Blood surged up and down the tower in a violent manner. This gory scene eventually vanished without a trace, revealing smooth metal walls with glowing blue veins. Coils of energy flowed through those veins from below, gaining more and more momentum until they rocketed out of the tower’s open ceiling. A minute later, the walls began to melt. At the bottom of the tower was a blazing furnace that devoured and purified any metal that fell into it.

None of this affected Jayce. The bloody rapids couldn’t drag him away and the furnace couldn’t make him sweat. He stood in a wary stance while he waited for a message from the system, but none came. Several minutes passed and the tower continued to cycle through its three forms without any changes.

“What is this place?” Jayce asked aloud. He wasn’t expecting much, as the system had ignored his questions during the first gate’s test.

This time was different.

The world around him collapsed and he fell into a dream. In this dream, Jayce was back in the Fragmented Ruins. He was standing in front of the god who called itself Kulve while everyone else knelt. The god’s four pupilless eyes were placid and the lava running across its body flowed at a steady pace. It lifted one of its four arms and opened its hand, revealing a tiny coal that was being consumed by a robust purple flame. Jayce, who was very aware that he was dreaming, suddenly had a terrible premonition. True to his memory, Jayce watched as the purple flame entered his body and felt unspeakable pain when it began burning him alive. Fortunately, this pain only lasted for a moment before Jayce separated himself from what was happening in the dream. He felt a little strange as he watched his body writhing in agony from a third-person perspective.

Soon, he sensed that something was happening inside his body. When Jayce extended his senses inward, he was reminded of the emotions he had felt during his scattered moments of lucidity. Pain and fear were at the forefront, but underneath those primal feelings was a deep stubbornness. Even though he could have given up and chosen to escape the pain through death, he had persisted. The next time his burning self became lucid, Jayce in the dream watched as a small seed appeared in the void where his soul rested. This seed was transparent and illusory, fading in and out of existence like a flickering flame.

Jayce watched, transfixed, as the seed quickly grew into a tower and then faded out permanently. Immediately after this phenomenon, the brand on his soul was destroyed and he was notified that he had unlocked the Soul Forger class. The dream faded away and Jayce returned to the tower.

Still as a statue, Jayce quietly parsed through the information he’d received. “So, this tower was created back when I got my Soul Forger class, but it wasn’t stable. It’s clearly related to the system and my classes…and it’s probably the reason why I was able to challenge both tests when I opened the first gate. I get the feeling it isn’t complete yet.”

The tower’s nonsensically simple design and the jarring way that it swapped between forms made it hard for Jayce to see it as anything other than incomplete.

Throwing out a random guess, Jayce asked, “Can I merge my classes here?”

Merging cannot be initiated. User is lacking affinity in relevant classes and enough authority.

Jayce nearly jumped when this information entered his head. The system had never answered him directly before. He quickly recovered from this shock and turned his attention to the message’s contents. It seemed that he needed to raise his affinity before he could merge his classes. The term affinity represented a vague measurement of how well one’s personality aligned with their class. Those with high affinity were more likely to get abilities that suited them, and they would naturally fight in ways that stimulated their class. Sometimes, their abilities would also activate subconsciously, as if by reflex. Even if a person wasn’t naturally aligned with their class, it was still possible for them to raise their affinity by either changing their mindset or deepening their understanding of said class.

Jayce, for his part, had come close to having an epiphany when his Bloodrager class reached level 20. If he had grasped it, his affinity with that class would have reached a new level. His affinity with the Marksman class was at least average, as he was able to get the ability that he wanted after only two weeks of training. Jayce felt that guns suited him more than any other weapon and as he gained combat experience, his affinity with this class would steadily grow. As for Soul Forger, Jayce suspected his affinity wasn’t very high. He figured that the fastest way to increase it would be to create an artifact while completely lucid, which was something he had been planning to do anyway.

Bloodrager affinity rating: A-

Marksman affinity rating: B

Soul Forger affinity rating: D+

“Oh,” Jayce breathed. He hadn’t even said anything out loud. “What rating do I need before I can merge my classes?”

Two classes require a minimum rating of A before any kind of merging can be performed.

“How much authority do I need, then?”

This question cannot be answered at your current level of authority.

“…” Jayce stared blankly into space for a moment.

‘I don’t even have enough authority to know how much authority I’m lacking?’

