Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

The nearby rift was twenty minutes from the academy by transit, located in the outer district of Celestial City where the dimensional monitoring stations had flagged the elevated readings the morning the worldwide notice appeared.

By the time Lin Yi arrived, the area around it had been transformed into something between a military staging ground and a festival.

The barrier perimeter established by Celestial City’s hunter response authority extended in a wide arc around the rift’s location, keeping civilian traffic back. Inside that perimeter, the density of people and equipment was extraordinary. Guild banners were visible from the transit stop, at least six major organizations that Lin Yi recognized from the city’s registered guild directory, and several he didn’t. Guild teams in coordinated equipment were staged in formations, waiting for authorization from the monitoring authorities or simply watching the rift.

Independent hunters were present in significant numbers as well. Solo practitioners, small teams without guild affiliation, experienced contractors who had received the worldwide notice as everyone else and had made their own calculation about what it meant and where they should be standing.

The rift itself was different.

Lin Yi had entered dimensional rifts before. The Celestial Emperor’s Abode. The Dragon God Tower, which was a permanent fixture rather than a standard rift but operated on similar principles. The Underworld Layer during the academy’s dungeon event.

But this, the border of it was gold.

Gold, clean and consistent, the same tone as the worldwide notice’s display border, the same tone that the Celestial Emperor Note in his inventory produced when he looked at it closely in low light. The interior of the rift was not opaque in the way that most dimensional gateways were. It had depth. Not visible depth, but the impression of depth, the way a very clear body of water communicates that it goes further down than the eye can confirm.

He looked at it for a moment. Then he opened the Celestial Legion group channel.

---

Lin Yi: I’m at the rift in the outer district.

Wang Hao: Wait you went already?? We just got the notice this morning!!

Wang Hao: I’m still at the academy trying to figure out what this sub class thing even is

Wang Hao: How are you already there

Lin Yi: Transit.

Wang Hao: Right. Of course. Normal speed for a normal person to a major worldwide event.

Shen Rou: I’ve been researching the historical records since the notice appeared. The gold border is consistent with the account descriptions from 150 years ago. The original hunters called it the Heaven Gate appearance. The color was apparently uniform across all active rift sites globally during the original event.

Wang Hao: Heaven Gate appearance

Wang Hao: That sounds both incredible and terrifying

Wang Hao: What’s the level requirement to enter

Shen Rou: The historical accounts don’t specify a level threshold. The Bureau’s emergency briefing that was distributed twenty minutes ago mentions that preliminary readings from monitoring stations suggest an internal environment significantly above standard Abyss classification.

Wang Hao: Above Abyss, dungeon classification goes like this:

Normal

Dangerous

Difficult

Nightmare

Hell

Abyss

Wang Hao: Abyss! That’s the highest classification

Wang Hao: Okay so the level requirement is probably insane then

Wang Hao: I saw on one forum that there’s a level cap to enter

Wang Hao: Level 100

Wang Hao: Which means basically no academy student can go in

Wang Hao: Bai Rong is level 66 and she’s the highest in the academy

Wang Hao: Even the instructors are mostly in the 80s

Wang Hao: Nobody here clears 100

Shen Rou: The level 100 threshold is consistent with the Bureau briefing’s preliminary recommendation. They’re advising hunters below level 100 against attempted entry based on the internal environment readings. The recommendation is non-binding for registered hunters but the major guilds appear to be using it as their internal staging criterion.

Wang Hao: So it’s functionally a level 100 minimum

Wang Hao: Brother Lin what’s your current level

---

Lin Yi looked at the rift. Around it, the guild teams were still staging. Several hunters near the perimeter had attempted to approach the rift border and pulled back, the internal environment pressure apparently registering before entry. A senior hunter from one of the major guilds was in conversation with what appeared to be a Bureau monitoring official, both of them looking at readings on a device between them with expressions that communicated the numbers were not comfortable.

He looked at his phone.

------

Lin Yi: That’s not important

Wang Hao: That’s not an answer

Wang Hao: Brother Lin

Wang Hao: I am asking you a direct question

Wang Hao: What is your current level

Lin Yi: ...

Wang Hao: BROTHER LIN

Shen Rou: He’s above 100.

