Akira dashed through the forest, weaving through the trees in an attempt to reach the ongoing fight before it could end. She followed the sounds of combat, yawls of an injured beast and the grunts of effort coming from a man, leading her to their battle.

She was close when the sounds of the scuffle died out, signaling the end of the fight. Knowing she didn't have long before the man disappeared, Akira poured on the speed, wringing out every last drop of agility she had. Eventually, she heard sounds of movement and slowed her approach. Before doing anything else, she reached into the bag of holding at her waist and pulled out a recording crystal. Infusing some mana to activate the purple crystal, Akira tossed it up in the air, letting it float just above her shoulder.

Ready to record the man who'd just stolen her kill, Akira concealed her aura and snuck through the brush. She was no stealth specialist, but having grown up in the forest, she knew how to move quietly through the undergrowth and was confident in going unnoticed.

Coming up to the edge of a small clearing, a growing sense of unease welled up in her. It wasn't one of danger or fear of being attacked. Instead she felt gross and slightly ill, as though she'd eaten something that had gone bad, which was strange since she hadn't eaten yet. Ignoring the feeling, she parted the leaves of a bush she was in, giving herself and the recording crystal a clear view of the scene in front of her.

A man absolutely covered in blood, fresh and dried, wearing what could only be called rags and a wolfskin cloak stood over the body of the Vipercat. He was putting a sleek black mask over his face after downing a potion. The mask obscured all his features, the only thing visible were two glowing amber lights that shined through, no doubt the result of a perception ability.

He reached out with the hand holding the now empty bottle, and in an instant the bottle disappeared, making Akira wonder if it was some kind of ability. It wasn't unheard of for people to pick up some kind of storage ability, though it was usually only crafters. The kind of ability that allowed a blacksmith to carry around their tools and half completed works. It was something she noted about the man, in case they came to blows.

As she continued to observe, the man grunted in pain and clenched his fists and arms. The man muttered something under his breath, but due to the distance Akira was unable to pick up any of what he said. She had a good feeling that he was swearing, though, and likely gaining a new ability as well.

Was this why man poached all those contracts? Just to power level? It was an extremely stupid thing to do, and he was almost begging the adventurers guild to come down on his head. Then there was the fact that slaughtering so many low-tier beasts was wildly inefficient; he'd level faster by completing contracts in higher-tier areas. Then again, maybe the man was just a coward, too afraid to face anything his level.

Akira tried probing the man's aura, searching for his relative strength. His aura was restrained, but not completely retracted, allowing her to take a peek without alerting him. The first thing she noticed was the crudeness of his technique. It had all the finesse of a giant war hammer, and it was like he was actually trying to use one to retract it, beating his aura into what could be described as a compressed misshapen lump.

'With aura control that terrible, it was no wonder why he was out here killing weaker beasts, he probably couldn't kill anything his lev—'

The rolling vitriol playing out in Akira's mind came to a sudden stop once she looked at the man's aura properly. He had to be between level 20-30, and would barely be considered copper rank. In fact, she suspected that he was gaining his fourth ability at that very moment, officially making copper rank in the eyes of the adventurers guild.

Beneath the low level of the aura and the god-awful technique used to wield it, was a soul strength Akira hadn't expected. It was much stronger than any copper rank she'd ever come across, so much so that she couldn't properly quantify it.

Being an aristocrat she'd grown up around powerful people who knew how to wield their auras, even meeting a high gold ranker while traveling with her mother when she was a child. As a result she knew what powerful auras felt like, even if she couldn't truly understand it. It was just a matter of power, those of higher ranks were simply so much stronger. The higher quality of their rank even made it difficult for those who were at the precipice of ranking up to compete in a spiritual battle with someone who'd just broken through.

The soul strength she felt beneath the thin surface of the man's aura was at least as strong as a peak iron ranker, and that was a guess based solely off of the feel she'd gotten from weak iron rankers. What a person like this was doing with a soul that strong Akira had no idea, but it was another thing she'd keep in mind.

Due to the strength of his soul, Akira was unable to get a proper read on the man, but the feel of the aura was more than enough. It was bloody and brutal, forged through combat and strife someone at his level shouldn't have seen yet. There was also a hint of something else, as though the man were the bringer of disease and plague.

This was no doubt the cause of the unease she felt, and a result of an aura power. Having felt many before, Akira could tell that this one lowered her resistances, making it harder for her to handle poison and disease.

'That's another ability, on top of the storage one and the eyes,' Akira thought.

There was one final feeling, a strange one she couldn't make sense of. The man was obviously a human despite his lean build, and Akira could even see his human ears and his humanity in his aura. But there was something else there, something that would usually be an ethnicity. You could feel it just below the race, as though it were a qualifier to it. It was something you could feel in every aura, and Akira had met every human ethnicity there was.

Whatever this man had in his aura it wasn't some simple ethnicity. It was more prevalent too, but it occupied the same spot. Akira had no idea what to make of it and could only add it to the growing list of things she noted about the man in front of her.

