A Helpful Coward

As I fell into the guild Artemis, Clarence and, hey, Lawrence rushed over to help me. I fell on the floor and leaned against the wall sitting up. I made the victory sign with my two fingers, smiled and passed the hell out.

When I woke up I was horizontal, on a hard surface, but covered in a sheet and had something like a pillow under my head. Unlike the last time I had woken up in the tower, I was sore all over, and sleeping on the hard surface had made my muscles tight and my head hurt. I opened my eyes and found myself in the guild, which was now full of people. Another person- a young woman in a tracksuit- was laid on a 'cot' next to me. Her hair was a mess, and she had a pair of very thick glasses laying on a desk next to her. The cot was simply a number of classroom desks pushed together and covered by any cloth available. The woman looked injured, there was blood on her face, but she was asleep and looked peaceful. As I started sitting up I heard a loud man's voice shout:

"Ey Clarence! My hero is wakin' up!" the man I had dragged from the gym shouted across the din of the room. There were all sorts of people, all queuing to get to either Clarence or Artemis, aside from a few patients and sleeping people in the corners and on the desks. Chum squeezed out through between the legs of the crowd and said "Mornin', boss." And I stood up. I rubbed my eyebrows and checked the blackboard. 54 hours and a quarter or so remained- I had been out for nearly the full eight. It made sense; I had spent around eight hours in the tower doing difficult, traumatic and tiring things and it had been near midnight when I had been transported here. Seemed like a waste, but I needed it.

"Yeah. Morning," I said as the four people in the guild that I recognized were rushing towards me. Lawrence was wielding his giant axe with a lot more confidence. Between his flannel and the axe he looked like a cartoon lumberjack, except older and blacker than the stereotype. Artemis was almost like I had first seen her, but a bit more frazzled and tired, and Clarence seemed almost robotic in his ceaseless propriety. I think there may have been some dust on the shoulders of his suit, but that was as much as had changed. The guy that had been poisoned looked a bit green around the gills, but he was up and about.

"Lawrence, good to see you found your way here," I said. "Wouldn't-a made it here without this baby," he said patting the axe, "saved my life again by giving it to me." "Get into trouble on your way here?" I said. "Just some weird small green damn things. Maybe like baby orcs. Anyways, I managed to hit 'em with the axe, all it took was one swing each, and it gave me a class. Distressed Barbarian is what I've got now." "Hey, I'm Alex," I said to the guy I'd carried here. "Shit, I'm Jimmy," Jimmy said, "Thanks a lot for savin' me. I guess I cannot blame you for getting me the Deadweight title, but I'll work my way back up." "No problem. Say, Artemis, did you get enough information about the- Sorry, I should say, Jimmy, what happened to you out there?" I said. "Antonio and Sal are dead, sure. We went into that gym place, it was just the small things, figured it would be good exp, you know, squishing bugs. Well, one got me, and I went unconscious, and while the boys were trying to get me to safety the big motherfucker came out and- Well, hell, I just went limp and unconscious, I bet none of them didn't do so good," Jimmy said. I didn't hear scratching from my journal and looked to Artemis. "Ey, boss, don't you worry about that," Chum said, "Your journal was updating like crazy for a while after you went unconscious. Bet there's a lot of good stuff in there." "Busy as hell here, Artemis," I said. "Yeah, people figured out what I'm trying to do here, and the response has been pretty good. We have the supplies to last out the rest of the time for something like a thousand people," Artemis said.

I looked around the room and paid attention to the people this time. It was a varied bunch. There was a larger guy with long, brown, curly hair in black jeans and a t-shirt with completely illegible metal band logo. A middle aged Asian couple was having a serious discussion, I think about going out to explore or staying where it's safe, though I didn't mean to eavesdrop. A man in a white, flamboyant jacket was strumming at a guitar, while looking ahead, blank-faced.

Most people looked frightened and confused, but enough were moving about and helping out that nobody was neglected. Even as we spoke, a serious looking younger man with a blue cloak around his back entered the Guild from the halls. He threw what looked like half of a butchered pig's carcass on the supply table, wiped his brow and checked his journal for a completed quest. I tuned back into the previous conversation.

"...One thousand, two hundred and fifty or so," Clarence said. "We're getting back the first reports about some of the more dangerous side-rooms around this area. Chum says they're all way more dangerous than usual," Artemis said. "Hey, I said either that or humans from your world are way less useful than usual," Chum said. "Immaterial. Some people are getting good experience. We have a few fighters above level 7 already, and some of them are talking about forming groups to go into the side-rooms. A couple have asked for you in their team by name," Artemis said. "Me? I'm level three and useless," I said. "You've saved two lives, completed a quest and people like Chum. Most people cannot say as much about themselves. The higher levels mostly got good titles and got experience from doing basic quests for me and exploring the halls. Not a lot of people have as much combat experience as you," Artemis said. I laughed.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. "Three fights, one of which I ran away from screaming, leaving my allies to die," I said. "I didn't say that the rest of them were in good form," she said. "Check your journal before making any decisions boss. I reckon you should have gotten rid of that title," Chum said.

