Zoe stared the ceiling of her room. Dark wooden beams interlocked, holding back the dull gray stone. She liked to change her room every so often, switch between etchings and carved runes in wooden planks or carpeted plush hanging in clumps like vines reaching down.

  For now, she enjoyed seeing the stone that made up the walls of her home. It felt like a reminder of how her home came to be, in the first place. Each room carved out of the hill, piece by piece over a span of centuries.

  She looked over her stat sheet. It was overwhelming to see. Skill after skill, feat after feat. The sheer numbers it contained alone were incredible. Six million health, just over a billion mana with she couldn't even tell how much mana regeneration. The limiting factor seemed to be more the actual capacity she had than anything else.

  Skill levels reaching into the hundreds, some even approaching the thousand mark for her first mastery feats in the near future. The raw power on display in her stat sheet was outrageous. Beyond anything anybody could have even imagined when she first arrived in the world. Somehow, she'd amassed more power than she ever thought possible.

  A nation had been created, with her power at the forefront of it. Schools in her name taught lessons learned because of her. Calling herself historically significant would be an understatement. She was bordering on a facet of reality to many of the people living in Foizo. A myth, a legend, a magical force that defended them from the evils without. Not even human, or living anymore. Just an existence beyond anything they could fathom. A guardian angel, even oftentimes worshipped as a deity.

  There were people who viewed her as a literal goddess. Enough people that she'd even noticed classes offered to help her lean into that role. The system itself had recognized her. Even as much as she tried not to let it get to her head, it sometimes did anyway.

  And for that, she was almost thankful for the dragon. In an instant, it took her from feeling like an old immortal who couldn't be stopped, to a cowering young woman hanging from a tree begging a boar to leave her alone.

  A large part of that she realized, might have been her low physical stats. Her intelligence sat well over fifteen thousand and Wisdom at just over ten thousand. Neither had provided her with a feat after reaching ten thousand, though Zoe wasn't sure if that meant there would be no more feats or if they were more complicated.

  Maybe she needed each of her stats at over ten thousand before she got a new feat? Or maybe the next feat was at one hundred thousand, or a million? She wasn't sure.

  Whatever the case, her Endurance was still only just over six hundred in comparison. With Strength and Dexterity at thirteen hundred even still after so long. She'd felt fast enough, strong enough. The extra stats just weren't needed, more Intelligence would always result in stronger skills. Some more speed when she was already faster than anything that wasn't built specifically for speed? She just didn't see the point.

  But even though that was without question a part of why the dragon felt so fast, the bigger part was that it was just plain stronger than her. It had well over twice the number of levels to work with — or at least twice the potential, according to the system. Some of Eliza's more recent research showed that levels between species didn't always mean the same thing.

  Some species on other planets had far more levels, though each individual level was equally less impactful. The biggest culprit of that were the Anadari from Lorjuthalon. Friendly folk for the most part, though most lower level humans would die from the passive aura of poison that radiated from their amorphous jelly like bodies.

  It took quite a few years before Eliza was able to communicate with them, but when she did she'd found that the levels they said they had and the levels the system said they had were different. As were the levels they said that humans had. Even their youngest children, barely out of the egg sacs were well over level two hundred in their eyes and climbed rapidly, multiple levels every few hours.

  Their highest levels — which to Zoe appeared to be around three hundred, were called the Andoli. A concept which roughly translated to ten thousands, indicative of them having crossed the level ten thousand threshold.

  So maybe the dragon wasn't higher level than her. Maybe the system was just showing her that it was beyond her current potential, or however the system liked to measure things.

  The system was weird, Zoe found. And dangerous, she believed. It wasn't consistent, it didn't make sense. Even on the good days when things seemed to work, there were just strange oddities. Bits of mana that didn't seem to do anything when she'd cast a skill, changes in the feats and skills people were rewarded.

  Sometimes a feat would say it granted certain skills, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes a skill would mention capabilities it didn't even have. The issues weren't super common, and difficult to verify as so few people even bothered to record the messages the system gave them. The system was the system, and people trusted it.

