Harvey was in a trance, pounding his hammer into the would-be helmet over and over again.

  I have to make sure this next skill is perfect, or I’m going to get stuck as a warrior in a wizard’s body. He thought.

  He’d been locked in a mental battle with himself for days after his Level 15 class skill didn’t turn out how he hoped. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it, but he felt himself falling farther and farther away from the arcanist path he’d always chosen in every video game he played. 12-year-old Harvey would hate him if he wasted the opportunity to become a true sorcerer in favor of swinging around a hunk of metal on a stick.

  The only person to blame was himself. He couldn’t blame the System. He’d known just enough to expect the skill he got.

  The idea for the skill started when he first stomped down on the blood mist Bloodrunn with a Fangbreaker covering his foot. It had been effective, crunching through bone to puncture its organs, but it had also nearly knocked him on his ass. That led to using it to boost his jump up into the trees when they fought the Moonshade Stalker. It was only a Common skill, but it had already saved him countless times when fighting the ever-growing elementals down in the caves. Being able to change direction on command made him far more nimble, but it wasn’t lost on him that he’d basically created a more complicated version of Julian’s Heroic Leap skill.

  The metal tongs dug into his palms, even through his leather gloves. His ears had grown numb to the incessant ringing of wrought iron after days spent making armor. He’d felt sharp and creative when forging the first set for Julian, but now that he had some practice making essence molds in the shape of his client’s body, the whole process had become frustratingly monotonous. Now, that didn’t mean it was easy, just repetitive enough for his mind to wander through the woods of uncertainty and doubt in his head.

  Crack

  “Damn it!” Harvey swore, setting the hammer down and picking up the helmet.

  “What happened?” Elena asked.

  “I cracked it.” He fussed, picking it up with his tongs and setting it in the fire, “I let it get too cold and broke a piece.”

  “What’s up with you today? You’ve been so spaced out, and I can tell you’re annoyed about something.” Elena pestered, setting down her brush.

  The empty workbench she’d drawn the picture of her brother on was now covered with bowls, bottles, and brushes holding various colors of pungent inks. When people saw Julian’s inscribed armor, dozens started asking Harvey to forge a set for them. He would’ve loved to do it for free, but funding Elena’s profession was getting expensive. They’d started offering inscribed armor in exchange for any unique or valuable materials, and almost everyone in Veils End had brought something for her to experiment with. The smithy was starting to smell more like a chemistry lab with all the crazy inks she'd produced.

  “It’s the same thing we’ve talked about already. I can’t figure out a plan for my level 20 skills.” Harvey sighed.

  “Dude!” She chastised. “I told you, you have time. Stressing out all day isn’t going to help.”

  “I really don’t! I’ve got the time it’s gonna take me to get one more level in each before I have to decide.” He snapped back.

  “Who says you have to visit the Loom the second you get the level. You’re always obsessed about having a plan, why not take the time to come up with one?” She asked.

  “Because the only ideas I can come up with are more Warrior skills, and I can only waste so many slots on those before The System locks me into that path for good.” Harvey groaned.

  “You make way too many assumptions. This isn’t some video game you played or a book you read. Stop treating this like a game. It’s your life, and you get to decide what to do with it!” She scolded.

  “How else am I supposed to wrap my brain around all this?” He begged.

  “Look at me. I’m painting a turtle shell on a shield made of dead iron elementals with a brush made from the branch of some strangely hard tree that a half-living, half-dead guy from Spain found out in the woods. And my paint? It’s a mixture of blood and magic floating rock hearts.” Elena laughed.

  “Yeah. So?” Harvey asked.

  “Don’t you hear how ridiculous that is?” She chuckled. “None of this should work, but it does. You told me that my inscriptions remind you of The Loom, right? I’m not following some recipe here, I am taking the best materials I have available and finding a way to express my will in a way that makes sense to me. Whether I draw a turtle shell, a fortress tower, or just a big rock, they all make the shield stronger. It’s just about finding what works best.”

  “What are you trying to say?” He asked.

  “Stop assuming there’s an answer to every question. Just experiment a little bit, and when you think you’re on the right track, you can use The Loom to bring your ideas to life.” She marveled.

  “That doesn’t fix that all my ideas are gonna get me some warrior class at F Grade.” He sniped.

  “Hell, Harvey. You’re still thinking of it as a video game, where you only have a few choices to pick from. The warrior path… The arcanist path… How about you stick to the Harvey path?” She pleaded.

  Ha, the Harvey path. Yeah right. He thought, looking back at the red-hot iron deep in the forge.

  “That sounds good in theory, but we don’t have any proof that’s how the world works.” He huffed.

  “Doesn’t John’s shop sell a guide to the System? If you’re so worried about it, let’s just buy it and see for ourselves.” She snapped.

  “Fine. Let me finish this helmet, and we’ll go.” He relented.

