The rest of Unseen Beholder's skills were simple enough, after Zoe figured out the core Umbra element itself. They were made up of much the same chaotic, rage induced frenzy of mana but all had that same core component of a stable speck, guarded from the light.

  The wisps of violent mana reached out to accomplish whatever task the skill needed to do. Ravage the rays of light that shone on her, or around her. Utterly destroying them, rather than subtly redirecting them.

  In a short week, Zoe managed to steal the rest of Unseen Beholder's skills and turned her attention to the last of the component classes. Corporal Beholder.

  In a perfect world, she wouldn't need to take the class again because the skills just wouldn't have been worth it. A piece of the puzzle that let her get her second combined class, and then be forgotten. But they were just too enticing to leave on the table.

  She stored away the clothes she was wearing — a frilly dress that was a touch too small even before she took the class. Once she took the class, the poor fabric wouldn't stand a chance at her rapid muscular expansion. Instead she replaced it with an outfit she'd chosen specifically for taking this class again.

  Large, oversized cotten pants made of a stretchy fabric and a shirt to match. Plain, but somewhat comfortable and not going to be in the way after she takes her next class to experiment with.

  Zoe pushed the system to replace her Unseen Beholder with Corporal Beholder and grimaced as the system's magic raced through her body. This time, she'd been prepared for the experience. She expected it, and she even managed to watch what the system was doing to her, rather than just feel it.

  And the process was disgusting. The system had no regard for her health or safety, it seemed. Ripping apart her skin and muscles, then building them back larger and stronger. She'd expected a simple expansion — painful an idea as that was, but this was a complete recreation. These were no longer the muscles she'd been living with until now but new ones formed of the system's magic and forced into place in her body.

  Minutes passed as the system worked its way through her body, tearing through each muscle one by one and rebuilding them in its vision. And then its magic left, the faintest remnants vanishing moments later.

  Zoe shrugged, feeling her thick arms tug against the side of her body, her very muscles too large to even fit in a normal human shape anymore. Somehow it felt worse than before. Maybe because of Omniscient Beholder's slight bonuses bolstering the class's effects?

  She wasn't sure, but she pushed the thought aside. She could wonder about those things later, when she didn't have the class anymore. But right now, she had more pressing matters to worry about. Like stealing every single skill the class had to offer and then getting rid of it as soon as possible.

  The first skill she started with was Stilled Flesh. Which was also when she remembered the main problem with stealing these skills. These skills didn't use mana, so there were almost no mana patterns visible to be seen at all. No visual indicator of the skill she was using, no packet of mana for her to recreate. The skill moved her body, at the cost of her stamina.

  There was some mana though, Zoe noticed after several days of careful study. Some. So little that her natural regeneration filled her back up to full before she could even realize she'd lost any. So little that it almost blended in with the ambient mana surrounding her. It wrapped around her body, with that same familiar obscuring pattern the system covered every skill in.

  But the rest of the skill? That was her moving. The system either forced her to move in a certain way, or it gave her a particular intuition for how to move. The mana wasn't for the skill, it was for something else.

  Corporal Quell for instance didn't have any magical effect. She physically blocked the sound. She clapped, she stomped, she leapt and dove and physically stopped the sound from leaving her defined area. It was a dizzying, strange effect to use, but it was a physical effect.

  The mana wasn't accomplishing anything on its own. It didn't even look reminiscent of any elements that Zoe was familiar with.

  Zoe shrugged and got to work studying the mana patterns for the first skill she chose to work on — Corporal Renewal. It had the most obvious mana patterns of all the skills Zoe had access to, concentrated around whatever wound she was trying to heal — for however obvious the miniscule amount of mana used could be. The unfortunate counter to that was that it also only worked if she had a wound. A simple fix, but Zoe could never quite get past the feeling that something about it was unhealthy, from a psychological standpoint.

  Though, how well studied were the psychological effects of self harm on millenia old immortals pursuing magical power? Zoe giggled to herself as she thought about creating a therapy clinic for immortals struggling with acquiring new skills. Dragons, Wanderers and just regular old Greg's living amongst humans stumbling into her clinic to whine about how many times they needed to lop off a toe before their new skill finally worked. Zoe could sit there in her gaudy chair with a book full to the brim with unrelated scribbles and nod wisely.

  She watched as mana swirled around her thumb, mending the slight scorching caused by the burning coals she rested her hand on. Through all of her resistances and passive regeneration, the coals barely made a dent in her pool of health. But it was enough to have the skill working without end, letting her study the faint wisps of mana that cycled around her thumb.

  None of the mana was for healing, explicitly. It seemed that the mana was being used to direct her body on how to heal the wound itself. She'd seen several skills before that had bolstered her body's natural healing, but this was the first that simply directed her body on where to go. After the mana did, her body burned through her stamina pool to rebuild the burnt flesh.

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  After several days of burning her thumb, Zoe managed to recreate the same skill, and the system granted her the Corporal Renewal general skill. But something about it felt strange.

  Skills never required they be entirely recreated before the system granted them. A shoddy interpretation was always enough. But this was quite a step away from even that. Zoe had no idea how her body was mending itself. Her body did mend itself, when she recreated the mana patterns instructing her body to do so.

  But she couldn't do that, without the mana. She couldn't, through force of will, expend stamina to regenerate her wounds. There wasn't even a feeling that happened when the skill happened, no tug on some unused muscle, no pressure in an organ she wasn't acquainted with.

  The mana ordered her body to heal, and her body followed suit. But the skill wasn't supposed to be mana, was it? Was the skill just a mana pattern ordering her body to do something, or was the skill her body doing the thing itself? If she could manage to recreate the effect without mana, would the system still have granted her the skill?

