Part 15 - The System and a Blessing

  Liz had been in training for five days straight before Aegis finally got fed up with her antics.

  In his defense, she’d been stumbling through training already, and she didn’t have much experience with going for days on end without sleep. She’d been actively pushing herself as much as possible in the limited time available before they’d have to leave for the operation to rescue Jax.

  Her Metal class, [Fate’s Shackles] had become shockingly easy to level. Team Iota was willing to grind her into dust to boost her proficiency before the mission, and the facility alchemist had a nasty concoction of horrible mint-based eye drops—yes, they went into the damn eyes!—that could force a person to stay awake for hours after each exposure, with some effectiveness reduction from repeated use.

  The facility blacksmith also provided her with a nearless endless supply of gold and silver chains to use as a fuel for her abilities.

  She continued to haul herself through Aegis’s obstacle course of barriers on repeat until Elina was available for her skill training each day. Then she’d be using her classes in tandem to avoid barrages of sharpened ice blades and arrows. Her Metal class loved the act of using chains to tie up ice blades, while her divine class had her nimbly dodging the arrows. All of this also served to boost Elina’s levels, since she was the next lowest level of the team.

  The status boosting skills were the most tricky to incorporate. Her mental capacity was the largest hurdle to trying to use every one of the skills in rapid rotation during a battle. That accounted for almost all of her exhaustion each day. Mentally forming images of how some of the skills worked while shackling projectiles and managing the rest of her evasion training was pure hell, but valuable experience.

  Each of the [Fate-linked] buffs were, at the same time, both low enough level to gain experience quickly, as well as tricky enough to need a specified image or precise timing to grant the best effects. If she failed to formulate an image of the result, then the effects were spread out to be so minimal that they’d barely be noticeable.

  The Dexterity boost was best used as a flicker skill, which she could activate for a sudden burst of flexibility to perform dodges that would make action movies look realistic. The skill was a mana hog like the others, and the efficiency boost mentioned for leveling the skill was negligible. She had to focus on investing the stat enhancement with a specific use, or else it would give her a fraction of the effects to her entire body. That meant a tradeoff of being able to dodge like a freak of nature—by her standards—or instead move like an olympic gymnast for a few seconds. The latter was more than acceptable by Earth viewpoints, while the former was actually useful at the speeds of Pallos combat.

  The Vitality boost was a simpler story, with a flat doubling of the stat for an instant. It could be abused to make her body impossibly tough for her level, and extended to her [Elegant Chains] to halt the worst of attacks in their tracks. The real problem became her fraying mind as she operated on little to no sleep. She simply wasn’t making enough use of her reaction speed to properly put the skills to use. The added intensity—self-inflicted, admittedly—kept the levels rolling in.

  Of particular note was the speed boosting skill. A sudden burst of speed was excellent in theory, but since it couldn’t be used with the other skills, the ability wasn’t to be taken lightly. Suddenly doubling her speed was an insane thing, if only she had the ability to match her perception to the speed change. She had the numerical stats to pull it off, but the shift was too jarring to get used to without insane bouts of repetitive use.

  The skill to boost her mana regeneration had become a constant passive. It granted her a tenth of a percent boost per level, at the cost of what felt like her sanity in her training circumstances. The skill made her beyond tired. She tried to seal it away with [Mental Partitioning] but that had backfired. Her mana costs while training often meant her expenses on things like her mental walls often couldn’t be maintained. If she realized she was about to be hit with a powerful attack during training, she’d have to rearrange her skills to boost her durability to soak the blow, and for some reason the first things her sleep-deprived brain dropped when she needed intellectual resources were recently applied partitions.

  The training had become exhausting, and that was added on top of having not slept in nearly a week.

  On a tangential note, Liz had completely avoided drinking anything besides water and the rare fruit juice since arriving on Pallos. Almost everyone in the region drank some form of alcohol on a regular basis. Liz had declined the stuff at every turn, even when it had gotten her a solid round of hazing from those around her.

  There was, in fact, a perfectly good reason.

  And the same thing happened when she was dead tired.

