Chapter 3: The Weakest Class in Atherion

Miles woke up choking on grass.

Not metaphorical grass. Not the memory of a loading screen or some pretty respawn effect with angelic harp music and a clean fade-in. Actual grass jammed between his teeth, bitter and wet, with dirt packed under his tongue and something small and many-legged sprinting across his cheek like it had paid rent there.

He lurched upright with a sound that was half cough, half scream.

The ruined meadow spun around him in smeared greens and grays. Above, the sky still hung broken, a blue dome fractured by glowing black cracks that pulsed like veins full of ink. In the distance, a tutorial sign leaned at a crooked angle beside the dirt road, its cheerful painted mascot partially burned away. One wooden eye remained, wide and delighted, as if thrilled by the apocalypse.

Miles slapped at his face, spat grass, and dragged air into lungs that felt brand new and horribly used.

His last memory arrived in pieces.

A rabbit.

No, not a rabbit. A furry white landmine with a horn.

It had launched out of the flowers with the sound of tearing canvas. Its little red eyes had burned with all the mercy of a tax audit. He remembered the horn punching through his stomach. The wet pressure. The absurdity of being impaled by something that belonged on a greeting card. Then the world going dark while translucent blue text unfurled above him.

You have died.

He pressed a shaking hand to his abdomen.

Whole. No hole. No blood. His borrowed tunic—thin gray beginner trash with frayed sleeves—had repaired itself too, except for a faint dark stain where the horn had gone in. The System had restored the outfit but kept the trauma for flavor.

“Cool,” Miles rasped. “Great. Ten out of ten immersion.”

A breeze slid across the meadow and carried the stink of damp soil, wildflowers, and something rotten hidden under all that tutorial sunshine. The starter zone was too pretty at a glance, like a postcard someone had left in a flooded basement. Daisies bobbed beside chunks of cracked stone. Butterflies flickered over patches of black corruption that hissed when the shadows touched them. Every few seconds, the world stuttered at the edge of his vision—a blade of grass snapping back into place, a cloud jittering, a dead tree briefly becoming whole before remembering it was dead.

A chime rang inside his skull.

RESPAWN COMPLETE.

Integrity check: Failed.

Soul anchor: Unknown.

Player record: Missing.

Entity classification pending…

Miles froze.

The blue windows hovered in the air before him, semi-transparent and mercilessly clean against the ruined meadow. He had played games his entire life. He had broken games for money. He had crouched in out-of-bounds corners while donations scrolled past and viewers spammed frog emotes because he had saved 0.3 seconds by clipping through a cathedral wall. He knew a character creation screen when one had its fingers around his throat.

Another window snapped open.

WELCOME, BEGINNER.

You have entered the Tutorial.

Please proceed to the Training Yard for weapon selection, basic attribute allocation, and class assignment.

ERROR: Training Yard unavailable.

ERROR: Weapon selection unavailable.

ERROR: Attribute allocation unavailable.

“Yeah,” Miles said, voice thin. “Kind of picked up on that when the bunny spawn-camped me.”

The System did not appreciate his feedback. The next pane arrived with the hard finality of a judge’s gavel.

CLASS ASSIGNMENT FORCED.

Analyzing available templates…

Commoner: Corrupted.

Apprentice Swordsman: Missing trainer validation.

Novice Mage: Mana channels damaged.

Scout: Pathfinding module destroyed.

Priest Acolyte: Divine authorization denied.

Fallback class selected.

The air in front of Miles darkened. Letters crawled across the window, glitching red at the edges.

Class Acquired: Dead Beginner

Classification: Glitched / Invalid / Persisting

Description: A starter entity that has failed to start properly and has demonstrated premature termination.

Weapon Proficiencies: None

Armor Proficiencies: None

Magic Affinity: None

Growth Rate: Catastrophically Poor

Social Standing: Unrecognized

Miles stared.

“Dead Beginner,” he said.

The meadow answered with a cheerful birdcall from something that sounded much too large to be a bird.

“That’s not a class. That’s a Steam review.”

The stat window unfolded beneath it.

Miles Vale

Level: 1

Class: Dead Beginner

HP: 6/6

MP: 0/0

Stamina: 8/8

Strength: 1

Agility: 2

Endurance: 1

Intelligence: 4

Willpower: 3

Luck: -1

Unassigned Attribute Points: 0

Miles’s mouth went dry.

Six HP.

He had seen decorative vases with more survivability. In some games, chickens had ten. His Strength was a rounding error. His Luck was actively hostile. Intelligence being his highest stat felt less like a compliment and more like the System saying, You’re smart enough to understand how screwed you are.

