Cayden slashed out at the training dummy with bared claws, the practiced motions digging slightly into the runed wooden surface before sending it spinning. With reflexes honed from hundreds of hours training with identical dummies, Cayden ducked under where he knew the arm would pass, ready to rise just as quickly and strike with another quick combo.

But for all of his training, Cayden wasn’t infallible. He wasn’t entirely sure what happened – perhaps his claws caught the dummy better than he’d expected, spinning it faster than he was used to. Perhaps he was just slower than he needed to be, the tightness of his newly-healed skin limiting his mobility by just the slightest amount. Or perhaps he just wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Regardless, the result was the same.

The wooden bar protruding from the spinning dummy slammed into the side of his head with a resounding crack, and he flinched back from the impact.

It didn’t hurt. Between his massive vitality and his defensive skills – [Resistance] and [Skin of Stone] both boosted thirty percent by [Boost Passive] – there was no chance of such a simple ‘attack’ actually harming him. And with his recently acquired [Immutable], he didn’t even feel any transferred momentum from the impact, his small flinch a result of his own instincts rather than the force of the blow.

He reached out to slow the slightly-spinning dummy, fumbling with his claws to reset it back to its ‘base’ position.

“You ready to go?” he heard from behind him.

Anyone else might have been embarrassed at such a clumsy display in front of an audience, but Cayden could only smile as he heard the voice.

“Not yet. I really want to get [Claw Mastery] today, if I can,” he replied without turning or even opening his eyes. “You don’t have to watch, if you’ve got anything else you need to do. I can take care of myself for a least a few hours on my own.”

“Nah, take your time. I don’t mind looking after the cripple today,” Tiana answered with a laugh, and Cayden chuckled as well, unbothered by the teasing.

He and Tiana looked nothing like siblings. That was true of many siblings in this world, where everyone would have the opportunity to choose their race upon unlocking the system at age twelve, but it especially applied to Cayden and Tiana. They were at least still both humanoid races, but that was about where the similarities ended.

Tiana was small and slim, her narrow face often smiling at whatever misfortune was currently befalling her big brother. She was a fateweaver, a rare and powerful race with pure white hair and glowing white eyes as its distinctive features. She was only thirteen years old, and her growth spurt was late enough that she’d recently been bemoaning that it might never come, that she might be stuck as a five-foot-tall shorty for the rest of her life, despite the fateweaver race not being counted among the ‘pygmy’ races like fairy or dwarf.

In contrast, Cayden was tall and wide, his growth spurt still going strong even after reaching six feet, and his daily training packing on more muscle than would’ve been possible for a fifteen-year-old kid in his previous world. He was a gargoyle, a race that allowed him to ‘mold’ new skills onto his very body, courtesy of a rare enchanting material found in dungeons. In the almost four years since becoming a gargoyle, he’d found three chunks of primordial mud, resulting in his three racial skills: [Clawed Grasp], [Skin of Stone], and [The One Who Watches]. [Clawed Grasp] was the first modification that pushed him away from ‘base’ humanity, giving him permanent razor-sharp claws that he kept sheathed outside of training lest he accidentally tear up everything he touched. [Skin of Stone] painted his entire body in shades of grey, greatly increasing the resiliency of his skin, especially to slashing attacks. [The One Who Watches] was his most recent racial skill, and would normally give his eyes a red glow and unsettle whoever he focused them on while negating any movement abilities they tried to use.

‘Normally’, because he was currently lacking the eyes to actually use [The One Who Watches].

For all that he and Tiana didn’t look like siblings, they unquestionably were, as evidenced by the ease with which Tiana could typically get under his skin. Though recently Cayden hadn’t found himself bothered by the needling; it had been only a little more than a week since he’d lost his eyes, the sacrifice in his fight against Duke Vass’ attempted coup and what earned his sister’s freedom, and her presence was still too new for him to be annoyed with her.

He stepped back into position, feeling the location of the dummy in front of him, before striking out with his claws, allowing his instincts to guide him as he dodged the retaliatory strike cleanly this time. Though his sister wasn’t bothering him and he considered the loss of his eyes a worthy sacrifice for her freedom, he wasn’t pleased with his blindness. But even aside from his sister, his efforts against the duke weren’t without their own reward.

Immutable (passive): The user is less affected by all external forces acting on the user's body, mind, and soul.

[Immutable] was his newest tier-three skill, formed from combining three different tier-two skills, each of those a combination of three different tier-one skills, and was likely the only reason he’d survived his confrontation with the duke. And while he was confident it had unplumbed depths, sure that a tier-three skill wouldn’t be as bad as [Immutable] had thus far seemed to be, he hadn’t yet had the chance to delve those depths.

It wasn’t that [Immutable] was weak. In his limited tests, he’d immediately been able to feel the difference the skill made. He could accelerate and change direction much faster than a normal person, in his estimation about as fast as if his old [Inertia] skill was set to half his base value, yet forces that would have previously sent him flying barely budged him. Tiana couldn’t so much as make Cayden take a single step back, and even gravity lost some of its hold on him, his early jumping tests having to be aborted after he put a small dent into the ceiling of his dorm room.

But Cayden still expected more. One of the tier-two skills it had absorbed gave him the ability to slowly heal from lasting injuries, an ability he was sorely missing now that he was without eyes. And the fact [Immutable] lost that ability made him hope it gained something equally impressive in trade, though he couldn’t yet figure out what it might be.

