[{The Third Eye of Corruption} has reached its maximum level]
The urge to read what had happened was impending, so I opened the System message right after I got to my room. I didn’t even check my status, even if I knew it had to be related.
Your understanding of the magic required to use {The Third Eye of Corruption} has reached a limit.
The System cannot provide any insights to surpass this barrier. The System does not acknowledge the class, so you cannot initiate an evolution process.
The class cannot be restored to an operative state by the System's criteria. The System recommends that the user relinquishes the class and obtains a class suitable for System-based augmented features.
The message was, ironically, the key to understanding how evolutions and levels worked. I already knew that levels were just a representation of some complex metrics and numbers that boiled down to your use and knowledge of magic.
I briefly looked at my status and confirmed the obvious: I had reached level 25. The limit was not the level itself, but the need to reinvent how I interpreted magic to be able to progress. An evolution was moving pieces of an invisible puzzle in ways that would make them fit better, ultimately making the user more efficient and effective.
An evolution was the System doing the process for you. It took all your experiences and compacted them into a few classes that would let you advance. The more you had done and tried, the more options it could come up with.
But there was no System to help me. My class was outside of all the System’s parameters, it wasn’t able to use the bases I had set for anything. I was on my own, and I loved it.
There were two [Corrupted Class Books] that I had to read through. Mine, which I was hoping provided some insights, and Charlotte’s. The latter, to me, was a prerequisite. Whatever had happened with Charlotte, it was in there.
I opened the book and was met with a black page with white words. I had seen all types of pages in my own book, like my golden class, but never black. Black, the same color as corruption.
[Corrupted Bane of the Berserk]
> An expert in the arts of close combat, the user has mastered magic to augment themself. The experience is captured in a weaponless class that shines in obliterating enemies when it matters most.
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> The user has let their emotions drive the class. Their anger and resentment have permeated to the very core of their magic. Empowered by corruption, the limits imposed by the System to separate magic from feelings had been broken.
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> The class is now containing the corruption from killing the user. When they choose to unseal the darkness inside and reveal its true powers—attributes and skills—the corruption will end what it started.
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> When there is no other way forward and the only outcome possible is death, the user enters a frenzy state. For they become a berserk at its peak power.
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> The closer to death the class owner is, the more of the sealed stats become available. Power beyond what was originally possessed becomes available for a berserk who has made the ultimate sacrifice. A berserk that found its own bane.
The next pages were simply painful to read—sometimes, outright impossible. Numbers, doodles, curses, and incomprehensible phrases mingled into a chaotic expression of pure rage and evil.
The numbers spoke for themselves. Charlotte had been level 1 since the moment I had corrupted her. Dormant, sleeping somewhere inside her, her powers were fighting the corruption, stopping it from killing her.
And when she saw that we were about to lose the battle, when she decided there was no other alternative, she released the chains. My last pulses to corrupt her just put more wood in the fire.
It was a good class for willing individuals—those that had no other desire but to die enacting their vengeance. But that was far from the conclusion I wanted to draw here.
I was corrupting the individual, but I was not giving them a class. I empowered them and opened the doors for them to form their own class. And they had to be in the right mental space to do so.
Charlotte only wished to eradicate the Sanctum and kill everyone. Her lopsided look at the power she thought she needed made her class an extreme. A powerhouse, but just for a few minutes until she died.
I sighed. This would make my job much more complicated. Whoever I had to corrupt would have to have a clear picture in mind of what they wanted. Accidentally becoming a [Corrupted Bane of the Berserk] happened once already, but it could not happen another time.
Shaking my head, a bit out of desperation and exhaustion, I brought out my [Corrupted Class Book]. I had barely touched it with a finger, the book still materializing from the invocation, when it snapped out of my control.
Charlotte’s book pulled away from me. I was barely able to follow them as they clashed in front of me. There was no explosion, glow or effect. My own book opened to a blank page, and Charlotte’s, reverting back to ink, wrote itself right there.
The book fell to the floor with a thud.
“Motherf-” I stopped myself from cursing. “I have been carefully carrying you around all this time, and I could just have done this?”
I picked up the book and opened it to the newly written page. The class description was right there, without all the insanity that had plagued the original version. It glowed, radiating light even if the page was still pitch black. It suggested I could take it, and I immediately discarded that option.
No, I wouldn’t be throwing myself to my own early death. But… what was stopping me from collecting more of these pages?