James felt himself solidify as soon as he made the decision. Something deep within him tensed like a muscle and what could only be called his full strength pulled in towards him. His domain pushed in against his skin as if pressure cooking his power.
On all sides as far as James could see, the world suddenly began to feel weak and brittle. Richard was saying something as he exited their spaceship but his friend's voice echoed faintly as if spoken from a mile away.
The world was glass and tissue paper and James was a storm. There was a very real sensation coursing through him – not a phantom swirl but a full-body trembling. It was as if he were clenching that newfound muscle with his entire body. A whisper brushed across James’s mind. His body spoke to him, he was starving. Suffocated. Suppressed. The world about him could no longer support him. It hadn’t been able to for a while, but now he could see that.
All James had to do to break his surroundings was relax…and yet James still focused on getting Richard's attention before he left.
“I’m going on ahead. Meet up with me on the other side, okay?” James called his voice booming and cracking the hull of their ship.
Richard said something, then seemed to notice James could no longer hear him. He nodded, flashed a grin and gave James a double thumbs up.
This is fine.
James exhaled and reality cracked then fell away.
Physically James felt as if he were floating upwards while everything blurred and melted. His friends and the ground fell away the sky wrapping about him in a brilliant blue cocoon.
‘Magically’ the shift was a bit different. A faint resonance with his domain made James certain he was moving inwards in a direction that was closer to ‘sideways’ than ‘upwards’. The blue sky wrapping about in every direction became a blinding blur of light and sensation. James felt as if something deep at the center of his being was guiding him towards a place where he would belong. Just a bit further…just a bit more.
James blinked furiously removing the spots and blur in his eyes. By the time he noticed his surroundings once again he had stopped moving in every possible sense of the word.
James now found himself in a large, semi-natural cavern filled with growth. It was roughly a kilometer in diameter and half that in height like the inside of a giant squished sphere. Below him a small ring of crumbling grass lay on top of the rocky topsoil that surrounded them. It looked like a tiny chunk of the ‘lower realm’ had been brought here with him.
The entire cavern was filled with plant life and dense with humidity, faint wisps of mist clinging to dips in the ground and completely filling the ‘outer ring’ around them. Different sensations vied for James’s attention – it was hard to focus on the surroundings beyond a scan for danger when his body felt so strange.
There was a vague rush of positive exhilaration from ascending. It felt like he had just stepped off a roller coaster a rush of adrenaline coursed through his body from the experience. A slight inverse of the weak feeling from before pushed against him. While before ‘reality’ had felt like it could no longer support him, here it felt like nothing he did could harm what he saw.
James kicked a nearby bush and watched it spring back without a scratch.
It wasn’t all positive. Every single one of his senses felt like they were going haywire. His eyes felt strained and sensitive. Everything looked a bit too bright, too sharp and too vibrant with colour. Directionless light filled the entire cavern, banishing most shadows and giving everything an uncanny photoshopped twinge.
His bare feet felt how hard the ground was below him. His lungs burned with how pure tasting the air was – intoxicating in strength and yet full of multiple distinct flavours.
And yet all of that paled with a single sensation that felt off. It wasn’t a magical effect – or more accurately, if it were magical it was impossible to tell that it was. This was a law. A fact. An unbreakable truth.
Gravity.
What was up with gravity?
Of course there were plenty of other sensations. His skin prickled while exposed to the elements. His ears felt unplugged…but magically the most important change was in the force acting upon him.
James tried to pick himself up and this difference became even more apparent. Getting up off the ground was hard – just lifting his body felt like dead lifting an entire building. He had to strain to push himself just a few feet off the ground…and yet the higher James rose the easier it became. Instead of a barrier when James swapped between pushing off the ground and the space around them he smoothly flipped – space as strong a foothold as the ground had been. After rising up a good distance it felt like he were back in space instead of anywhere near land.
In front of him – slipping in moments after he arrived and promptly ignored a single blue box trailed along in his peripherals.
It begged him to read it following along until he acknowledged it…but James couldn’t bring himself to relax. This mystery was more important.
Something that previously felt unbreakable had been broken and remade. Something that had been as reliable as the ground was now different. Now strange.
What happened? Why does it feel like this?
James had a foolproof method of exploring forces that acted upon his body. He flipped his lens, abusing the layered understanding his transition gave him, then flipped it again as soon as the transition began to fade. Mana through a science lens. Aether from a magic perspective. The law of gravity and how it related to his power. How this external force affected him.
