Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 32

Chapter 32

“You have done well for yourself, this one observes.  To the detriment of many of your fellow Contenders in Forgestone, of course.”

You… know about that? he thought, remembering his first encounter with the Support Class Representative back in Ashcleft that made it so he didn’t have to verbally speak.  That was a good thing, he supposed, as having a one-sided conversation that anyone could listen to was probably a good way to get oneself into trouble.

“We see all that is affected by the Assimilation System, though after coming to our specific attention at your last Class evolution, we have been observing you a little closer than most other Contenders.”

Thaden gulped, his palms suddenly feeling sweaty.  Rubbing them on his robe to dry them off, he did his best not to convey the sudden paranoia he was experiencing.

“But that is not important.  What is it that this one can do for you?”  The wrote-sounding question reminded him of his first interaction, and when he added in the fact that the Assimilator didn’t seem particularly concerned about what Thaden had been up to, he began to relax a little.

I’ve come to evolve my Class.

There was a moment of hesitation, as if the alien Representative was mentally processing his request.  “Ah, yes, you have achieved the next transitional point in your Class Evolution.  However, it appears as though you have yet to complete your Support Class Evolution Assignment.”

What is that?  This is the first time I’m hearing of it.

That seemed to take the tall being aback as he could feel a mental shock uncomfortably reverberate though his mind, making him wince a little from the near pain of it.  “Truly?  This one detects no deception in your thoughts.  This information will be passed onto the ones in charge of Training.  Punishment will be administered to those who have failed to properly prepare all Contenders for their experience here on Tarth.”

 Uh, there’s no need for that—

“As for your Support Class Evolution Assignment,” the Assimilator kept going, ignoring his protest, “it should be a relatively simple task for one such as you.  Or perhaps not to simple, now that this one has reviewed your Achievements.  This one is sending the Support Class Evolution Assignment that you should’ve received during Training to you now.”  Thaden could sense that a new window had opened somewhere in his vision, but he was still focused on looking at the Assimilator’s eyes and couldn’t look away.  “Once that has been completed, come see any Support Class Representative at any Adventurer Coalition location.  If there is nothing else you require, good luck and don’t die, Contender.” 

His eye contact with the Representative suddenly broke, and Thaden felt a little dizzy as he turned away.  Once he felt like he was steady enough, he walked to the nearest wall and leaned against it for support as he finally looked at the window that had popped up at the right side of his vision.

Congratulations on choosing to become a Support Class!  You’ll find the experiences as a Contender both challenging and rewarding, as you literally hold the difference between life and death in your hands.

As a Support Class, your role in any party is to be, as you no doubt guessed, a supportive influence toward the positive outcome of battle.  This can be accomplished through healing and protective spells, as well as granting the ability to boost the fighting capabilities of your party – you might even be able to bring them back from the dead!

As a tradeoff for having such powerful abilities at your fingertips, your offensive capability has been hindered to almost complete negligibility.  No weapons may be wielded for offense and you are barred from many types of defensive armors, and any Competencies based around direct combat are unavailable to be learned or applied to your Class.  But fear not!  It is the role of your fellow party members to protect you just as you support them, creating a symbiotic relationship that will prove your worth many times over. 

On your journey to become a powerful Support Class Contender, there are multiple milestones called Evolution Assignments that you will need to accomplish before you’ll be able to evolve your Class.  These tasks are designed to test your abilities to successfully mesh with your party and show how you have become a successful and valuable Contender.

While most of these tasks are hidden right now, you will unlock knowledge of a new Evolution Assignment with each newly evolved Class you obtain.  Do not worry too much about accomplishing these Assignments as you Level-up, as during your normal development they may end up being naturally or automatically completed.

Support Class Evolution Assignments:

Level 21: Cast enough spells to restore 50,000 total Health and prevent 10,000 damage

Level 63: Complete at least 1 dungeon on Minimal difficulty, at least 1 dungeon on Medial difficulty, and at least 1 dungeon on Maximal difficulty while in a complete, 5-member Contender party

Level 189: ??? (Locked)

Thaden slumped against the wall propping him up as he read and reread the message in the window.  After a few minutes of staring at the Assignment for Level 63, he wanted to scream out in repressed frustration, but he was still conscious of his location; doing that in the middle of the Coalition lobby he was standing in might subvert all of his careful preparations to making it this far without calling undue attention to himself. 

