Chapter 5: Class Selection Is a Lie

The forest ended like a wound cauterized by civilization.

One step, Leo was under black pines that breathed mist and watched him with knot-hole eyes. The next, he stood on a rutted hill road overlooking Hearthgate, starter town of the northern marches, where the tutorial’s blood and mud gave way to chimney smoke, wheat fields, and the bright impossible nonsense of a game pretending not to be a prison.

The town sat inside a crescent of low stone walls, more decorative than defensive, their tops crowded with orange banners snapping in the morning wind. Beyond them, steep roofs climbed around a central plaza like children gathered at a storyteller’s knee. Windmills turned lazily on the far hills. A river glittered along the eastern side, splitting sunlight into sharp coins. Bells rang somewhere—clear, cheerful, insulting.

Players swarmed the road.

They came in clumps of three and five, laughing too loudly, touching their own faces as if still amazed to have skin in full-dive. Some wore fresh leather, some homespun robes, some the default gray tunics the System had issued before dumping them into danger. Above their heads floated clean blue nameplates and level indicators.

KAZUO — LEVEL 2

MIRA_BLADE — LEVEL 3

DADGAMER77 — LEVEL 1

A boy no older than sixteen sprinted past Leo waving a wooden staff with a crystal glued to the top.

“I’m a Stormcaller!” he yelled at nobody and everybody. Sparks popped from the crystal, one of them landing in his hair. He shrieked. His friends howled with laughter.

Leo watched them with the exhausted contempt of a man who had seen a magic trick from backstage.

His own body still hurt in places no health bar admitted existed. The goblin chief’s axe had opened him shoulder to hip before Leo had learned the timing. The memory of dying remained lodged under his ribs like a splinter. Not the first death. Not even close, according to the number burned into his interface.

DEATH COUNTER: 7
RESPAWN TITAN INTEGRITY: UNSTABLE
ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: OBSERVER LOCK FAILED

The warning hovered at the edge of his vision no matter how hard he tried to dismiss it. It flickered when he blinked, crawled with red static, then hid itself behind the false serenity of the normal HUD.

Leo adjusted the strap of the rare weapon across his back.

The goblin mini-boss’s blade—Grief-Edge of the Split Maw, if the System’s melodramatic naming department could be trusted—was too long to qualify as a shortsword and too ugly to be ornamental. Its metal had the dark sheen of river stones under moonlight, chipped along one edge, serrated near the tip. Tiny runes lay under the surface like trapped worms. Every few minutes, it hummed against his spine with a note that made his teeth ache.

Players stared at it.

Of course they did. Starter zones were built around incremental dopamine. Rusty dagger. Cracked wand. Beginner bow. Not jagged rare boss loot that looked like it had been forged in a grudge.

A broad-shouldered man in spotless novice plate slowed beside him. His nameplate read BRANDON — LEVEL 4. The man’s hair was sculpted in a way that suggested he had spent at least twenty minutes in character creation debating heroic forehead visibility.

“Yo,” Brandon said, eyes on the sword. “Where’d you get that drop?”

“A goblin asked me nicely to take it.”

Brandon blinked. “Like, quest reward?”

“Like, after I removed his ability to object.”

Two players behind Brandon snickered. Brandon’s smile twitched. “Cool. Cool. You rush the mini-boss? What class?”

Leo’s interface spasmed.

CLASS: ██████████
CLASS STATUS: FORBIDDEN / QUARANTINED / DO NOT DISPLAY
PUBLIC INSPECTION: BLOCKED

The message flashed so fast only he could see it. In the public space above his shoulder, where his class should have shimmered when inspected, there was nothing. Not even “Novice.” Just a faint distortion, like heat rising from blacktop.

Brandon narrowed his eyes.

“Your sheet’s private?”

“My personality is private.”

“No, seriously. Everyone’s class should show after selection.” Brandon tapped two fingers in the air, probably opening an inspect prompt. His expression went slack. “Huh. Says target invalid.”

One of his friends leaned in, a girl with twin axes and the name P1XIEKILL. “Maybe he’s an NPC.”

Leo gave her his best dead-man smile. “Boo.”

She laughed, but took half a step back.

He kept walking.

Hearthgate’s gatehouse grew ahead, two square towers flanking a wooden portcullis raised high enough to let wagons pass under. Guards in boiled leather checked carts with a bored efficiency that felt too real for decorative NPC behavior. Their eyes lingered on players, then slid away. A pair of chickens fled between wagon wheels. Somewhere inside the walls, someone was baking bread, and the smell hit Leo so hard his stomach folded in on itself.

