One had to remember that Ryan grew up in the modern age. It explained many of his issues, like lack of attention span towards boring tasks, a preference towards flashier declarations like he was doing a livestream.
And a very, very deep misunderstanding of what exactly adventurers were normally like on other worlds.
You see, Ryan believed that posting your details, trying to get sponsorships and raising a fanbase was just a normal thing you did as an adventurer. Ryan had seen very little problems with posting your entire skill build online until he himself started to exploit it.
In Ryan’s eyes, what he was about to do was normal.
“Hello world. Wait no, what am I? A computer program? Hello everyone, damn too formal.”
Ryan had accurately assessed that a ‘paper’ released by some random person wouldn't cause as much of a fuss as a video with a somewhat famous face on it. Ryan believed that a lot of the educational world hadn’t quite figured out the importance of trying to gain some level of public support. Comparatively, he believed he knew how to get everyone interested in learning some cool things about the Trial System.
He started off with a personable approach. A friendly face he’d seen many adventurers try before. He sounded truly genuine and excited to share a great secret that nobody else had figured out until now.
Some people would tune in to scoff at but secretly hope there was something a random adventurer on realmnet had figured out that nobody else had.
To the others, it was going to be a genuine video of an overexcited adventurer that believed he stumbled on gold.
He was going to get so much shit for it, but that was the thing, Ryan didn’t care. All of it would bring in the views.
The plan was to release the video essay, spark controversy then produce results.
He’d seen it done before.
Adventurers making the most ridiculous plans to maximize achievements. It sounded stupid until you understood that these people had PR agents and had practiced their entire lives for the Trial System. They knew that a bit of overblown confidence and silliness got more views than being clinical and intelligent about things.
Then you outperformed expectations.
Then those people that were supporting you from the start would become superfans, trying to claim that they had always been right to follow ‘this new rising team’. Those that didn’t like you would either shut up and watch or just call you lucky.
That was the approach Ryan was emulating. All of it to spread as much as possible of course, not because he wanted to get rich and famous out of it.
All for the safety of The Realm.
After all, even if the researchers bickered away and the realmnet argued over whether it was legitimate, to practical adventurers, they would hear of the results and implement it themselves.
That was the plan.
As long as Ryan performed and helped a few ninth realms resonate with their classes, he couldn’t see anything going wrong in the long run.
He gave the camera a wide goofy smile. Embodying a good-hearted adventurer researcher, excited to have come across something and was ready to share it to the world.
“Hey guys! This is just the first update of something I’m excited to share with all of you. It’s about class resonance and skill mastery. I believe I’ve figured it out. It’s not some major secret or anything, plenty of people have mentioned that this could be the case to break bottlenecks. But I don’t think anyone’s really produced the same results as I have. It’s only three adventurers so far, but every single one I’ve worked with has broken through their bottleneck!”
Ryan raised his arms in surrender.
“I know, I know, it’s not enough for a proper sample size but that’s why I’m making this! To spread the word and find more adventurers to work with to see if I’m right.”
It took twenty takes before Ryan was satisfied with the mix of naivete, arrogance and the little tease of a great secret.
Grevich started to look at him like he had grown another head on his shoulder. Perhaps realizing that Ryan was much more of a manipulative bastard than he thought.
“Okay, so I’m not the first person to say this about skills. Everyone knows that lower rarity skills are easier to manifest the higher realm you are, meanwhile it seems almost random how quickly adventurers can learn rarer skills. Some adventurers learn Epics in a few months, while others might never learn them. I think I’ve found a part of the puzzle that’s important to learn skills, and that’s what you want.”
Start off with something that everyone knew then immediately move onto a topic that everyone at the higher realms wanted to know about.
“It’s the same idea with class resonance. Yes, the current leading theory is that you have to act the way of your class and that has brought the most consistent results so far, but I can confidently say that the step forward is for you yourself to align with your class.”
Ryan was pointing at the camera at the end of the sentence, then he spread his palms to face the camera.
“If you’re a [Knight] you don’t just pretend to be like a knight all chivalrous and upstanding, what you’ve got to do is to figure out what part of being a [Knight] appeals to you. Then you focus on that idea while you enter the flow state and… bam!”
Ryan slammed his hands together in front of the camera in a loud clap. The example of soul and class coming together.
“Your own soul aligns with the Trial class. You start embodying the class without the Trial System’s help. Or, what we call, class resonance.”
Ryan stopped recording and replayed that bit on the camera.
“Hmm, maybe a little cringe. What do you think, Grevich?”
“I think it’s genuine. But I also do know it works so I am a little biased.”
“We’ll keep it then.”
They continued recording.
“Now, while I consider that to be the first step, it is a step that requires a bit of soul searching, pardon the pun. I have a few ideas on how you might go about figuring it out, a therapist is one.”
Give them something that nobody ever really wanted to do, then offer a better way.
