Zoe and Emma found themselves outside the capital a few minutes later, walking through the line outside that never seemed to shorten despite the steady movement. They paid their minor import fees on the belongings they were bringing in and then found transportation back to their home in the Pigo district. When they got back inside, Emma let Fennel and Oliver out of her cat storage yurt and they flopped on the floor at Emma’s feet.

  “Alright, you need my help with anything?" Emma asked, reaching down to rub Fennel’s belly.

  “Nah, I’m just gonna go to a dungeon and study my new skills a little. They don’t seem too bad honestly, so I think I’ll be able to finish them somewhat quick. Then I’ve just gotta figure out some way to get a better sixth class and its on to the horrible grind of getting my seventh class.” Zoe sighed, thinking about the time investment her seventh class was going to take.

  “Okay,” Emma nodded, laying down on the floor next to the cats. “Have fun then. Tell me if you get anything cool. I’ll just be here relaxing for a bit.”

  Zoe chuckled as she left, and made her way down to the nearest royal office to get transportation to her favourite lodestone dungeon to try out all of her new skills, with her return trip scheduled for a month later. The dungeon was a little below her level at this point, but her goal for the moment wasn’t levels anyway.

  She wandered down the gentle slope, passing by the dozens of dilapidated and destroyed villages until she got to the area ravaged by drakes that she’d spent so much time at. A bow of ash and frost formed in her hand, with a translucent blue arrow of frost forming on the wispy string. She pushed mana into her Shadow Barrage skill and let the arrow fly at a distant drake perched atop a ruined windmill.

  The arrow raced through the air, whipping tendrils of shadows around as it flew. The tendrils tore into the buildings the arrow flew past, ripping loose bits of wood away and tossing them aside, before the arrow slammed into the drake. The tendrils exploded, wrapping around the drake and tearing into its flesh for a moment before they vanished, leaving the drake to fall to the ground below in a disgusting clump of flesh.

  “Eugh.” Zoe shuddered. Not the prettiest skill to use, but it seemed somewhat strong, at least. Much like the Shadow Split skill, it allowed for a little bit of crowd control, but without losing its ability to hit a lone target with the full extent of its power.

  She retreated back up the dungeon until she found a village overrun by a horde of lower level goblins, and took aim at a group sitting around a fire with rotting flesh roasting on spits with her Shadow Bombardment. The arrow flew through the air and landed in the middle of the roaring fire, exploding in a burst of shadow tendrils that dug into the ground and tossed the burning embers around. The goblins jumped and screeched as the arrow burst, but were far too slow to avoid the tendrils lashing out at them.

  Zoe grimaced at the gnarly scene and turned to lean against the cavern wall. The main goal she had at the moment was finding a stronger sixth class, so there was no particular rush to recreating all of her Unseen Archer skills. But at the same time, it could be nice to be able to change her class more freely as she pursued higher achievements, and maybe steal a few more skills along the way.

  Though, what achievements could she even pursue? She summoned her notebook and looked through the requirements for the three classes she was stuck between. Feats were a big part of making the classses stronger, but didn’t seem to have too much of an impact on getting varying class types. If she didn’t have a feat for something, the system would just offer her a weaker version. An apprentice version or something similar.

  But what she wanted wasn’t just something stronger than the ones she had access to — the classes themselves were already quite strong, they just didn’t quite fit the niche she needed. And those niches seemed to be more about the selection of skills she had, as well as her distribution of stats.

  The warder classes — or all of the defensive options she’d seen, seemed to be based around her Vitality and Health. The Transcendent Pursuit class required her time and alacrity skills, as well as dexterity.

  So if she wanted to find a class that was a combination of the two, she’d need to find some skill or stat combination that told the system she was trying to avoid damage outright, rather than strictly absorb damage. Stats were off the table at this point, since she’d already levelled her class to its cap — and redoing the whole process of getting her sixth class again wasn’t something she was interested in.

  Which just left one option — she needed to find some skills that would get the system to offer her classes with a focus on both defense and speed. Or maybe someday when she was interested in spending even more time repeating everything she’d done, try and get a combination class that would offer her both.

  Unseen Archer actually seemed well suited to that, Zoe realized. The shadow skills let her avoid damage by hiding in the shadows, while the class itself still required a considerable investment into Dexterity. Perhaps just taking the Unseen Archer skills alone would be enough to get her something worth caring about.

  Zoe smiled as she realized she’d fallen back into her old habit. The strongest classes were building on what she already had — but the weaker classes built on something she didn’t. Maybe there would be a class that perfectly fit the niche she wanted, but without enough relevant achievements to bolster the strength to something she’d pay attention to in a quick glance through her class options.

  She pushed the system to show her all of her class options again, and looked through the classes with little requirements. Two stood out to her, and she wrote them down in one of her notebooks. One was Dextrous Sentinel, a class with a focus on her dexterity and vitality, with a few achievements for narrowly dodging different types of attacks. The second was Mystic Defender, with a focus on her wisdom and vitality, with achievements for blocking attacks with magical creations.

  Zoe slammed the book shut and stored it back in her Storage skill. Neither of the classes seemed to be particularly powerful — the lists of requirements were short, and the descriptions were paltry compared to what she’d gotten used to. But they seemed more right than anything else she’d seen.

  When she was finished with her Unseen Archer skills, Zoe decided to take some time wandering through higher level dungeons allowing the creatures to hit her. Typically in dungeons, Zoe tried to avoid being attacked by the denizens. Even if they were weak, all it would take was one mistake, one lapse in judgement for her to be killed. Defending against attacks was arrogant, in Zoe’s eyes. The best way to be safe was to take on dungeons she didn’t struggle against and that she could conquer before they got a chance to respond.

