《Reclaiming the expanse.》 Chapter 1: Fist verse same as ... Arthur awoke in a forest with no knowledge of how he''d gotten here nor what he was last doing before he had gotten there. He stood and brushed himself off. He was in a clearing. None of the plants looked familiar. It was a cool mid-day. Birds chirped overhead, just as Arthur began to take his first step, something flickered into existence. It was a ball of rainbow flickering light ¡°You need to make it to the Obelisk and reset Caretaker permissions.¡± Arthur blinked at this sudden change in events. ¡°Who¡­what are you?¡± The ball flickered and burst into static for a moment but continued on as if he hadn¡¯t spoken. ¡°If you cannot, the current Admins will open a gate out and not only threaten your world, but that will also draw the attention of beings that would stop at nothing to wrest control of this place. You need to reset the caretaker privileges with your blood. I know you have no memories of how you got here or what came before. But that was the only way I could get you here. Unfortunately, here is a valley several days travel from civilization in a region controlled by a dungeon that is the religious figure of a goblin tribe. It''s considered too dangerous for the local adventurers guild. You have neither been isekaied or regressed. I cannot tell you more, but you are once again level 1 tier 0. Your Talents skills and levels have all been reset. I have done what I can for you. I have given you a vessel with 10 in each stat which is peak human outside of this realm. I have made sure you have the proper bloodline, your character info says your name is Shane Richards but your Display name just says Shade. You cannot let anyone know that you are Arthur Slate. That name is taboo; and speaking it aloud will trigger an alert and bring the church down on you. Before you try and respond, know that this is a recording. I am banned from speaking or appearing in the presence of anyone other than the regent admins who have fashioned themselves as gods and taken control of this demi plane. As things stand now there is the Drendarian empire There are 7 kingdoms each ruled by a god king\queen. I have placed you in the territory of one that won¡¯t be overtly hostile towards you. however the church and its inquisitors will inevitably become a problem. The church worships the 7 and upholds their strictures. Each of the 7 head on organization. The Adventurers guild, the Crafters guild, the Healers guild, the Merchants guild, the Assassins guild, the thieves guild, and the Mages guild. They all work in tandem under the church. The Emperor and the grand Hierophant work side by side to rule the Empire. My time is short. Your first Talent is Caloric Completion. That is perhaps the only thing I have been able to unlock for you besides your meditation skill. But leveling as well as many other things are controlled by the church. You need a Guild card, and until you have a guild card you can only obtain utility skills and abilities through the system restrictions until after you have reached tier one, and you have been approved to receive a class. Unfortunately your second talent will likely be Denied by the church. As have all soul weapon summoning or related Talents. Not because of their power¡­ but because the crafting and merchants guild don''t like competition and gear better than what can be bought or made; undercut them. However I have replaced it with one of the other choices that were available to you. your 3rd talent shouldn''t be a problem though. I''m rambling¡­ So I''ll wrap this up. Survive this valley and head southeast to the nearest settlement. I have fabricated some supplies. And a weapon. You also have access to a storage dimension. In which I have stored a weapon. Drop some blood on the weapon to soul bind it to yourself. It resonates with your space affinity and can return to your hand at will to teleport you to its location. If you can get a private meeting with the god of crafting present the weapon to him. That is all for now. Once you have achieved Tier 1 we will speak again. Good luck.¡± This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Arthur sat back down and looked around the clearing. ¡°Status.¡± he said aloud. A window popped up however instead of the expected character sheet he received. ***** Warning: you must seek out a church of the 7 and receive the blessing of the 7 to view your status sheet or assign your Talents or to progress a skill beyond level 9 tier 0. You may however see a list of skills you have unlocked. ***** Arthur stared at the list. It was short, all it had was Meditation level 9 tier 0. So a maxed out skill. Hmm. It was strange but he knew how to activate his skills and abilities. He reached inside himself and for a moment his mind shook. He saw his core a nebula of ice blue and slate gray swirled tightly in a clear bubble of energy. Etched upon the surface was a complex sigil which he knew was his first Talent. Something tugged at his awareness like