I went right to the journal and checked the front page.

Alex Vorhal Helpful Human Coward, Level 4 Abilities: Run Screaming, Run and Hide, Useless (1( choice pending)) Capacity: Power 2* Resilience 3* Mind 4*

Notable Skills: Spreadsheet Management Level 6 Game Master (Tabletop Role Playing Games) 4 Mixology 2 Spellcasting (Abjuration) 2

Notable Spells: Seal Door 3 Conjure Icicle 2

Traits and Features: General Anxiety Disorder (Mild) Trauma

"Hell yeah," I said and went to log to see what the hell had happened.

Log: Level Up! 1 Attribute point available 1 Class Ability available

Gained skill Athletics at level 1 Experience gained in skill Athletics 22.5/25 to level 2 Changed Title from "Useless" to Helpful experience gained. Experience to level 4 39.3/50 You have lost the ability Novice Recovery Quest Completed: The Missing Expedition. Experience to level 4 49.8/50 Helpful quest completed. Experience gained. Level up! Experience to level 5 5.05/100

Title: Helpful: You have spent the majority of the first 24 hours in the Tower helping your fellow humans in life-and-death situations. You have proved your use to the community by completing a quest for the adventurers guild and saving a life of a fellow adventurer. Your Human ability is upgraded in the following ways: you now gain a 10% experience boost when you gain experience in the presence of others. Allies and non-combatants of any intelligent species now count for the experience boost, instead of just other humans. Your use of support spells and abilities is more effective. You gain additional experience for completing helpful activities and quests.

Ability choice pending. Source: changed tile from Useless. Choose one of Rank 1 Helpful abilities.

Give and Take: When accepting an adventurers guild quest you may ask for an additional reward. If the head of the guild agrees, they receive an additional 25% of your experience reward for a total of 75%.

Critical Support: You learn a support spell.

But I Can Carry You: When carrying unconscious people their weight counts as half for your ability to carry them. Total carrying capacity increased by 20 pounds.

I could see the use for all three, but I knew that I needed ten spells to get my wizard class in six levels, so I picked the support spell. A scroll materialized on my lap. The sigil was a lot more complex than anything I had seen for the spells before. It was two symbols, overlaid over one another. A circle with runes in cardinal directions and a square with a triangle pattern within.

"That'll be your first tier 2, pal. Hope it's a good one," Chum said.

Invisible Wall, Abjuration, Tier 2, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Abjuration spell Invisible Wall. This abjuration conjures an invisible wall of force that lasts for 10 x Arcana seconds. This 5ft by 5ft wall is impenetrable by physical force or objects, but may be dispelled by dispelling magic of equal or higher rank. Physical attacks against the wall deal 10% of the damage to the caster. The incantation is Ban-Aval-Krom-Nefor-Tyn-Vol.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Block a total of 0/1000 damage without dying from damage transfer

This was the first second tier spell that I had ever received and both the sigil and the incantation were literally twice as complex as the first rank spells. I tried to imagine a spell of 10th tier, and quickly understood that an unenhanced human mind probably couldn't keep the whole of the information in their head, no matter how smart the person. Frankly, I wondered if higher level spells could reasonably be cast in combat. It took me about two seconds to cast my spells, so a tier 5 spell would take- let's see- about half a minute to cast, even if I could do it perfectly. Hardly ideal for a combat scenario. Still, this spell looked incredibly useful, even if the incantation was already long enough that it would be clumsy to cast in combat.

But I wasn't even done. I assigned the attribute point from the level up to Knowledge again, and maxed out knowledge available to me now. My memories were as clear as day, and I could disentangle them easily. I wondered what going even higher in the attribute would do. Perfect recall? Mind palace? All seemed possible.

Class: You have reached an even level. Class abilities available:

Cowardly Lion: you gain a further 10% chance to flee when encountering a natural or magical fear effect. If you resist a fear effect all of your attributes go up by 1 and you are immune to fear for 1 hour.

Survivor: you passively gain 2 experience an hour, so long as you do not engage in any combat or dangerous activity in this hour. Taking this ability multiple times doubles the experience gain.

Protect me!: when an ally intercepts an attack meant for you, your Power and Mind capacity and all related attributes go up by 1 for 1 minute.

These were a lot better than the 2nd level choices. I already had a penalty to my fear resistance, and I didn't want to be rewarded for putting others in danger. Survivor didn't seem overpowered or anything, but it'd all add up. So I picked Survivor.

After I put the journal down, I went with Artemis to meet the people who wanted to explore some of the dangers of the Tower.

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