Power. Hunger. Regeneration. Lolis. Solo. Degritone finds himself inside the bodiless white void once more. This time, uncontrollable, short thoughts race through his brain. Protect. Survive. Grow. Me. He struggles to regain the ability to actively think his own thoughts again. Control. Cute. Lolis. Regeneration. Despite not having a head, he feels pain similar to that of a headache as the words begin to repeat.

Power. Lolis. Regeneration. Control. Cute. Protect. Survive. Me. Lolis. Solo. Regeneration. Me. Grow. Power. Hunger. Lolis. Regeneration. Solo. Me. Survive. Protect. Grow. Control. Cute. Lolis. Regeneration. Lolis. Regeneration. Solo. An unknown amount of time passes as those 13 words repeat themselves in his brain in random order. Over time, words grow and shrink in frequency, while some are added and quickly lost, while others are kept.

After a long, long time, what feels like years to Degritone, but is a completely unknown amount of time to him, he regains his ability to think his own thoughts, and as he does so, a bright flash takes his vision, even through the white of the void, and he finds himself inside his body once more. He looks around, finding himself in the black void once more, his rocking chair floating in the nothingness.

He wills himself over to it and sits in it. "Inside my soul again, h-" he's cut off by a massive pain taking over his entire body.

Beginning soul refinement.

Rather than being just a notification like normal, this one was read in Ted's voice, more monotonous than it was outside Degritone's soul, alongside the text normally obtained with notifications. "Odd, you're awake." Ted appears inside the soul world. "I haven't heard of a case such as this. Contacting higher authority." Ted stands there, motionless, as Degritone is racked with pain.

After a few seconds of silent stares from Ted, a white cylinder appears. Ted turns to look at it, and stare at if for multiple seconds before it disappears. "Te-le-pa-ghuh-thy?" Degritone stammers out through the pain.

Ted ignores his question. "There are no rules against you being awake, but I have been instructed to investigate the cause." The soul world begins flickering different colors. After just a few seconds, the colors disappear, but Ted still stands still as he was when the colors were flickering.

What feels like multiple minutes later, Ted summons the cylinder once more, probably uses telepathy to tell it the results of his findings, and it disappears once more. "No outside interference found. Logs and analysis of your soul suggest you damaged yourself in such a way that prevented us from putting you to sleep. Once again, there is no rule against this, so you will be permitted to be awake for the process."

With that, Ted disappears. Shortly after, the pain increases greatly, and the world begins to shift from the pure black to a dull gray and eventually, it settles on the pure white of many of the system voids he's been in. Around him, a large, yellow ring appearing far above him, the same color as he imagined for souls. Slowly, other rings form, stacking on top of the yellow one.

Soul refinement completed. Creating class.

First, a thick, red red one; then a blue one; then a thin, gray one. After a second, the red one shifts slightly, instead becoming a pink, before another ring of a multitude of different colors appears. In it lies reds, greens, pinks, blues, grays, and some yellows. In some spots on this last ring, divots in its surface can be seen, while others are a blacker than black black, dulling the colors around them.

Class creation completed. Importing skills.

In the center of these rings, 28 nonsensical shapes appeared one by one and scattered to various locations around his soul world.

Importation complete. Creating first class skill.

The pain on Degritone finally disappears, and he takes in all that's happened. Looking at the last notification, he says, "Maybe I can affect this in s-" He's interrupted by another nonsensical shape appearing and taking its place inside the world.

Skill creation complete. Removing user from their soul and removing notifications from their list.

Degritone immediately finds himself back in reality, Ted still touching his forehead, and everyone still staring at him. As Ted removes his hand, Degritone says, "So, time was stopped. I doubt anyone will, but if anyone else is awake, please at least ask them if they want to sleep through it first." With that being said, he turns back to his new notifications.

Congratulations! You have obtained a class!

Lolicoknight

Rejuvenate lv1

Defeat monsters and complete quests to level up and become more powerful.

Quest received.

Defense of Grimey Gulch

"While it might be fun helping decide on village upgrades, I'm getting out before anyone has a chance to say anything," Degritone says as he quickly gets up, walks out the back door, and walks down the driveway, donning his sword and armor as he does. Once he's half way down the nearly quarter mile driveway, he says to himself, "Now then, I need to find that node that keeps sending monsters after us. Preferably before any of the 500% increased difficulty ones spawn."

"I wonder if it's additive or multiplicative. Probably multiplicative, as I doubt they'd let Mana Armor block over 50% of damage alongside other DR granting skills and have them be additive, and I doubt even harder that they'd make percentages stack differently between different things. Anyway, monster node. It was 10k damage, right?" He asks as he opens Beltag's chat, scrolling up.

Finding himself correct, he moves to the woods, attempting to see any sign of a medium dog-sized cockroach going through the area recently. "How to do 10k..." He opens his skills, immediately going to Omen of Famine. "439.425 damage. Basically 440. 55 cost, 1576 mana pool... 5 and 3, 15, 55 and 30 would be... 150, 1500, 1650. So, a little under 30 casts. 3, 4, 12, 440, 30... 1200, 12000, 13200. More than 10k."

Nodding, he continues searching for any sign of disturbance in the woods, but not finding any, he remembers his paths. "Right, I still have PP to spend." He opens his path screen.

