Days after the attack on Max’s village I wake up feeling fully refreshed. Different from the last few days, with no fear even before testing the waters, I just know I’m fully healed. The wound on my side is completely gone and I spring from my root bed and run doing jumping jacks, cartwheels, and stretching in every imaginable way possible.
I feel absolutely no pain, not even soreness from the lack of use of these muscles. They should be a little weaker than the rest of my body, but the sheer joy, the adrenaline hitting my veins overcomes it all.
My recovery speed is miraculous, not quite at the level you would expect if this was a game, but much sorter than back on Earth, something like this would probably mean a serious injury that may never heal.
I look at my arms as my body starts to feel my own again, not a vessel for the system or even my friend housed in the inner world. This sense of belonging within my own skin resonates very deeply with my choice of class.
Finally, what had been missing fits into place, and I can suddenly see. I see more than ever before. But more importantly, I begin to understand, and that is the first step in any action. Each of my other senses comes to a screeching halt as the input of this new sense is all I can handle.
The last couple of days were strange. I finally chose a class and it fits me like a glove, but it strangely didn’t give me a new class skill. So I knew something was missing, and now I found it. I can’t just rely on levels or something else to progress with this class, I have to be comfortable within my skin. It seems strange the system has a requirement like this, but I ignore the peculiarity for the moment.
I take the time to not only explore this new sense but to relax as this familiarity is finally back. Ever since I was brought to this place, things have just been changing at an accelerated pace, but this is a very good step into getting solid ground under my feet again.
This perception field of mine, now even larger than before, somehow doesn’t feel as if it’s the goal. It looks to be just a consequence, that is probably why progress was so slow. I have yet to adopt the proper mental picture.
Feeling throughout my body, it’s clear what the goal was all along. Feeling like myself, owning my skin or something along those lines. How that relates to this sense is still a mystery, but I can find out later. I began to master my own body, and so it has come to me.
I idly check my system screen and spend a few moments working out how many stat points I have gained since my injury.
Name:Nash
Level:10
Titles:3
Class: [Expand]
27.59 M/0 EXP
Strength
35
Soul
37
Constitution
32
Agility
34
Dexterity
39
Endurance
45
Perception
44
Intelligence
49
Willpower
63
Health
555/555
374
/day
Mana
809/809
75.74
/hour
Stamina
357/357
5.34
/min
The physical stats don’t change much, only dexterity and perception increased a little, my mental stats increased by over ten-point in a few days. I’m starting to feel a bottleneck there, but that may be just the result of my stagnation.
If I start to move around again my brain will get further reorganized, and the bottleneck should disappear for a little while again. Finally, I tap on the class I selected. Different from last time, I don’t get a prompt telling me I still don’t meet all the requirements. It’s a strange class.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
One with the world – Scarce – Main class LV. 10 – Trial Pending
+5% to Perception +0.25 to Perception /Lv.
+3% to All stats +0.1 All Stats/Lv.
+5% Better perception of the world
Name: Nash
Level:10
Titles:3
Class: One with the World
27.59 M/0 EXP
Strength
37
Soul
37
Constitution
35
Agility
36
Dexterity
41
Endurance
47
Perception
51
Intelligence
51
Willpower
66
Health
587/587
396
/day
Mana
849/849
79,28
/hour
Stamina
377/377
5,62
/min
My average stats is really starting to increase, but even after the system finally lets me press the button to accept the class, my level doesn’t change. I take a little Aether, a resource I have come to treat with much more respect, and interact with the system prompt. It is far from perfect, but after a minute or two, the impressions I get are distinct. I can somehow choose to accept this trial. After running my fingers over the text, I feel in my mind an option to take this trial.
I laugh at the convoluted way I found out what this trial was about. I spend minutes carefully going over it with my Aether, but the system has a button for me to press.
I feel I’m not ready for it just yet, I’m close, but something tells me I’m quite there, so I move my fingers away and go back to amazing my stat screen.
My mana pool is starting to get respectable. I still come short when compared to someone like Merlin, a high-level prodigy who chose to specialize. If I’m not mistaken he must be close to reaching 2000 mana points, maybe more if he managed to get past level 50.
I take a quick peek at my subclass. Nothing new is unlocked there. It seems I need to pass the trial for the main class to get the level 10 skill. Why my class is different is a mystery. I didn’t even properly unlock it after I technically chose it, with that strange requirement not met.
I want to see what all the buzz is about. I managed fine enough until now without one. Though I do have to admit, at higher levels, the difference between someone with a class that suits them and someone with a random class, maybe much more apparent. And if I didn’t have one that suits me, I would cry.
This trial business is new, I didn’t hear of anyone else having to go through one, but perhaps it’s because they chose more common classes. Not in the rarity assigned by the system to it, but in some hidden mechanic I guessed governed them. It doesn't make sense to have such a grand name without something to back it up. Unless it’s another trap of the system prompted by the council.