a memory coming to the surface, but that was the extent; nothing came of it. Something about the script etched in his core still nagged at him but he let it go for now. He opened his eyes while still in a meditative state and saw a hazy miasma in the air mixed with some other silvery flecks. On a whim he started rotating the nebula in his core. Soon the mites of silver around him in the miasma began to rotate as well. However, so did the miasma. And when he tried to draw it in it felt like drinking sewer water. It was corruptive and wrong. A few of the silver motes made their way into his core but the miasma was gathering like a layer of oil making it hard for the silver motes to get in. He was broken from his reverie when a message popped up. ***** You have unlocked the skills Mana sight and mana manipulation. You have also contracted miasma sickness. Your Mana pool is halved for 24 hours. Refrain from absorbing more miasma or mutations may occur. Meditate or seek your local healers guild for cleansing. ***** Arthur willed the window closed and acknowledged that he felt ill. He stood and extended his will with the thought of his spatial storage. He found ten pounds of Pemmican bars, some bandages, three or four changes of clothes, a tent bed roll and a Chakram with an S shaped grip in the center like Xena''s season 5 upgrade. He pulled it out of his inventory. It was light but it had a good throwing heft. He practiced summoning himself to it and it to himself, also summoning it and banishing it to storage. He looked up and the sun was in the sky which he used to mark his bearing. Suddenly he felt a shift like a soap bubble popping and some part of him sensed that danger was approaching. Chapter 2: Gobbling Goblins some part of him sensed that danger was approaching. Suddenly a goblin burst through the brush and leapt. Its upper torso and arms were limbed in a red aura, its eyes also glowed red and it was frothing at the mouth. With instincts born of memories he didn''t have he fed the intent into caloric completion to fade step back just enough for the goblin to miss its swing. He couldn''t access his character sheet but he didn''t need to. Since he invented Caloric Completion. It was broken but not inherently a combat ability. It allowed the user to do anything that they knew and understood how to by expending the caloric energy to complete the task instantly. Know how to make an origami crane? Have a stack of paper? You expend Calories and the resource; paper in this case, and instantly complete all of them. In this instance Arthur let the Talent drive by expending the calories to move backwards to just avoid the swipe. The talent did not allow for complex actions that relied on the unpredictable acts of others like the act of striking someone with the potential for blocking or dodging a series of attacks. Doing only self affecting actions like moving within a parameter like just out of this goblins reach. Will work. But expending the calories to dodge every attack thrown at him would not. Now that he shifted back clear of this talent using goblin; wearing bone claws crafted from some creatures fangs. He instinctively did something else curious. He reached both within and without and drew his space and time affinities into his perception stat in a precarious but even measure. Suddenly everything was slow. And he could sense everything within a 50 foot radius, like the other 3 goblins trying to flank him. He applied a trickle of time to his dexterity and agility, and now he was moving at normal speed through this slow time, but he knew this was eating his stamina and taxing his body. He summoned his chakram to his hand and punched out towards the goblin¡¯s neck severing it. With one last trickle of time he pushed it into the weapon and twisted to throw it behind where the goblins were preparing to flank him. The last thing he did before letting the time flow out of his physical stats was teleport to the thrown weapon. He fell upon the goblins with fury after time began to flow normally for him. After the fight he lay panting in the clearing. The Technique he used was likely created with a much sturdier body in mind. Because everything burned. He took a moment to focus on his muscles, the lactic acid and the torn fibers repairing in the way that made them stronger, and applied his Caloric completion to the process. Suddenly he was ravenous, but his body no longer hurt. He reached into his inventory and drew out a Pemmican bar or three and ate them with his talent metabolizing and adding to his clearly low calorie pool. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Once he felt like he was put back into working order he sat back up. Floating in the air above where each of the goblins died was a card With a light blue glow, he knew it was rare rarity. He considered how he knew that and he had a ton of knowledge but no memories. Briefly he wondered if this was how a certain loud orange anime ninja''s shadow clones felt when they were summoned. Knowledge skill and intent with no supporting memories. Either way he checked out the four cards. They had three question marks as the description but each one had a purple gem with an icon. He poured his intent into them with the thought of acceptance and three lighter sized crystals lay in his palm. He focused on one and it was a full skill crystal for a berserker skill. He stored that in his inventory. The other three were a foraging skill, a wilderness survival and a tracking skill. All of which he crushed and absorbed. It was a weird experience. They gathered and organized my existing concepts pertaining to the skills; and then corrected and edited them according to correctness and efficiency. ***** You have unlocked the skills Foraging tracking and wilderness survival. ***** The biggest leap was the foraging skill because it drew the most sensation of new knowledge. Plant types and what was edible or toxic. What moses grew in what conditions. Followed by the tracking skill, which I seemed to know plenty about, what drew attention there was animal tracks habits and droppings that I guess I didn''t know. Again it was so weird to have a sense of self and no memories to support it. In what was clearly a big brain maneuver Arthur Decided to Dissociate. He wasn''t Arthur. He was Shade, a mysterious amnesiac on the run from world controlling organizations on a mission to survive equipped with mysterious skills and abilities to save a world he cannot remember from invasion. After that bit of deciding was out of the way, Shade scanned his surroundings and spotted several edible plants and mushrooms. Now that they were highlighted. He also saw the tracks of the goblins and the direction they had come from. Which was probably the dungeon. Going that way was a terrible idea. He was lv 1 and he couldn''t access his character sheet stats hit point or even his halved MP pool let alone his experience. How did people live like this? The non adventuring populace. The farmers and villagers. Did they just have like a tier day or does the church just have that tight of a hold on the populace. He bet that was what it was. They probably baptized the populace and convinced them to worship. Shade began to move through the forest towards the south east; he kept his space perception up, and did his best to avoid enemies and predatory animals. Between caloric completion and his Chakram wasn¡¯t a problem. Navigating to the head of the valley Shade discovered a fortress manned by goblins and Orcs. The orcs were larger but they all seemed to be collared and goblins with rods and whips stood by. There were at least twenty of them and twice as many Goblins. Some of the goblins and most of the Orcs gave off a sense of weight that others didn''t. Shade decided to avoid this whole situation before he herd twig snap. Chapter 3: Sometimes Yeet is the only way out. Shade looked down and saw the goblin and orc slave pair. Both felt heavy. The orc sniffed the air. The both of them were just outside his radius due to it being a sphere and he was a good 30 feet up a tree which allowed them to get close without Shade noticing. Neither of them were looking up, they seemed to be following an animal rather than having been alerted to his presence. Shade opened his mouth slightly to exhale silently when a large bird landed heavily in a tree behind him. As the debris of dried bark and dead leaves filtered to the ground, the orc and goblin pair both looked up. Two pairs of glowing yellow eyes locked with his faded blue ones. He immediately fed time and space into his perception and body. To his rising horror even in this time dilated perception, the goblin moved at normal unhindered speed reaching up to activate a pendant which snapped a chromatic orb around itself, and the orcs legs bunched as it crouched to leap, all in real time despite everything being slowed. Reacting quickly Shade summoned his chakram and chucked it into the trunk of another tree across the clearing after infusing it with time energy to bring it into his current space time. With a kachunk it stuck and he teleported to where it stuck just above a branch thick enough to hold his weight. Behind him a thunderous crack and a roar sounded as the orc landed and punched where shade had been shattering the upper trunk of the tree to rain debris all over the clearing. To continue the rising horror several more orcs and goblins ran out at seeming normal speeds; and Shade knew he could maybe take one of them if he had the advantage. But he did not and this enhanced state was taxing and short lived. Thinking quickly he used his talent to climb to the bow of the tree he was in where he stripped a few branches to create a Y shape at the top. He secured his chakram in the cleft of the Y and leaned out away from the fort causing the bow to sway. Which got the attention of several orcs who began to shimmy up the tree after him. Now that the tree was truly leaning with the added weight he used caloric completion to imagine dropping to the