"Actually, please remove Disentage, Roguish Ingenuity, Faerzress Wild Magic, and School or Song from the list too." She asked the system.

She did not know what had come into her this time around. But the new School of Song specialization, along with the old Roguish Ingenuity did not feel like good ideas to her anymore. And the same was true of Disengage and Faerzress Wild Magic, both for entirely different reasons.

However, the system did not question her sudden change in judgment and did as it was told, leaving her with only four choices to choose from:

Criminal Mastermind Archetype Sneak Attack Hide

You can intuit actionable weaknesses of any foes you have an advantage against.

Advantage is acquired by things like utilizing the terrain, getting the upper hand in a fight, surprising your opponent, or sneaking behind them. Get creative!

You get a preternatural sense of stealth akin to precognition to help you prevent being discovered.

You can further hide from enemies by muffling the sound of your steps, sticking to the dark, and avoiding enemies' sightlines.

Magus Weavesinger Archetype Song of Rest Grieving Song

Once per day, you can sing to the Weave to revitalize yourself and your allies.

Everyone who can hear your song recovers from physical or magical fatigue and gets a significant boost to their natural healing.

Commoners enjoy gathering for lunch breaks and listening to a bard Song of Rest, improving productivity by 50% for every workplace benefiting from it.

Your song is blessing the dead eternal rest, repulsing any undead and causing most necromancy spells within earshot to critically fail.

Though highly unpopular, this rare complementary boon to its cleric equivalent is highly sought after for funeral services and the occasional mass graves, especially on the battlefield.

You currently have:

[Criminal Mastermind Archetype (Primary): 5 ] [Weavesinger Archetype: 4/5 ] [Others: 0/5]

She already decided to pick from her Weavesinger Archetype so actually, it was more like choosing between two options and that choice was a no-brainer.

Hide and Sneak Attack, the two choices she had eliminated by default were both good but mostly redundant with her tool set. As for Grieving Song, it was too situational. So Song of Rest was finally her go-to option.

To be honest, she expected something better than the School of Song and to pick it instead. But giving up on some of her ability to learn spells only to get access to spells that were essentially unknown quantity to her... it was a gamble she wasn't ready to take. And so she didn't and decided to remove the temptation from her sight entirely.

Yet, while her best option, Song of Rest felt a bit lackluster compared to all the boons she had picked so far.

Maybe that was her standards that had grown unreasonably high after getting so many truly awesome boons one after the other. But Song of Rest truly did not compare, or at least, on paper. Yet, she would hope for the best and thoroughly test it before passing judgment.

"Thanks. I will take Song of Rest." She finally concluded.

And then, she had the displeasure to wake up in the respawn pod, again.

★☆★

If someone had told Sophia she would ever think the resting area was too small, she wouldn't have believed it.

But here they were. And four grieving on their own, it took a lot of place.

Paolo had claimed the library, Moana the bedroom, and Michel the training room.

So Sophia was left with the kitchen and a lot more free time that she was comfortable with.

And so, she had soon been surrounded by the smell of firewood, caramelized sugar, and simmering fruits she was turning into preserved food and jam. At first, she had made pies and other dishes for immediate consumption, but there was only so much food five people could eat in a day.

And so she had started cooking for the sake of stoking up for the next floor. Especially since this time, they would go in blind, as the resting area front door was leading to a poorly lit square room, with the same metal door as every challenge she had encountered so far.

But she hardly had any time to think about it, or anything really. With so many things cooking at once, there was always something requiring her immediate attention.

Jam that needed to be tested, one drop at a time, to make sure the texture, color, and taste were perfect, exactly as her perfectionist grandmother liked it.

Back home, the old woman has been a freaking perfectionist tyrant in the kitchen. But she had also been a gourmet and an artist. And for all her efforts and the quite unreasonable time she spent in her kitchen, her cuisine had all been to die for. However, in the last few years, her grandmother had been aging badly, unable to keep up to her own standards and embittered by her 'failure' at transmitting her passion and knowledge to the next generation.

Yet, her grandmother's decline and their bittersweet relationship had been a transformative experience for Sophia, especially after she had been forced into an early retirement from gymnastics because of her injuries. She had been twice as hard on herself as her grandmother had ever been, somehow doubling down on the same mistakes by trying to avoid them.

She was realising it now.

While living her life to the fullest to never regret it was a commendable goal, she had forgotten what it truly means.

Those memories with her grandmother, with her parents and her brother... would she ever get a second chance of making new ones? She had been so awful to so many people in her goal-oriented tunnel vision, taking things for granted that the person she once was felt like a stranger. If she could come back in time and talk to her past self, what could they possibly talk about? And even more, would her old self even be willing to listen?

She finally turned over the last jar of burning hot jam before taking a break, letting her mind wander further.

It wasn't only her past self that might not want to talk to her. Maybe her own family would also be unable to recognize her too.

