From one moment to the next, Victoria finds herself back in the little hut, only for Daniel's head to appear in the opening a moment later.

"You okay, Vicky? And what about the kid?"

"I'm fine.", Victoria answers: "And the boy's name is Andrew. I think he lived in the same apartment complex as you did before... Whatever it is that happened."

Victoria didn't like that she had to lie to Daniel, but if even only a part of that story was true, she wanted to press the kid for more information before making any decisions. Especially if what he had said about being partially responsible for the system's creation was true. That kind of info would be invaluable. Of course, she still took the story with a bucket of salt. For all she knew, she had been right about her Alien theory and this was just some intergalactic TV-show.

Well, she didn't want to go down that rabbit hole right now.

"In that case, let's go to the nearest city. Maybe they have an orphanage there where he can stay until his parents find him. Don't worry, the city isn't very far from here, maybe thirty minutes through the forest and another fifteen through an open field and there aren't any more demons. Come on, let's go!"

Daniel was a bit annoyed with that kid. In this world, it had supposedly been thirteen months since the first demons invaded. Back then, the gods gave humans the system, so that they may gain the strength to protect themselves. But even then it hadn't been enough and they choose a few selected individuals and granted them the strength to be heroes.

Back then, Mother earth had chosen him to be the hero of the thirteenth wave. But that power hadn't come for free. While Victoria had been asleep until they got released, he had been stuck in a Dungeon with accelerated time to train.

At first, when he learned about the system, he didn't like that the gods made him a hero. The whole situation just reminded him too much of his games, and he had always hated cheaters. And if that didn't make him one, he didn't know what else would.

But his opinion soon changed when his patron explained to him what it meant to be a hero. Or to be more precise, what it meant not to be one.

Supposedly, there would be several tiers of classes. Tier one classes, the weakest, give only one automatic and one free stat point per level, and the skill experience bonus would be rather small and restricted to a single area, while also making the learning of skills outside of it extremely hard.

A tier two class in comparison, receives two automatic and free stat points each, while also having better skill experience bonuses, and especially fewer maluses.

The Hero class Daniel got was a tier five class. It gave him a total of ten stats per level, A huge skill experience bonus, and no malus at all.

The problem was, mother earth had explained to him, that no matter the tier, you had to kill ten demons on the same level as yourself to level up, a lot more if you fought those below your level, possibly even hundreds.

But, while a tier five needs to kill ten Lv10 demons to reach Lv11, a tier one class would have to do the exact same, despite having only about a fifth of the stats and much lower skills. And to add insult to injury, ninety-nine percent of humanity have tier one classes, and tier three classes are closer to one in a million.

At first, Daniel had thought that wouldn't be much of a problem, but only until he started his training. He soon realized that a tier one, might be able to reach level ten, maybe even twenty with a lot of dedication, but the demons would just get a lot stronger with every level. Even Daniel hadn't been able to keep up with them past level sixty.

At that point, he had been forced to rely more and more on the ultimate skill he was given. It made him extremely strong and allowed him to win any fight, but the downside was that he received no exp from the fights.

When his training first started, he had still been motivated, fighting with all his spirit, but as days passed, then weeks, and finally months he wanted to give up several times. Constantly living in a dungeon without ever seeing the sun, always being on the lookout for demons that want to kill him, had gnawed at his mind, until finally he almost killed himself just to escape.

While he had been full of hopes and dreams at first, soon the only thing left, the single thing that had carried him through the dungeon, was the thought that he had to protect Victoria. He knew her just too well. He was absolutely sure she would try, like always, to be the best at everything. But he also knew that that wouldn't work anymore, no matter how bright of a mind she had. But she would continue trying and someday she would die in the process.

Of course, back then he had still been sure that, if there was one person with a tier three class, it would be Victoria, and even if it was tier two he had decided that he would protect her while she could grow stronger. But now that he found her to have a tier one class, one whose closest thing to a combat skill would be vegetable cutting nonetheless, he wasn't so sure about that anymore.

At first, when he saw her class, he wanted to poke fun at her about it, but then he was reminded of something mother earth had said, that the classes were a crystalization of a person's destiny. When he remembered that, he realized what he had to do.

He had wanted to confess the love he had held for her for all those years, that had even carried him singlehandedly through the dungeon, right that instant, reaffirming his dedication that he wouldn't let anything happen to her.

But then, that annoying little kid showed up.

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Daniel had never been terribly good at social interactions, even getting exponentially worse the more emotions were involved. And being stuck in a dungeon with no one to really talk to, besides his patron goddess who would visit him sometimes in his dreams, for who knows how many years, didn't make him any better at it.

And while his years of loneliness and newfound self-confidence might have tipped the scales far enough to win out against his shyness and fear of rejection, the social anxiety resulting from confessing his love in presence of a stranger, even if it was only a child, tipped the scales right back.

"Ehm, Daniel, are you still there?", the girl asked.

