Zoe groaned, laying against the hard wooden bed. The system shock was terrible. Stats ripped away from her were one thing, but she had several entire senses from the classes taken as well. And a new one that was completely different thrust into her mind even before she had the sanity to read through her new class options.

  This one reminded her somewhat of her Cosmic Vision, though only on a surface level Zoe noticed after she pushed through her blinding headache to focus on what the class was telling her. The melding, shifting sights she saw weren't time. Or maybe they were, she realized. But they were more than just time, more than just different branching futures overlapping each other, if that was even a part of it at all.

  There was some layer of almost implicit understanding that came with her new sense. The bed, every fiber of wood, the stress they felt as she shifted around. The mana within and its lingering attachment to Zoe.

  The deep shadows that filled her room screamed with new sensations. Something between pain and ecstasy, not quite uncomfortable but far from pleasant. Tiny specks of light that crept in from the still open doorways. The faint movement of sound passing through the air and vanishing within the dense earth that surrounded her.

  She could see it all.

  Zoe laid on her bed for a few minutes more, letting her mind get used to the new sense she was feeling, and then ran her hands over her body. It was more toned than she was used to — at least before Corporal Beholder. But it lacked the sheer grotesqueness that Corporal Beholder gave her.

  She let out a sigh she hadn't realized she was holding.

  Small vibrations shook through her room a moment before she heard scraping rocks and hushed voices in a whisper too quiet for her to make out any words.

  "Zoe?" Tom's head leaned into the room. His dark hair glinting with sunlight that beamed in through the hallway.

  "I'm up. How long was I out?" Zoe asked.

  "Two days." Jeff's voice called out from behind the shoddy earth door. "Was it worth it?"

  Zoe rubbed her eyes and stretched her body out as she stood up, rubbing against all the sore kinks and painful points where the hard bed had dug into her body. "Hopefully. Haven't looked at what it has yet but it's got a good perception ability at least."

  Tom swung the door open the rest of the way and made a grand gesture for Zoe to follow him out, like a royal servant greeting his queen in the morning. The sarcastic joy billowed off him like a waterfall. "Jeff's made some minor adjustments while you were out."

  Zoe stepped out of her room into what she could only describe as a royal throne room. A long hall with towering windows — all of which revealing deep, dark holes behind them. Pillars lined the hall, with a long carpet laid out down the middle made from some kind of red stone Zoe didn't recognize.

  Sun shone down through gaping holes in the ceiling, casting bright light down the center, with deep shadows off to the sides behind the carved stone pillars. At the end sat a gaudy, fake gold-like stone throne larger than any she'd seen before, with Jeff sitting down on it like a child seated at a giant's dinner table.

  "Greetings, O' loyal watcher. Fare thee.... How doth...." Jeff shrugged and grinned. "Ya like it?"

  Zoe stared at the sight and laughed. "Why?"

  "He got bored." Tom said.

  "I was not simply bored," Jeff scoffed. "It is only fitting that royalty such as I would have a home as grand as my own stature."

  "Wait, I didn't know you were royalty. Where are you from?" Zoe asked.

  Tom shook his head. "He's not. He got bored."

  "I hail from a grand lineage of sinkhole wizards. A prince of the depths, a ruler of reality." Jeff held his chin up, oozing with pride and more than a little joy.

  "Bored." Tom added. "He got bored."

  "Yup." Jeff nodded, and hopped down from the comically large throne. He paced across the red stone carpet thing, each step an echoing clack as a rock he'd clearly embedded into his boots rapped against the floor. "We tried the dungeon without you, at first."

  "We got a couple kills, but it was a lot of effort." Tom said. "Jeff wasn't able to keep me protected as well as you two could together. Plus he just really sucks at manipulating earth like that anyway."

  "Hey!" Jeff called out. "A sinkhole royal such as myself has no need for such precise manipulations. This dungeon would be handled easily if you simply let me use my most powerful spells."

  "Would it be?" Zoe looked at Tom. "Dungeons repair themselves, if he really has a skill that could do it."

  Tom sighed. "He doesn't. He'd just make a sinkhole and the dungeon's mana would fight back against it. He can't actually overwhelm a dungeon at this level, and the backlash would be disastrous."

  "Just because it was disastrous last time doesn't mean it will be disastrous this time." Jeff tried to reason.

  "And the time before that? And before that? And what about Lorjiron?" Tom raised an eyebrow.

  "We don't need to talk about Lorjiron." Jeff said. "It never happened."