You have been inducted into the tutorial for:

2 weeks, 3 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 37 seconds

To her, it had been about six months since she got inducted into the tutorial. But to them? It had been two weeks. And the more they climbed through the tutorial floors, the more time was slowing down to a crawl.

Almost five months: it was the time it took them to clear the fifth floor. But in real time? It had been less than five days.

And if that floor was of any indication, by the time she cleared the eighth floor, they would be at least twenty years old and would be missing for barely three weeks out of the allocated three months they had been given to clear the tutorial.

As Paolo suggested, it would not be far-fetched to assume they would all be at least in their thirties by the time they cleared the tutorial. And yet, for their families, it would be less than three months. Would it be even possible to rekindle a relationship in those conditions?

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The very thought was enough to get her back to work.

★☆★

It took weeks for things to get back to normal between them. And yet, they unanimously decided they were in no rush to leave:

It would take at least a couple of months for Lono to make it back to the ninth ring, which for them would be four months. And that was about the time they would have to wait if they wanted to give him a fighting chance to ever get back to them. However, they would not be able to wait much longer. Even with all the food that the resting area provided, it would not last forever. And they needed to keep some more to tackle the sixth floor

However, it didn't mean that Sophia would let more of their precious time go to waste.

It was time to get back to training.

And the fight against the troll had revealed some more of the team's weaknesses.

For all its utility, support, and offensive boon, the system had not offered her a single defensive option. And except for Paolo's mage armor, they were physically as vulnerable as the moment they entered the tutorial. But the same wasn't true of their opponents, almost always physically and magically superiors.

And so the team needed to train to fill that gap, one way or another.

Mage armor worked well for the raptors as a supplement to their natural armor. But it did not work with actual armor, so only Michel, Prince, and Paolo could somewhat benefit from it. Then Michel had his precognition, but it could only help him so much. And Sophia had her survival fitness to help her evade attacks, but it was currently limited by her perception. She had been neglecting that aspect as her last fight as proven to her.

Yet, she had to admit, it was still less about them and more about Lono.

It had been his forte and now he was missing. And he would probably have survived that fight, had he not lost his shield earlier on that floor... or if Sophia had done the right thing and even thought of giving her unused buckler to their only fighter. Sure, that buckler wasn't much of a protection compared to Lono's kite shield. But maybe, just maybe he would still be with them if she had not been so stupid about it.

However, it didn't change the truth: they had been all offense, no defense, and were now paying the price of their foolishness.

And so, she was back to training with Paolo, trying to awkwardly figure out the basics of wielding a shield, getting out of harm's way, and doing basic perception training. Using a buckler was extremely counterintuitive and she wasn't surprised the system made it into an entire rogue specialization.

It was too small to passively protect from anything from up close. It was just good at proactively keeping one's enemy at arm's length, one at a time. And it probably worked better in narrow enclosed spaces where bigger shields would have been a hindrance, like fighting inside castle walls.

"You know, I never thought I would ever say something like this, but maybe that fighting style isn't for you," Paolo observed during one of their breaks.

And Sophia could not help but reckon he was right. She had forgotten about that buckler at the very bottom of her backpack for a reason: both her bow and twin blades required both of her hands. And everything she had learned about fighting so far, either good or bad habits, was getting in the way of learning this new one.

So rethinking her delusion of what could have been if she had lent it to Lono, she considered doing the same, with Michel this time around. He was a diviner wizard wanting to be a rogue. And he might succeed where she failed as their fighting styles couldn't be any more different.

"You are right." She admitted and shrugged. "Let's skip straight to perception training."

Yet her response had made him cringe. Their previous attempts at perception training, mainly using sensory deprivation, had been a huge failure for both of them, for entirely different reasons.

Sensory deprivation didn't help Sophia as much as she would have liked: without her eyes, she could concentrate all her attention on her ears. But whatever benefits she got from it was lost the moment that particular training ended.

As for Paolo, compensating for the lack of one sense with another did not work for him. Without his vision, he was once again the clumsy paralyzed boy afraid of his own shadow. Not that she could blame him. Her survival fitness gave her an edge that even Moana could not entirely replicate.

And yet, it wasn't enough. Or at least, not enough against the superhuman threats that were now integral parts of their lives.

"Don't worry," Sophia told Paolo reassuringly. "No blindfold this time. We are going to try something else."

Instead of a monastic deprivation of senses that couldn't translate well in combat, she wanted to reproduce the condition of a fight instead: chaos, everytime, everywhere, with an overload of information, of which only a few were pertinent combat-wise.

But those were not conditions that the two of them were enough to reproduce. And so it was time for team training. But first, she had to get everyone on board with her idea.

★☆★

It took some negotiation and brainstorming, but in the end, the five of them had improved upon her idea to such a degree that it gave birth to something completely different.

It was a betting game.

Two people would fight like in any of their training sessions.

