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

by J. P. Valentine

  Preston sighed. “So AOE is limited, what about detection? Sight and sound are out because we know she can manipulate those. How good is your nose?”

  “Dubious at best,” Eve said. “If I empower it with Mana I can smell a lot of things, but only a general gist of where they are. Not accurate enough to aim an attack.”

  “Touch?” the Caretaker continued. “Can you amp it up enough to feel where she is? Vibrations in the air or the ground or something?”

  “If I were a wind or an earth mage, maybe. My senses aren’t even a skill, they’re just a quirk of being a manaheart. They’re good, but they’re not sense-someone’s-footsteps-through-the-earth good.”

  Preston threw up his hands. “Okay, so that leaves us with throwing out a wide Mana Burst at the start of the fight and hoping she’s immobile. It’s not a good strategy, but it just might work.”

  “Well, there’s one other thing we could try,” Eve said. “It’s a long shot, but Fatetorn Gaze sounds exactly like the kind of thing that might be able to see through illusions.”

  “That’s assuming you can figure out how to unlock it,” Preston argued. “For all we know you need to do some ancient Burendian ritual or replace your eyes with gemstones or some shit. And what happens if we spend all week unlocking Fatetorn Gaze just to find out it doesn’t actually help with Riah?”

  “Fatetorn Gaze?” Roric cut in. “What is Fatetorn Gaze?”

  “A general skill,” Eve explained, “that one of my class abilities says I can use, but I haven’t learned yet.” She gave him a quick rundown of various failed attempts at unlocking the skill.

  Roric frowned. “Are you certain this is a skill in itself? General skills are few and distinct, this one sounds like it may tread on the territory of another?”

  Eve shrugged. “That’s what Defiant __Mind says.__ So, what, you’re saying it’s too similar to another skill?”

  “Perhaps this Fatetorn Gaze is not a new skill but an upgrade to an old one.”

  Wes raised an eyebrow. “General skills can upgrade?”

  Eve didn’t hear Roric’s answer, her thoughts too busy racing through her existing skills for a promising candidate. One sprang to mind.

  She tried, as she had so many times before, channeling Mana through her eyes. Her vision sharpened, the world around her exploding into the extreme level of detail she’d grown familiar with. Then, holding her concentration on the flow of Mana, Eve turned towards Wes and tried something new.

  She Appraised him.

  Level 37 Disciple of the Devouring Flame

  Epic Tier 3 Class

  Ability Upgraded!

  General Ability - Fatetorn Gaze

  Read the threads of fate themselves to see that which does not belong.

  “Bandir’s fucking left nut,” Eve groaned. “It’s that easy.”

  Wes perked up. “You got it? What does it do?”

  Eve nodded. “It’s not a skill, it’s an upgrade to Appraise. Description says something about seeing that which does not belong, which is about as vague as it gets.”

  “So what does it do?” Wes asked again.

  Eve Appraised him again, minimizing the blue screen that popped up but keeping the skill going. The world looked… different.

  The smaller elements of the bedchamber, from the chairs to the bedsheets to the silverware on the breakfast table, all glowed with an angry dull red, giving Eve the distinct impression something was off about them. The more static furniture, such as the table or the dresser, seemed untouched.

  Her companions raised even more questions. Wes, Roric, Art, and Reginald all glowed a similar red, brighter and angrier, but identifiably the same out-of-place-ness as the room’s objects.

  Preston shined so bright it blinded her.

  “It-um… it makes some things glow, but I’m not sure why.”

  “Well it’s called Fatetorn Gaze,” Preston theorized, “so I’d guess it shows things that aren’t where they’re fated to be.”

  “…And because I’m defying fate, that’s everything I’ve moved or changed.” Eve thought aloud. She turned away from Preston and activated the skill again, this time looking down at her arm. Again she found herself blinded by the intensity of the crimson light. “There’s an easy way to test it.”

  The others stayed in place as Eve crossed the room to grab the wardrobe and drag it out of place. Sure enough, it too began to glow an angry red. “I think Preston’s theory is right.”

