Chapter 9, Class up

Three years later.

Horizontal slash, uppercut, vertical slash, roundhouse kick, backstep, horizontal slash, wrist grab, horizontal slash.

“I think a little extra power is needed on that last slash, Ari.”

“Think so? Alright, let’s try again.”

We do.

Ding! General skill [Small Blades] has leveled from [13] to [14].

“Much better I’d say. As long as we don’t miss the wrist grab we should be able to hit before they get loose.”

“Noted, Zel. Enough training unarmed and blade training for today? Are we doing more magic training next?”

“No, I don't think so. We’ve managed to get a good enough handle on moving our body and managed to incorporate both hearing and smell. Hell, we’ve even learned how to speak. With our recent increases in [Mana Sight] I think we’re ready.”

“Oooh I’m so excited! Those potential classes have been almost too tantalizing to ignore. But I understand why you thought it best. No use having a class if we can’t even use what we’ve already got.”

I already had 9 available classes before I delved into the dungeon and now we got 5 more. Since both Ari and I already know about those 9 classes we decide to just skip looking into them and move on to what we’ve gotten since.

Class 1: None - Available [14]

[Jeweler], [Merchant], [Mage Apprentice], [Courier], [Reluctant Barmaid], [Field Cook], [Rogue], [Thief], [Hauler]

Looking at the classes I got before arriving at the dungeon paints quite the picture of my life up unto that point. I have no memory of stealing anything but I must have been in a bind at some point if I went far enough down that route to get awarded with the [Thief] class. I’ll just get Ari to remove all these classes from my status. I will never pick any one of them. Now onto the good stuff.

[Vampiric Specter]

You have survived the ordeal of shedding your mortal coil by sustaining your soul on the energies around you. Your soul has remained without an anchor even though your mortal shell has long since turned to dust. Embrace the incorporeal and you will never have to fear dissipation. Drinking the energies of the world's inhabitants is now not a matter of survival, but pleasure.

Requirements:

-Die without dissipating.

-Absorb the energy of the living to keep your soul intact.

-Stay alive longer than it takes your body to disappear from the material.

“What the fuck is this? I’ve never sucked anything out of anyone.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Think you’re funny do you? Of course you do. We are comedy geniuses after all. What I said still stands.”

Ari sends the mental equivalent of suppressed amusement.

“Good one. I have no definitive answer but I would think your soul absorbed some of your own anima when you went into the dungeon core. You know how cramped it is in those channels and anima was flowing along those paths together with you. Only a guess.”

“Hm. Good guess. Let’s move on.”

[Unseen Executioner]

You have fought a mighty being of the soul with only your own soul as a weapon. Leaving your body behind you battle that which has no physical form. Be it a ghost, a specter or eldritch horror not yet to manifest in the material. You can be the judgment falling on those who dared not meet their forefathers. The unseen executioner protects the people even if your feats will forever remain unseen to those you deem worthy of saving.

Requirements:

-Have your soul leave your body.

-Win a battle fought with your soul against an incorporeal being at least 200 levels above your own.

-Have [Soul Magic Resistance] at level 20 or above.

“Well that’s just boring. Fighting unseen enemies for the good of others without them even knowing I saved them? Pass. It reminds me though. I got a kill notification when waking up in the core after I died. How could I have killed you? That makes no sense.”

“You should be able to figure this out but I’ll explain since we don’t have all day.”

“Hey t-”

She studiously ignores my protests.

“Since your soul was trying to defend itself on instinct, thrashing around and scratching mine, it doesn’t seem to matter that you didn’t do very much damage to me as I did that part myself. By cutting most of it off and joining with you while you kept attacking me, the system awarded us the kill. Most of what had been the entity you killed dissipated at the same time I became you. Thus, a kill for us.”

“Seems far fetched to me.”

“Well the experience had to go somewhere. I don’t know.”

[Soul Mage]

Fiddling with your very essence can go horribly wrong or horribly right. Sometimes it even goes perfectly okay. You have initiated and halted a soul fusing process. You have melded a soul to yours. You have even modified your soul to handle external stimuli with mana. Chasing more power to make greater changes to what you are is the path of the Soul Mage. You might even turn yourself into something great one day. A great monstrosity is still great.

