The silence of the crystalline cavern, which moments ago had felt serene and sublime, now pressed in on Kage. It was the suffocating silence of a prison. A beautiful, shimmering, useless prison.
The Architect of Verse.
The words echoed in his mind, laced with a bitter, cosmic irony. He, Klaid, the man who had traded the art of the sword for the science of the game, was now a poet. It was a joke so profoundly unfunny that it bordered on tragedy.
A wave of cold, sharp panic threatened to crest. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic rhythm that felt alien in his own chest. This was a catastrophic failure. A career-ending, life-altering mistake. His mother's face flashed in his mind, and the panic sharpened into something akin to terror.
He slammed a mental door on the emotion. Panic was a waste of resources. Terror didn't pay bills.
The Operator took over.
And it was wrong.
The data was there, yes, but the presentation was all wrong. Before the class change, his UI had been a model of minimalist efficiency: clean, sans-serif fonts, sharp-edged windows, and health bars rendered in solid, functional blocks of color. It was a design choice he'd appreciated—utilitarian, unobtrusive, and built for speed.
Now, it was a mess.
A subtle, infuriating filigree, like a creeping vine made of faint silver light, now traced the borders of his character sheet. The font had changed, its clean lines replaced with a more elegant, calligraphic script that was marginally harder to read at speed. Even the health bar was different, its solid red now imbued with a faint, pulsing texture, like a line of liquid ruby.
The system had re-skinned his entire reality.
The Operator logged the change with a spike of cold fury. It was a purely cosmetic, resource-wasting alteration. An inefficiency forced upon him, a constant, galling reminder of the artistic prison he was now trapped in. He forced the irritation down, filed it away, and willed his focus back to the numbers themselves. The flowery container was irrelevant; the data within was all that mattered.
This wasn't a crisis. It was a system failure. And every system could be analyzed.
He began a methodical, system-by-system damage assessment, pulling up every new panel, every blinking notification, every line of text his new reality had forced upon him.
[Character Sheet: Kage]
Level: 1
Class: The Architect of Verse (Legendary Poet)
Experience 0/100
Title: -
Fame: 300
Physical Damage: 10
HP: 110/110
AWN: 310/310
Weight: 2.8/30
[Attributes]
Strength (STR): 10
Agility (AGI): 10
Stamina (STA): 10
Intellect (INT): 10
Artistry (ART): 30
The numbers were an abomination. His high-DPS build had been wiped clean. His Strength and Agility were back to the pathetic base stats of a fresh spawn. In their place, a mountain of points had been dumped into Artistry.
Useless. The word was a venomous spit in his thoughts.
He moved on, his mind a fortress of cold logic.
First, the core systems. His UI displayed two new, foundational mechanics.
[System] The Poet's Lexicon
Type: Knowledge System
Description: Codex of all known [Conceptual Keywords]. Holds the raw conceptual ingredients for your verses. The power and flexibility of your abilities are directly limited by the keywords you have acquired and understood (resonance metric).
A database, Kage's mind translated instantly. Currently, it's a library with no books. He checked its contents. A pathetic starter pack stared back at him:
[Self], [Target], [Strike], [Bind], [Shape], [Strengthen], [Weaken].
All of them at 1% Resonance. Whatever that meant.
Next, the primary active skill.
[Active Ability] Verse-Crafting (Form I: One-Word Poem)
Type: Active
Cost: Baseline - 50 Awen.
Description: Use [Conceptual Keywords] from your Lexicon to create a poetic effect. A verse is composed of two parts: a Title (which defines intent and targeting) and a Poem (which contains the conceptual payload). As a Level 1 Architect, you can only use the most basic form, invoking a single keyword.
A command-line interface, he concluded. Title is the targeting command, Poem is the executable. Simple. But 50 Awen for the very first skill? 'Baseline'… His eyes paused at the word. Does that mean it can go up?
His eyes narrowed. The core mechanic required testing. He moved on to the passives, searching for anything that could salvage this catastrophe.
