“Hey, I just hit my leveling threshold! Are you good for a run through the first floor of the dungeon, see if the door to the holy place for classing opens up?” Kestra felt like bouncing with joy. She wasn’t a prodigy for getting to her third class by her mid twenties, but that had more to do with the utility of the core skills for a [Combat Alchemist] and a [Woods Wraith Hunter]. Her Alchemy skills made her the primary [Healer] for their party, aided in large part with having learned the valuable First Aid skill. Her [Hunter] skills meant she didn’t have to just stand back when they got into fights, and she and Dualla, the [Umbral Scout] of their party, often worked together when tracking down monster commissions.
“Not going to wait to cap skills at forty, huh?” Dualla arched an intrigued eyebrow, then grinned. “Sure! Let’s get Patil and Geunter. I think they’re close, too!”
“Of course I skill capped! If I can open a [Healer] type class, won’t that be great?” Kestra giggled.
“Oh, is that what you’re going for? Not something to make more booms?”
Nose in the air with mock-dignity, Kestra said, “Someone told me I have to put the bits all back in place after I make them go explode-y.”
Dualla rolled her eyes. “Your aim’s gotten a lot better. Let’s get the guys.” She led the way as the two women went off to find the pair of [Warriors] that finished off their party.
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The Fang Crest dungeon was located in an established Knighthold, and the knight's retainers managed access to the dungeon, as well as collecting their Sir's taxes on the way out. It wasn't uncommon for the dungeon to be called the Dungeon of Snakes, either, because they were on every floor, mixed in with weasels and a few other fanged creatures. Fang Crest had reached a depth of twelve floors, but the classing room only opened after defeating the first floor boss. Kestra's party, the Silent Scouts, could safely delve to the seventh floor, but none of them were quite ready to tackle the giant Earth element viper that served as the seventh floor boss.
Kestra's team queued for entry to the dungeon, and shared a bit of light hearted gossip. When their turn came up, they tore through the first floor.
They were watchful, and they respected the dangers of the dungeon. The traps did occasionally change, and they were painful, potentially lethal if triggered in the wrong circumstances. Kestra took point on disabling them as she was hoping to get a class evolution for her [Combat Alchemist] that would let her craft alchemical traps. Every bit of help she could get to advance her Traps skill she took.
The first floor monsters were primarily dangerous for their speed. There was only one venomous kind of snake on this floor, and the venom was a paralytic that mostly numbed a limb for up to an hour. That was one of the reasons every member of the Silent Scouts had at least a secondary [Scout] class; they all got passive boosts to their perception skills and reaction speeds.
They could hear the sound of fighting down one of the other pathways when they reached the boss room, but no one was waiting there, so in they went. The dire giant weasel that served as the boss came up to hip height when on all four legs, and towered over them by nearly twice their own height when standing on his back legs. He lost a smidgen of his speed to his size, but it was still a fairly straightforward fight.
Drill with arrows from Kestra and Dualla while the boss charged. Patil Taunted with a burst of mana, and then it was all just managing their skill use so that the "flavor" of mana was always strongest on their [Shield Wall Warrior]. Any time the boss tried to bounce away, Geunter's [Sword Dancer] blades raked it, trying for vital bits like tendons.
In the span of twenty paced breaths, the boss lay defeated. Kestra checked over her teammates and applied an alchemical bandage as needed. By the time that was done, the boss's body had dispersed back into the dungeon, and a chest, Uncommon grade, had popped up. It held a small imprintable Minor Holding ring and four large bronze coins.
And the door to the holy place stood open, next to the open pathway down to the next floor.
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Holy places didn't only show up in dungeons. It was probably Kestra's village roots that she still thought of the places where one went to gain their classes as holy places. By the village she grew up in, there had been a holy place with a tree at the center, and they had made the quarter day hike out to the holy place, hung up their offerings in the branches of the tree, poured out the libations at the tree's roots, and in return were granted their classes and the opportunity to become more tomorrow than they were the day before.