Without waiting for another second, with these questions in mind, I open my book and flip through the last pages. It is starting to have quite a few pages filled out, but it seems to never have any fewer blank pages.
I skim over a few of the new pages. It’s useful information, but not what I want to know at the moment. On the very last page, as I read what these trials are about, I’m stunned.
Some classes with ‘high potential’ have these trials.
I can only speculate what high potential means, but my imagination runs wild.
Trials can be taken multiple times, but each time you take them you start to erode the very foundation of what makes the class special. I ponder for some time on whether to take the trial right now but eventually decide to wait. There were a couple of things I wanted to do first.
I may even be able to get some more information about it.
I get up with my whole body tingling and a twitching leg. Legs with a familiar burn that I haven’t felt since I came to know Pando. I can’t stop myself so I run trying to burn off the energy. I don’t stop for anything, not even to get a couple of things that I may need in my house, whatever is in the inner world is what I will have at hand. I run around for a bit, but eventually, I realize I should choose a destination or at least a direction.
Going north or south would just put me in contact with other villages. It wasn’t bad per se, but not something I was in the mood for right now. I think about heading the East. I had heard from the scouts as they found the end of the instance. About 300 miles beyond the outer circle of villages was an invisible shield or something that stops any further progress.
Some speculate that it can be broken, but I have a feeling there isn’t any point in trying to go in that direction. We were somewhere created by the system, not in a real world.
This only leaves a single choice, exploring the inner boundaries, about 300 miles inward of the smallest village ring. Heading to the East is the way to go.
Whatever is in the high-level zone is the real prize, and soon enough I would manage to enter it. The line our scouts had begun to delineate is not some shield, but the territory of the beasts living over there.
We have grown used to the two zones. One that goes to roughly 30 miles from each of the villages. In it, only two low-level mobs reside, the rabbits and the wolves.
Anything over thirty miles is the place where the higher-level mobs roam around. Both zones are easy enough to deal with. None of the mobs have the strategic thinking or magic needed to be a threat. Even when we were level zeros, with some knowledge we just kept our distance and used the terrain to our advantage. We heard of a few deaths from other villages, and most of them were from overconfident people. We had so far gotten lucky in this regard, and besides the one person going missing in the first couple of days, no one else disappeared, though we don’t know what happened to him.
Even slowly increase in levels, the mobs in the low-level zone haven’t crossed level 20, and the medium level zone still had mobs ranging from 50 to 70.
The monsters in this new zone are a different thing altogether. All of them are over level 100 and heavily rely on skills, magic, instinct, and cunning, to kill anyone who came into their territory.
Charlie was thinking of sending a few stronger parties more prepared to delve inside the place, but the 600 miles trip put a damper on the idea for now. We only started getting accurate reports a few days ago. We still didn’t understand much, and Charlie is taking his time. There was still much we don’t know and rushing would only mar our ‘spotless record’.
I run straight to the closest spot in this new zone, without using even a smidge of mana, and the sense of exploration that was missing starts to come back in full swing. Passing over the last root line still connecting to the village and my house, I stop for a moment. Containing myself, I connect to the comm network and talk with a couple of people. I already send mana to the smithy and help forge one last pair of weapons, though I am still getting used to doing so far away, and one of the weapons almost fails to meet the +5 attack level.
The minutes seem interminable as I talk to everyone and get everything in order. I could probably ignore it, but this way I won’t feel any guilt if I wanted to extend my trip a little longer. Not that I know how long it will last.
With nothing else in mind to take care of, I say my last goodbye and start running again.
I go beyond the reach of the comms. It is much larger than after the attack on Max, and our scouts are spreading the seeds further and further. The beginnings of a massive network is starting to form, it has already cost me over a gold coin, and money continues to flow out as I wanted it as widespread as possible ASAP. The goal is to have everything in place without me having to manually send my mana and connect each and every single seed.
Though a gold coin looked to be a lot just a few weeks ago, now it is the work of a couple of days with the smithy or on other villages.
The villages that hired me to work on their defenses already started seeing some of the benefits. As the roots grew and eventually connect to the main network they will begin to see the full array of improvements. I have plenty of money coming in through multiple avenues with a few of my low-effort ideas coming to fruition from the MRI, and I carried a couple of loads of ore for the village.
Even all that doesn’t compare to the stream of mana. I have more of it than I know what to do with.
The hours tick by and I slow down. Even with my prodigious stamina, the fruits I ate for the regeneration, and even the attention to vigor, the tank is beginning to empty. To speed up the recovery I start to tap into my mana. Now running at about 40 km an hour is no longer hard. I even increase the pace to about 50 with the plentiful supply of mana I have.
I can’t wait to see the edge of explored space, going where no man has gone before, on a five-year journey...