[New Skill: Meditation 1(Intelligence +1)]

[Meditation aids the user in achieving a state of flow, shortening the distance between who and what the user is.]

[Intelligence is a measure of the ability to process Information.]

[You have reached level 10. Please select your first Class.]

[Class options]

[Sw — ERROR]

[System Override Detected]

[Magic System Infection Detected]

[Attempting purge]

[Purge Failed. Tree of Worlds contaminated]

[Emergency Notification System failed due to insufficient power to System]

[You have reached level 10. Please select your first Class]

[Class options:]

[Anti-Light Insurgent]

[Accept Anti-Light Insurgent?]

[y/y]

The prompts came all at once, along with dozens of blank prompts that filled my vision even though my eyes were closed. Wafts of neon green smoke coiled off of them. One refused to be dismissed, but I shoved it out of my vision as Eros roused.

“What’s going on?” Eros shouted from across the room. He pulled his bow up and nocked an arrow.

“I just unlocked a class.” I said, dismissing the prompts as fast as I could. The green smoke still wafted off of the system, burning away.

“You’re level fifty?” Eros asked, incredulous.

“What?” I said. “No.”

“Level one-hundred?” Eros asked.

Poppy and Anna were both fast asleep. Anna snored, laying with one arm crossed over poppy. Poppy’s hard metal armor was stacked against the wall, while the two of them leaned in the sand.

“No. Level ten.” I looked up to Eros.

He scoffed, looking at me as if waiting for the punchline to a joke.

“You’re serious? You can’t be serious. What level were you when you killed all those goblins?” He asked. “No. You can’t be serious. That should’ve put you nearly at level ten on its own! Not to mention any skill levels you have — you did that without skills? But you moved like you had twenty levels in every stat?”

“That was just my cultivation.” I said. “And my martial art.”

“Cultivation…” Eros whispered to himself. “You have some kind of Old Magic. You didn’t have levels at all.”

Eros stared down, whispering to himself as he ran through dozens of thoughts. He put the arrow he had drawn away — the green smoke from dismissing the prompts was no where to be seen. My hand still rested on my sword in the sand next to me. The paranoia that had been beaten into me was hard to shake.

I stared at him carefully, trying to read his thoughts from his facial expressions. It might have been stupid to reveal this much about myself in front of these people. But they trusted me, at least enough to sleep comfortably a few feet from me. The least I could do was offer them a single piece of trust back.

When he looked up at me, his expression was rabid.

“Can you teach it?” He must have seen my facial expression, because he immediately leapt into his next sentence. “No — it’s dangerous, right? How dangerous is it?”

“Very. Apologies.” I said. “I could start teaching you… but not here. And there’s no guarantee you’d be compatible with what I could teach you — you’d have to know what your elemental roots are attributed to. If your path isn’t compatible with mine…”

“Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I got excited. It’s just…” Eros sighed. “You came from very far away didn’t you? Are you even from this world? Or have you been living in an untouched reach of the Savage Expanse?”

Eros stepped over the sand and sat next to me. Poppy and Anna slept through it all.

“Very, very far.” I agreed without answering. “I’m not even sure how far.”

“But maybe you’d be able to teach me if I could build up the right resources — is elemental root attribute like Mana Affinity? No… you didn’t know what mana was, so you wouldn’t…” Eros sighed. “Sorry. Magic was always my dream. Almost everyone in my family inherited a Nature affinity. But mine — I didn’t. Screw it. I don’t need it.”

I looked at Eros calculatingly. If the dimensional rebound happened in two days, I didn’t even have time to help him obtain the start of his cultivation. And without solidifying my second core, I couldn’t check his attributes. Everyone had cultivation attributes. They wouldn’t have to be exact matches to the path — just near enough. Teaching him cultivation now would just endanger him.

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“You have good friends.” I said, resting a hand on Eros’s shoulder. “Make them your power. You’d be surprised what many mortals coming together can accomplish.”

“You’re right. If Poppy can build a whole new dynasty, then I can too.” Eros’s eyes scanned the room. “And if we live, we’ll get more out of this dungeon than anyone else.”

I nodded at him.

“If you don’t mind, I need to continue meditating.”

“Huh.” Eros said. “The mages of my family gain [Meditation] as well. Yeah. Sorry. And congrats on your first class. It’s a big step forward for most.”

Eros pushed himself up, grabbing another cup of water and holding it while sitting on the other side of the room. I closed my eyes once more, and with a bit of mental focus, pulled forward the system prompt from my class.

[Anti-Light Insurgent 1]

[Skills:]

[Zone 1][10 Spheres Remaining]

[Zone modifies Reality in a designated space. Entities trapped within will accelerate the Decay of a Zone, contesting against your own Authority. Current zone forms:]

[Slow][Accelerate][Carve]

[Slow: Decrease the progression of time within the sphere.]

[Accelerate: Increase the progression of time within the sphere.]

[Carve: Increase the cost of all magic within the sphere.]

The text for the Carve zone were written in a shimmering green that seemed to subtley shift and writhe under my gaze. It was as if the System — or whatever had imparted it to me — was trying to tell me there was more to it.

Inspecting it made the skill seem to itch, like there was something just beyond my reach.

