Zoe sat at the table looking through her stat sheet and checking all of the skills she had left in her classes. Bearer of Words had the Bearer of Books skill and the Notebook skill — both somewhat convenient, but not all too necessary for her.
“Actually,” Zoe said to Oliver on the floor. “I guess there aren’t more skills to combine into the Bearer of Ink skill. Cause the Notebook skill should have combined into it too, right? Or maybe I could make a portable pencil skill. Maybe it’s just for writing, and not for the actual stuff you write on?”
She shrugged. “Not all that important I guess, really. Do you think Notebook would be worth getting? I got by just fine before it. Bearer of Books is pretty nice too but do I really need to keep that much storage just for books? I could just buy another storage ring or bracelet or sock if I really needed more storage, right?”
Zoe looked through her Elemental Shaman skills. Elemental Growth and Elemental Creation were both quite nice, when she used them. But she hadn’t used either in over a decade now, maybe even closing in on two decades. Nature’s Clearing was an amazing skill though, and even if she didn’t use it often, might be worth spending at least a little time trying to replicate.
All of her enchanting skills she’d already decided weren’t worth spending time on yet, which left her Cosmic Mystic class. She’d already gotten the Cosmic Familiar skill for herself, which just left her Cosmic Rift and Cosmic Armour as options, if she wanted them.
Armour was somewhat redundant since her Elemental Arsenal filled a similar shoe and she’d never be able to replace her Seasoned Persistence class. Or if she did, it would be an upgrade and likely not lose much if any of the capability it had yet.
Realistically, none of the new classes she’d found would be her true final options. Knowing that she could combine classes together to make far more powerful ones with even more slots available for skills left her hesitant to settle on anything less for a permanent decision.
And if one day, perhaps far in the future, she’d be replacing all of these classes with even more powerful ones anyway then was it really all that important to optimize everything as much as possible right now? Did she need Cosmic Rift to thrive in this world?
It was powerful, and if she ever wanted to go back down into the valleys to try and meet the wanderers again, she’d want to have that power. But she could get that power through other options, too. And whenever she decided to do something dangerous, she could just switch into some class options that better suited what she was trying to do.
Zoe nodded her head. She’d spend a few days trying to recreate Nature’s Clearing and if it didn’t look promising, she’d just start replacing classes one after the other. Mana surged around her as she cast her skill, with a dim green light expanding to fill the room she was in. Oliver looked up at the sudden light and then to Zoe, before he laid his head back down with his paws over his eyes.
*Ding* You are within Zoe Mara’s [Nature’s Clearing]. Increased health regeneration. Increased resistance to Mental, Poison, Pain, Heat, Fire, Cold, Disintegration, Time, Space, Gravity, Ice, Wind, Lightning, Sound, Bone, Flora damage types. Reduced damage dealt to other creatures within [Nature’s Clearing].
The mana was intense, an absolutely astounding amount of mana that didn’t seem to stop pouring from her body to power the aura around her. And the pattern that it formed was massive, beginning from Zoe’s body and winding throughout the entire space covered by her aura. She let the skill go and cast it again, watching as the mana expanded from her body and wound over itself as it settled on its final distance with thick strands of flowing mana stretching out, pushing back against the dense wall at the edge.
“I dunno if this one’s gonna be worth it, buddy. But I’ll give it my best shot.” Zoe said to Oliver who was pawing at his face, trying to cover his eyes from the dim green light.
The days passed, with the light expanding from Zoe’s body hundreds of times so she could watch the pattern as it flooded the area around her. There was a lot of mana, far more than any other skill she’d studied. But it wasn’t all that complicated, Zoe found. There were dozens of different components all linked together with an abundance of powerful mana, but each component on its own did a simple task. A wall that held in the surge of mana flooding from Zoe’s body, pathways for that mana to follow and be distributed through the aura.
More weeks flew by as Zoe studied each component, documenting every wisp of mana she saw and trying to pick it all apart from the surge of what Zoe was calling raw mana that powered the continued effect. Other skills that Zoe had studied had similar things — when Zoe summoned a ball of Frost, there was a trickle of mana when she would move it or even just keep it floating. But that totalled maybe dozens of mana every second. This was almost a hundred thousand mana per second, rushing through the skill and almost overwhelming the structure Zoe could see.
