Matthew entered his home taking his boots out at the front door. He sat there for a while resting a bit. From the living room he could hear the TV on. A cute idol song was playing, so he deduced it was Sarah who was watching.
"Is it you Matt?" She asked from the couch.
"Yeah. Just resting a bit." He said turning his head to face the living room.
"Then say something, jerk. You scared me." Sarah commented without taking her eyes from the television.
"Sorry. It’s just that it’s been a long day." Matthew said getting up and walking inside.
Sarah’s face went pale when she looked at Matthew walking in. He was covered from head to toe in dried blood, his hair was scorched at the points and he looked so tired that she thought he could faint at anytime.
"Are you alright?" She asked slowly afraid of the answer.
"Yeah. It’s not my blood." He said. "Just a strong monster that took a lot of work to beat. I’m very tired." He hid the fact that some of the blood was his.
"Don’t get close to me. Do not let it on the couch! Go take those clothes off, now! And shower!" Sarah said recoiling away from him.
Matthew didn’t say anything, just went to the bathroom, put his clothes inside a plastic bag and showered for a long time scrubbing himself meticulously off all the blood.
Once he was finished he went to his room and got dressed in his pajamas and fell onto his bed. He looked at the ceiling reliving the day on his head. Then he remembered that Vanessa leveled up and so did he.
He opened his status screen and gasped at what he saw.
Rolling Gacha for class
You draw a tier 3 class!
Rolling Gacha for class
You draw a tier 3 class!
He leveled up twice? And got two tier 3 classes? And both classes were actually good? He felt a bit scared. good luck was announcing something terrible was about to happen. But he also felt excited, he felt rewarded by fighting so hard for the first time.
He first looked at the Witch class. A class designed for debuffing and controlling enemies. It was a natural progression of the Imprecomancer class. It had two skills, like all other tier 3 classes: Witchcraft and Mind Down.
Witchcraft was a skill that allowed the Witch to alter the mental state of a creature. With this skill, the Witch could cause fear or confusion, induce rage and love and even put people to sleep. It was a very useful skill, even if Matthew didn’t have the Mage skills to use Witchcraft effectively, he could still make good use of it.
Mind Down was a skill that reduced a target’s Mind stat. This allowed the Witch to reduce the defenses of that target against the Witchcraft skill. This one was not very useful for Matthew, therefore he picked the Witchcraft skill.
Matthew then looked at the Witch Doctor class. Its two skills were Healing Totem and Favorite of the Spirits. It was a class that served mostly to create synergy between the Caller and Summoner classes and the Healer class.
Favorite of the Spirits was a passive skill, as the adventurers called it. A skill like Sense Traps that didn’t require MP to be used. Favorite of the Spirits made the user’s mana more appealing to spirits that fed on it. It served to better attune the adventurer with their pacted spirits or to be able to summon stronger spirits with the Summon Spirit skill.
Healing Totem was a skill that allowed the user to infuse an object with mana giving it an aura that healed all living things around that object. Without the Mage skill Lingering Mana, the healing would work while Matthew fed the object with mana. But, even so, it meant Matthew now had a healing skill he could use.
He then looked at his stats and followed his initial idea of spreading out his numbers:
"Matthew Lordstone – Level 10
Doctor (T2) – Level 1
Warrior (T1) – Level 1
Gunner (T2) – Level 1
Plague Doctor (T3) – Level 1
Ranger (T4) – Level 1
Summoner (T2) – Level 1
Priest (T1) – Level 1
Necromancer (T3) – Level 1
Witch Doctor (T3) – Level 1
Skills (1): Anesthesia (E), Imbue Mana (E), Boost Gunpowder (E), Resist Disease (E), Animal Companion (E), Purification (E), Unholy Mana (E), Witchcraft (E), Healing Totem (E)"
Matthew got a pen from the table and experimented with the Healing Totem skill. It didn’t work. He tried different objects in his room. None of them worked with the skill.
He then sat down at his computer and searched the internet about the Healing Totem skill. The object recipient of the Healing Totem skill needed to be blessed by a god or a greater spirit or be possessed by a spirit itself.
It wasn’t going to be so easy as he thought. But it was still a great skill. He decided to talk to a professor at Laufgraan about this the next Monday.
He also searched about how to use the Witchcraft skill. The concept was simple. You had to send mana into the target’s head filled with the feelings you wished to inflict on them. Apparently, the better the user understood the feelings they wanted to inflict, the stronger the target felt them. And that understanding could only be obtained by living experience. That’s why powerful Witches were usually old.
When he turned off his computer, he heard a knock on the door.
"Matt? You awake?" Sarah’s voice asked from the other side of the door. Chapters fırst released on Nov3lFɪre.ɴet
"Come in, sis." Matthew said spinning on his chair to look at her.
Sarah had a scissor and a comb on her hand and looked around the room nervously.
"What are those?" Matthew asked pointing at the objects in her hands.
Sarah took some time to speak, gathering courage to do so.
"I-I thought I could fix your hair. The points are all curled and burned." She said blushing.
Matthew smiled and chuckled a little. It has been a long time since he saw Sarah being cute like that. The last time he could remember was when she was 12. Back then she acted the same way whenever she wanted to do something good to him like giving a gift.
"What are you smiling about, you jerk?!" Sarah blushed more after seeing his smile. "If you mock me I’ll drive this scissor in your good eye!"
Matthew lifted his arms surrendering.
"I would never mock my cute little sister!" He mocked her.
"You fucking jerk!" She said slapping him with a smile on her face.
Matthew laughed and used his phone to look at his hair. It was really a mess.
"But can you fix this?" He asked checking the sides. "Wouldn’t it be better if I went to a barber?"
"I can do it. I have been reading about it a lot." Sarah said. She was studying hard for her ideal of being an idol and studying about fashion and beautification was a part of it. "Let me try on you!"
"So..." Matthew scratched his chin thinking. "I’m to be your guinea pig?"
"Yes." Sarah opened an evil smile.
She brought him to the bathroom and tied a towel around his neck. Then she slowly and patiently started to comb and cut his hair.
The siblings were silent while Sarah worked. She was too focused to say anything and Matthew had a warm feeling on his belly for being cared for by his sister. It made him remember their childhood. She used to kiss his cheek and hide behind him when she was scared. He felt the same way he used to feel back then.
After finishing the hair cut, Sarah swept the hair from the floor to the trash while Matthew looked at himself on the mirror thoroughly.
"That’s the best I could do." She said checking her work.
"It looks better than before." He said still checking himself out.
"Not as good as I imagined." Sarah said showing him the parts of his hair that were so burned she had to cut way more than she wanted. "You’re lucky you’re handsome." She finished.
"Thank you, sis." Matthew thanked her with a kiss on her cheek that sent her tumbling back.
"What the hell?!" Sarah almost screamed cleaning her cheek with the sleeve of her pajama.
"What’s the problem? You used to kiss me all the time."
"We’re not kids anymore!" Sarah protested stomping her foot.
"You’ll always be a kid." Matthew laughed.
"Fucking jerk." Sarah cursed, but a smile crept into her face.
They said their goodnights and went to sleep. Matthew was so tired by now, that he fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed.