The Achievement [system].

---James---

The very first class James picked was founder.

Not because he would be using it often, but because he wanted to protect his 3D printer. That was the only reason – if monsters started to appear he wanted to try and keep them off his stuff.

To gain the class he had to draw a circle with a short wiggly tail on the inside of it.

Easy.

His eye highlighted the pattern in 3D space and all he had to do was carefully trace it. The first time he tried, he failed after he ran out of class mana… but by the second attempt, he managed to draw the shape in a single motion. James was met with a glow and miniature achievement that appeared only in his class eye.

First class! + 1p

As soon as he had the class he was given access to a single expandable spell. Delineate space. The first step was to draw a ring around the entire area he wanted to 'claim' – in this case a ring about 3 meters in diameter perfectly enclosing the machine he had been given with plenty of room to work in.

Next he had to reinforce that ring. He had several options but the easiest for James was to 3D print a physical fence and erect it vaguely overlapping the ring.

…as far as protection went, it was far from a wall's strength. It wasn't a literal barrier that could block the types of creatures James might worry about fighting – despite literally being a barrier. Instead, the fence did two things. First it solidified his class ring somehow, activating in the fastest possible way with a visible ring overlapping the one that glowed in his class sight. Two, it directed entry towards his single 'open' location acting a bit like a restriction weaking the barrier there in exchange for enhancing everywhere else.

The final step James needed to do was pick a single purpose for the ring. A single 'law' this 'space' would enhance.

There were several base options he could chose, but most were complicated involving several components or days of spellwork or multiple people.

James chose the simplest method with the least amount of control.

At the edge of his ring, James drew what looked like a signpost. A glowing box on a stick. Inside the box he wrote his goal. He then moved and created a second box and a third, writing the same goal with a bit of variation.

Each time he made a box, his class sight revealed a sort of warning. It said his law needed to be as simple and singular in purpose as possible. No "This and this and this" shoving as many goals in as possible. Ideally a single word or contained idea. A sentence or two max if the concept was simple but there wasn't a word for it.

If he wanted control over the actual form the law would take and its side effects he would have to use a longer more complicated process…and probably rely on information gained from previous people who had used this skill. It was hard to forget the base was raw, with him technically being the first person to use it ever.

James ignored most of the warnings, finishing off his third and final sign. 'No-property-damage', 'free-equipment-repair', 'structure-protection'.

The moment he finished the third and final sign, the area seemed to change. A fourth sign briefly appeared – the words from the first three melding and shifting into it – and then all four boxes bled into a visible barrier melting and growing in all directions like sped up frost on a lake.

James's goal was literally ripped apart and infused into the surroundings and because of the shortcut he had taken, it all seemed to rest on him.

Almost an hour of time for his nebulous conceptual goal to permeate the space and become a law. An hour where he wasn't allowed to leave – an hour where it felt vaguely like he was carrying something heavy as the class magic rested on his own using his high rank to shortcut experience and skill.

Once again there were a few 'spells' James could use to try and guide the process, but most were too complicated or hard for James to get right. What he could do was flare his domain and manually filter the area. In his class sight, multiple red dots appeared mostly clustered around his large 3D printer. James drew circles around them with his class mana then watched as the rings seemed to suck the dot out of space and into his ring before physically condensing into a small red crystal.

Walking to the edge of his still forming barrier James then chucked the crystal, watching as it broke down once again fading away to nothing outside of his space.

The only other bit of setup James did in this time was influence the type of monster he might get.

For his convenience James wanted a single opponent. Forcing that would make the opponent slightly stronger than if he left it random but that was fine.

For his main wish, James wrote something that could get past his barrier. Not the class barrier his reflective one. As far as James was concerned, this was the only way he could really be pushed.

…

James's 'settlement' was finished without a problem and the last step he had to take was a sort of analysis to figure out how exactly his goal had been implemented.

It was very quick to analyze, a status of sorts appearing after he spent some class mana and created a box for it.

