I had been keeping it constrained deep inside of me, but I was longing for freedom. I had been steadily repressing it with the duty of leveling up as quickly as possible, but I had reached the breaking point. I was technically standing at a crossroad of decisions, but I had already chosen my path long ago.
... If my life turns out to end at the hand of Blake, so be it then. I'm going to give it my all to kill that fucking bastard, even if it ends up killing me as well. He is going to pay for all the crimes he committed, no matter if he wants to or not. His [Hero] class be damned, the world doesn't need a 'Hero' like him. If anything, it should have been me to begin with. Him getting a class like that while I got the worst-grade class among all of us was just another 'fuck you' from the world, as if I hadn't already taken enough up to that point.
Even if the class itself was invaluable in my survival of the magma and the following time with neither food nor water, it wasn't directly made for combat, and I paid dearly for that, even if the strong survival focus of it was the only reason I ever even survived for so goddamn long in these shitty caves.
Now what, though? This invasion is different. Blake was chosen as the original [Hero] to defend this invasion, but he wasn't chosen as the [Sentinel], that was me and not him. Even if I didn't like being forced to take the responsibility for preventing the potential destruction of this world, I couldn't argue with the suitability of my skillset for that exact task.
... I apologize for my outburst, but I really needed to get that off my chest. While Blake has indeed caused me incredible amounts of pain and sorrow throughout my life, maybe that mental fortitude was inadvertently the only thing that allowed me to survive up to here. If I hadn't already been used to pain as much as I was, I would have died the very day he caused me to fall down deep into the Abyssal Descent along with that poor behemoth of a spider that almost maced my head in with one of its legs during our fall.
Almost makes me laugh a bit in hindsight, but it really wasn't that funny in the moment it happened. Enough words, though, I needed to get on with my tier-up now. With just a slight amount of hesitation, I flexed my mind and willed the dreaded option window into existence.
[Class evolutions for: T2 Broken Star (Epic+)
T3 | Planewalker (Epic+)
T3 | Distant Star (Epic+)
T3 | Planar Architect* (Legendary)
T3 | Singularity* (Legendary+)
T3 | Celestial of the Sun* (Legendary+)
* Potentially includes change of race**. Might involve minor or major bodily alterations. Outwardly changes of appearance are usually minimal. This can not be influenced in any way.
** Responsibility for facilitating racial changes only falls marginally under the system. Provided information may be inaccurate or erroneous.]
Okay, quite a lot to take in here. I guess the worry of the [Leviathan] class that I was able to choose when ascending to tier two changing my body in ways I didn't want was basically unfounded.
As it seems to apparently be the case, the system is unusually forthcoming when it comes to things like this. Even for the skill [Broken Celestial Physiology], it gave me that list of detailed changes that was longer than a damned dictionary.
While I didn't particularly want to change my race, being human was fine in my books after all, I didn't have much of a choice here unless I picked one of the two epic options. But who would in all honesty not pick one of the legendary classes here?
I hadn't done so back in the last tier up, but that was mostly because the one legendary class there was way too weird and didn't represent me the way that [Broken Star] did. I still thought that this philosophy was highly important when it came to choosing classes. I didn't know how other people thought about it, but just choosing the bottom-most class as the one with the highest rarity was not something I wanted to resort to. If the last option was always the best, there wouldn't be a need to give people the choice, right?
Epics are still out, though. Since I didn't want to waste too much time on the classes I wouldn't choose anyway, I skipped using [Identify] on the two epic options I had available. [Planewalker] sounded pretty boring anyway, I had done so much 'planewalking' in the recent times that I did not need a class centered around that very concept.
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As for [Distant Star], it seemed like the direct equivalent of [Broken Sky] just in tier three, almost like a successor or something like that. While the class had certainly been very good, I did not plan on choosing the exact same class again for tier three. Even the necessity of having my race changed with the legendary options was not enough to make me consider either of them here.
Since I definitely wanted one of the legendary options this time, the three classes left in the race were [Planar Architect], [Singularity], and [Celestial of the Sun].
For the sake of continuity, let's start with [Planar Architect]. Well, the name itself already made me question how suited that class was for my plans for the immediate future, but maybe it was just slightly misleading. Just because it has 'architecture' in its name doesn't automatically mean its not combat focused, right?
...Wait, did [Identify] even work on these? I couldn't exactly remember if I even tried it the last time, but I didn't remember reading vague descriptions about the classes I had available back then. While I might have forgotten doing so for the less important ones, there was no way I wouldn't remember looking at the probably juice flavor text of [Omen of Calamity], right?
