Chum

"Uh, what?" I said. "Heey, adventurer, big man, I'm not a danger to you, I wouldn't give you much real experience, so let's just talk," he said. I sighed, "I don't have any intention of hurting you unless you hurt me," I said. "Hah! Score! I bet I'll get all kinds of persuasion points for that," He said. "Alright, so I'm Alex, what's your name?" I said. "Hey, hey, let's not start getting all true names on each other yet. Call me Chum," he said. "And you're 'familiar class'?" I said. "That's me, Devious Imp Familiar," he said. "So- and I reiterate, I have no intention of fighting- why would that stop me from fighting you?" I said. "Oh shit, oh fuck, don't kill me," he said. "I won't, I promise," I said. "Score," he said, "Wait, can humans break promises?" "Can imps?" I said. "Well, a promise is sort of like a contract. No demon can break a contract made of free volition. It's a union thing," he said. "You're unionized?" I said. "Yeah, we're all unionized. The union has their work cut out for them because we must fulfill all the orders of our Lord Mephistopheles or be thrown into a lake of boiling sulfur for ten thousand years, always suffering, never dying, but we've got a few concessions over the millenia" he said, "and then there's the fees, of course, but it's all worth it in the end." "It is?" I said. "Dunno, haven't reached the end yet," he said. "So back to the familiar thing," I said. "Right, right you're new here too then?" he said. "Wait, you're new here?" I said. "Well, I'm new here here, but we demons get summoned and banished to all sorts of places all the time. Sounds like you were stuck in a no-contact universe. Preservation of species and cultural values, that sort of thing. I've been familiaring for about a hundred years," he said. "Sounds like you have a lot of experience," I said. "Nah, when we get summoned to a new demiplane we usually start at level one like everyone else. I think it's to do with the fact that the plane is new, there hasn't been a lot of time here, so it wouldn't make sense for anyone to have ground out a bunch of experience yet. I don't really have any experience, I just have my experience," he said.

Chum had stopped begging and genuflecting, and the change came on so suddenly that I thought it must have been an act. Like, not even a lie; it didn't seem like he was trying to deceive me, only that he had a role to play and he was playing it. If the Tower worked like my games on Earth, then a familiar- an intelligent familiar no less- would be a great boon. If demons worked like they did in my games (and culture, and religion), then it would probably be best to try to kill it right away.

"So how does a familiar contract work?" I said. "Not so slow, are you?" Chum said, "It's pretty simple," he said, and there was a burst of flame and a sulfurous smell and in his hand there appeared a single sheet of parchment. It was formatted exactly like the Seal Door spell, but the sigil was a lot more complex. This one had a pentagram in a circle, and a different rune in each of the triangular parts of the star.

Bind Familiar, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Binding spell Bind Familiar. To cast, touch a friendly creature with the Familiar class and perform the basic casting procedure. The incantation is Aiu-Nn-Kva. Upon casting this spell you enter a magical contract with a creature that has the following terms by default:

#1: neither party can intentionally harm the other;

#2: The Binder may not order the Familiar to perform actions that put the Familiar in unreasonable or deadly danger, except in situations where the lives of both parties are in danger;

#3: The Parties shall remain in each other's proximity (no further than 300ft apart) for the duration of the spell. If either party attempts to move further, the Familiar will be magically dragged towards the Binder via the closest safe path. If there is no safe or possible path, the Familiar will instead be teleported next to the Binder.

#4: The front page of both parties character sheets shall appear at the back of each parties character sheets.

