[Congratulations Untried!

Continue to excel by forging your way through difficult situations.

+5 stat points by assignment per level ]

Mike cursed under his breath as the notification confirmed his fears: his new Class would require him to undergo more hardships. Another notification appeared, offering a ray of hope in the storm of acid reflux caused by the first notification and the speed of his travel.

[You are awarded a Class Skill to remember your old Class by

Class Skill calculating…]

The swirling background made reading the notification difficult, forcing him to squint his eyes against the kaleidoscope of colors and bringing back the stinging memory of when he had become old enough to require reading glasses. Aging past 30 was more pain than it was worth when focusing purely on physical characteristics.

[Class Skill Unlocked: Fortune's Folly

Once per day, you can influence a situation directly by channeling your Luck into it]

Well that will be worthless, he thought to himself, even as he struggled to subdue the vomit creeping up his throat. Something told him that should the substance breach his lips, high speed travel would become immensely more uncomfortable, especially without wind to blow off any stray debris.

[Congratulations! Level 12 reached!

+5 Stat Points by Assignment]

[Congratulations! Level 13 reached!

+5 Stat Points by Assignment]

Forcing his mind to think about something other than the building bile, Mike pulled up his Character Sheet and was amazed to see that between his last Level as an Unlucky and his two Levels as an Untried, he had 26 stat points waiting to be assigned. That was as much Intelligence as he had total.

A horrible realization struck him then, bringing with it a torrent of incriminating thoughts: How could I have been so stupid? That means I had 13 points I could have used to defend the valley. Would that have been enough to save Creeagle? Would I have needed the hobgoblins' help at all?

He was saved from even more introspection when the energy path parted abruptly in front of him and he was barely able to register the sand before he collided headfirst into it, burying the upper half of his body like a carrot in some tasty garlic sauce. His body was already sore from the days spent fighting for his valley, which made the process of extracting himself from being halfway buried even more cumbersome. Before the System, the force of the collision surely would have broken his neck, and if he had survived, he doubted he would have been able to dig his way out before suffocating. Now, however, it was a tiresome inconvenience, but he was in no immediate danger.

After a few attempts at shifting the sand around, he took the easy route and summoned Quicksilver from the spatial storage bag at his side, which expanded underneath him and pushed his body free from the uncomfortable confinement and caused a small cascade of sand to flow on either side of him. Turning around, he took in his surroundings for the first time.

He was on the largest sand dune he had ever seen–nearly as tall as some mountains. Incredibly, it wasn’t the largest one in sight. As far as he could see in every direction was an ocean of sand with cresting dunes that rose thousands of feet. As he squinted into the glaring sunlight that reflected from the sand’s surface, two notifications appeared before him:

[Congratulations on entering the Elite Zone!

Monsters here range from Level 75-150 and represent the strongest foes earth has to offer.]

[As always, no XP will be awarded for killing fellow monsters,

But that doesn't mean you can’t progress.

Push for excellence and you survive this crucible to become Unstoppable]

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

He couldn’t help feeling that he was once again being stiffed by the System as he read how strong the other monsters in the zone would be. And that was only heightened by reading that he couldn’t even Level Up here, which meant he would stay 62 levels weaker than any foe he would come across. And he was confident there would be foes–much as he had hunted buffalo, he would likely be targeted for food. Some things were always the same regardless of the ecosystem. His thoughts were interrupted by another notification:

[Congratulations! You have learned the ability Energy Sense.

+2 to Intelligence

It’s rare to survive energy transport at such a low level.

You can now sense Cosmic Energy.]

I got a skill that makes me a hippie? It was the first thought that came to mind. Cosmic Energy just sounded way too much like the counterculture that he had survived in high school. I guess I will just put this in the same category of uselessness that Fatalistic Prophet falls into.

Energy Sense appeared to be even more useless and “far out” when he checked on the parameters required to level it up: Learn to trace your own energy pathways.

“Yep, there have gotta be some drugs involved with that one.” he said allowed, before yet another notification appeared:

.[Congratulations! New Quest Initiated: Return Home.

Follow the arrow and survive until the Zone Barrier falls.

Then, return to your valley.

Rewards: Variable upon completion.]

