The two kept wandering through the tunnels as they twisted around over themselves for another few hours. They didn’t find anything of particular interest, but Zoe was happy with her progress of exploring. There were a few more large open caves that other tunnels connected to and she made marks as she walked around to put together a bit of a map.

Drawing the entire labyrinth of tunnels was impossible for her, so she took a simpler strategy of marking each tunnel that she went through with a symbol, and then wrote down the order of symbols she followed.

Starting from the tunnel she’d carved out of the hill herself, she could go towards the star which would take her to the massive main cavern, or towards the square which took her towards the smaller cave that she fought the first two Frozen Shards in.

After that, another star took her back towards the massive main cavern — stars were her marking of tunnels that only led to the main cavern. And the other tunnels were marked with whatever symbols she felt like at the moment. Squares, circles, diamonds, a slash, or two slashes. The exact symbols weren’t important, as long as each intersection didn’t have the same symbol twice she could write down an order and follow it to the same place every time.

There were some more Frozen Shards that Zoe found as they explored, but with her new strategy they were simple to take out. Build up a shield to block their projectiles and then pummel them with blunt force. She tried to do the same with Frost at one point, just to save on the hassle of ripping rock out of the walls but it was ineffective.

The Frost projectiles she created were almost all absorbed into the Frozen Shards on impact. It did some damage, and with enough of them Zoe was able to take one of the Frozen Shards down with just her Frost. But it was a slow and tedious process compared to just smashing through them with rock, so she didn’t try again.

Eliza and Zoe were chatting on their way back while they followed the rudimentary map Zoe had made.

“So who do you think made the system anyway?” Zoe asked. “Richard said it probably wasn’t a god, which is fair I guess. But I think that making the system is basically like being a god of this world, anyway. What even would count as a god anyway?"

“Hmm, I’ve thought a lot about who would have created it. If you’re going to argue that somebody made it, then the first thing anybody usually asks is who made it. But I don’t know for sure. Probably some being that I’ve never met. Maybe it was a god. Maybe it was just some powerful mage who was sick of not having a rigid structure to cast their magic with.” Eliza shrugged.

“Do you think it’ll ever go away?” Zoe asked.

Eliza laughed. “No, god no. The system’s here to stay. It breaks at times but the system’s not doing anything that we can’t do, for the most part. I mean I don’t know how I’d go about making a dungeon, or identify things without the system. But I think if it disappeared, we’d just have to relearn how to do things for a while.”

“Wait, you can make a dungeon?” Zoe looked at Eliza.

“No, I don’t mean that I could do it even with the system. But the system makes them, right? Why couldn’t we, if we really tried? I don’t think the system adds anything to our world, I think it just provides more of a structure. Hmmm…

“Like a mountain, you can climb a mountain, right? Walk up to a cliff and pull yourself up bit by bit. I think the world is the cliff, it’s there. It’s climbable. We could, through our own efforts climb to the top. But it would be easier if there were already a rope hanging down, hooks to attach yourself to, footholds marked and visible. That’s the system.” Eliza explained.

“And then the creator of the system would be whoever climbed it first and put the rope down to begin with?” Zoe asked.

“Exactly! But enough about that. What classes did you end up getting for your first class?” Eliza asked.

“There were a few good ones. Elemental Master seemed good. Lots of elemental bonuses, probably good magic. Master of Frost, Temporal Anomaly both looked good too, but I ended up with Seasoned Frost” Zoe explained, she still had some reservations about sharing everything about herself with people but it was just so tedious to manage.

Who gets to know her class choices, who gets to know her feats, who gets to know her origin, who gets to know her skills. It’s so stressful trying to keep things quiet and under wraps, and for what? So people didn’t know about what class she had? Was somebody going to kidnap her and do horrible experiments on her?

It was too late to worry about that at this point anyway, the secret was out. Emma’s mom surely didn’t keep everything a secret so many years ago, and neither did Zoe anyway. Some things were too much for her — where she came from, what kind of life she lived before. Maybe even the exact distribution of her stats, who knows. But her class choices? That just didn’t seem like a big deal.

Eliza asked what the requirements were, and Zoe explained them. Eliza looked at her with a questioning expression. “Why did you go with Seasoned Frost? I feel like Elemental Master was a better fit for you if you wanted freedom.”

“Hmm. I don’t really know. I decided years prior that I wanted a cold class, and I guess I just tunnel visioned on that. The best cold class I had was the one I wanted to take. Plus a friend said it was good, and last time I didn’t trust him I got burned pretty bad.

“I think if I went back in time now I’d do things differently. I rushed into things a bit too much. I could have waited around for another decade, maybe two. Kept getting more skills, levels and stats. Got even better classes. But it’s just the first class and I’m happy with it overall. No point in belabouring about it now.”

“Well it might evolve still anyway, so you’re not totally out of luck.” Eliza said.

“Wait what? It can evolve? I thought I was stuck with it forever.” Zoe stared at Eliza, mouth agape.

“It’s rare, but it happens. I’ve only seen it a handful of times. Usually you have to do something specific with the class and then it evolves. I know of one person who had the Dragonslayer class, which evolved into Bane of Dragons after they killed enough dragons. Maybe your Seasoned Frost evolves when it gets cold enough.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“I think that every class can evolve, personally. But the requirements aren’t clear and often times not even related to what the class would want to do.” Eliza shrugged.

“So would an Apprentice Mage class evolve into Mage at some point then?” Zoe said.

“Maybe. I think it’s possible. Never heard of it happening myself though. Who knows what you’d have to do. What constitutes a graduation from being an Apprentice Mage? Taking another proper Mage class? I’d have heard about it if it was.” Eliza explained.

