Back in the forest, Alex and Alice walked toward the now opened path.
The mist had fully cleared, revealing the road that would lead them to Dawn City.
In the distance, the shimmering gates of the first city gleamed in the sunlight, and Alex noticed thousands of other paths coming from different directions to the city, probably from other novice villages.
"First, the profession altar," he informed Alice as he pointed at a stone structure right before the entrance of the massive lv1 city.
As Alex and Alice approached the profession altar, the atmosphere around them buzzed with energy.
The altar was an imposing stone structure adorned with six portals, each marked with an emblem representing one of the six main professions: Warrior, Assassin, Summoner, Mage, Archer, and Priest.
These portals shimmered faintly, awaiting the first batch of players to begin their trials and enhance their professions by advancing.
Alice, standing beside him, glanced toward the portal with the archer symbol.
She gave him a small smile, her excitement barely contained, "I think I'll go, we'll meet in the city later,"
"Yeah," Alex nodded, "Good luck."
Taking a deep breath, Alice stepped toward the archer portal.
The moment she approached, the portal flared to life.
[Level 10 Archer detected, launching first advancement trial!]
Without hesitation, Alice stepped through the portal, and in an instant, the vortex of swirling energy engulfed her.
She vanished into her trial, leaving Alex standing before the mage portal, alone but focused.
"My turn," he mumbled, his fingers running over the smooth surface of the [Orb of Dual Class] tucked in his pocket.
He had been waiting for this moment.
Pulling the orb from his pocket, he didn't waste a single second as he took a deep breath and activated it.
[Ding! You have activated the Orb of Dual Class, granting you access to the second class selection!]
[Current Class: Mage]
[Choose another profession among the available ones: Warrior, Assassin, Archer, Summoner, Priest.]
The options flashed before his eyes, and Alex immediately began sifting through his choices.
Warrior? No, he had already lived that life in his past. Heavy armor and brute strength didn't suit his new approach.
He dismissed it immediately.
Archer and Priest? Both were long-ranged or supportive, and as a Mage, he already excelled at range and magic.
There was no need to double down on that.
That left him with two distinct choices: Assassin or Summoner.
The Summoner class was intriguing, especially considering the possibilities of taming powerful beasts.
Alex knew that with his current strength, subduing certain rare creatures wouldn't be an impossible task.
The memories of legendary beasts came to mind: monsters so powerful that owning one would grant unparalleled strength.
Summoners were known for their flexibility, allowing them to command powerful pets while also offering support in battles.
Though this didn't mean other classes couldn't have powerful pets, not at all, actually, in his previous life, the person that had the strongest companion of all wasn't even a summoner player!
But even then.
"No, I need something to defend myself."
He had noticed it, but don't most of his fights end up in him being forced to block with his staff or at least swinging it?
His current strength attribute was high; and he should make use of it.
The decision was made.
[Ding! You have chosen the Assassin profession!]
[You have been given the basic skill: Strike!]
[Strike Level 1: Deals 100 points of damage to a target + 100% of your Strength. No cooldown.]
As you might expect, physical attacks don't consume mana, instead they would consume stamina, but using too much of it in little time could cause [Exhaustion].
With his decision finalized, Alex finally turned to the mage portal.
It called to him, a swirling vortex of blue energy with the emblem of a magic staff hanging above it.
His primary trial as a Mage awaited him.
He took a step forward.
[Level 10 Mage detected, launching trial!]
The portal surged with light, and as he stepped through, Alex felt the familiar pull of teleportation as the world around him blurred and warped.
The sensation passed quickly, and when the light cleared, he found himself in a small, stone-walled chamber.
[SSS-Level Talent detected, increasing trial difficulty accordingly!]
The message blinked before him, catching Alex off guard.
'Oh?' he didn't know about that, which made sense since he only had a C-Level talent before.
But before he could even think about it, a voice echoed through the chamber, explaining the rules of the trial.
[Welcome, FateBreaker, you have a SSS-Level talent, thus setting the trial to its highest difficulty!]
[This trial is divided into three parts: damage rating, fighting and finally, spell casting.]
[The further you go in the trial, the better the rewards, your rewards will be based on how far you go and your rating at the end, which can range from F to SSS.]
All of this seemed normal to him, except for the fact that it was set on the highest difficulty, and the fact he didn't know the contents of the trial as he had passed the warrior one in his past life.
[Good luck, FateBreaker.]
Alex felt dizzy, and the room around him changed.
In the blink of an eye, it transformed, now in front of him was a dummy.
[First Trial: Damage Rating]
[Try to do as much damage as the dummy as possible, your rank will be based on how much damage you do to it.]
[You can use three spells.]
The message disappeared, and Alex took a deep breath as he stepped forward, his eyes locked onto the dummy before him.
The dummy had around 3000 HP, yes, it wasn't much, but that was because at Alex's current level, nobody would do more than 1000 damage in three spells, and even doing that would already be considered S-Rank.
But Alex needed to do more than that, and so he opened up his skill panel, specifically the 'fireball'.
[Fireball has reached level 10; it can be upgraded to 'Grand Fireball' using 10 skill points!]
He used up 10 of his skill points to upgrade it.
Ding!
[You have used 10 skill points to upgrade 'Fireball' to 'Grand Fireball'!]
[Grand Fireball Level 1; Deal 1000 points of damage to target + 100% of spirit to target; consumes 100 mana; 2-second cooldown.]
Not only did the damage double, but the cooldown was reduced by a second too, in exchange the cost of casting this spell had been multiplied by ten, but it didn't bother him.
And so with this, this trial wasn't even a challenge anymore.
Fireball! Red Crystal! Rock Throw!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
-2257! -500! -1000!
The dummy was absolutely destroyed by Alex's powerful spells, crumbling to dust upon impact as its HP reached 0 instantly.
This was something that shouldn't happen.
[…] even the trial itself seemed to be shocked.
But it quickly recovered.
[You have somehow managed to destroy the dummy, an incredible feat for your current level, granting you an SSS-Rating and one prestige point!]
These prestige points would come in handy later, by the way.
'Thanks,' Alex mumbled, not even breaking a sweat as for him, he had just cast basic spells, consuming 135 mana out of his 2570 available ones.
He was becoming too strong.