“But I think you can do it yourself! I’ve listed my thought process here with the one example of our [Warrior] that had difficulty entering the flow state. It turned out he did not realize he would rather be a tank protecting his team than be the main damage dealer! You can follow how and why I came to this conclusion and try to implement it with you and your team! I’ll be adding to that list with more adventurers so stay tuned!”
Ryan talked about the release with the three adventurers that were in the study with him. They had pretty much responded immediately saying that they were happy to help, though the seventh realm [Martial Scout] wanted more guarantees, which was fair.
He continued the example with Mudriff, talking about how they used a guided meditation process to tailor make a class resonance and that was where Ryan dropped one actual bomb that nobody, perhaps not even the Witch Tyrant actually knew about.
“Yes, I believe even lower realm adventurers can resonate with their standard classes. It just has too little conceptual weight to make much of a difference. Even for unevolved adventurers, I still think it’s important to attempt some level of class resonance just for the benefits it brings.”
Grevich didn’t think this section was a good idea to put into the video. He called it too esoteric for adventurers and that the previous examples and methodology would catch on fire.
Ryan kept it in the video to lay the groundwork for the future.
After all, class resonance was the first step. He had seen unity from Luneia [The Knight] and knew adventurers could go even further.
The funny thing was, nobody had coined the next step properly yet. In fact, if Ryan’s guess was right, there might not even be a hundred adventurers that had truly stepped into unity.
He ended the video with a hook.
“Now, I do have a few ideas on where to go from there, I do really think class resonance is the first step into making the Trial class yours. If you know adventurers with titled classes, they’ve taken that extra step beyond resonance. For now, I will be focusing on getting adventurers into resonance. Once I have more experience, my goal will be to get everyone into that next step. Stay tuned for more.”
Ryan gave the camera a smile and winked.
They cut the recording there.
“What do you think, Grevich?”
“I believe you are far more crafty than you appear to be, adventurer Robinson.”
Ryan shrugged with his arms wide open.
“What can I say? I’m [The Rogue Adventurer], fooling the world to make it stronger is just part of what I do.”
——
The Realm, Sector Five.
Now, Ryan wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t simply post everything online immediately, the more he talked it out, the more the ideas consolidated in his head. The way the Trial classes worked, the way skills worked, everything was seamless in a path to give Trialists unearned power.
But then a question popped up in the back of his head.
So why didn’t anybody else know this?
There were arguments to explain why. None of his ideas were completely foreign to everyone, quite a few had hypothesized about a lot of what he said but it never really took off in terms of practice. Class resonance wasn’t something that anybody really knew anything about until after the golden generation. When the situation started to settle and adventurers started to stagnate.
It was really only popularized at the ninth realm and for dragonslayers, when they started to max out their skill levels and were looking for any opportunity to improve.
Acting like your class was something that only happened after people truly sat down and found a pattern amongst the most successful adventurers.
It could be said that there hadn’t been enough time to solidify everything. There were too many variables for a single researcher to claim their findings were correct.
And to be fair they didn’t have the information, class and conceptual skills he did.
But that still didn’t explain why the Witch Tyrant hadn’t shared all of this with the world.
So he wanted to check that he wasn’t doing something stupid.
Ryan appeared in a ruined outpost, even more ruined than when he had left it last. Every single building had been demolished flat with only the Trial entrance was left standing.
Luneia the shining [Knight] stood in between him and the entrance. A single lone [Knight] in a ruined outpost, ready for a last stand. She lowered her lance and got ready to charge.
Ryan just looked around until he found the distortion in the air.
“Hey Gamielle, I need to talk about something.”
Gamielle started floating down when Luneia called out to him in annoyance.
“Are you fleeing from me, coward?”
Ryan shooed away [The Knight].
“Yeah, yeah good job at clearing the battlefield so I have to fight without cover. I have more important things I'm dealing with, can you wait a couple days?”
Luneia was fuming red and started charging when Gamielle appeared in front of him. Luneia came to a skidding stomp and leaped back as Gamielle tilted her head, curious.
“What’s up?”
“I just wanted to do a sanity check.”
Gamielle looked him up and down.
“Nope, can’t see any of that here.”
“What do you mean? I’m the most sane person across both worlds.”
Gamielle rolled her eyes. “Riiiight, tell me again about how you tried to kill the Manager?”
Their third wheel shouted from a distance.
“He did what?!”
Gamielle’s glance made [The Knight] stand up straight like she was standing to attention.
Ryan ignored that, he simply sighed, remembering the attempt.
“Better to have tried and lost so I can try again but better next time.”
Gamielle took a moment to process that sentence. “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.” She then looked at him weirdly, like she was suspicious. “Wait, what are you trying to say?”
“Well, I want to get your opinion on something I’m going to be releasing soon, hear me out…”
While Ryan explained what he was doing, he had a distinct feeling that this wasn’t what Gamielle was asking from him. Her right eye was twitching in unrestrained frustration. Ryan frowned.
