As I was considering the story thus far, I realized that I hadn't put a lot of thought into who Adrianna (the goddess) was before she became Isa. Once I started ironing that out, it shifted the story in a few minor, but significant ways. The changes don't necessarily change the trajectory of the storyline, but I needed to make a few changes, which then rippled into a few more...

If you don't feel like re-reading chapters, just reading this summary should get you fully up to date. The last couple of chapters had almost no changes, if that helps.

I know big revisions like this are not popular, but I want to give you guys the best story I can, and I can't make changes going forward without revising previously published chapters to make things flow properly.

The first two chapters, I explained the differences between the realms a bit more. To summarize, if souls could be weighed on a scale of 1 to 1000, with 1 being a tiny, newborn soul and 1000 being the absolute maximum a soul could sustain without fracturing, the Mortal Realm could only accommodate souls up to 299. The Mana Realm could handle up to 600, and the Qi Realm up to 800 (though I don't think I clearly spelled the last two out in the story yet.)

It takes a soul 'strength' of 250 to be able to use mana properly. Those with weaker souls would never be a Mage. Because of this change, I reduced the number of 'Mages' being classed after the ascension. They would be rare, especially considering the world was part of the Mortal Realm before. Isa was reincarnated with a soul strength close to the maximum (297).

Cultivation, like mana use, has a minimum soul 'score' to be feasible (500). You can be below the threshold and still be born in a higher realm (minus the Immortal Realm), you'd just be a mortal.

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That's all just background to explain why Adrianna needed to do what she did. Her soul 'score' was 953, so while she probably had centuries (or potentially millennia) left, she was feeling the pressure.

As far as the changes to Isa's background: Adrianna was the Storm Goddess for her pantheon. It suited her well because her strongest aptitudes were for Storm, Ice, Water, and Air mana. I'm calling them 'aspects' instead of elements. As a goddess, she also picked up (or bolstered, perhaps) Arcane, Mind, and Soul, though only Arcane showed up in the initial assessment.

This small change prompted a ton of other changes, which are scattered throughout the story thus far.

I almost completely changed how the system evaluated newly ascended users. The classes are more generic at first, though Isa still gets a little boost because she had the race upgrade pending. She doesn't get to upgrade her class with the rest of her team. That's something that comes with a race upgrade (which will happen in the next chapter, so that'll feel familiar).

The spells given to Isa by the system were adjusted to support her new aspects. She wasn't given Spellslinger as a class, she picked Spell Crafter. The actual class is the same, I just wasn't happy with the original class name.

I also added a section to her status for learned abilities and spells, though she only uses that to keep up with what spells she's demonstrated. I explained some of her knowledge in runes as having been learned from Jenkins, the researcher guy who happened to take an Enchanter class. A lot of what she creates uses enchanting, not spell anchoring.

I also seeded more references to psionics and her hacking skills to make the big reveal more believable. Additionally, the intake person in Horizon City now has some hinted at capabilities to determine if people were being honest or not. I understood and agreed with the criticism in the comments about the Horizian government being a little too welcoming and open to potential spies, so I changed it slightly.

That's it for the big stuff, I think. Like I mentioned, there are a lot of minor changes, but you don't have to read any of it to keep enjoying the story. I changed a few scenes to work better and deleted a bunch of others. Hopefully, it worked out for the best.

If you do take the time to re-read everything, please let me know what you think!