Further terms may be added by creating a physical contract on paper signed by both parties.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2:

Level up your Familiar to level 10 or bind a Familiar of level 10 or higher

"So do you actually want this?" I said. "Hell yeah. Once either of us dies, I get to go back to my Lord's domain with all the experience and loot I gained here added to my true form. It's one of the few ways I can gain levels in hell," Chum said. "Seems kind of slave-y to me," I said. Chum snorted. "As if I'd fall for a contract that makes me into your unwilling servant. That's the first thing, I want an out clause," he said. "Makes sense, do you want to be able to just break the contract at will, or what?" I said. "Eh, two week notice is considered standard across the multiverse, unless it's something real inappropriate," he said. "That'd work for me," I said, sort of relieved. I assumed that once he knew my title and class he may become less excited about this contract. "Alright, so I guess I'll go with what I want. I want information most of all. How the system works, how I can get better classes or titles, how to survive here, that sort of thing. It'd also help if you could fight with me," I said. "I suck at fighting, but you don't look so good at it yourself. Tell you what, I'll do 'the familiar shall assist the binder in combat against even or lower level monsters until level 5, at which point this clause can be verbally renegotiated. The knowledge stuff is standard, but I won't be giving you multiverse info, only rules, magic and survival advice. That's non-negotiable, union stuff," he said. "Anything else you want?" I said. "Uh, I wanna get paid, ya dunce," he said, "20% of loot in monetary value from here on out." "Works for me. Are there some priceless magic artifacts that I should be worried about," I said. Chum grumbled about the question, clearly having hoped that I wouldn't think to ask. "Fine, any named magic items go to the Binder, that's standard," he said. "Are we missing something," I said. "Not really, but hey, you seem like a reasonable sort, and you kinda implied that your class sucks. I have one sure-fire way to change your class to a pretty powerful one, but it'll cost ya," he said. "It's not like I have any money," I said.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. "So, the class is Demonologist. You get a bunch of skills connected to demon lore, you get a full book of summoning spells, and you even get some resistances and offensive magic too," he said. "And the cost?" I said. "Well, you must complete one request given by Lord Mephistopeles per month, or lose your class," he said. "And?" I said. "And when you die your soul goes to hell for 666 years. Hey, it's really not that bad, plenty of people have worked their way up the ranks there," he said.

It's not like it wasn't appealing. The abilities that he mentioned were stronger than anything I'd even considered. It's not like I was the most moral man in the universe- multiverse?- and it's not like I had many hang-ups on purity or religion. 700 years also wasn't an eternity and a lot of people were willing to do bad things when that was what they believed they would get. But it was just too much like giving up my agency. I could survive here that way, sure, but what about after? But most importantly, what if I got the class and died twenty minutes later anyways? That would be the dumbest move ever.

"Honestly tempting, but the risks outweigh the rewards for me. If there's nothing else, I'm willing to do the familiar spell," I said.

It took us less than 20 minutes to draw up a pretty simple contract. Aside from what we'd discussed, I added some safety clauses about Chum not betraying me, or misleading me to death. I had heard the part where if I die he gets to go home, so it sounded like a good idea. It actually took me longer to cast the spell. It is simple enough to visualize a squared circle clearly in your mind, but five different unique runes took some doing. I hadn't seen the countdown that seemed to only be in the classrooms in quite a while, but I doubted more than three hours had passed total between me waking up here and now. It felt longer, but I was having a lot of new experiences, so, of course. I noticed that I was pushing down thoughts and feelings about the college kids from earlier. I doubted that that was how I would get over my trauma, but I was pretty sure I would spiral to despair in about twenty-five seconds if I started processing it. Maybe before I go to sleep.

Me and Chum were sitting opposite one another and I had had my hand on his forehead for what felt like half an hour by the time that my chants and visualizations came to affect physical reality. As if from out of nowhere ghostly threads of silk and chains of silver bound the two of us together, and out contract burned in white fire and was gone. Chum checked my character sheet and sighed, and I checked his.

