Tangled Classes
I had a problem.
At first glance, mixed-up hair color might not seem like much of an issue.
But I’d instinctively understood that this was no simple matter, so I moved to check it for myself.
I tried throwing a light kick. No, I tried to throw one.
For some reason, I couldn’t do it properly. It was like I’d hit a lag spike; my body just wouldn’t respond the way it should.
Other movements were no different. Even a simple punch came out clumsy and half-broken, never quite finishing the way it was supposed to.
The reason was simple.
"They’re tangled."
Just as the colors in my hair had knotted together in two different shades, the original character and the new one had tangled into each other. Two skills had been assigned to the same command, so neither of them would activate properly; they’d just stutter, choke, and stop.
That alone was enough to panic me, but after pushing myself too hard inside the dream, those few little movements had left me completely exhausted.
Ugh.
I flopped straight onto the floor. Given how shaky my arms and legs already were, it was only natural that I couldn’t hold out after moving around like that.
There was nothing I could do about this. If I could at least walk, I’d manage somehow, but walking was hard enough; crawling wasn’t exactly easy either, so I had no choice.
In the end, groaning all the while, I barely managed to crawl over and pick up the phone.
"Yes. What is it, Seha?"
"Instructor. I’m really sorry, but I’m in terrible shape today, and I don’t think I can make it to practice."
Just lifting the phone had drained what little strength I had left, and I managed to say only that much while breaking out in a cold sweat.
"Oh dear. Are you feeling very ill?"
"Yes."
"That can’t be helped. Then rest well today, and let’s meet again tomorrow."
"I’m truly sorry."
After apologizing again, I hung up and, the moment the call ended, collapsed into sleep as if I’d lost consciousness.
And when I finally woke up, I had no choice but to be shocked all over again.
Shit, I’m screwed.
That was because an entire week had gone by.
What, was this a time machine or something? I’d jumped a week into the future in the blink of an eye.
But that wasn’t the real problem.
My phone had dozens of missed calls. The instructor had called, the association had called, and there were plenty of calls from numbers I didn’t even recognize.
Practice? Obviously over. By this date, the draft was probably finished too.
Thanks to sleeping like the dead for a whole week, I seemed to have shaken off the same drained state I’d been in when I woke from the dream. But the problem of my limbs getting tangled up was still there.
For now, I called the bald instructor first.
"Seha?"
"I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry."
"..."
"I know anything I say will probably sound like an excuse, but I’m sorry, anyway!"
The instructor said nothing for a moment, then let out a small sigh and said,
"I think it would be best if we met and talked. Would that be possible?"
"Yes."
"Then I’ll wait for you."
I rushed to wash up, changed clothes, and headed for the Awakened Center.
As soon as I stepped inside, I saw the instructor standing near the stairs on the first floor.
"I’m sorry!"
I bowed my head the moment I saw him, but he just let out a long sigh.
"Let’s not do this here. Come on inside first, somewhere quiet. Follow me."
"Yes."
The instructor took me to a small meeting room and asked me to explain what had happened from the beginning.
"Uh, well..."
I couldn’t exactly tell him that I’d had a dream-seduction encounter and been drained so badly that I’d slept for a week. But I couldn’t just say nothing had happened and I’d simply fallen asleep, either, so I changed it a little.
"So, you’re saying you were training, then got exhausted and fell asleep, and when you woke up, a week had passed?"
"Yes..."
Even I thought it sounded ridiculous. Anyone who heard that would probably assume I’d gone off to waste a week somewhere and only came crawling back afterward, pretending nothing had happened.
But the instructor tapped a finger against the table for a while, thinking it over, and then, as if something had occurred to him, said,
"To be honest, we were considering tampering."
"Tampering?"
"It’s when an unauthorized guild makes contact with a rookie, or with a guild member who still has time left on their contract. In the case of the Awakened draft, there’s less coercion involved, so situations like this happen more often than you’d think."
"Ah..."
"Of course, when signs of that sort are found, the guild in question gets penalized. But if it’s a guild that can’t even take part in the draft in the first place, there are plenty of cases where they just ignore the rules and push ahead."
"I see..."
In other words, they’d thought my sudden week of silence meant I’d been lured away by a better offer from another guild.
Come to think of it, if one of the biggest prospects in this class suddenly stopped showing up for practice and cut off all contact, that was probably the first thing people would assume.
If I had an agent, they could have tried reaching me through them, but I didn’t. And with no other ties, it wasn’t as if the association could just file a missing-person report out of nowhere either.
Maybe because he’d at least confirmed that it wasn’t something like that, the instructor’s stiff expression softened a little.
