Chapter 2: The Worst Class in Arkenfall

The first imp landed on Callum’s chest with all the grace of a dropped knife.

Its claws punched through the rotted leather vest someone had died in before him, scraping ribs that were no longer exposed but still remembered being dead. The thing weighed almost nothing—like a starving dog wrapped in bat wings and bad intentions—but its stink hit him full in the face. Rot, copper, wet feathers, and a stomach-souring sweetness that made his eyes water.

It opened a mouth full of needle teeth and screamed.

Callum screamed back.

Not heroically. Not with defiance or battle spirit or whatever motivational garbage people shouted before getting carved into statistics. He screamed because a winged goblin was sitting on him in a pit full of corpses under a sky the color of arterial blood, and his brain had not yet found a category for any of that.

The imp flinched.

For half a second, its yellow eyes widened.

Callum used that half second to slam his forehead into its snout.

Pain burst behind his eyes. The imp’s cartilage cracked with a wet pop, and the creature reeled backward, claws raking down his shoulder as it lost balance. Callum bucked hard, shoving it off his chest. It tumbled into a bloated corpse beside him, shrieking, wings battering dead flesh.

More screams answered from above.

The carrion imps were descending in a swarm.

They came crawling down the grave walls, clinging to jutting roots and broken coffins, their bodies hunched and twitchy, their wings too small to fly well but good enough to flutter between corpses. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Their eyes glowed like fever lamps in the red light. Some had bone hooks lashed to their arms. One wore a child’s skull as a helmet. Another had a necklace of fingers.

Callum lay among the dead, soaked in grave mud, wearing someone else’s ruined clothes, with no weapon and a translucent blue window blinking in the corner of his vision like an error message.

Welcome to Arkenfall.

Status: Newly Spawned

Level: 1

HP: 18/24

Stamina: 9/12

Mana: 0/0

“Not now,” Callum hissed.

The System did not care.

The first imp recovered and launched at him again.

Callum rolled. Its bone hook slammed into the mud where his neck had been. He scrambled across bodies that gave beneath his hands in ways he immediately tried not to think about. A pale arm snapped under his palm. His knee sank into a burst stomach. He gagged, slipped, and nearly fell flat as another imp bounded toward him over the corpse pile.

It came low, claws out.

Callum grabbed the nearest object and swung.

Unfortunately, the object was a severed femur.

Fortunately, a femur was still a club if one lowered their standards far enough.

Bone cracked against the imp’s cheek. The creature spun sideways, struck a jagged stone marker, and collapsed with a squawk. A tiny red bar appeared above its head.

Carrion Imp — Level 2

HP: 11/19

“Level two?” Callum barked, backing away. “Of course you are.”

Three more imps dropped into the pit. One landed on a fresh body and began sawing at its belly with eager little chirps. Another sniffed the air, head snapping toward Callum. Its nostrils fluttered.

Alive meat.

The imp shrieked.

The others turned.

Callum’s heartbeat hammered so hard it seemed to shake the red sky. His mind tried to split apart: one half wanted to curl up and die properly this time; the other, colder half—the one that had spent sixteen hours a day reading frame data, memorizing spawn timers, and finding exploits developers swore did not exist—started counting.

Dozens of enemies. Low intelligence. Aggressive targeting. Grave pit with uneven terrain. Corpses. Bones. Loose stones. Broken coffin lids. Two narrow exits: one sloping path choked with roots, one collapsed drainage tunnel half-covered by a rusted grate.

No weapon.

No skills.

No respawn information.

So don’t fight fair.

An imp leapt.

Callum threw the femur at its face and ran.

The bone bounced off the creature’s skull, doing no visible damage but insulting it deeply enough that it screeched and followed. Callum scrambled over the corpse heap toward the far wall. Mud sucked at his boots—boots? He had boots. Bad boots. Dead man’s boots. The left one had a hole near the toe and squelched with every step.

Behind him, wings flapped. Claws skittered. Imps crashed into one another in their rush.

Good.

Callum grabbed a broken coffin board jutting from the muck and yanked. It resisted. He yanked harder, muscles burning. The board came free with a wet slurp, revealing rusted nails like crooked teeth.

A tiny notification flickered.

Improvised Weapon Acquired: Splintered Coffin Plank

Damage: Pathetic

Durability: Questionable

“Great,” Callum gasped. “Exactly my brand.”

The lead imp lunged at his calves.

Callum swung down. The plank smashed into its wing, nails tearing membrane. The imp hit the mud and cartwheeled into the path of the ones behind it.

