High in the mountains, a wyvern instinctively began to peck herself out of her egg, then blasted outwards with her magic. Her shell and the rest of the empty nest were blown away. As she lay there, mana was channeled into [Magic Growth], accelerating her growth tremendously. In just minutes, she was half-grown. She would have gone further, but mana could only substitute so much for nutrition and she grew languid. As the wyvern looked around her, searching for both food and prey, she briefly smelled fur and flowers before her head cracked and blackness took her.
----------------------------------------
It felt like she had gotten smacked on the head by a boulder.
When she came to, she was no longer on the high mountain peak she started on, but rather on the edge of a seaside cliff. The smell of salt hung heavy in the air. As she stared out at the breaking waves, her discombobulated thoughts slowly coming back, a chiding, feminine voice speaking [Ravornia] reached her ears.
“Are you quite done with your tantrum, child?”
The wyvern turned to the voice. Standing on top of a rock was the tallest [Kitsune] she had ever seen. Nearly four meters! And nine tails too! The figure looked familiar and the view tamped down on her still roiling emotions. She tried raising an eyebrow in surprise, but found she lacked fine control over her facial features. Instinctually activating [Belly Speech], she replied in the same language.
“Who are you?”
“Why you don’t even recognize your own patron? I’m disappointed, Kazuhiro.”
“Adonite,” the wyvern huffed in conclusion. Her emotions were still a mess, if numbed, but her memory was clearing up a bit. “I didn’t know you had a [Kitsune] shape,” she replied with little surprise or inflection, being simply too drained from her grief. Her thoughts though still wandered. “Kazuhiro died. I am… nameless.”
“Very well then, Nameless,” the goddess chuckled to the wyvern’s consternation. “But you shouldn’t discount Kazuhiro. It’s because of you and Ryoko I even have this form.”
She didn’t quite know what to make of that, but she also wasn’t sure if she cared. “Why are you here? I’ve never heard of a goddess interacting with a mortal in person. Certainly not since the Gods’ War.”
“The Second War of the Gods,” she corrected. “But never mind that. Why, I’m here to set you on the right path. Your rage is not only self-destructive, but also causing quite a mess. Fortunately, a good whack upside the head seems to have cured most of that.”
Her head did seem a bit tender, though she still didn’t feel very keen to be bothered by others. “Leave me to my grief.”
“No no no,” the goddess chided. “It’s not every day the System asks for my help. And how could I deny not helping one of my own?”
“Your help with what?”
“Why with you of course. After Bo died, the System fast tracked the reincarnation of your soul into the strongest vessel it could find: the royal princess of the [Celestials]. Course, you just had to kill most of the royal family with your little stunt. And then reborn in a prophesied impossible birth among the [Demonkin]. What. A. Waste,” the goddess spat.
Nameless winced, but clued into something she said. “My reincarnations have always taken years, if not decades. Why would it fast track me now?”
“Why so you could rescue Bella, silly!”
“She’s alive?!” Nameless whispered.
“Indeed. When that [Soulmancer] killed you, he did so with the intent to seize your soul and use it in his research. What he found was that, while he handily defeated you in combat, your soul was far too strong for him to wrangle and you slipped free of him, returning to the wheel. Rather than lose his other specimen, he captured Bella and has kept her in a magically induced coma until he is strong enough to attempt to properly capture and study her soul.”
Adonite fell silent at that point, as Nameless chewed her words over. Finally, “How long has it been?”
“Six months or so. The System waited three months before reincarnating you the first time. After the second failure a month later, it came to me.”
“It took you two months?”
“The System had a lot of explaining to do. I was not aware of your existence as a [Reincarnator] until it brought this problem to me. I knew you as Kazuhiro—you and Ryoko were all the rage in the Pantheon for a while—but as far as I knew, with your passing, you were simply gone.”
“But you know now. I take it then that the Pantheon does not object to my existence as a [Reincarnator]?”
“Mmmm, probably. If you were a… problem, we certainly wouldn’t want you coming back. But you were a great boon as Kazuhiro and your other lives are hardly troublesome. So… maybe don’t rock the boat?” she gently suggested.
Nameless nodded to herself, kicking herself for foolishly losing control of her emotions like that. Then again, how was she supposed to know that Bella still lived. Then, realizing that she had an audience with a goddess, went to her short list of questions she never thought she’d have answered. “So, why do I have the [Reincarnator] Trait?”
“I don’t know. And before you ask, neither does the System.”
“What?! How?”
