Not the sharp, screaming kind from the Trial, but a deep, bone-heavy ache that made every breath feel like he’d spent the night wrestling a truck. His ribs throbbed. His shoulder felt like it had been used as target practice. Even his fingers protested when he tried to curl them.
He stared at the rock ceiling above him, disoriented for half a heartbeat.
No white chamber.
No storm.
No mirror self.
Just the damp smell of moss and earth. The soft trickle of the stream. A faint crackle from the remnants of last night’s fire.
And a fox face hovering three centimeters from his own.
Lumi blinked, nose almost touching his. Her whiskers twitched. Then she headbutted his forehead lightly, as if to say finally.
“Morning,” Mike croaked.
His voice sounded rough. His chest didn’t like the effort. He gritted his teeth and rolled onto one side, biting down on a hiss as his ribs flared.
“Don’t,” Marina’s voice snapped.
She was at his side in seconds, staff set aside, her usual mild softness sharpened by worry. “Lie back.”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
She glared. “You look like you lost a fight with a building.”
“He won,” Vex’s voice floated over from somewhere near the overhang entrance. “The building is in the shop.”
Arin added, calm and matter-of-fact, “You’re not fine, Mike. Breathe wrong and you sound like broken glass.”
He probably did. His lungs felt tight, every expansion scraping along bruised tissue.
He lowered himself back against the bed of moss and bundled cloth they’d improvised. Lumi settled on his chest with a disapproving chirp.
Marina exhaled slowly, as if trying to will herself into something calmer.
“Hold still,” she murmured.
She placed her left hand over his sternum, fingers splayed. With her right, she grasped the haft of her staff, drawing in a breath that was a little too steady to be entirely natural.
Soft green light began to glow beneath her palm.
It wasn’t a clean beam like in games or movies. The light came in threads, seeping through her hand into him, then flowing back out and pooling beside them on the ground.
The soil shivered.
A small bud pushed up between stones, then another. Within seconds, a plant was growing—a slender stalk with translucent leaves that pulsed faintly with that same green light. Tiny roots spread through the ground like veins.
The bud blossomed into a flower. Not pretty. Functional. Its petals opened and closed with a slow rhythm, each pulse sending a new wave of warmth through Mike’s chest.
He felt it—like a second heartbeat, external but synced to his own.
“What is that?” he managed.
Marina’s forehead shone with sweat. “New skill. Don’t move. It’s anchored.”
[Skill: Verdant Conduit (Rank F, Rare) — Active]
The System text flickered briefly in his peripheral vision.
He didn’t need to read it to understand the effect.
The pain didn’t vanish, but it changed. It softened. Numbness spread in careful lines, not wiping sensation, but muting the worst of it. Underneath, something else worked—not instant mending, but steady reinforcement, like invisible fingers knitting torn muscle and bruised tissues together one tiny strand at a time.
“It’ll take… a while,” Marina said quietly. “An hour, maybe more. You can move carefully, but don’t sprint or fight unless you have to. If the plant gets disrupted, it stops.”
“And you?” he asked.
She hesitated. “It drains mana over time. Not much. I can still walk. Just… no marathon spellcasting today.”
Arin crouched nearby, studying the flower with cautious respect. “That’s stronger than what you were doing before.”
Marina’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, well. Watching people almost die is good motivation to improve.”
Vex leaned against the rock wall, arms folded. “Note to self: do not die near Marina. She’ll invent something worse.”
She flicked a piece of dried leaf at him. It missed by a wide margin.
“Shut up, Vex.”
Despite everything, Mike felt a smile tug at his mouth.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the warmth from the plant soak into him, feeling strength claw its way back up from wherever it had fallen.
A familiar notification still blinked at the edge of his vision, patient and quiet.
[Guidance: Choose an Initial Focus]
? Survival & Gathering
? Crafting & Building
? Alchemy & Healing
? Magic & Enchanting
? Leadership & Organization
The System had announced the end of the first 72 hours last night, thrown numbers at them, then calmly told them Phase Two was unlocking. The Establishment Cycle. Bases. Professions. Identity.
