“I guess I got happy too soon.” Nathan could only assume and hope that as long as he leveled up she would return to the person she once was. As long as he worked hard enough they could be reunited once again. That was his motivation to ignore his fears and doubts as he pushed himself further.

Still just seeing her once again even in this state brought great joy to him as he began to look at his available classes.

| Available classes: Swordsman, Scout, Possessed, Spiritualist. |

| Class: Swordsman |

| A class specializing in using the sword to deal the most damage possible. Unlocks the swordsman class tree. |

| Passive: +25% XP gain for sword related skills. |

| Class: Scout |

| A class specializing in gaining information from their environment. Unlocks the scout class tree. |

| Passive: +25% to any scouting related skills. |

| Class: Possessed |

| A strange class for those that have lost their minds to a spirit. Becoming their vessel. Unlocks the possessed class tree. |

| Passive: +25% XP gain to any spirit related skills. |

| Class: Spiritualist |

| A class specializing for those that use spirits as their main means of protecting themselves. Unlocks the spiritualist class tree. |

| Passive: +25% XP gain to any spirit related skills. |

As Nathan began to read the short descriptions of each class and their passives he started to have a better understanding of what each class truly did. Being that he already had made all his prior choices dedicated to the path of spiritualism it seemed like an easy choice to just take the spiritualist class. But the option of possessed seemed like a pure opposite of the spiritualist one. That made him think, If possessed gave his body to the ghost would that mean he would gain control of the spirits if he chose the spiritualist class.

"Should I just play it safe and take the swordsman class?"

Still, there was the possibility he was just wrong in his assumption on what the spiritualist class did. What if it let him empower her and bring her back even sooner?

Looking at her transparent beautiful figure floating in front of him as he sat on the stairs his final decision was made.

| Class: Spiritualist |

| Passive: +25% XP gain to any spirt related skills. |

| Spiritualist skill tree has been unlocked |

| You have learned the following skills: Spirit command, Spirit mana, Soul slash |

| Spirit command |

| Your voice is now able to reach even the dead. Letting you command even those that aren’t among the living anymore. |

| Soul slash | Level 1 |

| Send out a slash of spirit mana damaging the soul |

| Damage: 100% |

| Range: 5 meters |

| Cost: 1 Mana |

| Spirit mana | Level 1 |

| Your body's mana has attuned itself with spirit properties. |

| Passive: Mana regeneration increased in a high spirit mana environment. |

| Using magic not related to spirt mana takes more mana. |

| +2 Mana and magic power |

With the unlock of the skill tree, it had opened itself up automatically as well showing that he had 1 skill point to spend. Only 3 options gloved in a green light while branching paths from those 3 were greyed out showing no information at all.

| Shared power | 0/5 |

| You and the spirit can share part of each other's power. |

| +10% of each other's base stats. |

| Spirit embedment | 0/3 |

| The power to infuse a spirit inside an object to empower its abilities. |

| 33% of spirits power can be added to an object |

| Spirit enslavement | 0/5 |

| You can dominate a spirit's will to your rule. |

| A spirit that is 50% weaker then you can be dominated. |

| Current limit: 5 spirits |

Reading through the skill trees available unlocks Nathan concluded that a spiritualist had 3 general paths that they used.

The path of domination in which you capture wild spirits to use them at your disposition as you command them to attack your foes, possibly further unlocking more options in which you used the spirits to attack.

The path of infusion where you use spirits on your equipment to enchant their effects. Possibly gaining the ability to infuse a spirit's skills into gear creating your own custom sets for each situation. Or possibly creating one use items with superior power as consumable items.

The path of cooperation that treats the party involved equally while supporting each other in the process. Boosting each other's abilities and possibly unlocking various synergies further down the skill tree.

His choice was blatantly obvious as he would never wish to put Nicole under anything that could potentially harm her. Just as he added a skill point to shared power a change was felt by him. Nicole’s figure had become less transparent after becoming a spiritualist and it was amplified even more after putting a point into shared power. This change didn’t affect only her appearance but her actions as well as before this her figure always hovered around Nathan but now she had started to stick to his body fully embracing him while releasing that chill with its warmness that washed away his worries and doubts and helped him push through the hardship. Her body was cold and felt nothing like humans would. But it had still made Nathan extremely happy in his choice of becoming a spiritualist.

"Let's get going we still have a lot to do."

Even as Nathan began to climb the staircase nothing changed in Nicole's position as she simply floated there while embracing him. He could only see this change as a positive one as she was becoming more human once again. One day she will be here with him once again the same as it has been all the years they were together.

Traversing the short trip up the stairs, Nathan saw an empty room with a door. The system message came up as soon as he took his feet off the last step of the stairs as well.

| Stage 1 |

| Stage 1 will be done in a party with other lucky winners of the tutorial. You will have to work together to face off against nature that has been exposed to mana. |

| While in a party each member gets an equal portion of the experience. |

Approaching the simple wooden door, Nathan opened it into a completely different view from what he had seen so far in the tutorial.

It was a dome-shaped clearing in the forest with four other people opening the door about the same time he had done. Just as he began to examine them so did they.

Nathan was around 1’90 centimeters tall with some Slavic facial features. Short black hair with medium length beard. He was dressed in your average black sports attire. His build was quite muscular together with the bloody sword he created an image that was quite intimidating. Not to mention the faint white mist that hung around him. One person from the group could even see a faint figure of a person inside the white mist from time to time, he could even swear he saw two arms reaching out from behind Nathan.

| All your party members have arrived good luck in surviving stage 1. |

A fragile-looking guy around 170 centimeters with cracked glasses holding the fire staff was the first one to speak up.