“Are you listening? What do you think?”
Gamielle let out an insufferably long sigh. It made Ryan’s stomach drop.
“Go release it to the public, I’m sure it’ll work out as magically as all your other plans have anyway.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Are you saying it’s a good idea or not?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t matter if you release it. People won’t just magically find what resonates with them just because you told them it’s important.”
“But I managed to do it.”
“Because you’re an irregularity! You’re the prodigy at the literal top of your realm with multiple different classes you resonate with!”
While Ryan would have liked to hear that when he was younger, it felt wrong to him with what he was trying.
“I think I just had more opportunities than others.”
“You just don’t get it. Ryan! There is literally nobody out there that is capable or willing to try to scheme around my mother and the Manager. You are not a good benchmark of what is and isn’t possible.”
“I got three other adventurers to resonate with their classes.”
Gamielle actually looked like she wanted to strangle him or pull her hair. She settled for throwing a [Fireball] into a pile of rubble.
“Which is part of the reason why I’m not commenting on whether you should or shouldn’t release it! I don’t know, maybe your little unified theory ends up being the renaissance of adventurers and their classes!”
Ryan just raised an eyebrow. Gamielle huffed.
“Sorry, I’m working through some stuff.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Gamielle looked as if she was tempted, then shook her head.
“Got anything else, or is that it?”
Ryan scratched his head.
“Do you have any idea why your mom hasn’t released this before?”
Gamielle sniffed. “Probably because she didn’t understand all of this until recently. Even then, I don’t think it’s as much of a net benefit as you think it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Neither Zedart nor you need to learn to resonate with your classes. Even Valee will find it easier to resonate with her classes as the weight of her concepts become heavier.”
That was something Ryan hadn’t realized was a thing. The idea that the weight of concepts meant you would be able to resonate with it quicker…
Even still that didn’t feel like a reason not to spread the information.
“So the average to below average adventurers get stronger, is that a bad thing?”
“No, but think about what happens if you made a [Warrior] realize he wanted to be a [Dancer]?”
Ryan, who had never wanted to be anything other than an adventurer, literally couldn’t even imagine the idea. Gamielle scoffed as she realized this.
“The simple reality is Ryan, it’s better for most people to stick to their classes and act it out until it becomes who they are. Fake it till you make it. That was the vision my mother had for the strength of The Realm. At least before I died. She wanted adventurers stick to core offensive classes with a stable base of crafters.”
“But there’s Jeauamper, the [Royal Chef], Ozyell, the [Bard]. It seems like wasted potential.”
These were all standouts that were always well above and beyond other adventurers in their realm.
“Despite their insane talent, how many of them have hit dragonslayer, Ryan?”
“Oh. Wait, is Jeauamper a Fallen?”
Gamielle didn’t answer him, she gave a different reply.
“The Trial System is unkind to those that pick a non combative path. Even a combat adjacent class like [Witches] have incredible difficulty trying to defeat the dragon in their own way.”
It felt wrong to Ryan. So much potential there waiting to be unlocked. He knew the fifth trial was quite possible as a non combat class but the tenth trial… Some dragons were solid gold assholes that couldn’t be reasoned with, no matter how skilled you were.
And if you boosted yourself with an adventuring party to kill the dragon… you often ended up with a mixed class.
Ryan shook his head, sat down and activated [Conceptual Meditation].
It helped. Over the night, he had managed to distill everything he understood about the Trial System into the paper and the video, he had already made connections and understanding about how the whole system worked. The whole thing was more beneficial to his understanding than he first expected.
He should have done it sooner.
Now Ryan wanted to see if there was a path forward.
The skill didn’t give him an answer on whether he was right or wrong. It could not make such broad predictions on others like that.
Ryan decided on his own conclusion.
“Even still, I think there’s a gap between [Warrior] and [Dancer] that people can pick. It’s just a matter of framing things the right way.”
[Return to Earth]
Maybe he had been affected too much by his classes, but he was more determined than ever to make it work.
Or perhaps this could be his first successful rebellion against the design of the Trial System.
Gamielle smiled as Ryan disappeared.
There was another calculation she didn’t have the heart to tell Ryan. It was something her mother never explicitly said but it became obvious when you paid attention to the changing of generations.
If you increased the average strength of adventurers, it gave the standouts less opportunity for meaningful achievements in The Realm.
“Seriously, why even come here and ask if you were going to come to your own conclusions anyway."
Gamielle was still smiling.
——
Ryan released the document and video the moment he got back.
Eight hours later, both Grevich and Ryan regretted it.
Ryan had asked Gamielle about whether it was a good idea, of all the people he should have asked, it was Milock that could have told him that this was a really, really stupid approach.
////
Fun/challenging chapter! 3.1k words! Flow state! Then editing hell! It drains!