Requirements:

-[Soul Manipulation] at level 10 or above.

“I don’t like the snark of this one. I’d like to see someone else turning themselves into something as great as us. We’re being underestimated.”

“I’ll have to agree. I was forced into a variation of [Soul Mage] when I got my second class as a D.Core Subsystem. It helped manage the status sheet of my architect but it will be mostly useless to us. We already have a fairly high level in our [Soul Manipulation] general skill. This won’t give us anything new.”

[Arcanist]

A wielder of the arcane seeking ever greater power and mastery. You have refused to walk down the traditional path of a mage wielding power aligned with the natural elements. Showing great determination and perseverance through hardship you sought to wield that which is rightfully yours. You have now demonstrated your dedication and control. Grab a hold of your power, freedom and destiny.

Requirements:

-Arcane affinity

-[Mana Sight] at level 1 or above.

-[Mana Sense] at level 1 or above.

-[Mana Manipulation] at level 100 or above.

“Now this is more like it! We’ve finally done it, Ari! After all this time we got a mage class for wielding the arcane. This would be so useful for our new body since it’s all arcane, all bonuses we’ll gain should translate to even greater power.”

“Yay yay yay! I’m so happy for you, Zel. Happy for us.”

We both send fuzzy feelings of happiness back and forth between us. Showing how much it means that we actually got what we wanted.

“Hey, did you turn on the waterworks? I know we are grinning like fools but you don’t need to add tears to it.”

“You’re too grumpy, Zel. Tears of happiness fit the occasion perfectly.”

“Hpmf. I’ll let it slide. Let’s check the next one as well. Can’t imagine how it could be more perfect than this though.”

[Mana Machine]

You have gone far along the path of becoming one with mana. Wielding the most elusive and versatile form of unaligned mana, the Arcane, was not enough for you. You took the concept of being one with your power and manifested your idea in reality. Continuing down this path will give you the tools necessary to turn your mimicry of biological life into a well oiled machine of unrestrained complexity and possibilities. To wield great power you’ll create a vessel capable of supporting infinite growth.

Requirements:

-Arcane affinity

-[Manabody] trait.

-[Mana Sight] at level 50 or above.

-[Mana Sense] at level 200 or above.

-[Mana Absorption] at level 150 or above.

-[Mana Manipulation] at level 300 or above.

“You were saying, Zel?”

...

“Holy shit! Is this tailormade for us or what?”

“Yeah probably. Rare traits or achievements often lead to unique classes. It’s only the common rabble without ambition who take basic classes since they’ve never really done or experienced anything The system deems worthy of rewarding.”

“Does this mean we should take this class without even considering [Arcanist]?”

“You don’t always want to pick a unique class since unique doesn’t mean tailormade to your current goals. A horrible but unique experience might give you a class that turns you into some sort of monster. You need to make sure you understand the class description and find any hidden risks hidden between the lines.”

We both read and reread the [Mana Machine] class description looking for anything suspicious.

“It looks like you’re worried over nothing in this case, Ari. The class seems very straightforward to me.”

“Yes it looks that way. [Arcanist] would have been a really good choice if we still had our old biological body. But now? It sounds like we’ll get a lot of what [Arcanist] might offer and more options for future growth and enhancement of our body by going with [Mana Machine].

“I agree. And it was really fun designing and building this body. Doing more of it in the future to get even stronger sounds amazing.”

“We’ve decided then, Zel?”

“We have.”

Ding! You have gained the class [Mana Machine]. +[5 AP].

Ding! [Mana Machine] has leveled from [1] to [37]. +[180 AP].

Ding! [Mana Machine] has claimed general skill [Mana Sight].

Ding! [Mana Machine] has claimed general skill [Mana Sense].

Ding! [Mana Machine] has claimed general skill [Mana Absorption].

Ding! [Mana Machine] has claimed general skill [Mana Manipulation].

Ding! [Mana Absorption] has become [Passive Power].

Ding! [Mana Manipulation] has become [Arcane Manipulation].

[Passive Power]

Passively absorb mana to automatically fuel all desired [Manabody] processes running at normal performance.

[Arcane Manipulation]

100% Increased efficiency and control when manipulating arcane mana. 400% Decreased efficiency and control when manipulating mana aligned with naturally occurring elements.

