“William Oh is the smartest, most talented, badass, stoic individual that this town has ever produced, bar none,” Jason announced. Let it never be said that Jason Salazar skimps on a job.

“Really?” the priestess asked, leaning forward and putting her elbows on the table, staring directly at him. She bore a symbol of Granesh on her waist, and honestly, a questionable choice of clothes.

“Have you heard about William Oh?” Jason asked between scooping the thick stew into his mouth. The stuff on the bottom was the tiniest bit burnt-tasting, and it was rare to get a piece of meat or veggies, but it was a damn sight better than the orphanage’s bread and gruel.

“I sure haven’t. Do tell.”

Jason lowered his voice and leaned forward conspiratorially, prompting the pretty priestess to do the same. “Some say he’s a descendant of the very gods themselves. Nothing human could possibly have accomplished the same feats,” Jason whispered. “I personally saw him kill three men…with a writing quill.”

“Oh my,” the priestess said, resting her chin on her palm, completely unconvinced.

“Indeed. People say he was BORN on the top floor of The Tower. They say he was steeped in its lethal Miasma from birth, giving him strange and unnatural powers.”

“They say that, huh?” the priestess asked with a smirk. “How come I’ve never heard of him, then?”

“You will,” Jason said, pointing his greasy spoon at the woman. “Keep your ear to the ground and you’ll soon hear whispers of his prowess. William is a master of both blade and women. A man of Focus, Commitment, and sheer fuckin’ Will.

“He’s indomitable, he’s unquenchable, he’s unstoppable, he’s unflappable, he’s—”

***Will***

“Totally fucked,” Will said, pacing back and forth in a panic as the hyperventilation began to kick in.

“I’m gonna die. This is me, dead.”

Will was in a plain white room with three Altars, and no exit. A white cube from which there was no escape.

People had tried. The walls were seemingly immune to any force an Aspirant could bring to bear, and that included Relic weapons gifted to them by high-level Climbers.

Why the creators of The Trial would design it in such a way that bad luck could trap you in the Class Creation Room until you starved to death spoke to a, quite frankly, criminally negligent oversight.

The only way to open the Door to The Trial and avoid a protracted death by dehydration was to offer three Sacrifices.

Typically, this was not a problem, because the Door only opened when a person had three Sacrifices in their possession.

Will did not have three Sacrifices in his possession.

Alright, let’s lay everything out and go over what we have.

Will unwound his bandages and retrieved the Uru Drake scale, which had been bound tightly to his midsection.

I wonder if things would’ve gone better if I’d left this thing at home, Will thought, rubbing his thumb along the smooth surface of the scale before setting it down.

Nah. They used The Trial opening to determine whether or not I had it. If I’d left it at home, they would’ve kept up appearances and waited for me to reenter the Hunting Grounds with it. Ambushed me then.

The only way he would’ve been able to avoid this fate would’ve been if he had left it home, guessed their intentions and acted on the hunch, hiking several days to a different town with another entrance to the Hunting Grounds.

He wouldn’t have done that. Will was paranoid, but not particularly perceptive. He would’ve retrieved the Uru Drake and come back through the same entrance, and gotten ambushed when he tried to take his Trial.

This was one of the best possible outcomes without advance knowledge. Or at least, the more spitefully gratifying one.

They didn’t get what they came for, and now they never will.

Will grabbed the tattered leather satchel and shook it inside out in a vain attempt to make the Will-o-wisp and spirit turtle Sacrifices fall out.

No such luck. The other two keys to open The Trial remained on the other side of a nonexistent door.

There were, however, several crumbs of pemmican trapped in the interior folds.

Will let out a primal scream and threw the satchel across the pure white room, the simmering anger coming to a boil.

“Having everything given to you wasn’t enough?! You had to take mine, too, Ben?!”

When did I screw up? Was he always planning on taking it from me, or did that merchant make Ben aware of it in a way he hadn’t been before? Did they conspire to steal it during the week I was gone? Were the Climbers working with him, or did he do that on his own? Did they plan on reselling the Uru Drake and splitting the profit, or did Ben lie about what I had and promise something else as long as he could keep the scale for his Class?

