Morning physical exercises were canceled.

Everyone but Dan was sitting in the cla.s.s selection room.

Michael and Alexander were the first to make their choice. Dan looked at the status of the group and found out that Michael had taken the cla.s.s of Soldier, and Alexander had not risked taking the Knight. Alexander chose the Warrior cla.s.s.

In the courtyard, he and Turin opened the gate and rolled to the village for the carpenter.

From the bas.e.m.e.nt they heard Gandalf moaning: "What"s there to think about?! Hurry up and pick something!""

In the morning, Gandalf"s desire to be a magician became strongerб and he furiously persuaded John and Nick to go hunting in the morning.

"You are clever and fast! Quickly choose your cla.s.ses and run into the woods! There are pigs, its meat for dinner, it"s a test of new abilities! I want to take level 10!"

Jim took the Craft and Basics Smith and went to the blacksmith. Skin and cut skills were his reward from the system for his work and his many attempts to fix players" stuff. Now Jim is a professional with a broad profile.

Dan walked into the castle, went up to the room with the fireplace and sat down in front of the fire. He had to look closely and carefully at the description of the Inquisitor cla.s.s.

When Dan woke up, the choice seemed to him to be a good one.

The Inquisitor is the one who punishes Evil. The Inquisitor must know how to fight monsters. And Dan liked the prospect of becoming the expert on which his survival in this game depended.

Dan started reading the Inquisitor cla.s.s description.

*

The Inquisitor.

Attention! There are three possible transformations of this cla.s.s.

Evil has always been, evil is many faces and ruthless. Evil often hides under the mask of good.

To understand and defeat such an enemy, you must become Evil.

You have taken the Inquisitor"s path, you must know that you will now be hated and feared. Ordinary people will never give you a table or shelter, the merchants will significantly increase the price of their goods.

To survive, you will have to go to a place where you can get the resources for your future existence. Your road leads to the cursed places, abodes and lair of monsters. These incarnations of Evil have now become your family, and you must mercilessly destroy this family.

You have chosen this path yourself, you must be strengthened by the Spirit and follow it with honor.

Attention! The Inquisitor cla.s.s can use the cursed artifacts.

1. Improved skills [Pa.s.sive]:

"The Cognition of Evil". When you fight evil, you will learn about the nature and essence of evil. When you kill monsters, you research them thoroughly. By developing this skill, you will be able to see and identify the monster, under whatever mask it is hidden.

[Attention! This skill group is only an upgrade in the battle with monsters]

It opens up skills:

"Inquiry". Sensible monsters can"t lie to you by talking to you, it"s easier to expose them.

"Hammer of Witches". If the monster is near you, it will suffer severe pain and loss of vitality.

Damage Calculation Formula: The number of your Spirit point per second * per skill level.

2. Cla.s.s skills:

"Autodafe". Developing this skill will allow you to summon the monster to Court, thereby limiting the area of his maneuver. The monster cannot leave the Court area while you are alive.

Attention! The combat skills of a Court-called Monster are reduced by 5% in one skill, the cla.s.s skills of the Monster are blocked. Skill duration: The amount of your Spirit * by the skill level.

Opens Skills:

"Spiritual Power". If a warrior"s main characteristic is Strength, then your main characteristic is Spirit, and it can completely replace your strength.

One skill point gives you a 5% increase in strength from the total amount of your Spirit.

"Tough Will". You will experience fear and pain, but you will be able to turn these harmful feelings into your advantage.

Some of the damage you get turns into life points. You will be able to receive 5% of the damage you receive.

Combat skill:

"Punishment". The Inquisitor is weak in body, but he is strong in spirit. In the battle with monsters, it is the Spirit who will be your weapon.

This skill increases the damage you cause and your defense, including against non-material enemies.

Your damage and defense are increased by 5% per skill. Time of action and Cooldown skill: 120/240 seconds.

*

Dan saw the advantages and disadvantages of his choices.

The most unpleasant thing was the fact that he was firmly connected with a group of other players. The Inquisitor will not be able to interact normally with ordinary people. The Inquisitor needs a helper.

Now he has the Clan. But he was unhappy with its restriction.

Everything has a price. He can deal with new problems.

The active part of the new cla.s.s has pleased him. As Dan thought, the Inquisitor is a master in destroying monsters.

It has a pa.s.sive aura that does enormous damage. A Level 1 skeleton has 1200 lives. Skeleton Elite level 15 has 8000 lives. If Dan raises the Hammer of Witches skill to level 10, he will deal 300 damage points per second! 4 seconds will destroy a weak skeleton, Elite will fall in half a minute of combat. That"s very impressive. Dan wonders how far this aura can hit.

