Zoe spent the next few weeks wandering through the dungeon, allowing the monsters that could never threaten her to wail on her with all their might. The system would without a doubt reward her for being hit by things that could hurt her, but even if it would end up in a better class that just felt like a poor decision to her.

  Besides, if the system required her to get hit by attacks that could actually hurt her for her class, then the class would probably revolve around doing just that which didn’t interest her. She wanted to be able to outright deny the damage she was receiving, not just recover from it. And for that, a horde of lower level monsters fared much better than a few lone higher level ones that could actually break through her defenses.

  The end of her trip came around, and Zoe made her way back up to the shanty town for her return teleport. She thanked Lionel — the royal mage she often used for her dungeon expeditions, and made her way back home. Emma wasn’t around, so Zoe sat down in the living room and played with Fennel for a while.

  As a child, she had fond memories of playing with her family’s cat with a laser pointer. Darting it from sock to paper bag as the cat raced across the wooden floors and pounced on everything it thought the dastardly red spot was hiding under.

  On Abyllan, she didn’t have a laser pointer. But magic fit the bill just as well Zoe thought as she watched Fennel dash around the living room chasing a small ball of vines Zoe was moving around the room.

  “Actually,” Zoe said to Fennel. “Maybe I could make you a laser pointer, now that I think about it. You want a laser pointer, Fennel?"

  Fennel meowed.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Zoe chuckled, dropping the ball of vines on the floor and letting the cat pounce on it. He dug his claws into it, tossing bits of green leaves around the living room as Zoe summoned a small gem.

  Lasers were complicated technology, Zoe knew. Light amplification by the stunning something something? She couldn’t quite remember what it stood for, though nobody ever did anyway. They were lasers, that’s all they needed to be as far as she was concerned.

  But to make one with magic would be a little different — and to Zoe’s hope, a little simpler. She could use her light skill as an enchantment for the light source, but it didn’t give her much control over the light so much as making an object spew light around it.

  If her other skills were anything of a reference, then with practice she should be able to change the colour. Red was a classic, of course. Why were most laser pointers that she found red, anyway? Red’s wave length was longer, but it’s not as though other colours of cheap laser pointers didn’t exist. At least she thought she could remember seeing small blue and green ones around before.

  She shrugged. It probably made more sense that she just couldn’t remember her time back home all that well anymore. It had been quite some time since she last went shopping for a laser pointer, maybe she was getting it mixed up with some video she saw on different colours of laser pointers.

  If most of the laser pointers back home were red, then it was probably cause it was cheaper. And if it was cheaper, then it was probably easier and simpler to make. So step one would be to figure out how to make red light, she decided.

  But any colour of light would work in a darker room so she decided to skip the first step for the time being. The next part of the process would be figuring out how to direct the light so precisely. A combination of mirrors would work if she understood to direct a light source to a tiny pinpoint with mirrors, but that sounded like a lot of math that she didn’t quite understand.

  Which meant the best solution would be magic. There was of course the possibility to just make a very powerful light enchantment, stick it in a sealed room with mirrors and leave just a tiny hole for the light to make it out. Even without the most optimal path for the light, it would probably make a dot at quite a distance in a darker room.

  Zoe summoned a small box with her wood skill, about the size of her fist, and lined it with Frost in the middle. She slipped a gem into the middle of the box, filled it with mana and then enchanted it with Light and cast her Elemental Amplifier on it.

  The result was promising, though not adequate enough. At a short distance, it did create a bit of a bright spot on the floor. But the light spread out far too much as it travelled from the small box. Zoe extended the opening a few inches and filled the inside of it with more frost which helped to extend the beam, though it still seemed more like leaving a glass bowl in a ray of sun than a laser pointer.

