Illumisia and I sit by the fire for a little while. Neither of us talk. I busy my hands with gathering the ghost quarters and my eyes with checking my Class Card for anything that I might’ve missed. No matter how hard I look there isn’t anything else to see. And eventually, there’s nothing else to do but try to talk with the shark-wolf.

“So were those all of the secrets you can tell me?” I ask as I dust off my hands and put away my class card. “Because there are a bunch of holes that don’t make sense to me.”

She looks over at me and nods. “Yes, there were. Which ones are bothering you in particular?”

“Mostly the entire reason why the system doesn’t like Worth classes. If it made me weaker on purpose and sent me to a completely random place to die, then… why? Wouldn’t the other classes be a much bigger danger to them? I mean, why Worth, and not Fate?”

“There are very simple reasons for that, but I can’t give you the context due to censorship. What I can tell you is that your class skills–those that directly manipulate Worth–are wholly unique. If a class does not start with one, they cannot ever gain one. So there is only ever a grand total of seventeen Worth manipulating skills in existence.”

“Seventeen? How’d you get that number?”

Illumisia lifts her paws to reveal tally marks in the sand. “There must always be at least one of each class in existence. And a ‘class’ is determined by which stats they have as primary attributes. With the five stats, while always needing to have Worth as one of the primary attributes, there are seventeen total possible combinations.”

So that means there’s only one of each Worth class in existence? I already know about Gamber and Merchant, which means there’s only fifteen other classes like me. But… Illumisia didn’t talk about the non-Worth classes like that.

“Are the non-Worth classes limited too?”

She sneers with a deep growl. “Only by the system’s willingness to create more Class Coins. As long as one person holds a class, their coin disappears when they die. But if they were the last of their class, the coin follows their corpse back to wherever they came from. Which is where I assume you found yours.”

I nod in confirmation and think back to that disintegrating corpse. “So only the Worth classes get passed on like this, and all the others just… keep getting made. For as long as the system wants them. And it doesn’t want anyone with… Worth increasing skills out there. Because we could completely screw up whatever it’s trying to build here by helping other people out.”

“No. Your skills have… limitations when used on other people.” Illumisia says carefully, as if every word out of her mouth could potentially be censored. “If you haven’t run into them yet, you will. The reason is… how do I explain this without censorship…”

Frustration boils off Illumisia like heat off a furnace. I don’t quite understand why she’s so annoyed with this–if anything, I should be the one pissed that the system is forcing me to level up a stat to be able to hear things. But for some reason, she seems to see it as a personal attack.

“The system knows that if a Worth class survives, they are a danger to it.” She eventually says as carefully as a linebacker in a china shop. “They tend to question it more readily, act against what it desires more often, and have used its powers against it.”

“That sounds dangerously like a grudge.”

Illumisia nods in agreement. “It does, doesn’t it? Now imagine what I can’t say–what made it carry ____ ______.”

Even though her last words were censored, I know exactly what she was about to say. And it’s… worrying. I thought the system was an uncaring mass of magic and rules–but anything that can carry a grudge has to have emotions. Or it has to be manipulated by something that does.

“I can work with that. I have no idea what I’ll do with it, but just knowing that is helpful. So, is this it? The limit of what you can tell me thanks to my tiny Mind stat?”

“Not quite, but it does not easily segway into any other topics I would touch on. Instead, I wish to test your resolve.” Illumisia rises from her bed, hops the pool of water in a lazy jump, and turns back with an annoyed look when I don’t instantly follow her. “You still need to get used to your newly improved body. Your muscles are stronger, your mind sharper, and everything else similarly enhanced. Pearlescence and I rewrote you to eventually become the pinnacle of our three species. It will not come if you do not put in the effort.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be rewritten.” I counter as I push myself to my feet and slide the spade over to my backpack. “Not that I’m not thankful for it, I mean. Just that… I’m not exactly the pinnacle of humanity, you know?”

“Oh, I am well aware.” Illumisia says without a hint of humor or mocking. Just deadly seriousness as she slips through the glass, and I follow right behind. “From the look of your insides, your species has not yet mastered anything that could take away your genetic weaknesses. For Pearlescence, her species writes their own genetic code and creates forms with it. For me, I ripped away my weakness and supplanted it with only the best parts from all my fellows.”

I crack my knuckles as Illumisia leads me to the center of the small clearing. “Just you? Not your species?”

