Once they were no longer being pursued by the Empire, Chris had dropped everyone off in some isolated valley so they could get experience while they practiced their skills, before continuing to make his way towards the Northern Wastes. At least, one of him did. Multiple selves were really convenient. Greg then made them an underground bunker and they spent the next week working on skills and leveling, particularly the three who'd died and had to start from scratch.

Since Andrew was focusing on his Essence Master Class now, the first skill he grabbed was Essence Manipulation. The skill still horrified him, but he'd realized he could practice it with the bodies Greg made out of smoke, which was a lot more palatable. It was great practice too, since Greg didn't just give up the body to him, allowing him to experience what it was like to fight for control or even potentially co-exist. He wasn't sure what to do with it yet, but it was clear that just because his aura was attached to a body, it didn't mean he had to be the one in control. Other than that, he obviously grabbed his inner sight skill again, but then he was a little stumped. He supposed he could pick up his footwork skill again, for some combat options, but it didn't feel necessary. He was already pretty good with his footwork skill so he didn't need the skill to actually fight, which meant he'd only be getting it for the stats… but his stats were covered by the system, so he didn't need that either. He could also use points to improve the skills that way too… Basically, the skill wouldn't do much for him and it wouldn't help his future Class either, so why would he pick it up? And of course, his navigation skill was right out.

So that left the question of what skills would help him, and he had no idea. He could- actually he definitely would use a point to advance his Essence Manipulation skill. Maybe he should advance his inner sight skill as well? That couldn't hurt, could it? But that still left three skill points… Andrew snapped his fingers. Energy Control! That's what he needed! Then he'd advance that as well, turning it into Energy Manipulation, leaving him with one last skill point for… a basic skill that wouldn't do anything for him. Maybe he'd hold off on advancing his inner sight and instead pick up something else… Andrew paused. What would happen if he merged Essence Manipulation and Energy Control? Or whatever Essence Manipulation advanced into and Energy Manipulation? He could use the last skill point for that! If it turned into something fucked up, he could just kill himself again. Well, he'd probably let one of the others do it, for the experience, but same thing. Andrew nodded. Yeah, that's what he'd do.

Thomas, on the other hand, was going full warrior. Inner sight was a given, of course, but other than that he was focusing on blades and footwork to start. For blades, he combined Swing, Stab, and Parry and then he took a page from Andrew's book and combined Kick, Dodge, and Walk into a footwork skill. He could definitely get a decent Class out of that, couldn't he?

As for Quinn, this wasn't the first time she'd been through a Class reset, though it was the first time it'd happened because she'd died, so she was working on building back up to her Exotic Battle Dancer Class. As embarrassing as it could be, she'd already built her fighting style around it, and she wasn't interested in developing a completely new one. At least, not until she unlocked her extra Class slots again. Her bigger issue was what to do with all the skills she'd trained for her other Classes… She didn't think she'd be able to return to being a Dungeon Streamer any time soon, and without that, her Videographer Class was rather pointless as well. So what could she do with those skills? She could probably shift her Dungeon Streamer Class into something like Dungeon Explorer instead… similar skills but with the focus shifted from entertainment to finding and gathering resources. As for Videographer… What use did these guys have for making and editing videos? Maybe she should talk to Chris… her expression twisted as she forced the thought away. She was not going to conform herself to that man's needs! She sighed, shaking her head. Maybe she'd just give up on those skills and work on something else… it wasn't like she didn't have the time.

Greg had managed to avoid dying, so he still had all his skills, but instead of focusing on Class Advancement, Greg had decided to focus on skills. Why should he worry about leveling up so he could get more skill points when he could just buy skill points using Thomas's system? He'd be missing out on traits of course, but since traits were based on skills, wouldn't getting as many as he could before he Advanced actually help? But really, Greg just didn't want to bother with all that and skills were fun! At least, more than Runes and spells. And abilities for that matter… not that abilities weren't cool in and of themselves, it was just- well, he already had an ability he was trying to figure out, and adding a second one on top of it just distracted him. Plus, abilities were tied to the Worlds they were in, so focusing on them wasn't very practical. Skills on the other hand could not only be used with his smoke, but once he learned them, they were his! No matter what World he was in, his skills would be there! That wasn't to say he was going to ignore abilities, but if he had the choice between focusing on them or skills, he was going to choose skills.