  Or would she have even needed the skill at all, at that point? Would it have changed her species, or some other facet of her definition? A feat, maybe? Was every skill just a defined function of mana, even the ones that seemed entirely physical?

  Would it be possible, with enough study, to enact effects through force of will alone? Was it possible to expend stamina like a pool of magic, mending her flesh and forcing her body to move in ways it shouldn't be able to, without dragging herself along with mana?

  Zoe wasn't sure. In theory, it should be. If the system could force her to spend stamina to recover her wounds, she should be able to do the same thing. The mana she recreated wasn't giving her body something it couldn't do, it was just giving it a gentle nudge along the way.

  Why couldn't she do the same thing, but without defining it through mana? Maybe there was some other piece of the puzzle that she was missing. Like a warrior trying to steal a magical skill without Mana Sight. Maybe there was some dedicated skill or class effect for understanding the flow of stamina through her body that she just didn't have.

  Zoe made a note of the idea for later, and turned her attention to the rest of the class' skills. One by one, Zoe recreated the minor mana patterns that ordered her boy to move in a specific way, or that fed her a particular intuition on how to move.

  That one was a particularly strange experience. Pushing mana into the world to give her an intuition for something she didn't understand at all. She didn't know how to launch a barrage of physical strikes — not with the expertise that Corporal Barrage had, at least. But she could copy the mana that defined it, and feed herself that same knowledge all the same. Only for it to be lost once she stopped using the skill.

  There was a certain eerie dissonance to that. Maybe people who specialized in physical skills accomplished the same feat through recreating the effects physically, through mastering the movements so well that the system gave them a helping hand.

  Maybe, those same people would recreate some of Zoe's magical effects through similar brute force. Rather than following along with the patterns of mana, maybe they danced or jerked to specific patterns and the system recognized those all the same.

  A spike of earth creeped up beneath Zoe's feet, growing up to about her knees. The tip expanded, stretching out into a small plaque in front of her. On the surface, letters began to rise.

  Dungeon

  Zoe stared at the plaque in front of her, watching as it crumbled to dust and scattered about in the cavern several seconds later.

  "What the..." Zoe mumbled to herself, examining the dense spire of mana that was fading away with the earth, confusion bubbling within her.

  She squinted at the remnants of the spire and bit her lip as she summoned a sheet of paper, along with a pen to write with.

  Jeff? Is this your way of sending messages?

  Mana raced through the paper, ripping it from her hands and sending it off to Jeff, wherever he was. Several minutes later, another spire rose from the ground in front of her and formed another small plaque.

  Yup

  Zoe rolled her eyes, and summoned another sheet of paper to write on.

  What are you trying to say? Is the dungeon repaired? Did you find another dungeon? Do you need help? What's going on?

  Several more minutes passed as Zoe waited for the next spire to rise in front of her.

  Repaired

  Zoe blinked at the plaque. Was he being intentionally obtuse, or was he just not able to send more than a single word with his skill? She summoned another sheet of paper, and scribbled another note out for Jeff.

  Are you at the dungeon, now? Do I need to come there?

  This time, it took almost fifteen minutes before Jeff's response came. If it was Jeff's response. She wasn't quite confident in it yet, though it did fit what she knew of the man.

  When

  Zoe felt a sense of frustration pooling up inside her as she ripped another page from her skill.

  Can you only send one word?

  Yup

  That is so unbelievably stupid. Get a better skill.

  Sinkhole

  "I swear to god..." Zoe mumbled to herself.

  Another plaque rose from the ground in front of her.

  Loop

  Okay, so the dungeon has repaired itself and you want me to come help you loop. Am I understanding that right?

  Yup

  Zoe sighed, then switched her Corporal Beholder class out for Enchantrith. She was done with the muscle woman class anyway, but she'd hoped to spend some time on Omniscient Beholder first.

  She promised though, she reminded herself. What were a few years of helping somebody get a better class, anyway? She wouldn't have had Omniscient Beholder as quickly without their help, it was only fair that she helped them out when they needed. Besides, a few years would go by in the blink of an eye. She'd spent more time doing less important things before.

  Zoe grimaced at the years she'd wasted working on enchantments that never worked out.

  Several minutes later, she'd ripped through the sky and landed outside of the Latent Power dungeon.

  Calling the dungeon repaired was a bit of an understatement Zoe thought, as she looked out at the still gaping hole where the dungeon once was. Though some of the steps leading up to the tower had returned, and several of the faint mana signatures indicating the invisible guards defending it were pacing up and down the few stairs they had access to.

  Tom and Jeff stood at the base of the dungeon, at the edge of the hole Jeff had formed. Jeff looked at Zoe with a beaming smile, excitement radiating from him. His once impressive level of over four hundred was now down to a measly seventeen.

  "So," Jeff said with a grin. "How are we gonna do this?"

  "You need to contribute. It went quickly for me because I have several experience bonuses, and I contributed a lot by being the primary means of defense against the archers. Which I could only do because of all my feats, skills and powerful class bonuses. Do you have any way of actually contributing here, at that level?" Zoe asked.

  Jeff snapped his fingers. "I have sinkholes!"

  "Strong enough to hurt one of those guards?" Zoe asked.

  Jeff shrugged. "We'll see, I guess."

  "Probably not much," Tom added. "His first class isn't very good."

  "Hey!" Jeff scowled. "That's what I'm trying to fix right now."

  "So what can you actually do, then?" Zoe asked.

  "I can make sinkholes." Jeff nodded, pleased with himself.

  Zoe sighed. "Alright. What kind of... nevermind. You're trying to get a sinkhole class, of course. Shall we get started then?"

  does want Zoe to come through on her promise to help him loop.

  Also, I really like the Hamilton musical. That's why these guys are named Tom...as, and Jeff...erson.

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