Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe and her two friends spent the next nine months up near the top of Moaning Point fighting the hordes of mages that were dragged to Joe’s inn. By the end of their excursion, the inn had become something even rather comfortable. The walls didn’t let in as much wind, the chairs and tables didn’t creak as they sat in them. Emma had even brought up beds from Gafoda so they both had a comfortable place to sleep up in the sixth stage of Moaning Point.

An odd thing Zoe had found from her time escorting people on the mountain was the dungeon’s ceaseless destruction of anything she built on it. As they climbed higher up the mountain, the dense mana that filled the dungeon ate into the buildings and wore them down. Wood rotted far faster than she’d expect it to, while the wind and rain that buffeted her buildings broke them down in a matter of weeks rather than months or even years.

But Zoe had very little to do as she sat in Joe’s inn and keeping everything repaired and as nice as she could was great experience for her Carpentry skill. As well as some of her new space skills, as she used them to help hold planks of wood or hammer in nails.

Her Storage skill had grown quite a lot, reaching level ninety nine and to Zoe’s best estimation around a three quarters of a bag worth of storage. But the most interesting skill for Zoe was Spell Creation. It was a tricky skill to use, but so much more versatile than she ever could have imagined.

What it was, at its core, was unlimited magic. If she wanted to teleport, she could learn or even make a spell to do so. If she wanted to summon down meteors that devastated mountains, there was probably a spell for it. So far, she’d learned nothing quite so grand, but it was obvious when she used the skill that the only limitation to the skill was her own mana and whether she could learn the spell itself.

It was similar to trying to learn a new general skill, but markedly easier. Or it would be, if she had as much experience with the skill as she did with learning elemental general skills. As long as she focused on the skill and forced mana to coalesce in specific forms, magic would form. There was no ambiguity to it once she found one, no tricky mana confusing her senses. Just a simple spell forced through her skill, and the world responded.

All she had managed after nine months however were three spells, one of which hardly counted since it so closely resembled her Spacial Grasp spell. Another was a light ray that Zoe stumbled on quite early as she played with the skill, the power behind it wasn’t all too strong but if she kept it active for a while it managed to burn through wood or the odd zombie arm.

And the final spell was a cleaning spell, which had Zoe questioning her already existing cleaning skills. Did she really need them? She used them quite often, even multiple times most days. Without a doubt, they were some of her favourite skills and whenever she had to go without them she felt as though she were covered in sticky sludge.

But did she need them as class skills, she wondered? Or would it be possible to replicate a similar thing as a general skill, instead? Both of her new manipulation skills were off the table for her to play with until she was done with her Moaning Point excursion with her friends.

But there was no sacrifice being made for her cleaning skill — she already had it. And for that matter, what was the nature of any of the skills she had? Were any of her class skills truly necessary to be able to achieve similar feats? With practice, could she force an Enchanted Mirror into her soul even without the class? Could she warp the mana around her in such a way that she’d mimic the effect of Alacrity even without the skill?

Did the system do anything that she couldn’t do? The manipulation skills were often simple enough for her to get, but was there anything special about them? What was the difference between a Fire Manipulation skill and a Restoration skill?

Maybe the system wouldn’t reward her with a Restoration general skill, maybe certain skills had specific classes they could be available to. But did that mean she couldn’t replicate the effect without the system, even if it didn’t reward her with a skill for it? Would there be any benefit to doing that?

Some skills didn’t make sense as general skills to Zoe, even if the system didn’t restrict them to classes. The affinities in particular seemed like they were multipliers in the system, rather than anything that really affected her. And perhaps even something like Enchanted Mirror where it so deeply affected her soul were out of reach.

But a cleaning skill? Whoever made the system was obsessed with cleanliness, that much was clear to Zoe. Every class she’d taken, every class she’d ever heard about had a cleaning skill. They all had different names, but always the same description and effect.

Cleaning was a core part of life to the system’s creator, so why wouldn’t it be a general skill? Why wouldn’t it just be a default skill in her racial class?

Zoe turned her attention for the last few months on Moaning Point to her A Cleanly Space skill, watching the mana wash out from her to scrub away grime. She’d never paid much attention to the mana patterns when somebody used one of the skills, the mana seemed so quiet and subdued throughout the effect that it just didn’t scream out as being important to her.

But she pored over every little detail of the mana whenever she had time, whenever Emma was out hunting and Joe was busy taking a more active part in defending his inn. She watched the mana scrape away the oils left behind from her hands, the dirt left from Joe’s shoes as he retreated back inside.

It was beautiful Zoe found, the mana so quiet and soft but with so much power behind it as it plowed through grime. The mana patterns weren’t as complicated as the Time or Elemental Manipulation skills Zoe had, but it was a step between the more simple manipulation skills and the complicated ones.

Just before the end of their nine month long stay on the sixth stage of Moaning Point, Zoe had managed to clean away a speck of dirt from the bottom of her shoe. The mana twisted and warped around her shoe, gently crushing the dirt to dust and even further to the raw mana that filled the universe.

*Ding* You have unlocked the Magical Scouring skill.

The description was as Zoe imagined and she wasn’t quite sure what she expected when she checked it. Remove dirt and grime from objects, of course. What else would it be?

Magical Scouring worked just the same as every other cleaning skill she’d ever had, but with the very welcome change of it not taking up one of her class skills. Not something that was useful to her now with the apprentice space mage, but all three were hoping to reach their caps soon and would see some welcome improvements.

Zoe and Emma were both at level one twenty seven while Joe was a ways above them at one forty eight since he hadn’t reset his class. Both Emma and Joe had managed to grab the wisdom feat — Endless, rather recently and it helped them both out immensely.