He stared at the list.
The System didn’t explain what each line actually meant. It just asked, silently:
What kind of work do you want to lean into?
“Got your focus prompt too?” Arin asked.
She’d finished checking the ravine’s entrance for tracks and now stood, arms crossed, gaze flicking between them.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “It wants us to pick a lane.”
“Mine has the same list,” Vex said from his spot. “I’m torn between ‘run around in the woods’ and ‘accidentally drop rocks on my friends’.”
“Survival & Gathering,” Arin said. “Fits you. You’re already scouting ahead half the time.”
“I thought I was hiding in bushes half the time,” Vex countered.
“That’s called scouting,” Arin said.
Marina, still maintaining contact with the staff but letting her hand hover now instead of pressing firmly, sighed. “Mine has Alchemy & Healing. Of course.”
Mike frowned slightly. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “I just don’t need help being ‘the healer’. That’s already my class. But if this path makes it easier to brew potions, antidotes, that sort of thing… I’ll take it for the alchemy side.”
“Just don’t start putting toxins in our food,” Vex muttered.
“No promises,” she said.
Arin tilted her head. “What about you, Mike?”
The answer was simple enough.
“Magic & Enchanting,” he said.
It wasn’t just because of lightning. It was the structure of it. Patterns. Imprints. The idea of taking raw mana and pinning it down into something reusable, reliable. Less explosive storm, more circuitry.
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And somewhere deep inside, something else tugged toward it.
He confirmed the choice.
[Initial Focus Registered: Magic & Enchanting]
[You will receive guidance quests related to this focus.]
Arin tapped the air as well. “Survival & Gathering.”
Vex grimaced and accepted the same. “Fine. I’ll be the guy that brings you nerds ingredients.”
Marina rolled her eyes and confirmed Alchemy & Healing.
The world didn’t shift dramatically. No trumpets. No beams from the sky. Just a subtle feeling of… being sorted. Like invisible lines had drawn themselves out from each of them, direction markers for the System to follow.
A new prompt appeared in front of Mike.
[Guidance Quest Available:]
Beginner’s Touch — Magic & Enchanting
? Infuse mana into a simple object (0/1)
? Maintain the imprint for at least 10 seconds (0/1)
Reward: Minor enchanting insight. Small progress toward a related profession.
“That seems harmless,” Vex said, after Mike read it aloud.
“You say that now,” Arin replied.
“Any of you get quests too?” Mike asked.
Marina nodded. “Gather a set of specific herbs and prepare a basic infusion. It doesn’t say ‘potion’ yet, but it feels like that’s where it’s going.”
“Mine wants me to track and mark three different kinds of beast trails without getting eaten,” Vex said. “So that’s encouraging.”
Arin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Mine says to reinforce a campsite. ‘Identify vulnerabilities, gather materials, improve structural defenses.’ That tracks.”
“All basic stuff,” Mike said. “The System is just trying to see if we’ll actually do what we said we’d focus on.”
How exactly it evaluated their choices, none of them knew. They were guessing, stitching together patterns from scraps of behavior and notifications. The only thing they could be sure of was that the System was watching everything.
Mike’s ribs hurt less.
Marina eased her hand back another inch. The plant by his side was taller now, its petals unfolding fully, light pulsing more slowly.
“Don’t push it,” she warned. “You’re still knitting.”
He nodded and made a point of standing slowly when he did rise, testing his balance and breathing. The pain was still there, but it had backed off from “screaming” to “annoyed mumbling.”
“Let’s get some of these quests started,” Arin said. “We don’t have to rush, but the sooner we understand how this phase works, the better.”
“We’re not splitting,” Mike said automatically.
“No,” Arin agreed. “Scouting distances only. No solo heroics.”
Vex held up both hands. “I protest this blatant attack on my life choices.”
They moved out again, careful and quiet. Marina’s plant had sunk most of its roots into the ground, but a thin, almost invisible tendril remained connected to Mike’s ankle, trailing along like a living thread as they walked. Every so often he felt a gentle pulse through it, another wave of warmth flowing up.
