The following day was spent with Zoe getting used to her new sense. It wasn't immediately overwhelming, like Cosmic Vision was, and for the most part she was able to ignore the barrage of sensations it gave her. Or maybe that was just because she'd grown so used to compartmentalizing the incredible amount of information these types of class effects could give her now. Pushing it all to the side so she could focus on what she knew, her eyes and her ears. The smells. Her familiar senses.

  When she did focus on the information, it was difficult to parse. Not because any individual piece of it was difficult to understand — with Cosmic Vision just the thought of wrapping her head around the mingling strands of time was difficult at first. But because of the sheer quantity of information it gave her.

  Every little speck of dirt had its own story to tell. Some that had come from far away, dragged in by hooves and fur. Some had been here for years, decades and centuries, tossed around in the stew of history that slowly built up on the ground over time.

  Each leaf that fell from the tree was important — as were the small veins and the stems. Some that had grown many leaves, some that were new. Branches with knots, young branches bursting with life.

  Even the wind as it raced by pulled a story along with it. The particles that drifted along with it full of character, tiny specks of skin from animals, pieces of rotting flesh from old carcasses.

  At last, Zoe was even able to see the invisible beasts that wandered through the dungeon, to some extent at least. Not quite as clearly as when she would use her Scrying ability, or how well her group would be able to see it with the buff she'd given them. Rather than seeing the beasts themselves, it was almost like she could see the absence of them.

  Strange holes where they walked, areas that light bent a little strangely. Where the shadows cried out in misery and exhaustion. Where the wind was pulled around in strange patterns and the mana twisted in peculiar patterns.

  With her Scrying, she could see them in all their glory. She could see their glistening stone armour, the incredible detailed faces, the brutal weapons they held at their sides and on their backs. She could see the power and force they carried with each step they took.

  None of that came through to her Omniscient Beholding. All she could see was the impact their invisibility had on the environment.

  Not to mention that she still couldn't perceive herself, see whatever it was that Tom and Jeff were seeing when they looked at her.

  Omniscient didn't seem like the right descriptor for the class, Zoe thought. It wasn't omniscient. If she were truly omniscient, she would be able to see these wandering guards in all their glory. She would be able to see the well of mana that Tom and Jeff described her as. But there were limits to omniscience.

  Was that because of the system's limitations? Was the system restricting an already existing class, or did it just want to make this class seem a little more grand than it really was?

  She pushed the thought to the side, just another thing to talk about with Eliza when they met. The more important immediate question was what she was going to do with her next class.

  If she were being honest, she was sick of dealing with new classes. Omniscient Beholder wasn't even a finished product, in her mind. Not to mention that she hadn't even tried out her new Elemental Manipulation yet, she still barely understood what Beheld did. The class would take years, if not decades of playing with before she understood it.

  And that wasn't even mentioning what the base Beholder classes could do. Corporal Beholder had some skills she absolutely needed to steal, and she hadn't even seen what Unseen Beholder had to offer at all. There was a process to getting new classes, and her backlog was long.

  So in the meantime, Zoe put the massive list of available classes to the side and decided to take ones she was already familiar with. She could spend a few months, or maybe a couple years even going through all of her available enchanting classes until she found something even better, perhaps. And later, she would. But now, she wanted to finish up this dungeon with her new friends and then go meet a wanderer again.

  And she couldn't do that until she had at least five or six decent classes under her belt. With some luck, by the time they finished clearing this dungeon she'd already be there.

  So Zoe made a list of her classes. Enchantrith would be her next class, a powerful enchanting class that she was already used to and would appreciate plenty. Death's Master would be next — the boosts it gave were incredible. The skills weren't all that important, but the class effects were incredible. Massive boosts to healing, health and mana. It was an unbelievably good class for her, and a must have. At least from the list of classes she already knew.

  And for her sixth class, the choice was simple. Spacial Essence was the only one that made any sense. The class wasn't actually all that great, anymore. Every skill it had to offer was incredible, which meant she'd already stolen them. The bonuses were great for her mana, and it gave a decent number of stat points, but nothing some other class couldn't do while giving new skills.

  But the main reason she would take it for her sixth class was because when she inevitably got her seventh class again, she hoped it would be a requirement for something even better. A seventh class that required having a class that she could only get as her seventh class? She didn't know everything about the system, but that kind of recursive logic was exactly what it loved to do. And so even if she didn't plan on getting a seventh class before she looped again to play with all her new classes, it just felt like throwing away potential to take anything else.

  Getting her next class took less than a day after they started on tackling the dungeon again. So many different things compounded with each other to make Zoe's levelling experience an absolute breeze compared to when they first arrived, which was already an insane pace.

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  The incredible amount of mana and mana regen she got from Omniscient Beholder let her contribute significantly more than she normally could with only her third class, which let her get an even bigger piece of the experience pie. The bonuses the class gave her to seeing the invisible beasts let her have a much easier time of dodging the arrows that were launched at them, which let her spend some of her mana offensively, which also let her get a larger piece of the experience pie.

  All of the weeks of experience the party had with the dungeon made them much better at working together and helped her get even more of the metaphorical experience pies to be split up.

  But perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle was that she just got lucky. Three class resets, and she found herself at her cap of forty five in just a few short hours already. Without a second thought, Zoe urged the system to give her the Enchantrith class and slotted in both Mana Affinity and Enchanted Mirrors as soon as it did.

  Her mana skyrocketed — at the beginning of the day it was just below ninety thousand. A handful of points thrown into Strength and Dexterity to bring them up to a less pathetic fifty, and a nice 699 points thrown into Intelligence brought her to 143280 before she took Enchantrith. The class gave her a 370% boost to her Mana and Mana regeneration, bringing her up to almost seven hundred thousand with a staggering amount of mana regeneration that almost matched it, second after second.