-[Mana Machine]-

You have gone far along the path of becoming one with mana. Wielding the most elusive and versatile form of unaligned mana, the Arcane, was not enough for you. You took the concept of being one with your power and manifested your idea in reality. Continuing down this path will give you the tools necessary to turn your mimicry of biological life into a well oiled machine of unrestrained complexity and possibilities. To wield great power you’ll create a vessel capable of supporting infinite growth.

Perks:

-[Intelligence] +100%

-[Wisdom] +100%

Skills:

-Mana Sight - [61]

-Mana Sense - [233]

-Passive Power - [189]

-Arcane Manipulation - [312]

-Empty

Available skills [0]

We read through all the new notifications and a few things stand out to me. The first thing being the amount of Attribute Points or AP the class rewards each level. From Ari I’ve learned that unevolved classes, that is to say classes level 0 to 100, always give between 1 and 5 AP per level. The higher the requirements for acquiring the class the more AP you’ll receive.

The second thing that stands out to me is two skills changing into something else. This supposedly happens sometimes when classes integrate general skills. It’s very rare for the skills to get worsened by the change. In this case it was a very welcome improvement.

The [Passive Power] skill makes sure that our vessel won’t disappear and frees up mental energy spent on keeping the old skill active. It may only passively power our body to a degree of normal performance but it won’t be hard for Ari to manually supplement mana with our regeneration when it's needed.

[Arcane Manipulation] is also a welcome upgrade. It will effectively double our ability to manipulate mana since we never use anything other than arcane anyway. Now with the added penalty to anything not arcane we might stick with it forever.

The third thing to stand out is our level and lack of available skills to fill the remaining skill slot. The level comes from accumulated experience since I didn’t have a class to level before now.

“Hey, Ari. Do you know why we aren't at a higher level and why there are no available class skills? I would have thought that killing something more than 200 levels above our own would have given us a massive boost in experience.”

“That’s easy to explain. Regarding the lack of class skills there is no doubt that we aren’t high enough level to receive them yet. How many skills you receive and when you receive them differs greatly between classes. Having a unique class could mean never receiving anything or getting a new skill every other level up.

"I’m just going to assume that you know that defeating opponents below your own level rewards less experience. The bigger the level difference between you and them the less experience you get. It is the same the other way around. You get diminishing returns on experience when defeating higher level opponents.

"You will always get more experience by defeating higher leveled opponents but at some point it becomes inefficient to level this way since you get exponentially diminishing returns with exponentially stronger opponents.”

“But isn’t level 37 still too low?”

“It isn’t if you take into account how little damage you actually dealt to the enemy. The rest was self-inflicted and thus the experience was split between a dead person and yourself with the minority going to you.”

“I guess it still helped with getting the [Unseen Executioner] class. Not that we picked it mind you. But we might still need to look for stronger opponents to defeat if we want our class evolution at level 100 to be as good as possible.”

“That’s true, Zel. Though I think we might want to wait until we’ve actually killed a few things at our own level before rushing against the strongest opponent we find.”

The next thing to do is spending our new attribute points. Deciding to put the first points into [Intelligence] and [Wisdom] we do an even split of 180 points. Keeping 5 points for emergency use. This will hopefully give us enough power to fight on even ground with opponents at our level.

Ding! Attribute [Intelligence] has been increased from [33] to [123].

Ding! Attribute [Wisdom] has been increased from [29] to [119].

“Well that’s everything I think?”

“Yes. Time to check our new status.”

-Status-

Name: Zelaria

Level: [37]

Race: Human

Age: [16] (80)

Attribute Points: [5]

Strength: [10] -50%

Constitution: [11] -50%

Vitality: [10] -50%

Agility: [9] -50%

Dexterity: [11] -50%

Intelligence: [123] +100%

Wisdom: [119] +195%

Mana: [2460/2460]

Mana regen: [351] / Minute

Traits:

Arcane affinity

Twin Minds

Soulcore

Manabody

Resistances:

…

General skills:

…

Identify - [6]

Unarmed - [5]

Small Blades - [14]

Manabolt - [16]

Class 1: [Mana Machine - 37]

Class 2: Locked