. Warped glass in the ceiling let just enough light into the workshop to work by. Wallpaper hung in huge, decaying sections, like sloughing flesh on a dessicated animal.

I was just happy we didn’t have any flies.

Time and wear had chipped away the tiles, sections missing from the workshop floor. Few remained pristine. Scabbed over scars decorating the surviving furniture; marks of repairs that fought against the march of entropy. We couldn’t afford proper carpentry this far out in the sticks.

The wrecks of old furniture piled against the wall like a bone pile; the old chairs and tables that hadn’t been lucky enough to be worth repairing leaned on each other for support, legs missing and surfaces worn down passed the wooden lacquer.

Despite our best effort at keeping the place clean and dry, it still smelled like mold.

Mom’s current table creaked under the pressure of her work as she stitched together leather at superhuman speed. Then she stopped. It was always weird when she [Cancelled] — looking at the action hurt. One moment, her hands were down, needle stabbing into the leather work, and the next she was inches away; though she hadn’t moved at all. Magic was weird.

She looked at me with tired eyes and an even more tired smile. The work was done for the day. A pile of stitched clothing from cloth and leather piled on the table nearly to the point of toppling.

“My light.” She stood. The chair screeched as it moved over the tile. “He should be here soon. Are you excited?”

“Yes.” I swallowed and looked at the door. Today was the day her power would be mine.

I nearly jumped when I felt my mother’s hand land on my shoulder. Nervous energy filled me today, making me distracted. It was only fair. Today was the day I found out if I inherited my mother’s Class.

I didn’t have her hair or her face. Mom looked almost nothing like me; her hair was brown and frizzy and locked into tight curls. Her facial features were soft. Round. The only thing I got from her was her eyes. Bright blue.

“My light.” She said. I turned to her. She searched my eyes. “I know you don’t want to,” She paused, figuring out what she was going to say. “I know you like what we have here, in our little workshop in our little village. But this village won’t last much longer.”

“Unless a Noble starts actually clearing the dungeon.” I said. She searched my eyes again.

“If you do get your — his class,” Your father’s class. She left the words unsaid. “You shouldn’t limit yourself to this village. If the world is open to you. Gwendolyn.” She said, using my full name to let me know she was serious. My father the Noble.

“I know, mom.” I said. She had had this talk with me more than once. Dozens of times, since I turned 14 and approached the age I would gain access to the System. Despite saying so, she had also been teaching me to be a Seamstress for years. I didn’t have the System enhanced powers she did — but I was still alright at it without them. I bit back the frustration. She was just trying to help.

“Think Noble thoughts. Think monster slayer.” She gripped my shoulders tight.

“I will.”

“Now help me carry these.”

Mom pressed leather padding into my arms. It was all I could do to keep the piled stack from toppling, leaning to look around as I stepped out of the workshop and into the living room.

“Esmeralda.” Maritha said from the couch, nodding at my mother. “The priest is already here. Hurry, so he leaves. He’s making the entire town stink.” She was knitting something together. Everyone in this house was always working. Patched-together upholstery strained to contain the worn padding of the room’s furniture. The fireplace crackled. I smelled someone making food in the kitchen, which meant I would probably have to do dishes later.

Like every other structure left in the village, a half-dozen people lived inside. The field around the dungeon sustained the buildings, and since no one had cleared it in years, it continuously shrunk, taking the buildings of the village with it. Soon, there wouldn’t be any left. And the noble that owned the village would take a fee for every villager he relocated.

The priest was already here. He rode in on a wagon half the size of our house with no animal to pull it. It snuck over our dirt roads to sit pressed between two rows of houses. Outside, a small line massed; the children in the village who had reached eighteen this year would be meeting the priest to unlock their system.

My mom led me passed the wagon and the starry eyed children staring up at the priest’s wagon and waiting for their turn. The church soldiers standing around it looked bored. I didn’t get to look any longer as mom led me away and down a different street, near the core of the city.