Her notes grew, each piece of the structure with its own small notebook of diagrams, laid out on her table like a blueprint of the skill itself. When she finally got through the last piece of the puzzle, she double checked all of her notes and tried to cast the skill without the system’s help, finding it difficult just to control that amount of mana without the system’s help.
She could make the wall that held mana in, but once she tried forming the pathways her mana followed, the wall’s structure crumbled. And if she tried to build the wall back up, the structure of her pathways fell apart. There were too many components, all working together and all needing to be flawless at the exact same time.
It took days of attempts before Zoe managed to get her first completed attempt in, and she was rewarded with a system message.
*Ding* You have unlocked the Life’s Domain skill.
Zoe smiled and ripped out a piece of paper to write on.
Hey Emma, come back home. I’m taking my new classes now.
She held the paper and pushed mana into her new Sending skill. The paper surged with mana before it vanished into a tiny pocket of space. An hour later, an excited looking Emma ran through the front door.
“You’re done? Really really? Done done?” Emma slammed her hands on the table, sending some of the loose papers a few inches into the air with a bright smile on her face. “You’re gonna take your new classes now? Really really?"
“Yup.” Zoe said.
“Okay. Okay.” Emma sat down, then stood up again and walked around the chair to sit down again. “Okay. Cool.”
Zoe laughed. “You seem more excited than I do.”
Emma laughed. “I have a secret.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Oh?” Zoe lifted an eyebrow.
“Mhm. Mhm. But I’ll share that after. You get your new class. I wanna see it.” Emma said.
“Alright. This is going to super, super suck.” Zoe said as she moved all of her items from her Storage skill to her various storage items.
“You’re replacing your third class, right? You’re gonna lose four classes worth of stats and skills.” Emma laughed. “You’re nuts.”
Zoe chuckled and took a deep breath to prepare for the system’s wrath, then urged the system to replace her Cosmic Mystic with Cosmic Explorer. The system’s mana wracked through her body and soul, pulling out hundreds of levels of stats, dozens of skills and class effects that she’d grown used to. She cried out in pain and took a few minutes to get her bearings before she checked the notifications screaming at her.
*Ding* You have unlocked the Cosmic Explorer class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.
Effects:
- Cosmic Explorer: Gain twenty six stat points for each level in this class.
- Cosmic Vision: View the world around you.
- Cosmic Journey: You gain experience while exploring the cosmos.
- Explorer’s Mirth: Maximum mana increased by 175%, Mana regeneration and Maximum Health increased by 125%.
- Cosmic Mastery: All Cosmos aligned effects are boosted by 225%.
Available Skills:
- Cosmos Affinity: Increased Mana affinity
- Cosmos Manipulation: Manipulate the cosmos with your will.
- Cosmic Leap: Travel through the cosmos.
- Cosmic Launch: Throw yourself through the cosmos to somewhere new.
- Explorer’s Journey: Recall your journey and the places you’ve been with perfect memory.
- Traveller’s Tiny Tent: Form a small tent that can fit up to five people.
- Storage: Store objects.
- Cosmic Radiance: Remove dirt and grime from objects.
The class was interesting to Zoe for a number of reasons. The stat points were worse, and the bonuses were less powerful. But Cosmic Mystic gave her no mana regeneration at all, so Cosmic Explorer ended up being better for her mana output regardless. And the skills seemed far more useful to Zoe — in particular Explorer’s Journey and Cosmic Launch which both seemed to be quite interesting to test out.
Most important to Zoe though, was she still got to keep her Cosmic Vision skill. After getting used to being able to see everything around her, all at the same time, losing that ability wasn’t something she was interested in. Losing new senses was something she’d found very difficult to accept ever since she arrived on Abyllan, with just the thought of turning off her Vampyric Senses being offensive to her almost from day one.
“Well?" Emma pestered. ”What’d you get? You barely even told us anything about them before just that they’re good.“
“I didn’t really check much, to be honest. I just saw that they were good options, but I didn’t really try out any of the skills.” Zoe said.
