“Much like advancing to paragon, and then pinnacle, you can evolve your species to the next tier,” Trebor explained. “At this point, your physical form will begin to incorporate enough activated energy that you aren’t going to be genetically compatible, amongst other changes.”

“What other changes, exactly?” Bob asked.

“Activated energy, be it mana or stamina, will no longer be enhancing your muscles and nerves, you’ll have reached the tipping point where they are beginning to replace them,” Trebor replied.

“And I’m guessing that tier ten is another break over point,” Bob mused.

“It is,” Trebor agreed.

“Alright, so the wording of the System notification makes it pretty clear that I can go wild on converting my the skills and schools I’ve maxed into natural affinities. I’d expected to only be able to convert one.”

“It appears the System is taking into consideration your paragon and pinnacle achievements, allowing you to continue to guide the path for your species’ advancement,” Trebor said. “Or that’s what the System is telling me.”

“So, I can continue being a progenitor, but I’ll only be able to choose from the five affinities on the list, whereas if I switched to a new species, I’d be able to score two attribute affinities, but I’ll have some unwanted features,” Bob surmised.

“You’ll also no longer enjoy the enhanced creativity, empathy, curiosity, desire for knowledge, mana sensitivity and mana manipulation that you chose to infuse into humanity, or the humanity from Earth at any rate,” Trebor warned.

Bob winced. He’d been focusing on the affinities, and hadn’t considered that.

“If I evolved, and kept Dimension, Shadowmancy, and Summoning as my affinities, I could, when I get to tier nine, pick an attribute affinity, right?” Bob asked.

“You would have to allocate all of your attribute points to the attribute you wish to gain a natural affinity for,” Trebor replied, “Which is more acceptable with the advent of heavy specialization, but given your not entirely unjustified paranoia, you’d have to select Endurance, which would leave your spellcasting attributes awfully low.”

“If I double down with a natural affinity, and an affinity crystal, I should be able to get my summon spell up by thirty-two levels, and once I’m level eight, I’ll be able to use the school threshold bonus to push the level to level sixty-five, and once I’m level sixteen, I’ll be able to go to level one hundred and nine, which is sort of insane when I say it out loud,” Bob mused.

“Actually, the System caps the percentage you can increase a skill or spell by to one hundred. So that would be level ninety-six, at level sixteen, if you used both the threshold bonuses from the school to increase the maximum level of the spell, the first offering sixty-four percent, and the second offering a hundred,” Trebor explained.

“Considering that you’ll have to have killed six hundred and seventy-five thousand one hundred and twenty monsters to have done so, by level sixteen, the number is more reasonable,” Trebor said. “You’ll have to have completed the Hidden Dungeon, alone, two hundred and twenty-six times. Given that you won’t have your full set of skills, I expect that will take you roughly four months. Of course, you’ll need to kill even more monsters to continue leveling the spell, which should have a cap of one hundred and ninety-two. Once your spell reaches one hundred and four, you’ll have to kill over one point three million monsters in order to advance it one level, which, even with the increased clearing speed, is four months per level of the spell. You can safely assume that the stretch from level one hundred and twelve to one hundred and twenty will take eight months. From one hundred and twenty to one hundred and twenty-eight will take a year and four months. You can see the progression.”

Bob shook his head. “I might be better off taking that second threshold bonus as a cost reduction instead,” he muttered.

“Or both of them,” Trebor offered. “With a natural affinity, and an affinity crystal, you’ll be able to add thirty-two levels to the spell. With your Pedagogue and Academic achievements, you’ll have the school and the spell available immediately, so you can have, at level zero, a level thirty-two summons.” He paused. “Of course, you won’t be able to cast it,” he finished.

“Yeah, not enough mana,” Bob agreed.

“Indeed,” Trebor agreed. “Given your examples, at level eight, you would need five mana to cast and maintain the spell, if it was level forty. If it was level fifty four, you would need seven.”

