There was a good chance that the list of class options was now officially the most-read "article" of Ricky's entire life, and he only hit Level 2 earlier this morning. Every word was already memorized, but he expanded the system prompt to dominate his view and block out distractions. Plus, it helped him put things into perspective; this will be his foundation as he grows with the strange system. This is what mattered.

  Ricky skipped past the first layer of options, after pausing just long enough to wonder why the Cybroid class sounded so familiar. But it didn't matter, as he already knew that he was going to be a spellcaster. Phanya complained at length about magic, but how could she ignore the downright impossible feats of physics-defying magic that Tapper pulled out of nowhere? If that was a glitchy robot, then imagine what a human could do! Choosing the Spellcaster class was easy, the challenge was deciding what kind.

  [WIZARDRY]

  [The quintessential classic spellcaster, wizards command the arcane through years of rigorous study and an unbendable will. Wizards receive the strongest bonus spell die and can hold the highest number of spells in their spellbook, but all the study leaves them prone to exhaustion and inflexibility. They are also the only class that requires a spellbook, and woe unto the wizard that loses their tome.]

  [SORCERY]

  [The spark of life within all beings glows a little bit hotter for some mages, and none glow as bright as the sorcerer. As an equal opposite to wizards, sorcerers know very few spells but they have the strongest flexibility to tweak those spells on the fly, and can even willingly harness the chaotic powers of wild magic. As a result, they lack academic punch and barely benefit from holding a spellbook, and are prone to magical mutations.]

  [DRUIDRY]

  [Masters of the wilds and spirits of nature, druids employ a specialized type of spellcasting that draws from the world around them. Commune with animals, control plants, and become so in tune that they can polymorph their own body to match great beasts. However, their disconnect from civilization means that they can never use any metal equipment — even magical metals like silver and gold are alien to the druid.]

  [WARLOCK]

  [Some magicians are not born with a grasp on the arcane and must ask for greater magic from a powerful deity. While this does sometimes entail blood pacts with demons giving them a bad rep, warlocks can form a pact with any deity, good or bad. Unlike clerics and other avatar spellcasters, warlocks work through a more direct, quid pro quo relationship where the deity imbues the recipient with a font of magic as payment for services rendered. As a result, warlocks often specialize with more up close and personal combat magic.]

  [AVATAR]

  [Praise be! Warlocks can only achieve power after personally meeting a minor god, but others find their strength in their faith. Avatars embody the divine on such a deep level that they gain a fraction of their deity's powers, without ever directly contacting them. This means that clerics and priests have magic as steady as their belief, and can even repel those that their deity finds offensive.]

  [WITCHCRAFT]

  [Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble! Wyrdlings, cunning folk, and bush doctors are among the more mysterious magicians due to their reclusive nature. They have a reputation for cursing their enemies and enchanting their victims, but witches are no more inherently good or evil than any other magician. Unlike other magicians, witches spend just as much time studying people and nature as they do studying mana, and as a result their magic is used to psych out opponents and brew potions along with casting spells.]

  [NECROMANCY]

  [Grizzly ghouls from every tomb, just want someone to talk to. Necromancers know not to fear the spooky or the scary, and can instead turn any crypt or recent battlefield into a workshop. Raise skeletons, commune with the dead, summon and dispel spirits! But every necromancer must learn the most important lesson: No magic in this world or others can ever truly bring a loved one back to life.]

  [ARTIFICERY]

  [Blathering blatherskite! Most magicians enjoy making a big show of casting flashy spells on the battlefield, but the artificer prefers a more methodical approach to problem solving. Artificers are a class apart because they think up trinkets to be used in battle, spreading their magic to their teammates, and the sky's the limit so long as they have the proper tools. Because of this, artificers can have some of the best long-term flexibility but are also the worst class to be caught with their magical pants down, so to speak.]

  [RUNES]

  [Leave your mark! Rune mages watch other practitioners throw their spells into the air and see only waste, choosing instead to etch their magic into the physical world. These etchings hold their magic and do not fizzle like other spells, and can even enchant iron gear that normally repels spellcasters. But runes are exact and must follow their patterns, leaving little room for alterations or physical damage.]

