Adam woke with a cracking headache. The vermite quickly filled him in on the confusing last moments of the night and proudly told him about their further exploration without him. The trio had ventured back down to the upper mine once the Great Slime had retreated back to its cave. Without Adam they had been more cautious than before but had still managed to clear the slime and spiders from the first tunnel they had explored together before returning. They had also killed all the nest of spiders from the entrance level of the mine.

Checking his notifications he had gained 93 exp from the fighting while exploring the mine. Added to this was 84 exp from what the vermite had earned. Then there was an additional 21 exp for the second wave of enemies the vermite had killed on their own. Cae had reached level 5 and raised his thrust skill to level 3. Neither Ti or Rai had enough exp to level up; but they had both increased their second skill to level 4. Not to be left out Trey had collected all the loose ore on this level of the mine which was all now neatly sorted into piles in the room with them gaining Adam an extra 5 exp.

Having filled him in on their antics in the night the vermite all bedded down to sleep. He would have to wait until tonight to find out if they had developed enough to complete exploring the mine. The vermite resting Adam turned his attention to himself. Not enough exp to raise his main class skills he spent 80 exp to raise Spear Wielder to level 4 in line with his other secondary classes. He spun the spear in his hand; the vermite having collected it for him from the mine. Each level seemed to instinctively improve his understanding of how to use the weapon without the need for extra practice. Perhaps he had been too quick to assume he wouldn't be using the weapon much.

It didn't take long for his headache to ease and having eaten his fill of the fruit and meat Adam left the vermite in the mine to head back to the main camp. He practiced his use of air mana on the journey. The use in a fight had improved his understanding and ability to control the mana down one leg rather than both and now he could control the timing to both push himself forward while running and cushion the blow when he landed from the overpowered leap. It wasn't a surprise that he received a notification confirming his basic control of the element before he reached camp.

Once again camp had undergone some substantial transformations overnight. There was now an outer fence that formed a ring around all the new structures with four small gated gaps heading out of camp. The central enclosed area was now completely encircled by an eight foot wall of stone with a small wooden parapet positioned around the gate that led inside. It impressively now looked like a semi-defensive structure rather than a work in progress. Outside the fields had been planted with small green shoots already visible in the furrows. There was a better defined training yard and archery butt with small wooden buildings half-constructed to store equipment. Lastly the small sty and fenced area for the piglet had been moved outside the inner wall.

Adam linked with the vermite gaining another 100 exp for their various exploits. Ma had persuaded another five vermite to join the camp bringing the number in their group to a total of forty. All three of the vermite with classes had levelled making Jay a level 3 Archer and Ail and Dee both level 2 Spear Wielders. Lei had taken the weaponsmith profession but with no MP was unable to use iron creation. He had finished sharpening the sword; giving Adam another item to go on his list of tasks for the day - unlock Sword Wielder class.

Malakai watched on once more. If he had timed it right, which he definitely had, it had been thirty hours in the way Adam was measuring time since he had last been here. He recalled the spy matrix he had left to observe since his last visit and quickly reviewed what it had captured.

It made no logical sense. Malakai wasn't sure whether to be impressed with the sheer variety of tasks Adam was taking on a daily basis or to dismiss it as idiocy. He had started practicing with a new weapon. Attacking boars with a sword before developing a skill to extract the useful parts of the corpse. Then without reason he stopped this task to head to a nearby cave and practice with bow and spear to kill bats; for some reason holding off on using the same skill to extract useful components. Again he stopped for no discernable reason to move back to his camp. Along the way he performed a number of further seemlingly pointless gathering tasks all the while bounding around with air mana in a meaningless way. Once he arrived back at camp he had fed a pig before dancing to himself in excitement for some reason and then headed to the campfire to sit.

It was here that Malakai was watching as Adam was sat cultivating his mana once more. He observed as the earth around Adam's feet was stirring and slowly rising. He's using earth mana now, thought Malakai. Added to the previous observation and the recording showing the use of air mana to return to camp Malakai was tempted to give Adam the benefit of the doubt and be impressed. While watching, all of a sudden, Malakai realised what was happening.

With no guidance, Adam was splitting his effort between everything rather than pick a focus to develop. As this dawned on him, all the previous actions made more sense. This Transcendent was lost he realised. For some reason the system had not picked up his strengths and set tasks designed to hone them. With no understanding of where to go Adam had simply stayed still. He was unique in those brought from his world in that he had accepted the system support and even the existence of magic but for some reason had not been directed by the system to move on.