James began actively searching for an answer.
He ripped out chunks of ground and dropped them – measuring the fall with his AI and guestimating numbers as he did so. He dropped into a pushup and flipped into a handstand. He jumped and ran across the ground, feeling how his balance had been shifted and warped in a disorienting but positive manner.
Slowly the difference became…if not obvious at least a bit more apparent. The gravity James was used to had a well known formula.
F = G * m? * m? / r2 . The important part to note was that gravity was typically effected by the reciprocal square of distance. When calculating the acceleration acting upon yourself, masses cancelled and became a constant and typically at the distances measured on a planet, ‘r’ also varied by such a small amount you could fold it into a constant.
Here on the other hand the relation between distance and force was quite a bit higher.
Ignoring mass and the constants at the top of his formula, James could tease out part of it. Something simple like X/(R/8)^16 as a baseline change to distance was easy enough to map out…but easy didn’t mean correct even if it was close. There seemed to be a bit more to it than a much greater force at short distances because of how sharp the dropoff felt in comparison to the slower peak near the start…so the true formula for gravity had a curve closer to X/( (r/8-C?)?+C? )?…maybe? and all of this was assuming r was quite close.
At least…that’s the direction James would modify the distance part of the formula if he were measuring it off a planet. Something was warping his center of gravity by some value C1 – not enough to be truly weird but enough that the distance from the top of his body to the bottom of his body somehow didn’t make him top heavy. This lower center of gravity improved his balance even if it messed with every single one of his instincts.
A second base amount of force C2 seemed to fill the curve in the in-between distances. …and if you thought about it for any amount of time, there was an infinite amount of mass in all directions. That meant the center of gravity ‘should’ be half of infinity out and nearly cancelled out by the gravity from the ‘roof’ and because it wasn’t a sphere it shouldn’t be pinpointing into a easy downwards direction. It felt like the center of gravity was warped to be much closer…
James moved around for a bit longer before landing on the simple truth. Yeah the law of gravity is definitely more involved now it seems to be as reliable as ever as soon as I stop worrying about it.
It almost had a texture to it. What had been a flat plane was now a rocky hill.
Without the math, what this meant for James was there was a band of semi constant gravity very very vaguely close to ‘earth’ gravity for about a meter to two meters above the ground – and that didn’t somehow make him top light despite the top half of his body being in a less strong band. There was a tiny spike of stronger gravity above this band and a rapidly decreasing zone for quite a few meters above that. And then by the time James was 100 meters off the ground he was effectively weightless… although nope. He still felt there was an incredibly small tug the whole time preventing the middle of the cavern from just permanently filling with dust and debris…or was it actually a tug?
James flew about the inside of the cavern while basking in the kinetic forces acting upon his body. It seemed almost as if there was a second law in place. A repulsion instead of an attraction – centered upon the exact center of the ‘void’ in space. It was as if the ‘missing’ mass in the pocket of earth created a ‘negative’ gravity that pushed instead of pulled…and maybe that second negative gravity would become stronger if the void became bigger?
This change also meant the cavern that James was in did not have what he would consider a roof.
If James flew up to the ‘top’ of the cavern it would pull him in until he was standing on it. Then his previous position became ‘up’. He actually didn’t need to ‘fly’ – his base stats meant he could jump from the top to the bottom in a surprisingly fun motion. Kinetic manipulation did help him land on his feet every time, but with some practice he could do some flips and still land feet first even if he suppressed his aether or mana.
…The cavern he was in was beginning to feel quite a bit smaller than it did when he appeared. A kilometer? What was that when seen through the lens of a single leap.
James looked around the cavern for a few moments longer trying to see if there was any creatures or dangers beside him. There was a relatively large but shallow pool of water on one side. Plenty of trees, bushes, vines, mushrooms, stalks of fibrous but unrecognizable plant life…and that was it. The cavern was incredibly still – a few tufts of dirt and dust that James had kicked up with his jumps floated through the air slowly drifting towards the ground once again…but other than that it was empty.
Finally James found a comfortable spot to float in the very middle of the chamber and read his notification.
Welcome to the transition.
This place is designed to help you prepare and adapt to the following area, as well as providing a place for you to remake yourself by enhancing any magic you might use to do so. It may be painful or difficult, but the process is as safe as possible and not undertaking it may be immediately fatal. Do not ignore this warning lightly, there is a potential for instant death if you deal with the same transition without aid. This space converts all instant death into a drawn out damage that may be fought and adapted to or healed from. With a minimal amount of effort and common sense, it should be impossible to die within the transition.