She snorts out a quick laugh and turns to fully face me. “You’ve seen the others of my species. They were weak enough to be taken by the system, and even with the system’s aid, they are still weak. In an attempt to make them overpower me, the system instead furthered my ascension.”

“Your ascension, huh? Is that why you can talk and the others can't?”

“A very simplified version of history, but yes. I grew to the absolute pinnacle of power and my pack turned on me when I tried to do the same for them. So I sought out a different pack not made of my own kind, and among that pack I found Pearlescence. I wonder how all the others are faring without us.” She licks her lips, and I could swear there’s a little bit of worry in her eye. “But that is a story for another time. We will start with dodging. I will be using the same ability as the corpsedragger to create magical projections that will charge at you. Every thirty seconds I will create another, and you will keep going until one of them lands a hit that you did not in some way block or deflect. Do you understand?”

I swallow hard, but I don’t nod just yet. “Do I get to use my spells for this?”

“No.”

“Clear as day. Alright.” I shake out my hands and focus on Illumisia. “Are they going to be as fast as the corpsedragger?”

“Yes, but they will begin their casts from within visible distance. It will be possible to dodge.”

I try to think up more questions, but the patience on Illumisia’s face is starting to wear thin. And I really don’t want her being pissed when she’s throwing spells at me. So I finally nod and tense myself in a preliminary dodge.

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“I’m ready.”

Magic bubbles up from Illumisia’s coat. It shifts to deep red once more, then starts to slowly rise from her head all the way up to the tips of her ears. She flicks her snout upwards once, almost like she was warning me, and the mana coalesces right between her eyes.

“I should hope that you are.”

A red mana projection leaps free; a nearly perfect mirror of Illumisia’s current form bubbling with a frankly absurd amount of magical power. It shakes itself once, locks eyes with me, and bears its teeth in a throaty growl. One that feels really… personal.

It flashes red for a split second. Memories of the corpsedragger jolt my body to action, and I pretty much twitch out of the way of its almost-teleportation. Jaws fly by right next to my neck, opened wide to tear the life from me. I clench my jaw tightly as I force myself to keep my arms at my side, spin fully out of the way, and watch the projection dig its claws into the ground to stop itself.

“Do not hesitate!” Illumisia chides from over my shoulder.

I grimace and dodge to the side as the projection charges again. “I’m not hesitating! You told me I can’t use my spells, so I’m not using my spells!”

She makes a low, frustrated noise deep in her throat. “I am testing you to ensure your body has taken to the repairs and improvements we made. Do not belittle our efforts by claiming you need to rely on spells.”

“You…” I gesture at the projection as it flies by me. “You want me to punch this? I can barely–oop–dodge it.”

I step out of the way without even looking at the projection, then pause as it swivels around and seems to… smirk? Just like the expression that’s slowly seeping into Illumisia’s face. The edges of my vision darken ever so slightly, and somehow, I’m just… aware.

“Yes, of course, you are having such troubles. Is it difficult dodging without putting any effort into it? Does it get your tired little muscles into tightly-wound bunches?” Her words drip with sarcasm. “If belittling yourself isn’t quite your style, then why don’t you try putting your newly empowered flesh to the test?”

The projection lowers itself to its stomach as she speaks, then launches at me to punctuate her sentence. I see its mouth open wide. The magic whirls around it, supplying it with enough power that the only way it’s disappearing is if she calls it off. My body starts to dodge without a single input. Forcing myself to stand my ground takes a little effort, but the worst of it is the sinking feeling that Illumisia’s doing this to justify getting rid of me. A training accident gone wrong. Pearl might believe that.

I raise my leg and slam my foot into the projection’s nose. A shockwave rumbles up my body, and the impact pushes me back a few inches, but I hold my ground. I grind my teeth and slam the projection’s mouth closed with a stomp, then stick my hands in my pocket and pivot to crush its neck with my other foot. I’m fully expecting it to roll out of the way, or buck me off, or any of a huge variety of ways to screw me over.

Instead, my heel crashes through the magic like powdery snow. It bursts into motes of red power that hang in the air for a split second, then fall to the ground like a rain of blood. I stare at the stuff in confusion as it settles on the ground before it trickles towards Illumisia.

“Why are your hands in your pockets?”

I blink at the address, then sharpen my focus as I see another projection forming over her ears. “I don’t know. I just put them there.”

