Deadworld Isekai

“Slash, slash, stab.”

“Why are you saying the moves out loud, Derek?” Artemis asked.

Derek, now truly Derek again, huffed.

“I just want to. It's a thing.” He leapt backward, barely avoiding a sweep from a demon's claw. It was slow, but so was he. It was all he could do to keep out of the way of even the most basic attacks, especially when Artemis broke his rhythm with her questions.

“Slash, stab, chop.” It was a simple combo, but it kept him alive.

When Derek stopped moping and decided to start over, the first thing he did was to run to his plinth to obtain a new class. And looking through them, there were quite a few doozies. He didn’t know why the guardian would recommend Death Knight, but it sounded awesome. Derek was about to select it when he paused.

“Chop, chop. Chop. Stab!”

All of this chopping and stabbing was exhausting. But it was necessary. Derek realized that while Death Knight sounded just as great as Blademaster, he was not great. Plastering a class over his problems wouldn’t help him beat the demon lord. He needed to do better than that.

“Stab, parry, DODGE, shit, did you see that? Slash, slash.”

As Derek thought back to his fights with the demon lord on that god-forsaken planet, he realized that the demon lord had never once used a skill. Maybe that last tricky bit at the end with the insane amount of dirt that he shoveled upwards was a skill, but there were no combat skills. So Derek stood in front of the plinth, thinking.

The demon lord didn't seem stronger than Derek, or faster than him, or really that durable, not that he ever landed a hit on his slippery foe. His weapons were shit. And he still won. How?

And so, Derek waited in front of the plinth for an answer. When one didn't come, he walked away from his class selection.

“Stab, Stab. YES!”

The last stab hit home. The imp flopped to the ground, struggled for a few moments, then died. Imps like these were literally the lowest-level foes you could face. They were little flying lizards with some level of animal strength and speed, but not much. Asadel would have put them down without a thought.

Sure, they looked like little dragons, but that’s where the similarities stopped. Were they part of the demonic forces, and thus an evil to be eradicated? Yes. The evil they spread was on a smaller scale. They stole chickens, or tried to hurt children. Farmers killed them by the dozens with pitchforks. Their raw aggression made them a little bit dangerous, but they were much more “rabid house cat” than “dark terror lord”.

Anyone with a few levels under their belt could take them easily. It’s just that Derek was one of the few adults on the planet still at level 1.

Derek Cyrus
Level 1 Unclassed

HP: 25
MP: N/A
STAM: 10

STR: 5
DEX: 5
PER: 5
VIT: 5
WIS: 5
INT: 5

Warning: The unclassed do not have class goals, and thus cannot gain levels. Their stats can only be improved through great effort. There is no advantage in putting off class selection.

Derek wiped off his brow. He was sweating like a pig, and he had only fought a single imp. His weapon was plain old steel, something that the old man had lying around and was willing to sell to him cheap. It was heavy, much heavier than his claymore had been, even though it was just a short, basic one-handed deal with no enchantments or stat buffs.

“Please, please don’t talk to me so much while I’m fighting. I’m going to get clawed,” Derek said.

“Derek, anybody hearing you do that in battle would know exactly what was coming. It’s a bad habit. I think. I’ve never actually seen anyone say 100% of their moves out loud before. Are you sure this is a good idea?” Artemis sounded genuinely concerned.

The problem, Derek thought, was that people already knew every move he was going to throw. When he got the sword, he went out back to the old man’s training yard to get used to it. Before he knew it, he was back in the massive, two-handed overhead swing of things, and had done about twenty of them before he even realized it. Artemis wanted to talk about bad habits? He was the king of them.

Saying every move while he fought was the only solution he had found so far. At least that way, he had to notice when he was on his fifth or sixth consecutive, identical slash.

And then he could mix it up.

“I’m not going to keep doing it forever,” Derek smiled, “It’s just what I’m doing for now. Don’t worry. I talked to the old man about it, he said it’s okay for a while.”

“Oh, I see.” Hearing that the old man had approved of it, Artemis stopped bothering Derek about it. It wasn’t just politeness, either. It was like she forgot the objection entirely.

What is that old man, really? Derek had always considered the old man to be a bit of a rube, someone he could relax around who was also really good at making swords. He never saw that nobody else joined in his banter.

Since he had been back, Derek had started noticing these smaller things. Like how much quiet respect nearly every older reincarnator seemed to have for the blacksmith.

