The morning air buzzed with a certain wildness, an enthusiastic fervor fueled by optimism for the day to come. All around Janet, everything seemed poised to take advantage of the brimming energy churned up by the shadow-dispelling sunrise.

The birds trilled their lungs off in their perches up in the trees. Beside her, Janet’s teacher, Pireus, went through his morning stretches with an easy smile on his face.

Janet felt like punching the gleaming teeth off of his jaw.

To her back, Darius, Brian, Sylvia, and Sylthis sat cross-legged on enchanted mats. The were seated in a rough circle, so all four faced a transparent Mana Stone placed on a short pedestal right at the center..

They all looked so peaceful as they refined their respective [Talents] by having their mana resist the other three’s. It aggravated Janet that they could be so relaxed while her world was upside down.

The exercise, according to the mages, was something she’d have to participate in when she finally acquired a full set of [Talents] rooted in the primal Affinities. The four were basically drawing pure mana from the high-tier crystal into their cores, and in the process ‘coloring’ it with their own Affinity.

Since they were in such close proximity, tiny motes of foreign mana would get drawn into their cores. The motes acted as impurities that they had to cleanse.

That process, the pitting of one’s mana against another’s, helped a mage get a clearer picture of the specifics of their own [Talent] by revealing imperfections and areas that needed refinement.

It was akin to dusting a glass surface with powder so fingerprints could be revealed, and in this case, wiped off or lacquered over.

Janet skimmed through her Status one more time. It was growing into a habit to do so every dawn, not because of the gains she was accruing, but because of what she now knew she was missing out on.

According to Brian, every person was born with the four primal Affinities, and they all Awakened at the moment of System Initialization at age ten. The ranks varied, but it was an accepted fact that everyone received a minimum of four [Talents] after Initialization.

And that wasn’t counting the 40% of the population who boasted an additional Affinity atop the four base elements, or the 10% born with another above that.

There were absolute geniuses out there with up to 10… but Janet would get there, eventually.

There were downsides to every extreme, and Janet wanted her foundations firmed up before she began building her tower of Affinity supremacy. Her ability to consume souls and their [Talents] was not going anywhere, after all.

As to why she was so fretful? Her little saying, like attracts like, was more prescient and representative of truth than she had first assumed.

Elemental [Talents] were the bedrock of all cultivation. Be it Warrior, Mage, or any mix of the two, [Talents] played a central role in their development.

Why? The farming of Experience, of course.

Experience was a subject in which most people had little understanding – and not for lack of trying. The main consensus, however, was that all XP earned was a product of dissipating souls of the slain.

As for the rewards doled out by the Systems for feats of cultivation or discoveries that enriched the Almanacs themselves? Well, people initialized into Systems died from all sorts of causes, most of them non-combat-related. Their gathered XP had to go somewhere.

Where the [Talents] came in was simple.

A soul was made up of every conceivable Affinity, most of them too diffuse to be utilized actively, but playing their part nonetheless.

Awakening essentially involved condensing the most abundant elements within a soul to a point of saturation, where the body and mind animated by that soul could interact with them. These condensed clods of Affinity were what people perceived as [Talents].

For Janet, [Talents] appeared as patches on the spherical body of a soul, or concentric bands around it when the person or beast was powerful enough to have ‘closed’ a Circle.

The reason why Janet earned +2, and only +2 to all Stats with every Level-up, was because she only had two Talents, just two Affinities with which to attract XP of that nature from the dissipating souls.

Of course, if she had the four primals that everyone else was born with, she’d receive +6 to all Stats, which by LV 5 should have filled up her Stat tally for the First Circle, allowing her to stockpile XP with which to empower her future Class.

It was all like a bad joke.

When the soul dissipated upon death, it became XP.

XP was drawn into a soul by the Talents, which in turn were fed and empowered by the XP, increasing their Rank. The improvement of a [Talent’s] Rank improved the rarity of Spells and Skills that it could support, which in turn allowed the Practitioner to grow more powerful by enabling them to acquire more XP by slaying more opponents or performing meritorious feats.

In short, power bred power, which helped in the cultivation of even more power.

With only two elements, Janet’s development was hobbled. Her Stat gain was so slow, she would have to wait until LV 15 to even think about getting herself a Class.

Classes were another story altogether.

A Class allowed its wielder to distribute XP towards the Stats that would benefit them most. A Warrior had little need for Wisdom, after all. Rather than allow the even spread of earned points to all Stats, they allocated them into Stats like Strength and Endurance, making themselves even more effective in battle.

The Class also allowed a [Talent] to harvest more XP from each kill, since as stated, like attracts like. A powerful, well-crafted Class allowed greater Stat gains per Level.

Classes were constructs that acted upon the soul, and thus increased the conceptual weight of their [Talents]. Just as gravity increased with an object’s density and overall weight, a Class construct increased its [Talent’s] draw.

