Well, first of all, the common classes were right out as far as choices went. It seemed that the six choices available as common classes would branch out to all types of combat but were fundamentally beginner choices. There were two magic classes, a ranger, a rogue, and a basic warrior class. I assume that at the end of the class progression, that there would be more unlocked classes. Let’s inspect warrior to make sure.

  Ah, so I guess because I maxed out those skills already, I unlocked further paths on the tree for unarmed combat, namely Monk, Martial Artist, and Brawler. Let’s inspect those as well and see what they’re about.

  Well that’s pretty cool. It looks like both monk and martial artist take some form of magic and use it with their combat in order to strengthen themselves, though monks strengthen the mind, and martial artists strengthen the body. I wasn’t super into the whole strengthen the mind to strengthen the body stuff, so I’m not sure that monk was the choice for me. I also didn’t really care for the club techniques of the monk class, but I had seen clubs used in the past and if a master used them, it was pretty terrifying.

  Martial Artists looked like a good path for me, and I was already leaning towards it due to the increase in strength and agility. I would check the variants of them in the unique skill section, but that path appealed to me more than anything else. While the raw damage that strength granted was useful, the stacking lightning damage from storm fists was far more beneficial, and any class that benefited from speed seemed immensely useful to me, not to mention I already had gauntlets, which were a martial artist weapon.

  Brawler seemed much cooler than I originally gave it credit for, and if I didn’t have such powerful magical abilities, I would take it for sure. The problem was, I could fly around in combat, making footwork much less important for combat maneuvering, and while I didn’t want to focus on magic attacks, I couldn’t neglect them either. What’s more, I was interested in using more foot techniques. I hadn’t learned any yet, but I could see how a flying roundhouse kick to the throat might, hypothetically, be pretty strong.

  Let’s check the unique versions of the classes now.

  Alright, that’s not bad. I could already tell that my choice would be one of these three, but I wanted to check storm user and graphic designer as well, just for fun. I might still go back and take them later, but there was no telling.

  Both of those were pretty cool, but not what I was going for at the moment. It was sad to say, but I feared that my work as a graphic designer was long behind me. Only a week ago I had been so excited to get an interview, but now, the idea of going to work behind a desk appalls me. Storm user looked pretty awesome as well, and I was all for that Storm Magic Enhancement Skill. It’s a shame that I didn’t start with the ability to use magic circles but having access to the ability to rewrite and customize spells seemed pretty useful. My spell list seemed rather neglected at this point, as the magic skills were painfully hard to level up any more at this point. I would certainly go back and take this class later, but for now, I was going to go with one of the melee ones.

  The last thing to recognize about classes was that maxing out the class granted skills allowed you to unlock additional classes. I bet if I took warrior, and then picked sword techniques, I could max out the skill and then return for more choices. I probably would later, but for now, I would stick with unarmed combat. I just didn’t have the time to devote to learning a new type of combat at this point.

  With that being decided, I decided to choose the Way of the Storm Martial Artist as my first choice. The body-strengthening technique would be super handy, and the amount of variability would be handy. I wanted to try and wear heavy armor to take the most advantage of my weightlessness and flight, and I wanted to use a combat technique that would be able to allow me to use my melee attacks with the greatest amount of efficiency at this time. Hopefully there would be derivations in the future that took advantage of weapons as well.

  Huh? I went ahead and checked, and meditation had disappeared from my skill list. If I recall, the bonus from using meditation was a 25% increase to stamina and mana regen. This one regens all of my stats, but it only increases it by 12%, or twice the amount of the skill level. I still had my StormBorn regeneration, so it wasn’t desperately important, and increasing my health regen seemed like a good sacrifice.

  Looking at the armors, the first thing that jumps out to me is Powered Armor. That’s freaking awesome. I guess with those science people running about from the fourth wave, were probably going to see some ridiculous technology eventually. I decided to choose heavy armor anyway, though. Learning how to wear the armor correctly and move with it equipped seemed pretty important at this point in time.

  The martial arts were much more difficult. I tried to inspect them but came up with nothing. There were five arts, one for sand, ice, water, wind, and lightning separately, and I could only choose two. Lightning was a must. I assume that lightning would be straight attacks, with plenty of power behind them. The final choice was more difficult. Do I pick something that matched the affinities that I already have, or do I branch out? Personally, I felt like taking a risk, and I decided to choose blizzard.

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  Alright, great. So, it appears that the two combat arts I unlocked each do different things. I can already sense the path to using the skills, but unlike with unarmed combat where the information just came intuitively, the information from all of the class skills I received is more like I just read a manual on how they are done, and I need to practice them to make any more progress. Still, the increases in critical damage and the strange upgrade to dash seem cool. I didn’t use dash to its full potential, as even though I went much faster on the ground, it was still generally faster to fly into my foes and disable the weightlessness at the last second. The instantaneous movement seems much stronger, and if I can get that all the way up to 20ft. of instant movement, I will be a true monster to encounter. I was also surprised that the Chaos Body Strengthening skill didn’t increase any of my stats. Perhaps it will as I use it.