  "Wait, you did Lorjiron?" Zoe laughed. "That was you two?"

  "Two?" Tom looked offended. "I tried to stop him."

  "What about your class? Anything good?" Jeff smiled. "Some fun skills? How much are your bonuses? Get some good sinkhole spells?"

  "Uhh, sure. Lemme take a look at the message." Zoe pulled up the system's message that had been hovering in the corner of her vision since she'd woken up.

  *Ding* You have unlocked the Omniscient Beholder class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

  Effects:

  - Omniscient Beholder: Gain 33 stat points for each level in this class.

  - Omniscient Beholding: Understand the world around you.

  - Omniscient Source: Maximum Mana, Mana Regeneration, Maximum Health, Health Regeneration, Maximum Stamina and Stamina Regeneration are boosted by 300%

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  - Omniscient Form: Increased experience gained while witnessing.

  - Omniscient Might: Divination aligned effects are boosted by 400%.

  Available Skills:

  - Elemental Affinity: Increased Elemental affinity.

  - Elemental Manipulation: Manipulate the elements with your will.

  - Scrying: Witness a distant view.

  - Nescience: Form an area that can not be witnessed.

  - Omniscient Displacement: Move to an area you can witness.

  - Omniscient Presence: Make your presence known to those who can witness it.

  - Omniscient Flare: Bare down on enemies with the raw power of omniscience.

  - Assault of the Beholder: Rend apart that which you see.

  - Beholden Bestowed: Imbue your allies' eyes with mana.

  - Beheld: Become one with that you have witnessed.

  - A Nice View: Remove dirt and grime from objects.

  She checked on her class list — six slots for her third class, just like Seasoned Persistence.

  "Huh," Zoe hummed. "The bonuses are very good at least."

  "What's it boost?" Jeff asked.

  "Everything," Zoe answered.

  Jeff clicked his tongue. "That's too bad."

  "It's a three hundred percent boost, Jeff. To everything. In my third class." Zoe laughed. That competed even with her Seasoned Persistence class — which made sense, she supposed. They were both combinations, and the Beholder classes did seem a little more powerful than the Seasoned classes did on their own too.

  Tom whistled. "So you wouldn't have lost much then, and you've got some easy levels to get. Any good skills?"

  "I have no idea. I have scrying again, but the description has changed. I'll have to try these out, do you two mind waiting a little longer?"

  "We've got about an hour of sunlight left today so wouldn't be able to do much anyway." Tom said.

  "I'll come watch. Sounds like more fun than watching this guy." Tom pointed at Jeff with his thumb.

  "I'll stick around here and work on my glorious throne room for now. You should get a sinkhole class for your next one though." Jeff closed his eyes as a faint smile crept up on his face. "The verdant sinkhole. What a nice ring that would have."

  "Nope." Zoe teleported up to the surface through one of the many holes in the ceiling, dragging Tom along with her.

  "Next class is an enchanting class. I need a specific skill from it." Zoe said.

  "You should just recreate the skills you don't want to lose. I figured you would have done that anyway, given how old you are." Tom sat down on a wooden chair Zoe formed for him.

  "I do for most. But sometimes the system does things I don't understand. You ever had a skill that affects your soul? I have no idea what I'm doing there and honestly it's terrifying to think about trying it." Zoe responded.

  "Ah." Tom nodded. "Some of Jeff's sinkhole spells do. He's tried to figure them out a few times, but it's a painful experience."

  "He's actually tried, then? What's it like?" Zoe asked, her curiosity piqued.

  "Painful, according to him. Like system shock. The worst part for me is watching him suffer and then be forced to continue to suffer as he tries to fix whatever it is he did. The system won't help, and the entire time it's painful." Tom shrugged. "Never tried it myself."

  Zoe nodded. "Hmm. Well anyway, got some skills to try out."

  She decided to save Elemental Manipulation for another day — it would just be a combination of the base beholder elements, and she'd rather have a day to herself to play with them all.

  Instead, she started with her new Scrying skill, which felt very similar to Arcane Beholder's scrying at first. But it lacked the limitations Arcane Beholder had. She could push her Scrying as far as she wanted — even to places she'd never been before. The mana cost as she got further away from herself was incredible — burning through her entire pool of eighty thousand in just a few seconds at a distance of about a hundred kilometers.

  But if she had as much mana as she did back when she had her seventh class? She'd be able to explore entire dungeons, entire cities. Entire planets, without ever having to even step foot anywhere near them.

