As Arin sat inside his room, he turned toward the mirror and studied his reflection. He had not really taken the time to look at himself properly since becoming an adult, or a Mortal as people online had increasingly started calling it because they thought the word "adult" sounded far too dull. Now that he was finally sitting still, he could see just how much his body had changed since the arrival of mana. And, if he was being completely honest with himself, he had to admit that he looked pretty damn good now.
Before mana arrived, Arin had possessed what he would have described as a rather forgettable appearance. There had been nothing particularly wrong with his face, but there had also been nothing that made people remember it after seeing him. His features had carried a dullness that made him easy to overlook in a crowd, and that had never bothered him particularly much. Now, however, there was something distinctly different about his appearance, and the change was impossible to ignore when he looked directly at himself.
His eyes were one of the most obvious changes.
They had once been a soft green, but that color had gradually deepened over time. Now they were approaching an almost emerald shade, making them considerably more striking than they had been before. The change was subtle enough that someone who had not seen him for a long time might not immediately recognize what was different. However, once they noticed his eyes, it would probably be difficult for them to forget them again.
His hair had undergone an even more obvious transformation.
Originally, Arin's hair had been dark brown, but green strands had begun appearing after mana arrived. Before becoming an adult, he had only had a few green locks scattered throughout his hair, making the change noticeable but not particularly dramatic. Now, however, roughly half of his hair had turned green. It was a deep, dark, leafy green that matched the forest far more closely than his original brown hair ever had.
The change was made even more noticeable by the fact that his hair was completely unkempt.
Arin had not been to a proper barber in more than three years. Nobody in the Sonnenberg family really knew how to cut hair properly, and Arin had eventually decided that he did not care enough to solve the problem. Whenever his hair became too long, he simply took a knife and cut it himself. It was not particularly elegant, but it worked well enough for him.
Besides, Arin had no patience for sitting in a chair while someone spent an hour cutting his hair for absolutely no important reason.
"God," Arin thought as he looked at himself, "when was the last time I was even in a proper civilization?"
The answer was probably around four years ago, just before they had been transported to the Trail. Everything after that point had been so far removed from anything resembling normal life that calling it normal would have been ridiculous. The following years had been filled with mana, monsters, cultivation, secret realms, family projects, and the constant rebuilding of humanity.
The Sonnenberg family had also spent the last three years largely cut off from the outside world.
Strangely enough, Arin found that he liked it.
He had almost no social obligations anymore, and there were no expectations forcing him to constantly interact with people outside the family. He could simply spend his time with the Sonnenbergs, practice his skills, explore the forest, work on bows, and do whatever else interested him. There was something incredibly relaxing about that kind of life, especially compared with the strange and chaotic world that existed beyond their forest.
Arin had even spent entire weeks simply moving through the forest.
He had deliberately wandered through different areas, meditating, observing, and trying to connect with the forest around him. Every time he returned from one of those trips, he felt different. His psyche seemed more alive after every journey, as though spending so much time surrounded by nature was gradually changing something inside him.
That connection had become particularly important because Arin had apparently reached the limits of what his soul could currently handle.
Or, at least, that was how Gaia had explained it to him.
When Arin reached Stage 0.9 in his class, he had expected the System to offer him another skill. Normally, that would have been the obvious progression, especially considering how important skills were to his development. Instead, nothing happened. He received no choices, no list of skills, and no opportunity to select something new.
His soul was overloaded.
Gaia had explained that the soul was not developed enough to handle the strain that Arin was currently placing upon it. Every skill granted by the System was carried within the soul, allowing that skill to perform its function regardless of what happened to the user's body. That meant the soul was not merely a container for information. It was an essential part of the System's ability to provide skills to a person.
Arin's problem was that he had placed an enormous amount of strain on his soul far too early.
