Zoe looked up at Emma standing across the table from her — somehow looking as though she were a part of a distant tree in the forests surrounding Foizo. She squinted, trying to push the flood of information aside. It had gotten easier with weeks of practice, and her cosmic classes had already given her a bit of experience with processing the different senses she had. But it was still overwhelming, taking everything she had to not break apart under the pressure.

  “You okay?" Emma asked. ”Do you need anything?"

  “Sorry,” Zoe said. “Was Joe interested? Should I go get him?”

  Emma nodded. “I don’t know if he wanted to know your class stuff, but he was worried, at least.”

  “I’ll go get him, then.” Zoe said, stumbling her way to her feet. She tripped on a root in the forest and landed face first in a mess a boar must have left behind.

  Emma appeared next to her a few moments later as blue light washed out from Zoe, pulling away the grime covering her body. “This isn’t Joe’s place, you know?” Emma asked, laughing.

  Zoe sighed. “Okay. I swear, I just tried to stand up.”

  “You got something like my class now!" Emma grinned. ”Pretty fun, isn’t it?“

  “Fun? Yeah. Maybe eventually. This is insane, though. You always see stuff like this?" Zoe asked.

  “I dunno what you’re seeing, but maybe? It wasn’t so intense that I tripped and landed in boar poop so maybe not.” Emma laughed.

  “You speak of this to nobody.” Zoe said.

  Emma laughed. “I’m super telling everybody. I’m gonna make a big sign and write ‘Zoe faceplanted in boar poop’ on it then hang it from every building in Foizo.”

  Zoe sighed. “Whatever, lets just try to get to Joe’s.”

  “Just focus on where you wanna go, let everything else wash away and then… walk there.” Emma said. “Simple, right?"

  “Yeah, sure. Simple.” Zoe stood up, each movement slow and precise as she tried to avoid stumbling through space again. She looked towards Foizo, letting all the other visuals fade to the background. She saw dozens of people walking through the streets, above ground and below ground. Doors swung open as people walked into businesses or their homes. Animals hooves clopped along the street and birds flew through the skies.

  Zoe closed her eyes and focused on Joe’s inn, the wooden planks that made up the walls, filled with tiny slivers of enchanted materials. The heavy wooden door that swung open like it was weightless with the slightest nudge. The small gardens hanging outside the windows on either side of the door filled with colourful flowers, and the large wooden sign hanging above the door with a rudimentary carving of a bed in it.

  The familiar smell of Joe’s inn flooded Zoe’s nostrils, with the bustling noise of the streets outside as people chattered and rushed about their business. Zoe opened her eyes to see herself standing just outside of Joe’s door. Emma appeared next to her a moment later.

  “Guess you don’t even need to walk there, huh?” Emma asked.

  Zoe blinked, her head swivelling around to look at her surroundings. She’d teleported before, far too many times to even be able to take a guess at the number. Hundreds of thousands of times? Millions? It was just too large a number to even comprehend. But this was different. It was effortless, it didn’t even have intent behind it. She just changed where she was as though she were always there to begin with.

  “I guess not.” Zoe said, pushing open the door to Joe’s inn.

  Joe was behind the bar, leaning against the wall looking out at the few groups sitting in the dining area enjoying their meals. He looked over and smiled as Zoe entered.

  Zoe smiled back and walked up to the bar. One of the people sitting in the bar turned and looked at Zoe and then back to his group, whispering about a green mark. The rest of the group turned and stared at her, with the rest of the people following suit as the hushed whispers about her level grew.

  Joe chuckled as she approached. “Should have known this one would be difficult, huh?"

  Zoe scoffed. “Yeah. You wanna come see how it works with me and Emma?"

  Joe shrugged. “Sure, just let me get everything sorted out here first.”

  Zoe sat on one of the stools and waited a few minutes for Joe to clean up the kitchen and finish serving all the people sitting. None of them approached Zoe, but the whispers about her didn’t stop the entire time. Everybody seemed interested in her level when Joe approached them, the first light green they’ve ever seen before.

