"ZOE!" The voice repeated, the sound burning into Zoe's already growing headache like throwing burning oil on a blazing field.
Zoe reached out, flailing her arms around. Something fell to the wooden floor with a dull thud.
"ZOE!" The voice called out again, a repetitive hammering on her sanity.
The system's magic was quick efficient, but at the same time it was cold and calculating. Zoe's sanity didn't matter, her emotions and her feelings were irrelevant. All the system cared about as it's foreign mana flew through her body and soul was rebuilding her in the image she'd asked of it.
Her flailing arms felt like wet noodles, limp and frail. Each breath was gasping, fighting back against the immense weight of an ocean pressing down on her. Every sound that burned in her ears felt muffled and aggravating.
And there was something else. Some other, foreign, feeling that she couldn't understand. Sounds, smells, lights and colours that jumbled together in a mélange of sensations she'd never felt before.
"ZOE!" The voice shouted again.
Something gripped Zoe's shoulder, five painful touches as it wrapped around and shook her torso.
Zoe screamed — continued to scream, she realized. How long had she been flailing? How long had she been crying out in pain?
The existential pain continued with Zoe's consciousness drifting in and out for several more hours after she'd first heard the voice.
"ZOE!" The voice called out again.
Sally, Zoe realized. She'd been watching the cats. Zoe tried to look through her Cosmic Vision to see them and felt a sense of dread rise up as nothing came back. No sight, no sounds. Nothing.
She replaced her class, she remembered. She felt blind. Deaf. Despite the abhorrent, overwhelming sensations that rammed through her brain. Colours and smells that she had no means of parsing. The raw sensations given, but lacking the clarity she'd grown used to. The familiarity she'd known.
"ZOE!" Sally shook Zoe's shoulders.
"I'm..." Zoe stammered out, the word feeling like thick slime as she spoke. Every movement was as though she had to drag thousands of pounds along with it. She licked her cracked lips and swallowed.
"ARE YOU OKAY!?" Sally cried out.
Zoe struggled out a nod, forcing her sore, weakened neck to move as it screamed out in pain.
Sally let out a sigh. Zoe heard a dull thump in the wood next to her head as the tight grip Sally held let up.
"I thought you were going on a trip, dammit." Sally muttered out. "Then you show up here again without warning. Naked and screaming like you were dying. You scared the hell out of me."
"How..." Zoe struggled to form the words against the weight of her jaw. "Long?"
"A day? I think. About a day. The cats are fine, by the way. Your room..." Sally hesitated for a moment. "Isn't."
Zoe cursed to herself in her mind. A day wasn't that bad, she'd had worse even. But Tom and Jeff would not be happy with her. Abandoning them, shoving them from their goals without a warning just to show up not only late but significantly diminished in power?
She brought up the messages the system had given her. One of the few things she could do while she waited for her body to accept itself.
*Ding* You have unlocked the Arcane Beholder class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.
Effects:
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Arcane Beholder: Gain twenty-four stat points for each level in this class.
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Arcane Beholding: See the world around you through ambient mana.
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Arcane Source: Maximum Mana and Manage Regeneration increased by 150%.
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Arcane Form: Maximum Stamina increased by 150%.
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Arcane Might: Mana aligned effects are boosted by 220%.
Available Skills:
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Mana Affinity: Increased Mana affinity.
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Mana Manipulation: Manipulate the fabric of space with your will.
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Mana Cloak: Shield yourself in obscuring mana.
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Scrying: Witness a distant, familiar view.
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Obnubilate: Form a small area that is clouded to magical perception.
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Arcane Shielding: Shield yourself in a dense layer of mana.
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Arcane Barrage: Blast outwardly with forceful mana.
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Assault of the Beholder: Rend apart that which you see.
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Mark of the Beholder: Imbue your allies' eyes with mana.
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A Nice View: Remove dirt and grime from objects.
Zoe would have looked disappointed at the class if it weren't too painful to shift the muscles. The multipliers just seemed so weak. Though it had been a very very long time since she'd replaced her third class. Since she'd replaced any class, for that matter but especially one so early.
