Frostbitten Wayfarer

Emma was the first to get her fourth class another week later, and she took a space magic class that gave her an enormous boost to her transportation capabilities. The just over doubled mana and mana regeneration from the class alone was enough to make her mouth water, but it also gave her a lot of space affinity and some other bonuses that helped her out.

Getting back to Foizo overnight wasn’t quite in the cards, but heading down to Gafoda at a moment’s notice had quickly become a regular part of her routine. As much as she enjoyed exploring the mountain, sleeping in a bed — even the rather uncomfortable ones in the inns at Gafoda, was much preferred for her than the cold hard dirt up the mountain.

Joe followed only a short two weeks later as Zoe spent most of her time in his thrown together inn fixing up miscellaneous damages that Joe’s skills weren’t able to prevent. Largely because it wasn’t from external damage but just the wood itself falling apart due to the shoddy craftsmanship.

He ended up taking the Master Innkeeper class again, with the plan of replacing it with a class called A Traveler’s Keeper which required it as soon as he got to his next level cap. The Master Innkeeper class wasn’t quite as amazing as Emma’s new class but it gave him a fair bit of mana regeneration which let him be a little more aggressive with the number of zombies that were lured to his inn at a time.

With both of them having their next classes, the three talked about heading up to the groups of mages to try their hands at the much higher levelled zombies. Even the tool wielding zombies were quite a bit higher level than both Joe and Emma — even combined at times, but the mages were yet another step above. Zoe wasn’t sure how experience worked to a tee, but a larger level difference made a massive difference from her testing with both her own levels, and the people she’d been escorting.

Zoe’s alchemy class had crept up higher and higher early on as she had to help her friends with hordes that were a little too large for them to handle, but as they both climbed up in levels she had less and less to do herself. Part of her wanted to go and get some levels herself to see what the next class selection would offer on an alchemy path, but it didn’t feel right leaving her friends behind when they were relying on her.

Besides, without Zoe in his inn, Joe was much worse off since he relied on patrons — and in particular immortal patrons. And what was a year or two of waiting around if it would help her friend out? He’d done more than she could ever repay him for, even if he’d never admit it.

The groups of mages were handled with far more comfort than Zoe had expected her friends to be capable of. Emma’s new class helped to shore up the weakness she had against the magic the zombies hurled at her, letting her avoid the attacks outright instead of needing to rely on her armour while also making her armour much more efficient if she did take a hit.

While Joe’s skills just didn’t seem to have the same downside to begin with. The magic simply washed over the Inn Zoe had prepared for him while the two sat inside and chatted about their plans for the future. Joe planned to settle down for a while after the exciting excursion on Moaning Point while Zoe wanted to finish building out the rest of her house back in Foizo. She was left with a gaping hole in the ground after all the work she put in over the last few years — separated by a stone wall she’d conjured to keep it from feeling like she lived in a construction site. And it excited her to think about filling it in.

With Foizo becoming more of a town itself, Zoe didn’t have much need for all the rooms she once wanted when she first moved in. What use was there to building a forge when she could walk down the street and visit one far better than what she could build?

But it would be her forge, her furnace and smeltery, her own private workshop. It wasn’t even about the rooms themselves for her, she just enjoyed the fantasy of it all. A self contained home full of everything she’d need to thrive through the ages.

The weeks turned to months, as Joe and Emma slaughtered the mindless magic wielding husks and collected hundreds of the small gems that were left behind in their wake. The first hurdle was over, but with both of them now having their fourth classes, their levels began to slow down quite a lot. Where before they often got multiple levels in a single day, now they needed to take often two or even three days for a single level.

With their progress slowed down, Zoe’s passive experience gain and Patient Decider showed their true power as her levels continued to climb far faster than either of her friends were capable of and even started to catch up again to Emma. But it was an odd feeling for Zoe as she watched the number grow.

Only nine points per level was difficult to get used to, and that was even after her Transcendent feat added an additional five points to it. Four per level, for a fourth tier class was frankly asinine. That was even worse than her initial starting Earthian class, she’d realized.

Would it have been better if she took it earlier? The classes that Zoe had taken scaled with the tier, growing stronger with each one. But did apprentice classes work differently? If you took an apprentice class as something other than your first class, were you penalized for it?

Zoe asked Joe, and he had six points per level for his Apprentice Innkeeper class — five to choose and one to vitality. He also even had a full doubling to his mana and mana regen for his apprentice class, which Zoe didn’t get all.

Maybe you got a bonus for taking an apprentice class as your first? Or maybe apprentice alchemist was just much, much worse than an apprentice innkeeper? Zoe wasn’t sure, but whatever the case was it meant that levels were not all too exciting for Zoe. It took three just to get close to what would have been a normal level for her with a better class, and the difference was more and more noticeable as she got closer to level one hundred.

If it panned out well though, she’d get an improved alchemist class to replace it with soon and maybe even find some new magic she could experiment with. Zoe had Emma use her space magic to train her space resistance up as much as she could, and had managed to reach level twenty five. She had even tried to follow along with the patterns of mana that Emma’s magic caused whenever she did, but it didn’t bare fruit. Even Eliza’s simpler manipulation was too much for Zoe to follow, let alone Emma’s magic with all the extra bits of mana rushing throughout the effects.

