Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

Lin Yi turned toward the basin rim.

The clearing had taken less time than he had expected, which was a statement that applied to most things in the Allheaven Expanse once the Set Attribute Core and the sixty-four skill absorptions had restructured what he was capable of.

Thirty thousand Furious Flame Lions in a volcanic basin, gone in under ten minutes. The Spatial Storage Token was still storing the last of the amplified drops. The spiritual energy column still rose from the central pool in its dense continuous stream.

He activated Heaven Step, orienting toward the rim to begin the ascent.

Then he stopped.

Movement. From above the basin, descending through the basin’s open top in a trajectory that was fast, the movement of someone who had been waiting for a specific moment and had decided that moment had arrived.

A figure on a flying sword.

The blade cut through the air at the speed of someone whose traversal technique was optimized for rapid descent in open space, the sword beneath her feet tilted at an angle that maximized descent velocity without sacrificing directional control. She was moving toward the far end of the basin, the deep interior section beyond the central pool, the area that the Furious Flame Lions had occupied at their highest density.

Had occupied. Past tense. Because Lin Yi had cleared it.

She reached the deep interior in seconds, descended to the basin floor, and moved toward something that had been hidden beneath the lion population. He had not seen it during the clearing because thirty thousand monsters had occupied his attention and because the object itself had not been visible until the population above it was removed.

It was shining with the specific quality of something that had been containing its output and was now releasing it in response to the population that had been suppressing it being eliminated.

A halo. Circular, approximately a meter in diameter, suspended above the basin floor at waist height, pulsing with light that moved through a slow cycling pattern.

The girl reached for it.

Her hand closed around it.

The halo lifted from its position without resistance, as she examined it for exactly three seconds. Then she mounted her flying sword, ascended from the basin floor in a single smooth arc, and rose toward the rim at the same speed she had descended.

She cleared the rim and crossed over it, turning slightly in the air to orient toward the expanse beyond the volcanic formation.

And then she stopped. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Looked back at the basin below.

Looked at Lin Yi, who was still standing on the basin floor where he had been when she arrived.

And laughed.

"Thank you so much!" she called down into the basin, her voice carrying easily. "I’ve been watching this place for two days waiting for someone strong enough to clear the lions."

She tilted her head slightly, "I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly, but I’m certainly not complaining."

Lin Yi looked up at her.

She continued, "You did all the work, I got the treasure. That’s the most efficient arrangement I’ve encountered since arriving here." A faint smile. "With this, I’ll be untouchable in all of Allheaven. Every hunter who thinks they can challenge me is going to have a very hard telling."

She turned the halo in her hand once, examining it with the attention of someone reviewing an acquisition they were very pleased with. "So, again, genuinely, thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you."

She began to turn away.

Lin Yi looked at the space where the halo had been. The spiritual energy column, which had been rising from the central pool in a dense continuous stream since before he entered the basin, was no longer there. The pool still burned with fire. The channels still ran their patterns across the basin floor. But the column, the dense upward stream of concentrated spiritual energy that had been visible from two kilometers away and that Celestial Absorption had been running at maximum intake from since they arrived, was gone.

The connection was immediate and obvious.

*It wasn’t the basin generating spiritual energy. The halo was generating it. Contained inside the lion population for however long they had been here, feeding out through the gaps in the density as a column visible from distance, the spiritual concentration in this basin entirely dependent on the halo’s output.*

*Which she is currently flying away with.*

The Greater Qilin moved.

Lin Yi had not said anything. Had not gestured. Had not communicated any instruction in any direction. The qilin simply moved.

Heaven Step. The qilin’s version, the optimized one, the spatial transition that covered more distance at lower cost than his own, the one it had developed through observation and comprehension.

It activated once and appeared directly in the path of the girl’s flying sword, materializing in the air in front of her with precise spatial accuracy.

The girl’s flying sword stopped.

She stopped with it, the forward momentum of her departure cutting off instantly as the thing that had appeared in front of her registered in her awareness. The Greater Qilin hovered in the air before her, its evolved form carrying the full weight of what it had become since the jade absorption, its multicolored scales catching the volcanic light from below and the ambient light of the expanse from above, its eyes looking at her with the steady awareness they directed at everything.

The girl stared at it.

For several seconds she was completely still, the arrogant ease she had carried through the entire encounter replaced by the honest reaction of someone who had not anticipated this specific development.

Then, a few seconds after the qilin arrived, Lin Yi Heaven Stepped from the basin floor. He landed on the qilin’s back with the same ease he had developed over the traversal work of the past day, settled into a stable position, and looked at her across the short distance between them.

She recovered faster than most people would have. The stillness resolved back into composure, and the composure reorganized itself into something that still had an edge of the arrogance from before but was now also genuinely appraising him rather than writing him off as the person she had used.

"That’s a Greater Qilin," she said.

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

She looked at the qilin for another moment, then at him. Something in her expression was recalibrating without her having decided to show it, the automatic adjustment of a person updating their threat assessment in real time.

"It Flash Stepped," she said.

She then tilted her head, and looked at him with an expression that suggested she had several things she wanted to say and was deciding which one to lead with.

"The halo," Lin Yi said.

She looked at it in her hand. Then back at him. The mischievous quality returned, this time without the dismissive edge that had characterized her departure speech. She was treating this as a different kind of conversation now. "You want it."

"You took it from a location I cleared," Lin Yi said. "Without asking."

"There’s no rule in the Allheaven Expanse against claiming unattended treasures," she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact rather than defensive. "And it wasn’t attended. You weren’t holding it. You didn’t know it was there." She paused. "Technically."

"Technically," Lin Yi said.

She smiled, "You’re not going to just take it by force," she said. "If you wanted to do that you would have done it instead of having a conversation."

"Which tells me you’re either the talking type or you think I can contribute something worth more than just taking the halo." She balanced the halo on her fingertips, a gesture that was simultaneously casual and deliberate. "I think you’re the second type."

The Greater Qilin had not moved since Lin Yi mounted it. It looked at the girl with its steady evolved awareness. She glanced at it periodically in the way that people glance at large and powerful things they have assessed as not currently hostile but are keeping in their peripheral awareness anyway.

"What is it," Lin Yi said. He was looking at the halo.

She followed his gaze. Something in her expression shifted, the mischief settling into the particular quality of someone who knows they have information worth sharing and is deciding on its value.

"Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo," she said.

The name landed with a weight that matched the halo’s appearance. She looked at it with an expression that was still proprietary but now also carried something that was closer to respect than she had shown anything else in the conversation.

"It’s a formation tool," she continued. "Seven stars, seven conversion sequences. Each star in the halo can be assigned to a target, a monster, a spirit beast, a construct, anything that qualifies as an entity, and the conversion sequence runs until the target is fully converted." She paused. "Converted from wild to bound. From unaffiliated to loyal. From enemy to something that fights for whoever holds the halo."

Lin Yi looked at it. "Guardian," he said.

"Exactly," she said. "Once converted, they’re permanent. Not a contract that expires or a skill that has a duration. Permanent." She held it up slightly, the halo’s light catching the ambient glow. "Seven slots. Seven permanent guardian-tier entities." The mischievous edge returned to her voice fully now. "Which is why I said invincible. Seven guardian-tier converted entities is not a force that any individual hunter or conventional guild team in this expanse has an answer for."

Lin Yi looked at the halo. Then at her. His expression had not changed through the conversation.

"Immortal guardian?" he said.