Your class space has been unlocked!

I woke up to the usual notification, still unsure whether to view it with excitement or dread. Another chance to finally clear the cursed trial I’d put myself through, but also another chance to get brutally cleaved in two.

Before I did anything else, before I showered, ate, or even got out of bed, I immediately went to my class space, put on my boots, and descended the stairs which marked the start of my class trial.

Despite this not being the first time I’d visited since my defeat in the final room, I still let out a sigh of relief as I reached a cavern with eight doors ringing its perimeter. True to the system’s words, I thankfully had not been forced to rerun the entire trial anymore.

Had I wanted to, however, I still could. I’d briefly tested it out, and going through any of the doors would bring me back to a specific portion of the trial I’d passed. Better yet, dying or quitting in one of them wouldn’t lock me out of my class trial either. It was a completely free space to just train myself.

At some point, I planned to take advantage of the opportunity more. My mastery over frost step and light step were still a bit lower than I wanted them to be. For now, however, I had a different goal in mind.

I chose the last and largest of the eight, swinging it open and stepping through to a now-familiar scene. A massive room. A shining light. An expanse of smooth, dirt flooring, separated into perfect squares.

Just as it had the first time, the room shook. The floor opened up, and I once again laid eyes upon my nemesis. Armor Guy, I’d started calling him. True, I had no idea what was going on under that armor, or if there even was anything under that armor. As incredibly common knowledge dictated, though, there were only so many times a human-shaped being could kill you before you started anthropomorphizing it.

His name was now Armor Guy, and he was a bastard.

The squares started to populate — randomly, I might add, which never let me pre-plan a route — and I shot off the moment they were done.

The trial once again materialized a sword for me to use, but I didn’t bother, instead letting it fall to the floor. If I was in some sort of fight with the armor, I’d already lost.

Turbulent waters, floating platforms, goblin-filled forests, volcanic rock with streams of lava, and a countless, dizzying variety of much, much more. I sped through it all, each square only taking seconds to a few tens of seconds depending on the terrain. Had my superhuman Dexterity been returned to me, I would have sprinted through half of them with ease, but it wasn’t meant to be. At the very least, my Endurance was high enough to carry on without too much of an issue.

And then, of course, he saw me.

Armor Guy.

Though I’d gone off to the side this time around, he’d somehow found me while I’d been running through a sort of fountain-like square. It was fully formed of water but contained concentric raised squares that made it look like a waterfall-covered pyramid.

He charged.

“Go bug someone else!” Of course, there was no one else here, but I didn’t see why he had to be so obsessed with me in particular. Better hobbies existed.

I’d been intent on skirting the pyramid to save time, but with him quickly closing the gap between us, I decided to start scrambling upwards. Each new square was raised high enough that I would have normally used my hands to help me up, but they simply sank through the water without any purchase. I was forced to use Jet Step to hop onto each new square, switching back to water mana before I landed.

By the time I was half way up, Armor Guy had managed to start his ascent as well. Unsurprisingly by now, he seemed to have the same enhancements that I did, letting him walk on water with ease. Infuriatingly, he made it look easy. He was significantly faster at it, too, and I barely managed to reach the top before him.

“Please stay put. Isn’t this a nice little fountain thing? Maybe meditate for a bit. It’ll make you happier, or more zen or something.”

Armor Guy failed to heed my enlightened words, but I hadn’t waited for him to. Instead, I flung myself off the top of the pyramid, instantly flaring air mana into my boots to keep me alight. I started to soar over the next square, making good progress towards the end of the room.

“Wait, I should just do this immediately next time.” I’d find a mountain tile and scale it as soon as possible.

As if to crush my dreams, Armor Guy jumped off the pyramid before even reaching the top. For a moment, I thought I’d won, as the trajectory of his jump gave him no way to intercept me.

That was, until he activated a Jet Step mid air.

The flames shooting out of his feet launched him higher, and at his apex, he reactivated Featherfoot, now much closer to me than he’d been before. Despite how close he was getting, I only had one thought.

Wait. He can fly?

It was followed by another thought that was much more important.

Wait. That means… I can fly?

How was I just discovering this? Experimentally, I toggled my Featherfoot off and activated a quick Jet Step. Without any grounding, it was a much wobblier affair, but I managed, ending up higher than I’d been before.

I have legitimate flight powers! True, they were sort of janky, and they would drain my mana pretty quickly, but still!