They did not stop.

The next two imps trampled their fallen packmate, claws punching into its back, wings flaring as they clawed over each other to reach him. The wounded imp shrieked and bit one in the ankle. The bitten imp turned and savaged it.

Red numbers popped above them.

-3

-5

-2

Callum saw the numbers and almost laughed.

Friendly fire.

“Oh,” he said, breath ragged. “You stupid little loot piñatas.”

Another imp came from the side, bouncing off a tomb slab with a hooked blade raised high. Callum ducked under the slash and slammed his shoulder into its chest. The impact hurt him more than it hurt the imp, but momentum carried them both sideways into a knot of feeding creatures.

The imp’s hook missed Callum and buried itself in the neck of another imp.

The struck creature made a sound like a kettle boiling over and retaliated by tearing half the attacker’s ear off.

The pit erupted.

Carrion imps were not soldiers. They were hunger with wings. The moment blood flowed, the swarm forgot the menu. They snapped at anything moving. Claws flashed. Teeth clicked. One imp tried to drag a strip of flesh from a corpse and had its tail bitten by another. A third attacked the thief. A fourth attacked both because violence appeared to be its first language and only hobby.

Callum staggered away, clutching the coffin plank, staring at the chaos he had accidentally—or maybe not accidentally—created.

Then something sharp sliced across his back.

He cried out and fell to one knee. Heat washed down his spine.

HP: 14/24

Right. Still enemies. Still death.

A larger imp crouched behind him, its wings scarred, its jaw too wide. Unlike the others, it wore actual scraps of armor: bits of leather strapped over its chest and a rusted pot lid tied to one forearm. Its red bar glowed deeper than the others.

Grave-Slick Imp — Level 3

HP: 31/31

“Boss variant,” Callum muttered. “Because why wouldn’t the tutorial grave have one?”

The Grave-Slick Imp smiled.

It had too many teeth for smiling.

Callum backed up. The imp advanced with slow, deliberate steps, letting the lesser imps rip each other apart behind it. It was smarter. Not smart, hopefully, but smart enough to understand that Callum was wounded, weaponless in any meaningful sense, and made of delicious experience points.

Callum tightened his grip on the plank.

The imp darted left.

Callum swung.

It wasn’t there.

Something hit his knee from the right. Pain flashed white. He went down hard. The imp landed on his back, claws digging into his shoulders, mouth lunging for his neck.

Callum jammed his forearm under its jaw.

Teeth sank into his sleeve and flesh beneath. He howled, twisted, and smashed the plank backward over his own shoulder. The first blow glanced off. The second hit the imp’s skull. The third broke the plank in half.

Improvised Weapon Destroyed.

“I noticed!”

The imp ripped free with a strip of his sleeve and skin. Callum’s HP dropped again.

HP: 9/24

Status: Bleeding (Minor)

The word Minor felt extremely personal.

He rolled beneath the imp’s next swipe. Its claws carved sparks from a half-buried gravestone. Callum’s fingers closed around something cold and metal in the mud. He pulled without looking.

A rusted chain came free.

At its end dangled an iron collar still attached to a broken vertebra.

Callum decided his standards had not yet hit bottom.

He whipped the chain at the imp’s face.

The collar cracked against its eye. It shrieked, stumbling back. Callum lurched to his feet and ran straight toward the brawling swarm.

The Grave-Slick Imp followed, furious now, one eye weeping black fluid.

Callum leapt over a corpse, slid down a slick mound of mud, and nearly slammed into two imps locked together in a biting match. He kicked one in the back as he passed.

“Tag,” he wheezed. “You’re it.”

The kicked imp spun, saw the Grave-Slick barreling toward it, and lunged.

The Grave-Slick swatted it aside without slowing.

But the second imp latched onto its leg.

Then a third smelled blood and joined.

Callum kept moving. He dragged the chain behind him, whipping it across wings, tails, backs—never staying long enough to be surrounded, never hitting hard enough to kill, only hard enough to offend. Every offended imp added itself to the storm.

A red number here. A shriek there. Target lines crossing. Pathing breaking.

If Arkenfall had a developer, Callum wanted to kiss them and sue them.

He reached the sloped exit at the edge of the mass grave. The path climbed between roots and broken stone, narrow enough for one body at a time. Perfect choke point. Perfect escape.

Also blocked by three imps gnawing on a horse carcass.

“Move,” Callum said.

They looked up.

“Okay, rude of me to ask.”

