Nothing is Impossible

A ball of fire crashed over Atlas, doing a small amount of damage to him before another fireball -that looked exactly the same- flew from Atlas's armor, seeking out Zores. Zores waved his hand, and a jet of water collided with the fireball head on, canceling both it and the fireball out of existence.

Atlas's armor went from being huge and bulky to thin and streamlined, as he shifted from Defence Form to Speed Form. He leapt forwards, appearing next to Zores almost as soon as he donned his fastest form. Zores turned, reacting fast to Atlas's new appearance, but Atlas had already slashed out with his scythe, forcing Zores to teleport away or lose his head to the black blade.

Atlas looked around, changing back into Defence Form so he could deal with any unexpected attacks, when he did, Zores appeared high above him, way out of reach of his bulky defence form. He created a small spell between his hands before throwing it down at Atlas, making three more and tossing them down in quick succession after the first.

Atlas narrowed his eyes, switching to Magic Form before casting a spell. The first component he added was earth, then he added metal on top of it, then finally said the command. "Be A Wall!" he shouted, and a metal wall appeared in front of him, blocking out his vision of Zores but also blocking the spells Zores had thrown at him.

After the sound of four hits to his wall, he waited a brief second before using Speed Form and leaping over the wall, hoping to take Zores by surprise if he was preparing an ambush attack.

Atlas saw Zores under him, hands glowing a golden green. He smiled at Atlas then shouted at the top of his lungs. "Be A Fist That Breaks Through All Opposition!" A giant golden fist sprouted from the sand, made up of sturdy rock and what looked like streaks of metal. There was a brief second where the fist came up towards him. Atlas tried to shift forms, but he was a second to late, and the fist hit him, his meager defence failing to properly defend him as he was sent flying even higher into the air.

Atlas used Perfect Awareness.

The world stopped.

Atlas shifted into Recovery Form, injuries healing in real time, as he waited, multiple streaks of lightning appeared in the air around him bulging and writhing as he filled them with the maximum amount of mana he could. When he decided he had recovered enough, he shifted forms again into Magic Form. The spells all surged in size once more. Atlas commanded them "Target And Follow That Man." before Atlas released the spells, shooting them down in a mighty barrage to end Zores in a storm of lightning. But he didn't stop there. He used a spell that instantly copied the storm of lightning again and shot that after a brief delay, using the same glyph work, and the second storm was on its way to the ground.

Atlas then shifted into Speed Form, beating the storm to the ground and landing by Zores. After shifting once more, now into Strength Form, he grabbed Zores by the collar and threw him bodily upwards, sending him flying straight into the lightning bolts, which were all targeting him.

He crashed through the first storm, using wind magic to stop himself in place before looking down at Atlas, creating a large fireball that he threw down with all the force of a hammer.

Before the second wave of lightning consumed him.

Zores screamed in pain, his body unable to handle the power of dozens of lightning bolts slamming against his skin, and he exploded into green light. Atlas used Defence Form to take the fireball head on, and though it hurt, he managed just fine.

One more second ticked and Perfect Awareness ended. Atlas collapsed to the ground, thoroughly spent. Zores appeared beside him, and he clapped Atlas on the back. "Way to end strong! Was that finally fueled by Perfect Awareness?" He asked Atlas, looking interested.

Atlas nodded. "It was. How did you know?"

Zores chuckled. "You went from having an almost equal battle with me to sending me into oblivion almost instantly. That and your eyes tipped me off."

Atlas frowned, reaching up to his face. "My eyes? What changed about my eyes?" He asked Zores inquisitively.

"They went blank, as though you had no emotions, it was terrifying if I'm being honest, and it caused me to react to your first wave of lightning bolts slower than usual. I tip my hat to you for the second wave though, caught me completely off guard." He glanced at the fading light and sighed. "We have just a couple minutes until our training completely ends, might as well check your notifications now, no reason to hold it off." He told Atlas.

Atlas nodded seriously and opened his notifications.

You have leveled up your skill Mind Step (Z) to level 8!

You have leveled up your skill Spell Crafting (ZZZ) to level 3!

You have leveled up your skill Eloquent Articulation (S) to level 42

Tiering up…

Eloquent Articulation (S) -> Eloquent Pontification (S)

Tiering up…

Cannot tier up…

Ranking up…

Eloquent Pontification (S) -> Beautiful Pontification (SS)

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LUCKY BONUS!

Beautiful Pontification (SS) -> Flawless Pontification (SSS)

Tiering up…

Cannot tier up…

Ranking up…

Flawless Pontification (SSS) -> Perfect Pontification (Z)

Tiering up…

Perfect Pontification (Z) -> Flawed Utterance (Z)

You have leveled up your skill Perfect Awareness (SS) to level 20!

Tiering up…

Cannot tier up any further…

Ranking up…

Perfect Awareness (SS) -> Impossible Awareness (SSS)

Tiering up…

Cannot tier up any further…

Ranking up…

Impossible Awareness (SSS) -> Mind Shattering Thoughts (Z)

LUCKY BONUS!