By using this space, you consent to your magic being recorded and replicated in part for future ascendants. In exchange, all that have come before will help you in turn and otherwise free boons are provided for your convenience.
A detailed TOS may be generated upon request as well as partial disclaimers for any actions taken.
As you are one of the first to ascend, additional help will be provided in the form of customizable minor requests. Three requests remain.
This space is primed to help provide information when you check your status.
An overview is shown below.
Your current situation.
Rank 3++
Immortality standing:
Age protection: Minimal passive enhancement through rank.
- Do you wish to accept a standard form of age enhancement?
Physical Violence protection: Sufficient
Lifesaving skill: Precognition danger sense + Absolute reflective barrier.
Note: As this is an active defense, it is more brittle than passive alternatives. Certain situations may break your protection and rare forms or vectors of damage may bypass you completely.
Mental Violence protection: Lacking
Will: High. Stat barrier: Low. Dedicated magical defense: non-existent. Domain adaptability: Variable and inconsistent as measured.
Note. While the lower realm has heavy restrictions on mental magic, the higher realm has no such protection as a default. Please stick to locations with mental protection to continue enjoying your current safety.
Rank 1-3 Personal Boon/foundation/talent.
Monster Kiln of Combat Eater (mutated)
Description: Gain monstrous stats from consuming creatures with higher stats than your own, as well as certain attacks with strong energies. Gain concepts and skill seeds or improvements based on foreign energies such as certain attacks or consumed monsters. Through the use of restrictions and flipping between aether and mana lenses, your own abilities may be designated as foreign.
-Allows self-sufficient growth: True.
System lock: True.
Note: The system is currently protecting this talent. This lock prevents it from weakening in both the short and long term, but also limits its ability to change and thus potentially improve. If you value safety, this limit is a guarantee. If you are willing to shoulder greater risk and increase your self reliance, this external lock may be removed.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Rank 4-6 Authoritative Boon/Mantle/edict.
- Absolute of combined mana and aether.
Description: Nothing can stop you from mixing two incompatible fields. Your existence is proof that the fields may be mixed, and by following your rule, this law may be enforced upon all you influence.
No individual currently has a conflicting mantle or goal that might contest your own, and your mantle is fully formed, so no additional trials will be generated.
Permissibility: High. Your mantle is compatible with the vast majority of reachable spaces. It is incompatible with any settled world that has banished its flip side and may react negatively while interacting with reflections of those spaces depending on how much weight they have. If these spaces are unprotected and wild, your existence may damage them. If these spaces are protected and reinforced, they will prevent your entry with an absolute level of rejection. To increase your compatibility you may momentarily suppress your guarantee – only use magic in mana spaces or only use aether in scientific spaces with a self imposed unbreakable restriction.
Your mantle may also be used as an anchor for a space, greatly improving its reach and effect on others at the cost of decreasing your own attachment and control over it. Your mantle may also act as a source and key for space bound domains such as faith based divinity and a ruler’s decree.
James stared at the notification the words vanishing as soon as he finally acknowledged them.
Was this something the system had done? Was it something Maddy had done? James didn’t remember anyone mentioning this, but maybe he hadn’t been paying as much attention as he thought he was?
…Wasn’t there supposed to be a class system as well? Rolled out around the same time as they bundled it into this? Had that been successful or not and how did it work? James knew a lot more about that setup – he even knew that he was supposed to be one of the first to interact with it in a sort of beta testing…
“Maddy are you there?” James called out to no response.
“Gain Class. Accept Class.” James tried but either Maddy had failed, or he was going about this in the wrong way…did he have to move his mana about in a certain way or go through a trial to gain access?
Should he ignore that for now? James began floating about the space marveling at how easy it was to move. What…should he be doing exactly?
James spotted a giant pitcher flower with what looked like a dozen green fruits contained within its petals. Floating down James felt a massive amount of strain as soon as he entered the low band of quality gravity. He felt beads of sweat drop off him as he floated close and struggled to yank a single fruit off the stalk.
Retreating upwards as soon as he was able to claim a prize James dug his fingers past skin and into juicy pulp. With a twist he ripped the fruit in two then brought one of the halves up near his eyes.
Inside, glistening slightly with liquid was a clear meaty sort of flesh. It reminded James of some colourless cross between an orange and a pomegranate.