Did he bring two Sacrifices with him, with the intention of taking the scale?

Eventually, Will realized he was pacing again, thinking about things that had no bearing on his immediate survival.

Not that anything would really help with that.

Will took a deep breath and slowed his walk, coming to a stand. Right. Calm down. Lay everything out.

Will took off his shirt, folded it, and set it on the floor. He rolled up his bandages and set them beside the scale, followed by his pants, boots, and socks.

He stalked across the room and grabbed the satchel, placing it in his line of ‘supplies.’

Uru scale, clothes, bandages, boots, bootlaces, pemmican crumbs…

Will squished them into a thumb-sized bite of food and was about to pop them in his mouth, when it occurred to him. Pemmican is preserved meat, fat, and berries. It’ll bind you up like nothing else, but ‘meat’ is on the ingredient list.

Will didn’t care if he got a ‘spacetime cow-rancher’ or ‘mystic berry’ Class, as long as it allowed him to leave the room alive.

He stood and approached the Altars, heart hammering in his chest.

He placed the thumb-sized chunk of pemmican on the Altar and stood back.

As soon as the pemmican touched the Altar, a beam of light descended on it, gradually growing in brightness until it suddenly flashed, leaving nothing behind.

A voice spoke directly into his mind.

Suboptimal Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Failed.

Please place an adequate Sacrifice on the Altar. Poorly preserved or mixed Sacrifices have a diminished chance of successfully generating Class Seeds.

But there IS a chance? Will thought to himself, glancing back at his supplies.

His gaze settled on the ruined satchel. It was leather. Monster leather of some type, most likely.

Will went over to the satchel and tore the fabric lining out of the inside, then gnawed the metal studs away from the leather.

He tore the seams apart and pulled the stitches out with his teeth, isolating the leather of the satchel to the best of his ability.

Hours later, he had a frayed stack of pure leather with nary a stitch, stud, or seam. A bit of William spit, but he patted that off with his shirt.

Once the taste of leather faded from his mouth and the hide fully dried, he picked it up.

Here goes nothing, Will thought, heart hammering in his ears as he approached the Altar.

With trembling hands, he put the stack of leather on the Altar.

It’s about the same mass as the Uru Drake scale. Let this work.

The Altar blazed with light, and the leather was gone.

Suboptimal Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Retrying… Success.

Generating seed….

Gravity Goat

2 Kinesthetics, 1 Acuity

Earth, Mobility.

Will’s brows rose, and he shook his head. “They sent me two Sacrifices in one. Huh.”

The beam of light remained above the Altar, indicating that it had been used, leaving the two on the sides.

Will grabbed the Uru Drake scale, contemplating the sheer amount of trouble it had caused him, holding something so valuable without the strength to protect it.

If he hadn’t had it, he’d be just a nobody not worth the effort of robbing. He might even have been friends with the Climbers. They seemed friendly enough, before they knew he had something they wanted.

His Class would’ve been less powerful, but at least he’d be able to pick what he wanted without constantly looking over his shoulder for betrayal.

Just add that to the list of things to punch my parents for, I guess, Will thought, placing the scale in the center of the rightmost Altar.

Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Success.

Generating seed….

Uru Drake Primogenitor

1 Strength, 2 Resistance, 1 Acuity, 1 Focus.

Spacetime, Meta.

Will processed that for a moment before he shrugged. “Okay. It was even more valuable than everyone thought. Whatever. It’s gone now.”

Will stared at the two lit-up Altars for a moment before his belly began to rumble. He hadn’t had breakfast.

He turned to stare at his brand-new leather boots.

I’m gonna have to give Leon a raise, Will thought, stretching his aching jaw, warming up his leather-cutters. Now to spend the next couple hours chewing on boots.

Over the next five hours, Will learned more about the taste of shoe polish and old foot than he thought he ever would.

Finally, he’d disassembled the boots, taking out anything that wasn’t pure leather, assembling the rest into a pile of leather scraps.

Gums bleeding, Will shuffled forward and deposited the leather scraps on the Altar.

