I return to the exact spot I was in before entering the trial. Right in the middle of my home at the base of the heart tree. I take in the changes made to my body by the system and I’m surprised to encounter none at least when it came to body composition. It seems that my short stay or better nutrition didn’t prompt the system to restore my fat and glycogen, which is actually good.
The details of the trial seem so unimportant, even if this is one of those that will make a difference. I take the root egg I constructed even as the system’s constructs try to enter my body. I allow most unhindered as I had grown used but choose one to fight vehemently against. Not because I hoped to keep it out of my body, but simply because I lacked experience and grit when it came to fighting the system, hoping to grow strong enough for when it really mattered.
I follow similarly to my exercise routine back in the day trying to grow my stamina and speed to get to Pando faster and with more energy. Riding my bicycle in peace for hours on end, spending a couple of hours in the forest and coming back home.
Like the good old days, I don’t over exert myself, but I also don’t leave too much on the table, ready to repeat it in just a couple of days.
On a more immediate term, however, the exhaustion is still here and I let the last system construct enter my soul.
I return to full awareness in a minute but even pushing this hard could be bad if it happened in the middle of a fight and I really needed to fight off the system’s interference.
Then the time to learn the system’s changes and to choose my next steps comes. But I remember something, I didn’t get a chance to try the next level of the trial. Last time even if the system messed with my memories, I still remembered that there was a next level and now I have nothing.
Did I fail to unlock that choice this time around?
I look around my soul looking for any clues I might have left there, but nothing shows up.
Maybe I needed the complete egg for the second level of the trial or there was another trigger.
I open the prompt and start to go over it.
Class trial – One with the world (3rd trial)
Time: 7d 2h 23m 14s
Congratulations, you have passed your class trial.
Extra score:
4 Puzzles unlocked: Class loses one rarity ranking.
10 Puzzles unlocked: Class maintains rarity ranking.
36 Puzzles unlocked: Class increases one rarity ranking.
Hidden Easter Egg (7/7)
The way that the information came organized this time around makes a little more sense. The tendency of the system to switch how it presented things, often not showing the same screen to people upgrading from the same basic class to another was frustrating in our efforts to understand its intricacies, though its ability to read minds, even if invasive, comes in hand now and then. Now, the change in the format made me realize that my impression of how this whole thing works was wrong.
What is shown is not the base ‘guaranteed’ upgrade for simply passing the trial that passes the trial but an overlayer or extra points.
So, the fact that both times I end up getting two upgrades when there was supposed to be only one starts to compute and how hard the trial was supposed to be fully come to my mind.
I got lucky in many senses. I doubt even one in a thousand would get more than a couple of the puzzle pieces perfectly lined up, let alone all of them as I did.
Then the last line sinks in. Seven outta seven easter egg pieces.
I have them all, but clearly it’s missing one more. Perhaps my sense that I was supposed to work out the rest on my own was correct or I was missing something more fundamental.
Then a more fundamental change in myself gets to a tipping point and I notice it.
I‘m unsure of what is being altered. But somehow my mistrust takes a back seat. Yes, the system had many pitfalls, but that sense of connection that my class let me build powered by its main skill was not only there, but it was growing… stronger. My body mind and soul were being taken across a fundamental threshold that I didn't understand.
I simply became GREATER.
All those changes are absurdly faint on their face, but I know that they are so fundamental that I can’t avoid gawking.
I’m like Santos Dumont or the Wright brothers after making the first plane, being transported in time and watching vortex generators being put on modern aircraft. For a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the total weight you suddenly get 10 or even 20 percent more efficient. But without computers, a deep understanding of aerodynamics and a thousand other little things it was impossible to even understand the magnitude of what you were witnessing except at the most surface level.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Awe gives way to more practical matters and I start to go through all my screens before another message takes my attention.
One with the world – Epic – Main class LV. 100 (1.3 X class multiplier)
(Legendary: requires 3 tokens to upgrade.)
+5% to Perception +0.25 to Perception /Lv.
+6% to All stats +0.2 to All Stats/Lv.
+10% Better perception of the world
I try to make sense of those words. I understood that just going through a trial doesn’t guarantee a class upgrade. I needed to actually pass it, but now these tokens...
Upgrades are rarer, and won’t come every trial. Not even close to it if my assumptions are correct. The limits come not only from failure but lacking tokens at the higher levels.
Then I go to the subclasses and I get a little more information.
Do you wish to upgrade your subclass (lowest rarity limitation removed by using full class tokens):
Upgrade tokens: 2
Pando’s Carrier - Scarce (50% Effectiveness) (Rare: requires 1 token.)