PP: 132

Initiate 10/10

Hoarder 50/50

Survivor 15/15

Greatsword Mastery I 100/100

Novice 150/150

Imagineer 100/100

Introduction Conquerer 0/500

Adapter 100/100

Rising Star 0/1000

Pupil 200/200

Greatsword Mastery II 250/250

Origin of Requiem of the Gravedigger 250/250

Soul Survivor 0/50

Hardy Soul 0/100

Rookie 0/500

"HS and SS aren't super compelling, but I can complete one and nearly complete the other. Rookie is almost definitely more free stats... Do I even care about the skills HS and SS probably give? Probably not, unless they're super amazeballs. And Intro Conq and RS don't seem super appealing, given their unknown factor and high PP costs. Rookie it is, then," Degritone says, putting all 132 PP into Rookie, earning him one free stat every 20 PP.

He frowns imperceptibly at this. "Four times the others," he says before shrugging and opening his status.

Name Degritone Race Human Resources 1525/1525 (+4953.545) 667/667 (+4590) 498.12.../1356! (+1963) Class Lolicoknight lv1 Experience 0/100 Strength 27 Endurance 14 Vitality 36 Agility 8 Physical 115 Magic 75

He notices his Agility being 8 and his 16 free stats. "I don't remember getting 10 other free stats, and I thought my Agility was seven..." He stares at his agility for multiple seconds before slightly raising his eyebrows temporarily, slightly nodding upward. "Ah, level rewards apply to the first level, as well. I wonder if they're also retroactive." He looks back toward his unallocated free stats.

"I would like to get to 60 Endurance so I don't have to deal with normal survival needs... And I'll be fighting an unknown enemy. But increasing Vitality also increases effectiveness of RCD... I don't have a calculator or anything to write with, so figuring out a balance between vitality multiplier and vitality will be annoying, but whatever."

He takes multiple minutes to do mental math in his head, eventually settling on adding 8 to health regeneration vitality multiplier and vitality. "I might regret that once I find the monsters and find they're big bois now, like I would have with the grimalkins, but whatever. With RCD, I regen like... Actually, it just lists a multiplier, so no way am I going to be able to math that out to find health per second, but I bet it's above 10 now.

"Speaking of RCD, I should have probably invested into max stamina so I can sustain it longer. Granted, around two minutes isn't short, but using it during combat will be pretty meh. Especially while Rejuvenate doesn't give at least 5 stamina per second and it costs less than my mana regen...

"I'm probably the only one who cares so much about regen, though, since I could have basically swapped my maxes and regens by investing in endurance and its multipliers rather than vitality and its, so RCD is probably much more useful to people with higher endurance. Or even equal endurance and vitality. But, I just want to be able to regen fast enough that, as long as they don't one-shot me, I don't die, so I only need enough health for that.

"I should definitely put more into mana regen so I can sustain rejuve longer. And train rejuve so it doesn't cost an arm and a leg per second... Well, it was my class skill, so maybe I should look into how it works specifically and make a better skill out of it. And seeing how RCD blocks S regen could also help me make a CC skill, and it healing with stamina would also be nice to reforge into another regen skill.

"Heck, rejuve may be worth spending some SP on to get to a more manageable cost. For now, no need to waste my already pretty depleted mana. Let's see if I can pay enough attention to what RCD does to make more skills out of it." He closes his eyes and carefully pays attention to the stamina pool in his chest as he activates Rapid Cell Division.

As he activates the skill, he feels a tightness his chest, right at his heart, as well as his stamina pathways opening, though they open much differently than during Haste. If haste was breaking a dam and letting the stamina flow through his body as it wanted, Rapid Cell Division was an irrigation channel, built to let specific amounts of water through to water the crops that are his cells.

Moving his attention back to his stamina pool itself, he searches for what the tightness is. Imagining himself flying through the light gray that stamina is, he searches his stamina pool for anything that looks off, beyond himself. As he does, he feels a strange movement in his chest, but ignores it for now and continues his search.

He searches until RCD deactivates from lack of stamina and he leaves his stamina pool, the cold aching in his chest painful, but not debilitating, and it recedes in under a second when his stamina regeneration comes back. Rubbing his chest, he shrugs. "Whatever. I'll figure it out eventually. Right now, I need more skill levels. Do I use my SP to get rejuve up to like 50..."

He shakes his head. "No. While the cost is high and it'll regen quite a bit, I should leave rejuve for a while. I need more combat skill levels. Or maybe another skill. With GC and OHS scaling off my GSM damage, I don't have a super compelling reason to level those, though lowering OHS's charge time is always nice. I doubt anyone back home would think I'm lacking for options, but I really only have two.

"Summon a thing or swing at them. No great CC beyond Soul Grasp, no way to stick to opponents beyond a 20% slow and a 20% speed buff, no long range damage. Well, Haste also doubles my agility, bit I should always assume my opponent has higher Haste level than I do. Flight or teleportation. I could summon Cib and have him demonstrate flight... Flight is cool and amazing, but not really something I feel like I need.

"Cool, yeah, and I'd love to have it, but I need a way to stick to opponents more than I need a way to not fall or get up high ledges. Something like Phantom Step or Half-Step would be great. Even better would be something that teleports me and a target to a 1v1 arena neither of us can escape until the other dies, since I will be effectively designed to be immortal in 1v1s and slightly outnumbered situations.

"Though, I'd need to see how mana creates a space first, then figure out how to make that into a somewhat large area, but not too large, and then I'd need teleportation magic to see how to teleport me and a target into it. Really, I think just creating a worm hole would be easier. Quick and easy teleportation by doing nothing but bending space. I think I understand how spacetime itself works enough to bend it.

"Oooo, there's a thought. Time magic. Well, space magic. Since space curvature dictates relative time. I just need to understand how mana works much better and then trial and error my way to getting my mana to interact with space itself. A space manipulation skill - wait. Cib said he got manip skills from just trying to manipulate elements around him. I know how space works..."

Degritone opens his left hand and holds it out in front of him, as if putting his hand on a wall, a determined look on his face.