The beam of light descended, grew in strength…

Having gotten the hang of it, Will closed his eyes an instant before the flash of light washed across the Altar, heralding the disappearance of the leather scraps.

Suboptimal Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Retrying… Retrying… Failed.

“NO!” Will shouted over the voice in his mind as it continued to emotionlessly deliver its pointless message.

Please place an adequate Sacrifice on the Altar. Poorly preserved or mixed Sacrifices have a diminished chance of successfully generating Class Seeds.

“I would if I could!” Will shouted, kicking the Altar with his calloused foot, having about as much effect on the solid stone as an aggressive cough.

Will’s head turned, almost as if someone had seized his head and forced him to look.

Metal studs, bandages, clothes, bootstrings.

I’m gonna die, Will’s brain realized.

His body, however, wanted to live. With the burning urgency of a man swimming to the surface before he drowned, he leapt forward and seized his shirt, crumpling it up and placing it on the Altar.

Suboptimal Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Failed.

Without bothering to listen to the follow-up, Will grabbed his pants, socks, underwear, the bandages, and threw them all on the Altar, one at a time.

When he got the last ‘Failed,’ he slumped down against the wall.

“Heath always told me I would die naked and afraid,” Will mused. This probably wasn’t what he was talking about, but it sure fit the situation.

36 hours later, Will was considering the best way to kill himself.

The thirst was really starting to get to him, and he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the next two days of agonizing pain before he finally expired.

The only problem was, there was no good way of killing himself available.

The only metal he had left was a collection of metal studs from the satchel and boots. The bootstrings were long enough to strangle himself, but there was nothing to use as leverage.

It was times like this, woozy from dehydration and hopelessness, that he considered what the future held for this extradimensional room that would exist in perpetuity, waiting for a mold-covered corpse to get off its ass and place a Sacrifice on the Altar.

Will blinked.

He stood up, staring at the final unlit Altar.

…Now there’s a good way to kill myself.

But what if…

His heart leapt in his chest, rattled back into action by the sliver of hope he’d uncovered.

If this didn’t work, he wouldn’t have to suffer another two days of agonizing dehydration.

If it did work…he might still die.

Either way, slowly wasting away was no longer on the menu.

Will picked up one of the bootstrings and tied it around his left forearm. He grabbed one side with his bloody teeth, and the other with his right hand. He cinched the string tight around his forearm, until it was painful.

Then he pulled it tighter, knotting it firmly to keep it closed.

Before he could lose his nerve, Will slapped his left hand down on the Altar, his stomach sinking with nausea as the enormity of this decision tried to catch up with him.

The pure adrenaline flowing through his veins made time seem to slow, made it feel like the light took ages to come down, to gain strength, until finally—

A flash of light accompanied a burst of searing pain.

Sacrifice detected…attempting to generate Class Seed… Success.

“HAH!” Will crowed in victory moments before he passed out.

***

“They say he was born on the Hundredth Floor, bathed in its lethal Miasma, which granted him abilities beyond human comprehension,” Jason said over his bowl of soup, doing his job, as per their agreement.

Across from him was a scar-faced Tank with a faintly amused expression, picking at a shepherd’s pie.

“How could he be born on the Hundredth Floor? Nobody’s ever been there, especially not a pregnant woman. The only people who could’ve come close…” The Climber frowned.

“What were this William character’s parents’ names, again?”

“Mary and Thomas Oh, I think. Why?”

The scar-face paled as he stood, his chair clattering to the ground behind him.

Jason watched him march out the door, grabbing the arm of one of his teammates as he moved, hauling them out of Brenda’s Inn.

Huh. Jason shrugged, sliding the man’s food over to himself and devouring it before he scanned the room for another out-of-towner. One who hadn’t heard him out yet.

There. Jason locked on a short figure cloaked in leather, scraping bits of food from his plate into a barrel of soil beside him.

“Have you heard of William Oh?” Jason asked, whispering conspiratorially as he slid into the empty bench in front of the figure.

“I can’t say that I have,” a raspy voice emanated from the confines of the Climber’s leather hood.