Ardwin and James both felt like kids on Christmas, with magic literally in the air. All their stress and shock had flipped like a switch and become relief and excitement. Ardwin felt a little woozy, the emotions of survival were so intense. And now video games were thrown into the mix. Looking at his weird phone, it listed off his current attributes, clicking on each of them for a brief description.

  Vitality:0

  Vitality is a measure of the excess life force your body produces. This excess is stored as your Health Point bar, which will automatically and near instantaneously heal any wound, including otherwise instantly fatal ones, until depleted. Increasing this score will increase your Health Points.

  Perception:0

  Perception is a measure of the augmentation your physical senses have undergone. Increasing this score will increase your ability to use and control your five senses.

  Athletics:0

  The catch all score; athletics amplifies your body to be capable of superhuman feats. The degree this is skewed between strength, endurance, and fine motor control is determined by your class. Increasing this score will increase all three of those to some degree, again depending upon your class.

  Processing:0

  A computer’s favorite, this score measures the augmentation of the raw processing power of your brain. Increasing this score is useful for warriors for increasing their reaction speeds, and necessary for mages, allowing them to work with larger sums of mana before tiring.

  His HP bar was, of course, 0/0 due to his lack of vitality. All the stats were extremely interesting, they seemed exactly like video game stats that some intelligence had added some sort of magic to and applied them to the real world. His survival mode died down a bit as he immediately felt the urge to experiment. Unfortunately, experimenting with zeroes across the board was impossible, so he clicked on the blinking level up message. It expanded to cover the screen, then a brief introduction followed by a list of dropdowns appeared.

  Available classes are selected based on prior knowledge and actions. Please select between:

  Druid (Green Path)

  Druid (Wild Path)

  Scholar (Specialty:Life)

  Rogue (Assassin)

  Rogue (Ranger)

  Ardwin guessed the druid and scholar classes were available due to his Biology background and camping hobby while the rogue and ranger were from his and James ambush of the hawk. He clicked on each for the descriptions

  Druids are wizards that seek their knowledge from the wild rather than the pages of books. Green Druids focus their studies upon mana, plants, and the manipulation of both.This class will give skills to aid in that endeavor. Like all wizard classes, it is highly customizable. Points in athletics will spread evenly between the three paradigms.

  Druids are... Wild Druids focus their studies upon mana, beasts, and transformation. . Like all wizard classes, it is highly customizable. Points in athletics will be expressed approximately 43 percent in strength, 33 percent in endurance, and 23 percent in fine motor control.

  Scholars have forsaken the pursuit of physical power entirely for the sake of the power of knowledge. This class provides a bonus statistic, Memory, that will gain free points per level. Processing will also gain a free point every two levels. Life scholars receive biological analysis skills. Points in athletics will be expressed 90 percent in fine motor control, 5 percent in strength, and 5 percent in endurance.

  Rogues are, in short, the sneakier types. Assassins specialize in combat, and skills generally help with laying ambushes, slicing throats, and poisoning drinks. Points in athletics are expressed 50 percent in fine motor control, 35 percent in strength, and 15 percent in endurance.

  Rogues are…Rangers specialize in passing unseen through the wilds and surviving in them. Points in athletics are expressed 40 percent in fine motor control, 30 percent in endurance, and 30 percent in strength.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Ardwin’s mind immediately erupted in theories, buildcrafting and experiments. He shook his head. I’m currently stranded in the middle of nowhere with monsters everywhere. Focus.

  Why would the Scholar get any points in Athletics? Maybe there’s something I’m missing in all this?” Ardwin mused. He rubbed the bump on his head, his skull being for some reason shaped irregularly from birth. It was a tic of his to mess with it while thinking. It doesn’t seem like I’m getting any more info than this though. Reminds me of games that give you part of their mechanics and leave you to either figure the rest out or look them up.

  He loved those games. He actually didn’t care if it was reading it off some wiki or searching back corners of levels, learning the nooks and crannies excited him. He shook himself. Survival situation. Looking at the list in those eyes, ranger was probably best. But…druid wasn’t far behind and that class appealed to him far more. Better to talk to James about it.