They followed the same path as yesterday toward the ridge, but stopped earlier this time. No need to peek at everything again—just to confirm that the world was still doing what it had looked like it was starting to do.
The clusters of survivors were a little bigger. Fires more organized. A few crude shelters had been half-built over the night. Movement was less chaotic: people delivering things, others standing guard. Early shapes of hierarchy forming out of fear and necessity.
Mike watched for a minute, then pulled back.
No one had time for them. They didn’t have time for anyone else either.
The rest of the day, they worked.
Arin walked the perimeter of their ravine, marking lines of sight and gathering rocks to stack into a low barrier at the most vulnerable approach. She tied strips of cloth on branches at heights that would give away tall approaching figures, then showed Vex where to hang makeshift noise traps from bits of metal.
Marina guided Vex through identifying three different plants the System had highlighted—for her infusion quest and his gathering goal—correcting him when he reached for something that would have numbed his tongue or stopped his heart.
“This one has fine hairs?” she said. “Bad. That one has a clean edge and a slight shine? Good.”
“You’re making this up,” Vex complained.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely could be.”
“I am insulted,” she said.
He still only picked the ones she personally double-checked.
Mike sat by the stream for a while, metal scrap in hand, watching the small, muted reflection of the sky in the water. Lumi paced up and down the bank, sometimes hopping to catch imaginary fish, sometimes staring off at nothing in particular.
The Guidance quest prompt floated at the edge of his awareness.
Infuse mana into a simple object. Maintain it.
He’d been channeling lightning into enemies since the first hours of the Tutorial. This was… the opposite. Not discharge. Imprint.
He took the scrap of metal and placed it flat in his palm.
“Alright,” he whispered. “Let’s see if we can behave for once.”
He closed his fingers around it and reached inward.
Mana answered more smoothly now than at the very beginning. The Trial, the Titles, the level-ups—they’d all carved pathways inside him. It still crackled with wild potential, lightning eager to jump, but he held it back, shaped it.
Not a bolt.
Not a weapon.
Just energy, guided.
He imagined threads instead of strikes—lines tracing along the inside of the metal, anchoring in simple patterns. No complex runework; he didn’t know any. Just intent: Hold this. Stay. Don’t explode.
The scrap warmed.
A faint, pale glow seeped through his fingers.
He focused on breathing. In. Out. Counting seconds in his head.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Sweat pricked his forehead. The mana wanted to surge, to jump, to leap free. He forced it to remain.
Seven.
Six.
Five.
He felt something give, not in him but in the metal, like the surface of it softened for a moment and accepted the imprint.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
He opened his hand.
The metal fragment held a tiny spark at its center. Barely visible, but there. Stable. When he tapped it lightly, the spark jumped up and tingled his fingertip before settling again.
The System chimed.
[Quest Complete: Beginner’s Touch — Magic & Enchanting]
[You have successfully imprinted mana into an object.]
[Basic insight gained.]
A faint rush of understanding washed through him—like a tutorial overlay showing the difference between “dump mana” and “shape mana.” The next attempt would be easier.
Another prompt followed immediately.
[You have begun structured mana imprinting.]
[Profession Suggestion: Apprentice Enchanter. Establish?]
His lips curled into a small, genuine smile.
That did feel right. Out of everything, “Enchanter” was the label that fit the mental itch he’d had since the first time he looked at System prompts. It matched the way he wanted to approach the world: not just hitting things harder, but rewriting the rules of how they worked.
He accepted.
[Establishing Profession: Enchanter…]
The prompt hung there a fraction longer than it should have.
Mike frowned.
The glow in the metal flickered.
A new line appeared.
[Warning: Soul Classification — Transcendent.]
He’d seen that word before, on his Title list. He still didn’t know what it really meant beyond “rare and strange” and “the demon in the white room lost his mind over it.”
The System continued, calm and unhurried.
[Standard Profession Framework: Incompatible.]
[Candidate Soul rejects alignment with “Enchanter”.]
