Everything happened in a flash.

The left arm of the hostile figure finally broke through the invisible wall that separated the two of us.

As it did so the system began to shout within my mind.

[All Classes of the Sentient rank have been labeled as dangerous for the host in its current state]

[All Classes of the Sentient rank have been forcibly removed]

The yellow background that filled the space began to crack piece by piece until it shattered revealing dark monstrosities that my mind refused to picture.

The shattered background began to swirl together like a whirlpool sucking in the cyan figure as well as the other lights that I couldn’t control into the darkness before reshaping itself back into the bright unassuming background.

All the lights that were previously beyond my sphere of influence had vanished without a trace.

I felt my lungs being pulled out of my chest even though I currently didn’t have a chest or lungs to be feeling such a sensation.

I did not feel fear panic or worry. I was incapable of such emotions in this form so I simply went back to going over the classes I would be choosing without giving the encounter I just had too much thought.

I already knew that I wouldn't have enough information to come to any reasonable conclusion so the best thing I could do was get this done quickly while asking more informed people about my predicament.

Looking back at the spheres of light that surrounded me I immediately dismissed anything that wasn’t of at least Ancient rank.

While it was incredibly common for lower-ranked classes to have better value and more useful abilities than higher-ranked ones I did not have the time or energy to go through each and every one of the lights that surrounded me looking to mid-max my approach.

Another reason I didn’t bother to do so was the fact that this was the first class around which I would be centering my future around.

Ideally, someone’s first class would have a clear identity so one could easily build around it, which wasn’t something you typically found in lower-ranked classes.

I looked at the five Ancient-ranked classes that were left and finally considered how weird it was that I got them in the first

I mean I could understand Knowledge Hermit I spent the last portion of my life as a shut-in who didn’t go outside much or interact with others often.

I also had very specialized knowledge as a former electrical engineer and as a general keyboard warrior but I had no clue as to how I would get something like False demoness for example.

I could come up with some bullshit explanations for the two classes to do with madness as I was diagnosed with both ADHD to a minor level and Autism to a bearly functional level.

I could even make a case Disptive warlock apostle, as I stopped believing the religion I was born into at 12 years old but pretended to follow it all up until I was twenty but again I couldn’t even come up with a flimsy justification like those for False demoness especially not one that would be profound enough to justify me getting an ancient ranked class because of it.

Putting the problem of why I got certain classes aside for now, I started to consider which class to choose.

Starting with the not-so-difficult decision of what not to choose.

False Demonese turned me into a woman without the ability to change back so it was an instant no, though I would probably have considered it had it given me the option to switch between genders rather than being stuck as a woman permanently.

Prisoner of Madness is also an instant no for me because I did not want to have to learn how to use multiple monster forms which have vastly different physiologies than my human one, while yes the possibility of getting a racial class in the future was nice, getting a racial class was also illegal.

I plan to live a pretty uneventful life once I’m done proving myself to my family so I can get some form of inheritance, and picking up a strong combat class that was illegal simply did not fit into that.

That was the only reason I continued to pretend that I wanted to be a fighter, that and the fact that I enjoyed my combat and magic training.

That left Deceptive Warlock Apostate, Prison Guard of Madness, and Knowledge Hermit considering the problem in order.

Deceptive Warlock Apostate was the one I had the most information on simply because it held the Keyword Warlock meaning that it was a variation of the classic Feral ranked class by the same name.

In general warlocks and most of their variations got to sign a contract with a patron granting them abilities in exchange for whatever that particular god wanted.

The type of abilities said warlock would gain would then be based on whatever their patron's abilities were and they would also gain the ability to ask their patron for favors and to cast spells for them a certain number of times a weak.

Judging by the description of the Deceptive Warlock Apostate class. This variant would not only allow me to sign up with multiple partons granting me abilities from each of them but would also allow me to switch out the patrons I was contracted with depending on my needs which made an already versatile class extremely useful.

That's not even getting into the other abilities related to Deception which I currently don’t understand and don't know enough to speculate on.

All this with the basic caveat that signing a good contract with one god of sufficient power was already difficult so signing up with multiple would be quite the task especially if I wanted specific ones that could suit my needs.

In general, the stronger and more popular the god the more powerful the warlock abilities you gained were but that was always under the assumption that the god in question gives you priority over their power.

The more popular the god the more powerful they were the more people that said power would need to be split between.

Any of the gods from the seven major religions all have thousands of priests, nuns, paladins and so on that all need power from the god they follow so getting a good contract that doesn't cost you an arm and a leg from one of them is impossible.

On the flip side if you form a contract with a god that has very few followers that only needs to split their power to a few people.

That said god would have little power to go around in the first place meaning that making any contract with them would be worthless.

There was a careful balance to be struck when picking a patron and while this class was powerful it required me to strike that balance multiple times.

