Steve was in fact not having a good time. He had been in his trial for just over an hour now, and was starting to get frustrated with this whole ordeal. It had all started with a seemingly simple task. He had received a quest to use a spell that would destroy or stop the advance of an oncoming monster tide that was running into a narrow valley between two sheer rock faces. Disregarding how terrifying a monster tide was for the moment, his job was simple. All he needed to do was to make a new spell or utilize a spell he already possessed to complete the quest.

This is where all of the problems started for him. Based on what Daniel had relayed to them from Ulgatha this trial was supposed to be a test on A. How they had used their classes up to this point, and B. Test how they have developed their classes, and give them a way to further push them to develop their class with the end goal to gain a new specialization and skill tree for their class. All of which sounded nice in simple in theory, but when put into practice Steve was having a difficult time

Now for any normal person at tier 5 this first challenge wouldn't be a problem at all, but for Steve this was a whole other matter. He had only had access to his class for less than a month let alone developed his skills in any meaningful ways. He had only made a handful of spells, and none of which would deal with the scenario he had been given. He had hardly even used his earth element, and only had the basic tier one spell he had been given when he had gained his class. So, now with his very limited experience with the subject he needed to make a new spell that could be used to create a landslide to kill a whole bunch of monsters.

Steve sat down and let out an audible sigh. He decided that he would take stock of the items he had gained as rewards for the gremlin onslaught; he had only quickly glanced over before he had been transported here. First he decided to look over his new gear.

Item Name: Pendant of the Elementalist

Item Type: Necklace

Quality: Good

Rarity: Scarce

Features: The pendant can store a major amount of mana of a single element in its gem. Mana can be stored for up to 24 hours before the mana begins to disperse

Appearance: a clear gemstone in the shape of a diamond set into a gold chain

Item Name: Mantle of the Elements

Item Type: Cloak

Quality: Good

Rarity: Scarce

Features: Contains four defensive activations. One of Fire, one of Water, one of Wind and Earth. When activated it will create an elemental shield of the chosen element around the user. The charges expended will not replenish until all charges have been used. Cloak will fully recharge after 24 hours have passed

Appearance: a patchwork cloak that looks to have been sewn together with many different colors and types of fabrics.

The items were nice though Steve didn't like the limitations that the defensive cloak had. If he ever wanted to gain more charges he would have to get rid of any remaining charges leaving him defenseless until a full 24 hours had passed at which point all of the charges would come back at the same time. The necklace though was nice; he began to slowly funnel earth mana into the gemstone on the necklace, there was no point in not using it; you could never know when you would need more mana. Next up were the two skill gems.

Skill Gem: Dancing Blades

Quality: Good

Rarity: Uncommon

Features: Learn the general skill Dancing Blades

Skill Gem: Hell’s Blazing Inferno

Quality: Excellent

Rarity: Epic

Features: Learn the general skill Hell’s Blazing Inferno

Steve Had no idea what Dancing Blade could do and didn’t want to waste his general skill slots on a completely unknown skill, but Hell's Blazing inferno seemed interesting. He immediately decided to retract his thoughts on learning unknown skills and decided to take a chance on this epic skill. Who knew maybe this would be the skill that would allow him to finally clear this trial. He put Dancing Blades back into his bag unused until after he got back from his trial then he would choose whether or not to learn the skill.

Steve held the glowing purple skill gem in his hand for several moments before he finally reached up and pressed the gem to his forehead. He waited for the rush of knowledge that signaled gaining a new skill, and soon enough that rush of knowledge came.

Hell’s Blazing Inferno ( 1/5 ): The Flames of the inferno are not something to be messed with. Most will eventually be consumed by the flames they try to wield. Will this also be your fate or will you find a way to harness the flames and their ever burning hunger. Active. Cost to increase 2 Skill Points.

The opening lines of the skill description was different somehow from most of the others skill descriptions he had read up to this point. It almost felt like it was speaking to him, and it didn't reveal anything about what the skill might upgrade into like many of his other skills did. It was ominous, but that wouldn’t stop him from finding out what his new skill did.

Level 1 (Active): Open a tiny portal to the elemental plane of fire inside of your body for a moderate mana cost. This portal will remain open inside your body until the skill is deactivated or until you die. Primordial flames flood your mana channels, dealing 1% of your maximum health every 5 second and increasing power and efficiency of all fire spells that you cast by 10% while this skill is active.

