A few days went by rather peacefully as they settled into their zone. Stragglers came in here and there, folks that had been further away or hesitant to trust Aegis. Bernard also took the time to learn a bit more about how Aegis worked. His class was highly specialized compared to others, which wasn't unexpected. What was unexpected was when he figured out how to pull up a list of classes he could change to and found nothing but nature related classes.

Everyone else that he talked to had a plethora of options, many of which were completely unrelated to their current class. Some of them were even planning on using that selection to expand and customize their abilities. Which was another thing his class seemed to lack. A lot of other classes gave active abilities, allowing people to do things like extend a sword strike, or cast spells, or even use an internal resource to heal or harm with punches. The little brat.

Bernard only ever seemed to get passive abilities that were always active. He didn't want to complain about it, since his class was definitely powerful. Nobody else had permanent sense enhancements for example. A few had things like darkvision, owlsight, or wolfscent and they all had to focus to activate their ability. It would only last for an hour or so before they needed to reactivate it too.

Other than that, they determined that Stat points definitely existed, despite Aegis's adamant refusal to even hint at their existence beyond the initial message Bernard heard about from the others. That message had led to people experimenting with ways to determine the increases classes were giving them. Bernard, for example, had gotten significantly more durable. His endurance was up too, which was a more subtle thing to notice. Particularly with the days of running about in the forest and getting into life and death fights.

He expected to get into better shape, and didn't think to attribute it to, well, Attributes. Testing proved that it was a mix of the two though. He was stronger and harder to hurt than any of the others, that strength increase paired with his Stride feat also made him faster than most others in the forest. He was mostly just jealous of all the people getting instinctive knowledge of how to fight, use spells, and how to handle weapons while he was forced to learn the hard way.

Which is why he intended to take a level or two in a different class that interested him. It wasn't on any of the lists anyone else shared with him, which meant they were either holding back information or that it was another hidden class related to his own. Regardless, Arboreal Archer would help solve his greatest weakness, which was his inability to do anything at range. Sure, he could throw Thistle, or use it like a whip, but he was terrible with whips and if he missed a throw he just disarmed himself for no reason.

With Thistle being as mutable as it was he hoped to be able to have it turn into a bow once he had the class. If not, he would have to get another weapon from the store. He preferred to avoid hauling around another weapon that he would have to support, though.

That was another thing he learned, his equipment was alive and needed sustenance. It was an obvious thing, one he knew even, but the ramifications and limitations were what he learned more about. He was connected to them whenever they were in physical contact, and when out of combat they provided him with nutrients and energy. In combat they drew from him and their own reserves to strengthen themselves.

It was why he was always so hungry after a battle. Thistle needed energy to produce its poisons, and his armor needed energy to create thorns and absorb attacks. He was, in effect, their battery. Not completely, of course, and it was drastically oversimplifying the symbiotic relationship he had with his gear, but it ultimately boiled down to the fact that he could only do so much before both him and his equipment needed to recharge.

Now that he was recharged, it was time to do some exploring. He heard about an anomaly from the most recent arrivals that needed to be investigated. He didn't much care about monsters that escaped, or were avoided, or anything along those lines. So long as the forest didn't send him after them he wasn't interested in going out of his way to find them.

He was concerned about someone spotting a black tear in reality a day's walk away from their budding village. He couldn't call it a town yet, but it was growing fairly quickly and none of them wanted to have a potentially dangerous thing so close to home.

Which is what brought him, along with Peytah, Leo, and a couple of the newcomers that had combat classes out this way. Margaret, a Water Mage capable of cutting and piercing things with pressurized water. Julien, who was a Butcher. Bernard had been surprised by that one, but it turned out to be astonishingly useful for combat according to Julien. He instinctively knew where to cut to disassemble things, and most living things didn't typically survive getting disassembled.

They got a bit of practice working together as they traveled, and combat went surprisingly smoothly. Bernard focused on drawing the attention of whatever they were fighting. With the majority of beasts and voidlings refusing to change targets once they had one, it was relatively simple for everyone except Julien to stay safe. Julien was armed with a blade that was a strange cross between a cleaver and a machete. His explanation was that he needed to use something resembling a tool a butcher would use for his class abilities to activate.

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Julien's need to get into melee range made him the only one an engaged threat would switch to. Luckily the man was nimble, and patient enough to wait until things were focused on Bernard before darting in to slice off chunks of them. He also didn't stick around, and when the beasties swung around to retaliate Bernard would usually get in a solid whack with Thistle while Julien got out of range.