At the center of our town was the entrance to the dungeon. It was a dilapidated ruin, made of cut white bricks and overgrown with moss and vine creeping through them. A hollow archway held a rippling image of stretching farmland interspersed with copses of trees. It was not dissimilar from our town. I turned away, rushing to catch up with mom.

The sound of metal pounding on metal overwhelmed every other noise in the calm of the streets. The forge’s heat and sound dominated the central street of the town. The workshop of the town’s only blacksmith was built into the house, like our own, though the working area was kept outdoors. Smoke billowed out of an ever burning furnace.

“Bob.” Esmeralda said. I wasn’t sure if he heard her.

He was standing over an anvil, bringing down a hammer bigger than his head on a steel rod with a rolled cigarette burning in his mouth. The bang, bang, bang of metal on metal continued.

Bob towered over me; he was easily over six feet, bald, shirtless, and scar free. When using a blacksmiths tools, he possessed a superhuman ability to manipulate them. No normal human would be able to lift a hammer that large. The torque would break your wrist. It was an ignoble class, an unchosen blacksmith, able to wield a hammer and swing it fast enough that it could crush a car. Yet for some reason, people insisted that the non combat classes could not fight monsters. They couldn’t clear the dungeons that kept the cities alive and pumping.

“Bob!” Esmeralda said, louder.

“Just a second.” He said, his voice audible over the ringing despite him not talking any louder.

After a final hit, he dropped his hammer. It crashed into the earth so hard it shook, dust coming loose from the roof. Bob grabbed the burning piece of flattened metal and rounded it out, bending the shape, handling white hot metal without so much as wincing. His hands didn’t burn. With an irreverent toss, he dropped it into a bucket of water, liquid splashing out and hissing with heat when it hit the ground. I only noticed Gerald all but hiding behind his father when he made a noise at the boiling water splashing out, stepping backwards.

He looked nothing like his father. Messy brown hair hung over his face. He met my eyes with an excited smile.

“Aren’t you getting your class today?” I asked Gerald.

“What do you need?” Bob asked, voice booming.

“The padding. For your last order.” Mom held up the leather in her hands.

“I already got my class.” Gerald said. He looked around conspiratorially. He looked like he was going to be sick.

Bob’s eyes lit up as he reached for the leather.

“Thanks, Esme. Come in.”

Mom tried to wave him back, but he insisted. I followed her, Gerald walking alongside me.

“What about you?” Gerald asked me.

I dumped the leather padding onto a grease covered shelf, picking up a piece that fell. Mom followed Bob into the kitchen.

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“Not yet. I’m going after this.” I said.

“Gwen!” My mom shouted. “Do you want tea?” She leaned out of the kitchen, looking down at me.

“Yes!” I replied to mom before turning back to Gerald.

“I want you to know. Our classes won’t change anything between us. I’m going to make it regardless. Your first weapon.” Gerald said. He held out a pinky to me. With a nervous smile, I returned the gesture, looping my pinky around his. We shook on it.

“You’ll have to make something that will still work when I end up as a Seamstress.” I said, bitter, smiling.

“I still have the schematic.” He nodded seriously.

“Schematic?” I laughed. It was too serious a word for our plans. I stepped passed him and into the kitchen.

Bob delicately poured from a tea kettle into two metal cups. The water steamed and frothed, condensing on the warped glass window above the sink.

After pouring out five cups, Bob took his own, swished it around, and drank it, still steaming. He let out a contented sigh.

Mom looked at the remaining cups dubiously. Gerald fetched a metal coaster, throwing it down on the counter and reaching for an oven mitt. He stopped half way, hand hovering in midair, and looked up at his dad.

Bob nodded.

Gerald touched one of the cups tentatively, as if afraid it would bite him. He poked it with the edge of two fingers before yanking them back as if the cup burned him. Then he reached out, pressing a palm to the cup, before finally closing his hand around it and putting it on the coaster. He inherited his father’s class and his resistance to heat.

