[Congratulations Untried!

Continue to excel by forging your way through difficult situations.

+5 stat points by assignment per level ]

Mike cursed under his breath as the notification confirmed his fears: his new Class would require him to undergo more hardships. Another notification appeared, offering a ray of hope in the storm of acid reflux caused by the first notification and the speed of his travel.

[You are awarded a Class Skill to remember your old Class by

Class Skill calculating…]

The swirling background made reading the notification difficult, forcing him to squint his eyes against the kaleidoscope of colors and bringing back the stinging memory of when he had become old enough to require reading glasses. Aging past 30 was more pain than it was worth when focusing purely on physical characteristics.

[Class Skill Unlocked: Fortune's Folly

Once per day, you can influence a situation directly by channeling your Luck into it]

Well that will be worthless, he thought to himself, even as he struggled to subdue the vomit creeping up his throat. Something told him that should the substance breach his lips, high speed travel would become immensely more uncomfortable, especially without wind to blow off any stray debris.

[Congratulations! Level 12 reached!

+5 Stat Points by Assignment]

[Congratulations! Level 13 reached!

+5 Stat Points by Assignment]

Forcing his mind to think about something other than the building bile, Mike pulled up his Character Sheet and was amazed to see that between his last Level as an Unlucky and his two Levels as an Untried, he had 26 stat points waiting to be assigned. That was as much Intelligence as he had total.

A torrent of bitter emotions and self doubt tore through him: How could I have been so stupid? That means I had 13 points I could have used to defend the valley. Would that have been enough to save Creeagle? Would I have needed the hobgoblins' help at all?

The thoughts struck deeply at his profound desire to protect others, and it took some time for him to worm his way out of the spiral of his emotions. In his heart, he knew that it likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome that much, maybe giving him enough energy to fight for an hour or two longer. Despite this being true, it was hard accepting that he had made a mistake that affected the lives of others.

Another thought struck him then, how many kills did it take to achieve his latest two levels? The numbers above enemies’ heads had disappeared once he had reached his Level cap, so he hadn’t been forced to think about this subject in a while. Some quick Math told him that Level 11 would have been 512 kills then 1024 and 2048 for Levels 11 and 12 respectively.

Even knowing that most of the kills came from the hordes of Quicksilver Soldiers, the thought made him sick.

I’ve become a killing machine. It would take an explosive in a high density city to rack up the number of deaths I have caused.

Suddenly he couldn’t hold the bile back any longer.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Time was innocuous in the wormhole, the ever shifting colors were poor substitutes for the celestial bodies that Mike had been relying on to measure its passage since his birth. He took solace from the fact that he was still able to tell time the way he had before his exposure to clocks, the sun, or the simple routine of a young child: hunger. Based on his hunger, he would guess that he had been traveling for around an hour already.

After using as much time as he possibly could in his Character Sheet, he took to meditating, although that was difficult with his now very wet and smelly clothes. The lack of wind also meant that any meditation towards Aeromancy was wasted. This thought led his thoughts down the rabbit hole of why he could still smell things if he couldn’t feel the passage of any air, which caused him to think about what he was actually breathing. After several minutes, he chalked it up to another case of System Physics, which was the same reason why he could turn invincible and also run faster than most cars at this point.

After what he estimated to be three hours, based on his hunger levels, the swirling vortex suddenly parted and rocketed out of it. His calm and trance-like travel suddenly ending as gale force winds began buffeting him, causing his cheeks to flap and vomit to blow off of him as he took in the sprawling vista beneath him. He had been at incredibly high altitudes before during some covert missions, and the lack of curvature of the planet beneath him impressed upon him its enormity. As far as the eye could see, a brown landmass extended, pitted and pockmarked with deep canyons and ravines. Small hills also dotted the landscape, although they were far fewer than the valleys. Tucking his neck slightly to look at what was behind him, he saw more of the same. Nowhere did he see a source of water.

His shirt flapping in the wind caused him to realize that the lighting here was also different from earth. It wasn’t too noticeable, like the difference between yellow and white light on earth, but it was enough that his skin looked slightly discolored. Although, that could be due to the sheer volume of mud, gore, and bruises that covered his body.

His reverie was broken as he realized that the small hills he had seen were actually incredibly large mountains. One of which he was approaching at an alarming rate. Although based on his current trajectory, he would likely miss the mountain and land in the gorge next to it. A notification appeared in front of him:

[Congratulations! New Quest Initiated: Return Home

Survive the Outskirts for 10 years.

Rewards: Return Travel to home planet. Other awards pending completion.

Ten years?! A feeling of cold dread steeped his bones. What would the valley do? They would be destroyed without him. How badly would the System have ruined humanity by that time? Would there be anything left to return to?

The nagging questions were eviscerated as he realized that the gorge was only a few seconds away. As a SEAL, he had been trained to judge fall times for purposes of stealth deployment behind enemy lines. Using that training, he judged when he was no more than 2 seconds above the gorge and then activated Unflinching Meteor.

He must have misjudged his timing, whether that was due to the sheer size of the planet or some other factor, he didn’t know, as the edges of the gorge passed by his periphery only 1 second after activation. Over the next second, his eyes struggled to adjust to the diminished lighting, and he barely had a glimpse of the rocky terrain before he shattered into their midst with a near-deafening thud. The dim light around him disappeared entirely as he heard hundreds of pounds of rock shift to envelop him entirely.

Fighting back panic, Mike eyed the count down timer on his Skill Ability. When he only had one second of invulnerability left, he activated Footsteps of the Wind and then used Tactics to channel all of his Dexterity into Strength.

As the timer hit zero, he pressed into the ground with all of his strength, activating Undeviating Juggernaut as he attempted to complete the hardest pushup of his life.

Cursing the training that had taught him to free fall flat rather than vertical while also feeling incredibly grateful for every single pushup Sargent Gillespie had forced upon him during bootcamp, he continued to press, despite not feeling anything shift above him.

He watched as his continued exertions enabled Undeviating Juggernaut to reach its capacity, bringing his total Strength (modified by Tactics from 29 to 50) all the way up to 200. Yet still, the colossal weight above him refused to budge.

When three seconds had passed and Tactics was once again usable, he bit the bullet and added all 26 unallocated points to Dexterity, before he again channeled another 13 points into Strength, bringing the stat passed 250. This seemed to do the trick as the rock suddenly shifted above him, creating a small hollow that didn’t collapse on him as his stamina wore off and he collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. Stars punctuated his vision in the darkness and a roaring sound filled his ears as the backlash of his inhuman feat hit him, making it difficult to makeout the notification in front of him:

[Congratulations! Skill Ability Level Up: Undeviating Juggernaut

Stat increases boosted to 500% base stats]

The measly amount of euphoria he felt for improving an ability that he had only used a few times quickly faded away as reality began closing in.

He was trapped in a small cave, with barely enough room to roll from his stomach to his back. His air was limited. He was exhausted. And he was stranded on a different planet for 10 years.

I thought Nutty Putty Caves was going to be the most claustrophobic state of my life. He grimly laughed to himself, trying to find optimism despite his precarious position.

Try as he might, he could think of only one possible way out. Just as he was removing the blasting rock from his spatial storage bag, the air no longer bringing any actual oxygen to his lung and causing him to slowly lose consciousness, he heard the crunching sound of rocks being shifted above him.

Trusting his instincts, he extended his hand to the ceiling and used Sonic Sounding to send out a wave of energy, before he collapsed into unconsciousness.