Fights ended so much faster with more damage dealers. The only thing they were missing was a healer, and while Henry could have filled that role, Bernard had refused to take the kid out with him. Now that they had an actual base that was relatively safe, it felt highly irresponsible to take a kid out to fight monsters. No matter how good the kid seemed to be at protecting himself.

It had taken a great deal of convincing, but he eventually talked the kid into staying behind to protect the others. Which probably had the kid out patrolling the exclusion zone's perimeter and fighting whatever he ran into. He followed up his talk with Henry with another talk with the other adults, getting them to keep an eye on him as best they could. They promised they would keep him from going out, but he knew better. The kid could move through the woods like a ghost when he put his mind to it.

An unsettling feeling of wrongness washed over him. "We're almost there."

"How do you know?" Margaret asked.

"I can feel it. The forest doesn't like it, whatever it is." Bernard answered a bit distractedly. It was different from the way the forest responded to voidlings, almost as though it wasn't sure how to handle it.

"That's not creepy at all." Leo deadpanned.

"Talking to trees is plenty creepy all on its own if you ask me. Particularly when they talk back." Julien said with a grin.

"I wish I could talk to the forest." Peytah said wistfully.

"You could have taken a class that let you." Bernard said as he glanced back at him.

"No, well, maybe, but we chose our classes carefully after much discussion about who would be best at what. I have the best aim, so we agreed it would be best for me to be the one to pursue a magic hunter class." He shook his head in wonder. "Magic, to think we can do magic now."

"Yeah, magic is pretty amazing and all, but it came with monsters." Leo said with a shrug. "I think I preferred the monster free world, even if it didn't have real magic."

"We're here." Bernard said, stopping as he finally spotted the eerie black rip in reality. "What is that?" He asked, hoping for an answer that didn't involve the destruction of the world. The others voiced similar questions. They were each trying to get a response from Aegis by asking about the anomaly in slightly different ways.

Alert: you have discovered a Void Rift. Void Rifts vary wildly in contents, size, and value. Most contain voidlings that spawn at an accelerated rate. Biome usually resembles the area in which the Rift is located, but not always. The most valuable Rifts are those that connect two or more worlds.

Note: due to Earth's newly integrated status Aegis has restricted interplanetary linkages to other newly integrated planets. This restriction will be lifted in approximately two local years depending on the speed of integration.

"Wait. We can travel to other worlds with these things?" Bernard practically shouted. "That's insane! Doesn't that mean others can come here? What if we don't want that, can we destroy them?"

Rifts can be destabilized and eventually destroyed by restricting the flow of void energy to their entrances. This practice is not encouraged, however. Destroying a Rift is a volatile process that greatly endangers everything within several hundred meters. It is also seldom permanent. Most Rifts will reappear within six months to a year.

"So this is Aegis's version of a dungeon." Margaret said calmly. "We're going to need to investigate and at least guard the entrance. I was just cheerfully informed that there is nothing stopping any voidlings in there from leaving. Can we break it?" She looked at Bernard, clearly having heard him ask about it.

"No, it's dangerous to try and most of them just come back eventually."

"On the bright side, they aren't all dangerous." Leo cut in. "Some of them are just empty pockets of space we can use for storage, or even mines."

"This one isn't empty." Bernard said grimly. He had caught a brief glimpse of something in the entrance while Leo was speaking, and it was ugly. He thanked his lucky stars that whatever it was didn't come out to say hello to them just yet. "So… What do we want to do?"

"I vote we go in." Margaret said. "We need more information, and the only way to get it is to go in."

"No way. We would be going in blind, with no way of knowing we aren't just charging to our deaths." Leo crossed his arms to emphasize his refusal.

"We do need to know what's in there. I vote for someone to stick their head in and look around." Julien said. He was staring right at Bernard the entire time, making it abundantly clear whose head he thought should be stuck through the magic murder hole.

Peytah just looked at them and stayed silent.

"Whatever is in there has tentacles. On its face. One of them peeked at us a minute ago." Bernard said with a shake of his head. "If I'm going to stick my head in there I want to be tied off. I don't want to get yanked in there by some Davy Jones looking thing while you guys all run off and leave me."

"We would never!" Margaret said with a grin. "Don't worry big guy, I brought rope."