You have become a [Pathfinder of Hidden Trails]
No truth, however obscure or hidden, shall hide before your eyes. You shall find the paths long forgotten, the trails of those gone and forgotten, and bring them back into the light.
Gained +20 Body +15 Mind +15 Soul
Gained Class Skill [Unravel the Firmament]
Gained General Skill [See no Falsehoods]
Class Skill [Pierce the Heavens] Evolved into [Perforate the Stars]
Class Skill [The Cold, Hard Truth] Evolved into [Truth is a Bitter Pill to Swallow]
Your Skill [For Your Eyes Only] has encompassed your new class, allowing you to disguise it as one of the other choices you have been presented with.
After she made her choice at last, Alissa breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed the notification regarding [For Your Eyes Only], as it had been her main worry all along. She immediately chose to disguise her new class as a [Laurelled Lancer of Legend], which she hoped wouldn’t attract too much attention compared to her actual class.
As a bonus, it also sounded like something a [Consecrated Warrior] would likely upgrade to.
The changes to her stats were particularly noticeable, the class upgrade granting a massive amount of improvement compared to the second tier one. It drove home the point on why the natives had such a hard time dealing with people from different classes, even if their discrepancy would probably not be as massive as her own, due to class quality.
Name : Alissa Faith O’Connor
Race : Human
Age : 18
Class : [Hero Lvl20]/[Truthseeker Lvl20]/[Pathfinder of Hidden Trails Lvl1]/???/???
Stats :
Free Major Stat Points: 0
Body : 75.66
- Strength : 71
- Dexterity : 81
- Constitution : 75
Mind : 69
- Intelligence : 50
- Perception : 107
- Wisdom : 50
Soul : 61.33
- Willpower : 51
- Intuition : 81
- Sanity : 52
Skills:
Class 1: [Hero]
* Weather The Storm: EX
* Spear and Shield Expertise: Lvl 4
* One Small Step: Lvl 7
* Perforate the Stars: Lvl 6
* Grasp the Soul: Lvl 6
Class 2: [Truthseeker]
* Walk in the Shadows: Lvl 6
* A Critical Eye: Lvl 5
* Truth is a Bitter Pill to Swallow: Lvl 4
* Lies May Please, But it Doesn’t Heal: Lvl 4
* Moment of Truth: Lvl 2
Class 3: [Pathfinder of Hidden Trails]
* Unravel the Firmament: Lvl 1
* ???
* ???
* ???
* ???
General Skills:
* Respawn: EX
* For Your Eyes Only: EX
* See no Falsehoods: Lvl 1
* Language Understanding: Lvl 5
* Quick Learner: Lvl 7
* Analysis: Lvl 8
* Refuge in Ignorance: Lvl 6
* Tracking: Lvl 4
* Pain Resistance: Lvl 3
* Poison Resistance: Lvl 2
* Mana Sense: Lvl 2
* ???
* ???
* ???
* ???
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
If there was one drawback about the powerleveling regime she and the others have gone through, it was that they generally had less chance to practice their skills compared to others of their level, since they grew in level rapidly. Up to the present day, Alissa had only managed to “naturally” evolve one of her skills, namely [Weapon Proficiency], which turned to [Spear and Shield Expertise] to better match her weapons of choice.
The rest of her skill had leveled as well, but none of them had reached their maximum level and evolved yet. She was told by Nadine and the others that typically a third tier would have several such naturally evolved skills, more often than not, as they also generally took a much longer time to reach that level in the first place, and thus had a longer period of time to “grind” levels on their skills as a result.
She did end up getting [Tracking] since she often scouted for the group. The skill helped her find her way back, as early on she had some difficulty navigating while in the shadowy realm. As for the resistances, they were things Sir Inolet suggested for them to get. The process of getting them was rather painful, as it involved whippings and ingesting poisons, but it was at least worthwhile in the long term.
As for [Mana Sense], it was another suggestion from Sir Inolet. While Alissa herself had no skills that made direct use of mana like mages do, her acute Perception made her quite sensitive to changes in the mana flow, and after some training, she found herself able to sense how the mana around her changed quite easily. That in itself might not sound too useful, but it allowed her to not only identify mages at a glance, but also to “read” their moves ahead of time, an often decisive advantage in battle.
Too bad the thread-colonies in the last dungeon don't use mana at all, thus giving her no real opportunity to make use of it there.
Alissa took a glance at her new skills next.
[Unravel the Firmament]
Epic Skill
Level 1
‘Tis not only physical objects that could be unraveled.
Imbues the user with the ability to unravel either an advantageous status from an enemy or a disadvantageous status from an ally. Range: Touch. Level 1: Cooldown: 24 hours. Number of status unraveled: 1.
It was straightforward enough. A skill that gets rid of either a buff on an enemy or a debuff from an ally. Like most of her active skills, it started out with a long-ass cooldown period, so it was something to grind to a more usable state like the others, for sure. Given that she had run into quite a few foes who made use of buffs and debuffs, it was definitely a useful one once leveled a bit.
