2. Freedom

The beauty of a class skill was that it could be used on instinct.

When Alistair reached for Clone, the class guided him. No chant or gesture was needed. He focused, stirred the new place of power in his soul, and let something in his mind separate without truly breaking. It was an odd sensation, half will and half surrender, and the first attempt nearly made him lose his balance.

The air in front of him warped. Then another Alistair stepped out of him like a reflection peeling itself away from a mirror.

For a moment, dizziness hit so hard he had to brace himself on the altar. His vision did not split cleanly into two sets of eyes. It was stranger than that, less like looking from two directions and more like suddenly having extra limbs he had never learned to use. Space felt wrong. Near and far shifted. His own body no longer seemed properly centered. A headache pulsed behind his eyes, but he forced himself to endure it and watched the clone with fierce attention. And at the same time, he was watching his original body as the clone.

It was him.

The clone had his face, his thin frame, his ragged clothes, and the same hollow look years of slavery had carved into him. Yet before he could test more than a few clumsy movements, the clone dissolved into nothing and the pressure on his mind vanished with it. Alistair stood still and breathed through the fading pain. The first result had already told him enough to set his pulse racing. The skill worked. The only problem was that he did not yet understand the proper way to hold it.

He tried again after a short pause, thinking back to the trial. The answer came from there. During those endless borrowed lives, he had survived by anchoring himself to one truth while letting everything else pass around it. He had not controlled those lives by force. He had endured them without letting them erase him. That same principle applied here. On the next attempt, he did not struggle to manage two perspectives at once. He held fast to himself and allowed both bodies to exist under that single core.

Relief came instantly.

The strain did not disappear, but it settled into something manageable. He had found the right method. Both bodies were his, and both moved as naturally as hands or feet. He could place direct focus on one if he wished, increasing control until it felt like his main body, while the other continued in a duller, more instinctive way. Even without close attention, the unfocused body did what he would do. It obeyed intention instead of commands. The realization nearly made him dizzy. It meant he could divide effort without collapsing under it.

Before the second clone faded, he tested what little time he had. He made it walk, turn, bow to the mural, and touch the altar. Then it vanished again, leaving him alone in the Hall with a dull ache in his head. The clone had lasted roughly a minute. Not long, but long enough to be useful. Especially if that time grew with level, just as the skill description suggested.

Alistair waited until the strain eased, then created another clone.

This time, he wasted no movement. The duplicate stepped toward the altar, bowed once to the Five, and placed a hand on the crystal.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the world faded away.

Alistair’s awareness narrowed so violently into the clone that the sensation nearly felt like being dragged through a keyhole. The Hall disappeared. A new trial began.

He almost laughed.

He did not, because the challenge that followed demanded concentration, but the urge was there. His guess had been right. The Hall accepted the clone as a separate candidate. Whatever limits the world believed absolute had broken twice in front of him in a single day.

From then on, time lost meaning.

The Hall offered no hunger, thirst, or exhaustion beyond what his mind already carried, so Alistair used that stolen eternity with ruthless focus. Whenever his thoughts grew dull or the strain behind his eyes became too heavy, he rested. Once he recovered enough, he summoned another clone and sent it to the crystal. Some trials ended in failure. Others crushed him so completely that he understood within moments the class had never suited him. Every failed attempt closed that path for good, even for new clones, which was irritating, but not enough to slow him.

The successes mattered far more.

Each time a clone returned from a trial with a class, that class appeared in his Guide as something he could call on again. He only had to focus on the result he wanted while creating the clone, and that body would take the chosen class. The simplicity of it made the power seem even more unreasonable. He tested those classes as well, one by one, learning their basic instincts, their first skills, and the feel of hremainedow each body changed around them. It was a pity that no single body could hold more than one class. He tested that too, and the answer stubbornly the same. One body, one class. Even so, the limitation felt small beside what he had gained.

More important than his disappointment was the fact that he did not truly need those classes on his original body. Once he understood how to shift focus between himself and a clone, the difference was minor. He could remain physically safe while experiencing another class almost as if it were his own. For now, he needed nothing more.

He kept going.

Most of the classes he imagined either did not exist or were beyond him. Others matched something real but ended in failure. He learned quickly that wanting a class was not enough. Some paths simply were not his, no matter how useful they might have been. Still, persistence paid. A few abstract wishes succeeded, and a handful of common occupations came easily. By the time his efforts finally slowed, his Guide held far more options than any person should possess.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Eventually, though, he ran into practical limits. He began taking longer pauses between attempts. New ideas came harder. Success thinned into rare gains. His mind was tired in a way sleep would not fully solve, and there was no reason to keep going. He had already pushed the Hall further than anyone alive had likely imagined possible.

At last, he forced himself to stop.

Standing before the altar again, Alistair opened his Guide and scanned the growing list of classes. It was still difficult to believe. He almost pitied the company for not knowing what it had brought to the Hall today.

Almost, but not quite.

He planned carefully before leaving.

The class reader outside would expose anything dangerous. That much had been clear from the beginning. If his original body was inspected, there was a real chance the crystal would reveal it or at least flag it as something unfamiliar.

With the plan formed, he finally left the Hall.

Outside, the line of returning slaves stretched from the portal toward the voidship. No one spoke unless spoken to. Heads stayed down while steps dragged. The handlers watched with bored caution. Alistair moved into place and let his body sag further than usual, as if the trial had drained even the little strength he once had. It was not difficult. He was barely pretending.

Then he waited for the right moment.

It came halfway down the path, where the line narrowed slightly between broken stone and a shallow gully. He stumbled forward into the slave ahead of him hard enough to send the woman sprawling with a cry. Curses exploded from both chainers at once. The line jolted. Bodies shifted. For a few seconds, everyone nearby was looking at the commotion instead of counting faces.

He tripped and fell into the hole, pressing flat against the filthy stone. A moment later, he dragged himself up and quickly hurried to the front of the line. The woman he had knocked down scrambled up in terror before any extra punishment could find her. One of the handlers barked, “Move, damn you! You want the lash for this?”