Beacon from Beyond

He groggily woke himself up the next day as the gemstones around his cave brightened. He slept terribly, but didn’t feel all that bad considering how much he had worked out the day before.

He was hungry again, of course, so he decided breakfast would be the first thing he did… a very careful breakfast. It consisted of a speck of carrot and nothing else.

Drinking some water to wash it down, he sat in his previous spot and contemplated his profession options again, pulling the list back up.

[Pondering Sage (Mythical)

Planar Researcher (Rare)

Spiritual Observer (Rare)]

As well as the Pondering Sage description again

[Pondering Sage - Mythical

The noise of the world means nothing to you, not truly. You hear it, yet it flows off you like water down the soft leaves of the sturdy oak. You have pondered upon existence and what it means, you have traveled planes and universes to discover the highest of secrets, the limits of Gods and existences of Ascenders. You have spoken to a System, and told it secrets that caused it to reel back from your presence. You have visited the Void, the space between which so few may enter and exit with their minds intact. In the nothingness that existed between, you found everything. You found your deepest self, and were changed from the glimpse of truth. Not scarred, yet forever different, you ponder upon existence and yourself to find your spiritual center of balance.

Gives the Skills: [Commune with the Universe], [Meditate], [High Mind]

Gives the Stats: +5 Spiritual every level]

Good news, the error was gone. Next, he looked into one of the skills it came with. [Commune with the Universe].

[Commune with the Universe - Level 1

What constitutes a universe? Where are its boundaries, and how does one know when they have crossed into another? Is it only after puncturing the fabric and moving to another plane? If so, then why are such things connected to the materialistic plane? Is a universe, perhaps, all of connected existence? If so, then is the only way to cross into another potential universe to become absolutely disconnected from all things, then reconnect in another location? Very few know, but you have seen a glimpse into what it means to cross the disconnected lands and find a new home elsewhere. With this understanding, you have garnered the attention of not only higher beings, but also fundamental entities that govern the laws of physics. While they may not necessarily like or hate you, you have garnered their attention nonetheless.

Allows you to open your mind to fundamental entities, potentially communicating with them, if they deign to answer.

Mana cost: 128,365 mana per second communicating with an entity, to be paid by the entity themselves.

Become more likely to receive answers with each successive level. Not out of obligation from the entities, more that they will consider it more interesting to discuss with one who has already spoken to other fundamental entities]

Interesting! And nerve wracking! He would be talking to abstract concepts like Gravity and Entropy. That sounded terrifying. It was good at least that any entity that talked to him would foot the bill for mana, because he didn’t think he could pay that. He was pretty sure it wasn’t talking about the avatars of Affinities, otherwise he wouldn’t need this fancy shmancy spell to hear their words.

He opened the final Profession Skill

[High Mind - Level 1 - Passive

All the knowledge of the world, yet not enough time to ponder it. There is simply too much to do and see to process it all, yet it all requires your attention. You’ve found your mind adrift, unfocused, and scattered towards all corners of your ventures, and truly your friends worry for your sanity as you forget to respond to their questions, caught in your daydreams of the past you once saw or the books that introduced those mysteries to you. Perhaps there is a way to indulge yourself, pondering your past while investigating the future at the same time.

Allows the mind to become malleable and complex, gaining both increased motor functions and perfect memory. Can potentially manifest a hyper-realistic world in your mindscape over which you have absolute control, split your mind into multiple parts, form an eidetic memory, and more, given enough experimentation.

Malleability and processing power increases with each successive level.

‘Holy shit! This one is incredible, and probably the most combat-direct option I’ll get’

It sounded like his mind would become some sort of supercomputer and, if he thought of it like that, its uses couldn’t possibly be underestimated. It was more than just a mental improvement, he would be able to theorize things in a hyper-realistic scenario in his head with something like this Skill. Could he practice fighting other creatures in his head? Would his Skills improve?

He interpreted “malleability” as a kind of “neuroplasticity” that brains had, meaning that he would be able to rewrite the way his mind worked at will.

When it came to direct combat, he could possibly overwhelm enemies simply by having so many moving parts to his attacks. If he split his mind into six parts, each one focusing on using a Skill in different ways, his enemies would be bound to slip up. More than that, “processing power” made it seem like it would increase his thinking speed too, potentially working in tandem with his Mental stat.

