I hadn't touched my notifications since the fight — I'd been too busy making sure we all stayed upright. Now, the little icon pulsed at the edge of my vision like it had been waiting for this moment.
You have reached Level 100. Tier Advancement Available.
Choose your new Class.
Three panels unfolded, each one clear and steady despite the ache still in my bones.
Oathbound Warden (Tier 2) Your oath does not waver. You stand as the anchor for those you have chosen, guiding their growth and holding the line through presence and resolve. Your bond reinforces their will, making them harder to break in body and spirit.
Brand Limit Increase: +1Oathforged Strategist (Tier 2) Your bonds become your battlefield map, every connection a thread you can weave into victory. Through trust and precision, you turn a handful of allies into a force that moves as one.
Brand Limit Increase: +2Brandwright (Tier 2) You have elevated the art of Branding beyond its limits. Every creature you bind is shaped with near perfect harmony to its path, growing faster and stronger under your guidance than it ever could alone.
Brand Limit Increase: +3I leaned back against the cave wall, eyes scanning the three choices one more time.
Oathbound Warden — the name alone screamed defense. Not just guarding my brands, but stepping between them and harm. That would mean taking hits meant for them… and with my health already slashed to a fraction by the Oathbound path, that sounded like a fast track to the grave.
Oathbound Strategist — that one had potential. It sounded like coordination, battlefield control, the kind of class that could make every brand fight as if we shared the same mind. Useful, yes… but too broad. Too much about managing positions and tactics when what I needed now was raw capability in my Branded.
Brandwright — the name made me think of a smith at a forge, hammering a weapon into shape. Not just placing brands, but crafting them. Tempering them. Improving them beyond what the System might naturally allow. If the first was defense and the second was coordination, this one was pure enhancement — making my Brands stronger, more adaptable, more dangerous. That was the kind of edge that could tip a fight before it even began.
I didn't overthink it. My finger brushed the choice, and the word Brandwright locked into place with a muted chime.
Power filled me as I felt my stats increase. It wasn't as much as I had spent before but it also wasn't nothing. More stats just for reaching tier 2, and the sense, deep in my bones, that every bond I had from here on out would burn brighter and cut deeper than before.
And beneath that, deeper than muscle or bone, came the change I'd been hoping for. Every bond I held seemed sharper in my mind, clearer in Oathsense, as if I could feel the pulse of their strength right alongside my own. Whatever I built from here on out… it would burn brighter, cut deeper, and leave its mark on the world.
Another notification sounded, sharp and insistent, cutting through the lingering rush of my tier advancement.
I opened it — and froze.
Tier Advancement Bonus Unlocked. Choose one:
Gain a new Class Skill. Modify an existing Class Skill.I stared at the words for a long moment, thumb hovering just above the air. Was this something everyone got when they advanced to Tier Two? Did Kelan see the same prompt? Hal? Or was this another quirk of being… whatever I was now?
If the others had it, it meant they could be walking away from this step with even more of an edge. If it was just me, it meant the system was dangling something tailored — dangerous, maybe — in front of me.
A new skill would mean a fresh weapon in my arsenal. Modifying one of my existing class skills, though… that meant taking what I already relied on and bending it into something stronger, more precise. Oathsense. Brand Surge. The possibilities spun through my mind like sparks in a forge.
Either choice could shift the balance for what was coming.
I choose modify an existing class skill and a prompt of my current class skills appeared.
Brand (Tier 2) Oathsense (Tier 2)
Tactical Recall (Tier 1) Brandflare (Tier 1) Brand Surge (Tier 1)
The list of my class skills shimmered in front of me.
Brand. The heart of everything I do. Without it, I'm just another guy with an axe and a bad attitude. Every creature I've bound, every foothold I've carved out in these worlds—it all comes back to this. If upgrading it made the Brands stronger, more durable, faster to place… hell, even just harder to remove—that's not just a short-term gain, that's a kingdom-builder. Long term, this is the kind of thing that turns me from "dangerous" into "don't even whisper his name." Hard to ignore that.
Oathsense. I rely on this more than I want to admit. It's my eyes in the dark and my read on the people who matter. An upgrade might make it sharper, maybe even predictive. Could be nice… but it's not going to swing a fight right this second.
Tactical Recall. My poor, neglected skill. I use this about as often as most people use their gym memberships. It's clunky, limited in range, and it's just never quite fit into my rhythm. But… if I could fix that? Make it snappier, drop anchors, pull people to me—or hell, swap places with them—that changes everything. Suddenly it's not just a rescue button; it's a weapon. I found myself lingering here longer than I thought I would.