Level 2 (Active): Open a small portal to the elemental plane of fire inside of your body for a moderate mana cost. This portal will remain open until the skill is deactivated or until you die. Primordial flames flood your mana channels, dealing 2% of your maximum health every 4.5 second and increasing power and efficiency of all fire spells that you cast by 20% while this skill is active.

Steve read the skill then re-read it. Then he began to smile. He Quickly opened up the information on both of his feats just to be sure, and his smile widened even more when his memory was proven correct.

Elemental Absorption (Passive): When a spell does damage to you, absorb some of its mana and elemental properties, increasing your mana reservoir and negating damage to you based on the amount of mana successfully absorbed.

Chromatic Mana Channels (Passive/Active): your mana channels have been perfected to adapt to any type of mana and its affinity can be changed at will. Drastically increase the mana efficiency of all single element spells cast. This bonus is slightly reduced for each additional type of mana used in the casting of a spell.

When Steve had originally gained his class he had plenty of time to read about his class and its abilities. He had chosen his feats based on his class hoping to synergize them. He had chosen Chromatic Mana Channels for the increased spell efficiency and adaptive mana channels. He had then chosen Elemental Absorption to work with Chromatic Mana Channels to hopefully increase the amount of damage he could negate by having mana channels that could adapt to any kind of spells that were thrown at him which would also increase the amount of mana he could gain from an hostile spell that he did absorb. His plan in his own estimation was a good one, but so far there had been one glaring problem with his plan. He hadn't faced any hostile spells so his second feat had been worthless up to this point; he had been only using the mana efficiency aspect of Chromatic Mana Channels, but now everything had changed.

Hell’s Blazing Inferno could hopefully give him a reliable way to use his Elemental Absorption Feat which would also hopefully negate most of the damage over time that the skill caused. That was of course If he managed to absorb all of the hell flame that came through the portal. It would also give him a way to increase his mana recovery speed. There were only two downsides he could see that could become a problem later. First was that if he did manage to absorb all of the fire that came through the portal would that negate the increased damage and efficiency of fire spells. Second was what increasing the level of the skill would do. It seemed based on the level two descriptions of the skill that it would increase the size of the portal which seemed to correlate with the increased damage he would take and which as what seemed like more of a side effect would also increase the power of his spells, but that was only a guess on his part.

If the trend of the size of the portal he summoned increased every level then eventually it could mean that his elemental absorption wouldn't be able to keep up, but for right now that shouldn’t be a problem. As a test he activated his new skill which activated without any problems. Turning his sight inward he saw what looked like a small crack in space in his chest. It could hardly be called a portal to anywhere as it was only the size of his finger nail. As he watched the portal it slowly began to leak small wisps of flame. It hardly seemed like much of anything if Steve was being honest, but as soon as the wisp of flame came in contact with his mana channels everything changed. He keeled over at the sudden pain of what he could only describe as if he was being burned alive before it was suddenly gone. Confused, he quickly refocused back on the portal inside his body. There he saw another wisp about to enter his mana channels; this time however he braced for the pain that he knew would come as soon as the wisp made contact with his mana channels. It hurt just like before but now he saw what happened as soon as the pain went away.

As soon as the wisp of flame had made the slightest contact with his mana channels they had turned from the pearlescent white they normally were to a vivid red, almost crimson in color: then the wisp of fire was simply gone, absorbed into his mana channels. Then as soon as the wisp was gone his mana channels reverted back to their normal color like nothing had ever happened. He knew that the first effect of his mana channels changing colors had been his ‘Chromatic Mana Channels’ altering themselves to adapt to the new mana that had entered his body; he had observed the effect happen before when he cast any of his elemental spells. When casting a spell with an elemental affinity his channels would adapt themselves to the skype of mana being cast which would in turn increase the mana efficiency of the cast spell. However he had never seen what had come after before. He knew that it had probably been his ‘Elemental Absorption’ coming into effect, but he had just never seen it work before and what he had seen was getting him excited.

As he watched more wisps of flame continued to leave the portal and enter his body. Every touch of the flames still sent intense momentary flares of pain through his body and he needed to figure out how he would fix that.

He needed to try and manually change the mana channels around the portal into what he had just seen them automatically adapt to when the flames made contact with his mana channels. He assumed the reason he was any sort of pain at all was because of the slight delay between the when the flames made contact with his channels and the passive nature of his channels adapting to the new mana in his body, but if he managed to actively change the mana channels around to portal he might be able to avoid that side effect all together.

