Quest completed for the day, mysterious object acquired, and mask firmly back in place, Maya’s next stop was the makeover shop Sevard had shown her on their first visit to Nirsym.

She spent the next two hours adjusting her various personae - at least those in the Path of Life save. She’d have to come back another time to decide on Circe’s appearance, but at least now she had a distinct Emma persona and adjusted her Mage Stader look to be less like her initial default.

Speaking of her initial default, she changed that too while she was here. Drawing inspiration from Gurth, she made a generic earth-toned look with red patches and fluffier feathers. That way, if she ever had to remove her mask in front of other players, she’d just be an unrecognizable rando rather than any one of her actual characterizations.

Mage Stader required more effort. Her initial attempt at concealment had been to just make everything black — though that had ultimately proved unnecessary, in the deserted academy. She ended up basically inverting her original design, keeping black as the primary colour, but adding white and greys in for accents. The only purple she allowed herself was her eyes, which she figured shouldn’t be too strange for a mage. Shaping was simpler; she hit the randomize option a few times and called it good.

Which left Emma 2, and a real conundrum. If she were going to act as a Domitian in both save routes, she should probably match her appearance to each other. So far, no one had mentioned the fact that she’d gone through three different looks in the past day, but mainly because she hadn’t been around the same people. Julios had only ever seen her brown versions, and not the white-purple-black one.

In the end, she settled for another randomized reshaping, adding some white speckles and darker feather tips, but otherwise leaving the colour largely unchanged.

One more item off her ever-growing checklist. She’d have to come back for her Seer personae, but that route wasn’t her highest priority right now.

Next, Maya opened her journal and started taking notes of equipment, trying to remember what she’d worn when and around whom. She quickly decided to retire Kittykitty’s stupid dancer items for good. They’d been better than nothing, but she had much better options now.

She quickly realized that she didn’t even remember where she’d gotten half her items, much less if she’d worn them around anyone in particular. A lot of them were high enough level that she’d never had the chance to wear them yet, though, so that would help at higher levels. She grew bored with this quickly, and set that aside for another time. After all, so long as she was in a large group and her luck was this high, it didn’t really matter if she was less than fully equipped.

Wandering back toward the gate, she wondered if the mage academy had gotten her attempt at a secret message. And where they all were, regardless. She’d seen several of the mid-level players at Domitius’s place, but no sign of Shardlord either there or at the academy. Could he have logged out? Surely not, especially in such a time of crisis.

Speculation couldn’t help, though, so she returned her thoughts to her immediate plans. Now she had her daily quest finished, base appearance taken care of for the moment, and equipment put off until she had the chance to go over it properly. Not such a bad day after all. And she still had another couple hours of high luck left to go.

While what she really wanted was to find out what had happened to the mages at the academy - and why the two groups had somehow organized attacks on each others’ bases at the same time, and what purpose that served anyway - she had come to accept that right now there was too much chaos and she had no idea how to find anyone.

Her second major priority was finding the Goblin Champion she needed for her tier trial quest so she could reach level 10 and start getting experience again. The knowledge that she was stalled and couldn’t gain anything from whatever she did constantly nagged at the back of her mind. It would have made reputation grinding with Julios much more bearable if she knew she could continue gaining levels in the process.

Technically, probably no one would care if she just left to do that now, but she already knew so little about anything going on. Curiosity would drive her crazy if she didn’t stay to watch the big unlocking.

Maya returned to the western gate, but nearly everyone had dispersed by now. She wandered around for a little in hopes of finding Sevard or Julios or anyone she’d recognize, but found only strangers. And not many of those.

But she didn’t want to just stand around and wait. That would be wasting her luck. So she returned to the shopping district and purchased several Dust of Recall - still expensive, but with a decent discount - as well as a sword and a bow with arrows. Since she’d be on her own and her magical repertoire was fairly limited in scope, she wanted to have as many options as possible. Then she returned to the leypillar and transited back to Kalyx.

By her calculations, she should have almost two hours yet before the grand event itself. With everyone else out recruiting it seemed the perfect time to fly below the radar and quietly complete her tier trial.

Julios had mentioned the Goblin Champion as one of the rare monsters that sometimes spawned in the northern forests where they’d been hunting, so Maya headed there first.

Not long after she’d entered the woods, a group of goblins ambushed her. She quickly realized that fighting them alone was very different from fighting with a partner, and if she hadn’t hastily re-equipped her best items and retreated to give herself some space, she probably wouldn’t have survived. But with her best items, her health came up to 468. At that point, she could tank a group of level 4 goblins no problem.