Owned, designed, physical structures were nearly impossible to damage and quick to repair, stealing lifeforce from nearby living creatures if they had to. If anyone tried to damage structures or even owned items, the damage would be transferred to the person who tried to damage the 'thing'. In this 'city', items were more important than people. If you crashed a car, the car would remain unscathed while you exploded from transferred damage.

Not the best law to base a city around. More than good enough for James's goal.

Found a micro space successfully. +10p

…

James started the process of swapping his class from settler to explorer, ignoring the note that he would lose progress in his founder class.

Swap class for the first time. +1p

Because he had only dipped into the rank 1 or 'base' class, swapping would only take a few hours.

He would get that chef/ingredient explorer class eventually!

While swapping, his class eye was nearly out of commission – a dull grey sight with the majority of his new tools disabled…but James's power did not rely on his class.

Time passed nearly uneventfully, his body becoming more and more uncomfortable feeling as time passed and the laws grew closer to that of the new universe than the old.

And then suddenly without warning, a massive blur stuck.

Its head ripped out of the ground taller than James stood, sharp fangs extending out longer than his forearm.

James had a moment of premonition right before the attack, so his protection flared into place almost faster than his conscious mind could react. His domain flared into its active state, reflective barrier snapping up on all sides.

The maw pressed against him then rebounding slightly with a bounce as jaws snapped shut and were rebuffed. Sideways the mouth loomed, jaws vibrating like an elastic band as the creature chewed, four fangs like the bars of a jail crossing his sight. Each bite rebounded a foot or two before snapping shut once again fractions of a second later.

The head was sideways in James's sight. Two walls closing in again and again with smaller bounces.

James punched the countless small teeth coating each of the walls around him smashing the jaw further open. Then before his situation got worse, he turned and forced a large amount of kinetic energy around his body boosting his speed. Just weeks before, this much power moving this fast would have burst blood vessels.

Stepping down on one of the fangs as he jumped upwards, James kicked with his explosive concept – trying to shatter the enamel even as he flew upwards towards the center of the room. A faint crack rang out – there was a good chance he had snapped his target, but James kicked upwards without checking. His foot kicked once more pushing off the snapping snout that moved towards him.

The creature was faster than James's base stats but more than manageable after he boosted everything with mana.

James rose in a dart then flipped through the air orienting himself 'upside down' as he beheld his foe for the first time. The moment he recognized the creature his vision suddenly cracked with a sharp pain.

It was…a basilisk. That was the only description James could bring to mind as his eyes turned to stone in his scull.

Massive snake.

Massive didn't even do it justice. Almost three kilometres long, the creature wrapped around the inside of his chamber multiple times like the inside of a scaly spring. As it moved and unearthed itself from the ground, the creature's massive trunk of a core flexed, flattening bushes and toppling small trees. The head turned rising up towards him in a smooth motion then lunged.

James's view of the creature froze. Colours tore like a badly compressed image even as he braced himself to rebound.

How had it affected him? It shouldn't have – James could block anything moving towards him and if it were based on sight, there was a good chance it was attached to light somehow. If it were based on light, he would have noticed and blocked it…

If the petrifying gaze was 'teleporting' towards him it should still be moving…just moving through a different dimension or something?

His instincts should have helped block it all the same.

His face should not be stone right now.

James felt the impact of the snake's lunge, absorbing a good amount of the force and using it to throw his body as far to the side as he could.

Air rushed by him as James struggled to keep track of his body. He'd done this before a few times now. Restricted his eyes in a fight. Typically only for weak creatures – never for anything serious.

Not enough to claim he was anywhere near good at blind flighting.

A twinge of premonition and James flexed to the side, making sure he hit the side of the snake's mouth so he wouldn't be swallowed whole. James tensed and pushed with his domain, glancing the attack to the side instead of directly forwards. Each reflection was perfect – his body remaining still in the air unaffected by the kinetic swipes.

He did want to fight something that could threaten him. James did want something that could get through his barrier somehow just to make things interesting…but did it really have to take his eyes? Was this going to break his class access somehow?

It wasn't just his eyes actually. The curse threatened to spread in all directions held in place by nothing more than his will.