It took him around half to figure out how to manually change his mana channels since he had never tried to actively do so before, and the fact that he kept getting distracted every time a new wave of pain flooded his body which would inevitably disrupt his concentration, but once he figured it out it out for the first time the rest was effortless. It was almost like flexing a muscle that he didn't know he had until that moment, but once he flexed it, it was easy to repeat.

Now that he had figured out the process he reactivated ‘Hell’s Blazing Inferno’ which had turned off at some point since it had been quite distracting after the first few minutes of it being active. Now the problem was learning how to flex this new muscle of his in the way that he wanted. Learning to flex had been easy, but learning to flex in very specific ways to get the results that he wanted were very different things.

Over the next hour he watched the tiny specs of flame impact his mana channels and watched and felt them adapt to the new mana before they reverted back to normal again. Then once they were reverted he tried to mimic the effect of his mana channels changing by doing the flexing trick that he had learned. Then holding his mana channels in this way he waited for the new flame wisp to impact his channels to see what would happen.

His attempts were far from perfect and most of the time would only be somewhat correct. He always knew he had failed because the pain would last much longer or would be sharper before his ‘elemental absorption’ absorbed the mana and took the pain away. He had been forced to stop several times since he would take more damage from his new skill on every failed attempt at changing his channels, so at somepaints he would be forced to stop to regain some of his missing health. He had an internal sense for how much health he had just like his mana, but it was hardly a precise measurement, so he always played it safe and never let his health dip too low.

In the time he waited between his mana channel practice he worked on making the new spell for his quest, but he was making limited progress his mind too focused on his failures at changing his mana channels and what he needed to do. He knew that he was close to success, so reactivating ‘Hell’s Blazing Inferno’ he got back to work.

The first wisp once again came out of the portal, and made contact with his channels. There was of course a brief flash of pain before his channels adapted. He watched as the mana was absorbed and his channels reverted back to normal. He then manually changed his channels and watched as a new wisp of fire emerged from the portal, however this time when it made contact there was no pain, and soon enough the mana was absorbed into his body. This success didn't make him relax, he helped the changed channels and waited for the next flame to emerge and when it did he once again felt no pain.

Steve internally rejoiced at finally succeeding, but it was still not time for him to relax. He needed to memorize this exact feeling of how he had flexed his mana channels so that he would be able to repeat this feat at any time.

He held his channels in this correct state for over any hour. Memorizing the feeling as the tiny flames continued to escape through the portal. Eventually he felt confident enough to let go of the change to his channels, and once released he flexed his channels again and watched and was successfully absorbed again with no pain. It was then and only then that he finally relaxed. He dismissed the portal to the plane of fire and layed down on the ground.

This was a big success for Steve, and while it didn't help much for this current trial he was excited for all of the possibilities that this new skill opened up for him. He would need to experiment more, and would need to find a way to keep his mana channels changed without his constant attention, but this felt like a step in the right direction.

This would hopefully be a passive increase in his mana regen which was currently one of his biggest problems in this trial since he presumably needed to make a new spell for every encounter, and he still didn't know if he would receive the increased effect of his fire spells if his body absorbed all of the flames that came through the portal. He also didn't know how he would even test for something like that. These were all thoughts that raced through Steve's head, but for right now he needed to get back to work he did still have a monster hoard to kill.

