This Class is Bonkers! (This Trilogy is Broken (A Comedy Litrpg Adventure) Book 2)

by J. P. Valentine

  Fighting back a wave of nausea, Eve turned back to glare at Preston. Like hells was she going to do this alone.

  The healer rolled up his sleeves.

  It took about four more swipes for Eve to fall into the rhythm of it—about as close to ‘used to’ the horrific stench and mucus-y texture as she was going to get. The bucket she and Preston shared was only half full when Drathis moved to exchange his full bucket for an empty one. Eve spotted four more still waiting for their share of the slime. She sighed.

  “What do you need all this sludge for, anyway?” Preston asked.

  Drathis’s squeaky yet gravelly voice carried from behind the giant slug. “You’re the one who was complaining about the mists.”

  “I wasn’t complaining, I was…” Preston trailed off. “The slime helps?”

  “How did ye think the pelsids survive out here? They absorb things through their skin. Without their slime, they’d absorb the poison too.”

  Preston’s eyebrows raised. “It’s an antidote?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Drathis set down yet another completed bucket, moving on to his third before Eve and Preston finished their first. “Stuff’s more toxic than the air.”

  Eve’s eyes shot open as she jerked her bare hand away from the dead beast. “How toxic?”

  Drathis scaled the carcass to peek over at the two adventurers. “Oh, relax. Don’t eat it and you’ll be fine.”

  Eve took a moment to confirm she had no notifications about ingesting a new toxin before returning to her work.

  Preston continued his line of questioning. “If it’s poisonous too, how is the slime supposed to help us with the fumes?”

  “Same way it helps the pelsid.” Drathis slid back down to the ground. “By filtering the air. It takes some doing, of course, but if ye soak a bit of cloth in boiled and dried and reboiled pelsid slime, it’ll keep the mists from killing ye. Directly, that is. Won’t stop something from sneaking up on ye.”

  “Ah, right,” Preston said.

  With another swipe, Eve topped off their first bucket and moved to pick up a second. On her way back, she made a point of glaring at Preston for letting his conversation distract him from the task at hand. He sucked in air through his teeth in silent apology before getting back to work.

  Despite having smaller hands, shorter arms, and claws more fit for slashing than scooping ooze, Drathis managed to finish his fourth and final bucket just as Eve and Preston topped off their second. At least they had managed to keep their clothes relatively free of the stuff. Drathis’s hardened-leather cuirass couldn’t say the same.

  “Good, good,” the rat-beast muttered, handing off the collection of buckets to the adventurers.

  Eve took them all. Her class had started out as a glorified pack mule, after all. Carrying Drathis’s slime was just a return to her roots.

  “This way, this way.” Drathis took off into the mist, forcing the companions to scurry after him for fear of losing their only guide.

  Eve took the opportunity to fully analyze their savior. Beyond the leather chest piece, the crossbow at his back, and the mask protecting his mouth and nose from the toxins in the air, Drathis was completely exposed. Eve wondered at his decision to go without pants in such a dangerous place, if only for the sake of protecting his fur from getting covered in grime. As it was, he looked an absolute mess.

  Dirt and blood and pelsid slime practically coated him, giving his fur a glossy sheen that reeked more than the slug itself. Perhaps he preferred it like that. Rats were filthy creatures, after all, at least if those she’d fought in the sewers were any metric.

  Eve shook the thought from her head, cursing herself out for stereotyping Drathis. He was no sewer rat. Instead, she opted to Appraise him like she would any other adventurer in the wild.

  Level ?? Scavenger of the Wastes

  Uncommon Tier 4 Class

  Eve snorted, fighting to suppress her laughter. With a class name like that, maybe he had been a sewer rat at one point. It just sounded too much like ‘scavenger of waste.’ Far too much.

  The other piece of information she noticed was the class’s rarity: Uncommon. However high-level he might’ve been, Drathis was probably weaker than she was, at least from a stat perspective. Not that it mattered—in their current environment, his survival skills were worth far more than a few points of Strength.