  As an enchantment however, the skill was identical to Arcane Beholder's Scrying. There were no fancy additions, no powerful addons that she could pull on with the enchantment.

  Nescience was like a combination of Arcane Beholder and Blinding Beholder's obfuscation skills. A barrier that magic, light, darkness and sound couldn't penetrate. To Zoe's eyes, the space as good as vanished. A hole left behind in reality, not even the faintest wisp of mana leaking from within its bounds. The skill was just as good as an enchantment too, letting Zoe hide entire objects from reality. Rocks that she could hurl that wouldn't leave streaks of air behind in their wake, no leaking mana. The cost in the enchantment was quite high making it difficult to use as a permanent fixture.

  But as a projectile? Nescience allowed Zoe to create functionally invisible projectiles. No amount of mana sight or keen eyes would let somebody — or some creature, perceive them. The enchantments would die in mere fractions of a second after she stopped feeding them, but for an enchanted weapon that was more than enough.

  Omniscient Displacement was a simple teleport, though it was worse than her Teleport skill in almost every way. The skill felt uncomfortable to use, whisking her along some pathways of light and shadows then reforming her body at the other end in an instant. A terrible, nauseating experience. She could get used to it she felt, but there was little reason to bother when she had access to a proper Teleport skill which also let her bring other people along.

  Zoe couldn't figure out what the enchantment did. It burned through mana, but nothing seemed to ever happen. She decided to come back to the skill another time when she had enough mana to feed a much more dense material.

  "Woah," Tom fell back off his chair when Zoe tried using Omniscient Presence.

  "What happened?" Zoe pulled the mana back from her skill.

  "It's similar to when you imbue our eyes with mana, but even more intense. Your entire existence becomes something so much more visceral. So much more real." Tom explained.

  "Make my presence known, apparently." Zoe said. "That's all the skill says. Well, make my presence known to those who can witness it."

  Tom chuckled. "Well it certainly does make your presence known, though it's more primal fear than reverence. Good if you ever need to threaten some king, I guess."

  Zoe grimaced. Threatening kings wasn't a particular hobby of hers. Threatening anything didn't tend to be, and the skill was yet another one that showed off some part of her that she couldn't understand.

  Not to mention that yet again, she wasn't able to see herself. Was she not considered one that could witness herself? She could see herself plenty fine, both with her own eyes looking down at her body and from her class's effect and even Scrying.

  In an enchantment, the skill did a similar thing. An intense, vibrant collection of colourful wisps that congregated on the piece of wood Zoe summoned. Though according to Tom, calling it the same thing was like calling a butter knife the same thing as a sword forged by a famous smith.

  Interesting to Zoe, the collection of mana that surrounded the object did nothing for helping to maintain the object's enchantment. The mana itself seemed to be a part of the enchantment, and if anything it made it more difficult to bring in ambient mana to power the enchantment.

  Omniscient Flare was a powerful, confusing skill. To the trees and grass, the skill did nothing. But to Tom, it felt like she was baring down on him with the full force of her existence. His mind was thrown into disarray by the overwhelming force, his eyes couldn't see anything but the very representation of herself and his ears were flooded with a splintering, cracking sound.

  For some reason, as an enchantment the skill seemed to focus more on the Flare part than the Omniscient force part. The skill let her use an object as a flare, sparking with intense bright light with just the faintest pulse of mana.

  Assault of the Beholder and Beholden Bestowed were tested just in case they differed, but they were both identical to the other classes' versions.

  And the last skill to test was Beheld. The description gave Zoe some pause. Become one with that you have witnessed.

  What had she witnessed? Everything she'd seen over long life? The trees in the forest, the beasts that roamed them? The streets of Flester, her home in Foizo?

  Mana pulsed through Zoe's form as she pushed it into her new skill. She focused on Jeff's throne down below, and then reality warped, twisting around her as her mana ripped time and space apart in a violent display of magic.

  Colours merged together, time itself overlapped on itself, twisting and winding. She saw Jeff, mana coursing through him with a grin on his face. She saw herself, resting on an bed in the distance. She saw Tom, laying on the stone floor, watching with a pained face of boredom and frustration.

  She looked around, then realized she couldn't move.

  "What do you think, Tom?" Jeff called out. "I think it'll be funny."

  Space warped again, and Zoe found herself gasping for breath on the cold dirt with Tom hovering over her. "You okay?" He asked as Zoe's eyes opened.

  "I have absolutely no idea." Zoe said.

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