JAARU ANIIK

Returning to work was strange. Her new class made work actually more difficult. She didn’t have her social spells anymore and instead had to rely on her social skills and her empathy. This made work far harder than it used to be since she had to use actual emotions in her work. In addition, her red skill was pinging and twitching every moment she was standing still. She had to pace back and forth at work or it would have been unbearable. One evening, she met up with Init and they went home together. Init asked: “Are you planning anything this evening?”

Jaaru shook her head: “I haven’t planned anything, but I know that if I stand still, this thing in my mind is driving me crazy. I need to do something.”

Init looked at her: “You still have that issue?”

Jaaru nodded: “I still do indeed. It actually gets stronger.”

Init shook her head: “I really don’t understand why this is a thing you have. But then, I don’t understand the class you have and it doesn’t even seem to exist in the system, so I have no idea.”

Jaaru nodded: “It seems to have something to do with the fact that we are in, you know… a black one, a red one,...”

Init understood the reference to the second system: “Maybe you should stop fighting it and do what it tells you? Maybe this is how you get something out of your ‘Established Founder’ class that no one can tell anything about?”

Jaaru nodded: “I… I am not sure what it does but I need a place where I can stay for two days in direct contact with the soil.”

Init raised an eyebrow: “What? How do you know?”

Jaaru made a vague gesture: “I just do. Not sure why, probably because I got some weird class that no one has ever heard of and that has nuked all my previous abilities…”

Init shook her head: “I never heard that classes come with instructions like that. They generally don’t.”

Jaaru nodded: “Said by a true Solidarity’s Technologist.” She stressed the word Solidarity.

Init was able to read between the lines: This was likely a consequence of being in the second system. She confirmed that by a momentary shift in her facial expression. Init generally was more suspicious about surveillance than Jaaru, but in this case no one felt like taking any risks.

Init responded: “I understand, it seems to be quite different from what classes normally do. You generally need some kind of guide.”

Jaaru hissed: “I know, I know, it shouldn’t be the case! And yet!”

Init smiled uncertainly: “I think we need to trust this, no matter how strange it is. Just one day to the weekend, then we are doing this, okay?”

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Jaaru nodded: “Okay, sounds like a plan.”

Init agreed: “Grand, and today, let’s cook together!”

CVETKA KRALJ

She looked into the compound and winced. People looked like they had been through heck. The monsters had been gruelling and people had various injuries. Crystal helped treat the injuries using her magic. She cursed: “Who invented these fucking spawns‽ Who had the idea to make monsters that can burrow so fast‽”

Cvetka quipped: “Teki. That’s the guy — or watersnake, I guess, who seeded them.”

Crystal shrugged: “I mean, yeah, but what was that‽ It looked like a Shanane or a Groundrunner, except that it didn't move like this.”

Cvetka nodded: “It’s a variant-Groundrunner. A Groundrunner with an ability to burrow faster. Probably derived from a Swiftgrab.”

Crystal: “A Swiftgrab? That's a bit of a stretch, but I get where you are coming from.”

Rush shook his head: “It’s a variant of a Salimar. That is why it got its fast speed. And we know that the planet has Salimars, loads of them, in all variants and elemental affiliations.”

Cvetka looked at him in confusion: “What makes you think that?”

Rush explained: “It just seems to make sense that there are more variants instead of completely new creatures on a planet like this, where most creatures cannot exist. These things also had the weak points of Salimars, I think. I mean, they really crumbled when exposed to attacks like this.” he demonstrated how the attacks that did immense damage differed from those that barely affected them, then said: “Swiftgrabs are more armoured in that area. Both are fucking lizardfreaks though!”

Tom grumbled: “Why the fuck did you race to 10? We all barely were able to push them back, whatever they are.”

Cvetka explained: “You realise that we are not the only ones on this planet? I didn’t even get the buff for the planetary forerunner, it went to a mostly native team.”

Tom raised an eyebrow: “Sarah?”

Rush nodded and so did Cvetka.

There was an audible pause, then someone screamed: “How the fuck did a group of natives break the threshold first?”

Someone murmured: “Sarah…”

Rush nodded. Cvetka looked for the person who said it, but couldn’t find the origin of the voice.

Someone grumbled: “We should get them before they cause us to die by rushing to 20.”

Cvetka shrugged: “That is what we were doing to them with the integration. It’s kinda the same. You can’t grudge them for wanting to protect themselves by gaining levels.”

“We can grudge them for how scary they look!” another voice shouted.

“Please, let’s not talk about ethnic cleansing here!” Cvetka diffused. “Let’s instead get to level 20 faster than them. I feel that the dungeons might be away from the settlements of the weird scorpions. I mean, that’s generally how it is: The first dungeons are near centres of population, that means the Kha Zha plain. However, higher dungeons are in other areas of the planets as they need to be deliberately reached. And we are going to deliberately reach them!”

TEKI

The pod was lifted into the air using a kinetic skilled practice. Teki was in the water, wearing his watersuit, watching it being lifted into the air. He felt different kinds of ways about this. On the one hand he did not miss this narrow place, on the other hand, it was the place where he had stayed the last few months and he could not help feeling a bit attached to it. Technically, he was now homeless. As he saw it depart into the sky, he saw a message in his vision:

Your levelling restriction has been lifted. Go on and advance!

He slithered towards the nearest level 1 dungeon. He had a lot of catching up to do.