But war was coming. Five years away, it would reach Trok’s shores. What good would a Profession-based Class be then? No, Eric needed something proactive and powerful. He could do plenty of research without a Class dedicated to that purpose.
Eric immediately went to the COMBAT doorway and stepped through the film.
[Combat Class selected.]
The silver barrier clung to him like a sheet of saran wrap. He had to exert some physical effort as he pushed past the film and entered a huge, war-torn battlefield. No corpses were present, but the signs of battle and old equipment were strewn about. They looked to be from all different eras of Elyndian history. Spears were shattered, shields were cracked, armor was rent asunder, and swords were snapped into pieces.
Last time, the surroundings reminded me of my past on Earth . . . maybe these are fragments of my previous timeline on Elyndor, or a record of the past histories I have healed.
The ground was a deep red, as if blood had soaked into the ground over millennia of carnage. Just like the prior chamber where he had chosen the COMBAT doorway, the skies above were the same, as was the huge, crimson moon.
But. . . something was different this time. Eric saw a figure in the moon. He squinted and focused on it, then spotted the smallest outline of some inner circle. An outline of another shape. It was. . . familiar, though he couldn’t place where he knew it from.
He tore his gaze from the skies and back to the ground. Before him were five pillars, roughly ten feet wide and thirty feet tall. They were all different colors, with the names of the different types of Classes listed at the top in the same white text as before. At the base of each pillar was a person-sized doorway, with an opaque, slightly undulating film of the same color.
Each different Class type had a corresponding message from The Paths, written in white text that hovered in the air.
[Warden - Those who heal, protect, and secure.]
[Reaper - Those who harm, destroy, and annihilate.]
[Strategist - Those who control, manipulate, and decide.]
[Vanguard - Those who provoke, retaliate, and endure.]
[Stalker - Those who scout, infiltrate, and disrupt.]
His thoughts turned back to his first time around. He had entered the Warden pillar and immediately found a Tome that matched what he’d wanted to do: Healing Mage. He started off just healing cuts and bruises and using simple barriers, but over time had began reattaching and regrowing limbs.
Eventually, he had added the Barrier Mage as his second Class and kept pursuing new heights of power through altruism and helping people, hitting milestone upon milestone from performing charitable acts with his powers.
When he had found the Scroll that had given him access to the hidden Warden Class, Exarch, all of his abilities were amplified . . . and he had become the strongest Warden of the era. The people had named him a saint for his deeds of altruism, and he had tried to live a life worthy of that title bestowed by the people he aided.
He had been able to resist being shoved into lava with his oh-so-mighty barriers. . . but what good had that done? It kept him alive for a few more seconds as the world cracked in half, and nothing more.
I need a Class that can do multiple things. First, I need one that excels in dungeons, so that I can gain milestones rapidly just like Darius did. Gaining power is going to be paramount.
His best friend in the other timeline was a powerful hero who had gone beyond Eric in level, and thus Eric knew that dungeons were the way to level up quickly.
Second, I need a Class that can destroy the Admiral and Steward: not just the people, but their illicit organizations, their underlings, their businesses—all of it.
Third, I need a Class that can turn the tide of a war and make a difference on a battlefront. Fourth, I have to choose something that is capable of handling the Titan, whether that is keeping it dormant, confined, or even killing it. Killing it might cause issues all on its own, since it's in the center of the world—and who knows how that plays into the whole ecosystem of Elyndor. But still . . . I want the option on the table.
Fifth and most important, I need the Class to be proactive. It cannot be reactive, so Warden, Vanguard, and Strategist are right out, as those require other people to do things to hit milestones. That leaves me with Stalker or Reaper.
He let out a breath. A calm, collected one as he considered the options that lay before him.
I know I’m adding Healing Mage as a second Class later on. Exarch is like a buffed-up Barrier Mage; I just have to get to the White Keep and get my hands on that scroll. That’ll be my third and final Class. That covers support and defense. I need offense. Stalkers can use offense, and their non-combat milestone options are better, but they aren’t the strongest in a fight.
Better go with the strongest type. Reaper it is.