  When Joe finished, Zoe Cosmic Leaped him and Emma out to the forest a few hundred kilometers away. She checked on her Mana as she did and gasped at the number she saw.

  “Okay first off, I’m curious about my mana.” Zoe said as they landed on the ground. “I haven’t been looking at it, but the class said I got another eight hundred percent boost to my mana.” She glanced up at her vitals in the corner of her vision.

  Zoe held back a gasp as she saw the number, counting it several times before she didn’t feel like she’d made a mistake. “Five hundred sixty million mana. Over half a billion mana.”

  “You sure you didn’t miscount it?” Emma asked.

  Zoe nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  Joe whistled. “That’s a lot of mana. Does it give you some good skills to use all that mana with?"

  Zoe shared all the class details with her friends and explained what the Spacial Being effect felt like.

  “Alright,” Emma said. “Get to testing your new skills then!”

  Zoe smiled and pushed the system to give her Spacial Anchor, Spacial Warp, Devastation, Teleport and Spacial Tunnel. She grimaced as even just the skills were painful to take as the system’s magic wreaked havoc through her soul, building up their patterns.

  “You okay?" Joe asked.

  “I am, the skills are pretty powerful, I guess.” Zoe said.

  Zoe focused on Spacial Anchor, pushing mana towards it. She gasped as an enormous amount of mana was ripped from her and twisted the space in front of her into a solid looking mass of mana. A slight pressure pressed against the back of her mind, begging her to pull on it, and so she did.

  More mana flooded from her body to fill another small bundle of space in front of her. After a fraction of a second, the mana exploded out, covering Zoe’s body as she teleported a foot forward to where she set her anchor. The mana filling the anchor broke apart, exploding like a firework of mana that flooded the surrounding forest.

  “Okay, that seems like a good one.” Zoe said. “Lets me set an anchor to teleport back to.”

  “How much does it cost?" Emma asked.

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  “A lot,” Zoe chuckled. “But I have a lot now.”

  “What’s the maximum range?" Joe asked.

  “I’m not sure. It didn’t look very mana efficient but it also looked like it wasn’t using my mana by itself but letting me store the mana to be used, so maybe no maximum range?" Zoe suggested. ”I’m gonna test that, actually.“

  “Careful,” Joe said. “With how much mana you have, it could be dangerous if it drains from your health like your other skill.”

  Zoe nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

  Zoe repeated the process of forming a Spacial Anchor and teleporting to it, each time Cosmic Leaping further away from the anchor as she watched how much mana was being ripped out. It wasn’t until she was almost a quarter of the way to the moon — just a few maximum distance Cosmic Leaps, that her mana was drained completely when she cast the skill. But instead of pulling from her health like Spacial Weave did, Spacial Anchor just let her pull on her incredible regeneration to fill it up a moment later and pull her back.

  “Yeah, looks like there’s no maximum.” Zoe said as she appeared back in the forests with Joe and Emma. “It took more than my maximum mana and let me just regenerate a little bit more for it. That’s absolutely amazing!”

  “Heck yeah!” Emma shouted. “You don’t have to live on a silly one week timer anymore!”

  “But you should still be safe.” Joe said.

  “I know,” Zoe grinned. “I know. I will. But this is so much less stress!”

  “What’s next?” Emma asked. “If they’re all this good then I might have to try and get my seventh class too.” She chuckled.

  Zoe pushed a bit of mana into Spacial Warp, bending space around them as the trees seemed to grow just a little bit closer than they were before she used her skill. When she let up on the mana, space snapped back to normal. She pushed mana back into it, trying to push the trees further away and the forest stretched out, the trees looking like they were a few inches further than they should have been.

  “Weird.” Joe said.

  “So weird.” Emma agreed.

  Zoe focused on a tree a few dozen feet away and pushed mana into Devastation. An incredible amount of mana raced from her body and seemed to rip apart the very fabric of reality. Space folded in on itself and the tree vanished like it was never there.

  “Damn.” Emma said, staring at the place where the tree used to be. “It’s just gone.”

  “Did you move it somewhere else?" Joe asked. ”Can you bring it back?"

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s just gone.” Zoe said. “It took a tonne of mana. I don’t know exactly how much but at least a couple million.”