Ultimately, Jayce wasn’t upset because that answer had told him something very important. The normally silent system was answering his questions because he currently had some level of authority.

The word authority brought back memories of the tail end of his journey in the Fragmented Ruins. After Kulve appeared, they spoke about usurping authority from the Nexus system to gain dominion over a world fragment. Apparently, the guardians who followed Mize and her siblings also carried tokens that gave them some amount of authority, allowing them to twist the dungeon’s rules and escape at any time. Jayce wasn’t sure if the authority he possessed could be used in the same way, but he still felt goosebumps appear on his skin. At that moment, he didn’t know if this authority was temporary or not, so he decided to keep asking questions.

“Can I promote any of my classes?”

Special classes cannot be promoted.

Basic class Marksman can be promoted at level 60 or earlier if certain conditions are met.

Reach class level 0, have been granted the class through baptism, reach SS-Rank class affinity. Reach class level 20, have been granted the class through baptism, reach S-Rank class affinity. Reach class level 40, have been granted the class through baptism, reach A-Rank class affinity. Reach class level 0, reach SSS-Rank class affinity. Reach class level 20, reach SS-Rank class affinity. Reach class level 40, reach S-Rank class affinity.

Other conditions are not visible at your current level of authority.

After looking at the list, Jayce briefly wondered if the conditions he couldn’t view were similar to special class rituals. He didn’t spare this idea too much thought before addressing the real question. Was it possible for him to promote his class early? Jayce wasn’t confident, as raising his affinity from B to S-Rank would be very difficult. As for immediately promoting, he didn’t bother dreaming of it. Anyone with SS or SSS-Rank affinity probably came out of the womb swinging a sword or aiming a rifle.

Jayce was pretty sure that the villagers didn’t know about these conditions. He hadn’t read anything about them in the library and the teachers who worked at the training field didn’t place much emphasis on class affinity. It was possible that they had noticed a correlation between affinity and class promotion, but they couldn’t see how much of a role affinity played without knowing how it was rated.

Jayce asked more questions, but he didn’t always receive an answer. He quickly learned that any questions unrelated to himself would be ignored. Meanwhile, questions like ‘what can Marksman promote into?’ and ‘what is the name of the fourth gate?’ were blocked by his low authority. Possibly the most useful thing he learned was that examining class abilities in this space gave him slightly more information than usual. Most of these were small details that could only be learned through practice, such as how flesh that was moved with Flesh Control (Lesser) couldn’t reintegrate into the body, or that Soul Strike had a rapidly increasing chance to fail if used multiple times in succession. Now that he had learned how important affinity was, Jayce took this chance to learn everything that he could about each of his abilities.

While he was preoccupied with the system, Jayce glimpsed a flashing light out of the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw the massive sun that was his soul quiver in an agitated manner. Bright purplish-white light flashed out and forced Jayce to close his eyes. When he could see again, Jayce found himself in another dream.

“We’re leaving,” a gruff voice announced. His tone brooked no argument.

In a wide cave, Jayce watched as a group of blue-furred villagers followed an elder with wolf features. The elder stepped towards the exit tunnel, but he was stopped by a frosty comment thrown from the other side of the room.

“What about our compensation?” a tall female jotun asked, folding her arms.

Jayce immediately glanced at Soest, the wolf-like elder, and drew a short breath when he remembered what was about to happen. Just like in his dream with Froker, Jayce was completely lucid and had his levels and abilities updated to their present state. Even so, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stand up to a third gate elder like Soest.

If this was the real world, Jayce would have quietly allowed Soest to grab him and toss him over to the jotun leader. That would be the smartest decision. In a dream, though, Jayce wasn’t going to put up with it.

Soest’s eyes landed on Jayce and his figure blurred. Anticipating this, Jayce poured the maximum amount of energy into Keen Eyes to track Soest’s movements. Tiny Hammer appeared in his hand and he twisted his body to keep it pointed at Soest’s chest. The elder’s eyes widened but he merely scoffed before chopping Jayce’s wrist. Both the speed and the force of this blow were beyond what Jayce could handle and he was swiftly disarmed. Soon after that, Jayce was captured and tossed over to Weiss.

The dream faded, but Jayce didn’t wake up in the tower.

“We’re leaving,” Soest announced. At his order, a group of blue-furred people began following him towards the cave exit.

Jayce looked around and grimaced. Everything had been reset.

