While the outside of the temple had looked like a bank, the inside reminded me more of a doctor’s office. The room I was in was a large, lobby-like room full of chairs with a receptionist desk directly across from the front door. There were large doors on either side of the desk leading back further into the temple.

  Because it was so late, there was no one else in the lobby with me, aside from the receptionist, who was snoring in his seat. The receptionist was a slightly overweight, balding, middle-aged man with thin, light brown hair and a few days of unshaven stubble. He wore robes that probably used to be blue, but were faded and threadbare and looked closer to gray. I walked up to the desk and grabbed the bell on it and shook it. At first, he did not wake, so I shook it again, harder, and he started awake.

  “Huh,” he said, looking around in a daze.

  When he noticed me, he stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then rubbed his eyes and stared at me some more.

  “Oh shit!” he said once he was finally awake enough to figure out what was going on. “Welcome to the Temple of Change, how can I help you?”

  “I’m here for a class change,” I said.

  “Ok, that will be 8 silver.”

  “8?!” I exclaimed. “Over in Satie it’s only 3!”

  “Well, then ya shoulda gone there,” he said, shrugging. “Here it’s 8.”

  I glared at him for a few seconds, before reluctantly pulling a gold from the leather pouch in my pocket and putting it on the desk. He took it, and then pulled out a much dirtier leather pouch from his own pocket and dropped it in. Then he pulled out two silver and handed them to me.

  “Follow me,” he said as he stood up and walked towards the door on the right.

  I did so, and he led me through the door and into a long, wide hallway. On the right side, there were identical doors spaced evenly every eight feet or so, with chairs next to each. A couple of the chairs had people dressed in the same robes as the receptionist sitting in them in various states of boredom. We stopped at the fourth door, and the receptionist opened the door and gestured inside.

  “This is the room that you’ll be in for your class change. Don’t worry, it doesn’t lock.”

  With that ominous sentence, I walked into the room. It reminded me a lot of my prison cell. It had no windows, and a small, poor quality bed on the far side. At least this room wasn’t pitch black, as it had a magical light source in one corner. Not that it would have mattered to me, but it would have lowered my already abysmal impression of the temple even further if it had been dark.

  “Now, here’s how this is gonna work. I’m gonna pray to the god of Change, and then a class change window will appear in front of you. I’ll step out after praying, and you can take as much time as you’d like to choose your new class, though it probably won’t take long.”

  “What kinds of classes will I get to choose from?” I asked.

  “How am I s’pposed to know? It’s different for everyone. It depends on what you can do and what you have done. Most people haven’t done much and can’t do much, though, so they only have a couple options. Now, if you don’t have any more questions, I’ll get started.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it, and settled for a glare. The service here wouldn’t get any better if I complained, and the questions I still had would be answered on their own once the class change actually started.

  The receptionist, who was apparently actually a priest, put his hands together in front of him and closed his eyes. He held the pose for a few seconds until a window appeared in front of me.

  “The window should have just appeared, for you, yeah?” asked the priest. I nodded. “Alright, then I’ll be right outside. Lemme know when you’re done.”

  With that, he walked out the door and closed it behind him. There was no locking sound.

  I turned towards my status window and thought Yes. The prompt window disappeared, and a new, much larger window appeared.

  I scanned down the list, but paused when I reached [Dominatrix]. Confused, I opened it up to see the details.

  “What the fuck, Jacques,” I muttered as I selected the [Remove from List] option.

  With that option gone, I was able to focus on the task at hand again. Before I went through the classes, I would need to refresh my memory on how classes worked, and then define my goals, and what I wanted out of my new class.

  My class was essentially my occupation, and to level up, I would need to do things that fit my class. So if I remained a [Con Artist], in order to level, I would need to scam people. That was why I hadn’t leveled at all after killing the goblins. [Con Artists] don’t kill goblins, so that granted me no experience. Additionally, class levels had a delicate balance with User levels. If the class level was the same as the User level, both would increase together, but if the class level was lower than the User level, only the class level would level up until it matched the user level. This meant that once I selected my new class, and if my class ever evolved in the future, my user level would stagnate until I could catch my class level back up to par. That was probably the reason that class changes were so uncommon for higher level people.

  Once I recalled all the details of classes and class levels, I came up with some criteria for selecting my new class.

  First, since I was part of the Seven Deadly Sins’ game, I would need to be able to fight, or at least guarantee my safety. So anything without combat or escape skills would be out. Second, it would need to have both short, and long term benefits. A class with decent skills and stat bonuses, but no good evolution track would also have to be out. Third, I would need to be able to level without doing things I found to be unpleasant. Once I had defined these things, I went through the list, one by one, striking off classes that didn’t meet my standards.