James felt a rush of air and dove, punching what felt like a tire with all his might. He ignored a swiping tail and barely noticed a rain of rocks and debris bouncing off his back. James felt a sudden lightness and cursed for the first time in genuine anger.

"Bastard!"

His spices.

His thin backpack had torn and now his small collection of precious spices was flying away.

Why hadn't he left them in the safety of his protective base?

Truthfully it was like his wallet pre-system. James forgot he was wearing it except when he needed them – only taking his bag off to cook.

James punched and kicked, parrying each lunge and swipe of the massive monster. It was a sad sort of stalemate. Not a single one of the monster's attacks dealt any damage to James…other than the initial petrification of his face of course. The worst was getting caught between its jaws – a constricting force that tired his power more than anything else. James could reflect blows all day, but bites were a continuous force with leverage. Same reason he didn't want to get swallowed. He could defend against the constriction and stomach acid or whatever else there was but for how long?

On the other hand, James's attacks were equally useless. He punched like a truck. Kicked like a piston. Redirected the monsters' own strikes back at it with a smaller surface area.

Nothing seemed to work. To make matters worse, every strike he made needed to be reflected before it touched him. Skin contact spread the curse, his hands and feet gaining a thin film of brittle petrification that broke off in painful sheets.

What James needed was a weapon…but other than the occasional flying tree or rock, he barely had any ammo.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He preferred to use the environment as a weapon if he could, but it was hard to take advantage of the environment when one couldn't see.

James needed a proper weapon…it didn't change his distaste for the idea of relying on some tool over his body. Didn't change his distaste of an item that could break or be stolen. Still needed something to block the petrification from reaching his skin.

Wait a minute.

James remembered the lake of healing void water.

Where was it again? Could he kite the creature into it? Theres no way the massive trunk of the snake hadn't slipped in as the beast was slithering around all willy nilly…

Maybe it could weaken the skin and let James dig in easier?

Would it fix his eyes?

Turning to his AI for the first time, James tried to locate himself. He used the last known spot of his memory before he froze – his ai pinpointing a spot way better than he could based on its recorded memory. He had it analyse all the motions he had taken since then…and came up blank. Too many variables had happened. Each movement had a tiny degree of error. Each of those tiny errors compounded. James could be anywhere.

His AI helpfully informed him he was somewhere in the air.

Technology always failed you when you needed it the most huh?

Querying the room…it didn't seem to have a location sensor. Trying to pinpoint his location from the connection to his 3D printer…either the fact that it was in a protective space blocked it or that space had failed and his device was broken already.

James finally decided to use a brute force method flying down to the ground and jumping up.

The cavern was shaped slightly like the inside of a flying saucer. He should be able to figure out where the edge was.

Letting his AI guess he launched himself again timing the distance from one end to another and correcting again twice more.

This should be the edge! James jumped again landing on what felt like a slope then began to run. The pool was all along a dip…

Suddenly James felt himself push into water.

He held it back with his domain, reaching down and trying to modulate the barrier to let some through on just his palm.

Immediately a num burn began to leak through his hand, breaking slightly before it healed once again.

James ducked under the liquid just in time to draw the basilisk's head under water.

Pushing the attack to the side, James tried to flash a hole in his reflection right near his eyes. Letting something through in a specific part was harder than keeping a reflection in all directions.

A snap and the monsters mouth closed around James completely as it jerked its head to the side. Punching as hard as he could in panic James felt his fist slide right through a section of the snout, void liquid softening it on all sides. All the snake's teeth were meant for holding and dragging pray back further into its throat. None were meant for chewing. When James punched repeatedly the teeth were pushed backwards through softened flesh and out into the air beyond.

Of course his hand was melting as well. Even reflected, this was too much motion for them.

He had to stop getting stuck in the creature's mouth...But that was easier said than done. Neither time had been purposeful after all.

Gripping a fang, James tore, trying to reach a brain if it existed, then braced himself and exploded through the roof of its mouth in a fleshy burst.

As soon as James was out, he turned and dove once again trying to press the attack.

But the snout wasn't where he was expecting. The creature had flinched back with remarkable speed; the rush of air James's only sign he had missed.

