Jace read them the way Elara read rune-structures - slowly, thoroughly, feeling the shape of each option with an attention that bordered on reverence.

  [Pathwalker] was safe. Useful. A class that any party would welcome - navigation, exploration, dungeon-sensing, a teleportation mark. It would make him valuable in the way a good tool was valuable: reliable, specific, appreciated. It would also strip away everything he'd built. No more cross-class skills. No more borrowed techniques. No more fighting like five different people badly. He'd be one thing, done well, and the door he'd forced open would close behind him.

  [Drifter] was tempting. It acknowledged what he'd been doing - fighting, adapting, wielding whatever was at hand - and it gave him a framework to do it better. Normalized DPS costs. Reduced penalties. A combat-focused path that would let him keep his edge without bleeding for it quite so badly. But it locked him into DPS. One role. The same constraint that defined every other student at Ironhold, just wearing a different uniform.

  [Vagabond].

  The cost reduction was modest - +150% instead of +200%. Still painful. Still more expensive than any specialist. The proficiency penalty went from crippling to merely severe. Nothing about [Vagabond] suggested power. Nothing about it suggested efficiency. It was, by every measurable metric, the worst evolution on the list.

  Except for [Skill Mimicry].

  Temporarily replicate a witnessed skill. Duration based on Mystical attribute. Cooldown of five minutes. Forty percent proficiency.

  Forty percent of someone else's mastered skill, available on demand, from any class, any role, any discipline.

  It was everything he'd been doing - the watching, the absorbing, the desperate improvisation - crystallized into a System-recognized ability. It validated nothing. It promised nothing. The duration would be terrible with his MYS of ten - twenty seconds. Twenty seconds of borrowed power, then five minutes of nothing.

  But twenty seconds was close to how long it had taken to dismantle Team Valdris. Twenty seconds was a fight. Twenty seconds was the difference between dying and not dying, between winning and losing, between the person the System said he was and the person he was becoming.

  *Identity is not assigned. It is built.*

  Jace chose [Vagabond].

  The evolution hit like a wave breaking against a seawall. His mana channels didn't just widen - they *restructured*, the rigid pathways of [Nomad] cracking and reforming into something more fluid, more adaptable, a network of channels that could carry different types of energy without the friction that had been burning him alive for months. He gasped. His hands clenched on the bunk frame. His vision whited out for a span of time he couldn't measure - seconds, maybe, or an eternity compressed into a heartbeat.

  When it cleared, he felt different. Not stronger, exactly. Not faster. But *looser*. The constant grinding weight of [Wayfaring] had eased - not gone, never gone, but reduced from a crushing burden to a heavy load. He could breathe. He could *move* inside his own class architecture without scraping against its walls.

  And beneath it all, humming like a new string on a familiar instrument, [Skill Mimicry] waited. Ready. Hungry. A mirror that fought back.

  The character assessment settled into his awareness - the full accounting of what he was now, laid out with the System's clinical precision:

  ―――――――――――――――――――

  [SYSTEM - CHARACTER SHEET]

  **Name:** Jace "Jinx" Miller

  **Class:** Vagabond *(evolved from Nomad)*

  **Tier:** Normal

  **Role:** Unassigned (Multi-Role Capable)

  **Level:** 5

  Strength: 9

  Agility: 13 ↑

  Vitality: 12 ↑

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  Intelligence: 14 ↑

  Mystical: 10 ↑

  Presence: 11 ↑

  Hit Points: 22

  Stamina: 23

  Mana: 24

  **Class Trait:**

  [Wayfaring II] - Cross-class skill acquisition enabled.

  Resource cost: +150% *(reduced from +200%)*

  Proficiency penalty: -35% until mastered *(reduced from -50%)*

  **Class Feature:**

  [Skill Mimicry] - Active *(new)*

  Temporarily replicate a witnessed skill.

  Duration: MYS × 2 seconds (20 sec)

  Cooldown: 5 minutes

  Proficiency: 40% of source user's execution

  **Skills:**

  Athletics - Novice

  [Footwork: Evasion] - Apprentice

  Improvised Combat - Apprentice

  Initiative - Apprentice

  Dodging - Apprentice ↑

  Ranged Weapons: Throwing - Novice

  Finesse Weapons: Dagger - Novice *(new)*

  Endurance - Apprentice

  Pain Tolerance - Apprentice ↑

  Analysis - Journeyman

  Academics - Novice

  Basic Mana Theory - Apprentice

  Basic Rune Identification - Novice

  Basic Anatomy - Apprentice

  First Aid - Novice

  [Mana Sense] - Apprentice

  Streetwise - Journeyman

  Intimidation: Social - Novice

  Taunt (Observed/Mimicked) - Novice *(new)*

  **Powers:**

  [Mana Sense] - Active - MP drain (~5/sec) ↑

  Perceive ambient mana flows, creature signatures,

  and magical structures within range.

  [Skill Mimicry] - Active *(new)*

  Temporarily replicate a witnessed skill.

  Duration: 20 sec | Cooldown: 5 min | Prof: 40%

  **Equipment of Note:**

  Subway Fang - Common - Finesse weapon, AGI-aligned.

  *Vermin Bane* passive vs. dungeon fauna.

  Dungeon Rat-Hide Bracers - Common - Minor AGI bonus, improved grip.

  Hybrid Leather Jerkin w/ Chitin Plate - Common - Light torso protection.

  **Milestone:** [Vagabond] Rare-Tier Evolution - Conditions Unknown.

  ―――――――――――――――――――

  The numbers were still bad. He could see it - feel it - the way a musician could hear a chord that was technically correct but lacked richness. STR 9 in a world where Normal-tier melee fighters started at 12-15. MYS 10 where even a mediocre caster sat at 14. HP and SP pools that a single strong hit could halve. Equipment slots mostly empty, the ones that weren't filled with Common-tier gear that any serious adventurer would discard as vendor trash.

  By the numbers, he was still behind. Still the weakest combat-capable student at Ironhold. Still the [Nomad] - [Vagabond] now, but the tier hadn't changed, and Normal was Normal was Normal.

  But the skill list was twelve entries long and growing. The class feature was something no one at the academy had seen before. And the trait that had been killing him - slowly, relentlessly, taxing him for every borrowed breath of power - had just become less lethal by a margin that meant the difference between drowning and treading water.

  Jace opened his eyes. The dormitory room was dark. The mana-conduit pulsed overhead - blue light, blue dark, blue light. Through the wall, he could hear the muffled sounds of the dormitory at night: conversation, footsteps, the distant thrum of the Proving Grounds' generators winding down after the tournament's first round.

  He looked at his hands. They'd stopped shaking. The tingling had faded, replaced by a warmth that started in his core and radiated outward through channels that felt new and old at the same time - familiar architecture, unfamiliar capacity.

  Twenty seconds. That was what [Skill Mimicry] gave him with a MYS of ten. Twenty seconds of someone else's mastered technique, executed at forty percent proficiency, once every five minutes.

  It wasn't much.

  It was everything.

  Tomorrow was the second round. He'd walk into the arena as a [Vagabond] - a class that didn't exist in any textbook, that no instructor had trained for, that no party-composition guide had a slot for. He'd walk in with twenty seconds of stolen power and a body that still couldn't take a clean hit from a Rare-tier without breaking.

  He smiled. It was the same smile he'd worn in the Library of Dust, holding a dead explorer's journal and a plan that was barely distinguishable from insanity.

  *Let's see what twenty seconds can do.*