Unfortunately, my activation of the skill had been more vertical than horizontal, and I found that I was moving significantly more slowly than my pursuer.

I tried to fix that. I Jet Stepped again and again.

No matter what I did, however, he did it even better.

As he rapidly bridged the gap between us, sword held high, I had time for one key thought.

Really wish I’d picked up that sword right about now.

You have failed a class trial!

From then on, I started taking the offered sword with me.

It didn’t make much of a difference.

Cut down in the forest.

Cut down on the water.

On the ice, in the air, a dark tunnel, thick grass, underwater. Anywhere and everywhere, he eventually found me and cut me down.

It was getting to the point where I wondered if the trial was even possible. How was I supposed to get on that sort of level? Was this secretly the sort of thing that was supposed to take years to complete instead of months? I could always go back and redo the previous trial sections to get better, but it felt like I was missing something.

And then, one day, things changed.

“No chance you’re killable, is there?” I’d gotten caught out on one of the volcanic tiles, lava actively flowing only a few steps away. I sincerely doubted that I could kill Armor Guy just with my sword skills, but that didn’t mean nothing could.

Catching up to me, he delivered a brutal blow to my side, which I only barely managed to block. He nearly managed to use my own plan against me, as I went stumbling towards the lava. Not wishing to be burnt to a crisp even in my class space, I caught myself and backpedaled, doing my best to position the armor where I wanted him.

He swung again, but a quick step with Flash Feet took me to the side. I hastily switched the light mana to earth, letting more and more rocky mass attach to each foot. Though it was a colossal struggle without my enhanced Strength, I then kicked, snapping my foot forward into the armor’s thigh.

The blow which I hoped would send the armor falling back into the lava instead did… nothing. It was as if his feet were firmly rooted in place, which was perhaps because they were. Life mana suffused his feet, and with it came gripping vines.

Arable land my ass. True, the vines he’d summoned looked a bit anemic — or whatever the non-blood equivalent was for plants — but they held fast.

As was often the case when I spent time here, I felt shown up. I was pretty decent fighting with Mana Feet, Flash Feet, and even Jet Step by now, but I doubted I’d have been able to summon up those vines as quickly as he’d done. I still hadn’t ever used Heavy Step or Friction Feet in combat, save for the kick I’d just delivered.

Huh. Maybe… maybe that’s kind of the point?

I didn’t have too long to dwell on that, as Armor Guy swiftly retaliated with a devastating two-handed swing, as if he were using a baseball bat. It left him wide open and would have generally been considered poor swordsmanship, but when you were a walking suit of armor, openings became a lot less important.

I raised my sword to block, but then with a sudden epiphany, I did more than that.

When his sword met mine, instead of smashing through my guard and gutting me or making me lose my sword, it sent me back.

Far back.

I manipulated the friction of the rock beneath me, sliding across the land under the force of the blow. Hastily, and partially backwards, I swerved, avoiding any spurts of lava which would end my impromptu skating trip.

By the time I slowed, I realized I’d managed to cover a good half of the square.

“Well, damn. Maybe there’s something to this.”

I managed to use the distance to fully clear the square before my armored opponent caught up to me. This time, we were in a forest, the dense trees making it hard to run in a straight line.

When he struck at me again, I repeated my earlier performance, letting it push me back.

“I can do this! This is going to be the time I clear it!” Avoiding the trees took all my attention, but with the time I’d spent in the ice hall, I managed it.

I let that giddiness fill me, right up until I slid into an exposed root.

As one might expect, I fell.

I did not end up getting up.

You have failed a class trial!

In a way, it made a sort of sense. My class wasn’t about running away from boulders or skating down hallways. It was a combat class. Once I accepted that there was no way for me to win by solely running away, things started looking a little different.

Still, I would sprint as far as I could before he found me. Still, I would run whenever I got the chance. But the bulk of my time in the trial was now spent fighting.

Admittedly, not offensively. I knew I still had no chance of beating the armor for a good host of reasons. With an entire toolkit of movement options to control my speed and temporarily disengage, however, I started to make it work.

Whenever I found my back to a wall, be it lava, a deep ravine, the edge of a floating platform, or in one unfortunate case, a literal wall but covered in spikes, I used all of my options to keep myself from getting pushed back. Life boots to take a hit then dodge away. Earth boots to increase my weight and prevent a knockback. Ice boots to solidify my footing and increase my traction.

