Arcane Whore

This is the first part of a story I have been working on for a while now, if people like it I will have several more parts to upload soon afterwards.

If anyone spots any inconsistencies with the RPG system, or have any suggestions about how I could make it more clear or things I could add please let me know. but This is my first attempt at writing this kind of story and I am sure there will be some quirks to work out. I appreciate any constructive criticism or interesting suggestions about making the system work.

Also thanks so much to EvalineDoll for editing it was very helpful.

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Part 1

Gasping for air with cramping lungs, I ran down a dark and smelly alleyway. I cursed as I tripped over a bump and nearly pitched headfirst into a pile of trash. I didn't want to look too closely at it. Gritting my teeth, I muffled my curses and rubbed at my aching ankle. I must have hit some kind of metal bar. I checked over my shoulder to make sure nobody was following me. Thankfully, all I could see was the faint glow of mysterious puddles reflecting the bright pink neon lights.

The only sounds I could hear was the normal heartbeat of New Hope City. The constant rumble and growling of vehicles nearby and the screeching of metal on metal from the tram systems. The sounds of sirens and distant shouting. Nothing close enough to be anyone following me thankfully. I had managed to evade the last guy who had been tailing me by running through a crowded casino and slipping out a back window and falling into a dumpster. It didn't seem like he had caught on to where I had gone yet.

I looked up at the large glowing neon sign overhead that spelled out the name of the place: The Violet Palace.

I was in deep shit. I was hoping to find the last place anyone would have looked for me. The club was my last hope for salvation.

I didn't have a single credit to my name and had a mountain of debts to some very serious people. There were a few who if I didn't pay them back, I would end up as a corpse in an alley without most of my organs.

Nobody would really care if I ended up that way. I was nobody, useless and faceless in the megacity that had over three billion people. I was one of the tens of millions of unclassed kids who hadn't turned twenty yet. I lived in unclassed shelters. I managed to work as a runner for the gangs on occasion. I had no living family, no real friends, and no allies that I didn't owe tons of money to.

So in spite of knowing it was a terrible idea, and knowing that going to the palace would likely end poorly for me, there was no other way to get some quick money that didn't involve killing someone or robbing some place. The boss was expecting me, I had already sent word about my offer, and had been told to get there as soon as possible.

A short time later, with my ankle still aching, I limped down the steps to a basement entrance and knocked on the door. I waited nervously looking, around praying to the system that nobody would see me. I hoped that I didn't look as desperate as I felt.

When the door finally swung open,I hurried in past the massive bouncer who towered over me. He looked at my skinny frame with obvious disdain. I entered an office at the end of the hall after knocking and hearing the deep voice inside say enter.

Behind the desk, was a large and unreal looking man and the one I had come here to see: Silas Gold.

When standing, he was around 6'5" and built like a god. His hair looked like actual spun gold and his eyes sparkled with golden flecks in the silvery irises. His power was palpable even when I was just standing there several feet away.

Looking at him, I couldn't help but tremble and think about the legends I had heard of him. How he had reached tier three and had some kind of metal mastery class. The proof was a video I had seen of him summoning a spike of solid gold and spearing a guy through the head in less time than it took for the guy to reach for a gun.

In the gang known as the Violet Fangs, he was untouchable. In the wider city, he was one of an elite few who had managed to reach that level of power.

He stood up from his chair and stretched his arms before stepping around the desk and towering over me. "So Remi is it? You said your birthday is tomorrow, correct?"

"Yes it is. Um... I know you do experiments and stuff with classes and the selection. I was hoping that I could get paid to be a part of that," I said with as much courage as I could muster, repeating what I had sent to him earlier.

It was difficult to not show how nervous I was, standing in front of this man was terrifying. I kept replaying the memory of that video I had seen. The golden spike dripping blood and brains on the ground was vivid in my mind. It would have normally kept me away from him and any kind of offer he had.

But I had the choice to either try and become a killer, or work for one. It was just the way things worked in our fucked up world. The people with the power to kill controlled everything.