  Fennel didn’t seem to be interested in the bright spot dashing around the room, but to Zoe’s surprise Oliver did. He jumped up from cleaning himself to chase the spot around the room, running up the walls and bouncing from place to place as Zoe darted it around the room. It wasn’t quite what Zoe was going for, but it wasn’t all too often that Zoe found something that Oliver seemed to enjoy too much. She continued playing with him for a few minutes before she stored it away in her storage bracelet.

  There was only so much she could do by simply bouncing the light around within a box, Zoe knew. As soon as the light left the box, each photon would be travelling in a slightly different direction and that would be amplified the further it got from the light source. Not to mention how they would interact with all of the particles and gasses that floated in the air. What she needed was a lens, something to align the light as it left the box.

  Zoe formed another box, placed another of her gems inside and enchanted it all again. But this time, on the exit, she formed a somewhat concave piece of translucent frost. When she saw how much wider the spot of light was, she pushed mana into her frost skill to switch it to a convex shape. Which did work much better, but only at a certain distance — beyond which, it began to spread again.

  She pursed her lips and started trying out any shape that she thought of, watching as the light scattered in different patterns on the floor. Triangles and squares that didn’t seem to have too much of a noticeable effect, and a wide variety of curves which had very pronounced effects.

  After almost a half hour of fiddling with the shape, she stumbled onto a lens that managed to do something close to what she was looking for. The light first passed through a flat plane for a few millimetres before it exited through a convex curve.

  Which seemed to be exactly what she needed, creating a much brighter and smaller spot that managed to sustain itself at a much wider range of distances. At the furthest she could manage in the home, the spot began to dim as it spread out a bit too much. But that was hardly a concern anyway since the cats would always be in the same room. As long as it worked within a dozen or so meters, that was good enough.

  This time however; Fennel seemed to be the one who was interested as he jumped up from the ball of vines to chase the pinpoint spot around the room. Oliver seemed completely disinterested as he lay just outside the living room watching the commotion.

  Both the cats ears shot up as footsteps stopped just outside the front door and the familiar sound of keys scraping against the lock filled the living room. Emma opened the door a moment later and smiled.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Hello boys. Zoe.” She said. “What you got there?” Emma pointed to the spot of yellow-white light on Fennel’s paws.

  “Oh, it’s a new toy. Back home we had these things called laser pointers. Cats loved them, usually. Figured I could make something similar to it.” Zoe explained.

  “He like it?” Emma asked.

  “Oh yeah.” Zoe smiled as she darted the small light around the room and watched Fennel run around chasing it.

  “Lemme try.” Emma said, holding her hand out for the box.

  Zoe handed it to her and Emma waved it around, laughing as Fennel ran around the living room chasing the light spot.

  “Can you make it smaller?” Emma asked.

  “That’s the next step. To make it even better, I’d need mirrors. So I either need to learn how to make mirrors, get a skill that lets me mirror, or maybe figure out how to do that with the light skill.” Zoe said.

  Emma tossed the box back to Zoe. “Well good luck with that. I just got a new class.”

  “Oh? Which one this time?" Zoe asked.

  “It’s called Cosmic Curiosity. It’s pretty bad, honestly, basically just a bunch of bonuses for exploring space, but not anything to help with it. Not even a teleport skill. Still haven’t found anything to replace my Feline Warder yet.” Emma sat down on the chair next to Zoe.

  “Oh, about that. I met some people down in the dungeon recently. Real nice folks.” Zoe said.

  “Oh?” Emma questioned.

  Zoe talked about her little excursion into the dungeon with Keff’s party, and Tia’s interest in meeting with Emma.

  “Yeah I’d be down to chat with her. When did she say she’d stop by?” Emma asked.

  “Didn’t ask. Sometime soonish, probably. Not sure when their return trip was, or where they live anyway. I probably should have got more information from them, huh?" Zoe asked.

  “Probably.” Emma laughed. “I was planning on being lazy for a bit with the cats anyway so it works out as long as she stops by in the next week or two.”

