The world snapped back into focus with the subtlety of a hull breach. The coppery taste of ozone and spent energy was thick on my tongue, a metallic tang that was both alien and intimately familiar, the afterbirth of my advancement. The shriek of distant railguns and the deeper, stomach-churning thump of plasma charges provided a brutal symphony to my introspection. I was still in the Kalisti rift, my body kneeling on cold metal, my mind screaming through a list of possible futures.
The list of classes the System presented, even the basic ones I was qualified for, was stupidly long. A veritable encyclopedia of potential damnation and deliverance.
People had discovered long ago that while the System was technically sentient and capable of responding intelligently to even poorly-worded commands, it certainly was not sapient, creative, or possessing any sort of real personality outside of its overriding directives. It was a vast, cold, cosmic machine that offered power in exchange for compliance, a gilded cage whose bars were the very affinities it nurtured.
Right. Let's not get a nosebleed from the altitude. Time to prune the family tree of destiny.
“Screen class list,” I muttered, the words feeling inadequate for the gravity of the moment. The holographic display shimmered before my mind’s eye, a waterfall of text and icons. “Eliminate basic classes, any class requiring less than two affinities, and specialized classes for the Unified Planetary Fleet.”
The list shortened dramatically, like a crowd thinning after a particularly bad joke. But Kushiel had been right. Tucked away, gleaming with a faint, ominous gold light, was the ‘Crusader’ class. Spiritual and Physical affinities, a stated moral goal. It felt like putting on a suit of armor that was already molded to someone else’s body. Their sins, their righteousness. It didn't fit. Classes were the route to new affinities, but sometimes the power just didn’t feel right.
I needed to experiment, to narrow the search further. The sheer volume was paralyzing. To my shock, a number of rare classes glimmered among the options. That was… unprecedented. Rare classes at Copper rank were the stuff of academy legends and recruiter hyperbole. They were stepping stones to mythic paths, to becoming the kind of person who didn’t just navigate history but bent it over their knee.
Or gets disappeared by a black ops team in the middle of the night, a more pragmatic part of my brain, the part that had survived the 132nd, whispered.
“Add Parameters,” I instructed the silent, waiting presence in my soul. “Eliminate common classes, any class requiring less than three potential affinities, and classes marked as criminal by the United Planetary Fleet.”
I’d almost forgotten that filter. The UPF and I didn’t see morally eye to eye—their idea of order often looked an awful lot like tyranny from the bottom looking up—but some classes were outlawed for extremely good reasons. ‘Psychic Slaver.’ ‘Hypertech Smuggler.’ ‘Biophage Cultivator.’
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The names alone carried the stench of charnel houses and betrayed worlds. I was already a hair’s breadth from getting locked in a hole for my Forces affinity; grabbing something like ‘Hyperwarp Pirate’ would probably put me farther over the line than even the formidable Commander Taera could tolerate.
The list shortened again, but it was still daunting. Dozens of Uncommon classes, a handful of gleaming Rares. My heart did a funny little stutter-step against my ribs. This was it. The moment that defined everything that came after. I could almost feel the weight of Wasserman’s gaze on me, though he was kilometers away, a phantom pressure of expectation and… something else. Something that felt dangerously like faith.
I pushed the sensation away, focusing on the three rarest options I could qualify for. They pulsed with an inner light, promising power and peril in equal measure. I reached out with my consciousness and touched the first one.
Terraformer-
Trait Requirements: Cross-discipline sorcery. Biomedical or genegineering. Triage or deep medical scan. Convert Energy. Remote forces or astral sorcery.
Affinity Requirements: Spiritual or life affinity, Physical affinity, Earth or technological affinity, Forces or Channeling affinity.
(Hidden Requirements)
The description unfolded in my mind, not as dry text, but as a vision. I saw a dead, airless rock hanging in the black. I felt a well of power within me, vast and deep, and I pushed it out into the void. Not to destroy, but to create. Microorganisms, simpler than anything, bloomed in the darkness, processing rock, exhaling minute traces of gas. Then plants, hardy and desperate, cracking stone with roots, building soil from dust. Faster and faster, a time-lapse of genesis. Weeks and months instead of millennia.
Using your own energies and starting with simple life forms (Plankton, microorganisms) you are able to jump-start the terraforming process within a suitable temperature range. You can help build a number of environments with appropriate microorganisms to support more advanced life such as plants and eventually animals within a fraction of the time standard technology or magic would require…
Offers the following traits as you advance:
Energy expansion
Life support
Rapid growth
Guided evolution
Matter conversion
2 affinity ranks per level
There it was. The golden ticket. The get-out-of-jail-free card that could trump even a forces affinity. ‘Rapid Growth’ was a simple farmer trait, and ‘Life Support’ was normal for many uncommon medical paths. But ‘Guided Evolution’? That was a game-changer on a civilization-scale. Absolutely a rare trait. If I worked for the United Planets, and gained enough energy, I could charge a king’s ransom to terraform planets in the Goldilocks zone, allowing them to immediately begin importing biomes rather than waiting centuries for basic habitability.
They would probably even forgive my existence. I would be far too valuable not to. And ‘Matter Conversion’… the endgame. Converting silicon and carbon into hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The ultimate alchemy. My swarm and drone controls could be repurposed not for war, but to seed and tend a living world. It was a peaceful, prosperous future. A life of immense value and, likely, immense comfort.
It was also a life of a gilded cage. I’d be their prized canary, singing in a cage made of entire worlds. My value would make me a target for every megacorp and political faction in the galaxy. And what of my people? What of the slavers who’d picked my world clean? Would the UPF let their precious Terraformer go gallivanting off on a personal crusade of vengeance? Not a chance. I’d be tucked away somewhere safe, productive, and utterly neutered.
The vision was beautiful. And it was a betrayal of everything I was. I let the image of the green, growing world fade, a profound sense of loss curling in my stomach like cold smoke.