Wang Hao: Wait

Wang Hao: Wait wait wait

Wang Hao: Shen Rou how do you know that

Shen Rou: It’s pretty obvious from the way he has been reacting recently

Wang Hao: Well above 100

Wang Hao: The level cap for the worldwide event that nobody in this entire academy qualifies for

Wang Hao: Brother Lin

Wang Hao: Please just tell me the number

Lin Yi: What purpose does it serve?

Wang Hao: I hate you

Wang Hao: Shen Rou help me

Shen Rou: My projection puts him at approximately 118 to 122.

Wang Hao: 118 to 122

Wang Hao: 118 to 122

Wang Hao: The highest level student at this academy is 66

Wang Hao: The worldwide event requires level 100

Wang Hao: And you’re sitting at the rift entrance at level 118 to 122

Wang Hao: You know what

Wang Hao: Fine

Wang Hao: Go in

Wang Hao: Break whatever is inside

Wang Hao: Get your sub class

Wang Hao: Get the talent thing

Wang Hao: Become something the Bureau doesn’t have a classification for

Wang Hao: And when you come back out I want to see you at the top of it all

Shen Rou: Come back safely.

Wang Hao: What she said

Wang Hao: Come back safely Brother Lin

Wang Hao: And dominate all!

-----

Lin Yi closed the channel and put his phone in his pocket.

He then looked at the rift.

Around him, the activity continued. Guild teams conferring. Bureau officials monitoring. Independent hunters watching the gold border with the specific expression of people who wanted to enter something and were calculating the risk against the potential return. Several of the guild leaders near the perimeter had the look of people who had already decided the level 100 threshold eliminated their options and were now in the business of watching what happened to those who didn’t have that limitation.

Lin Yi walked forward.

The hunters near the perimeter noticed. A Bureau official started to raise a hand to redirect him toward the restricted access point, then looked at him more carefully, then looked at the monitoring device in his other hand, and then did not redirect him. The guild members watched. Several of them adjusted their positions involuntarily, the specific physical response of people who have registered that something is approaching the thing they couldn’t approach and are uncertain how to classify that.

Lin Yi reached the gold border of the rift.

The pressure was real. It was not the suppression field he had encountered in the Dragon God Tower or the Underworld Layer, not the specific weight of a dungeon environment calibrated to resist above a certain threshold. This was different. It was the pressure of proximity to something that existed at a scale his current capabilities acknowledged without being overwhelmed by. His Strength 598 and Constitution 544 had learned what real pressure felt like through enough encounters to produce an accurate reading of what they were dealing with.

This was large.

He stepped forward.

The gold border passed over him like a membrane, the transition not instantaneous as standard rift entry was but gradual, a second and a half of passing through something that had texture, the texture of something ancient and aware. Then the exterior world was gone.

And the system prompt appeared.

[Grace yourself, lowly being.]

[Before you stands the threshold of what was, what is, and what has not yet been permitted to become.]

[The Heavenly Dao does not invite. It does not compel. It simply exists, as rivers exist before the fish decides to enter them, as mountains exist before the climber decides they are worth ascending.]

[One hundred and fifty years ago, the Dao opened this door and your kind could not walk through it. Not for lack of strength. Not for lack of will. For lack of understanding what was being offered.]

[The Sub-Class Awakening is not a reward. It is a question. The Dao asks every hunter who crosses this threshold the same question it asked one hundred and fifty years ago, and it will ask one hundred and fifty years from now, and one hundred and fifty years beyond that, for as long as your kind produces those worth asking.]

[The question is simple.]

[Are you what you believe yourself to be?]

[Beneath the class your world assigned you, beneath the level your effort has accumulated, beneath the skills your training has produced, there is something that your kind’s systems cannot measure and your kind’s organizations cannot classify.]

[The Heavenly Dao measures it.]

[It has measured you.]

[Do you wish to know what it found?]

---

A pause.

Then the final prompt appeared below the text, smaller, the same gold, but formatted in a way that was recognizable despite everything around it being unlike anything he had encountered before.

---

[Do you wish to awaken a Sub-Class?]

[ YES ]　　　　[ NO ]

---

Lin Yi looked at the prompt.

Around him, the internal environment of whatever this was extended in every direction, and it was nothing like a dungeon.

He looked at YES.

He reached out.

And pressed it.