Weeks pass in my class trial without any real surprises. I explore the surrounding space, reaching about 100 miles from my arrival point, only to find the edge of the ‘allotted’ part of this world is similar to the edge of the instance. But here I know all this is only a section of a planet.

Anyone else would only see an end to reality and even the system’s perception field only encountered an impenetrable wall, but I’m not limited to normal senses. I have a true version of the perception field which allows me true knowledge of the world.

The forest continues beyond that barrier almost as if it had been put here a while ago, but without drastic alterations. I still feel a hint of the system’s touch on the general organization of the forest inside, it’s closer to an alteration made a century or two ago and then left mostly ‘unsupervised’.

The pace at which the beasts grow stronger seems relatively tame and I will be able to stay here for months with my current power, but I still haven’t uncovered the tip of any clue to my goal.

My tiny wooden fortress, half dug into the ground, with a reinforced two room system is of great help. Though it's only meant to delay an attack while I’m asleep. If the Mobs were at my level or even stronger, with how weak the current iteration is, would be more of a liability rather than an advantage. But I will keep reinforcing it based on how the trial develops.

Food comes next. anyone else could simply eat the mobs they kill. BUT have more options, so I carefully mold the trees to provide me with a constant food supply avoiding introducing any hint of the actual roots I carry with me or any of my resources to accelerate the process. Any attempt to go the easy route would have the system ripping out of reality whatever I touched.

The intrepid Albatross occasionally circles close by, though never within a hundred meters. He seems to be shifting, moving away to create his new nest even farther than my perception field could reach. I leave pieces of the mobs that can’t be reasoned out for him to eat, along with a few seeds, though he doesn’t show any interest in that. I wish I could dissuade the Mobs, from trying to tear my throat out every time we meet, but they are insistent in their desire to kill me. So they become corpses that the system takes away in a few minutes.

But the albatross only eats a pair of times when I move far from the direction I leave the strips of meat behind.

I explore each inch of the outer section, not finding a hint of the ‘easter eggs’ from the first trial layer. Meditating and trying to absorb the environment seems to be futile. What I learn, simply conforms to my expectations.

I think of my main class, though I don’t know if this trial is only meant for it. My sub classes may tilt the direction, even if the main class is the reason for the trial at all.

I take up, as I had started and overlaying both the skill-based perception field and the natural version of it. The lack of any findings doesn’t discourage me, I simply keep going without hesitating a second.

Meditating in search of the barest hint of enlightenment, I surround myself with reproductions of the eggs from the last trials, I look from the deepest layers to the sky, both in the micrometric sense and also trying to extract even the mildest sense of purpose from reality.

My class namesake makes itself manifest:

One with the world.

I try to connect, I try to extract meaning from reality. Usually, it works, even if not in the manner I expect, but now I feel as if I’m trying to force an answer to the wrong question. Not because it’s impossible, but because it bangs against my own preconceptions.

“What is the right question?”

That eludes me.

Then the month comes to an end and I feel a shift roll over the land. The mobs hide as they sense something even before I do. Something that deeply scares them. Even the leopard that had been slowly sneaking up behind me abandons its half an hour of work and scampers off with no thought to stealth.

I have been on this trial for too long. Concern builds over the people on Earth facing the Elves and Goblins and the minor invasions without my power, wisdom, and healing. It will be a bit more troublesome than otherwise. Still, they are in as good of a place to act without my input as I could possibly hope in the current conditions.

Each month, a couple more healers show up back on Earth from the instance. They are a great help, but like other magical users, they can’t simply act from the other side of the world like my connection to plants allows. Not the end of the world, we have the logistics to transport them in relative safety near to battlegrounds or quickly transport the injured to a central location with the healer. Eighter way, they are slowly chipping away at my need to spend Life, a nearly ‘finite’ resource.

That worry builds in the back of my mind, but I put it off, knowing I can’t always be there. No matter how much stronger I am, each person is always responsible for their own actions. If I simply ignore a path to power like my trials, I’m gonna end up obsolete and all but powerless and humanity might see a little less need to grow as we all need.

I feel a rumble through the earth that gives me a hint of what has scared the Mobs. A rumble that doesn’t get to my body kilometers away, but it calls my attention on the perception field and I turn the longest tendril in that direction to find a being too large to capture in its entirety.

A being that would put the mammoths in the instance to shame. Weighing no less than 30 tons, an ‘elephant’ charges my position as I start running in her rough direction and away from my little fort. Her steps are the smoothest ever seem, pound per pound. Hits I would expect to shake the world and leave craters become veritable feather falls that do vibrate the ground, but fade at an exponential rate, way faster than normal. The hints of a skill and system interference are plain for me to see and what I’m supposed to do is clearer than ever.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I taste the flow of will and something else, the skill being used. It isn’t a mana skills or anything of the sort, it works on a different principle, but that probably has nothing to do with my actual goal.

Doubts over the entire affair bubble over, but as the elephant gets within a few hundred meters away, I inspect my newest pursuer.

Featherfall Elefant. Lv. 220

The highest level being I ever managed to inspect and like the Titan, its body size gives it a significant advantage.

It moves at a comfortable speed that is faster than anyone had a right to and even the wind that is such a hassle to deal with for someone like myself simply gets pushed aside by sheer momentum. The very mass it carries is the solution. She isn’t forced to rely on tricks as I have to. The wind will eventually become a problem as speeds increase, but the diminishing returns of higher stats will only kick in at about twice the speed a human should experience. All that before accounting for skills, though I don’t feel anything stronger than my own in that department.