Eric made a beeline for the deep, black pillar and the dark grey film of the Reaper Class type. Upon reaching forward, his hand found resistance. “Oh, you fucker,” he muttered. He had not experienced any impediment the last time.
It must be something to do with the Class-type suited to a person’s personality or direction in life. I suppose Seraphine had some point with what she said, how The Paths dictate a person’s lot in life . . . but I know we have a choice, since we can make that later on for a second and third Class.
Eric looked up at the moon, which began to shift. He recoiled from the pillar as he realized the shape inside the center of the moon. . . it was a colossal iris. The moon was an eye, and it was watching him. A slitted one, like the apex predator of Elyndor. It belonged to a dragon.
Hmm . . . There is a creator deity that’s worshipped in some places. Maybe it's watching me right now? Maybe it’s like an internal guardian of The Paths? Fuck, it could even be the Titan itself.
Eric locked his gaze on the moon. “Well? Got something to say?”
It did not reply.
Eric gritted his teeth and faced the Reaper pillar once more. He pushed against the grey film and felt it bulge inward, but that resistance pressed back against him. He looked at the moon again. “A healer can’t save the world,” he explained to the imposing celestial body. “I need to be something other than a Warden.”
It did not respond.
He turned back to the film. “You’re going to let me through,” he muttered. Then, he took a deep breath, backpedaled several steps, and charged full-bore into the pillar. He broke through the barricade and stumbled on the other side, landing on his hands and knees. Words appeared in his vision, and that mechanical female voice spoke.
[Reaper selected.]
He looked up and saw the final part of The Paths’ Class-selection process. He was in a huge library, with dozens upon dozens of floors. His surroundings were the same as the last time, except instead of white, gold, and silver covers, these were black, grey, and deep crimson.
Last time, he had felt called to a specific Tome, grabbed it, and after reading it once to confirm it had what he wanted, had acquired his Class. It was right near the entrance where the beginner Classes were located. Classes that were easy to master, with simple Skills, Rotes, and Traits. They did not require masterful capabilities or extreme force of will. The types of Classes that most ten-year-olds would acquire when they acquired their first Class.
Deeper into the library, one could find stronger Classes. Elyndians never got that deep, because their bodies couldn’t handle too long spent in the library at that young age when they had to take their first Class or risk dying of mana sickness. But Eric was a Summoned, in the body of an eighteen-year-old in prime physical condition thanks to his rigorous workout routine back on Earth with his older brother.
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He glanced at some of the titles adjacent to the carpeted corridor open to the sky. Classes like War Mage, Assassin, and Marksman, there were all manner of magic and martial-focused Classes. The list was endless. The Mage variants called to him, each of them whispering in his ears sweet promises of power.
But Eric knew what he wanted. He looked up at the moon in the sky. “You’re that voice I heard before, aren’t you?”
Silence answered, but the eye on the moon blinked.
Eric grinned. “I know exactly where the most powerful Classes are, and I’m getting the strongest of them all.” He faced the corridor and began sprinting.
The library had an end. He had never witnessed it, but he had heard of it. His friend, a Demonologist named Darius, had told him as much. According to him, the back of the library contained the most powerful—and most deadly—Class Tomes. Classes that required immense strength of will to master. Classes that could consume a person entirely and incinerate their mind, leaving their body a broken husk that would succumb to mana overload, crystallize, and shatter into manacules.
It was why those Tomes were so far away. Someone who was brand new to The Paths would choose a Class that was more archetypical of the overall category, did not require willpower to control, and would not risk their physical body dying during The Paths’ attunement process thanks to the lengthy time that had to be spent in the mental landscape of the library to reach the depths of that place.
Eric had his and he also had the willpower of an adult who had gone through war, famine, survived plagues, and witnessed the very end of the world. He had seen death, been on the verge of it many times, and even experienced it before being pulled back from that inky void with his Self-Resurrection Trait.
His will was impenetrable and impermeable, unbreakable, having witnessed horrors beyond reckoning. He had even been dragged through a realm fully occupied by demons thanks to Darius, and that form of fast-travel had almost broken his mind entirely—yet Eric had recovered and emerged all the stronger for it.
