“So, now that you have your class choice, which ones did you choose in the end?” asks Aidan. Nysali butchered part of the Mother Pakarri, and I carried it back to the cave, so now the scent of roasting meat fills the air, and all the wolves are partaking in the flesh.

“Untamed, and Beastmaster.” I say. “I don’t have a clue if it was the right choice, but they make sense to me.”

“Huh. That must be nice.”

He takes a chunk out of the brazier-roasted meat. I don’t feel particularly hungry. Something else weighs on my mind. I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. Back on Earth, I knew what I wanted to do. Build my own gang, try and turn towards proper, legit business. Life gets in the way, then it ends. I certainly never got to go see the world like my mom wanted me to do.

This is an entire new world, with new experiences, and yet it feels hollow. I don’t know this world. I have no care to explore it. There’s nothing special I can see on the horizon, nothing that makes me want to go and find it. The person I like most so far is Aidan, and why? Because he’s from Earth. I’m still holding on to those memories. So I ask him.

“How did you let go of Earth?” I ask. He sighs, deeply, and puts down the shank of Pakarri.

“I’ve been here a good twenty years, I think. Time doesn’t flow the exact same here. Days are longer, months are longer, you get the drill. It ebbs with time, but it helps to have people you care for. Living for yourself is fine and dandy, Ryan, but having others helps to keep that homesicky feeling away.”

“I don’t have a good reason to be homesick. I was a street rat, a thief, a mugger. I wanted everything I couldn’t have. Here, I’ve got a new start.”

“We don’t pick the things we feel, Ryan. I was a pilot, a damn good one…” he says, his claws digging into the wood of his seat. “Yet I crashed. I don’t know how many died. I don’t even know why we crashed. I can barely remember. The sickest part was that when I came into this world I felt relief. I hated my life. I’d gone through god only knows how many years of training and bullshit, and I was done.”

“You didn’t feel a thing for the people on the flight?”

“Not at first. Not at first.” He’s silent for a while. “At some point, I started wondering if it was because I hated the work, the world, that the plane crashed. It could have just been a malfunction, but as soon as those thoughts started entering my head, all I cared to do was fight. It eased the pain, made me forget it. That’s why I fought for the King. I was so completely, utterly unsure if I fucked up the lives of at least a hundred people, and I was terrified.”

I turn to him. “Terrified? Of what?”

“If they had reincarnated too. How could I have ever faced them? What would I have done if they hated me? Hell, what if they didn’t? I felt like even kindness would kill me. Then, after years of replaying the events in my head, it stopped. I had other things to worry about. I had a child, I had a clan of wolves that needed me.”

He looks at me, we lock eyes. “If there is one piece of advice I can give you, it’s to find something that’s worthwhile, no matter what it is. Your path is your own.”

I nod. “I’ve been thinking. You don’t have a class. I’m an incarnate, and I can give access to the system, which comes along with a class. What if you took some of my DNA?”

He looks at me, half smiling. “You asking to fuck me, fledgling? Bold, I gotta say.” He says, then bites a chunk of the meat.

I smile out of humour, for the first time since I came here. “Seriously, though. Why not try?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to do with it.”

————————————————————

I accepted all the bonuses from the Pakarri that surrounded the Mother. They were the same bonus each time, and the exact same as the other Pakarri. I now have the passive food buff for much longer, and a bit of regeneration. However, I spent ten of the thirteen bonuses on the third choice, the ability to control bound Pakarri.

So, in preparation for the dungeon, I decided to collect some. 10 Pakarri are now bound to me, and they somehow cling to my back, virtually weightless. They have shifted in shape, and now connect to each other to form a long, midnight-black cloak down my back.

I’m checking over my Skillsheet - in two hours, we delve into the dungeon, which gives us roughly ten hours before my Curse figuratively, and perhaps literally, fucks us.

NAME: RYAN RIVERS
CLASS: RAMPAGER/BEASTMASTER
RACE: WOLFHEART [WOLF GROUP]

RACIAL BONUS(s):
…..
+ MINOR HUMAN RACIAL BONUS [PREVIOUS INCARNATION]: +5 INTELLIGENCE
+ DISCOVERED WOLFHEART POISON RESISTANCE
+ DISCOVERED WOLFHEART REGENERATION

STATISTICS:

MAIN ATTRIBUTES:

POWER: 80 SPEED: 60 (+10 SHAMBLER BONUS)
INTEL…: 25 CHAR…: 105 (25 BASE + POWERFUL AURA BONUS)
WIS…….: 3 PERCE.: 40
END…: 55 VIGOR…: 50

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES:

INTIMIDATION: 30

CLASS MECHANICS:

RAMPAGE - GAIN COMBAT STATS WHEN IN COMBAT, DIMINISHING RETURNS AS FIGHT GOES ON.

BEASTMASTERY - CALL DOMINATED CREATURES TO AID YOU IN BATTLE, INCREASE STATS BY PERCENTAGE OF USER’S (BASE 30%)

The Pakarri don’t use Beastmastery, they’re something else entirely, more like a piece of clothing with teeth than an actual animal. I mainly picked these classes to aid clear the dungeon, as they sounded the best for a head-on fight, and to bring extra allies.

Thus, I went and ‘recruited’ two Vaalosaurs to act as meat-shields for us in the dungeon. They don’t seem to be angry at me, yet they retain their instincts, and I think they know I dominated them. Either way, I’ve put them at the entrance to the dungeon for now.

Right now? I want to rest a bit. Just try and… relax. I sink down onto a spare fur bed, the stretched skin of an animal screaming in protest at my weight as the frame tries to support me. I haven’t seen another werewolf my size yet. I guess Wolfhearts really are some kind of big-shots in werewolf lineage.

I wake to roaring and screaming.