When mana first arrived, humanity had been completely unprepared for the changes that followed. Arin had experienced things that a normal human soul should not have been expected to handle so early in its development. On top of that, he had died once, which had placed additional strain on his soul. As a result, his soul was still damaged or, as Gaia had described it, "sour," and it had not yet fully recovered.
The situation was made even worse by the rarity of his archery skill.
His archery skill was Epic rarity, and skills of that level placed an enormous amount of strain on the soul. Gaia had not expected Arin to obtain something so powerful so early, and that had created a problem she had not originally accounted for. Frankly, Arin should not have had access to the amount of power he possessed at his current stage.
That was one of the reasons his progression had become so unusual.
Gaia had explained that children born after the arrival of mana would have a very different experience. They would only gain full access to their System on the day they turned eighteen. That was because eighteen was expected to be the point at which their souls had fully developed and were finally strong enough to bear the strain caused by System skills.
The difference existed because humanity had not been given that luxury.
If people had been forced to wait until their souls naturally matured before gaining access to the System, humanity would not have survived the arrival of mana. Humans needed the System immediately because the world had suddenly become far too dangerous for ordinary people to survive without it.
Unfortunately, that emergency measure came with a price.
Giving immature souls access to powerful skills created a much higher possibility of soul strain. The soul simply had too much to carry before it had developed enough to handle the burden. Under normal circumstances, a soul would not be so fragile that a person could be placed into a coma simply because they attempted to craft a bow that was two rarities higher than the skill they possessed.
Yet that was precisely the kind of situation Arin had experienced.
Because of that, he had been unable to choose another skill when he reached the limit of his class.
The choice had simply been postponed.
Arin found that rather unfortunate, but there was nothing he could do about it. Even worse, Gaia had expressly forbidden him from telling anyone else about the problem. She had told him that humanity needed to discover the benefits and dangers of the soul for itself. According to her, this was something that needed to happen for the good of the human race.
Arin had found that explanation extremely vague.
It was also so vague that he had eventually stopped asking questions about it. He had simply filed the entire matter away under the mental category of things he was not supposed to talk about and probably did not need to worry about.
What neither Arin nor Gaia knew was what existed elsewhere.
Deep within the Void, something had reacted.
Something had flared up in response to Gaia's words, only for chains to suddenly wrap around it and suppress whatever had begun to emerge. A dark shadow covered the disturbance, forcing it back into silence before it could become anything more.
Arin, of course, knew nothing about this.
His attention was focused entirely on his own situation.
Now that he had officially become a Mortal, he should finally be able to choose another skill. That was not particularly surprising, since Arin had already known that reaching this point would eventually give him another opportunity. He had simply told everyone that he had chosen the skill Basic Tracking, an Inferior-rarity skill.
It was a convenient choice.
Arin already knew that Basic Tracking was a skill he could improve almost immediately, so pretending that he had received it was not particularly difficult. He had no problem maintaining the illusion because, if he had actually been given the choice, he probably would have selected the same skill anyway.
Still, being forced into that choice meant that he had lost the opportunity to see what other options might have appeared.
Not that Bow Bash had become any better.
Arin could not help but think that if he was going to be forced into choosing something predictable, it was unfortunate that his alternatives had disappeared entirely. Still, there was one particularly exciting advantage to finally becoming an official Mortal.
He would be able to choose a new class.
Or, more accurately, he would finally be able to choose the class he should probably have had from the beginning.
The System had originally been designed to make sure that humanity survived the arrival of mana. Because of that, the classes offered to people were heavily restricted. Arin had only ever been given three options, and none of them had been particularly impressive.
Strangely, the same limitation did not appear to apply to professions.
Nobody had managed to map out exactly how many professions existed. Even five years after the arrival of mana, people were still discovering new professions on a regular basis. Arin found that interesting because it suggested that the System had created an enormous amount of variety in that particular area.
Then again, professions were apparently the only method humanity currently knew of that could directly improve the soul.
Considering that, perhaps the sheer diversity of professions was not so strange after all.