People from cities and towns mostly only ever saw the holy places in the dungeons, and they learned to call them "classing rooms". Their offerings were more … bloody than Kestra had grown up learning to give, either bandages wet with their freshly spilled blood or the corpses of monsters they had slain.
That worked for some, but Kestra kept to her village ways, pulling out alchemically treated parts for a trap and assembling it while she knelt in the classing room. She added two potion pots, one with her new formulation of Healing Salve and the other a concoction that helped people see through the darkness.
There wasn't a tree with roots to water, but she still pulled out a small dish and her most recent alcoholic brew, a mix between a honey mead and a frost distilled cider she was calling Honied Jack.
The liquid was still falling toward the bowl when the voice of the world spoke.
Elamshaq's Blessing falls upon you.
Kestra barely had time to register that ominous warning before the world around her fell away, leaving her suspended in a featureless void.
Elamshaq was not a divinity whose blessings the sane courted. The God of Trials' domain overlapped with Fortuna's Luck and Nam-Am's domain of Redemption. She didn't think she had done something to earn the dour god's attention, and the only thing keeping her from completely panicking at that moment was the idea that this was a blessing and not a penance. Blessings carried opportunities with them; penances were just painful correction.
Two breaths in the void reassured her that she wasn't going to suffocate in the dark, and then a tome appeared before her. The voice of the world spoke again.
Elamshaq's Blessing: You are being granted a rare tribulation. The text before you contains divine revelations. Internalize these revelations and use them to forge a personal realm. You are currently suspended in time, and shall not require food or water until you attempt to complete the tribulation. When you are ready to complete the tribulation, state that you are so ready and then form your realm.
Well, that was both ominous and reassuring, she supposed. Kestra opened the book and began to read.
She found that she could only parse a sentence or two before she had to pause to allow her mind the chance to calm enough to comprehend what she read. She did not notice how her skin took on a luminous quality, nor the faint currents that stirred to life while she read, contemplated, and read some more.
For anyone watching, it might have been mildly entertaining to see Kestra turn into a living light source, however it would have required someone with the patience of an ancient tree to notice the changes in the first place. For being caught up in a timeless moment, it took an awful long time for Kestra to read the tome, and then she went back to the beginning and read it all again, and then a third time.
After the fourth pass through, she began to try out different things, creating small balls of super dense light or floating gravity wells, then returning to the book to check different bits of the revelations before going back to tinker with her experiments.
She played about as she explored the consequences of the revelations in the book, forgetting the tribulation entirely as she got caught up in the ideas she was learning.
Had time been passing normally, some millennia later Kestra remembered once upon a time being given some sort of quest and went searching back through her memories to discover the details. That prompted the voice of the world to repeat the description of her "blessing".
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Kestra reoriented her activities based on the instructions from what she now knew to be a Divine Mana Circulation System message. A vague memory of entering one of the holy places for her class upgrade reminded her that she had people waiting on her.
The personal realm sounded like a fun idea, too, and Kestra decided to use the tome of revelations as a basis for a test run. Only, it wouldn't be polite to use the exact tome before her, so she painstakingly recreated it, using the principles hidden within the revelations, and then made her test realm.
It started out as a sphere with a diameter of a scant hundred meters, as much of a void as the timeless moment in which Kestra currently hung. She tweaked it here and there and decided she liked the idea of keeping this first realm a blank canvas. It would be like her personal storage realm, she decided, and added to the realm a variable stasis effect and an inventory system, creating a minor servitor of Order to keep the inventory neat and tidy. Deciding on the instructions at the heart of the servitor turned into another fairly long and lengthy process, and she opted to leave the servitor, a kind of sprite, with spiritual room to grow, in the event she needed to amend any of those instructions.
Happy with this trial run, Kestra made another three copies of the book of divine revelations and stored one in her storage realm. She repeated the realm making a second time, just to be sure she had the process down pat.
In this realm, she achieved a sphere with a diameter closer to five hundred meters, and she tucked in a lot of the stable bits of materials left over from her experiments. They turned into air, water, soil and stone, which she shaped into a pleasant stone cabin and spring. The things that weren't good soil, or would have poisoned the air and the water, she gave to her Inventory Sprite to safely store. The sprite seemed to enjoy the charge, at least.