She used a combination of magic and thrown knives unless they got close, at which point she switched to flailing about with her twin daggers and wishing she had a spell to set them on fire. Spark was useful, but more of the light up a dark area variety, not a deadly flaming ball of fire to annihilate anyone in her path. Which reminded her of the academy, and her magic - which she'd managed to lose again - and she forcefully put it out of her mind and went back to slaughtering goblins.

Surprisingly cathartic.

She continued roughly northward toward the mountains, meandering a bit, but convinced she was heading in generally the right direction.

Two more groups attacked her, and she had fun burning her way through them with her new ability. Sure, her hand-to-hand fighting skill was still lamentable, but Path of Life was really showing its strength here, enabling her to tank practically anything the lower-level foes could throw at her.

Then she reached a thick copse of trees, and saw a glint of firelight shining from a cave beyond. She crouched into stealth and edged closer, trying to keep out of sight, and there he stood.

Nearly eight feet tall, the massive goblin held no weapons but had plates of bronze wrapped around his hands and feet. She thought she saw spikes on his chestplate and armor skirt, his enormous bulging arm- and leg-muscles gleaming in the light of his campfire. Maya swallowed and took a step back.

If this wasn’t the goblin champion, she didn’t know what else it could be. Still, she definitely saw a mismatch between her class and his. She didn’t know if she could kill him, and it suddenly felt like a very long time since she’d last saved.

She didn’t know if there were any penalties for being killed by a tier trial champion, or if it was just the same lockout time as any other monster death, and she didn’t particularly want to find out. But. . . he stood between her and advancement. There was no way around, no way past. If she wanted to continue leveling, this guy needed to go down. Waiting wouldn’t help. Luck was on her side right now, and there was no guarantee it would stay that way tomorrow.

But he was really big, like ogre-sized. He might not even be a goblin at all, green skin notwithstanding. She might be picking a fight with a. . . forest troll, or something. How was she to know if this was even the right enemy? She should come back in her Seer save, scout him out properly, not rush into things.

No, no. She could do this. She had to at least try. Just go for it. Don’t think about losing. Nope, just. . . Blindly rush forward. Or something.

Her heart raced. She drew a pair of throwing knives, shifted her position until she had a clear view. She’d never tried attacking from stealth before, so she wasn’t sure how long it could last, but it was worth a try. Had to be.

She had to stop hesitating. Time to act. Now. Come on.

With one last deep breath, she threw the knives.

The monster roared as they struck home, snarling and stomping on the ground with enough force to shake the forest. Trees rustled, leaves fell, and Maya scurried back out of sight, trembling. Thankfully, his stomping wasn’t sufficient to impact her will - her fear was all natural, not artificially imposed, which meant she could fight it off.

Just another monster. She’d faced down worse. Sure, she’d had allies, but she could do this. It was a solo quest. She ought to be able to do this.

She stayed in stealth, crouching behind the tree, while the goblin stomped around punching random trees and bushes with his bronze-covered fists. His awareness was apparently pretty low, because after a minute he grumbled something and returned to his campfire without ever having gotten close to Maya’s hiding place.

She exhaled, gasped in another breath - she apparently hadn’t been breathing at all - and ducked out to throw two more knives.

This time, she didn’t wait until he returned to his fire, only watching until his back was turned, then threw two more.

He spun, bellowing in rage, but still didn’t come close to her position.

She snuck around his clearing to attack from a different angle before firing anything more, just in case he was smart enough to put two and two together. This time, she charged a Windborne Blade, more confident in her stealth now that he’d failed to spot her even once.

All hail her armor of agility. Speed and stealth, so useful.

The attack landed, and he spun once more, roaring and flailing uselessly about.

Maya continued her guerrilla attacks, shifting location any time he seemed remotely close, for nearly a half hour. It felt almost unfair, picking him off from the darkness without him ever getting a chance to fight back, but no way she was getting in close enough for melee combat. He could probably stomp her flat, Path of Life or no.

And he had a lot of health. She wasn’t adding up all the individual damage, but it had to be easily over a thousand.

But, one bite at a time will still consume an entire elephant, and though Maya several times had to pause and recover her energy, a continued barrage of knives and wind magic will wear down even the toughest goblin.

With one final roar that trailed off into an unceremonious gurgle, the giant monster fell to the ground with a deep, echoing, final thud.

Maya waited several minutes, still crouched in stealth, just in case he was faking. He didn’t twitch, and she finally crept forward to loot the body. The moment she stepped into the clearing by the cave mouth, an alert popped up.

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve completed Tier Trial 1. Level 10-19 unlocked. Specialization unlocked. Innate bonuses have increased.

Maya grinned, did a little dance, then collected her well-earned loot.