He’d noticed some of the more esoteric effects of the skill, like his new resistance to healing, but those so far were mostly downsides. Thankfully, his ‘healing resistance’ wasn’t so strong as to entirely prevent the healers of Delver’s Academy from doing their work, and thus far they’d assumed their struggle was a quirk of his injuries rather than the result of a skill, so he hadn’t been forced to reveal his tier-three skill.

Elise had also voiced some worries about [Immutable], that it might be negatively affecting his thoughts. But Cayden had easily been able to prove those fears unfounded.

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Aside from his physical injuries, he felt perfectly normal, if not better than usual in the wake of his victory over the duke. He had enough awareness to realize he hadn’t been in the best place, mentally, for the month between learning his parents’ deaths had been orchestrated to create members of the fateweaver race and exacting his revenge on Duke Vass. But now that he’d gotten his revenge and Tiana was free, he was finally able to relax and enjoy his life, despite the limitations imposed by his injuries.

It was nice, not having the cloud of vengeance shadowing his every thought.

So despite its subpar showing so far, Cayden was excited to explore the full limits of his new skill. And since the creation of [Immutable], he had four empty general skill slots to fill, opening up so many skill options that had previously been closed or put on the back burner. He intended to keep [Spear Mastery] and [Dual-Speak] as his [Borrowed Power] and [Save Progress] skills – his two most powerful [Test Subject] class skills – at least until [Borrowed Power] leveled. It was still only level three, and Cayden was determined to find out exactly what triggered the useful skill to gain experience.

His [Test Subject] class would only level as fast as his slowest-leveling class skill, which thus far had been [Borrowed Power]. If he wanted to evolve his class in any reasonable timeframe, he needed to figure out [Borrowed Power’s] quirks.

But for the moment, Cayden was focusing on his general skills. He continued to strike out at the training dummy for another twenty minutes, getting hit by the spinning arms much more often than he was used to, until he saw the notification he’d been waiting for.

New skill available:

Claw Mastery (passive): Provides a 30% boost to strength and agility when fighting with claws.

With a smile, he pulled up his full status.

Name:

Cayden Johannson

Age:

15

Race:

Gargoyle

Racial Level:

17

Class:

Test Subject

Class Level:

4

Stats:

Vitality:

73

Charisma:

8

Strength:

38

Endurance:

36

Agility:

30

Dexterity:

25

Perception:

13

Mind:

25

Magic Power:

9

Magic Control:

8

Mana:

89

Mana Regeneration:

7 mana per min

Free Stats:

0

Racial Skills:

General Skills (max 6):

Class Skills:

Boost Passive

Awareness (lvl 1)

Borrowed Power (lvl 3) -- Dual-Speak (lvl 2)

Clawed Grasp

Claw Mastery (lvl 1)

Conduit (lvl 3)

Skin of Stone

Immutable (lvl 2)

Power from Experience (lvl 4)

The One Who Watches

Inspect (lvl 2)

Save Progress (lvl 4) -- Spear Mastery (lvl 3)

Other Ways to See (lvl 2)

Resistance (lvl 13)

With [Claw Mastery], he’d officially filled up the last of his general skillslots, though he didn’t expect to keep any of his current tier-one general skills.

[Awareness] and [Other Ways to See] were unquestionably powerful, and he was optimistic about the possibility of them combining into a tier-two perception-based skill, but he had no intention of remaining blind any longer than was necessary. Even with the two perception skills, he was nowhere near as capable as he had been with eyes, and he had to wait for Tiana to retrieve his sheaths, attach them over his claws, and then lead him by the hand out of the arena.

Once they were beyond the sands she handed Cayden his spear, which he tapped on the ground in front of him to further train his skills. Thankfully, there were significantly fewer students walking around the campus compared to a week earlier, and he never came close to whacking anyone’s shins with his tapping spear as Tiana guided him back to his dorm.

In no time at all, they opened the door and walked in, and Cayden released a happy sigh. He was getting better at navigating without sight, at trusting what his ears and spear were telling him, but he was still barely beyond what a normal blind human on Earth could do. He imagined it would be eventually possible to navigate freely while blind, using echolocation and the rest of his senses, but he was nowhere near to that point. So stepping into his familiar dorm, a place where he was unlikely to run into a random step or piece of furniture someone had moved without telling him, was a relief.

The dorm was made for four people, originally for the four-person team he’d started with at the academy. But with two of his former teammates missing – Velic and Marvenal, the son of Duke Vass and his bodyguard – and the third – Delphia – having returned home to her family’s barony after recovering from her own injuries, it was more empty than he was used to. Tiana had been allowed to claim one of the rooms for a modest fee, but that still left two rooms completely empty.

So he was surprised when a voice called out upon their entry, tensing from the unexpected noise.

“Cayden! Tiana! You’re finally back,” Elise called, and Cayden relaxed upon recognizing the familiar voice. Elise was his oldest and best friend, and he’d given her a spare key to his dorm ‘just in case’. She was an intelle, a humanoid race known for their intelligence and inquisitive minds, and she fit her race’s stereotype to a tee. She had no combat skills to speak of, but her intelligence more than qualified her for the Affiliate Academy, a newer branch of Delver’s Academy that gave her access to all of the same facilities.

“Hey, Elise. Something on your mind?” Tiana asked, and Cayden frowned. Before losing his eyes, he hadn’t realized how important facial expressions and body language were to communication. He still had his hearing, but without being able to see those he was talking to, he sometimes felt as if he was missing half of every conversation.

“It’s about your skill, Cayden. [Immutable],” Elise replied, and then she paused for an inordinately long time before continuing. “I think you need to get rid of it.”