“The System purges records of any mortals who died more than five hundred years ago. You first came to its attention about sixty years ago, so it managed to trace you a little bit farther back than that. But, it simply doesn’t have any record of your original reincarnation and, therefore, no record of what triggered the Trait.”
“But shouldn’t it know what the prerequisites are for [Reincarnator]?”
“That’s getting too much into the nits of the System, but no. As a side effect of the dynamic creation and award of Skills and Traits, the System can’t maintain a comprehensive list of how all Skills are obtained. It can certainly take a guess, but there’s no way to test whether that guess is any good.”
Nameless pondered this a while, then turned her attention back to the future. “So, now what? Level up and assault the [Soulmancer]’s castle again?”
“That seems to be your strong suit.”
“And then, what? [Dryad’s Bond] wasn’t just deactivated, it was destroyed. We’re still… unbound. And last I checked, I’m not a tree, so I don’t see how I could possibly reacquire the Trait.”
“Silly mortal. There’s more than one Trait to bind two souls together. I’m sure you’ll find one.”
Nameless nodded to herself. “I guess there’s only one question left. Where are we and where is the [Soulmancer]?”
“Why, we’re on Isla Delos, the isle of monsters.”
“Never heard of it.”
“People wouldn’t. A hundred thousand square kilometers of beach, cliff, forest and mountain, filled with some of the rarest and strongest creatures in the world. We figured after saddling you with a (very rare) Race, we might as well try and make it a tad easier for you. Though those XP multipliers really do juice you up.”
“Thanks? I think.”
“As to the [Soulmancer], Breibone’s about a thousand kilometers west of here. Try not to miss a freaking continent while you’re flying.”
“I think I can manage. Thank you Adonite. I owe you a favor.”
“Oh, it’s my pleasure. And to be sure, I will call that favor in someday. Might take a few millennia though.”
“I can wait.”
“Course you can; so can I,” she smirked. “Ah, it’s so good to have an immortal agent on the ground again,” she cheered to herself, then popped out of existence.
“Ah shit. Should have asked why it’s called the XP Multiplier when it’s additive in nature.”
“Gah!”
----------------------------------------
With the goddess gone, Nameless turned to go over her notification log. [Celestial] and [Demonkin] huh? Maybe I missed out there. [Wyvern] though will be… fitting.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head though at the XP notifications of her last two lives. Digging through the log carefully, she saw what was the cause.
I’ve always leveled up as the XP became available. But since I can punch so far above my level, the level bonus multiplier from not leveling up can be insane. And while my XP multiplier is limited to 7.14, as I’m not sharing with Bella right now, it’ll feel like 14.24. I’ll refrain from leveling and Classing as much as I can. I’m not fully grown yet, but I need to hunt and eat before I push [Magic Growth] any more.
As Nameless looked over her status, three armed figures approached her from the jungle, a gleam in their eye. [Identify].
> Greb (L106) [High Goblin] (Ra) (L53) [Clubman] (Re) (L53)
>
> Gem (L102) [High Goblin] (Ra) (L51) [Spearman] (Re) (L51)
>
> Bor (L110) [High Goblin] (Ra) (L55) [Rogue] (UC) (L55)
Ah, lunch!
----------------------------------------
As Nameless suspected, the multipliers from being level zero and killing way above her level were insane. Those three [Goblins] alone, gave her enough XP to take both her Race and Class to Level 71 immediately if she chose to do so. Working the calculations backwards, she realized that the System must treat her level as 1 for purposes of the level multiplier calculation; else, there would be a divide by zero reference and [Mathematics] told her that was bad. Of course, if she took her Race to Level 2, she would immediately halve her XP gain so Level 1 was the limit for now.
This was so broken if the System was meant to be anything… systematic. But, then again, if she hadn’t done it herself, she would have said it was implausible that a level zero would be able to kill anything that far above it in levels. It really was just her and her freakish Status. Level zero was supposed to be the realm of newborns with single digit Attributes and HP, not deathbringers.
Here though, she was an adolescent [Wyvern], giving her base Attributes of over a hundred, which combined with the [Divine Champion] trait sent her total Attributes soaring to over 700. Of course, she had no Attributes from her Race or Class, but it didn’t matter much.
But, with a meal of [Goblin] in her, she pushed herself now to fully grown with [Magical Growth]. That of course sent her total Attributes to over 1,200, with hundreds of thousands of both HP and MP. And, with physical maturity, came the option to Class in.
