Somewhere in a dark corner of Aether Online:

“Oi! Did it work??” whispered a rugged man with a large scar over his eye to another man.

“I think so but there's no guarantee, she is the Minerva after all, I just hope this buys us enough time to raise her combat ability high enough.” responded a man wearing a very large pair of glasses.

“I'm still amazed you managed to hack the system, even if it was only for a moment.”

“My job is [King of Sabotage] though, Why is it that ‘surprisin?”

Their conversation drew on for a while.

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[You’ve Arrived 400ft above Desolate Wasteland]

‘Hmm?’

It was as if she floated for a moment before plummeting 400 feet to the sand below. What ensued was a fit of hysteric screaming before her body landed and was subjected to a mouthful of sand.

“This sucks! I don't wanna’ be here-”

Hecate’s momental fit of irritation was silenced by the landscape laid out in front of her.

miles of sand as far as the eye could see, there were strange rock formations and some man-made structures from the people who came before her- but the majority of her surroundings were sand.

Her aw was quickly interrupted when a dinging noise forced her attention to a new notification.

[Notice: you’re currently overheating, find a way to cool down.]

“Isn't that unfair?? I can't just-” she cut herself off. “I'm such an idiot... ”

This was the first time she had activated a skill consciously since she logged onto the game, all she had to do was think of the desired effect and the skill would automatically activate- as long as she had a skill capable of doing it.

She activated [Body Manipulation] and very quickly a small layer of freezing air wrapped itself around her body, lowering the surrounding temperature to a much more comfortable level. "Yeah! Body Heat Manipulation! so convineitent!"

“Ahh, this is much better!” without having to worry about the blazing heat surrounding her, Hecate was able to push forward through the vast desert.

And so, a few hours went by.

“How long have I been walking?” she took a deep breath in between sentences. “It’s odd… I've yet to see a single person since i've started. Though, I can't say it's surprising considering that this place is the absolute worst!”

Suddenly, a sharp pain entered her foot- like a burning needle being rammed deep into her heel without any alcohol rub beforehand.

“What the hell? Shit!”

[Notice: You’ve been poisoned,Your health will decrease by 1% every 30 seconds. find an antidote or destroy the source of the poison.]

Slowly the sand that she had disturbed started to move, and a creature rose from the ground.

It was a strange being, that much was obvious to anyone who had ever seen it- but it was quite interesting when observed in detail. It could easily be classified as a species of tortoise, because that's what it was; a tortoise. It had a rather small head in proportion to the giant shell that surrounded the animals body. That shell was a pale green color, but what made it stand out was the giant needles covering the entirety of the creatures armor.

“What the hell is that?!?” shouted a now poisoned Hecate.

[Wasteland Poison Tortoise- A rare breed of Wasteland Devil Tortoise that prefers to bury itself under the sand so that clueless idiots step on its poisonous spines. Under its shell are hundreds of glands responsible for making its deadly poison, those glands then pump the poison through the spines releasing it into whomever steps on top of this deadly creature. The shell of this creature is extremely durable, so it's often crafted into armor or used as a shield. E+rank monster.]

Hecate took a few steps back after hearing the robotic voice answering her rhetorical question, which in hindsight was a bad idea because the creature took this as a sign of weakness and charged the girl.

“Shit!” she made a quick lunge to her right and narrowly dodged the charging monster. ‘This really is a terrible matchup, I can’t use any of my skills reliably right now- not to mention i'm unable to use [Chlorokinesis] at all because of the lack of plants.’ Hecate racked her brain for a path that would end with her as the victor.

[Clairvoyance] it's a finicky ability that lets its user see into the future, see distant locations, or even read someones mind- but that's where the problem lies, without any notion about what the ability could mean in the context of Aether Online, it was her wild card. It was a leap of faith if you will- a blind choice, which is ironic because of how deeply rooted the ability is with your eyes.

Her vision turned grey as time around her started to slow- the tortoise which was now moving so slowly that you might think it was dead, split into dozens of astral projections of itself, each showing an individual future that could or could not happen.

Hecate started eliminating possible futures one after another, looking for one that might lead to a victory- she found it. She found the only future out of all the possibilities that could end without her death, it was an odd series of events for sure, but was there really anything normal about this girl?

Slowly her vision was filled with the oranges and yellows of the desert landscape and the astral projections of the tortoises folded into themselves compiling into their original forms as a Wasteland Poison Tortoise. Said tortoise continued to charge Hecate trying as best as it could to penetrate her skin using its poisonous spines, though the girl managed to dodge each time. After her third narrow escape she started to increase the size of her hands using [Body Manipulation] the process was slow because of her lack of proficiency using the skill, but after a few more minutes of dodging the tortoise her hands were comparable to watermelons in size.

‘Hehe’ Hecate let loose a sly chuckle. “We’re almost there… now!”

The girl filled her hands with sand from beneath her and when the tortoise next charged she released her grip spilling the particles of rock and mineral all over the creature.

“[Transmute]!” She shouted aloud.

The particles of rock and minerals covered the tortoise and bonded to its shell at a molecular level, subsequently reducing the durability of its shell and the effectiveness of its poisonous spines. A very large grin spread across the girls face as she repeated the process effectively reducing the tortoises defense to nothing.

By this point Hecates hands were shaking from the strain she was putting on them by keeping them in an enlarged state for such a long period of time, though, this was all within her predictions as she started to change the matter her hands resembled from a gas-like solid to a solid-solid, Luckily, this didn't take nearly as long as making her hands rubber-like did.

Her hands which were now as hard as rock were raised above the tired creatures weak shell and released. The amount of force that hit the tortoise's shell was enough to easily shatter the creature's armor and end the life of the monster that attacked our protagonist.

“Shit.” she breathed heavily as her attention was drawn to a new notification.

[You have subjugated a monster well outside your expected limits and have thus gained a new title: [Skilled Hunter].Your Stamina and Vitality have been increased by 1. You’ve surpassed the experience threshold and thus have levelled up.]

Hecate let her legs collapse as she chuckled about what preposterous first few hours she was having