In the fleeting moments I managed to escape the armor’s sight, I found that Dark Soles could confound him, if only temporarily. I used it frequently, never fully escaping him, but getting closer to my goal each time.

Then there were the easy tiles. Perfectly flat environments ideal for the ice trick I’d pulled before. The armor didn’t seem to learn, either, and it was kind enough to repeat its brutal attacks and allow me to skate away using the force of its blows.

Sadly, even with my Wisdom no longer stuck at 10, I still had to watch my mana. Dodging with Flash Feet was costly. Increasing my distance with a well-timed Jet Step was doubly so. On occasion, I had to stall, using only the barest hints of the basic Mana Feet to keep myself from getting skewered until I had more mana.

Obviously, I didn’t win immediately, nor was my progress entirely linear. I’d had a particularly foul day after tripping over myself on the water and ending up dead the very moment I’d been found.

On average, though, bit by bit, I got farther.

Weeks passed since I’d first started. We’d already been fighting our “final duels” for a few classes now, and my other finals were close at hand.

Of course, I didn’t need to finish the trial by the end of the semester. It wasn’t like it was a class or anything. But it felt right. I pushed myself harder and harder each day, struggling to reach the end.

And then one day, I saw it. The end. Not as a far off beam of light, but only a small handful of tiles away.

I stood panting at the top of the hill, recovering my mana, but more importantly, my breath. Running a kilometer? Easy. Child’s play. People back on Earth could do it in a few minutes, even without super Endurance.

Running a kilometer through uneven, often outright malicious terrain while engaging in nearly nonstop sword fighting?

Not easy. And hopefully not child’s play unless your child was very good with swords.

Thankfully, I’d managed to buy myself a few seconds from the last tile. I’d caught the armor coming off a Featherfoot and managed to land an earth-covered kick which had sent it hurtling back.

Well, not “hurtling” per se. It only had 10 Strength behind it.

Still, pretty good. Without its feet on the ground, the armor had no way of negating the force, and I’d immediately continued my mad dash.

I took my second’s respite to reorient myself, looking towards the light and seeing which tile I’d want to step onto next.

As high as I was, it still came as somewhat of a shock when I could actually see my goal, though. It was strangely barren, save for a blindingly white light at its center.

Five tiles.

A simple 100 meter dash.

I didn’t even need breath or mana to do that. Cutting my micro-break short, I leapt off the hill, hoping to float most of the way there.

Fate was not so kind.

As if suddenly powered up by my proximity to the goal — a real possibility given how sadistic this entire trial felt sometimes — Armor Guy came back into sight, flying through the air with a vengeance. Eschewing even the speed of Flash Feet, he’d jumped into the air and was now solely propelling himself with Jet Step.

It was, sadly, a feat I could not reproduce. Already my mana could just barely support my slowed descent. Rapidly chaining together Jet Steps would leave me falling to the ground in a heap.

Seeing that the armor would catch up to me long before I naturally hit the ground, I canceled Featherfoot reluctantly, only reactivating it right before I hit the ground. Experience had taught me that things did not go well for me when we tried fighting in the air.

I’d managed to float over the bulk of a single tile already, but still had four to go. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have gotten the simple ones.

The next tile was a muddy marsh, not particularly dangerous on its own, but troublesome all the same. Each step sank into the mud, making the simple 20 meters slow and cumbersome. Depending on how liquidy the mud was, water mana could help, and even more so, I’d discovered Featherfoot could also help me lighten my steps, preventing me from sinking down as deeply.

Running on fumes as I was, however, I couldn’t spare the mana, leaving me to do things the old fashioned way. With my glacial pace, I didn’t even manage to clear the tile before the armor caught up to me.

As if incensed that I’d managed to evade him for longer than usual, he came at me with a renewed vigor. I backpedaled clumsily, several times almost falling as a result of the mud. For his part, despite the fact that he must have been much heavier than I with all the metal, his feet barely left a mark wherever he stepped. Air mana cushioned the bottoms of his dark sabatons, letting him dance across the mud as if made of feathers.

Does he even have a mana pool, or is this more of a general “fuck you” type deal from the class trial?

Sadly, complaints wouldn’t help me complete the trial. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t still complain, but I’d have to work and complain.

The muddy terrain would have been ideal for rooting myself down, but of course, that was the exact opposite of what I wanted in this case.

