Then I felt something ripple through what I could only call the fabric of Reality. The energies around me started to act weirdly. Suddenly I had a splitting headache and saw Emir drop to his knees clutching his chest. My vision started to slowly grow darker as time and space lost their meaning.
After some unknown amount of time, I woke up. Immediately I got a System notification blaring at me to get noticed. I opened it up to see what it was fussing over.
[Welcome to the 76th Era]
[ERA OF RESONANT UNITY]
I saw the sparkling golden panel before me. After I finished reading the panel went away and I got a normal blue screen with a message.
[You have been deemed a worthy candidate for the Hidden Title (Pioneer of The New Era)! Do you accept?]
I was confused as this was the first time the System asked if I wanted to accept a Title or Achievement. Also, the 'Hidden' part of it intrigued me. At the same time, I was very creeped out by the Title as the God of Knowledge had called me the 'Pioneer of the New Age' and this was the same just the Age changed for Era. I shook my head to clear it and accepted it.
[Congratulations! Pioneer for acquiring this Title. You will now receive System granted Quests and will gain higher active System Support!]
After the message vanished I opened my status to see what had changed.
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Personal status:
Name: Anavrit Toho
Health: Good
Mana: Almost empty
Race: Chimera Core
-Evo Human
-Human????
-Biomechanical nanite core (Control/ Forge)
Traits:
-Chimeric Form
-Modulator
-Adaptive
-Malleable
-Central Core
-Deconstructive Absorbtion
-Assimilation
-Reconstruction
-Wielder of the Seeing Eyes (NEW)
Affinities:
-Nature/ Technology (80%)
-Illusion/ Knowledge (66%)
-Arcane (54% -> 55%)
-Mental (12%)
Achievements:
-Bridge between (Epic)
-Abyss blinked first (Epic)
-Otherworlder (Unique)
-Marked (Unique)
-Father of Prismatic Aether (Unique)
-Figment made Real (Unique)
-Grand Ritualist (Epic)
-Father of Monstrosity (Unique)
-Name Giver (Very Rare)
-Family-er (Rare)
-Soul! Where did you get that! (Epic)
-Catalyst of Confluence (Rare)
-Perfect Form (Unique)
Titles:
-Phantom Thief (Legendary)
-Emissary of the Watcher (Legendary) (NEW)
-Pioneer of the New Era (Unique) (NEW)
Cores:
-Main (Tier 0)
(S)-{Domain Nexus} LV 8 > 10
—(A)-{Perception Processer}
(S)-{Wellspring of Knowledge} LV 5 > 8
(S)-{Synchronic Mind} LV 11 > 16
(S)-{Transmorphic Bioforge} LV 11 > 13
(S)-{Sensory Amalgam} LV 11 > 14
----------------------------------------
I had gained two new Titles, of which one was a surprise. It seems like the Boon of the Elder God was the Trait. The Nexus Skill also got to the point where I could pick a new quirk for it.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
*Eh* I nearly jumped after hearing the grunt. I looked over to see what made that noise and found Emir getting up from the way he was splayed on the ground before. He looked at me and froze, completely. Then he started to laugh hysterically. "HAHAHAHA! I LIVED TO EXPERIENCE THE CHANGE OF ERA! I GOT TO TEACH ANOTHER OTHERWORLDER AND NOW YOU MAKE HIM A PIONEER! THE MISTRESS OF FATE HAS SMILED UPON ME! MY TIME IS AT ITS END! HAHAHA!"
Then abruptly he stopped and looked at me with that too-wide smile. He then shook his head. "Now come along! It has gotten late, let's get you to sleep and we will talk about this tomorrow morning." Before I could say anything I started floating up as a bunch of mana and natural energy grabbed me. He carried me back up to the room I was given and placed me on the desk before quickly leaving.
Not giving much thought to the weird behaviour of Emir I looked at the HUD again and saw that the menu on the corner now had two square icons. One had a silhouette of a person and the other a hexagon with an exclamation mark on it. I guessed that figure was my status so I opened the new tab.
[Quests—
System Quests—
1. Step towards a Scholar.
2. Glimpse of Magic.
Patron Quests—
1. Integrate Interface!
2. Many Eyes.]
It seemed like I already had four quests. I tried to see if these had more information about them and new windows opened with just that.
[System Quests—
1. Step towards a Scholar—
Objective: Gain a (Scholar) Class
Reward: Aspect (Discovery)
2. Glimpse of Magic—
Objective: Choose a (Magic) Class
Reward: Suitable Magic Focus
Patron Quests
1. Integrate Interface!—
Objective: {Assimilate} the Interface
Reward: Ability seed (Assistant)
2. Many Eyes—
Objective: Have 127 functional eyes or one sensory organ that covers more than 72% percent of your body.
Rewards: Upgrade to {Wielder of the Seeing Eyes}]
So those rewards were interesting. For the System quests, I had to wait till tier 1. As of right now, I can only complete one of the Patron Quests. The reward was called Ability Seed but that was what I didn't know.