  Every time Ricky opened this list his eyes dragged automatically to one choice, and every time he forced himself to read the entire description. A small voice in the back of Ricky's mind — a voice everyone has, which never grows up and always yearns for the safety of their parents' embrace — screamed to just pick Necromancy and make it work anyways. Ricky could figure it out, they're smart enough! But for all of its vague mysteries, the system was blatantly clear that Necromancy would never work for that. It almost felt like a warning to him personally, so Ricky forced the option away again.

  The other obvious poor choices went next, he had no interest in plants or leaving himself indebted to a mysterious patron. Niche options vanished, and choosing Witchcraft like Tapper just felt like a wasted opportunity. Eliminating these was an automatic response after going through this cycle countless times, leaving the same few choices as always:

  Did Ricky want to be a Wizard, a Rune Mage, or an Artificer?

  Wizard was the biggest gamble with the biggest payoff, especially with his new journal at his side. Ricky had asked Ms. Uxral for one because he intended to record every system message in it, but if he could turn it into a spellbook? It sounded perfect, if Ricky wasn't guaranteed to lose that spellbook at some point. And it didn't help that his external instincts said that Wizards do not play well with heavy armor. Still, the notion of holding the world's magic within a book just felt right to them, and Ricky knew it clouded his judgment. The other two were much safer bets, and a means to similar ends.

  The Artificer promised power with prepwork and visions of magical golems danced in their head, but whether Ricky could one day command such a legion depended entirely on obtaining the correct tools. Ricky doubted the emergency repair kit in his exosuit counted as "proper tools," and until he discovered what did count he would always be at a disadvantage. Runes, on the other hand, could be written with anything, and the description specifically mentioned chiseling runes into his gear for great synergy, but it sounded limited in comparison.

  Which to choose, which to choose...

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  Doubt gnawed at Tapper, as his second thoughts insisted that he made a mistake. The mist thickened substantially on the tarmac compared to the raised cabin, suppressing his sensors in addition to the strange chill effect. Now he couldn't see more than four meters in any direction, and any sounds that managed to pierce the veil were muffled and distant. The occasional crack of thunder, or frantic panting that came and went like a ghost's passing, were the only signs that the whole world hadn't vanished.

  Or rather, that they hadn't vanished from the world into an endless gray void.

  Phanya shivered and tugged her bowling shirt in. Not that it helped; she couldn't even button the shirt closed without losing the strange bonus her Aerobic Set gave to her dexterity. Tapper tried to distract from his second thoughts and said, "Truly Miss Phanya, you do not need to assist me."

  "Nope, not leaving you alone," Phanya immediately responded. Tapper couldn't tell whether her tone was short due to the chill in the air, or a heat in her emotions. "Last time I did that you picked a fight with a psycho cyborg four times your size. Let's just hurry and get this over with." She stomped off towards a rubber duckie, its bright yellow now a shining beacon in the gray, and a path of other duckies stretched out behind it.

  After a few minutes of walking — or what felt like long minutes — Phanya couldn't stand the stifling silence. "So why are you really doing this, Tapper? I get sticking your neck out to save Steffo, he's great, but this bounty hunter was going to turn you in. He's not your friend."

  "I am aware. And yet, we worked together to save each other's lives, so this feels like the correct course of action. It feels right. I believe that may be an influence from the system, and how it speaks of us as prospective heroes."

  "Not much of a line between heroes and fools, then," Phanya muttered. But then she noticed the robot's shoulders droop slightly and a point of guilt warmed her frozen mood. "Sorry. You're right, helping people is good, just hard to justify risking it like this when I know he wouldn't do the same for us."

  Tapper's head cocked to the side as fingers tapped against his faceplate in thought. "Hmm, 'Doing for others what they would not do for you is where fools and heroes meet.' Yes, that wisdom will be added to my idiom library," Tapper said with a happy eyebrow wiggle.

  Rapid popping sounds cut off their moment of reprieve. Gunshots fired from nearby, with the thick fog obscuring any sense of direction while somehow also amplifying the sound above the normal wufts of air rifles. Without anything to duck behind the two prospective heroes collided together and ducked low to the ground, all eyes darting in every direction for any sign of attack.

  Screaming replaced gunfire and a figure emerged out of the fog at a dead sprint, running directly for them. Phanya's wired reflexes kicked in and she kicked off of Tapper to shove them both in opposite directions, and as the man dashed between them his voice clarified for a split second.

  "AHHH it's got me! I feel the pull, Hand save me!"