  “Lizha! Take this shit seriously!” Aegis’ voice shouted at her as she lay crumpled in a heap after having taken the full force of another of his annoying barriers.

  “Ah…” she choked back a response.

  Nope, she couldn’t hold it back anymore.

  “Pffft—Ahahaha! Holy fucking damn did that hurt! Oh right… no pain. It didn’t hurt. Ugh, Seira, my head’s spinning.” She half muttered, half giggled out a hysterical—and vulgar—response.

  She had blood running from her mouth, bruises all over her body, and her training outfit was regularly reduced to tatters. She just kept slipping up. She wasn’t really used to the way Vitality could allow her to go days without sleep, but the issue wasn’t her body being able to pull it off, it was the mental strain.

  In an effort to manage the changes, she’d been putting herself through the efforts, even giving herself the hateful eye drops to keep awake.

  Aegis gave her a look of complete disgust and contempt.

  “This chick is insane.” One of the other team members was piping in as he took a break from his own routine.

  “She’s completely drained. Hasn’t slept in days, all by her own choice. Maybe I went too far with my warning to her. How the hell does someone end up at her age without any emotional maturity at all?” Aegis had his palm against his forehead, seemingly fending off a migraine.

  Elina cocked her head to the side. “You did say her levels were too low, so now she’s doing her best to raise them fast. I used to think about things the same way, but I never had to go this far, and for so few levels in her divine class, too.”

  “Leaving aside emotional maturity, I’m convinced she’s never been given a proper education about the system. She doesn’t even tell anyone about her classes or skill details, so it’s hard to actually teach her what she’s doing wrong. Her skills cap out pretty fast, but her classes…” Aegis frowned before striding over to the hysterical bundle of crazy on the ground.

  “Oh, hey, Aegie! I think I broke something just now. Should the world be spinning?”

  “You dumbass. Get some damn sleep.” He promptly knocked her out.

  ~ ~ ~

  Liz woke up next with a pounding migraine. The only good thing was that she wasn’t still stuck wearing tatters.

  There was something to be said about hangovers being similar to being knocked out, but in her new circumstances, she would’ve taken being blackout drunk over the pain she was suddenly feeling.

  As if to add insult to injury, she remembered her sleep-deprived ramblings with flawless clarity. She found herself wishing she could use [Mental Partitioning] on other people to lock away anyone who’d seen her like that.

  She groaned as she rolled over, head feeling like it’d been kicked by a horse. That might not have been far off.

  “You feeling clearer now?” Aegis was next to her, and the team was still sparring nearby in their pairs.

  “Sorry.” That was all she could bring herself to say.

  He offered her a cup of water, which she accepted as she adjusted her passive skills to her normal choices, though she added an extra boost to pain reduction for her mildly concussed head. Bless Vitality making injuries that were nearly fatal that much easier to walk away from.

  “You’re trying really hard, but you’re taking it too far. It isn’t necessary for anyone to run themselves ragged for strength. You’re just baking in bad habits.”

  “I’m pushing myself to get levels faster. You were right. I’ll die without them.”

  He hit her over the head, making her feel that he’d be a seriously abusive father.

  “You’re unbelievably hard headed. Was the only thing anyone ever told you just to never trust anyone with your class and skill details? Nobody levels as slow as you do. I have never met someone who knows so little about the system as you seem to.”

  Liz rubbed her head and gave him an annoyed look.

  “You work for a paramilitary organization that has a team member who kills with flesh eating infections. Not only was I told not to share my classes and skills with people, but sharing them with all of you seems like a uniquely bad idea. Although how long was I out? I feel really rested now.”

  “Mission got delayed. Meeting with Lord Faithsent later. You’ve been out a full day.”

  “Delayed how long? Seems sudden.”

  “To be fair, your cover story involves getting an Exterreri envoy involved. I completely understand some waves being created. Do you really not trust us? I get that we don’t do things in an honorable fashion, but the Justiciary never had knights and chivalry like the western aristocracies. Order isn’t always maintained through righteous means.”