Chum Devious Imp Familiar, Level 1 Abilities: Gas Light 1 Stench cloud 1 Retch Capacity: Power 6* Resilience 6* Mind 6* Notable Skills: Contract Law Level 8 History 5 Stealth 2 Traits and Features: Fire Immunity Natural Weapons (claws, hooves) Ice Weakness Holy Weakness

"Aah, shit, Useless Coward, huh?" he said. At least there was no anger in his voice. He sounded more like a plumber telling you that he's going to have to rip out your floors to re-do the piping for the whole house, "Well, boss, don't beat yourself up over it. The system will be an asshole to you sometimes, what it tells me is that you got into a shitty situation and survived. That's the first thing we've got to fix. Your caps ain't great either." "I was kind of worried that you'd want to get rid of me once you learned about my title and class," I said. "Ah, what can I say, I like me a fixer upper. It's still early days, we've got a lot of time to knock you into shape. So long as you get rid of that Coward class by the end of tomorrow. Though you might want to start with your title. Coward is not great, but Useless is straight up the worst title you can have," Chum said.

"What would be good capacities, out of curiosity?" I said. "If this is a standard demi-plane of heroism the inducted population goes through some sort of a statistical analysis. So, whatever your smartest guy is gets a 6 in Mind, the really clever people get 5 and so on. Three is average, more or less, but of course that depends on your attributes. Someone with 3 in self-esteem and no other resilience attributes would rank as average, but would in fact get destroyed by any mind magic or any physical damage. So you technically average out, but usually it's easier to work with people with higher Power or Resilience," Chum said. "So your caps are higher than anyone in the dungeon?" I said. "Yes and no. Keep in mind that there is one person with Power 6, one with Resilience 6 and one with Mind 6 in the Tower. Also there's some adjustment based on species and size and stuff like that. I'm tougher than a human pound-for-pound, but if you push a bookshelf on top of me, I'd still go squish," Chum said.

"Again, sorry about that. I assume by the name that the capacities determine the limits of the attributes, but how does that work? I thought it was just the numbers of all attributes added up together, but when I increased my Willpower, it didn't raise my resilience," I said. "Good catch. When you got inducted- that's when you first came to the Tower- you got assigned starting caps based on your attribute totals. At first it looks like they're just added up together, but that's just the system giving you something to strive for. You cannot raise your attributes above your capacities. Don't worry about raising your caps for now. Now, despite the name, capacities do provide some bonuses by themselves. Someone really intense and strong is going to punch harder than someone who's just strong, and that is reflected in the system. Confident, willful people will keep going when someone who's just physically tough would have given up. But for specific actions and tasks you do want specific attributes. You've increased your willpower, which is probably not a bad idea. It'll make you a little tougher, but more importantly it will let you concentrate on spells and studying for longer," Chum said.

"Is that something I've got time to do?" I said. "That's the thing you'll want to do, boss. Look here, I don't think I've ever seen a monster in a demi-plane that would get knocked down by someone with Power 2. If you wanna get anywhere, you'll need some offensive magic. Plus you've got the robe and the hat. You gotta go for a magic class if you want to get anywhere," Chum said. "Hell yeah, that's what I'd have wanted anyways. How do I do it? Change class and title?" I said.

"Getting a class and title is pretty easy. Hell, I bet you had a title within the first hour in the plane," Chum said. "Nosy," I said. "Goddamn right, get your nose in there," Chum said, "Anyways, once you've got them, getting rid of them is harder. To get a class or a title you just have to do the things that people of that class and title do. It's different if you want to improve them. Say, if you wanted get that Nosy title up to Scholarly, you'd just have to study a lot. Problem is, once you've got a bad one you have to do that and you have to go directly against what your build is all about, or you'll just get variations of Useless and Coward." "So, to get rid of Coward, I'd have to do something brave, to get rid of Useless I'd have to do something useful?" I said. "And you have to do it in a way that aligns with another class. Useless is pretty hard to get rid of too- it'd be too easy for it to go away when you do something that helps you survive yourself, so you have to either really go for it and get something super powerful for yourself, or you have to help others in a dangerous situations, probably several times, depending on the danger level. Coward is a bit special too. You have to destroy whatever gave you the class too," Chum said.

I shivered at the thought of Brad's guts spilling literally all over me. I still had blood on me, fuck.

"Yeah, okay, I'm fine with getting rid of Useless first. What do you recommend?" I said.

Chum cracked his knuckles and started his explanation.

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