I honestly think I decided purely based on names and affinities back then, though affinities have always played way less of a crucial role than I expected. Maybe they're working their magic in the background of things, but they certainly don't play a major active role in combat. [Planar Architect] had
[Planar Architect] (Legendary)
You have glimpsed beyond the surface and peered into the very foundation of the world you reside in. Of creativity and patience, an apprenticeship in the foundation of everything there has ever been.
Venture forth through the fabric of the world, and embark on a journey of weaving the strings that make up the architecture of mortal planes. No longer bound by the laws that have governed, you have been freed from the chains.
The end of a journey or just the very start? From here on out, the first of your kind, deign yourself an architect of a never-established form of art.
Race changed to Architect.
Permanently increased level of Authority.
Grants: [Greater Fire Affinity], [Greater Realm Affinity]
...That sounded powerful. Not like a tier three class, isn't this the semantic equivalent of starting to ascend to godhood? If a tier three class like this one can already start interfering with the fabric of reality, what's left for tier four and tier five? Constructing new 'planes', creating new realms and, crafting new worlds?
Also, the first of my kind? Does that mean that there aren't any other people out there that can play with the weird strings I keep seeing when using [Broken Sky]? Or has the system simply never encountered anyone who could? Maybe only people born through the system count for this? If anything, the system itself seems pretty much like the exact kind of thing I'd imagine could be crafted with a class of this kind, though probably only with an even better class at the peak of tier four or tier five.
The bigger questions were different, though. Did I actually want this class? Did it in any way help me work towards my goals? How did an 'architect' fight? It probably had some combat capability, at least because it's pretty much impossible to lose anything you could do previously through an evolution, but it didn't particularly sound like it had much destructive potential.
Well, if you could construct or manipulate the fabric of reality with it, I'm pretty sure you could also destroy it to some degree. I highly doubted that that was very healthy for the world, though, so it was very far from a sustainable combat strategy.
The class probably had insanely high potential for the future in return for actually being a very high-grade but somewhat mediocre class. While it would probably be a smart pick for someone with very long-term plans, that was not exactly what I needed right now.
The 'increased authority' was also something to think about. I had already partially gotten something similar through my randomly acquired title [Sentinel of the Realm], which also mentioned authority and even gave some hints about its immediate effects. They were mostly related to manipulation of space and the fabric of reality, which fit this use case perfectly.
While I wouldn't immediately jump at this class as my primary choice, I concluded it to be at least a viable option if both of the other ones unexpectedly turn out to somehow sound worse. Even if it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, it was still probably a fun class to have.
Moving on, though, I turned to the second of the three legendary options I had available. From the name alone, this one absolutely sounded like the most powerful class on there, at least destructively speaking.
[Singularity] (Legendary+)
The end of all and a beginning anew. A fate changed to a disorderly tune. Awakened in spite of tales dreaded by light, a new dawn gives way to the dusk of fright. In fear of an end too dark it seems, a hole of black forms in the heart of dreams.
On a path that didn't exist, a new way hath formed, for a light only shone at extremes of dark in heartly warmth. To a new chapter in the tales of grim, a legend born under rock and endless pain, no longer bound to exist within a realmful plane.
Singular yet plural in mind, the infinities converge into a single bind. A ballad of timeless power when sung by none, its existence a paradox that will already have forthcome.
Race changed to Realmless.
Soul no longer draws mana from current plane of existence.
Soul remains stable when unbound and sustains itself through [unknown].
(Warning: Results of Simulation of current model of soul for this evolution were neither always deterministic nor finite. Direct and transitive effects could not be further determined. This does very likely not implicate any sort of immortality in the event of death.
Records show a total of 0 evolutions under similar conditions, of which 0 were successful and 0 failed. Estimated chance of success: NaN%. Choose at your own risk.)
Grants: [Greater Spacetime Affinity]
...What? Putting aside everything that is going awry here, this single block of text gave me more insights into the nature of the system than all the ones before combined. This basically ticks off all the signs of an application form back on Earth that wasn't tested nearly as much as it should have.
Just the line with the NaN% chance of success alone strongly supports this. Instead of giving me 0 or 100 as a chance, it gave me NaN because you can't divide 0 by 0 in any sort of calculation, it's just not a defined mathematical operation.
Since it probably tries calculating the estimated chance of success by dividing the number of successful evolutions by the number of total evolutions, it executes an illegal operation, which results in the numerical error value NaN.
Still, even that is just the beginning of what this actually tells me about the way the system fundamentally works.