  “Just for a tree?" Emma asked.

  Zoe nodded.

  “Not very mana efficient then.” Emma said.

  “No, but I have a lot now so that’s not that important.” Zoe said.

  “It might be a lot more expensive for creatures with a lot more health and mana, though.” Joe suggested.

  “Probably.” Zoe agreed, pushing mana into her Teleport skill, focusing on a spot a few feet away from her. She shifted through space, appearing at her destination just as she would if she used Cosmic Leap. Zoe formed a Spacial Anchor then looked up to space and pushed as much mana as she could into her Teleport.

  A moment later she was drifting through the vastness of space, with Abyllan a small brown sphere far in the distance behind her. She Cosmic Leaped back towards Abyllan and made it a few kilometers away from the surface. Mana flooded into her Spacial Anchor skill to bring her back to Joe and Emma.

  “Seems a little better than Cosmic Leap but not by enough to be excited about, really. Definitely better, though.” Zoe said.

  “Can you still teleport other people?" Emma asked, holding out her hand.

  Zoe grabbed her hand and Teleported them both a few feet to the side.

  “Yup.” Zoe said. “So it’s just better, then.”

  “Hold on,” Joe said. “Do you still need to be touching her?”

  Zoe shrugged and pushed mana into her Teleport skill, trying to drag Joe and Emma along with her. All three of them vanished and appeared a few feet away where Zoe was looking.

  “Ooh!” Zoe exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”

  “Can you teleport me without teleporting you?” Emma asked.

  Zoe pushed mana into her Teleport skill, trying to move just her friend a few feet away. Emma vanished and appeared a foot away to her side.

  “That’s a very big improvement over Cosmic Leap then.” Emma said.

  “Yeah it is. Wow. I wasn’t expecting that at all.” Zoe looked at a fallen branch and Teleported it to her hand. “This is so much more convenient than Cosmic Leap.”

  “You don’t really need your Cosmic Explorer class anymore, do you?" Emma asked. ”It seems kinda redundant, now.“

  “Mmm,” Zoe hummed. “It kind of is, but it kind of isn’t? It gives some good bonuses and Cosmic Vision is a lot clearer than Spacial Being. But I guess it’s kind of a direct upgrade, sort of. I’ll have to do some thinking whenever I decide to loop again.”

  Joe nodded. “You’ve got one more skill left to test, right? I’m hoping this one could be helpful for Foizo, honestly.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “You want a tunnel between Foizo and Foizo on the Moon don’t you?”

  “It would be nice.” Joe chuckled.

  Zoe pushed mana into her Spacial Tunnel skill, forming another bundle of mana that looked similar to her Spacial Anchor. She walked a few feet to the side and repeated the process, forming another bundle of mana. Nothing happened at first, but Zoe watched as ambient mana was gradually sucked into both of the bundles of mana and tried pushing even more into them.

  An enormous amount of mana was pulled from her, filling the tiny bundles of warped space with a blinding light as the wisps of light were packed in. After a moment, the anchor Zoe was filling exploded outwards with ripples of space. The wisps of light were ripped through space and flooded into the other anchor which also exploded in ripples of space. Both anchors expanded, forming shimmering, waving portals that floated in space.

  Joe looked at the portals then stepped through one, coming out through the opposite portal. “Incredible. Do you think you could make one of these to the moon?”

  “I could, but not right now.” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, we’d need time to set up a place for you to put them at anyway. But that’s good to know.” Joe said.

  “You happy with your choice? Can you still try the other ones?” Emma asked.

  Zoe pushed the system to show her some class options, looking for Elemental Excellence or Realmstepper but neither were available. “I am happy,” she said. “The others aren’t available, but I think I made the right choice.”

  “Good, I’m glad.” Joe said.

  “So what’s the plan now?" Emma asked.

  “I don’t know, honestly. This was the plan and I expected it to take another hundred years.” Zoe chuckled. “I think I’ll relax for a few years.”

  “And build a portal to the moon for Foizo.” Joe added.

  “Right. And build a portal to the moon, just for you.” Zoe laughed.

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