As Akira finished her aura inspection, the process of gaining an ability finished up within the man. He let out a relieved sigh, clenching and unclenching his fist as though feeling out his new ability. Once again he said something that Akira couldn't hear, and he kept talking as though having a conversation with himself.

Akira was debating whether or not to get closer in order to hear his ramblings when he stopped. Crouching down, the man tapped the body before standing again and taking a step back. Akira wondered what he was doing when a heat-haze-like shimmer rose from the Vipercat's unmoving body.

'A storage and looting ability? Just what class does this guy have? Between those two, the perception ability that made his eyes glow, and the aura ability that's all his abilities,' Akira thought, 'If he has no combat abilities it should be easy to capture—'

Akira had been watching the man like a hawk, waiting for the moment to pounce, but out of nowhere he disappeared. No, not disappeared—melted into the shadows. She could still feel him with her magic senses, but he was quickly out of her range as he moved through the shadows with a speed that didn't match the man's low level.

Akira was left staring at the spot the man had just stood, unsure of what to think. Five abilities, he'd shown off five abilities. The man had been nowhere near strong enough to have gained a fifth, he was barely strong enough to have gained a fourth.

One of those must have been a racial ability, but humans rarely had even a single racial ability, most having none. And because there were so few, most, if not all, human racial abilities were known, none matching what the man had displayed. She didn't think new racial abilities could appear, but she could be wrong.

Her intuition told her otherwise, it also told her that presenting the recording of the man to the guild wasn't the right move. Standing, Akira grabbed the recording crystal and threw it into her bag of holding before turning and running home.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

***

Lukas strolled through the forest casually, testing out his new ability after finally reaching level 25 in his rogue class.

New ability earned: [Star Forged Armory] - Ability: One with the night, you have learned to wield it against your foes. Conjures a bladed weapon made of the night itself. With every strike, some of your foe's life force is sucked through the blade and into the emptiness of space. Conjured weapons have increased effectiveness in darkness and shadows, but decreased effectiveness in the light. Mana cost: Low.

Lukas had some mixed feelings about the ability, on one hand, being able to conjure up a weapon at any time was a boon if Lukas was caught off guard or disarmed. And by the sounds of it, the ability also allowed him to conjure up different types of weapons to suit his needs.

On the other hand, he already had a good dagger and a new one at that. Sure, he could use the dagger in one hand and a conjured weapon in the other, but Lukas didn't know how to fight with two weapons; he barely knew how to fight with one weapon. Adding in a second now felt like putting the cart before the horse. Then there was the fact that the ability wasn't wildly useful to him at the moment. He would've preferred something else, a spell or special attack maybe, something repeatable that would let him do a decent amount of damage.

Ultimately, it didn't really matter what his feelings were, he got the ability and there was nothing he could do about it. That wasn't to say he hated the ability, just that it came at an inopportune time when something else would've been more appreciated. In the end Lukas still had fun making cool space weapons out of nothing.

The ability was rather simple, it just conjured up a weapon, but the weapons that could be conjured varied. The first thing Lukas tried to conjure was naturally a dagger. With almost no effort a dagger appeared in his hand. The dagger itself was like a hole in reality, a window out into the cosmos. It almost looked 2D and featureless as Lukas turned it over in his hand. The dagger was the deep impenetrable blackness of space with stars and other pinpricks of light seen in the darkness. As the dagger moved so too did the stars, as if Lukas' perspective was shifting and the dagger truly a window out into space. It was pretty cool, but also extremely trippy.

The next thing Lukas tried to conjure was a sword, but he found it much more difficult than the dagger. It wasn't until he thought about the ragged short sword still in his inventory that he had any success. Eventually he conjured a short sword, though this one lacked the dull and jagged edge of his other one.

Lukas tried summoning other bladed weapons, but found himself unable. He only had some minor success when attempting to conjure a war axe. Feeling that connection, Lukas tried to summon all kinds of different axes. Finally having some success when he managed a lumber axe, just like the ones he'd used to cut down trees for his cabin. Then he conjured a smaller axe, a hatchet he'd used for smaller cuts.

It was then that Lukas realized the conjurations depended on his familiarity with what he was trying to conjure. He'd fought with a dagger and short sword, and used various axes in the making of his cabin. He wasn't entirely sure how useful those axes would be, but it was fun to swing it into the trees as he passed by nonetheless.

If he tried to build a cabin with his current stats it'd go ten times faster than it had back home.

Lukas also decided to do some testing with the effects of the conjured weapons. Judging by the abilities' description, they'd be able to directly drain an enemy's health points with each hit. The first thing to feel the effects was naturally Lukas.

With the trippy space dagger in hand, Lukas gave his finger a small cut. As he did so, he noticed some of the blood being absorbed into the dagger, the finger becoming discolored and gray as well as losing heat, feeling as though he'd dunked the finger in cool water. Checking his health he saw that he'd lost a handful of health points.