  “Nope! We’re going now.” Elena laughed, stealing a set of tongs to pull the half-finished helmet out of the fire and setting it on the anvil. “The helmet will still be here when we get back.”

  It was still early in the afternoon, so the streets were empty when they walked to the mirror. The Undead army got closer every day, and everyone was busy making preparations. The guide wasn’t cheap, but four days of killing elementals had brought his wallet back to 28,741 merit.

  Would you like to buy John’s guide to the Tapestry for Newly Integrated Babies for 10,000 merit?

  “This John guy is wild. Who names their books like this and expects people to actually buy them?” Harvey groaned.

  “You’ve bought three of them,” Elena laughed.

  “Yeah, but only because they’re the only options.” He chuckled, his annoyance fading just a bit.

  The other guides had all looked like textbooks, massive tomes full of knowledge and wisdom. They may start with a snarky introduction, but the information inside was undeniably useful. This guide for newly integrated babies was more like a magazine.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “10,000 merit for this? What a ripoff!” He griped.

  “Shut up.” Elena laughed. “It’s probably because The System is way simpler than your psycho brain is trying to make it.”

  The two returned to the forge, pulling two stools side by side at a workbench. Lying the magazine flat, they read side by side.

  So, your home planet finally got sucked into the Multiverse! Sorry about all the death and destruction, but I’ve found that a few good calamities help the truly promising ascendants rise to the top. The Tapestry may be infinite, but The System’s power definitely isn’t, and we can’t afford to waste it on a bunch of weaklings destined to die anyway, can we?

  “He’s writing like he started all this… like he’s above it all.” Elena mused.

  I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but I’m only going to give you enough answers to help you calm down and get to work. Surviving the integration is gonna take a lot more than reading my little books, but I’m sure you already figured that out, considering how much killing you had to do to afford one.

  Let’s start with what the Tapestry is. Simply put, it’s the record of everything that has ever happened, and it’s looking for new additions. Most people spend their entire lives not having a single original thought or doing something that hasn’t already been done millions of times before. I get it, it’s hard to be original when sapient life has existed for billions of years, but still, it would be nice to see some change every once in a while!

  Harvey blinked, resting his head on his fist as he tried to process everything. He’d expected life in the Multiverse to be all about learning the secrets of the cosmos or grasping the true meaning of life. Cultivating your understanding through practice and meditation until concepts like life and death were laid bare before your eyes. John made it sound like the exact opposite was true. The Tapestry didn’t want you to follow some divinely appointed path to power. It wanted you to experiment until you found something that had never been done before.

  That’s where The System comes in. It keeps track of the lives and actions of every sapient lifeform, and lends them power from the Tapestry when they do remarkable things. Prove you have the will and dedication to push the cosmos forward, and you’ll be given the strength and lifespan needed to continue walking your path.

  The more he read, the more it started to feel like the System wasn’t about surviving… it was about living a life of purpose.

  “Lifespan? Does leveling up make us live longer?” She asked.

  “My blacksmithing guide said I might be able to do something cool after a few thousand years. I thought it might be referring to some other species that lives longer than we do, but maybe The System can keep us alive that long if it thinks we’re worth it.” Harvey replied.

  Reaching the peak of power is a lifetime of struggle and innovation. Most choose to ignore the Tapestry’s true purpose, only focusing on what power they can steal from the System. That’s fine. Every once in a while, someone gets strong enough or lives long enough to do something truly new anyway…

  But that’s all in the far future for you. For now, here’s what you need to know.

  The book went on to explain the basics about essence, classes, professions, levels, and the higher grades. It only gave specifics about the F grade, saying that an ascendant will get the opportunity to evolve at level 25, and that instead of a skill every 5 levels, they could create one every 10 until reaching the E grade limit at level 75. Once they evolved to F Grade, auras would become a lot more important. Right now, it was just something they could vaguely feel from people with Marks or Stains, but they would be able to control them at F grade. Drawing it in to protect yourself, or blasting it out as a weapon. You could even imbue skills with aura once you upgraded your Mark into an imprint, vastly empowering them if they shared similar concepts.

  John called Marks and Stains the most important part of any ascendant’s path, as they made up the Legacy that was the true reflection of a person's soul. Every action you took either weakened or reinforced that piece of your character, and evolving to future grades would require a certain depth to your Legacy.

  Harvey wasn’t surprised there were stronger versions of Marks and Stains since they were already becoming somewhat obsolete. -5 Willpower from his Severed Thread stain had been devastating at Level 1, but had almost become an afterthought now that he was Level 19. What made his heart lurch into his throat was a single passage.

  As long as an ascendant still lives, their Legacy can change. Each Mark or Stain is simply a part of your story, carved soul deep, but with great time and effort, that story can change. You cannot hide anything from The System, and it will reveal who you truly are.

  Could he really wipe his stain away? He’d come to terms with the fact that his final act in life would be burned on his chest forever, but the chance to wipe the slate clean ignited a fire in his soul.