Mind Shattering Thoughts (Z) -> Perfect Mind Shattering Thoughts (ZZ)

And just like that, Atlas was able to complete all of the goals. They waited a few more minutes before the goals appeared in front of him. Zores had called it the post lesson summary.

Goal One: Synergize down to at least 12 skills. Difficulty: Moderate. Reward: 10 levels in any skill.

Total Skills: 11

Assign 10 levels to a skill of your choosing.

Goal Two: Get Skill Rank up to S rank. Difficulty: Extreme. Reward: Upgrade Title under Legendary.

Skill Rank: SS

Choose Title to Upgrade.

Goal Three: Get all Combat skills up to SSS or Z rank. Difficulty: Hard or Super Hard. Reward: New Title (Rare or Epic)

Combat skill lowest level: Z

New Title Gained: Combat Journeyman (Epic)

Atlas turned to Zores and informed him of what rewards he had gained. Zores glanced at his titles and said to just upgrade his new one, and that he could choose whatever skill he wanted for the ten free levels. After a few more minutes of idle chatter, Zores left. He told Atlas not to expect something like this to ever happen again, as he was a busy man, but that he would be happy to give Atlas pointers.

After Zores left, another notification popped up in front of him.

After further processing it has been found that Player [Atlas] has completed the system hidden bonus objective. Stand by as objective and rewards are shown. This is only being shown as you have already completed the hidden objective.

Atlas frowned. What did this mean? What exactly was a hidden objective?

(System Tip: Hidden bonus objectives are objectives that the system itself sets for a lesson. They are always a minimum of Super Hard Difficulty. As they are set by the system and cannot be viewed until completion, the rewards are much higher and can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 hours to process, depending on players' significance.)

Atlas frowned. That gave as many questions as answers. What was the players' significance? How powerful a player was? How important they were? If the latter, how did the system judge that?

After a few minutes of endless questions, Atlas gave up, heading up to the bleachers to allow more people to use the arena he had been occupying.

He did as Zores said, upgrading Combat Journeyman to Combat Master.

Combat Master: You are a master of fighting, and all skills/spells that do damage or are used in combat gain experience much faster. Rate of experience gain is dependent on what you are fighting. You can roughly judge someone's combat power in relation to yours. This information is shown when using inspect. 1.0 is your combat power 0.5 is half your combat power 2.0 is twice your combat power, and so on and so forth.

Atlas tried it out, looking down on one of the people fighting in the arena.

Barbarian

Tier: 4 Level: 117 CP(Combat Power): 3.2

So he was roughly 3.2 times stronger than Atlas? Or was it just evaluating his Combat Power-

Atlas's thoughts were interrupted by a notification. He hastily opened it up.

Hidden Bonus Objective: Get all Skill to Z-grade or above. Difficulty: Extreme. Reward: Gain Title Skill Master.

ERROR. Earth Player 0001 "Atlas Channing" Already possesses this title.

Searching for optional rewards…

Option One: Upgrade Skill Master

Best solution.

Computing…

Upgrading Title…

Reward: Skill Master -> Skill Grandmaster

ERROR. Earth Player 0001 "Atlas Channing" Already possesses this title.

Processing…

ERROR TO UNDERSTAND.

Ignoring…

Searching for optional rewards…

Option One: Upgrade Skill Grandmaster

Possibility. May be too strong for player… ERROR - UNEXPECTED LINK FOUND.

Player [Atlas] is both a candidate for [Avatar of Death] and [Skill Sage].

Upgrading Skill Grandmaster is acceptable, but does grant Player [Atlas] a slight advantage over other candidates.

Searching for possibilities…

Decision made. Upgrade title at the expense of losing one of the three links to [Avatar of Death], giving him advantage in [Skill Sage Candidacy], and disadvantage in [Avatar of Death Candidacy].

Upgrading Title and deleting [Avatar of Death] link…

Skill Grandmaster -> Skill Sage

Skill Sage***: You are a Sage at creating skills, and it is now 50 times easier to create and level said skills. Skill experience gain is no longer increased by 20% at each level and 200% at each tier, and instead becomes 5% and 50% increase respectively. (This effect is not retroactive) Whenever someone uses a skill in your presence, you can focus to know the name of the skill and all of its abilities. (Works on any skills at or higher than your highest leveled skill). You will no longer be given skills by the system. (This does not apply to skills gifted from achievements). You can change the name of your skills, even if they are not 10 words or greater, and you can subtly change the effects of a skill, but it can never be stronger than the maximum its rank and tier suggest.

Atlas just stared at a loss for words. How had such a simple reward caused so many different problems? He had gotten three errors in from just one message sending off a chain reaction. And what was this about him being a candidate?

At a loss, he shrugged it off and pushed it away, opting to go hunting with his new skills. And on the topic of skills…

10 levels assigned to Breath of the Consuming Void (ZZ)

Tiering up…

INSANE LUCKY BONUS!!!

Breath of the Consuming Void (ZZ) -> Breath of the Consuming Void Dragon (ZZ)

Time to get to work.