《An Un-Ideal Eternity》 Arc 1: Chapter 1: He Died I died.... It was on a Thursday, I¡¯d woken up early to head to the office to finish some work I¡¯d left undone the night before. I was hoping to get there and finish before Mr. Newman, our section chief, wanted to actually see the work. As it was often easier to show work once one some had actual done for the showing. I stood at the window of my fifth-floor apartment, a warm, terrible tasting coffee in hand. Like most people I was doing that thing, where I pretended to try to eyeball the sky before I went ahead and had my cellphone tell me what the weather would be, anyway. Then I saw them. Lights that rose up into the heavens like great big fireworks. Shining bright though it was still daytime. They climbed higher and higher and higher still, then just before they reached the limit of the sky, they turned towards the earth. Falling. Their lights growing brighter as they grew closer. Eventually they hit the ground, and the dim morning was forcefully pushed forwards into a blindingly bright day. Across the planet a million small suns, bathed the world in brilliant white. At least that¡¯s what I assume, I¡¯d already died, the instant that the rockets made contact with the city. Crushed flat with the rest of the building. Getting thoroughly atomized in the process. ***** They¡¯d destroyed the world... again. All the countries of the world blowing themselves up with such vim and vigor you¡¯d think they were all in a hurry to die. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. That was the problem with playing such high stakes games of chicken, farm fowl generally weren¡¯t very clever birds. The first world, the first earth, was lost the same way. Mankind was forced to abandon it after six world wars. Countless generations of pollution and one not-so-minor outbreak of gray goo. In the end they all had to flee the planet, piling into rickety ships of iron and steel. Flying into the sky and wandering for several hundred years till we found Agartha, the second earth, our new home. Humanity and their children, the humankin, and the machinekin, wept with joy when they stumbled upon the new garden world. It was thirty times bigger than the old world had been, and though the fauna and flora were a bit more ornery, if we weren¡¯t already beyond sick of breathing recycled air by then, we were at least pushing the limits, of our survivability for such conditions. We¡¯d have taken Agartha, even if it were a death world. Had there been intelligent life living there already we probably would have tried to conquer it or at least begged to be let in as refugees. We settled down and we rebuilt. Life was good again. Or at least it was a proper living, not just baseline survival like we¡¯d been barely managing to do in the ships. Civilization could restart and flourish. Things were magical. Literally so, Agartha, had actual, literal magic. There was a presence of some manner of thick, anomalous, particle field, that let the kind of stuff that filled comic books and novels, be possible. Our scientists couldn¡¯t really figure out the hows and why of it. And our best Physicists joined the ranks of dentists and psychiatrists, as one of the more depressed professionals, but we ¡°did¡± eventually figure out how to make use of it all. The magic let us rebuild even faster. We worked our butts off. Or at least our great, great, great, grandfathers and mothers worked their butts off. Then we forgot why we¡¯d had to do all that hard work in the first place. Polluting again. Warring again. Now here we were, just a few years shy of a millennia later and we¡¯d gone and done it again. We¡¯d ended the world. Arc 1: Chapter 2: 700 Years Pass It took just thirty seconds for my fair Berwyn, New England to be reduced to a smoking crater. One amongst countless other such craters across the globe. It took two hundred years of rain, wind and snow to gradually erode and fill that crater till it became something like a lake. It took three hundred more years for the nearest fast flowing river to shift according to the whims of the rampaging climate, feeding into that lake. It took an additional fifty years for that lake to be absorbed as a part of the river, thusly becoming included with its connection to the sea. It took an hour and a single seconds of bad luck for certain post-nuclear otter knock over some shifting rubble and trigger a dead bomb that had been lying at the bottom of the lake. The resulting explosion further widening the new addition to the river and loosing up the surrounding soil, making it more vulnerable to erosion. One hundred and fifty years later the whole area was overtaken by the sea. The aggressive flow of the river and the encroachment of the ever rising tides, slowly shrinking the nearby coasts till everything was submerged in the calm black waters. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. It was near of the end of all this that I arose. Bursting back into consciousness, like I¡¯d been there all along and only resting my eyes for a few seconds. ***** A small little fun fact, about the effects of the magic on Agartha that was often shared by this world¡¯s scholarly types, was that one in every one thousand people, was secretly immortal. Or at least tenably so. According to the internet it had something to do with Mana nodes, the collective unconscious, possible evidence of Agartha having been artificially created by either Angels or Demons or Aliens, and quantum resonance of the human soul. All things that I held only a very cursory knowledge of if only because I was under the impression that they were at least partly made up. Like most kids, I was wowed when I first heard this. Then when I was older and learned that this ¡°so-called¡± immortality was only triggered under certain highly improbable circumstances, and that in some cases this immortality was only partial, the wow started to fade. I mean, to prove this theory, one would have to try to die, and considering that there was a ninety-nine point nine, nine, percent chance that one might really die even if one ¡°was¡± an immortal, if the circumstances weren¡¯t just right, it was only expected that realism would step in. By the time I was a proper adult I already understood it to be one of those scientific in jokes like schrodinger''s cat, or maxwell''s demon. A statement that was either meant to disprove itself, or point out an odd, little understood, concept, in a more substantial line of scientific thought, but was otherwise not meant to be taken seriously. However, seven hundred years after my death, it seemed that I and everybody else were wrong. Spectacularly wrong. I was alive, and I was immortal. As to how I knew I was immortal and not just inexplicably alive, let¡¯s just say my return trip from the other side had left me, a very changed man. Arc 1: Chapter 3: Beating Myself Up Back when I died, I didn¡¯t go to heaven. Naturally once I was dead and saw no sign of either angels or pearly gates, I found myself sweating. I hadn¡¯t been a bad man; I was nice to the elderly, paid my taxes on time, was generally courteous and polite to most people I met. I even gave to charity on occasion. But I hadn¡¯t been a good man either... with various flaws of character that... I will not be mentioned here. For I feel that those flaws have been spoken about enough in various court mandated counselling sessions, that track from my somewhat unfortunate childhood, to my relatively more healthy but still far from perfect, late-adolescence Thus it was to my great relief when I didn¡¯t find myself seeing horned red men and lakes of fire either. Instead, I found myself in a place of black. A realm that was cold like the deepest sea. A place lit by a massive pale red moon that hung low enough that it almost felt like I could reach up and touch it. My only company in that place was myself. By that, I don¡¯t mean I was alone. No, on the contrary there was a great multitude present, enough to populate a large country. A great multitude of ¡°me¡¯s¡± An army of me¡¯s all wearing different sorts of cosplay. Dressed in all manners of uniforms and gear. Armed with many, many, painful looking various tools and accoutrements. Row after row, man after man, they gathered. All of them bearing the same awkward height, dark brown skin and shaggy, nigh-uncombable hair. Even the ones that ¡°weren¡¯t¡± human, still managed to look like me. It was uncanny. Whether dog, or cat, or fish, or betentacled hill-sized jellyfish creature, they all were still very clearly me. Maybe it was something the exhausted, dead fish, look they all had in their eyes. In any case. Before I could even start to ask what was going on, they set upon me. Those first five hundred years in the real world were extended to five hundred thousand years in the place of black and cold. I suffered, quite miserably through all of it. Getting poked and prodded and diced and minced. I¡¯d never considered myself the self-loathing sort but I have to say I was beaten quite thoroughly. If I didn¡¯t hate myself, I certainly hate ¡°me¡± now. Sometimes they¡¯d use magic. Burning me. Freezing me. Shocking me. Making me explode. Occasionally various versions of smoke monster-me and jellyfish squid-me would take turns forcing feeding themselves to me. Forcing their way into all my orifices. All my orifices. Other times I would be buried in molten metal or drown in acid. These weren¡¯t even the worst of my experiences in that place. I shall be kind to both of us and spare you those¡­ All the same it amounted to a not inconsiderable amount of pain and mental duress. The worst times would be when no one touched me and I was simply left alone beneath a moonless sky to relive everything and the loss of my life and world, in the darkness. It was only sometime near the beginning of the six hundredth year that one of my alternate selves would even bother trying to explain what was happening. ¡°Why?!¡± I moaned, for the millionth time. ¡°... To toughen you up... you great numpty.¡± said a camouflage uniformed me. Speaking for the first time in a subjective eternity. ¡°..... What?!¡± I said, dully breathing. My breath labored and ragged. My body aching from all the new bullet holes the army sergeant-me had shot into me. ¡°Status?¡± said the other me. ¡°What?¡± said I. ¡°Use the [Status] spell.¡± said the other. Speaking the word in what I recognized as part of the runic tongue of modern magic, except different. A new twist on the odd bits of harmless, puzzling magic that many children on Agartha learned to use by age five and grew bored with by the time they were six. I used the spell, hoping that it would stop the other me from continuing to hurt me. I¡¯d never been able to use much magic before, in the old world, in Agartha, but somehow here, in that bleak darkness, it worked. A window appeared, its bare bones diagnostic aesthetic looking like an internet pop up on a very shady site. *****
Name: Desmond Bose
Age: 27
Level: 1
Race: N / A
Affiliation (s):
Title (s):
Talent: 15
Attainments:
Body 0
Mind 0
Soul 0
Affinities:This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Time, Light, Life
Abilities: Ruin & Restoration, Auto Recovery
Virtue: Temperance
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed
****** It was a menu both like and unlike, what one would see in a game. Looking at it, I couldn¡¯t help thinking of the games I¡¯d play on the weekends when my girlfriend and I didn¡¯t have anything planned. Or whenever she got mad at me again, for either being too distant, or for not listening about¡­. something or the other... and I was left to my own devices. I found myself feeling unsatisfied by the teasing resemblance. There were some stats that were present and others that were missing or turned strange. Unsure what to make of it, I looked to my doppelg?nger for answers. ¡°Um... what is this?¡± ¡°Proof that you¡¯re not ready yet. You¡¯re close but not quite there yet.¡± said the other me. ¡°Ready? Ready for what? What are you talking about?¡± said I. ¡°Ready for the waking world. This dream will soon end and when it is over the world will be very different from how you remember it. How ¡°we¡± remembered it..¡± said the other me. I had no clue what ¡°I¡± was talking about, I was still mostly just talking for the sake of keeping him from shooting me some more. Unfortunately this plan would be foiled. As the window faded from my view he resumed shooting me. When the drill sergeant was done shooting, out came a knight to hack me into pieces. When the knight was done, out came a mad scientist type with a metal gorilla to mash me into putty. When the scientist was done the outcome a living tree to fill me with ivy and more unpleasant memories. I begged and pleaded and howled, lamenting my fate. Then finally for the second time I got an answer. ¡°Will you shut the hell up already?! Who the hell do you think we¡¯re doing this for?¡± snapped a gloomy-me that was all skin and bone. Scourging me with a ghastly black whip. ¡°Huh?! What do you mean? Why are you doing this?!¡± Till then, I had been a normal man, who¡¯d led a normal life. As such I held no strong grudges, and no enemies who would or could arrange to torment me in the afterlife. (Assuming I¡¯d ever believed for a second that such a thing would be possible of course¡­) ¡°Do you seriously not remember?¡± said skeleton-me. ¡°He probably doesn¡¯t. It wouldn¡¯t be too strange if that was the case.¡± said a me who walked in with a rust metal trapezoid for a head and a great knife in his massive arms. ¡°What do you mean?¡± said Skeleton-me. ¡°This version of us hasn¡¯t finished initializing yet. He isn¡¯t connected to the network. He doesn¡¯t even have access to the archive yet.¡± said metalhead-me. ¡°Oh, wait so you mean he¡¯s still only seeing time with mundy eyes?¡± said skeleton-me. ¡°Yes, he can only see forwards and backwards, not the sides or angles, or the possibilities.¡± ¡°Really!? Cor... No wonder, his future-self told us to break him in. He¡¯ll definitely get eaten at this rate.¡± said skeleton-me. ¡°True.¡± said Metalhead-me. As I was currently experiencing some of the worst pain I¡¯d ever felt in both my life and afterlife by mashed into pieces and then forced to heal. Pulled apart and then smushed back together like clay. It shouldn¡¯t be too unreasonably to believe I did a terrible job of following along with their conversation. I sort of zoned out for a century or two. I¡¯d scream a bit, pass out a bit. Soil myself then lapse into consciousness. Then someone with my face would wake me up again and the cycle would be restarted anew. It was only near the of things when I¡¯d finally get answers, and like most true maturations, it would dawn on me when I¡¯d least expect it. The answers coming to me, bit by bit, till finally one day I suddenly opened a purpled, swollen eye and realized that I knew what was happening. Looking in the corner of the bleak, black room, standing out of the light of the pale red moon, was yet another me. But this me was well more ¡°me¡± than the others were. Dressed like I dressed. Looking just slightly older. Our eyes met as whichever me that was currently torturing me shouted that I should check my status again. I complied and as I saw my renewed status I understood. I understood everything. ******
Name: Desmond Bose
Age: 27
Level: 5
Race: Greater Cambion
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient,
Talent: 35
Attainments:
Body 70
Mind 35
Soul 35
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Ruin & Restoration, Greater Auto Recovery(Passive), Impermanence & Eternity, Mercurial Flesh(Passive), Indomitable Physique(Passive), All- Consuming(Passive), TPO (Passive), Ambrosial Tongue (Passive)
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed
***** My race was changed, a very, very distant part of me was disappointed to see that I was apparently not human any more. Though considering all that I¡¯d gone through, it was to be expected that my nature would change. They¡¯d beaten ¡°talent¡± into me. Drastically increasing my ability to increase my attainments with each level. As for what attainments were, they were the simplification of all the traditional stats in a game. Body was all the physical traits. Mind was mental traits, plus magic. Soul was magic, plus luck and charisma. The system of spells, that created the status menu couldn¡¯t just boil down a person to numbers. The numbers would fluctuate too much, changing with time, health, wakefulness and myriad other conditions. Attainments covered all the expected ranges and potentials of an individual and then went a step further by allowing easy, magically modulated growth through use of the leveling system. A gift that had apparently been bestowed to the surviving people of Agartha shortly after the world was purged by the nuclear fires. Each point of talent invested in one of the categories of attainment meant a level¡¯s worth of growth for that category. The attainment system was a privilege given to immortals. I wasn¡¯t entirely certain why they were getting special treatment. The most I could gather, was that it was it important that immortals be strong. My omniscience was picking up something about the undying portion of the population being responsible for folding the sky. Acting as pillars, or anchors to keep the world from falling apart and being consumed by rampant magics. According to, ¡°the archive¡±, for regular folk, talent just decided one¡¯s growth per level. In my case that meant each level of growth from me brought a thirty-five percent increase in my capabilities. Along with the loss of my humanity, and the increase in my talent I¡¯d gained a title, partially-omniscient. A title that meant exactly what it sounded like and was the cause for my sudden understanding. I wasn¡¯t all knowing but I was all learning, the breadth of my knowledge ever expanding, growing with each minute and each second of every day. The base of my knowledge honing itself like a self-sharpening blade. Rather than relying on what I saw with my eyes, or heard with my ears, my mind pulled knowledge from the ether. Using the akashic stream, the background recordings of all of existence, in much the same way a younger me used to use to the internet. It was like my brain was a beleaguered phd student, working on its thesis on the grand totality of everything. As in everything under the sun, or should I say, the moon. Besides my new learnedness there was a whole bunch of new abilities and traits. Besides simply being tough, or indomitable, my flesh was now extremely adaptable. Anything that hurt me once, wouldn¡¯t get to do do so twice. My magical affinities went up, encompassing all the elements including that of dreams and illusions. I had a bunch of new tricks up my sleeves, an ability to destroy, and an ability to create. An ability to ruin and an ability to recover. Beyond the magic, there were practical abilities that I¡¯d picked. Plain skills. My torturers...I mean, my trainers, didn¡¯t always one-sidedly assault me. Sometimes they let me fight back. Sometimes they let me run. Sometimes they let me hide. They always got me in the end, but I got good at running and fighting and hiding. This whole hellish experience had been for a purpose. It had been done with the intent of making me stronger. I knew this. I knew it as sure as I knew that in a few years, I¡¯d string several of my alternates in the multi-verse into the task of whipping my current self into shape. Right now I was in much too much pain to actually appreciate it, but there was a streak of cold, discomfort that ran through my core as I realized that it was all very necessary. As much as I hated to admit it, in the waking world, oppurtunities like this would scarce. Managing to attain even one ability or special trait, would require a stroke of unbelievable luck. Meaning in a certain sense all this pain was actually my good fortune. An opportunity someone who was either very desperate or very stupid would kill for. And sad as I was to say it, I or at least the future me, had probably felt and been and exactly that desperate and stupid. I would soon be returning to the world of the living, but the Agartha I¡¯d be returning to would be one that was filled with all sorts of monsters, devils and undying dangers. A world full of beings and personalities that could and would go out of their way to ensnare a vulnerable young immortal like myself. If I wanted a chance at having anything even remotely resembling a normal, peaceful, life, all the suffering I¡¯d gone through during this my first respawn, had had to happen. I¡¯d need to get stronger if I didn¡¯t want to get a game over right off the cuff. The improvement the other ¡°me¡¯s¡± had made was still far from enough to ensure my safety. All it was a very, very good start. I¡¯d need more strength to continue living, and to keep from being tossed about in the stormy world above. And knowing both my present and future-selves, if I could cheat to make that strength superlative I would certainly do so. Arc 1: Chapter 4: Feeling Alive Seven hundred years, in real time, had passed since the day myself and my fair city of Berwyn were summarily erased from the map. Seven hundred thousand years, of subjective time, had passed in between that first death and my first respawn. Though my future-self had made mine more extreme than the norm, and mine might have been longer than most, the so-called initialization period, that came directly before their first respawn, was something that all immortals had go through. As I burst up from beneath the surface, the cold black waters that now flowed over my former home, I decided two things. First off, death was still terrifying regardless of whether one could or couldn¡¯t die. Even knowing that my next respawn probably wouldn¡¯t take anywhere near as long and likely wouldn¡¯t involve regular beatings, grueling workouts and dark-matter enemas, I still didn¡¯t want to die again. It was too scary to take the risk. At worst, I¡¯d be in for more mind-altering pain. At best, I¡¯d be in for nothing at all. My soul scattering into the ether. The second thing I decided was that regardless of how bad it had felt, and how mixed my feelings on the issue, I¡¯d probably be arranging the treatment for some younger version of myself at some point in the future. I know I¡¯ve said it before, but this world was not a safe one. I¡¯d learned this when I became semi-all knowing and I could feel it personally now. I¡¯d emerged into a world filled with lions and tigers and bears. I was fresh meat in world of beasts and creatures that should neither be seen nor thought of. Had I come back as just my regular self, knowing my own strange luck I probably wouldn¡¯t even know what happened when something came and killed me for the second time. Never mind speaking of the many possible fates that were worse than death and waiting for unwary mortals and immortals alike. My first heart beats in seven hundred years were coming a mile a minute, sped up by a cold fear and the instant trigger of my fight-or-flight impulse. Anyway, it took me a minute to swim to shore. It was a miserable swim. This was partly because the waters of Agartha on our side of the planet were always cold as a rule. However to make it worse, I¡¯d seemed to have made my return to the world during the dead of winter. And on top of all this, being blown away into a substance that was less substantial than ash, meant I¡¯d ended up coming naked. So yes, it wasn¡¯t pleasant. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. There I was swimming in iced water, in the middle of winter, while in the buff. Then when I reached the coast I was wandering naked, getting snow on my shoulders, while in the buff. My first and only priority was to not be naked. So I wandered for a bit drifting over an open plain of sand and dead grass, for a good two hours. Wandering like a blind man in the tundra till, my dumb ass, remembered that the my [TPO], time, place, occasion ability was pretty much a swiss army knife, style, combination of a dozen handy teleportation and movement abilities all rolled into one. I took a step forwards, and in a single instant I was at the nearest inhabited settlement. A town that my semi-omniscience told me, was called North Brodick. A mid-sized municipality that had been founded on the new north-eastern coast of the old Tri-American Territory. There was a scream I looked and saw that I was being stared at by a gaggle of washer women and young ladies gathered by a crick. One chubby young girl had her eyes covered by her portly mother. One old woman mumbled something about certain parts of me looking a bit like her dead husbands. Finally people started throwing things, and I had the sense to take a step back and shift to a different setting. This time I found myself in a shop. It was dark, and dank smelling so they were either closed for the evening or closed down permanent. It didn¡¯t matter to me which case it was. What ¡°did¡± matter was that there was big heap of slightly moth-eaten clothes there, for me to ste-...I mean borrow. I took some pants, and a few shirts. I found a jacket that someone had left on a table, next to an ashtray, with some cigarettes that had recently been put out in them. I took the coat. And took a pair of boots too. And then I used a bit of rope for a belt because the shop¡¯s owners hadn¡¯t had the good sense to sell belts too. I quietly made a promise to eventually come back and pay for all that I¡¯d taken...if I could be arsed to do so and still remembered. Which thanks to the points I had invested in my mental attainments and the changes that the partial-omniscience brought to my mind, was actually more likely than you¡¯d think. Then I took yet another couple of steps that whisked me away, dropping me in an empty room. An apartment in ruined city several miles north of North Brodick. One of many old world ruins that had emptied by the fallout, the evil mists, and monsters that had more or less dropped Agartha to the level of death world. (Wait¡­.monsters? What monsters?) I blinked, as my the thing in my head, that gathered knowledge even when I wasn¡¯t thinking about it, filled me in on the state of the world. Beginning with a images of rejects from a late nineties bad guy line up and ending with a bunch of fake-looking cg monsters that likely that heard about Darwin¡¯s Survival of the fittest and took that shit seriously. It was pretty much, exactly what one would expect from watching an evening¡¯s worth of post-apocalyptic films. The bombs fell. Most people died. A few people lived. First there was confusion. Then chaos. Then anarchy. The monsters and the mists made of vengeful ghosts and corruptive magics didn¡¯t help things. (Wait...the mist is made of ghosts?) Eventually, enough of the violent meat heads killed each other to lower the level of chaos to something manageable enough for the population recovery. The cleverer ones set up kingdoms and tiny lordships for themselves. Their even cleverer followers, children and trusted lieutenants then turned around to oust them and start with the creation of proper countries. So I guess society was finally back in the rebuilding stage. Things weren¡¯t exactly peaceful. For instance there were at least five very bloody major conflicts happening within a hundred miles of this portion of the North Eastern T.A.U.(Tri-American Union). Still it wasn¡¯t as bad as it had been. There were all these factions, which I had no intention of getting involved with just yet. And all these feuds, which I had no intention of getting pulled into ever¡­ Still the rate of deaths, to births, was low enough that the population was climbing, and there were people who could live and die without ever having to pick up a weapon. Arc 1: Chapter 5: Getting Associated I currently stood in line, in a place called the hunter¡¯s association. Normally they were pretty much like a dmv back in the old world, but this place was just a secondary depot. Which meant that it was less of proper establishment and more of gathering spot for shady looking dudes with guns and spiky pieces of metal strapped to their backs. Some genius went and opened a bar. So it was now a place where violent strangers met drunk strangers, to either fight, hook up, and maybe if they had some time to kill, look for work. I was just wondering how semi-governmental office could run like this, when the know-it-all within my head informed me that this wasn¡¯t the town¡¯s main depot. Rather than a proper secondary depot this was practically something like a tertiary depot. A dive joint that was actually more bar than depot at this point since the owner realized that ¡°that¡± was what was making him more money. I was also reminded that I¡¯d chosen this place. Choosing it because it was the exact kind of place, a stranger from nowhere could come and handle his business without getting looked at for too long or with anything close to too much scrutiny. After properly chastising myself. I wondered what I¡¯d been griping about. Sure this place was a bit funky, both in smell and in atmosphere, but it was exactly what I needed right now. Heck, since I had the time to spare I could probably come around for a drink later, to see if post-apocalyptic beer tasted compared to pre-apocalyptic beer. Or at least that was what I¡¯d been thinking, then I happened to look at the corner of the room and spotted a still form leaning against the wall. Blood and piss pooling around him. I¡¯d found at least two thirds of the reason for this place¡¯s funky smell. (Maybe nix that beer, yeah?) My turn in line came slowly, but it did come. I stood before a humankin, an old catwoman. From the looks of her, her ancestors must have been generation one humankin, because she was more cat than woman. An anthropomorphic cat, with what was more or less a cat¡¯s head. Though I could see that from the neck down, she had probably once been comely by human standards. ¡°Welcome to hunter¡¯s association. How can you today?¡± said the clerk. Sounding board and all but yawning as she spoke. ¡°Um... I uh¡­¡± I startled. Tripping over my own damn tongue. Stuttering as if I hadn¡¯t been expecting to have to talk to someone while I¡¯d been standing in line this whole damn time. Fortunately, her apathy towards her position and me, made the good clerk both patient and non judgemental. Eventually I pulled myself together enough to properly get out the words I needed to get out. ¡°.... I¡¯d like to register as a hunter, please?¡± I said. My voice, doing me the great favor of cracking like I was the awkward fifteen year old I¡¯d once been, rather than the awkward, grown-ass, man that I currently was. ¡°Do you have papers?¡± she said. After blinking twice and actually yawning, not even bothering to stifle it. ¡°N-, no. Sorry.¡± I said. Panicking for a bit, thinking my well laid scheme had just fallen apart. Then she blinked again. ¡°Would you like us to make you some papers, sir.¡± said the clerk. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. ¡°Um¡­.sure.¡± ¡°That¡¯ll be two hundred fifty CCD, sir.¡± said the clerk. ¡°Um, CCD?¡± I blinked. Frowning. The archive supplied the answer. Common currency dollars weren¡¯t actual. Dollars. They were thin plates of magically charged mithril, that were used by the major the players both on and off the continent. The clerk just gave me a flat stare. I got another stare from the other end of the room. That one was from the manager who was about a few seconds away from telling on the bully boys he had working as guards to escort me out and maybe give me a working over for wasting everyone¡¯s time. Fortunately, I was actually not as stupid as I or everyone else I¡¯d ever met generally were lead to believe. I¡¯d come here with a plan. ¡°Uh, sorry, I don¡¯t have any CCD on me but I¡¯ve got some lump mithril that I wouldn¡¯t mind trading in.¡± She stared at me and then she nodded. I reached into a hole a handy-dandy the time space continuum. and brought out a stone that I¡¯d found on the road. One that I¡¯d used my abilities as an ¡°Immortal Alchemist¡± to transmute into pure, high grade mithril. The clerked scrutinized it, frowning at the lump of magically charged metal. She mumbled the words for an appraisal spell. Then as the spell fed her, the details of what she was looking at I watched as he entire attitude changed. Wide-eyed for the first time since the start of our exchange she looked at me as if trying to get my measure. ¡°One moment, sir.¡± She left the counter and was gone for about fifteen minutes, leaving the lump of mithril on the counter. She came fifteen minutes later, with the bearded, bald, one-eyed, old man who was a senior executive for the North Brodick¡¯s branches of the Hunter association. ¡°Well, young man. I must say that this is quite the windfall you have here.¡± said the man. Not even bothering to introduce himself. Likely because I was either was supposed to recognize him as one of the town''s famous elites, or because I was below introducing himself to. ¡°.....Um...yeah?¡± said I. ¡°Would you like to come to the back offices, so we can speak in private?¡± said the old man. More or less already leading me there as he turned on his heel and had the clerk and manager of the depot make me fall. Shepherding me. I found myself led to a lounge led to lounge that was better decorated than the rest of the depot, and better smelling, though not by much. ¡°Please, by all means. Have a seat.¡± said the old man. ¡°...Thanks.¡± said I. ¡°Ahem¡­.so¡­.its not everyday that someone brings in a lump of high magical material as big as their head. And I hear that you¡¯re apparently a mage as well.¡± ¡°....!¡± I didn¡¯t say anything. I was mostly just befuddled, wondering how I could be both, hyper intelligent thanks to the forced leveling, borderline all-knowing, and still be an idiot. It had just occurred to me, that showing off what I could do, and choosing to transmute a stone that was larger than my head, had probably not been the best moves I could make. Even if I didn¡¯t want to hide my inventory, I still could have brought out a smaller piece of mithril, or transmuted it, to a lower, less magically enriched grade. The old man, just stared at me. I never missing a chance to look slightly daft, just started a back. This staring match lasted a good minute, till the door of the lounge opened and one of the younger clerks came in with a tray of teas. I couldn¡¯t fathom where they¡¯d found either the tea or teacups in a place like this, but I still drank it. Drinking but not tasting. ¡°In any case. I heard that you wished to register with our fine association.¡± ¡°....Right. Er...yes.¡± said I. Finally managing to say something. ¡°That¡¯s quite the surprise. You know, if you took that lump of mithril to any of North Brodicks family, or if you¡¯d went to our neighbors in the much larger South Islington, you could have gotten quite the fortune, and probably gotten a position working for a main family or perhaps even been invited by a sect.¡± said the old man. ¡°...I¡¯m aware.¡± said I. I really ¡°was¡± aware. The archive had even told me which families were more likely to actually pay me, rather than trying to cheat me or murder me for the treasure. If I sold the mithril successfully I¡¯d get more than I¡¯d get for selling it to the hunters and be able to live in the lap of luxury for months. I¡¯d chosen forgo that option because the archive had also showed that my freedom would have been more restrained that way. Either I¡¯d be ousted after all the money they gave me was spent, or I¡¯d spend years working my way up from whatever upper lower rung position they put me in. Plus there was the concerning issue of the ninety-six percent probability that I¡¯d be pulled into something troublesome once I¡¯d become part of a family. ¡°Mhm¡­ I see. I see.¡± said the man. Eyes narrowed, a slight smile appearing behind his beard. He nodded to himself as if seeing something. ¡°Very well, then. Well, we can have that wrapped up in a jiffy.¡± ¡°Um, thank you, Sir Geoff.¡± said I. Arc 1: Chapter 6: Balls Roll, Dominoes Fall Sir Geoff von Brodick, knight of New Aubrey, and the immortal founder of the towns of North, South, and the ruin that had once been called the East, Brodick, stared at the empty seat across from him. It wasn¡¯t universal but after reaching a certain level, all immortals could generally learn to sense the presence of other immortals. For instance, Sir Geoff was aware that the young man, or at least the young looking, man, who¡¯d he¡¯d just talked to was an immortal. Tall as if he were an ogre-kin, dark like a southerner, and comely in a way that was rarely seen outside of the halls of the nobility and the higher tier sects. The strange boy, had come in and said surprisingly little. If he¡¯d recognized that Sir Geoff as a fellow immortal he didn¡¯t say anything about it. Nor did he speak of his plans, or his reasons for coming to join the hunter¡¯s association after what Geoff could only guess, to be decades or even centuries, of not joining before. The man, this Desmond, just came in dropped a lump of Mithril that was large enough to buy a small dukedom and then requested to be registered as D-Rank hunter. Only choosing to pay for the upgrade from a G-Rank hunter when old Geoff, pettily decided to try to needle him a bit. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. All Geoff knew was that it all made him feel things that he hadn¡¯t felt in a very long time. This man, this Desmond Bose, as the immortal was calling himself, was a sly one, barely speaking the entire time that they were having tea. Eyeing the old man with the same unwavering scrutiny that Geoff used to eye him. A faint and sinister smile etched across his features. Fear and anticipation warred within the old man as he remembered the stranger. Recalling the pink of his hair and the eerie glow of his crimson eyes. Geoff had tried to appraise the man and sneak a lot at the man¡¯s status but found that view was obfuscated. His spell had failed. Something that hadn¡¯t happened in a very long time. If the man had been a newly awakened immortal, it would have been impossible. Appraisal failure was something that could only happen if Geoff were to run into an existence that was many times stronger than himself. A being or creature whose strength exceeded Geoff¡¯s own One hundred and twenty-five levels of magical enhancement, attainment and cultivation. Thus, the question was created. A mystery was born. Forming in the old man¡¯s mind, birthed the million dreadful possibilities that his imagination came up with. The question of what on Agartha, a person, or possible humanoid monster, of that kind extraordinary strength, was doing in their neck of the woods Whatever the man was after, whatever his intent Geoff only knew one thing, that eventually it would bring change. Even the man was just some bored old master wandering about, people that powerful, beings that big, made waves when they moved. Giants crumbled mountains when they stumbled. Dragons created draughts when they sneezed. The man¡¯s presence could either be a boon, or a curse, but only time would tell. In the meantime, Geoff could only do due diligence by informing Hunter Associate Headquarters of the new member and leaving notice with his branch¡¯s people to have them keep note of the man¡¯s actions. Arc 1: Chapter 7: A Regular Guy In the world that once was, a first day on the job for me would have meant getting used to the awkwardness of new office space and getting used to a new computer console, and the accompanying A.I. assistants. In this strange, new, somewhat broken Agartha, my first day on the job, involved me being kicked through a building. An entire building. I was sent flying through a wall, and then through several support beams. I heard things breaking and couldn¡¯t tell whether it was happening inside me, or all around me. From the amount of pain I was in I didn¡¯t need the archive to be able to tell that the answer was probably more a mixture than both, rather than it being either one or the other. I landed on the street outside the building, listening to the thunderous roar that followed as part of the ancient building collapsed. Its age ensuring that a partial collapse would lead to the rest of the building going down. Fortunately, it didn¡¯t fall on me. Something else fell on me instead, a pickup truck sized mound of spiked fur, horns, hooves, and fury. Things had been going so well, I¡¯d even managed to make my first kill as a hunter. The beast had been some kind of magically altered wild boar. Built as a big as a small car. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. After joining the hunter¡¯s association and setting myself up in an apartment building in the wastes, that I¡¯d used my magics to restore and ward, I¡¯d finally mustered up the courage to go on a hunt, As for why, I¡¯d felt the need to go on a hunt, it was because; it felt like thing to do. As for why it felt like the thing to do. Well, for that, I¡¯ll just have to admit to having a mild fixation on the idea of normality. Mom ran away with the circus. (At least that¡¯s what Dad said.) Dad was part of some kind of demonic sex cult. By the time social services showed up I was kind of fucked as kid and foster care didn¡¯t really help that. As by then the Tri-American Union was already balls deep in several small wars that were looking like they were going to build themselves into one big global one. Meaning they didn¡¯t really have the time, leeway, resources to be arsed when it came to checking whether their social safety nets were working properly. I¡¯m not complaining. I got through alive and with a college diploma. The only drugs I was hooked on were anti-anxiety meds. The point is being normal, having a normal guy routine was something that was very important to me. And normal now, for your average Agarthan, was either killing things as a soldier in an army, killing things as a cultivator in a sect, killing things as a Sorcerer in a Sorcerer''s Circle or College, killing things as hunter in the wastes, or being killed as a poor itinerant dirt farmer or townsperson. I would have been a townsperson and gotten some of the world¡¯s more normal job, but those seemed to all involve bowing and scraping to super powered levellers and inevitably either dying randomly or having your daughter whisked away. (I know I said things were getting better, and society was recovering, but your average Agarthan was still dead by fifty and that was only if they were lucky.) As for the other options being a hunter was the only one that didn¡¯t make PK into a necessary part of the work day. I wasn¡¯t a Saint, but neither was I a monster, thus if I could live without ¡°having¡± to kill people I would try to. Besides in my head the Hunter¡¯s Association was synonymous with the Adventurer¡¯s guilds that one would often find in games. And as a gamer, there was a real romance to that that appealed to me. Now here I was getting my ass handed to me, by a truck sized mother, of the car-sized baby boar that I¡¯d killed as part my first ¡°successful¡± hunt. Arc 1: Chapter 8: Premium Character So,...I didn¡¯t die. I should have died, but I didn¡¯t. I¡¯d waddled my dumb ass out into the wastes, like a noob gamer, all decked up in all the premium gear that his daddy¡¯s credit card could pay for. And somehow, miraculously it worked out. Don¡¯t get me wrong I was hurt, looking like a mummy, wrapped up in towels and bandages to keep my inside parts from getting outside, while my body healed itself, but I was alive. In my book alive, always counts as a win. Or at least that¡¯s usually the case. There was always those pesky fates worse than death, but those were and few between in popping up, right? (....Right?) ¡°[Status]¡± I gargled. Growling the words out through my broken jaw. The status window popped into being, just like I had expected it to. Cool blue and semi-transparent just like in a video game. ******
Name: Desmond Bose
Age: 27
Level: 12
Race: Living Nightmare (Cambion Lord)
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Immortal Sorcerer, Immortal Alchemist, Celestial Arcanist, Immortal Scholar, Keeper of Chaos and Order, Keeper of Secrets, Time Traveller, Cosmic Wanderer, Lord of the Pale Red Moon
Talent: 65
Attainments:
Body 265
Mind 162
Soul 168
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Ruin & Restoration, Sublime Auto Recovery(Passive), Impermanence & Eternity, Mercurial Flesh(Passive), Indomitable Physique (Passive), All-Consuming (Passive), TPO (Passive), Vox Empyrean (Passive), Philosopher Lord¡¯s Primal Catalyst, Immortal''s Determination (Passive), Time Traveller''s Paradox Protection (Passive), Entropy Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Mana Manipulation, Many-Eyed (Passive), Waxing Moon, Waning Moon, Blood of Bright and Dark (Passive) , Liminal Bearing (Passive), Transdimensional Readjustment (Passive), Cosmic Traveller¡¯s Privilege (Passive), Moon Lord''s Demesne, Ruler''s Aura (Passive), Devilish Good Looks (Passive), Nightmare''s Aura (Passive), Koschei''s Ink Stain, Extension of the Deep(Passive), Fortress of the Old One (Passive), Seal of Amrita(Passive)
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
****** I know I¡¯ve said this already, but that breaking in my form and modification of my untamed essence, by all the alternate ¡°me¡¯s¡± was a good call, one future-me¡¯s part. It was smart to the extent that I almost couldn¡¯t believe that it was my idea. By the time I¡¯d been returned to the world, I was already level eleven. Counted as ¡°Skilled¡± in this world¡¯s standards for strength. Bearing the strength of ten men, or speaking more specifically, the strength or martial efficiency of ten ¡°me¡¯s¡±. Killing that boar mother and child pushed me up into level twelve. Naturally there were many changes since my time in that place of dark, wet, and cold. For instance I was apparently a ¡°Living Nightmare¡± of the ¡°Cambion Lord¡± Variety now. My archive said that the aside from the obvious dramatic changes that the switching of my race made on my non-existent base stats, it also came with some additional abilities. I¡¯d inherited a whole mess of titles from my other selves which did the same thing, either making me more intelligent and more grounded in my thought processes or making my thoughts more plain for me to understand. My attainments would naturally rise as my life rose, and I got more talent points, fresh for the investing. As for my abilities, I had a metric shit-ton of them and they were all focused on keeping me safe and comfortable. The exact kind of gift that a man could only give himself. Indulgent in the extreme and exactly the kind thing I wanted. As a preface I should probably say that the abilities recorded in the abilities slot of my status weren¡¯t just a list of things that I could do. Nor were they a list of my skills. If they were, it¡¯d be even more obnoxiously long. The future-me had egged on all my alternates forcing me to learn whatever they could teach me. And while far from gentle or humane. Being forced to let¡¯s say, learning to pick a lock while a chitinous monster with your face pours flesh eating ants into a room, was a very effective way to make someone picks up the skill. Of course they¡¯ll probably die a few times before they get it, but they ¡°will¡± learn. (And Quickly.) As such, all my ¡°abilities¡± and all such abilities for levellers in general were more like special character traits that could either be invoked, or if they were marked passive, were always active all the time. Like I said all the abilities I had were pretty much based on keeping me alive and in one piece, and above the sticky, shit-end of this world¡¯s food chain. They were what allowed me to live in a relative level of safety and comfort if such a thing was possible in this new Agartha. My titles were the things that gave me those abilities. Gifting me powers as well as a few not insignificant bumps to my base stats. Starting from the top, my [Ruin & Restoration] ability basically allowed me to use a mixture of small scale time manipulation and mass to energy conversion to either age things forwards or backwards. My [Sublime Auto Recovery] was an evolution of the [Greater Auto Recovery] that I¡¯d had before and both basically amounted to being healing factors. [Impermanence & Eternity] was pretty much a more esoteric version of [Ruin & Restoration] except that ability affected things like, the effects and lengths of magical or chemical reactions. As I mentioned before [Mercurial Flesh] was a power that adapted me to any adverse changes in my environment, and made it so that anything that put me down once, had a harder time doing it a second time. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Having an [Indomitable Physique] just made my body strong all around. Tempering my bones, muscles, and viscera. I kind of became [All Consuming] by accident, it just sort of popped one day. This was enough to freak out the Alternate-me who¡¯d been working me over at the time and spooked my future-self. Which leaves me feeling uncertain about its appearance, but as far as I could figure, it was pretty exactly what it said on the tin. An ability to eat everything, and use absolutely anything for sustenance and recovery. [TPO], my time, place, occasion, was stupidly named, but in my opinion it was the most handy of all my abilities. It was a mishmash of a hundred other lesser movement, and teleportation powers. All of them gelled together to form an ability that allowed me to be pretty much anywhere and anywhen I needed to be. At least that was what it¡¯d be once I got the hang of using it. For now it just let me jump around crossing thousand mile distances with a single step. Which would be amazing all on its own if weren¡¯t for the fact that half the time my destinations were random. If I didn¡¯t mind feeling shit for a few weeks, I could also apparently use it to ¡°stop¡± time for a few seconds. For now it was just two seconds, but something told me that by time I got a little stronger the freeze frame would be something a little longer. And the archive was telling me that mastered to its apex, those frozen seconds could be rolled back, for a brief span of time-reversal. A thing I was very interested in verifying one day. [Ambrosial Tongue] was a cambion racial ability which let me add charming effects to everything I said. It was just dumb extra that came with the race change, and as someone who didn¡¯t talk to people much and absolutely loathed, as in really fucking loathed, the idea of brainwashing and messing with people¡¯s heads, it was pretty much useless to me. [Ambrosial Tongue]¡¯s evolution [Ambrosial Tongue]¡¯s evolution, [Vox Empyrean], heightened the power so even the elements could be ¡°charmed¡± by me. This basically meant that every word I said, could be made into a magic spell. Eventually as my soul and mind attainments rose, I¡¯d find myself calling thunder from the heavens by just cursing. Which made for a slightly more useful power, though no less scary, due to the fact that both versions had been passive. Meaning I had to work super hard, ¡°Not¡± to use them. [Philosopher Lord¡¯s Primal Catalyst] was something I got for becoming, a titled immortal sorcerer, alchemist, and scholar and boosted my powers in magic, alchemy and esoteric study. [Immortal¡¯s Determination] just made it harder for me to die, and if this levelling system had had a proper hp and health bar attached, it¡¯d basically be like the ¡°second-chance¡± abilities in your average video game. They type that either saved by a single hp or snapped you into a recovery state after you¡¯d lost all your health. [Time Traveller¡¯s Paradox Protection] made it so that I ¡°could¡± go back and give my grandfather¡¯s a good ducking, for raising such terrible parents for me if I so chose. And protected my current self from suddenly getting de-powered if I decided to chicken out on paying whatever steep as hell price, all those alternate me¡¯s had required to get them to expend the time and effort to whip ¡°my¡± weak ass into shape. It also protected me from the de-aging and super-aging effects of temporal anomalies and spells like those included with my [Ruin & Restoration] ability. [Entropy Manipulation] was fairly straightforward in that allowed me to convert all the unusable or ¡°lost¡± energy in a system to a useable form. Though for some reason the archive also said that it also made me ¡°luckier¡± for some reason. [Energy Manipulation] was similarly straightforward and just let manipulate energy flows, regardless of the form. I had the feeling that once I got better at using my powers, those two, combined together, the ability to recover all lost energy, and the ability to manipulate all forms of energy, would become something stupidly broken and crazy useful. (...I¡¯m looking forward to it.) [Mana Manipulation] was redundant and let me directly manipulate magical energy. There was the added annoyance of it boosting the power of my [Vox Empyrean], making it harder to suppress. The oddly named [Many-Eyed] was more a power for my archive¡¯s use than anything else. Though I could also use it to remotely view anyplace I¡¯d ever been, any place with a reflection, and thanks to my [Lord of the Pale Red Moon] title, any place where the moon¡¯s light had ever shone. It was also passive, so I had to concentrate to keep my view focused on just the stuff that the eyes in my head were seeing. (*Sigh*...I¡¯ve seen so many things I wish I hadn¡¯t, already.) [Waxing Moon] granted me heightened powers during the night-time, boosting my strengths and tweaking my physiology to make me, slightly more ¡°ethereal¡± while the moon was out. The flow of the mana to my core grew so strong, on full moons that I¡¯d apparently be able to level up just by sleeping. [Waning Moon], like [Waxing Moon] was another title granted to me by my [Lord of the Pale Red Moon] title. And without going to deeply into the details it turned me into a sort of energy vampire whenever my vitals were low. I couldn¡¯t figure out what [Blood of Bright and Dark] was supposed to have done. The archive didn¡¯t know either. All I knew is that it was yet another thing that made me a teensy bit stronger, and it also turned my hair pink for some reason. [Liminal Bearing] came from my race change to a [Living Nightmare] version of Cambion. The archive says that it made, an existence, that was just slightly counter to the flow of reality. Simultaneously making both more and less real than your average being. Like an imaginary beast made real, or a thought monster, which are apparently both actual things that were currently prowling around in my new world. I could feed on people¡¯s thoughts and harvest their feelings for energy. Being feared made me stronger, same for being hated. And my confidence level and other people¡¯s confidence in me affected my overall physical state. So yeah... it was just a minor add-on. Nothing special. It did have the benefit of making any damage I experienced extra ¡°ambiguous¡± though. Boosting the effecting of my [Immortal¡¯s Determination] so that there was a chance that some of my deaths just wouldn¡¯t stick. In fact I was pretty sure that was the reason why I didn¡¯t die during this first hunt. That boar totally flattened me, but somehow I was able to sort of shake it off, like a shady baseball player staying in the game even though he¡¯d clearly been out. [Transdimensional Readjustment] and [Cosmic Traveller¡¯s Privilege] were both abilities I got from my [Cosmic Wanderer] title. The first assured that if I was ever brought into a space of reality where everyone was let¡¯s say, turned into ducks, I would either stay a man, or be turned into a duck with the same abilities, stats and level of consciousness of the man that I once was. The second ability was more subtle and basically gave me a level of anonymity. Something like I a ¡°neutrality¡±, or separation from the rest of the world. I was like a character in a game. I was part of the world, but not really. Sure I could interact with people. I could talk to people and make friends or enemies, but it was only after a certain level of intimacy that the interactions would stick. For the rest of the world I¡¯d be all but invisible. All interactions would be superficial. I¡¯d become a vague concept that could be readily understood and communicated with, but also readily slipped out of mind once it was out of sight. People could know ¡°of¡± me, but not know me as person. One benefit of this was the fact that I¡¯d seemed to have inherited the bizarre super power that every open world, crime-based, videogame ended up giving to the players. If I ever did something piss off the authorities of the land, all I had to do was get out of sight till my ¡°wanted level¡± dropped down, it¡¯d be like it never happened. Well, it wasn¡¯t quite that tidy, and there would be logical limits, but essentially, I was now untouchable to the law. [Cosmic Traveller¡¯s Privilege] also came with translator functions, so that was neat. I¡¯d failed Spanish in high school, but now I could speak it and all the other languages, of this or any other world, quite fluently. Which I figured would have to come in handy. Actually, considering that over seven hundred years had gone by, and I could still understand whatever dialect of earth-common the people were speaking, I had to assume that the ability was already coming in handy. Moving on, [Moon Lord¡¯s Demesne] was another power that gave heightened stats while the moon was out and raised the efficiency of my powers during the nighttime. As far as I could see [Ruler¡¯s Aura] was another annoying charisma type power that made people more inclined to do what I said. Adding an extra layer of enforcement to my magical aura, to make men and beasts kneel. (Tch..As if that were something that appealed to me¡­.) But also making it unlikely for others to be able to make ¡°me¡± kneel or affect my mind with their auras and charisma powers. [Devilish Good Looks] popped up when I became a cambion and I was still convinced that it was just the levelling system trolling me. But the archive said that it was a power that subtly adjusted my looks by the standards of the time and local culture, so that I got the ¡°charisma¡± bonuses that came with being contemporarily good looking. [Nightmare¡¯s Aura] was like [Ruler¡¯s Aura] accept it could be throttled back and forth to make people go from being sort of intimidated, to piss themselves scared. I saw some potential exploits for using that in tandem with my [Liminal Bearing]¡¯s fear-eating abilities. My archive chose to disturbingly describe [Koschei¡¯s Ink Stain] as an ability to leave indelible marks on the backs of people¡¯s minds. Sticky black dregs of made of my essence, that would allow me to, if I so chose, know everything they were doing, planning, or thinking. If I needed to I could also either explode the marks to do some magical and mental damage. And in the event of my death, I could use the mark and portion of my victim¡¯s mental energy as a sort of extra life, to hasten my respawn. [Extension of the Deep] was supposed to make me smarter, though I¡¯ve seen no evidence of it working. It also changed the nature of my soul and mind couldn¡¯t be dragged out of my body. If [Extension of the Deep] was meant to keep ¡°me¡± inside of me, then [Fortress of the Old One] was meant to keep ¡°others¡± out. A self-adapting, all-rounder magical mechanism that protected my mind and soul from outside influences. Viciously built, and slightly sinister in that, anyone who was strong enough to break through it, ¡°without¡± accidentally killing me and letting me slip out of their reach in the process would be trapped inside. Which brought us to the final of my abilities, the [Seal of Amrita] which was like a double portioning of [Extension of the Deep] and [Fortress of Old One] except it came with the added benefit of being able to consume, and convert any of those outside elements and to adapt my mind and soul so that repeat invasions couldn¡¯t happen. And there they were, all the abilities that my future-self had had my alternate-selves beat into. All the abilities I¡¯d likely have my alternate-selves beat into a younger me, once I was old enough to figure out how I¡¯d arranged it. Thirty powers that any leveller, any immortal, would kill to have. With even the more minor ones being stupidly over-powered to an extent that they were practically beyond saving, beyond nerfing. (If this was a game instead of real life, the developer would simply just have to cut them.) I had mixed feelings about it all. On the one hand, I was glad to have them. I was very aware, that I was one lucky, lucky, boy. On the other hand¡­.my future-self had gone out of his way to make sure I got all those powers, all those stupidly overpowered abilities, titles and traits. And he hadn''t looked too satisfied when it done either. So, here I was, in the present and I couldn¡¯t help wondering what and why exactly the future, had gone ¡°quite so far¡±. I mean, I knew that if I had the option to and the ability to, cheat and get ahead of the rat race, I probably would. But I couldn¡¯t help feeling nervous about the extent the future-me had taken it too. If my goal was ensuring my life, I could have stopped with just the first five abilities and forgone most of those titles. My current status was overkill of a grand order. As a character, as a leveller, I was broken in a way that would have had all my fellow players calling ¡°haxors¡± had I played this build online. Thus I couldn¡¯t help wondering what exactly he had gone through, what exactly I was going to face, to make ¡°me¡± think that all this was necessary. I couldn¡¯t help feeling just a little afraid for my future. Thus after a few hours passed and my broken body had recovered itself, I got up, restored my clothes and gear and went back outside again. Something told me that I¡¯d be better off grinding as many levels, as I could while I still had the time to do so. Arc 1: Chapter 9: Level Rankings Agartha had changed drastically enough that death and taxes were no longer the reliable anchors that they¡¯d once been. In my mind, there were now two new absolute¡¯s in this world. I came up with them as I stood in line with the materials and trophies from my first hunt. First off, Bureaucrats were just like cockroaches, present in any time and place, in some form or the other. Second, anything that was worth a damn, was worth making a chart. At least that¡¯s what I thought and society seemed to have agreed. *****
Level Range Descriptor Capability Level
999+ N/A Astral Class: Incalculable.