“Assuming I placed my attributes into intelligence and wisdom, I’d regenerate sixteen mana each second, but I’d lose ten to the system for upkeep,” Bob sighed.

“Ah, you’ll find it is eleven,” Trebor said hesitantly, “assuming you wish to keep me?”

“Sorry, of course, eleven,” Bob agreed.

If there were one thing Bob disliked about the update, it was that resource management had become a concern. Prior to the update, he could cast as many powerful spells as he’d liked, without fear of ever running out of mana. Now, he had to balance the cost of the spells against not only his mana pool, but as a summoner, against his mana regeneration.

“Cost reduction for the School thresholds is tier times two, right?” Bob asked.

“It is,” Trebor agreed. “For a specific spell, of course.”

“I don’t think I can shoot for an attribute affinity, not without crippling myself,” Bob sighed. “The only one I could feel safe taking would be endurance, but without increasing my attributes, I’d never be able to cast my spells.”

“Which circles back to the question of which species you wish to advance to, or if you’re going to evolve,” Trebor said.

Bob didn’t need to run the numbers. “Any of those races would quadruple the amount of time needed to level my spells,” Bob sighed. “If we were settled down on a quiet little planet in an uninhabited solar system in a different universe, it would be one thing. But we aren’t there yet, and getting there requires some degree of haste. That means those races are out of the running.” He shook his head. “I’d be leaning towards evolution simply because I don’t want to lose the benefits from the paragon and pinnacle advancement, but the time seals the deal.”

“Have you considered the benefits of only using a single natural affinity?” Trebor asked. “You could still use affinity crystals, but you would only require twice the experience, rather than eight times the experience for three.”

“I need the double affinity for dimension, as until I have the spell leveled back up, we’re stuck here. Summoning is obviously my speciality, and the more powerful my summons, the quicker I can clear Dungeons alone, or the more I’m contributing to a group. Shadowmancy is the only one I could drop, but it’s the one that I actually want,” Bob sighed. “I’ll admit that the System does package everything into nice neat little parcels that are easy to use, but there is so much more to magic, and Shadowmancy is the key to unlocking it.”

“Balance that against the time required,” Trebor offered. “With a single affinity, you can level Mana Sight, Mana Manipulation, Summon Mana-Infused Creature, and Portal all in the same amount of time it would take you to level a single one of those spells with three affinities.”

Bob closed his eyes and sighed. “Why is does this have to be so hard?”

“Because you accept responsibility for your actions,” Trebor replied. “Every person from Earth who chooses to become a paragon and then a pinnacle of your species will then have the option to evolve into whatever you have chosen. While your personal considerations weigh on you, so does the fact that other people will also have to live with your decision.”

“Yeah, that,” Bob muttered.

Affinities were the cheat code for the System. They’d been balanced slightly with the update, but you could still leverage them in a number of ways. If you could double dip on affinities, the results could be utterly insane. A tier eight being, at the highest level possible, which was sixty-four, with a level one hundred and ninety-two summoned monster? Hell, with a level one hundred and ninety-two conjuration blast? Yes, that was their one trick, and it had required them to invest almost half of their skill points, but still.

Bob was well aware that he wouldn’t be able to increase the maximum levels of his Portal or Mana Manipulation spells. As it stood, he was going to have to rely on path bonuses to be able to cap more than four other spells, due to his summoning spell requiring so many more threshold advancements. The cost reduction for his portal spell would be key for allowing him to explore the multiverse, while the increase in power to his mana manipulation spell would hopefully allow him even greater control when he was working true magic.

The real question was, how quickly did he plan to advance? He’d already stalled out several times when events conspired to force him to halt his progression. In a perfect world, he would grind his way up to the peak of tier ten before taking a break.

He had a dream.

One hundred and nine worlds. Each one unexplored, and more importantly, undelved. He wasn’t sure how many Dungeons would be on each, but assuming a minimum of fifty, that meant five thousand four hundred and fifty first clear bonuses.

Bob wasn’t greedy. Some of his happiest days were when he and Monroe had lived at Murmuring Falls, delving each day and enjoying a couple of meals a week with his friends. He didn’t need much to be happy.