Not seeing any harm in trying, James took a small bite, chewing and swallowing a single attempt. He then closed his eyes and focused inwards as the pulp slowly dropped through to his stomach. The fruit itself was sweet and had a great texture…but no discernable taste beyond that. Might as well have been pulpy sugar water as far as his pallet was concerned. As far as his stomach was…Very quickly James’s enhanced digestion began giving him a familiar burn. Incredibly faint lines of altered healing energy filled James’s veins, but not enough to be noticeable.
This fruit was toxic but not poisonous. It was like most monster meat – the vast majority of it was different enough in chemical makeup to be inedible for base humans. Most monster meat still fine as long as you had some digestion stats. As long as it wasn’t actively trying to be poisonous you didn’t even need a lot of stats to render most monster meat safe…although you needed a more significant amount if you were trying to gain energy from it.
This food was a bit more toxic than normal…almost an acid by old world standards and yet despite that it didn’t seem to be actively trying to be poisonous. No aether focused on void or poison. It even had a incredibly minor level of healing to it that should offset most of the damage it might do to someone without James’s stats.
…
Didn’t the system notification mention this being hard? Or painful? When did that start?
James finished eating the fruit, dropped the rind and raided the flower for a few more.
Floating up and down into the difficult area pushed his skill in a new way but…what else was James supposed to do? He felt directionless. James tried looking in at the part of his mantle that might connect to R…but for the first time that connection seemed to be completely gone.
No easy hint from that direction.
Looking about, James almost absentmindedly queried his AI for some progress than noticed something.
The space around seemed to be projecting information his AI could pick up in a loop. Directing it to start reading this information, James soon locked into a similar readout to his previous notification along with some extra fields and stats.
That was a bit better. If James formatted it a bit, he had what looked like a Todo list.
This space was currently 99% aligned with the lower realm and 1% with the upper realm whatever ‘alignment’ meant. Gravity was quite a bit more than 1% different so…it was probably talking about something else?
A notice mentioned this ‘alignment’ would drop roughly a percentage every hour for the next 33 hours and then pause at 66% until he adapted or forced it to continue somehow.
…presumably it would slowly drop to 33% and then pause there for a while as well? Maybe a third and final drop to 0% considering how much the system liked threes?
So, entry one on his Todo list. Survive 33 hours while it just ticks away. Easy enough, could he speed it up till it started pushing him?
Todo list entry two was the immortal checklist that seemed to be some baseline the system was recommending he reach before entering the higher realm. James had enough physical defense with his broken reflective barrier. He had an insufficient mental defense. He had insufficient age defense.
Mental defense felt like a must, but how did one even gain that sort of thing? How was he supposed to have achieved it without being exposed to the problem?
And as for age defense…should he accept the system offered solution? Try and figure it out himself? James spun around in the air staring at his fingers as he thought…it hadn’t been a priority. Before the system, before his new life, James was on the cusp of being suicidal. Now…well immortality had never seemed to cross his mind. He had always been focusing on the present in one way or another. Now that it was mentioned he couldn’t help but consider it.
Now that he was alone with his thoughts and offered the option…well who wanted to die of old age? James wouldn’t say he was afraid of death. He wasn’t a coward afraid of danger… but growing old and weak? That sounded awful. James would rather die to a monster – go out on his own terms – than slowly fall apart.
Was this something he could achieve on his own? Magic wise…he didn’t have a single concept aligned with extending his age.
Maybe because it had never been a goal…but that didn’t change the fact that nothing about his magic or domain felt like it would help. He didn’t have a life affinity…and he cared more about his stats than he did about gaining a new affinity now even if life mana was tied with kinetic mana for warrior utility.
Maybe soul power or speed? He could give those up considering he didn’t know how much they were affecting him…but James disliked that idea without fully knowing why.
If he were to achieve this on his own, he had much better luck trying to use science… but where would he even begin? This felt like a decision important enough he should sit on it…so James set up a reminder to poke him around when the space reached 66%.
James read through the rest of the information he had received once again.
The only other part that popped out immediately what the so called system lock on his ‘talent’. His foundation that had started as a specialized body boon at tier 1 and had grown into its current form after a trial between zones…
Did James want to jailbreak it? His ‘talent’ was a deep part of him. A choice that filled his entire body – directed most of his stats. Lay as a bedrock for his magic and influenced every single one of his skills…
James kind of wanted to jailbreak it. This was his power. His abilities. His magic. If the system was currently holding part of that together…was it really his? He had had to break the system skill to fully claim it as his own…wasn’t this the same? Training wheels he should remove now that he had strength?