He tried a second time and failed almost as quickly as the first. The third and fourth attempts were a little better, but Jayce was still overpowered in the end. To his dismay, the dream just kept repeating. He could feel that deep down, some part of him refused to accept defeat. This feeling that he had kept bottled away ended up bursting out of his soul while he slept. Somehow, it had even used what little authority he possessed to create this dream world.

Jayce’s skirmishes against Soest were short and he quickly lost count of his attempts.

Eventually, the world reset for the nth time and Jayce bolted towards the villagers. He ignored their startled cries and used Flesh Control to open up large cuts on his arms. Under his careful control, many villagers had their blue fur dyed a sticky red.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Soest yelled, darting through the crowd with blinding speed.

As a Warrior who had almost certainly promoted to Swordsman, Soest’s agility wasn’t something that Jayce could hope to match. Jayce tried to hide in the throng of bodies, but a heavy fist snaked through a small gap and sent him tumbling out. Activating Bloodrage and Marksman’s Alacrity, Jayce nimbly flipped to his feet. He managed to raise his guard just before Soest rocketed out of the crowd and sent another fist flying his way. This blow landed precisely on the injured part of Jayce’s arm, but he only let out a low grunt as blood sprayed onto Soest’s fist. Jayce then activated the Bands of Freedom to jolt backwards. This burst of speed surprised Soest and allowed Jayce to retreat.

“If you want to push me down, I’m going to drag everyone with me!” Jayce shouted. His blood-red eyes were wide, and his tone carried a tinge of insanity. He snapped his finger and the blood on Soest’s fist exploded. The impact only managed to crack Sost’s barrier, but it throttled his momentum and startled everyone terribly. Jayce looked at the crowd of blue-furred people and shouted, “If you use your barriers to push my blood away, I’ll detonate it immediately!”

This volatile scene ground to a halt as the villagers and spectating jotun froze up in stunned silence. Soest was also anchored to the spot. The quality of his barrier was far above a common villager’s. If Jayce used that attack against anyone else, especially the youths who came as porters, it would be a disaster.

“And what do you think will happen to you if…” Soest’s rebuttal started out fierce but he trailed off after staring into Jayce’s mad eyes. “Don’t do anything hasty. What do you want?”

“I want you to stop giving me trouble,” Jayce vented, turning around and striding out of the cave.

The instant he was outside, Jayce let out a long sigh. He felt like he’d just beaten an extremely difficult boss after wiping over and over. This was actually his second attempt at taking hostages. The first time around, Soest drew his sword and killed him while he was negotiating. That was why Jayce chose to fully commit to the role during his second time around. Jayce even made a few superfluous gestures like detonating the blood by snapping his fingers raise Seost and the villager’s awareness of his threat. As for the madness in his eyes, after so many attempts, Jayce could only say it was a quarter feigned. He had been stuck in this dream for hours, but his hard work hadn’t been for nothing. By the end, Jayce was able to follow Soest’s movements and block attacks that he had been helpless against at the start of his dream. This was a very impressive feat, as even though Soest wasn’t giving it his all, he was still much more agile than Yule.

As for the victory itself, Jayce didn’t feel overly enthusiastic. It was just a dream, after all. Still, he felt more confident after overcoming that ordeal.

The dream finally faded away and Jayce woke up in his bed. He checked the time and found that he had gotten up at his usual hour. When Jayce thought about how much time he spent in both the tower and his two lucid dreams, he felt skeptical. While he couldn’t be sure that time flowed one to one, it seemed that his dreams did take some amount of time to complete. Jayce ultimately wasn’t too worried about that question. He was only concerned with whether or not he could return to the tower.

That night, he received a positive answer. Jayce went to sleep and was elated to wake up in the tower again. At some point, his soul stirred and sent him into another dream. Jayce ended up tackling many kinds of dreams, all of which were pulled from his memories. Some forced him to resist certain abilities like Mize’s glare or Erilin’s invisible pressure, a few challenged him to complete tasks such as processing materials, and others were completely random like when he convinced Marin to let him spend the night at her family’s home. Of course, the vast majority of these dreams were related to combat. Eventually, Jayce was relieved to find that if he spent too much time challenging a dream, he would wake up without completing it. His nightly challenges never maligned his sleep schedule.

These dreams soon became a part of his routine and Jayce’s days in Snowdrift began to pass quickly.