Moving to something with more general applicability we have Prison Guard Of Madness which seemed to go down the general path of mental manipulation and being an Ancient class it has to be extremely effective.

That being said I didn't know much about it so I couldn’t even begin to theorize about the kinds of things I would receive from it.

There was a similar problem with the Knowledge Hermit class while yes what it did sounded incredibly powerful with no frame of reference as to how it worked I had no clue how effective it would be and therefore I could not accurately compare the classes to one another in terms of value.

The Deceptive Warlock Apostate class seemed much better than the others to me especially since I could theoretically use it to simulate effects from the other class options.

If I wanted manipulation abilities, all I had to do was sign a contract with a god of socializing, If I wanted information abilities just sign a contract with a god of knowledge.

Deceptic warlock apostate seemed far better than the other classes but the reason for that could simply be that I had a way better frame of reference to contextualize its power not because it was that good.

That being said it's better to bet on things I understood rather than things I didn’t.

With that thought, I looked toward the being of light in front of me. He breathly took a break from watching the pendant in his hand to look at me with a somber expression.

A complicated emotion passes through his soul. The colors on his surface seemed to ripple as he sensed my intent.

I wasn’t bothered by the light change in emotions.

Why would I?

It was nothing more than a power-up in my mind, not something to take care of communicating with or something to show empathy towards.

I beckoned it forward. The light touched my none existent chest without any sign of resistance as it slowly dissolved into me. I could have sworn the light gave a light smile as if realizing something before being consumed completely.

Consuming the light was a strange feeling but not one that I was unfamiliar with as it was almost identical to the feeling I had when I retracted my soul back into my body after using Soul Control or when I was practicing my alchemy.

The only difference was that the new sensation felt foreign, less like a part of me finally returning and more like a friendly invader slowly fusing with me.

Before I could properly identify what it felt like to have my soul mixed with a foreign entity the all too familiar voice of the system once again rang in my ears.

[Congradulation your fusion with the Deceptive Warlock Apostate has been successful]

[Your first class point has been allotted ahead of time to facilitate this process]

Deceptive Warlock Apostate (DA Warlock)

Class Requirements Level 1

Sign a contract with a deity (This will become your first patron) Understand the basics of Deception Understand the basics of Freedom Consume the eye of an Awakened Rank Monster once you have comprehended its mysteries. Complete the quest Preparation 1 (Warlock)

Exp Allotted to the class [ 0 / 100000]

***

Looking at the requirements to get the class proper left me flabbergasted. Like hell, I knew that an Ancient level class was no joke so it would have heavier requirements but what the hell is this?

Signing a contract with a Patreon was quite standard for a warlock and would typically be the only requirement for the most basic of warlocks along with allotting about 100 experience points but the rest was madness.

This class requires 100000 exp for the first level that's enough to get a level one human all the way to level 17 and is almost 1000x the amount you need to get level 1 of a normal Feral rank class.

Then I need to understand the basics of Deception and Freedom.

What the hell did that even mean?

Did I need to unlock a skill or trait related to it?

Did I need to have some profound philosophical understanding of them as concepts?

Did I need to demonstrate an understanding through the action like lying to an important figure to benefit from it to understand Deception?

I didn’t know which made these the worst types of requirements as it could potentially take me years just to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

Consuming the eye of an awakened rank creature would mean I would need to buy one which isn't a problem for me admittedly as I came from a rich family, but consuming one of these things is extremely dangerous potentially leading to one going feral if they happened to lack resistance to it.

And again more vague language what the hell did it mean to “Understand its mystories” how the hell was I supposed to do that?

And there was also an entire secondary quest I would have to complete I hadn’t even seen yet.

If this is the requirement just for the first level what the hell would the future look like are all ancient classes like this?

How the hell was I supposed to max out this class in five years so that I could hope to get an evolution when my next advancement came up?

Even a mediocre class could become extremely powerful if it was allowed to evolve and while any variant of warlock was not a mediocre class would I end up behind my peers who took on weaker classes simply because I was unable to fully complete mine.

People at the Astra will have probably already unlocked a few levels in their classes by the time of the event while I highly doubt I will be able to get a single level in mine before the event happens.

I began to slowly imagine a host of problems until I remembered a quote my father from my original world taught me.

The more potential one had the harder it was to fulfill it.

You can not compare the struggles of the man looking to build a shack to the struggles of the man looking to build a mansion no matter how big the discrepancy is between their innate skill at the building.

For all the trouble this class would give me it meant that my potential peak was far greater than my peers even if I had to work ten times as hard to get there.

With that the room I was in vanished or better to say it collapsed into me and disappeared.

I finally woke from my slumber to see one of the maids threatening me and shouting something.

I warm water flowing down my face.

As I tried to wipe it off a finally saw that it was not water but blood.

The moment that realization came to me so did the pain.