The Achievement [system].

---James---

James slowly began to explore the zone trying to find signs of a problem – any problem really. What sparked the cities failure? If he had to guess it would be someone poisoning the food supply. Maybe the hot spring pulled up heavy metals or a foreign country committed some sabotage.

If this was a story, that's where James would start. It fit cleanly into the scenario.

…but then again, this scenario wasn't created. It wasn't a game or neat story. It was a piece of history. A memory in the mana. Real life didn't always follow neat plotlines or have structural links.

It was the same with the natural abilities. Basically free analysis of someone's level overlapped with aura and showing others your own level…They served the same purpose in a way. James kept trying to imagine how either of the tools might help him solve the problem…but that was the wrong way of looking at things. Both aura and analysis were part of the environment. One existing made the other easier. They could help or be completely separate from his quest.

Basically anything could be anything and trying to figure out the correct or optimal path just gave him decision paralysis.

In the end what James actually ended up doing was flying around tasting soup. Every single restaurant he went to was phenomenal and different in its own way.

Somewhere along the way James found himself slipping into fetch quests without noticing how he had gotten there.

Essentially the city had half a dozen outposts several kilometres away in each direction.

The outposts were somewhere between guard towers and hunting lodges. Each had roughly a hundred people at a time. They shipped bulk wagons of meat back to the city and supplies back with the nearly empty carts.

James hunted a bit – the inner area of the kingdom between the mountain and outposts was relatively safe but the further you traveled into the wilderness the stronger the beasts became. James wasn't in danger of dying from anything he met but some of the encounters were far from easy. At one point he got caught in an invisible spider web with thick lines stronger than steel binding his body. Those spiders had been larger than dogs and able to shoot buckets of restraining line at a time.

…Kind of embarrassing how long it took James to escape that time.

There had also been a six legged creature with a long neck and slim form. Like some cross between a wolf and a deer if James had to describe its vibe. This creature was faster than James even at max speed, but after figuring out it couldn't get past James's defenses the creature had taken to stalking him and feeding on his prey.

There had even been a giant a hundred meters tall and nearly that wide. A large very very roughly humanoid creature of rough rocky skin. Covered in moss and using a thick tree as a club.

James had used his new spear to stab its neck from above and the remaining fight had wiped out a vast swath of forest.

But hunting didn't seem like a good lead so James shifted to courier work.

Essentially the meat wagons were shipped back as soon as they were full which was anywhere from a few days to over a week. Individuals still wanted to communicate and send missing items outside of this cycle and James could reach most of the outposts in less than an hour.

He was literally the fastest option available.

James delivered bags of desiccated stock. Letters, volatile magical parts that would have broken before they made it back. A warning about a wave of monsters. Some tools needed to measure fluctuating mana levels in the environment. Normal fetch quest tasks.

…other than not minding the courier life too much, James made quite a bit of money in this time. More than he had hunting at least for time spent. The money could be spent on high rank food and information requests from what James was 80% sure was a spy agency.

Finally after several weeks without a hint, James found something that might have changed. Something that had changed a month previously – around when James had arrived in fact.

One of the council members – head of the refinery Subaerial – had discovered a volatile new way of concentrating power. His psudo organization was experimenting and attempting to push beyond what they had done before.

Rank 5 soup.

James spent too much time trying to figure out what that meant and how he might talk to the council member, so he was too late to stop the process.

And that marked the end. As soon as the fabled broth was made what felt like an aura pulse spread in all directions.

A ring echoing through reality. A chime heralding the most perfect of meals.

James failed his quest. The system told him so. It gave him a scenario to run and survive instead of prevent the city from falling. Upgraded the difficulty rank to '5-6' and said nice try.

James refused to take that so called failure at face value. The city hadn't been destroyed yet.

He waited till the end.

And watched as the dragon came following the siren sent of a worthy morsel.

Rank 6. True dragon.

Similar to the creature James had faced so long ago but slightly smaller. James was stronger now, entire realms stronger and yet facing a dragon the size of a mountain…it put his strength into a sad bracket.

The dragon had come a shadow blanketing the city. It had narrowed in and swallowed the refinery whole.