  “Believe me, I get that chivalry and honor will get you in a grave fast. It’s not you, it’s Jayce. I’ve been surrounded by master manipulators my whole life. Trying to do things to get in my good graces, for one thing.” She held up the barbed golden and silver chains the facility blacksmith had made for her. “Then there’s the way I was left with the kids for weeks after arrival, trying to foster a bond with them to tie me to them, keep me from being able to abandon them. I’m not a good person myself already, so it’s not about morality, it is entirely because I hate feeling like someone is trying to control me.”

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  Aegis nodded, staying quiet for some time.

  Finally, he spoke. “I understand now. I wasn’t aware of most of that. I can’t help you there, but I’m sure you’ll sort it out. My job is to get you ready for the mission. You want class levels? I’ll teach you a few things.”

  Liz downed the rest of the cup of water, then folded her legs and sat up straight, giving him a nod.

  “You are correct that the system rewards achievements while under difficult circumstances. My suspicion in your case is that you’re not doing what your class wants you to do.”

  Liz frowned as she thought that over.

  “If you have a class for working with copper, but then always work with iron instead, your class won’t reward you for doing things that the class isn’t meant to cover. It’s the same with combat classes. If your class wants you to be a swordsman, then you only use an axe, you’ll get great experience for near death experiences, but not as much as you’d get for the same situation while using a sword. And, you’d be more likely to be offered an axe class at your next advancement.” Aegis gave her a small shrug.

  “I think I get it. My classes have fairly odd names. But my first one actually mentions fighting in an acrobatic fashion. I thought it was mostly flavor.” Liz looked at the dirt at her feet in deep thought until she received a reply.

  “Finally, we have some progress here. I need to get you practicing some unique moves, and then incorporating them into the shield weaving lessons. Your second class?” He didn’t have the gruff atmosphere anymore, which made Liz finally relent a little.

  “[Fate’s Shackles] is the name. It has enhancement skills and other ones for using chains.” Liz didn’t really have much to keep secret in her second class, since it had been on display a lot already.

  “Ah, that one should be easy enough. The weaponized chains in it are bound to give you some interesting future options, but it sounds like you’re not operating quite in the niche of the class so far. That’s what you have to balance. What does your class want you to do, and what do you want the class and skills to become? If you know what your goal is, and use your skills to achieve those goals, building in the direction you desire, then you’ll get the outcome you seek. If you do so by completely denying the class you already have, you’ll never level up.”

  Liz needed a few minutes to gather all that information up.

  First, what did her classes and skills want her to do?

  [Templar] was a religious combat class. She’d been using the class to fight, but she hadn’t been using it to fight in the way that was core to the class. The handful of levels after fighting multiple opponents at a much higher level than her was a huge red flag. She needed to pursue a style that embodied gymnastics. She could do that. And maybe offer prayers while doing so.

  Even just thinking about doing that earned the faint impression of a smile from her connection to the goddess. On top of that, she could swear the feeling gave off a sensation of focused attention on her as well.

  [Fate’s Shackles] was a class with ties to her love of reading the future, even though that was impossible. The class was about envisioning her goals and forcing fate to end up how she desired it. She had just been training the skills as tools, but the truth was that she needed to envision the skills guiding the world to bring her future to her grasp.

  She’d already found the list of [Fate-Linked] skills she was offered to be more than a little suspicious. The only things the four skills had in common was that they were for the stats she had above three thousand three hundred thirty-three. Three was an auspicious number in Earth’s folklore, and she could see a class that embodied her own interests having unique details that broke from Pallos’ love for base eight systems. She could easily see the other stat boosting skills being offered once the stats reached that mark, though she had to admit she might never be offered one for Strength.

  She needed to make a concerted effort to merge or drop the skills in favor of other choices before the other skills were offered.

  Then there were her divine class skills. She was quite satisfied with them, though [Earth Conjuration] was being abandoned and left behind again. She’d be needing [Gemstone Conjuration] fairly soon, so she’d need to put the skill to work in the interests of her future upgrades.

  She began putting together a new training program in her head as Aegis patiently waited for her to ruminate on things. It turned out to be perfect for her to have the mission delayed the way it was. She just had to hope Jax could hold out for a bit longer before they’d save him and send him to his family.