The skill of "Tough Will" is vampirism, and it"s a great opportunity to get out of combat alive.

"Autodafe" blocks the monster"s cla.s.s skills. That"s very good. Enemy skills in this game look scary and very dangerous. Dan has an opportunity to ease his fight. This kind of control and debuff looks cute.

Buffs of the cla.s.s will be useful in the game, too.

Dan does not understand the conditions that are necessary to transform into a new level of cla.s.s.

Perhaps the player should gain a certain number of levels. For example, until you reach level 20 the transformation is impossible.

Maybe the player should develop some of his skills to the maximum. Then, the question arises about the required number of developed skills.

In any case, the time has come to work carefully with his characteristics. The skill points and the reserve characteristics should not be a dead weight in the status.

Dan was not in a hurry and calmed himself with the thought that there is no bad skills, every skill of the inquisitor is worthy of attention.

He hopes that he has not ruined his life in this cursed world.

Status:

*

Character information:

Name: Dan

Cla.s.s: Inquisitor

Race: Human

Level: 10

Experience: 41100/54200

Strength 25 [16 +3 +2 +4]

Intellect 13 [11 +2] [MP 130]

Dexterity 17 [14 +3]

Spirit 35 [29 +3 +3]

Endurance 20 [HP 2000]

Luck 2 [Pa.s.sive]

"See the Hidden" 1 [Pa.s.sive]

Improved skills:

"The Cognition of Evil" [0/10]

Cla.s.s skills:

"Autodafe" [10]

"Spiritual power" [3/10]

"Tough Will" [0/10]

Combat skills:

"Punishment" [2/10]

Available with 0 point characteristics and 0 point skills.

*

The improvement of skills began when the system reminded him of the need to fight monsters. Dan couldn"t improve the "Cognition of Evil" skill. This skill group required a battle with monsters!

Dan developed the cla.s.s skill "Autodafe" to its maximum. Monster control and maximum enemy weakening is the most important thing for him now. Is he dependent on other players? Fine, then they should help Dan in combat. It"s Dan"s business to control and debuff the enemy. And no vampirism will help him survive six minutes of combat. Now all he has to do is get four strikes from a strong enemy to go on a rebirth. Pitiful crumbs of compensation won"t help!

But increasing strength with "Spiritual Power" is a reliable and useful skill.

Dan hopes that the monster in the Court area will be available for damage from his partners.

He liked "Punishment" for its versatility, but increasing damage and protection is great.

Dan was in the early stages of character development. It"s important to take care of his survival.

Dan wonders how all this will work in battle. He remembered the possibility of using Cursed Items. Terrible moment, terrible perspectives. The game for Dan will be a constant challenge to his luck.

His body was floating on waves of euphoria from the elevated characteristics, thoughts lazily confused in the head.

And what happens if Dan comes to the village now? Kicked out in disgrace? Dan wants to shout.

Half the kingdoms for the information book on this d.a.m.n game!

The euphoria blew up, Dan hit the floor with a glove shackled in steel and got up slowly. Dan liked the bracelets, they were comfortable, his fingers could move freely. He didn"t feel any decrease in insensitivity.

He wanted to take a walk around the castle. What if he got lucky and found a new stash?

And Dan also decided that from now on, he should spend his Glory on his development. He has nothing to gain a reputation with the locals, the Inquisitor is a dangerous monster for everyone. Everybody has their sins, everybody hides skeletons in hiding places, and everybody doesn"t like the Inquisition.

But this question should be discussed with Michael.

Dan wandered from room to room. In random places, the player tapped into walls and pressed on ledges that seemed suspicious to him. Until Dan was unlucky.

The only thing that seemed strange to him was the floor that contained the cabinets. Something on this floor was wrong, and he couldn"t figure out what it was.

Dan went down to the yard and invited Jim to help. The new smith was already forging something with a small hammer. Not knowing how to properly explain his problem, Dan just asked Jim to come in one strange place.

They walked into the Castle, went up to the floor with the cabinets, Jim was staring at Dan questioningly. Dan started talking:

"Jim, you"re an engineer, right?"

"Yes. I was an engineer," he said quietly.

"You know the schemes and plans and you can imagine them in your head, can"t you?"

"What"s your idea?" he asked.

"The idea is that every s.p.a.ce in this Preceptorium is used to its maximum. I carefully measured the width and length of the tower and all the rooms in it. I know for a fact that the tower has a hidden room! The area of all rooms do not equal the area of the tower."

"Do you think there"s another room just because the builders didn"t use the entire useful volume of this floor?"

"By all accounts, this was home to a warrior order, Jim, and the military is known for its practicality."