Now, Classes and Professions were obviously meant to function as support structures for a specific fighting style or working style. In order to get Class experience, he would fight, and in order to get Profession experience, he would work. The question was, what would his job be as a [Pondering Sage]? Could he do it? If it was something that he was physically unable to complete, it would be absolutely useless to get the Profession, as he would never be able to gain levels.

What would a [Pondering Sage] do? Well, the obvious answer was to ponder. In the description of the Profession, it showed that he already had the answers. He already knew all the deepest secrets, now all that was left were the simple ones. His “job” would be to think about life, existence, or really anything. He would just be required to sit and think every now and again.

‘Truly, a devastating cost for communing with forces of nature and super intellect’ he thought with a smile.

In conclusion, it wouldn’t be some dead end Profession, and he could reasonably advance it.

That being the case, he would likely take the Mythic option over his other two Profession options. He wouldn't lie to himself and say "let's look at all the options" when the reality of it was that a higher rarity Profession would just be objectively better. He would still give the other options a cursory look, just in case he missed something amazing though. Pulling up the second Profession option he had, he skimmed over it a bit and all of its skills, summarizing it in his head

[Planar Researcher - Rare

Something something, you've experienced what its like to actually be in a plane of existence rather than a material one and have a headstart on other researchers. something something, keep researching with your new knowledge

Skills that come with it: [Locate convergence], [stabilize your soul when you take on intangible forms], [get better at fuckin around with affinity mana]

[Spiritual Observer - Rare

you like watching people secretly when in soul form. get better at doing that. you're sneaky and hard to detect, so get better at scouting things out while in a spiritual form.

[become more sensitive to the different spiritual wavelengths, allowing you to better sense other souls and maybe hide yourself], [get a more sturdy soul, also dont die from soul damage when your avatar dies], [gain the ability to POSSESS THINGS?! ok thats pretty cool. only for a few minutes though, and its hard to control people. probably to just sneak into secure areas.]

Alright, he had considered all his options. Looking at both of them, the Mythic Profession was both more versatile and had Skills that were applicable to more situations. Spiritual Observer was also super nice too, and he had to admit quite tempting. While he already had tons of scouting Skills, and more with his Class helping him, he was especially interested in the part where he got to possess things. If that was all he wanted from the Profession though, maybe he could just recreate it freestyle using his Soul affinity.

Happy to have at least done the mature option of looking everything over at least a little bit, Dei happily selected his new Profession, [Pondering Sage].

He had done a lot of pondering lately, so he expected the same influx of improvement he had gotten from the class, but was sadly disappointed when he only felt a slight warmth emanate from deep within him. Looking over his notifications, he received the unsurprising news.

[Profession Gained! Pondering Sage (Level 1)]

[Stats Gained: +5 Spiritual]

'Darn! No stored experience allocated. I wonder why it stored the experience for my Class, but not my Profession.'

That was not at the forefront of his mind though, as he felt something in his soul begin to grind against the Profession. One of the Skills given by the Profession, [Meditation], was pressing against his already existing [Meditation].

They were not opposed to one another, per se, but like small fragments of the larger whole. The issue came from the fact that they did not cohesively fit to one another. It was like Meditation, as a concept, was a huge jigsaw puzzle, and the two pieces he had were absolutely not supposed to be next to one another.

It didn't feel painful at all, whatever they were doing, but it was very unpleasant. Rather than linking together to form a Skill larger than the sum of its parts, they were pushing into each other and merging their concepts. The Skill that resulted from the two merging was the most effective parts of both. it wasn't any larger or more versatile than the others, but he could feel that it was better. Like he had gone from a 144p image of Meditation to a 240p image of Meditation. He would still only have one piece, but his piece would be higher quality as the two Skills ground out the weaker parts of each other.

After five nauseous minutes, he received a notification as the discomfort came to an abrupt stop.

[[Meditation] has merged with [Meditation] to form the Skill: [Meditation]]

'Ok man, whatever you say' he thought while looking at the message incredulously.