He had come to realize that he was a little bit of a loot whore, though. He rather liked the idea of continuing to improve his armor, and at some point, a staff.

While he hadn’t yet had the discussion with the group, he felt like he knew them well enough to know that they’d be all for it. There were other, less self-serving reasons to sweep and clear all the planets first, like conducting detailed surveys, putting satellites in orbit to monitor weather patterns, all in the interest of knowing exactly which planets would be the best ones to settle down on.

Something he had talked to the group about was waiting to level up to tier nine until they’d caught up to him. They each expected to have a single natural affinity when they reincarnated, which meant that if he had three, they’d be advancing much more quickly than he would. Quickly enough that they might be able to burn through tier seven and reincarnate into tier eight before he had gotten too far. It meant they’d be running in their groups while he delved alone, but the plan had always been for them to catch up sooner or later.

It all came down to time, which was frustrating. In theory, he had all the time he could ever want. At tier eight, with two attributes allocated to his endurance at each level, his life span was around twelve hundred years. While Kellan had assured him that the Church of the Light wasn't a problem, Bob didn’t think that particular statement had meant that they’d never be a problem again. Nor did he harbor any hope that the alphabet agencies on Earth had forgotten about him. He figured he had between one to two years before they leveled up enough to get back from Earth to Thayland, and he expected teams of tier six agents at the level cap to be looking for him. Everyone had gone back to Earth six months earlier, so he figured he had between six months and a year and a half.

He wanted the Dimension Affinity because it would allow him to double up with an affinity crystal, and reduce the cost of portalling to pittance. That was not the only reason, though. He’d begun paving the way for humanity, or the Earth version of it, to be inventors and explorers. If the third step of the species’ evolution included the Dimension Affinity, it would encourage them to range even further, exploring the multiverse. There were so many amazing things to see, and while he’d like to see them with a very small number of people, he also wanted everyone to have the capacity to see those things as well.

Shadowmancy was the key to truly understanding magic, of that he was certain. Given his previous choices, it would be a disservice if he failed to include the Shadowmancy Affinity in his evolution.

Summoning was, at first glance, a purely selfish choice. It was the centerpiece of his own personal delving technique. A deeper look told another story, though. Ritual Summoning was a cornerstone of a post scarcity society. Summon Mana-Infused Object remained, in Bob’s opinion, the single most useful spell offered by the System. He could build a goddamn city with that one spell.

Abjuration and Animancy were tempting, if only because they would reinforce the role of healing and protection. Ultimately, he couldn’t justify the additional cost of a fourth, or worse, a fifth, natural affinity. Humans who chose to continue their evolution would go from tier seven to tier eight and stall.

“Alright, I’m going to stick with the big three,” Bob decided.

“As the progenitor of a new species, you can choose the manner in which your species advances from a physical perspective as well,” Trebor said, and a hologram of Bob appeared.

It was ten feet tall, with human proportions. His skin appeared to be slightly thinner, his veins more prominent, while the irises of his eyes had changed to a deep purple.

“You can choose to increase or decrease any of the proportions to a slight degree,” Trebor explained, “However, the eyes result from the choices you’ve made regarding mana sensitivity and a Shadowmancy Affinity. Those will be common to everyone who chooses this evolution.”

Bob nodded. The image was basically him, only larger. He’d grown somewhat accustomed to that after becoming a paragon, and then a pinnacle.

“I’ll take it,” he said, and a System window appeared.

You have chosen to evolve.

As the progenitor of your species, you have continued to forge their path according to your ideals.

Members of your species who chose to evolve past the pinnacle will now receive a natural affinity for the Arcane Schools of Dimension and Summoning, as well as the Divine School of Shadowmancy.

Would you like to name your new species? If you prefer, the System will assign a name. Speak or mentally project the word yes, or no.

“Yes,” Bob said.

Speak or mentally project the name of your new species.

“Wayfarers” Bob stated.