  She turned her attention to her list of classes. They weren't ideal, she knew. Enchantrith was decent, for a dedicated enchanting class. But compared to something like Spacial Essence or Death's Master it just didn't match up very well.

  Arcane Watch was fine, with respectable multipliers but the passive effects just weren't all that impactful. Increased physical and magical power just wasn't as exciting as something like her Cosmic Vision or Aura of Seasons. Those let her do something different — something she couldn't replicate just by waiting around a few thousand years for more stats.

  Cosmic Explorer was in a very annoying spot. The class sucked. At the time, it was incredible. Powerful mobility, convenient skills. Amazing multipliers and stats with what had grown to become her most important class effect in Cosmic Vision.

  Yet over time, each piece of it had been replaced by something else that was better. Cosmic Leap was worthless when she had the much more powerful Teleport from Spacial Essence — which itself wasn't needed after she'd made a general skill of it. Storage was convenient, but she could get it as a general skill with little effort now if she wanted it.

  Cosmos Affinity was barely even useful to her, with her main abilities not even being Cosmos aligned anymore. The class just didn't make sense — but getting rid of it would be like getting rid of her eyes. The sphere of perception had become such a normal part of her life, for so long that losing it was unimaginable.

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  Spacial Essence provided Spacial Being which let her feel the space around her, but Cosmic Vision was so clear. She could see as though she were looking with her own eyes. She could hear as though she were standing in the room herself.

  Zoe sat up and pulled out a notebook to scribble down her thoughts.

  The bottom line, she decided, was that she needed to loop again. She'd gotten her seventh class, and it was an intoxicating power. But if she stuck where she was now, she would never begin to approach the power of dragons. She would stagnate. She needed to optimize her classes, make each one as powerful as they could be, no matter how long it would end up taking.

  There were a few things that had become second nature to her. Things that she needed for herself, no matter what her class selection ended up being. The most important was something to replace Cosmic Vision. She had tried many times to replicate the effect herself, but nothing she could manage even came close to the efficacy of the class effect.

  Maybe someday she would be willing to experiment on her soul, to see what the system actually did to her to make something like Cosmic Vision possible, but that day was not today. Nor any of the previous tens of thousands of days, and not likely to be any of the coming tens of thousands of days. It was painful enough when the system was doing it, let alone when she was making mistakes.

  The second was she needed an enchanting class. At the very least, she needed an Enchanted Mirror. Ideally, she would have Enchanted Mirrors but she could live with a single one if that's all she got. The mirror skills were in a similar position to her Cosmic Vision. The skill worked from within her soul, a modification to the very essence of her self. Replicating it sounded like a good way to kill herself.

  There was however a significant issue with that. And it was the Spacial Essence class. Without a doubt, it was the single strongest class she had access to if she was going to replace her third class. It gave her amazing bonuses, great stats, powerful skills and hit an affinity that she actually used.

  It made sense that Spacial Essence would be in her final build, her ultimate goal. Maybe at some point it would be replaced with some combination class if she could find another one to merge into her third class. But for right now, if she wanted to loop, Spacial Essence was the obvious choice for her.

  That would leave her without both of her top priorities until she could get to her fourth class at least. Fifth if she couldn't find some cosmic enchanter class to solve both problems with one class.

  Her pencil tapped on the paper, leaving small gray marks everywhere the tip touched.

  The best decision would be to find some combination class that she liked. There were a few she knew about — some from even early on in her journey, and others that had been discovered in her lifetime but all of them had problems.

  One that stood out was Transcendent. There were many classes that had the word in it and required the feat, but the one pure Transcendent class was claimed to be a combination class as she expected. It required having the Giant's Might, Expeditious, Unbroken, Unyielding, Archmage and Endless classes, allegedly.

  Zoe didn't know the person who obtained it personally, but a few hundred years back a book began to circulate around, written by somebody who said they'd achieved it. The logistics behind it were difficult to believe though, so Zoe wasn't sure the book was true. And nobody had stepped forward to verify the claims, either.

  In order to get the class, they would have had to either get their eighth class or have taken one of the transcendent class bases for their first class. Getting over one thousand in a stat without taking their first class was possible, in theory. But even Sally was nowhere near reaching that point yet, and Zoe doubted anybody who waited such a long time would squander it on something that only required a mere thousand in a stat.