“I just won’t get my hopes up then, I like my class anyway. It’s pretty fun.” Zoe said.

“That’s the spirit.” Eliza said, and turned down the last square marked tunnel towards the exist.

“Oh, I heard of skills being uncapped before too. How does that end up happening?" Zoe asked.

“Particularly powerful classes often reward you with a higher limit on certain skills. An Arch mage class might give you a higher meditation limit, a powerful warrior class might give you an increased cap on some fighting skill maybe. It’s not super common but it happens now and then.” Eliza said.

“Alright, thanks.” Zoe said and pushed mana into the earthen door in the wall. It shrunk aside, and Zoe flooded it with her Wind Manipulation to make sure they could breathe in it.

“No problem. Thanks for all the info, you’ve given me a lot to work on now.” Eliza said.

“Like what? What do you do, anyway?" Zoe asked.

“I do stuff like this. Explore ruins, look for anything interesting. I think I’m going to try and get some of those elemental skills now though. I already have a lot of space and time research for my magic, but they’re not technically skills. Might be able to figure something out though.” Eliza said.

“Well if you do, come help me out with them and I’ll consider your debt paid.” Zoe grinned.

Eliza laughed. “Fair enough. I’ll tell Lila to contact you if I ever figure them out then.”

“Good. It was nice talking to you again. I’m sorry I didn’t contact you sooner, I honestly just didn’t know who I could trust.” Zoe said.

“It was frustrating but I get it. I wouldn’t have trusted me either.” Eliza said.

The two walked through the entrance Zoe carved out, and Zoe opened the other side and led Eliza out of the hill.

“Well it was nice seeing you again Zoe, let me know if you find anything super cool here.” Eliza said, and then vanished moments later.

It was a fun experience having her along for the journey through the cavern, but Zoe was excited to have some time to herself as well. Everything felt so much more rushed when she was with other people, like she had to go at their pace.

And she still hadn’t even had time to process the fact that Ash was dead. Zoe started walking back over to her home cave.

It’s not like Ash was a great friend or anything, in fact they had met no more than a handful of times. Acquaintances at best, but it was still a weird feeling. They were just gone.

Not just gone, either. Gone so long ago that everybody else had moved on from it, and Zoe had no idea. She wasn’t upset about it, not too upset anyway. It was an odd feeling, knowing that somebody she knew was just gone now.

Lynn’s husband had died before too, and that was fine. But Ash was somebody Zoe knew, and they were just gone. The mortality of people ate away at her. It wasn’t even Ash dying that bothered her. It was the fear that Joe would be dead when she went back to Flester, that somebody other than Emma would answer when she knocked on the tower’s wooden door.

Maybe she hadn’t quite gotten over her fear of her friends’ mortality. Zoe took a few deep breaths. It was okay that people died. That’s what people did, they died. That was okay. It wasn’t a happy experience, but it was a part of life. And Zoe needed to accept that, as hard as it was when death stared her in the face.

She pushed the thoughts aside and kept walking back to her cave. She couldn’t let the fear control her anymore, she couldn’t let it warp her decisions and push her into things she didn’t want to do for herself. It was okay to be afraid, it was okay to worry. But letting those dark thoughts poison her decisions was unproductive, she knew that.

There were other things to think about, like the icy splinters she’d gathered from wandering around the cave. Zoe was excited to try enchanting things with them, maybe she could use her Carpentry experience to set them into something and help bolster its enchantment capability.

Zoe opened her Earthen door on her cave and flooded it with wind before she walked in. Having the door seal itself off in her cave was not the best of ideas, she’d come to realize. It was fun and secretive, but she needed to make some ventilation.

There was already the one hole she’d been using as a chimney, but even if she pushed air out of it now there wasn’t anywhere else for air to come in through. Zoe spent some time digging out another tunnel next to her door that connected to the outside just under a tree to keep it somewhat hidden. She pulled up some of the stone to make it extend a little ways out of the ground and then added a cap so that rain and leaves wouldn’t be able to just fall into her chimney.

Next, Zoe went back to her chimney and closed off the tunnel not far into it, then she turned it to the side and cut through the mountain to make a much shorter ventilation shaft. While she was there, she added a similar cap to the end of the tunnel to keep out all the detritus.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would be good enough for her for a while at least. Zoe went back to her cave and sat down on her bed. The ventilation tunnels were great, but they’d be much better if she could get some fans to help assist the air flow through them.

She pulled out one of the icy splinters from her bracelet and then started flooding it with mana. It took almost twenty minutes before it was full, and she enchanted it with Wind Manipulation, Meditation and Enchanting.

The wind was much more powerful than she expected, rather than the subtle current that her fans made before there was a very noticeable pressure created from the wind blowing on her. She watched the wisps of mana float around as they were drawn into the splinter and noticed it was much more than she would expect from a simple Meditation and Enchanting combination.

The mana in the splinter didn’t seem to drain, at least not a noticeable amount in the few minutes she watched. She’d have to check on it after some more time to be sure that it wasn’t just slowly draining, after all it did take quite some time to flood it with mana in the first place. But either way, she was shocked at how much of a difference the splinters made compared to enchanting her Frost, or a chunk of earth.

What was the difference, anyway? Why was it so much better? Just because it was pieces of a monster? Or was there something else that she could replicate with practice using her Frost? Density, maybe? There were too many questions she had, and none that she could answer right now.

Zoe made another of the powerful fans and placed one on each of her ventilation tunnels to keep the air flowing, and then fell asleep on her bed. Before she went back into the frozen tunnels, she wanted to get some more experience with her other skills, and depending on how close she was maybe get another class too.