“What’s the story on that old man, anyway? He fights pretty good for a blacksmith,” prodded Derek.

“You’d have to ask him that. I try not to talk about people who aren’t present.”

Damn.

On top of the respect that the blacksmith carried, Derek also found that nearly everyone who seemed to know anything about the old man was unreasonably discreet. That was a problem, sort of. While Derek's trip to Gaia had wiped out all of his levels and his class, one thing did survive. His quest to figure out what the old man's deal was.

“Got it, sorry.” Derek realized that Artemis was still looking at him.

“No problem.” She smiled.

Derek was amazed how many problems could be solved by just apologizing.

“Anyway.” Artemis looked down at Derek’s sword, then his beginner’s equipment. “How long is all of this going to last? I don’t mind, exactly. But time is time. If you had a class, I could teach you about that class. You are wasting time and experience.”

Derek shook his head. “I’m not getting a class yet. I have too many problems to fix. I can do that better when I don't have distractions.”

It wasn’t a lie. He had a lot of bad moments lately, but the second worst was when he picked up a training sword and found he didn’t even know how to hold it. His footwork was the same. He was tripping over every other swing he made with the sword.

The old man had been, if not exactly nice, effective. He had put Derek’s hand around the sword the right way, and taught him how to take basic steps the right way. There wasn’t any of the usual banter, and he hadn’t called him stupid.

Actually, ever since Derek had come back, the blacksmith had stopped talking to him, except to give answers when Derek asked him specific questions. He wouldn’t refuse to help outright, but their relationship had fundamentally changed when Asadel ran off to some planet to almost get himself killed and hid it from him.

In short, Derek had hurt his feelings. That was the first-worst thing. Worse than losing the class and his name together was finding out the old man had cared about him, and Derek had betrayed that.

—

“Derek! Run!”

Like hell I will.

Another big downside of Derek’s classless state had just shown itself. He was fighting his fourth or fifth field imp, and finally starting to get the hang of it. Then, the imp decided to change things up and slashed out at his neck.

He jumped back entirely too far to get out of the way, and then, in his embarrassment, went for a charge and two-handed overhead swing out of pure reflex.

Only he didn’t quite finish the move. A massive cramp erupted in his calf. Instead of bisecting the stupid imp, he fell forward towards the ground, barely getting his arms down in time to catch the impact with his elbows instead of his face.

In that painful moment, he realized the truth. He was out of shape. Not horribly, but enough that the sudden injection of a hard day’s walking followed by several rounds of intense fighting caused his standard-issue human body to experience exercise-related failure.

After a few seconds, the imp got over the sudden animal shock of having its opponent fall over without actually doing anything. It flapped its way over to Derek with its claws bared. Downed prey was something it understood very well, and it was obvious that this was its big chance.

Derek’s calf was still fully cramped, and the sheer pain it was radiating didn’t bode well for trying to use it. With few options, he managed to roll over onto his back as the imp approached, waving his sword upwards into the air to fend it off. The angle was all wrong, and his valiant attempts to defend himself did nearly nothing to stop the small demon from latching onto his right arm with its claws and biting down on his forearm with its teeth.

The shock of pain was unbelievable. VIT and various class bonuses had done more for Derek than he had ever realized. Now, he was experiencing the full, human pain of getting shredded by an enemy claw for the first time. His arm spasmed in reaction to the attacks, and the sword fell and clattered against a rock on the ground. The imp also started flapping its wings and tugged upwards like it was trying to pull Derek’s arm out.

Reaching across his body, Derek grabbed the sword with his left hand and brought it high towards the Imp. There was no way he could get a good swing with it, everything felt wrong. But Derek suddenly realized that he had other options.

Swords are sharp for a reason. And this is one of the old man’s swords. Should be plenty sharp.

He couldn’t swing, but the sword could still cut. Contorting his body, Derek heaved the sword up and let it fall onto the demon's back. It barely scratched the imp, though the extra weight did bring the imp lower. Then, Derek sawed the sword back. As the sword came back, the edge of the blade caught the imp's skin and bit a deep wound. The thing shrieked and immediately let go of his sword arm.

Derek wasted no time shifting his sword to his dominant hand, rolling over, and getting his good leg under him. Even standing on one leg would be better than fighting from his back, and he would NOT be quasi-teabagged by this little chicken-stealing bastard anymore.

At this point, Artemis screamed for him to run. But he wouldn’t. Strong people did not run from monsters that were essentially sharp pigeons. Derek was going to stand and fight.