For the Machine Lord class, he selected Enhanced Control. It would enhance his ability to control his own mind and body, through Eve and his augmentations, which would be useful in a number of ways. For one thing, it would allow him to train faster and harder, as, despite everything that had happened, Alan was definitely still human. When exercising he could only handle so much pain, yet Eve believed he could push himself further without risk of injury. His body and mind just wouldn’t let him. This would help to break free of those bonds, hopefully making training easier.

The battles in the Survival Test had also been extraordinarily painful for Alan, and he wanted to mitigate that pain as much as possible, as he couldn’t imagine willingly going through such torture again, especially in a state where each second that passed felt like minutes. Additionally, it would be useful in masking his true intentions and presence. With enough practice, he would be able to control his heart rate and other factors that might lead to his detection or give him away when he lied. At least, that was the idea.

For the Rogue class, he chose the Jack of All Trades path. The ability was what it sounded like. It would allow Alan to gain and train new skills and abilities more easily, and hopefully master them as well. The other options such as the Stealth or Assassination paths had more obvious, direct benefits, but Alan liked his choices. They gave him the greatest potential for growth.

His decision made, Alan spent the 500 ability points, opening up a series of additional abilities to unlock and train in. A few especially caught his attention. There was an ability in the Jack of All Trades path that would decrease the cost to purchase new abilities, but at the same time there was one that would allow him to learn faster. It would probably be better only getting one. There was another ability that would reveal available combinations of abilities or hidden requirements to unlock skills, but Alan felt like this would probably be a waste of Ability Points. He could find the information online, and combinations of skills should be fairly straightforward, right? The Enhanced Control ability tree, on the other hand, was depressingly sparse. It appeared that Alan hadn’t met any of the requirements for the abilities on this path yet.

Then, they got to the point Alan was the most excited about.

I’d like to browse the contents of the Vault.

Very well.

The Vault. A collection of items that the Administrators traded for marks, rumored to be the largest and most varied collection of weapons, armor and vehicles gathered in the Game. These items were rumored to come from a variety of sources. They were items dropped by players due to death penalties, items taken from chaotic players that broke the law, items developed by the Administrators and items bought by the Administrators. Each Administrative Center had its own vault, but the greatest and most expansive, where all the rarest items made their way, was here, in the Administrative Center at the center of Khersath. Alan needed a weapon, and he had one platinum mark, ten diamond and ten gold marks to spend.