[Poetic Insight]
Type: Passive Ability
Description: Your mind automatically parses the world for conceptual data. Witnessing or experiencing events of true narrative or emotional weight has a high chance to distill that concept into a new [Conceptual Keyword], adding it to your [Poet's Lexicon].
A passive parser that flags important data points. It's a tool for farming the Lexicon. My primary way to populate the empty database.
[Storyteller's Intuition]
Type: Passive Ability
Description: Your mind is subconsciously attuned to the narrative resonance of the world. When interacting with an item of significant history or standing in a location where a major event occurred, you may receive a brief, psychic impression—a "lore echo"—of its past. This can reveal hidden properties, quest clues, or the [Conceptual Keywords] embedded within it.
A built-in object history scanner. Useful for appraisal and sniffing out quest triggers. Cuts down on research time. Some minor utility.
He felt a sliver of something other than pure despair. The class had tools for acquiring its own "ammunition." Inefficient, perhaps, but it wasn't a complete dead end. He continued down the list.
[Unflinching Verse]
Type: Passive Ability
Description: The act of imposing your will upon reality is a tangible force. While actively composing a verse, you gain immense CC Resistance, allowing you to complete your work even while under attack.
Super armor during cast animations. A critical defensive utility. It makes the otherwise suicidal act of writing a poem mid-combat actually viable. A necessary feature, not a gift.
[Poetic Spirit]
Type: Passive Ability
Description: Your creative energy is a direct reflection of your artistic mastery. Your Artistry (ART) stat is converted into bonus Awen and passive Awen Regeneration. Any additions to Mana and Mana Regeneration instead grant Awen and Awen Regeneration.
My primary stat also buffs my primary resource pool and regen. It's just good build design. It means stacking ART isn't a total waste. But stacking it in the first place is the core problem. Also… INT just became a literal dump stat.
Finally, he came to the last passive. His eyes scanned the description, and for the first time, he saw not a liability, but a clear, quantifiable value.
[Conceptual Purity] (Passive Ability)
Type: Passive Ability
Description: You are able to perceive the conceptual essence of defeated foes. Allows to harvest a [Conceptual Material] from powerful or unique entities. These materials can be used for Verse-Crafting.
Better drop rate on rare mats, his mind latched on, the thought sharp and clear. Exclusive materials that only I can get. This creates a monopoly.This is the passive that will actually make money.
He leaned back, the whirlwind of analysis settling into a grim conclusion. He had a full picture of the class now. It was a high-concept, slow-burn artisan class. It had a unique method for acquiring its skills, a built-in defense for its otherwise vulnerable casting, and a single, potentially powerful economic engine.
For a roleplayer, a lore-hunter, or a patient crafter, it might be a dream.
For him, a player on a desperate, high-stakes race against time and his mother's medical bills, it was a nightmare. The path to monetizing this class was long, winding, and uncertain. He needed results now.
His new objective snapped into focus with crystalline clarity.
Suffer through this for twenty-four levels. Grind, endure, and ignore every flowery mechanic this class throws at me. At Level 25, I dump it for something viable. That's the first opportunity the players get to reroll.
The Operator had a plan. The panic subsided, replaced by grim determination. But before he could act on it, a different impulse surfaced. A need to confirm the loss.
He stood up, the silent cavern his unwilling dojo. He took a single, deep breath and fell into a basic kendo stance without a sword. His muscle memory was a flawless, ingrained thing. He began to move through the first kata of a sequence Master Jin had taught him, a simple, elegant form he could perform in his sleep.
His real-world body, safe in its capsule, knew the rhythm. But the avatar, his new virtual self, betrayed him. The lunge felt sluggish, the turn a fraction of a second too slow. The clean, crisp snap he expected at the end of a phantom sword stroke was replaced by a dull, heavy feeling. His perfect form was being throttled by the pathetic STR: 10 and AGI: 10 stats.
He was a master musician trying to play a masterpiece on a broken, out-of-tune instrument. The spirit was willing, the knowledge was perfect, but the vessel was fundamentally broken.