  Just as Eve’s musings turned toward how the Scavenger had found himself in the Dead Fields, he stopped short.

  Eve stumbled, bits of slime sloshing out from the buckets to land on her leg. She winced.

  “Careful!” Drathis snapped. “We’re here.”

  Lost in her thoughts as she was, Eve hadn’t noticed the stone cliffside come back into view, nor the twenty-foot pond at its base. “What’s here?”

  Drathis snatched two of the buckets from her grasp, his shoulders slumping from the weight. “Follow me.”

  He dove in.

  Eve squinted at the water’s surface, watching as the giant rat disappeared into the depths. She turned back to give Wes and Preston an uncertain look.

  The healer raised his eyebrows. “You first.”

  Eve sighed, looking back towards the clear pond. She took a deep breath.

  Reginald leapt in.

  “Shit,” Preston cursed. “I must’ve said that to Regi too. Still getting used to this mental-link thing.”

  “Can Reginald tell you if it’s safe?” Eve asked.

  “Maybe?” Preston shrugged. “Depends on how far away he gets.”

  “Can drakes even swim?”

  Preston furrowed his brow in concentration for a moment before nodding his head yes. “He seems to be doing fine so far. Oh, he’s found the—” He trailed off. “Shit. Shit shit shit.” He jumped in.

  Eve grit her teeth. “Can you make it?” she asked Wes.

  He rubbed his tired eyes. “If it means I’ll get to sleep, I can do anything.”

  They took the plunge together.

  Frigid water rushed along Eve’s skin in a refreshing shock. It took less than a second for her Mana-infused body to overcome the chill, but she worried for Wes and Preston. Such was becoming a trend.

  Her gleaming Mana lit the way through the submerged tunnel as she swam, following Preston’s frantic kicking ahead of her. About halfway through she spared a thought for the four buckets she still carried. Looking down revealed the slime still rested comfortably in the iron receptacles, dense enough to avoid being washed away. Unfortunately, the same could be said for the ooze that still clung to her hands and leg.

  A minute later, she emerged into the cool of bioluminescent moss and the tense growl of a frightened drakeling.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Preston struggled to calm both Reginald and the crossbow-wielding Drathis. “Reginald is with me.”

  “Well, why didn’t ye say so?” Drathis slung the crossbow over his shoulder, accidentally firing a shot into the ceiling.

  “He… was visible around my neck this entire time.”

  “Was he?” Drathis pulled back. “I thought that was a growth.” He shook his head. “Anyway, welcome to Hunter’s Den. I’m the hunter. This is my den.” He turned to where Eve was still pushing herself out of the water. “Ye can put the slime by the cauldron.”

  As she deposited the buckets, Eve took the opportunity to survey Drathis’s cave. It was downright verdant. Moss lined the walls, joined by twisting ivy and even a few ferns in the soft soil around the water. There was probably more plant life in this single cavern than the entire Dead Fields.

  Eve was okay with that. She’d rather missed plants. Seeing the same dead earth and barren stone all day every day had grown rather tiring.

  Throughout the cave, she noticed a complete lack of any sort of ventilation. Given the poison outside, that was probably a good thing, though it did leave her to worry about the oxygen supply. Perhaps the sheer size of the cavern in conjunction with the quantity and diversity of its plant life could help overcome
that particular danger?

  Eve sighed. It worked for Drathis, but three additional sets of lungs meant that much staler air. At least it wasn’t actively poisonous.

  While Preston helped Wes climb from the frigid pond, Eve took a moment to sit back upon the soft moss and rest her weary legs. Manaheart or otherwise, she had just walked for several days straight.

  As chance would have it, her quest decided then of all times was the ideal opportunity to reward her for the combination of endurance, bravery, dumb luck, and willingness to scoop slime off a dead slug with her bare hands that had gotten them safely to Drathis’s abode. Eve smiled.

  Legendary Quest Milestone Reached: Get Your Hands Dirty!

  +16000 exp!