Brandflare. The big one. It's the moment where the tide turns and the enemy suddenly realizes they're not winning anymore. If it lasted longer, hit harder, or came with a nasty little side effect… yeah, I could break an enemy's back with that. Very tempting.
Brand Surge. Useful, sure. A lifesaver in the right moment. But it's also a mana hog, and my control isn't perfect yet. Could be better to revisit this one once I'm not tripping over my own channels.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I sat there, caught between the raw power of Brand, the battlefield swing of Brandflare, and the "what if" of Tactical Recall. I could be the guy who builds the perfect army, the guy who shatters lines… or the guy who can be anywhere he's needed, exactly when it matters.
And damned if all three didn't sound good.
I stared at the list a little longer, weighing each one like I was about to spend my last coin in the world.
Brandflare would be glorious, sure. But it needed bodies—numbers I didn't have. I couldn't lean on it to shatter a line when my "line" was a wolf, a miner, and a handful of stubborn survivors. There were just too many enemies between me and that kind of fight.
Brand… yeah, that one hurt to pass up. But Brand's a foundation skill. Strengthening it would pay off more when I had the numbers to actually flex it. Right now? I'd just be polishing my hammer when I needed a scalpel.
My eyes kept drifting back to Tactical Recall. The one I ignored. The one that sat on my sheet like a bad habit. But the more I thought about it, the more it stopped looking like a forgotten tool and started looking like an answer. With the right tweak, I could jump where I needed to be, hit where it hurt, and vanish before anyone could pin me down. It was speed. It was escape. It was a way to turn every fight into my fight.
Yeah. I didn't need a bigger hammer—I needed to move faster than they could swing back.
I chose Tactical Recall.
The options bloomed in front of me, neat little lines of text pretending they weren't about to change the way I fought forever.
The system shifted, and my new set of choices stared back at me—each one a very different kind of dangerous.
Tactical Recall – Echo Step After recalling, leave behind a delayed afterimage that explodes in a shockwave of force and mana, knocking enemies back and disrupting spells.
Tactical Recall – Area of Operations Recall I could now recall others—anyone within 50 meters of me—to anywhere else within that same range. Pick them up out of a bad spot, drop them behind an enemy, or just shuffle the pieces of the board however I wanted.
Tactical Recall – Predictive Recall Automatically triggers when a Branded ally is about to hit 1% health, yanking them to safety and restoring a sliver of health on arrival. Life-saving… literally.
Echo Step was still the loudest, the "kick in the door" option. Fun, sure, but also guaranteed to make me the center of attention.
Predictive Recall was a quiet guardian—almost too quiet. It wouldn't win fights, but it would keep my people alive to fight the next one. And I knew exactly how often that would be worth more than any flashy move.
Then there was Area of Operations Recall… That one made me pause. It wasn't just a teleport—it was a battlefield mixer. If Brandflare was about turning the tide with one burst of power, this was about controlling the entire flow of the fight. Put Kelan behind someone mid-swing. Drop Hal right in front of a fleeing target. Pull someone out just before they get buried. Every skirmish could be a shell game, and I'd be the only one who knew where the real pieces were.
I could already feel the grin pulling at the corner of my mouth. This one was dangerous. And I liked dangerous.
I didn't hesitate. My finger tapped Area of Operations Recall, and the confirmation chime echoed in my mind. The sensation that followed wasn't raw power like before—it was awareness. A lattice of possibility spun out from me, fifty meters in every direction, every point on it now a potential anchor. I could see the ways I could bend a battlefield with this.
No more "hold the line" or "fall back." Now I could rip the line apart and stitch it back together wherever I wanted. My enemies would never know where the fight was going to be until it was already happening.
I called Hal over with Oathsense, and a moment later, the crunch of his paws on the ashen ground reached me. The frost curling from his muzzle was thicker now—Tier Two had changed him, made him sharper, heavier in presence.
Got a mission for you, I sent through the bond. His ears pricked forward, tail swaying once, slow.
"You remember how the Brands work," I said out loud. "I started with two. Then I got that modifier—the one that lets my Brands make their own, a tier lower."
He huffed once. Agreement.
"Well, now I've hit Tier Two. More slots for me… which means more slots for you. You've got three new spaces to fill, same as me." I let that sink in for a beat. "Your job is to go out and find more wolves for your pack. Strong ones. Smart ones."
His head lifted slightly, pride radiating through the bond.
"But," I added, "don't fill them all at once. Leave one… maybe two open. We might run into more frost wolves later, and I want you ready to bind them. Your branded wolves, though? I want their slots full. Every one of them. That way the pack grows even faster."