"Well as I am sure you know already, I am always looking for more people to test the system with. But you understand what that means right? I will get full control over your system selections and you won't get any kind of say in how it goes."

I hesitated but nodded at him, grimacing as I did.

"I asked some of the guys about you. You work part time as a runner you don't normally steal too much or step on people's toes. Smart kids like you wouldn't be here if you had any other choice. So you must have fucked up pretty bad."

He let the words hang and I couldn't help but look at the ground and just nod my head.

"Well in that case. As payment for your participation in my experiment, I will put word out that you are here and I will pay off anyone who shows up looking for payment from you while you remain here. Once we are all finished with the experiment, I will give you a payout of two thousand credits. How does that sound?"

That was not what I had been hoping for at all. Some others had said Silas had paid some people over five thousand credits for letting him do this. But he obviously knew I had no choice and was taking advantage of it.

That being said, it would mean that anyone really invested in finding me would come here eventually and get dealt with. If not, the two thousand credits would pay off some of my debts, and it would be enough to get me out of this part of town. Hopefully whatever class I ended up with would let me make a living somewhere else far away from this shitty neighborhood.

"Yeah alright," I said, my voice catching as I felt the inevitability of my situation land on my shoulders.

"Great, we will get started immediately. Put on this bracelet and link with it. It will allow me to see your status and make selections. You also might want to sit down. The sensation for an unclassed can be unsettling."

He gestured to the chair in front of his desk after handing me a thin silver bracelet.

I took a shuddering breath and sat down in the chair in front of him and slipped the bracelet over my wrist.

Looking at the bracelet, I focused my thoughts on it and pushed on the strange internal sense. I had gotten it when the basic system interface was unlocked on my sixteenth birthday, nearly four years ago. I had nothing like any of the mana abilities someone with a class would have access to, but like everyone who accepted the system, I gained an ability to sense my internal mana. That mana could be mentally pushed on and manipulated slightly.

Using this reserve is how most enchanted items worked. A person would touch or get within the area of an enchantment and would push out their mana, allowing it to touch the lattice or enchantment of whatever it was. That would allow them to interact with it in some way, or potentially power it, using the person's internal mana to do so.

Once I pushed my power to the bracelet, it shrunk becoming uncomfortably tight on my wrist. I let out a small gasp which made Silas chuckle.

"Little nervous? Now let's take a look at your status."

I felt a tingle of mana as my system screen was pulled up.

STATUS

Name: Remi Henshin

Age: 19

Class: LOCKED

General Skills (4/4)

Cleaning - level 4 (Maximum level reached)

Running - level 4 (Maximum level reached)

Sneaking - level (Maximum level reached)

Lying - level 4 (Maximum level reached)

Bonded Items

System Control Cuff - Requires command word to remove

System Credits: 0

"Well now, quite the runner it would seem. Very useful skills, I bet you put a lot of work into those," Silas said while staring into the air, clearly looking at a status screen.

I watched Silas as a tingle of mana ran through me from the bracelet. I saw screen after screen pop up in front of me.

Confirm remove general skill: Cleaning - YES - Skill removed *

Confirm remove general skill: Running - YES - Skill removed *

Confirm remove general skill: Sneaking - YES - Skill removed *

Confirm remove general skill: Lying - YES - Skill removed *

Looking on helplessly in mute horror, I watched as Silas erased all of the work I had done on my skills over the last four years. A rising tension filled me as the mana from all of my skills activated and swirled inside of me, before it seemed to seep away slowly fading into the ether.

"Now that's what I like to see. A blank slate. I already have something in mind for you. Hopefully, you will have that special something that I am looking for."

I sat there somewhat stunned. The feeling of loss and a strange hollowness following a feeling of weakness. It hit me hard.

It had taken Silas less than five minutes to completely destroy the work I had spent years working on. He seemed entirely unconcerned with the mental turmoil I was going through as I wondered yet again if there had been any other option than coming here. I still couldn't think of anything so I sighed and tried to keep from crying.

