CHAPTER 3: THE FLASHBACK OF THE LEGEND - PART 1
Fourteen Years Earlier - The Awakening Ceremony
The air in the Sunstone Town square was thick with the scent of hope, sweat, and roasting nuts from vendor stalls. Banners fluttered in the spring breeze, depicting heroic classes: the gleaming Warrior, the wise Mage, the shadowy Assassin. For every child turning fourteen this year, today was Destiny Day. The Awakening Ceremony.
Among the crowd of anxious youngsters stood a boy named Rocky. At fourteen, he was the physical definition of "unremarkable." Skinny as a rail, with a posture that suggested he'd rather be invisible. Mousy brown hair fell into eyes that were a dull, uncertain gray. His clothes were clean but threadbare, hand-me-downs from an older cousin. He was the kid at the back of the class, the one picked last for teams, the one whose name teachers struggled to remember.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Today, he thought, clutching the cheap luck-stone his mother had pressed into his hand. Today, everything changes. He dreamed of something solid, respectable. A Guardian, like the town watch captain, armor shining. Or a Ranger, ranging the wilds beyond the wall. Even a Crafter would be fine—a useful life. Anything but the whispered horror, the joke of a classification that was almost a myth in a small town like his: Jobless.
The Mayor, a portly man with a Merchant class badge glittering on his chest, took the podium. "Children of Sunstone! Today, the System graces you with your path! Step forward, touch the Awakening Stone, and embrace your future!"
One by one, kids approached the milky-white quartz obelisk in the square's center.
"Tomas Veld!" A sturdy boy swaggered up. He touched the stone. It flashed copper-brown. "Class: Warrior! Sub-class: Brawler!" The crowd cheered. Tomas punched the air, already flexing.
"Elara Fen!" A delicate girl with careful braids. The stone flashed silver-blue. "Class: Mage! Sub-class: Hydromancer!" Her family wept with joy.
"Derik Mott!" A shifty-eyed boy. The stone flashed forest-green. "Class: Ranger! Sub-class: Tracker!" Respectful nods.
Rocky's turn crept closer. His mouth was desert-dry. He saw the successes, the bright, clear futures. He also saw the few disappointments: a boy who got Farmer (a fine class, but not glamorous) looked crestfallen. A girl who got Cleaner wept quietly.
Then came the nightmare.
"Jax Rourke!" A bulky, red-faced boy with a perpetual sneer—the town bully. He slammed his hand on the stone. It flickered weakly, a sickly, piss-yellow light that sputtered and died. The stone's surface went dark for a long second before glowing a dim, mundane gray.
The attendant squinted at the runes that formed. His voice, previously booming, dropped to a confused, then pitying murmur. "Class:... Jobless."
The square went dead quiet for three full seconds.
Then, laughter. Not joyful cheers, but a rolling wave of cruel, derisive mockery. It started with Jax's own friends, then spread through the crowd like a contagion.
"JOBLESS?!" someone guffawed.
"He's got no class! Literally!"
"Hahaha! What do you even do? Stand around?"
"His future job is 'being unemployed'!"
"His parents must be so proud!"
Jax stood frozen, his face turning from red to purple to ashen white. The sneer melted into a mask of utter horror and humiliation. He looked at his hands as if they were diseased. A Jobless. A system-error person. A walking void of potential. He stumbled away from the stone, pushed through the laughing crowd, and vanished, his life effectively shattered before it began.
Rocky felt a chill colder than the deepest winter freeze his soul. That. That was the abyss. He prayed to any god listening. Not that. Anything but that.
"Rocky!" the attendant called.
His legs, made of jelly, carried him forward. The laughter from Jax's awakening still echoed, now mixed with curious murmurs. He was the skinny, quiet one. What would he get?
He reached the stone. It felt warm, humming with ancient power. He placed his palm flat against it, closing his eyes.
Please. Warrior. Mage. Crafter. Healer. Anything. Please.
The stone reacted. A light built behind his eyelids. He dared to hope. It felt... warm. Maybe... gold? A Warrior's light?
He opened his eyes.
The stone was emitting a faint, flickering, utterly colorless glow. Not silver, not blue, not brown. It was the light of weak moonlight on dirty snow. It was the absence of color. At its center, simple, unadorned runes formed.