The terrain, our relative stats, my restricted usage of Qi and a hundred other parameters enter a complex formula that I half handwave it into existence. But that follows instincts I try to hone with the perception field while in the instance with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of mobs.

I judge its top speed to be a hair less than my own but I’m gonna have quite a bit more maneuverability.

Now, what does this behemoth has to do with my One with the World class is a mystery, but I don’t have time for philosophical questioning.

Stand and fight, or run?

“A hybrid.”

I wait for the before taking off running and almost instantly I sense it shifting its direction. A system screen pings very softly, comparatively speaking, but this time I don’t ignore it.

Survive for one hour to continue your trial.

57m 28sec

Interacting with the screen doesn’t reveal anything more and I still have to wonder at the rationale behind it all.

The only new thing is my attacker, so my perception field goes back there.

I look at its entire body. From the composition of its skin to the neurons firing at unbelievable rates. Its thinking process seems fairly simple, so I won't be able to communicate with it to any meaningful degree.

I cover every inch of its body until it comes near.

When the system’s version comes into range, I learn nothing new. One day, it might make a difference.

Perhaps I could properly integrate both skills together and never run the risk of the system not showing me something because it didn’t know I was looking.

My mind turns over the idea of running a system skill on top of my own. It would give me a bit of work and I would still want my natural version to act without knowledge of the system, but it’s something to work towards.

Running in between trees that probably seemed almost like styrofoam to my pursuer, who even if it didn’t have a perception field of its own, had some other way to locate me, I manage to gain a small lead, even without pushing my all.

I end up leaving the job of ‘parting the wind’ to my other half. It’s extremely important to both save my limited resources and will. Even with our willpower to back the effort I see a simply atrocious efficiency, but it’s a dimension I’m fast seeing gains that probably will continue until I catch up with everyone else.

My attention gets drawn to the organs of the beast behind us.

A few seem off-place. The impressions they pass are strange.

Four equidistant solid meat blocks that don’t seem to serve a purpose following a line that would be roughly where a belt would go if it was trying to imitate a human.

I run through everything again. All my anatomy knowledge from before the system and the hundreds of books I added after to improve my healing.

My senses follow the blood flow: cleaning, recharging and pumping. The digestive system, acid amidst several layers of mechanical and chemical decomposition. Stores of fuel, a few organs seem to be unidimensional in their function while others seem to interface with everything on the body, but the solid blocks don’t seem to be anything. They are... weak. I would induce a tremendous amount of blood flow if I wound it there.

Spinning my body in its direction ready to spend a chunk of the accumulated Qi over the last month, in the tight cycle inside the last piece of the inner world I carry within my body. Although it is quite a decent amount, I do need to be careful in a long fight. With sparks of Qi ready at hand, to save whatever little Life I was able to accumulate, I close in.

The lumbering beast moves much slower in close quarters, but that is only an artifact of the distances involved. Sure it does take twice as long to tuck its leg than a normal sized elephant, but I also need to be twice as far to avoid being hit.

I can sense its coiling muscles and as I move in and I suddenly have to be ready to shift and dodge in a dozen different directions simultaneously. Gluing my feet to the ground I move like a dancer around its own reactions.

Finally, When I close enough, I strike my palm on the hide covering the ‘useless’ organs, and I pulse my Qi inside its body. A tiny hole forms letting out a blood jet as if I had poked a big ballon.

Seconds later, the blood flow staunches, just as I pass its other side and repeat on the one I can from the ground. If the system needed something physical to detect my discovery, it will be clear now.

The elephant gets even more enraged and its body flows with a thin layer of flames. Flames I can’t feel the heat off from meters away, but my perception field is goes haywire.

Its trunk swings back and forth trying to hit me.

I’m nimble on my feet and when not sparing resources for a few seconds, I close in once again, taking off in the sky for a moment and exposing myself. But my aim is true and my palm hits the side of its back on the third ‘weak’ spot past its flaming body. Changing plans in the last second, as its reaction seems farter than before, I jump away as fast as I can hurtling myself in the direction of a pair of trees, either of which will give me options.

I sense the light damage my body even from a momentary touch with those flames. It's nowhere near what I imagine ‘void flames’ would be able to inflict, but it’s way more than I had seen anyone wielding. But this is likely a lv. 200 plus skills and we hadn’t encountered those yet. I feel my cells slowly turning back from an inflamed state and second-degree burn.

A wild swing misses me. But it does hit the pair of trees I was aiming at.

I miscalculated the range of motion of the elephant and suddenly both of the points I could use to redirect myself are gone.

Its motions seem almost random and I thank my lucky stars that it didn’t manage to hit me. Then it all clicks together and I realize what the strangeness of those organs was. They aren’t real organs, they are system organs meant to be weak points, but beyond that, they allow for something akin to the perception field or at least a locator for me. Now it only has one left intact.

My realization fades in the middle of the complex web that allowed me to realize it.

I have a much greater problem:

I’m exposed.

My weak propulsion runes push me away at a very slow rate and an enraged turns its head to track me with its working organs: Its eyes.

I no longer have much of an option for safety.

At the mercy of gravity, my mind spins.

“Spending a lot of resources doesn’t seem so bad now does it? If I could I would trade a million even for a mild increase in gravity I would.”