801-999 (Pseudo)-Immortal World Class: Direct Reality Distortion.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
701-800 Saint High Level Sovereignty: Strength of Ten Nations.
601-700 Legendary Mid Level Sovereignty: Strength of a Nation.
501-600 Master Low Level Sovereignty: Strength of Ten Armies.
401-500 True Expert Dominion Growth: Strength of an Army
301-400 True Elite Dominion Generation: Strength of Tens of Thousands
201-300 Named Expert High Level Anomalous: Strength of Thousands.
101-200 Named Elite Mid Level Anomalous: Strength of Hundreds.
71-100 Gifted Low Level Anomalous: Strength of one Hundred.
51-70 Apex Peak Human Level: Strength of Fifty.
11-50 Skilled Human Level: Strength of Ten.
1-10 Ordinary Average: Strength of One.
****** After looking at the chart, that hung up on the board at the hunter depot, and having the archive confirm that there are identical charts hanging on the walls of other guilds, in the martial sects and mage¡¯s colleges, I found myself feeling, slightly unsatisfied. On the one hand it was good that humanity had it together enough to build a standard that everyone agreed on. On the other hand, it was a standard that I and countless other abnormals in this world, could scarcely be said to fit. Arc 1: Chapter 10: 50 Years Pass ¡­..And then fifty years passed. First off, yes, I know. Fifty years? How the hell did that happen?! I was surprised too, but life was life, even at the end of the world. The hours, days and years creep by without us noticing, till suddenly we turn around and all that time has already gone. I probably wouldn¡¯t have noticed, except one day after a day¡¯s hunting I was checking my status as I often did, and realized, holy shit, somehow I¡¯d become seventy-seven years old. I certainly didn¡¯t feel seventy-seven years old. I didn¡¯t look seventy-seven years old either. Actually, thanks to my non-human nature and the constant physical activity, I¡¯d seemed to have aged backwards. My appearance approaching something that lay somewhere between me and my short-stint on the high school track team and me in my even shorter stint when I was real into college wrestling. I was baby-faced again, which was actually damn annoying because I¡¯d spent half my adolescence wondering when the hell I¡¯d stop looking twelve. Thank god, I was still just as tall as I¡¯d always been, (possibly even a little taller), otherwise I would have probably lost my damn mind over the issue. So there I was seventy-seven and trying to figure out where all the years went. Seven hundred years ago, or rather seven hundred and fifty years ago, I¡¯d returned to the world of the living. I¡¯d ¡°borrowed¡± some clothes from some store keep who was almost certainly beyond caring about being paid back by now. Then I joined the hunter¡¯s associate. Then I set myself up in an apartment building in the ruin that had once been Culdaff. A nice big empty place, miles away from any of its inhabited neighbors and filled with all sorts of dangerous beasties for me to farm for magical energy to feed the levelling system. And somehow between all that and now¡­.fifty years happened. I honestly still couldn¡¯t get where all the years went. What was I doing with all that time? It couldn¡¯t have just been hunting, right?¡± I mean, I definitely had to go into town to talk to people. Handing in magic cores and beast parts even though I didn¡¯t really need the money. And for various reasons us immortals couldn¡¯t ¡°not¡± interact with other people. So I know I definitely met people and made some connections whether willingly or not. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Still, it was like those fifty years went by likely nothing. (Hmmm¡­..) I had only two possible theories for what had happened. The first involved time travel and some misshapen with my [TPO] ability. The second was just a mundane combination of my own borderline antisocial tendencies. Added to the fact that I¡¯d discovered and then proceeded to loot a run down old store filled with all kinds of broken tech just waiting to be restored and played with. Added to the fact that A.I. satellites that hung in Agartha¡¯s orbit were still operation, meaning that wifi and the internet were still a thing, even if sophisticated computers like the ones I¡¯d found and fixed weren¡¯t. Added to the fact that having all my necessities solved by magic and my ability to kill things meant that I probably wasn¡¯t interacting with society as much as I would have otherwise. All of it adding up to a very routine and regulated life where my ups and downs stayed fairly even and my actions had pretty much been sitting on autopilot for the last fifty years. I couldn¡¯t tell you whether I¡¯d been very bored or very miserable throughout all of it, but I know I¡¯d gotten used to it. It was me living normally. Living just like I had seven hundred and fifty years ago before the bombs fell. Sure I was hunting monsters instead of optimizing data collections on computers but by this point it might well have been the same damn thing. By this point I was comfortable with it. Which was why it sucked that I was getting this ominous feeling that things were going to have to change soon. **** Ahem¡­.At the very least, I haven¡¯t been doing absolutely nothing in the last few decades.
Name: Desmond Bose
Age: 77
Level: 312
Race: Living Nightmare (Cambion)
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Immortal Sorcerer, Immortal Alchemist, Celestial Arcanist, Immortal Scholar, Keeper of Chaos and Order, Keeper of Secrets, Time Traveller, Cosmic Wanderer, Lord of the Pale Red Moon
Talent: 65
Attainments:
Body 8065
Mind 6012
Soul 6018
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Ruin & Restoration, Sublime Auto Recovery(Passive), Impermanence & Eternity, Mercurial Flesh(Passive), Indomitable Physique (Passive), All-Consuming (Passive), TPO (Passive), Vox Empyrean (Passive), Philosopher Lord''s Primal Catalyst, Immortal''s Determination (Passive), Time Traveller''s Paradox Protection (Passive), Entropy Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Mana Manipulation, Many-Eyed (Passive), Waxing Moon, Waning Moon, Blood of Bright and Dark (Passive) , Liminal Bearing (Passive), Transdimensional Readjustment (Passive), Cosmic Traveller''s Privilege (Passive), Moon Lord''s Demesne, Ruler''s Aura (Passive), Nightmare''s Aura (Passive), Koschei''s Ink Stain, Extension of the Deep(Passive), Fortress of the Old One (Passive), Seal of Amrita(Passive)
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
Arc 1: Chapter 11: Finding Religion She¡­. was nearly ten feet tall, full figured, her skin glowing with an undying vitality. There was no need to speak of her face, it was almost painfully beautiful. In fact, every inch of her, promised things that could not and should not be possible on this world. I couldn¡¯t tell you, how she was doing it, but she was hitting ¡°that¡± ratio. That perfect mixture of Mother and Maiden, virgin and whore. That perfect blend of pure and impure, that artists, writers, poets and advertisers on both earth and Agartha had been trying to figure out, since the dawn of their professions. Her pendulous breasts lay bared, and the rest of her was only barely covered by a flowing expense of shimmering, sheer silk. She was radiant, larger than life. Larger than Agartha. Larger than its sun, and any of its moons. Her aura incongruously pure for one who bore the title of Mother of Monsters, and Keeper of the Crypt. I think, had I not been frozen solid with fear, I likely would have been set aflame with desire. As for I met her, I met her the same way I met most of the women in my life. While I was working. It had been a few months since I¡¯d realized that I¡¯d turned seventy-seven. By now I¡¯d gotten used to the idea. I dare say I might even have gotten over it, by then. After years of hunting in the Culdaff ruins, the number of beasts had begun to thin. And continuing to hunt, meant going deeper and deeper into the ruin. I had no complaint on the matter. Deeper into the ruin was where the stronger foes lay. Stronger foes meant more mana for leveling up. So, I continued hunting beasts and their numbers continued thinning. Then finally, I came to this moment. That moment that existed in every video game since the dawn of video games. Every rpg since the dawn of rpgs. The moment where you¡¯ve about cleared all the enemies on the map, save one. The boss. The boss monster. The big bad. I hadn¡¯t thought that reality would mirror art quite so close. Or saying it the opposite way. I hadn¡¯t thought the game designers had been so spot on. I was at the boss level, and this radiant, terrifying woman...no this radiant, terrifying goddess in front of me, was the boss. She was a woman of gold who sat upon the back of a great white snake. A massive, hundred mile long serpent that couldn¡¯t possibly have fit in the room, but somehow was still very present. Serving as the woman¡¯s living throne. ¡°Well, child. It¡¯s about damn time that one of you got here.¡± said the goddess. ¡°......Um¡­. Sorry?¡± (How the hell was I supposed know anyone was waiting.) I couldn¡¯t help complaining in my heart. She shrugged and somehow made look it artful and sensuous as she did so. ¡°True. I very much doubt any of your ilk would have been informed or invited to this place. Still here you are. And for that I congratulate you.¡± I was pretty sure I was supposed to feel mildly insulted there, but somehow I ended having to work very hard to not fall on my knees. Barely managing to hold on to a single word she¡¯d said. I could feel my [Ruler¡¯s Aura] and [Nightmare¡¯s Aura] fighting against her godly aura and I could feel them losing. Barely keeping me on my feet. The snake shed a single scale, and the one landed on the scale, doing so flawless and effortless. As if she hadn¡¯t just fallen from several hundred feet into a target that was slightly smaller than a tea coaster. I could feel the mana in the room, boiling like a troubled sea. I could feel gathering around us. I could feel her pulling on it, and as gathered that power I felt a chill go up my spine. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I realized I was going to have to fight her. ¡°Wait! Wait-Wait! Wait-Wait! You still haven¡¯t explained what¡¯s happened here. Why are we fighting?!¡± I was a monster hunter, not a soldier, nor a hitman, I wasn¡¯t the sort to fight blindly ¡°just because¡±, besides, I was pretty sure if we fought, I was going to lose that fight. And badly too. To my surprise the woman actually stopped, the illusory set of armour that she¡¯d been about to summon dissipating with the broken breeze. ¡°Mhm?....What nonsense are you speaking child? You are playing the part of the hero. And I am the villainess. What extra reason do we need for the two of us to fight?¡± (Hero? Villain?) No matter how I looked at it this was a textbook case of answering a question with stuff that only brought even more questions. Even more poor archive was clueless. The best it had been able to do was retrieve goddesses name. Picking it up from the faded murals that had been painted on walls of the chamber we were in. ¡°Um...last I checked, Cambions were a type of demon. And if you pardon me saying so, Ma¡¯am. While I¡¯m probably not a villain, I¡¯ve always seen myself as more the ¡°anti¡±- hero type. I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ve lost me with his hero talk.¡± The Dread Goddess Albia furrowed her brow at me, the serpent shifting behind her, moving into position to catch her as she fell back onto its head. Returning her imperious seat pose as if she¡¯d never left it. She stared at me, drumming her long sharp, gold painted nails, atop the snake¡¯s head. The sound so loud that I couldn¡¯t imagine it not being at least a little painful for the over-sized serpent. ¡°Mhm...well it is true that you scions of the new order, have for the most part not been informed of certain things.¡± said Albia ¡°Er, yeah...Like I have no clue what¡¯s going on here, so maybe I should just¡­.¡± ¡°Tell me, boy. Do you believe in the gods? Is there one that you¡¯ve given your faith to?¡± said Albia. I blinked. This conversation was moving too fast for me to keep up and I was still fighting the urge to drop to my knees and crawl to the woman to beg for her favor like the worm I was. Having a discussion of religion on top of that, wasn¡¯t quite something I wanted to do right now. But still, it was her show, I didn¡¯t want to antagonize her before I got a good grip on myself. ¡°Um¡­.Yes. And No.¡± ¡°Yes you believe in the gods. But no, to there being one you worship?¡± said Albia. I nodded. Atheism went out the window for me after my experiences with Dad¡¯s cult. I saw some things that make it very hard for me to outright the deny the existence of either gods or god-like entities. Still those same experiences also cooled me on the idea of worshipping any of those things. At best I could be called an apatheist. So long as the gods didn¡¯t trouble me, I wouldn¡¯t trouble them. She looked at me one brow raised and then she shook her head clucking her tongue. There was something incredibly patronizing about the way she did it. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Again, I couldn¡¯t help feeling like I was being looked down, and quietly insulted right now. Yet somehow, the tingly feelings and excitement I felt about the fact that ¡°she¡± had used her actual eyes to look at me, was overwriting those feelings. Adding to the assault on my willpower. ¡°Okay then...we¡¯re both of the undying persuasion. The two of us have got nothing but time. At the very least we have enough time for a story¡­¡± said Albia. Reclining back into the crest that lay atop the head of her living throne. With a snap of her fingers we weren¡¯t in the hall at the bottom of Culdaff¡¯s former subway system anymore. Instead we were hovering out in the cold, beige, outer reaches of space. I knew it was an illusion of some sort. My archive and several of my abilities was telling me it was an illusion. Yet despite saying that, none of those powers of mine were able to explain how it was being done. All I had was what my senses were telling me, and to my senses, the bleak expanse that were unfolding around us, were all too real. ¡°So¡­.first off, what you¡¯ve got to understand is that the universe is a big place. And multiverse is an even bigger place made up of many such, universes. And then there is the omniverse, which is in turn made up of all the multiverses.¡± said Albia. Her tone seeming to suddenly become less sultry and more school teacher-ish. As she spoke, images flowed into my mind. The void that we stood in were filled with spheres of darkness and light. And those spheres of darkness and light were filled with yet more spheres of darkness and light. ¡°...This is what we call, the mortal layer, the most readily visited, the most largely inhabited portions of the cosmic sea.¡± ¡°Um¡­..¡± ¡°Don¡¯t interrupt! I¡¯ve barely gotten started.. Girl¡¯s don¡¯t like boys who jump too far ahead, you know...There¡¯s such a thing as pacing...you know.¡± said Albia. Looking put off. ¡°Er...uh...S-, sorry.¡± said I. Shrinking into myself, like I was in junior high again, and trying to ask the one that got away to the big school dance. I let her speak. Drawing a small amount of confidence from the fact that the adaptive abilities of my [Seal of Amrita], and [Mercurial Flesh] were actually starting to make some head way in helping me resist the shining lady¡¯s aura. My other abilities were of less help but still aided the two powers by helping me to consume the massive amounts of extra aura and energy that she was radiating and pulling into the room. Stealing her power for my own purposes. ¡°Ehem¡­.So where was I? Ah, yes. So there¡¯s the mortal plane, the omniverse, and above all that, there is the firmament. You can think of it, as imperceptible...at least for your sort¡­.super reality, that lies above the realms of the mortals. If one were pour a large enough amount of raw energy into the void of space, for a brief span of time you¡¯d even be able to see it a little..¡± In my mind the sea of black and white spheres became engulf by an interconnected complex of soap balls. All of them forming one large, misshapen aggregate bubble. ¡°This is what is known by those with the power, technology, and privilege, to know of it...as the realm of immortals. The heavenly super space. This is abode of the heavens and the hells. The paradises and the perditions. This is where all the gods, devils, angels, demons, Saints, and Celestial Ascendants live. (Wait...what? There are demons in heaven?) My thoughts became increasingly disjointed as the inner confines of my head were force-fed scenes of light and shadow and overwhelming glory. I saw the sights that mortal beings of the cosmic sea, through the ages, had foretold, in all their holy books. For the woman in front of me, it probably just amounted to someone showing a tourist clip of her hometown''s top five visiting spots. For a little former mortal like myself it was crushing...not humbling...crushing. The sheer immensity and grandiosity of the visions running through my head was of a scale that likely would have been ego destroying, mind breaking, for me. Had I not invested so many talent points, in my MIND and SOUL categories. Either not noticing my duress, or more likely, not caring, the goddess continued speaking. ¡°So...there you have it, two levels of existence, that are by the way, not all of existence, just the two levels that people you and little old me, can even begin to comprehend. One for mortals. One for immortals. As you can imagine the latter is drastically more energetic. Practically radioactive in comparison to former. Taking even a grain of sand from up there, to down here would be like snatching a bit of the sun and trying to stuff it inside an ice sculpture.¡± I literally saw what she was saying. Though the images I saw involved a little pearl of blinding white fire, being stuffed inside a world of ice. I saw the world melt. I saw people screaming and dying as they were all reduced to vapor and ash. ¡°Nothing good could come of that¡­.¡± I mumbled. Wide-eyed, staring at ...I don¡¯t even know what I was staring at. I just knew I was seeing something in the distance and whatever it was, was positively horrifying. ¡°Mhm¡­.precisely. Now imagine instead of a little drop of the sun, its an entire shard of sun. A whole big section.¡± Instead of seeing single world of ice get destroyed I saw a whole universe get wiped out. Planet after planet, solar system after solar system, galaxy after galaxy. All of them gone in an instant. Some of them barely even having the time to scream. ¡°.......¡± ¡°So, a bit of heaven, fell down to earth¡­.and nothing good came of it. Those who were in charge of such things, had to act because the thing was¡­.if they, we, didn¡¯t do anything the effects wouldn¡¯t stop at just one universe.¡± she said. Pausing for effect. A useless measure as I was still recovering from the trauma of seeing an infinite number of lives end in one terrible instant. It occurred to me, that in over seven hundred and fifty years, I hadn¡¯t really given any thought to the end of my own world. An end that while not quite so complete as the ends I was witnessing was still very much an end. To speak plainly I¡¯m a selfish man, a self-possessed man. It was bad enough that my state mandated counselors may or may not have put me on some kind of spectrum because of it. I didn¡¯t have much in the way of friends or family in that old Agartha, but I¡¯d had a few, things and people that I did indeed care about. Now remembering, finally remember that was lost, if not by me, then by other, I found myself weeping. ¡°.......¡± ¡°....And then...Well...Okay, how do I put this?...Oh, I know!...Tell me boy, how do put out a fire.¡± I blinked. Glassy eyed. She did something to me, snap me out of the stupor. Some trick of her voice. Or some shift of her aura. Either way I woke up to myself halfway and the momentary ease was enough to let my abilities help me recover the rest of the way. ¡°...With water?¡± ¡°No, boy. This is a fire to big to put out with water...Or instead of a fire, let¡¯s make it a bomb. And explosion.¡± ¡°You stifle it¡­.er...smother it, I think¡­¡± I said, half-remembering something I¡¯d watched on tv one time. ¡°Right, no!..Right now it¡¯s way too big to smoother all at once. Too big to keep tamped down...and no cheating by saying you move it somewhere else or move everyone else somewhere else. Or wait, wait...how about instead of a bomb, made of fire, its a bomb filled with steam, or maybe we can scrap the whole bomb idea and make it earthquakes instead¡± I frowned at her. And started thinking of earthquakes instead of explosions. ¡°Let it get smaller, by letting it blow off a little steam...or maybe let it get it smaller by triggering a bunch of smaller earthquakes. ¡°Bingo...You¡¯ve got it in one. Which brings us back to ¡°our¡± little situation. Sometimes the best solution for stopping a big bang is a lot of little big bangs. And to that, you need a clever triggering device. Do you know what kind of triggering device us, gods, angels and demons, in the Council of Chaos and Order decided on?¡± (How the hell would I know? What the hell are you asking of a former office worker?) The golden woman glared at me, reminding me that she for whatever reason could hear my thoughts, or at least my surface thoughts. My abilities were thankfully shielding the deeper ones. I pretended not to know that she¡¯d heard my remark. Feigning innocence. The archive filled something in for me, as I recalled Agartha¡¯s former scientific findings on a few oddities in the energy flow of the planet and oddities in the birthrates of our people after we settled here. ¡°....Us.¡± ¡°Yes you. You and your children. You mortals do two things extremely well. You multiply and you touch big red buttons, that smarter beings know to leave well enough alone. That¡¯s pretty much all you¡¯re good for asides for use as worshippers.¡± said Albia. ¡°Ah¡­.er¡­.¡± (Well sorry for being a dumb mortal.) She wasn¡¯t wrong, but I was finally in my right mind enough, to feel annoyed by the constant jabs, and her superior attitude. Mind you, I wasn¡¯t dumb enough to show it though. I hid my feelings, as deeply as I could manage and then hid that act of hiding something, as well. ¡°Immortals, those among you that for some reason are suddenly finding that dying is a lot harder than it should be¡­.Are humans born with the souls of those affected by the initial calamity. Most of you are just aberrations. Monsters born from the out of control divine energy. A few of you were already demi-god level, and natal celestial, right on the verge of ascending. A fair amount are former angels, goodie-goodies who gave their lives while trying to save as many as lives as they could. There¡¯s also a few former demons who either drew too close, trying to profit from the heaven-fall. Or were too slow in running when they realized that, that was a terrible idea. It doesn¡¯t really matter what you were, what matters is that your souls were altered, large enough to hardwired and sturdy enough to be made into the linch pins that you all serve as, in the current age.¡± ¡°Oh¡­.Okay then. I still don¡¯t get what that has to do with you and me fighting.¡± I said. Growing weary as she realized that she was starting to grow tired of talking. Noticing that her snake was getting restless. Coiling and coiling. Its thick, hundred mile body, winding around itself. Making a tower for the woman to look down at me from. ¡°Really?....You still don¡¯t understand? We turned broken souls into living receptacles to absorb and contain celestial power. We hardwired them to this world, this oversized chunk of the heaven, to keep things from flying out of control again. And then we waited for your species, to do what it does best and try to annihilate itself. All for the sake of kick starting this current age, this current age of heroes, we¡¯re people are forced to gather strength with a ¡°leveling¡± system that we¡¯ve so kindly devised and you still can¡¯t puzzle out what the goal is?¡± (..........You made the leveling system?! This is supposed to be some kind of age of heroes?) Why the hell didn¡¯t the archive say anything about that? Or rather why was it saying that that was wrong. And that she was at least partially being untruthful. And what the hell was this ¡°Asphodel Industries¡± copyright license that my archive was reading out for me? I¡¯d found myself, but I¡¯d completely lost my grip on the conversation. For one thing, I¡¯d still been partly going along in the belief that the leveling system was just some function of the universe at large. It was like finding out that the law of gravity was something someone thought up. She sighed and then she spoke as if to an extra slow child. ¡°You lot...are the trigger devices. And this planet is the bomb. ¡°I¡±, one of this world¡¯s many hidden ¡°Demon Kings¡± am the small explosion. You...hero...me... demon king. Do you get it now?¡± I blinked, as a lifetime worth of video games, fantasy books, and the archive, filled in the gaps. All the immortals were counted as ¡°heroes¡± and scattered throughout the earth, making the world hell to force us to grow even faster, was a select group of young immortals, ¡°demon kings¡±. The two sides were supposed to fight to reclaim the power of the other. A demon king who killed a hero got to add, the power that accumulated in a hero''s soul to their own. Ditto for a hero, who killed a demon king. In either case, a small amount of the misplaced heavenly energy would be released. With similar but lesser effects being found if heroes killed other heroes and demon kings killed other demon kings. The mortal levellers were just a side-effect. Allowed to exist, because increases in the general strength of the human race couldn¡¯t only benefit the system that this so called council of chaos and order had set up. If the world didn¡¯t randomly explode in the middle, and nothing went wrong, eventually this world would just be another normal, if extremely energy rich world, in the mortal plane. In the end this was, almost exactly like a game, or worse like a job. In the end all we immortals were teeth, in the cogs, of a larger machine. The reward for our participation being that the young gods, devils and angels, fae and assorted celestials...the immortals of the heavens who¡¯d volunteered to play the part of the Demon Kings got a little extra field experience. A chance at building a power base in the mortal world and a chance at gaining a big boost of strength. While us terrestrial immortals got the chance to earn ourselves a place in the heavens. It was disheartening in a way, learning that there was a such a base reason for all the world¡¯s ills. I felt the same kind of disappointment I felt when I grew old enough to realize that all the big ideas in war and politics ultimately came back to economics. And that economics was an infinitely shitty version of that one board game, that everyone used to play. Since the game was built so that only the bank and the cheaters won with everyone else getting at least lightly screwed over. ¡°Do you get it now?¡± asked Albia. ¡°Ah...Uh...Yes, I guess.¡± I said, scratching my head. Suddenly the air changed growing colder. The snake hissed and mana in the room was suddenly bubbling again. I blinked as I saw her standing right in front of me, and was taken aback, by both the armor she was and the realization that for some reason she was suddenly only just tall enough to meet me in the eye. ¡°Good...Well then, time to die.¡± ¡°Huh?!...Wait...Shit!¡± Arc 1: Chapter 12: Birth of a Hero The ruins of Culdaff shook. Their thick concrete and steel foundations cracking, bending, breaking. A body came flying from deep within its underground. Flying through the air and smashing through two buildings before hitting a third, sliding down to the ground, bouncing once and coming to a stop. Ten seconds went by, before it finally stirred, before he finally stirred. A tall, dark skinned, dark eyed man, with pink hair. A hunter dressed in an incongruous mixture of t-shirt, jeans and light plate mail. ¡°Wait for what exactly?¡± said the goddess. ¡°Aw¡­.so we seriously can¡¯t talk about this.¡± he said speaking to the gulf in the earth, that he¡¯d just come flying out from. The answer to his question was a roar, a bellow loud enough that it could be heard clearly from several hundred miles away. Two seconds later he got a second answer, a flash of divine flesh covered in divine armor, backed by several thousand miles of muscular metal scaled serpent. Thus, having barely returned to his feet, the young hunter was made airborne again. ***** Elsewhere, in the former, town, slowly expanding city-state of Brodick, an old man, watched from the top floor of a tower, as a familiar skyline grew emptier. For the most part, the people of the new age weren¡¯t advanced as the people of the old age. They couldn¡¯t build their kingdoms and territories quite as high as their forebears could. As such, it was always noticed when an old world building fell. The sky would grow brighter though the hearts of the common folk grew dimmer, shaken by fear and questions of whether the destruction a ruin spoke of new danger or new hope. Today, ancient buildings were falling like dandelions, like grass before a mower. In the young Aubrey empire, those power houses and ancient undying''s that lived in the settlements and cities nearest to the Culdaff ruin watched the sky grow wider, feeling the violent fluctuations of mana and finding themselves feeling uneasy in their hearts. Some simply ordered their people to show caution and if possible to halt all unnecessary activities for the day. Others, who were bolder, or at least more curious called up a few of their fellows to draw nearer and see more clearly, with their own eyes, what exactly was happening. Lord Geoff Brodick, immortal ancestor, and protector of Brodick city, was one of those who answered such calls, and gave into their curiosity. The thin haired, thick skinned, one eyed old man, went to join his fellows, a group of levellers and immortals, who had been his contemporaries in settling the North Eastern Tri-American continent. Some of them were young faced, many of them were old, but he was familiar with all them. And as a single group they flew in an airship, a zeppelin that was mixture of old world tech and new world magics. Flying towards the city stopping just short of where the mana fluctuations were the most violent. ¡°Oy, old one-eye, you have any clue what the hell¡¯s going on over there.¡± said Regis. A portly old man, who held the oversized morning star in his hands with the same ease a normal old man would hold a golf club. ¡°How the hell would I know, Old fatty?¡± snapped Geoff. Not liking the immediate of his old nickname. ¡°Eh?!...Really! It¡¯s practically happening in your backyard and you say you don¡¯t know what¡¯s happening?!¡± said a third speak. A skinny old humankin male, named Fitzgerald, Fitz for short. An old catman with gray sprinkled through the fur of his ears and his whiskers. His mostly human face, heavily wrinkled. ¡°You should talk...isn¡¯t your Fitzroy Sixteen Claws School of Assassins, closer to Culdaff than my city.¡± glowered Geoff. Fitzgerald simply stood, serene, smiling faintly as if he hadn¡¯t heard the other man¡¯s rebuttal. ¡°In any case...what exactly do you think is going there.¡± said Fitz. Speaking after a moment¡¯s silence. ¡°Old Man Rorick, thinks it the gods awakening¡­¡± said Regis. Tapping the pointed club with the back of his hands. Wearing a strangely feral look on his otherwise grandfatherly face. Looking like he wouldn¡¯t mind going to war with a god or two. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°Psh...Please. Old Rorick always thinks its the gods awakening...I swear to you that old man¡¯s going senile.¡± said a fourth speaker. A finely dressed old matron, with lightning crackling out from the pearl necklace that she wore around her neck. ¡°Ah, hello Susan.¡± said Geoff. As always feeling, slightly anxious and slightly apologetic as he ran into his ex-wife. A silly, slightly cowardly part of him wondering if he hadn¡¯t perhaps made the wrong the decision by coming here today. More explosions came from the dead city, shaking the sky and threatening to knock down all nearby airships that flew within it. Great beams of lightning appeared in the cloudless heavens and struck the city at least a dozen times, felling a least three dozen buildings. In mean time, the other old men of the small little clique of former party members, rivals and friends managed to mumble out their greetings, to the strongest amongst their company. ¡°W-...well, it¡¯s not impossible for it to be the gods. I mean we ¡®are¡¯ living in some remarkable times.¡± said Geoff. Recognizing that mood had turned strange and trying to pull things back on track. Regretting it as he heard his words. Wondering why it was that it sounded like he was trying to pick a fight with the woman. Fortunately for all present, she simply glared at him and sniffed. ¡°Pah, gods my foot. Do you hear that roaring? I¡¯d say we¡¯re seeing the fight between two Saint level beasts.¡± said Susan Cadeyrin. Former greatest swordsman in all the continent. All three old and several of the other immortals and levellers who¡¯d come on this trip with them, froze for a minute. Geoff felt his mouth go dry as he heard the roaring and the rumbles that came from the dead city shaking itself to pieces. ¡°Su-...Surely you jest...Saint level beasts aren¡¯t apples and pears, you know. It¡¯d be hard enough to believe that one would somehow come settle down in our neck of the woods but for two to try and do so, that would be...well that would¡­.¡± Geoff have anything else to say about it. He just let his words peeter out and the old woman simply shrugged. Rolling her eyes as she turned her attention to the city, that now shined as silhouettes. It¡¯s background made bright by beams of burning mana and bolts of heavenly thunder. ***** On the ground the young hunter, stood, his body covered in blood. His eyes red, his gaze gloomy. A silvery mist escaped him as he faced off against the armored war-goddess that sat mounted on the back of colossal serpent. ¡°It¡¯s going to be this way then huh¡­?¡± he blustered. His face determined and heroic, though if any had been slightly closed it would have seemed that he looked slightly teary-eyed. ¡°Well then don¡¯t blame me, for not being polite.¡± he said. Throwing back the accrued mass of energy and force that he¡¯d been able to steal from her with each blow that she¡¯d given him. The blow landed flying out at the woman as beam of solid red and white light. The woman was blasted off the back of the head of the serpent and sent flying towards the other end of the city. Meanwhile all the observers, in all the airships gasped. Shocked as they realized that they were seeing human forms fighting. Realizing that instead of war between monsters, they were witnessing a war between monstrous people. ¡°Ah¡­.can you look at that¡­.It seems that both old Rorick and ol-....I mean...and Lady Susan, were both wrong.¡± said Fitzgerald. ¡°Aye¡­.it seems I was a bit too hasty in my surmise. Instead of two Saint rank beast its two beastly Saint Ranked warriors.¡± said Susan. Her eyes narrowed. An appraising look in her eye as she watched the battle below. Watching as the woman in white, stood, using willpower and gather aura, to pull herself back to her feet. Looking battered, but more hurt than angry. She roared, and her mount roared and she leapt into the air with a single bound. Easily overtaking and surpassing the height of the observant airships. The Lady Swordsman watched, wishing she¡¯d brought her sword with her despite knowing that in all likelihood she¡¯d have been no match for either of the warriors below. Feeling her blood boiling with an excitement she¡¯d thought she¡¯d gotten too old to feel. Geoff could barely believe his eyes, as a building fell over and he saw a familiar face. A figure that had been haunting his city like a specter. A living bit of urban legend that followed North Brodick as it had absorbed its neighbors and grew larger. Seen mostly near the whorehouses, the taverns, and in the Hunter Associate offices themselves. But only ever seen in glimpses. He¡¯d known the man was something else, but this was beyond the board, beyond expectation. He gazed down just as the man gazed up and Geoff felt his heart grow cold he saw the look on the man¡¯s face. That sinister smile of his, that look that said, it was all in his hands, that everything was going as ¡°he¡± expected it to. The sinister man bowed, and Geoff some him mouth some words. Words that the old man, felt that he could almost hear. Words that he felt that he had to hear, vital words. Important words. The smile dimmed a little and the man looked almost apologetic, but then just as if it were all a dream he was back to looking sinister again. Turning towards his opponent, the golden woman who now presently seemed to be holding some manner of miniature sun in her hands. ¡°Geoff? I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯d have heard of anyone quite this powerful skulking around through our territories? I haven¡¯t heard anything have you?¡± said Regis. His grip on his mace tightening as he watched the scene below with a bit of anxiousness in his heart. The strained feeling in the local mana making him worry as to whether airship wasn¡¯t just a tad too close to the ruined city, after all. ¡°Geoff?¡± said Fitzgerald. Seeing his old friend go as pale as a ghost. ¡°Geoff!¡± shouted Susan, rushing forwards to catch her old paramore, as he fell in a faint. As the two warriors below clashed for a final time the whole sky shook, and the old woman missed, letting the old man fall to the floor. Geoff awoke from his stupor as he hit the ground. Feeling embarrassed, for all himself to be quite so shocked. Feeling a grim sense of impending doom. He got up and without a single word. He tore a talisman out of his pocket. Fingers trembling. ¡°Geoff what are you-...¡± ¡°Everyone get out, We have to get out¡­.this is...this is some kind of trap.¡± ¡°What?¡± said his friends. Speaking different versions of the same words over each other. ¡°What are you talking about?¡± they asked. Questioning. Uncomprehending. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know. I just¡­¡± He didn¡¯t speak further. He just directly tore the talisman in half pressing it, into the palm of his Susan. So Susan, who he¡¯d made to hate him, but who he¡¯d never stopped loving, even after he¡¯d gone and married another woman, a mortal noblewoman who bore him six sons before she died. She vanished in a flash of light. And seeing what he¡¯d done. The other seniors grew more apprehensive a few of them, pulling their own disappearing acts in turn, sensing that sight-seeing trip was over. Barely escaping as the sky was scorched empty, and all was turned ash by an explosion of golden flame. Arc 2: Chapter 1: A Favor The man who always smiled, arrived late. Dressed sharply in all black, a black derby, sitting atop his slicked-back pink hair. He entered the club, passing by several patrons whose forms ranged from the typical humanoid, to the slightly more beastly, to those forms that were simply incomprehensible for the human eye and indescribable for human tongues. Made of impossible angles, and what would seemingly be evolutionary impractical shapes. He wandered towards the back of the room, striding with purpose, though there was an easy confidence in all his movements. Midway through, the managers that were on the floor, saw him recognized him as a vip and sent one of the better waitresses to see to him. As obvious as it might seem, the man who always smiled, was known as the man who always smiled, because he always seemed to be smiling. Never mind that it was actually more of a grimace than a smile, and he hardly knew when he was doing it. Some things were simply ingrained, and some habits were simply too hard to break. And after who knows how many thousands of years, the man was beyond caring enough to try to do otherwise. Nevertheless, he was not known for that smile, it was his mark, things had even progressed that by this point in time when he wanted to let others know that he was serious he¡¯d add a little smiley face to the corner of the message. ¡°Welcome to Silence is Golden, best club this side of the Aesirian Stretch, How may I help you, sir?¡± said the Waitress. Rattling off the speel that she¡¯d memorized by heart as if she actually meant it. He smiled now, and this time it was on purpose. ¡°Ah, yes...I¡¯m er...Mister Redman. I was supposed to meet a friend of mine. Mister Gray. I don¡¯t suppose you could take me to where you seat him, could you?¡± The waitress frowned looking drawn, on the one hand the man in front of her was a VIP on the other hand the Mister Gray he¡¯d mentioned could be considered ¡°V-VIP¡±. Person whose stature her masters and their little club could scarcely afford to offend. Lost she looked to her managers, who pressed the headset at his ears, frowning a little before giving her a small imperceptible nod. Just like that she immediately brightened falling back into her role. ¡°Right away, sir! Right this way.¡± The Waitress lead the Man who always smiled, the illustrious Mister Redman, to the very back of club where the high spirited music was fainter and the ambrosial smokes that filled the air were thinner. Seating in a booth at the back of the second floor of the club, his eyes glowing an eerie green, was a man, who sat, surrounded by guards. He dressed in plain gray. They dressed in pinstriped gray. And despite possessing an atmosphere that could make dragons and tigers step carefully, the small entourage all sat with a certain casualness that was almost disarming enough to make one forget the aura that they exuded. ¡°Here we are, sir.¡± said the cheery waitress. ¡°...Thanks.¡± said the Mister Redman. ¡°In this case, I believe this is the person you were waiting for, Mister Gray, sir.¡± said the girl turning to the man in the booth. Her smile growing a little wider, her eyes a little brighter filled with just a bit of hero worship. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°.....Right. Good job. Tip the girl, Nikki.¡± said Mister Gray. The waitress tried to shake her head no, but by the time she¡¯d opened her mouth to say anything. There was already, a large thick billfold of glittering divine currency, stuffed in her hands. Along with a single large crystal that radiated celestial energy. ¡°Please¡­¡± said the man. ¡°I...um¡­.y-yes, sir.¡± said the girl. Taking the crystal and clutching it to her chest. Making her exit and likely leaving the club itself, off to do other things. Better things, with the chance that, that crystal of raw heavenly energy had just afforded her. Redman sat down, but not before bowing once. Gray stood up and bowed just a little shallower. ¡°So¡­..¡± ¡°So¡­..¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got to say, you¡¯ve kind of saved my ass here buddy.¡± said Redman. ¡°Don¡¯t sweat it...what are friends for?¡± said Gray. If Redman, was the man who always smiled then Gray would be the man who never smiled. Stoic faced, always looking plainly apathetic. There was some gossip that said, despite having Six wives, the man couldn¡¯t even crack a smile while on the verge of climax. There were actual pictures of him holding his squalling infant children in his hands wearing that same face. Redman could believe the rumors, partly because he¡¯d meanly started a few of them himself. One man was a sly looking trickster. The other man, was more or less ¡°infant¡± faced and pretty like a girl, but older and more powerful than most of the heroes, gods and monsters that were in this club at least a few trillion years or so, it was almost unbelievable that the two men had become friends. ¡°So¡­¡±I¡¯m¡± not dead yet, right? The Moderators decided that she cheated?¡± said Redman. Gray nodded. ¡°It¡¯d be one thing if she offed you with her own power, but completely sealing a section of the planet like that, and annihilating everything inside...With that kind of energy efficiency?....Pah...That kind of click and delete capability isn¡¯t something a kid like her is capable of...My best guess is that she pulled out something her Godking granddad gave her in case something went wrong. Really...it looks like thickhead-ness runs in the family.¡± said Gray. Redman chuckled. ¡°Hmph¡­.look at you, talking like you¡¯re not the least bit over protective about your own grandkids.¡± ¡°....Nh?....When did I say I was judging the guy for trying to protect his grandkid. I¡¯m judging him for doing it so shoddily. Asphodel tech would have done the cheaper, more successfully and without making such a mess. As it is the poor girls in a bind both in physically, socially, politically and legally, right now. The other members of the Council nearly went apeshit when they realized that some young pup nearly ruined everything we¡¯ve spent billions of years putting into motion, in a single second.¡± said Gray. Taking a sip of the drink that sat in front of him. One of his entourage getting up to pour him another. ¡°Right, right¡­In any case that¡¯s for saving ¡°my¡± bacon.¡± said Redman. Sliding a box over the table to the man. Who snapped his fingers and made it disappear without bothering with being too polite. Pulling the little oddity into his inventory to tinker with at a later time. ¡°Well, after you¡¯d gone and gotten yourself cooked extra crispy like that, it would have been a waste to throw you away wouldn¡¯t it.¡± said Gray. Gray snapped his fingers and one of the gray suited men leaning on the wall, stood and handed an ominous looking envelope over to Redman. Redman took it his eyes glittering with anticipation as he slipped the envelope inside his coat. A wide smile on his face. ¡°Seriously, man? You actually managed to get ¡°that¡±?...On top of getting ¡°me¡± back in the game?!...Oh, he''ll I could kiss you. I owe you one...shit I owe you like ten now. Stiff faced as always but with his tone of voice jovial and light, Gray responded with a, ¡°First, please don¡¯t, my wives would kill us both...Second, Are you kidding me here? You me way more than ten.¡± Redman, chuckled, as he turned to head out. Aware that there were things he needed to set in motion. ¡°Right, in that case, we can just add this to my bill.¡± ¡°Fuck you.¡± laughed Gray. ¡°Fuck you too, buddy.¡± said Redman. Waving as he left. Gray watched the man go and then shook his head. He didn¡¯t ask what his friend was scheming or what he was trying to do, by meddling in the past like this. After all Gray himself had done similar. As far as he was concerned so long as their interests, didn¡¯t go too far into conflict,...if they ended up conflicting at all, and none of Gray¡¯s people got hurt, then the young faced, old emperor could care less what that Red Moon Devil was up to. Arc 2: Chapter 2: Its Alive In a dank room that was the fetid cross between a root cellar, an outhouse and a castle dungeon, a group of twenty or so, men, women and children huddled in the dark. They were all kept huddled on the side of room, with the thickly barred enclosure. Their stomach making sounds of pain and hunger and frustration as they stared at the crates their own food and goods, that were being stored on the other side of the room, in another cell. On their arms and legs they wore chains and manacles. On their necks they wore the ensorcelled collars worn by slaves across the globe. Amongst this band of the sickly, bruised and miserable, was a boy around twelve years of age. Stick thin and gangly, with his long limbs and large head, he looked a bit like an insect. His light brown skin, was covered in a sticky sheen of sweet. And his breath grew increasingly labored as he huddled up in his little corner of the room. Shivering violently despite the humidity within their cramped quarters. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Whether it was the bruises on his body, the fever that was boiling his blood, or the weeping wound on his side from where a bone broken just badly enough to puncture his skin, one thing was clear. The boy was not doing well. Hours ran on, while they all sat, in the dark humidity and, one by one, the weaker amongst their number succumbed to their wounds and illness. Eventually, the boy with pale brown skin and the light pink hair, fell as well, slumping over in his corner. A day and a night went by. And their kind hosts, former kinfolk who¡¯d turned their backs on the people in the cage came to remove the bodies, for the sake of keeping the rest of their salable stock alive. One of the guards came to take the boy, hefting the light corpse over his shoulder and dragging it up the stairs. Tossing the body, onto the heap of bodies that lay by the door, lying in a pull cart. The guard then went to go and retrieve other bodies, for sake of filling the cart, and avoiding a second trip. In the meantime, the corpses were left exposed to the heavens. Left exposed to the light of the planet¡¯s three waxing moons. One white. One yellow. One a luminous pale red. Arc 2: Chapter 3: Save File...Restored Back when I was a kid one of my favorite shows, was this, series involving a clown and talking doll. And of course they¡¯d get into crazy adventures, but at the end of it, they¡¯d always end up back in the clown¡¯s room. She¡¯d look around and see the mess that had been made, while she was having her fun and then she¡¯d stand up on her bed, hands on her hip, eyes full of righteous indignation and shout, ¡°Hey, who made this big mess!?¡± And of course the camera would pan in on her and she¡¯d look directly at the camera and well, you can guess the rest. After all this was a kid¡¯s show. The point is, I now understood that feeling she must have had. Having cut loose and then been subsequently brought down. Forced to ask the obvious question and stand abashed as the obvious answer remained to be the obvious answer. I stood in a big house,...well not a big house per se, but big by Potter¡¯s Run standards, which was the name of the town I was in, by the way. Potter¡¯s Run, the town I¡¯d lived in for the last...twelve(?) years or so, and also the town I¡¯d been born in...or rather, ¡°re¡±-born in. A rural little town, pretty much a village really, made up of subsistence farmers, who¡¯d raid the occasional caravan if the harvest was low...which was actually quite often now that I was thinking about it. I was in the biggest house in town, the new mayor¡¯s house. Standing in the mayor¡¯s office. I was¡­.I¡¯m actually not exactly sure, what it was I was doing. I, the parts of me that make me, ¡°me¡±, have been away for quite a while. I¡¯ve just recently learned that there actually is a way to kill an immortal for at least a semi-permanent basis. Which was, um, some good information for me to know in case I ever truly pissed of, or was pissed off by, a fellow immortal. Or in the more likely case, that things got to be too much and after who knows how many tens of hundreds, of thousands, of years, I decided I wanted to take a little break before I did something disagreeable. The soul of a living being was a sturdy thing, but apparently they weren¡¯t unbreakable after all, just very resilient. One could willing dissolve one¡¯s own soul and go all one with the universe if one reached a sufficient level of mental and spiritual (read: soul) strength. The opposite was true in that being strong of mind and spirit could also keep one¡¯s soul from breaking or wearing away. Which as an immortal leveller meant I should probably keep that in mind for investing talent points in the future. Returning to my discovery, a sufficiently strong person or sufficiently strong attack, with enough depth to it, could be used to forcibly dissolve or break someone else''s soul. And though souls were immortal as a rule. It could take a broken soul any time between millions of years and billions of years to pull itself back together again. And breaking the soul of an enemy like that...if you did it right, you could either be too strong for them face again by the time they got back. Long gone. Or if you were especially ruthless in your methods, or especially clever, you ensure, that the victim was either too weak or too muddled to ever become a threat again by the time they¡¯d recovered themselves and regained physical form. Unpleasant yes, but it was a trick that I intended to eventually figure out and keep up my sleeve...just in case. Going back to subject of what exactly happened to ¡°me¡±, well, while I probably should be last one saying this, being a cheat character myself, that buxom golden lady, cheated. What¡¯s worse I wasn¡¯t even winning. I¡¯d just barely managed to score a hit on her. I¡¯d hurt her yes, but I¡¯d sort of been hoping to bluff through with that, and make her back off, because I wasn¡¯t likely to be able to do it again. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Unfortunately she had...other thoughts, or maybe she wasn¡¯t thinking at all. Maybe she was the kind of mad that gets good men sent to jail for accidental homicide. She pulled some kind of device out, pressed the button and made a miniature sun, I tried to [TPO] my way out of there but found that the device had also sealed off the surrounding spaces. More alarming it had sealed of a space of one thousand miles, nearly a fourth of the Tri-American Continent. The sun exploded and fried the entire space. The big surprise was that what I thought was a miniature sun was actually more like a miniature big bang, an energy blast that literally blew away everything inside. Including the space itself. Which from what I¡¯d learned from high school physics probably shouldn¡¯t have been possible. Still she managed, and I died. Hard. My soul getting annihilated along with the space. So, yeah...in a match between a jumped, mortal man, versus an actual bona fide deity it seems that predictably enough the deity one. Well...though I¡¯m not a violent man¡­(at least I don¡¯t think I am)¡­.I take a small amount of pleasure in informing you my fairly one-sided murder was turned into a double homicide at the last minute. While most of my other abilities had ended by rendered useless, energy manipulation and entropy manipulation had turned out to be quite handy at the last minute. She blew me up and in the split second that my whole universe was being erased, I fired my own little pop gun out of sheer spite. Just in the hopes of taking her down with me. Managing to burst the protective bubble that was set up to protect the goddess from her own weapon. But again, I am digressing, we were talking about Mayor weren¡¯t we? The little man, who currently crouched huddled behind his overturned desk, his gun having slid out of reach. So close yet so far, like a glass of water, set out of reach of a sinner burning in hell. ¡­.I think I was trying to kill this man for some reason. Searching my archive, I find the reason, this man was responsible for death of some boy named Dudley Patterson. As to who the hell, Dudley Patterson is, or was, I think that¡¯s who I was supposed to be, while I¡¯d supposed been forcibly jammed back together forced to reincarnate through some more meddling from my future-self. He was a sickly, cry-baby, putz boy that everyone in town, kind of shared the duty of kicking the shit out of when he got too annoying or got in the way. So, pretty much just me, from around the first time I was twelve. Which I didn¡¯t mind so much, since having the angels put my humpty-dumpty self back together again, was pretty much the only way I was going to be coming back before this universe experienced heat death. And then more meddling from the future-me, was used to bring back the ¡°real¡± me, Desmond. My immortal persona, kicking in, shortly after Dudley¡¯s death. The Mayor was Dudley¡¯s ¡°Uncle¡±, he and half the town had just engineered a small coup, after a certain amount of small wealth was found during one of the town¡¯s raids. My side, Dudley¡¯s side of the town lost the war of arms and were on the brink of being sold off. Looking at it, rationally it wasn¡¯t like they could safely keep us here after stealing all the wealth and power for themselves, that would be just asking for trouble. Still...while I wasn¡¯t entirely sure I got why Dudley was so pissed, I wasn¡¯t one to do things halfway. If ¡°I¡± as Dudley had thought the Mayor should die, then the mayor would die. I¡¯d consider it a bit of service to the boy who¡¯d had to pass for me to return to the world of the living. There was a scream, followed by a crunch, followed by me leaving the mayor''s office. There were more bodies in the hall and in the rest of the house. A few women and children, but mostly a lot of grungy looking guys, who all looked malnourished and wore surprised expressions on their faces. Unlike the clown in the tv show, I had no intention of trying to clean up this mess. More like, I was pretty sure I simply couldn¡¯t clean up this mess. People had died. A good portion of the town seemed to be on fire. And honestly, asides from a few people, I didn¡¯t really think I owed anyone there a damn thing. I ¡°did¡± make sure to shore up with the ones I owed though. After all a gentleman must always honor his debts, both the good ones and the bad. Slave collars were the most insidious device that the current civilization had ever built. A mixture of subtle and hard magics, that read intent and physiology to make it so that even if complete obedience couldn¡¯t be ensure, ¡°disobedience would never be allowed. Fortunately, I had a few skills, that let me brute force a work around. Dissolving those key magics that were intended to make such escape attempts into a fatal one time affair. I did so for Dudley. Freeing him...and me. Eating the magics in the collar with my own magic before tearing the damn thing off me. And then I did it more gently for the Hewitts and their kin. The one family in Potter¡¯s Run who¡¯d never raised a hand to Dudley and who¡¯d occasionally shared some food and a word of comfort. Grammy Hewitt, made me free the rest of our part of the town as well. I acquiesced because she was one tough lady to argue with and like I said, Dudley owed her. The one person I didn¡¯t free was Dudley¡¯s father Jep. A few folks tried to talk me into it. But I refused. As I was concerned Jep could stay in that cage and rot for all I cared. He was a shitty husband to wife, who would conveniently disappear when Dudley was night. Having apparently run away one day, despite not taking a single one of her possession or even saying goodbye to her only child. And he was an abysmal father. Transgressing in every way a father ¡°could¡± transgress. I won¡¯t speak too much on that. Perhaps it me projecting my own daddy issues, taking what happened to the poor dead kid whose body I now possess entirely too personal, but I¡¯m pretty sure if I¡¯d tried to free the man, I¡¯d have likely broken his neck. My debt, in my eyes, having been paid, I gave a final goodbye to the town and to my surprise they said goodbye back. I guess, their being a town that occasionally moonlighted as bloodthirsty raiders made the numb to all blood and death, Dudley had wrought in his tantrum. Or perhaps it was just the simple fact there was a very special kind of hate elicited when someone you cared for deeply, thoroughly and completely screwed you over. Locking you in a cage to sell you and your children to slavers. In any case, while I never intended to ever come back here again, I found that I held a small warm spot in my heart for the small village of bandits. Arc 2: Chapter 4: 3000 Years Pass A regular respawn wouldn¡¯t have taken longer than a few days, having to have my essence collected, re-glued together and then shuttled down the path of full reincarnation took much longer. According to the archive, over three thousand years have passed since ¡°I¡¯d¡± last walked the earth. And you know what?....I was kind of over it. I think it¡¯s a sort of strange-ness fatigue. There was only so much that one person could be wowed or devastated before they ceased to feel anything about a given scenario anymore. Wave the same gun in someone''s face enough times and you¡¯ll find that sooner or later they¡¯re likely to make you either put up or shut up. It was a big deal when I first respawned and found that seven hundred years had passed since the end of the world. It was an even bigger deal when I somehow let fifty years pass by without my noticing. Just simply losing three thousand years all at once? It was meh. A loss too large to actually feel. It was like someone telling a normal person that they were suddenly three trillion dollars in debt, right while they¡¯d been barely handling being under several hundred dollars of debt. If anything, it was almost freeing. I was officially so deep in the shit that I no longer had to worry about digging myself out again. According to the archive in my head, the culture had changed so drastically, that ¡°my¡± age was an age of myths to these people all but forgotten. Only vaguely recalled by a few of the older immortals who¡¯d not given into their devils or dissolved themselves, and a few older AIs. It was a still a very violent world yes, they still used mithril bills as money, yes, but that was just the way things were now, and not some, temporary thing, like I¡¯d been half hoping it¡¯d be. Simply said, this world was what it was. It wasn¡¯t my world. It was something else, an entirely different Agartha. Going on an entirely different path, they were no longer in recovery, they were no longer ¡°rebuilding¡± they were what they were. And if that was the case, I had no need to worry my head over it, for there was absolutely nothing I could do. Thusly freed, I turned my attention to more pressing matters. Issues such as, just exactly what, was going with my Status. ******
Name: Dudley Walkins
Age: 12
Level: 1This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Race: Humanoid Existence
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Child of the Emptied Skies
Talent: 95
Attainments:
Body 0
Mind 0
Soul 0
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Mandate of Black, Mandate of White, Mandate of Gray, Devilish Good Looks
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
****** Looking at my status I suspected that the future-me was up to hijinks again. Everything was changed even my name. I glared at the status, feeling betrayed by the status menu, completely aware that all this was of sign of more plotting by my future-self. It was this sense of creeping violation akin to waking up and finding a doctor leaning over your bed, doing...something...after operating on you while slept. This sense of seeing evidence that someone had changed the way you were without your consent. I suppose I should have been more concerned about having seeming been de-leveled and lost all my attainment points but the thing was, I didn¡¯t ¡°feel¡± any weaker than I¡¯d been three thousand years ago. The archive confirmed my suspicions, if this leveling system had proper stats display, mind would have been more or less the same as they¡¯d always been, save a possible diminishment to my agility, health, and stamina, because of my current, badly malnourished, pre-pubescent form. Yes, I¡¯d have to start over with leveling again, but it wasn¡¯t like it''d be hard, I was no less stronger, then I¡¯d been before, so more likely than not this could considered a boon. All that I¡¯d managed to achieve before had now been rolled into my base stats. Investing my talent points, which seemed to have gone up by the way, would now be even more impactful when applied to the accumulated stats of a former level three hundred leveller. Rather than caring about the change to my levels and attainments I was more taken aback by change to my race, titles and abilities. First off, what in the nine hells was a [Humanoid Existence] supposed to be? The boy had just been a regular vanilla human as far as I knew, so I wasn¡¯t sure what sudden switch was for. While I was happy to have shed the embarrassing ¡°grandiose¡± mantle of a [Cambion Lord] and [Living Nightmare] I had the sense that I might have been turned into something even fishier. Doesn¡¯t being something that¡¯s merely humanoid, mean that I wasn¡¯t human anymore? Why did I feel like I¡¯d become even less human than I was when I¡¯d been some kind of nightmare demon? Losing most of my titles only made the feeling worse. The archive had no clue what a [Child of the Emptied Skies] was, but I didn¡¯t like the sound of it. My abilities were gone too. All of them. Instead there were new abilities in their place. [Mandate of Black], [Mandate of White], and [Mandate of Gray]. And again the archive had no specific information to tell me about them, or what they did, or how they operated. What I ¡°did¡± have was a little note, that had been left with me, pinned to the back of the inside of my head, as if that was a place where it was okay to just leave things. It read: ¡°Buck up, buttercup...you¡¯re still more or less, what you¡¯re supposed to be...plus a little extra. XOXO...-Desmond.¡± That explained nothing! That was barely even a message and in my opinion was more a form of trolling. If I could kick my own ass and know that future-me would feel it I swear I would, but knowing that I¡¯d feel it worse kept me from trying to do so. Interestingly enough the only old ability ¡°he¡¯d¡± let me keep [Devilish Good Looks]. Which pretty much confirmed my theory that my future-self was fucking with me. ¡°Well, whatever...I guess since I¡¯m not dead I still have to get on with living.¡± I grumbled to myself as I wandered across the arid wasteland that lay between Potter¡¯s Run and all the nearest inhabited settlements in the region. Arc 2: Chapter 5: The Walkins Boy Granny Hewitt, head of the Hewitt family came to Potter¡¯s Run on a stormy day. Back then she¡¯d just been a girl, a young woman by the name of Patricia Orman. Chased out of town by her father¡¯s enemies in her former hometown. Chased out by family disputes that spilled over into sect disputes that eventually led to spilt blood. She¡¯d make it to the small dead end town with naught but the clothes on her back and what little she could carry in her carpet bag. Fighting off a few raiders, would be-rapists, and self-important idiots with troublesome amounts of political pull, along the way. Despite being on her own and only being fifteen, she would manage to use what little funds she had to start up the town¡¯s one general store. Making a home for herself in a boony made up of a handful of dirt farmers, scavengers and people like her, who¡¯d barely survived being on the losing end of similar factional conflicts in the wider world. All of them too scrappy to die from the terrible conditions but too tired, weak, and dispirited to try to go any further than where they¡¯d ended up. She¡¯d eventually marry a man, named Henry Hewitt. A decent enough fellow with a head thick enough to break rocks with but was still smart enough to know when to get out of his wife¡¯s way. Together they¡¯d raise six children and those six children would raise children. This was how the Hewitt clan would be founded, raised on principles of good business sense, doing what one has to do to stay alive and retaining one¡¯s human decency despite inhumane conditions. Their numbers and relative wealth being enough to name them as one of Potter¡¯s Run¡¯s founding families. That principle of decency and humanity, was the reason that she never tolerated bullying amongst her boys and why her boys didn¡¯t tolerate their children bullying others. This was why when most of the town was scorning the Walkinses kid, the woe-begotten, flea covered brat of an angry drug addict and some poor girl who either ran or was sold off, the Hewitt family would occasionally call the boy into their shop. Usually offering him something small to fill his stomach, or somewhere dry to sleep on the times when both his father and the weather seemed to be on a tear. Letting him pay the favors, with small errands and minor chores. It wasn¡¯t any great kindness; it was just them being less hard than most of Potter¡¯s Run¡¯s other folks. Darren Hewitt, was one of the Hewitt boys, one of those kids who¡¯d grown up half-heartedly telling the other town kids to knock it off when they were enjoying that most common of pastimes, the kick-the-shit-out-of-the-Walkins-kid game. Tall, strong, and broadly built like his Grandpappy was, there was talk of him possibly becoming a leveller one day. Accumulating enough magic energy that separate ordinary men from the heroes and legends of Agartha. Honestly, even if he could only make it past level three by his next birthday, it¡¯d still be enough for him to join the town defenders. Protecting the town from monsters and helping in their raids. ¡°Darren dear, be a good boy and go help your cousins.¡± ¡°Yes, mee-mah. R-, Right away.¡± he said, the pitch of his voice hitching slightly with pubescent squeak. Darren currently stood by his grandmother, trailing her, along with six of his older cousins and a few of his uncles. The rest of the town and most of the other Hewitts had gone to their homes to clean up and recover. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. They and their grandmother were going around assessing the general damage that had been done to the town, both during the coup and after when¡­.¡±he¡± hit. To put it plainly, it looked like a storm hit. It looked like one of those big dust devils that the town was supposed to be warded to keep out, had cut right through Potter¡¯s Run. Tearing apart the streets and pulling up the cobblestones of the town¡¯s one real road. Flattening houses and whatever or whoever else was in its...his...wake. Granny Hewitt took it all in with eyes that were tired, set in a face that was wrinkled, set on bones, that were still startlingly strong for someone of her years. With a calm and steady hand, she leads and would continue to lead the town¡¯s recovery, with the one other surviving town leader, former Mayor Haversham. She eyed her great-grandchild Darren watching as he helped his kin, with the moving and hauling of rubble and bodies. Silently approving as he turned green but still managed to keep down his mid-evening meal. It was bad to waste food like that, by needlessly throwing it up...but besides that, it showed promise. Promise that should be nurtured something that she¡¯d see to once all this was over. Perhaps even mentioning it a little sooner to his parents, just in case she forgot, because she ¡°was¡± getting on in years. She looked at the lined up bodies that lay on the ground and she looked at all that a few pounds of mithril had wrought and found her thoughts drifting. No one needed to die today. At least not this many people. At least not Potter¡¯s Run people. No amount of money made all this worth it, and yet beasts died for food and men died for wealth and that was just the way of the world. Her thoughts drifted again, turning towards a certain scowling man who¡¯d been left in the town storehouse, because he¡¯d die, drowning in his own blood if he tried to leave it and because no one could find the key to the damn slave collars yet. She and many others were starting to suspect that that fool Chesterfield bought the collars without buying keys. Never intending to let them go, except maybe to some slaver dealer. The poor bastard in the storehouse, likely would never see daylight again, if that was the case. Which made it all the more fortuitous that, that peculiar and unfortunately little boy, had, had the strange change that he had. Suddenly losing that meek frightened look he¡¯d used to wear all around. That goofy lopsided grin the boy always wore turning into something more sure of itself. The boy broke the collars and then a silvery green light came from his palms and from eyes and from his mouth, to heal sick and injured. And then he was gone. There was no telling where the change came from, no speaking to the hows or whys. And no guessing where the boy went. The folk in the region might have had stories about men suddenly being inhabited by spirits and the saints of legend, but those were just stories. ¡°Food, Water, Money and Blood¡­.Those are four things that a man will be a fool not to look after if he doesn¡¯t want to come a bad end.¡± ¡°Yes, Mee-Mah¡­¡± said a chorus of young voices. That startled the old woman from her thoughts. She¡¯d likely been thinking aloud again, a bad habit of hers that she¡¯d had since she was young, but in the Hewitt clan, at least for the younger folk who didn¡¯t know any better any word that came from her lips might as well have been gospel. She frowned shaking her head and then forgot about the mysterious boy and his unfortunate father. Her great-grandson Darren, came forwards with a load of bricks held in his sturdy arms, a faintly thoughtful look on his face. ¡°Uncle Sam said to tell you that we¡¯re all good and this side of town, Mee-Mah.¡± ¡°Mhm...Then I guess we¡¯re done for the day then. Tomorrow we can come and see what we can recover from the houses...waste not, want not and all that.¡± said Granny Hewitt. ¡°Yes, granny. Um¡­¡± said the boy. Hesitating, a bit before deciding to go off and get rid of burden in his arms while keeping the one in his head to himself. The old woman stopped him with a sharp look and a grunt. ¡°Well spit it out boy I ain¡¯t gonna live forever.¡± The boy gave the old woman the same, slightly skeptical look all her family members gave her when she said that, as if they all suspected otherwise. As if they were all sure that so long as the world had a Hewitt clan, there would always be a Granny Hewitt. ¡°Um...okay, well¡­.so do you think we¡¯ll ever see ¡°him¡± again.¡± said Darren. His words revealing that his thoughts hadn¡¯t been far off from his grandmother''s. Which was likely the case for many of the town¡¯s folk. A lot of ¡°them¡± would think it with a tiny bit of fear, but the Hewitts and those who like them, never went out of their way to make the poor boy¡¯s life even more terrible thought it more with a bit, of curiosity. Granny Hewitt looked up at the brightening sky, with a look of consideration. ¡°Mhm...hard to say. But in this old woman¡¯s opinion, I¡¯ve seen a lot of folk come through Potter¡¯s Run and I¡¯ve seen a lot of folk leave it. When it comes to Potter¡¯s Run folk, in the few times that they¡¯ve left they generally come back at least to visit. And that boy is Potter¡¯s Run folk...If¡¯n he doesn¡¯t die out there, I expect we''ll see him again...one day.¡± Darren frowned, not sure how he felt about that. The Walkins boy was an unknown and the sounds that the townsfolk had, had to listen before he¡¯d returned to free them all, had been ghastly to hear. A tragically operatic combination of screaming, gunfire, swearing and bellows like no ¡°human¡± could ever make. Still in the end the boy just nodded, taking the old woman¡¯s words as fact. Taking the fact of the monster-boy¡¯s possible return with the same stoic-ness that Potter¡¯s Run folk used to face all of life¡¯s little trials. A man could make plans but sometimes the game was already in the gods¡¯ hands. There was no point in worrying about what couldn¡¯t really be prepared for. ¡°Yes, Mee-mah.¡± Arc 2: Chapter 6: Mellowed Out Agartha, a mere seven hundred years after the bombs fell, was still mostly scorched earth, and poisoned skies. Though enough time had passed for some recovery to take place, the animals were mostly mutants. The land was mostly deserts. The heavens were filled with ghastly mist. Agartha nearly four thousand years after the bombs, was a reborn world. The heavenly energy that made up the planet¡¯s core hastening its recovery. Pushing the mundane towards the fantastical and ideal. There were floating islands and walking mountains, and fairies, flitting humanoids that flew by in swarms. The world was green again. Abundantly green, tall grasses and jungles grew where all the old cities used to be. The sky was blue, a shade so pure one could stare at for forever. The air was cleaner than it had been even before the old Agarthans (us pre-apocalypse humans) settled it. The fauna and flora had adjusted to the higher energy levels, resulting in a level of vibrancy, and activities that made the skin crawl. In short, this Agartha was an Agartha in which mother nature had stopped recovering and was now in the process of rediscovering a balance. A balance between life and death, and man and beast and heaven and earth. Naturally if all that rampant divine energy was not completely settled, this world would never find a true balance. Meaning the continents would continue shift and the seasons would continue to be volatile, but still there would be some regularity. Even if it was of a violent and somewhat unpredictable sort. ****** Months had gone by since I¡¯d returned to the world of the living yet again and left Potter¡¯s Run behind. Without checking with the archive I couldn¡¯t really till you how many months but it was long enough for the age value in my status to go up by one. (Six¡­.It was six months...Six months, fifteen days, thirty-six hours, and twelve minutes.) I was thirteen now. I had even already managed to get several levels under my belt. Making for a strong start for my journey to recoup my lost progress and then move beyond that point. I¡¯d also calmed down a fair bit, gaining a bit of peace when it came to my current situation. Ultimately I¡¯d been able to accept some things and reject others, rationalizing the rest away as either out of my hands or beyond the scope of what I, as a person had a real interest in. In the category of things I rejected, I was rejecting this gnawing sense that something beyond my ken, and capability was taking place. I was rejecting whatever plans my future-self thought he was making on my behalf. I was rejecting that helpless sense that I¡¯d have no other choice in this life but to fight and die and fight again, till I finally either dissolved or gave into my demon. I was rejecting that stupid name change, no offense to Dudley, the kid I¡¯d been before I¡¯d gone back to being me. For me, Dudley had the feel of a name that one would give to someone who either ate and or huffed copious amounts of glue, or couldn¡¯t be left alone with barn animals. In the category of things that I ¡°was¡± accepting, I was accepting the fact of my past deaths and all the losses they entailed. Honestly there wasn¡¯t much I could do about them, now that they¡¯d already happened. Disbelieving them wouldn¡¯t change anything. Kicking my heels and throwing tantrum solved nothing. In other words, I was going to do, what I¡¯d been subconsciously resisting doing, and eat those L¡¯s. My lost home, which had also been home to all my really nifty crap. My lost job...I¡¯d been on the verge of maybe possibly getting a raise.. My lost friends, as few they might have been. My lost looks, for I was now entirely unrecognizable from the man I one was. My lost species. The last few months had made me increasingly sure that whether it was the new abilities, the mysterious mandates, or my fishy as hell race change from a normal human child, to a [humanoid existence] that I was now increasingly sure merely looked like a normal human child. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. (Albeit with ridiculous pink hair¡­) I was accepting that this Agartha was not my Agartha, it was not the Agartha I left when I first died. Nor was it the Agartha I¡¯d been barely adjusting to prior to my second death. It was something new. A world that would have to be approached as foreign soil. Taking the whole of my rejections and my acceptances I came to one single resolution. A simple goal to find and keep a new normal. Were this my old world, my original world, I¡¯d consider myself deluded to even think of it. Men made plans, and the gods did as they would. Gods made plans, and the fates did as they would. Look at the classics and any fool can see it. No one has control. And yet, here I was in a world where rising above, progressing, ¡°leveling¡± was in the name of the game. I would never dare say I could command completely control of my own fate that sounded too much like a challenge and something warned me that those capricious three sisters were the sort not to take such things lightly. Still, I would gain autonomy. I would have some semblance of control. I was through with having my worlds destroyed. I would rise to a level where even my future-self could not touch me. Where even the pre-ordained could not disturb my new normal whatever it happened to become. I would reach a place where random ¡°Demon Kings¡± could not come and destroy my everyday existence. Where outsiders could just come and trample my peace. The first step towards this goal, would be leveling. Rising high enough to graduate from and escape the confines of the system. And before that, step came the matter of changing my damn name back. After a few days of beating my head against a wall over the issue, the archive presented me with a solution that was equal parts simple and aggravating. The Leveling system came with functions for setting up Aliases. While one was unable to casually change the name one was given from birth, one could assign an alias to oneself. I had two problems with this solution, the first being that my real name ¡°was¡± Desmond, and a stubborn part of me rejected the idea of having it labelled as false even as a necessity. The second problem was that, if I was appraised by certain authorities or anyone of a higher level than of power than mine, which was roughly anyone I saw right now, they¡¯d be able to see that it was an alias. Which further dug into that sore spot of not wanting people to think my ¡°real¡± name was a fake name and also brought forth the issue of not wanting to draw suspicion onto myself by walking around with a ¡°fake¡± name. The solution for this was two-fold. If I could get my level high enough, let¡¯s say high enough to be considered a ¡°Master¡± or a ¡°Legendary¡± leveller, an existence with strength equal to or exceeding that of any single nation, then I¡¯d be given certain special privileges. Privileges likes the ability to change my name as I pleased. (Because what¡¯s a name to a being that could crumble mountains?¡­) The second part of this solution or thinking chronologically the first part, dealt with what to do in the meantime. Having just regained my mental health, by deciding on what I could and couldn¡¯t take from this world, I didn¡¯t want to risk it by trying to carry around that most onerous of monikers, ¡°Dudley¡± for however long it took me to reach Master status. Thus instead I decided to go with an ¡°obvious¡± alias. A fake name was suspicious, but a ¡°nick¡± name was something anyone could have, either giving it to themselves as a flight of fancy, or getting it from friends and family as praise or as a backhanded insult. From what the archive told me they were actually quite common operating like the social media ideas that people of the old world used to give themselves. Except often parents would be the ones responsible for giving them to their kids, giving them names that would come attached with false titles, or monikers, that they would hopefully one day gain in truth. Naturally they often came out stupider than the MMO and social media user names of old used to be. Meaning that the more pretentious the name was, the less suspicious, and the more taken for granted. For example I can¡¯t even begin to tell you how many ¡°Emperors¡±, ¡°Masters¡±, and ¡°Saints¡± this world currently had, that were under the age of six. Thus I gave myself a ¡°nickname¡±, an obvious, non-suspicious alias, that I could carry around till I could my real name back. Eventually I¡¯d be Desmond again, but for now I would be ¡°Sam¡± as in Samhain, as in ¡°Samhain the Red Moon King¡±. An extra touch I¡¯d added to the name, just in case anyone doubted that it really was some idiot kid¡¯s idiot parents¡¯ runaway dreaming. *****
Name: Samhain(Alias)
Age: 13
Level: 7
Race: Humanoid Existence
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Child of the Emptied Skies, Red Moon King (Moniker)
Talent: 95
Attainments:
Body 342
Mind 114
Soul 114
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Mandate of Black, Mandate of White, Mandate of Gray, Devilish Good Looks
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
Arc 2: Chapter 7: Lessons Learned ¡°Now, boyo...How ¡®bout you drop that rock, and maybe I¡¯ll see about letting you leave here, with all yer¡¯ arms and legs.¡± said the Shopkeep. He sneered leaning over me, while giving a far from subtle nod to his guards, to let them know that they should bar the door. I looked at the man that I¡¯d been told could help me offload wasteland scavenge in return for CCD. Greed and meanness making his eyes bright. A wide smile on his face, because all he saw was the huge lump of mithril on the table, already discounting the urchin who¡¯d brought it in to sell. I kind of thought that I¡¯d avoided making the same mistake I¡¯d made the first time I¡¯d transmuted some magical metal for resale. I guess I was wrong. In any case, my archive was blaring warning signs, confirming that yes, that feeling of danger, I was feeling was indeed, the shopkeeper and his men¡¯s killing intent. Cruel as it was, at this point of things, letting me go was no longer an option. Even if I¡¯d immediately just let them take the stone, they apparently couldn¡¯t risk having anyone know that they had that large an amount of high yield, high purity mithril in their possession. Beasts died for food, and men died for wealth. Even if the kingdom didn¡¯t come knocking at their door to try to confiscate it, there were other factions, groups and personalities who might come sniffing around if word of their windfall was spread about. (Top tier mithril is too precious for trading¡­.Lesson learned.) I heard the bar clunk into place as a door was sealed shut. I heard window blinds clatter close. I heard the sounds of blades being drawn. Then ¡°I¡± muttered a few magic words to make sure that the people outside didn¡¯t hear the sounds of the screams. A few minutes later I would I appear at the bank of river. Staring down at the murky water I¡¯d meet the eye of a glum boy who looked like he¡¯d just dived head first into a vat of pizza sauce. His hair, skin and clothes soaked with red spatter. I have to say, that in the passing weeks, I¡¯ve felt a little less antagonistic towards my future-self. Part of it was knowing from the common sense that going to war with myself was fairly pointless. After all even if I won, I could only lose. Part of it was the fact that his note had been more or less accurate. I was exactly as strong, and as capable as I¡¯d been before...at least as far as my abilities went. I didn¡¯t have [TPO] anymore, but I could still be anywhere I needed to be with just a single step. I didn¡¯t have all those passive traits anymore, but the combination of the mandates and whatever being a [humanoid existence] meant, seemed to be doing a fairly competent job of making up for what was missing. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. For instance after waiting an hour to make sure whatever it was that decided my ¡°wanted level¡± in the city I¡¯d just left had gone done, I returned. Walking the streets, even nodding towards a few of the town police force without any sense of unease. I still seemed to have all the odd little perks and privileges that I¡¯d had before. Which was good, because my lack of a complete handle of the common sense of this place, and all the stupid little mistakes I¡¯d been making as of late, would have gotten me on either the executioner''s block, or the slaver¡¯s stand, otherwise. One good thing about random people trying to rob and or kill me, was that it removed any moral compunctions I might have had about robbing and killing them. Maybe this was a failing, or maybe this was just me adopting the mindset of the age, but as soon I¡¯d killed the shopkeeper¡¯s last guard, I¡¯d made sure to loot everything that wasn¡¯t nailed down and tore free a couple things that were. Now finally after several false starts in the past three weeks, I could do as I¡¯d set out to do. Sure of the air of anonymity that hung over me, I felt confident enough to go back to the marketplace, that I¡¯d just fled barely a few hours ago. I headed into a clothes shop, ignoring the nasty look that the Shopkeep and her clerks gave me, as I went through the aisle. I was aware of how I looked, dust covered, dressed raggedly in oversized clothing. Still there was a certain amount of confidence that came from having money and the knowledge that you were in store serving as a proper customer. The Shopkeep could glare all she wanted, but so long as she didn¡¯t get in my way or try stop me I didn¡¯t need to care. And if she did want to make it a thing, then there were other clothes sellers in this marketplace and other people to take my hard stolen dollars. In the end I bought a set of five outfits. Actually, what I really bought was five sets of the ¡°same¡± outfits. Dark blue, canvas trousers. An off-white, button shirt, and a tie, because a gentleman always wears a tie. This was supplemented by some t-shirt for when I was at home...wherever home ended up being. Underwear, socks and a belt. With the last things I chose from the store being a coat that was a bit big for me but not too big. A pair of boots and a pair of shoes. I wasn¡¯t really the creative sort, but I was good at modding. With my magical and alchemical know-how I¡¯d be able to turn all my purchases into functional gear. To my surprise when I went to the counter to pay the old shop smiled at me. I smiled back, but couldn¡¯t help feeling slightly skeptical, as I always did when people suddenly changed their minds about something, or acted opposite my expectations. All the clothes went into my inventory and my next stop was an inn. I asked a few people on the street for the name of a good one and then verified that goodness with the archive. Sifting through two that were actually only so-so and louse ridden and one that was actually a trap set up by human traffickers, before finding a place known as the Jack and Nory. A small little tavern and inn that just happened to be at the mouth of the city''s red light district which was extra convenient for me, because I¡¯d yet to fill this month''s quota to avoid being overtaken. One step took me to the door of the inn, the street were crowded enough that no one noticed the sudden appearance of a single undersized boy in their midst. Though, my abilities would have hopefully kept most from noticing even if the streets had been empty. I entered the inn, surprised to find that it was exactly as good as the lady who¡¯d recommended it had said. The walls were covered in a pleasant pastel wallpapering. The floors were cleanly swept hardwood. The music that came from the radio was a soft-rock, in the style of old earth¡¯s American Nineteen fifties. The noise level was loud but the good kind of loud. Born from bunch of people having soft conversations at the same time, rather than a handful of people making a lot of noise all on their own. While I was aware that this might have just been the consequence of it still being just a little past noon, I was starting to find myself feeling more sure about staying here. ¡°Welcome to the Jack and Nory, Can I get you anything, dear?¡± said the hostess. Coming over to where I was, as I was heading towards her counter. ¡°Er...Yeah. I¡¯d like to get a room please, and uh...a bath...and a meal.¡± said I. She just barely blinked, still keeping an even and professional smile as she looked at me. ¡°Sure, thing. That¡¯ll be cash up front though.¡± said the hostess. ¡°Right. How much?¡± said I. ¡°A room is thirty. A meal is ten for the standard. A bath would be five. So it¡¯s forty-five dollars, hon.¡± I nodded. Deciding that the price was reasonable as my archive found them to be relatively competitive with what other inns in town were charging. Not that I¡¯d have tried haggle even if they weren¡¯t. ¡°Um...okay, in that I¡¯d like all that for um...uh...three nights, I think.¡± said I. ¡°Sure thing, in that case it¡¯ll be one thirty-five.¡± said the hostess. I nodded again and then I paid her. She gave me a receipt and key and then I went up to my room to wait for the inns one bathing room to be free. Arc 2: Chapter 8: College for Knowledge After letting the archive do a little research on the Martial Sects and School of Sorcery, I now knew that there was a belief that such establishments had always been. Or maybe I¡¯d always known it, but I knew about it from back in the days before those sects and schools had actually started to be a big deal. Their power and status in today¡¯s society was such that it was easy to see how one could be made to believe that the groups had simply always existed. Not sprouting anew after the war that nearly wiped out our species. In this theory the groups would have existed on the old earth. Operating in secret, as either small, exclusive cloisters that operated separately from the rest of the world, or as shadowy cabals that had come built into the foundations of the old worlds most prestigious organizations. Be they schools, governments, or corporate bodies. I for one wasn¡¯t one of those who held this belief, but then again, I willingly admit that, that was more due to a refusal to believe that before Agartha, humanity had, had any mystics and ascetics with supernatural powers amongst their ranks. For me, earth was and would always be, a world where physics and the laws of nature could be trusted to act rationally. A world where the only monsters were those that hid within the heart of man. And the only magic was the magic of a child¡¯s smile¡­.period. The archive seemed to disagree with me on this, and for once I was choosing to disagree with it. Whatever their origins were after the end of the old world and full activation of the leveling system the schools and sects really came into their own. They¡¯d already been expanding beforehand with Agartha¡¯s rich magical atmosphere lending them credibility and lots of new blood. But after the bombs fell, it was a whole new ball game entirely. The first good thing that came to them was the leveling system, which to them might well have seemed like manna from heaven. A magical tool that simplified and amplified all cultivation techniques, and magical training, by simply making it a matter of accumulating mana. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. In this new Agartha the word ¡°bottleneck¡± was only used for actual bottles. Raising one power was a smooth process that only required sufficient mana levels in the environment and time, to do. Raising one understanding in a technique just meant sticking with it as the leveling system seemed to have some boosting effect on ones magical and martial comprehension and the periphery effects of leveling up on intellect meant that so called geniuses could be readily created. The second benefit that the end of the world brought these groups was the fact that for the longest time, they were one of the few surviving groups to exist in the post-apocalyptic world. They and the churches and a few other small groups, were the ones who were largely responsible for the recovery of civilization. Naturally that meant that once everything was up and running again, they got to enjoy a hefty amount of authority in the new world that they¡¯d built. Thus it was, that in the current age, belonging to a decent sect within a school was like belonging to an entirely different social class. A sect or school was like a country within a country. In truth the more powerful sects and schools tended to keep a handful of countries in the ¡°secular¡± world, as subordinates. Controlling the royal houses and recruiting students from the countries¡¯ young nobility As for why I suddenly was doing so much research on sects and schools, well that was because I was starting to consider the idea of joining one. Actually I was beyond the consideration stage that was why I was here in Kensett City. After making up my mind to make the best of this new world, it occurred to me that perhaps my former ¡°arms-reach¡± approach had been a mistake. Just joining a guild or getting a job somewhere wouldn¡¯t cut it. I decided that instead of just being a complete free agent, I¡¯d see about becoming a part of something instead. Joining a faction that was actually a proper faction. Sure, it wouldn¡¯t be as trouble free as being a freelance with the hunters, who still existed in this age, by the way, but I figured it¡¯d pay off in the long run. Looking the fact that I was probably going to be around for a while, if not for an eternity, it wouldn¡¯t hurt if I tried to work on making some friends in this new Agartha, or failing that, it wouldn¡¯t hurt if I got some underlings. Many hands made for shorter work after all. In both cases that would mean having some kind of status. As my current status was that of some no name urchin from out of the wastes, if I wanted to eventually become somebody who mattered, the best chances of that would mean joining a school or a sect. Which brings me back to why I was in Kensett. The little city was a small place, built up at the edge of a dark forest in the Tri-American Midwest. That forest was an enchanted forest, full of magical beasts and magical flora, the kind of place that sects and schools of sorcery tended to set up for use as a holy land. Perfect for rearing new talents. With the size of the forest, it was big enough for multiple such institutions to share. Though whether they were doing so willingly or whether they were doing so because it was the only way for them to hold the forest for their own use and resist the pressures of the bigger sects and schools, was up to debate. All I cared about was the fact the three mage schools and two martial sects that made up the Blackwood Union had the right amount of repute and prestige for my purposes. They also just happened to be holding open recruitment. Arc 2: Chapter 9: Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three On a momentous Tuesday in Kensett city, a great crowd was gathered. It centered around the biggest of the city¡¯s parks and spilling over onto the market streets, where the vendors were hawking their wares as if it were all one big event. Police men patrolled to keep the peace and empty out a few areas where people were bunching up and getting just a tad too agitated. The streets were covered in banners and streamers and multi-colored magical lights hung in the air. Musicians played on a stage that stood nearby, the sound of their instruments boosted by a mixture of magic and regular speaker systems. Today was the day that the six schools that ruled this land and held sway of this kingdom and all its nearest neighbors came to recruit new students from the populace. Today was the day that I¡¯d been waiting for and I¡¯d come dressed to impress my clothes cleanly pressed, my tie done up in a neat Windsor. At the center of all this excitement stood twenty men and women, who stood apart, heads held high. Some of them wearing looks of arrogance many of them just looking lofty and above it all. As their leveller status plus their membership in the schools and sects, did in fact put them in a whole other layer of social strata then the surrounding people. These were the examiners and their assistants. At the head of this group was a powerfully built old man with a supercilious look and eyebrows that tufted white, like angular clouds. He stepped forwards with his arms crossed, his aura flowing out of him magnifying his voice as he bellowed. ¡°All applicants step forward!¡± The crowd went wild, some people clapping without knowing what they were clapping for. Many of them hugging for no reason. A lot of them kissing their spouses and kids for no reason. The huge mass of people split into two smaller masses, one made of eager, anxious and expectant parents and one made of their eager, anxious and expectant kids. I was part of that latter group. I was surprised to find myself feeling nervous. Mentally I was at least nearly a thousand years old right now, but I¡¯d just suddenly been plunked back to my first day of middle-school where my heart was up in my throat and I just ¡°knew¡± that the other kids could tell that there was something wrong with me, just by looking at me. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. There were six schools in the Blackwood Union. The Iron Oak Martial Sect, the Five Fairies School of Mages, The Golem Stone Martial Sect, the Clear Flowers Academy for Witches, Saint Undine¡¯s Academy of the Occult, and the Silent Glenn School of Sorcery. Of those six, I couldn¡¯t get into Clear Flowers because it was a girls-only academy. I didn¡¯t ¡°want¡± to get into the Golem Stone Sect since there were some hanky things going on with the school¡¯s golem production. Plus the sect also moonlighted as mercenary company sending off a large number of its weaker students to serve as soldiers for hire. Either they toughened up, or they died. Mostly they died. The sect would use the bodies that were sent back, to make humanoid golems. Which surprisingly enough ¡°wasn¡¯t¡± what was wrong with the school¡¯s method of golem production. Basically there were only three schools here that I wanted to join, but the good news was that I was fairly confident in my ability to have my pick of the litter. All I had to do, was to do good during the trials. ¡°The first trial, will be beginning now. All applicants must separate into six lines.¡± shouted a woman with sky blue hair and silvery green robes. Again there was applause for no reason, again the crowd fell over itself to do as their super powered superiors had asked. We split up into six lines, each line of children heading towards six stands where a mage or cultivator was waiting. Standing by a giant foot tall mass of magical quartz. I know those stones from the time I¡¯d forced to more or less absorb an encyclopedia of magic minerals and materials. That quartz was called Seer¡¯s Stone. It could be processed for use in making high level scrying mirrors but in its raw form it could used to measure magical power. That was the first step in a nutshell. A simple test to see how much magical energy the children had. The kids whose mana levels were too weak wouldn¡¯t be able to make the stones light up at all. They were all immediately sent back to their parents. Looks of disappointment etched on their faces. Stronger kids would make stone light up brighter than the kids with average mana levels. The strongest kids, the special cases would make the stones shine with different colors. I wasn¡¯t trying to stand out too much, so I stopped after letting the light shine just a little brighter than the average. This was pretty much what all the tests were like, for the student recruitment. It started with tests for mana level, mana flexibility and magical affinity. Then the testing progressed to some more standard stuff like tests for literacy, and basic math. Ending with a zig-zag back towards the magical that began with some kind of crystal puzzle box and ended with a standard appraisal, like you¡¯d get at a bank or a town hall. Of all the tests it was the appraisal that made me the most nervous. Though the fact that one¡¯s attainment slots wouldn¡¯t show in a regular mid-level appraisal saved me from being given away as an immortal, I was concerned that my talent points and abilities would make me stand out. Luckily, the examiner in charge of my line didn¡¯t seem to give me much more than a second look. He asked me name and then he asked my top two schools of choice and then he let me go back to the main crowd, like he¡¯d do for a kid with parents. I guess I overestimated myself. While ninety-five talent points was kind of lot, when you considered that average person had been ten and fifteen, but in the world of sorcerers and cultivators, maybe I wasn¡¯t such hot stuff after all. Actually, now that I thought of it, my archive was aware of at least fifty beings in a thousand mile radius of me with talent levels above mine, so maybe I was just being too self-conscious. In any case, I got through the testing and now eagerly waited to see which school I would get into. Arc 2: Chapter 10: Stupid Freshmen Raymone Miller of the Golem Stone Sect, sat at his makeshift desk, with a water bottle filled with something just a little stronger than water at his side. He sat with a binder and clipboard, staring out at the screaming crowd and the lines of fidgeting, anxious youngsters. Common folk and their common children, all of them hoping that today was the day that their family was pulled up from amongst the rest. In truth, he wished them all best even as he scorned them, for being na?ve and for being common. At the very least they were for most part, much less arrogant and annoying than the noble children and their families were, when it came time for recruiting new students from the upper crust. And Raymone would admit that the first time he¡¯d come out here as an examiner his heart had swelled with pride as he saw how wild the people went when they saw their resident levellers. He¡¯d remember how he¡¯d stood with his chest puffing out just a little. Bolstered by the knowledge that people from the all the nearest cities, town and villages had come just to see him. Just to join his union, just to join his sect.. He¡¯d remember sharing in their excitement and fanaticism as he watched them cheer. Pleased to see them applaud the super powered protectors who kept their lands safe from monsters, spirits and other creatures of the outer-dark. However seventy-two cities times sixty-one years later, and the glamour of it all had long worn out. Now it was just a job, one that he couldn¡¯t wait to get over with. Sitting up here as a senior-examiner was irritating even if it wasn¡¯t exactly labor intensive. The chairs the commoners provided were always too deep and too stiff backed at the same time. An unpleasant mixture of hard and soft. Speaking of unpleasant mixtures of hard and soft, Raymone dissatisfaction with the position had only deepened as his cultivation did. As his level rose so did the overall integrity of his constitution. Which was a fine thing to have if one were going into battle, but was a troublesome thing to have for ¡°other¡± activities. There were reasons beyond lifespan and lifestyle for the general lack of marriages between levellers and non-levellers. Ultimately it was just more proof that playing the part of an examiner, was a young man¡¯s game. That Raymone could no longer safely indulge in the occasional romp with a star struck town-girl, or one of the older, more desperate examinees was just a sign that it was time for him to hang up his lanyard and stamp. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Even if the schools did need a few Seniors to be in charge of the recruitment process, it didn¡¯t necessarily need to be him. Thinking of it, he actually up his mind right then and there. After this last tour he¡¯d go and speak to his Sect Elder, his direct superior. Or maybe he¡¯d have his grandfather, the honorable and immortal Jerald Miller speak to the Elder. Raymone¡¯s talents were better spent, watching over one of the sect¡¯s ancillary schools. Magnanimously guiding their energetic, ardent and often oh-so-bendy young talents. And if ¡°that¡± job turned out just as boring as this one was, then at least Raymone could be bored in comfort and suitable inebriation, just as he prefered. He appraised one examinee and gave them a pass. He appraised another examinee and gave them a fail. He appraised a third examinee, one well-apportioned for her age and gave her a wink and a maybe. She frowned, half confused, half-disgusted and flounced off, but Raymone was willing to bet that she might actually come by once things quieted down. And who knows maybe he wouldn¡¯t break this one. If she lived and she pleased him well, he had enough integrity in him that he would indeed change the results as agreed and recommend her to either the clear waters school, or Saint Undine¡¯s. Finally there came a fourth student, skinny, dark skinned, red eyed, pink hair. The hair and eyes hinting at some kind of rare bloodline if they were real and not just more the cosmetic magics that was getting increasingly popular these days. He sat, looking like a little bureaucrat in his pressed shirt and tie, his air just slightly too calm, bordering on self-assured. It made for an odd enough impression that old Raymone actually bothered to take a second look at the names that he had recorded on his clipboard. ¡°*Ahem*...And you¡¯re known as ¡°Samhain¡± are you?¡± said Raymone. The boy had the grace to blush, his dark skin growing even duskier. ¡°Er...yes, sir.¡± said the boy. ¡°How¡¯d you like the trials?¡± said Raymone. ¡°Um...they were fine...um a bit hard maybe.¡± Raymone glanced at the boys results from the prior testing. Slightly more than average mana levels, slightly more than average mana flexibility. He¡¯d slipped up with the literacy and mathematics, by scoring above the expected mean though. As for the tests for magical affinity, the first more obvious test for affinity only showed an affinity for fire and light. While the second test, the maze-crystal test for leveller potential showed a high aptitude for using all the elements and a high chance that the boy might end up being an immortal, though he¡¯d have to ¡°die¡± or at least go through the baptism of light, after his hundredth level, for that to be confirmed. ¡°Hard huh¡­.so you don¡¯t think you did well?¡± said Raymone. ¡°Um...no...I uh, I ¡°think¡± I probably might have done okay. I just meant it was kind of hard.¡± said the examinee Raymone looked at the examinee with a look of amusement, wondering exactly what rock this little princeling had crawled out of. Purposefully scoring low during the trials. Purposefully hiding his potential. Using an obvious alias. And then there was the smile, that cocky, self-important, self-assured, smirk. It was obvious that the boy was either a lazy member of current nobility who didn¡¯t want to shine too much or a member of some fallen clan that been told to lay low. If that was the case, then Raymone would help the brat, kindly downgrading his results without even bothering to give the boy a proper appraisal. If Raymone was right, then the boy would likely climb up the ranks of whatever sect or school he¡¯d gotten into regardless of the old man¡¯s meddling. If he was wrong then...fuck it...neither of the boy¡¯s top school choices was the Golem Soul Sect and besides that, ¡°luck¡± was also a type of strength. ¡°Well good news kiddo, you¡¯ve passed.¡± chuckled Raymone. ¡°Um...thank you, sir.¡± said the boy. Arc 2: Chapter 11: Silent Glenn Deep in the black wood, hidden from the eyes of the mortal factions was a city of wires and magic. An ornate construction that not only equalled the glories of the old Agartha but surpassed them. Filled with tall crystalline towers and castles made of enchanted stone. For a man with little talent in magic they might think they¡¯d wanted into a fairyland, an abode for the strange and fae. A land of flying men, flying cars, talking animals and thinking machines. For the cultivators of the world this sight would just be recognized as that of your average mid-rank sect. Silent Glen Academy possessed a main campus that was roughly two thousand, three hundred and fifty-two square miles in length. Roughly the size of a small country or large duchy in the secular world. Much more crowded than in the secular world, the space was filled with sorcerers and mages of all shapes sizes, and ages. All of them going about their days. All of them, in their own roundabout way, continuing in their pursuit of power. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Here, protected by the thickly enchanted walls, that were in turn fiercely defended by a leveller elite guard and a force of high-grade enchanted golems, this was one place where need not fear gathering, for fear of inviting calamity. The Silent Glenn School of Sorcery was all but a city in name. Both open and closed in their approach to things, whether willing or unwilling they eventually became the second most advanced, third largest, and fourth wealthiest of all their peers. Looking around at the glitz and bright lights of the campus, and the aura of vitality that hung in the air, it might have seemed laughable to call such a great sect poor. However the truth was, that rearing a sorcerer, rearing a leveller, was as expensive as developing and building your average super weapon. After all, if it were cheap and easy to do, why would people be so ecstatic to see their children get into the sects and schools? Recruitment by a sect or school was both an assurance that one would be heavily invested in. Naturally such investments had to be paid back, thus a student was expected to return to lend time, labor and eventually their name to the sect as they were reared up and climbed to glory. I was bummed to find that I¡¯d seemed to have overestimated how well I¡¯d done in testing. Barely managing to pass as an outer-student. Which in the terms of sects and schools, and the higher education in general, was akin to being somewhere between a wait-listed student who could eventually get into school if there was space, and being a probationary student who was in danger of failing out. From what the archive could gather, I would be given the least regard and the least investment. I would also be just a single step above being one of the school¡¯s servants and slaves. Made to do the menial jobs that they wouldn¡¯t want to give to their real students, whose time was better spent in cultivation or study. Still on the bright side at the very least I¡¯d gotten into the my first choice pick for schools. And I didn¡¯t think it would be ¡°too¡± hard to get to a proper student status. Probably... Arc 2: Chapter 12: In Over My Head A group of a hundred or so youths stood as a unified force. Dressed in black and green sweatsuits. Armed with a mixture of sports equipment, farming tools and a few rare low level magic-tools. They stood at the midpoint of a one-thousand acre plot of land. Charging in their direction from just a short distance away, was a dust cloud. A storm of clicking mandibles and buzzing wings. As it grew closer, the forms within that dust cloud grew clearer. Locusts. Frenzied, carnivorous grasshoppers as big as your average man. They jumped and flew, trampling one another in their haste to consume all that lay in the field before them. A blockade of trembling teens and tweens was all that stood in between the locusts and a garden filled with magically potent vegetables. Finally, the two forces met, and it was almost instantaneous chaos. The students were almost instantly overrun. The more stout hearted children swung wildly while being bit scratched and kicked. The more craven, read: rational, children broke and ran, screaming. Getting halfway across the field to the safety of the nearest garden sheds, only to be chased down and buried by the more scattered portions of the swarm. The Prefects, the young captains of this little troop, shouted orders that went largely ignored. A fair portion of their orders getting lost beneath the deafening drone of the insects¡¯ beating wings and the keen screams of their young wards. I was included amongst this group of unfortunate enlistees. I was somewhere in the middle of the vanguard, holding a hoe in my hands. Spinning it like a parade leader¡¯s baton. I wielded the hoe like a polearm, striking down two or three locusts with each frantic swing. Choosing a tactic of popping up at different points in the field, for the sake of A)keeping from being swamped in predatory insects and B)getting caught in the crossfire of my teammates. Those where older had learned just barely enough magic to be able to shoot out bolts of heat and cold. The Prefects, would shout at whoever shot out a burning bolt for fear of the garden being set ablaze. As for the bolts of cold, those usually resulted injury for either the shooter, or some random unfortunate. While the ice bolts ¡°were¡± effective, a single falling frozen locust amounted to a calamity for whoever it fell on. Ditto for the clumps of freaked out semi-frozen locusts that would usually be hit when the blasts went wide. Dropping down on a few poor unfortunates then rolling over whoever was nearby as they tried to pull themselves loose. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. The very worst of this chaos and cacophony was caused by those kids who¡¯d brought firearms with them when they¡¯d left to come the academy. Fighting magic beasts with conventional weaponry as if that were something that had ever really worked in the world at large. As things degraded further into bedlam shooters gained a troubling tendency of hitting their fellow students more often than they hitting locusts. While I wasn¡¯t out there trying to play hero and had no intention of giving away any of the tricks that were up my sleeve, I did try to save those I could. I wasn¡¯t a monster after all. Watching my fellow student get picked up and carried off to who knows where, or get mauled right there on the field was not my idea of a good time. Unfortunately after three weeks of being here as on Outer-Student of the Silent Glenn School of Sorcery, that was a sight that I¡¯d grown somewhat accustomed to seeing. By the time the whole fiasco was over and the last of the locusts had either flown off with their prizes or been killed, I was clear on two things. The first was that our class now had thirty-eight less students than we¡¯d started with. The second was that I had absolutely underestimated how hard this whole going back to school thing was going to be. I had been na?ve in coming here. Once they¡¯ve grown up Adults tend to look back at their childhoods and think of it as the most low stakes, carefree time of their lives. They forget that stakes are a relative measure, and that what seems easy in hindsight is harder at the moment. If you¡¯d asked me, I would have thought I was better than that. I would have thought I would be wise enough to know better, but it seems I was wrong. Even ¡°I¡± had fallen into the trap of thinking going back to school would be easy because after all, it was ¡°just school¡±. I won¡¯t bother speaking about the social aspects of High School. My admittedly low EQ and my tendency, read: skill, of avoiding both people and trouble were enough to assure that I stayed a relative nobody in school. Known by none, but bothered by none...at least for the most part. I would eventually become that guy that comes to the reunions and has people mistaking him for one of the facility staff, or some other student¡¯s plus one. Or just some person who came off the street to get out of the rain. ¡°Wait, you were in *Blank* Academy to? Really¡± And ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir this is for members of *blank*- middle-school/highschool/university onl-...oh, my apologies. Er, have a good time.¡± I¡¯ve heard both of those a lot. Rather than speak of the social, just the academic and societal pressures that came with schooling were bad enough. That need to succeed. Hearing everyone with a mouth telling you that this was ¡°the¡± time to make whatever one was going to make of oneself come together. Simultaneously frustrating and frightening, to this day, I still don¡¯t understand how you can tell someone that the period they are living in is the most life or death, and the most fun, period they¡¯d go through. Worse yet was the pressure to fit in. Which sounds like more social stuff but is more social adjacent. Fitting in had nothing to do with family, friend, or enemies. It had nothing to do with ones connections with the world though it could be helped if one had such connections. Fitting in was a survival skill, one carried over from the plains of the Sahara onto the sidewalks, classrooms and office floors of modern civilization. It was camouflage. It was the ability to combine clothing, conduct and a believable smile to put the rest of the world at ease. All these things, were included part and parcel with going to school and I¡¯d forgotten how hard it all was. Or maybe because it was an entirely different world, and because these ¡°schools¡± were closer to military and political superstructures rather than actual educational facilities, it didn¡¯t click that I would actually be going to school. So there I was, a new student, an outer-student, on the very lowest rung of the Silent Glenn microcosmos, just barely above the school¡¯s servant and slaves. It wasn¡¯t till I was there, partitioned out into one of fifty-one first year classes, set up with a low grade dormitory and a spiffy set of uniforms, that it hit me. ¡°Fuck it¡¯s High School all over again¡­¡± Arc 3: Chapter 1: Wunderbar A castle was erected deep within the void of space. A gray construction made by gray automatons. Covered with bright green grass and filled with a bright blue atmosphere. All of this was then enclosed within a silver-gray bubble that separated it from the universe that lay beyond. Eventually people came, many of them wearing checkerboard gray suits. At the top of the tower there was a man, dark eyed, dark skinned, dark haired, his face so beautiful that it was left somewhat in doubt whether he was actually a man. His look so young that it was hard to believe that many of the people who came to visit him here in this office were his grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. His descendants who¡¯d multiplied over the eons. That man currently stood at the window of his office in the topmost floor of the tower. Looking down at the empty universe below. Gazing at a world with only a single planet floating within it. His expression was unreadable, but any who knew him would be able to tell that ¡°that¡± was just because he generally never wore any expressions. Wearing the same somewhat puzzled, somewhat bored look for most of his adult life. Those same people were usually able to decipher the old man¡¯s moods through other means. Known by many names, Emperor, Asphodel, Mister Gray, King of Nothing, Lord of Despair, he was an inscrutable to man to all but those who truly knew him even the littlest bit. By which point he became an open book. Unable to hide even if he wanted to. Not that he ever did. One such person was currently standing with him in the room right now. A woman with elegantly styled purple-pink hair, a robust build, densely muscular build and eyes that were bright enough to make the stars look dim. She sat wearing the incongruous combination of sundress, and an armored fur-lined coat. Seated on a couch, looking every inch of the empress she was. ¡°Ah Billy, is all this really that exciting to you? Watching all the boring old stars get eaten up by one little world.¡± ¡°Mn? Maybe¡­¡± said the man. Briefly glancing at his wife before his attention returned to the mostly emptied universe outside. She clucked her tongue slightly annoyed that he¡¯d looked away. As Empress she had countless worlds to look after. Watching over them even if she¡¯d long ago left ruling over that section of Asphodel Imperium to her children and their descendants. It wasn¡¯t easy for her to get away as she had. And then when she¡¯d finally managed to do so and sought to surprise her royal husband she¡¯d found that he was off on another of his pet projects. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Which meant having to track him down. Now she¡¯d tracked him down and he was still focusing on the project instead of her. She shook her head, gracefully sliding off the couch and draping her arms around the man. Looking every inch the twenty-something year old she¡¯d been when the two of them had finally gotten together. ¡°Bill-lly¡­.Come on hon, this isn¡¯t the first wonderland you¡¯ve watched getting born. Hell, we even have a few back home. Come out and play with me, huh? I haven¡¯t done anything fun in ages.¡± ¡°Billy¡± stood still staring out the window. He didn¡¯t move, but he didn¡¯t say no either. Standing in the woman¡¯s embrace, letting her rest her weight on him, while his thoughts dully lurched forwards. Moving like the ticking gears and cogs of a great clock. On the one hand, she was right, on the other had she was right¡­ and yet he found himself feeling reluctant to leave. There was a reason that he¡¯d set up the this observational tower. There was a reason he¡¯d so cheaply and so easily agreed to help the assembled forces of Council of Chaos and Order set up the leveling system that now governed the power levels for this universe. Every wonderland was different. Be it the causation, the way they spread merging with and or engulfing their entire universe. Their innate natures. They were called Wonderlands for a reason. Even the gods, angels and devils took interest in them. A wonderland was a heaven under the heavens. Filled with endless possibilities despite being anchored in the realms. Uniquely fascinating in a way that could grab the attention of even a man who¡¯d seen nearly all that the cosmic sea had to offer. And yet...a man had to have priorities there was a reason that he and his wives had lasted so long together. ¡°Um...okay...what do you want to do.¡± The woman smiled tightening her grip around the man¡¯s shoulders, a slightly undignified, plainly lascivious look spreading across her lovely green-brown face. ¡°Well...I-¡± There was a knock at the door and the woman¡¯s look fell flat. She remained on the man¡¯s back, both literally and figuratively as a robotic servant opened the door. ¡°A man is here to see you, sir. He¡¯s your priority appointment. You said we should show him in.¡± Billy looked at the crystal faced butler and then he looked to his wife and then he looked to the butler. ¡°Er, we can let Richie handle it. I¡¯m pretty sure I knew what the guy¡¯s here for. We can let him borrow a few the Nihilus Guard troop, to get the results he¡¯s looking for.¡± said Billy. Slightly bemused at missing the chance to hassle his friend and haggle for a bit, still aware of what was most important here. ¡°Yes, sire.¡± said the Butler. Bowing deeply as the royal couple abruptly faded from his view. Teleporting to whichever pleasure planet the woman had wanted to go to. ***** Meanwhile several floors below, on the lush green plaza of the tower, Red Moon, the man who smiles, grinned to himself. Pleased to see the lights go out on the top floor window of the tower. He was aware of what likely happened and aware of his abandonment, and ecstatic about it. He¡¯d come expect to have to pay and arm and a leg for the use of some his old friend¡¯s most powerful creations. It seemed that it had been a good decision on his part to let her royal Highness Elena vi Asphodel know of her husband''s whereabouts, before asking for the meeting. She got what she wanted. Red Moon got what he wanted too. Billy might have gotten slightly screwed over, but hey the guy was used to it, and wasn¡¯t likely to be upset, considering the methodology. Besides, Red Moon had a feeling that he¡¯d probably end up spitting up today¡¯s savings on some other purchase from the Lord of the Asphodel Imperium. A seventy-Five percent discount to friends and family was fairly worthless when all the things that one was trying to procure were things that could easily be considered priceless. Arc 3: Chapter 2: Nose to the Grindstone Inside my mouth exploded a taste that was like pennies, the salty, sweet flavor of blood and saliva and pain. I flipped head over heels as I slammed through the entirety of a planet, landing on the desolate surface of a distant moon. As I groggily and fruitlessly peeked out from only one eye to see if playing dead would stop the beat down I saw the future-me glaring. His look unimpressed and peeved. Next to him was a faceless humanoid being made of silvered nothingness and chrome coated power. Its arms folded behind its back like a courtier of an imperial. ¡°Dude, we¡¯re already on the same page. I¡¯m you, you¡¯re me. Do really you have to kick the shit out of me, every time you want to ¡°teach¡± me something?¡± I grumbled. Opening both eyes since it was already clear that we both knew that I¡¯d been faking. Future-me just shrugged. The bones in his neck clicking faintly as he rolled his shoulders. ¡°Honestly, yeah. But then again, would you be going easy, if the roles were reversed? Even if you knew that this short but intense moment of suck right now, could save you a whole bunch of suck in the future?¡± I sighed, thinking it over. ¡°...Shit.¡± ****** Two years had passed since I¡¯d become a student in Silent Glenn. Two surprisingly un-terrible years. I was fifteen now, looking a lot like the crazy tall scarecrow I¡¯d been during my first life. Though all the physically activity the school had use outer-students doing had served to fill me up a bit. After the first few horrific months where the school basically just tried to break us outer-students in, setting us to our strenuous, and highly hazardous duties, we all gradually began to adjust. Those who were either weak of body, mind, or will, all either died or quit. Underperformers who couldn¡¯t stay in the top seventy-five percent of the student rankings were all expelled. Quitters didn¡¯t get rides back to town, meaning that they had to travel through the deep dark forest and the wild wastes to get back to the secular world, quitting was a kind of death sentence in itself. Expelled students ¡°did¡± get rides back into town, for the sake of letting the school seem more magnanimous. If one was expelled at a high enough rank, one could even get a job out of it. Usually it¡¯d be a position doing running a business for the school. The rest of us, who were still in the running, got used to things and got stronger gradually growing in strength with use of school provided training meds and our use of the levelling system. Ridiculous as it sounds, eventually doing manual labor for the school, while killing the occasional monster-sized pest, just became routine. Part of the grind. The rest of our time was spent in self-study. While we technically weren¡¯t allowed to go to class with the rest of the student body yet, occasionally there would be public lectures that were open to everyone. Thus I got the life of routine that I¡¯d been looking for. Waking up in my tiny dorm room. Getting breakfast in the canteen. Working in the garden till a little past noon and then knocking off to meditate, study, or in my case teleporting out, to try to grind some levels in the forest. It wasn¡¯t the easiest life for a kid to have, but relatively speaking it was a peaceful life if you avoided all the drama with the student factions. Which I made damn sure to do. So long as I kept my results to par, and did what I had to keep my class ranking up, by the end of the year I¡¯d been in the top twenty-five percent of the outer-students. Meaning in the following year I¡¯d get to be in the bottom twenty-five percent of the inner-students. Having finally become a full student of the Silent Glenn School of Sorcery. I¡¯d have had no complaints about the last two years if my future-self hadn¡¯t shown up one day and started beating the shit out of me again. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. At first I thought I was dreaming, then later I thought I was losing my mind. He¡¯d appear drag me to some nightmare plane, a desolate universe of lifeless planets. Then he and the faceless, gray fleshed monsters that always accompanied him would start in on me. Dropping me into the cores of dying of stars. Smashing me with mountains and moons. Doing something to the flow of time and space to so my flesh would start to dissolve. Sometimes he¡¯d revert to more mundane things. Like the time he had a gaggle of, blank faced women with their eyes hidden behind plates that were screwed to their foreheads, chase me throughout a dead city that spanned an entire planet, while my ability to teleport had been stripped away. Their siren song letting them inside my head. Forcing me to do things to myself that no one should have to do. Or like the time he had a metal angel with wings made of swords chase me down the length of an endless hallway. Dicing me into bits and then dicing those bits into subatomic particles, like he¡¯d had an alternate me do in the good old days. Or¡­.like the time he somehow turned me into a moon and had a giant with a thousand hands sit in the center of the universe and try to swat me like a fly, while I shot myself from orbit to orbit. Using gravity magic to slingshot my way through the galaxies. While the gigantic shade would erase all those planets and stars with every errant wave of its hand. And then there were the times where the older Desmond, the future Desmond, would just take me on by himself. Mano-e-mano sometimes with powers, sometimes without. Of course, considering that he had the benefit of being me, but with all the skill, strength and experience that I¡¯d yet to gain, I always lost. He¡¯d wail on me, ranting either mathematics or physics or philosophy or about what kind of shitty person we were and I¡¯d just sort of have to take it, because like I said, he was stronger than me and like three times crazier than I am now. Worst of all is that I couldn¡¯t even get mad, he and I were ostensibly on the same page, on ¡°what¡± I needed to get done, if not the how. I needed to be stronger. So strong that nothing could ever touch me. That no one, man, monster or god, could mess with my life. Each little training session would go on for a subjective, five billion years. It literally became my life. I¡¯d emerge from them, feeling like the real world was some daydream I was having while my mind and psyche healed. I¡¯m pretty sure, there were some points in the last two years where my classmates would just find me catatonic, so in away its a miracle that I¡¯d been able to avoid getting expelled. Even more miraculous was the fact I¡¯d managed to make a friend in Silent Glenn. Another Outer-Student, by the name of Jack Hu. I have no clue how I did it, or why he¡¯d befriended my mostly zombified self, but I¡¯ll admit it was nice to have friends again. Even if it was some random kid who was maybe one, one billionth my mental junior. The kicker is that I didn¡¯t even get any titles, or abilities from it all. All I got was a better sense of how to use the abilities I currently had. I now understood how to use the mandates. The archive still had no clue, what the mandates were, and as far as I could see they were just all my old abilities with the addition of some black and white and occasionally some gray, particle effects. Speaking seriously, I was aware that that wasn¡¯t all that there was too them. I knew that much when I saw that the future-me had traded the grand surplus of abilities that I¡¯d had before for them. And having been so thoroughly drilled in their use as I¡¯ve been, I¡¯d be beyond dense to ignore the implications of abilities that were more overkill than the overkill I¡¯d had before. I now suspect that I had cheats that were less like cheats and more like a mod-kit for the black, white and gray portions of the universe. In the last two years, I¡¯d spent a subjective three quadrillion six hundred and fifty trillion years learning things of a nature that had me nervously awaiting the day that a very troublesome ¡°partially-omnipotent¡± appeared amongst my titles. I hoped it would never come but something told me that the day it appeared was all but etched in stone somewhere. The only limit to the breadth and scope of my abilities was the level of strength with which I could use to employ them and how much imagination I used in doing so. In other words, I was now potentially one of the most powerful creatures in this universe. The only limit to what I could do lay in how much stress my body and soul, could take. (And how much willpower I have to keep things from going out of control.) For that I¡¯d need to keep working, I¡¯d have to keep leveling. Which I guess really just means that not much had changed after all, except maybe I was just a teensy bit better at magic and fighting than I used to be. Or the very least I¡¯d grown taller and older, and that¡¯s something, right? ***** *My Current Status
Name: Samhain(Alias)
Age: 14
Level: 22
Race: Humanoid Existence
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Child of the Emptied Skies, Red Moon King
Talent: 100
Attainments:
Body 1242
Mind 414
Soul 414
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Mandate of Black, Mandate of White, Mandate of Gray, Devilish Good Looks
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
Arc 3: Chapter 3: Depressing Thoughts ¡°Fuck. This... Shit.¡± Those three words were flippantly released after having been imbued with all the weight in the world. Under their weight the very heavens were bowed. At their utterance the stars of the clear black night were made to fall. I didn¡¯t stop having to watch my words once my [Honeyed Tongue] and [Vox Empyrean] type abilities went away. Rather, I had to watch them more, whatever it was the ¡°Mandates¡± did to me or had given to me, I now even had to watch my thoughts. A thing that I was actually quite adept at after decades of state mandated therapy and expensive counseling sessions. Not to mention the subjective eons of what basically amounted torture from my future-self and his grey fleshed friends. Still, even with all that, I could still have off days. Bad days. Today was one such day. I¡¯d teleported to some ruin in the more empty parts of the continent to do some leveling. It was undead city, inhabited by wraiths and other ghostly undead. For whatever reason things just weren¡¯t coming together. Perhaps they were just slightly too outside my level. Or perhaps there were just too many of them...Or perhaps I¡¯d just gotten into this far too half-cocked and instead of taking a step back like a smart person I¡¯d done the dumb thing and instead chosen to try seeing if slamming my head against the problem in sheer stubbornness would resolve the issue. (It didn¡¯t¡­) In either case, things just didn¡¯t go right that day. I was nearly overwhelmed three times for every thirty-minute time span. Every time I tried to get a grip on things, the wraiths that inhabited the city would just ¡°poof¡± and ghost away. Disappearing before I could even think of what tract I should be thinking. I experienced the kind of aggravation one received when one was forced to play a broken game. Even though this was real life and not an actual game, this undead city was suckware. Unbalanced enemies. Unfair spawn rates. Random bits of environmental fuckery because the whole city was falling apart and the magic in the area was pretty corrupt. Meaning that if the buildings weren¡¯t falling apart, then they were coming to life and trying to eat me. If there was anyway you could imagine a game being broken, just short of it literally just refusing to work at all, that was how bad this particular hunting trip was going. Finally I lost my temper and teleported above the city, standing on the empty air as if it were solid ground. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Some minor bit of human decency made me ping the area with the archive to make sure there weren¡¯t any non-combatants hidden within the city. And only once I knew that there weren¡¯t, did I allow myself to lose my temper. ¡°Fuck. This. Shit.¡± All my frustration and irritation at this day and all the others I¡¯d experienced in the passing days oozed out of me. Materializing as a sea of twinkling black that fast-forwarded the evening into darkest night. Stars fell like arrows, a glittering barrage of astral energy that pounded into the city rocking the world and drowning everything beneath me in bright red and white fire. I listened to the roaring and screams that were released as the whole city died. The Genius Loci whatever greater spirit that had been control the city and the other spirits that dwelled within the city, howling as its existence was extinguished by the flames. I could feel it as my core magic levels surged from absorbing all that magical essence. My level went up by more than thirty levels right there and then. More than five years gain made in a single instant. I should have been ecstatic, I should have felt on top of the world. Satisfied and vindicated by the release that came with all that destruction and the gains I¡¯d made from that release. Instead I felt kind of terrible. It was like there was pit in my stomach that had been opened up and everything that had been inside had fallen through it. For the first time in ever, for the first time in both my lifetimes I¡¯d used my powers without restraint or any attempt of control and there was no pleasure in it at all. It was like the period after one moves out of one¡¯s parents house and into their own place. There was that moment where after one was living one¡¯s own for the first time and for the first time one decides to smoke, drink, masturbate in the open, whatever bit of mundane naughtiness that one would normally have to hide from roommates, siblings and parents. You did it and you expected to feel great but instead you just sort of felt empty instead because all it reminded you of was that you were on your own now and were supposed to a full grown adult. This was like expecting to cum and ending up crying instead. I felt childish and kind of ashamed and beyond that there was this bit of existential dread over what I¡¯d done. This jarring realization that I¡¯d just destroyed an entire city on a whim, in a fit of ill temper, and it wasn¡¯t really all that amazing because I was probably one of thousands, probably tens of thousands who could do so. And there were definitely hundreds of other beings on this planet who could do worse. It was all the awesomeness and anxiety of being a proud new gun owner and blowing your load for the first time. I was standing there, floating there, whatever, looking at the whole in the world that I¡¯d made. This huge crater that would eventually either became a canyon or lake. Rather than feeling proud exactly, in my head there was a litany of safety issues and thoughts of making sure that I didn¡¯t end up doing something similar by accident. As well as an awareness that there was a whole horde of other maniacs who were less trustworthy and sane than I was, with the same destructive capability. In other words I won the fight, but it ended up feeling like a loss. Like a burden. Like suddenly being gifted a big bowl of stress and anxiety from nowhere. It was like winning a yacht and realizing that you neither know how to drive the boat or know what to do with thing. Eventually ending up being forced to search up the details of how to sell the boat because otherwise you were probably going to have pay taxes on the thing. ¡°Tch¡­.Fuck¡­.¡± Arc 3: Chapter 4: Immature and Petty I teleported back to school. While most of the grand campus of Silent Glen was still alive and bustling, our end of the woods had grown quieter as the evening progressed. I appeared on the lawn outside my section of the outer-student dormitories. Compared to the rest of school our lodgings were more or less akin to tenement housing. The Rickety wood and plaster buildings were made up of dozens of one to two-person rooms, with two communal bathrooms placed on each floor. The water was often cold and more often then not you could hear ¡°things¡± skittering in the walls, but all in all it was warm, quiet and dry, which more or less meant I counted it liveable. I was still in an awful mood from destroying that city. It had seemed a good idea at the time but now I was regretting it. Now I was pissed off, and slightly teary eyed. Feeling somewhat alarmed because I¡¯d gained the [True Hero] title. Which meant that there¡¯d been a Demon king somewhere in that city. And if I my ping had missed a bloody demon king, a creature of a scale that varied from deep infernal to deep divine, and so powerful it should have been like missing a nuclear flash, while in a dark cave who knows what else I might have missed. So there I was in the very worst of moods. One worse than the mood that would always find me shortly before it was time for me to move to yet another foster family, who would be similarly unenthused to take on the cultist¡¯s kid. In any case, my mood was foul, and all that I wanted to do was get to my room, crawl into bed and sleep for three days, or however long it took for life to stop feeling so intolerable. I was well on my way to doing just that, when I realized that there was an obstruction, a barricade in my path, one made of teenaged bodies and teenaged hormones. There was a crowd of boys gathered by my door, from the lighter green of their green and black blazers I realized that a few of them of them were actually inner students. They were laughing, being noisy and obnoxious as teenagers tended to be whenever they were gathered in suitable numbers. I normally wouldn¡¯t have cared but as I said, they were gathered around my door and as I¡¯ve already belaboured, I wasn¡¯t in the best of moods. In my defense, I ¡°did¡± at least try to be civil about the whole thing, swallowing the deep and guttural growl, that tried to escape from out of the monster that lived in my core. ¡°Ah...um...hey guys.