The Class also allowed a person access to very specialized Skills pertaining to their Primary Talent, with Subclasses doing the same for secondary Talents and Affinities.

The entire system was built in a way that all parts worked together to strengthen the individual by making the most use out of every single foe slain, and allowing faster progression in every single Skill, Spell, or Technique learned.

The Guilds that crafted the Systems wanted to encourage as many people as possible to climb towards the pinnacle. Every strive towards that goal was rewarded, and every advancement incentivized.

For Janet, a person who only possessed two Talents, no Class, and such a slow Stat growth that she’d have to wait till LV 15 when her soul and mana core was strengthened enough by the +2 Stat gain to support even the weakest of Classes, her progress was as a snail’s sprint compared to the better prepared.

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“Why so glum?” Pireus, asked.

“I was just thinking about the XP system and how ill-prepared I am for all of it.”

The man actually laughed. To her back, she heard someone chuckle.

See? These people needed a good smacking. They dared to have a great morning while she was so depressed?

“Janet, what more preparation would one ask for?” He shifted his stretching posture so he was looking right at her eyes. “You can devour entire souls!”

Janet shifted her posture into the next stretch. Her spine let out a deliciously pleasurable crack. Still, she looked up, confused.

“I’m not talking about souls right now. I was thinking how I would have been better poised for cultivation if I was born with the four primals like everyone else,” she answered.

“You don't understand your advantage, do you?” Pireus commented in a deadpan voice that didn’t really answer her question or alleviate her malaise.

Seeing her evident confusion, Pireus signaled that she could stop contorting her body. Janet was actually a bit disappointed by that. She loved how free and at ease her muscles felt after she completed the taxing stretches.

“Hey, Brian… would you mind assisting me with something?”

The fire mage, still garbed in red but with his collar and cuffs a burnished gold, stood up with a huff. “What do you want, old man? The mana here is very thin, you know? I need all the priming time I can get.”

“I need your hands for a moment.”

“Hands?” the mage stared at his palms, his face the same shade of confusion as Janet’s. Where was her teacher leading up with all this?

Pireus’ eyes followed Brian as he left his meditation mat and dragged his feet as he moved towards the two of them.

“What’s this about?”

“I need your Strength,” the old man stated.

“My build is not Strength-based.” Brian replied. “You’d be better served by having Sylthis or the boss help you with whatever this is.”

“Not exactly. You’re the closest to Janet when Stats are concerned,” Pireus explained in an arbitrating tone. “For this demonstration, I need the two of you to compare the Stat effectiveness of your Strength.”

Janet was now thoroughly confused. While Brian was indeed a mage, he was far older than she was, and had been at the cultivation game for decades, compared to her mere weeks. Did the old man want her to feel even worse about her 11 Strength?

At least that was her thinking until Brian opened up his mouth. “Are you kidding? If you want to embarrass me, just come on and say it outright.”

Wait… what?

“Calm down, Brian.” Pireus tussled Janet’s hair. “She doesn’t believe her diet of souls does anything for her Stats.”

“Not so much her Stats, as it would improve her base constitution,” Brian corrected.

“Yeah, that too.”

Pireus got a rectangular tarp from his storage and spread it on the ground. There were runes inscribed onto its edges, but Janet had no idea what they meant.

“I think I need to refresh my knowledge of runes,” Janet commented as she helped her teacher straighten out the edges. Unfortunately, the crumples were persistent.

“You can tell what that formation does?” Sylvia asked from her position on the mat. With Brian out of position, training had been interrupted.

“Some sort of weight-altering…” Janet began, then stooped after seeing a section that contradicted her first guess. “Mana-to-earth conversion... and a portion for somatic conductivity? What’s going on here?”

“Told you she was a genius,” Sylthis praised as she stood up.

“I never disagreed,” Sylvia sniped back as she stood up. “She’ll need some advanced formation theory tomes, Darius.”

The boss also got up from his mat. He smoothed the creases out of his outfit, a sharp-looking black suit with a striped blue and white shirt underneath. He collected the mats and Mana Stone into storage, training apparently concluded for the day.

It looked like the little side-show was making spectators out of the magic practitioners.

“I still suggest we wait until she has all four primals,” Darius replied to the Elf.

“But the timeframe for that is so nebulous! Look, she can already decipher some of the arrays on the Grav-Scheme!” Sylvia complained. “I bet it’ll be eye-opening when we get some current rune theory into that brain of hers.”

“One thing at a time, Sylvia,” Pireus interrupted the discussion. “Do you mind?” he pointed at a circular rune on the tarp’s corner that Janet could tell was meant to receive mana to power the formation.

Sylvia nodded her agreement, and knelt over the circle. Janet felt a string of mana exit her palm and into the rune.