  ~ ~ ~

  As it turned out, she’d been left to sleep in the training grounds while she’d passed out, as none of the available personnel at the facility were strong enough to carry her when she had conjured the stone she used for her combat training. She’d gotten into the habit of increasing her own weight to further amplify her skill level gains.

  She’d still slept quite well despite her lack of bedding, likely because her first class loved being immersed in contact with the ground so much.

  She’d been a bit in the way when another team came to practice for the evening, but they’d managed. She still knew she wouldn’t be the most liked person in the underground base for a while.

  Going to the meeting with Jayce required some serious self-management.

  She first visited the facility's public baths.

  The baths were the first sign she got that she’d been in much worse condition than she’d thought. Her muscles were sore, and her joints screamed in protest as she sank into the hottest end of the large bathing area.

  Hygiene on Pallos was a mixed bag. Basic shampoos did exist, as did simpler cleaning options like soaps, but there wasn’t much in the way of added pampering products she’d gotten used to for maintaining her appearance in her old life. She had to assume that was why [Stunning] hadn’t liked her very much. The appearance skill was languishing as she had no way to come close to how she’d kept herself in the past. It was like the system could tell she wasn’t at her best.

  She slid down until her head was submerged and cast her mind back, finally willing to reflect on her new life.

  She recalled her happiest memories filled with familial love. Sitting with her father as he helped her to design her own jewelry, then taught her how to use the equipment to cut the gems for each piece. She’d even learned the science behind how the lab made diamonds were grown from diamond seeds. She briefly wondered if the process could be replicated onPallos with the right skills and knowledge.

  Her old world was full of life’s pleasures, but those moments of affection and happiness were so few and far between. She’d quickly be off to another role in another country for months at a time. Her mother was a caring person, but she’d never had any free time for the family after she’d taken over her father’s company.

  Elizabeth had very few memories left from her time as a little girl, and so she’d grown up with very little in the way of parental guidance. Most of her social interaction had been with people who waited on her hand and foot, or those with ulterior motives. She reflected on how that had likely led to lack of trust and other negative personality traits.

  She had to ask herself what she enjoyed about Pallos now.

  Top of that list was magic, the power she could enjoy thanks to Seira’s intervention. Magic was amazing and exciting, and it held limitless potential. Part of what drew her to Gemstone was how the element opened doors to every variety of magic out there. Every element had their own gemstone, and then skills of the matching element could be stored into processed gemstones, allowing for varied uses by anyone who acquired the gem.

  It was perfect for her. She loved gemstones and jewelry, and she had already asked around about how advanced Pallos was on the topic of crystalline structures and gemstone hardness. The weird looks she’d gotten were enough to stop her from giving out molecular compositions. She had decided her father’s passions would live on in her and become her ultimate strength in this new world. Her mother’s passions? The world had enough sea monsters, murderous killers, and terrifying beasts that could hunt people like cattle. Her mother’s obsession with the horror genre could stay on Earth.

  She had an endless list of things she didn’t like about Pallos. Everyone she’d met had been secretive on some level. It reminded her of hidden motives and machinations that created so many of her trust issues. That was added on top of how violent the world seemed to be. The idea of an apocalypse occurring with regularity was terrifying, and she’d been brought to a time when one was bound to happen any day.

  Liz finally surfaced from the water. She wanted fruit juices back. She missed peaches.

  A cough nearby finally caught her attention.

  She turned to see a worried expression on a tall woman with raven black, shoulder length hair and a towel wrapped around her body.

  Liz’s jaw dropped as a familiar person sank into the water nearby.

  Her expression elicited a small chuckle from the goddess in human form.

  “Seira? You can just show up?” Liz glanced around the baths to realize they were empty, and the doorway to enter was obscured by a curtain of light.

  “On rare occasions, given how much turmoil is in the world now. I’ve come to check on you.” The goddess sank all the way down to her shoulders, and Liz noticed the appearance of the Goddess of Order was different from what she’d seen in the void between worlds. “How keen of you. Gazing upon the form of a goddess can be damaging to mortals. Reducing myself to a more human appearance prevents psychological harm.”