For now he was focusing on crafting skills, because it seemed like a shame to have all this smoke and not make anything out of it. He'd already picked up a smithing skill, a combination of Swing, Bash, and Mold, though that really only taught him what to do once he had the metal hot and on the anvil. Thankfully it at least told him how hot the metal needed to be and whatnot, but he was going to need more skills if he wanted to be involved in the entire process. Which got him thinking: with his abilities, did he need to be involved in the entire process? All the heating and shaping and yadda, yadda, yadda could be covered by his smoke. What he needed to focus on was the end product, how everything was supposed to fit together to make… whatever it was he wanted to make. The design, not the process. But what skills would he need for that? He pulled up his skill list, frowning slightly. He'd need Deduce in there somewhere… maybe with Mold? Or Draw? Both? Fuck it, he was just going to ask the system people.

"Yo! How do I get a skill for designing shit?" Greg asked, causing Quinn and Allison to jump as he suddenly formed out of smoke.

"Don't do that!" Quinn snapped.

"Why do you need a design skill?" Allison frowned. "That's a little advanced for you, don't you think? You should focus on your fundamentals, or all you'll get is crap."

"Why?" Greg cocked his head.

"Because you build your design skill out of your crafting skills." Allison explained. "Merging them all together and then adding Deduce to it. The better your skills, the more you can add to it, the better your design skill will be."

Greg blinked. "Huh… I guess that makes sense. Take what you know about making things and then add a bit of thought to it… annoying as fuck though. I wanted to skip the making and go straight to the designing." He sighed.

Allison frowned. "I suppose you could get your Deduce skill to a high level and advance it… but no, you'd still need the skills to Deduce from. You can't design something you have no knowledge of."

"Yeah, no, I get it." Greg shook his head. "Still annoying though."

With no easy solution available to him, Greg refocused on getting as many crafting skills as possible. Obviously the more he had, the better his designs would be, so his goal was to get all of them. Maybe a bit ambitious, but he did have an army of clones to help him practice. They didn't benefit from the guidance from having it as a Class skill, but practice was practice, and the more he had to work with, the more points he could spend to improve the skill. Though he might need some help once he started getting into computers and technology and shit…

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Allison was working on her skills as well, but she hadn't died or anything, so she didn't need to make any huge changes. She just needed to keep working on her Spatial Enforcer Class. As for Chris, Allison had added a bit more variety to the skills available to him, but it still wasn't up to the standard he would like. He was going to need a lot more subordinates in order to fill his world with skills. Or at least he'd need to figure out how to combine the skills into more combinations than simply what his subordinates had… as long as he had the base skills, he should have the building blocks for the advanced skills, right? Unless this World functioned like the Maze game did, relying on the knowledge of the people in the World to build the skills? That- actually seemed more likely than not. Which meant he would still need a crapload of people to connect with his world.

Chris paused at that thought. Couldn't he help people with skills as well? All he needed to do was take what people knew about their skills and share it with everyone, right? Just like he was doing with his subordinates back in his World to help them mutate! After a quick discussion with Allison and Quinn, he pulled their skill knowledge and shared it between the two of them and… well it didn't instantly raise their skills, but there was a noticeable increase in the speed at which they could raise their skill levels for shared skills. Chris wasn't sure why they struggled to actually use the knowledge they'd been given since it wasn't an issue he had, but at least it helped.

"I swear, your world gets more and more bullshit the more we learn about it." Greg shook his head.

"And your thing isn't, Mr. 'I have a few dozen clones practicing all my skills'?" Thomas retorted.

"Or you, Mr. 'I have a system that lets me improve anything'." Andrew added.

"Hey, my system helps everyone!" Thomas protested.

"And so does Chris's world, mostly." Andrew replied. "We can't share skills like that, obviously, but all the other crap with moving energy around helps us all."

