Eryx Vale didn't stop working when the screen appeared.
That was the strange part.
He was halfway through pulling weeds from the edge of the wheat field, fingers sore and dirt-packed, when the thought drifted through his head—I wonder how tired I actually am—and his status screen slid into view.
Same as always.
Transparent. Clean. Familiar.
He glanced at it without breaking rhythm, eyes flicking over the top lines out of habit.
STATUS Name: Eryx Vale Race: Human Class: Farmer Secondary Class: Beginner Gambler Level: 1
His hands stopped.
"…Wait."
Eryx straightened slowly, the weeds forgotten.
The screen didn't vanish. It hovered patiently in front of him, as unbothered as the wheat swaying behind it.
Farmer was right.
That had been there as long as he could remember. Most kids in the village saw their class for the first time before they were ten—usually by accident, usually while bored. Farmer, Shepherd, Woodcutter. Simple things.
But the second line—
He reread it.
Beginner Gambler.
Eryx frowned.
"That's… new."
He dismissed the screen, wiped his hands on his trousers, and leaned on the hoe, staring out across the field.
Gambler.
He didn't gamble.
Not really.
Sure, he played cards during festivals. Dice sometimes, when there was nothing else to do. Everyone did. You won a few coins, lost a few coins, laughed about it and moved on.
That wasn't a class.
Was it?
"Eryx!"
His father's voice carried from the fence line.
"You planning to finish that row today, or should I come do it myself?"
Eryx flinched. "I'm working!"
The screen was already gone.
But the unease stayed.
That night, in the loft above the barn, he opened it again on purpose.
He lay on his back, hands folded on his chest, staring at the beams overhead as the interface slid into place.
Slowly this time.
Deliberately.
STATUS Name: Eryx Vale Race: Human Class: Farmer Secondary Class: Beginner Gambler Level: 1 HP: 100 MP: 100 Attributes: STR: 10 AGI: 10 VIT: 10 INT: 10 WIS: 10 LUK: 21
Eryx exhaled.
"…That's not right."
Not the tens. Those were fine. Those were expected.
But Luck—
He remembered the number.
Fourteen.
It had been fourteen the last time he'd bothered to look, maybe a year ago. He'd noticed it because it was higher than most people's, then promptly forgotten about it.
Fourteen made sense.
Twenty-one did not.
He stared at it, waiting for the number to change.
It didn't.
"Why would that go up?" he muttered.
Luck wasn't like strength. You didn't train it. You didn't work it up by hauling grain or fixing fences.
It just… happened.
Or it didn't.
And yet—
The memories came anyway, uninvited.
The festival dice game where he'd won five times in a row and quit early because people were starting to look at him funny.
The time he drew the one good card left in the deck.
The ladder that slipped but didn't fall.
The calf that survived the night when everyone expected it wouldn't.
At the time, it had all seemed explainable.
Coincidences.
Now, with a number staring back at him, those explanations felt thinner.
"And Gambler…" he murmured.
He scrolled.
CLASSES Primary: Farmer Secondary: Beginner Gambler Description: A novice in probability-based games and chance-driven activities.
Eryx huffed softly.
"So playing cards counts."
That… made an uncomfortable amount of sense.
He wasn't shocked, exactly.
More like embarrassed.
As if the system had noticed something about him he hadn't thought important enough to name.
He dismissed the screen and lay there in the dark, listening to the quiet sounds of the village settling for the night.
Nothing about him had changed.
He wasn't stronger.
He wasn't smarter.
He wasn't suddenly special.
But something was moving, quietly, underneath the surface of his life.
And for the first time, he had proof.
Eryx rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he'd still wake up early.
Still help in the fields.
Still be Eryx Vale, farmer's son from a quiet village.
But now, when things went his way—
He wouldn't be able to pretend it was just coincidence.
Somewhere beyond the world, a system noted the update without comment.
A stat had changed.
A class had been added.
Everything was functioning as intended.