Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

The hand fell.

The halo left her grip and was in his before the hand reached the basin floor.

She made a sound. Not a scream. Something harder than that. Pain and shock compressed into a single controlled output, the response of someone who had experienced real combat before and knew that falling apart in the middle of it was the worst available option. She pressed the wound with her other hand and the flying sword repositioned to put distance between them again.

Lin Yi looked at the halo in his hand.

He needed to understand it before using it. He had the knowledge from the academy archive, but knowledge from that and operational knowledge of a specific object in hand were different things. He reached for the skill that should cover this.

------------------

[Heavenly Appraisal]

[Active | Utility]

[Directly reads all stored information on a targeted item, entity, or location. Reveals properties, requirements, history, and usage mechanisms that are not apparent through standard observation. Information clarity scales with Spirit.]

---------------------

He activated it on the halo.

---

[Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo — Appraisal Result]

[A formation artifact of the pre-gate era, constructed during the first Sub-Class Awakening event one hundred and fifty years ago by a practitioner whose identity is obscure.

Primary function: Immortal Guardian Conversion.]

[Conversion Mechanism: When the halo is directed at a target entity and activated, the target’s entire accumulated level experience is extracted and compressed into vitality mass. The target’s original level, skills, and attributes are dissolved. What remains is the vitality mass, which binds to the halo’s holder and manifests as an Immortal Guardian.]

[Immortal Guardian Properties: The guardian retains no memory, will, or individual agency. It operates on a single behavioral directive of constant engagement with hostile entities in proximity. It possesses extraordinary vitality derived from the compressed level experience, making it functionally impossible to defeat through sustained attrition for most opposition it encounters. It is not immortal in the absolute sense — sufficient force will end it. But its vitality makes that outcome unlikely in standard combat.]

[Guardian Benefit: All experience generated by the guardian’s combat activity transfers directly to the holder’s system panel.]

[Slots: 7 total]

[Usage: Direct the halo at a target and apply activation intent. The conversion sequence completes automatically once initiated.]

---

He looked at her.

She was across the basin, the wound still being managed with her remaining hand, the flying sword keeping her mobile. Her expression was the controlled version of someone dealing with significant pain and significant threat simultaneously. She was watching him the way she had watched the barrier before it deployed, reading for the next development.

He activated the halo.

The conversion sequence was immediate. A thread of formation energy from the halo extended outward across the basin air, patient and inevitable, and when it contacted her the sequence began automatically as the appraisal had described.

She understood what was happening faster than most people would have. Her expression moved through the stages of comprehension with the speed of someone with genuine intelligence. She tried to move. The flying sword angled sharply upward, attempting to carry her out of the basin before the sequence completed.

The thread followed. Distance was not the relevant variable.

She tried to counter the formation energy with her own skill activation. The sequence absorbed the interference and continued.

She said something. He was not certain what it was. It was not directed at him and it was not a plea and it was not an attack. It was possibly just the last thing she said before the sequence reached its conclusion.

The conversion completed.

The woman who had been watching the volcanic basin for two days, who had laughed over the rim at the person who cleared it for her, who had deployed a barrier that should have been unbreakable and had the composure to fight through a severed hand, was gone in the relevant sense.

What remained was standing on the basin floor.

Taller, somehow, though the physical form was the same. The vitality conversion had done what the appraisal described, the accumulated level experience compressed into extraordinary vitality and bound to the halo now in Lin Yi’s hand. Her posture had changed completely. The directional awareness she had carried through the conversation, the intelligence in the movement, the specific quality of a person reading a situation and responding to it, was absent.

What was present was simpler. An orientation toward threat. An absence of everything that was not that orientation. The singular behavioral directive that the appraisal had described.

She was missing one hand. The conversion had not changed that. Whatever she was now, she was one-handed, the wound still present, the physical fact of what had happened before the conversion preserved in the form that remained.

Her eyes moved across the basin. They passed over Lin Yi and the Greater Qilin without registering them as threats, because they were bound to the halo and the halo was the anchor of her orientation. They settled on the far side of the basin wall, where the volcanic terrain extended beyond the cleared area.

She moved toward it.

Her footstep on the basin floor was different from her movement during the fight. No subtlety. No adjustment. No reading of terrain or repositioning for advantage. Direct approach to whatever her behavioral directive had identified as the next engagement.

Lin Yi looked at the halo in his hand.

Six slots remaining.

He looked at the system panel notification that had appeared in the background of the last several minutes.

[Immortal Guardian Conversion Complete]

[Guardian bound to Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo]

[Experience transfer active — all EXP generated by guardian combat credited to holder]

[Remaining slots: 6]

The Greater Qilin moved to his side, its evolved eyes tracking the guardian as she crossed toward the basin wall. It looked at her and then at Lin Yi.

"She’ll generate EXP on her own," Lin Yi said, quietly. Not to the qilin specifically. Just a confirmation of something he was still processing the full implications of.

The guardian reached the basin wall and began moving upward along the interior surface, toward the rim, toward whatever was in the expanse beyond the volcanic formation that her behavioral directive would categorize as a valid engagement.

From the rim, as she passed over it and disappeared from view, a sound came back down into the basin.

A low, sustained growl that carried across the volcanic stone and the empty basin and the space where the spiritual energy column had been, and then faded into the ambient sounds of the Allheaven Expanse beyond the rim.

Lin Yi looked at the halo.

Six slots.