He swallowed and forced himself to breathe through his nose.

Panic was an input delay. Panic was mashing jump after missing the ledge. Panic was how you lost the run before the boss even finished its intro animation.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay, Miles. Assess the build. Trash stats. No weapon. No trainer. Murder rabbits. Respawn confirmed. Death penalty unknown. Potential perk triggered by death.”

At that, as if waiting for the thought, another pane flickered into existence. This one looked different from the others. Its border was not clean blue but black glass veined with static. The text inside pulsed like a heartbeat.

GLITCH PERK DISCOVERED

Death Loot: Novice

When killed by an enemy possessing active skills, you may retain one compatible skill imprint upon respawn.

Skill retention chance: 100% for first acquisition.

Future retention conditions: Unknown.

Warning: Repeated death may cause identity erosion, memory fragmentation, soul desynchronization, hostile System attention, or permanent deletion.

Miles read it once.

Then again.

Then a laugh broke out of him, sharp and disbelieving, and he slapped both hands over his mouth because the meadow had rabbits in it and the rabbits had opinions.

Death Loot.

The System had given him the worst class in existence and accidentally taped a loaded gun under the desk.

He looked toward the flowers where the horned rabbit had killed him. The meadow seemed empty, but he knew better now. The little monster was still out there, probably chewing clover with the smug confidence of an overleveled tutorial gatekeeper. He remembered its movement more than its appearance. That impossible burst. One second stationary, the next a white streak crossing ten meters like reality had given it priority processing.

He raised his hand, half expecting some new ability to hum under his skin.

Nothing.

“Status,” he said.

The word felt ridiculous. The window obeyed anyway.

Miles Vale

Level: 1

Class: Dead Beginner

HP: 6/6

Stamina: 8/8

Skills:

— Burrow Dash I (Stolen)

— Death Loot: Novice (Glitched Perk)

Miles stopped breathing.

There it was.

The rabbit’s movement skill. Sitting under his name like it belonged to him. Like he had not acquired it through the noble method of being skewered through the digestive system.

He tapped the floating text with one finger. His finger passed through cold light, but the skill expanded.

Burrow Dash I

Type: Movement / Beast Technique

Cost: 4 Stamina

Effect: Compresses body posture and launches user in a short ground-level burst toward target direction. Increased speed when initiated from crouch or partial cover.

Restrictions: Requires functional legs. Reduced control for non-burrowing species. Collision damage possible.

Original Owner: Tutorial Hornhare

Acquisition Method: Fatal Impalement

“Acquisition method,” Miles whispered. “You petty little interface.”

He crouched.

The grass brushed his knees. Dirt smelled wet and metallic beneath him. He leaned forward the way he had seen the rabbit coil before launching, palms hovering over the ground, weight on the balls of his feet.

Nothing happened.

“Burrow Dash,” he said.

His stamina vanished like someone had yanked a plug out of his spine.

The world stretched.

Miles shot forward.

Not ran. Not jumped. Shot. The ground blurred under his face, grass whipping his cheeks, wind punching tears from his eyes. His center of gravity dropped too low, his limbs tucked wrong, and for one wild second his body seemed convinced it was a compact predatory loaf instead of a human man with knees and a fragile nose.

Then he slammed headfirst into the tutorial sign.

The crack of skull on rotten wood echoed across the field.

The sign shuddered. The remaining mascot eye popped loose and bounced off his shoulder.

Miles collapsed backward into the grass, clutching his forehead while bright white stars exploded behind his eyes.

HP: 4/6

Stamina: 4/8

Collision damage suffered.

Skill proficiency increased slightly.

For a long moment, the only sound was his wheezing.

Then he began to laugh.

It hurt. His head throbbed. His nose was full of old wood dust. But the laugh came anyway, a ragged ugly thing that shook his ribs and scared a flock of glittering insects out of the flowers.

“Oh,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Oh, that’s broken.”

It was awful. It was clumsy. It cost half his stamina and had nearly brained him against signage. But it was movement. Burst movement. On a level one body with trash stats and no gear.

Movement broke worlds.

Every serious speedrun started with the same question: How can I move wrong? Wrong movement led to skipped bosses, missed triggers, unloaded maps, infinite climb glitches, fall damage cancels, and developers quietly sobbing into patch notes. If the Broken Tutorial had collision, terrain, enemy leash ranges, aggro states, and skill imprints, then it had seams. Miles just needed to find them before something found his spine.

A rustle came from the flower patch.

Miles froze on his back.

