I spend the next hour slowly going through each sub class, but I’m thwarted in my efforts to learn more. I don’t know if it is some other change or the fact that I have so many in a long list, but just as I learned enough and got better at tasting the Aether system screens to extract anything useful, everything comes jumbled together. This way I can’t be sure each impression I get is from the very class I’m looking at or the others around it.
I spend another hour trying to narrow down my options to only one but quite get there. There are a few contenders who seem brighter than the others. And in many ways atop it all came a relatively humble sub class. I knew of nothing beyond the stats and what I gleaned by myself, but there was something about it that called to me.
Runic Storyteller (Scarce)
Like my own main class, I can feel that more hidden underneath the surface. The problem is that I don’t know if it’s like a styrofoam piece that had 90 percent exposed and only the barest hints dipping in the water or an iceberg with only the barest of tips showing above water, hiding its magnitude beneath the waves.
There is also the risk that it won’t mesh well with who I’m and who I’m striving to become. I overcame inertia and placed it amongst the top contenders, but there is a risk, there is also a stronger pull that I couldn’t explain. So without fear and trusting my gut, I go for it at once forgoing all the other subclasses this time around. Then I read the full prompt instead of just the stats of the class.
Runic Storyteller (Scarce) (25 percent effectiveness)
You have developed your runic writing skill to a minimum level of mastery and so this option opened up for you. But runic storytellers are not simply wordsmiths who spun words of wonder to bedazzle children or engravers who develop complex programs on sheets of metal, instead, they speak a deeper language.
They reach across all mediums and affect change in the world through the language of the heart in the form of runes.
+1,125% All Stats +0.0375 All Stats/Lv.
+1,25% effectiveness while telling a story.
(This is a legacy sub class: Normal Legacy class benefits are forfeited.)
The entire text strikes deep at me and I have no idea how I almost missed the monumental potential of this class. Hell, if I had picked anything else I might have lost the chance by the next turn.
But now isn’t the time for such thoughts, instead, I rush to my soul and open up all my senses to witness the sub class addition process.
Even after a lot of attempts, the system didn’t allow me to even glimpse this process on anyone else’s soul. I always end up getting botted out even when ‘simply’ upgrading a class, subclass or even adding a few stat points. Generally, anything that messes with a more fundamental layer of someone.
Anything that I witnessed inside myself was before a lot of changes like the gathering of several pieces of my soul with a much shallower understanding of the system.
But I’m not content with just watching it from a distance to glimpse superficial phenomena and risking failure to understand even the minutest of intricacies of the system by laziness.
So I fly as fast as I can, to the closest Aether constructs erected mid air and tied in place by forces I didn’t understand. But instead of the simple rope I had started to weave, something more complex is in place.
A rope ladder that I climb with steady movements. I almost feel the system trying to boot me out of my own soul or at least force me to step away from the corner of space that it has claimed around the Aether constructs at the bottom. But like the dozens of times before when I didn’t want its interference, the runes painstakingly carved all along my soul’s walls flare up. They come to full power reducing the system’s grip inside my soul for a few moments.
That delays it just long enough for me to get within an arm's length of my goal. But then gravity grows a thousand times heavier and I’m almost yanked from y position even with both arms and legs grabbing for dear life. My other half breaks off from me and I regret not having planned better, though it’s not like I knew the system would be quite this domineering inside my own soul. Even its strongest reaction so far had been closer to a river that pulled me elsewhere, but after getting not just a rope but something even more developed the river suddenly gets way faster.
I could have probably asked my other half to interact with the system prompt while I stayed secured in the chair. But as he enlarges himself and becomes an embodied mass of will on my little island, half of him plants himself in its protection that nothing and nobody could hope to contend against, with long tendrils reaching out for the runes on the outer walls. He takes all his power, no longer even trying to exert force on a level he can sustain, but instead optimizing for a slip second.
Even before it actually gets here, Hits of the new class shine through as he strengthens the story that I engraved on the outer walls trying to replicate a hint of the properties of my island. Characteristics that became an immutable and unbreakable shield in the center of my soul which is part of my legacy.
The system that was pushed back slightly, batters against the edges of my soul: and it Fails.
Not mincing words: It fails. As it had failed to push with proper strength or I rely on tricks trying to make sure the system hit the strong points instead of finding a weak crack in my defense while using my resources and other runes outside my body. No, this time it is just the skin of my soul and it straightforwardly fails.
Then the cost comes due and I feel an enormous strain through my connection with my other half, but I don’t stay idle. I lunge forward without even a hint of the system inside my soul and I trust that my other half can take care of himself. Then with a heave, I sit on the rope chain and start to pull the sides to finish up. It’s uncomfortable. Given that it feels closer to riding a rollercoaster on a chair made of thin chains and a couple of sticks for my back.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Then it gets a lot worse as the system bulldozes past our defenses and sends out a pulse that pushes out the walls of my entire soul. The runes carved out are almost a hindrance containing the power instead of letting it leave, threatening to tear itself open one more, but this must be a measured response from the system precisely calculated to not be able to damage me. Like when it got really insistent and pinged system prompts with such vehemency that low levels users would be concussed or even die if they experience it at the same level, while a higher-level person only feels an insistent nudge or at most painful, but definitely not life-threatening.
