Squad 13

A few days later, John was currently walking towards the room for Squad 13. He was dressed in some light armor and carried his new sword by his side. It didn’t take long for him to reach the room and open the door to the sight of three other people. A tall muscular man was wielding a giant sword, a red-haired dwarf with an ax on her back, and purple-haired elf tinkering with her bow.

“Hey, my name is John Wonderworth. It’s nice to meet you.”

The tall man got up and said, “Likewise, I’m Rico and I’m the captain of Squad 13.”

The elf said, “I’m Janet and I’ll watch your back.”

“I’m Sarah.”

“Yeah, both of them weren’t exactly excited for introductions. Now that everyone’s here, I have a few things to say. I know that all of you might not have wanted to be here and wanted to spend your lives doing something else that you might’ve wanted. I’m sorry that I can’t change that but you have a responsibility to the citizens of this nation to protect it with all your might. I expect you take this seriously because it's not only your lives that hang in the balance. None of you went over your classes in your introduction so for simplicity’s sake I will inform your new teammates what your class is. John has the Great Knight class, Sarah has the Enhanced Strength class, and Janet has the Magic Archer class.”

Enhanced Strength isn’t a particularly rare or valuable class, so she must be someone who volunteered for the military. Despite that, it seems that she wants to be here the least.

“I know it's your first time together and you’re all level 1 so the best thing to do is go out into the field to level up. We’ll go directly south from here and go on the path toward the city of Riverdale. The path was made to ensure the safest pathway from our city to Riverdale but if you step off the path, it's drastically more unsafe. We’ll be leaving the road and heading a little into the forest to slay some beasts. Nothing that you guys can’t handle since everyone is required to go through basic training in school before this point. I also have some potions to heal anyone with a serious injury but since these are in high demand if it’s just a scratch, I have some bandages for you to use otherwise you’ll have to walk it off. Let’s go.”

Rico led us to our squad’s horses, but it seems that Sarah didn’t take the class for horse riding, so she was stuck riding with someone else. The person was Janet since they’re both girls. There were two brown and two black horses to choose from and John chose the black one. Janet and Rico picked the two brown horses and the four of them made their way out of the city. It didn’t take too long after they left the city when Rico veered off the path and headed further in. The rest of us followed him until we came across a pack of Thunder Wolves. Thunder Wolves can shoot bolts of lightning at their enemies and the higher level they are, the more damage they do. They were still a little further in and haven’t noticed us yet. Rico used a special eyeglass to identify the wolf's levels.

Rico stopped his horse and told the rest of us that this pack of wolves’ max level was five and they should be able to handle it. Janet leaps off her horse and climbed up a tree to provide support.

“Rico seems content to just watch us so we should team up on the wolves together while Janet gives us support from behind with her arrows,” John said to Sarah.

“Fine, let’s do this.”

Sarah and John rushed in with weapons in hand. John leaped at one of the wolves from behind and decapitated it in one swift motion. A level-up notification flashed through my mind as the other wolf shot a bolt of electricity at him. John easily dodged out of the way as Sarah slashed through it with her ax. One of the wolves managed to get behind Sarah and lunged at her throat. The next moment an arrow went straight into its eye, and it howled in pain. Sarah turned around and finished it off before it could attack again. John ran toward the next wolf charging up a bolt of electricity at him. The wolf saw John’s charge and shot the bolt at him. John moved his head to the side as the bolt blew past him. John slashed the wolf clean in half as another came in to bite him, but John kicked it away as an arrow was shot into his leg. It made killing the wolf even easier as another one died by his hand. John looked to his right to see a wolf die as an arrow went straight through its body. Sarah finished off the last wolf in the pack as Rico made his way to the carnage.

“Good work. Sarah, you’ve got the basics down but remember to beware of sneak attacks. If it wasn’t for Janet, then you might’ve gotten seriously hurt. Janet, you might want to move around when you shoot more. It won’t matter much to these stupid wolves but for experienced fighters and intelligent monsters, your support will be dramatically less effective. John, you need to stick closer to Sarah. You were a bit far away to give or receive any meaningful support in a crisis. Overall, you guys did well for your first time working together. We’re going to kill a few more groups of beasts wandering the forest and then head home for the day. First, let me take the monster cores. Usually, our work doesn’t involve killing a lot of beasts so we don’t have to, but we might as well make some extra money while we're out here.”

This process continued a few more times while Rico pointed out flaws in our teamwork, skills, and strategy. All of us have gotten a better feel for each other than when we first started and have leveled up as well. Rico led us back to the city and back into our squad’s room. He gave the three of us our military ID and a portion of the money earned on our outing today. After that, he dismissed us, and we all went home for the day.

John took the time to look at his stats since he leveled up multiple times today.

John Wonderworth (Lv. 6 Hero [Sub-class: Copy Lv.1])

HP: 375/375

Mana: 300/300

Strength: 75

Dexterity: 65

Constitution: 55

Intelligence: 70

Wisdom: 65

Charisma: 55

Hero Class Abilities

Master of Many Pathway

Skills:

Subclass

-Copycat

Available Skill Points: 10

All of my stats have jumped a lot in just five levels. Maybe this class helps out with my stats as well. My subclass hasn’t leveled up at all though. John looks around his sheet until he sees a button next to his subclass. When he clicked it, he got a notification for the distribution of experience points. Everything was going to his hero class, so his subclass didn’t get any levels. The problem is how he should distribute his experience. Whether he should distribute the experience points evenly or not. The hero class does triple his experience, so he decided to have one-third of the experience points be distributed to his hero class and the remainder enter into his subclass. Now it's time to look at his next skill options.

Master of Many

Skill Choices Available

(Passive) Danger Sense: The ability to sense hostile intent being sent your way. The stronger the feeling, the stronger sense of danger. Cannot sense where it is coming from.

Or

(Active) Inventory: Gain a small pocket dimension that could be used to store any item (50 Mana to open and close).

Even though there are two options, there’s only one option to pick. Getting Inventory would be useful, but the Great Knight class doesn’t have any abilities like that. The only way it would work would be if he hid it but that would be a major pain. Danger Sense isn’t a bad choice either since John could sense danger before it occurs. John picked the option and another set of choices appeared before him.

Master of Many

Skill Choices Available

(Passive) Eagle Eyes: Increase the range and accuracy of your eyesight.

Or

(Active) Mana Drain: Target one creature and absorb some mana. The higher level the target is, the less effective the skill is.

John doesn’t even know how to feel about these choices. The Master of Many Skill line is all over the place. Eagle Eyes would’ve been better if he was an archer but since he isn’t it’s kind of useless to him. Mana Drain isn’t much better since he isn’t a magician but having a method to get more mana for when he gets more skills in the future isn’t terrible. John didn’t hesitate when choosing Mana Drain. That’s two skill points down. John could use the skill points to upgrade the skills he already has. He decided to try upgrading danger sense to see what happens.

(Passive) Enhanced Danger Sense: The ability to sense hostile intent being sent your way. The stronger the feeling, the stronger sense of danger. Can vaguely sense the direction of where it's coming from.

So, it went from can’t sense to vaguely sense the direction. He has extra skill points, so it's probably better to upgrade this one more time.

(Passive) Enhanced Danger Sense v2: The ability to sense hostile intent being sent your way. The stronger the feeling, the stronger sense of danger. Can sense the direction of where it's coming from.

That’s enough for today.