The next morning, the old man shook Marco out of bed in a very literal sense, picking up the bed with him in it and dumping him on the hardboards that lined his dockside house’s floor before marching him off to bathe, comb his hair, and change.

Marco did as he was told, making sure to give the old man no grief. The system may have assigned Marco to him after the sea took his parents, but that didn’t mean Tatric had to do a good job with his mandatory role as a substitute parent. Tatric had anyway, to the extent Marco could be parented. It had taken plenty of time and effort, and the old man had done more than he had to.

I owe him. I’ll always owe him. See? I’m combing my hair, old man. That’s love.

Once they had both swallowed down their meals, the old man and he set off down the road. Despite his age and all his whining about his age, Tatric could still move just fine. Marco trotted at his side as the old man ate up a yard-and-a-half of road with every stride of his high-level legs.

“How many did you get to max, after all that?” Tatric asked.

“Too many to count. All the easy ones. Some of the hard ones. The system will have plenty to eat, trust me. I’ll get a captain class. I know it,” Marco said confidently.

“No you don’t, idiot boy. Nobody does. The system chooses, remember? It hears your wishes, but it doesn’t always agree. Though whatever class you do get, it’s going to be one of the best.” The old man shook his head in mock dismay. “I never even heard of a kid who maxed more than one or two of the hard ones. And I’d know.”

Elisa met them on the walk and joined them, walking side by side with Marco and chattering happily about the classes she wanted. Marco soaked it in. He just then realized it would be quiet out there on the ocean. If he could have bottled some of the chatter and taken it with him, he would have.

A bit down the road, Elisa was the first to see the only unpleasant thing on the road that day. A guard was standing over a man tied to a post, one that Marco recognized. He was a town drunk of sorts, an old sailor who had finally earned enough to spend the sunset of his life in taverns and didn’t always behave himself when the drink led him astray.

The guard was whipping him. Marco didn’t know why, but he wasn’t holding anything back in the process. It was normal to see a flogging from time to time, even merciful as punishments went in some cases. This was more like a grudge was involved.

Luckily for the beaten man, Tatric’s presence was noticed and seemed to take the wind out of the guard’s sails. The guard pulled a knife, cut the old man free, said some words just out of the group’s hearing, and left.

“Ugly,” Marco said. “That wasn’t good.”

“It’s necessary. For law and order. That man must have broken the law. Punishments are necessary to keep him from doing it again,” Elisa said.

“Maybe,” Tatric said. “But that punishment? Just the way you saw it? Was that what you would have chosen, if you were in charge?”

Elisa opened her mouth to argue the point and then closed it. She shook her head, sadly.

“No. I wouldn’t have.” She looked at the post where the man had been tied, frowning. “Should we report him? The guard, I mean.”

Tatric shook his head. “Wouldn’t do much good, I’m afraid. Reports work just fine when the people in charge don’t want what’s happening to happen. That man? I suspect he was loud outside of the wrong set of houses, or something of that nature. No use calling attention to yourself in that way, Elisa.”

“There must be something I can do.”

“There will be.” Marco patted Elisa’s shoulder. “Get your class, and in a few years this will be your island. You’ll be governor, or something like that. Change things then.”

“That’s pretty hopeful.”

“It would be weirder if it didn’t happen.”

“You know, I was thinking.” Elisa got serious as they drew close to their destination. “About what we talked about yesterday.”

“What? Sharks?”

“No, I mean how much the books talk about the seas and oceans. There’s a lot. And I’ve read it all.”

Elisa reading about something or knowing about generally everything wasn’t a new thing. Marco didn’t have the slightest clue why she was bringing it up now or what she wanted him to say about it.

“That seems like a lot,” Marco said.

“It was. That’s the point. If you’d just listen for a second, I’m telling you that…”

“All right, you two.” The old man clapped a hand on both their shoulders. “That’s enough talk. We’re here.”

They made it to the system temple’s outdoor amphitheater with minutes to spare, and Tatric shoved him towards the nearest cleric with instructions to make sure he didn’t get into any trouble.

Twenty minutes later, the cleric was standing tall in front of a group of twenty children, talking loud to an audience that for once actually wanted to be there.

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“Citizens of Gulf Isle, the system greets you. You have come to watch the transformation of today’s children into the young men and women who will lead us through tomorrow. We will begin the classing now.”

The system thought about communities, individuals, and the needs of the entire world when it granted classes. Before Marco’s eyes, the system made just the right number of farmers, tailors, and warriors for the needs of the community, just as it had always done. Each of them was his age, and he watched as each of them stepped up as a child and descended as a full system-acknowledged adult.

Just a few moments before his turn, it was Elisa’s. The cleric called down her blessing, and it took a much longer time than the others. The system had to process every bit of what she had gained during her childhood, and Marco knew she had gained a lot. The cleric hesitated a moment before announcing her class.

“A rare class! Elisa the Learned, rise and greet your peers.”

Marco didn’t know what a Learned did, as a class, but it sounded more like an indoor affair. Elisa would be stuck on land, or else some other settled place just like it. It was where she belonged, really.

A place with lots of books. She’d love that.

For most people, what they loved was something close to home. Even when they had big dreams, the system saw that and set them on nearby jobs to be done. They tilled soil. They mended clothes or raided local dungeons. But above all, they stayed put.