In a few moments, the tarp stretched itself into a perfect rectangle, all the crumples smoothed out. The runes on its edges began to glow, which caused the space above the rectangle to waver like a mirage. The wavering settled after Sylvia was done supplying mana.

“All done.”

Pireus directed Brian and herself to take up positions on opposite halves of the tarp, within pre-indicated squares. He then withdrew from his Ring of Storage two metal dumbbells.

Janet felt her heart skip a beat. She really wanted to test her strength and actually tell how far she’d come. It looked like she finally had her chance.

“The runic formation on the tarp interfaces with an enchantment inside the dumbbells. Every five seconds, they \will double in weight as long as they remain in contact with your arm,” he explained, looking right at Janet.

“When you reach your weight limit, just cut off the supply of mana, and you’ll have yourself a measure of how strong you’ve become.”

“Okay… I get what the tarp and weights are for,” Janet began, “but what’s Brian doing here?”

“Brian has a Strength of around 165, and since he’s been a mage since First Circle, his Strength should almost be at baseline effectiveness,” Pireus explained.

Janet paled. If the mage’s least-invested Stat was at 165… how high was Wisdom, or Intelligence?

“We need a general comparison on your respective Stat Effectiveness. Essentially, how much does every single Stat add to your actual capability?”

Pireus handed a dumbbell to both she and Brian. Janet felt she could have lifted hers in a single finger. it was that light. She clasped it in her right hand, and settled her racing heart with a slow exhale.

The enchantment inside the weight connected with her mana, drawing some fraction of a point every second. Janet did not resist the meagre drain.

“We began at 10 kilograms,” Darius announced at twenty seconds in. “How are we feeling?”

“I’m okay,” Janet replied.

Some quick mental math informed her that the weight was now 160 kilograms. Her arm was not feeling any strain at all.

Five seconds later, she felt her fingers constrict around the weight, to get a better, tighter grip. At 320 kilos, the weight was getting substantial, but not yet tiring.

At 640, she looked around, expecting to see astonished faces. Everyone was looking towards Brian. She felt him activate some sort of mana-based Skill, but was too engrossed in feeling the weight to check.

At 1280, the strain grew unbearable. She cut off her mana at that point, even draining some out of the dumbbell so the weight reduced to a more comfortable point.

A few seconds later, Janet heard the crunch of a heavy weight upon the ground, followed closely by a body hitting the ground. Brian had obviously overextended.

Janet handed over her weight and stepped off the tarp. There was now a dimly glowing line on the central bar corresponding to an inscribed scale.

“Just as I thought, about 1100 Kilograms.” Janet’s martial teacher went and collected Brian’s weight. He was collapsed beside it, his right shoulder looking painfully out of place.

“As for our resident mage, his bar reads 6,000.”

Janet could not believe her ears. She went and read the scales herself. Pireus’ reading was true, although Brian’s weight was 5,490.

Still, it was an absurd result. The mage’s Strength was 15 times her own. Logically, he should have been able to lift 17,000 kilos.

Or more to the point, her Strength should only have enabled her to lift around 350 kilos. By all accounts, she was lifting three times beyond her base level.

“What does this mean?” she asked, her face a picture of incredulity.

She was proud, even bombastic at the result, but she feared this was yet another secret she’d have to keep hidden.

“Basically, due to your constitution being improved every single moment by the soul-matter your soul consumes, every single cell, organ, muscle and bone is that much more powerful.” Sylthis looked at the collapsed mage. “At least thrice as effective, and it looks like that number should be higher.”

“You are very much still in First Circle, make no mistake about that,” her teacher added as with a wave of his hand, the tarp returned to storage and Brian was left lying on dew-moistened grass.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how you could craft Skills, slay beasts, and heal from practically anything, while your power is ostensibly at the level of a 12-year-old’s?”

Janet felt a bolt thunder through her brain. She was just a beginner, weeks into her journey of cultivation. There was no way a newly-awakened ten-year-old could do the things she was capable of.

====

After a hearty breakfast, the six left towards the Fire-Ant canyon, now just days away, Janet's mood had lightened up. Yes, she was just Level 6, and her soul could not Support a Class yet…

“By the way, what was the threshold for a core becoming capable of supporting a Class?”

“An average of 30 points in all Stats…” Sylthis answered, then her eye shot open. She grabbed Janet by the shoulders and stared into her belly as though her eye could pierce through her flesh.

“Darius, you should come look at this,” she called out. Her breath was fast, and her grip upon Janet was getting more painful by the second.

“By the gods! This…” Darius sputtered. “How did we miss this?”

Turns out, Class qualification was all about the density of a core's weave of mana, rather than its capacity in MP. And Janet’s, by virtue of the sheer weight of stolen XP, was a white dwarf masquerading as a languid moon.