  But it being a combination was her initial assumption when she got the feat regardless, so it did make sense. It was just a rather incredible claim, in her eyes.

  Her mind wandered as she scribbled on the page in front of her, thinking about all the classes she'd been offered. The classes she'd read about in books, heard about from friends or that were shared freely by those wishing to educate and inform.

  She brought up her class selection, browsing through the uncountable numbers of classes for a few hours, looking for anything that stood out. Keywords that might give her some kind of perception ability. Watchers, Viewers, Hunters, Cosmics. Patterns, connections between classes. Anything that the system might view as being related to each other while still providing some bonus to her perception.

  There were a few that seemed connected, though the requirements were far too weak for most of them. Apprentice classes with themed names — Apprentice of the Enchanted, Apprentice of the Sewn, and so on. Zoe assumed if she gathered enough of them she'd get some class that focused on learning, maybe some kind of Jack adjacent class.

  There were many that seemed like they might be part of a series, but she just didn't have the requirements to see more than one. Seasoned Frost would only show up in the winter, for instance. It made sense that many of the classes she was seeing were a small part of a greater whole she just couldn't see in the moment, but she brushed the thought aside.

  Two groups stood out to her more than the others, however. The Master series of classes — if they even were a series. Death's Master was one she already had, but Light's Master was also one offered to her now. There were many that used the master keyword, but those were the only two she could see that had that specific wording. Something's Master. Not Elemental Master, or Master of Frost. But Death's Master.

  Both of the classes comprised of opposing concepts, too. Death contained both life and death, while light seemed to require both light and darkness. If she could find some other opposing concepts to collect, she might find some kind of Contrarian class? She giggled to herself.

  The other group she found was much more promising, however. Four full classes, with a clear connection between them. None on their own powerful enough to compete, at least from their descriptions and requirements, but together could become something great if she were lucky. And worst case, she'd waste a few decades figuring it out.

  [Unseen Beholder] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for some beauty lies in the stillness of the shadows. Increased experience while in shadows. Increased visibility while in shadows.

  Requirements: Has successfully witnessed at least ten thousand private conversations while in darkness.

  [Blinding Beholder] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for some beauty lies in the blinding light cast by the stars. Increased experience while in starlight. Increased visibility in starlight.

  Requirements: Has successfully witnessed at least ten thousand private conversations while obscured by starlight.

  [Arcane Beholder] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for some beauty lies in the raw power of magic. Increased experience while using magic. Increased magical power.

  Requirements: Has successfully witnessed at least ten thousand private conversations through magical means.

  [Corporal Beholder] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for some beauty lies in the might of physical prowess. Increased experience while stressing your muscles. Greatly increased physical senses.

  Requirements: Has successfully witnessed at least ten thousand private conversations through corporal means.

  A mixture of light and dark, physical and magical. The combined class would be some kind of hybrid, Zoe assumed? Enhancements to her physical senses, some kind of bonus to let her see through magical means and vastly improved vision in every situation were the safe assumptions.

  There was just one glaring issue with looping at this point, and it made Zoe pale with anxiety. She had well over twenty thousand stat points invested by now, along with several class effects that changed how she perceived the world. Replacing her third class was going to be a terrible experience.

  She took a deep breath and whispered to herself. "Just rip the bandaid off. It'll be alright."

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Arcane Beholder class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

  We also get a little glimpse into the system's inner workings here. Just the tiniest of glimpses. A new planet that we may go to one day, I don't think so though. The Anadari are slimes. They communicate through their poison aura — it's less of a poison aura and more of like, hmmm. We see with our eyes, right? When we see a person, what we're seeing is the light bouncing off of them. Whatever light wasn't absorbed by their skin and clothes and hair.

  quite some time to manage to translate, and the words that are used to represent their concepts aren't really accurate. The Anadari don't call themselves Anadari, they instead have a concept for themselves expressed through their gaseous exhausts. But since Eliza needed some way to refer to them to other people who can't understand their system of communication, the Anadari chose a name to represent themselves.

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