The attendant leaned in. His expression shifted from professional neutrality to bafflement, then to the same pity he'd shown Jax, tinged with a hint of theatrical sorrow for the crowd. He cleared his throat, amplifying his voice.
"Class:... Jobless."
The silence this time was even deeper, more profound than for Jax. Then, the dam broke.
The laughter that erupted was ten times louder, more vicious. Jax was a bully, his failure felt like cosmic justice. Rocky was just... Rocky. The nobody. His failure was funnier. It was pathetic.
"ANOTHER ONE?! Two Jobless in one year?! Sunstone's cursed!"
"Look at him! Of course he's Jobless! He looks like a stiff breeze would knock him over!"
"All that hope for this? Hah!"
"Hey Rocky! Guess your class is 'Professional Disappointment'!"
"Mom, what does a Jobless do?" "Nothing, sweetie. Absolutely nothing."
The words were physical blows. He saw his mother in the crowd, her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. His father turned away, shoulders slumped. The hope in their eyes, the hope he'd carried for them, extinguished.
The Mayor shook his head sadly. "A tragic result. The System works in mysterious ways. Do not despair, child. Even the... classless... can find simple labor."
Rocky pulled his hand from the stone. The colorless light clung to his fingers for a moment before fading. He felt nothing. No surge of strength, no whisper of magic, no new knowledge. Just the same hollow, skinny self. He walked back to his parents, the laughter and jeers following him like a pack of hyenas.
"Don't worry, son," his father said, voice thick, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder that almost buckled his knees. "We'll... we'll figure something out."
That night, in the tiny attic room he called his own, Rocky didn't cry. He stared at the moon through the small, grimy window. The words of the System Administrator, who'd given a dry lecture to the two new Jobless boys after the ceremony, echoed in his mind.
"The Jobless classification is unique," the man had said, bored. "You receive no automatic stat bonuses per level. Your growth curve is flat. You have no class skills, no specializations. You cannot lead guilds. You are barred from many enchanted professions. Historically, Jobless individuals occupy support roles, manual labor, or... fade into obscurity. The System has judged you to have no focused aptitude. Your path is... open-ended, in the most limiting way possible."
No focused aptitude. The words burned. He wasn't a specialist. So what?
Then, a second memory surfaced. His grandfather, a weary Laborer class, sitting by the fire before he passed. "The System," the old man had coughed, "it sees what's easiest to mold. A block of wood becomes a spoon. A lump of ore becomes a sword. But what if you're the raw clay? It doesn't know what to make of you, so it calls you useless. But clay... clay can be anything. If you have the will to shape it yourself."
At the time, it had sounded like the ramblings of an old man comforting a grandson who was bad at school. Now, it sounded like a prophecy.
No class skills. No guided path. No bonuses.
But also... NO LIMITS.
What if being "Jobless" didn't mean you couldn't learn? What if it just meant the System wouldn't teach you? What if the "open-ended path" wasn't a prison, but a blank page?
A fierce, defiant heat ignited in his gut, cutting through the cold humiliation. They all laughed. The entire town. They wrote him off at fourteen.
Fine, he thought, his gray eyes hardening in the moonlight. If the System won't give me a class, I'll become my own.
He had no stats to guide him. So he'd train everything. He had no skills. So he'd learn them all. He was weak. So he'd get strong. He was ugly, unnoticeable. So what? Could that be changed too?
He scrabbled for a piece of charcoal and a scrap of parchment.
PHASE 1: THE FOUNDATION.
He wrote, his handwriting cramped and desperate.
1. THE BODY.
· · 100 Push-ups (build chest, arms)
· · 100 Sit-ups (build core)
· · 100 Squats (build legs, glutes)
· · 100 Pull-ups (build back, grip)
· · 10 km Run (build stamina, heart)
· · EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Rain, snow, hellfire. NO EXCEPTIONS.
2. THE MIND.
· · Read. Everything. Library. Manuals. Botany. History. Bestiary.
· · Observe. People. Animals. Weather. How things work.
· · Calculate. Distances. Trajectories. Leverage. Economics.
3. THE VESSEL.
· · Skin. Clean it. Moisturize it. Protect it. (Grandmother's simple lanolin soap, aloe if he could find it).
· · Hair. Keep it clean, trimmed.