Joe’s mana wasn’t quite on the same level of Zoe’s but as long as Zoe was inside his inn, no horde of zombie mages managed to faze him. Their magic washed over his inn and his magic responded in kind far stronger than they could handle. Even without Zoe in his inn, he could hold his own against a sizable group for a while with the doubled mana regeneration it gave him.

His level was almost triple what his previous level cap was at fifty six — he still had almost twenty levels until he reached the hard maximum but if he was lucky, it would be much sooner. He already knew what class he’d be taking, too and was excited to try it out. It was the alternative he was debating between when he took An Everlasting Home and he was looking forward to getting both.

Emma on the other hand was giddy with excitement when she got the feat. Doubling her mana regeneration was no different to doubling her speed at this point, letting her warp around the mountain without a care as her mana topped up twice as quick. Her plan for her next class was some variant of space mage, whichever seemed strongest. She planned to take every class that looked tempting and settle on whichever one gave her the most mana to play with.

With her previous cap being sixty three however, she’d only just reached the earliest her current cap could be. But she had a bit of a naïve hope that it would be a very low level and she’d be able to grab a powerful upgrade soon.

Zoe was the first to see her level stagnate at level one thirty, and looked through her class list as soon as she noticed. There were many classes that interested her, powerful variants of space mages and even archmage variants with different elements that required an existing mage class.

But there were only two that really stood out to Zoe.

[Space Archmage] A master of space, pursuing mystical might above all else. Twisting and bending the fabric of space to suit their needs.

Requirements: Has a Space aligned Mage class, has the Archmage feat.

[Cosmic Mystic] A being outside the rules of the cosmos. Space and Time are mere foundations to be sculpted and moulded to their vision.

Requirements: Has the Space Affinity skill, has the Time Affinity skill, has the Transcendent feat, Has the Patient Decider feat, Has been blessed by a being from another realm, Has travelled to another realm

If Zoe were looking at her options even just two years earlier, Space Archmage wouldn’t have even been an option. Cosmic Mystic was far superior in every respect. Higher requirements, more diverse magic. There was no competition.

And if she were being honest, it was hard to take the idea of Space Archmage seriously even now for her, but she felt she needed to at least entertain the idea. Her ultimate goal was to get the Cosmos general skill, which Cosmic Mystic would probably do for her far quicker than any other options. There wasn’t much purpose to her obsession with it anymore — Emma had attained immortality in her own way, if she just took the class before she got too old. And Joe had surprised both of them by getting it on his own through one of his classes.

She didn’t need cosmos, and even if she got the skill she wouldn’t be able to just hand it out like a piece of candy. Even to Zoe who had years of experience studying mana and breaking apart the patterns to mimic them for herself, just the space skill alone was beyond her comprehension. Let alone the far more complicated cosmos skill.

Space Archmage gave her what she wanted in the interim, powerful space magic that would let her build up to Cosmos in her own way. But Cosmic Mystic handed her the end result on a silver platter.

Zoe laughed. At the end of the day, there was no argument she could make for Space Archmage. The class would be there in the future if she ever wanted it, or if it wasn’t then something else like it would be. But Cosmic Mystic was in its own class of power, and the regret Zoe would feel if she knew she left it on the table because of some naïve obsession over not taking the strongest would be great.

She pushed the system to give her the Cosmic Mystic class and as soon as she did, the world went dark as pain wracked through her. System messages flooded her vision, but she couldn’t read them through the pain and within moments of taking the class, lost consciousness.

The next thing she knew, she was being woken up by Joe, lying in a puddle of sweat on the floor of his inn.

“Joe?" Zoe spat out. Her body was sore, every hair on her body stinging with pain.

Joe took a deep breath and sighed as he leaned back on the floor. He and Emma were both kneeling next to Zoe with panicked looks on their faces.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked.

“Mm,” Zoe groaned as she looked around. Everything looked so odd, like somebody had smudged grease all over her vision and then ran it through a fisheye lens filter.

“Zoe?" Joe asked.

“Eugh. Shush.” Zoe’s head fell to the floor and she closed her eyes. Everything felt so heavy, every movement as though she were dragging a bag of rocks behind her.

Joe and Emma both nodded, Zoe knew. Her eyes were closed yet their actions were visible to her as clear as day. The entire inn was, Zoe realized. Every chair, every grain in the wood. Even the dirt just outside the inn’s walls and the green grass that stretched up to meet the sun’s rays and waved in the gentle wind.

Zoe laid on the floor for a few hours as she grew accustomed to the changes and then looked through the notifications she couldn’t read earlier.

*Ding* You have unlocked the Cosmic Mystic class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

Effects:

- Cosmic Mystic: Gain fifty stat points for each level in this class.

- Cosmic Vision: View the world around you.

­- One With The Cosmos: You gain experience through the passage of time and space.

- Cosmic Well: Health, Stamina and Mana capacity are increased by 350%.

- Cosmic Mastery: All Cosmos aligned effects are boosted by 450%.

Available Skills:

- Cosmos Affinity: Increased Mana affinity

- Spell Creation: Form spells to create magical effects.

- Cosmos Manipulation: Manipulate the cosmos with your will.

- Cosmic Armour: Wreath yourself in the power of the cosmos.

- Cosmic Rift: Rend apart the cosmos with your mana.

- Cosmic Step: Travel the cosmos.

- Cosmic Familiar: Summon a being from the cosmos to perform simple tasks.

- Storage: Store objects.

- Cosmic Radiance: Remove dirt and grime from objects.