A level zero fully grown [Wyvern]. Ha! she laughed to herself.
Still, she thought as she settled in for the night, she had a way to go before she would get her revenge against that [Sasquan Pithekaman] (L87) [Soulmancer] (L87).
----------------------------------------
Unfortunately, that first day turned out to be a fluke of luck.
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First, finding anything to kill was very difficult, and she really only managed one good battle per day. The monsters on this island really gave each other a wide berth. And while she had great senses, including [Tracking Nose], her speed over ground was very low as [Wyverns] were meant to travel any significant distances by air instead. And while she could [Float] and move decently with some other Skills, it was a far cry from [Fly with Wings], which she couldn’t pick up at all as she didn’t have any SKP available due to her current XP grinding strategy. Course, even if she could fly properly, going too high was likely to attract the attention of flying predators she really didn’t want to tangle with at this time. No need to humiliate herself with another death by dragon. And so, she resigned herself to a relatively slower grind.
Second, she was only managing about a fourth of the XP that the [Goblins] had provided. Either the creatures were lower level or lower in rarity, or both, and any of those hurt her multipliers and thus her XP gain. She tried pushing inland once, but immediately retreated as the creatures scaled too rapidly in power for even her Attributes to safely handle.
Still, by the end of the first week, she had doubled her XP from the [Goblin] fight, and could have reached level 80 in both Race and Class. It was just a matter of time before she would be gnoshing on that furry’s face.
----------------------------------------
The weeks ground on. Nameless was able to slowly improve her weekly XP gain, but only by a few percentage points, as she acclimated to her local environs. Finally, though, during her sixth week preying on the island, she finally eclipsed 15,290,800 XP, the amount needed to reach Level 101 in both Race and Class, and the second tier ups in both, which she felt would be more than adequate. A little buffer, and Nameless was finally done scrounging along the outskirts of the island. It was time.
> Ding!
>
> [Wyvern] has reached Level 51.
>
> You have earned the Trait [There Is No Queue] (fantastic): You have jumped your Race directly from Level 0 to Level 51 and your first tier up, bypassing all before it. Obtain XP at 2x. Additional options unlocked.
>
> Congratulations! You have reached the level cap as a [Wyvern] (very rare) and are eligible to evolve your Race into a higher tier. Your Race represents what you are, and will help define the rest of your life. Your Race provides Skill Points and Attributes, the latter of which may be Fixed or Free, may come with intrinsic Traits or Skills, and otherwise potentially unlocks access to many other Traits and Skills. Your Race may be leveled using experience.
>
> Based on your Race, Class, Level, Traits, Skills, geography, society, and prior experience, you are eligible to evolve your Race into one of the following (inspect for more information):
>
> * [High Wyvern] (very rare)
> * [Fire Wyvern] (ultra rare)
> * [Ice Wyvern] (ultra rare)
> * [Fire & Ice Wyvern] (fantastic)
> * [Berserker Wyvern] (fantastic)
>
> Choose carefully! This change is permanent and irreversible.
Nameless quickly disposed of [Berserker Wyvern]. The Race came with a Trait which made it easy to trigger an enraged state, boosting combat capabilities, but limiting higher thought. She’d been through that thrice and didn’t need a repeat. Not seeing any need to retain the flexibility that came with [High Wyvern], nor to stick with just a single element, Nameless made her choice and, after the requisite meditation for the evolution, leveled up again to the next tier up.
> Ding!
>
> [Fire & Ice Wyvern] has reached Level 101.
>
> You have earned the Trait [No Interference] (Unique): You have jumped your Race directly from Level 51 to Level 101 and your second tier up, after immediately earning [There Is No Queue]. You’re a complete beast. Obtain XP at 8x. Additional options unlocked. Sapients trying to interfere with you will find it 50% more difficult to do so.
>
> Congratulations! You have reached the level cap as a [Fire & Ice Wyvern] (fantastic) and are eligible to evolve your Race into a higher tier. Your Race represents what you are, and will help define the rest of your life. Your Race provides Skill Points and Attributes, the latter of which may be Fixed or Free, may come with intrinsic Traits or Skills, and otherwise potentially unlocks access to many other Traits and Skills. Your Race may be leveled using experience.
>
> Based on your Race, Class, Level, Traits, Skills, geography, society, and prior experience, you are only eligible to evolve your Race into [Arctic Volcano Wyvern] (fantastic). You may evolve now or defer in hopes of a better choice later.