“Well? What’d you get?" Emma asked.
Zoe filled Emma in on all the bonuses.
“Should we leave town to try it out?” Emma asked. “Some of those don’t sound like they’d be allowed inside the city.”
“Probably, yeah.” Zoe got up and walked with Emma to the gate and then ran through the forest until they were quite a ways away. At a very, very slow rate compared to what Zoe was used to. She didn’t even have any teleportation skills yet since she didn’t want to just trust Cosmic Leap to be a direct replacement to Cosmic Step without testing it first, and her physical stats were almost the same as when she first showed up on Abyllan now.
“Okay.” Emma said. “We’re far enough. Try out your teleport, I don’t wanna have to walk like this again.” She said with visible, exaggerated disdain.
Zoe chuckled and took the Cosmic Leap skill. Immediately, she was given another sense that was somewhat confusing to her. A swarm of information tickling the back of her mind as she looked around. Locations she realized after a few moments. Different points in space she could teleport to, small pinpricks that told her of obstructions behind her and to her sides — both now and moments in the future. Leaves that fell from the trees, branches that would flutter in a gust of wind in a few seconds.
“It feels like little pinpricks in the back of my head, telling me where I can teleport to. Or maybe where I can’t? It’s a little weird.” Zoe pushed mana into her skill, trying to Cosmic Leap a few steps forward to Emma’s side a few seconds in the future.
“Oh! You still have the weird time teleport thing. Neat. Do you ever get much use out of that, though?" Emma asked.
Zoe shook her head. “Not really. The class gives me a lot of information about time, but as soon as I disappear the decisions people make change so I can’t really be sure of what would happen and just end up having to react to stuff when I appear. Fun as a party trick though.”
“What’s the other teleport do?" Emma asked. ”The Cosmic Launch?"
“I dunno. One way to find out, I guess.” Zoe shrugged.
“Somewhere new, huh?” Emma asked. “Wonder what that means? You can only teleport to places you haven’t been to, but you could teleport farther?"
“Maybe. I’m a little worried about it, honestly.” Zoe said.
“It’s probably not going to teleport you somewhere super far away since you don’t have the mana for it anyway.” Emma said.
“Probably not, but just in case let me mark you.” Zoe held out her hand and Emma grabbed it. Mana flooded from Zoe to Emma, leaving a mark with Zoe’s Spacial Weave skill.
Zoe pushed the system to give her the Cosmic Launch skill and was flooded with even more of the familiar pinpricks, but they felt different somehow. Distant and dull.
“I get more locations, I think?” Zoe said. “Like the Cosmic Leap ones but quieter, if that makes sense?”
“What happens if you teleport to one?" Emma asked.
“I dunno. Should I try?" Zoe asked.
“Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll probably just end up like, over there." Emma pointed up to a nearby tree. ”Never been there before. So that’s new.“
“I dunno, I end up stranded in another dimension again?" Zoe laughed.
“Okay. Fair. Maybe you don’t try it?” Emma suggested.
“Maybe not.” Zoe said.
Zoe turned her attention to her Traveller’s Tiny Tent skill and pushed mana into it. Contrary to the skill’s name, a rather large tent appeared in front of Zoe. Inside were five cots, a small firepit and windows that weren’t visible from the outside. When she dismissed the skill, the tent and everything that came with it vanished, leaving behind the sticks Emma tossed inside on the forest floor.
“Neat.” Emma said. “You got a home on the go, now. What about the last skill?”
Explorer’s Journey did nothing at first, but as Zoe paced around the forest she began to feel a small pull telling her where she’d been. Every step she took remembered perfectly. Even if Emma picked her up and carried her around, Zoe’s skill tracked every movement perfectly.
“You think it works in space? Cause that’d solve your problem if it does." Emma asked.
“One way to find out, I guess. But I’m gonna need some more stats first.” Zoe answered as she settled on her final skill selection of Cosmic Affinity, Cosmic Leap, Explorer’s Journey, Traveller’s Tiny Tent and Storage.