  Wes sat up in his seat. “So what do we look like?”

  “Most of you look similar to the objects,” Eve explained, “like something’s moved you away from wherever you’re supposed to be, which, ostensibly, I have.”

  Roric raised an eyebrow. “Most of us?”

  “That’s the thing,” Eve said. “Preston doesn’t look like he’s been moved; he looks like I do. Like he’s doing the moving.”

  Preston scowled. “It kind of makes sense. The Stones gave me a starting class that never should’ve been an option for me, and a life quest that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Which you still haven’t told me.” Eve glared at him.

  Preston waved her off. “But that doesn’t explain why I never went down the Shatterfate line.”

  “There was a whole list of requirements,” Eve said. “And even if you saw it as an option, would you have taken it? We do need a healer.”

  Wes spent the entire exchange with a big dumb grin on his face, one he finally explained the moment there was a lull in the conversation. “Does this mean me and Preston are the fatetorn gays?”

  Preston stared at him. Roric gaped. Eve groaned. Art broke out into a fit of laughter.

  “How long have you been sitting on that one?” Eve asked.

  Wes beamed. “Since you told us about it in the Dead Fields.”

  Preston shook his head, muttering under his breath, “Fatetorn gays. Gods below.”

  Roric slapped Wes on the back hard enough to send the fire mage reeling forward. “Very funny!”

  Preston rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage him.”

  “Or do,” Wes said. “Do encourage me.”

  Preston turned his focus back to Eve. “Do you think it’ll work against Riah?”

  “Probably?” she answered. “She’s probably in a different place within the tournament than she would’ve been if I weren’t competing, and she’ll probably move about the arena differently against me than against some other opponent.”

  “Assuming she glows,” Roric asked, “will your Fatetorn Gaze see through her illusions?”

  “Yes,” Preston said flatly. “Magical invisibility is about bending light. Maybe Riah could use illusions to mask the glowing effect, but she’d need to actively do that. If she doesn’t know she’s glowing, she can hardly hide it.”

  Eve clapped her hands together, grinning like a madwoman. “Perfect. Riah isn’t gonna know what hit her.”

  Wes snorted. “I’m pretty sure we all know what’s gonna hit her. Your giant bone club isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

  “Speaking of my giant bone club…” Eve crossed the room to collect her weapon from where it leaned against the wall. “I think it’s about time to get some practice in. I’ve got a bout coming up after all.”

  Eve spent the following days in her usual fashion, eating seven meals a day so she could train for inhuman hours. Beyond the daily drills to reinforce Roric’s strict teachings of technique, Eve spent a fair amount of time sparring with the Hewer of Bones while wearing a blindfold.

  She found, in their bouts, that Fatetorn Gaze persisted as long as she kept circulating Mana through her eyes and, more importantly, kept them open. She could see Roric’s angry red glow through several layers of cloth, but the moment she blinked she lost them and couldn’t re-Appraise him without tearing the fabric from her face.

  That gave her a time limit.

  It would be easy enough to Appraise Riah at the start of the match to get Fatetorn Gaze going, but if Eve ever
blinked or got sand in her eye or lost her focus, she might struggle to reactivate the skill.

  The idea worried her, until Roric pointed out she could just Appraise someone in the crowd.

  On Wednesday, her midweek day off, Eve spent the evening after her weekly tea with Queen Elric musing about her and Preston. She supposed she’d known the Questing Stones had been acting strangely for the two of them since she’d met the male Priestess, but Fatetorn Gaze confirmed there was some thread connecting them, or reminded Eve of it.

  She’d always wondered if there were others similarly mistreated by the Stones, or if she and Preston were unique. Well, Eve knew that she was Unique, but not necessarily unique. At least now she had an easy way to spot any other victim of Questing Stone shenanigans, and as far as she could tell, the vast array of items and people she’d displaced made a trail straight to her. Finding others, if there were any, would be simple.