Besides, as fundamental of a part of him as this foundation was…it also ‘felt’ sort of weak? He had eaten hundreds of monsters and gained almost a hundred stats from that, along with some hard to measure but noticeable conceptual ‘strength’…but then again, at the end of the day that was ‘only’ a hundred stats out of his 1500 or so. Even if you considered many of these stats felt stronger than regular ones and even if you ignored that achievements were vastly easier to get by ‘first time’ users…well it still felt lacking.
James read through a disclaimer for the option then requested the lock get removed. This was a decision he didn’t care about sitting on.
So, system checklist. Survive and passively adapt. Reach minimum baseline on the immortal checklist.
Optional third check was to ‘remake’ himself with an easier transformation.
He had three minor boons. What they meant were unclear but they were supposed to help make up for the fact that he didn’t have past ascenders to rely on. He could give each checkmark a boon, but James felt like he could survive just fine alone. He could also save them until he had a problem they could fix...but James knew himself. He knew if he saved the boon for later there was a good chance he wouldn't even use it. Better to plan them out now than save them for never.
Assuming James wanted to change his body in some way…how would he go about changing himself?
…As James had grown and gained stats, his body had changed. His heart no longer beat. His blood swirled about constantly with his affinity instead of an organ. His blood itself was black – an energy dense compound.
But that had just sort of happened.
It wasn’t something James had decided. Nothing he had done purposefully…just a natural mutation. There was probably some gains to be made by actively working on it. He might be able to use restrictions to help focus on the areas that needed the most work. Kind of like picking exercises for little used muscles.
Could he modify himself by moving those pathways about? Could he improve them somehow? The most convenient solution would be some sort of x-ray machine that let him see exactly what he was changing. Maybe he could use a boon to create one of those instead of working off of feel…but James didn’t know what he needed to change to improve what he had. What if he got an x-ray and found it worse than his current feeling about? With his AI and mana sense he could get pretty close.
If James had to pick any machine that would help him the most with any purposeful changes, it would be a machine that help him build other machines…
“Can I use a boon to create a really good quality 3D printer? Maybe one with lots of different materials or one that can process different materials into different forms?” James asked.
A moment later a blue box appeared. James considered it for a moment than accepted.
This was a good start. Something to help with active changes. Natural changes happened when James pushed himself.
Should he ask for a gym? A gym that could push his current body?
…no, simple weights or shapes James could 3D print. What would truly help him was opponents.
“Can my second wish be used to create opponents I can face? Monsters that target my weak spots maybe? A nest I can control? A way I can experience mental magic safely without getting permanently controlled or damaged by it? Meat I can eat?”
This time James noticed a quite a lot of activity though the areas AI bands.
A similar blue box appeared for him to accept, but this time he could pull up some extra information from the room. It seemed to request some confirmations first – checking to see if he knew what essence was among other questions before giving him a detailed explanation.
[Monsters should already naturally form from any essence you generate. This random process can be made explicit and general direction given towards it. If you want full safety and control over the process minor boons are not enough, you would need all 3 minor boons and one has already been spent. You could spend both of the remaining boons and undertake an additional trial to perfectly achieve your wish. Otherwise a single boon can be used towards influencing opponents and safety can be aided by the space you are in.]
James stared at the response then sighed and nodded.
What use was pushing himself if there wasn’t a tiny bit of danger?
James had one boon remaining. His previous two wishes seemed like they should be enough help…should he try using his final boon to boost the safety? Improve whatever existing protection there was?
Suddenly James had an idea.
“Can I use a boon to activate a class?” James asked. In response a blue box appeared followed by a AI disclaimer about the costs.
[Are you willing to sacrifice a single eye to act as a base?]
…
Straight to body sacrifice huh. What the fuck Maddy. Was this because of her eye theme?
James stared at the cost for several silent minutes considering it. Part of him hated the idea of permanent loss…and that was despite the fact he frequently restricted his sight fighting blind for the achievements. He didn’t need a class. This wasn’t a decision he was forced into…But his friends had put so much into this. James' acceptance of a class in this moment could very well make or break the entire plan.
How bad was losing a single eye?
James closed one eye.
…everything looked the same. Theoretically his depth perception had taken a hit but not in a way that was noticeable.
