Chapter 10 - The Omelet

Thea was eating an omelet. She didn’t like omelets very much but the Vending Machine did not have many options. She sighed and stared at the small wand on the table. Although she had experienced it all herself, it was still surreal. 3 days ago she had been suddenly brought here and was asked to choose a ‘Class’ Not knowing much she had chosen the intriguing class of Fire Mage. Then she had been brought here.

This place had all its floors and walls white like the first room but also had more plants and run-of-the-mill structures like cupboards. It came with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen in the residential side. Although the kitchen had a fridge and cooking stuff she had chosen to use the vending machine which dispensed warm cooked food like this omelet. She wanted to become stronger before the squad meetings and did not want to waste time on cooking. The other half had two things. The first was a training range where a 3D hologram showed her how to use her class skills and practice. The other was a fighting range where she could set a difficulty and monsters would be produced to fight and gain XP.

But that was more like an immersive VR experience than a fight. Her body was covered by a golden glow whenever her HP went critical and she was teleported out. She had tried to get a lot of levels at first but the system required her to succeed in the corresponding training first. The setup resembled a school in a lot of ways, or a tutorial as the name implied. Teaching theory then giving practicals. The system existed in this place like a smart voice assistant. Like Jarvis was for Iron man. Over the last three days, she had asked the system a lot of questions about this place. And this was the gist of what it had answered

Their planet Earth had been a baby world and was thus isolated from the rest of the Grand Procession, which was the supposed Multiverse. It had confirmed the existence of countless other worlds and races except their own. When they started experimenting with mana a few months ago, The system started preparing for Descent. When they finally reached a quantity of mana that they could be considered ‘Aware’ of it. They had been transferred out of the incubatory. Apparently it had teleported the solar system to the incubatory when we began mana use to prepare for descent but had cast an illusion in outer space to look the same to us. The Incubatory was a smaller universe where it kept the baby worlds to help along the planet’s mana core. The planet's core was still developing and undergoing changes in its new location in the Grand Procession while its sentient denizens were stuck here.

The job of this place was to give classes and experience to the denizens to allow them to survive the trials. The trials were supposed to be a 91-day gauntlet where death was actually possible. They needed to perform quests in there and earn points so that they can get a good Origin. The system was pretty cagey about the details regarding that but it did say this-

The Origin is a Creature’s most prized characteristic. On completion of the trials, you will unlock your Origin according to your potential, performance, and characteristics. It is nigh impossible to change it even for exalted existences. It is closely related to your soul and is highly influenced by internal factors. Although you can change your fate by performing highly, but still the system can only aid you to a certain extent in this context.

It was quite perplexing

It was told to her that although the Origins came in various forms and sizes they were divided into 78 categories which oddly enough, were represented by cards of a Tarot Deck. 22 of these which came under the Major Arcana like the fool, the chariot, etc were unique. It was not just that one race could have only 1 instance of a specific major card within its ranks. But also, these origins had only one or at max two classes availaible. At the same time, other origins had a large number of types under them and could even have multiple of them depending on the Origin strength, characteristics, base class and various other factors.

For example, a fire mage, a necromancer, and a runesmith could all belong to 6 of wands, but the Tower will only have one class, which was called Berserker. Although that could be a false fact, as quite simply, the number of a particular kind of Major Arcana known were too less to make a definite statement. Those that did have it were a race’s most prized possessions so their skills and abilities were always a rat’s nest of rumours. Only one thing was agreed upon by everyone. They were Mighty.

So, Thea had soon abandoned that line of questioning and focused on the Minor Arcana. It is not that she wasn’t interested. It was just that the probability of her ever meeting one was less than negligible. After all these races had hundreds of worlds yet less than 20 of them. These race pieces that had special properties and insane powers had proven to be highly elusive even by the Grand Procession standards. Even the most powerful races did not have complete sets of 22.

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Now on to the Minor Arcana. It consists of an Ace, cards 2 to 10 and 4 court cards. The King, the Queen, the Knight, and the Page in four suits. Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles. True to their name, Wands implied magicians and Swords implied warriors. The pentacles were almost all civilian professions you know while cups were a rarer and weird bunch with mystic classes like Oracles, prophets, chosens and also the religious classes like paladins etc. But that didn’t mean that a Wands couldn’t fight or a Swords couldn’t use magic. Those were open to all. It was just the way the person was that defined the Origin. You could have been forced into fighting for survival and become a great warrior. But if you had the heart of a blacksmith, You will have an Origin of Pentacles. Although its not that the Origin won’t affect your path. If you have an Origin of Cups but were a Magic swordsman you could get skills like the seen blade that allowed you to predict the strike of an enemy a split second in advance.

