Earth Affinity +1

  Earth Affinity +1

  Congratulations, you have learned the spell Immobile!

  Immobile

  You don’t wanna move? You’re not gonna move! Plant your feet and let the earth say “nope” to anything that tries to shove you.

  James grinned. He wasn’t sure when that would come in handy; it wasn’t as cool as something like, say, Earthball, but it was satisfying to see his growing list of skills. He pulled up his status sheet.

  Name: James

  Race: Human

  Class: Hero

  Level: 22

  HP: 250/250

  MP: 700/700

  EXP: 500/37,500

  Stat Points Available: 0

  STR: 50

  AGI: 60

  INT: 71

  WIS: 70

  CON: 40

  Skill Points Available: 7

  Skills: Meditation 1, Mana Bolt 2, Vital Pulse 1, Fireball 2, Immobile 1

  Fire Affinity: 6

  Earth Affinity: 1

  Infernal Affinity: 33

  His infernal affinity was worryingly high, while his earth infinity was disappointingly low, but on the whole James was pleased with his progress. Ever since Inara had explained that AGI expanded what was basically a parrying window in combat, he’d started dumping his stat points there instead of wisdom. The worst thing in the world, he’d decided, was having to stay completely still while some bozo enemy took a swing at him.

  No. Thank you.

  The stat points, then, were the easy part. It was the skill points that gave him a big decision to make. James scrolled through the impossibly long list of possible skills. Every time he passed Breathing he had to resist the humorous urge to add it to his skill list. Maybe one day he would, but he wasn’t at a place yet where he felt confident enough in his build to basically throw away a skill point.

  He continued to scroll, and then his eyes caught on Dip.

  Dip

  Get low—because the safest place is under the swing, not in it.

  Scales with Agility.

  With the way Agility worked, a skill that scaled with that stat could only mean one thing: it would improve his ability to move during an enemy turn. Ducking under a swing would be incredibly useful, but it was a bit too niche for him to spend his points. James kept reading.

  Dive

  When subtlety fails, hurl yourself dramatically out of the way.

  Scales with Agility.

  Now that was more like it. A much broader skill. It still carried some danger, though. Hurling himself out of the way seemed like it would end with him in a vulnerable position. But if those two existed, then surely he could find…

  Dodge

  Step aside like you totally saw that coming.

  Scales with Agility. 5 MP

  There it was. A true dodge ability, where he could step out of the way without throwing himself into even more danger. James purchased the skill.

  “Throw something at me!” he said to Desiree.

  The girl didn’t hesitate. With a grin, she picked a random book off the ground and chucked it at him.

  “Dod— oof!” The book caught him in the chest before he could say the name of the skill.

  Inara raised an eyebrow. “New skill?”

  James smiled ruefully back at her. “Dodge.”

  “Remember you don’t need to speak the skill, to use it.”

  “Right!” Jame waved at Desiree to try again. This time, when the book came hurtling his way, he thought, Dodge!

  His body moved. He stepped to the side, and the book went sailing just inches past him.

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  James pumped a fist. “Dodge, baby!”

  “That’s awesome!” Desiree crowed. “I mean, you totally should have been able to dodge a book without a skill, it’s not like I’m throwing them that hard, but that’s probably going to be super helpful in a fight!”

  James stuck his tongue out at her, then matched her smile. It was a good skill.

  “You guys should get it too,” he said, then winced when his eyes landed on Inara. Inara, who had plenty of skills and experience but who still couldn’t use them. While the rest of them grew more powerful, she was stuck with all the power of a child. Less, actually, if you considered Desiree.

  “Got it!” Desiree said. “Aww, Agility? I guess I can put some stat points towards that.”

  James went back to his skill list. He still had six points to spend, and he had an idea… Sure enough, there was one more dodging skill.

  Duck

  Sometimes survival is just putting your head down and hoping the problem flies overhead.

  Scales with Agility.

  Maybe it was silly. Maybe Dodge was a broad enough skill to encompass the rest, and he was wasting his points on redundancy. But maybe it wasn’t, and there were multiple skills for a reason.

  James purchased all four (Dip, Dive, Dodge, and Duck) and enjoyed the expansion of his skill list. That left him with three skill points, so he upgraded Dodge for two points and held onto the last one.