Considering the meager amount of health he lost, Lukas suspected that larger wounds would cause more health to be stolen. The moment the thought entered his mind, Lukas promptly plunged the dagger into his palm, yelping in pain the moment he did so.

Lukas immediately regretted his actions as pain racked his whole arm. He thought he'd be able to take the pain after everything he'd been through, casually stabbing his own hand like it was no big deal. Well, it fucking hurt. It didn't help that he'd severed multiple tendons. He watched on with a grimace as his hand lost its color, turning a sickly gray and becoming ice cold.

Swearing, Lukas dismissed the conjured dagger and it evaporated like a shadow in sunlight, leaving a hole in his hand. Hissing in pain, Lukas pulled out a health potion and quickly downed it, the self-inflicted wound mostly healing.

After giving his hand some time to heal, Lukas went looking for a beast to test this new ability out on. It didn't take long for him to find an unwilling participant to experiment on. Suffice to say, Lukas was happy with the result.

It quickly became clear that the beasts weren't fans of the whole "sucking out life force" thing, but Lukas was. It meant fights didn't last as long while also inhibiting natural recovery. He also experimented with changing up what weapons he used in battle. It was a little rough at the moment, but Lukas saw the potential should he learn to conjure more weapons.

He even discovered how nice it was to be able to summon a new weapon after losing one. He found that out after getting an axe stuck in a beast before getting swatted away. He dismissed the axe, leaving a decent-sized hole for blood to pour out of, before conjuring a new blade.

There was one downside though, that being that Lukas could only conjure one weapon at a time. If he tried to conjure a second weapon the first would automatically break down. The limitation was a bit annoying, taking away the option of dual-wielding cool space daggers, but overall Lukas was happy with the ability. Especially since he was able to change the conjured weapon's shape without dismissing it first, it did cost double the summoning mana, but it was worth it in Lukas' eyes.

Finished with his testing and having met his goal of getting two new abilities, Lukas didn't dally any longer. He no longer went around looking for beasts and monsters to hunt, not needing to kill hordes of lower-ranked chaff anymore. Instead, Lukas headed straight southwest, nervous but eager to find civilization. He had no idea what exactly awaited him, but he wanted to find out, even if that meant dealing with the risks of being found out as an outworlder.

Taking in a nervous breath, Lukas looked at his status screen, wanting to see how far he'd come.

Lukas Hellstrand

Race: Human (Outworlder [unique]) - Level 26 Class 1 - Combat Alchemist - Level 27 Class 2 - Rogue of Night - Level 25 Health Points: 768/1100 Stamina: 845/1010 Mana: 874/1100

Stats Vitality: 110 Endurance: 101 Intelligence: 96 Wisdom: 110 Agility: 154 Perception: 100 Toughness: 96 Strength: 95 Willpower: 72 Free Points: 60

Titles: Prodigious Dimensional Traveler, Unkillable, True Heart of a Warrior, Indomitable Worm, Hierophant of the Risen Goddess, Unceasing.

Abilities:

Combat Alchemist Abilities: (Amber Eye of the Alchemist [lvl - 0]), (Domain of the Combat Alchemist [lvl - 0]).

Rogue of Night Abilities: (Lurker of the Shadows [lvl - 0]), (Star Forged Armory [lvl - 0]).

Race abilities: (Dimensional Traveler), (Tribute of the Fallen), (Steel gut), (Tongue of the Multiverse), (Stranger in a Strange Land).

Lukas stared at the 60 free points he had, noting that it was close to passing his lowest stat, willpower, which was kind of sad. Knowing that he was potentially about to jump into the lion's den, Lukas decided that now was the time to use the points. He wasn't sure if he should try to do an even spread, or if he should just dump it all into one stat, or even just split it between two.

He stared at his status screen for a long time in indecision, as if staring at an open fridge, trying to decide what he wanted to eat. He didn't feel any particular way about any of his stats, not feeling any one was particularly better than the others. Well, not enough to make him focus on it yet anyway. His main focus was on agility, his highest stat and probably the most important to his class if the +2 to agility each level was anything to go by. But that just meant he was already getting more than enough agility to begin with. Next was strength, because who didn't want to be stronger? It was the stereotypical superpower and Lukas couldn't shake that from his head. Then there was vitality, it was always nice to have more health, especially if he ever found himself in a sticky situation. Toughness was another good option, making it harder to truly hurt him, even if he had begun to realize it also made it slightly harder to heal.

And as hopeful and positive as he was about the future, Lukas couldn't help but feel like something would go wrong eventually, so in the end he just dumped half the points into strength and the other half into toughness. He was already fast with his agility, but what he really needed was to be stronger and harder to take down if things went south.

With that done, Lukas checked his new stats.

Stats Vitality: 110 Endurance: 101 Intelligence: 96 Wisdom: 110 Agility: 154 Perception: 100 Toughness: 134 Strength: 133 Willpower: 72 Free Points: 0

With a nod, Lukas continued to push through the forest, searching for any sign of the promised road.

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