Two long ears rose above the daisies.

They were not cute ears. They were dagger-thin, veined with angry red lines, each tip twitching independently. The horn followed, spiraled bone stained brown at the base. Then the rabbit’s head emerged—white fur, twitching nose, eyes like fresh blood.

A nameplate appeared above it.

Tutorial Hornhare

Level 7

HP: 38/38

Status: Territorial

Miles did not move.

The hornhare stared at him.

He stared back.

“We don’t have to make this weird,” Miles said softly.

The hornhare’s nose twitched.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re making it weird.”

The rabbit lowered its head.

Miles rolled.

The hornhare blurred past where his stomach had been and ripped a trench through the grass. Dirt sprayed over his face. He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering so hard his HP bar might have filed a complaint. The rabbit skidded, carved a crescent in the meadow, and turned with terrifying precision.

It was faster than him. Stronger than him. Healthier than him. Better designed in almost every measurable way.

Except Miles had the skill now too.

And unlike the rabbit, he knew what cooldown baiting was.

He backed toward the tilted signpost, limping slightly from the self-inflicted collision. His stamina ticked up one point, slow as a dripping faucet.

Stamina: 5/8

The hornhare pawed the ground.

“Come on,” Miles whispered. “Show me the startup frames.”

The rabbit crouched. Its hind legs compressed. Its ears angled flat. Horn lowered. A tiny tremor ran through its body a fraction of a second before the dash.

There.

Miles threw himself sideways before it launched.

The hornhare streaked past, missing by inches. Its horn slammed into the signpost.

Rotten wood exploded.

The sign cracked in half with a groan, the cheerful tutorial mascot collapsing face-first into the dirt. A red error message leaked from the broken plank like blood.

PLEASE PROCEED TO—

PLEASE PROCEED TO—

PLEASE PR—

The rabbit wrenched its horn free and shook splinters from its face.

Miles grinned despite himself.

“Environmental damage works.”

The hornhare hissed.

Rabbits, in Miles’s previous world, did not hiss. This one did. It sounded like steam escaping a punctured pipe.

He needed a weapon. The System had denied him proficiency, but proficiency was not a requirement to hit something with a stick. It only meant he would hit badly, slowly, and with embarrassing numbers. Still, numbers mattered less when the enemy did the damage for him.

Miles grabbed the broken sign’s support stake. It was longer than his arm, jagged at one end, damp with corruption sap that tingled against his palm.

Improvised Weapon Acquired: Splintered Tutorial Stake

Damage: 1–2 Blunt/Piercing

Requirement: None

Warning: User lacks weapon proficiency. Attack accuracy reduced. Self-injury possible.

“Story of my life.”

The hornhare charged again.

This time Miles did not dodge early. He waited, every muscle screaming at him to move, while the rabbit compressed. He watched the ears flatten, the hind legs coil, the horn line up with his thigh.

One. Two—

It vanished into motion.

Miles triggered Burrow Dash.

His body folded wrong. The world dropped low. He shot forward, not away but diagonal, skimming past the rabbit’s flank. His shoulder clipped its fur. Pain flashed across his arm as the horn grazed him, tearing cloth and skin.

HP: 3/6

Stamina: 1/8

But he had passed behind it.

The rabbit overshot, slammed into a low mound of blackened stones, and tumbled. Not much. Not enough to stun. But enough.

Miles staggered after it and brought the stake down with both hands.

He missed.

The stake punched into the dirt beside the rabbit with a wet thunk.

The hornhare twisted and bit his wrist.

Agony snapped up his arm. Tiny teeth sank deep. Miles yelled and kicked. His bare foot connected with warm fur, doing what felt like emotional damage at best.

You dealt 1 damage.

Tutorial Hornhare HP: 37/38

“One?” Miles barked. “One damage? I stubbed my toe harder than that!”

The rabbit did not care. It tore its teeth free, taking a red strip with it.

HP: 2/6

He stumbled back. Blood ran down his fingers, bright and hot. His stamina crawled upward.

Stamina: 2/8

Not enough. Burrow Dash cost four. The hornhare still had almost full HP. Miles had two health points and a stick that had betrayed him immediately.

This is unwinnable straight.

Good. Straight fights were for people with stats.

Miles scanned the meadow, searching for anything the arena designer had forgotten to idiot-proof. Broken sign. Stones. Flower patches. Corruption puddle. Dirt road. A shallow burrow near the roots of a dead tree, half-hidden by grass. Another sign beyond it, smaller, pointing toward somewhere called THE FRIENDSHIP POND in peeling letters.

A burrow.