He had eaten mushroom jerky looted from goblin packs and berries that had come with a fifty-fifty chance of poison. His body remembered hunger in full sensory fidelity. Fantastic innovation. Truly the future of entertainment.

A system prompt unfolded as he reached the gate.

LOCATION DISCOVERED: HEARTHGATE
Starter settlement of the Emberward Province.
Safe Zone protections active.

WELCOME, PLAYER.
Please proceed to the Hall of Choosing to finalize your class selection.

Leo stopped beneath the shadow of the portcullis.

“Finalize,” he muttered.

The word came wrapped in polished certainty, the same way old sponsors used to say “performance review” before cutting a contract. Finalize your class. Pick your fantasy. Sign your soul on the dotted line and enjoy the particle effects.

His forbidden class pulsed once in response, deep under the skin, a black heartbeat.

The nearest guard flinched.

Leo noticed because he always noticed. Peripheral movements had won him championships before they became clips in documentaries about wasted potential. The guard’s gloved hand twitched toward his spear. His gaze fixed not on Leo’s face, but on the center of his chest.

Then the man looked away too quickly.

“Problem?” Leo asked.

The guard’s jaw tightened. He was perhaps thirty, with sun-browned skin and a scar carved through one eyebrow. Not player-perfect. Not procedurally bland. He looked like someone who had slept badly for years.

“No problem, traveler.”

“That was convincing.”

“Move along.”

Leo considered pressing. Then a wagon driver behind him cursed and snapped a whip in the air, and ten new players began chanting “Class hall! Class hall!” like college freshmen on their first night out.

He moved along.

Inside the walls, Hearthgate exploded around him.

It was too detailed. That was the first thing. Not graphically impressive—every trailer had promised that. Detail was different. Detail was a chipped blue bowl drying on a windowsill. Detail was old candle wax layered on a shrine’s stone lip. Detail was a blacksmith’s apprentice with a burn scar on her wrist muttering multiplication under her breath while counting horseshoe nails. Detail was the wet slap of laundry against river stones and the sour-sweet stink of spilled ale drying between cobbles.

No studio built this for a tutorial town unless they had lost their minds or outsourced to a god with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Players filled the main avenue like a festival parade. They compared stat sheets, argued over builds, and tested abilities in ways that made nearby NPCs duck with practiced alarm.

A wiry player in green lifted his hands and vanished in a puff of leaves.

“Rogue path unlock!” someone shouted.

He reappeared three feet away inside a vegetable cart, knocking cabbages everywhere.

“You have chosen the path of paying for those,” the cart owner said, deadpan.

A woman in white robes healed a scraped knee with golden light and burst into tears. Her friend hugged her, sobbing too. A man with a conjured shield posed while three others took screenshots with invisible UI gestures. In front of a fountain, a group had already started recruiting.

“Need tank and support for Rat Cellar!”

“Level three minimum!”

“No off-meta garbage!”

Leo laughed once under his breath.

Twenty minutes inside a world where death tasted like iron and people had already reinvented gatekeeping.

His HUD drew a gold line through the street toward a large building at the town center. The Hall of Choosing was impossible to miss. It had been designed by someone who believed subtlety was a personal insult: tall white columns, stained-glass windows displaying heroic silhouettes, broad steps polished by generations of boots, banners embroidered with every archetype fantasy could monetize. Sword. Staff. Bow. Anvil. Harp. Skull. Sunburst.

A queue of players snaked out the doors and down the steps, vibrating with impatience.

Leo approached, and the chatter sharpened around him.

“Dude, Paladin gets self-heal at five.”

“Mage has higher scaling, though.”

“Beastmaster lets you tame a wolf. I saw it on stream.”

“There aren’t streams anymore, genius. We’re inside.”

“Clips still record locally, I think.”

“My menu says external broadcast disabled.”

A silence flickered through the group, brief and ugly.

Then someone said, too brightly, “Immersion feature.”

Everyone agreed too fast.

Leo climbed the steps with them.

A player near the door turned and did a double take. She had a shaved head, silver piercings, and the steady posture of someone who had done real martial arts before buying virtual muscles. Her nameplate read JUNO — LEVEL 3. Under it, in clean blue letters: CLASS: WARDEN.

“Your tag’s bugged,” she said.

“So people keep telling me.”