It also depends on how selective and broad the definition of “advantageous status” would be. If her target had multiple buffs would she be able to pick which to remove or would it happen at random. She also wondered if things like barriers from some skills would also count as one. If it did, then that would definitely make the skill even more useful, even though she had the newly evolved [Perforate the Stars].
[Perforate the Stars]
Rare Skill
Level 6
Not even the stars in the skies are safe from your thrusts. Perforate them and show your mettle!
Massively increases the penetrative power of the user’s attack when used, as well as amplifying damage dealt. Level 6: Cooldown: 45 Minutes. Duration: 5 Minutes or 3 attacks, whichever comes first. Damage Amplification: 30%.
If [Unravel the Firmament] worked on barriers and unraveled it as its name suggested, then that should save her a use from [Perforate the Stars] in turn, since it would not have needed to expend any force to go through the barrier. If her assumption was right, that alone would have made the new skill a worthy addition to her repertoire.
[Truth is a Bitter Pill to Swallow]
Epic Skill
Level 4
Still better than some sweet lies, though.
Grants the user’s attack the ability to cause massive hemorrhaging on the struck target, preventing the bleeding from stopping for a set period of time. Also causes the target to asphyxiate for a set period of time. Less effective against stronger targets. Level 4: Cooldown: 3 Hours. Duration: 3 Minutes or 2 attacks, whichever comes first. Effect Duration: 4 minutes.
Her bleeding-inducing skill got an upgrade that added asphyxiation to it, which even if it failed to incapacitate something strong enough to resist the effect, would likely still be annoying as all hell, Alissa thought. She still recalled the days when she was new to sports and the coach had them train their stamina. That feeling of shortness of breath after too much workout was just the worst.
She imagined that trying to fight while feeling like that would be distracting, to say the least.
[See no Falsehoods]
Epic Skill
Level 1
Only truths shall grace your eyes, o seeker of trails.
Allows the user to see past illusions and other fakehoods as long as they were created by skills equal or below this skill in rarity.
The last skill she gained from her class change was a quite useful passive. [A Critical Eye] might allow her to see weak spots in enemies, but if the enemy had some sort of illusion covering itself, then the skill wouldn’t be able to do its job, or it might show the wrong spot. [See no Falsehoods] conveniently took care of that one blind spot of the other skill, which made them particularly useful in tandem.
All in all, it was a good upgrade to her class so far, though the continued pestering from that class choice that tried to lure her into becoming a servant to the gods was worrisome. She was uncertain how powerful the gods of this world she’s in were like. They were clearly not omniscient, as they would have caught on to her from her second class change.
Perhaps she was just being paranoid and she had actually legitimately gotten the sort of feats that would make the system offer such a class instead. It was not an impossibility, given how the Kingdom had been doing their damndest to train and powerlevel them, so they might have also “directed” their path that way while they were at it.
Worst case, the gods of this world already knew about her duplicity and were simply amusing themselves while watching what she tried to do. She hoped that wasn’t the case, since if it was, she had no idea what she could even do about it. While she could probably call some of the other party members friends by now, she was uncertain whether they would go against their own gods – and likely Kingdom too for that matter – for her sake.
Out of the other party members Alissa had been closest to Moira, as well as Nadine and Maribel, who had been most open with her. The temple guards like Bronwen, Silvia, and Leda also treated her nicely, but she got the feeling that should push come to shove, all of them would put their faith first and foremost, so there was little to expect there.
In the end, Alissa went to sleep while she hoped that nobody would notice anything amiss once she woke up the next day.
******************************
Come the morning, when Alissa woke up she noticed that Ethan and Joshua had already been awake. The two of them had also made their class choices by then, likely after they woke up, as when she went to sleep the previous night neither of them had changed their class. Ethan had changed his class to an [Indomitable Protector], while Joshua had become a [Purveyor of Arcane Mysteries].
From their descriptions, the classes looked like straight upgrades of their previous classes.
Alissa wondered whether the two had not received more… interesting options for their class options, or whether they had chosen the straight upgrades because they felt it was what suited them best. Then again, given how she got two options each for what would have been relatively straight upgrades of her tier two class options, she assumed that it might just be how the class change went for most.
The three of them made some small talk – Joshua becoming a bit less taciturn after their grudging cooperation during the dungeon – over their new classes, and pretty much confirmed Alissa’s guess. She herself “sold” her class upgrade as one that focused more on versatility over power, which was not exactly a lie, for the most part.
All of them discussed just how many stats the third tier gave. Out of the three apparently Alissa had gained the most, with fifty points to major stats on the evolution and another forty to substats every level since. Both Joshua and Ethan only got forty-five to their major stats on evolution with another thirty-five to their substats per level afterwards.
That contrasted greatly with what they knew the [Companions] and [Associates] received. The one with the best class out of the [Companions], Nadine, only received thirty points to her major stats on the evolution with another fifteen to her substats every level after. The others had slightly worse classes than hers, though it was still better than the average sort of third tier class a native would have normally gotten.
Those classes barely received ten to fifteen points to their major stats, and typically received less than ten points to their substats per level. In fact, the [Heroes]’ second tier classes were not that far apart from what an average native’s third class would have looked like. It was why they had been so powerful in comparison to the natives even if the latter had a massive level advantage.