ground and rolling. But since they were still in slowed time perception the tree stayed bowed. Shade put two fingers in his mouth and gave a whistle which gained the attention of the climbing orcs who dropped from the tree. And that''s when the truth kicked in. Once they were not moving under their own power but the pull of gravity they just hung in the air, their eyes tracked him though. Seeing the tree primed to snap back and launch his chakram over the fort and out of the valley he envisioned walking back to where he started. He triggered his talent, moving him to the safety of the glade. He then ended his Technique. He counted to thirty, should have well and truly enough time to clear the fort blocking the mouth of the valley. He triggered his Weapon¡¯s ability and teleported to the chakram. Unfortunately for him it was rolling down the not gentle incline of the slope descending from the fort at the valley mouth, and so was he. His body hurt as he bounced and rolled down the incline that some might roughly refer to as a road. Until he caught sight of a destroyed bridge crossing a ravine and that he was sliding and tumbling towards it. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Shade tried to take control of his tumble, but he learned today that when he teleported to his weapon he did so at its momentum. Which was making this difficult. He started by summoning the weapon to his hand, and his lapse in concentration caused him to lose track of his tumble before he hit the log where the bridge would have been moored and up and over the lip of the ravine. For a moment he hung flailing in the air for purchase. But then he let time flow only into his perception; everything slowed and froze, including himself. Even this was causing noticeable mental fatigue. But he saw that the ravine wasn''t very wide at this point so he steeled himself and with a push that left him feeling like he pulled a metaphysical muscle He thrust himself and his weapon into a higher space and threw his chakram across to the other side. And teleport to it before dropping his technique. He had just enough presence of mind to store his weapon in his spatial storage before that effort of will pushed him into unconsciousness with a similar sensation to what he felt that last time he pushed his space time technique. When Shade awoke he was alerted to an insect landing on his face and then an Ascending cascade of red alerts. He was stripped down to bare skin\. He was laying on hay or grass and something hefty and metallic was around his neck. He could sense movement and hear the squeak of a wooden axle, and smell of unwashed bodies. Before he opened his eyes he gave himself a quick mental diagnosis. His body still hurt, he knew he was unable to pull himself into a higher space time at the moment. He tried to reach into his spatial inventory but he stopped when that metaphysical pain threatened to overwhelm him. He was however able to burn calories to ease his muscular fatigue without healing himself in case he was actively being observed, which he was grateful for once the alert appeared in his field of vision behind his eyes. ***** You have unlocked the skills Acting and Deception. Deception raised to level 9 ***** Shade immediately felt suspicious about his other self. This meant he was already so accomplished at Deceiving that it hit the max threshold after a passive use. He braced himself and groggily sat up and promptly had the wind knocked out of him. A foot connected with his chest and forced him back down. ¡° If you fucking struggle this spear is going into your eye, Meat.¡± Shade stared cooly at the messy unkempt man in piecemeal leather and cloth armor. ¡°Ohhh¡­ we got a hard one here. not a bit of fear in his eyes, even collared and hobbled. No access to his mana and naked as the day he was born. Still looks like is gonna take this spear and shove it up my arse¡­¡± In a move that Shade saw coming but could do nothing about, the butt of the spear swung around and clipped him on the side of the head. His head barely turned but his eyes watered slightly and he could feel blood trickling down his cheek. The man grinned showing blackened teeth. Shade also noticed his left eye was glossy and didn¡¯t focus properly. ¡°Good good, keep that spirit, the ludus will pay good coin for a strong Null like you. How''d you even survive to your age without getting the blessing? I didn''t see any criminal or caste marks on your body that would deny you the blessing. But survive long enough and do well enough and you might even make it to one of the god¡¯s coliseum, then you could ask. Sometimes the grant boons¡­¡± ¡°Oi, Charley shut the fuck up and make sure that he isn''t wanted cursed or a Heretic.¡± Charley kicked Shade¡¯s hip. ¡°You heard em. You any of them?¡± He pulled a white stone from a pouch at his waist and tossed it down. ¡°Pick that up it''l glow if you lie.¡± Shade reached for the stone.¡± I''m none of those to the best of my knowledge." The stone stayed dull in his hand.