Daniel had been so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even notice how close Victoria's face was to his until she said something. Surprised, he flinches back, quickly turning his face away in hopes his crush wouldn't see him turn red.

Victoria continued: "That sword and this hut, was that some kind of earth magic?"

"Hm? How did you know?!", Daniel asks with slight alarm. He hadn't told her anything about that, so how did she know?

"Ehm... There are magic stats in the stat window? If that wasn't magic, I don't know what is."

Right, now Daniel was feeling stupid. This was Vicky, it should have been more surprising if she didn't figure that out.

"Well, it could have been Psy, but yes, that's magic.", Daniel explained.

"Psy? Like telekinesis and telepathy? Well, I won't ask you how you know that and how you learned to fight like that for now, we can talk about that when we reach the city. But, can you use your magic to make me some shoes?", Victoria asks him.

"Shoes?", Daniel asks dumbly.

Looking down at her feet, he realized for the first time that she was still barefoot. In fact, while he was wearing socks, just by running through the forest they had become so shredded that they could have been just as well nonexistent. The difference was, his stats, especially his physical ones, were so high that he didn't even realize it. Vicky on the other hand was only as strong as a normal human being. Probably even less considering the especially low starting point of a tier one class.

"Yes. Yes, I can make you some. Can you show me your foot?", he finally answers.

Victoria lifts one foot in the air where he carefully holds it in his hands. He could have easily constructed the shoe in under a second, but he had to look down and act like he needed to concentrate to hide his furiously blushing cheeks. He didn't have some kind of foot fetish, at least not as far as he knew, but holding her foot like that somehow felt incredibly personal and made him feel strange.

A few minutes and two unnecessarily fancy stone high-heels later, Victoria had both feet on the ground again.

Only when he looked at his work again did Daniel realize how stupid he was.

First, no matter how fancy they were, those shoes were still made from stone and would disappear after some time if he didn't continue to maintain the spell, and secondly, and more importantly, high heels are by far the most unpractical shoes for a march through the forest.

But after wasting all this time on making them, and since Victoria wasn't complaining, he would feel even more embarrassed if he suddenly turned them into something simpler.

Victoria wasn't really sure why Daniel thought it would be a good idea to make her a pair of high-heels when they had to walk through a forest, but after seeing how much work he had put into them, she didn't want to embarrass him.

Also, seeing how they were made of the same magical stone as the sword he had made earlier, she was pretty sure that they wouldn't break off. Which was honestly her biggest worry. Though, eight-centimeter stiletto-heels may have been a bit excessive.

As they were walking in silence, following the arrow on the wave countdown, two messages popped into her mind one after another.

Earned Skill:

High-heels: Balance

Earned Skill:

High-heels: Surefooted

"Status.", she whispered.

And sure enough, both skills were now listed under the skills tab at level one. And while only slightly, it felt like walking had become just a bit easier.

But that reminded her of something different.

"Actually Daniel, I wanted to ask you something. Could I take a look at your status?"

"Hm... Why?", Daniel asked back guardedly.

"As I said, we can talk about what happened later, but we don't have much to do right now besides walking and I was wondering how strong you actually are."

At first, he hesitated a bit, but after a while he finally conceded.

"Very well, but don't tell anyone about my stats and skills, okay? Show status: Victoria Bright."

A moment later, a veritable wall of text appeared in Victoria's vision.

Name: Daniel Watson

Waves: Lv. 0 (0/1)

Class: Hero T5

Level: 62 (1538/38440 exp)

Stats:

Endurance: 30 + 0 + 200

Strength: 30 + 0 + 200

Concentration: 30 + 0 + 35

Willpower: 30 + 0 + 70

Magic: 30 + 0 + 75

Magic power: 30 + 0 + 100

Talent: Incarnation: Mother Earth Lv. 7 (123/654 exp)

Skills:

Greatsword: cut Lv. 75

Greatsword: smash Lv. 30

Greatsword: stab Lv. 45

Greatsword: throw Lv. 34

Greatsword: block Lv. 56

Greatsword: parry Lv. 73

Stand: Rooted Lv. 72

Enhancement: strength Lv. 65

Enhancement: defense Lv. 57

Blade aura: edge Lv. 70

Blade aura: weight Lv. 59

Swordart: gale Lv. 52

Swordart: flying slash Lv. 27

Telekinesis Lv. 17

Telekinesis: jump Lv. 22

Telekinesis: waterwalk Lv. 12

Telekinesis: parry Lv. 35

Telepathy: bunker Lv. 66

Stone: creation Lv. 73

Stone: strengthening Lv. 71

Stone: control Lv. 52

Earth: transferring Lv. 56

Earth: shifting Lv. 67

Earth: support Lv. 63

"Well, this isn't all actually. I have a number of miscellaneous skills that I turned invisible to make the thing a bit more manageable.", Daniel commented sheepishly.

"Hero?", Victoria asked, lifting one eyebrow.

"Yep!", Daniel grins at her.