The hippo league tester came back after a while with a smile, Roge feeling a bit nervous at how well he passed.

  “No need to look nervous,” she commented, sitting beside him on the bench and bringing out some papers. “Honestly, I think you’ve gotten the best score on record.”

  “Really…?” Roge asked, looking mildly confused.

  “Of course!” She cocked her head to the side and looked at him before a wide smile came across her face. “The minimum requirement is that you pass at least three of the tests, Roge.” Even though she said it gently, her words still rocked the dragon to his core.

  “But… wait…” Roge muttered, pulling out his guide and looking it through. After skimming the requirements, he frowned as he noticed no verbiage on how many of the requirements he needed to pass. “You should really add that to this thing…” he muttered, having been worried for nothing, apparently. He thought his lackluster scouting ability was the thing that might not get him accepted.

  “It’s not something we broadcast, and we do ask that league members keep it a secret for a reason.” She leafed through the papers and nodded at one particular one. “While yes, you did not pass the scouting section, that just means that it’s best for you to pare up with a team that *does* have a scout. And the team you’re going to join has two.”

  “Two?”

  “Marge, for obvious reasons, and Hops. The elf has a surprising knack for finding information about various creatures, which is part of a scout’s job.”

  “Oh…” Roge muttered, finding the reasoning made a lot of sense. “And the other categories?”

  “Spectacular.” She let out a chuckle at that, flipping through a few more pages. “Your strongest suits are, surprisingly, offense, defense, and healing. If not for the last portion, we would have recommended you try the rest of the test for a ranged fighter.”

  “Well… that’s not exactly my strong suit,” Roge stated, rubbing a claw on one of his horns. “While yes, I’ve been practicing-“

  “And for how long have you been practicing? A week?” Roge nodded. “Most fighters don’t have that level of accuracy. Your high dex helps, but having a knack for spatial awareness is more necessary.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” he conceded, feeling embarrassed by the compliment.

  “And the way you can outfit both your [Archer] and [Wizard] with magic items useful in combat? The item creation portion is *supposed* to be just for the cards you presented. Having a mobile weapon crafter on hand is fantastic.

  “And so, you pass with flying colors. We hope to see good things from you.” Stashing the papers in her inventory, the tester brought out what looked to be a brown leather wallet. Roge took the item and flipped it open, showing one of the sides showing his information like a driver’s license, while the other had a rectangular metal badge. It showed a single star in the center with a sweeping etching of the league’s crest. It was mostly a simple design, showing a stylized A and L inside a shield-like shape. What interested him the most, however, was the color of the metal. It was a deep red, crimson color.

  “The color…” he muttered, briefly glancing over the ID with his name, picture, and Utility designation.

  “Crimson Rank. Means you’re on the bottom of the totem pole. As you go up in level, your ranking goes up through the colors of the moon.” Roge barely remembered what all of the colors were, but nodded along with her explanation. “Once you get to level six in all of your classes, come back to get your badge upgraded. Each mission is rated for each badge color, so you won’t be put in too much danger right off the bat.”

  “Got it. And… thank you,” the dragon muttered, holding out his claw for the hippo woman to shake.