A true calamity. The end of all things.

James had tried to fight the creature of course but his attacks barely scratched the beast's scales.

He tried to push the head away from the city – tried to divert it.

Tried to launch buildings at the monster. Tried to help the cities leaders as they fought.

Tried to block a stream of dragon fire when his distractions grew annoying.

Tried to save everyone he could – dozens burning for every person he pulled out of danger.

The best James could say about the 'fight' if you could call it that was that he survived. Dragon fire – that impossible mix of every single affinity bent towards destruction and nothing else – came towards him and was partially diverted. Bits of the innate kinetic magic fought to continue moving through James's domain and was partially rejected. Everything that got through his defenses began to pool in his channels building and resisting refinement.

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The leaders of this wonderful city didn't stand by while James fought alone – a giant made of magma formed near the peak waves of heat reaching James despite his distance. One man swung a massive sword his slices strong enough to carve grooves in the forest below. Yet another controlled what looked like a giant sea urchin – an incredibly spiky metal ball the size of a house and telekinetically flung about. Still another had turned into a projection and entered the dragon itself…that clocked figure never returned.

James was finally forced to admit he failed – his final attacks nothing more than frustration and revenge against the senseless destruction.

He finally retreated, flying all the way to the edge of this zone and left it behind.

James passed through a barrier and stepped forth into the wider realm.

…

As James left the pocket of history behind, he got a popup stating he had entered an unmanaged zone. All the rules were the same except for the nearly free analysis. The requirements for food were still there but no longer tied as tightly into the realm as they had been. James would have to constantly eat rank 0 or 1 food to survive…but he could probably go a few weeks on a single rank 4 meal.

Before leaving James turned and found himself looking at a massive black bubble. Placing a hand on the barrier gave him a popup stating the zone could not be attempted again by the same person.

He felt lost. James hadn't expected to fail – not immediately.

He felt raw – his body was still filled with dragon fire and damaged beyond belief but the loss hurt more than his body did.

Staring at the bubble behind him James couldn't help but wonder if it had even mattered. Had he helped? Had his scouting trip made it easier for those who came after? Could he somehow tell people about the main quest? Hope someone else could use his information to prevent the town from making a treasure it couldn't protect?

…

If he couldn't it would almost seem as if the system wanted them to fail. James had entered at the upper end of the zone limits. He'd tried his best – he wasn't weak. The system had placed it here because it wanted to save that bit of history. It wanted someone to change the outcome…didn't it?

James considered making signs telling people how to solve the quest and placing them all around the bubble. Before he resorted to that he found a way his explorer class could interact with the controller for this zone.

There was some back and forth and then – as if listening to James's mantle and authority – the system opened up a 'notes' section for him to quickly write down what he had learned.

It even verified the truth of his discovery and integrated some of it into the questline.

After doing as much as he could James felt better. It hadn't been a loss and maybe…maybe if someone else saved the zone he could come back and try some soup again in the future.

…

James explored for a while slowly healing and refining the dragonfire into his soul. He found a large rank 4 lizard and took out some lingering dragon trauma on the monster. After his meal James slept for a week.

When he awoke James was healed and found every single one of his concepts had gained a depth to them – as if the dragon fire had changed into conceptual stats bound to his magic instead of his body.

He reached the edge of this unmanaged and wild zone and entered a new one accepting the rule change at the border. This zone had some similar rules to the previous but did not provide an aura to everyone who entered. One of the biggest changes was in how power moved and settled. Mana was completely physical and visible in the surroundings as a transparent haze. When it was concentrated in an area that gas became a liquid and crystalized into spiky solids.

Small monsters ate the raw mana while larger ones bioaccumulated mana by feeding on the smaller ones.

Other than mana being both a meal and a resource, this zone was relatively simple. Higlight was james condensing his mana to see how he tasted. He continued his journey.

He passed by a few bubbles – there seemed to be at least one in every natural zone as if the system 'seed' was radiating laws out into their surroundings.

James paused at each one but moved on after reading their questlines. He preferred to explore without a goal at least for now.