Both Joe and Emma had decided to work towards another of the Transcendent feats. Joe already had the vitality feat, while Emma had the dexterity feat. They both wanted the intelligence feat to bolster their mana, and Emma even wanted to commit to the wisdom one for even more mana regeneration. It meant she’d need to loop again just to get the stats required, but the temptation of such a massive increase to her mana was too hard for her to give up on.

Zoe tried to convince both of them to get all of them so they could unlock the powerful Transcendent feat but neither seemed interested in the time commitment. Their current plans on Moaning Point were already taking up more time than either of them were all that comfortable with, and committing to possibly doubling or even tripling that for some extra stats didn’t appeal to them enough.

It didn’t make an awful lot of sense for Zoe, especially since their classes tended to be worse than hers and gave fewer stat points so it would be even more impactful. But she wasn’t going to push them for it if they weren’t comfortable with it.

Emma was the first to get her new feat, unlocking Archmage at level ninety seven and just as soon resetting her class back down to sixty three. Joe followed a month later, unlocking the same feat at level one hundred three, but didn’t reset his class. The rest of his stat points he committed to putting into Wisdom both to help with powering his inn’s defenses and in the off chance that his class cap would be far enough away that he’d manage to get the second feat anyway.

It was a fun time for Zoe, she found. Exploring Moaning Point was something she’d done for so long and even something she’d taken many people up the mountain in a similar fashion. But doing it with her friends was so much more enjoyable. They spent time together every day to enjoy dinner and chat about their progress — and Zoe trusted Emma enough to allow her to run off on her own without needing to worry about the responsibility she’d been saddled with.

The temptation to switch out her skills and toy around with her new manipulation skills that she still hadn’t found the opportunity to play with grew as the three fell into a comfortable routine. Zoe just didn’t need to do all that much, since Emma and Joe worked great as a team anyway.

As long as Zoe was in Joe’s inn then Emma could teleport around the mountain and drag hordes of zombies back that she and Zoe could take out from the safety of his inn. Zoe’s only job was to be an immortal patron who sat around and did nothing too terribly important.

But she decided against it. Both Joe and Emma had talked often about wanting to clear Moaning Point before they left and Zoe wanted to be in the best shape she could be to make sure nothing terrible happened.

A few days later, Zoe noticed her level stagnating at level ninety four and focused on her class selections as zombies pounded against Joe’s inn.

There were many new classes she’d never seen before, with the majority of the classes being different variants of Alchemist. There were an abundance of time aligned alchemist classes that seemed quite powerful, but Zoe wrote them off. Controlling the speed of reactions sounded interesting, but even though Zoe had an alchemy class she still so rarely ended up doing any real alchemy.

With some of her spare time, she brewed up concoctions that spurred her interest as she found ingredients around the mountain. But for the most part, the class was a vehicle through which to discover new things about the system. To see new effects and skills she’d never see without stepping out of her comfort zone.

There was just one class that stood out to her as better than all the others, however. And Zoe immediately knew it was the right one as she saw it.

[Apprentice Space Mage] An apprentice of magic, learning from a master of space or perhaps peering into the fabric itself. Increased magic power. Increased ability to learn new space magics.

Requirements: 25 intelligence, has learned from a wielder of space magic.

Zoe almost rolled her eyes at how simple it was and found herself more than a little frustrated that Eliza didn’t qualify as a wielder of space magic. What made Emma different to Eliza? Was it just that she had a space aligned class, rather than a simple skill? Was a wielder of space magic somebody who had space affinity, rather than a space skill, or was there something else to it?

*Ding* You have unlocked the Apprentice Space Mage class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

Effects:

- Apprentice Space Mage: Gain seven stat points and two intelligence for each level in this class.

- Eager Learner: Gain increased experience when learning from those with more experience.

- Spacial Warp: All space aligned effects are boosted by 100%.

Available Skills:

- Space Affinity: Increased Mana affinity

- Spell Creation: Form spells to create magical effects.

- Mana Manipulation: Manipulate the raw mana of the world to your will.

- Spacial Grasp: Force the fabric of space to grasp objects from afar and move them to your will.

- Storage: Store objects.

- A Cleanly Space: Remove dirt and grime from objects.

The skill selection was once again rather easy with the class only having five skills if she didn’t count the Mana Manipulation skill, but rather underwhelming. Zoe wanted to teleport around, to hop from place to place like an excited rabbit around a comfortable home. More than anything, she hoped for Space Manipulation so she could at last start to wrap her head around whatever was going on with the mana in spacial magic.

Her first test was to try and store something in her new Storage skill and she started with the sleeping bag she had in one of her purple bracelets. The skill pulled at her mana, but the bag remained in her hand. Zoe tried again with several smaller objects but nothing happened until she tried storing a copper coin which vanished into her soul.

Which was quite the odd feeling, Zoe found. With the storage items themselves, the space wasn’t connected to her. But with her skill, it very much so was. With the coin in her Storage skill, she could feel it when she tried, like searching for a skill to enchant with or disable. It was just there, within her soul, and with a thought she could pull it out.

Spell Creation still confused Zoe as she could feel the presence of something within her, but still no clue how it could be used. Spacial Grasp on the other hand became one of her favourite skills the moment she first tried it. The skill was weak, only capable of moving around a handful of coins or knocking over a chair at its low level. But watching the world move as she reached through the fabric of space itself with her mind was an intoxicating feeling that Zoe couldn’t wait to improve on with a better class.