As the Great Worm approaches, Sera attempts to argue but ultimately is left with no choice when all of us back away from the monster, leaving her to face it alone. The look on her face as she faces the creature telling a whole story by itself.

  Yeah, that thing is gross to look at… As I think idly to myself, Sera begins her spartan training regiment and quickly starts using her skills to stem the worm’s charge.

  Using a mental magic skill, which I believe she called [Thought Disruption], Sera diverts the Great Worm's trajectory before using another skill to force it to charge straight into a tree; The thick and sturdy edifice of wood not even shaking from the impact. Dirt and spit fly everywhere as the rabid creature concusses itself in its charge.

  Not letting the opening she made go to waste, Sera pulls out a knife from her hip, coating the mithril blade in mental mana before charging forwards. Thick purple and white energy drips off the blade like venom as she plunges the weapon into the monster’s hide.

  Screech!

  The creature flails about violently as the mental poison seeps in through the wound. “Interesting use of mental magic there, using it as a poison coating is clever.” From a good distance away, but close enough to interfere should something go wrong, I begin discussing her fighting style with the rest of the group. We begin to throw around ideas and suggestions as Sera fights for her life.

  “Stop commentating on my fight you meanies!” Sera, clearly upset with the peanut gallery, puts in even more effort into the fight, slamming down another skill on the worm. Though, I suppose we should be calling them spells now. Sera’s latest spell immediately weakens the monster’s mental defenses, which allows the mind venom to wreak havoc inside the creature’s brain.

  Eventually, after much thrashing and many annoying screeches, the worm stops its rampage and collapses to the ground dead.

  I shiver a bit at the sight.

  “Sheesh, mental magic is scary.”

  My exclamation is met with enthusiastic nods from the rest of the group.

  Upon hearing us, Sera blushes and walks over with an awkward smile on her face. One which quickly morphs into a frown as she remembers that we abandoned her to fight the thing alone.

  “Hmph, every magic is scary if used by the wrong person. Now, how do I use this thing?” Pointing at the crystal and wooden ring on her finger, Sera grumpily asks for instruction on how to use the Anti-System Ring.

  I had explained briefly to everyone back when I passed them out, but the rings are meant to be able to replace the process of leveling up now that they are no longer connected to The System. After killing a creature by yourself, something that improves the quality of the transfer due to tainting the kill with your own mana, the first step is to carve out the creature’s Mana Core.

  Grumbling even more, Sera starts to dig her blade into the worm’s body. It takes a few minutes as I have to scan the creature’s body to get an idea of where the core is and highlight it for Sera to remove, but eventually she gets the core in hand.

  “Next, you need to place your ring to the core and push a bit of your mana into it.” Listening to my instructions, Sera holds up her blood covered hand and feeds her mana into the ring that is handling the fist sized core. The ring shines brightly for a moment before returning to its natural state.

  After giving her the go ahead, the mental mage places the core on the ground and starts to shake her hand, only to suddenly get a distressed look on her face. “Oh no.” Sera mutters. Staring down at her bloody hand, I realize the issue she is having quite quickly.

  “Ah, yeah… I have not been able to recreate The System’s [Clean] skill… Sorry. I will get you some water real quick.” Reaching into my storage space I pull out one of the water condensers and palace it in front of Sera. This small metal contraption which looks mostly like a metal stand with a faucet attached is an enchanted tool that is common among those whose cores did not develop enough for The System to allocate resources to. It uses air and water runes to pull moisture from the air and create a stream of water to wash up with.

  After cleaning up and complaining about how she does not know how she is meant to live without that incredibly useful skill anymore, Sera places her hand against her own neck. Her ring begins to glow again and Sera winces at the mild headache that accompanies the transfer. “Ouch, that is not fun.”

  “Yeah… this is a method I had to develop myself for the rings to function properly.” Sighing, I place my hand on her shoulder while shaking my head. “The way I learned to do it hurts many times worse, though it transfers far more power so I was able to advance quicker.”

  Perking up at the mention of advancing quicker, Agera strolls over and pokes his silver streaked head into the conversation. “How much worse are we talking?”

  I give him a pointed glare in response. “Don’t even think about it, I later learned that the method I use has a high chance of outright killing you or just turning you into a vegetable if you are not compatible with the technique.”

  “Neeeevermind then, I will stick with the ring.” Quickly making an about face, Agera leaves for his horse once more.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  We all begin idly chatting as we move to get on our horses when I notice Randall still looking over the worm with a concerned look on his stony face. “Yo, what is going on Randall?”

  He turns to look at me and then looks back at the worm before answering. “That monster… it seemed, I don’t know, more aggressive than normal.” Clearly unsure of whether to speak up, the paladin seems to hedge his opinion quite a bit.

  “Well, I have never encountered one myself so I would not know the normal aggression levels. Was it that noticeable?”