  Suddenly a new notification popped up.

  Congratulations! You’ve learned the Four D’s of D-Not D-Dying!

  +10 Agility!

  James’s jaw dropped. “That’s a thing?!?”

  “What is it?” Inara looked up from the book she was flipping through. “What’s happened?”

  He explained what he’d done and read the notification out loud.

  Inara blinked. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Your last hero never figured that out, huh?” James teased.

  Inara glowered at him.

  “I only have enough skill points for three of them,” Desiree pouted.

  “Weren’t you going to get a healing spell, anyway?” James asked.

  She waved a hand. “I will, just tell me which one to get.”

  “It’s up to you, you know your skill list better than me. Ideally you can find something with some range on it.”

  Desiree gave a bland nod and turned back to her skill list.

  With the excitement of his skills taken care of, James realized that Inara was just patiently waiting for him and Desiree to finish. She didn’t have any stats or skills to allocate, because she was still plagued by a broken class.

  “Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  She looked at him with some surprise. “Fine,” she said.

  James winced. “No, really. I know this is probably hard for you. To go through it all again.”

  The walls came down, and for a moment there was naked pain on her face. “Most things are different, but…” she searched for the right words. “It’s like the thread that connects them is the same.”

  “I can only imagine what that’s like,” James said honestly. “But I’m here for you, you know? In any way I can be.” That made her smile, even if it was hesitant, and he kept going. “Maybe Virgil can help us find some more information about your situation here.”

  Inara swallowed hard and nodded. “He’s already looking.” She gestured to the secret door.

  “Good. Let’s go help him.”

  Suddenly Desiree came rolling past them in a cartwheel. She giggled and whooped. “Agility is so cool!” she yelled, tumbling into a somersault and leaping to her feet.

  Inara rolled her eyes, but there was a smile beneath the surface. She wrangled her daughter, and the three of them stood on the platform of the secret door.

  James pulled the lever, and just as before, the platform turned. He looked back once, at the candles and the furs, and shuddered. It would be good to leave this room behind.

  The library was just how they’d left it. Books were scattered across the floor where Desiree had flung them, but there was also a new stack of books carefully organized on the center desk. By Virgil, presumably, but…

  “Where’s Virgil?” James wondered allowed. “Virgil?”

  The secret door began to rotate once again. James, Inara, and Desiree all immediately crouched into battle-ready stances. They’d killed everything in that room! Hadn’t they? So what could be coming through?

  The platform rotated painfully slowly… finally revealing Virgil, holding a book and looking more flustered than they’d ever seen him.

  “Must have gotten on at the same time as you guys,” he explained, not meeting any of their eyes.

  There was a tense pause. Then James laughed, harder than he’d done in days. The laugh held all the tension of the last fight, all the fear of learning how this terrifying world worked. It all evaporated, and he was just glad to be among friends.

  “Hate when that happens,” he said. “What’d you find?”

  “Well,” said Virgil. “I think I know how to fix Inara’s class.”

  “What?!” Inara made to snatch the book from his hands, and the scholar handed it over without a fuss.

  He pushed his glasses further up his nose. “It actually wasn’t too hard to find,” he said. “That sort of thing didn’t exist last time I was in this library. You know, we didn’t have Demon Kings, so we didn’t have Heroes. You can’t betray a Hero if there aren’t any, so obviously there wouldn’t have been any books about it.”

  “Soo… How did you find this one?” James asked.

  “Well! I figured if there was going to be a book about it in this library, it would be a book I hadn’t seen before! So I looked around for anything I didn’t recognize, and eventually found that one.”

  James blinked, stunned for a second by how completely a person would have to know a library in order to recognize a few new books.

  “You beautiful little nerd,” he said, and ruffled Virgil’s hair.

  “Hey!” Virgil swatted at James’s hand and ducked away, but he was smiling.

  Inara was flipping through the book like a madwoman, skimming pages. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she blinked them away so she could see.

  “The good news is,” said Virgil, “it’s not complicated. Whatever you did to the Hero before, you have to do the opposite now.”

  “Ah,” she said, her voice quiet. “Is that all.”

  “What, uh. What did you do to him?” James asked.

  Inara half-smiled, but there was no joy in it. “I tried to kill him.”