"Have you checked your status window since you woke up?"
"No?"
"Take a look. See whether anything has changed."
Following his advice, I checked my status window, and sure enough, something had changed.
The class had gone from my original Kunoichi to include Succubus, and my skills had also gained a new B-rank skill, Aensland Family Secret Art, alongside the existing Shiranuki Ninjutsu.
"Do you perhaps have a second class now?"
"Yes."
The instructor’s expression darkened again.
"So the dual class really was the problem. Is the hair color because of that too?"
"Yes. Probably."
"There are occasional cases like that. People awaken two classes, and the clash makes them tangle up."
"Ah... right. I woke up and immediately had that problem too, so I was at a loss."
More than anything else, I had to fix the problem of my limbs getting tangled. If I couldn’t solve that, I wouldn’t be able to fight properly, and that meant I couldn’t really function as an Awakened at all.
But the instructor gave me a regretful look and said,
"Unfortunately, this is something you’ll have to solve yourself, Seha. There isn’t really a set method for fixing a class that’s tangled like this."
"There isn’t? Really?"
"No. You either have to understand both classes completely, separate them properly and use them accordingly, or merge them into one. Unlike real-world martial arts, where you can mix and match more or less however you want, skills aren’t that forgiving. The error happens at the input stage, so even the actual movements end up crossing wires. In the end, it’s a problem that won’t resolve until you realize the answer yourself."
...
As I lowered my head, dejected, the instructor gave a bitter smile and pulled out a tablet to check something.
"Cheer up. First, it would be best to make sure there aren’t any other abnormalities in your body. I’ll contact the infirmary, so please go get examined first."
"Thank you..."
"And there’s an internship opening in the office. Would you be interested?"
"An internship?"
"It’s clerical work that supports Awakened staff. Since it’s under the association, if you have intern status you can also use the training facilities after work."
"I-I’ll do it."
If I had intern status, it wouldn’t be much, but I’d at least have some income. Landing first place in the draft and getting a huge signing bonus, or earning a salary in the hundreds of millions of won, had clearly gone out the window, but that didn’t mean I could just sit around twiddling my thumbs.
"Good. Today, go to the infirmary and get checked first, then start officially tomorrow. Does that sound all right?"
"Yes!"
And so, until I could solve the dual class problem, I’d be working as an intern at the association. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the worst possible outcome.
The moment the interview ended, I went straight to the infirmary and got a thorough examination.
It was called an infirmary, but since it was installed inside the Awakened Association, it was equipped well enough to rival a proper specialist hospital.
It was true that I’d “slept” for a week, but in effect I’d passed out and lain in a coma for that entire period.
If a person lies motionless for that long, problems are only natural, and this checkup was absolutely necessary to see whether anything like that had happened.
So I went to the infirmary rather anxiously, but when the doctor looked over the results, he only tilted his head.
"You’re perfectly fine. Strangely fine, in fact."
"Really?"
"Yes. It’s almost suspicious enough that I’d think you’d just been malingering at home the whole week."
"N-no way."
"I’m joking. Haha."
The doctor laughed heartily, clearly amused by his own joke, but I couldn’t laugh along so easily. If anyone took that seriously, it would be a problem.
In any case, once I confirmed that the exam showed no abnormalities, I went straight home.
But the problem still remained.
An internship as office staff meant I could no longer wear the training clothes that concealed my figure so well.
On top of that, the more serious issue was that the newly added class happened to be Succubus.
My body was already so unreal it was hard to show off carelessly, and now a Succubus class had been added on top of it?
I had no idea how I was supposed to handle the eyes of all the male employees when I went to the office tomorrow.
There was only one way to get through the internship quickly and return to being an Awakened again.
I had to get used to the new class as fast as possible. That meant suppressing it, hiding it, or using whatever other method I could think of to keep the extra effects of the Succubus class from showing too openly.
First, I checked the character settings again.
"Huh? This is..."
As I looked through them, I discovered something surprising.
This new Succubus character commanded various forms of familiars, and by using them, she could gain all kinds of effects.
They could be transformed into weapons through shape-shifting, or into all kinds of clothing. I also learned for the first time that the wings attached to her head and waist when she appeared in the game were actually transformed familiars too.
This character also showed herself changing into a variety of costumes whenever she won in the game. So that wasn’t really her changing clothes at all — it had been the familiars taking on different forms like this.
If I could control this ability freely, then at the very least, my clothing troubles would be cut down drastically. I could just create the kind of outfit I wanted myself.
More than that, it was a good way to make full use of the new character’s abilities without worrying about the tangled commands.
I immediately threw myself into practice.
First, I started with the most basic step: summoning the familiars.