Setting aside the hilarious form of the message, he pulled up the new [Meditation] Skill

[Meditate - Level 1 - Mana Affinity

The self, everything that ones identity is comprised of, is not entirely unique when considered in parts. Each moment is shared by an uncountable amount of other beings, separated by either time or perspective. The plants, insects, and even microbes experience the same moments as any human, yet ones identity itself is entirely unique. Despite sharing moments with so many others, no entity shares every moment with you. Your identity is the sum of so many parts, yet greater than every single one individually. Even still, there is an unbreakable link between every singular person and the grand cosmos that rotates around their unique perspective. Using that link, draw aspects of yourself into the open, showing all what it means to be you.

Gain the ability to create a Visible Presence, declaring aspects of yourself to those you project it towards.]

He didn’t know how to feel about this one. The other two provided some sort of tangible benefit, yet this one seemed more like a communication ability. The only thing stopping him from feeling absolute disappointment was that he could feel that it was somehow higher quality than the other two, and there was a power in this Skill somewhere. It wasn’t truly a System granted Skill like the other two of his Profession Skills, so he wasn’t going to get a clear-cut description on every single thing that it did.

Actually, was it a System granted Skill at all at this point? He pulled up his Interface to check

[Name: Dei Grrata

Race: Human (Gem Dweller Variant)

Class: Prodigal Detector (Level 34)

Profession: Pondering Sage (Level 1)

Achievements: Void Walker, Soulspeak, Beyond Understanding, No Rulers Above All, Bearing the Burden, Slayer of Mountains

Contracts: Soul of the (IIIIIIII)

HP: 26/26

MP: 26/26

SP: 26/26

Stats:

Physical: 13

Mental: 27

Spiritual: 14 -> 19

Magical: 28

Affinities:

Kindness: Mid-Rare, 34%

Wrath: Low-Uncommon: 99%

Soul: Low-Uncommon: 40%

Inner Skills:

Kindness: Pandora’s Box (Contained) (50) (592/2000), Call for Help (9), Good Samaritan (1)

Wrath: Pandora’s Box (Unleashed) (2), Growing Pains (19)

Soul: Astral Projection (1), Connection (1)

Mana: Meditation (1)

Confluence: Identify of the Stout Protector (1)

Outer Skills:

How About a Demonstration?, Fine-Tooth Comb (1), Vigilance (1), In Tune (1), Commune with the Universe (1), High Mind (1)]

Huh. it wasn’t an Outer Skill at all. He had effectively taken it from the System and, instead of using it, fed it to his pre-existing [Meditation] in order to improve his own. Looking at all his Skills, he realized he really needed to get onto training soon, because there were just too many level 1 Skills. For now though, he sat down to test the new Skills he had gotten from his Class and Profession. Rather than start with [Meditation], he decided to start from the beginning of the list. [Fine-Tooth Comb]

It was a passive Skill meant to filter out all the excess information he gathered, finding specific things he wanted. It seemed like he could create broader requests as it leveled up, but would need to get very specific at level 1. He wasn't sure if it would stop him from getting overwhelmed by tremor sense when he left his little cave, but he didn’t need a massive canvas to test whether he could see small details. Coincidentally, there was one particular bug that he had his eye on a lot lately, but had lost track of.

In his fight against the [Nightstalking Devourer], it wasn’t his [Tremor Sense] that had detected it though, he didn’t even have his feet on the ground at the beginning of the fight. It was his eyes. While [Tremor Sense] was an easy option to use it on, the eyes would be important as well, so he needed to see if it would work.

First, he would see if he could give it a broad request. Mentally, he asked [Fine-Tooth Comb] to find any beetles with his eyes. Slowly panning his head around the cave, nothing particular jumped out at him.

Next, he gave it something a bit more specific: ‘Find any Greengrow Beetles using my eyes.’

Again, he looked around the cave, but nothing obvious appeared. He now felt like he should have started out with testing what it looked like when it activated before testing its boundaries, but he was already mid-experiment, so he decided to finish it.

Lastly, and most specifically, he asked it to ‘Find that one specific Greengrow Beetle that I saw yesterday using my eyes.’ At first, there was no response, disappointing him a bit. When he started panning his eyes around the cave though, he kept finding that his eyes would be drawn towards a spot near the ground. To one piece of inconspicuous foliage in the form of a thin, knee-high plant.