  “Stains aren’t permanent.” Elena comforted him. “I could’ve told you that, though.”

  Wiping them away wasn’t easy. It took constant and repeated actions to prove that you had truly overcome them, rather than just one grand gesture. It was the same for upgrading a Mark. A few heroic actions, like Julian saving Hannah and sacrificing one of his few potions to heal her, might be enough to get him the Born Protector Mark, but he’d need to constantly prove to himself that was the type of man he was going to be if the System were ever going to upgrade it to an imprint. Something told Harvey that with everything he knew about Julian, the transformation to an imprint would happen sooner rather than later.

  They kept reading, and the magazine did not disappoint.

  He’d wondered for a while how the System assigned rarities to classes and skills, and it turned out to be surprisingly simple. The difference between a Common class and an Epic one had nothing to do with the class itself, but the person who earned it.

  Identity was everything. Skills that resonated with your lived experiences, instincts, and behaviors were always stronger than those you had no reason to possess. Marks, Stains, and Imprints amplified that effect even further. Creating higher-grade skills wasn’t just about the experiences that made them. It required the right Imprint to power them.

  In the end, rarity was about synergy and potential. Two people could climb the exact same mountain, but the System judged them by why they climbed and how they reached the top. Power wasn’t just about doing extraordinary things. It was about building a coherent legacy.

  They learned that the amount of essence an ascendant’s body could store was contingent on their overall stat count. It didn’t matter how the points were distributed, only the number of points the person had. Right now, everyone in Veils End was at a similar attribute count if they were at the same level, but once higher rarity classes and percentage boosts from imprints and scars got factored in at higher levels, the difference would be a lot more noticeable. The regeneration rate had nothing to do with the person, but rather with the amount of ambient essence in the environment, which explained why he recovered faster in the essence crystal mine than he did in the forest.

  It didn’t do much to explain their new Veilstrider race, just noting that all newly integrated species are given a race with a blank weave. Most ascendants inherited affinities to certain concepts from their parents, such as an undead’s weave being more closely aligned with undeath. The bodies of newly integrated ascendants didn’t have any genetic code to inherit, so they were given a blank slate that worked equally well with every affinity. John mentioned the existence of rituals using ink similar to the kinds Elena was making, where you could redraw your weave to better align with a specific attunement, but it didn’t provide any specifics.

  Also, not all ascendant races had both a class and a profession. Having access to both wasn’t necessarily an improvement since those who only had one usually had much stronger variants, but any race that had both could choose to sacrifice either their class or profession at each evolution. To keep both, you had to reach level 25 in each before evolving, and once you let one go, you would never have the chance to get it back.

  “This is amazing! I can still evolve without leveling up my class, and it sounds like doing that will make my next profession even better!” Elena cheered, pulling Harvey into a bear hug.

  Relief washed over him as he reciprocated the embrace. He’d worried her decision not to hunt would leave her stuck at G Grade forever, and knowing that wasn’t the case let him release a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Part of him still thought abandoning having a class was a mistake, but he knew it was a battle he’d never win.

  It went on to explain how The Loom was there to help you translate your insights into powerful skills that serve to help you push your unique understanding further. Elena was right, it really was limitless. Creating higher rarity skills wasn’t about guessing what the System wanted from you. It was about how well you understood the concepts that went into executing your plan. If you didn’t have one, the Loom could only do its best to address the struggle you felt in your soul, usually leaving you with a worse result.

  His Fangbreaker was an example of the loom doing its best to address the fears he’d felt at the start of the trial, but he was still happy with the result. Even if he wasn’t, skills evolved with you each time you ascended to the next grade, allowing you to modify them towards a better fit.

  “See? John wants you to follow the Harvey path, too.” She smiled, patting his shoulder. “Even if that’s mostly you trying to make all your nerd fantasies real.”

  “Whatever.” He blushed.

  John’s writing was constantly flipping from his snarky arrogance to something you’d find in the instruction manual for a graphing calculator, but the final paragraph took an unusually serious tone.

  The System isn’t the judge, jury, or executioner. It’s not here to decide between right and wrong or move the cosmos in a certain direction. Its one simple task is to reward those putting in the effort to push the boundaries of existence. It will not save you when a monster comes knocking at your door because the monsters are under its purview as well. All it will do is reward your efforts and push you to keep moving forward. There is no morality under The Tapestry, so if you want the Multiverse to be a certain way, get strong enough to make it so.

  They turned the final page and sat in silence as they stared at a picture of John winking at them while giving a thumbs up.

  “Alright, the Harvey path it is.” He sighed, looking at Elena. “I’ll finish the helmet, and take a break to ponder what I really want my life to look like from here on out.”

  “Good. I like that plan.” She reassured him.

  “Think you can teach me some more inscription patterns? I want to include them in my next profession skill.” Harvey asked.

  “Sure! It will be good for me to flex that muscle too since I’ve been sticking to the more artistic versions so far. We can figure it out together.” She agreed.