  He looked up at James, who suddenly had a zweihander and was swinging it about in clumsy, but oddly strong strokes with a massive grin on his face. Must be athletics. Ardwin couldn’t help it, here they were, huddled under a tree with a bloody monster corpse next to them, scared out of their wits but still nerding out.

  “So I see your class wasn’t up for discussion? Or forewarning? Or research?” Ardwin teased James

  “Two words Ard. MASSIVE SWORD. What is there to discuss? But yeah I chose Warrior parentheses Knight. And so, as you know, knights are nobles so peasant I demand you kiss my boots forthwith!” He struck a sarcastic pose with his sword outstretched in one hand. Which quickly began wobbling under the strain.

  “Har de har har. So I’m guessing by the area control weapon and generally armored knight class you’re going tank as usual?” Ardwin replied, but despite his more serious words he couldn’t resist adding a mocking bow.

  “Of course my noble squire, there be nothing better upon the world than a coupla idiots whaling on you while your HP bar is going up instead of down and laughing in their faces.” James said, reversing his pretentious accent halfway through.

  Ardwin could see James was practically vibrating with excitement, all terror gone. For some reason, that brought a thought barreling to the front of Ard’s mind. What about our families?

  For him, it was just him and his Mom, but they were extremely close. Like him, she was a massive fantasy reader and loved especially the classics. She had even named him after one of her favorite characters. Some people thought he had a weird name, but he loved it. Made him feel different.

  Ardwin quickly decided there was nothing he could do for his Mom now and bringing it up would just ruin James’ mood as well.

  “Well the real important question is stats. Did you start with zero too? What happened after leveling up?” He said, shoving the thought to the back of his mind.

  “Yeah I started at zero too, but the attributes are interesting. It looks like it gives you exclusively free points, leaving it entirely up to you where to put them. I mean I guess that could be just Knight, but I doubt it considering its not an extremely open-ended archetype. I got 4 free points so I dropped 2 in strength, err… Athletics and 2 in Vit.” James informed him.

  “We gotta test out the Vit. What’s your healthbar?”

  “200.” Ardwin promptly socked James hard in the nose. James swore and stumbled back. But his nose stopped bleeding before it could start, and James glanced at his phone.

  “190 you jackass. Weird though, the pain was just a hot flash then gone.” James said, rubbing his oddly fine nose.

  “Ok and what about skills?”

  “I got a couple options, but I picked Soulbound Sword, follows the usual pattern of either bonding an existing weapon or summoning a new one. After bonding the weapon I can’t be disarmed, and it will do a small amount of extra damage. The summoned one doesn’t do the extra damage.” He droned, eyes half lidded. James was clearly bored and wanted to get back to swinging the sword. His eyes lit up suddenly though, “What did you get though? Wizard like usual?”

  “Well I kinda wanted to be sure, picking your class seems pretty important. These are my options.” Ardwin listed off his available classes.

  “So you’re gonna be a treehugger then.”

  “Am I really that obvious?” Ard replied.

  “You’re the one who likes to get all crafty with your wizard archetypes. Question is really which archetype you’re going to take. Do me a favor and do it my way for once. Technically, we are still in an active world shattering emergency, so its probably better to take an imperfect choice quickly instead of agonizing over optimal. It’s definitely because our lives are on the line and not because I don’t want to hear your theories, arguments, and counter-arguments for the next three days.” James pushed him sardonically, in spite of the pleading look on his face.

  Paradoxically, James was the smartest person Ardwin had ever met. If a teacher could ever force him to sit for a test, he'd get a perfect score near every time. He abhorred applying his intelligence. Maybe it was ADHD or something but James hated planning, studying, and thinking in general. In games he had always followed the hallowed footsteps of the great Leeroy Jenkins. Whereas Ardwin the complete opposite. James helped Ardwin have fun while Ard ensured at least some forward progress was made.

  But he was probably right in this case. One of the reasons Ardwin liked games was because he had infinite time to plan. Life wasn’t as kind. Hopefully whatever intelligence that had created this phenomenon lived by the adage ‘everything is viable’.

  Instead of weighing the pros and cons of and theorizing about wild vs green, he went with his gut. He clicked on the class name for the green path and clicked accept in the subsequent pop-up.