The longer he spent in the library, sprinting down those corridors, the more his physical form betrayed him. His body was responding sluggishly to his mind’s commands, as his real life body impacted the mental landscape version of his form, and as he continued onward, he had to support himself with the shelves, moving hand over hand to pull himself along the bookshelves.
Still, his dogged determination dragged him onward.
Eric looked up at the moon, and it peered at him, blinking a few times as he moved. The fact that he was being watched goaded him into a second wind, and he managed to burst into another jog for a few minutes before, once more, his legs stumbled against his will, he was forced to slow again, and had to drag himself along the shelves.
He reached the very back of the library, where a massive wall of empty shelves stood before him. The back-most wall, where one would assume the strongest Class Tomes would be located, was completely bare. The walls to the sides were filled, so it wasn’t a fluke.
What gives? Some of the sections are empty? How? Do The Paths lock off certain Classes? Or are they restricted and invisible? Where are the most powerful ones?!
There were no other gaps he had seen thus far. This was the only shelf that was empty. Instead of books, that space was filled with a pure, black void. It was a darkness that rivaled that of the power of death that had dragged him down, only to be denied by the tether of his Self-Resurrection.
He glanced back, eyeing the magic-aligned Classes behind him. There were some powerful-sounding options, like Entropist, Graviturgist, and Arcanist. But he wanted the most powerful option—and it stood to reason that the most powerful would be at the very back wall, the farthest, deepest point of the library.
He looked back to the empty bookshelf, with the blackness in between the shelves, then up to the moon in the sky. His breathing was hoarse from the exhaustion of running through the library, heavy from the manacules filling his real body in the physical world and carrying over to this projected form in The Paths, and he could feel sweat rolling down his body. “Tell me! Is the power I want in here?!” he shouted, pointing to the darkness.
The eye in the moon vanished for a moment, then reappeared. Then it happened again. It repeated in a pattern.
“What are you trying to say?”
It kept flicking in and out of existence. It took Eric a few precious seconds, but he finally figured it out. It was Elyndian code-speak, something he had learned when he was imprisoned in a slave camp during his flight from Trok in the last timeline—the equivalent of Morse Code. The eye was effectively blinking out the letters for a word.
“Yes.”
Eric turned to face the bookshelf. When he pushed his hands forward, he did not find a wall behind the darkness hiding the depths of the shelf. Instead, his hands met open air. Wriggling onto the shelf, he squeezed his way through, passing another film of pure, inky blackness that left chills along his body. He fell onto white carpet of a hidden chamber.
Pushing himself up on shaking arms, Eric saw a single Tome, chained up, and sitting on a pedestal in the otherwise empty, black void. All that was present was the black film behind him leading back to the library proper, the white carpet in a ten-foot-diameter circle, that pillar holding the chained Tome, and the endless void of space.
Even the sky was gone, which had until this point been omnipresent, with the draconic moon-eye looking down on him. Above was just more black eternity.
He tried to get a look at the spine, curious about the name of the Class, yet the chains covered all but the very faintest front sliver of its cover.
If it’s hidden away like this, and chained up . . . it has to be powerful.
Eric did not immediately grab it, though.
It’s a gamble. It could be martial instead of magically inclined. That would mean I have to learn how to fight with weapons, which I didn’t want to do.
But it is at the back of the library of The Paths, which according to Darius means it’s the most powerful Reaper Class that can possibly exist.
Fuck it. If I have to learn how to use a sword, axe, bow, whatever—I’ll do it.
Eric grabbed the Tome. His thumb pushed aside the chain, and he touched the cover itself. A black spark leapt from the cover to his finger, and he felt a soothing heat surge up his hand, down his chest, and permeate all along his body.
The Tome ignited with the same black flame; it was tinged white along the outside edges and contained some prismatic glow within the center. Eric watched it burn away entirely to ash that coated his palm. The chains burst into boiling-hot liquid metal before disappearing.