The humiliation was a different, personal kind. It was a deeper, more personal failure. A profound disconnect between his will and his reality. He stopped mid-kata, his hand still raised in a perfect guard, and the ghost of the prodigy in his mind finally, truly, understood the depth of the catastrophe. They hadn't just taken his stats. They had taken his art.
The humiliation was complete. He had analyzed his body, his skills, his very soul. The Operator's final protocol was to run a full diagnostic on all related assets. Only one variable remained unchecked.
With a grim sense of finality, he opened his inventory. His eyes scanned past the vendor-trash components and the two crafting materials from the Elite Wolf and the Wyrm, landing on the single item that had started this whole disaster. The simple feather icon seemed to mock him. He focused his intent on it, pulling up the item description for a final, thorough analysis.
[First Maker's Quill (Dormant)]
Grade: ???
Type: Creative Implement
Properties: ???
Description: The world is written in ink, but before the ink, there was a thought. This tool slumbers. Its potential is tied to the wielder's ability to perceive the world's deepest truths.
Requirements: Artistry 15+
His eyes narrowed on the last line.
Requirements: Artistry 15+.
Before, this item was a locked box. Now, with his Artistry stat at a galling 30, the primary condition was met. And yet, the item state remained unchanged: (Dormant).
The Operator's mind immediately parsed the contradiction. If the stat requirement is met, its dormant state must be tied to a separate, non-stat-based trigger condition.
His gaze drifted back to the description, the flowery, useless text he had dismissed hours ago. It was the only clue he had.
Its potential is tied to the wielder's ability to perceive the world's deepest truths.
Kage translated the poetry into the cold language of game mechanics. It was a classic hidden objective. To awaken the quill, he would likely have to complete some esoteric, unguided task. Find a specific location. Perform a specific action. "Perceive a truth" was developer-speak for triggering a hidden lore flag. It was a wild goose chase. A time-sink designed for lore-hounds and roleplayers.
The path to awaken it was likely as inefficient and nonsensical as the class itself. He didn't have time to wander the world looking for philosophical epiphanies. He had a 24-level grind ahead of him, and every second he wasted on this conceptual garbage was a second his mother's real-world clock kept ticking.
He closed the window, the quill's description vanishing. The final assessment was complete. The class was a failure, and its "Legendary" tool was a locked-away puzzle box with no immediate value. It was irrelevant.
The Operator had his plan. Suffer, grind, reroll.
But for a moment, standing there in the silent, crystalline cavern, the plan felt insane. The sheer, soul-crushing absurdity of it all finally broke through his control. This situation felt... scripted. Like he was the protagonist in some cruel author's idea of a joke. His whole life was about optimizing systems, but he was now a character trapped in a narrative, and the plot was terrible.
His mind, in a flash of bitter, meta-textual rage, fixated on the protagonists of the webnovels he used to read on his phone during downtime—the escapist fiction that was now his horrifying reality.
He thought of the lucky fool who stumbled into a Legendary Blacksmith class and ended up equipping half the server with game-breaking gear. The penny-pinching grinder who became a Legendary Sculptor and raised armies from stone, commanding them in epic wars.
Their authors had at least given them a chance. A clear, if unconventional, path to victory.
Instead, he had been given a feather and a mandate to write poems.
The Operator's composure finally shattered, and a raw, unfiltered thought, boiling with the heat of pure, undiluted despair at his own terrible plotline, screamed through his mind.
The other guy at least got the blacksmith class... even the sculptor was better... how am I supposed to make money with A FUCKING POET?!?
The internal scream echoed in the silent cavern of his mind, leaving a profound emptiness in its wake. A flash of shame followed, a reaction to the loss of control, the inefficient emotional outburst. He crushed it, locking the despair back in its box.
Kage turned his back on the stone altar. He left the silent cavern, the beautiful prison, and stepped back into the world that was now his enemy.
The first step in any recovery plan was to acquire a new capital asset, no matter how pitiful. The long, humiliating process of balancing the books began with a single, necessary purchase: a sword worth less than a loaf of bread.