  As I had already known, [Apprentice] was a universal class that could turn into literally anything. Unfortunately, that would require someone to teach me, and I didn’t know anyone. Perhaps I could ask one of the paladins or merchants, but I wasn’t particularly interested in either of those jobs. I kept it on the list, just in case, but I expected that I would be removing it later.

  While assassinating people wasn’t my dream job, the class actually looked pretty useful. Nothing about it told me that I would need to kill people to level, so I could probably just assassinate monsters in order to level. The evolutions seemed to be relatively broad as well, so it probably had a good evolution track. [Assassin] stayed on the list.

  This was the second class to get removed from the list. Although the stat bonuses were good, and the skills were very tempting, the evolution path didn’t look too promising, and to level this class, I would need to repeatedly put myself in dangerous situations and escape, and that was not ideal.

  [Aura Control] definitely sounded useful, and being a [Fighter] would work with my plan to become an [Adventurer] as well. In addition to that, it had so many potential evolutions that it needed a separate list. I skimmed the list and noticed that both [Assassin] and [Martial Artist] were on it. That didn’t make me remove [Fighter] from the list, since it was a very versatile class, but if [Assassin] and [Martial Artist] were evolved versions of [Fighter], they would definitely be better in the short term.

  This one got removed from the list. The stat bonuses were nice, but I wasn’t interested in depending on my control over others to get stronger. I would rather get strong on my own. And I didn’t like the sound of that [Hive Queen] evolution. I wasn’t able to see the details, unfortunately, but if it was anything like what I was imagining, I would probably become a collective consciousness, and I didn’t want that.

  Like Fighter, this was a class with an enormous list of potential evolutions. Plus, it seemed to play to my strengths, stat-wise. The only downside to this was that it might turn me into a glass cannon, with powerful skills and magic, but a weak body and an over-dependence on my [MP]

  This class sounded very cool, and I thought that the [Faceless] evolution sounded interesting, but unfortunately I had to remove it from the list. If I chose this class, I would need to continue to disguise myself and infiltrate important places or groups, and that sounded far too risky, given that the church of Order would probably be searching for people like me in the near future, and their ability to detect disguises was probably much greater than what I could level my disguise skills up to in that time.

  I removed this from the list before I even finished reading it.

  The next group of classes seemed to be derived from my skills and knowledge from back on Earth. I removed [Cook], [Engineer], [Mathematician], [Medical Assistant], and [Musician] from the list after cursory glances, since none of them had any combat utility, or escapability. [Beginner Alchemist] only stayed for a few more minutes because I was curious about how I qualified for it, but once I realized that it was a result the chemistry classes I had been forced to take, I dropped it too.

  [Bard] also got removed. Though it looked interesting, and I had always wondered what it would be like to be a professional musician, it didn’t have enough combat utility or long term benefits to actually select

  I unlocked [Martial Artist] due to my efforts to learn mixed martial arts on earth. It wasn’t the most versatile class, but it came with good stat bonuses, and it was a class that would give me a solid base in physical combat. It stayed on the list.

  I had wanted to remove this option from the list, but the benefits were just too good to turn it down so quickly. The 150 free stats were huge, but I was more tempted by the four custom skills. Choosing this option would be very dangerous though. The paladins had mentioned that they had ways of locating Demon Kings while they were still low-leveled, and I would have to level my class up 19 times before I could enjoy the benefits of the free stats.

  When I read the description for [Sole Survivor], I wondered why I had bothered to read the other ones in the first place. It was perfect, and exactly what I needed. Massive stat boosts, useful skills, and based on the title, all I would need to do to level it up would be to continue to survive.

  This class, disappointingly, had to be removed. It looked like I had only gotten it because I was the only vampire, and the skills was focused entirely on ruling. With no other vampires around, there would be no way to level up. I was curious about what [Queen of Nothing] meant, but not enough to change my class to Vampire Queen just to check.

  While [Vampire Champion] had the highest stat boosts of any class other than [Demon King of Pride], I had to remove it from the list as well. It had no evolutions, came with no skills, and I wasn’t sure how I would level it up. It was possible that it would just level up passively as I remained the strongest of the vampires, but it was equally possible that, like [Vampire Queen] it was a dead class. Besides, [Sole Survivor] gave almost as many stat points, but I could freely allocate them, and it came with skills and an evolution path.

  I looked over my now much shorter list for a few moments, but internally, I knew I had already made my decision. I went back to [Sole Survivor] and hit [Select].

  Yes, I thought.

  Wikipedia has more background on the piece and a summary of the story that the piece tells. If you do want to listen to this piece, I recommend the performance by Gil Shaham, Lan Shui, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. This piece is split into 7 parts, so make sure you listen to the whole think in order. Don't hit shuffle.