¡± said I. ¡°Huh? Hey, man how¡¯s it hanging?¡± said one inner-student. ¡°Uh...Good.¡± ¡°Yeah, er, we know we might be in the way, but our chief here is just trying to have a little chat with somebody.¡± said the student. ¡°Er...alright...Don¡¯t mind me I just want to get to my-¡± ¡°Huh? Didn¡¯t you hear me, dude? This hallway is off-limits for now. Come back later.¡± And normally I would have done just that. While obviously more than a little chat was taking place here it was none of my business. Honestly there was even the possibility of just pretending to back of and then teleporting in my room. Honestly I wasn¡¯t sure why I hadn¡¯t teleported into my room to begin with. Perhaps it was because I was just that tired. Mentally and magically drained from my trip to the city. Thus, instead of backing off, I persisted. ¡°Er...y-, yeah...I get that, but you see that¡¯s my room and I really kind of need to-¡± If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Dude, seriously? Just walka-¡± The guy was interrupted by one of his pals. ¡°Marco, is that dude still fucking here? You, Yo. My friend. Fuck off. Like all the way off. Your betters are busy right now. Now leave while I¡¯m still in a good mood.¡± Said another guy, who was also and inner student. Triangle eared with big blue eyes. A humankin. A Foxman. Again, I¡¯d like to stress the point that I wouldn¡¯t have normally done as I did were I not so exhausted at the time. I was no brute and didn¡¯t have a habit of coming into loggerheads with the children that I was currently calling my peers. Even if my ¡°body¡± was a teenager, my ¡°mind¡± was still that of a proper adult, thank you very much. Unfortunately, the guy hadn¡¯t just told me to fuck off, he showed me how to do so with a shove. Which was then reinforced and escalated, by one of the other boys who hadn¡¯t spoken yet pouring his drink over my head. The sticky, soda syrup seeping through my hair and into my clothes. *Bang* That was the sound of the kid who poured the soda on my head smashing into the wall next to us. *Bang* ¡°That¡± was the sound of the kid who¡¯d told me to fuck off, colliding with the wall on the far end of the hallway. ¡°Hey what the hell do you think you¡¯re doing ma-¡± *Bang* Was the sound of the guy who¡¯d actually pretty decent if slightly heavy handed, being sent flying into two of his fellows with enough force that at least one of them, was definitely going to need to make a trip to the school infirmary. The lads who were still standing tried to fight me¡­.That was ¡°their¡± mistake, but luckily for all of us, myself included, I didn¡¯t end up killing or maiming any of them. Finally the way to my door was clear, or at least it was almost clear. I saw one last guy standing there and pressed up against the door was a girl. ¡°Come on, babe...don¡¯t be like that.¡± said the guy. ¡°...Leave me alone, Vince.¡± said the girl. ¡°Are you serious? Why so cold? Didn¡¯t we used to play together when were kids.¡± said the guy. The girl just glared. Arms crossed over her chest as final buffer to the guy¡¯s encroachment on her personal bubble. I found that I¡¯d changed my mind, I did care, what was going on. I generally didn¡¯t care for most people, even my friendship with Jack was mostly one sided. However the neighbor girl, the girl who lived in the room across from mine was an exception. We didn¡¯t talk, and I didn¡¯t know her name. We barely ever met in the hallways and when we did our exchanges were always terse but polite. Part of why I liked her was the fact that we lived in close proximity and she still somehow managed to not be nuisance to me. I¡¯ve had bad luck with that. My last neighbors were literal monsters and my neighbors before that, in the non-exploded Agartha, were frat boys who went to the local college. Loud as all get up and chronic litterers. As a neighbor the girl was fairly decent. If she had friends, I assume they mostly hung out elsewhere. If she had a paramore, I was never assaulted by the sounds of their youthful intimacies. No ¡°ghostly¡± moans ever came through the wall, calling on the heavens or simply repeating the word yes. In other words, she was the perfect neighbor, or the very least a fairly adequate one. Which by my standards, equated to perfection. Occasionally we got each other¡¯s mail, but asides from that I often forgot she even existed. Which paradoxically made her memorable for me. Which was why I ended up changing my mind, if it was any other girl, any other hallway, any other time, or any other day, I might not have cared. But today was different and she in a very vague and distance sense was someone with which I was acquainted and they were leaning on my door. ¡°...Come on, Lou...Be my girl. You know I¡¯ll treat you ri-¡± said the guy. Blind to all the hints, signals, blearing signs and flags of rejection that the girl was putting out. I interjected, completely out of patience with the whole situation, and not seeing any reason to continue being unnecessarily courteous. ¡°...Move.¡± I said, following my words with a kick, because I too was apparently still young enough at heart that the hormones and adrenaline coursing through my veins had me amped enough to pick a fight with anything and everything. The guy wasn¡¯t expecting the kick because who expects a kick out of nowhere. So fell on his side and sort of rolled on the floor for a bit. Having dealt with nuisance, I turned to the neighbor, remembering my manners again. ¡°Please, move.¡± She moved. Staring at me. Her hands on her arms. Her look grim. She looked pissed, but not at me. And I know this because while I was bad with people, I was good at knowing when they were pissed at me. ¡°Motherfucker...Do you know who I am?¡± said the guy. Slowly pulling himself up off the floor. As a matter of fact I didn¡¯t know who he was, but I did know that in schools like this he could well be someone troublesome. Thus I stopped, turning back towards him, reluctantly releasing my grip on the handle of my door. A single footstep phased me to his position. I appeared in front of him. Glaring down at him. I found thoughts of murder dancing through my head that I had to spend a little time putting to rest. Then I stared at him some more and let my archive find out all about him. ¡°Alright, Vinny. Vincent Orwell Finch. Of the Finch Family. Son of Harold Finch, famous trader in the leveller markets, and Rebecca Finch-Mcknight from the Mcknights of the Green Rose Kingdom¡­.You¡¯ve surmised correctly in stating that I don¡¯t know who the fuck you are¡­.But tell me...Do you know who ¡°I¡± am? Hmm? How about this...While you¡¯re telling your daddy to look into it. Why don¡¯t you ask him to why he¡¯s letting the Rascovich play around so much, huh? It¡¯s all fun and games till someone gets hurt. And I¡¯m pretty sure, if you know who, finds out, the Finches will be included in that.¡± I was mostly bluffing, throwing whatever looked useful in his family¡¯s portfolio into his face, but I found a bit of satisfaction in watching the boy¡¯s angry look cool off. His haughty expression replaced by one of confusion and uncertainty. I shoved him away, letting him tumble into the friends that had been trying to get up from where I¡¯d dropped them. I turned back towards my door, ready to retreat for the next few evenings. The girl was staring at me, still looking tense, but looking less so than before. ¡°You didn¡¯t have to do that...I can handle my own issues.¡± she said. Face paler than usual. Her expression approximately five kinds of pissed. ¡°Right...I¡¯m sure you can...Next time, try ¡°handling¡± them on your side of the hall, yeah?¡± I grumped. Slamming the door shut after I¡¯d entered my little one room apartment. Arc 3: Chapter 5: Luxuriously Boring Weeks went by, I cooled off, chilled out, found my zen. I decided not to focus on the more troubling implications of the fact that I lived in a world where an absolute nobody like me could suddenly find themselves in possession of enough firepower to have the nations of any proper world threatening to make sanctions. Once my mood had readjusted itself and I found myself thinking clearly I realized that I¡¯d be remiss to leave such an easily exploitable option for growth on the table. In the end I decided that for now at least, while it was still relatively easy to gather mana and level up, I¡¯d use that route to quickly jack up my level. Once my level was up in the hundreds where it¡¯d be hard to level up even ¡°if¡± I erased a city or two I¡¯d go back to doing things the old fashion way. By then this method would more or less be useless anyway. The kind of beings and monsters I¡¯d have to hunt to level up at that point, were beings that might well only be ¡°emotionally¡± hurt, if their homes were firebombed. Somehow despite my former distress over destroying one city, I found that my psyche could easily accept the idea of erasing dozens more. It should have been puzzling, but it really wasn¡¯t, somehow I doubted that my unease was over the destruction of the city. I even doubted that it had anything to do with my worry that I¡¯d accidentally killed a few innocents. Bafflingly I ended finding that I wasn¡¯t all that worried about ¡°That¡± particular issue. At some point while I was ¡°sleeping it off¡± I¡¯d had a nightmare where it turned out that I¡¯d killed millions and was a bit unnerved to find that my primary response had been one embarrassment and annoyance. I wasn¡¯t repulsed in that dream so much as I¡¯d been flustered. As if I¡¯d been having a dream about coming into work in my pajamas. Or having to deal with a malfunctioning copy machine. Of course knowing that my mental response to the prospect of massacre was the wrong one, led to me angsting a bit over why my emotional response was so off. But I eventually got over ¡°that¡± issue as well. Mostly by forgetting about it, or more specifically, mostly by forgetting to care. Time passed and this time it ¡°did¡± actually cure of all that ailed me. By the end of my retreat into an inner world made of deep shadow, warped space and like so, so many comforters, I felt like a new man. Well actually, I felt like a teenager with delusions of having been a middled aged man, who had delusions of having become a billion year old immortal, but actually that was pretty normal for me. (That whole mind-body connection thing, is a killer.) Today I went back to being a proper outer-student. Despite my weeks of absence the supervisor didn¡¯t have much to say about it. I guess that makes sense, we outer-students didn¡¯t have classes and attendance was taken by the number of ,monster cores we collected during our work. My absence was its own punishment, I suppose, since it meant I¡¯d probably fallen a bit in the school rankings. I didn¡¯t particularly mind that. The Silent Glenn School was next to an enchanted forest after all, read that: Haunted Forest, for the secular folk. There would be always be a little extra work for someone who needed extra credit and didn¡¯t mind the hazard. Today though, was just a regular day of watching the garden for me. We had our usual scuffle with the demon bugs. Today¡¯s enemy, and if I was hearing it correctly, the enemy we¡¯d been facing for the last few weeks, was ants. Continuing in this school¡¯s tradition of having to deal with monster-sized insects the ants were also monster sized, ranging from the usual human sized common ants, to the truck-size soliders. Naturally they all came equipped with the typical ant-scale amplification of strength which meant it was pretty much over for whichever unlucky S.O.B. got caught by one. While with all us technically being mages, and thus being able to fight at a distance using spells or magic items that shouldn¡¯t have been too much of a problem, the situation had apparently been so dire that the creatures had been able to cut down the student body, by quite a margin. They even took Robbie. Who is Robbie, you ask? I don¡¯t know, but when Jack and the others in our class told me about it, I could see from their faces they were apparently all hit pretty hard by his passing, so I made sure to look similarly sad. At the very least, knowing that the age range for us Outer-Class Students was twelve to twenty-five meant that I could feel safe in shaking my head and somberly commenting that, whoever this person was, he had passed too soon. Had he been older than twenty-five he would have been expelled, sent out to help handle the school¡¯s business in the secular. In the end the school ended up having to send some inner-student seniors and a few students to deal with the ant problem. It turned out that things had been more dire than we thought and the ants had been built an underground which they were now cheekily trying to expand under the garden and the rest of the Campus City. Thus the need to send in a few strong mages and a few storage-tanks filled with soul cleansing fire to deal with the issue and several others that the school had been holding off on using actual resources to handle. What that meant for us outer-students, was that we were pretty much in the clear, the next few days would be a free day. I currently sat in the cafeteria, my back to a wall, my head bathed in the warm light of a nearby window. In front of me there was a bowl of savory lamb and cabbage stew. Across from me sat Jacky. Jack Hu, light tan skin, black hair, eyes that were bright with a good, if slightly twisted sense of humor. There was a slightly Asian cast to his features. He had the look of a fat person who became a skinny person and then filled out some. His body leanly muscular. His face slightly chubby. He was shorter than I was, but considering that I was already well into six feet after only turning fifteen, just like in my first life, I was assuming that most everyone else I met would be shorter than I was, and Jacky was probably of an average height, if not slightly taller. He sat with a magazine in his hands, reclining on the bench with a look of lazy boredom. The same look several others in our class were wearing. ¡°They¡± were impatient to get back to work, they¡¯d had fun not working for the first few days but now I could see a few were getting restless. They were outer-students, and did the work of outer-students, having lived doing so, for the last two years or so. If one did a job long enough, it became part of you, part of who and what you were. Being left without, was like suddenly losing some aspect of ones self-definition. I too would have also liked to get back to work, but for other reasons. I ¡°needed¡± to work to get my point level up, lest my grades fall below the top twenty-five percentile for the class. In my opinion the rest of the kids here just didn¡¯t know the beauty of a boring day. The good sort of boring, the stable, non-tense kind, was period where no one was coming to get you, nothing was gunning for you or trying to eat your face. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Such moments were meant to be treasured, for levellers like ourselves, they were frightfully rare things in this world. ¡°So, bro.¡± said Jacky. ¡°Nh¡­¡± said I. ¡°What¡¯s uh, new with you?¡± ¡°Mhm¡­.Nothing?¡± said I. ¡°Really? No mysterious powers awakening? No interesting scars? No call of destiny? No mutations? Not even a low level VD?¡± said Jacky. (The hell? Who the hell has VD these days? Aren¡¯t there spells for that?) ¡°No¡­.¡± said I. Wondering not for the first time why I became friends with this person who sitting across from me, wishing ill, and remembering that it was ¡°him¡± who¡¯d made friends with me. Declaring this at some point while I wasn¡¯t in a state to pay any attention to anything. ¡°Tch...You boring motherfucker¡­.¡± he said. Going back to his magazine, which seemed to be fifty percent softcore pornography and fifty percent bad Sorcery advice. ¡°Nh...Sorry...I guess.¡± He sighed. Behind us there was some chatter as some girls walked and not just any girls either. The outer-class, inner-class and core or ¡°elite¡± class, all had a few young ladies that were admired by its young men. Unlike the core and inner-class idols, the outer-class idols were at least technically in reach for the dreamy eyed brats, so they were well favored, and fiercely fought over behind the scenes. Jacky was no exception putting down his magazine for a second to stare before realizing that staring was a bad thing. Picking up the magazine and hiding behind it before he remembers exactly what kind of magazine it was. Sitting there, like an old school AI trapped in a logic loop, looking like a lost puppy. I found it amusing to watch and pointedly ignored the possibility that I¡¯d ever looked that stupid during my first life and first adolescence. The girls came in and then they left. Then every boy and a few of the girls, all breathed a sigh of relief while wearing wistful looks on their faces. Jacky turned to me, spinning around and placing both hands on the table. ¡°You saw that right? Please tell me you saw that?¡± ¡°Nh¡­.Saw what? You...making an idiot of yourself?¡± said I. The boy blushed. ¡°No not, that, you see that much every day, you goon. No I was talking about crazy Lisa Black looking right in my direction. What do you say? Do you think I have a shot?¡± said Jacky. ¡°I¡­.have no opinion on the matter.¡± I said. Sticking with the old by line. My body notwithstanding, as someone whose mental age was in the hundreds if not the hundreds of millions, I didn¡¯t really take interest in the whole crazy. In my eyes they were all kids and therefore were of zero interest or attraction to me. Plus this soup I was eating was actually pretty good, so I hadn¡¯t really been looking at anything other than Jacky making an idiot of himself. The boy moaned, the sound equal parts sexual frustration and normal exasperation at my lack of interest in most of the world around me. Then he got over it, twenty seconds later when he read something in the magazine that got him excited. ¡°Hey, hey, check this out!¡± he said. Turning the periodical in my direction. I looked at it, scanning its contents with my archive. There was a little semen on this magazine, hidden amongst the creases and the corners of the pages, hidden beneath the usual oils that were included within the average human finger print. Did Jacky know there was a little semen on this magazine? No...Probably not, the archive was saying that it wasn¡¯t ¡°his¡± semen. Just who did he borrow this from? Should I say something? A thousand thoughts went through my head. ¡°What am I looking at?¡± was the one that came out through my mouth. ¡°Huh? Don¡¯t you see it?¡± said Jacky. ¡°See what?¡± said I. ¡°The picture¡­.the picture, they sent a probe into outer atmosphere to get a picture of the planet.¡± I looked at the magazine and saw a sweeping landscape of vibrant, greens, reds and blues. I saw dark clouds that were actually floating islands. I saw deep seas made black by ominous bodies that lay beneath their depths. Then it clicked. ¡°It¡¯s not round.¡± said I. Jacky smiled, flashing his slightly jagged edged, pearly whites. ¡°Right, now you¡¯re getting it. It¡¯s not round any more, or at least not perfectly round. It¡¯s like an¡­.¡± ¡°Like a huge egg.¡± I said. Jacky snapped his fingers. ¡°Exactly. It¡¯s like a huge egg. The magical and scientific communities have going nuts about this. For the last six hundred years, astronomers have been noticing that there was something wonky happen with the stars, something wonky happening with the planets. Now while we don¡¯t have much proof about the first thing, we can finally be certain about the second one. Or at least you guys can be certain...¡± I knew what he was talking about. It had been one of the things the future-me would rant about while he was beating me senseless. The planet was expanding, it had been doing so for the last few thousand years and would continue doing so till it consumed most of this entire universe. It was something called the wonderland effect. ¡°So...uh, have ever heard of the Starter Towns, man.¡± said Jack. Looking slightly uncertain. Speaking with uncharacteristic softness. I nodded and for some reason he looked surprised, then I remembered that that wasn¡¯t what we ¡°Agarthans¡± called them. We called them foreigner towns, or stranger settlements. They were yet another thing the future-me would rant about. It seems as things settled down, and the system grew more stable, the various gods, angels, demons, spirits, fae, and celestials of the council of chaos and order had started looking to benefit from the situation. What we had here, was a world with infinite real estate, a near infinite supply of magic and divine energy and an automatic means with which to process it. Thus they were all given allotments. An allowance that permitted them to immigrate a number of beings from their own territories and dominions into this new world. Some, mainly the gods, fae and the demons, would send their children, descendants, and followers over, as this was the perfect place to raise a force and hone a future generation of young immortals. There were several gods using Agartha as a promised paradise for their warrior-worshippers. Turning it into a Valhalla of sorts. Others, mainly the angels and the celestials, would drop in slices of different populations. People from alternate realities. Alternate earths and other places. Usually it was from worlds that were about to go extinct. Saving a small percentage of the population of those worlds to stop their souls from being lost due to bureaucratic overflow. The cosmic neutrality of Agartha and the general abundance of land made this world perfect place for settling people in, or hiding them from outer forces. The fact that this world was protected by a very powerful force of neutral ¡°moderators¡± who¡¯d been set in place to protect the system made it even more so. As for what the Starter Towns were, they were what the people who monitored the system called the settlements set up for the outsiders. Like the starter towns set up in online games, they were always relatively safe compared to the rest of the world. And were made up of a territory in which the people within could be acclimatized to both the system and their new reality. There ¡°were¡± some limits though, such as the number for how many new levellers could introduction in total and the number for how many new immortals could be made or brought in. The protection for the starter towns only lasted so long as one stayed in the starter town and was beneath a certain level threshold. Plus the number of strangers for the entire planet, could never exceed twenty percent of the native Agarthan population. There were also some limits divine and earthly, that had been put in place to assure that Agartha stayed under Agarthan rule, for the protection of the system. ¡°Um...what about it?¡± I said. Trying not to give away exactly how much I knew. Jacky looked around, looking slightly nervous. ¡°So, like, my Mom¡¯s, mom, was from a starter town.¡± ¡°Huh? Really?¡± I was actually a bit interested. ¡°Yeah, she came over from this place called earth. Back then, everyone in the town, thought this world was like some big video game or something.¡± ¡°Huh¡­ weird.¡± said I. Going back to my soup. Feeling that I might have gone too far with that ¡°weird¡± bit. I¡¯d actually heard that this was common for several of the alternate earths and other earth-like civilizations. If the guardian angel forces of a world were too busy, or they¡¯d foreseen the possibility of catastrophic loss of a population beyond acceptable margins. They¡¯d install fail safes that immigrate a portion of the people to new bodies in alternate universes. Alternate universe that would have been introduced beforehand as VR games to speed up the acclimatization process. ¡°So¡­.¡± said Jacky. ¡°So what?¡± said I. ¡°Aren¡¯t you gonna ask me about why I didn¡¯t say anything?¡± said Jacky. ¡°Not really.¡± Exploitation of strangers was neither common nor uncommon. The system was fairly rigid about their integration and treatment within the world. The same powers that be that kept them from being brought in within enough equipment and numbers to possibly take over the world also worked to keep the world¡¯s denizens from taking too much advantage of the strangers in turn. Which was why slaver bands and even slavery promoting nations that tried to prey on the starter towns tended to come to bad ends. Still there were always intrigues and there were always tragedies and horrors taking place across this world at any time. Both for the denizens and the strangers. I knew this even without the future-me saying so because the archive was filled with last words, and screams for mercy. Jacky rolled his eye. ¡°Whatever man...here I am pouring my heart out and you sitting there eating your soup.¡± I shrugged. Idly wafting my hand to send some of the steam from the bowl his way. ¡°It¡¯s good soup.¡± I said. He gave me a flat stare and then he chuckled. Smiling as if whatever that odd bit of seriousness he¡¯d worn before had just been an illusion. ¡°Motherfucker...Tch!..Now I¡¯m hungry too dammit.¡± he said. ¡°Um...er...remember to wash your hands before you eat...¡±I called after him. He just snorted. ¡°Yeah, whatever ¡®Mom¡¯.¡± he called back. Arc 3: Chapter 6: Buddies...Pals...Homies...Bros Two young men sat in the shadow of one of the Black Forest¡¯s taller trees, one with black hair, the other with pink. They were resting after a hard day¡¯s work of purging hog-sized pill bugs from the garden that they¡¯d been set to watch over One of the boys was wearing a set of headphones that were likely purchased from one of the myriad curios and tech stores that could be found in the academy city. The other simply lay sleeping, lying on his side, on a particularly comfy heap of leaves and grass. Seeming unconcerned with picking up any unwanted little passenger. Possibly because any such critters would find themselves sinking through his clothes. Pulled into his flesh as if were quicksand. They sat like that for nearly an hour''s time, sitting in silence, till the boy with black hair could no longer take it anymore and was driven by a need to fill that silence with words. ¡°By Odin¡¯s beard it¡¯s hot!¡± There was no response from his sleeping compatriot. ¡°I said...by Odin¡¯s beard it¡¯s-....¡± ¡°I heard you the first time, Jack. What the hell do you want me to do about the weather? Neither of us is a grand mage. Hell, I¡¯m pretty sure we don¡¯t even count as full apprentice mage¡¯s yet. We¡¯re just outer-students.¡± said the sleeping boy. His still closed though his brow had furrowed with annoyance. Young Jack Hu blinked as if not expecting to be responded to so seriously. As if he hadn¡¯t even been thinking of the day when their magical prowess would be great enough to allow for a limited control of the weather. To be fair, he wasn¡¯t. Then he smiled, for while the response had been a bit out of left field, he¡¯d achieved what he¡¯d intended by getting any sort of response at all. The smile quickly flickering out of view as he turned to the other boy with a look of mock surprise. ¡°Ah...Samhain, did I wake you, old boy? Dreadfully sorry about that.¡± The other boy just grunted as he sat up. Yawning, picking leaves out of his pink hair. Stretching as he tried to get comfortable with the new position. Jack knew that the other boy was still half-asleep. It was as good as confirmed when the boy pulled a bottle of soda from thin air. Revealing powers that he normally tended to hide or at least downplay when he was more self-aware. Feeling like testing the waters, Jack nodded towards the drink and said, ¡°Hey, Sammy-boy...did you bring some for the rest of the class?¡± To Jack¡¯s surprise the boy just sleepily reached into an empty space and brought out yet another ice cold bottle. As Jack received it he corrected his prior assessment, his friend was ¡°mostly¡±, if not entirely, asleep right now, not half asleep. If he were half asleep calling attention to what he¡¯d done would have at least made him freeze up for a bit, even if no denials were forthcoming. Things like floating instead of walking, suddenly appearing without explanation or means of entrance, levitating objects instead of using his hands, or pulling objects from out of nowhere, where things the other boy only did, whenever he was too preoccupied or out of it, to be aware of what he¡¯d done. And as a whole they made for some interesting entertainment for Jack, who held the seat of the other boy¡¯s only audience. The only person that the boy named Samhain spent any real time interacting with. Their friendship was a curious thing. Despite, the faint smile that the pink haired boy seemed to always wear, he was largely dour and unpersonable. Polite yes, but decisively distant. Stolen story; please report. At first he¡¯d seemed a bit of a dullard, and even now there were a few that thought the lanky teenager a bit of a lunk. Dull eyed, soft spoken, and extremely aloof to everything happening around him. All this in combination with the permanently affixed grin he were led to many thinking the boy wasn¡¯t all there. There were many who¡¯d questioned just how the boy had gotten accepted into the school. There were many who believed that there was something ¡°off¡± about him. Jack would freely admit to having been amongst that number. The very beginning of the two¡¯s relationship had mainly centered around the sly boy¡¯s realization that the other boy a very handy human shield. It had started unconsciously. One day, a wolf-sized hornet nearly ran him through with its stinger, what saved him was a certain pink-haired blur that appeared right in front of him before from out off nowhere. His broad back blocking both the sun and the body of the killer insect. The next day whether purposeful or by accident Jack would end up sticking next to Sam. Several other close calls both on the field making him realize how handy it was to stick next to the boy. Whether it was giant moles, monster centipedes, or blood sucking beetles, though the boy was slow to speak, it gradually became clear that he was quick on his feet. Jack had been one of the first people to realize that standing next to the skinny pink haired kid was actually the safest place to be for an outer-student. He was also the first to realize that this protection extended off of the fields. As a boy who was far too clever and far too loquacious for his own good Jack Hu took no time at all in making enemies amongst his fellow students. The outer-students had factions, same as the inner and core students, same as teachers even. Staying an independent and not falling under someone else¡¯s control required strength. Strength that Jack knew that the other boy had. Strength that was confirmed for him and the rest of their fellow students again and again whenever somebody would try to pull in ¡°the Samhain¡± The pink haired boy would eventually grow notorious this way because interactions things would always go down the same route. First there¡¯d be an introduction from some youth who looked and acted like he was somebody who mattered.. Usually it would be whole group of such individuals, at least five or ten. Then the dull eyed boy would look through the group like they were air. Unresponsive towards both their bribes and their threats. Ignoring them in a way that even a fully matured immortal Saint might have had trouble dealing with, or accepting. Naturally the group of smug youths would get angry, and then someone would do or at least threaten to do, something violent and unwise. After which just like clockwork the group of aggressors would be put down...hard. Sometimes entire factions would be demolished. Disappearing overnight. If they were true disappearances, then they¡¯d be accompanied by the disappearances of entire clans and families in the secular. Otherwise most of the key members of each faction would eventually emerge from hiding, usually bad bruised and worse for the wear. All of them having suddenly attained an anathema for boys with pink hair. All together it was a somewhat worrying thing to see from the outside. Enough so, that most of the other students in the outer-class made a point of avoiding the boy, lest they get implicated by the association. Little Jacky Hu, didn¡¯t have that problem. If being implicated by association was a concern, then Jack had feeling that one that should be concerned was the pink haired boy. While little Sammy only had a few enemies here and there, made from school time hijinks. The Hu were a clan that enemies from all across the world and countless generations. It was for this reason that he¡¯d tried to test the other boy. Giving out a hint of his less than ordinary circumstances. Wanting to see how the other would react, wanting to see if the other boy was a plant like he expected, from either the family or the family¡¯s enemies. Or whether he¡¯d change his tunes after hearing that the ¡°Hu¡± in Jack¡¯s surname was spelled in gold. Unfortunately things didn¡¯t even get that far, unexpectedly or perhaps perfectly expectedly Sam didn¡¯t react. He was just as dull eyed as usual, more interested in his lunch than in the fact that his only friend was at least ¡°part¡± alien. Descending from a woman who hailed from one of the many strange alternate earths. Jack finished his soda and then realized that he didn¡¯t know what to do with it. Rattling the bottle with a slightly perplexed look as the nearest trashcan was at least ¡°a¡± mile from where he sat, if not several miles. ¡°Uh...a little help?¡± said Jack. Noticing that Samhain¡¯s soda seemed to have disappeared just as magically as it had come into being in the first place. ¡°Do I look like a garbage man?¡± said Samhain. Frowning while disposing of the other boy¡¯s soda anyway. ¡°Ah...Sorry, Sorry¡­.Sorry and thank you, oh benevolent, sir..¡± said Jack his words slightly sing-song. ¡°Tch¡­.¡± The other boy just groaned and grumbled, not bothering to answer Jack¡¯s unserious response with words. Then he got up and walked away, heading off to do whatever it is he did when he wasn¡¯t working in the garden or just hanging out in the outer-student''s¡¯ portion of the campus. Teleporting when he thought himself out of view of the other boy. Naturally Jack had followed as he always did, taking a small amount of pleasure in foiling the other boy¡¯s meagre attempts at discretion. Then Jack turned and headed his own way to carry on with his own secret exercises and cultivation practices. As he did so, he decided that he¡¯d stay friends with the other boy after all. If things got dangerous, troublesome or even worse, boring, they could always break things off later, but for now, it¡¯d be too much of waste. Fascinating individuals with sincere intentions like the pink haired boy were rare finds. Only an idiot would throw-away such a high quality toy. If possible Jack would very much like to make use of him in the future, or in the case that the boy was as a big a fish as he seemed to be Jack didn¡¯t mind being made use of. Arc 3: Chapter 7: Broken Circles Out amidst a void of beige cosmic nothingness and bright twinkling stars there was a plain gray asteroid that had once been a planet. On this asteroid was an old man and a younger, middle-aged man, both with pink hair and red eyes. They glared at each other, arguing their words lost in the rumble that still echoed onwards after the death of a nearby star. The old man flicked the middle-aged man on the nose, the cartilage crumpling under force of the old man¡¯s finger. Holding his bleeding nose, the young man swore tried to take a swing at the old man and nearly got himself thrown off the asteroid. ¡°Asshole¡­¡± grunted the middle-aged man. Barely anchoring himself in place before he slipped off of the edge of the asteroid. Using great chains of glowing silver light to do so. ¡°Idiot¡­¡±said snorted the old man. Not deigning to look in the young man¡¯s direction. ¡°So...this is when it happens, yeah? I can feel it...I can feel the paths crumbling. The old roads, I...we...have spent our lives walking are disappearing, taking our footsteps with them...So many fuckups and regrets disappearing like they¡¯re all a bad dream.¡± The younger man shifted his position with a short teleport. Disappearing from the far end of the asteroid and appearing next to the old man. ¡°Yeah, but knowing us we¡¯re...he¡¯s short to make new fuckups.¡± said the middle-aged man. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. The old man frowned and then he smiled, the curving of his lips making his ancient face look like it was made of carved stone. Sinister and dark and somehow enchanting to behold. ¡°Tch...so? That¡¯s his problem ¡°we¡± no longer exist.¡± The middle-aged man smiled as well, the expression coming off more as a sneer. A wicked thing straight out of a nightmare. Too wide, too bright, too full of teeth. ¡°How irresponsible of you...¡± The old man looked down at himself as he saw that his body was fading away his existence being reabsorbed into the cosmic flow and the quantum tides. ¡°Hehehehe¡­.Youngster you sound like my wife used to.¡± The middle-aged man frowned, his head cocking to the right of him, to look at the spot where old man once stood. ¡°What wife? I got married? Why don¡¯t I remember tha-? Oh right, altered-timeline...¡± The man looked down at himself and then he shook his head. He too was fading away. His ¡°present¡± was becoming irrelevant, same for the future that old man had represented. All that remained was the past. The living past. The one he¡¯d stuffed full with as much potential as he could manage. The one that had even superseded Desmond Redmoon¡¯s expectations by rendering his existence, his timeline null and void. Even knowing that he was dying the young immortal couldn¡¯t help feeling excited at the implications of what was happening. Thousands of years of regrets and sadness were going away. Being erased from the eternal scoreboard. There was no guarantee that, that which would come to replace them would necessarily be happy, but somehow, he found that he had some faith in his younger. He¡¯d hopefully beaten enough skill, knowledge and sense into the boy to assure that at least the key things would change¡­.Hopefully. If after all that, things still ended in failure, then there really was ¡°nothing¡± that could be done. Then...that¡¯d just be the damndest shame. At the very least if things still ended in failure they end in spectacular. They¡¯d end as a glorious and mutually destructive failure. He could trust that the parties that robbed him last time, wouldn¡¯t get off so easily this time and if that was the only thing he gained from all this, even that was enough. Worst case scenario, another set of future-hims and future-future hims would try again. Continuing with the cycle till the wrongs were set to right. Arc 3: Chapter 8: A Good Status If the tenth level was the dividing line between levellers and non-levellers then the hundredth level was the dividing line between the true levellers and all the normal folk who were just trying to get by. It was the difference between levelling to reach the apex and levelling just enough to survive with a little a dignity. The difference between an elite and someone who was merely a little gifted. If the leveller ranking chart could be trusted, while level one hundred only gave you the strength of one hundred men, level one hundred and one could grant you the power of hundreds. Possibly even a thousand men. It wouldn¡¯t make you untouchable but it would be the point where one could finally say with confidence that one could protect one¡¯s own little life. For us, the myriad abnormals that lived scattered across Agartha, this was even more so. Living with heightened strength, intellects and souls this point we could be doubly sure of our ability to oppress and avoid oppression. We lived in a world of freaks, monsters, and demigods, it was enough that someone might question whether this confidence was really just fool-hardiness. Or maybe the people here already knew that? When three out of every ten people you met was secretly a superhuman, or transcendental existence, one would still have to learn to be polite to the other seven, just in case. No matter where you went in Agartha, even the roughest cultures tended to put an emphasis on courtesy and offense, when it came to dealing with unknown persons and powers. After all the wrong word in the wrong ears could easily breed calamity. Well...even on earth, there were fairy tales about people who inadvertently pissed off Royalty, the Supernatural or the divine...So maybe I was making too much of it.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. But I digress¡­.the point was, that I was now over level one hundred and one. Actually using various uninhabited ghost and beast infested little burgs as the fuel for my power leveling, I was even able to go past this point by twelve levels. Reaching level one hundred and thirteen. ******
Name: Samhain(Alias)
Age: 15
Level: 113
Race: Humanoid Existence
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Child of the Emptied Skies, Red Moon King, Great Hero
Talent: 100
Attainments:
Body 5460
Mind 1820
Soul 1820
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Mandate of Black, Mandate of White, Mandate of Gray, Devilish Good Looks
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony
***** When I looked at my accrued attainments, I felt a certain measure of surety in seeing that number. This surety came from knowing my ¡°stats¡± and talent were fairly high compared to the average person. I came from knowing that I leveling entire cities was becoming progressively easier on both a mortal and practical front. It came from feeling my body, mind and spirit grow more rich and full with each and every invested talent point. Granted I wasn¡¯t entirely sure how high this was, and I was far from confident on my standing when compared to other monsters who were out there with even higher talent and ¡°stats¡± but it was something. I felt like my life was headed in a good direction. So long as I kept going the way I was going in no time at all, I would be a secret powerhouse and a student in middle-level School of Sorcery, which were pretty good as far as statuses went. Not too high, not too low. A good, firm, foundation for my new life, in a new world. Arc 3: Chapter 9: Down Memory Lane She retched, spewing a mouthful of rancid bile, raw red blood and viscera onto my lap. Ignoring the blood and viscera, the hot bile on my crotch was giving me flashbacks of the first time I¡¯d thought I was going to lose my virginity. Mind you, this ¡°wasn¡¯t¡± the day I lost my virginity¡­. ¡°That¡± day wouldn¡¯t come till like five years later. An uncomfortable pity fuck from a friend. She was supposed to be moving away that year, and I ¡°might¡± have been dying, from one of those rare diseases that everyone always thinks mankind has already magicked away, but actually is still being caught by people in shittier countries and unlucky idiots who happen to fall head first in the wrong puddle of sludge.....It was one of those things. Unfortunately for both of us her moving plans fell through and I didn¡¯t die. The resulting awkwardness leading to the death of the friendship. But again, like I said, this wasn¡¯t me reminiscing of the first time I got laid, it was reminding me of the first time I ¡°almost¡± got laid. I was fifteen then too, maybe closer to fourteen, she was older possibly college aged. Yes, I too, have no idea how my gawky, socially stunted, teenaged-self managed to swing that. I assume it had something to do with the fact that we were both very, very drunk. And maybe a little high from all those sweet purple fumes that had been filling up the ground floor of the house. And the wonderfully irresponsible foster brother who¡¯d taken me to the party had taken us there in a car that was maybe, probably, definitely stolen by ¡°his¡± friend Rocco who¡¯d also been responsible for bringing all the alcohol. We got to the bedroom, she got down to her bra and then nothing happened. Like I said, I was thirteen and terrified and suffering from my first experience of whiskey-dick, and she was drunk. Super drunk. Any mood that had existed, was killed when she leaned over and vomited into my lap. It was unpleasantly warm and smelled terribly. Also... even back then I was already developing into the gentleman that I would one day become, even if she hadn¡¯t filled my lap with hot, chunky, vomit, I probably wouldn¡¯t have let things go any further. Now here I was, again, sitting in bed with another young lady. Alas the first had been drunk and this one was too young. Even if our bodies were the same age, I was mentally an adult and had no interest in creepily trying to court teens like certain vampire heart throbs. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I imagine this was for the best, as my partner of the moment likely had romance as the very last thing on her mind. You see, as far I could see, she was quite preoccupied with the business of not dying. A few hours prior I¡¯d been about to head out for the morning and start my day. I figured I¡¯d get some breakfast from the cafeteria and then head over to the garden. Today was one of the rare mornings where the neighbor girl and I left at the same time. I¡¯d generally here her leaving her dorm earlier in the morning heading to go do whatever the school had her doing in some other part of the outer-school. Seeing that we were both out and had technically run into each other, I was obliged to give a greeting as a courtesy. Thus I said, ¡°Good Morning.¡± To which she responded by nodding once and then flopping onto the floor in a faint. My first instinct was to take her over to the school infirmary to let them handle things. Unfortunately she came out of the faint quickly enough and completely enough that her lucidity and adamance when it came to how much she did not want to be handed over to the school doctors became impossible for me to ignore. Even more unfortunate our association was prolonged enough that my conscience, as meagre and vestigial an existence as it was, could not allow me to leave her in her room to quietly die in peace. Instead here I was meddling, like some damn¡­.meddler. Casting healing spells and brewing potions out of her illegally(School dorms have these regulations for a reason) kept crockpot. And none of it seemed to be taking. Whatever was wrong with the girl seemed to be eating her from the inside out. Now that I thought of it, it had probably been killing her for quite some time. Some dreadful terrible disease, that she¡¯d lived with on her own. I really probably should have taken her to the infirmary anyway but those few times where I attempted to do so, happened to always magically coincide with her suddenly snapping out of her fugue. Growing lucid enough to not only protest but if necessary to physically resist. I¡¯ll tell you one thing¡­.The girl was strong. Stronger than I was. (At least when I was still pretending to be normal anyway.) Strong enough that if I¡¯d tried to get serious she would have, at the very least forced me to get a little rough to get her to come along. Which probably would have amounted to me killing her, or pushed her over the edge of whatever metaphorical and/or literal precipices she was dangling over. It made me uncomfortable. I really didn¡¯t want to be here when she died, yet whether consciously or unconsciously, whether it was her or me, every time I got up, her hand somehow found its way into mine. Nor did I want to feel at all responsible for her dying, which I would feel like if I gave up. Especially since I¡¯d more or less failed to get her into professionally trained hands. There was a solution to this that I could see¡­.a fix that archive and my magical senses were telling me about. It was a clean fix that would probably get her out of this alive. But I was loathe to go that far. Some things shouldn¡¯t be touched, even if one had to die for that inviolability to be maintained and yet¡­.when you were dead, you were dead. Only immortals got to experience death as a revolving door. ¡°Oh fuck¡­.FUCK! I¡¯m really going to do this aren¡¯t I?¡± Arc 3: Chapter 10: Instant...Karma Damn it...Damn it¡­Damn it...Double dog damn it...I had one rule. One single rule that could be said to actually count for anything in my moral core. One single rule I¡¯d said I¡¯d never break and then I went and broke it. What the actual hell was I thinking? As I ran into a closet, then out of a back alley, then into a sewer and then into a yawning cavern and then into another closet, I couldn¡¯t help thinking that this was ¡°exactly¡± what should happen. This is what when one gets when one goes and does the only thing that can truly be considered ¡°black¡± in a world of moral grays. I did what I had to, to save the neighbor girl. I regretted it almost immediately. I regretted it as I took off her top. I regretted it as I undid her bra. I regretted it as I tore open her torso and stuck my hand in her chest. If there is anyone in the universe willing to listen, I Samhain...formerly Dudley *Erp* Walkins¡­.formerly Desmond Bose, am Sorry. I did a very bad thing and I am deeply, deeply sorry. As should probably be guessed, as someone whose future-self had come back to the past to stuff them chockful of extra powers and skills, I had the luxury of having favorites and unfavorites amongst my abilities. My favorite abilities were TPO and my Cosmic Travelers Privilege and whatever their current incarnations were. I liked being able to get around to whenever I wanted to be and needed to be. I also liked not having to interact with people unless there was a definite need for it. My least favorite abilities had been Ambrosial Tongue, Vox Empyrean and whatever their current incarnation was. Sure, you could argue that they were my most game breakingly powerful abilities, but I didn¡¯t much appreciate having to watch every word I said and every thought I had to keep from unmaking myself and everything around me. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Most of all I hated the fact that it was almost stupidly easy for me to brainwash people. You couldn¡¯t even call what I did brainwashing, really. It was more an erosion of will and self. Given enough time and energy, which I think I¡¯ve already established, I hold in near limitless supply, if I wanted to I could use my will and thoughts to grind down the will and thoughts of others. I could make anyone do, feel, think, say absolutely anything I wanted. I could even invade people¡¯s souls. If that sounds impressive it¡¯s probably because it is. All my powers are impressive...I¡¯m a living cheat remember? If that sounds terrible that¡¯s also probably because it is. What I¡¯ve just stated is something along the lines of announcing that I have the ability to easily capture, malign, and abuse all the world¡¯s puppies or to eat all the world¡¯s children. It¡¯s not something I¡¯m proud of. It¡¯s something that I pretty much never, ever wanted to use. A tool I was content to leave in the tool box. Whether it was life with the cult, or life living under my abusive father, or my time with the shittier of the shrinks that state appointed to me, I knew how bad it was to have someone in your head. Trying to make you feel things you don¡¯t want to feel. Trying to make you think things you don¡¯t want to think. Muddling with your inner reality till you couldn¡¯t know what was what anymore. But then, two days ago came, and the girl was dying and the only way to save her was to go tinkering in her soul, because that¡¯s what was wrong with her. Her soul. There was something attached to it. A growth. Something that was bubbling up from within her. The aberration of her metaphysical-self wreaking havoc on her physical form. I probably should have left it alone. Or rather forget the probably, I ¡°definitely¡± should have left it alone. But I didn¡¯t. I didn¡¯t want her to die. So I touched what should never be touched and reached inside her with glitter, black, white and gray scalpel and scissors. Snip, snip, snipping away at her inner-most being to remove the abnormality. At the very least I can say I got something, that could roughly be called her consent first, talking directly to her mind before I went ahead and did the procedure. But even then, I can¡¯t know for sure if I was talking to all of her. Even the archive doesn¡¯t know. To speak to the parts of her that were sane and lucid I had to put the parts that had gone insane with pain to sleep. And who knows...maybe those were the important parts. Maybe I¡¯d locked down key portions of her mind and personality that were instrumental to whether the her I was speaking to was the real her. I honestly don¡¯t know and again neither does the archive. What I do know is that after getting her permission and cutting out the abnormal growth. I almost immediately had to run out of there. I¡¯d just barely closed the girl up again sealing the surgical site and setting up and iv of healing serum, before ¡°they¡± appeared. Now I was running, teleporting from dead city to dead city, from continent to continent. Chased by an army that made all my future-self¡¯s efforts seem meaningless and small. And honestly I can¡¯t say I didn¡¯t deserve this. Even if, when,..¡±they¡± got me in the end, this would all still be my own fault. Arc 3: Chapter 11: Emergency Shutdown In a certain room, in a certain tower that hovered above the purple-green landscape of Agartha, a choir of blindfolded, winged women oversaw the happenings of the world. A world that was displayed on a room-sized holographic projection. Displayed as an ever flowing datastream made up of akashic alpha-numerics. Somewhere amidst all those squiggles, pointed symbols, patterned dots, and ones and zeros something akin to an error message popped up and the supervisor in charge of that particular observational called for a momentary halt of the system. The world ended again, but this time was one of many occasional, regulated endings that most universes might experience. Scheduled planned and safe. A universe that was slowly being overtaken and converted into a wonderland ceased to be and one of the many worlds that lay beneath the infinite and eternal heavens disappeared from view. The world stopped spinning and for the casual observer it was as if everything ended. Of course, this wasn¡¯t the actual end of the world. It was just a mere pause. The sea, the earth, the grass, the trees, the birds in the sky and the starry canopy above all went away. But again this was all fine. Reality ceased to be, but as reality was just physical phenomena being interpreted by consciousness, for the billions of lives that now populated the planet Agartha, it would merely seem as if they all lost momentarily lost their train of thought. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The hours where time was halted would not be logged into their memories or perceived except on the most basic and liminal of levels so for them, it would be as if the period never happened. The Supervisor logged the time-space coordinates from which the error had originated then went and reported to her supervisor, a woman whose countless eyes had been placed on her wings. That supervisor kicked the issue to her Supervisor a man who was made entirely of whispers, who then kicked it up to his Supervisor who ostensibly just seemed to be a very ominous little girl. A certain sinister something hiding behind those bright eyes, button nose and golden ringlets. The little girl then read the report and took it up directly to her supervisor, who was also the man in charge of the whole operation. Running the system that controlled and monitored Agartha¡¯s divine energy output and moderated its release, recapture and utilization in the system known to the populace as the Leveling System. ¡°Your highness, there seems to be an anomaly report in Sector Seven-G?¡± said the ominous little girl. Speaking to a man whose age was as hard to figure out as his gender was. His features both young and old. Both Masculine and Feminine. With a certain nearly imperceptible something tilting the scales towards the former rather than the later. A dark man, in a dark gray suit, whose face bore no expression whatsoever. He took the report. Absorbed the data directly and then he snorted. An impossibly faint, ghost of a smile accompanied an even fainter burst of laughter. ¡°Classic Redmoon¡­What a card.¡± said the man. Muttering to himself, a hint of warmth entering his tone. Though the overall flatness and his lack of expression, might well have given the young lady who stood at attention by his desk that something very, very bad would soon be befalling this Redmoon...Whoever or whatever he was. ¡°Nh.....just isolate the sector so it doesn¡¯t affect the surrounding regions. I¡¯ll handle the rest.¡± The young woman bowed. ¡°Yes, sir.¡± Then not long after she¡¯d made her exit, the blank faced man made his. Teleporting out of his office. Arc 3: Chapter 12: Finite Infinities Up beyond the sky, in that troublesome and oh so... fucking...fantastical realm known to most mortals as the heavens there were twelve clans of gods. They fought warred and loved and created as gods did, each clan ruling of an age. With the span of each of these twelve ages being around twelve hundred million years in length. Constant battles wore these twelve sides down, leading to the formation of two factions, each made up of six tribes and their allies and followers from the other ends of the cosmos. These two factions would war against each other rising and falling from supremacy in turns. With each epoch of rule lasting roughly one hundred and forty-four billion years. Eventually a ruler, a Godking whose name is¡­.unimportant at the present time... would arise and he would take a bride from the most powerful of these factions. A young goddess of nature, love and life. Naturally even the gods were not immune to the kinds of royal intrigue that plagued mortal monarchies. A second bride would have to be taken from the second faction to keep the peace. A slighter older goddess whose dominion was the arts and the sciences. This and that would happen and like from some dime store novel or old world fairy tale, the lesser queen would be found to be a shrewish, jealous evil witch. Eventually things would come to a head and she¡¯d be executed the scattered pieces of her soul consigned to a place of shadows and lamentation. The divine queen and king would rule happily for some time and the worlds they ruled over would know peace. Until suddenly it didn¡¯t. Until suddenly a haunting plague that turned flesh into plastic and ceramic and bones into metal started their worlds. Until sinister creatures that ticked and tocked as they looped over the ground and flapped up into the air appeared. Laying waste to the worlds below and then finding their way into the heavens. Again the usual divine epicness would take place and the gods would find that *gasp* all this was the final vengeance of the long deposed jealous. The gods and their other divine neighbors would wage war on the creatures but they would lose. The creatures were too finally made, the ¡°evil¡± queen too thorough when she made the fiendish creatures. Thus as sometimes occasionally happened, all the gods for that particular portion of reality would perish. They would die, but not before, through the singing of certain general amongst this horde of clockwork demons, a tale was told. Their dreadful secret revealed. A tale involving the plots of the ruling faction of gods, who with the tacit approval of the warrior-king would frame and arrange the downfall of, the ¡°evil¡± queen. Of course their side would deny it of course. It was all just mad nonsense from very ill, very wicked girl. And they would have enough political clout in their particular section of the heavens to make ¡°their story tick. Though not without, having a few disgruntled, less pleased members amongst their number looking into them with eyes that were slightly colder and less trusting. Like I said, they all died. There¡¯s no twist ending there. Or maybe there is. The big punchline to this dreadful story about the ending and reaping of many billions of divine lives and many trillions of mortal lives is that there was no secret last play for revenge. That poor goddess just died betrayed and alone. Forsaken even by her own clansmen. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. If there was anything that got the perpetrators in the end it was the fact that they¡¯d failed to understand the true nature of what they and their so called godly kin were. And in that ignorance had gone on to chose the very worst disposal method for their unfortunate victim. As to what the gods, at least the understandable, somewhat comprehensible sorts of divinity people make statues of...are...for the most part they¡¯re mortals. Or rather former mortals. Super powerful kings, wisemen, wizards and sages who transcended the mortal barriers that lay between regular folk and the legends whose images were imprinted onto the stars. When I said that this leveling system was pretty much a kiddie pool for young gods and future immortals I wasn¡¯t joking. Basically how it works is stunning simple at least as far describing it goes. First you get tough enough to be pretty much impossible to kill¡­.Or fake it so people believe that¡¯s so. Then you get strong enough to be pretty much capable of anything. Or at least make it so people believe you are. Then in case you really want to go for the gold you call yourself a god and have people call yourself a god. Naturally, just as cinema and comic book history warns, going all ¡°A God am I¡± pretty much assures that the universe will almost instantly try to kill you a thousand times dead. But eventually the true powers that be, sublime existences that lie beyond what we can perceive as reality either give in, or acquiesce. Bestowing the mixture of punishment and reward known as godhood. Just like that you get to be a god. Congratulations you¡¯re a god. A core piece of your being has been infused with an aspect of a certain fragment of the universe and depending on your level, because even the gods apparently have to deal with this power ranking BS, you¡¯ll have some of of all the powers traditionally attributed to the divine. But here¡¯s the kicker, in return for all that godly power you have to actually ¡°be¡± a god. Otherwise you fall is both far and deep. That¡¯s what went wrong. They killed a goddess, and then instead of letting her go back to the universe to either fall or be reconstituted and brought back, they stuck her into a bit of void. An empty space where the omniverse was still too young to understand what being part of the omniverse meant. They had in fact stuck her in their with a vast amount of other murder victims and fallen political foes. Believing they¡¯d consigned her and them to oblivion there. Never to ever, ever, ever bother anyone ever again. This supposition was incorrect. Souls were the only thing that was truly immortal on this comprehensible slice of all of existence. You literally can¡¯t kill a soul. The most you can do is tear it up or dissolve it away till eventually a piece of it escapes and recovers. In the case of immortals, that usually entails a resurrection or revival. Unless of course the damage is too complete in which case the soul gets washed into the cycle of Samsara with the mortal souls, to be repaired and then reincarnated. So like I said, they, the gods of this unnamed little slice of heaven had done fucked up. You know that saying beware the quiet ones? Beaten, tortured, raped, decried, divorced and then beheaded in front an audience of all her so called friends and family. Even a mortal soul would be scary to deal with under these conditions but this was a goddess. It was only rational to believe there¡¯d be a reckoning. They threw her shattered soul into the void with other resentful soul shards. And her soul was just big enough and angry enough, with just enough(pretty much all) her divine spark still present. It was like throwing a lit match into a cave of tnt. Except instead of just blowing up. It sparked the creation of power unlike most portions of the heavens would ever see. An angry semi-sentient power with a thirst for blood, revenge, and the creative arts. Thus another pantheon bit the dust, eaten alive by the ghosts of all their enemies and the echoes of all their sins. Later when things settled down the power would be drawn back towards the mortal realm. Drawn into the mortal kin of one of the Queen¡¯s cousins or nieces. Drawn by her blood. With most of its hate spent and very little divine energy present the dreaded power would lie inert. The descendants of the inheritor of the dreaded power would live on, somehow managing to survive the end of several worlds. Saved by half-forgotten covenants and a series of increasingly unlikely coincidences. Eventually they¡¯d settle down in an alternate earth. One of the more tech oriented ones. That world would end and yet another lucky coincidence would save a certain family with a certain bloodline, that carried a certain power. They¡¯d be brought to this world. A planet that absolutely chock full of divine energy. And for several thousand years the family would still live in relatively peace. Only occasionally getting terrorized by the horror that was the family curse. A dark ailment that manifest in pain, palpitation, numbness and then eventually ended in death. And that ladies and gentlemen is what I stuck my head into. That¡¯s what I pulled out of that girl. An accursed power that was born from endless hate of countless dead gods and one royally pissed off goddess of logic and the arts. As to how I knew all this¡­.The cloud of angry, glowing, gears and cogs that was chasing me was telling me this. Or at least telling my archive this. The archive was passing this story to me as I fled for my life, running from dead city, to dead city. From continent to continent. Fruitlessly trying to escape a destructive force the doom that I¡¯d called down on myself. A doom that I wasn¡¯t entirely sure I¡¯d able to come back from, if it hit me. Arc 3: Chapter 13: Be Thou Worthy Normally, for Agarthans suddenly being struck by a bolt from the blue would be a thing to celebrate. In other worlds you¡¯d call it divine calamity, and it¡¯d be a thing to fear. In this world, in Agartha, it was merely called graduation, and rather than fearing it ever everyone in the world dreamed of one day seeing it. It was the thing that announced one¡¯s entry into the true world of immortals. Being struck by it signified that one was no longer bound by the leveling system. I seemed to be one person on Agartha who was still afraid of the things. That likely had something to do with the fact I was several hundred levels too low to be getting chased by a divine thundercloud. So there I was teleporting for my dear life. Running from a falling, crackling, sword of Damocles that I¡¯d idiotically stuck my head under. Fleeing from what was effectively the crystallization of an insane and wrathful horde of vengeful divine souls. No matter where I went it would find me, no matter how far I ran it would chase. And perfectly fitting my luck at the moment, it looked like I was finally finding the limits of my mental and physical capacity. I¡¯d been running for months now, teleporting for months now and I was finally getting tired. My jumps were getting last accurate. My stride less sure. My breath more ragged. Finally after precisely three months, seventeen days and six hours, I was no long able to keep running. I fell to my knees. Exhausted. Staring up at the glowing rumbling black cloud that had been chasing me. Finding myself both horrified and fascinated by the ghastly faces that would emerge and disappear within the cloud. A great blue bolt of lightening felt down, and I closed my eyes preparing to have my soul scattered into the cosmic breeze. There was a rumble and crack, as I sat there, feeling simultaneously relieved and terrified to see the story of my life coming to an end. ¡°Well...I can¡¯t say it¡¯s been a great ride...but it was what it was...I guess.¡± I grumbled to no one in particular. My voice high pitched and plaintive in my ear. The divine lightning descended, rumbling roaring with the malice and wrath of roughly a hundred trillion years worth of divine madness and hate. I made the mistake of opening my eyes near the end of it and I have no shame in saying I almost certainly pissed myself. I was an ant facing a wrath that burned hot enough to boil away entire worlds. Of course I pissed myself. It wasn¡¯t even totally out of fear either. I was facing something large enough to dwarf my entire existence as an adult of my spice. My entire existence as a sentient being. At least half of that piss was my brain simply forgetting its self-awareness while trying to understand what the hell it was, that I was looking at. Trying to under what was coming my way. Imagine a microbe trying to understand the full implications of the anti-bacterial spray and anti-septic wipes that it and all its fellows were being killed with. This was how I faced my death. This how I ended up seeing things. What was about to happen to me couldn¡¯t even be called death. It was annihilation Unemotional. Malice-less. This whatever this was...wasn¡¯t about me. I was just a mess that was being cleaned up and tidied away. I waited to die. But then¡­.I didn¡¯t die. The bolt of glowing blue wrath fell till it was just a hair away from touching my face and then it froze in place. It even slowly receded a little so that I could just barely stand under it. Had I had the wherewithal to rise up off my knees, anyway. ¡°Hey¡­.¡± said a voice. My nerves were on edge and so my neck snapped towards the new speaker so quickly that I heard something in my neck crack. I expected to see my older-self. I figured was exactly his style to appear during bullshit moments like this one. Instead I saw a man in a plain gray suit. A man pretty enough that I doubt anyone in the world would have said anything had her appeared in a plain gray dress. Dark skinned, but more cocoa or coffee-colored versus my current dark caramel. With a face that was so devoid of expression you¡¯d think he¡¯d spent every day of his life watching guys get bowled over by their own cosmic insignificance. ¡°Um...no offense but who the hell are you?¡± said I. ¡°A friend.¡± said the man. I shivered. Somehow hearing that man call me a friend was terrifying in ways that being blown away into nothingness hadn¡¯t been. Not ¡°more¡± terrifying mind you, just differently so. ¡°Uh no offense buddy...er¡­.sir¡­¡± said I. Feeling almost instinctively that this was a personage to whom one should refer with a sir. ¡°But I don¡¯t recall making a friend like you.¡± said I. He shrugged. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t its your older-self that I¡¯m friends with and its to ¡°his¡± older-self that I owe the favor.¡± ¡°Favor?¡± said I. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it...That timeline is gone now...even the consequences of it, still remain. That you no longer exists. Er...Come.¡± He tugged me too my feet, pulling me out from the frozen bolt of blue annihilation. With a snap of his finger I was suddenly feeling fresh and refreshed in all sorts of ways. My clothing tidied. My energy stores restored. I looked around and realized that the setting had changed. We both stood in a great, empty, rolling pane. A desert wasteland amongst desert wastelands. Complete with an arid and empty sky. ¡°Er...thanks.¡± I said. ¡°Don¡¯t mention it.¡± said the stranger. A chair appeared behind the man and he sat down. I looked behind me and saw that there was a chair there too and I sat down. A strange gray creature in a gray butler''s suit appeared from nowhere with a tea cart in tow. It gave us both china cups and set up a table of snacks between us. We ate the silence. The man ate with a strange daintiness. His manner filled with the deceptive daintiness of a beast pretending to be human. I had a very distinct feeling that I sitting besides a monster worse than any monster born on Agartha. An existence that was even more devastating than the both the lightning and the golden goddess that killed me last time had been. ¡°Um...like I was asking before...if-, if you don¡¯t ¡°mind¡± me asking...that is¡­.Who exactly are you?¡± The man finished eating his snacks and drinking his tea before he answered. Then after airily wiping his face and his hands with a napkin he clapped to call for the decidedly non-human little butler to come and take the tray away. Which was a shame because I¡¯d hardly gotten a chance to have any of it. From the smell of the tea it was probably very good. Or at least very expensive. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. ¡°Nh...I¡¯m the guy in charge.¡± I blinked. ¡°The guy in charge of everything.¡± ¡°Everything?¡± I said. Sort of catching the man¡¯s meaning but not quite believing it. ¡°William vi Asphodel. Head of Asphodel Industries. Nice to make your acquaintance¡­.again.¡± said the man. Reaching forwards and proffering his had. I shook that hand. It was both soft textured and firm, like sandstone or jade. Then looked up at the man, unsure of my own feelings. Sure I should feel outraged but only finding numbness there instead. I heard myself say, ¡°So...you¡¯re the one behind this shit show where people spend their days dying for the ¡°greater good¡± huh?¡± The man just shrugged. ¡°Well, if you¡¯re talking about my being the one responsible for making sure your people aren¡¯t just burnt up like matches to make sure their world and all the other worlds in this section of reality doesn¡¯t go tits up...then yes. That is pretty much the job I was hired for.¡± The sharpness of his words should have made me feel like I¡¯d struck a nerve, but the flatness with which he¡¯d said them, was so complete it almost felt like neither of us had said anything at all. I couldn¡¯t let it go like that of course. The next words out of my mouth were¡­ ¡°....So this is supposed to be you people saving ¡°all¡± our worlds? By turning our world into a hellhole of endless strife and suffering?¡± I couldn¡¯t help wondering where I¡¯d suddenly gotten the guts, because I heard myself go on to grumble some more. Saying, ¡°So this is you saving us¡­.I¡¯d surely hate to see what the solution where you don¡¯t save us was supposed to be¡­¡± The man didn¡¯t even look at me. He just sat there sipping his tea. His eyes focused somewhere on the skyline. It wasn¡¯t even like he was averting his eyes either. I got the sense it was more that I was below his notice. Which kind of pissed me off. Then finally he did look at me. Staring me straight in the eyes. His gaze avid, dazzling gray-green. Luminous and sparkling like he had stars in his head rather than actual eyeballs. I felt all the piss and vinegar drain out of me in a single second and it was only by some miracle that this drainage didn¡¯t end up literal. ¡°Yes¡­¡± ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°Yes, you probably wouldn¡¯t want to see what Plan A, the solution where we don¡¯t try to at least let you save yourselves looked like.¡± I didn¡¯t quite get it. Then I got it and found myself chilled. Shuddering in revulsion. He didn¡¯t say what plan A was, but he didn¡¯t need to. The Archive supplied that answer. I saw a future where the people of Agartha lived in plagued by some dreadful disease that filled us up with divine power and then made us burst, disintegrating in front of our horrified friends and loved ones like fireworks made of salt and sand. There weren¡¯t just one set of Plan As either. There were numerous versions of similar plans. Plans where we were forced multiply and then die or sometimes were supplanted by an invasive species that would act as the catalyst to defuse the bomb that we called a planet instead¡­.after wiping out all us humans as the opening act. ¡°We¡¯re¡­.we¡¯re people damn it...You can¡¯t...That¡¯s not¡­.¡± I supported. Haunted horrified. Feeling like I¡¯d aged a thousand years in single ten second time-span. ¡°That¡¯s not right?....Come now, Desmond. You know better than that. In this world there are very few absolute wrongs and rights. And even if it were ¡°wrong¡± look at it in perspective the human body is made up of thirty seven point two trillion cells. Each death of each human on Agartha can be said to save all the lives in about that many worlds in the neighboring universes. Do you truly think that the protectors and rulers of those worlds would chose your lives of that of their wards?¡± I wanted to say something. I wanted to find some argument. Instead I just sat there tongue-tied. I was stupefied. ¡°Still, we have¡­¡± ¡°Right? Human rights? Those aren¡¯t real things. By the time you lot came here, you were only being looked after by a set of young traveler gods and a handful of guardian angels. When things really kicked off, and the time came to discuss what to do with you. The only ones who would speak in your favor were those, and the handful of immortals and high powered A.I.s that had managed to just barely ascend before and after your voyage to this planet. So basically all you had were some young or low level immortal. None of them having so much as touched the rank of a heavenly-king by the time things came to a head. Tell me, what happens to a nation, or people without the power to defend their interests?¡± said the man. I went into my head, begging my archive to find something. Anything to prove him wrong. All I got was a litany of examples from this world and the old earth where militarily, politically, and economically inferior states got pushed to the kids table. Before the age of imperialism ended such peoples found themselves swallowed whole. In history while one could argue that might did not necessarily make right. It could also be argued the right, had rarely counted for anything without some measure of might on its side, whether political, military or economic. The America of the earth we Agarthans left behind was created by the loss and stress placed on that world¡¯s English powers and the increase of our on military and economic presence. A cynical enough mind could argue that protests and cultural movements were manipulation, albeit peaceful ones of the political powers of a region. In which case it could possibly even be argued that right had ¡°never¡± counted for anything without some measure of power behind it. Justice and righteousness without power behind them were toothless and therefore meaningless in a world where might ruled over all. At this very moment my archive was picking up trades deals taking place all over this planet. I was witness to scenes where entire cities found themselves being traded and doled out without their say. Sometimes to serfdom or slavery in the more unlucky cases. I might have called the sects and schools countries within countries before, but perhaps that was underselling it. After the end, after the bombs dropped and the system was rolled out. They were the ones with the most levellers. Meaning that they were the ones with the most say so in the world. It might have been better to call them countries over countries. Having a branch of a sect or school in your lands was akin to having it announced that you were their property falling within their territory. This was what it meant to live in a world where a single man could possess the power of a nation all on his own. This was just what happened when you lived in a universe where there were beings who could snuff out planets by accident. (Wait, Seriously?...By accident?!...Shit¡­) The current world saw countless instances where popular kings or populous nations got their whole lives sold out from under them, because they were too weak to say otherwise. Assuming the same were true in the world of immortals, would we even be counted as people if it was in comparison to all the other lives that could be saved by our deaths?¡± Even the angels, benevolent and kind as they were supposed to be, could only be trusted to try and ensure that our ends for the sake of the greater good, were no more painful or prolonged than necessary. Which came as some very cold comfort when combined with the fact that there had been many immortals in the heavenly realms, theorizing that human emotion, human anguish, would be necessary for the safe and efficient diffusion of the divine energies that suffused this planet. ¡°....Anyway¡­.I¡¯m not here to talk about me...I¡¯m here to talk about you, both in the present and the future...or should I say the present and the past? Nh...This time travel stuff is tricky isn¡¯t it...The future-past? Anyway, I¡¯m here to talk about you now and the you that once were meant to be.¡± ¡°Ah...er¡­.sure.¡± I said. Feeling somewhat beaten in my other arguments. Willing to move on because I saw there was no point in trying to explain why all these eternal giants really did have to pay heed to the rights of us fragile, and ephemeral ants. ¡°So...here you are at a bit of an impasse¡­¡± ¡°An impasse?¡± I goggled at the man. Not quite getting what he meant. He pointed upwards and I looked up. Nearly shitting myself as I saw the thunderhead hanging above me, a bolt of frozen divine destruction hanging above my head. ¡°Holy-?!¡± (How in the nine hells did I forget that?!) Then in next moment the man pat my leg and I found myself thinking some faintly warm, very alarming thoughts. ¡°I have to say, both I and the you that¡¯s no longer you, are very proud. You know..though the leveling system is my creation the idea of making this world an immortal kiddie pool was his...er ¡­your idea..¡± And this was the point where I finally grew tired of jumping all the time and being alarmed at everything. After freezing up for a full five minutes I sighed, a long steamy glowing breath escaping me. I found my body relaxing against almost against my will. ¡°Are you serious?... Why the hell would I do that?¡± ¡°Really? Well, I guess I get where you¡¯re coming from...probably in the same way you...the future-past you got where I was coming from. Despite your looks, our looks I guess, we¡¯re a decidedly greedy lot. I¡¯m pretty its probably even one of your vices. There are things we¡¯d go to any length to acquire. Things we¡¯d go to any length to protect. That¡¯s just the way guys like us are built.¡± To tell you the truth I didn¡¯t understand a word the guy was saying but the fact he said it with the same plain faced seriousness, made me slightly afraid to tell him he¡¯d kind of lost me. ¡°Um...right¡­¡± ¡°In any case.¡± He snapped his fingers, and the sky went away. I stood exposed to the naked glare of the heavens and felt an urge to curl up and look away. ¡°...like I said. I¡¯m just here to do you...the future-past you. A favor. I wouldn¡¯t be living the life I live today, if he hadn¡¯t played a certain trick on me¡­¡± (Oh, shit!) I didn¡¯t like the sound of that and prepared to run despite knowing I¡¯d probably not be getting away from the man who could stop time and halt the divine lightning like it was nothing. I froze and then I flinched as he leaned towards me. Returning to the resignation that I¡¯d felt before the man arrived, since it apparently looked like I was going to die again. But then...again, I didn¡¯t die. Instead I found the man hugging me. His arms wrapped around my shoulders. It was weird hug but not entirely unpleasant and despite being so pant-shittingly terrifying, the guy smelled crazy nice. Like a mixture of pine forests and laundry detergent, the good kind of laundry detergent, not that harsh no name stuff. Like fresh cut grass and lavender. A mixture of sharp and soft accents that could and should be bottled and sold in markets around the globe. And somehow I couldn¡¯t remember when the last time I¡¯d been hugged. He pat me on the back and then he stepped away and bowed. A deep bow. It felt wrong to see a man like him bow. Especially to a no one like me. ¡°From the bottom of my heart...on behalf of myself and my wives and all our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren...Thank you.¡± said the stranger. ¡°Uh sure¡­Does this mean you¡¯re going to deal with that thing that was chasing me?¡± The man shook his head, managing an odd chuckle. Slightly musical and slightly repulsive in the way his facial expression didn¡¯t change at all as he did so. ¡°Oh heavens no. If I robbed you of this opportunity I¡¯m pretty sure, the you from the future-past would at least ¡°try¡± to kick my ass. And then he¡¯d die which would make me sad since I am ¡°very¡± obligated to him and very fond of him as well.¡± ¡°....Oh.¡± I said looking up to see that the cloud had followed me despite being time being frozen. ¡°What I ¡°can¡± do, is assure you that at very least you won¡¯t die from it, at least not permanently and to tell you if you lean into this particular curve in the road you¡¯ll finally be able to be free of the karma that brought you and the future you to go to such extremes.¡± ¡°Er...I-, I guess that¡¯s good too¡­.Um, thanks?¡± ¡°Not at all.¡± said the stranger. Then just like that he disappeared. Vanishing in much the same way I imagined that I¡¯d seem to vanish if someone happened to be looking. A few minutes passed during which I collected myself and stored away all the more understandable bits of all that had just taken place into my memory. To digest at a later time¡­.If there were any later times for me. Which according to the stranger, there presumably would be. At some point I realized that time was starting again. Slowly lurching into motion as the eerie silence that I¡¯d been too preoccupied to notice before was swallowed up by the roar and rumble of the wrathful thunder cloud. The blazing bolt descended and I grit and clench my entire being. Throwing everything I had against it. I¡¯d had time to calm myself. ¡°Oh, bollocks...I guess I¡¯m doing this, yeah?¡± Arc 3: Chapter 14: Click...Click...Boom Agartha¡¯s transition from being a mere planet into being an entire realm was proceeding quickly. Each day a handful of new island and continents would appear, ready and waiting for the native Agarthans and the immortal overseers of the world to build upon them, and populate them. The Agarthans would provide the people and the governance. The overseers would provide monsters and a small handful of offworlder allies and competitors. The same people who were responsible for creating the system and administrating the world would provide and prepare almost everything else. From the magical resources, to the dungeons and dead cities. Today, on a certain newborn continent a man with pink hair would appear from nowhere. The whole continent would be covered by a dome of shimmering silver-gray crystal. He¡¯d be accompanied by a roiling black cloud. A monstrous thunder head that spun within itself like a coiling, colossal serpent. If there were any who were able to penetrate the dome with their senses, they¡¯d note that the man seemed to be shouting something. Shouting up at a sky that held only a single cloud. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Then man began to burn, his flesh transforming into energy, and time and space. He flared black, and then white and then gray. The cloud rumbled its displeasure, like a predator that was unhappy to see that its meal still had some fight in it. Then as the man made of black, white and gray, began to rise up from the ground, a bolt of light struck down from the heavens. From the roiling monstrous cloud. ****** In a certain tower above that hung above the world, a group of blindfolded, winged women would look at the project that displayed all the goings on of the world below. They¡¯d note that the anomaly that had occurred a subjective seventeen hours ago and a real-time five minutes ago had seemingly been cleared. Manipulating the controls on their workstations to allow the world below to resume its normal operation. The moment this happened the world would be in uproar. A small uproar, but an uproar all the same. Countless beings of power and many higher existences of the immortal realms would find themselves alarmed as they felt the ripple of power that washed across the land. The mortals below would witness the seas surging as the sky was split in two. They¡¯d hear the heavens howling and be deafened by the screaming of the wind. Then just like that it¡¯d be over. In a single instead an entire continent would disappear. The power that appeared just seconds before, overwhelming and inexplicable as it had been, would be gone. Gone without a trace as if it had never been. Should any persons of sufficient position try to question the Asphodel Administrative Offices on what exactly happened, they¡¯d be shunted to a telerecording that would blithely explain that all this was just a planned interruption in the service. Part of a pre-scheduled update in the system. Arc 4: Chapter 1: The Girl and the Cat ¡°The flow of Karma is based on circles and spirals. So too is the flow of mana, the flow of divine and magical energies in the universe. Yes, there are positive and negative polarities. Yes, there are elemental variations. However... too many spend too long focusing on this. Overlooking, the oneness,...the uniformity that lies latent in all matter and all forces.¡± She sat at the back of the room, about six-two, tall for her age. Taller than most would expect for a grown woman, never mind a child. She bore pale toffee colored skin, freckled from her time working under the sun. Her hair was a pale white. Her eyes were red, dark red, almost passing for a light brown. She sat amidst a small crowd of her fellow students. Other twelve to fifteen year olds who were all eagerly drinking in everything that the teacher in the front of the room had to show them. They watched with rapt attention as the bearded man expounded on the nature of the universe while going through a set of slow, smooth flowing, movements. The girl was no exception, and for all that her face was impassive, looking likely slightly dull and listless, there was no denying the sparkle in her eyes. A sparkle that grew especially bright as the teacher stomped hard on the ground and sent himself flying several feet into the air. Spinning like a top before gently descending like a leaf in the wind. There was applause, and even some whistling. The middle-aged teacher soaked a bit of his student¡¯s excitement in, faintly and briefly smiling to himself before calling for silence. ¡°Now, taking what I¡¯ve told you and what I¡¯ve shown you, we shall have the first assignment for the month. I will have you awaken your power, your mana. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will be able to train, to cultivate. The sooner you are able to train and cultivate the faster you will get stronger. The stronger you are, the stronger you will become with each time you level up. Understand?¡± The word ¡°Understand¡± was a key phrase, the magic signal that the teacher used to let the class know that the man was done with his lecture. And well trained as they were, they knew exactly what response he was waiting for. ¡°Understood, Teacher Markel¡± said the students. Speaking as a chorus. Their unified voices loud and booming, despite any individual reediness or softness.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. They students stood as one, or at least they tried to, rising slightly sloppily, a small amount of lag and disorder being created by those whose attention was elsewhere and those whose legs had fallen asleep. The girl, Innes, was one of those whose legs had fallen asleep. Making her wobbly as she stood. Eventually, she, and everyone else in the class managed to stand. Then once they were all standing they bowed. Bowing deep bows that bent their backs in half making their faces parallel to the ground. ¡°Thank you for your guidance, Teacher.¡± said the chorus of young voice. For his part the teacher bowed his little shallow bow, before softly replying with a, ¡°And you for properly listening..¡± And with that said, the class was dismissed. The students filed out of the room, some of them heading for the cafeteria, others heading for their rooms or to the school facilities. Teacher Markel¡¯s classes were always the last class of the day. The girl was the last to leave. As she left the dojo, as if by magic, sliding from somewhere within her shadow, there appeared a cat, or perhaps it was a dog, or perhaps it was neither. It looked more like a living plushie, or maybe some rare and inexplicable magic beast that was born with what looked like stitches in its side and gleaming stone eyes, red like rubies or fire-amber. No matter what it was, it was very pink and its fur was very fine and soft. Its body was small and its leg short, yet somehow each stride it took was long enough to match the extremely tall young lady beside it. Fluffy in a way that made the visible dread and caution the girl seemed to display as she interacted with the creature look most peculiar to any who might have been watching. The girl looked behind her, as if not expecting its presence, even though she¡¯d definitely known it would be there. She bit her lower lip as if unsure of what to do. Then finally she mustered enough courage make herself speak to the little creature. Speaking softly lest others hear her talking to the cat and she be thought even stranger than other¡¯s already thought her. ¡°Um...so-...so there you are little Master. Come along.