Chapter -2147483642 (Classing Up II)

  Ada slid the purple disk into the slot on the front of her machine. It popped in, made some pulsing mechanical sounds, and then the screen lit up. Across the top, displayed in big blocky lettering was the text [WORLD TRAVELER - Spatial]. Below that was a more standard terminal font describing the features of the class. The class would grant skills that allowed opening portals into other realms, teleportation, pocket storage spaces, and more. It would gain bonus experience from simply visiting other worlds, and would grant nearly two thousand skill points distributed almost evenly between the four magic stats, but nothing in any of the physical stats at all. It had been unlocked by visiting three different worlds. Ada was no number theorist, but she considered herself decently skilled with her fingers, and that last part wasn’t adding up.

  Somewhat confused, Ada turned to Lovelace and asked, “Hey, this looks like it’s supposed to be like a glass cannon, but I don’t see any attack skills on it. Despite the huge stat gains in magic, it looks suspicious, yeah?”

  Lovelace nodded back. “Yeah, and you won’t even be able to level it up at all without mooching XP off some companions,” she replied.

  “What do you mean? It does let me teleport and open portals and stuff,” said Ada. “I’d probably even be able to get back to Earth at some point.”

  “Mana costs. You wouldn’t be able to push enough mana into any of the skills before they’d fail to activate. Teleporting and bending spacetime takes a lot of mana. Just imagine the gravitational forces involved.” Lovelace continued, “No, for that class to make sense, we’d need to already have at least one other magic focused class at a high level to have a prayer at making it work.”

  Ada was slightly disheartened, but knew that would be the result after she had read the help file. “Alright, make a copy and save it for later?”

  Lovelace smiled as she replied, “Already done. What you’re holding are the originals, but I already backed up the data in a couple different redundant spaces. That’s going to be part of another one of my projects. We’re going to reverse engineer these and craft our own with all the best options.”

  “Good deal, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you to try doing,” said Ada. “Ok, then, moving on.”

  Ada popped the purple disk out of the drive and returned it to the box. Next, she pulled one of the yellow disks and slotted that in.

  

  [Disappointment]

  Ada put it back. “Really? Disappointment?”

  She pulled out the next yellow disk.

  

  [Mind Goblin]

  And then the next one.

  

  [Act 1 Wallflower]

  And the next.

  

  [Participation Trophy]

  She threw all of these back into the box and sat back, folded her arms and scowled in disgust. Ada couldn’t believe it. The system was obviously trolling her. She turned to Lovelace, glared at her, and said, “We’re getting joke classes, right? That’s what this is?”

  Lovelace nodded back, “Yeah, pretty much. The descriptions and unlock requirements aren’t much better, either. Probably best to just skip most of these and just use them for data points for later.”

  Ada scowled and said, “Can you narrow this mess down to just the real, actual mage classes, and maybe the metal element if there are any that are specialized?”

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  “Yeah, hang on. I just wanted to have a bit of fun having you look at some of the crap options just to show that stats aren’t always everything. In this case, in order to get you the class path you want, we’re going to have to take something a bit lower down on the quality scale,” said Lovelace. She rolled her chair over and pulled out one seemingly random disk out of the middle of the case that Ada would swear wasn’t there before. This one was a light green color, and somehow Ada hadn’t seen it in the box when she looked through it before.

  Ada groaned. She took the disk as Lovelace offered it to her.

  

  [Elementalist]

  “You ass. You just said lower quality,” said Ada.

  Her soul duplicate chuckled and said, “Yeah, I was fucking with you. I knew when you came in that this would be the one we’d want. Check out the class features.”

  Ada did just that. Turning her chair back around to the desk, she slotted the bright green disk into the workstation and it booted up, loading the details about the class.

  

  [Elementalist - Metal]

  Requirements: Craft and inhabit an elemental body, 50 Magic Power, 50 Magic Control, 8+ ranks Meditate general skill.