"Hi, I'm Kyle the mage of the group." He had just finished the tutorial and officially chose his class as a fire mage. He had learned some fire spells as well as chosen in his skill tree an ability that increased the duration of flames on his opponents burning them for a longer period of time as the flames now stuck to his opponents. Nobody else spoke after his introduction creating a bit of an awkward atmosphere before Nathan spoke up as well.

"Hey, I'm Nathan the swordsman of the group then." After gaining the spirit command skill his voice had turned a bit deeper while carrying a commanding aura to it.

Following there example, the next one to speak was an obese man in his thirties. Holding a shield and a short spear. "Hello, I'm James. That makes me the tank" He instantly seemed very socially awkward as he spoke. He kept giving Nathan weird glances all the time as sweat was starting to build on his forehead.

"This is fucking dumb let's just go losers." He was an Asian teenager with blonde dyed hair. With tattoos covering his arms. He had a cocky look on his face as he looked down on the guys on his team. He was even excited before this thinking there would be some girls in his party that he could show off his new gained power that he was so proud of. Yet there were only some freaks in his team.

"Don't be like that we are a team now we should work together." Kyle, dissatisfied with the man's attitude couldn't help but speak up.

This clearly irked the Asian guy. This scrawny looking loser dared to talk back to him? He wasn’t the type of person to just take it without doing anything in return. He approached Kyle in a threatening manner before trying to intimidate him.

"Or what?" He now stood too close for comfort for kayle as he tried to back off while defending his argument.

"We are a team now, we should work to..." Before He could finish his sentence the Asian guy had slapped him across the face. Making Kyle fall to the ground as blood started to flow out of his mouth. Kyle was in mid-sentence with his mouth still open, his cheek got torn from his teeth as blood started to flow out of it. There was a clear red mark from the slap on his face as it began to swell up.

"What makes you think you can command me you little shit." Back home he had a small gang, he was the leader off. He couldn’t even remember how many times he had collected money from kids around the school as a protection fee. No, he wasn’t the type of person to care about things like those. With this new power, he had gained he felt almost invincible as he had slowly become drunker and drunker on the power he was gaining. He had the bad habit of not knowing when to stop as well. Kicking Kyle in the stomach forcing him to vomit on the ground.

“What, you got nothing to say now huh?”

Until now Nathan hadn’t been paying almost any attention to their antics as he was simply mesmerized by his sense stat being as high as it was now. The world around him felt completely different now even if he felt it was odd that there was a lack of sound from the forest around him. Yet the acidic smell of vomit and blood had drawn his attention enough to speak up as he couldn’t just watch someone do something like that. James even as the oldest looking one of all of them seemed way too timid to do anything in this situation. It even looked like he was about to run away glancing behind himself from time to time.

"That's enough, you might kill him at this rate!" Nathan's deep voice did startle the Asain guy, but that only caused him to become even more pissed off.

"You creepy fuck you got something to say about this huh?" From his teammates, Nathan seemed to pose him the most treat. Being quite a bit taller than himself with a weapon. But seeing that Nathan had inserted his sword in the ground with no indication of using it boosted his confidence even more as he began to approach Nathan.

Unimpressed by the actions the Asian guy was taking Nathan closed the distance, as well as the two of them, were ready to clash.

"Yeah, you should stop acting like a spoiled brat. Before you regret it." When it came to regular humans Nathan held no fear. They weren't monsters that you are seeing for the first time. The blondie didn't wait for anything more as soon as Nathan was in his range he threw a punch. But with Nathan's greatly enhanced sense stat it looked slow as it got easily dodged and countered with an elbow strike to his head. When it came to pure physical power and agility the kid was indeed quite a bit stronger than Nathan but in a fight power and speed didn't mean everything. But most of all Nathan wasn't fighting alone at the moment he threw his punch Nicole had reacted as well. Nobody but Nathan could see how ten scratches were left on the blondie’s arm as blood had started to flow down his arm as centimeter deep scratches were engraved in his arm from Nicole's materialized claws.

"What the hell did you do to me you freak!"

He screamed out in pain as he fell to the ground clutching the side of his head while his other arm hung limply as blood flowed from it. Nathan had struck his temple with a hit that had a good chance of killing him if his vitality wasn't as high as it was. Afterall the temple was the weakest part of the human skull

"Why don't you sleep for a bit." He couldn't understand what Nathan meant by his words. His head was ringing and he felt dizzy.

"Wha.." A powerful kick was delivered to his jaw shaking his brain and knocking him out for good.

As the fight was over Nathan relaxed and noticed that James had disappeared at some point in his exchange with the guy whose name he still didn't even know. Nathan couldn’t know this but James had an extreme fear towards ghosts since he was a child. The ghastly figure of Nicole could be nothing else but a ghost to him and he didn’t dare to be in the same party with something like that. The moment he saw his chance he ran and left the party.

"Well, there goes half of the party." Nathan wondered if he was just put in an unlucky situation or did most teams end up like his.

"Kyle, can you get up now?" His cheek had swelled up even more from the slap now and as he tried to speak he choked on the blood in his mouth going into a coughing fit as blood splattered on the ground.

“Yea-hh just give me a minute."

Since things had turned out like this Nathan wanted to know his last teammate’s opinion of their further actions.

"Since James left the party, do you want to remake it so we don't have that guy in the party?" Kyle raised his head and saw blondie passed out on the ground. He couldn’t help but smile seeing that the guy got what he deserved and was put in his place.

"Did you kill him?" His eyes shone with madness as he stared at blondie's body with hate in his eyes.

"Huh, no just knocked him out." Nathan might have been a bit more brutal than it was needed but death in the tutorial only meant you go back to the real world so he wasn't too worried about it.

The yell that Kyle had released completely took him by surprise not expecting such a reaction from the scrawny looking Kyle at all.

"Kill that bastard!"