Not even a tripling of her mana? A stamina boost she'd never care for? In a magic aligned class? It just seemed wasteful. Zoe sighed, and regretted her decision immediately as her lips burned from the air scraping past them.
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"Zoe?" Sally's voice squeaked out. "Everything okay?"
Part of the overwhelming sensation was Sally's concern. The fear she felt was palpable, soaking into the room like an overflowing river next to a crater of dried brul. The fear was draining as Zoe calmed down, but every movement Zoe made came with an accompanying surge of anxiety from the woman next to her.
"Fine," Zoe croaked out. "Dragon... Looped."
There was a slight pause before the sounds of shuffling fabric against the wooden floor rattled Zoe's brain. "You're only level TWENTY TWO?"
Zoe flinched at the sudden shout.
"Sorry." Sally said. "So you're okay, though? You're just dealing with system shock?"
Zoe gave the slightest nod.
Sally let out a sigh, a wave of relief crashing through the room and shoving away the fears. She clapped her hands together gently then stood up.
"Well," Sally said. "System shock sucks. I've heard. But you're a goddamned idiot for doing that. Good luck."
The door slammed behind Sally, rattling Zoe's frail body again.
She was right, Zoe knew. She thought it would be fine. Like ripping off a bandage. One quick rip and it would all be over. Most of her stats were from her seventh class anyway so she figured it would suck no matter what she did. May as well only have it suck once.
Naive.
It had been too long since she'd looped. The pain and misery of having the stats ripped out was a distant memory. She thought herself better. Her ego had gotten to her, and now she suffered for it.
In the centuries of time the people had to experiment, something of a solution had been discovered for system shock. It wasn't flawless — which was why Zoe didn't bother, but it was much less strenuous than what Zoe had done.
Instead of resetting all the way down in one drastic move, people began to step down class by class. By replacing each class with itself, the stats were removed while the bonuses weren't. They could take a few minutes to let the system work its magic, and then step down to the next class. Over and over, piece by piece.
If somebody had a powerful class with many stats and bonuses, it would still suck. But Zoe had several powerful classes, each with powerful stats and bonuses. Resetting every single one of them, all at the same time had been an unbelievably stupid idea.
The hours passed as Zoe took painful breath after painful breath. She browsed through her stat sheet to pass the time. It was longer than she ever thought possible when she first arrived in the world. Hundreds of different skills she'd picked up for fun, most of which left well under level twenty. Sewing, Knitting, Painting, Fingerpainting, Sculpting, Weaving. Dozens of feats. Just reading through her stat sheet and really understanding what she had available helped her pass well over an hour on its own.
Looking at her vitals passed another hour. Staring at the number that declared her so frail, so weak. Just over fifteen thousand health. Just a day or two earlier, she'd been sitting at over six million health.
Now she was less than a rounding error. It was enough, she knew. For most cases. She had magic to defend herself with, she had healing to deal with anything that wasn't overwhelming, instant damage.
But it felt so frail. Even at such a low level, she had 764 vitality. Points spent from her various feats that provided her stat points. She'd thought them enough.
They weren't.
Fifty thousand mana. Zoe pushed some mana through her Mana Manipulation skill, shoving some of the colourful wisps... she paused as she realized what she was seeing.
She didn't have her Enchantrith class anymore. Her Mana Sight was gone, and Arcane Beholder didn't have a Mana Sight effect. But still, even with her eyes shut as she lay on the cold wooden floor, the colourful wisps drifted through her room.
Arcane Beholding, Zoe wondered?
She focused on the wisps of mana she could see, following an intuitive pull as she reached out with her own mana. The world screamed to life. The sounds of her breathing, of the cats scratching against the carpet in some distant room. The smell of burnt, sappy wood.
Zoe grimaced as the mana showed her the room around her. Deep grooves carved into the wooden floors, the colourful rug she'd made ripped to shreds. What bits hadn't been turned to ash were strewn about, along with the remnants of her torched wooden bed.
She felt a sense of shame rising in her. How could she have lost control like that? Lashed out in such a disgusting way? What if Sally hadn't been around to keep the cats away? What if Sally had been around, but wasn't able to protect herself from whatever Zoe had done?
