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  “-pening.” She finished the word she’d been in the middle of almost automatically as she came to. Apparently, no time had passed.

  A shiver ran through her body as she felt new power. The power felt a little weird, but not in a bad way. More specifically, the power didn't really feel her own just yet, but she could already tell that it would not take long for the foreign feeling to go away. It wasn't even that the power wasn't hers, but that it had another source as well. The other source obviously being the System.

  She could also sense a real tsunami of announcements just waiting for her to acknowledge them.

  “It’s a heady feeling, isn’t it?” Her mother asked with a knowing smile. “It always is when you get a large influx of levels and stats. Or in your case, your first level and stats.”

  “Well…I’m not sure if heady is the appropriate term as I’ve held much more power in the past, but I can see how the sudden influx of power could go to your head.” That was the problem when you didn’t earn your power day after day, a little bit at a time. That and the fact that your control would be shot to hell and back.

  She’d already been taught how to bring up the Status Window.

  It seemed she had a lot of Free Stat Points to spend. A quick perusal told her that she got 10 points to Physical and Social Stats from her Race, which left 20 points as Free Stats to be assigned as she wanted. Path of the Seer gave all the Stats as Free Stats, while her second Class also left 25 points to be freely assigned. In fact, she had almost as many Free Stats as she had already assigned points. Naturally, a large chunk of them would go to Psionic Stats to pad out the feeble numbers there.

  Most of the four new stats were rather self-explanatory. Power increased the effectiveness of all her psionic abilities while Control gave her more precise control over that power. The more Control she had, the more precise her abilities were, and the more she could customize those abilities. She'd always valued precise control, and that was not likely to change now. Psi simply gave her the pool of power she could draw from for all her abilities. Apparently, the formula was a simple X times 10 to Psi Power. She got the sense that psionic power regenerated much more quickly than many other types of power. The downside was Tolerance.

  Tolerance was the stat that defined how much psionic power she could use in a short amount of time without causing harm to herself. If she used more, she would start overheating both physically and mentally. Some amount of overheating could be tolerated, so she could push herself beyond the Tolerance limit, but it would be more effective to allow a few seconds to pass between uses of power to allow the excess heat to bleed off. There was no strict limit on how long she would have to wait until her Tolerance reset, as it was affected by so many factors, ranging from Willpower and Control to outside factors such as weather. Generally, it would be a matter of seconds though. That sounded like a short time, but in a battle between powerful individuals, those seconds might as well be forever. Which made increasing Tolerance mandatory.

  “You seem to be lost in thought. Not surprising considering you just opened your System. I assume you got something good?” Her mother asked.

  “You could say that.” She replied modestly, not sure how much she should mention. Besides, she would need to work through all the announcements before she was ready to say anything. “Give me some time to get my bearings.”

  She wasn’t the type to hide her power for no good reason. After all, she’d revealed her origins to Ophiel the day she had been born. That said, it wouldn’t do any good to advertise her advantages either. It would be much easier to surprise someone if they weren’t aware of her strengths. She wouldn’t go out of her way to hide her powers, but she wouldn’t go out of her way to reveal them either.

  Specifically, she probably didn’t want to advertise the fact that she had two Classes. Which meant she would need to at least try to pretend she had just one. The choice of which was easy, as the abilities of the Path of the Seer were much more obvious to anyone observing, and the Path also had heavy martial elements which meant she could easily play off the abilities from Shinmei-ryū Kamigoroshi as part of the Path. Warlocks on the Path of the Seer actually mostly focused on using their weapons in combat while bolstering themselves with their psyker abilities. It wouldn’t be hard to play off as a particularly flexible martially oriented Seer, or a variation of that Class.

  She decided to spend her Free Stats before diving into her Skills and announcements. Her Psionic Stats were pathetic, so all of them would get a hefty increase. It only made sense to put most of the points from Path of the Seer into those stats, so all of them got a nice +10. The other Free Points from that Path would go into the Physical Stats, giving each a nice +5. That left her with 45 points. She decided to divide 40 of them equally with her Physical and Social Stats, as half of the Free Points came from her Racial Stats anyway. That meant a +5 to all of them. That left an extra floating +5 that she decided to save for now.

  That left her new Status like this:

  She had wanted to be physically focused in the beginning, and she achieved that goal. Just her Physical Stats alone were enough to match most single starting Class and race combinations in the number of points. Her Psionic Stats were left a bit slimmer than she wanted, but she would compensate in the future, and she already had more than most other Classes would due to the dual facts of having a stupidly powerful race and a second Class from the beginning.

  Right. Skills. The deluge of announcements was still there waiting for her, and nearly all of them had to do with Skills. She experimentally tried to give instructions to the System, to have the announcements grouped by Skill category, with Racial Skills first.

  Yes. Finally.

  Alright. Lucifer had mentioned that. 3% didn’t sound like a lot, but as the bonus increased along with the Skill, the bonus became somewhat silly at later levels. At Skill level 100 the bonus would be 300%. Heck, at level 5 it would already be 15%, which was a lot. That said, Skills that granted improved leveling were apparently not very rare, though their scope was usually more limited, and they didn’t get quite as ridiculous. She’d heard that most academies had a passive effect which guaranteed any students on the grounds increased leveling speed, just to mention an obvious example.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  This was something they’d already talked about. Again, 1000% sounded like a lot, but any being with Race, Class, and weapon at rank F would likely not be a threat anyway. So, the 1000% only really applied to natural hazards, and even many of those had a magical component. For everything else, the bonus would be smaller. And that didn't even consider the potential difference in level. Still great, but not what she was used to. As Lucifer had mentioned. She would have a great time being a tank, but she wasn't invulnerable anymore.

