Her eyes shot wide open as she gasped for air and clutched at her throat. An odd feeling of disassociation coursed through her body and she started cough to uncontrollably.
The figure clad in black who she assumed to have killed her was fresh in her mind, however there was no fear for the being, just pure admiration.
“Ugh, where am I?” she coughed out, feeling a numbing cold spread all over her body.
Sitting up, she looked around and her sight was met with spindly trees without leaves along with a frozen wasteland of snow.
"But I died...?" she thought, thinking about what had transpired just mere moments ago.
"Is this... the afterlife?" she muttered and looked down at herself.
There, she found obsidian black hair running from her shoulders all the way down to her waist. Pinching one of the locks of the hair, she thought it to be quite silky and soft to the touch. She also noticed that she was currently wearing a loose blouse that certainly did not help in protecting against the cold weather.
Shivering, she stood up and examined the rest of her body and saw that her height was around 5' 5 which was quite unlike what she remembered.
Just before she could do anything else, a bluish translucent screen suddenly appeared in front of her eyes causing her to fall to the ground on her back in shock. The screen was what everyone called 'The System.' The system was given to everyone the moment they were born and people would grow accustomed to life around it, just like she was. However, the screen so familiar to her, yet so mysterious and strange, displayed an odd message.
[You are eligible for the second class ‘Ice Mage’]
[Do you accept?]
Her eyes opened wide, a second class was unheard of in the entire world of Alyria. Her heart began to race and she blinked her eyes multiple times as if to distinguish illusion from reality, yet the message still stood firm in front of her eyes.
“I accept,” she said, feeling a cold but comforting power flow into her. The frigid air of the frozen wastes now felt like a spring breeze to her. Her once black hair glowed brightly white as it changed into an icy blue with streaks of white running in between the seams.
She felt a slight tingling feeling in her eyes as they slowly changed from black to a striking shade of blue with white impurities.
“Status,” she muttered.
Name: Rin
Titles:
Mana Core Connoisseur: (Ability to eat Mana Cores),
Race: Hum-{Error}
Class: Ice Mage, Seraph of the Night
Level: 0
HP: 200/200
MP: 200/200
Strength: 10
Endurance: 10
Vitality: 10
Wisdom: 10
Intelligence: 10
Agility: 10
Unassigned stat points: 0
Available Skills-
Ice mage:
[Lesser Mana Regeneration (Passive), Elementary Ice magic, Ice aura, Protection of Ice]
Seraph of the Night:
[None]
The first thing she saw on her status already made her confused.
“Huh, why did my name change?” Rin asked, receiving the sound of the chilly wind in response.
Her only theory was that she had occupied the corpse of a person named Rin.
'But why me...' she contemplated about what she had done to deserve a second chance.
Shaking her head to rid those types of thoughts, she sat up and continued to look through her status page and found something unusual.
“An error? I definitely feel like a human,' she said aloud, looking down at her body, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
'Maybe the system made a mistake,' she thought, "Anyways, let’s try this new class out,” Rin said with a grin.
She jumped up from her seated position to her feet before promptly tripping over and falling flat on her face.
“New body, whoops,” she chuckled, pushing herself off the ground and back to her feet.
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She took a step forward, then another as she quickly broke into a run.
Pausing her steps, Rin created a translucent sword of ice in her right hand.
'The balance is decent, but it doesn’t heavy enough. Maybe it’ll get better once I level up more,' Rin thought as she swung the sword a couple of times in front of her.
She performed thrusts, stabs, and slashes against an imaginary enemy in her mind before dissolving the sword back into mana. The feat of creating the sword taking a tenth of her total mana.
Channeling mana in front of her, she created a two meter long lance of the same translucent bluish ice and sent it flying towards a tree.
The lance cut through the air, propelled by her mana as she watched it penetrate halfway of its length through the tree while splinters went flying into the icy wind. She examined the lance's flight pattern, its acceleration, the strength of the skill and created a verdict.
“Power, six, Speed, 8, Piercing, 9. Not too bad at all.” Rin concluded, satisfied with the results of her second class.
Although it wasn't impressive in any way whatsoever compared to her first class, she was already quite happy as an elemental class was usually linked to creation.
And with a lifetime of battle experience on her side, she would find a way to make use of the class.
Hearing something fall next to her, she looked up and found a stone ceiling covered in stalagmites that dripped with cool water which then crystallized into the snow that floated to the surface below.
Rin knew that while she was in a forest filled with ice and snow, she was currently in a dungeon because of the higher density of the mana in the air, most likely within the lower levels as the cold had not instantly frozen her within the first moments of her waking.
Walking in the only direction she could, forward, Rin headed to find the exit or whatever else would be waiting for her. The cold no longer bothered her and although her body was not her own, she felt free, reborn to chart a new path.