Diving towards the retreating head, James felt a pang of premonition right before it reversed and struck out at him once again. Trying to condense as much damage as possible into the parry, James struck – his imagination filling the air with shards of flesh as the basilisk's head exploded completely.

…

His imagination didn't last long, and reality was disappointing in comparison.

James's eyes were healing ever so slightly, the liquid bringing back some of his sight, a blurry shape showing the distressing shape of the messy head in front of him healing as well. James tried to punch the basilisk's eyes – both to see if that would stop the petrification and to make his job easier.

James was pretty sure he hit but based on how fast it was regenerating it wouldn't last for long.

Guess its only fair. If James could use it to heal so could the snake.

As soon as James recognized the shape in front of him as the basilisk, his eyes cracked once again – deeper. Harder, the petrification digging into his scull and covering his nose and upper lip before he stopped it.

What was that?

Why wasn't his barrier blocking it? Was it really just 'happening' without movement? It wasn't something that jumped across from the snake to him? That should be impossible!

…was it because the snake didn't think of it as moving? Was the snake's domain built around this effect happening instantaneously?

James dove for the water skimming his entire face over the surface then flipped up and away retreating as fast as he could to heal.

…

The basilisk had to be equivalent to the calamities. Rank 4 at least. James refused to believe otherwise.

The creature's magic was definitely instantaneous. At least within the monster's domain…which filled the cavern. It had to. James's domain was an aura extending a hair span away from his skin. His domain told him he had absolute control over the movement of anything within it. He had authority over that which moved into his space…and yet the basilisk's domain surrounded him on all sides. It overlapped his own. It said the snake could petrify all who glimpsed any part of its form…

Recognizing that there wasn't a conflict caused James to push. If he couldn't prevent the force, he just had to get out of range. He just had to squeeze the domain out. James had control, it was his body. He was so much smaller and more concentrated…

Nothing.

James focused, rebounding off a blurry section of trunk curling through the air past him like a hose filled with water.

His eyes cracked. Petrification digging deeper as it was reapplied.

Everything began to feel strange in this moment. Distance stopped mattering along with fear.

A potion of his brain was definitely frozen. Not enough to kill his combat capability. Enough to make his mind body connection weaker than usual.

It was a good thing James's 'brain' was distributed through his entire nervous system. The reactions for each of his limbs were located in decentralized nerve clusters. A portion from his head had crawled down his spine at some point.

Technically all James should need to survive was the twin cores in his stomach, but he didn't quite have enough defensive stats to believe that with certainty.

His body defense had been locked for a long while now. Soul and mental defense might pick up some of the slack?

Why wasn't James scared? He no longer had a safety net and this was the closest to dying he had felt in a long time.

Brain damage. It's the only thing that made sense.

James lashed out, navigating back towards the healing pool and allowing his entire head to sink under. The burning liquid filling his nose and ran down his throat feeling like it burst out into his body all along the path.

Had some leaked into his lungs somehow?

Everything burned even as James felt the magic dig deeper into him, his body weakening.

James felt a twinge of premonition then jumped in an explosion of liquid just barely missing the head of the beast.

The stats in his body felt weird. They were trying to enhance partially melted flesh overcharged with kinetic mana. His flesh was healing towards some ideal both its current and past state insufficient.

James jerked sideways first reflecting the shift then magnifying his velocity with a burst of energy. A rush of air swirling past told him he had dodged successfully.

A Rush from the side came towards him but this was just a physical blow, so James reflected it, ignoring any changes.

His body knew how to move almost better than he did. One of his arms shot sideways and punched with a single finger held straight. His reflection protected his finger from the impact and let him punch past scales dumping a kinetic blow directly into the flesh beneath.

James allowed himself to get pulled forward as the snake crossed the cavern and tried to squish him against the new floor then bounced like a ball as he perfectly redirected his own motion. His finger had stiffened into a point after touching the snake's skin, but James ignored it continuing to fight in wild instinctual jerks.

Meanwhile James felt both the magic of the void water and the barest hint of paused petrification rushing through his channels. James pulled the power around refining it even as his channels began to melt and freeze in its passage.