With a sigh he sat back up and once again began to try to figure out how to stop the beast wave. ‘Hell’s Blazing Inferno’ hadn't been what he had expected, but what he had gained was arguably better for him in the long run. He was definitely looking forward to what came next as got back to making a new spell.

~~~~~

Steve continued to weave individual threads of aspected earth mana to try and make new spells or to perform his tasks. ‘Hell’s Blazing Inferno’ was a huge help allowing him to constantly and quickly regenerate any mana that he used in his spell creation. It took him many more hours to craft an earth spell capable of destroying the oncoming monster hoard. Every time that he failed at the task he would reappear at his starting location with a prompt to begin when ready. Even if every failure was disappointing he never gave up and eventually he succeeded by using a spell that weakened all of the parts of the stone cliffs to make an artificial landslide. After the first test he went through another four tests which took him ten hours total to complete. After that it was a good enough time for a break and ate a quick meal with supplies for his storage and went to sleep.

The next test that he needed to complete was to start a forest fire that burned the entire forest by using only a single spell. After a few attempts at making a fire spell with enough power and area of effect to burn he decided that it may just be time to try and make a dual element spell. The quest had given him no restrictions besides on him only being able to cast a single spell; after a few more attempts though he did eventually find out that there were more restrictions that he had not been told about. There was also a hidden time limit in place, so whatever spell he used would have to work at a relatively quick pace.

The spell he ended up making was a variant on his current flame tornado spell, but he replaced his wind blade with powerful gusts of wind to enhance how fast and hot the fire burned. He at first wanted to keep the wind blade in hopes of them cutting down some of the tree to provide more fuel for the fire, but the blades of wind hadn’t been strong enough for a single one to cut a tree down. In the end though while the spell did work it didn't work fast enough, so he had to go back to the drawing board.

He had two main issues with his spell. The first being that his wind made the fire burn too hot and too fast. The fire would consume all of its fuel before the fire was able to spread naturally. Second, it was too small in scale; the fire that did manage to spread was all in the same spots; he needed a spell that worked on a wider range to burn more of the forest at a single time.

He had several ideas that could work however the problem was the restriction he had to work with; the main two hammering him were that he could only cast one spell, and another hidden restriction he had discovered was that he would not channel the spell to make it last longer. His second problem was that he could not move from his starting area. He was restricted to a roughly fifty foot area at the edge of the forest which made it difficult to make his spell centered in the forest. He had thought about making a flamethrower spell, but he would need to move and channel the spell for the plan to work, so that was scrapped right off the bat. He tried to make a fireball propelled with wind magic. It worked better than the flame tornado, but had the same problem where it fire was too localized and didn't have enough time to spread before time elapsed. He really needed something that would start a lot of smaller fires instead of a single big one that spread from a single location.

After many more failed attempts he finally came across a weird combination that had the possibility of working. In his tests he had discovered that his initial thought that he wasn't allowed to actively channel his spells was slightly wrong. That restriction only applied once the spell was cast. He could however overcharge the spell with mana before it was cast which gave it a longer duration he wanted he would just be unable to direct it like he could with a spell that he was actively channeling mana to. It was a side to his mana channeling skill that he had never used before since he had not seen any reason to overcharge a spell when he would channel it mana instead and retain active control of it though, but in this situation he had found a use for that portion of the skill.

The spell he had finally made was still a wind and fire spell, but instead of a tornado it was more of a cloud that would rain liquid fire. By using the secondary channeling ability he was able to vastly increase the size of the cloud that he summoned allowing it to cover a good portion of the forest that he was supposed to burn down. Once activated the spell began to rain a little drop of fire that was spread out by the wind of the spell giving the already large spell even more coverage of the forest. And to his relief his plan worked flawlessly, and he was able to move onto the next task which of course was to use a single spell to put out the forest fire that he had just created. Of course it was. Steve sighed and got back to work at putting out the forest fire he had just created.

~~~~~

Days passed as he completed more and more tasks. By the seventh day in the trial he was wondering just how many of these missions he would need to complete before he would finally be done. By the second week his resolve was starting to waver. Daniel had told him that this process could take him weeks in a heightened time dilation zone, but the constant spell craft was starting to wear on him more than he thought it would, and for all he knew the time frame Ulgatha had provided was for someone who actually knew what they were doing instead of someone like him who had basically lucked into starting out with a tier 5 class.

Steve could only move forward. He made more and more spells. Eventually he had made enough spells that he felt that he actually had a good spread of spells that he could draw on for any of the tasks given to him. He would still of course have to modify each spell for any given task, but it was good to have a starting point. It was just a shame that he was never able to use a spell more than once for any specific challenge; it would have made his life so much easier. This thought made Steve pause on the current spell that he was constructing in the palm of his hands, blue sparks of mana dissipating from where he had held them.

It was then that a crazy thought came to Steve's mind; what if this wasn't just a test to see if he could advance to the next tier like Daniel had said it was, but a way to force him to grow in a specific way. Steve had no idea how sentient or omnipresent the system was, but it was even half as smart as he thought it could be then the system would know everything about him, and what he and by extension Earth would be going through in the near future. It would of course know he was one of the ten thousand heroes, and that he was new to the system and because of all of that he would be lacking in spells. This whole trial could just be an elaborate way to help Steve expand his spell repertoire; to help him grow for whatever came next once their time was up and the system fully came to Earth.

If the system knew of all of that and was incredibly powerful there was no reason why it couldn't tailor just for him. Forcing him to grow his spell list and his strength to new heights.

With the thought that the system was trying to help him grow he drove back into the trials with a drive and determination that he had been missing over the last couple of days. He would advance, he would grow stronger and if the system really was helping to push him forward then he would use it to pull himself into even greater heights, and if it wasn't well what was a little bit of extra work to him.