Malakai watched on to try and understand this further. It was then he noticed the faded self-representation that had been given to the system by Adam. He looked on in anticipation as he saw a way of fixing this problem. Adam had acknowledged the system but compartmentalised it at the same time meaning the guiding element had been subverted. All Malakai had to do was break this association somehow.

A brief period more of observation showed that Adam was no longer even interacting with the system properly. It was as if the small semi-transparent person sat next to him had been forgotten and dismissed. What Malakai needed him to do was realised that this external representation was, and always had been, part of Adam. If the system was fully integrated in this way, perhaps he was salvageable. With only seconds left on this world before moving on Malakai sent a brief command to the system that he hoped would lay the foundations to fix the problem.

Adam was feeling quite smug with himself. Through the day he had managed to unlock the Sword Wielder class with a similar method as the Spear Wielder class previously. This turned out to be the offensive class he was after all along. He then managed to complete his quest to kill the bats. Collecting the rewards for killing the various creatures gave him 310 exp; with an additional 180 exp for completing his quest. As well as this he discovered the Animal Husbandry Profession on returning to camp for feeding the pig four days in a row. He had even started his development of earth mana.

He rechecked the notifications:

Notifications: Class Description Skills Sword Wielder Unlocked by defeating two creatures with a sword. Increased proficiency with swords. An offensive Combat Class.

[dual wield]

Increase skill to level five to unlock next skill:

[stab]; [pierce]; [parry]; [flurry]

Profession Benefit Skills Animal Husbandry Ability to breed and care for animals. Pick initial [raise]; [breed]; [tame]; [trait]; [feed]

The Sword Wielder skills [stab] and [pierce] both allowed a single high damage attack with the latter being designed to break through armour the same as the Spear Wielder skill. [parry] allowed the user to defend an attack and give a high chance of delivering a counter. [dual wield] did what it said, allowing the user to effectively carry and use two swords. [flurry] released a number of slashes with the sword depending on its level, with a slightly lower attack power than normal. Wanting to enhance the offensive attributes of the role and in part because he thought it would be very cool Adam chose dual wield.

In his excitement he forgot he had only one sword at the moment. The sword would also be pretty useless to the vermite given their relative size. At least Lei was now a weaponsmith so should be able to make some swords. This led to the realisation that Lei had an MP of zero and would therefore struggle to make anything but wooden weapons. He also had no way to level up as he had already selected a profession. With no magic he couldn't manipulate the metals to create stronger weapons.

Fortunately only a few hours later Adam had discovered a solution. This was why Animal Husbandry had him so excited that he danced. The [trait] skill which allowed the user to select the trait they were trying to breed into an animal reminded Adam of the additional abilities Transfer had given as he levelled. One of these was the Common Ideology trait; the other was Divine Blessings. He had used one blessing on Ma and gained an additional blessing per five followers meaning he could use the ability twice more.

Blessings: Divine Blessing Unlock criteria Effect Brighten Unlocked by increasing Intellect to 20 Increases Intellect by five Purify Unlocked by increasing Clarity to 20 Increases Clarity by five Blessings available/bestowed 2/3

Since it was intellect that gave mana he linked with Lei and used Brighten. Checking the follower sheet he noticed this was not the only change to Lei's entry.

Follower: Lei Followers Level Attributes Class Profession Exp Lei 1 HP 50/50; stamina 20/20; MP 5/5; SP 2/2 n/a Weaponsmith 10

When Adam had bestowed the blessing his exp had moved from blank to reading 10. As Ma was the only other vermite who had a blessing perhaps this was why she gained exp too. Maybe this would be a way he could get the vermite who chose professions to increase their level and therefore their stats. It was like all the pieces were lining up today. Rather than each problem creating more things to do they were getting solved almost straight away.

Reviewing his mental checklist Adam noticed that he had been neglecting his toothy friend and initiated a link with Sharky. It was always a joy to link up with Sharky. Partly because of the overwhelming sense of joy that the shark had knowing Adam was paying it attention, completely contrary to how much Adam actually paid. Also because of the astounding amounts of exp that Sharky obtained. Adam's share was 378, plus 100 for quest completion. Meaning Sharky had gathered 1890 exp through his exploring and killing of numerous sea creatures.

Adam poured praise back down the link to Sharky along with the mental image of a belly rub and pat behind the gills. With the underwater cliff explored Adam sent Sharky to work out what the next unexplored areas around his domain were; making sure to remind the overenthusiastic follower to take care as he did so.