The foreign power was already partially his…it hadn't quite become his power yet, but he could move it about activating it and deactivating it as if it were.

By focusing on his concepts, James felt whispers of optimal pathways come to the forefront. All he had to do then was allow channels to melt and drift then freeze them back in place.

And at the same time James focused on his foe trying to imagine how he might beat it.

How was it petrifying him?

Was it a mental effect? Mind magic? The snake affecting him as soon as he 'mentally decided' he had seen it?

Oh! I just saw it. James thought then waited a half second to see if he froze again.

Either he hadn't believed it hard enough or it wasn't mind based.

Was this like in stories where staring at it in a mirror was safe? James had already been burned a few times by assuming real monsters had traits like similar creatures in fantasy. He could try making a giant mirror? If it didn't work it would be a huge wast of time...

Dashing about a bit longer James once again dunked his head in void water. He landed some useless hits, threw a few lucky rocks, was struck and parried so many lunges he lost count.

And finally got an idea.

Keeping his eyes mostly shut – only opening them in a squint for a split second then closing them again when he saw it – James located his protective space with his class eye. The delineated dome was highlighted in his class's sight. Easy enough to spot.

He then designed a weapon – a giant nail, nearly 9 meters tall – letting his AI take care of the math...aerodynamics and other specifics.

Spotting a large rock floating past, James grabbed it flying quickly into his space to both upload the final design and toss some material into the hopper.

Dashing back, he flashed his eyes open for a bit and locating a large wooden trunk on the ground nearby.

Grabbing the wood, James tossed it in the hopper then jumped out once again, avoiding the snake still rampaging about his surroundings as he looked for more materials.

He settled into a rhythm – the world seeming to condense down into nothing more than a percentage of how much more material he had to collect and how damaged his body was.

Out he went. Back he came. Out he went. Back he came.

Refine his channels a bit. Dodge or block the snake as needed.

Finally he gathered enough materials for the machine to start working. Quite a bit of what he brought was junk, some of it could be refined and built back up while some could only be used without decomposing it. The wood for example could be ripped apart at the atomic level but worked better when stripped and left as sticks. The atoms in this new universe were weird, Simplified and smaller yet more heavily reliant upon aether to stay stable.

James didn't care about the nitty gritty. What he did care about was finally gaining a way to fight back. The giant spike looked like a javelin crossed with an oversized dart. At its back, metal and wood twisted out into a thin tail while a faint spiral along the sides promised it would spin and remain stable when thrown.

It was perfect.

Taking to the sky, James struggled slightly with maneuvering his load – then tanked a hit from the snake trying to absorb and assign as much of the motion into the spear as possible. Motion twisted through his body and James fused kinetic mana into the natural source before slamming it deep into the rod beside him.

Holding the weapon back for a second to aim, James struggled to keep it steady, then opened his eyes, spun and threw with everything he had.

Even as his eyes began to turn to stone, James was able to spot his weapon smashing into the snake's head and pinning it down to the ground below.

With a crack, the tail of the javelin snapped open locking into place and James knew the far end should also have hooked open digging into the stone below.

The idea was to make it hard for the snake to slide off the spike. Even as his vision faded and petrification threatened to transmute his entire head, James moved. He had spotted a good-sized rock roughly the size of a small car and knew it would work as a good projectile if he could just pop it off the ground.

Smashing his body partly underneath the stone, James exploded upwards flipping the large rock up into the air.

Jumping upwards he reached out and rotated radial motion stopping and boosting it up towards the center of the room before it could fall down.

With a jump towards the far wall James landed then oriented towards his weapon before jumping once again.

He was blind but his goal was big, and a combination of instincts and AI helped him impact the rock on a rebound.

If only he were heavier, he could have transferred more force... as it was, his hit tapped the rock forward and towards a section he knew the snake would wrap around.

Flying forward he caught up to the stone and accelerated it the rest of the way his senses almost spreading across the stone as he did.

James landed directly on top of where he knew the snakes head was then flew across to the pool to heal for a final time.