Rin skipped through the snowy forests as she looked around for anything out of place, but there was nothing that caught her attention.
'Where are the monsters thought,' she thought with a frown.
Eventually she came across a wall which had an ident within it. Walking up to the wall, she grazed her hand over the indent and it felt cool to the touch. But it didn't appear to be naturally made, it was more like depicting that a fight had occurred as if something or someone was thrown into the wall. Rin could not tell if the fight was recent, but it would not hurt to try and search for any clues.
Rin followed along the side of the wall until she came across a spot in the snow that was reddened by what she assumed to be blood. Looking around the area, she found a set of four legged tracks a couple of meters away from the bloodied snow that led back into the forest of icy trees.
Setting off after the tracks, she soon came across a wolf like creature with a deep wound set into its side. It lay on its side and appeared to be unmoving.
[Snow Wolf - lvl 15]
Although it was 14 levels above her, Rin released it out of its misery by sending a lance directly into the helpless creature’s heart. She put a little more firepower into the lance until it took up over forty points of mana as it buried itself into its heart and continued travelling through the flesh of the beast and into the snow.
[You have slain Snow Wolf - lvl 15]
Rin stumbled at the sudden release of a fifth of her total mana but smiled when she heard the ding from killing the creature. She released a sigh before walking through the snow to the corpse of the creature. Even though she had already been accustomed to the physical properties of her body, going from having over a billion points of mana to a mere 200 was going to be quite difficult to muster.
Rin looked at the dead creature’s body before her stomach growled in hunger at the sight of meat. Unfortunately, she did not have access to any kind of fire magic and was unable to cook the corpse of the wolf..
However, she sensed a feeling that drew her towards something within its heart. She reached into the corpse and slid the creature's heart off of the lance, dissolving the lance back into mana shortly after. The squelching sound of flesh and blood being squished filled the air while her fingers searched the heart for what was inside.
Quickly locating the source of the feeling within the monster, she brought it out and found it to be an E class mana core. Mana cores would rarely drop as the byproduct of a monster as the reason why monsters spawned within dungeons was because of the density of mana within them. The dungeons would sometimes produce monsters with an overly large amount of mana that would be condensed into what was called a mana core.
Lower lever creatures like this wolf would have a lower chance of containing a mana core, but higher level creatures would contain higher class mana cores and would also have a higher chance of forming along one in the first place.
'Wow, I didn't think this would come in helpful,' Rin thought.
Deciding that it wouldn't hurt to try, she popped the core into her mouth and was immediately met with the taste of a hearty soup. It didn't taste particularly good, but it was the only source of food she had in the dungeon. Satisfied with her meal she heaved out a sigh and checked her status.
Name: Rin
Title: Mana Core Connoisseur (Ability to eat Mana Cores)
Race: Hum-{Error}
Class: Ice Mage, Seraphim of the Night
Level: 0 -> 4
HP: 200/200
MP: 200/200
Strength: 10
Endurance: 10
Vitality: 10
Wisdom: 10
Intelligence: 10
Agility: 10
Unassigned stat points: 40
Available Skills-
Ice mage:
[Lesser Mana Regeneration (Passive), Elementary Ice magic, Ice aura, Protection of Ice]
Seraphim of the Night:
[None]
After killing the level 15 wolf she had gained an entire 4 levels along with 40 skill points due to the level difference.
Each person would obtain ten stat points every time they leveled up until they reached level fifty where they would undergo a class change, evolving it, making it stronger than ever before. A common effect of advancing a class would be the amount of stat points earned for leveling.
Previously when Rin was at level five hundred in her former life, she gained a little over a million points per level along with her many multipliers of passive skills and equipment.
Looking over her unassigned points, she put her points into what she deemed the best for her current situation, fifteen into agility and twenty-five into intelligence. With her only tool being her second class, she needed to rely on speed for dodging and intelligence for her damage.
Besides, Rin had been a mage in her past life who obliterated her enemies from afar. She certainly lacked in hand to hand combat, but that was against the strongest opponents. Her skill with martial arts was enough to compete against many, but her mastery and control over her magic was what brought her to the very top. Which is just one of the reasons why she prioritized agility and intelligence.
After traversing the dungeon for nearly the entire day without a map of the dungeon she may as well be wasting time; feeling tired she walked up to the tallest tree in the vicinity and created twin daggers of ice in her hands, plunging them into the bark of the tree and hoisting herself up the tree using the daggers like climbing holds.
Reaching the top of the tree she looked around but could see nothing but the tops of the shorter trees and the wall which she came from. Deciding there was nothing else she could do, she settled within the limbs of the tree securing a makeshift nest to its trunk and going inside.
She lay down on the ice sideways, knees to her chest. As with her new class came with the feeling of not being cold at all in such an environment, it was rather safe and warm. But also cramped. Rin quickly drifted off to sleep with thoughts of leveling and hunting the next day.