  With that, I removed my hand from the obelisk. I had been touching it for about 20 minutes it seems, so I checked my watch to figure out what time it was. I was shocked to discover that only a minute or so had passed. I guess accessing the obelisk applied some type of time dilation affect.

  I was the only one who had finished, so I pulled back, and waited for Donny and Kaitlyn. I decided to look over the changes to my status while I waited, even though it should only take a few seconds for them to get done just to check the changes to the skills I had received.

  Skill Sheet:

  Well, at least my meditation seemed to contribute to my skill, as I didn’t start from zero in my body strengthening technique. After about twenty seconds, Kaitlyn and Donny opened their eyes and removed their hands from the obelisk.

  “So, did you guys get anything cool? Any unique classes?”

  Donny nodded his head, and asked, “From your question, my guess is you had the choice of one as well? That’s pretty unsurprising, actually, considering how much you’ve done in the past week. I decided to go for a blacksmith, for now, to synergize with my job and choose a combat class once I’ve put enough work into this one. It doesn’t make sense to ignore combat altogether.”

  After hearing Donny, I turned to Kaitlyn with a questioning look as well.

  She smiled, and bragged, “I’m a ninja! I didn’t have the option to get a unique class, but I did have both assassin and ninja available as unlocked classes. They seemed pretty neat.”

  “That sounds pretty cool, Kait. Let’s head back to the apartment. I have a feeling that this place is going to become really busy before long.”

  Donny and I took off into the air, and Kaitlyn became a blur, running through the streets, the wind created from her movement whipping debris into the air as she ran. We were about a mile from the apartment when I looked down and saw a white van stopped in front of an old house. There were people milling around outside of it, and I decided to fly down and check them out.

  It was fairly obvious now that I was closer that they were members of the gems. My enhanced sight let me pick up their crystal jewelry from a great distance away. As I flew in, Donny came up behind me.

  One of the thugs noticed me, looking up, and shouted, “Get the fuck out of here, bitch. This ain't any of your business.”

  He raised a gun at me, but I didn’t shrink away, just looked at him and glowered. He had three other gems with him, and they all looked up at me and Donny without any sign of fear or trepidation. That was probably a mistake on their parts. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot come from inside the house, followed by a woman’s scream.

  I immediately landed in front of the goon with the gun and let out two lightning punches at full force into his head, followed by a kick to the chest, blasting him away from me. There was no way that I was going to allow these bastards the chance to hurt anyone else while I was here.

  Critical Hit! -73, -76, -103. Fatality!

  After he died, I turned to the rest of his friends. I wasn’t planning on leaving any of these murderers alive.

  Donny beat me to it, though. He literally tore into one of the bandits in a spray of blood and gore, slashing with his claws before I could even move towards the next one.

  As soon as I looked over, I saw Kaitlyn wielding a combat knife, perched behind one of the gang members. He fell to the ground after only a few attacks to the back of his neck.

  There was still one more outside, but the other definitely had it. There was at least another one in the building, and someone made that scream.

  I ran to the house and came face to face with another gang member wielding an AK-47. I got close before he could turn the barrel towards me, and I tore the gun from his hands.

  I used lightning step twice to move backward 2 feet, and then tore into him with another two punches, and ducked under a retaliatory swing on his part.

  -36, -43

  I immediately pushed through his guard, attacking his right elbow. Once the arm was out of the way, I come in with another to strikes straight to the heart.

  -40. Limb Disabled. -60, -62, Fatality!

  They seemed to have low health, poor combat sense, and poor resistance. My lightning charged attacks were tearing through them like they were nothing. If I encountered someone who could do damage like I could, I would be in a major pickle. Considering how much of a beating that orc boss took, he must have had more than 4000 total heath, but that seemed impossible for a Rank 1 monster. No person could have the 400-strength required to grant health that high, so resistances were the only thing that made sense. I noticed that my attacks did less damage, but I wonder if there is more to it?

  I began searching the house room by room but stopped when I found the master bedroom. The bedroom had four bodies, all shot in the head, a man, a woman, and two children.

  My sight became fuzzy, and I almost collapsed backward when I saw the children. They couldn’t have been older than 9.

  I became filled with an insatiable, simmering rage. It sat in the back of my chest, and almost possessed a physical weight. It looks like the gems came in here looking for supplies, money, or food, and when they found people here already, they took them out. These gang members were taking things too far, and they needed to die.

  Donny and Kaitlyn walked into the house before I could stop them, and they found me sitting on the floor, looking at the bodies.

  Both of them immediately started growing in rage. Donny reached down under my arm, heaving me to my feet.

  “Let’s get out of here, Vic. We need to let everyone know about the classes, and what happened here. We'll deal with this later.”

  I nodded my head. It was time, yet again, to get to work. I needed to rank up. After that, I would take the fight to these bastards.