Another sharp huff, this one tinged with a thrill I could feel in my own chest.
"Go," I told him. "Move fast, but stay smart. If anything out there's bigger than you, bring friends before you bite it."
Hal dipped his head once, then turned, the ashen wolves falling in behind him like his shadow had split into three. The bond between us stretched thin as he slipped into the haze, but the reassurance from Oathsense lingered—steady, determined, and entirely confident he'd return with more teeth than he left with.
I watched the last flicker of frost fade into the ash before Kelan's shadow stretched across me. He still moved like someone half-expecting another assassin to spring out of nowhere, but there was a steadiness in him now that hadn't been there when we first met.
"You're sending the wolf out," he said. Not a question.
"Yeah. He's got more Brand slots now. Same as me. If we're going to take that fortress, we need numbers… and wolves are faster to recruit than people."
Kelan grunted. "Not exactly subtle."
"That's why you're here," I said, glancing at him. "You've got your own new slots now, too. How do you want to use them?"
His answer was immediate. "Builders and crafters. The settlement's going to need more than teeth if we want to keep it standing. Walls, tools, proper shelter—things that don't break the first time the wind changes direction."
I tilted my head, weighing him. "You could Brand fighters, too. More hands for the walls, sure, but also to hold them when something tries to knock them down."
Kelan met my gaze evenly. "I'm not saying we ignore fighters. I'm saying we plan for the long haul. A fortress isn't taken in a day, and it isn't held without a place worth holding. Give me the right people, and I'll make something that lasts longer than either of us."
That settled it. The wolves would handle the teeth. Kelan would lay the bones of something bigger. And me? I'd keep the net tight enough that neither of them got torn apart before we were ready.
A soft crunch of ash made me glance over. Rysa, Auren's wife approached, wiping her hands on a strip of cloth that still smelled faintly of herbs and bitterroot. She'd been the one to patch us up after the assassins—steady hands, no wasted motion.
"I couldn't help overhearing," she said, eyes flicking between us. "You're talking about this… Brand? The thing that gives people more strength, more skill?"
"In a way, yes," I said.
She hesitated, then squared her shoulders. "I took a combat class because I had to. Someone had to keep Auren alive. But what I want—what I've always wanted—is to work with my hands. Potions and pills. Those potions I gave you earlier, I brewed them myself from what I could scrape together out here."
I raised an eyebrow. "You're asking if a Brand would let you be an alchemist instead."
"Yes," she said simply. "If it could give me the time and the ability to focus on something other than killing, then yes. I know If I want to change classes I have to do something related to potions and combat. I want to know if your Brand could make that possible."
"It's possible for you to do that on your own…the Brand isn't a direct increase in power. It's a guide. It will guide you to actions, classes and Dao that you have affinity for. If you do not have some kind of affinity to an Alchemist class it is not something you will be guided to.
She crossed her arms, thinking that over. "Then I suppose I'll just have to prove I have that affinity, won't I? The way I see it, I've already been brewing under pressure. Maybe the Brand just… makes sure the world stops pulling me toward a sword."
Kelan gave a short laugh. "Or it pushes you toward making better poisons. That's still alchemy, right?"
Her eyes narrowed at him. "Only if you test them first."
I smirked. "If you're serious, Kelan can Brand you. I wont use one of mine on you. But it'll be your work that does the heavy lifting. The Brand won't hand you your dream—it'll just open doors you might not have found otherwise. Whether you walk through them is on you."
Her chin lifted, resolve settling into place. "Then I want in."
I studied her a moment longer, weighing what she'd done for us yesterday, and the fact that Auren hadn't hesitated to put his life in her hands. That was enough for me.
"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't mean it," she replied.
"Alright," I said finally. "Kelan you handle it, maybe loop in Auren first so you don't have an angry husband coming after you.
Kelan chuckled, shaking his head. "Yeah, I'd rather keep all my limbs. I'll talk to him first."
She snorted. "He already knows. I mentioned it last night. He said if you were willing, I should go for it. We have only been looking for a chance to make our own path."
"Good," I said, leaning back a bit. "Makes things easier. Once Hal's back from his hunt, we'll sort the rest. Until then, Kelan—make sure she's squared away, and if Auren's got questions, keep him from storming over here breathing fire."
Kelan gave a mock salute. "On it."
As they walked off together, I couldn't help thinking that, one Brand at a time, this was starting to look less like a loose group of survivors… and more like the beginnings of something I could actually build with.
If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.