When she had tweaked as much of her second realm as she thought useful, she mentally stepped back from it and announced, "I'm ready to clear this tribulation."
A new presence joined her, a vaguely humanoid form that was doing a solid job of remaining vague. "Begin," the new comer ordered, and Kestra suddenly felt quite shy. She admonished herself for being silly and set about making a third personal realm.
This one began as a sphere with a kilometer diameter. She didn't get a chance to tweak it or toy with it the way she had with her first two realms before the newcomer said, "You have passed my tribulation. Place this within your new realm."
The figure passed over a chunk of mana crystal, and Kestra placed it in the center of her newest realm.
"That is not just a mana crystal. That is a world seed. When I return you to the moment from which I blessed you, it will soak up the after effects of all the experiments you ran through during this tribulation, preventing harm to come to those with you in the holy place.
"Any revelation from the tome that you have failed to hold in your soul will soon be stripped from you, as will your class and all the augments to your body that join you to this world. Only that which is soul-bonded, such as your realms, will remain with you once that process is completed. I wish you well on your journeys, and I hope that you remember me with fondness wherever you next alight."
She didn't get a chance to ask any questions as the void receded, returning her to the small room where she had laid down her offerings.
In the physical world, Kestra’s jaw was still falling open from reading the first notice when another message overtook her.
You have been selected to transmigrate to another world! You have three days to put your affairs in order. Only imprinted items can transmigrate with you. During these three days, you are immortal, and your actions will affect your transmigration. Divine eyes are watching you.
Transmigrate? What could that mean? Wasn’t she here to get her third class?
The bottle of Honied Jack from which she had been pouring slipped from her grasp, the pottery cracking.
Kestra stumbled out from the holy place, back into the boss room.
Dualla's grin faded into a puzzled expression. "What happened in there?" she asked.
"Where's your classes!?" Geunter asked, slacked jawed.
"You're not a damn [Rogue] now are you?" Patil asked, stepping back.
"What?" Kestra asked. "No! When have I ever betrayed anyone!? I didn't get a class; I got a—. I don't know, a quest? Something about 'transmigrating' in three days and only imprinted items coming with me. I swear before Solaris: may I burn if I lie!"
The light of a divine confirmation seared over Kestra, down from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet and back up, ending in a miniature sun that blazed before winking out of existence.
Her team mates relaxed.
"Well, where did your classes go, then?" Dualla asked.
Kestra quickly turned her focus to that inner spark where the knowledge of her classes and skills danced, only to find it gone. She felt her blood rush out of her limbs and face, her body curling inward with shock.
"They're gone!" she whispered, trembling.
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The Silent Scouts hurriedly tucked their shaken team mate into their center and marched her out the exit tunnel. They made her imprint the ring to drop the tax on it, and then kept themselves interposed between her and the rest of the world as they paid their taxes on the dungeon loot. Even with the significant drop in value with the ring being imprinted already, they barely covered the tax on it with the coin in their pockets. Then they hurried Kestra down to the Free Lancer's compound.
They ignored the queue tokens and marched Kestra to the counter. Fortunately, there were two clerks working the counter and only one with a group.
"We need an officer for an urgent confidential matter," Dualla stated, her tone vibrating with controlled panic.
The clerk had opened his mouth to snap at them, but he closed his lips, gave them a more studied look over, then nodded. "This way," he said, pointing them to the door in the far wall that led further into the administrative maze of the compound.
He met them at the door, opening it from the other side, and then guided them to an empty room. "I'll get the first available officer in to see you. Silent Scouts, right?"
They nodded.
The clerk departed.
Within a rush mark, not just any officer, but both the Guild and the Compound Masters arrived.
Guild Master Bertea and Compound Master Yorsing swept the room with high tier Inspect skills that even in her stripped state Kestra felt. They both focused on her.
"Explain," Bertea ordered.