+2,25% All Stats +0.075 All Stats/Lv.
+2,5% Connection to Pando
Creator – Uncommon (50% Effectiveness) (Scarce: requires 1 token.)
+1.5% to All stats +0.05 All Stats/Lv.
+2.5% Connection to your creations (Bonus can apply to other people’s creations - variable)
Spatial Architect: Epic Rarity (33% effectiveness) (Legendary: requires 2 tokens.)
+3% to All Stats +0.1/Lv. to All Stats
+1.7% Connection to the fabric of space
I think about upgrading each of my subclasses. Even Spatial Architect, which would use all my Upgrade Tokens. Though from everything that I gathered, the concrete benefits from legendary classes probably won’t make up for the extra cost when considering that lousy 33% effectiveness. Only a third of any gain will come into effect. But the deciding factor comes as I realize that the real bottleneck is that I don’t want to just spend all the tokens now. If my assumptions are correct, I will get two tokens every trial given how overpowered I’m for the current level of challenges. If I keep just one, I’m very likely to be able to upgrade my class the next turn, so I settle on spending only the ‘spare’ point.
Without hesitating I go for it choosing the higher rarity subclass.
Pando’s Carrier – Rare (50% Effectiveness) (Epic: requires 1 token.)
+3% All Stats +0.1 All Stats/Lv.
+2,5% Connection to Pando
That way I will get both a lesser subclass with little chance of affecting my main one.
However, something else I can dream about and dive right in without fear is my new subclass:
Choose a new subclass:
Manasmith (Rare)
Bookworm (Scarce)
Aviator (Scarce)
Internal Mage (Rare)
Memory singer (Rare)
Reality Architect (Epic)
Archivist (Scarce)
Techno Wizard (Uncommon)
Hunter (Rare)
Runic Storyteller (Scarce)
Foreman (Uncommon)
Pando’s Disciple (Scarce)
Pando’s Priest (Rare)
Pando’s Bishop (Epic)
----
There were plenty of old and new alternatives. Apparently, even the techno wizard subclass is available to me. I know this isn’t a carte blanche from the system to start using tech, but it would probably lean me further in that direction.
I try to taste the Aether and the constructs from all the sub classes, though I get very little that isn’t a jumbled mess.
Even if technology is something that I want to develop, for some reason this subclass doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe the direction that it heads doesn’t meld well with my way of thinking or it simply wouldn’t provide something benefits I could get elsewhere. The insights from my gut aren’t always perfect, but I had trusted them thus far and it hadn’t steered me wrong.
Even choosing the subclass Reality Architect could provide more concrete benefits towards building tech rather than simply becoming a better user.
Its lower rarity also didn’t help and I didn’t feel the clear upgrade path like I had with my main class. That more than anything tells me the system’s reluctance towards tech, at least in its user's hands. Sure this class came after I proved instrumental in getting a few parts of our tech tree into gear, but it would help those efforts, so I skip it.
All that can come later. I have nearly a hundred sub classes to go through.
Glancing at the trial counter I’m stunned:
Time until the next trial is available:
9m 29d 23h 42m 13s
Ten months.
A full ten months, instead of just one.
Ten times longer than the previous wait times. Would this trend continue, increasing every new trial or maybe after every trial that pushed me across a threshold?
Besides upgrading Pando’s carrier, which had been an easy decision, I also have to choose a new subclass, but after that revelation, the choice can wait a little.
Right now I want to explore my body further. I want to find out what the increase in stats, in potential from the system and a hundred other things, could provide. So I take my staff out of the inner world and spin it a couple of times, feeling the edges of my skills. Several are at Level 99,999 just shy of crossing to 100, but the system is loathe to allow me that victory while using my own resources.
In seconds, I start to develop not an intellectual understanding of why I failed to cross the threshold with my skills before, but an understanding ingrained in my movements. Understanding that I didn’t need to think consciously to achieve. Understanding that I could no more go against than I could fight gravity.
I spin and dance imitating a hundred different polearms techniques from staff and spear to halberd stances. I let the ever present faint guidance from Blackwood infused in my staff guide me and I can feel the potential just on the tips of my fingers. Potential that I want to unleash, but the system is ever present and its gaze blankets me causing a fine drag on my every move and stopping me from actually breaking through without using its resources.
“Ok, ok.”
I say in surrender as I stop completely.
An hour spinning after having barely gotten all these stats and the changes to my body aren’t enough to simply break this threshold, but I can tell that they are a step forward. A rather large step, maybe even a Titan’s step.
Anticipation builds in my chest as I want to explore, but now is the time to take a good look at the subclasses. There has to be a good option in there.