Still, every so often, someone escaped. They went out into the wider world, explored it, and stopped by occasionally to tell stories. Looking out into the audience, he saw one of his favorites. Captain Garrick was standing near the edge of the adults, looking straight at him as he rested his hand on the giant scimitar in his belt.

He was a combat captain, one who defended the greater confederation of islands that Gulf was a part of. He had story upon story of hair-raising, life-and-death excitement that he was more than glad to share. Marco had always been more than glad to listen to them all.

They nodded at each other, like two adults would have. Marco felt good about it.

Finally, after decades and decades worth of waiting packed into a single painful hour, it was Marco’s turn. There were no chants in the ceremony, just a gentle cleric leading him to the center of the stage and raising his staff.

Marco felt the process begin, affecting him in the very depths of his soul. Seconds ticked by as his pseudo-skill accomplishments were ripped away from him one by one. With each loss, he was a bit weaker, slower, and worse at the things he had trained in across his youth. Even if it hurt to give it away, that stuff he was losing was the material his class was built from. The system built your future out of your childhood, and he had a lot of childhood to work with.

Perhaps too much, in some ways. He saw the looks on the faces of the adults and children go from respectfully bored to slightly surprised, then to outright shocked as the cleric continued to simply watch Marco instead of calling his new class. He almost had the cleric too, by the end. His accomplishments ran out just a second before the man’s jaw fell open.

Then, as with all the other children before him, he was hit with a single, short burst of light from the heavens. And that was that. He had a class. He felt stronger and faster, and infinitely more capable. It all made sense for a captain class, even if it wasn’t official until the cleric said it.

“This boy, Marco, the charge of Tatric the Dockmaster, has been granted a unique class.”

One or two people in the crowd gasped. A few cheered. Marco had no idea what a unique class was about but knew who was a reliable source of how he should feel about it. He looked to Tatric. The old man seemed like he had turned into stone.

Worried. That’s like him.

Marco still found it hard to contain his excitement. He was not only going to be a captain but a rare one. His life was set. He’d…

“Marco the Gluttonous Marauder, rise and… and…” The cleric was pale and almost clammy-looking now. It didn’t seem to be a good sign. “And await the judgment of the kingdom.”

Gluttonous. Marauder. Judgment. I had better…

Marco had just begun to decide to run when strong arms caught him. Two of the island’s guards lifted him from the ground and carried him away as a horrified Elisa and a still petrified Tatric looked on.

Marco didn’t scream or cry. He simply smiled, thanked the cleric, and allowed himself to be led away.

The screaming and the crying were coming, he was sure. He could already see Elisa exchanging some choice words with the cleric before huffing in frustration and running after him.

—

“It’s like this. Think of what you have as a class for criminals.”

Elisa had somehow talked her way into visiting Marco after he had been placed in his cell. Being a low-level non-combat class had helped. Neither Tatric nor Garrick had shown up yet, but Marco didn’t hold that against them. They were tough guys, as much as each of them tried to play it down. If he was guarding this place, he wouldn’t let them anywhere near him either.

“I’m not a criminal, though,” Marco protested.

Elisa rocked back and forth on the bench in front of his cell, thinking. He gave her a moment to figure out the very best words. It was who she was and what she needed.

“No, but you could. And your class would help you. If you decided to become one.”

“But I wouldn’t, though.” Marco stuck to his guns. “You know that.”

“The government doesn’t. Or the people around you. Imagine if you had a class where you had to have a sword out and pointed at someone all the time. Or that forced you to wear a mask. The government considers you to be involuntarily equipped for anti-social class-based activities. They are going to do better-safe-than-sorry things about it, whether you like it or not,” Elisa said.

“That’s my crime then? That the system gave me the wrong class?” Marco shot back.

Elisa sighed and rested her head on the bars.

“It’s not a crime. If it was, you could have a lawyer. There’s a special set of laws for this. You will be free, soon. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“They’ll watch you.” From outside the barred window of the cell, Tatric’s voice came through, softly. “They can’t punish you without looking like they are blaming the system, so they’ll pretend they aren’t. They’ll lock you up out in the open, where everyone else can see you, pretend you aren’t getting punished, and pat themselves on the back. They’ll give you work that won’t let you level up. Let you rot in some place you can’t cause trouble. It will all be very safe.”

“We’ve both seen it.” Garrick appeared at the bars behind the cell. “It’s not pretty, and we won’t let it happen to you. Elisa, go home. Marco, come with us.”

“I can’t. The guards. And I’m kind of stuck here.” Marco gestured at the bars and general structure of his cell.

“The guards are out drinking. We had a friend send them some alcohol as a thank you for keeping the town safe from children,” Garrick said. “As for the bars…”

He reached up his hand, grabbed a bar, and yanked it out of the wall like it was a stubborn chin hair.

“They aren’t as impressive as they look. Let me get the other too, and then come on. We have to get you out of here.”

Marco grabbed what few things he had and went to the window. He looked back at Elisa one last time. In his head, he would have stopped at this island a lot. Just like Garrick did. He would have checked in on her. It wouldn’t have felt like goodbye that way. Now, it sounded like he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. He smiled. It felt like a goodbye.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll catch up.”

“What?”

“No time, boy.” Garrick reached through the window, caught Marco’s shirt, and dragged him out. “Come.”