That I survived was only by virtue of the fact that I’d already been halfway across when he’d arrived. With legs caked in mud and half stumbling, however, I finally backpedaled past the end of the tile, trading mud for loose, unpacked sand.

All right. Three to go.

The sand, in many ways, was no different from the mud, except that water mana no longer did a thing. It pulled at me, tried to swallow me and bury my feet, with only air mana proving a reasonable defense.

It wasn’t just a desert tile, though. It was an oasis. A rectangular pool of water took up the central third of the tile’s length. In width, however, it spanned the entire tile, offering me no way forward but over it unless I wanted to detour to the surrounding tiles.

In some ways, that was even worse than the sand or the mud, though. At least I could move through the latter without using mana. Unless I wanted to use my water boots, there was no good way over the pool.

Had I had the breath to do so, I would have cursed.

It couldn’t be helped. I’d regained enough by now to drain some off.

Slowly, much in the same way I’d stumbled through the mud tile, I made my way over to the oasis, the armor forcing me to fight for each step without ever seeming to tire itself. I, on the other hand, was practically panting by now.

At last I made it to the edge of the pool, ready to step off the loose sand and rush across the water as fast as I could.

And then, quite abruptly, I fell.

The sand gave way beneath me, botching my footing and leaving me falling backwards. Time seemed to do the opposite of freeze as I realized how close I’d gotten to winning only to lose once again.

Nope. Nope, nope nope. Not doing this shit all over again. Way too close.

It wasn’t the most dramatic or heartfelt resolution, but it was enough.

Before I could fall any more, I dumped all the mana I would have used to traverse the water into one solid Jet Step. Angled as I was from my fall, it catapulted me backwards over the water.

Even better, the force from the jet disturbed the sand further, mucking up the armor’s footing enough to stall it for a moment. As it regained its stance, I went sailing backwards, completely drained of mana. When I landed, it was with a splash.

Frantically, I started swimming, the eerie silence of the amor somehow making things more tense than if it would just start shouting at me. It bounded across the oasis, nearly catching up before I could haul myself out. By margins of a second, though, I beat it, only barely managing to get into a stance to receive its blow.

Wait, this works for me, doesn’t it? I needed some time to recover my mana. Right at the water’s edge with the armor firmly on the oasis, he was stuck using Waterwalking. Unless he wanted to sink into the water and potentially get pushed back, he had to keep that up, which meant he couldn’t use any other variant. As long as I could keep him from getting on land, I’d be free from the accelerated movement of his Mana Feet or Flash Feet, and he wouldn’t be able to brace himself either.

And so, in spitting distance of my goal, I locked myself in and got to fighting. It was the most aggressive I’d been yet, having to do more than just defend to keep him from moving off the water. Second by second, though, I did it, until at last I decided it was time to keep moving. I had enough mana, and even if I didn’t, my body was about to give out.

This time around, I used Featherfoot to soften my steps against the sand, allowing me to make good time as I cleared the remaining third of the tile.

Two tiles left.

A tunnel tile. It was narrow enough that my opponent wouldn’t be able to circle me, but the rocky footing was uneven. I managed to do more backwards-running than fighting this time around, using small drops of Flash Feet to ensure I wouldn’t receive a sword through the back.

One tile le-

There was a- Seriously?

My foot hit an unseen ledge at the end of the tunnel, and I once again started to fall backwards while internally cursing up a storm. This time with a ceiling above me, I didn’t dare Jet Step for fear of launching myself too vertically and dying after earning myself a concussion.

In equal parts fortune and misfortune, the last tile started from the top of a hill. Luckily, that meant that by the time the armor’s sword plunged down towards me, I was already gone. Unluckily, that meant I was presently tumbling down the hill with little control.

Somehow, I managed to get my feet under me. Instead of standing up or stopping, however, I flared ice mana into my feet for all I was worth. What had been an uncontrolled tumble quickly turned into a dangerously fast slip n slide, something which would have been nice and fun if not for the armored figure descending on me like a god of wrath.

Jet Step, Jet Step, Jet Step. It descended with a trailing stream of fire. Not even my own rapid descent was a match for the armor rocketing through the air. I watched as it neared, closer and closer and closer as I tried to get control over my hasty use of ice mana.

I failed, miserably, brutally, and completely. As the sword came for me, instead of executing some flashy maneuver, my exhausted body could only manage to fall. I crumpled into a heap, face down, gritting my teeth at the expected blade and nearly about to cry at how close I’d come only to fail once again.