That pulse fades, but the system’s presence increases until I’m shaking in place, but I just hold on with both hands, and with a single effort, I get into the mental headspace for creating Aether constructs that ordinarily would require me minutes to get into but now come s in moments. I mold a little of my Aether into a proper construct. A tiny but strong ring tying all the chains in an X pattern across my chest.
Then it is game over for the system’s attempts to push me out. Not in a real way, but in a hit of the cold ruthless eye in the sky that I heard and even felt tangentially from Pando when he was fully connected with me freezes me in place.
I feel so small. Like an ant before a giant’s feet, hoping that I land on the gaps of its shoe rather than the solid rubber.
Everything I learned told me that system users weren’t subject to this kind of treatment, but I guess that I’m no longer quite as protected after poking the sleeping bear too many times or maybe it's simply about the nature of my actions now. I’m crossing the system’s bottom line.
In my one kilometer wide soul, as I tended to think of size, my other half is now fully hiding on the island nearly 500 meters away while I’m only 60 meters away from where the center of the action will be. But even as I lose control of my body, I’m well secured and the ride can shake as much as it wants, I won’t be flying away from the roller coaster seat. I’m pulled in every direction with such strength that I fear the chains will cut my limbs off, but it never crosses that threshold.
This keeps going for another few seconds, but then the calm is absolute as the actual Aether constructs for my sub class arrive. The system will start its delicate operation and heavy metal isn’t the song to hear while doing open heart surgery. The entire space locks. I can’t move an inch and even my head is locked in place. Luckily I can still tilt my eyes slowly and I’m roughly in the right direction.
The ball of Aether constructs unfurls into a thousand delicate constructs similar to how my dual mind skill did.
But this is a whole other level of complexity and I have the sense that most of it comes from the number of skills and other stuff I have. Each new needs to be connected to everything that came before and that will compound in the future. Just this subclass is probably adding about ten percent to the Aether constructs I already have. I try to ingrain in my memory their shapes and the dazzling patterns that are formed, though it seems like observing it with a microscope would be better to witness the actual ‘runes’. Still, the detailed sketch could wait for me to get closer. Even constructing roughly 40 meters inside the ‘system’s’ space is already hard enough. Even with time to slowly make a better construct, another couple of meters is my current limit.
I follow the way everything feels and flows. That feels more immediately significant, as if I’m getting a glimpse not of the final result, but the process needed to arrive at these complex Aether shapes.
The barest hint of truth hides underneath each movement, their positioning the patterns they follow. Like the way that seeds in a sunflower are neatly organized into mathematical wonders. Or the fractal patterns of ice flakes forming something superior to the works of all the greatest artists. It is much more than I can hold or even comprehend in a single sitting, but I witness a hint of the real system’s majesty filled with awe and wonder
And then it’s over.
The system is gone and I’m left without pressure or noise. Noise that I only now realize had collapsed my ears in and only after relaxing did I feel them popping back out.
I step out and using the telepathy skill me and my other half start to talk to each other.
“That’s too bad. All that fuss for something barely more than a more complex skill.”
“What you are talking about?” I ask as he fails to comprehend what just happened.
“You…” His void trails off as the realization that I witnessed something different than he did.
“We didn’t see the same thing.”
“Ohh… and what did you see? Your, our memories are… blurred.”
I try to describe everything as close as I can, drawing the overall patterns and then going through my memory palace back and forth to extract everything I can from those few seconds.
“Damn, I wish I could have seen that. If you hadn’t discovered how to make permanent those Aether constructs, we would always think that there wasn’t anything special inside that region.”
“Next time you will see it as well. With your seed brain, you will remember much more precisely the subtler movements in the patterns.”
“Not sure that is an advantage, your natural sense is better attuned compared to mine and I think that is what we need for now. Something closer to well trained instinct instead of someone to copy the mechanical parts of the system’s constructs.”
“We will find out. Still.... this subclass. I think it’s special.”
Then we each go on our separate ways, letting go of the telepathy skill.
Something is off about this whole thing, but I don’t pay attention to the insular questions that arise.
Name: Nash
Level:150
Titles:10+
Class: One with the World (*)
1.00 B+/0 EXP
Strength
426
Soul
93
Constitution
423
Body
88
Agility
445
Dexterity
457
Endurance
692
Perception
1120
Intelligence
661
Willpower
1160
Life
7699/7699
4910
/day
Qi
12412/12412
1325,3
/hour
Vigor
5099/5099
79,83
/min
I have class skills to explore, stats and so much more to learn about and acquaint myself with. Further debate will only delay more important tasks and I dive back into it, ready for whatever may come.
With this new class, now I have stories to tell: stories about someone that is way stronger than they should be and I’m not slowing down any time soon.