But the other three? They were placing secret bets on the winner and then, proceeded to either help or distract the opponent with all sorts of visual effects and sound, either produced normally or with prestidigitation. But aside from transforming the arena into a perception training nightmare, they were only allowed to intervene once per fight, thus revealing their secret bet.

Prince could make one nasty attack from above and was a true master of feints and distractions. Paolo and Michel could both use prestidigitation and both were rather creative with their mundane distractions and attacks. Moana was the one most struggling cause she had no magic or unfair mobility advantage like Prince. And Sophia... she had Prestidigitation, Luring Song, and Stealth Singing on top of every mundane distraction the team had come up with for the game.

Cause, of course, everyone would play and bet in turn. Even Prince had insisted on participating. And there were ten permutations of their two among five opponents to play with, which they had all written on pieces of paper for a random draw.

Three times in a row, she had lucked out, all her teammates getting to play the actual fun part of the game before she did, Paolo and Michel even getting a second time. But the fourth time, her name was drawn, along with Prince.

Lady luck was clearly not in her favor. But at least, she would get the most boring fight straight out of the way.

Prince was a non-combattant for a reason.

Sure he could fly. But his only attacks were still his claws and jaws, forcing him to get up close and personal while attacking, which exposed him to a counter-attack that was almost certain to be stronger than what he could handle. After all, he was still a cat with wings: the living terror of every bird creature and occasional rodents, but also the ideal size for a snack for most of the monsters they had encountered since the second floor.

But moreover, Prince was simply a bad match for her, as she had proved the tressym right from the first floor. The advantage of his flight, namely the extra mobility and creating distance with his enemy to get a breather, actually worked in her favor as a ranged specialist.

And the look on the tressym face confirmed that he knew she would be his worst fight by a considerable margin.

"Let's get this done quickly so we can both get back to the fights we can actually enjoy, right?" She offered, sympathetic.

"Don't count your chicks before they hatch. I do plan to put up a fight." The tressym challenged her proudly.

"Sure. Bring it on." She replied confidently and prepared herself for the fight.

And Prince had started confidently flying in a narrow cone over her head, right out of reach of her bow. It was a training shortbow, not a warbow. And its strength versus gravity was a joke. Sure, she might be able to touch Prince if she got really lucky, but her arrows would lose so much velocity that they would be harmless. Not that she would ever think of harming her training partner but there was no point in training for a situation that could not be replicated in the field.

Then, Paolo hit the improvised hand drum they had made in the absence of Lono to start the fight.

And Prince predictably nosedived to try to hit her face.

Which she met him with the flat of her unsheathed blades at the last moment, sending him 'flying' toward the ground, readying herself to finish him with a kick.

Which he dodged, also at the last moment before going for an unusual tactic, flying straight between her legs to attack her from behind. She turned around as fast as she could and swiped the air with her blades aimlessly in a poor attempt at a counter-attack. But Prince was nowhere to be found.

Until she got hit in the back by the tressym surprise attack.

In the time it took for her to turn around, Prince had done the same around her, using his superior speed and mobility to compensate for his meager defense and abysmal attack. This time, she did a circular swipe all around her with both her blades, only stopping when she caught sight of the flying furball.

"I reckon you did some progress, trying to force me into melee like this."

And then, as she said that, she dashed to create as much distance and dropped her blades at her feet to take her bow.

That move should have been predictable and the winged cat should have been able to follow, but at the same time she had spoken to create her diversion, Michel had taken her cues to create a diversion, offering her the precious seconds she needed for her risky maneuver.

But now she had created some distance?

It did not matter if someone had bet on Prince against all odds. In a real fight, the tressym would be turned into a pin cushion before his allies could react and attack her. And yet, it did not prevent Moana from attacking her from behind with her daggers.

Prince couldn't win But Moana probably wanted to make it a draw with her timely intervention. Except that, unfortunately for both her opponents, Sophia had seen it coming: While she had been dashing, she had caught a hint of light reflecting from Moana's blades. And since the blades had not flown in the tressym direction afterward, she had known the blades were for her.

Knowing that she had just the time to lure sing a one-word command before it was too late: drop.

Moana still hit her in the back, but empty-handed, she didn't get the time to turn her hand into a fist and hurt herself instead.

"So you placed your bet on the losing side just to spit me?" Sophia turned around, picked up the sheaved daggers, and nagged her playfully.

"We both agreed to even the odds and give Prince a fighting chance," Paolo interjected from the other side of their improvised ring.

"Even you, Paolo?" Sophia replied in feigned heartbreak. "I'm almost surprised Michel wasn't in too."

"Ah. Sorry. It did not occur to me I could choose to lose on purpose." The diviner rogue said as a matter of fact, before turning to the tressym, apologetically. "No offense meant, Prince"

"None taken." Prince shrugged it off and he stood back up and looked at her, throwing daggers. "Your arrows might be dull but they still pack a punch. Can we call it a day and resume it tomorrow?"

And so they did.