>
> [Evolve]/[Defer]
Huh. That’s new, she thought. But, seeing no reason to hesitate, she evolved again, then triggered her Classing.
> Congratulations! You are now eligible to select a Class. A Class represents who you are and what you do, and will help define the rest of your life. Your Class provides Skill Points and Attributes, the latter of which may be Fixed or Free, may come with intrinsic Traits or Skills, and otherwise potentially unlocks access to many other Traits and Skills. Your Class may be leveled using experience.
>
> Based on your Race, Level, Traits, Skills, society, and prior experience, you are eligible for the following Classes (inspect for more information):
>
> * [Mage] (rare)
> * [Sky Mage] (very rare)
> * [Hunting Mage] (very rare)
> * [Deathdealer] (very rare)
>
> Choose carefully! While a Class may be abandoned, all XP invested into it will be lost.
She discarded [Hunting Mage] as she wasn’t planning to hunt monsters this life. [Deathdealer] was also discarded as it specialized in wide-spread killing and there was only one person who deserved to die right now. Finally, as it synergized with her Race, she chose [Sky Mage] and brought it to the tier up.
> Ding!
>
> [Sky Mage] has reached Level 51.
>
> Congratulations! You have reached the level cap as a [Sky Mage] (very rare) and are eligible to evolve your Class into a higher tier. A Class represents who you are and what you do, and will help define the rest of your life. Your Class provides Skill Points and Attributes, the latter of which may be Fixed or Free, may come with intrinsic Traits or Skills, and otherwise potentially unlocks access to many other Traits and Skills. Your Class may be leveled using experience.
>
> Based on your Race, Level, Traits, Skills, society, and prior experience, you are eligible for the following Classes (inspect for more information):
>
> * [Elemental Soarer] (ultra rare)
> * [Stormclad Fury] (ultra rare)
> * [Indomitable Sky] (ultra rare)
>
> Choose carefully! While a Class may be abandoned, all XP invested into it will be lost.
Three (ultra rares), she thought. The first has to do with the balance between fire, ice, wind and stone. ‘You soar above the concerns of the world below at peace.’ Nope. This is a very personal between me and that damn mancer.
The second is interesting though. ‘The elements themselves will shield and protect you.’ Hmm, but the ‘fury’ aspects are troublesome… Pass.
[Indomitable Sky]. ‘Like the sky itself, no mortal can dominate you.’ Well, guess that works.
A bit of XP later…
> Ding!
>
> [Indomitable Sky] has reached Level 101.
>
> You have earned the Trait [A Choice in Class] (fantastic): You Classed and uptiered twice in the same day. Spend XP and SKP to preview your next Class selections and learn the missing prerequisites for any Class with only one missing prerequisite.
>
> Congratulations! You have reached the level cap as an [Indomitable Sky] (ultra rare) and are eligible to evolve your Class into a higher tier. A Class represents who you are and what you do, and will help define the rest of your life. Your Class provides Skill Points and Attributes, the latter of which may be Fixed or Free, may come with intrinsic Traits or Skills, and otherwise potentially unlocks access to many other Traits and Skills. Your Class may be leveled using experience.
>
> * [Arcane Reaper] (fantastic)
> * [Avenger] (fantastic)
>
> Choose carefully! While a Class may be abandoned, all XP invested into it will be lost.
Only one Class fit this life perfectly.
Now, time to get some anti-Chodrak Skills.
----------------------------------------
A week later, and Nameless had spent all the time she wanted to chasing after Skill prerequisites. She didn’t get everything she wanted, but it was enough. Glancing at her status one last time before leaving, she thought, Not quite Kazuhiro-level of power, but it’s enough, and took off.
She [Flew with Wings] to the west for a whole day before she hit the Breibone continent. A quick rest, then two more days of travel and she was nearing her destination.
As she approached the castle from a distance, she saw it under the same illusion as before. Though when she began to circle high above it, looking straight down on it, the illusion no longer affected her. Suppose he never concerned himself with an aerial attack. An hour of circling overhead, and Nameless had largely [Mapped Lair] and with enough pings of [Detect Nemesis] and [Detect Companion], had a sense of the state of play.
It was time.
One [Drop Attack] later, and Nameless was crashing through the roof of the castle into a large open space. It was a workshop of some sort, and Nameless had timed her attack when Chodrak was on the far side from Bella so that she landed between them. Bella was caged and unconscious, and Nameless immediately threw up several shields around her. Chodrak was still responding to the sudden hole in the roof and the large mass that had come through it when Nameless attacked.