James flew over to the lake of water drifting downwards to stare at his reflection. He grew closer and closer stopping a foot or two above the water with a screaming skill. James's entire body still shook with exertion – the water below was also shaking as he forced aether into it from his flight. James forcefully held his head still then forcefully stilled the water directly in front of his face.
So much work just to gain a mirror…James ignored the sensible option of moving to shore and resting on the ground.
Staring down at himself he closed his left eye.
…One eye kind of looks cool?
James swapped eyes a few times then nodded.
He could live with this. If the cost had been both eyes or one of his limbs it would have been a hard no but a single eye?
…he could live with this decision. It helped that he liked how the change looked.
James accepted his 3rd and final boon then watched in his reflection for something to happen.
First a single drop of water jumped out at him, impacting his eye with a jerk.
James hadn’t noticed a danger – no reflex let him pulse his barrier and so the drop hit his eye unhindered.
James jerked back in surprise one of his fingers passing through the water as he flailed upwards in shock.
This was not water.
The very first act the liquid did was kill his nerves, spreading as fast as it could through an area. He lost sensation in his eye at the same moment he stopped being able to feel his finger. The second thing the liquid did was start melting.
This wasn’t a minor old world acid. This was an aether based acid. Void based and able to melt through steel beams with dedicated dissolution.
On his finger the liquid had nearly instantly permeated his flesh before wrecking havoc. James bones and flesh were partially liquified to the point his finger flopped backwards his defensive skin acting like a sack.
The third and final action the liquid did was start healing as slowly as possible.
James held his finger in place before staring down at his reflection.
For his finger the loop was simple. A passive melt and heal.
For his eye on the other hand, incredibly detailed runes covered his flesh. The liquid seemed to facilitate a transformation the remains of his Iris now glowing bright purple swirling with liquid light like a sparkly lava lamp.
It reminded James of Maddy. Was this one of her eyes? Was this her? Why wasn’t she speaking to him?
The liquid reminded him of her as well – at least of the time she had killed a calamity. Healing mana to bypass defenses before shifting to damage.
…what had happened to her?
…
The last thing James was expecting was to regain the use of the eye he had just sacrificed.
Slowly but surely as it healed, vision began returning to him in blurry black and white. Staring down at his reflection, James now had an incredibly solid case of heterochromia.
If he were honest with himself it looked good.
His new eye slowly but surely tried to connect to his body and James body kept rejecting it. Finally James actively began cycling lines of aether towards it, fighting to accept it. It very much wanted an aether ‘slot’ to connect it like his AI had – in general the sensation he was gaining was the closest to connecting an AI that he had ever achieved…but James didn’t have discrete slots in his body. It helped to swap lenses but at the end of the day all he really needed was a continuous flow of power dedicated to this and nothing else.
Soon his class eye came online, various sensations slowly blooming as the organ sent feelers deeper into his body searching for his brain. Existing nerves were hijacked and new ones were laid.
The first sensation he gained was of a new pool. James had to feed his eye mana or aether and then let it sit and convert but bit by bit he gained a configurable bar or vague sensation of how much ‘class mana’ he now had access to.
The second sensation he gained was almost that of a new limb. One he could do nothing more than twitch at the moment, rough dashes of class mana ripping through the air with a hum before fading as he stopped holding them. It felt similar to James control over the mana in his body and yet isolated somehow. Like a hand covered in thick gloves. Maybe someday it would feel like a part of him but right now the limb was foreign. Nothing more than a lump of ‘other’.
The third sensation he gained was one close to a limited AI but laid out in a completely different way.
As far as devices went, it felt like opening a mac book for the first time after only using windows.
There was settings and controls for his eye itself – a dial to add or remove colour from its view or blur the surroundings to remove distractions. A notification for a tutorial he could open. Empty stats and collections he could fill. Places tools might appear if they were available. Places goals might appear – links for spells like open sockets for wires to be placed.
There was a lot of empty information – James was overwhelmed by the amount of windows and buttons before he started realizing how much of it was empty or not implemented.
As soon as most of those controls were hidden or minimized, all that really remained was his tutorial.
[Draw this shape to gain an explorer class. Draw this shape to gain a founder class. Your choice is not permanent, but changing classes takes at least 3 hours to the power of your class rank to complete and class progress or settings may be lost depending on its state. For an in depth description of these two base classes and your statues in them, feel free to look at their descriptions in your class library.]
…
At least now James had a goal?