"Now for the next step, I want you to take this crystal and link it with it," Silas said as he held out a palm sized purple crystal that was diamond shaped.

Still somewhat dazed, it took me a second to react. I took the crystal he was offering and again pushed my mana to interact with it. No matter what my hesitations and concerns, I didn't have any other choice. Besides, it wasn't like the crystal would kill me or anything. If Silas wanted to kill me, he had far simpler and easier ways to do it than to give me a cursed object.

As I linked with the shard, my vision flickered. I saw the edges go black before system screens popped up. They were blurred and flickering. I felt a panic welling up in me that did absolutely no good. After only a few moments of intense panic, I felt my body relax. Then I drifted off into unconsciousness.

Some time later, I woke up with a splitting headache. My eyes opened and I saw dim light. I was lying on a somewhat comfortable surface on something that felt like cloth. The walls were bare, but looked like the ones in the basement of the Violet Palace. So thankfully, I probably hadn't been moved anywhere far.

Sitting up only made the headache pound more. I stopped moving and clutched my head. A feeling of vertigo and an urge to throw up demanded my attention, as I struggled to keep it together.

Looking down at myself, everything seemed fine. Other than the crippling agony in my head. Though as seconds went by, I realized my whole body ached slightly, like every single muscle had been worked to exhaustion. I hadn't noticed the feeling immediately. But it was slowly becoming clear to me that something dramatic happened.

I slowly opened my eyes once again without moving. I winced as even the faint light and movement of my eyelids made the pain in my head spike. I saw that I was lying on a thin mattress pad on a bunk bed, in a room that looked like a dormitory space with two bunk beds, a pair of desks and matching dressers. It wasn't a large room, maybe twenty five by twenty. I was alone and the door was shut.

Closing my eyes again, I realized I wouldn't get any more information from the room. I focused on trying to breathe and prayed to the system for my head to stop aching soon. Focusing on the other parts of myself, I could tell from the tight pressure on my wrist that I knew the bracelet was still there. Meaning Silas was not finished with me yet.

Fuck, hadn't he done enough to me already? What else could possibly happen? I thought.

Rubbing at my head, I tried to understand what that crystal had been with little success. I had never seen anything like it. Then again, what did I know about enchanting and magic items? I was a poor unclassed street kid. Nobody let me anywhere near anything actually valuable.

With nothing better to do and looking for a way to distract myself from the intense and overwhelming ache, I attempted to open my status. It worked. The edges blurred as the screen came up and a wave of pain flooded my mind. The mana moving through me to activate the system caused the pain. It temporarily blinded me from the system screen that had popped up.

It made me think that it was the result of mana burn or a mana hangover. It was said to happen to people who attempted to force their magic to do things the system didn't support. It can also happen to people who took magical drugs more powerful than their body and mana channels could handle. I had never experienced it before but I knew what the signs were and knew people who had lived through it and many more who hadn't.

I focused on the screen to see what had happened and felt my own mouth drop open. Just what the fuck had been in that crystal?

STATUS

Name: Remi Henshin

Age: 20

Class: Arcane Whore - level 1

Class Abilities (1/8)

Shaped by Desire - level 1

General Skills (0/8)

none

Bonded Items

System Control Cuff - Requires command word to remove

System Credits: 0

Staring at the screen, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. What the fuck had Silas done to me? I had never heard of a class called Arcane Whore before. It meant all of the plans I had had for my future had just gone up in smoke.

I had heard of people with sexual classes before. Some of the most exclusive brothels and strip clubs boasted that they had workers with classes like that. People said that the things they could do with their skills and spells would blow your mind. But I also heard some stories about how people with classes like that hadn't necessarily chosen those classes voluntarily.

Now I guess I knew how that kind of thing happened. I berated myself. Just what had I expected to happen exactly? I knew what Silas did, he was the owner of the Violet Palace. He dealt in sex and drugs. Why was I surprised by what he had given me?