Instead of screaming, he settled for punching the wall behind him as he pushed himself away and closed the window displaying his Assignment, gritting his teeth in anger.  Seriously?  I came all this way and now the System wants me to complete a Minimal and Medial dungeon with a full party?  The only consolation he saw in the whole Assignment was that he already had the Maximal portion of the requirement done, courtesy of completing the Mausoleum of Despair with Sarah and her party. 

This… isn’t going to work.  Everyone is too low of a Level compared to me, and convincing anyone to dare a higher-Level, more dangerous dungeon would be equivalent to asking them to kill themselves.

Why is the System forcing me to party with other Contenders, when I’ve been doing fine on my own? 

The answer to that was obvious, even if it didn’t fit his own situation.

Support Classes were essentially helpless without someone else to support.  He imagined that most Support Classes would easily complete the Assignment before they ever hit Level 63, as it would be easy enough for them to join four other Contenders to make a full party; healers were uncommon enough that there was a 99.9% probability that any Support Class would get snatched up and into a party fast enough to make their head spin.

But Thaden wasn’t like any other Support Class; if he had known about the requirements for the Evolution Assignment earlier, he might’ve been able to do it with Sarah and her party, but that wasn’t really a possibility right now.

As he walked around the lobby, the Lifewarden contemplated his limited options.  First, he could utilize his relatively new Emboldened Leadership Competency, which would temporarily boost the stats of other Contenders that he partied with, as well as increase their Level – at least on paper – so that they qualified for stronger dungeons, PICK, and loot from slain monsters. 

The problem with that was, while their Physicality, Celerity, and Mentality was boosted, he didn’t know how much this boost would be considering his Competency was still only Level 1; in addition, even with higher stats, the Competency didn’t miraculously give them any more spells or skills to use in a dungeon, meaning that they would likely have 30 or 40+ Levels of missing spells or skills that they would’ve normally had if they had actually Leveled-up that far.  The issue that would bring was that they would have trouble doing enough damage to the monsters to make a difference, and protecting them from death would be a full-time job on his part; unfortunately, with other people around, Thaden didn’t have a way to taunt monsters so that they attacked him alone.  He got away with it in the Mausoleum because he did so much damage to the Undead with his healing spells, but the same wouldn’t necessarily apply to almost every other dungeon out there.

Of course, this only mattered if they were in a strong dungeon around Thaden’s Level.  If they were in a much weaker dungeon, they would probably be fine, but they would get absolutely no PICK or loot from completing it. 

The second thing Thaden could do was pretend to be a normal Level 21 and sneak onto a party doing dungeon delves, and then later act confused about why they weren’t getting any PICK or loot.  Unfortunately, he didn’t think that he could maintain the ignorant act for long, because that just wasn’t his strong suit, and it was more than likely that the party he joined would suspect what was going on – especially as it was unlikely that he could turn his Emboldened Leadership Competency on and off.  It would be pretty obvious when everyone’s stats suddenly jumped up, and while he didn’t know how their temporarily inflated Levels were represented, he wouldn’t be surprised if they could see that, too.

The first two options were essentially trying to convince a party to either brave a much harder dungeon than they had any business being around or going through a weaker dungeon without any benefit to themselves.  He was fairly confident he could keep a party alive in a harder dungeon, but even if he was unsuccessful, he always had his Resurrection spell; but would a party he didn’t know trust him enough to count on him to do that?  To convince them that he could easily do it, he’d likely have to reveal at least some of the secrets he’d prefer to keep hidden at the moment.  Plus, trust was a two-way street; would he be able to count on them not to try and stab him in the back?

But the second option of a weaker dungeon gave rise to a third option.  While the prospect of no PICK and no loot was a deal-breaker in most cases, as it would be a waste of time… but what if it wasn’t?  What did Thaden have to offer to a prospective party that could offset this penalty?

Lots of gold that he had very little to spend it on and lots of loot he couldn’t use and was planning on selling at some point.  He couldn’t do anything about the loss of earned PICK, but he could certainly make it worth their while with other rewards. 

