Blackness spread between me and the hand. It was a physical wall of solid shadow someone had used a spell to create. It blocked the monster’s sight, and the creature bellowed as I scooted back.

  Corpse Looter was not far behind me. Seemed like when he smashed into me, he’d kept going, unable to control his momentum. He got up to one knee at the same time I managed to sit upright.

  I did my best to hobble to my feet, but my bad leg was numb. Grunting, I got one solid foot beneath me when something slammed into the side of my head.

  Everything flashed white, the taste of copper in my mouth. I hit the ground, hard, head pounding. I rolled to my back as a foot came down on my stomach.

  “Motherfucker!” the looter screamed, leg raised for another stomp.

  I shot a fireball, but it missed his head by an inch. He stumbled back, nearly fell, then came at me again. He landed on my chest and leaned over, his hands wrapped around my throat.

  My palm pressed into his stomach and I blasted him. He cried out, but kept squeezing. The edges of my vision closed in, splotches of black devouring my sight. I shot again, could feel his flesh sizzle, but he didn’t stop.

  A sword swiped down, burying itself in the man’s shoulder. The moment he released his hold, I punched him right in the jaw and then pushed him off.

  Michael looped an arm around my chest and started pulling me away. The darkness was starting to fade, the beast on the other side closer now. It started reaching again, faster this time.

  The corpse looter cursed, then he rushed us. I watched as the ground in front of him glimmered. As soon as he touched it, the sand turned to mud, and he sank all the way down to his waist.

  He twisted and struggled, and after only a moment, he’d almost pulled himself free. But before he could get out, I shot him in the face with a fireball.

  His beard and hair caught fire, and he fell back into the monster’s open palm. He screamed as it pulled him, his leather boots sucked into the mud. Then there was a crunch, followed by a long and unbroken silence.

  “Are you alright?” Michael eventually asked me.

  He helped get me to my feet, then Vinessa approached, my walking staff in her hands. Her daughter was beside her, whisps of blackness flowing around her fingers. It seemed the pair had saved my life.

  “I’m good,” I said, nearly pitching to the ground. I grabbed my walking staff and used it to stay upright as I surveyed the situation.

  Bow guy was on the ground, another man wrapping a bandage around his torn stomach. I recognized him as the man with the mace who’d run from the crawler. Most everyone else was standing there in some kind of numb shock. Probably just realizing what they’d almost done.

  The old woman with the charred leg was sobbing into the arms of the young man who’d come to her aid. I felt something squirm deep inside me as I watched them, a feeling I hated more than almost anything else.

  Guilt.

  “Here,” I said to her as I opened my inventory. I gave her one of my health potions, then walked over to bow guy and handed him one too.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked, eyes wide. “Do you have more?”

  As if to punctuate his question, several of the wounded groaned.

  I sighed and handed him five more potions.

  That left me with only one, and I was tempted to use it. My head felt like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. But I would live, and so I decided to hold the potion back for when I really needed it.

  “Thank you,” bow guy said. “My name is Darren, by the way.” He looked like he expected me to tell him my name, so I grunted it out, a little bitter that I’d just handed away my stash.

  Michael joined us. Darren offered him a potion, but he refused, saying he could deal with the concussion. The monsters left us not long after, their bulks disappeared into the night.

  “You think they’re gone for good?” Darren asked.

  No one answered, but we all hoped we’d seen the last of them. But what if they came back the next night, or the one after that? And what else could be lurking in the forest or in the sand? I shuddered just thinking about it.

  People awkwardly dispersed once it was clear the monsters were gone. A few new groups had formed, some of them comprised of the guys following the looter’s orders. They cast me a few barbed glances, but I figured they wouldn’t try anything. Me, Vinessa, and Lyra all picked a spot near one of the fires. The two of them fell asleep almost instantly. I thought fear would keep them up longer, but everyone was exhausted. It wasn’t long until half the survivors were out cold.

  I lay on my back and stared at the stars. Even if there wasn’t a massive blue planet dominating the sky, I would have known this wasn’t Earth anymore. The stars were all different, scattered in places I didn’t recognize. Dad used to love stargazing. He’d do it every night when the family went camping. I hated all the lectures, but he’d made me recognize all the basic constellations. I didn’t see any of them now.

  My eyelids started drooping, so I rolled over, head still pounding. Sleeping with a head injury was bad, I knew that, but it wasn’t long until slumber finally claimed me.

  Trumpets split the air, and I shot up.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Good morning players! the voice shouted.

  Several other people were sitting up, jolted awake by the sudden announcement. It looked like the sun had just risen. The first rays of it stabbed my eyes, and I blinked at the coming dawn.

  The game officially starts today. How exciting! But before we dive into details about your objective, we promised you a treat and a treat you shall have.

  A screen appeared in front of everyone’s faces. It was blank.

  Class selection! You each now have thirty minutes to choose your starting class. Those who do not make a choice in the next thirty Earth minutes will have a class chosen for them. But don’t be hasty, this choice is permanent.

  Good luck!

  I expected the screen to populate with class options, but it flickered before displaying information about my attributes.

  Core Attributes

  Strength: 4

  Dexterity: 2

  Constitution: 6

  Perception: 4

  Focus: 5

  Arcane: 3

  The two in dexterity was expected, but I was a little surprised my constitution was so high. I wondered how high it and my strength would be if this thing had evaluated me a few years ago.

  Strength, dexterity, constitution, and perception were all RPG concepts I was familiar with, but focus and arcane were new. Mentally highlighting each individual attribute provided me with information over its function.