Only, the blade never came.

Nervously, I pulled myself from the ground to see what had happened.

Standing there before me, the armor which had chased me so doggedly across the map was now completely stationary. Its sword was halted mid-swing, hovering above my head.

In front of its feet was a perfect, thin line.

The separator for the final tile.

Turning back, the beam of light stood right in the center of my tile, only ten meters away.

I actually made it.

I started to laugh, not able to help myself. “I made it!” Trapped in this hellish space, I was certain only the armor itself was there to hear me, but I shouted it out in triumph. “Finally!”

With the armor no longer attacking and my body as bruised and tired as it was, I almost let myself collapse to the floor, but I had more important things to do. Out of some begrudging respect or perhaps plain-old Stockholm syndrome, I gave a light bow to Armor Guy. It could have been a trick of the mind, but I almost thought I saw him nod back too.

And then, without further pause, I walked into the beam of light.

My surroundings vanished, the trial wiped away in an instant, and I found myself back in the familiar armory which marked the origin of my class space. For a dreaded second, I thought nothing would happen. That the reward would just be “the experience I gained along the way.”

That fear, however, was soon put to rest.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE COMPLETED A CLASS TRIAL!

The weight of the notification somehow seemed to reverberate through the space, and at last I was shown what I’d won.

You have demonstrated mastery over your class skill Mana Feet, and in doing so improved it in the process. The following upgrades have been granted:

Base speed increase bumped from 20% to 40%.

All secondary effects strengthened.

Grants the ability to use up to two Mana Feet variants concurrently.

Unlocks the ability to use advanced and composite mana types with Mana Feet.

Additionally, gain +20% leveling speed for all movement skills.

All movement skills will now be considered Class-aligned and will no longer face a leveling speed penalty at the Initiate stage.

“Wow.” I sat down and reread the message a second time, letting my body and mind reset after the ordeals of the trial. “That might actually be kind of worth it?” For all that I’d considered straight up dropping the trial once or twice, the reward was even more than I’d been expecting.

My most used skill had essentially just doubled in effectiveness, and that wasn’t to mention the other perks either. I could walk on water and also slide on it like ice. I could finally use mental mana with my boots!

In fact, I was going to now! I exited the space, my actual body luckily not feeling any of the strain I’d just put myself through. I channeled my mental mana to my feet, and at last I had another variant!

Beguiling Footwork

Your footwork becomes untrackable and confounding, leaving enemies unable to follow your movements. Additionally, kicks to the head may daze your opponents.

I frowned at that last line. I was relatively sure mental mana wasn’t needed for that — most kicks to the head tended to daze people. The other half sounded nice, though. If I lunged right, would people try to follow me to the left? I was looking forward to trying it out, though maybe not in dueling class considering that showing off mental magic seemed like a bad idea.

“If the rewards were that good, should I start another one?” No time like the present, after all.

I popped back into my class space, repeating the process I’d done all those months ago where I tried to lift all of the items, suits of armor, and weapons from their resting places.

It was with some small shock when I succeeded an entire three times this go: Bind Weapon, Bind Armor, and Arcane Vision were now all removable. Arcane Vision, I assumed, was now available because I’d finished the boots trial. For the other two, I could only imagine that it was because I’d finally finished ranking them up to 5/5. It looked like skills needed to be max rank and have their predecessors’ trials finished before you could take their trial.

“Well, easy enough choice. Vision’s probably my second most used skill.” I took the eyewear — a pair of monocles, which based on the “mono” part of “monocle” seemed all sorts of wrong — from its pedestal and brought the lenses to my eyes. Luckily, once placed they hung there of their own accord, essentially turning into floating glasses.

I went back into the main room, descended the stairs, and pumped myself up.

Unpleasantly, but as expected, on crossing the invisible start-line, I felt the drop in my stats all over again. From there, I walked forth into a familiar tunnel, which I hoped contained no boulders this time around.

“All right. Coming off the high of finishing one. Who knows? I use my vision a lot. Maybe I’ll finish this one in a single go. Or at least get through a few of the trials if it’s a multi-part one like the last one w-”

A spear suddenly shot through my chest from the back to the front.

Rather abruptly, I died.

Alongside the veritable stream of obscenities that filled the room came a notification I never wanted to see again.

You have failed a class trial!