  All her thinking led to rather little in the way of answers, and as her day off came to an end and training resumed, the mysteries of her life faded to the background. Questions of fate and quests and damage to the Stones were, as far as Eve was concerned, beyond her pay grade. Her focus was better spent elsewhere.

  After all, Eve had a tournament to win.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-

  AS IT TURNED out, Riah did have some form of mobility, something Eve noticed the moment her dull red glow teleported from where she’d started to one of the duplicates that filled the arena. From there the Mirage Dancer went invisible, leaving her illusory self behind.

  The bout lasted all of eight seconds.

  Once Eve could tell where Riah was hiding, all it took was a quick Defiant Charge and a swing of her club, no Divine Intervention necessary. For a few tight breaths, Eve kept a white-knuckled grip on her weapon as she stared at Riah’s crumpled body and the golden glow of Cheat Death around her, praying that this wasn’t all some elaborate illusion. With every dragging second, she grew more certain that it was.

  “Victor: Evelia Greene!”

  Eve exhaled. It wasn’t over, not when the evidence of her eyes and ears weren’t above question. She waited there, eyes fixed on the red glow around the fallen Mirage Dancer, refusing to blink lest she lose the assurance of Fatetorn Gaze.

  It was only when Preston, one of the healers on duty that day, placed a hand on her shoulder that Eve allowed herself to relax. The illusions couldn’t fake that.

  Eve left the arena that day feeling more relieved than anything else. There was no pride at her accomplishment; it had nothing to do with all the work she’d put in. The countless hours of training and practice hadn’t decided the match—the thirty minutes she’d spent figuring out Fatetorn Gaze had.

  It annoyed her. She knew, intellectually, that every step she made toward improving her technique, toward depending on her ability as a warrior in addition to the sheer power of her class, had the potential to make all the difference. Not once in the entire tournament had her class alone been less than sufficient.

  Eve took that evening off. She didn’t celebrate, she didn’t go out, she didn’t train. She whiled away the evening playing crowns with the others as she tried to rationalize all the effort she’d spent for no visible reward. The misty boy had told her to focus on ways to gain strength without leveling up, and while he’d said it to imply she should join the Dragonwrought or pursue her secondary quests, it was entirely possible training with Roric fell under that umbrella.

  Sure, drilling basic technique over and over again to learn how to actually fight properly didn’t carry the same sense of excitement as unlocking the secrets of a dead race or uncovering an ancient artifact of unimaginable power, but it was progress all the same. Hearing Roric constantly groan about losing to someone as unpracticed as she was an added bonus.

  All else aside, the Proving Grounds were the perfect opportunity to train up. The week between matches proved just short enough to make embarking on any side quests impractical and just long enough that Eve felt she needed to do something during that time. Training with Roric just made sense.

  That didn’t make it any less exhausting.

  She knew well enough that if she wanted to keep leveling up, she needed to take on enemies of the scale of the leviathan, something that would take as much power as she could get her hands on. Eve was well aware how hopeless the fight would’ve been if the sea behemoth had been focusing on her instead of its egg. Still, she itched for another such encounter.

  Eve wanted to level up. She wanted the thrill of fighting ever-stronger opponents. She wanted to prove all her work with Roric wasn’t for nothing. Instead, she’d bested Riah in eight seconds.

  Truth be told, Eve had grown tired of the tournament, her training repetitive and her bouts trivial.

  Following her match with Riah, Eve’s days blurred together yet more, countless hours in the practice yard punctuated by weekly teas with Queen Elric or afternoons at the arena. Emily especially made for a welcome distraction from the mundanity of training, but the more time Eve spent with the young queen, the guiltier she felt for continuing her lie. A part of her wondered what might happen should she reveal her true class, while another part insisted the answer was a resounding ‘bad things.’

  Eve’s next bout was against the wind mage that had so kindly sent Riah to the loser’s bracket. As expected, Jet single-handedly dismantled his strategy, sending her on to double-elimination’s approximation of a quarterfinals. All she had to do was fight through the lightning mage, Theodrin Palsk, and then whoever lost that week in the winner’s bracket, and she’d find herself in the finals.