  Focus would increase mana points for all classes and provide a small amount of stamina points to martial classes. I glanced up at my HP and MP bar, noting I didn’t have a bar for stamina. I inspected the arcane attribute next. It apparently increased the damage of magical attacks, including those from enchanted equipment. It was also necessary to use higher tier spells.

  Since my mana seemed to be glitched out, I wasn’t sure focus would do anything for me. This meant when it came time to assign points, I could probably dump most of them into arcane and be fine.

  About a minute after inspecting my attributes, a prompt appeared telling me I had a new menu to investigate. Activating it brought up a screen that was about four times the size of my attribute menu. I noticed a few other people pull it up, some of them staring at it with confusion.

  I realized then a lot of these people had probably never played an RPG game before. All of this was likely nonsense to them. A tiny part of me wanted to help them out, but I quickly ditched that idea. I had to worry about myself.

  The class selection screen flickered, then displayed a list of recommended classes. Each class had a little note telling me what archetype the class fit. I was shocked to find most of mine were listed as tank classes. These ranged from physical defenders to magical supports. But despite how good some of these sounded, I knew what I was looking for.

  Near the bottom of my recommended list were several spellcasting classes. Because of my leg, I would never make it as a frontline combatant. And if my mana stayed like it was, leaning into a spellcasting combat style was obvious. My options were pretty limited though. I only had four that made any sense.

  These were Elementalist, Summoner, Spellshield, and Mage.

  Each class came with a host of bonuses that promised to expand as I leveled up. They also offered a different starting spell, then another spell every five levels. Each had a note telling me the class would evolve after I reached level 20.

  Spellshield was the only one I quickly dismissed. It focused on buffing allies against magical attacks and also increased my innate magical resistance. I had no idea how useful the resistance could be, and the idea of buffing other people didn’t exactly have an appeal.

  Out of my three remaining options, Elementalist was focused on pure damage while Summoner and Mage offered more utility-based options. Summoner was tempting, especially since I could use something to tank for me. But the spell it offered summoned a ranged creature called a “Quill Bolter”. It also came with a whopping two-hour cooldown between casts and the summon only lasted for thirty minutes. The spell would probably be better as it leveled up, but I didn’t have time for that. I needed to find Avery as soon as possible.

  Elementalist was exciting for a few reasons. Each class came with bonuses to my core attributes, and Elementalist gave the highest boost to arcane out of all my recommended classes. Arcane boosted magic damage, which I desperately needed. The class also increased the base damage of all elemental attacks by 10%, which would include fireball. It did have two downsides though. First was the spell it came with, spark, looked like it was significantly weaker than fireball. It was listed as a Tier E spell while fireball was Tier C. The other issue was the classes’ complete devotion to damage. If this was a game, I’d be more tempted to take that route. But there wouldn’t always be people to run interference for me. Maybe I could blast the monsters all to bits without worry, but how long would it take to get to that point?

  Mage presented itself as a jack of all trades, master of none type of class. It gave an equal but small boost to arcane and focus, which was annoying. It also gave a passive boost to mana regeneration, which I was pretty sure wouldn’t do much, if anything for me. What it did offer was a decent sounding defensive spell and a skill called “Grimoire Roulette.” Apparently I could use it to reroll the reward from any grimoire I found. This would switch the spell the grimoire provided to a different spell of the same tier as the original, but I could only use the skill once per grimoire. I wasn’t sure how common these “Grimoires” were, but it at least sounded interesting.

  I flipped between Elementalist and Mage over and over again, weighing the pros and cons of each. Mage came with more negatives, but it offered a much better starting spell. Though if I continued to level up, Elementalist would probably make me into a powerhouse.

  A notification appeared telling me I only had ten minutes left to choose. I hadn’t even realized I’d been looking over my options for that long.

  Several of the others had finished already. The name of the class they chose flashed over their heads. Not a single person I could see had the same class.

  Even though I didn’t have much time, I wanted to check out the expanded list of classes. Maybe there’d be something in there that suited me better.

  I pretty much closed the expanded list as soon as I opened it. There had to be hundreds of options, far too many to sift through.

  I mostly played RPG games as a Warrior or tank. Don’t think I’d even been a wizard or anything like that, come to think of it. But this wasn’t a game. I played the events of the previous day over and over again, wondering what would have helped me most. What would help me stay alive.

  Another notification warned me that I only had five minutes left.

  I sighed, not sure which to choose.

  Warning: Three minutes remaining.

  Shit.

  With extreme amounts of hesitation, I selected Mage just before the class selection window closed.

  Congratulations on picking a class! The voice called as soon as the timer ran out.

  No one looked amused.

  Now that you’ve chosen your starting class, it’s time for this section of the 198th Omni Games to begin.

  The ground trembled, nearly sending me to the dirt. A few people hit the ground as everything continued to shake. It was as if the entire planet was vibrating, bucking in anticipation. Maybe it was.

  Something dark and black rose in the distance, blocking out the sun. As cold shadow fell over us, it continued to rise. It was a tower I realized, massive, and impossibly tall. It shrieked to a halt after it pierced the clouds.

  This game is simple. You have but one objective.

  A wave of purple energy exploded from the top of the tower, sending arcing electricity over the entire sky. The ground stopped shaking after that, and everyone’s eyes were drawn to the flash of purple fire floating above the spire.

  Kill the final boss, the voice said. Or die trying.