The kings have a complex power system which we will come to later so as to not bore you. The Queens have the power to create followers, The knights were unusually powerful warriors that could utilize their classes in combat, The pages were like elders who had gained a lot of experience and respect in the field. Aces were creatively new existences that were either pioneers of something new or were simply geniuses. They were considered at the level of Pages.

Now here was one point, the cards from 2-10 and the Page were progressable more commonly. That means the path to 3 of Wands from 2 of Wands, although rare and almost impossible to travel, was known to have been traveled. Even a king or queen could rise by Origin change once in a few million years. But so far, the number of instances of a card rising to any of the Major Arcana was Zero in all history. Also, a change never occurred across suits.

What is so special about them? Well when fully established a Tower could destroy a world in under 30 minutes, an Empress could summon legions equivalent to a world’s combined forces. The hanged man had a broken class called the Balancer. It was basically an equivalent interchange, which if done timely was one of the only four known sources of resurrection.

But it's also not as if these were completely broken. They all had a fatal flaw as a balance. Like the Judgement could defeat almost anyone as long as the laws of judgment were followed, but conversely was almost powerless to act against a righteous one. The Tower was destructive but was prone to temper and frenzies. The Moon could get glimpses of the far future better than any oracle or prophet but was deaf and blind during daylight. The Empress’ warriors fell with her death and so on. But still used with prudence, these were a species’s trump cards.

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STATUS

Name : Thea Macmillan

Race : Human(F)

Class : Fire Mage

Origin : 6 of Wands(Unascended)

Rank : Seedling(None)

Grade : Seedling(None)

Titles : -

Level : 4

EXP : 15/400

HP : 20/20

MP : 05/05

STR : 8

INT : 13

VIT : 10

Def : 8

Skills : Initiate Fireball(L2)

Initiate Fire heal(L2)

Fire Resistance(L1) Passive

Thea sighed. Due to her extremely weak body that started with a STR of 3, the sheer amount of things to learn and the amount of physical training she needed to do was enormous. She was also starting to feel lonely now. But that would change in a few days. The system had told her that before the trials she would be assigned to a squad of 10 people to team up in the trials. They will be evaluated on both the squad performance and individual one. But before she met her squad, she was planning to increase all stats to at least 10 and intelligence to 15.

- - - - -

The first thought Max had after reading the quests was - ‘I am so Dead’ But this time it was not because of the ridiculously difficult quests. He was also not surprised that by modifying quests to ‘personally’ the Demon System had bypassed whatever saved him the last time. He was pissed about it but not as much as he was because of the special clause. If this quest had originally been supposed to end in 2 days, then to survive 72 would be almost impossible, especially considering that he had no abilities so far to speak of to introduce a significant variable to this new war. Even the S rank only asked for 48. But this also made him ask a question. Since surviving as long as possible was the quest, does that mean if he died in that world he would have simply failed and returned if he had chosen a normal Origin?

He looked up to see if the system would answer, but as usual, the answer was silence. There were too many questions and too many doubts that he needed answered but all he had were his own theories mixed with Manga and Anime knowledge whose basis was not exactly credible.

One thing was clear to him. He could not rely on luck, last time somehow worked out but if he had to win these insane and inhuman requirements every time he needed to figure out a way to become more than a mere human. He began to think of ways to ‘consolidate’ his level. Was it like cultivation and he needed to meditate? Then what role did XP play here? Was it energy or knowledge or both for the breakthroughs?

His thoughts were interrupted by a lumbering sound that seemed to echo in the valley. He could see the soldiers farther down the line getting excited for some reason their shuffling turned to marching. The growing buzz affected him too as he tried to peek over the throng of broad-backed soldiers.

At first it was nothing but the natural high walls and grey dreary rocks, but slowly a mammoth dam came into view. With a color that matched the mountains themselves, Its height and majesty challenged the zeniths of the ancient mounds of stone and sand. At first, one might mistake its smoothness for a strange natural structure like the Grand Canyon but the mighty Castles lining the top along with strange contraptions that looked like cranes from down here betrayed its artificial nature.

They had arrived at the Defense line.