  More and more, Eve found herself less excited at the prospect of winning than at the tournament finally ending. Already the party had spent more time in Pyrindel than in any other place, and she wasn’t the only one growing bored.

  Wes, after nearly two months of facilitating a bidding war between various organizations, finally signed with the mage’s college. Eve found it a bit anticlimactic that after all this time he’d joined the same group he’d meant to when they’d first left Nowherested, but Wes insisted they’d given him the best offer.

  He didn’t let them pair him with a team, of course, holding off until Eve got her own offers from other mercenary companies, but the long list of jobs available to members of the College were a constant temptation. Negotiations complete, the Disciple had little business remaining in Pyrindel. He tired of reading arcane tomes about as fast as Eve had thought he would.

  Preston, on the other hand, didn’t sign any contracts, opting instead to reaffirm his affiliation with the Church of Ayla for the number of connections it granted. He was happy enough to help out with healing at the Proving Grounds when they needed him, but he otherwise avoided the clergy whenever he could. More than once he cited his job ‘guarding an important Emissary’ as the reason he couldn’t take part in some holy sacrament or other. At least it stopped him complaining about the risks involved in Eve’s deception.

  When he wasn’t working as a healer, Preston spent his time with Art and Reginald. Art still struggled to direct his powers intentionally, but he’d more than mastered keeping an ironclad grip on his emotions. Reginald, meanwhile, did exactly the thing Eve had expected of the young drake: he grew.

  Palace servants had cleared out half the furniture from his and Art’s room to give the drake space to curl up on the floor, usually with Art cuddling up against him.

  In the party’s time in Pyrindel, Reginald had grown from the size of a large dog to that of a small horse, though his draconic legs kept him relatively closer to the ground. Preston, more so out of excitement than anything else, took the opportunity to try riding him.

  Eve, Wes, Art, and a dozen palace guards, servants, and passing noblemen watched in rapt attention as Reginald ran circles around the practice yard with Preston clinging tightly to the spines along his neck. The Caretaker had to keep his legs bent at all times to keep them from drag
ging through the sand, and Reginald ardently refused to carry anyone but him or Art, but the trial worked.

  Envious as she was that she couldn’t ride him yet, Eve took her wins where she could get them. At least now she wasn’t the party’s primary mode of quick transportation.

  Her bout against Theodrin ended quickly, out of necessity rather than ease. As with many melee vs ranged matchups, it was a matter of getting in close to land a hit before his giant floating crystal could charge up. Jet and Defiant Charge made it simple.

  It wasn’t until after her victory, as Eve braced herself for the final match of the loser’s bracket, that she noticed the looks. In hindsight, they’d been there since round one, but she’d always figured people were just curious about her Emissary class or glowing eyes.

  The members of the palace had long gotten used to her ceaseless training, but on the rare occasions she walked through the streets of Pyrindel, Eve caught more than a few onlookers whispering amongst each other. The ever-present thread, as she overheard it, was of fear and awe over the mysterious New Burendia and the manaheart race, that even their non-combat classes were so fierce.

  It made Eve nervous. She’d known, going in, that the Proving Grounds would be a source of attention. That was the point. But the longer she stood in the spotlight, the more likely it grew that someone would realize she wasn’t as she seemed. Eve tried not to worry. Her focus was better spent on the tournament itself, and the public focus on her wouldn’t peak until she won and was thus finished in Pyrindel anyway.

  Her penultimate match, similarly to her prior two, was scheduled on a Saturday. As the remaining competitors grew fewer, the tournament fights became a weekend event to further promote viewership, not that they needed the help.

  The coliseum was bursting at the seams. No longer was this entertainment for the working class or opportunity for the lower-tiered mercenary companies; this was a showcase of Leshk’s best and brightest, a display of who would soon be a political force unto themselves.