“Sorry about that.” Bob said.

“He forgets sometimes.” Marielle said from the dining room. Bob’s wife was visible through the open floor plan of the house. She was leaned over the table, carving complex patterns in a piece of metal.

Bob’s wife Marielle worked in the kitchen, carving complex engravings in metal.

Gerald touched the cup to the engraved piece of metal he had set on the counter. It flashed blue. The cup stopped boiling.

He turned around, handing it to me with a smile. I took it in turn, taking a sip and nearly gagging at how bitter the tea was.

“Gerald… your elders first.” Bob said, scolding his son.

“It’s fine.” Esmeralda said with a smile.

Gerald rushed to cool her cup down before handing it to her. She took a sip.

“I’d kill for one of these coolers.” Mom said.

“You’d have to. They cost a gold.” Marielle said from the kitchen. “We just have it until we find a buyer. Then its shipping out.”

I took another sip. The tea was just as bad. I set it down on the counter.

Mom pushed the entire cup back. Then she drank mine.

“We better get going.” She said, stretching. “The priest wont be here forever.”

“Gwen. Good luck.” Gerald said, serious. He reached forward for a hug, squeezing me, before pushing me back. “We need it.” He whispered.

I swallowed nervously. Mom led me out the door, and I followed behind her to the priest’s wagon in the middle of the street. The line around it had cleared.

Guards in armor of pristine white stood at attendance. Silver light radiated off of them like a heat haze, bending the air. One of them had her helmet off. They glowed with prestige and strength that shattered when she took a drink from a flask. She nodded at me.

“Think noble thoughts.” My mom said to me. I looked up at her. We hugged.

The door to the wagon swung open, one of the village’s children stumbling out. He looked up at me, excited, then shot off at a run. A pungent smell rolled out of the wagon. It was closer to a bus in size, pristine white and engraved with silver filigree. It looked like something from my old life. Something from earth.

I stepped up to the wagon, sparing one last look back to my mom before throwing myself up the steps and into the wagon, several feet off the ground.

The wagon was bigger on the inside than the outside, and it wasn’t just a trick of perspective. It had to have been as wide as the street inside. Smoke poured out from behind the priest, who himself was lowered into a plush, reclining couch that stretched across a wall.

Soot piled into the corners and edges against the wall on top of white paint. Cushions and blankets covered couches; storage containers were sunk into the floor.

He was old. Older than anyone from the village; his hair was snow white. His robes matched it. His eyes were glued to the ceiling. I followed them, tracing the complex patterns decorating the ceiling.

I had seen no evidence of gods existing. But people weren’t any less convinced of them in this life than the last.

“Gwen.” The man said. He wasn’t looking at me.

Think Noble thoughts. It was an old tradition. Maybe a bit of ancient superstition. People thought that if you thought about the class you wanted, you were more likely to be assigned to it. I didn’t believe in it. I thought Noble thoughts anyway.

I hadn’t told him my name. But priests had weird access to the system in a way that other people didn’t. His eyes were irritated; pink. I didn’t know if it was from his eyes being exposed to the smoke or from him inhaling it. His eyebrows furrowed as he raised a hand towards me, stopping in midair, looking increasingly confused as he scrutinized me. It became harder to maintain the facsimile of a smile. He was a dozen feet away, but I still felt so uncomfortable in this room.

He leaned forward.

[Awaken.]

I shuddered as I felt power roll through me. There was a singular moment where I felt a presence of incomprehensible size turn and focus on me. I felt as if my soul was being weighed, judged, and measured. Time stood still. It was like I was in a river, power battering me from all sides. I was falling down and down. Think Noble thoughts. Helping people. Killing monsters. Owning land.

I felt it look away. It was as if all the light had gone out and I was hovering in perfect darkness. The world was so beautifully empty without its presence looking down at me. A bright blue box hovered in my vision.

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