Duskbound-Chapter 136 - Book 2, 57

The class orb was still sitting at the bottom of Velik's bag. He'd been too afraid of the consequences to mess around with it, not that he'd shared that with Aria. That conversation with the guild archivist was probably off the table now, but following the trail of the corruption was more important to him.

"No progress," Velik said. "I couldn't get into the archives to research anything."

"By 'research,' you mean 'get Thett to look it up for you?'" she asked in a teasing voice.

"Nothing wrong with that. He's way better at it than I'll ever be."

"I don't suppose I can hold it against you," she mused. Laughing, she shook her head. "I did the same thing, after all."

Velik's breath caught. Is she saying what I think she's saying? We were told to stay away from the guild hall. If she went and got the information I need about using class orbs as modifiers, I might finally be able to start working on the process.

"What do you know?" he asked.

"I know that thing you're worried about, that the class orb is going to overwrite your class and turn you into a monster like it did to your friend, isn't going to be an issue. Class orbs don't work that way. The system will ask you if you want to make changes once you activate it. You can freely decline to do anything without wasting the orb."

"That's not how it worked when I got my class," Velik said.

"Yes, well, what you found wasn't a class orb, now was it?"

He'd thought of the thing that had ruined his life as a class orb for so long that Velik sometimes forgot they'd proven it was something else. "Alright, so what do I do with it?"

"It's a system trigger thing, so just holding it and willing it to activate should be enough to get things started. If you just wanted to switch to the class it holds, that would be all you needed to know. Merging your class with the new one or taking on an aspect of it is trickier, according to what I've learned."

When did you even have time to find all this out? Velik wondered, but he wasn't about to distract Aria from her explanation now. If she could help him draw the full potential out of the class orb, then he could officially wash his hands of the Monster Hunters Guild and their political games.

He fished the orb out of his bag and held it up. It looked like a small glass ball, two inches in diameter and filled with swirling, pink-flesh-colored light so faint that sometimes Velik thought it was just a trick of the light. Now that he was focusing on it though, he could pick out the movement and knew it was real. In fact, the longer he looked at it, the brighter it got.

[Would you like to replace your current class with 'The Flesh Crafter?']

Velik mentally recoiled from the system prompt. No! he hurriedly pushed back.

When nothing else popped up, he looked to Aria. "What do I do after I tell it I don't want to replace my class?"

"It's a matter of intent, or so I understand. The system offers you the most basic option, but if you want something else, you need to figure out what it is. It won't just tell you, and finding something compatible and within the power of the class orb can take some tinkering. Considering that orb holds a unique class, I would say that as long as you come up with something that fits the general theme, it should be able to make it work."

"Intent," Velik repeated as he stared into the orb.

What is my intent? I want… power, I guess. I want to be stronger. I thought it was going to offer me a new skill. Maybe I could still get it to do that, but Aria made it sound like I have other options.

"The easiest intent is to merge your old class and your new one together," Aria said. "It's not hard to picture something like [Archer] and [Pyromancer] merging into a class like [Artillery Mage], but the records say that the more focused you are on what you're trying to keep from both classes, the better the result."

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"I don't want to merge my class," Velik said absently. That was the crux of the issue, really. He knew what he didn't want from the class orb, but he wasn't sure what he did. He was happy with his current class. He just wanted some new capabilities.

Ranged skills were still off the table. Neither [The Black Fang] or [The Flesh Crafter] had anything like that in their repertoire, at least not that he'd seen when he'd killed the amalgamation of dozens of different people Chalin had absorbed.

Let's look at this from a different angle. What could that creature do that might be useful to me?

There was regeneration, first and foremost. Velik had done an insane amount of damage to that monster, and none of it had been worth anything. It was only once he'd located its brain core and destroyed it that the fight had ended. But at the same time, he'd speculated that it wasn't true regeneration so much as rearranging its mass. The monster had coated tens of thousands of square feet of a tunnel network with its flesh.

It had also been able to create monsters, but that wasn't something Velik was interested in. His place was firmly at the end of the monsters' lifecycles, not the beginning. Even if he could control them, just the idea of making them in the first place sickened him. That wasn't the answer.

Shapeshifting was another power the monster had exhibited. It had sprouted spears of tooth and bone to skewer him during the fight, as well as enormous arms with grasping hands to catch and restrain him. He didn't like the idea of becoming some horrifying collection of sentient body parts, but the whole idea was to take what he wanted and discard the rest.

He didn't need the power to twist his body into any form he could think of at will. A classical approach to shapeshifting might be better, and with a class orb containing a unique class powering it, he was sure he could snatch a good one from the system. The real question was what it would be.

"You've been quiet for a while," Aria said. "What are you thinking?"

"[The Flesh Crafter] was designed to reshape bodies into monsters," Velik said. "That's what it does, both to the owner of the class and to any other unfortunate victims they can get their hands on. It seems to me that the most powerful augment would come from crafting an intent that matches what the class is designed to do."

"Yes, but if that's what you want, you could just take the class like normal," Aria said. "And we've already established that you don't want that."

"I don't," Velik agreed, "but what if we narrowed it down? What if, instead of being some master of flesh shaping, it was just one shape."

"A class with a battle form?" Aria asked, brightening. "That's an interesting possibility."

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"Stronger, faster, sharper senses," Velik said. "Everything I have going for me now, magnified and empowered. It might even be enough of an edge to stand up to Emberson."

"The merging of two unique classes," Aria murmured. "You're already half again as strong as someone with a rare class just from the stat allotment. Building on top of that… Well, stats aren't everything. I doubt you have even a quarter the number of skills Emberson has folded into his build, and he's got twenty years of real-world experience on you."

"I'm not saying it'd be easy, but it'd give me a chance."

"And I suppose cooperation is entirely out the window?" Aria asked.

"Do you think he would?" Velik asked seriously.

"No, probably not, but it doesn't seem like you even plan to try."

"You can try. I'm going to prepare for when he says no."

A shapeshifting skill was certainly within the class orb's power to grant him. He just had to figure out what he wanted that form to be. He needed something lithe and strong, something that didn't diminish his mind, something with opposable thumbs. It couldn't be too big, not if he wanted to keep his gear. His clothes all had [Mending], which meant they were a bit flexible in size and could patch up any rips, but he didn't need to be tearing his outfit apart every time he changed.

The front door opened again. Jensen and Sildra stepped through, then stopped when they saw Aria sitting there. "Hello," she told the pair. "Nice of you to join us."

"Aria?" Jensen asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you, of course. Did you think I was going to let you leave me behind while you went off on an adventure?"

"This isn't an adventure," Jensen said.

"Oh, I think that very much depends on your definition."

Velik tuned out their conversation while he turned the class orb over and over in his hands. A battle form that allowed him access to his skills was essential, and he knew nothing about those kinds of classes. It seemed like more research was needed, if only to provide inspiration for what he wanted his own to look like.

Unless…

Velik froze. There was one form that he knew could use skills from [The Black Fang] class. It was enormously powerful, and for that matter, simply enormous. Even if he couldn't use the gear he'd grown accustomed to, it might not matter. The power the form would grant him could easily outweigh those advantages.

He sent his intent into the class orb, slowly, laboriously building the idea up from nothing to something fully realized, something that took into account everything he wanted and needed. It would be difficult, he was sure, but Aria had promised that a unique class would provide limitless options, as long as he could link them to what the class did. Well, this is about as direct a link as I could possibly make.

[Would you like to consume 'The Flesh Crafter' to modify your current class? The skill, 'True Form' will be added to your skill list?]

Yes.