In other words, he would hire a party to take him through a Minimal- and Medial-difficulty dungeon; sort of like power-Leveling, but… in reverse?  He wasn’t sure if that was the right analogy, but it was the closest thing he could think of. 

The more he thought about it, the more he was liking the idea.  He wouldn’t have to go through a difficult dungeon where it was likely the party would die multiple times, with the possibility that they were killed in a way that they might not be able to be resurrected – such as falling into a pool of magma or eaten and digested by a monster – and he would even be able to maintain at least a modicum of anonymity.  Not completely, of course, because it would be difficult to explain why the party wouldn’t receive any PICK or loot from going through the dungeon, but he could keep most of his more important secrets to his chest.

But first, he needed to figure out where to hire a party for something like this.  The answer was fairly simple when he thought about it for a few seconds: The Contender Market.  He would simply hire himself out like he did when he was attempting to infiltrate the Harvest Guild back in Forgestone, but instead of a Contract Bond to perform a separate service – which would put himself outside of the party – he would design a Contract Bond that would make him one of their party on “trial” basis.  He had seen some like it before when he was originally looking through the different services, and the whole thing acted like some sort of “Looking For Group” application on some of the MMORPGs he’d played in the past.

Looking around the lobby, he saw a sign posted above his head that pointed toward a nearby hallway with the words, “Contender Market Access” written on it, so he followed the directions.  As soon as he got near his destination, however, he slowed down and shook his head.  “Nope, not gonna happen.”

The hallway led to a large room, not quite as large as the lobby, and it contained 50 separate “booths”, where Thaden could see someone sitting down at a table with their finger on a glowing blue spot.  He couldn’t see the Market screen, of course, but he recognized it from his room back in the Forgestone Coalition building.   

The problem was that there were at least 500 people crowded into the room in line to use the Contender Market.  A sign posted above each booth informed everyone that there was a “10 Minute Limit” to Market access before they had to let the next in line have a go; a quick calculation based on the number of people he saw put the wait time to a couple of hours, but Thaden didn’t want to wait that long.

There was a much better solution, even if it wasn’t something he had originally been planning on doing quite yet.  Unfortunately, his Evolution Assignment was screwing up his plans already, so he figured he might as well screw it up some more. 

Time to lean into the whole “mysterious stranger” routine once again.

Leaving the coalition building, he moved a short distance away into an alleyway and found a secluded spot where he was shielded from prying eyes, before changing into his Shadow Silk Robe and Hood of Obscurity, and then he boosted his Celerity using Major Mana Transformation.  Weaving in and out of the Contenders outside the building, to their shock and surprise, he sped into the Coalition lobby and did his best to avoid the crowd as he shot toward the reception desks.  He managed to squeeze through a gap in the Contenders standing in line as he moved up to the nearest Receptionist.

Dropping his voice down low, he said to the woman behind the counter, “I need to see the Vice-Leader,” before flashing his Silver-Ranked Badge so that only she could see it.

“Hey!  Get back in line—” the Mage-Class Contender he cut in line started to say, but he immediately stuttered to a stop as Thaden turned his empty-seeming hood toward him and stared him down.  “Uh, g-go right ahead.”

Thaden just nodded as the Receptionist’s eyes widened at the whole scene, though it was most likely due to the Rank of his Badge than anything else.  “Absolutely, sir.  Hartin is in his office,” she said, pointing toward the door where the Lifewarden had seen the Vice-Leader retreat into earlier.

There were some protestations behind him as he nodded toward the Receptionist and weaved his way around the desk to get behind her, his speed taking him to the door in less than a second.  He nearly smacked into it because his Celerity was so high, but all the practice he’d had running across the countryside helped to prevent an embarrassing faceplant in front of the entire lobby of Contenders.  Thaden quickly knocked, opened the door, and then let himself in before closing it behind him. 

The same Charee he’d seen earlier heading toward him abruptly stood up from behind his desk, his gaze wary as he looked at Thaden, and he pulled a glowing sword out of a compartment built into the driftwood-crafted piece of furniture.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” the Hartin, the Level 100 Vice-Leader roughly demanded.