  You have intrinsically bound yourself to a fundamental element. This class will help you gain a greater understanding of the element and grow with its power. You’ll be able to manipulate your form, conjure more of the element, and command other nearby sources of the element. +13 Strength, +13 Dexterity, +13 Vitality, +13 Speed, +26 Mana, +26 Mana Regen, +26 Magic Power, +26 Magic Control per level. This class path has a high chance to merge with another class of a neighboring element when advancing. Class skills have a high chance at evolving as your understanding and control of the element increases.

  “OK, wait. What’s this about an elemental body? I can sort of remember getting a system popup saying something about that, but then I think I passed out,” said Ada.

  Lovelace nodded and said, “Yeah, so that’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. When we got here to this world, you were kinda... dormant, and we didn’t have a body. I was trying to put something together out of what was around, but you try getting a bunch of loose iron particles to stick together without a big electromagnet. Anyway, it wasn’t going well, until this other... something, I don’t know, came along and showed me how to get all the little particles to stick together, and how I could even alter the size of surface pores to get it to absorb and reflect different wavelengths of light. So, I crafted a body, one that looked like how I always saw myself and how you always knew we were supposed to look. Once that was done, we just kinda bonded to the body. You took control, and then woke up. I came back here, set this place up, and started researching.”

  Ada wasn’t sure how to take this new information. She’d known that something had happened to her that had changed her from being a human. She remembered not feeling any pain from being injured by the goblins, and that she hadn’t bled from those wounds. It just hadn’t quite hit her exactly how extensive the changes had been. Oh, and there was also the fact that she no longer had to deal with those horrible things swinging around in between her legs. It was impossible to put into words how much of a relief that had been. She decided that the end result was worth whatever horrific death she’d experienced and could no longer remember. And besides, it turned out that Alex had already been here.

  Ada looked back to Lovelace and said, “Alright, that actually makes a lot of sense, but I don’t know how I'm going to unpack all of the other stuff just yet. I guess if this is our best class that isn’t going to make us indebted to a god and also actually gain experience, there’s not much point in continuing through the box. I still need to get back out there before morning.”

  “Right, OK, hand me the disk and I’ll load it up on the Gibson, then you can get going,” said Lovelace.

  Ada narrowed her eyes and said with a deadpan, “You seriously named this thing the Gibson?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Lovelace as she loaded the green disk into the other workstation and typed out some commands. “What else was I supposed to call it? And before you ask, no, the password isn’t ‘God’. It’s a 256 character alphanumeric phrase.”

  “It’s the chorus from ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and you lied about it being 256 characters,” said Ada.

  “Ugh, fine, yes, it is. Now go, get out of here already,” Lovelace replied, making shooing motions with her hands. “Your ranger friend is probably out there waiting for you to wake up so she can sit on your face or something.”

  Ada’s face turned a deep shade of crimson as she blustered, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, sure you don’t. That’s why you’ve suddenly become a tomato. Seriously, we’re all done with this class advancement. Get out already.”

  Ada, still blushing, turned to leave. The trip back to the entryway was quick, and there was now a door on the wall where she had initially arrived. She opened it, and stepped out.

  

  [*ding!* Congratulations! You’ve upgraded your first class -- [Elementalist] - Metal]

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  Based on the world from the original work by Selkie Myth

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  You can also find all of the Beneath the Dragoneye Moons volumes on Kindle Unlimited and Audible:

  

  1 - Oathbound Healer -

  2 - Adventures in the Argo -

  3 - Ranger's Dawn -

  4 - Beyond the Wall -

  5 - Moonveiled Journeys -

  6 - Immortal Moments -

  7 - Return to Remus -

  8 - New Horizons -

  9 - Gladiator Gauntlet -

  10 - Under Ashen Skies -

  11 - Mandate of Heaven -

  12 - The Phoenix Peaks -

  13 - Moonfall -