Thomas sighed. "Yeah, I guess… plus, I might be able to pull off skill sharing using the system. I just have an issue with quality control… if everyone can share anything, then there's no guarantee that what they share is actually correct."

"Huh… that would be an issue." Greg nodded. "I could see certain people having a lot of fun with that."

"I could see you having a lot of fun with that." Andrew grumbled.

"No comment." Greg chuckled.

"Well, there's certain things we know are true, aren't there?" Chris commented. "And if something contradicts those things, then it's obviously wrong. Just filter everything through that, and it should be good, right?"

"Just because something doesn't contradict what we know doesn't mean it's right." Thomas retorted. "That's why we can have competing theories and whatnot."

"Sure, but if they're valid theories, does it really matter if people share them?" Chris shrugged.

Thomas blinked. "I suppose not…"

"Hold on, guys, I think we're missing something." Greg interjected. "If we're talking about knowledge, then yes, we have to worry about people being wrong, but if we're talking about experience… People can't falsify experience. I mean, I don't think they can… even if they do it wrong, they're just adding the experience of doing something wrong, which at least tells people what not to do, right?"

"Also a good point." Thomas nodded. "At least, as long as people share the complete experience… I'm sure people could leave things out and lead people to wrong conclusions."

"Maybe…" Greg cocked his head.

"You probably don't want to be sharing explicit memories in the first place." Andrew pointed out. "That gets weird. You want to focus on implicit memories."

"Implicit memories won't help me learn to program." Greg retorted.

Andrew shrugged. "So it isn't perfect, but it's still more than you have now."

"Knowledge of programming would be hard anyway." Thomas frowned. "The fact filter would only catch what we already know, and if we already know it, we don't need it. Plus, even if you share the experience of making a full program, it doesn't mean the program actually works. Unfortunately, that's the crap that would actually be the most helpful…"

"Oh, fuck, if I could just skip school." Andrew sighed wistfully.

"We don't have to let everyone share." Greg commented. "We could be selective about it, approaching experts to share certain bits of information, people we know are trustworthy and know what they're talking about."

Thomas nodded. "Right. So implicit memory for everyone, explicit for experts?"

"Exactly." Greg grinned.

"Sounds simple enough." Thomas shrugged, pulling up the system and adding a new page for… skills? Thomas frowned. No, that wouldn't work. He moved to the original skill page, pondering what it actually did. It didn't provide information, but it did help you comprehend skills faster. It… expanded your understanding? Maybe? It turned surface knowledge into… Thomas blinked. It turned it into implicit knowledge, didn't it? So all he had to do was draw on the implicit knowledge of everyone connected to the system and pipe it into the skills page! Thomas paused before letting out a sigh. He'd been hoping sharing knowledge would be free, but no. Altering the mind always takes points. Except that time he messed with Foratuna's mind… he should really spend more time practicing using his points without the system.

Still, this would at least, hopefully, let people spend more than a few points on their skills, so he quickly set the system to collecting people's implicit knowledge and… Thomas froze, cocking his head as all the knowledge flooded into him. "Huh…" He always forgot that he was the points. If the points had something, he had something, so if the points were collecting everyone's implicit knowledge, he was collecting everyone's implicit knowledge. Except… for him it wasn't implicit knowledge, it was just knowledge. He'd still probably need to spend points to make it truly his. Not that the knowledge wouldn't be helpful. He'd just still have to actually think about it instead of it being natural.

As for the other page, he labeled it knowledge, but since he didn't have any knowledge yet, he didn't have anything to do with it. Though he supposed he could add some of his… he quickly added all his basic knowledge, language, mathematics, history, and so on before closing the system. "Alright, I set the system to collecting implicit knowledge, but it's just going to, hopefully, connect to the skills page, letting you spend more points. Though, since it's just the six of us at the moment, it won't help that much… and the knowledge doesn't cross Worlds, unfortunately. It's going to be very helpful in my World though."

"Eh, the system will spread." Greg waved dismissively.

"True." Thomas nodded. "Though for that, we'll need to actually talk to people."

"About that." Chris interjected. "I've finally reached the Northern Wastes. And I found a town."