  But if classes that she wanted were going to require her to absorb so much damage, or narrowly avoid so many attacks, then she had no choice. She’d just have to make sure it didn’t become a habit, even after she got a class for doing such a thing.

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  Zoe turned her attention back to her Unseen Archer skills. In the city, most skills were illegal, so if she wanted to practice anything while she was in the city, it would either have to be well outside the city walls or within the confines of the dungeons.

  A dungeon was the much better option for her Unseen Archer skills since they were so destructive — staying back in Foizo until she had the skills would have been simpler and perhaps even quicker. But the forest surrounding the city wouldn’t have survived to tell the tale. Here in the dungeon, however; Zoe couldn’t cause any permanent damage no matter how hard she tries.

  She strolled down the gentle slope until she got to near the bottom of the dungeon, at a small mining town taken over by corrupted rock golems. Along the way, Zoe cast her Shadow Cloak over and over, watching as the mana was whisked around her by the system’s guidance, disguising her beneath some gnarly tendrils that in the darkness of the tunnel seemed much more competent at actually obscuring her.

  Even with the tendrils reaching out, against the dark cavern walls, Zoe almost seemed to vanish to her Cosmic Vision. The wispy shadows that reached out were almost invisible against the already dark walls, and they even helped to obscure exactly where Zoe’s body was if somebody did happen to notice her. The pattern was one of the more complicated patterns her class offered — though it still paled in comparison to some of the other skills she’d acquired.

  Days flew by, quickly turning to weeks as Zoe spent her time studying each of her skills one by one, and then recreating them without the system’s help. Shadow magic was fascinating for her, the identity so subtle and yet just as delicate. Thin rivers of mana that raced through the patterns, stretching across in a beautiful web that formed her skills.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Arrow skill.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Shot skill.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Barrage skill.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Bombardment skill.

  The time for Zoe’s return trip quickly came, so Zoe made her way back up to the small town outside the dungeon entrance and waited. When she was brought back, she immediately scheduled another month long journey back to the dungeon and got back to work on the remaining three skills.

  She’d saved the hardest ones for last, and she hoped that all the experience she’d gained working with the rest of her Shadow skills would pay off. The first of the remaining skills she decided to work on was Shadow Cloak. Even though it was much more complicated than the other four she’d already obtained, it was a little simpler than the other remaining three she had left.

  The difficult with Cloak was just how much mana was being used, and how much of that mana didn’t seem to even be doing anything at all. The tendrils that spat out from her figure as she was cloaked were filled with far more mana than Zoe thought to be necessary for the effect, with wispy tendrils of mana that raced around her similar to when she used the Stealth skill but far more intense.

  And all of the mana shifted as she used the skill, changing as she changed her pose. The mana the system used to obscure her when she stood was hardly recognizable compared to the mana it used when she was sitting, or running.

  She formed a mould of herself that she sat in whenever she studied the skill, to keep the mana consistent. Her hope was that if she could replicate the skill in one pose, the system would grant her the skill and automate the tedious process of reacting to her movements for her.

  And it seemed to work, as after a few weeks of studying, she managed to recreate the wispy tendrils and the system rewarded her with a message. She leapt from her seat as soon as she noticed it, with the shadowy cloud staying behind where she was.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Cloak skill.

  The next skill she worked on was her Shadow Bow skill, which was the next least complicated skill of the bunch. And after her experience working with the ever changing Shadow Cloak, it seemed far less daunting. The shifting wisps of mana were familiar, and many of the notes she’d taken applied to this skill all the same. In just a week, Zoe managed to form a bow of shadows in her hand without any of the system’s assistance.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Bow skill.

  Next, Zoe moved on to her Shadow Split skill. She hadn’t worked on it at all until now and was hoping it would be as simple as creating the initial pattern of mana — if it was, it might even be one of the easiest skills the class offered. And if it wasn’t, she was in for quite an ordeal.

  Thankfully, it was quite a simple skill and Zoe was finished with it after just a few hours of studying. The mana dug into the arrow and formed the rest of the pattern on its own, when it impacted something.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Split skill.

  And the last skill Zoe had was Shadow Meld, which was not only the most complicated pattern the class offered but also added in the rather unfortunate quick movement whenever she used it, making it even harder to be sure of what she was seeing.

  Weeks flew by with Zoe shifting in and out of the shadows, catching a brief glimpse of the mana that rushed around her each time and scribbling down what she could remember in her notebook. It took over a week of rather uncomfortable jolts in and out of the shadows before she even begun to feel confident she’d managed to see the entire pattern of mana, and weeks more before she felt like she hadn’t missed anything.

  Zoe tried replicating the skill dozens of times to no avail. Each time forcing her to go over her notes again, and study every little bit of mana as she hopped in and out of the shadows for days on end. Each time, she’d move one of her diagrams a little to the side as she got a better glimpse at a specific portion of the mana or saw how it connected to the rest of the structure more clearly.

  By the end of the month, she’d stopped making adjustments to her notes. Each time she hopped in, the mana looked exactly like she expected. Each wisp in the exact place she thought it should be, her notes and the skill lining up perfectly, as far as she could see.

  Zoe took a breath and pushed her mana into the world, following along with her notes once again, hoping it would work.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Shadow Meld skill.

  “Yes!” Zoe shouted, pumping her fist in the air.

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