[Result: Profession not established.]
The faint spark in the metal fragment went out.
For a second, it felt like someone had pulled the floor out from under his ribs.
Another line slid into view.
[Note: Candidate’s soul is reserving its first profession slot for an alternate path.]
[Recommendation: Progress Class and Identity further.]
[Optional Objective: Solidify Identity — Priority increased.]
The windows vanished as if they’d never been there.
Mike stared at the lifeless scrap in his hand.
“Oh,” he said.
Lumi hopped closer, sniffed the metal, and sneezed once.
Arin’s voice came from behind him. “That sounded like an ‘oh something broke,’ not an ‘oh success.’”
He hadn’t heard her approach. He turned slightly, careful not to yank the healing tether still connecting him faintly to Marina’s plant, which had shifted to growing along the ravine wall now, still pulsing quietly.
“It… didn’t work,” he said.
Marina and Vex joined them, Marina wiping dirt from her hands, Vex chewing on a stalk of something that probably wasn’t poisonous.
“The object exploded?” Vex asked hopefully.
“No,” Mike said. He held up the fragment. “It was imprinted. The System acknowledged it. Then it suggested Enchanter as a profession. Then…”
He hesitated.
Arin folded her arms. “Then?”
“Then it told me my soul rejected it,” he said.
The words sounded stupid out loud. Like he was blaming a body part for a system prompt.
Marina’s brows shot up. “Rejected? As in… you can’t be an Enchanter?”
“As in I accepted,” Mike said slowly, “and the System said, ‘No, actually, your soul doesn’t agree, we’re not doing that.’”
Vex stared. “Your soul… vetoed a menu option.”
“That’s what it said,” Mike replied. “And that it’s… reserving the first profession slot for something else.”
Marina bit her lip. “Is that because of your… Transcendent thing?”
He looked away.
“Maybe.”
They’d seen the Title name when he’d shown them his sheet once. They knew it existed. They didn’t know what it meant any more than he did.
Arin watched him carefully. “Does it hurt? Any backlash?”
He took stock. Physically, he felt the same. The healing from the plant was still flowing, his ribs loosening a bit more with each breath. No sudden spike of agony. No weird empty feeling.
“Just… irritated,” he said honestly.
Vex blew out a breath. “Man. Everyone else gets, ‘Congratulations, here’s your nice clear path.’ You get, ‘No, you’re too weird for this, come back later.’”
“Something like that,” Mike said.
His Transcendent Soul had other plans. Plans he didn’t know yet—only that, somewhere deep inside, a part of him refused to be boxed into “Apprentice Enchanter” like a checkbox item.
Annoying? Absolutely.
But under the frustration, a small, reluctant spark of curiosity kindled.
What exactly was his soul waiting for?
Marina’s plant gave one last strong pulse of light and then dimmed, its petals closing. The tether at his ankle faded. He took a careful breath and was surprised at how little it hurt now.
Marina sagged a little in relief. “There. Internal damage is… mostly cleaned up. Don’t get impaled again today.”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” he said.
Arin sheathed her sword and sat nearby. “Profession or not, we still need you throwing lightning when things try to eat us.”
Vex nudged his arm. “And if your soul insists on being picky, at least make it something cool later. Like ‘World-Breaking Architect’ or ‘Guy Who Makes Free Food.’”
“I’ll put in a request,” Mike said dryly.
Lumi crawled into his lap and curled up, her tail resting against his wrist. A faint static crackled between them—soft, warm. Her own new power still small, but growing.
He looked at his friends. At their chosen focuses, their quests, their quietly growing roles.
Arin reinforcing defenses and pathing threats.
Marina brewing and mending.
Vex tracking, foraging, somehow not dying.
He’d wanted “Enchanter” because it made sense. Because it was clean and understandable.
The System—and his soul—had told him no.
Fine.
He’d work with that.
They had more urgent problems anyway: staying alive, getting stronger, not getting crushed between monsters and whatever human politics were fermenting beyond the trees.
The label could wait.
The storm inside him couldn’t.
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