I tried to slow down my breathing. The panic was not helping my headache and I knew I needed to think rationally.

I had fooled myself into thinking he would give me some kind of brawler, or thug class, something that would turn my skinny and weak frame into an experimental powerhouse. My reasoning was, why would he have wanted anything else from me? The idea of anyone being physically attracted to me was absurd.

I was a 5'4, painfully skinny guy. I hadn't had easy access to showers in over three years. My clothes were all stained, torn and usually dirty. I had a remarkably plain and boring face. I was perpetually broke and, in order to survive, I would usually drive away anyone even remotely friendly by asking them for money. Not what anyone would call a catch.

Due to all of that, I was still a virgin. Never even kissed anyone. Nobody had ever wanted to give me the opportunity. If there had been, they definitely were the kind of people I had avoided like the plague. Living on the streets was dangerous, but I had kept myself safe.

My lack of sexual prowess or appeal hadn't been that big of a problem for me. Almost all of my focus in life had been on surviving until I got a class. I tried not to let myself worry too much about all of the terrible shit in my life, because I knew that once I got a class, I would be able to change everything.

I would be able to reinvent myself somewhere else, Maybe find people I could rely on and who would like me. That might also mean that I could find someone who could like me, who might actually be attracted to me.

I knew my pathetic dreams were just that. Dreams. Hopes for a future that was unlikely to ever manifest. Even if I had gotten a regular class and been able to move away, it wouldn't have changed much about me. I still would have been the broke, skinny, short guy that no girl wanted to look twice at.

When people got classes, it usually changed them for the better. It made them stronger, more attractive. I had been hoping that would happen for me and make my painfully unattractive body something I could actually be happy about.

Pulling my thoughts out of the fog of confusion and speculation, I refocused on the status screen. More specifically, on the one class skill that had been chosen for me. I didn't recognize it, as I had never seen the skills of a whore, let alone an arcane one.

When I did, a secondary screen popped up. I read the description of the skill, getting more and more confused as I did.

Shaped by Desire - This passive skill is the essence of what it means to be an Arcane Whore. Serving your purpose will cause your body to change. As you gain experience, these changes will make you more attractive to everyone around you. This skill has the potential to change all but the most core biological aspects of your body.

I simply stared at the skill description for a time, utterly bewildered by how vague but promising it was. The very few examples I had seen of other people's skills were relatively simple, and easy to understand.

Core skills were the ones you got automatically when you chose a class. If you chose to be a mechanic, you would get a skill called mechanical diagnosis or something like that. But they were usually really simple and basic.

With this one, there were so many unknowns with the wording. Like how much would things change, how did it gain experience? There was no way this was a combat class. Based on the wording, did I need to just have people look at me to get experience? How dramatic would the changes be, when and how would they happen, had any changes already happened?

Based on what I had been hoping for, with a class I was not opposed to... the concept of being changed and made more attractive, but not knowing exactly how I would change, made me nervous.

The other thing that confused me now was my class name. I heard of people getting a whore class before. Usually people's first class was something simple. A single word like cook or thief. In the case of wanna be edge walkers, they would get a class of warrior or mage.

But nowhere did I ever hear about someone getting a tier one class with a descriptor like Arcane. This implied that the class had an attunement, and a really rare one.

Attunements normally only became a thing with classers who reached tier three or higher. It was something that would enhance every aspect of a class. For example a mage who managed to upgrade their class to something like frost mage would find that their most powerful options were ice related and they would be able to do impossible things with ice. It would also start to change them, making them colder physically and emotionally.

For me to have an attunement with only a tier one, meant I had gotten an incredibly rare class. Along with that, based on what I knew about the word arcane.

Arcane meant the essence of magic, which possibly meant that I would find that the options my class offered would be more reliant on magic. Perhaps making them all around more powerful.

Normally, one of the downsides with attunements was that it made people hyper focus on their skills and spells onto one kind of element. So if someone was able to counter their specialty, it made them far weaker. It meant that they were only able to excel in situations that allowed them to use their attunement.