“No level either.”

Leo glanced at his public nameplate reflected in a polished bronze panel beside the entrance. LEO VALE hovered above him, but where the level should have been, static chewed the air.

That was new.

“Huh,” he said.

Juno studied him more closely. Her eyes flicked to the sword, then his torn armor, then the dried black blood under his nails. “You soloed something ugly.”

“Something ugly soloed me several times first.”

“Honest answer. Rare.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

The line moved. A burst of applause came from inside the hall. Someone emerged wrapped in blue light, holding a translucent spear that dissolved into his palm. He punched the air.

“Spellblade, baby!”

The queue erupted in congratulations, envy, and immediate build interrogation.

Juno watched the new Spellblade jog down the stairs. “They make it feel like a graduation.”

Leo heard the edge under her voice. “You don’t buy it?”

“I buy that they want us excited before telling us what the leash feels like.”

Leo looked at her then, properly. “That’s a healthier amount of paranoia than average.”

“I work cybersecurity.”

“Worked.”

Her mouth tightened. The bells rang again, bright over the plaza.

“Yeah,” she said. “Worked.”

The line moved them beneath the archway and into cool incense-thick air.

The Hall of Choosing smelled of cedar, polished stone, and thousands of anxious palms. Sunlight poured through stained glass in thick colored beams. Dust motes drifted like lazy pixels. Along the walls stood statues of class exemplars: a knight with shield raised, a mage cupping a star, a ranger drawing on an unseen beast, a cleric with open hands, a rogue whose statue seemed to vanish if looked at directly. At the far end, beneath a domed ceiling painted with constellations, seven crystal altars formed a semicircle around a central dais.

Priestesses and acolytes guided players forward. Most were NPCs by any reasonable definition, but Leo’s definition had taken damage recently. They moved with ceremony, spoke with patient warmth, and occasionally exchanged glances when players said things that made no sense in-world.

“Approach the crystal,” an acolyte told a trembling teenager. “Let the System weigh your deeds, your heart, and your potential.”

“Does it account for preorder bonuses?” the teenager asked.

The acolyte’s smile did not change. “The System weighs all burdens.”

Leo almost respected that.

When a player touched an altar, light climbed their arm. Illusions blossomed overhead: swords raining fire, wolves howling under moons, saints burning undead to ash. Then came the prompt visible to all in simplified form, the moment of choice, the cheer.

Clean. Addictive. Beautiful.

A casino where the slot machine called itself destiny.

Leo’s turn came faster than he wanted.

Juno stepped to the Warden altar first. Green-gold light recognized her, wrapped around her shoulders like a mantle. An image of a stone gate appeared above her, roots threading through its cracks.

WARDEN PATH CONFIRMED
Role: Defensive Control / Area Denial / Protector
Recommended Attributes: Endurance, Will, Strength

She accepted without theatrics. A bracer of spectral bark formed around her left forearm, then sank into the skin. Her jaw clenched as if it hurt.

“That all?” she asked the acolyte.

“Your path begins.”

“Corporate answer.”

Then it was Leo’s turn.

The central dais waited empty.

A priestess stood beside it, older than the acolytes, her dark hair braided with copper rings and white thread. She wore layered robes the color of cream and hearth ash, and around her neck hung a sun-shaped medallion carved from bone. Not ivory. Bone. Leo knew bone now. He had seen enough of it in the goblin cave.

Her nameplate appeared when he looked at her.

ELIANE OF THE HEARTH — LEVEL ??

No class.

Her eyes met his.

The blood drained from her face.

Every sound in the hall seemed to step backward. The laughter, the prayers, the crackle of class magic—still present, but suddenly far away, as if Leo had sunk underwater.

Eliane’s hand tightened around her medallion.

“No,” she whispered.

Leo stopped at the foot of the dais. “That’s becoming a popular reaction.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her gaze traveled over his face, his shoulders, the sword on his back, then fixed on the space above his heart. Her pupils widened until the warm brown was almost swallowed by black.

“You should not stand beneath these stars.”

Juno, lingering near the exit, turned her head.

Leo kept his voice light because light was easier than the cold crawling up his spine. “I get that from bouncers sometimes.”

Eliane took one step back.

The crystal altars dimmed.

Not metaphorically. Their light guttered, colors draining toward gray. Players groaned as their prompts flickered. An acolyte dropped a silver bowl; it rang across the floor, spinning, spinning, spinning.

Leo’s HUD convulsed.