  Liz shivered despite the heat of the bath as she realized the goddess was quite capable of reading her expression.

  “I’m honored you’d come to see me. You haven’t responded to my prayers beyond a vague sense I feel for some time before today. How are things?”

  Seira’s expression softened. “How kind of you to care for me. Times of turbulence come and go. Violence leads back to peace in this unending cycle, so that is how life must continue. You’ve been struggling, so how could I not spare a moment for the mortal who gave such a blind confession to me?”

  Liz blushed, closing her eyes and letting out a slow sigh as she pondered, not for the first time, on the [Tenet] she had been given. Just to distract from her own embarrassment. She looked back up at the goddess and nodded. “I understand. Does it affect you when the world strays away from Order?”

  “To some extent, yes, but in other ways, no. Divine worship changes slightly over the millennia. Where once, Order represented rigidity, it has now come to represent unbreakable cycles, like Samsara for souls and their reincarnation. These changes cause a slight shift in what each deity represents, and have brought my faithful closer to Thanatos, god of death, over the many years. Some believe Order is good, and Chaos to be evil. You know life is not so simple, and little Elina represents a form of Order you yourself may find it hard to agree with.”

  “I had hoped for you to explain the system to me a little.” Liz had been nodding along, but felt she was missing some crucial information, and who better to ask than the most likely person to have created it?

  “The system is not a creation unique to Pallos. Even the gods do not have, or cannot share much insight on it. Instead, I’m here for other reasons.” Seira’s expression shifted to business as she moved closer to Elizabeth.

  Liz gulped and felt an oppressive presence reaching out to her, forcing her to close her eyes as the might of divinity shook her to her core.

  “My dear paramour,” the gentle, yet playful words felt so heavy that they might carve into her soul, “Pallos is at risk of crumbling from spatial fractures left behind by the very man responsible for your presence here. The dangers of his experimentation are a threat to the fabric of this world. I task you with the mending of these fractures. In order to achieve this task, I will gift you my divine blessing.”

  The goddess then embraced her, and placed a delicate kiss upon her closed eyelids, first one, then the other.

  Liz felt like the entire world stood still until a new line appeared below her status screen, and a system prompt appeared.

  [*ding* You have been granted [Seira’s Blessing]!]

  [Seira’s Blessing: Vision of Clarity. Even when the world around you descends into chaos, your mind and all in your perception shall unravel into perfect focus and clarity before your mind. The Goddess’ gift of sight shall even reveal the flow of mana to your eyes only, that you may save this world from destruction.]

  Liz felt like she might pass out as she opened her eyes, facing the kaleidoscope of miniscule waves of energy all around her. Mana faintly flowed like the water of the baths, the flow of the air as the heat caused it to rise, and the shining star that was Seira’s divine form, all as if she was seeing the world for the first time in her life.

  The goddess smiled at her warmly as the blessing etched into her and seemed to gracefully merge into her perception. It felt unusually similar to gaining the effects of her [Earth Shattering Arts] that granted her a feeling of the earth around her.

  “Thank you.” Liz willed the blessing to focus on Seira, who reached out to close her eyes.

  “If you wish to see me, I am here. But do not use the blessing to focus on me too intently. It would be harmful to you, and I may become embarrassed if you go so far to undress me with your eyes.” Liz felt her heart lurch at the playful and sultry tone of the goddess. She knew she hadn’t been wrong to express her feelings when they’d first met. She’d gotten a goddess to flirt with her! Score one for awkward, unfiltered comments from brain to mouth.

  She knew the goddess was teasing her, and probably saw her as a cute pet to toy with, but she really enjoyed it.

  “You really are perfection incarnate.” Liz smirked at the woman’s visage that held a hand over her eyes.

  “Aren’t you the little flatterer as usual?” Seira remained long enough for them to enjoy a blissful back-and-forth together.

  [*ding* [Stunning] has leveled up! 14 -> 43]

  Turns out, bathing with a goddess is a great way to have your appearance validated.