  “I’ll be here anyway, think I’m gonna try and refine this laser pointer thing. Though I need a new name for it, I guess. It’s not really a laser, even if it’s kind of a similar effect. Actually, I’m not exactly sure what a laser is anyway. I don’t think this is a laser though, this is just a focused beam of light. Which might just be what a laser is?" Zoe rambled.

  Emma laughed. “I have no idea.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. Gimme a name for it though.” Zoe said.

  “Hmm. How’s it work?” Emma asked.

  “Box of mirrors with a lens and a light source, basically. Could call it the refractoptitrix.” Zoe suggested.

  Emma laughed. “What does that even mean?"

  “Refraction, optics. Nevermind.” Zoe waved her hand. “Gimme a name.”

  “Hmmm. Light sender?” Emma suggested.

  “Ehhhh. I want something catchy.” Zoe said.

  “Just call it a laser?" Emma said.

  “I don’t know if it technically is a laser or not though. I don’t know what qualifies as a laser.” Zoe said.

  “Does it matter?” Emma asked.

  “I guess not, no.” Zoe said.

  “Then there you go. It’s a laser.” Emma chuckled.

  “Fine, fine. It’s a laser. You want me to make you one?” Zoe asked. “Oh right,” Zoe summoned the first prototype she made and tossed it to Emma. “This one works much worse, but Oliver seems to like it a lot.”

  “Really?" Emma shone the light near Oliver and laughed as he ran around chasing it. ”That’s awesome! It’s so hard to find things he enjoys. He always ends up just watching. I’ll take one of each, please and thank you.“ Emma raised her head in a snooty gesture.

  “You can keep these ones. They’ll probably melt soon though.” Zoe laughed as she tossed the second one to her friend. “I’ll try and make better ones at some point but I have no idea if I’ll actually be able to do it anyway. I might just end up getting distracted trying to discover some new skills, to be honest. I’m kind of in a bit of a skill kick. Honestly, I’m wondering if it would be worth doing what you’re doing but going a step further. Instead of just unlocking all of the classes, why wouldn’t we just take all the classes we have and then steal all of their skills?"

  “I thought about it.” Emma said.

  “And?" Zoe asked.

  “Way too much effort. So much effort. Can you imagine how much time it would take to steal that many skills? How long did it take you to get all of the Unseen Archer ones?” Emma asked.

  “A month or so.” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, a month or so. For just a single class. I don’t wanna do that. That’s so boring.” Emma laughed.

  “Kinda sounds like fun to me, to be honest.” Zoe said.

  “Yeah I bet it would. Cause you’re a freak, you know that? A freak.” Emma pointed her finger at Zoe. “A freak.”

  Zoe laughed. “Yeah, I know. I am. And you love me for it.”

  “I do. I really do.” Emma said. “You should do that. Steal all the skills, and if you find any super easy ones then teach them to me.”

  “None of them are easy if you don’t spend time practicing how to do it, you know?" Zoe asked.

  “But it’s so much effort, Zoe.” Emma whined.

  “But then it gets easier, Emma.” Zoe whined back.

  “Fine. I’ll make you a deal. The next class I take, I’ll steal all the skills it has. And if I have fun, I’ll join you.” Emma said.

  “What’s the deal? Just sounds like you’re gonna do whatever you want.” Zoe asked.

  “Deal is, if I like it I’ll join you, and if I don’t I won’t join you.” Emma nodded, rubbing her chin like some wise old sage.

  “That’s just you doing whatever you want, though.” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, duh.” Emma laughed.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “I bet you’ll like it. Just find a class that’s actually cool, don’t take some dumb class like Master of the Toilet or something. Get a fun one with fun skills worth keeping.”

  “Uh uh.” Emma shook her head. “The deal was I’ll do it with whatever the next class I take is. Whatever the system decides to offer me is what I’m stealing.”

  “Then just try and stay away from toilets for a bit, at least.” Zoe chuckled.

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