Those rewards didn't have any description when asked the System for it. So I looked at the description of the new Titles.
----------------------------------------
{Emissary of the Watcher}
You have spread the SIGHT of the Watcher. The first to walk on the BLIND world with SIGHT. Now SEE THE TRUTH OF THE #£@@&#.
Effect: While this Title is unequipped you gain a great boost to perception-based Skills, Traits, Abilities and others. When equipped, double the unequipped effect of this Title, be able to SEE through deceit.
{Pioneer of the New Era}
A new Era has dawned upon us! The knowledge of the New Laws is still Unknown! The System has chosen a number of beings to explore the World and Learn the Laws.
Effect: When unequipped you will gain a boost in exp gain and effectiveness for Skills, Abilities, Cores and others if they are used in discovering the new Laws or System Quests. The effects of this Title will change depending on your Path.
----------------------------------------
That was a bit esoteric. What even counts towards those goals? *Sigh*
I opened the description of the new Trait.
{Wielder of the Seeing Eyes}
You may equip an assortment of eye enchantments.
Current catalogue: N/A
It seemed that this trait would become better after I got the enhancements but till then it would do nothing. I then got in a meditative state to dive into my Domain core.
When I opened my eyes I felt like I was in an opera hearing a Great Orchestra play discordant tunes into a semblance of a Song. The Wind and Earth sang almost opposite yet in the mountain peaks the Stone became the Wind's instruments. The Water of the ocean crashes and grinds the Earth, yet the Swamp flourishes through their joint care. Just as suddenly those thoughts and visions came they went away.
I found myself standing in front of the Domain Nexus. It thrummed as it stabilized the energies near it into harmony. The system message opened for the selection.
[Choose one of the following quirks--
-Technique
-Stability
-Speed
-Optimization
-Processing]
I thought about it for some time but chose Technique in the end. When I chose it, new bulging vein-like structures started growing in the roots. Then they started pulsating as if being pumped by a heart. After that, I went out of the Domain core to see how that might change my body. In the real world, I couldn't find any big changes from that upgrade.
I relaxed a bit as all of the things that needed my urgent attention were gone. I was not even sleepy and couldn't use magic as the energies might be going crazy right now. I just sat there and tried to sleep or something.
I jolted into a clear mind as the light of the room turned on. I guess I went into some kind of torpor or something last night. I looked around to see if anything was different. I found my senses were sharper than before. I could sense the ambient mana and natura with more clarity, even my eyesight and hearing were better as now I could even make out the sound of nanites roaming the table.
After some minutes of examining the energies and how they might be changed, Emir walked in. "Sorry, I couldn't give you the hover disk, after the world merges the magic can become a bit erratic so I had to check if it was right. I had to change the enchantment slightly but it is now good to go." Saying that he threw the disk with a flourish. The disk flew right in front of me and stopped there. I climbed on top of it and pushed some mana out to connect to it. It felt like something was blocking my mana from entering the enchantment. This was new! I pushed a bit more and my mana got into the enchantment.
Then it started to act just as before if not more responsive to me. I flew up to Emir who nodded before turning around and leaving the room. I followed behind him as he climbed down the stairs. When we came into the dining/living room I saw a bunch of carcasses lying on the table. From my energy sense, these looked to be about tier 2.
"Now don't wait around! Get to making yourself a humanoid body, for that you will need about 70 litres in volume. Don't go too overboard from that now." He told me while he went out of the tree through the main doorway. I looked at the carcasses and went to look for the most humanoid body. I found a couple of green 3ft tall humanoid figures, those were ugly as their face had almost no symmetry, misshapen features and were covered in scars and warts. But as I didn't have the blueprint for a human yet, so I had to eat these things.
As I started to eat the bodies I found that I was getting more knowledge of the body structure than before, must be from the Emissary Title. I also found some interesting things about these guys. Their head was about one-third of the size of their torso yet it is mostly bones as their brains were smaller than that of a human child their size except for one of them, who had a small beast core in his head. I also found that Goblins don't have kidneys, liver and other organs just three stomach-like organs that go into the same intestinal tract.
After feasting on the humanoids that my Skill called Goblins, I had created about 57 litres of nanites as I could not eat their bones without magical help. I then turned to an exotic-looking creature that was on the table.
It looked like someone gave an ostrich egg some dark grey tentacles with barbs on it. And I even found out how to actively use the (Wellspring of Knowledge) Skill. I had to focus on the object using my Ability and then use a bit of mana into my eyes and the Skill activated to tell me the name of the thing I was looking at, in this case, the egg-looking thing was called Bone Shellers. Now that I was carefully looking at this I saw that the shell indeed had the texture of dried bones. After eating that and a big horned rabbit I had about 71 liters and some extra in volume.
I tried talking a humanoid form but found that the nanites try to follow the blueprint for the Goblin and make the head too big for structural stability. So I had to give up on making a head and just stuck my core on top of the neck.