His eyes were drawn to it enough that he finally got the hint, leaning in closer and looking. He initially couldn’t spot anything, but after a few seconds of staring at one spot, he was able to parse a little green beetle from its camouflage, surprising him. He hadn’t even seen it, despite staring at it directly, until he had thoroughly studied the spot. That was some effective camo!

Trying to confirm the identity of the beetle, he used [Identify], only for it to get shot down again. He rolled his eyes and tried to think of something he could give it in order to allow him to scan it. The beetle wasn’t even moving, content to just sit on a leaf, so he didn’t really have anything he could offer it.

He was defeated from the fact that the beetle was a simple little creature that wanted nothing, so he had nothing to give. He was still unwilling to use the Wrath version, for fear of killing the little guy. He didn’t want to threaten it either, as it seemed a little mean to him to bully a beetle into giving up its secrets.

He sighed. He would have to be content to simply assume he was right.

Next, he tested to see whether he could get the same result with his tremor sense. He closed his eyes, focusing on the vibrations around him. Frankly, there wasn't much. The sphere cutting off his little cave from the outside world also cut off vibrations, meaning that the only vibrations around were created from either him or the insects. These vibrations rebounded off the barrier a few feet into the walls, bouncing around in the stone until it became too small for even him to detect.

There was a constant, rhythmic pulse released from him, that produced at least a small vibration to work with. This pulse was, naturally, his heartbeat. There was also a sort of low hum from his body, with all the other organs shifting things in his body. His diaphragm drawing and releasing air, the blood flowing in his body even between beats of his heart, the stomach sloshing with each slight wobble from his legs. He was a beacon of constant vibrations, yet the heart was an easily discernible source to lock on to. Before using his [Fine-Tooth Comb] Skill, he took the time to simply… watch it all. To watch as a mental map formed in his head of where everything around him was.

He couldn’t see, not in a way that his eyes saw, yet he could understand it. A part of his [Tremor Sense] was the ability to parse through the vibrations and interpret their meanings. Even if he couldn’t see anything, he found that he knew the shapes of everything through which his vibrations flowed.

Using his heartbeat as a reference point for vibrations to track, the quiet thrum of his body slowly brought shape to the darkness in his mind. The details eluded him though. The entire map was fuzzy, and he couldn’t get into the specifics of what he was seeing. Attempting to use [Fine-Tooth Comb], giving it the same order as he had given when using his eyes, he found that it failed to track onto the beetle.

Even if he could sense the shape of the cave, Dei found that it didn’t translate in his mind to vision. He felt a bit of vertigo when he tried to orient himself to the same position he had when he saw the Greengrow Beetle, as the new world he saw was unrecognizable. It felt like the difference between looking at a hexagon and trying to feel out the shape of one. They were two different sensations, and trying to make a bridge between them to convert one measure into the other would require practice.

His thoughts aside, the Skill failed to find his beetle friend, yet he didn’t think it was because of a mistranslation between sensations in his mind. The System was managing this Skill, and it was an objective force. It didn’t process the difference between sensations, its processing only understood information.

Instead, it was the details that gave his skill trouble. While his heartbeat was good enough to get a sense for his surroundings, anything specific eluded him. While he could sense the vibrations still, they became a jumbled mess, too specific to actually process individually.

Testing this theory, Dei stomped his foot down. The ripple it sent out was loud, louder than anything else in the cave, and he winced slightly at the difference in levels of vibration. The wave, however, gave new information to [Fine-Tooth Comb]. In seconds, many new, specific details were revealed to him. Bugs camouflage in the foliage, larvae hiding under leaves, grub in the dirt, all were revealed before him. In this mental mapping, he found his attention focused on a specific little bug, standing on a flat little platform.

This time, quicker on the uptake, he realized he had been led back to his Greengrow friend. He bent down again, bringing his head closer to the bug, and opened his eyes.

Again, he experienced some slight vertigo from switching which sensory organ he was using, but it went away after a moment, and he was left looking at a familiar little beetle. He wasn’t sure how his Skill differentiated the beetles between each other, but there was most likely some sort of subtle differences, undetectable to his conscious mind yet easily parsed when all information was considered.

He was also greeted with two welcome notifications.

[Skill Leveled Up: Fine-Tooth Comb (1) -> (2)]

[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (1) -> (2)]