  Much as she wondered why this was getting her hands dirty as opposed to fighting the goblins or visiting the gods-damned sewers, Eve accepted her milestone as it was. She’d take what she could get.

  Besides, regardless of how it happened, for as long as she lived, she’d never grow tired of the notification that followed.

  Level Up!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Scouting is Hard When You Can't See

  ABILITY UPGRADED!

  Active Ability - Mana Burst

  Variable Mana-cost!

  Eve dismissed the notification. She supposed it was a fine enough upgrade; additional flexibility would always be welcome. The main issue was that she already had a variable-cost ability to dump her Mana into, and the surge of Strength from Mana Rush just sounded better.

  She shook her head. Too many spells, not enough Mana. The thought was silly. She had access to way more Mana than anyone at her level ever should, especially considering how many ways she had to replenish it. Then again, most people regenerated Mana naturally. Hers drained over time.

  At least she could eat. Of course, eating mid-combat probably wasn’t a good idea—cramps, distraction, or even busying up a hand delivering food to her mouth could all mean her demise, but as long as she had some snacks to wolf down and a quarter hour to digest, her supply would last.

  The downside, she figured, was the same problem all endurance fighters had. Wes could be half starved and awake for a week straight and still cast at full power. If she missed a few meals she’d be dead weight.

  On that note, she slipped a hand into her pack to withdraw the last of the dried meat she’d bought in Foot’s Garrison. Eve chewed through the tough jerky with little difficulty as her 114 Strength applied as much to the force of her bite as the strength of her arm. As she ate, Eve took the opportunity to check in on her companions.

  They were already asleep. Wes, unsurprisingly, had passed out almost immediately upon their arrival at Drathis’s cave, taking no more than a few seconds to dry his wet armor with a flash of heat. The marginally less sleep-deprived Preston lay at his side, using the bulky mage’s arm as a pillow. Eve couldn’t imagine the armored appendage was particularly comfortable, but she didn’t question it. They looked too cute together like that.

  That is, they looked cute until Preston let out an earth-shattering snore, spooking Reginald enough to send the drakeling scurrying away from the warm Caretaker to disappear behind a fern. Eve chuckled.

  Across the lush cavern, Drathis scurried about a large black cauldron, emptying slime-buckets and sparking the fire to begin whatever alchemical process he used to turn the vile ooze into a cure for the poisoned sky. Eve watched him work for a time before her curiosity got the better of her. She approached.

  “How did you figure this out, anyway?”

  “Class knowledge,” Drathis replied without looking up from his work. He snatched a long stick from the ground, sticking it into the cauldron to stir the warming slime.

  Eve scowled. “Class what-now?”

  Drathis rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be much of a hunter if I didn’t know how to survive in the wild. Did someone teach ye how to strike things?”

  Eve didn’t comment that Drathis was a Scavenger, not a hunter. She’d let him have his fantasies. “Well… no,” she answered. “I just figured it out. It’s simple. Take weapon, hit enemy, repeat until dead.”

  The giant rat shrugged. “Ye ‘just figured out’ how to cast your spells, then?”

  Eve paused. Come to think of it, there’d been very little trial and error involved in learning new abilities. Sure, skills like Charge! and Jet took some getting used to, but she’d never had to learn how to activate them. She just knew. “Huh.”

  Drathis patted her on the back. “Maybe you’ll learn something useful when ye get a real class.”

  Eve paled at the statement, forcing herself not to snap back at her host. That’s rich coming from an Uncommon, she thought, ultimately deciding the better of correcting his faulty Appraise. Perhaps he’d be more willing to help if he thought her a weak Common-er. “I—um—sure,” she managed.

  The brief conversation came to an abrupt end as both parties fell silent, Drathis for focus on his work and Eve for lack of things to say. She watched intently as he stirred the green slime, grimacing at the squishing noise it made. The experience grew only more unpleasant as the first bubbles began to form, filling the air with the pure, concentrated stench of pelsid. Eve’s stomach turned.