It took them a bit to sort out their words. Kestra did not notice how her memories of the tribulation had been fogged over, and only spoke of the message that accompanied being stripped of her connection with their world and her classes.
"Transmigration?" The Compound Master slowly drawled out the word with a questioning lilt. His gaze grew distant and his expression flattened into a kind of somber soberness that a stranger might use to tell a child their pet just died. He sighed. "Well, it sounds like you have three days to fill up that Holding ring and write out your farewell letters for any friends or family you won't get to see in time for personal farewells. I suggest sticking to low mana items, and avoid prepared alchemical items. I've met two transmigrators; they are more commonly known as the Second Born. One came from a … 'universe' where mana and magic were the stuff of children's stories and little more. The other was from a 'realm' she called it, and mana was bound up in crystals, could only be used through special runic formations. I'll see if I can get a response fast enough, but I remember being told that the nature of mana is the biggest difference between where one transmigrates from and to."
Kestra shivered. Though neither of her classes were—. Had been based on mana, the elements of mana were foundational.
Or were they expressions?
Though she didn’t know where the question came from, it comforted her, and more thoughts flowed along to reassure her.
Frames of reference, a matter of perspective. Find the Laws, find the immutable nature, and the expressions turn from mysteries into determined aspects, neither more nor less wondrous for their predefined paths.
She nodded to show she heard the Compound Master even as she was distracted dealing with what he had said. "So, bring simple sword, bow, arrows. Enchantable material, but not enchanted. Perhaps seeds, to see how they grow in the new … place I end up. Okay. First, I need to reimburse my team for the ring. I'll bring bar gold, silver, and iron, but none of the rune-scribed coin. Food and water, cloth and leather.
"I don't have anyone to write to. My parents are dead, my only siblings are here, and we've never been close with our extended family.
"I maybe— No, I shouldn't leave the Compound. With you knowing that I'm no [Rogue], I'm safe enough here, but if any of the Sir's men Inspect me and fail to find a class, they'll like as not assume I've taken one of the forbidden classes, or worse yet think me a monster in human guise. There's no need for me to get in a fight with the Sir's men, and I haven't the time to waste sorting out a legal mess on top of handing over my legacy."
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No more information about transmigration was forthcoming over the next three days. Kestra's siblings, two older sisters Mira and Hildai, bawled over the coming separation and then promptly began shoveling food at her to fill up her ring.
Kestra smiled and thanked them, then traded the food for travel loafs, a nutritionally dense blend of grains, herbs, fruits, meats, and fats encased like a sausage.
Her looted ring may have only allowed her two cubic meters of storage space, but the temporal effect was very close to true stasis, the ratio around 1 million to 1. That is to say, for every million seconds that passed for Kestra (roughly 11.5 days), only a single second passed for the items in her ring.
She hoped the ring would work at least as well when she transmigrated, but if it didn't, well, she was no worse off for filling it up than leaving it empty. She hoped.
Another thing she discovered was that, even without that spark where her classes and skills had lived, she was no less skilled at her Alchemy than before, and perhaps a touch better. She didn't hear the voice of the world when she Inspected others, but she still gained a vague sense of their strengths and aptitudes. Telling [Warriors] from [Scouts] was surprisingly easier without the interference of the voice of the world, and the line that distinguished [Laborers] from [Artisans] seemed even more clear-cut. [Laborers] simply lacked the same passion for their craft that [Artisans] held.
On the third night since receiving the notice that she would be transmigrating, Kestra laid down to sleep, her ring repacked for the hundredth-odd time, and closed her eyes.
At some point while she slept, a cloud of mana gathered around her. It condensed along her skin, forming a shell, and then even more mana streamed into the shell.
Anyone looking on with normal, human vision, wouldn't have seen a thing. Those paying attention with some kind of mana sense were overwhelmed by the density of mana that kept pouring in and in, until all of a sudden it imploded, leaving a person shaped hole in the world.
The bedding frayed, the individual fibers disintegrating under the intense mana over-saturation, but a hand's width from where Kestra's body had lain was as undisturbed as if nothing note-worthy had happened.