Too slow, she thought coldly.
Gouts of ice and fire clashed with a hastily erected shield of purple mana. Though the [Pithecus] had countered most of the first magical attacks, Nameless quickly rushed him. Though her build was magical, not melee, she was a (fantastic) [Wyvern] with over twenty levels on a puny humanoid who deserved to die, she thought. In a heartbeat, Chodrak found himself with one arm broken and the other disarmed. He was knocked back against a stone wall with a sickening crunch, and magically frozen in place.
As his head lolled, his eyes flickered with purple mana. “That soul…” he whimpered, just as her ice entombed him.
> Ding!
>
> You have defeated a …
Nameless dismissed the notification as soon as she got it, and waddled back over to Bella’s side of the workshop, dismissing the [Mana Shields]. She gently pried open the cage around Bella, the steel easily bending to her. She was tempted to nuzzle her, but pushed that feeling down. She didn’t know if he had any reinforcement or allies in the castle, and she didn’t want to find out. Checking Bella’s health quickly for anything that required immediate attention—there was nothing—she gently cradled Bella with [Mage’s Hands], returned to the hole in the ceiling, and took off back into the skies.
As she flew away, she almost absentmindedly tossed an overcharged [Siege Fireball] back at the castle.
----------------------------------------
In just a few minutes, Nameless set down in a high alpine clearing kilometers from the castle. After a little awkward maneuvering, Nameless cradled Bella in her wing and channeled [Divine Lay on Hands] to remove the soporific in her blood.
Bella’s canine features began twitching, especially her rear legs, as she woke up. Her eyes cracked open.
“Hey,” Nameless ◐ whispered in [Greenwood Elvish], “Welcome back to the land of waking.”
“Bo?” Bella ◮ asked. “You came back.”
“Of course I did.”
Bella snuggled deeper into her wing. “I could get used to this. You’re so warm.”
Nameless chuckled, which came across as a deep rumbling in her chest, and the two fell silent.
“When that… mage,” Bella spat the word out, “attacked you near the end, I felt our bond be destroyed. The despair was… so terrible, I didn’t even realize for nearly a week that he had captured me. I didn’t know what happened and I didn’t know if you were okay.”
“I— I wasn’t. I thought I had lost you forever. I was furious, enraged. I lost myself and ended up killing a lot of innocent people before some sense was knocked back into me.”
“Knocked sense into you?”
“Adonite.”
“The goddess,” Bella whispered. Nameless nodded her head. “And the mage?”
“Dead in sixty seconds. I had given some thought about a grand entrance, a dramatic showdown, monologuing to him about retribution and reacquisition. But—” Nameless paused. “In the end, I cooled down enough to just want to get the job done. Though I suppose the entrance might have still counted.”
“What’d you do?”
“Crashed through the roof with a Skill.”
“Ha! You make it sound easy, taking down a man at that level.”
“Someone pointed out to me that we only lost last time because we had a crap roll of the dice at rarity. This time not so much, though I wonder just how much the System and the goddess did to help there.”
Several minutes passed with just the two of them together.
“What now?” Bella finally asked, a note of worry in her voice.
“We go on. We get back to our routine. Life—lives as usual.”
“One last hurrah?” Her voice seemed to break.
“One last hurrah?? Oh. Oh… You’re worried about the bond.”
> Ding!
>
> Nameless would like to enter an [Everlasting Bond] with you.
They cried together in joy for a long time.
----------------------------------------
Over the next decade, the locals in that part of Breibone reported sights of a [Wyvern], though there were never any killings or attacks. Indeed, adventurers in the area found themselves with significantly less work when it came to bandits and monsters, and some left for more dangerous, if lucrative regions of the continent. To the residents though, the sight of the [Wyvern] came to be seen as a sign of good luck.
Not even the most [Eagle Eyed] among them ever noticed the [Dog] riding on its back.
----------------------------------------
> [Mortal] Nameless (L206), [Arctic Volcano Wyvern] (F) (L103), [Avenger] (F) (L103), has died. [Reincarnator] triggered.
>
> [Mortal] Bella (L134), [Guardian Dog] (Re) (L67), [Guardian] (Re) (L67), has died. [Everlasting Bond] triggered.
In a dimly lit space, a male figure in blue robes gazed upon the two newly-generated System log entries which had had been flagged for his review. He exhaled deeply, and then relaxed back into his metaphorical chair.
“That was a close one.”
๛
----------------------------------------