He even stepped out of the unmanaged zones. He entered the wilderness. The cracks between zones where rules fell away and laws warped with each step. He found a place that felt like a frozen thunderstorm – giant bolts of blue lightning and drops of water frozen in space. A ecosystem had formed – small creatures racing along the arcing bridges of light and jumping between droplets of water.

If it weren't for a strange foreboding feeling – as if James would slowly turn to a frozen statue if he stayed – James would have explored the frozen land for longer.

Then, after what felt like ages James felt something.

A resonance.

A presence.

An approach.

…

"The protagonist has arrived! Heyo, miss me?" Richard laughed as soon as he saw James.

"What a hard to argue with system of dumping people out. Do you know how many times I had to say I don't care about left or right just bring me to you?" Richard shook his head in mock disbelief at the audacity of the path.

"Yes" James nodded turning to Richard with a serious face. "Yes, I missed you, 110%."

…

Bit by bit both the realm below and the realm above changed. Instead of the standard static crystallization of a world, the realm below remained far more fluid than most. It remained split in two. A side of aether and a side of mana – that clear split removing a huge portion of the cost of hosting them both. It still had a limit – a cap on danger and the strength things could reach – but that cap was not the end of an individuals growth. It wasn't an unbreakable barrier it was a ticket to the next adventure and that 'meaning' left traces in the world itself.

And as time passed the situation improved.

Every single selfless person who ascended left a permanent mark on the world. Jess created an organization and city for children working together with like minded people to create a place safer than anywhere else. She then ascended and embedded her mantle into the magic of the world, teleporting orphans and higher realm offspring into a place where they could learn and grow without fear.

A man who otherwise might have been called the god of anti orbital bombardment forced a law that limited the range and destruction of any weapon or power especially when focused on a city or group of people instead of an individual or swarm of monsters.

Another made freedom magic and forced rules preventing slavery into the realm.

In regard to the charity system Maddy made, its impact started small. Initially limited to those who ascended and unable to truly grow without selfless sacrifice, the system stayed a minor convenience for most. They were great goals – and the two base skills of space delineation and discovery remained incredibly useful for everyone who took the offer up.

A month or two past the final settling of the planet, certain dungeons began offering the class system as a reward in the lower realm. Bit by bit the number of individuals with a class grew and a lot of the early spells grew invaluable. Water creation alone saved countless lives as small of a spell as it was.

And then slowly people started to donate. Some were grateful for what they had used and willing to pay that gratitude forward. Some had abilities they wanted to spread or concepts and skills they no longer used they were willing to part with. Still others donated to improve their class system – unlocking helper functions Richard had built or improving their personal score and evolving a class with less actual effort.

Some individuals donated their city pillars improving the founder class while another even donated her mantle improving the entire system by some qualitative tick.

After a decade it was hard to find someone without at least a low level class and the number of available skills was incomparable to before. There were skills for cleaning and survival. Skills for art. For fun. Humans were even sometimes born with a class – the act of gaining one so infused into the planet it became a given.

The higher realm had bursts of ascenders – over a dozen within the first month. A hundred within a year. Far less after that, but the lower realm continued to send people up year after year. More surprising than anything else was the way ascensions continued to happen. The first generation of settlers were supposed to have advantages the following generations did not.

The max they reached was supposed to become harder for those that followed…and yet because of how several intersecting systems worked that truth was weakened. Everyone who ascended made it ever so slightly easier for those that followed. Those who embedded their mantles into the planet improved the chances for everyone who remained. The almost crystallization and continued existence of mana and aether side by side helped boost humanities growth while the worst threats were constantly pushed up towards those who could handle them better.

In more individual news every single person in the friend group rejoined each other after enough time had passed. Instead of drifting away they almost drifted together – the last two appearing far later and joining their friends as if no time had passed.

Troy and Maddy were those last two. Troy ascended and immediately looked for his friends throwing himself into a year long campaign to pull Maddy out of the magic. His trip found him traveling through empty voids and through paintings that contained entire worlds. Troy finally found her sleeping in his dreams then pulled her back to reality with lines of memories.

After the five met up once again they built a city together – A shared project with shared laws and tasks and goals.

The end.