  He didn't stop, likely didn't notice them at all, from the backpack-sized bubble of light firmly attached to his back. The fog quickly swallowed him back up as he ran away, leaving nothing except a faint glimmer. Soon after the wall of mist exploded with a flash of light and crack of thunder, barely muffled to bearable levels, and the sense of oppressive emptiness returned as if that person never existed. Tapper tracked a shadow in that general direction, or hopefully just a convenient fold in the mists, that shot straight up.

  "I wonder if he was shooting at the PSI bubble or, uh, something else," Phanya asked.

  "This time I lack the curiosity to find out," Tapper said, and the two hurried down the yellow duck path without another word.

  The mists had to be screwing with Phanya's mind, there was no way the mercenary had crashed so far away. It felt like they had walked for half an hour, and Tapper's chronometer just said Sync Error so their only reference point was mounting paranoia. He tried to distract them by going over options for Phanya's Level 3 feat, but after that raider went pop she wasn't willing to risk the distraction.

  And how many of the stupid ducks got shifted here during the crash, anyways? With nowhere else to direct her anxious energy Phanya started counting ducks, until she suddenly bumped into Tapper's outstretched arm. She cursed herself for getting distracted anyways, but she didn't see what made the robot stop. Far as she could tell, the foggy surroundings were just as gray and oppressive as ever.

  Tapper shushed Phanya before she could say anything. He had also pushed his nervous energy into analytics, opting to numb his touch and smell sensations so he could run his visual and auditory receptors at max power. Instantly shadows appeared in the mist and the occasional rumble of thunder became a constant background static of voices and engines and so, so many unknown variables.

  Tapper expected any new information to be terrifying information, so he had also set aside extra processing power to suppress any emotional outbursts and he managed to not panic, if only barely, until his analytics returned with a curious conclusion: All sounds were the same distance away from them, in all directions. And they had remained so until now.

  "There's something ahead," Tapper whispered. "Not coming towards us, not moving away either." Phanya nodded and the two crept forward, stopping to duck behind a large garbage pile when the sounds of clattering and rummaging grew loud enough for her to hear. As they tiptoed around the mound the fog lifted slightly and the duo finally no longer felt the oppression of the empty void.

  Instead, they now felt the horror of a disaster scene. One of the miner's vehicles now sat in a pile of its own parts, though not enough of it remained intact to determine which vehicle it was. What they could determine was that it hadn't crashed, because none of the wreckage was crumpled.

  It was shredded.

  Jagged metal strips fanned outwards from the vehicle, some of which still dripped with blood. Beyond the wrecked car lay a small clearing, ringed by more garbage piles and one pillbug vehicle in mostly one piece. The front of the pillbug was missing entirely, a clean crescent slice just like the jitney, but this one claimed almost a third of the long car. The engine, front seats, and front tires were simply gone.

  "I cannot hear or see any movement," Tapper whispered. "I believe whoever was here has moved on."

  "And took all the corpses with them?" Phanya asked, spreading her hand over the empty clearing. "Blood stains, but no bodies? Something's wrong here."

  "Astute observation, Phanya! Please watch my back." Tapper moved before Phanya could protest, walking across the clearing and into the pillbug without any hesitation.

  The vehicle's thick armor left for a cramped interior, long and narrow and optimized for only one occupant. A kitchenette lined one wall and a rumpled cot ran along the other, with the trail of rubber ducks ending on the floor. There weren't many places for someone to hide, but Tapper hadn't walked all this way to not try. "Mister Mercenary, are you in here?"

  A hidden panel snapped open on the far wall and a wild reptilian eye appeared. "You?? What the hell are — never mind, get me out of here!"

  Tapper couldn't stop his eyebrows from wiggling with joy if he tried. "Most certainly, that's why we're here! What seems to be the problem?"

  "This door jammed shut in the crash, I can't get it open from this side. Hurry! There's gremlins here." The mercenary's voice contracted to a whisper, quaking with fear.

  The irregular word triggered a response from Tapper's bar trivia index, catching him by surprise. "Do you mean the mischievous spirits of Old World mythology? How quaint!"

  "No not quaint, they're fucking demons!" He hissed back. Something rattled in the cabin and he shushed them both, ducking slightly within the opening so he could look around the room. The rattling turned into a scream of tearing metal and a panel tore away from the wall, spilling the contents of a hidden shelving unit into the cabin. Most of the odds and ends landed on the cot, only to launch again when something large and yellow bounced out of the compartment.