  “Great Worms are usually far more docile in my experience. That one… it was rather feral.”

  “Shit. I can only really make one guess, but I doubt I am wrong.”

  Randall and I adopt the same grim look on our faces as Agera speaks what we had been avoiding saying.

  “The System is making the monsters more aggressive.”

  We all look at each other before bringing our guards up a lot higher than they had been. That stupid System Quest is going to cause so many problems. I start to complain when Agera makes a final point I had not even considered.

  “I wonder if The System will blame this on us as a way to stir up even more hate?”

  Groaning in response, I simply shrug and move to get back on my horse. Then a new and annoyingly familiar screech echoes out across the forest.

  …

  “Fucking monkeys.”

  Shadows start to dart between the treetops as waves upon waves of sound magic crash down upon us. I quickly send out a blast of my specialized radar and find far more red dots than I was expecting. Dozens, no hundreds of Shoulad Monkeys spread out across the forest, all focused on our location.

  Quickly, I toss out dozens of Golem Cores. The tiny crystals impacting the ground and the trees as they wrench the materials from their surroundings and take the shape of their enemy. My monkeys are a little different this time though, with extremely sharp claws in place of any weapon to give them more maneuverability.

  Screeeee!

  All at once, the sound attacks increase in strength as the monkeys reach our position. They have no effect on me with my unique body and much higher Class, but the same can’t be said for Sera. Being the only Class 1 among us she is immediately brought to her knees with blood leaking from her ears while she clutches her head.

  “Alice, heal up Sera and protect her! The rest of us will go and thin the herd and stop this stupid screeching.” Shouting out orders I realize a bit late that the sound attacks are completely drawing out my voice and that no one can hear me. Deciding to just forgo speaking, I create text boxes in front of everyone’s eyes with the same instructions.

  The whole team, aside from Alice, react with shock at the unique form of communication. Whether that is because it looks similar to the universe’s Title messages or not is something I don’t know and don’t care enough to ask about. It takes a few moments for them to register everything before they all nod at me and get to work.

  [Sera, try and work on using your magic to create a mental shield against the attacks.]

  Passing out another order directly to the girl on the ground, I don’t get a nod back but I can see her mana start to churn underneath the surface so I take that as confirmation that she got the message. It is probably taking everything she has to stay conscious under this assault.

  While Sera tries to develop a new spell like I taught her, my golems move out and begin hopping through the trees while slaughtering monkeys along the way; Their wooden bodies unaffected by sound magic in the first place.

  As more monkeys die, the screeches become louder and more visceral, the feral hate in the monkey’s eyes quickly confirming Randall’s theory for me. They are acting more aggressive, a lot more so.

  Corpses continue to fall from the trees as I blind the monkeys, Agera cuts them to ribbons with his silver threads, and Randall forms a protective wall around Sera and Alice. Nearly half an hour of slaughter later there are only a dozen or so monkeys still alive. However, despite all their companions dying, they are still attacking with the same endless hate as before.

  “Sera, can you move?” Alice, finally able to be heard over the reduced screeching, pats Sera on the back as the young mage stands up.

  “Y-Yes. I think I managed to block out the effect of the sound with my mana.” Still unsteady on her feet, Sera leans on Alice for support while I run up to the both of them.

  “Good, now you can get in some more combat practice!”

  And the light in her eyes dies just a little.

  It takes some time, but Sera manages to kill off the rest of the monkeys and we go about making sure everyone gets a cut of the spoils.

  “Ugh, my head hurts… I really wish I knew what level I was. It would make the pain a lot more bearable.” Sera clutches her head after she collapses to the ground, having used her ring several times to steal the power from the monkeys she killed.

  Hmm, I guess seeing ‘numbers go up’ is really important for people. I guess I can add that feature to the rings.

  Walking over to her I weave a bit of light magic and place it in her ring. I technically could have done that remotely, but it is for the best that I pretend I have to mess with the rings directly. I can’t have people fearing my rings too soon.

  Plink!

  As the imaginary sound effect I make up in my head goes off, a small window appears in front of Sera’s eyes. “Woah! I am already level 100!?” Jumping up and immediately forgetting about the pain she was just complaining about, Sera looks over at me like an excited puppy.

  “Yep, now we just need to make you a catalyst and you can reach Class 2!”

  “I-Is that going to hurt too?” Sera holds her hand to the back of her neck as the persistent pain from today’s work still lingers.

  The System’s method was generally painless for leveling up, but that was only because it used mental magic to hide the pain from the user. And sadly, I don’t know the runes to recreate that effect in my rings yet…. As I explain this to Sera, I can see her face fall and the light once again leave her eyes.

  Looking over, I see Agera a bit pale in the face as well; No doubt recalling that ascension hurt even with The System in place, and that, since his next ascension involves evolution, it is going to be far from pleasant.