The Gravecaller Who Levels While Sleeping

Lucas Voss was smiling when Adrian Vale died.

It was not a nervous smile or the tight expression of a hunter trapped inside a collapsing Rift. It was easy and bright, almost friendly. Dawn had reached the broken ceiling of the old quarry dungeon, and a strip of pale light lay across the mud between them. Behind Lucas, the exit gate flickered. In front of Adrian, thirty carrion hounds paced through the darkness with their heads low and their yellow eyes fixed on him.

"You actually believed I invited you here to help you reach level ten?" Lucas asked. His staff rested across one shoulder. The blue crystal at its tip still shone with unused mana. "That is almost sweet. I only wanted to see your face when you understood that no one was coming."

Adrian tried to rise. His left leg folded beneath him. Blood ran down his side, warm beneath the cold morning air. The closest hound sprang before he could drag himself backward.

Pain came in pieces. Teeth tore into his calf. Claws opened his ribs. He tasted iron and dirt. Fear followed the pain, then helplessness, then a rage so sharp that it made his vision clear.

He remembered every cruel joke after his Ascension. Every team that had taken him along only to split experience, then complained that a Gravecaller was dead weight. Every instructor who had looked away rather than explain why his unique class had no starting skill and worse attributes than a civilian worker.

Most of all, he remembered the truth he had learned less than an hour ago.

Gravecalls were not weak because their dead were weak.

They were weak because nobody had waited long enough to learn how to wake them.

Another hound leaped. Lucas laughed. The dawn vanished behind a wall of fur, teeth, and blood.

Then the world cracked apart.

Adrian woke with both hands clenched around cold metal.

The pain was gone. Wind stung his face. Hundreds of students spoke in nervous voices around him. He opened his eyes and found himself standing in Northbridge Academy's central courtyard, directly beneath the old clock tower. Blue school banners snapped above the crowd. At the center of the plaza, a white stone obelisk hummed with contained golden light.

For several seconds, Adrian did not move.

He looked down at his hands. No scars. No blood. His fingers were thinner, younger, unmarked by three years of monster hunts and bad jobs.

On the broad steps before the obelisk, Principal Harland Reed adjusted his silver tie and raised both hands for quiet.

"Today," Reed said, "each of you turns eighteen. Today, each of you will enter the Ascension Loom and receive the class that will shape your place in this world."

The words struck Adrian harder than claws.

He knew that speech. He knew the order of names on the clipboard in Reed's hands. He knew the ugly crack in the third courtyard tile and the way the wind made one loose banner tap against its pole. He had stood in this exact line three years ago, believing the future waited inside the obelisk.

"Combat classes, support classes, and civilian classes all matter," Reed continued. "Our cities endure because hunters, healers, engineers, drivers, cooks, and teachers choose to stand together. Do not let one result define your value."

Adrian almost laughed.

Nobody had believed those words once black letters had appeared above his head.

For a century, Rifts had opened without warning. They appeared in forests, abandoned malls, subway tunnels, and sometimes in the middle of active highways. Monsters came through them. In answer, Ascension Looms had appeared in every major city, offering people a class when they came of age. Hunters protected the borders. Guilds cleared Rifts. Ordinary people learned to live beside a danger that never truly went away.

Recently, the danger had become worse.

Six months before Adrian died, the island republic of Hoshima had fallen during a single Rift surge. Every news channel showed the same aerial footage: black smoke over the capital, emergency lights on the coastline, and broadcasts ending one by one. After that, nobody called hunting glamorous without sounding like a fool.

In his first life, Adrian had been Northbridge's brightest prospect. His aptitude test had earned an Apex rating, the rarest result in the national registry. Apex hunters had better odds when leveling, stronger long term growth, and a chance to reach heights that ordinary hunters could only dream about.

Everyone expected Adrian to awaken as a sword saint, an elementalist, or an elite healer.

Instead, he had become a Gravecaller.

One of the weakest combat classes ever recorded. A class with no starting spell, terrible physical attributes, and a reputation so bad that instructors used it as a warning for students who thought any combat class guaranteed success.

The memory made his jaw tighten.

"You look pale, Vale."

Lucas Voss stood directly behind him in line, as if the universe had placed him there for a cruel joke. He was eighteen again too, slim and handsome in the polished way teachers always mistook for confidence. His dark hair had been styled despite the cold. A smug half smile waited on his face.

"Nervous you will pull a civilian class?" Lucas asked. "It would be a tragedy. The academy posters would have to find a new golden boy."

Adrian stared at him.

The sight of Lucas alive, healthy, and unaware made his pulse beat in his throat. He remembered the push. He remembered the hounds. He remembered Lucas watching from safety instead of helping.

Before Adrian could decide whether to hit him, a clean electronic chime sounded inside his mind.

Pale blue words appeared in the air before his eyes.

Continuum Link Established.

User recognized as Adrian Vale.

Starter function unlocked: Idle Accrual.

Idle Accrual grants one Experience Point per second. Stored experience may be claimed after midnight.

Adrian forgot how to breathe.

This was not the normal status window that appeared after Ascension. It floated before his vision, clear and calm, and a number in its corner increased while he watched.

One. Two. Three.

At level one, a hunter needed one thousand experience points to advance. Killing a basic goblin inside a training Rift earned five. Even with a capable party, leveling took days. Alone, it could take far longer.

But the Continuum did not care whether he fought, slept, ate, or hid beneath a blanket. It paid him simply for remaining alive.

"Vale?" Principal Reed called from the stairs. "Everything all right?"

Reed had mistaken Adrian's stunned silence for anxiety. "You tested Apex. Whatever class you draw, you will have options."

Those kind words had hurt after Adrian's first Ascension. This time, he only nodded.

Lucas gave a soft, mocking laugh. "That assumes he draws a class worth having."

Adrian turned and drove his fist into Lucas's mouth.

The punch was not elegant. It was not strategic. It was three years of humiliation and one violent death compressed into a single movement. Lucas stumbled sideways with a shout. Adrian followed with a sharp kick to his shin, then stopped only when two faculty monitors grabbed his arms.

"What is wrong with you?" Lucas demanded. Blood shone on his lower lip.

Adrian's chest rose and fell. "Call it a bad feeling."

Every student nearby had gone silent. Principal Reed's expression hardened, but he did not order a punishment. Apex candidates made academies look good, and academies had always found reasons to be forgiving when it suited them.

"Enough," Reed said. "This is Ascension Day, not a parking lot brawl. Think before you decide what kind of person you will be."

Adrian looked beyond him at the golden obelisk. The Continuum count kept climbing.

In his first life, he had spent three years crawling toward level ten. In this one, he had been given a weapon nobody else could see.

Lucas wiped blood from his mouth and whispered, "You will regret that."

Adrian met his eyes without blinking.

"Get in line," he said.