He collapsed to the ground and watched the world erupt in black fire. He gasped for air that didn’t come, felt his insides burning up, and had his mind threaten to white out from the pain. An all-encompassing agony that consumed all rational thought. It felt like he was dying, being burned alive on a pyre—something he had experienced once before. His mind struggled—it didn’t want to keep itself tethered through the misery.
Memories anchored him. All the people who would die if the world was destroyed. The friends he had made, the people he had rescued, and the allies he had kept alive throughout the years all flashed through his thoughts.
The famine in Trok that he’d helped to ameliorate. The war from beyond the ocean where he’d saved countless lives and helped keep the whole kingdom from falling into ruin. The Red Tide, a plague that killed thousands, which he’d been able to help quell.
All those experiences had hardened him. His resolve was unwavering, unflagging. It could not be burned away, even by this primal force of nature, this flame of creation, this force of destruction.
Through sheer force of will, he kept his mind from unraveling into chaos and madness.
Messages in white blurred against the black flames in his vision; he barely comprehended them in the moment, but they burned into his vision. The afterimages were clearly visible for a few moments, layering one atop another before fading.
[You have claimed a REDACTED.]
[Molding Blackflame to identity closest to user’s desired framework.]
[Selection Made: Blackflame Mage.]
[Explanation: A REDACTED. Once ignited, nothing can put it out save the user willing it to cease.]
[How to proceed in your path: You will progress by killing, burning, incinerating, and destroying. Blackflame annihilates, and thus you will grow from indulging in its wrathful whims.]
The flames in Eric’s vision receded, and a blink later he found himself lying on the floor of the Ley Line Loci chamber. The mana all around him seeped into his bones, his limbs, and his lungs felt heavy as he struggled to breathe. “Status,” he hoarsely whispered.
Before anything popped up, he heard booted feet behind him and pushed himself to his knees. The action elicited gasps from the guards approaching him. As the white text flickered into his vision, he looked back at them with a manic grin, half his vision filled with the white-on-black text of The Paths.
-----
Name: Eric Mercer
Classes: Blackflame Mage 1
Maximum Sigils: 5
Rotes: Blackflame Bolt, Ash Shroud
Equipped Skills: Backblast 1, Cinderburst 1, Blackflame Beam 1, Flashstep 1, Sootshroud 1
Traits: Fire Resistance 1, Blackflame Blaze 1, Vital Heat 1
Body Enhancements:
-----
Eric pushed himself the rest of the way up and looked out the observation window. Every face showed utter shock and disbelief—save for Seraphine, who had a broad grin across her visage.
Impression made, he thought. Good. Being conscious wasn’t expected, but hey, if it impresses, I’ll take it.
Eric staggered to the doors, trying to stay on his own two feet. Several steps in he faltered and slipped—one of the guards hooked him under the arm and helped him exit the airlocks.
The only reasonable explanation Eric could come up with was that The Paths didn’t need to reboot his consciousness with all the information on how it worked. He already knew everything about the basics, and it was only his body that would need to recover from the infusion of mana being bound to his body, forming his core and channels. His mind was crystal clear.
The heaviness in his lungs began to clear out as he breathed the clean, warm air of the tunnels. He could feel the vibrant energy of mana swirling through his body, rejuvenating him. The flow of the ambient power that surged through the world beneath his feet, across all Elyndor’s surface and throughout its atmosphere, invigorated his limbs. The pulsating heat rushed alongside his pulsing heart. It was refreshing and yet was juxtaposed with his gasping for oxygen as he coughed up the last little bits of manacules that clogged up his lungs like phlegm after a bad flu.
Seraphine met him outside the last set of airlock doors. “I . . .” She composed herself and smiled. “What is your Path?”
Eric held his left hand up in front of him, palm down. The small, black swirls of flame floated above the back of his hand. Ephemeral and only visible if someone was really paying attention. His Sigils. A far cry from the golden-and-white halo of his last life.
The symbol radiated a sense of malice and finality: the closing curtain call for any who was touched by the burning rage that it represented. A force of utter annihilation, barely bound within a state of energy. Pure, untainted, and primal.
It was the power to end a war before it could truly begin. He held the might to save a world.
The power to save his future.
“Blackflame Mage.”