Whatever it did, I wasn’t going to be testing it out inside of this cramped room. I settled into meditation, draining the dark-aligned qi from the sand around me. My meditation absorbed me so deeply that time slipped away.

With each breath, I pulled in the rich ambient qi in the air, compressing it down from its free-floating gaseous state into an almost liquid form that filled my channels with power.

Eros woke Anna for her own shift watching. I heard him settle in and opened my eyes to look at him. He was sitting near me, copying my position exactly and taking deep, measured breaths.

I chuckled to myself. Copying the outer movements of cultivation wouldn’t —

“I got a skill?” Eros asked, eyes flicking open. “Ugh. Intelligence spec. Meditation? What the hell does this description mean?”

“What skill?” Anna asked. She sounded groggy.

“[Meditation.]”

Anna rubbed her eyes for a moment before replying.

“Get some sleep.” She said.

Eros settled in again, closing his eyes.

The stream of power in the room seemed never ending. The Dark qi overpowered the remaining Wind qi inside me, making everything feel muted. I kept drinking it in anyway, more and more until I felt I was practically bursting at the seams with power. For a moment, I had a thought about breaking through into the Second Realm. If it wasn’t for the two elements being imbalanced, I would’ve broken through right there and then.

High on the power coursing through me, I didn’t even notice when the entire night passed. The room began to rumble open right as the air grew thin of the qi inside of it. I blinked my eyes open.

The spirit-sand across the floor had crumbled away almost entirely, small piles remaining over smooth stone tiles. Poppy and Anna whispered in the opposite corner of the room while Eros slept on the floor. He had circles under his eyes — he must have stayed awake to cultivate.

I stood with a groan and a stretch. My muscles felt coiled tight after an entire night of cultivating. With focus, I relaxed them one by one.

“Rested up?” Poppy asked. Her eyes flicked to Eros then back to me.

“Yeah. Better than ever.”

I started my series of stretches for the day.

Anna leaned her head out and looked into the next room.

“Holy sh — wake Eros up now!” She said.

I dropped and unsheathed my sword from where it sat on the ground, pulling it free and rising back to my feet in one motion.

“What is it?” I asked.

Poppy was also up, in a fighting stance despite not wearing her armor.

“The next room is full of food!” Anna shouted.

Poppy groaned, rolling her eyes and sitting back down to pull on her armor piece by piece.

In the next room were a series of dais with meals on them — proper meals, befitting a noble. I could only see a few from the doorway. They each sat within cubes of transparent force.

I relaxed and sheathed the sword, tied my belt, and took the first few steps into the room.

There were no traps or obstacle courses. Just the cubes of force. The food inside of them appeared to be frozen in place. Maybe even frozen in time.

“Wait up!” Poppy said from the other room.

I browsed what the room held. Food, and another stream of water. Broken clay cups along the stream. There were no instruction manuals.

The planes of force felt hard to the touch, but neither cold nor hot, as if they didn’t transfer heat at all. They distorted as I applied force to them. I tried to sense qi outside my body with my hand pressed to them; it was like reality simply ended where my hand was pressed. The sensation was unnerving; it was like a part of the world was simply carved away.

I pulled my hand back and waited for the others.

It took a few minutes for Poppy to don all of her armor, and she practically dragged Eros out into the room. His eyes lit up when he saw the food on display. Half asleep, he walked up and reached for a dais of noodle stacked bowls. His hand bounced off the cubes.

“Apologies; do any of you know what these are?”

Poppy looked at me expectantly.

“They’re not setting off [Detect Trap.]” Anna said. “Show us how to open them!”

“I’ve never seen these before.” I frowned, walking around the dais Eros had reached for.

He was rubbing his hand.

I used [Identify] on the cube he had tried to open. It was becoming easier; a tiny focused application of will. Far easier than shaping an entire cultivation technique.

[Zone of Stasis]

I pressed my hand to the cube.

“Let’s try…” I hesitated. Would I be able to use the skill as easily as [Identify?] There was only one way to find out. I spoke the word aloud, focusing on the intent. “[Zone: Carve.]”

I was forced backwards, sliding more than a foot as a sphere of power erupted around the cube. The two forces seemed to counteract each-other. The sphere acted like a second transparent plane of force, this one burning green. At its edges, reality seemed to flicker, the air dancing, flickering and jumping left and right.

[Spheres remaining: 9]

Something at my very center strained. Then the sphere of green collapsed downward, and both the sphere and cube shattered into pieces. Green smoke rose where the cube had been, still wafting into the air, as if burning the very space it had occupied. The smell of food filled the room nearly instantly. The part of me that strained felt like it had grown ever so slightly stronger, sore like a muscle after a workout.

Steam wafted off the food, still hot inside of the stasis chamber. Shattering other zones was not in the skills description, but I still had no idea what it actually did.

“Eros, is this food safe?” Poppy asked.

I nearly jumped. I hadn’t realized she had been right behind me.

Eros stepped up and stared down for a moment.

“Well, it’s not poisoned. Probably.” He said.

“And it’s not trapped!” Anna said. She seemed much more upbeat after a night of sleep.

“It feels too good to be true.” Poppy said. She was on guard constantly.

I liked that about her.

[Dimensional Rebound in 42 Hours]

I hesitated at the sudden appearance of the prompt. Then I used [Identify] on it.