It worked out this time. Somewhat. Her mana settled on the remains of the rug. It was the first rug she'd made. Over a thousand years old, now.
She inched her way over towards the largest piece of it that she could see and flashed Restoration through it. Nothing happened.
The system shock was one thing, but somehow the dread she felt in that moment was far worse. Seeing what she was capable of disgusted her. She was better. She could be better. She needed to be better.
Zoe pressed a bloodied hand into the splintered wood and sat herself up, leaning against the one surviving wooden post that remained of her bed.
She'd been overwhelmed. Responsibilities that kept building up. More city work to do, more expansions to build. More gates to make. Year after year after year, it never seemed to end. The time had come to take a break.
And then instead of the relaxing journey with touches of excitement she wanted, she almost threw her new friends onto death's doorstep — and walked right up with them afterwards.
How long had it been since she'd made such a stupid, impulsive decision? Since she'd let her emotions get the better of her? It almost seemed like an excuse, looking back on it now. Like the dragon finally gave her some flimsy justification to leave it all behind and she jumped at it.
There was so much more she could have done. She could have tried to feed the dragon, maybe it would have responded to food and become a friend. Maybe she could have built an enchantment to resist the intense heat. Could have levelled some time enhancements to catch up to the dragon's speed.
Instead she threw it all away without a second thought. Desperately clinging to the first chance she saw to loop. It would be centuries before she got back to where she was, before she could even think about approaching a dragon again. She sighed to herself.
Her mana reached into her bracelet to pull out something to cover herself up with, but found nothing. She looked down at her wrist and saw a pile of melted metal clinging to her wrist.
Zoe clicked her tongue. It wasn't the only vampiric bracelet that she had — almost all of her bracelets had several identical duplicates made just in case she lost them. Or at least as close as she could get to duplicates. Sometimes she found clothes she liked that weren't custom made, and she didn't often bother getting copies of them made.
The issue was that it wasn't just her clothes bracelet she'd lost. Both of the general equipment rings had been lost, her food was gone. She had a great deal of wealth, but it wasn't as though she could go around throwing entire gear sets out for fun. It still stung. Plus, that particular vampiric bracelet had quite a few outfits she didn't have duplicates of.
She got up and scraped off the burnt bits of metal and tar that still clung to her then turned her attention to the ruined room. Bits of burnt wood and shattered stones were stored away in her Storage skill, and more mana rushed out of her to form new floors and walls. It wasn't perfect, but it would work until she got back.
At first, she tried to push more mana than she had. Having such a tiny amount of mana felt unreal, after so long. And the regeneration was hardly of note. Just under ten seconds to restore her fifty five thousand mana from empty without Meditation.
The worst part though, to Zoe's surprise, were her physical stats. Her mana was pathetic compared to what she was used to but fifty thousand was still sizeable. More than anybody else at her level would have to wield — and competitive with people far above her level. Not to mention her Meditation at 932 providing her with a larger multiplier than most people got from their classes.
On the other hand though, she hadn't invested a single of her permanent points into her physical stats. A few points into Endurance, a lot into Vitality. But Strength and Dexterity? Both still sat at twenty. A fraction of what she was used to and less than even some children that ran around Foizo without their first classes. Not many — most listened to their parents and put their points in Vitality, but some.
Her mana reached out through Protector of Foizo as she searched for Tom and Jeff. She found them sitting at the crispy skin and cringed at the thought of travelling back to the valleys. With three people and a mana regeneration of about sixty thousand, she wasn't sure she could do much more than maybe four hundred kilometers an hour. Five if she was lucky.
She laughed to herself at the idea of five hundred kilometers every single hour somehow being a snail's pace. But she'd become used to travelling thousands of kilometers in an instant, whipping around between planets like she was visiting a neighbour to ask for some sugar. A few hundred kilometers in comparison felt like she was almost standing still.
All she hoped was that Tom and Jeff were a little more grounded than her, and wouldn't mind a bit of travel time on their way back to the valleys.
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