He threw the iron collar at the carcass.

It struck the horse’s swollen belly.

The belly burst.

The smell was a physical event.

Callum gagged so hard his vision blurred. The imps went mad. They dove into the spill, shoving and biting, forgetting him completely. Callum squeezed past them with his shoulders scraping roots, boots sliding in filth. One imp snapped at his ankle as he passed. He stomped on its head and kept climbing.

Behind him, the Grave-Slick Imp tore free of the swarm.

It was bleeding from a dozen wounds. Its pot-lid shield hung loose. One wing dragged uselessly. Its good eye found Callum.

Hatred sharpened its face.

Callum reached the top of the slope and stumbled onto open ground.

The mass grave lay inside a basin ringed by dead trees and leaning stones. Beyond it stretched a field of black grass under the blood-red sky. Ruined towers pierced the horizon like broken teeth. Far off, something enormous moved behind a curtain of ash, each step sending a dull thud through the earth.

Callum had no time to appreciate the postcard from hell.

The Grave-Slick Imp clawed up the slope after him.

Callum’s stamina flashed.

Stamina: 2/12

His lungs burned. His legs shook. Blood slicked his arm, back, and thigh. He could run maybe ten more steps before collapsing.

The imp knew it.

It sprang.

Callum dropped flat.

The imp sailed over him and landed on the rotten ground beyond the lip of the pit—exactly where the grass hid a cracked stone slab Callum had spotted on the way up. Its weight hit. The slab shifted.

The earth beneath the imp collapsed.

Not a pit. Not deep. Just enough.

Its injured leg plunged into the gap between stones. Bone snapped. The imp screamed, thrashing, trapped to the hip.

Callum crawled backward, laughing breathlessly because terror and victory apparently used the same muscles. The imp clawed at the ground, dragging itself forward inch by inch, its broken leg mangled beneath the slab. It reached for him.

Callum looked around for a weapon.

Nothing.

Just grave markers, black grass, and a fist-sized stone near his hand.

He picked up the stone.

The imp hissed.

Callum brought the stone down on its skull.

Once.

Twice.

On the third strike, the imp stopped hissing.

On the fourth, the System chimed.

You have slain Grave-Slick Imp (Level 3).

Experience gained: 24

Bonus Experience: Environmental Kill Contribution +8

Loot available.

Callum collapsed onto his back.

The sky above him churned red and black, clouds twisting like bruises. His chest rose and fell in ragged jerks. Every part of him hurt. His right arm trembled so badly he nearly dropped the stone. Somewhere below, the imp swarm continued tearing itself apart, shrieks rising from the grave like an audience that hated the performance but could not look away.

He was alive.

Again.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Tutorial complete. Give me the sword. Give me the fireball. Give me literally anything that isn’t corpse wrestling.”

The System answered.

Combat Assessment Complete.

Performance: Unorthodox

Direct Damage: Low

Environmental Interaction: High

Loot Awareness: High

Corpse Proximity Tolerance: Disturbingly High

Callum blinked.

“Excuse me?”

Class Assignment Pending…

A sound like grinding glass filled the air. Blue light unfolded before him, forming a window larger than the others. Symbols crawled across it, rearranging themselves too quickly to read. Callum pushed himself upright despite the pain, because this mattered. This was the moment. Every game had one.

Class selection. Build foundation. The thing that determined whether a player became a raid boss killer or a background corpse with starter boots.

The window flashed.

Available Class Paths Detected:

Warrior — Requirements unmet: Direct martial engagement insufficient.

Rogue — Requirements unmet: Stealth engagement insufficient.

Hunter — Requirements unmet: Ranged engagement insufficient.

Mage — Requirements unmet: Mana capacity nonexistent.

Cleric — Requirements unmet: Divine affinity nonexistent.

Scavenger — Requirements met.

The world became very quiet.

Even the imps seemed to lower their voices out of respect for the insult.

Callum stared at the word.

“No.”

Class Assigned: Scavenger

Rarity: Common

Combat Rating: Negligible

Party Demand: None

Survival Projection: Poor

“No, no, no.” Callum jabbed a bloody finger through the window. It rippled but did not change. “Reroll. Back. Cancel. Esc. Alt-F4. I killed the big one. Did you miss that? I was there. It was impressive from my angle.”

Primary Skill Acquired: Salvage

Extract low-grade materials from defeated enemies, containers, debris, and abandoned equipment.

Secondary Skill Acquired: Appraise Scrap

Identify the basic value and condition of damaged items.

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