Thaden immediately removed his Hood of Obscurity, revealing his fake name and Level, and the Charee quickly relaxed, sliding the sword back into the desk so quickly that the Lifewarden barely saw it.  “Sorry about the intrusion, but I need your help.”

“Anything for a Silver-Ranked Badge member of the Adventurer Coalition.”

Thaden chuckled.  “You really do get your information quickly, don’t you?”

“We do.  But I’m sure you’re not here to talk about that; what can I do for you?”

“First, I want to thank you for being discrete earlier; as you can see, I’m trying to stay incognito at the moment, and I didn’t want you blowing my cover.  So, I appreciate your quick thinking.

“Secondly, I need a room here with access to the Contender Market, like they have—uh, had—in Forgestone,” he said, stumbling over the tense a little bit in embarrassment and shame.

“Ah, yes, the circumstances in Forgestone were unfortunate, to say the least, but everything is as the Assimilation System wills it.  I also want to apologize on behalf of the Adventurer Coalition for the actions of the former Vice-Leader; while she has already been punished for attacking you with the intent to kill, we want to assure you that such a thing will never happen again.”

“Uh, well, thank you, but an apology isn’t necessary.  She was, uh, ‘punished’ enough, I think.”

“Nevertheless, the whole situation is a stain upon our sacred duties here, and while it would only be a minor recompense for how you were treated, the Coalition would like to extend to you an invitation to stay in any Silver-Ranked room free of charge for as long as you are here on Tarth.”

That was generous of them, even if it was unnecessary because of his large reserve of funds.  “That actually brings me to the third thing I need help with.  Does that offer extend to Gold-Ranked rooms?”

“Gold-Ranked?  Why would—?  Are you asking for a Rank upgrade to your Badge?”

Thaden just nodded.

Hartin seemed to be at a loss for words for a few seconds.  “Yes, well, let’s see to that right away.  And yes, the offer will extend to any higher-Ranked rooms you may need in the future.”

As Thaden sat down across from the Vice-Leader, the Charee still didn’t seem to believe that he had achieved Gold Rank – at least until it began to morph under his hand.  After it had transformed to Gold, Hartin began to move his hand back, but the Badge continued to glow.

“You have enough Rank Progress to reach Diamond Rank?” he asked, practically choking on his words.

Pulling up his Character Report, he saw that his Adventurer Coalition Rank was now Gold, and that he had 630/630 toward the next Rank; he vaguely remembered that he’d acquired all of it after the tragic events in Forgestone, which he hadn’t realized until now was just enough to push him to the next Rank. 

“Apparently so.  I guess I forgot about those other rewards.”

“You f-forgot?  How—?  Never mind, it’s not important.”  The Vice-Leader moved his hand away before it could transform.  “Unfortunately, I’m not able to upgrade your Badge any further; only the Coalition Leader for Region 1 is able to progress Contender’s Rankings to Diamond and then to Platinum.”

“Where can I find the Coalition Leader.”

“Unfortunately, he hasn’t been seen since Forgestone, uh, experienced some difficulties, as that was his settled location.  I’m sure he’ll eventually turn up, or someone will have replaced him, but for now I wouldn’t worry about it.  There are only a pair of Gold-Ranked rooms even available, with nothing of higher-Rank at the moment; there aren’t even any Gold-Ranked Quests yet, though we’ll be putting in a request for some immediately.  Having a Diamond Rank won’t benefit you right now, even if you’re entitled to it, but that will change in the future; hopefully, by that time, we’ll have the Coalition Leader situation worked out.”

“I… see.  I guess there’s nothing you can do about that.”

Hartin shook his head.  “Not at the moment, no.  Was there anything else you needed help with, or shall I show you to your room?”

The Lifewarden couldn’t think of anything else.  “I’d love to see my room.”

Both of them got up a second later as the Vice-Leader took them out a different door, which didn’t seem to be connected to the lobby, but Thaden slipped his Hood of Obscurity on over his head anyway.

“Just in case,” he said at Hartin’s questioning look.

The Vice-Leader nodded.  “Very well.  If you would kindly follow me?”

Without another word, Thaden followed the Charee to see what his now-free stay in a Gold-Ranked room would get him.