  In an instant, the slow, methodic approach they took to the dungeon shifted. Enchantments were Zoe's primary means of combat when she couldn't just overwhelm with sheer mana. And while she was capable of enchanting things without Enchanted Mirrors, the difference was almost impossible to compare.

  On her own, it would take seconds to form a projectile worth anything in combat. If she took a few minutes before they entered, she could bring in a handful of projectiles that she could use to attack the guards. But it came at the cost of having to maintain all the mana that sustained them, while she was dodging and weaving through the hurricane of arrows flying their way.

  With Enchanted Mirrors, she could form dozens of projectiles in an instant, launching them a moment later. A brief pause in the activity and she could unleash an incredible wave of destruction on the dungeon. It didn't require preparation besides setting up her Enchanted Mirrors beforehand, it didn't require constant maintenance. It was always active, always available.

  Zoe Teleported the group outside the dungeon bounds and took a few seconds to set up her first Enchanted Mirror in far too long. Her mana was still lacking compared to what she was used to, even if it was an incredible amount for her level now though, so she had to be careful about how much she put into each enchantment. They would need to be focussed, powerful enchantments.

  Nescience was tempting, but given the dungeon was made up of invisible denizens she wasn't sure if they'd even notice her projectiles being invisible anyway.

  Assault of the beholder was almost sure to be a standard in any of her offensive enchantments, going forward. It wasn't the most powerful skill but its mana efficiency alone made it entirely worth adding in to anything she already had to aim.

  There was also the standard set of skills that any of her projectiles needed, just to be a projectile. Archery and Elemental Arsenal, this time with a focus on crushing. Piercing the stone guards seemed less likely than smashing through them with force.

  And to that same end, Zoe threw in her Stonemasonry skill. It was still somewhat low level — only 143, but as an enchantment it worked wonders against stone constructions. Her projectiles would shove the entire extent of their mana into the stone constructs to do whatever she'd programmed it to do.

  Which in this case, was rip them apart. She didn't expect a single projectile to be capable of ripping apart an entire golem, but that was the beauty of Enchanted Mirrors. She didn't need it to.

  A moment later, she teleported them back into the fray with a swarm of earthen projectiles forming around them.

  ***

  Jeff watched as the world shifted. One moment they were taking down another of those horrid stone beasts — resistant even to his sinkhole spells, the blasphemous cretins. The next, they were back down on the ground outside the dungeon. A brief moment of reprieve, Jeff wondered for a moment? Did Zoe need a break? She seemed fine a moment earlier.

  And then they were back in the dungeon like nothing had happened, but with countless balls of earth forming around them. Each one launching the instant they formed. Some flew down, smashing into the guards below in giant plumes of dust and splintered rock. Some flew off through the sky, breaking through the devastating arrows that flew at them and smashing into the distant tower at the top of the stairs.

  In mere minutes, the stairs were cleared, nothing but rubble and destruction left below them. Jeff looked at Zoe, the frail looking woman still wearing nothing but a simple white dress in the dungeon higher level than most Jeff had ever seen. A toothy grin plastered on her face as she relished in the destruction below, her deep red eyes glowing in the waning sunlight.

  Fear shook through Jeff's form. Something from deep within him, something primal. His instincts screamed at him, telling him that he wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to be with this creature. This beast posing as human. There was something wrong, something dissonant about her. She didn't belong here.

  And just as quick as the feeling came, it left. A distant, fuzzy memory that Jeff wasn't sure he ever even felt. Her eyes were beautiful, mesmerizing. The power she displayed was incredible. And she was going to even help him loop! He couldn't wait.

  "Oh. Sorry." Zoe's expression turned to a frown when she looked at Jeff. "I got my new class and got a little carried away."

  "Hmm? For what?" Jeff asked with a chuckle. "I think I just got a level from that. You think you can do it again?"

  "I definitely did." Tom added. "I think I was close though."

  "Huh? Oh. Uh, yeah. I can do it again. We've got to wait for them to respawn though, but I think we should try taking that thing on now." Zoe pointed at the towering statue at the base of the tower.

  Its massive two handed sword was stabbed into the ground in front of it, both hands gripping the hilt that came up to the middle of its chest. Bits of rubble fell around it, bouncing off its shoulders and scattering around the ground as Zoe's projectiles countered each of the arrows flying their way and smashed into the tower behind.

  Each one did much less damage to the tower itself than they did to the creatures below, or even the steps below. And the tower seemed to be regenerating the damage much quicker than Zoe's projectiles could do — or maybe she was just putting less force into them to not tear the tower down? Jeff wasn't quite sure.

  "We can try," Tom shrugged, his hands running over his light leather armour in what Jeff knew to be a nervous tick. Tom wouldn't agree if he wasn't okay with it, but he often had a healthy dose of fear about him that he pushed through.

  Jeff agreed, and a moment later they were teleported closer to the statue. Then a bit closer, and closer. Bit by bit, inch by inch, as the arrows that once seemed to be so frustrating to deal with were nothing more than a display of light and sparks in the distance.

  The statue didn't move until they passed the threshold of the highest stair and hovered above the large platform a dozen feet in front of where the statue stood. Its stone eyelids cracked open, and it drew its sword from the ground in front of it with deafening cracks. Each muscle in its stone body bending with powerful snaps like a layer of ice that had built up on it shattering under its weighty movements.

  Its sword lifted, point towards Jeff and his merry band. Mana surged through the tower, flooding into the platform and up through the statue's feet and the swarm of arrows ceased. The statue's knees bent, and its eyes radiated with mana as it stared at the trio of invaders, waiting for them to make a move.

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