"Well, if there"s such a room, it can only be between cabinets," his hand patted on the corridor wall. "Are you going to smash the wall?"

"I"m not going to smash the wall. If the room isn"t buried, there"s got to be a mechanism that opens the stash. You"re an engineer, so if you had to build a stash here, where would you put the key?"

"I"m not an architect. We took out the rotten bookcases, no torch bindings in the cabinets. Have you looked at the walls?"

"I even tapped the walls."

"The walls are almost a foot wide, you"re tapping up your a.s.s. I"ll take the central cabinet, you take the extreme. We need to push those walls that seem smoother or more convex. Dan, let"s check this out fast, Turin gave me a lot of jobs."

"He gave you an a.s.signment?"

"I am now a blacksmith as an Apprentice. Our system for leveling is much more sophisticated than the fighters. There"s a whole list of materials to master, from simple to complex. Even Mifril and Adamantium are on the list, and there are many other metals we don"t know."

Players had begun a detailed study of the walls. Dan managed to check half the stones. He didn"t find any discovery.

Suddenly there was a deaf knock and a loud rattle from the cabinet Jim was in. Dan ran to the sound of his room. In the room, he saw a ma.s.sive table moved, and a surprised Jim standing where it used to be. There was an entrance in the wall that was a yard wide.

"I had a "See the Hidden"," told Jim happily.

"I"m very happy for you. Was the mechanism under the table?"

"Yeah, there are two masonry stones on the floor a bit wider than the others if you step on them."

"Okay, let"s see what we found."

"You"ll be watching alone. I can"t get off the rocks, and then the stash starts to close right away. You get in there and look."

As Dan approached the opening, he whistled respectfully.

"Very good mechanics. First, the stove goes deep into the wall, and then it slides to the left, into a special opening. But the most important thing is that I can"t see the details of the mechanism moving this plate."

"What is it?" he asked.

"It"s a very small room. In the center of the room is a stone pedestal, like a table. There are three objects on the table.

A sword in the sheath. A piece of black stone. And a thick book in a black cover with chains."

"Dan, don"t play with my brains! Read the description of the objects, not what you see!"

Dan moved forward, but I froze, stopped by a system message.

*

[Attention! You are approaching the cursed objects.

Attention! You can"t identify these objects. You need a skill or an Identification Scroll.

Attention!!! A cursed object can have a destructive effect on your character. Under the influence of the course, you may lose your cla.s.s and become a Monster]

*

Dan quickly jumped back into the room.

"Close that door!"

Jim jumped to the window and froze, looking at the slowly closing hole.

"What was it?" he asked in a quiet hoa.r.s.e voice.

"There are cursed objects. Says that identification is required. But if you put your greedy hands on them, your personage will turn into a Monster!"

"And why did the old knights keep that stuff in the castle?"

"I don"t know. We put the table back and wait for Michael."

Suddenly, a wild guess came over Dan:

"Jim, do you remember that funny werewolf with the name of your known player?"

"That"s a nightmare turn. It looks like he found something cursed and dangerous. Then why wasn"t this object on his body?"

"Could he have had a lair in a couple of days?"

"Dan! Every normal person will find a place that"s safe and secure. Even if you"ve become a cursed monster, you always have a lair."

That"s the end of the discussion. n.o.body wanted to talk about the cursed things and the cursed monster that was killed.

They put the table back.

Dan was impressed by the discovery and realized that he needed a walk in the open air.

Jim went to the blacksmiths. Dan sat down by the well and opened the group status to see if the others had made up their mind about the cla.s.ses.

There were some changes to the menu. Now it looked like a Clan theme. You could enter a picture of a clan"s coat of arms.

Dan saw a line of empty little windows to match the skills.

The system wrote that to use a skill, you have to make a certain gesture or say the word activation. The first time randomly, then your activator attached to a particular skill and change the "trigger" was impossible. He did not think about the activators of skills.

Dan"s thoughts were busy deciding how deep the a.s.s he fell into was.

The Inquisitor cla.s.s is adapted to interact with the cursed objects of this world.

Dan bound to be asked to deal with these nasty things. But he didn"t want to get to know them any closer! The memories of a werewolf fight came back to mind. Maybe, he turned into a monster some other way. Maybe a witch spelled it on him. Stupid and nonsense! Here, the witches eat new players for breakfast. They torture them to the last drop of blood.

Problems... a strange life where big changes, both good and bad, happen quickly.

Anyway, the cursed objects in the Castle are none of my businesses! The ancient experienced and wise Knights and Inquisitors have hidden the s.h.i.t in a hiding place. Finding the stash is no problem. And we"re not going deep into the d.a.m.ned trap. We"re not exactly brain-dead hardcore players!

Or are we?