  She backed away from the boiling cauldron, but the olfactory assault continued to spread until no refuge remained in the verdant cave. A quick check to her status confirmed there was nothing toxic about the fumes, but the scent alone made her regret eating that jerky. Eve looked back at her sleeping companions, feeling a pang of envy that they got to be unconscious while Drathis worked. She sighed.

  It was then, under the influence of smell-induced nausea, that Eve came to a rather dangerous realization. If the pond water kept the poison air out of the cave, it’d certainly keep the stench in.

  I might as well take a look around, she reasoned. Without the others I can just Charge! out of danger, anyway. She recognized the excuses for what they were, but between her watering eyes and rebelling stomach, better judgment fell by the wayside.

  Grabbing her weapons and leaving her pack behind, Eve made for the exit.

  As she hit the water, a part of her considered Jetting through it to shorten the swim. Shooting through the pond certainly sounded fun, but unnecessary Mana expenditures were probably unwise.

  Popping up in the outside world, Eve took a moment to get her bearings before following the cliffside to the eastern bank. Preston had said the mountain pass was only a day or two away. With her Haste and Charge!, she should be able to reach it in a few hours.

  She took off along the mountainside, immediately thankful she didn’t have to walk at the speed of Wes’s flames. Every breath sent poison into her veins, just enough for her body to break down into Mana to replace what she spent on running.

  About ten minutes in, she realized her mistake.

  In the thick haze of the Dead Fields, Eve couldn’t see the boulder until it was right in front of her.

  She Jetted to a halt, extending both hands out in front of her to catch herself on the obstacle. They slammed into the stone.

  Her heart raced.

  Ayla’s tits, she cursed, that was way too close. A bead of sweat dripped down her brow as she tried not to think about what might’ve happened without Jet. She shuddered. Death by running headlong into a rock wasn’t exactly heroic. Then again, she supposed a stupid death might’ve been a fitting end to her similarly stupid quest.

  Alright, Eve thought to herself, no running in heavy fog. Got it. She shook off her tense muscles and caught her ragged breath, taking the time to allow the adrenaline to drain away. Stepping around the would-be lethal boulder, Eve continued on at a brisk jog. Her Haste still kept her moving faster than most people could sprint, but without Charge! her speed would be far from deadly.

  She hoped.

  Eve kept an open ear as she progressed, listening closely for any hints of lurking dangers. Only the sound of her own footfalls echoed through the fog.

  The hours blurred toget
her as she jogged, the world too obscured to provide her any sense of distance or variety. Dreadfully boring as it was, Eve appreciated the dullness of her surroundings—it meant fewer distractions from the watch for threats.

  The sky had already begun to darken with the falling night when the cliffside came to an end.

  Eve nearly jogged right past the worn cobblestone road before she realized what she’d found. She froze, her eyes following the path as it led both left into the Dead Fields and right into the mountains themselves. It was more the bottom of a gorge than a true mountain pass, but even the ten feet of road she could see sloped upwards.

  A wide grin crossed Eve’s face. She’d found it! Already her mind flooded with thoughts of home, of comfort. She could hardly believe it. For all Preston had opined on the danger of the Dead Fields, for all the creeping terror of the oppressive fog or the lingering threat of the airborne toxin, she’d found a way home.

  For the first time since laying eyes on the Dead Fields, Eve wondered what she’d do once they made it back. She daydreamed of selling the massive dungeon core in her pack, of lying back in a soft bed, of buying a truly unreasonable quantity of strawberry scones. She let out a wistful sigh.

  Before she thought to return to Drathis’s cave to tell the others just how close they were to returning to civilization, Eve took a careful stride down the southern road, thinking she’d at least confirm it wasn’t a dead end. It wouldn’t do to get everyone’s hopes up only to find the gully had collapsed and blocked the way.

  What she found wasn’t much better.

  Four steps into the jagged gorge, a blue notification popped into Eve’s vision.

  You have entered the dungeon: The Fallen Pass! Fight well.