Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

Lin Yi looked at the halo in his hand for a moment. Then he looked at the Greater Qilin.

"Bring her here," he said.

The qilin looked at him. Then it activated Heaven Step and was gone, reappearing at the rim, and a few seconds after that it came back down into the basin with the guardian following at the speed of something that no longer had preferences about direction or destination, only about the presence of the entity the halo identified as its anchor point.

She landed on the basin floor and stood. The one-handed form was the same as it had been when the conversion completed. Still missing the hand. Still carrying the vitality that the conversion had built from the level experience.

She looked at Lin Yi without looking at him. The eyes oriented in his direction, registered the absence of threat, and moved to a neutral waiting position. The behavioral directive had only one mode and standing near the anchor was not the mode that activated it.

"Mount the qilin," Lin Yi said.

The guardian processed the instruction. The instruction passed from the halo’s authority structure to her behavioral framework and was executed without any stage between receipt and action. She stepped to the Greater Qilin’s side and mounted it with the practiced physical competence of someone who had spent years developing that competence, the body’s memory operating without the mind that had built it.

Lin Yi mounted behind her. Or rather, he mounted and positioned himself so that his observation of her during the test would be unobstructed, which required being behind rather than in front.

He looked at the Greater Qilin. "Nearest monster cluster," he said.

The qilin moved.

Heaven Step. Then Heaven Step again. The optimized version the qilin had developed through observation, covering the distance that the traversal would have taken at a pace that compressed it into seconds.

Five transitions. Six. The qilin was reading the energy signatures ahead in the same way Predatory Instinct read them for Lin Yi, the evolved perception it had developed since the jade absorption providing a navigational feed that operated maturely. It was finding the cluster without being directed to a specific location, which was new behavior that he had not observed before and filed with the other additions to the qilin’s developing capability profile.

They landed.

The cluster was a mid-tier island formation, smaller than the volcanic complex but denser in population, the monsters distributed across the interconnected island surfaces with the organized spacing of creatures that had claimed territory and arranged themselves within it. Level 130 to 145 range, a mixed population of classifications Lin Yi had encountered and catalogued in previous days. Approximately two hundred monsters across the visible cluster.

He looked at the guardian.

She was already oriented toward the cluster. Not because she had assessed it in the way a hunter assesses a target zone, reading threat levels and population patterns and planning an approach. Because her behavioral directive had registered the presence of hostile entities in proximity and had produced the single response it produced for that situation.

She moved.

Lin Yi watched.

She cleared the first island in the cluster without a weapon drawn, which was the first information point. The physical competence from the conversion’s preserved body memory did not extend to a specific combat style or technique set. She fought with raw vitality and raw force, the compressed level experience that constituted her post-conversion strength expressing itself through the most direct available method.

A level 132 Void Stalker moved to phase. She grabbed it during the shimmer window before the phase completed and drove it into the island surface with a force that cracked the stone beneath the impact. Not a skill activation. Just strength.

The Stalker’s HP did not drop to zero from the single impact. But it dropped significantly.

She hit it again. And again. The pattern was not tactical. It was persistent. She would not stop. That was the thing that the conversion produced that raw strength alone did not. She would not tire, would not reassess, would not make the decision to disengage when an exchange went against her. The behavioral directive did not have a retreat instruction.

The Stalker fell.

Then, the system notification appeared in Lin Yi’s panel.

[Void Stalker Defeated — Guardian Kill]

[EXP Gained: +18,900]

[Reward Amplification Triggered — ×1000]

[New EXP Gained: +18,900,000]

He looked at the notification. The amplification applied to guardian kills as well as his own. This was the appraisal’s described function operating exactly as described. Her combat was his EXP.

She moved to the second monster before the first had fully dissolved.

[Ashenveil Predator Defeated — Guardian Kill]

[EXP Gained: +20,400]

[Reward Amplification Triggered — ×1000]

[New EXP Gained: +20,400,000]

She was taking damage, as every attack the monsters landed, she absorbed. The vitality mass that the conversion had built from her level experience was substantial, the effective HP pool it produced considerably larger than anything her original class would have provided. But it was being depleted by engagements she was not managing. She was not managing them because she did not have the capacity to manage them. She engaged, she persisted, she won through attrition or strength or both, and she moved to the next target.

[Nebula Titan Defeated — Guardian Kill]

[EXP Gained: +27,400]

[Amplification: +27,400,000]

[Gravestone Colossus Defeated — Guardian Kill] 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

[EXP Gained: +23,600]

[Amplification: +23,600,000]

[Level Up! — Level 190 → Level 191]

She cleared the first island and moved to the second without pausing, the island bridge between them crossed at a run, the behavioral directive already orienting to the next concentration of hostile entities before she had fully transitioned from the first engagement.

The second island had a denser population. A group of five level 138 Voidclaw Ravagers in their standard cluster formation, the four-claw coverage pattern designed to make single-opponent engagement nonviable for most hunters. For a hunter operating with tactical awareness, with Phantom Void Step or Heaven Step or any of the spatial techniques that bypassed the coverage angle problem, the group was a manageable encounter. For something that moved in straight lines and did not adjust its approach based on the defensive configuration it was walking into, the group was something else.

She walked into all five simultaneously.

The four-claw coverage pattern landed on her from multiple angles at once. The damage was real and significant, each Ravager’s output landing cleanly because she provided nothing to mitigate it. She absorbed all five and kept moving.

And she killed them.

Not quickly. Not efficiently. One at a time, the persistence of a behavioral directive that could not be interrupted by pain or depleted HP overwhelming the tactical advantage the group formation provided. She grabbed, she struck, she drove things into surfaces, she used force as a substitute for every technical capability the conversion had removed.

[Voidclaw Ravager ×5 Defeated — Guardian Kill]

[EXP Gained: +32,400 × 5 = +162,000]

[Amplification: +162,000,000]

[Level Up! — Level 191 → Level 192]