All around him the snakes long body thrashed and crashed about.

Had this been enough?

James dunked then went out again to check the state of his meal.

…

His first rock strike had sadly not killed the creature. Nor did the second or third. James ended up having to squish it nearly a dozen times before he figured something out. It turned out the snake had a shifting core. Something that looked like a ribbed heart connected with dozens of fleshy cables. The snake could essentially pull its weakness up and down a good portion of its length. It was nearly impossible to notice from the outside but the more damage he made the more pronounced the bulge became and the harder the snake found shifting it.

Once James flattened enough areas it became clear he had 'locked' the core into a segment that was only 30 or so meters long. Splitting that in half, he reconfirmed which spot it was in and then in two more guesses he caught the vulnerability bang on. The worst part of this entire process was how intelligent the snake was. Even with its head pinned and squished, the snake was smart enough to shift its body towards the healing pool attempting to fix sections James had already squished...

Actually no. The worst part was being unable to look at it properly. James could have killed the creature ages ago if he could just keep his eyes open the whole time.

The snake finally died and James collapsed.

His endurance was spent after hours of fighting – just in time to reach the first scripted event.

33% in and something seemed to rustle through the space. The pool of void liquid was lifted up funneled towards the center then blended in a violent looking purple cloud.

The result was burning purple rain. Countless small drops flying in all directions and digging into nearly everything they touched.

James reflected some of them, but he was already at his limits and he'd already confirmed it was safe if painful… so he slowly relaxed and allowed his body to get coated in transmutation welts.

The rain continued for a half hour, James rolling over once and let it impact his back. Finally it faded – the hell rain dropping to a trickle – and with a second sort of shiver in space the world lurched forwards once again. It was now traveling percentage point by percentage point towards its new goal at 60%.

The first thing he had done while resting in the rain was change his adversary goal – removing the request for something that could get past his barrier but leaving in his bias for single opponents. This had pushed him hard and he wasn't sure he could replicate the same win if he got a second fresh monster just like the last one.

The second thing he did was seriously consider the systems boons once again.

While resting, James read through the pros and cons of the offered immortality and used that to ignore the acid rain.

As far as offers went…it seemed to have more pros than cons? Main con was a loss of some possibility he hadn't even been working towards. Second con was an increased need to sleep. Everything else was positive?

Honestly James would even accept the age enhancement and leave it at that. He didn't feel the need for the near death healing… but other than maybe making him more complacent with a safety net, it wasn't like there was a real point in rejecting that was there?

James made the decision then and there.

Maybe he should have spent a few more days thinking about such a big decision… but really why spend more time stressing over the decision when he had already made up his mind?

The moment James accepted, he felt a sharp tearing pain somehow completely separate from the beating the rain was giving him.

There was a feeling of something conceptually ripping somewhere…and then what James could only describe as a light full body phantom ache. The ache covered his entire body and mind – like he had a minor bruise on every inch of his skin and small headache that was only just beginning to clear. The closest James had felt to this was the time he had 'died' to dragonfire…and just remembering how bad that had been, seemed to clear this up. His headache faded in less than a minute and other than a lingering twinge in some of his joints the only real pain was from the rain.

Surprisingly normal. That was it? That's all it cost? It was that easy? Why didn't he feel different?

…was there a catch? If this was all it took you would be stupid not to take the deal.

James tried to feel if anything had changed but there weren't any obvious signs anything had even happened.

When he checked the space enhanced status it now claimed his age defense was 'sufficient'.

As if noticing his disbelief, a packet suddenly arrived.

Age boon accepted.

Soul defense 11. Soul adjacent defense 2. Sweet spot achieved.

-> High enough to make this safe (minimum 1 stat required)

-> Low enough to make this process easy (maximum 33 stats for quick unaided procedure)

Soul seed removed and bound to life tree. Tree planted successfully in the forest of immortals and germinated with meaning.

Please allow time for your soul to heal before testing any of the promised capabilities.

James finished reading the log, looked around at the destruction and then felt an even deeper wave of exhaustion.

Relaxing ever so slightly James felt himself drift slowly off to sleep.