He was initially stumped as to what “arrow” he was being told to follow, but soon found out that whenever he closed his eyes, a large yellow arrow would appear in his field of vision, and regardless of which way he turned his head, it always pointed the same direction. Judging by the position of the sun, that direction was North West.

As he turned his head about with his eyes closed, experimenting with the new sense, he became aware of just how hot it was getting. The sun told him that it was about 10 o’clock in the morning, but it was already hotter than any day he had ever experienced before. Knowing that it would only get worse, his survival skills kicked in and he began preparing for the uncomfortable day ahead of him.

Desert travel had a few rules, foremost among them was to always minimize travel and energy expenditure during the day. With that in mind, he began digging a hole into the side of the sand dune where he found himself. The task initially seemed impossible, as the perfectly dry particles simply flowed into any divet he managed to create that was larger than his head. With a little ingenuity and more patience than he would have had for the task if it wasn’t a life or death situation, he was able to use Quicksilver to shore up his tunnel, enabling him to make a proper shelter.

As he dug, he began to notice that Aeromancy picked up quite a bit more than it had in the past, which he decided must be due to the openness of the landscape. No trees were in sight, and the hills made the perfect channels for air streams to flow through. If he wasn’t acutely aware of how important building a shelter was, he would have stopped then and there to practice the kata. As it was, it required all of his focus to manipulate the Quicksilver so that his tunnel didn’t cave in.

The process took about two hours, by which time he was dripping in sweat and his. He had no experience that would allow him to know exactly how hot it was, but having done some training in Death Valley, he could say with confidence that it was well over 120 ℉. For the second time in as many hours, he realized that he would have died if it wasn’t for how much the System had improved his body.

Of course I wouldn’t need to survive these experiences if it wasn’t for the blasted System. He thought to himself.

When he was done, the cavern he had built was quite large, around 3 feet high, 4 feet wide, and 8 feet long. He would have to crawl around in it and could only lay one direction, but he had covered all of the metal so that it wouldn’t directly heat up from the sunlight–from his experience of stomach surfing in the Quicksilver dungeon and building cannons, he knew the metal was incredibly conductive.

The entrance to the room was a small hole which he had angled to the North minimize its exposure to sunlight. It wasn’t as good as building his shelter on the North side of the dune, but it was the best he could for the day. He was only about half way up the mountain, and didn’t want to chance cresting it that day. He had also installed a ventilation shaft using a pipe with a 3 foot diameter near the back of the metal room, which ran diagonally to the surface. Surprisingly, this had been the easiest part of the cave to construct as it was simply a matter of shaping the Quicksilver once the rest of the room was in place. The outlet of the pipe was also buried in a small lump of sand and angled northward.

Crawling into position, he found that the room was cooler than it was outside, but still uncomfortably warm. However, if there was one thing that SEAL training taught it was how to be uncomfortable, and he settled in to wait.

⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫

The day passed as slowly as any in Mike’s life. During the first couple hours, he periodically checked the temperature outside, but eventually gave that up when he felt his hand begin to sunburn the moment he stuck it outside. This, despite his very considerable farmer’s tan which he had cultivated over many years and truly perfected after the System. Thankfully, due to the insulation provided by the sand, he found that his hole only reached around 95 degrees, a temperature he could easily survive in.

After failing in his attempts to catch up on some much needed sleep, he turned to his spatial storage bag to take stock of what he had available to him. His large bag contained almost a ton of Quicksilver, in addition to the considerable amount he had used on his shelter. He also had a few pounds of Blasting Powder from when he had worked on creating the cannons for the valley, rawhide, some sweet potatoes, berries, dried fish, a few clay pots of water, and thankfully, the salt and pepper he had kept upon his person to prevent the hobgoblins from wasting it. Within the larger spatial storage bag, he found his original bag, which had much smaller dimensions and only contained some random seeds and the large jar filled with the Potion of Uselessness, which had been his attempt at creating a healing potion. Altogether, he figured he had enough water and food to survive up to a week. Not a long time when trapped in the desert, but hopefully it would be enough to find a more permanent place to settle and regroup.

Around 4 in the afternoon, he was finally able to fall asleep, the plush ground of Montana woefully absent as his bald head sweat against the hot metal.