  The racial transformation Skill of the Angels. Interesting origins, but otherwise what she'd expected.

  The mandatory flying Skill. Again, nothing spectacular. But she’d take it for now.

  That’s…alright. Interestingly, as soon as she accepted the Skill, she got information in her head about how to enhance her own appeal. Information that she promptly ignored. It seemed that these kinds of information insertions came with many of the Skills, though most of them had been useless so far. For someone really gaining the information for the first time it would be extremely useful though. She would be lying if she claimed she hadn’t expected something along the lines of the Charming Skill, but she suspected the faux-Lucifer had a hand in gaining the evolved version.

  Uh-huh. Sure. She could almost hear Lucifer’s voice in the announcement. Well, she wasn’t going to refuse the gift, though she suspected it might create some potential trouble in the future. Still, she could always replace it with something more useful later on. Besides, she was allowed her own weaknesses, and she wasn’t above admitting vanity was one of them. Although she preferred to frame it as well-earned self-confidence instead.

  No. No, she would not accept that Skill.

  No. The System really ought to stop mocking her. She wouldn't accept the Skill even if it improved her gaming skills, as she didn't want to cheat. Not so obviously at least.

  She patiently waited for further announcements, but no more came. Well, it was true that she hadn't been the most social person. Not enough to earn too many Skills at least. Most Skills also required a conscious effort to gain, at least according to her lessons. She'd most likely round out the set of ten Skills fairly quickly now that the option was there. She also wasn’t going to get too many more Racial Skills, considering she already got five. Many Skills that Angels commonly possessed, like healing and light magic required access to Mana or whatever resource Priests and Paladins used, which neither of her Classes had.

  ‘Right. Let’s get this over with.’ She thought to herself and opened the category with the most announcements, the General Skills category.

  Yes. Yes, she would. She’d been a little worried as she’d always liked to be flexible with her weapon choice. A Skill that forced her to choose a single weapon would’ve been really bad. That’s why she’d tried to practice with many weapons since being born here, although it seemed that the System also took into account weapons this universe didn’t even have. Or at least she assumed they didn’t have. She hadn’t seen any lightsabers yet, but that had been on the list as well. She wasn’t sure how well 2% compared, but she had a hunch that the Skill could and would evolve further.

  Automatic yes. Just like with the Weapon Arts, she got a rush of information on how to best apply martial arts, and the basics on several of them, all of which she once again promptly ignored as she already knew better. She’d take in any new information if and when some presented itself, but this kind of information was for beginners, which she was not. The mechanical help would be useful though.

  ‘Hmm. It's a little vague as it has no numbers, but the teacher did mention that most Skills would be. Only the Skills that need to be precise will be.' She thought to herself. Improved stamina would be useful, so why not?

  Simple and effective. Yes.

  Oh, this one would be very useful with her Shinmei-ryū Kamigoroshi Class. The original Shinmei-ryū style had been all about cleaving through magic and magical beings, so being able to sense magic was kind of fundamental to the Class. She was slightly surprised it had been categorized as a General Skill actually.

  Eh. She didn’t really need the Skill, but it didn’t hurt. And food that tasted better was always welcome. She’d keep it for now.

  This one was interesting. Once again, the description was vague and the term graceful didn’t really explain much either. Why wasn’t this a Social Skill? She wasn’t sure how it would improve things, but she would keep it to see what the effects were. She had a hunch that this could develop into something actually useful.

  That sounded vaguely handy, even if it overlapped with her Gift of Knowledge a bit, so why not. She still had a single Skill slot to fill, but most of the rest she was offered was somewhat useless. She saw some Skills she just didn’t need like math and reading, as well as cleaning that she dismissed right away, before she found something that finally made her pause.

  Problem one, she didn’t have magic. She didn’t pick a Class with Mana, and she wasn’t sure her third Class would have it either. She had plenty of options after all. Still, having the ability to at least design things and have someone else enchant them could be kind of handy. And although Psykers were not known for their creative abilities, it wasn’t like they couldn’t make or use any special objects. She would have to at the very least create a Witchblade for herself, and basic things like rune armor or ghosthelm were something that could be achieved.

  With finality, she locked in her last Skill choice and looked up to see her mother browsing some magazine to pass the time. Their food was already gone, most likely having gone cold. Her mother seemed to sense the change. “Back among the living?” She asked, looking up from her reading.

  “For now. I will still have to deal with my Class Skills, but otherwise yes.” She replied. “I didn’t take too long, did I?”

  “About 30 minutes. No worries, it’s quite common. The first time the System opens, the amount of information can be overwhelming.” Ophiel seemed to have expected this.

  "Didn't seem to take Raziel that long," Seraphiel commented.

  “Oh, he took his time later that night. He just put it off. You’re more curious about such things, while your brother just wanted to spend some time with his family celebrating.” Ophiel’s smiled a little at the difference in her children.

  "Now you're making me feel bad," Seraphiel grumbled.

  “Don’t. Your reaction is the normal one. As for your Class Skills, if I have any guesses about the quality of your Class, I suggest you wait until we’re in a more private setting. We don’t want to accidentally damage the restaurant. Even if you had similar abilities in the past, that might actually be a detriment this time as your control will be all shot. Things won’t work as you’re used to.” Her mother suggested.

  “I suppose you’re correct. Also, I’m still hungry. Do you think you could get them to serve us something fresh?”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged.”