· · Posture. Stand tall. Shoulders back. Meet eyes.
· · Teeth. Clean. Chew mint weed.
It was a child's plan, absurd in its simplicity and brutality. But it was a plan. It was a declaration of war against the destiny the System and the laughing crowd had assigned him.
The next morning, before dawn, he crept out. He ran. He didn't make it one kilometer before he collapsed, wheezing, lungs on fire. He did ten push-ups before his arms gave out. He did five sit-ups. He could not do a single pull-up.
He vomited in the bushes, then got back up and finished the run, walking and stumbling. He did push-ups in sets of two. He hung from a low branch and just tried to pull.
Every day, the town saw him. The skinny Jobless kid, running like a clumsy deer, struggling with pathetic exercises. The mockery found a new, constant target.
"Hey Jobless! Running away from your future?"
"Are those 'push-ups' or are you just trying to get up off the ground?"
"Give it up, Rocky! You can't exercise your way to a class!"
Jax, the other Jobless, now a surly, hulking drunk-in-training, would throw rotten vegetables at him from an alley. "Freak! You make the rest of us look bad by trying!"
Rocky ignored them. The laughter was just noise. The pain in his muscles was data. Each day, he could run a little farther. Each week, he could do a few more push-ups. After three months of sheer, mind-numbing agony, he did his first, full, chin-over-the-bar pull-up. He hung there, trembling, a victory no one saw but that echoed in his soul like a cathedral bell.
He also went to the town's meager library. He read dry tracts on herbology, on basic mechanics, on the geography of the kingdom. He studied people. He watched the blacksmith (Blacksmith class) at work—not just the hammer swings, but the heat management, the way he positioned his body. He watched the guard (Militia class) patrol—their footwork, their scan patterns. He absorbed it all.
And he tended to his body. With painful frugality, he saved coppers for a decent soap. He washed his face with cold water every morning and night. He chewed the mint weed. He practiced standing straight, even when he wanted to curl into a ball.
The First Year.
The changes were slow, but they began. The skinny frame filled out with hard, wiry muscle. The 10km run became a manageable, then a steady, rhythm. The 100 reps of each exercise became a grueling but achievable daily ritual. His face, cleaned of grime and with better health, lost its sallow tinge. His eyes, always downcast, began to look ahead. They were still gray, but now they held a sharp, observing light.
The mockery began to shift. It was less about his Jobless status and more about his weird dedication.
"Look at him, still at it! What a loser."
"He thinks he's a Warrior now? With no skills?"
"It's kinda sad, really."
The Second Year.
At sixteen, the boyish frame vanished. The relentless calisthenics and running carved him into something else. He wasn't bulky like a blacksmith, but densely packed, every muscle defined and functional. His posture was erect, giving him two extra inches of height. His skin, cared for and weathered by sun and wind, became clear and healthy. His hair, kept short and clean, actually looked good. His jawline, once soft, hardened.
And his face... something in the bone structure emerged. The combination of low body fat, excellent circulation from constant exercise, and the subtle confidence from achieving the impossible daily transformed him. The dull, skinny kid was gone. In his place was a strikingly handsome young man with a quiet, intense presence.
The laughter stopped. It was replaced by stares. Whispers. Girls who had once mocked him now looked twice, then blushed and looked away. Boys who had tripped him now muttered and avoided his gaze. He was still Jobless. But he no longer looked like one.
He also, through obsessive reading and observation, had taught himself things. He could identify every common herb in the forest. He could estimate distances with startling accuracy. He could basic first-aid. He understood leverage and simple machines. He had, without any system prompts, acquired a form of [Keen Observation] and [Basic Logistics].
But Sunstone had no place for a handsome, smart, strong... Jobless. The class barrier was absolute. He couldn't apprentice as a guardsman (required Militia class or higher). He couldn't work at the alchemist's (required Herbalist or Apothecary class). He was limited to brute labor: hauling sacks at the mill, digging ditches.
At seventeen, tired of the dead-end stares and the ceiling his town placed over him, he made a decision. He kissed his weeping mother goodbye, shook his father's hand (the man finally looking at him with something akin to confused pride), and left Sunstone with a small pack, a few coins, and his ironclad discipline.
He headed for the big city: Meridianus.
PART 1 END