“Don’t do that.” She says harshly. “Your hands, teeth, elbows, feet, and knees are your people’s natural weapons. I could put your skulls in that mix, but that is just as likely to give you brain damage as it is to win you a fight. Use all of your weapons, natural and magical, so that they do not dull.”

Another projection slides away from her like a shadow. I gesture at it with a closed fist “A lot less theatrical this time, huh? What, you want me to bite this one to death?”

It was meant to be a sarcastic comment, but Illumisia bears her teeth in what comes across as deadly agreement.

“That sounds like a wonderful way to end your training. Once you’ve used every natural weapon I listed for you to defeat one of my projections you will get a break. Until then, you must stay on your toes. True predators would not be having this conversation with you, and so ours is now done.”

Yet another projection bleeds out of her. I frown at the blatant disregard for her own thirty second rule, then pull my hands out of my pockets. The bracer weights slightly against my arm, almost begging for me to use the coins slotted into it. But I know that the second I try to use it Illumisia will use more magic herself. Even if I’m surviving the projections well enough right now, I definitely won’t be able to handle projections plus barriers plus whatever other tricks she hasn’t shown me yet.

The first projection slinks away to the other side of the clearing. The second stands its ground, as if waiting for the first to get in place, then charges out of the blue. I hold my ground until the last second, try to turn on my heel, and slam my fist into the thing’s side. It ripples like a pond struck by a stone, but lands easily and turns to look at me with confusion.

The second slams into my back before I can move. I feel its teeth graze my skin, but they don’t go any further than that. Instead, it pushes me to the ground and sits on me with a gurgling ‘humph’. The first joins it a second later, pinning my legs and leaving only my arms free to move.

I groan and try to pull myself free as Illumisia’s claws click against the glass. She walks right up to me, looks down at me with those expressive eyes of hers, and makes the most quizzical expression I’ve ever seen.

“That was quite possibly the worst thrown punch I have ever seen. You didn’t follow through, you didn’t use your body weight to put more force behind it, and still you somehow managed to leave yourself embarrassingly open. It’s almost impressive in how much of a complete failure it was.”

“Well, sorry that I’ve never punched anyone before.” I grunt as the projections shift, then plop down on me in a slightly different way. Now they’re both lying across me like living stitches to keep me down. “I didn’t live anywhere that made me need to learn martial arts.”

Illumisia widens her eyes at that. “Really? What happens if you are attacked at random? Do all your people carry weapons around–and are they properly trained in how to use them?”

“A good chunk of them have guns, and no. Definitely not.” I force myself to roll over with a grunt, but all that does is shift where the pressure is. “The apocalypse is kind of contained, and I wasn’t old enough for all the panic when it happened, so I just… live normally. Which means I never learned how to beat someone to death.”

“How sad. It is quite a useful and cathartic skill, even if you never need to take another life. So when you stomped my projection’s neck, that was simply due to the knowledge that the neck is a weak point?”

“Mmhm.”

“And you had no training to stomp–you just let gravity and your muscles do the work?”

I nod slightly. “Pretty much, yeah. There’s a reason we don’t let people stomp each other in professional sports; it’s pretty damn deadly, and takes almost no skill. Only reason I say almost is because I watched some guy break his foot when he stomped with his toes first instead of the heel. And he was just trying to squish a wasp, not crush something’s neck.”

“Then you will need to learn that as well.” Illumisia waves one paw through the air, dispelling the projections in a burst of red mist. “It will be strange trying to teach a biped to fight, but the basics should be similar. Come, now. I’ll show you how to properly follow-through an attack in a way that doesn’t lead you wide-open to a counter.”

She walks away, leaving me to get up on my own. Projections trail out of her as I steadily rise to my feet, but each of these is different. There are blatant pink zones marked on different parts of each of them, ranging from the neck to the legs to the tip of the snout. I chuckle nervously to myself as more and more of these things spill free from the shark-wolf, any potential rest I might’ve gotten growing smaller and smaller as they do.

“Am I going to get any sleep tonight?”

Illumisia turns when she reaches the other side of the clearing. “You have a potion for that, do you not?”

I sigh and tilt my neck to both sides to get the kinks out. “Remind me to throw that one away after this.”

“I have a recipe for a better version of it memorized.” She says with a toothy smirk. “Your free time is not safe from me, system-born.”