  “No. Thank you, Roge,” she replied, giving his claw a firm grip. “We expect great things from you and your party.”

  ~~~

  Once Roge left the main entrance of the League building, he was accosted by his friends, Fred showing up and excitedly asking questions as well. His description of the test was given while they walked to one of the nearby benches, the dragon sitting down heavily with a sigh as he got to the combat portion.

  “I knew that guy was a bit of a loose cannon, but still!” Sean growled, Roge giving him a wry look.

  “I was fine. Even if he did do a lot of damage, I can heal and the tester lady was right there.”

  “Leta,” Hops corrected, Roge looking away from the elf’s playful glare.

  “I’m bad at names sometimes…” he muttered, earning chuckles from the group. “Besides, it gave me enough to level up my dodging class, so I call it a wash.”

  “Well I’m glad things went well for you,” Fred stated, clapping Roge on the back with a grin. “Though that means I’m going to cream you in the Christmas competition.”

  At Roge’s confused look, Marge let out a bit of a chuckle. “We’re going to be out a lot in the next month to get you acquainted with how the nearby forest works. Not much time to set up a mural.”

  “Right,” Roge muttered, disengaging mostly from the conversation to think over that topic a bit. While yes, Christmas was still a massive celebration, he still missed the various traditions he’d do every year, even though a lot of them were done by himself, for himself. Setting up a tree in his apartment was a bit of an issue, as well as decorating both it and his living room, but it still brought a good bit of cheer to his favorite holiday. While he was thankful for not having the repetitive Christmas music playing on loop like it did when he worked retail during college, he would take them over what he had now. He’d heard that bards existed in this new world, but the songs they sang tended to be stories rather than the ‘normal’ music he was used to listening to. Other than that, no music was present of any kind, which saddened the dragon greatly.

  “Are you… humming?” Sean asked, pulling Roge out of his introspection. All of his friends were looking at him at that moment, Roge feeling heat fill his face.

  “Oh uh… sorry,” he muttered, having realized he’d started humming his favorite Christmas song.

  “Don’t apologize, man,” Fred said, slapping Roge on the shoulder. “Which song was it? Didn’t think you listened to bards.”

  “I uh… It’s something I heard… somewhere…” Roge stuttered, trying and failing to think of how he’d know the song. An idea came to him at that, Roge frowning at how bad it was but deciding to press on. “Gimme a sec.”

  He pulled out his wand and swapped out the ability, half filling it with [Spark] and the other half being [Thunder]. He’d tried the combination before to see if he could get lightning, but the two hadn’t combined. Luckily, he knew of another way he could use them, summoning a point of the effect and solidifying it into a ball. The ball hung in the air, buzzing and humming with a strange sound, which he then tried to modify. He knew from a couple of movies and videos that electricity could be used to make music, though generally the small sparks made the wrong types of noises. Thankfully, the sound magic of [Thunder] allowed him to change the pitch and tone a lot easier, mimicking a C scale that he’d learned when playing the piano as a child.

  “Woah!” the others gasped, Roge looking up briefly and grinning at their shocked looks. Focusing back on the little ball, he made another to work as the ‘drums’, it taking almost no time at all to set up the beat. He wasn’t sure how he could pass it off later, but at that moment, he just wanted to hear some music.

  He was surprised at how easily the lyrics came to him, each one flowing forward as he sang. Even though he’d never sung in his dragon body, it came to him after a line or two. He even had a larger range than he’d had before, his friends giving him confused smiles as he got to the Santa line. He continued on with the song anyway, feeling his tail wiggling as he really got into the song and a smile formed on his maw. It was hard focusing on the magical effect to make the background music, and it didn’t sound like the song actually did, but he still continued with enthusiasm.

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  All until he got to the bridge, feeling something coming over him as he sang. Blue flames formed around his clothes and the magic music became even easier, but he didn’t care. All he could feel was the excitement and joy from the song as he stood up from the table. The shouts of surprise from his friends didn’t faze him, singing and laughing as the background music fleshed out more and more. Finally, when he hit the last chorus, a burst of energy flowed through him, Roge looking down at his clothes as he continued to sing.

  While the general shape of the clothing stayed the same, the design certainly had not. His jacket was a little longer, music notes peppered along the edges in stylized designs. They flowed through the rainbow, framed by the signature blue he originally used and arrayed on blue staff lines. His shirt changed to a Christmas-y red with white trim on the bottom, though thankfully his pants stayed a solid black. They did have slits on the sides at his ankles, though, showing off his boots, which had a rainbow pattern instead of the blue on the bottom part.

  His music nearly faltered as he noticed the rainbow decals, though he barely felt his confusion over the joy the song made him feel. Looking up, though, he realized why it used rainbows. The two orbs had multiplied, turning into various musical notes all shining with a rainbow of color. He truly had the proper background music the song deserved, like he was singing at a karaoke bar. The song soon ended, though, the floating magic notes slowly fading out as the song came to an end.

  “ROGE!” Sean barked out, causing the dragon to flinch back as the lion walked up to him. “Are you okay? Why the fuck did you get a mage class like that?! After all the work we put in!” The lion was growling and nearly foaming at the mouth in anger, Roge backing up quickly as fear obliterated the joyful feelings from the song.

  “Back off,” Hops growled, somehow shoving the knight away and standing in front of the dragon with a stern look. “What do your popups say? [Bardic Mage] is very dangerous-“

  “I… didn’t get [Bardic Mage],” Roge mumbled, causing everyone to freeze in place as they stared. Marge and Fred were still at the table, having barely got up when they froze in surprise.

  “What did you get, then?” the elf asked, pulling out his journal and preparing to write.

  Roge froze in place as he actually read the notifications, feeling his body go cold. He’d only skimmed it to see if he’d gotten a mage class when he’d interrupted Hops. Now he could see that he’d gotten another *very* odd class. Only Hops’ worried frown caused him to continue, though the elf didn’t write any of it down when Roge started with the title of the class.

  “Other… worldly?” Sean muttered, seemingly calmed down. “And no spell skill…”

  “Descriptions. Now.” Hops barked, Roge obliging and pulling up the various descriptions.

  After Roge read out all of the boxes, he jumped when a purple hand grabbed one of his screens, the dragon only noticing the priest, Harold, at that moment.

  “Fascinating, Mr. Youngston,” the drow mumbled, looking over the class description. “Now this… makes a lot more sense.”

  “It… does?” Roge asked, feeling a bit lost.

  “Do you know how people with [Static Mind] normally act?” the priest asked rhetorically. “They have no sense of what anything is. They lose even the basics of common sense and generally have only muscle memory to guide them. But you. You have knowledge from another world trickling into you. Helping you along where our world matches up. Am I correct in assuming that young man?”

  “I uh… basically?” Roge squeaked out, a convenient explanation coming to his head. “It’s more… like I suddenly woke up here after living another life. I thought about telling people but…” He looked over to his friends, surprised by the support from most of them.

  “Roge, you’ve known us for a week,” Sean stated, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. “Of course it would take a while to confide something like that with us.”

  “I was afraid it’d make me sound crazy…”

  “And without proof, it would,” Hops said bluntly, Marge and Sean giving him a look at that. “What? You’ve heard the stories of people going insane after getting [Static Mind]. Seeing people that aren’t there. Being under elaborate delusions. Without this class and the song he sang, I would be thinking he went nuts.”

  “And it was quite a beautiful song as well,” Harold continued, giving Roge’s new outfit a look up and down. “I assume it was about the other world’s version of Christmas?”

  “*That’s* why you freaked out!” Hops shouted, smacking himself in the forehead as he did. “The holidays are probably so much different over there, right?”

  “I just… Christmas was my favorite holiday.”

  “So tell us what it was like,” Sean murmured, gently hugging an embarrassed dragon from the side. “Maybe we can figure out how to do some of it here.”