¡± The Cat merely stared at her, never uttering a single mew, or meow before trotting after her. Its steps slow and regal. Full of an unhurried haughtiness that might well be more suited for a mighty conqueror of several worlds. The girl lead them back to her room, where she had two bowls of porridge from the day¡¯s breakfast stashed, kept on her little table, stored in two lidded plastic bowls. Into her bowl she sprinkled a small handful of meat and dried fruit. Pemican bought as a treat from one of the shops that neighbored the Academy. The second bowl was placed on the ground, in front of the cat. It stared up at the girl, with eyes that were deep and a gaze that was heavy. Watching as the girl bit her finger. Biting hard enough to break the skin so she could drip a few drops of blood into the porridge. Arc 4: Chapter 2: Daisies in Concrete After patiently explaining what parts of what Teacher Markel had taught were bunk and elaborating on the parts that were actually useful I watched the girl sink into a meditative fugue. Back then...when we first met, the girl was actually only five feet, seven inches, or so...Which I guess is still pretty tall for a twelve to thirteen year old. Considering that she¡¯s preemptively blacklisted, bean sprout, string bean, stilts, amazon, legs and stretch for nicknames I¡¯m allowed to give her, something tells me that she¡¯d probably spent most of her young life being the tallest girl in class. Taking all that into account, and the fact that I knew better than most just how terrible kids could be when they wanted to be, it made it extremely difficult for me to explain that her recent growth spurt was my fault. She was already tall to begin with, and the small modifications I¡¯d made to her genetics over time had exacerbated things. Granted all those modifications had been necessary things. Changes ¡°she¡¯d¡± asked for. But my current projections, didn¡¯t see her growth stopping till she was just a few inches short of seven feet. So honestly, shitty as it is, I kind of was leaning towards not telling her and just hoping I could maybe stop things before she broke through the seven foot mark. (I mean, besides that there really wasn¡¯t anything I could do, and there was no need to get her pissed at me right?) As for where and when little Innes and I met, it was...a few months ago. I was in the wastes, hanging around...not being dead. I wasn¡¯t technically alive either but I wasn¡¯t dead, which was the important thing. She was...in a bad state, bloodied and crammed into a steam trunk. Unconscious. A trunk that was being carried by two guys who from the uniforms they were wearing, I guess had probably students in this academy. Though they were older by a few years or so. My Archive probably could have told me details on this but at the time I was bit...feral and my mind wasn¡¯t really interested in that information. I can¡¯t recall if I stumbled onto them or if ¡°they¡± stumbled onto me. I can say that it gave all of us a fair fright. Anyway...for once¡­.I wasn¡¯t the one pissing himself in terror. I at least I don¡¯t think I was...actually no, no, I definitely wasn¡¯t because I¡¯m pretty sure I don¡¯t have the right...internal workings...for it anymore. So there we were, me a shadowy, red eyed monster living in an old apartment building...them a couple of dumbass, twenty-something year olds who¡¯d come out to the wastes for...whatever reason. My best guess now is that it was some kind of field trip or academy task. I wasn¡¯t getting the feeling that what they did was perfectly pre-meditated, or if it was, it probably wasn¡¯t supposed to go so far. Even being mostly a beast as I was..I could pretty much puzzle out what had happened. The girl was by her own admission, a foreigner. She was someone who transmigrated from another world and either left her starter town on her own or levelled out and been forced to leave the town. In her case, remarkable as it was it seemed that she¡¯d down the latter. And in Agartha kid with that kind of talent could easily get themselves invited to sect or school or company. And as like I¡¯ve repeatedly said, the sects and schools were generally some of the highest powers in the land, those invitations can be pretty generous. New clothes, a roof over your bed, three meals per day. And The backing of an organization powerful enough that even the local law would step carefully around you. If I was a kid with no attachments and nowhere to go, there¡¯s no question what I¡¯d have done. Actually...that question¡¯s probably already moot, since I¡¯d pretty much did exactly that...joining a school to try and get myself some status. (*Sigh*) I was probably expelled by now, since it took me three years, (...well it¡¯d be three hundred years if we account for the subjective time and the time dilation that takes place in this part of the Agarthan Wonderland) to sort myself out after the divine calamity befell me. Either that or I guess they¡¯d think I¡¯d left on my own, which would lead most to assume that I¡¯d died somewhere in the woods...which¡­.I guess I don¡¯t really care about or particularly mind. People thinking you¡¯re dead means that there¡¯s no one out trying to kill you...Not that they¡¯d taught anything worth sending people after me for...it¡¯s just something my dad used to say. But I¡¯m getting off the topic here. The point is, when you¡¯re young with no other prospects, even if you¡¯re lucky enough to get into even a ¡°small¡± sect or school without too much competition, you best expect to have deal with competition and factions and the like once you¡¯re inside. Even in Silent Glenn it was kind of a rat race to see who could climb up the rankings from outer-student to core-student as the higher your rank was the better your treatment. Naturally in any kind of competition there are winners and losers.Victory brings glory and honor and reasons to hold your head high. As for loss it could either mean death, or it could mean that it was time to bow your head a bit and try your chances at getting in the good graces of one of the so called winners. That¡¯s pretty much where shitheads like these two came from. Winners came in grades, separated by caliber. Same for losers. Looking at the mixture of styled hair, second hand swag, and bulky builds, these two pretty much stank of lackey. If they weren¡¯t trembling in my presence, they¡¯d probably have looked semi-impressive, but there was something about how readily they acquiesced to my objective superiority that made me think that they were used to giving way to those who were stronger than them. Like villains in a cheap play they were sort that knew when bully the weak and fear the strong. Which was pretty much exactly what had happened. Innes was talented as far as her energy manipulation skills went a heightened intellect making it easier for her to pick up the knack. A quick appraisal would reveal that she had a fairly decent eighty-five talent points. Which was fairly excellent for a leveller either immortal or non-immortal. More than excellent even if you ignored all the abnormals and outright monsters in the world whose power grew by more than one hundred percent with each level up. All the same, the girl was still very weak. Through her own explanation of her past and what the archive could find out, I¡¯d learn that Innes was from an alternate earth with fairly low anomalous activity. They were just barely starting show signs of developing superhumans, mostly doing so through science. Which actually should have been a red flag for them, right there. Because honestly, sudden superhumans and signs that physics wasn¡¯t working as it should was a sign that all was not right in the world. A world would generally stick to its ongoing internal logic unless something was very wrong. I used to remember reading comic books and seeing people wonder aloud if the world would be better without a ¡°blank¡±-man in it. Since after all without ¡°blank¡±-man all the costumed villains wouldn¡¯t have shown up either. The future-me would actually lay down some useful information for once by clarifying that bit of fuzziness for m one day while perforating me with his laser eyes. Apparently in worlds with superheroes, the supervillains were also an important part of the big picture. It wasn¡¯t about good versus evil, it was about existence versus non-existence. The plot lines involving non-human, non-sentient, cosmic invaders from alternate dimensions and vague forces that would somehow ¡°destroy the world¡± were often given less dramatic attention in most of the works I read and watched. The thing is, they were generally the things that world, and the universe was trying to fight. Men don¡¯t evolve wings unless there¡¯s a dire risk of falling...as it were. But again I¡¯m getting off topic. ¡°Blank¡±-man doesn¡¯t exist to stop bank robber and catch criminals, he¡¯s just a living buffer for the extinction level events that are about to be thrown your way. Ditto for a fair number of the non-crazy villains, since if they don¡¯t want to die, and there¡¯s no where they can run to they¡¯ll generally be expected to throw down for the greater good as well. The point is, little Innes was the daughter of cape. Thirty something year old C-list superhero who¡¯d knocked-up a starstruck seventeen year old. Who¡¯d spend the rest of both her and her daughter lives resenting her daughter for being born and screwing up her life. Though she was a child of super hero she didn¡¯t get any super powers, except maybe a little heightened intelligence. So yeah, like I said, the girl was weak and as I¡¯ve previously mentioned the girl was tall and though any idiot could see that despite her height she was still very much just a kid, for some creeps tall was enough for them consider a person ¡°old-enough¡±. From there the rest of the unpleasant story, pretty much told itself. You have a young new student in academy. You have two older, significantly stronger students. Who by their own admission had forced the girl and a bunch of other little fresh faced students into joining them into a little jaunt into the wastes. Now that I think of it...I think I¡¯ve changed my mind, it probably wasn¡¯t the first time they did this kind of thing. At least part of this was definitely premeditated. They¡¯ve definitely bullied little groups of junior classmates into following them into the wastes before. They¡¯ve definitely bullied those same classmates into staying back and not saying a word about it, before. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. What I¡¯m guessing they didn¡¯t plan beforehand, was her fighting back so hard. Or the fact that it was looking pretty impossible for them to force her silence. She fought and then they fought, and because they were stronger, they nearly beat her to death, but they didn¡¯t die. So they locked her in the trunk and spent the next hour or so trying to figure out what to do. I know, because this was about the time where I woke up. Waking up for maybe the first time in weeks. At first I thought I was just dreaming. There they were two spiky hair thugs in school uniforms, like something out of a nineteen-eighties british post-apocalyptic film. One of them was talking about maybe selling her. The other just wanted to kill her and get out of there. The other argued that she¡¯d probably die since there wasn¡¯t much air in that trunk and they beat her up pretty badly. Someone called someone idiot. The other said something inappropriate about the other¡¯s mother. Honestly I was a bit taken about how thin skinned these lads were for two attempted rapists, but I was also just very annoyed because they¡¯d woken me up for the first time in weeks...when I¡¯d still been planning to sleep for several years more. So I made my presence known and the fat one fouled himself, which to my hyper acute senses was almost enough to offend me into killing them both right there and then. They did a bit of groveling and crying and then more groveling. I was just about to kill them, because in the past few years, I¡¯d found my reservations towards taking life growing increasingly faint, and I¡¯d just simply never been a morning person to begin with. Then the skinny one through himself onto his knees and asked what he could do to get me to spare his miserable mortal life. Which actually got me thinking, because at that point I didn¡¯t know he was a rapist yet, because my archive wasn¡¯t ¡°archiving¡± yet or at least it hadn¡¯t been actively ¡°archiving¡±. And also I was in one of those weird hyper receptive states of mind. So when he asked me if there was anything he could do to get me to spare his life I actually took it seriously and started wondering what exactly it¡¯d take for me not to kill this guy. Thus it was that I¡¯d just about figured out that if he could somehow go back in time and make my eighth christmas not be the shitty debacle that it was, I¡¯d probably send him home, none the worse. Which was about the same time that the fat one got the bright idea of opening the trunk and offering me the girl. Which was honestly the first time I¡¯d been offered a whole person, to you know, just have. Like as a possession. I was kind of turned off, also kind of thrown because despite my tacit acceptance that people were terrible creatures and a return to barbarism had meant the return of slavery and open human trade, I¡¯d not yet really ever thought about my personally owning people. And the boys must have taken my pensive silence as an acceptance of their bargain, because they ran out of their like a devil was chasing them. (Which is ridiculous since I was lying down at the time.) Then I decided I didn¡¯t really want to own any people, at least not right now anyway, plus the person they gave me was already almost broken, because she was pretty close to dying. At which point I got fair pissed because the beast in me was noisier these days, and my temper though no shorter than it had been before, burned much, much hotter. In my head the boys had tried to cheat me. Me...Desmond Bose. Samhain of the Red Moon. The Monster who swallowed a hundred billions gods¡­(or at least I swallowed the essence fractured souls anyway). I launched myself out of the window and flew after the boys, my body an invisible black and red streak in the night. I landed in front of them as they ran and then I stripped the flesh from their bones and sucked their souls from their bodies. Which wasn¡¯t really a punishment so much as it was, how I ate in general. I¡¯d then go on to chase down eat all and any wildlife I happened to spot within the range of my consciousness. (As well as a few unlucky adventurers and mercenaries.) At which point the beast got sated, which put the real me back in charge. Which was a bit like getting blackout drunk and then coming out of it whilst still awake. It wasn¡¯t the same in the sense that I couldn¡¯t remember anything I¡¯d done, because I could. Every terrible thing. It was just that I now had to deal with consequences and implications of having had a ¡°not¡±-me acting while the ¡°real¡±-me was still asleep. After ¡°sort of¡± waking up the first time, the rest of me came alive once I¡¯d been fed. I awoke with a killer headache and the taste of several strangers in my mouth. Which actually reminds me of my home life rather than my time at college, but getting into that would be another digression and I¡¯ve done enough that for today. The point is that my mood had gone from pretty foul to ¡°why hasn¡¯t the sun exploded already?¡±...I flew back to my den in the apartment building. An area that was thankfully dead silent, free of both regular animals and demonbeasts, because nowadays even a sleeping me, was less than healthy to stay around if one didn¡¯t want one¡¯s life expectancy drastically lowered. Once I¡¯d returned to my den my first thought was going back to sleep, but then I noticed the open trunk, with the half-dead girl in it. And because I wasn¡¯t a ¡°complete¡± monster a part of me, felt that I should maybe do something. So I fixed her. Pulling her back from that great unknown, because by then she was more dead than half-dead really. Undoing all the damage that had been done to her mind and body and even admittedly getting a bit carried away and switching on a few of the super genes that had been switched off beforehand. If that sounds at all impressive, it really isn¡¯t. I¡¯d just eaten. And after consuming and being consumed by the combined wrath of a hundred trillion deities and immortal monsters I was much different sort of existence than what I¡¯d been before. So fixing one small girl and bringing her back from the edge of death, was more time and energy expensive than anything else. Consuming a day''s worth of time and three days worth of energy, but taking almost no actual effort. I didn¡¯t even really have to think about it, at a certain point. All the things that those immortal knew and all the things that future-me had been into me, made it an almost brainless process. Enough so, that I almost definitely might, have maybe, probably, made some changes to the girl¡¯s being, while I wasn¡¯t paying attention. I didn¡¯t touch her mind or her soul though. I still have some morals. There are still some lines I won¡¯t cross. I¡¯d rather eat a soul than change a person''s innate nature. At least I wouldn¡¯t do so without their express permission and very, very damn good reason for doing so¡­ Anyway. I brought the girl back to life and then being the kind of stiff faced git I was I asked, her if she was okay. And she said, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± which sounded about right, except was maybe just a tad too honest. She then said, ¡°Are you going to kill me?¡± To which I responded with a, ¡°Well young lady, what do you think?¡± Which was answered with the absolutely correct, ¡°...Probably not?¡± After which I sent her on her way, briefly explaining a convenient route that would take her back to her school without letting her run into too many troublesome fellows, human or monster. (The streets tend to get nice and quiet once a huge scary monsters blown through.) She showed some unexpected politeness and thanked me because apparently she¡¯d aware enough to know that she¡¯d maybe been more than a little hurt just a little while ago. Putting it together with the fact that she was apparently now suddenly fine and assuming that thanks were in order. I didn¡¯t need her thanks and like I said, they hadn¡¯t been expected. However since manners in the face of extenuating circumstance, and life and death peril is something a gentleman like myself greatly approves of. Thus I more or less had to reward the girl. Giving her a heavily enchant magic blade. Which was actually the sword I¡¯d used when I was last humanoid, wandering through the deep wastes and the wilder parts of the wonderland for decades, confused and insane. Hungrier and angrier than words can describe. She briefly made a difficult face but thanked me again, bowing deeply as the school and Agartha culture probably would have thought her to do. Never mentioning that ¡°she¡± actually wasn¡¯t all that great with swords. Unfortunately my good will had just about run out by then and honestly it was and is a very good sword and at the time the girl was just one or two months over twelve, so I figured even if she didn¡¯t know how to use a sword the blade was already keyed to her and she had enough time to ¡°learn¡± how to use a sword. As the more good intentioned of my foster parent would say, I figured, ¡°[s]he¡¯d grow into it.¡± Thus with that settled, I went back to sleep. Or at least that what I wish I could say, but the obviously I didn¡¯t. Instead I spent that whole night tossing and turning. Bloated from all the people and monsters and people that I ate. I ate too many people that day. Way too many people. (Funnily enough, I still ¡°don¡¯t¡± consider myself a cannibal.) Plus directly eating conflicting sets of enchanted armor makes me bloat apparently and I probably should have chewed more properly. But getting thirty-two chews with every bite always feels so tedious. On top of all this a certain young face, with dull eyes and intelligent if slightly despondent look on her face, kept coming into my mind. The next day, I left my apartment to at least make sure that the girl back to town okay. She didn¡¯t. Though usually, any rampage of mine would have most of the local fauna and the more active members of the flora keeping things low key, occasionally there would be a few young arseholes who thought they were something special. As well as a few older fools who thought they could challenge me for supremacy. When I found the girl she was being set upon by a flock of griffins. I dealt with the griffins accordingly, despite my dislike of swallowing feathers¡­(they tickle my throat)...Then I landed in front of her to ask just how exactly she¡¯d managed to get a flock white griffins, a generally, benevolent and peaceful species angry at her. She just sort of panted, and just stared. So I healed her, recovering her stamina and erasing the damage she¡¯d taken. Which stopped the panting but not the blank staring. I asked my question a second time. To which she answered with an, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The archive told me that wasn¡¯t a lie. So I dug a little deeper and realized that funny enough her witch of mother had been an actual witch and if only by accident, she¡¯d managed to do her daughter a good turn. In her veins flowed the blood of a certain Evil God from a certain hell dimension. It was on his say so, that all his descendants were pulled from the girl¡¯s earth once it looked like the superhuman buffer was no longer going to hold. The world died but a handful of its populace, who were the descendants and inheritors of different immortal beings, were saved. So...pretty much the usual story. The part where this became a problem, started when I fixed the girl and turned on all her useful genes. Turning on the genes she¡¯d inherited from the evil god would have further boosted her intelligence and neural development, and increased her affinity for darkness, life, illusion. I¡¯d neglected to notice that it¡¯d mark her as an evil creature to all, quote unquote creatures of good. Now I probably could have just quickly fixed my little mistake a number of ways and then headed back home, but as I was going to do so, she kept looking at me. Wide eyes solemn and silent. There was this odd little ¡°hey, what can you do?¡± look on her face as this huge colossal bore down on her. Its very aura freezing her in pace. It was like she wasn¡¯t so much scared of me it was that she¡¯d somehow resigned herself to my existence. Something most grown men failed to do. Either throwing themselves at my feet. Trying to run. Or trying to fight. Usually to no avail, though I¡¯d sometimes let the stupider or sillier ones go with their lives and limbs intact because I could find food anywhere but a good laugh was rare thing. Curiosity struck me and I had the archive take a look at who she was and all that she¡¯d seen in her short little life. Some of it was good. Most of it wasn¡¯t. Some of it was amazing. Most of it was quite dull. I don¡¯t know why but the girl reminded me of a younger me. Her childhood had been less than stellar like mine had been, even if she¡¯d stayed in the custody of her real parents. If you could call living in a dreadful boarding school custody. But her attitude about life was probably healthier than mine was at her age. Or maybe she wasn¡¯t as far gone. Again I¡¯m not really sure. I said, ¡°Hey, kid¡­¡± And she said, ¡°.......¡± ¡°You¡¯re kind of helpless you know that?¡± And she said, ¡°......¡± ¡°You can¡¯t fight...you don¡¯t really know how to use magic and you don¡¯t have any special abilities¡­¡± Which was smartly responded to with a slightly indignant, ¡°......¡± Which I¡¯ll admit I deserved because really who was I to talk, if my future-self hadn¡¯t beaten so many cheats into my I¡¯d have probably been caught by somebody and turned into a soul slave. A fate that has befallen many an unfortunate immortal. One of several other bad ends, experienced by those who were too weak to ensure their own safety and foolish enough to give away what they were. A practice that was thankfully not very widespread as the converting of immortals into immortal objects was seen as a perversion or obstruction of the system''s intended purpose. Soul slaves couldn¡¯t properly level up since they were technically in a state of middling state of half-death, meaning they couldn¡¯t become heroes and fight demon kings, to create the reactions necessary to safely defuse the cosmic bomb that was our planet. All such perversions against the system were dealt with by the ¡°mysterious¡± gray moderators. Meaning while having a soul slave was a very powerful thing, it could also get you and all your people eliminated from this world with extreme prejudice. Even the higher entities of this world were no exception to this rule. (Self-Awareness: You¡¯re digressing Again¡­.) Ahem...Anyway...my point is¡­.compared to her I was just a spoiled rich kid, whose future-self used its connections to set him up with all the coolest toys and secret codes, so really I shouldn¡¯t have been criticizing the little girl who pretty much just trying her best. ¡°....Um¡­.Anyway¡­.You don¡¯t know much and I know lots. So what do you say, how about I show you a thing or two?¡± I said. Feeling slightly awkward and unsure of what I was offering and why I was offering it. The girl looked up at me, her expression a mixture of wariness and calculation, the look left naked and plain on her face. Undisguised by any guile or attempts at tact. It took her a good five minutes before she nodded and strangely enough despite our relative positions, it felt even longer. I felt myself tensing up a little. ¡°....Okay¡­.Sure¡­.¡± Arc 4: Chapter 3: A Young Talent The students were all gathered in the training hall where Teacher Markel gave his lessons. Today instead of simply sitting and getting lectured to, they sat along the walls. Watching as a small impromptu arena was set up through a creative use of floor mats and magical warding. Today, was an exam day. The day to test all that Markel and his assistant teachers had taught them. The examination method for today would be a practical test. The twenty-seven or so students of Markel¡¯s hall would be called up into pairs of two. They would be made to fight till a winner was decided or till the end of the two-minute time limit. If they lost they¡¯d step down. If they won you¡¯d keep fighting till they lost. This was what they would be doing for the majority of the day. Similar processes were being carried on in the halls of most of the school¡¯s other teachers. Especially for those teachers who taught the Academy¡¯s first and second-year classes. Passing the test meant winning at least three out of five matches. Passing with honors and winning four or more matches would bring glory and rewards. Dusk-Sea Academy was not a particularly large establishment. Where other schools and sects held entire kingdoms, the school only possessed a tenuous hold over the few small towns and cities that neighbored it. Thus there were limits to their resources. Small schools like theirs had to be particular about who they cultivated and who they let go. They couldn¡¯t afford to take as many chances as the bigger schools did. They couldn¡¯t afford the waste. This was the time of the year where the school¡¯s jewels and dross were separated. The beginning of that special period where the Academy sorted out which students would actually be students. Treasured seedlings to be groomed for the future glory of the Academy...and which students would either have to themselves prove of some nominal worth, or risk being sent away. Markel stood at the front of the class where he usually stood. Calling the names of his students. Behind him were seated an old man and an old woman. Magisters of Academy, elders who held the esteemed rank of Professor rather than being considered mere Teachers. At first the students came in twos, then after the first match they were called one by one. Squaring off within the little arena. Generally just throwing out rudimentary spells of water, fire, air, earth and force. Mixing their magic with hand to hand fighting. More than a few of them showing shameful displays as the children fell and rolled about like well¡­.children. Eventually, the name of a certain extraordinarily tall, but otherwise plain-faced young lady was called. Innes entered the arena. Masking any trepidation she felt with the same stoicism that she always bore. Her expression empty of either fear or anticipation. Her stride even. Her bearing steady. Her manner was enough to draw a bit of appreciation from the teachers and friendlier classmates. It was also enough to draw sneers from those who were wondering what means the seemingly mediocre girl had for her to be acting so confident. She faced the winner of the last match, a young man with blond hair and broad shoulders. She bowed once, before standing calmly on the opposite end of the arena, either failing to, or not bothering to, take a proper stance. An action that bought her a few disapproving looks from the observing teachers. ¡°Begin!¡± bellowed Markel. In a single instant as if electrified and jolted to life, she moved. Striking out like an angered serpent before her opponent. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. He cried out as he was flung into the force field that made up the walls of the arena. Smashing against it before sliding down in a heap. A moment went by before anyone did anything as if no one knew what to make of what they just saw. Out some thirty or forty matches, each spanning around three minutes each, this one had ended in the shortest time. The male Professor who sat directly behind Teacher Markel was the one who snapped out of it first. Wrapping his knuckles on the table to remind the young Teacher of his duties. ¡°...Excellent showing. Next Match. Olivia Winster, you¡¯re up.¡± said Markel. Innes¡¯s next opponent was a girl with brown hair and drill type pigtails. She carried a wand that was long enough and sturdy enough to double as a bow staff and used it accordingly. Or at least that¡¯s what she¡¯d done in her prior matches. In this case however, just as soon as Markel, shouted that they could begin she found herself knocked off her feet and into the wall. Sliding down and landing in a heap, just like the first boy had been. She wasn¡¯t particularly hurt, nothing had been broken. But it was perhaps for the best that both she and Innes¡¯ first competitor had already one three of their matches. Again there was silence, but this time it was shorter. Markel and the two professors behind him looked at the white haired student in the arena. Quietly appraising her in both senses of the word. Trying to figure out if what they were seeing was real talent or just some petty trick. The next competitor was called. He¡¯d learned from the first two and immediately dashed forwards and out of the way of that first palm strike, that had gotten the first two competitors. He tried to maneuver around the girl, so he could launch an ice-ball spell at her blind spot. He juked and jived dashing forwards, only to find his feet swept out from under him. Less than ten seconds after it had begun the fight was over. Despite his attempts at cleverness the boy slid down the same wall that the others had. Aching but whole the boy, named Robert Carlson, Robbie to his friends, looked behind him as he left the arena shortly afterwards. He sat with his fellow students as he and they all waited to see who would be called next. Wanting to see if the girl would keep up her winning streak. The fourth competitor was called, a broad young woman, with blue hair, spiked and frosted, in a style that was in vogue for the region. She stepped into the arena, a bit of haughtiness in her stride. Her blue eyes cold, her gaze imperious. ¡°I¡¯d like to see you try that nonsense with me, yeah?¡± She said. Stretching, her knuckles and neck cracking as she limbered up. A slightly sinister smile spreading across her lips. For her part, Innes said nothing, for she had nothing to say. She already guessed that this was probably be the hardest of her matches for the day. And the guess proved to be correct. The moment Markel gave them the go ahead they fought in earnest. This wasn¡¯t a match between students, this was grudge match between foes. Never mind that Innes had never spoken to the girl, nor did she know what she¡¯d done to offend this person. She¡¯d seen enough the kind of look that the girl had been wearing in her former world to know when she was hated. And strange inexplicable enmities were nothing strange to her either. The few friends that the girl had had in her old world had often joked that making enemies was probably her super power. The girls fought, and the fight was an ugly one. Markel frowned as he watched it. Ready to step in if it looked like either of them was about to seriously hurt the other. Technically this was just supposed to be a match, a short trading of blows. The children weren¡¯t supposed to be bringing their petty grudges and personal disputes into things, and yet such happenings were a common thing to see in the schools and sects. It was all fine so long as both parties knew not to go too far. Innes danced away from a tiger strike with flames coming out between the claw-like fingers. She dodges a kick that blazed hot enough to cook a few strands of her hair. She spent most of her time with the big girl on the defensive, being chased around the arena. Waiting for an opportunity. Then she saw it. The girl took a step that was just a little too wide, while throwing a blow that went just a little too high. It was just enough for the white-haired girl to act. She darted in and grabbed the broader girl, grabbing the corners of her clothing and lifting the girl off of her feet. The girl, a Debbie Something, was made to suffer a force amplified, over the shoulder throw. Slamming into the ground hard enough that the warded walls that made up the arena actually shook a little. Markel¡¯s eyebrows gathered as he reproachfully stared at the victor. He strode through the walls to make sure the other girl was alright. She wasn¡¯t...this time a few bones ¡°had¡± been broken. ¡°I¡¯ll warn you only once Kaufman...this is just an instructional match. No need to be doing harm to your classmates. Am I understood.¡± ¡°Yes, Teacher.¡± said Innes. Having the grace to look chastened. Even if it was entirely disingenuous. All in all this match had lasted, a short forty-five seconds. The others who¡¯d faced the girl and now sat at the wall, frowned. Making sour faces as they had it confirmed to them that A) they were perhaps not as skilled as they thought they were and B) the white haired girl had gone easy when she faced them. Time came for the fifth match, it was another student, who already had three wins under his belt. He looked at the girl and then he looked at Markel and then he looked at the girl. If this were one of the schools proper tournaments, he¡¯d have forfeited but this wasn¡¯t a tournament. It was just a classroom test. No forfeiting was allowed. He sighed as he stepped into the arena. Mumbling softly so that only he and the girl would hear. ¡°Go easy, okay? I bruise like a peach.¡± Arc 4: Chapter 4: Up Late and Unable to Sleep Nightmares were nothing new to Innes Kaufman, and she usually had one every other night. Beneath the cool, calm mask she wore to avoid letting the world know just how much it actually got to her, like most people in the world, she often quietly somewhat of a mess. Making for a less than optimal picture of mental health. Mature, pragmatic and logical on her best days. Paranoid, anxious, and cynical on the worst days. But usually finding herself in an unhappy middle. The girl had once been described as a sixty-something year old neurotic in the body of a twelve year old. Now she was a teenager in a whole other world, in a whole other dimension. She¡¯d finally had her first menses a few weeks ago, after having all training she¡¯d been doing forestall it for months and was finding the experience roughly as ugly, terrible and frightening as tv, the internet and her mother had always told her it would be. To put things plainly, whether it was the things that she¡¯d been through in her old world or the things she¡¯d been through in her new one, she was one girl who was direly in need of someone to talk to. There were some nights where she either didn¡¯t sleep at all, or she¡¯d sleep briefly, before snapping awake and sitting up all night, last whatever horrors had chased her into wakefulness find her again when she closed her eyes. Tonight was one of those nights. She was, or at least she¡¯d thought she was, sitting in a park that was few streets away from the boarding school she¡¯d used to go to. She¡¯d been feeding the birds, something that used to give her a bit of a peace of mind when her mind got too hectic and full of unnecessary, and decidedly negative thoughts. Then suddenly there was a hum, and that hum was followed by screaming and the sounds of explosions. Then suddenly she was on her back in a dirty alley way, inside an eerily quiet city. Two boys in striped, red-brown, blazers stood over her laughing. She flailed trying to get up, and the boys turned into metal monsters standing gleaming chitinous tripods, their proboscis like graspers out and in her face ready to engulf her head. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Then she woke up, and she was in her bed. To her relief tonight wasn¡¯t the few times that she¡¯d wet herself. That used to happen on occasion, but maybe...hopefully...she¡¯d grown out of it. She sat up, feeling her heart beating a mile a minute. Pounding almost painfully. Painfully enough that she wondered if thirteen wasn¡¯t too early for someone to have a heart-attack. Her stomach lurched and burst of sour-sweet gas invaded her nasal passages for warning her of a gastric situation that was about to go down in T-Minus three...two¡­. She ran and this time, like most times, she made it to the bathroom. Praying at a porcelain altar while her stomach tried to empty itself of all that she¡¯d ever eaten. She vomited until she felt better and then once that was done she rinsed her mouth out repeatedly till she could no longer taste what she¡¯d had for breakfast the day before. With the Crisis averted other needs came to mind. She kind of wanted to tinkle now and since she was already in the restroom, she figured she might as well. Somehow that led to her taking a shower, and it was only after all ¡°that¡± was done that she meandered back to her room. Opening the door to find an undulating pink and black shadow extending out from under her bed, bathing in the moonlight that poured through her open window. ¡°What¡¯s wrong kid? Did you have another one of those dreams?¡± said a voice, that was calm and sort of sly and sort of echoey. As if coming from far away and deep under water. ¡°....Un.¡± she grunted to the affirmative. Not wanting to talk about it right at that moment. The owner of the voice,, the enigmatic Red Moon King that had till recently been dominating and terrorizing Eastern half of the Europan Wastes didn¡¯t press the issue. Instead a smooth block of glass simply appeared from nowhere and from that glass came a projected screen. It was a tv, a television projector that he¡¯d either found somewhere or made from his memories of things that Agartha used to have. The girl had been pleasantly surprised to find that Agarthans had once had tv. She was even more surprised to find that they still had computer technologies. What¡¯s more there were even a fair amount of channels still on the air. They mostly played re-runs, but oddly enough the content was surprisingly similar to the kind of nonsense she¡¯d watch and pretend to be to mature to like when she was back home. A mixture of reality tv, soap operas and cartoons. Now that she was awake she¡¯d probably watch television till the sun came up and it was time to go to class. Or till she fell asleep if by some miracle she could fall asleep and not remember why she¡¯d been desperately trying to avoid going back to sleep hours before. Tonight, it¡¯d seem that both would come to pass, perhaps it was because today was a self-study day and there were no actual classes. She keeled over just as the first bits of sunlight started coming through her window. She nearly fell off the bed, but was caught in the strong but gentle grip of a pink-black tendril that nudged her in the opposite direction and then covered her with a blanket. Arc 4: Chapter 5: Fifty-Percent Context, Fifty-Percent Perspective Someone once told me that sanity is fifty percent context and fifty percent perspective. The only thing differentiating us from the insane and out-sane is that ¡°their¡± answers for what¡¯s going on in the world aren¡¯t in line with all the facts and figures that the rest of the world is looking at. Like a machine that gets its ones and zeros all screwed up or a program that fails to run an integral line of code.. I was in a lawn chair that I¡¯d picked up at some point, perched atop a pillar that I¡¯d created from the surrounding rubble. I sat reclined, arm behind my head, my eyes closed. A few hours ago I¡¯d just sent a thirteen year old girl into some of the toughest monster territory in this part of the Europan wastes, armed only with a single axe and a single revolver. And as I sat there, watching as she faced against a howling, muscular, beast of mangy fur and oxidized metal, one thought kept echoing through my head. (¡°You¡¯re. Not. Crazy.¡±) I knew what I was doing. Everything happening right now was completely under control and totally not a mistake. The kid was fine and if she wasn¡¯t she was close enough that I could instantly make the save if I needed to. This was just my way of hands on teaching, and even if it seemed a bit rough it was still leagues more gentle than my future-self had been. Like I said I knew what I was doing, and I had in fact been doing similar for months. The only problem right now was that I was having one of those moments where I¡¯m not exactly sure if I¡¯m in my right mind. There weren¡¯t any particular thoughts that stood out as off to me. It was more of a feeling. This off-kilter sense that the way I was currently thinking wasn¡¯t in line with the way I¡¯d been thinking a few hours ago, or even a few minutes ago. Which I guess is normal, when one is mortal and your frame of mind is fragile enough to be influenced by the neural chemicals coursing through the squishy meats inside your skull and the hormones in your veins, but not when you a man who is more energy than matter. More a concept than a being. In that case, those kinds of little subtle shifts start to feel more dramatic, more worrisome. Especially when you¡¯re me and a solid chunk of who you are, turns out to tied to being highly destructive and objectively evil. In that case, such strange and unplanned shifts of mood start to feel intensely inauspicious. ...My current status now looks something like this¡­. *****
Name: Samhain
Age: ---
Level: 5
Race: Irregular Existence
Affiliation(s):
Title(s): Partially-Omniscient, Partially-Omnipotent, Child of the Emptied Skies, Red Moon King, Great HeroUnlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Talent: 999
Attainments:
Body 1665
Mind 1665
Soul 1665
Affinities: Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Entity of Black, Entity of White, Entity of Gray, Blanked Gestalt, Devilish Good Looks
Virtue: Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence
Vice: Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth
***** Asides from the talent points, which I suppose were now finally high enough that even I have to admit it was a bit much, even if it was still nothing compared to the monsters that set up the system to begin with, there wasn¡¯t much in the way of dramatic changes. Just a few seemingly superficial changes to my abilities and titles. And odd absence of the alias tag on my ¡°name¡± that makes me think that the system has apparently just the decided to rename for some reason...but still nothing particularly dramatic. Then again, this isn¡¯t about all the little dramatic changes to my being, it¡¯s about the big subtle one. The profound alteration of the nature of my existence. When the divine calamity struck me, I both did and didn¡¯t die. The lightning struck, and I tried to strike back consuming and being consumed in the process. ¡°I¡±, the original me, disappeared, but there was ¡°something¡± left in its place. The residue of my soul was filled with residues of the immortals and then refined a cosmic reaction of the divine energy present both in this world and in that power that had been chasing me. That bit of me that remained after the rest was burnt away achieved a state of universal oneness that I can¡¯t even really explain. For a brief span of time I was everything and everyone and everywhere. I stopped being a person and was instead converted into something closer to a concept. Becoming an existence akin to friction, and entropy and gravity. Then just as suddenly as the real me, the old me had been destroyed, the new me was also destroyed. Dying and being reborn, countless times, in all parts of the cosmos. Till finally a new aggregate existence was created. One without form, or reason, or rationality. Egoless and pure like a newborn child. Built of all the impulses and dark hungers that made up my beast, the darker self that once powered half of my immortal being. After the divine lightning destroyed the continent I¡¯d been on, the bestial me would go on to consume and destroy several of the surrounding continents. In the same way the planets and stars arose from out of the fiery chaos of the big bang, eventually something like a new consciousness would arise from within my newborn monstrous self. One with the same memories and relevant thought processes as the man that once was. Close enough to the real Desmond that if you squinted and crossed your eyes, it was almost like he, I, ¡°was¡± the real Desmond. Except he, I, was now tied to the baggage of all the other fragmented consciousness that were dissolved within in that final lightning blast, and the all selves that I¡¯d been before ¡°I¡± had existed in the first place. The Goddess had been right. I¡¯d been a bit skeptical when she mentioned that there was a chance that at least a few of us immortals of Agartha were just heavenly immortals who¡¯d been reborn. Now I knew for sure that she right because I¡¯d met my immortal self and let me tell you...he¡¯s kind of an asshole. An antagonist for all that lives. Even after going all zen and touching the very materia of fate and fortune, it seems that my luck is still my luck. While everyone else got to be former angels, former gods, former heroes and even a few former devils. My former self was that of quarantined monster. Something along the lines of an immortal virus. Think somewhere between biological virus and software virus. That former me wasn¡¯t alive per se, but it ¡°was¡± everlasting. Possessing a consciousness made up of countless of former victims. Old and evil enough that the bad guys your typical cosmic myth had agreed to work together with the good guys to seal our kind away. I was anti-life. Which now that I was now fully in-sync with myself and all the portions of my being, meant that there would now always be a part of me that just instinctively yearned for an end to all life, everywhere, ever. (...Forever.) Unravelling the very fabric of reality till it was brought to a clean and beautiful blankness and all existence could restart in its proper shape¡­(whatever the hell that¡¯s supposed to be...) On the upshot, at the very least I wasn¡¯t crazy. I wasn¡¯t out of control. This wasn¡¯t some wolf-man situation. I knew what I was doing¡­.(for the most part. And had the ability to chose to act or not act based on my own decisions. So long as I kept on doing as I needed to and didn¡¯t let the beast in me get to be agitated, all would be well. (...Hopefully) All in all if I really wanted to lie to myself¡­.(which I kind of do)... I could still pretend it was just part of the whole normal package. The only real issues that I couldn¡¯t ignore was the fact that, for whatever reason, simply holding a physical, human form as I was doing now, seemed to both heavily drain my magical reserves and agitate the monster in me. And the fact that, I was now apparently omnipotent but couldn¡¯t actually tell you if becoming so had made me weaker or stronger. Arc 4: Chapter 6: A Civilized Society Europa was yet another of the six original grand-continents of Agartha with the other five being Tri-America, Sino-Europe, Afro-Arabia, Eastern Asgard and Luna. Each continent being named for the old earth faction that settled it. As for why the Europans called themselves as such rather than as European or as Unified Europe, that all likely had something to do with the ill feelings the inhabitants of the original Europeans of the old earth held against a large portion of their former countrymen. When half the EU defected and aligned themselves with Sino-Russian confederation to form Sino-Europe and kick start the Earth¡¯s fifth world war, it suffices to say that a great grudge was formed. One that lasted well into the second century of mankind''s meander through the great void of space. With an unease between the two factions remaining even after mankind had settled in its new home. Creating an atmosphere similar to that which had existed between the old United States and the SSR during the post-cold war era. Of course the purging fires of the nuclear war that wiped out most of Agarthan civilization several millennia ago, had burnt away most of this grudge, but there were still a few AIs and immortals who vaguely remembered. ***** The Dusk-Sea Academy sat on the low eastern coast of Europa in an area known to the locals as the Hollowmont region. The school was bit near the shore of a Red-Pacific Sea. A vast body of water that was formerly named as such due to the seasonal orange and red algae blooms. As was the case for most of the other grand continents, Europa in general looked like big mishmash of all the former homelands of all its members. Frozen in the north. Balmy in the south. With an endless expanse of rolling emerald hills and cliffs. It was a temperate land of forests and magic. And well favored by many of the fae races that started appearing shortly after the bombs dropped and civilization had to start over. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Perhaps it was for this very reason and some quiet bias of the fae that the more prettily built, and longer lived machinegun were the most populous variation of man present on the continent. Outnumbering the vanilla humans and the bestial humankin by a ratio of three to two. ****** The Hollowmont region was made up of five great Duchies that were held by two different kingdoms. The first kingdom was the Alden Kingdom that was founded on the northern part of the region and held the duchies of Blakeslee and Clarke. The second kingdom was Clayton Kingdom of the south that held the duchies of Comstock, Dawson, and Daugherty. Naturally behind these kingdoms, would be some sects and schools. As the Hollowmont region was not especially well known for having treasures or great resources that would be of interest to mages, cultivators or levellers of any kind, the only sorts of sects and schools that could be found in the region were of a humble sort. Ranging from small but elite establishments to larger groups that were more or less indistinguishable from your average mercenary company or gang of rogues. Even then these groups could still be counted as proper sects and school, each of them holding power over multiple cities even if they still had to share their power over the two nations between them. As is the case with any small pond with many mid-sized fish swimming within it, disputes were inevitable. Open warfare between the sects and schools would be calamitous for the common folk, as fights between levellers tended to be large scale and end in heavy in collateral damage. Most importantly it would come at the disastrous cost of the lives of their seniors and treasured powerhouses. Thus to avoid such misfortune, it had always been the tradition for sects and schools both on and off the continent to settle most of their differences through the tournaments they held for their juniors. The Dusk-Sea Academy was no different. Thus it was, months after the academy¡¯s yearly sorting chosen ones and commoners it came time for the five year inter-school tournaments where the schools and sects of the region would begin preparing to compare their harvests from the last half-decade. Seeing how many of their jewels were really jewels and which ones were just useless shiny stones. Arc 4: Chapter 7: Second Thoughts and Considerations ¡°Um...So, I was thinking...maybe I shouldn¡¯t go through with this whole tournament. Maybe I should just make some excuse for the teacher and keep my head down.¡± said Innes. As she sat in an out of the way corner of the outer-courtyard of the academy. Hidden behind some shrubbery. Accompanied only by her pink cat. ¡°Mhmew?¡± said the cat. Dozing. Lazily glancing at her with eyes of red crystal. The girl toyed with a bit of grass. Tearing it up, throwing it away. Her brow furrowing as thoughts quietly whirred in her head. On the one hand, she knew it¡¯d probably look bad to bow out without trying. Possibly bad enough to get her harshly punished. Though hopefully not bad enough to get her expelled. Especially after she¡¯d bumped so many other people off of the billing by winning in the class tourney. On the other hand, she¡¯d started to get the feeling that winning like she had, had gotten her too much exposure. That getting even more exposure by fighting in the inter-school tournament would be a bad idea. In the weeks since the class tests the girl had found herself with uneasy feeling that she was being stared at. It was occurring to her that perhaps she¡¯d done too well. People noticed when she went places now. There were too many people who were suddenly interested in talking to her. Too many people who suddenly gave a damn about who she was. People, who wouldn¡¯t have paid any heed if she were choking to death right in front of them, just a few months ago, wanted to shake her hand. This was both the reward and punishment of success. For the somewhat misanthropic girl it was more punishment than reward. If there had been a set of interclass matches or some kind of interclass tournament, she¡¯d have likely backpedalled a bit by purposefully losing. Unfortunately for the girl, Dusk-Sea Academy was one of those schools and sects, that believed in collecting only jewels in hopes of finding ¡°real¡± treasures, rather than just collecting whatever and hoping for rare finds. A small establishment that focused its efforts on cultivating a small bumper crop of excellent seeds. Purposefully being choosey from the outset because they didn¡¯t have the leeway to try developing just anyone who came through their doors. As such the leadership of the school saw fit to forgo having an interclass competition and just skip ahead to the inter-school tournament. So long as one ranked well in the tournament it would be enough to be counted as a core student of the Academy. The rewards from the both the school and the inter-kingdom union of sects and schools that hosted the tournament would be rich. And fame and fortune beyond reckoning would showered on those who stood out, for the next five years. Which, speaking quite frankly put the girl in a bit of a bind. Innes Kaufman was a girl who did best in the shadows. Someone who much preferred just being another face in the crowd. Nothing good had ever come from her being noticed or pointed out. It was the taller trees that caught the most wind and the highest mountains that were struck by the most lightning after all. This was something that the girl had already learned long ago. And as if the world thought that she needed a refresher she¡¯d been forced to spend almost every other day of the last month or so, receiving and answering challenges. Called to duel with her position in the tournament as the stake. In a perfect world she would have been able to throw the fight and lose in the very first duel that came her way. Unfortunately the world was not that simple. And while the climate and the stakes had never been so extreme as they were in this world, her old school and her current one ran with similar rules. Rules that she was slowly starting to realize would probably still be in effect in the world at large as was often the case for the more cogent life lessons one learned in school. It would have been fine if she¡¯d just passed that first class test normal. It would probably have even been fine if she¡¯d failed it. She was still just a first year and there¡¯d have been time to recoup the loss. What wouldn¡¯t be fine is losing, now that¡¯d she¡¯d already stood out as a contender. Throwing away all the face and status that she¡¯d inadvertently bought herself by becoming one the champions of Teacher Markel¡¯s hall and one the treasured young seeds of the school. As the saying went, it was sometimes better to just be a soul in purgatory than to try and fly out and fall into hell. Those flights often made one many enemies. People who were jealous. People who were angered. People who swore revenge for the perceived slight that came with being surpassed. One couldn¡¯t climb over others without at least seeming to step on the heads of the people below after all. It would have been different if she was a ¡°somebody¡± but even with her relative success and new popularity the girl was still more or less a nobody. As a commoner, a stranger that the academy invited in from out of the wastes, her status was too thin. A thin status that grew too bright and then allowed itself to grow dim would be crushed like a firefly. In short all those entitled sons and daughters of heaven. The young heirs and heiresses from the local clans and families who challenged her, had done it with the intent of using her as a stepping stone. Something to push into the mire while they climbed to the heights that were theirs by birth. Thus she fought and won, every single last duel she was challenged to. While it was no sin for a person to try and progress, stepping backwards was a sign of weakness. A drop of blood in the water that would draw every single person who thought it in their interests to tear her apart. And in this world that likely would be literal. Falling now, would mean falling out of the Academy¡¯s good graces and falling out of the Academies good graces could well be fatal for her. Innes wasn¡¯t sure that she could trust that the retaliation of the foes she¡¯d inexplicably managed to collect for herself would stop things at just some petty pranks and some bullying. She had a gnawing sense that any attempt to step down from the humble height that she¡¯d inadvertently climbed to could cost her. And knowing that even this much success and attention had turned out to have such dire consequences she couldn¡¯t help being afraid of what would happen if she did rank well. It goes without saying, that she was aware of how egotistical she was being here. Being presumptuous in the extreme. There was no guarantee that she¡¯d rank at all, never mind ranking well. But somehow going and not doing well in the tourney didn¡¯t sit well with her. In all likelihood throwing the towel there would be the same as throwing the towel in any of the duels she¡¯d been challenged to. A catastrophic step backwards that would bring her to the edge of a social cliff. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. And Her experiences in her old world had taught her that false humility was just another type of arrogance. One had to be objective about ones strengths and witness if one wished to go far in life. And if the girl was being objective...she knew that in all likelihood, if she seriously competed in the tournament, while she wouldn¡¯t necessarily be able to win. She¡¯d definitely be able to place. Climbing over thousands of others to reach the top at the minimum. The leveling system may not have supplied any actual stats besides talent points and levels, but one didn¡¯t need them to know ones strength. If one fought and trained long enough one would eventually learn from experience just how far their fists could carry them. The Little Pink Master¡¯s Dream Time Tutoring sessions and her jaunts in the deep wastes, Wandering in territories that warrior who held levels several ranks above her own, wouldn¡¯t dare wander on their own, made her certain of it. Even if two thirds of her survival in those dire circumstances was down to the buffs and equipments bestowed upon her by her master, she was certain that the widening level gap between her and the foes that she could fell was an indication of how strong she was getting. In other words, she felt certain within a seventy-five percent safety margin that her results in the inter-kingdom/ inter-school tournament would be more than average Results that would increase the spotlight that hung above her head and the number of eyes that turned towards her direction. Results that would reduce her ability to live as peacefully and inconspicuously as she¡¯d prefer. Innes sighed. Feeling fatigued already despite the fact that the actual tournament was still days away. Weeks even. ¡°What do you think, sir? Maybe I¡¯m over thinking it? Putting the cart before the horse?¡± Again there was no answer from the cat that napped at her side. Stirring only once to strike a bird down from out of the air and pull into its cute but sharply toothed pink maw. ¡°Do ¡°you¡± want me to enter the tournament, master?¡± asked the girl. Turning towards the cat. She stared at the creature pretending to be an ordinary feline till finally it peeked out at her with one eye. Yawning as it sat up, its actions slightly more human than it might have intended. ¡°Um¡­.I don¡¯t really care....more importantly, ¡°do¡± you want to enter the tournament little one?¡± She frowned, unhappy because that was yet another question that she didn¡¯t know the answer to. While she¡¯d eventually gained anathema to her mother¡¯s ambitiousness, the girl had still kept a certain amount of the familial obsession with ¡°winning¡± or rather it was an obsession with not taking a loss. ¡°I...th- that doesn¡¯t really matter here does it? Do you think I should do the tourney or not, sir?¡± said Innes. The cat pat her on the forehead, the pads of its paws soft and eerily cool. The sensation not entirely unpleasant. ¡°You do as you think you should, little apprentice. This old man just cares that you¡¯re happy.¡± said the cat. Yawning once more as if speaking had taken all its energy. Falling back to all fours and going back to sleep. Innes frowned. Her master¡¯s words trumped the old dilemma by bringing up new questions of whether he¡¯d actually meant that. She was used to having people say they care about her, but it was usually combined with a barb, or some prodding, or some other type of emotional manipulation. She¡¯d grown used to such things that she honestly didn¡¯t know what to do, in the face of the little pink monster¡¯s sincerity. She generally didn¡¯t know what to do about her master. He was yet another wildcard in a life that had become more than fifty-percent unknowns after her entry into a new world. Initially she¡¯d believed that there was an angle to his actions. Even as he trained her and healed her and helped her increase her strength, she¡¯d told herself that there was likely some sinister endgame. Perhaps some plot on her body or her soul, if souls were a real thing. Or some dark deed she¡¯d be expected to do later as payment. Then time wore on, and the strange being had continued to do things for her and continued to show her things. Things that started to slowly erode her belief that the monster that slept beneath her bed as a nebulous black and pink, red-eyed shadow and accompanied her during the daytime as squishy pink cat, had anything that it wanted from her, anything that she could give it, that it couldn¡¯t get on its own. Or just make her give it. This feeling grew stronger as their relationship progressed. She learned it could easily mold and alter minds and consciousness when it created a literal school of ¡°thought¡±. A psychic realm that existed within its dreams that she¡¯d entered when she was sleeping to be tutored in various subjects for what felt like years at a time. The idea that there was something that it simply needed an extra body to do, went away when the creature created several copies of her, that were each stronger, faster and smarter by several realms. Teaching her how to project her consciousness so she could possess the bodies and try them out, so they figure out what settings would be best for the creation of her current form. Eventually she just had to accept that there was nothing that the being needed from her, that it couldn¡¯t do on its own. And even if she was exaggerating its capabilities or misunderstanding them to some extent, she knew enough to know that if it made similar offers to people in higher ranks, the being known as Samhain could have easily had as many willing subjects as it wanted. Like a devil of folklore, its power held an allure that could entice even a king. It had no need to trick and coax a random urchin like herself. Thus having eliminated the possibility that this was all a trick, she had to turn to another thought she¡¯d quietly begun to have. Living together as they did, despite the fact that she was the human and it was a cat. It occurred to her one day, that she was probably being treated as some kind of pet by the creature. The girl didn¡¯t believe in gods, angels or fairies, but she did accept that there were such things as superior existences. Higher beings. Sufficiently advanced aliens. She sort of had to, her world was destroyed by race of such creatures. And she and several others of her world were transported her by another race of superior existences. Gray faced horned beings who flew on wings of luminous shadow. Following that line of thought she¡¯d eventually come to the conclusion that her master was yet another variation of superior being. Perhaps his was a species that compared to humans, stood in the same relative evolutionary vantage point, that humans had over their other compatriots in the animal kingdom. Or more likely they stood in the same position that a human would have over a jellyfish, though she tried not to push it that far, lest her own ego as a sentient start to fade away. While she¡¯d like to think that her ability to think and reason, and feel would at least warrant her counting as fellow sentient, there were things she¡¯d seen in her master¡¯s head that made her feel like his sentience and her sentience were on different levels. Thus eventually those feelings cemented into a growing certainty that if she looked at things objectively she, the human was the pet and the cat her owner. And she had no clue how to feel about that. As a human, as the proud member of race that once held dominance over the entire planet, there was a part of her that rejected that conclusion. That said even if she was below the creature, it was a question of status and power, it wasn¡¯t something so absolute, as to be based in their very natures. However, her self-doubt and gnawing uncertainty kept coming back to this line of thought as the only plausible explanation for why the creature would spend so much time and energy taking care of her. Making sure she was fed, and clothed. Fussing over her health. Training her to be best of her fellows. It was something humans did to animals. It¡¯s something she, herself, had once done. Volunteering in animal shelters and taking care of wounded animals. It wasn¡¯t about the animal, it was about the feeling that came from helping the animal. It was about the way nursing and looking after another life helped one turn ones focus from one¡¯s own. They way it helped a person get their head on straight, by helping them shift their perspective of things. A line of thought that once again, inflicted yet another blow to the ego. Because it meant she was being treated like a broken bird. A thing to look after while her inscrutable master worked his own issues out, whatever those issues might have been. Thinking about it too much made her head hurt. And it made her feel small, far smaller than even the girl who often wished she could shrink herself, could standing feeling. Making her meditate on her cosmic insignificance as part of one single barely civilized race amongst heavens only knows, how many billions and trillions of others. There ¡°was¡± a third line of course, one born from a small voice in her head that she¡¯d learn to recognize as being fruitlessly optimistic. The parts of her that were still stupid after twelve years of hard lessons. This line of thought was the one that took peoples striking up conversations with her as a sign of their wanting to be friends. The voice in her head that heard people saying ¡°hi, how are you¡± and actually believed that they cared about how she was doing. It was the line of thought that believed that sometimes her mother did indeed actually love her. This same voice saw the creatures care and effort and wanted to believe that Innes had actually found herself a bit of honest support in this world. Someone to care about a little girl who was a million light-years and whole dimension away from home. Naturally, she knew enough not to believe a single word that voice said. In the end she just decided that for now she¡¯d simply accept the strange cat¡¯s good will. So long as its intents and expectation didn¡¯t exceed her bottom line, she was fine with acquiescing. And if something she couldn¡¯t manage, or that exceeded that bottom line came up, she¡¯d try to run away or die trying. Pathetic as it was to say, her wariness and misgivings notwithstanding, it¡¯d been so long since she had anyone actually care about her little life, that she couldn¡¯t help wanting to luxuriate in the feeling for as long she could. Frowning she sat, legs wrapped up in her arms as she stared up at the cloudy sky. Still unsure of what to do. Arc 4: Chapter 8: Groceries...Laundry...Grinding Before, just after I¡¯d been struck by the divine lightning and blown away, I¡¯d had to put myself back together before I could safely move as I wanted. At first I was too weak, too fragile. Trying to move from one place to another too quickly would just leave me scattered across the ether. Then I was too strong, my existence slightly weightier than that of the world that I was in. Imagine a whale moving from one bathtub and splashing into another. Instantaneous transitions from one space to another would result in the erasure or engulfment of the space that I¡¯d left behind. And arrival in my destination were often ¡°explosive¡±. I try not think of those few times where I, in my confused, semi-conscious state would drift to close to human settlements. If they, I, we, were lucky then those settlements would starter towns. Or one of the other forms of blessed settlements such as Capitals and holy lands. Protected by immortal patrons and the goodwill of the system¡¯s administrators and I hopefully did little more harm than your average category five hurricane. If they were not so lucky...well¡­.then that¡¯s a shame then, I guess. Again, I try not to think of it. Those thoughts could live in the same place the rest of my doubts, guilts, shameful secrets lived. They could take my unspoken questions of whether ¡°I¡± was really the same me that I¡¯d been at birth, and not just a very confused collection of souls that had been melted together were now doing a Desmond...er...Samhain, impression, with them. In any case, the point I was trying to get to here, was that for a while I couldn¡¯t teleport, doing my usual appearing and disappearing act. I had to get around through other means and by the time I had my shit together enough that I ¡°could¡± safely teleport, I¡¯d already sort of gotten used to getting around in what I guess I could call, the slow way. My having an inconstant but highly mutable form was more or less the same as having the ability to shapeshift. Or rather it was exactly like being able to shapeshift. Fortunately the future-me had included lessons on shapeshifting. Thus in the time while I couldn¡¯t be ¡°me¡± I found it easy to be other things. The only problem being that I now had to budget my energy stores carefully lest I fall into formlessness or worse risk my consciousness growing faint enough for the beast within me to surface and rampage. Larger forms were harder to maintain unless I was sleeping as my [Sloth] made them the perfect vessel for storing and collecting ambient energy. Smaller forms were easier to maintain but there were too many idiots who saw small and mistook it for vulnerable. And of course my human...er...humanoid form was the most expensive of all, which is why it took me so long to regain it in any meaningful way. I¡¯d usually stay in medium size that bigger than a man but smaller than a bus, while I was meandering through the world. Travelling through the open air and endless seas and crossing over many young and largely untouched continents. It did occur to me a few times that I could maybe just claim one of those untouched lands for my own. Likely no one would mind. There were so many land masses being spawned into being each day that it was probable that a majority of Agartha would simply just never be inhabited by anybody. I¡¯d fantasize about maybe making my own little world there, a world built by me, for me. Then I¡¯d remember that I¡¯d spent my entire life trying to escape a world with just ¡°me¡±. I¡¯d remember that the idea of such a world was downright terrifying to me. That my attempts to fit in, to blend in, with the rest of the world were almost entirely about staying out of such a world. In my mind, such a world would either entail jail, or a mental institute, or death. I didn¡¯t try so hard to be normal just because I was afraid of others finding out I was ¡°ab-¡± normal...at least part of all that was because I knew deep down, that being just me, by myself, was fairly dogshit existence. And dangerous too, my father, had been just him, by him, for him and look what that got him? Sitting at the head of his own little cult of personality¡­. But this is getting off topic. What I was trying to talk about, was¡­.shapeshifting and how much of a pain in the ass it was, and how much fun it could sometimes be. Being forced to get around the slow way made me, what I¡¯d thought I¡¯d never really be, and outdoors-man. In truth, I can¡¯t really say if I¡¯m really an outdoorsy person or if necessity and the realities of my current existence just make me hate it less. However I can say that I do like running, swimming more. Most of all I liked to fly. And think about it, trapped in a body that could take every form except your own, wouldn¡¯t everyone eventually try giving themselves wings. I know I did. Flight was yet another of the excessive mishmash of skills that my now non-existent future-self instilled in me. And with the help of a little magic even the most ungainly forms could be made to rise up into the air. With obedience of the laws of physics and aerodynamics mostly serving to make the process less mana expense. So I learned to fly, or at least I learned to love flying and I still loved it now. Often choosing to fly when teleporting could end a journey in a fraction of a second. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! I¡¯d chosen to do so now, actually. Taking a form that was like a cross between that of a bird and that of a deep sea manta. A fast flying fleshy shadow with spots of pink light shining from deep inside of it, with wide wings and a long trailing tail for easier directional control. Even if say I was taking it slow I still I moved across the sky at hypersonic speeds. Moving just a little too fast for most of the flying creatures, or the occasionally airship pilots, that shared the sky with me, to get a fix on what I was. Which was just generally for the best when one traveled amongst the clouds and seas of Agartha. Where dragons and leviathans were known to roam. Beneath me were, rolling hills that went past in shifting shades of green and gray. Snow capped mountains that went from black to white as they craned towards the sky. Frothing inky rivers and glowing blue lakes. And the cities. Countless cities. Some of them were empty save the occasional long leaning shadow. Others were teaming with life, albeit inhuman. Life that came in myriad shapes. The shapes ranging from those that were at least somewhat reminiscent of normal animal life and those that were plainly alien. Coming with too many or too few limbs attached. Coming with maws that were always too wide as if made for the exact purpose of swallowing men whole. My visual acuity was sharp, and the omniscience that I¡¯d affectionately dubbed my archive, even sharper. Thus even as I flew, I could easily keep an eye on even the mites that crawled across the backs of the ants on the ground. Eventually I found what I was looking for, or rather I¡¯d known where it was all along, having headed there with ¡°it¡± as my intended target. As I reached my destination, my flesh crawled, liquefying, vaporizing and then solidifying. Dropping like a bomb and actually detonating. The blast equivalent to ten hydrogen bombs. The roar of it so loud that if felt like it could rattle the world to pieces. A mushroom cloud of vapor, and smoke and debris climbing high into the air to rain down on everything for several hundreds of miles. I felt my mana level rise, climbing a mere two levels. I clucked my tongue, or at least I would have...had I had a tongue. The blank faced man, William, had been right, when he¡¯d called the storm of immortal wrath that had chased me and eventually destroyed me an opportunity of sorts. Once I¡¯d pulled myself together again, I found that though I¡¯d been pushed back to the beginning of the level count once more, I was no weaker than I¡¯d been before. On the contrary I was stronger and my talent and ultimate potential much expanded. Partial-Omnipotence, was both more and less than what it sounded. I could do, be, anything. It was right in the Omni- all, potence-able. But being capable of anything, wasn¡¯t the same as being all-powerful. I still needed energy to do things. Worse yet, being capable of everything thing, meant being capable of the most magnificent of mistakes, like the very brief period where I almost erased myself again by opening a hole to...I don¡¯t know that nearly holed me out and drained me dry. Thus I still needed to level up, I still needed to get stronger, more substantial, since if I was an all-capable pen, then my power was like my ink. If I ran out of ink, then I simply couldn¡¯t do anything. Or rather, since I was more like a pen that was itself made out of ink, I probably could do ¡°something¡± or try to find a way to cheat but I¡¯d probably regret taking things that far and it¡¯d mess me up in the process. Possibly even resulting in an erasure of my consciousness which was pretty much the only way to kill me for realsies at this point. Though something told me not to count on that little too much. I suspected that there were people out there like my blank faced friend who could and would tell me to the contrary. I might have gotten a big head about things, all the same, but then the archive kindly reminded me that many of the immortals, be they god, angel or demon, and their children held similar powers. Even ¡°I¡± had held similar powers, albeit not so broad, in my previous incarnation. There had been very little that the black, white and gray mandates could not do. Thus, accordingly there were fail-safes set in place by the various higher beings and even the universe itself, to make sure idiots like myself couldn¡¯t get carried away and do something foolish. The one big dark spot that came with the reset of my status as a leveller was that the amount of magic I was required to gather for each level-up seemed to have balloon enormously. Whether willingly or unwillingly I¡¯d spent the last three years or so, killing up a storm and it was only recently that my level had finally climbed back up into the double digits. I probably wouldn¡¯t have even managed ¡°that¡± if it hadn¡¯t occurred to me, to wonder if there were any richer sources of magical energy in this world. My current need for magic was so dire that I could destroy entire cities and not gain a single level from it. Though the magical energies in Agartha was richer than that which could be found in almost any world, being almost as rich as the energies found in the heavens, my appetite now demanded richer fare. Which put me out of sorts for a quite a while as I¡¯d find myself needing completely consume ten cities or more to make any noticeable change in my mana stores. Fortunately there was a simple fix to my problem. On the one hand that I didn¡¯t think to ask the archive about the issue sooner just proves that super sentience and hyper intelligence are no remedies for being an idiot. I¡¯ll can only posit that I ¡°did¡± have the excuse of having to deal with the issue of the slow and unsteady reformation of my fractured consciousness to worry over, at the time. On the other hand once I¡¯d asked I was given a window into how far the administrators of this and the designer of the system were willing to go with this little experiment of theirs. It seemed that they too had seen the arrival of beings like myself, abnormals like myself coming. And to be fair, considering that this world was rapidly becoming a wonderland, a rollicking bedlam for the strange and impossible. A nursery for young immortals and great heroes to be reared, I suppose not seeing this coming was yet another blind spot in my thinking. Even in the original Agartha, aging games that were well played would often just naturally gain expansion packs as a matter of fact. It was something so part of the flow of things that most people just assumed it was so out of hand. If a game was good, there¡¯d be dlc to cash in on that fact. It was just a fact of life that everyone had gotten used to. Similarly, as things had been running well in Agartha, at least by the immortals¡¯ standards, for over three thousand years with leveller powers and the powers of the factions of Agartha rising, it was only naturally the new additions be made to the world. One part of these new additions were higher levelled ruins, dungeons and dead cities. Lands that would be visited by those levellers who¡¯d reached top ranks of the chart but either didn¡¯t want to graduate out yet, or still had a ways to go till they could do so. Territories with higher powered Demon Kings. Who were in turn served by higher powered monsters. Who in turned lived in higher quality dwellings. Environs that were big enough, rich enough and sturdy enough that they could take an atomic bomb or ten and only be slightly devastated. The kind of self healing realms that the gods and other immortals could fight in, in the heavens On the one hand, I kind of hated it because it meant collecting magical energy was back to being a grind again. On the other hand¡­. No, wait, there was no other hand. I just hated it, but it was what it was and even if I couldn¡¯t die any more and didn¡¯t need to worry about suffering through another reset, I still needed to keep getting stronger if I didn¡¯t want to end up suffering in the long run. I still had the memories from all those immortal soul fragments. Memories with which I could attest that there was a vast multitude of fates worse than death to be suffered if one was weak enough and unlucky enough to fall into the hands of another. Arc 4: Chapter 9: Calamity Jane A hammer the size of a small truck came down on me, slamming down with enough force to turn all of the surrounding pavement into loose gravel. Slamming down with enough force to bring some of the less hardy structures of the city tumbling down. Reducing them to rubble. I seemed to have been turned in a fine mist, fading from view before my triumphant killer. His smile was soon turned to a frown, that soon turned to a scowl, that soon turned to howling and screaming and tears. The metal fleshed giant dropped his hammer, letting it fall as he grasped at his neck. Blood poured out from all the orifices of his head as he sagged to his knees, still trying to drawn in a breath that just wouldn¡¯t come. Then finally he keeled over. Dead. Shortly after his body rupture, a ghastly hole opening in the center of his back. I stood in the center of that hole, standing on the base of the metal brute¡¯s spine feeling more embarrassed than hurt. I probably should have seen that coming, but I¡¯d been distracted by this really shiny, pretty, green stone. I know what it sounds like but trust me here; it was one very, very interesting stone. With sigils of some sort all over it. Sigils mysterious enough that even the archive had a hard time placing exactly where it was from. The stone was clearly a treasure, one of those little trinkets and bits of magical gear that the administrators of the world and the various immortal sponsors of the system had donated and had deposited in the various dungeons, wastelands, ruins and dead cities as an incentive for all those intrepid levellers out there. That this treasure was one I¡¯d found in a ruin meant for Saints, Sages and Would-Be Gods made it all the more interesting to me. I knew that I¡¯d found something big but I couldn¡¯t quite put my finger on what made it so special. The giant had been surprisingly light on its feet, thus I was nearly killed. Or at least nearly injured...Or maybe not even that. I find it hard to gauge exactly how hurt I am these days. In truth it almost always just comes down to how bad a thing feels. Yes, I ¡°was¡± smashed into powder by the giant¡¯s hammer, but I¡¯d had enough magic in me to take that powder funnel it inside the giant¡¯s nasal passages and reconstitute my body using a mixture of magic and some of the giant¡¯s mass. Without a permanent body, or any permanent forms of harm to worry about hunting has become a bit of a meditative process more than anything else. And I¡¯ll admit that I sometimes got a bit sloppy when it came to not allowing enemies to hit me. On the one hand the injuries did hurt exactly as badly as you¡¯d think, but on the other hand, I was kind of numb to pain after everything that I¡¯d been through. Thus my sense of danger was starting to grow a little weak. I mean if some real big shot Demon King or a being on the scale of genuine divinity were to show up, I¡¯d probably be in trouble, but with my partial-omniscience I¡¯d likely see it coming so long as I paid even the littlest bit of attention. Having learned my lesson from my meeting with the gods and my stepping on the divine landmine that had lived within the neighbor at the Silent Glen dorm, I was naturally, much, much more attentive to things these days. Or at least I tried to be. ¡°Um...ah...there you are.¡± I said, finding the rock again. I frowned as I continued to inspect it, and then following a hunch, I opened my mouth and dropped the rock inside. Chewing it like it was a hard candy. I waited, wincing a bit, but there was no rumble from the heavens, no shifting in the cosmic flow. I wondered if I¡¯d over thought things, but somehow I had this feeling that, that wasn¡¯t the case. ¡°Mhm¡­.I guess, I should get started then.¡± I said, speaking aloud. Mostly speaking to myself, but also speaking to my new friends who¡¯d been drawn by the sound the giant made as it tried to kill me and was then killed instead. I shifted from my feline form, to a larger, octopedal form. An armor plated, six legged base that appearance wise seemed like a cross between a tiger and stag beetle. And a humanoid torso, also armor plated, the ends of its arms, looking like they¡¯d been melted off, since I was holding off forming my hands till I knew what I was facing. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Out came more giants and in response the ends of my hands and the legs of my bestial half were turned into razor-sharp blades. In truth the blades were sharper than razors. They were monomolecular and enchanted with a curse of severance and ruin that made chemical bonds of a material loose and crumbly. As the crowd of hulking, thirty-foot tall metal brutes came to try and crush me, eager to feast on my flesh, I rushed forwards to meet them. Equally eager. The awakening of certain troubling portions of my inner-being had given me a certain zeal for ending things. I slew the giants that tried to ambush me, then I found and slew more giants that just happened to be minding their own business. Then a flock of metal wyverns appeared and then started attacking me, which led to my sprouting wing to meet them in the air. Then there were giant metal worms that appeared while I was trying to see what metal the wyverns tasted like. And there were many other creatures that appeared in this city of rust and silence, all of them picking fights that they probably shouldn¡¯t have been picking. I¡¯d planned to only lose myself in my work for a few hours but before I knew it thirty years had gone by. I wasn¡¯t worried about it though, this city was dead in the Agarthan wastes where the magic and divine energy were so thick that the laws of time and space were made unstable. Out here time was dilated. Thirty years out here was just three days for the folks back in the real world, the more densely populated parts of Agartha. This was just for this particular area though, there were other places where time was sped up, so one had to be careful. I knew of a fair number of recorded tales of famous adventurers who went off into the wastes only to return and find that everyone they knew had died of old age while they¡¯d just been gone for a day. Which would be bad since I still had the tyke to look after. My precious disciple, the girl I¡¯d taken in as a student on a whim. I¡¯d left her at her school, leaving her with the Moonlit Tower, the magical construct of illusion magic, spatial magic and psychic energy. A Magically enhanced dream that I generally used to explain the more fiddly concepts of magic and martial arts to the girl and let her try things out in a safe environment. I¡¯d left a sliver of my consciousness within the dream to look after the girl but I¡¯d need to get back to her eventually just to check up on her progress. At the end of my thirty year rampage I found that I¡¯d slain every single last mob in the city. The only thing left for me to do was to go after the territory¡¯s boss. It wasn¡¯t hard to find out where the boss¡¯s lair was, I just had to find the last living thing in the city. He, she, it lived in the one building that wasn¡¯t covered in rust. A stone mansion that stood apart from the quiet city of glass and steel. I entered the building and saw velvet ropes and flickering overhead lighting like those one would expect to see in the exhibits of a very old museum. Wandering a bit deeper inwards, I saw cases full of pieces of technology that were both similar and dissimilar to that of old earth and the original ¡°sane¡± Agartha. I saw phones. I saw early computers. I saw planes, trains and early sub-orbital shuttles. It really was uncanny. It was all our tech. More or less. Everything mankind had made both before the destruction of earth and after we¡¯d evacuated into the void. The only thing that stood out as ¡°not¡± ours, was the one big installation at the back of the museum. A gargantuan satellite that looked nothing like the one¡¯s we had floating in upper atmosphere today. Instead of being canister shaped it, or shaped like a rocket, this satellite seemed to have been built to look like a giant metal egg. One half hatched with the denizen within peeking out, their electric diode eyes blinking out from within the darkness of the metal shell. Beside the metal there were also bits that looked more like chitin.There were points where the wiring looking more like neurons on a human brain and there were tubes filled with a red pulsing liquid that regular flowed in and out of the ghastly contraptions internal workings. I didn¡¯t need the archive to know that there was something off about the machine, but the archive blared its warning to me anyway. I didn¡¯t need to be leveller to feel the danger wafting off the thing. The aura the machine exuded was enough to have me drawing weapons from out of the empty air. Shifting my form to something suitably large and suitably armored. I became a bull, a six armed minotaur with cannons instead of horns and a beam attack that came out of my mouth. I had multiple heads for the sake of varying how many kinds of munition and beam I could fire off at any one time. And the number of arms I had swelled growing from six to thirty six as my apprehension increased. There was a hum and then there was silence, palpable silence. I waited feeling something that was equal measures wariness and anticipation. Then from within the metal contraption there came a groan, a groan that was accompanied by whistling and beeping. Ice cold steam poured out from the seams in the machine¡¯s chassis. It streamed out without enough force to blow everything around it away. And by everything I don¡¯t just meant the exhibits and the museum furnishing. The floor and the ceiling were also blown away as well. The world beyond the museum was also shoved aside. The streams of steam blew long and hard till there was only a void, bleak and beige. Empty, save the machine and yours truly. ¡°Hmm¡­..Isn¡¯t this a bit early? I was told that I¡¯d have at least a millennia or two to slumber, before you little mortals found your way here.¡± said a voice, that was toneless and empty. Sounding synthesized. I couldn¡¯t help laughing, feeling a bit nervous. The corners of my mouth curling in the usual grimace. ¡°Ah...Well sorry for interrupting your rest, I guess...I¡¯m not sure if I¡¯m what you¡¯d call a mortal but you ¡°can¡± consider me a sort of early access adventurer, if you¡¯d like.¡± said I. ¡°Mhm¡­.fair enough. Now that I look closer you might not be mortal after all, you still seem to ¡°read¡± as a mortal, but maybe that will wear off in a few trillion years or so. Immortality doesn¡¯t really look like immortality till enough time goes by...In any case you say, you¡¯re an early access adventurer? Well, in that case might I ask whether you¡¯re a hero come to slay me for the honor or a Demon King come to challenge me for my throne.¡± said the machine. ¡°Ah...the first one, I think. A hero.¡± said I. The machine hummed as if mulling my words over, then without further ado the metal egg began to hatch. Arc 4: Chapter 10: Pleasant and Unpleasant Surprises First came the creature¡¯s hand. The tips of its fingers alone were many times larger than the metal egg they¡¯d been hatched from. Rising out from the metal canister like metal mountains. Each finger massive enough that an ordinary man would have had to spend many years in preparation if they¡¯d wanted to climb to even the tip of the creature¡¯s pinky. Then came the creature¡¯s arm, long, and thick like a branch from the world tree. It scale and musculature robust enough that one could easily imagine hanging a world off the end of it. Then came another hand and another arm. They rose and were followed by a head that was covered in rust and snow. A wild and untamable mane that flowed as free as the seas and the four winds. I stared up at a face that was marked with great canyons and ravines, marked with pockmarks, scars and wrinkles. Looking at the metallic coloring of the skin, I reason that I was staring at the metal-king of the metal-brutes, or perhaps the old man was some kind of metal-god. In either case, he was positively massive and there was no mistaking the overwhelming aura that radiated off of the creature. His physique filled vitality and unfathomable strength. It stared at me with eyes that were black and swirling. I stared at it with eyes that flickered with red flame. ¡°Ah...it seems you really weren¡¯t mortal. My apologies. I couldn¡¯t really see you while I was in the egg, and you¡¯d sounded human.¡± said the metal-king. His voice surprisingly soft and even, for a being that looked like he¡¯d burst forth from a time when the entire universe was young and primordial. ¡°I...Uh¡­.Uh, don¡¯t mention it. If I still feel a like a human that means I¡¯m still more or less myself¡­¡± I said. Craning my neck to stare up at the creature. ¡°Unh, Is that so? How odd. In any case, young one, I don¡¯t suppose you would mind lending me your ear, before we do as we heroes and Demonkings usually do.¡± said the old king. ¡°...Sure.¡± said I. After a moment¡¯s hesitation, I took a more humanoid form. I didn¡¯t think my tank-minotaur transformation would be necessary here and if ¡°that¡± wasn¡¯t the case, I thoroughly doubted that the bullish form would do much good against the continent-sized king. Once I¡¯d taken a human form, I let my scale swell till I¡¯d was a few dozen stories tall, roughly seven hundred feet in height. Standing at the limit of the sizes I could safely take in the short term, without instantly draining all my mana stores.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Even with all that growth, I was still only above the giant¡¯s big toe, my eye on level with the metal-kings lower shin. I felt uncomfortable, not afraid exactly, just uncomfortable. It was like standing next to a very large herbivore, I didn¡¯t feel directly endangered but there was a still a cautiousness within me, regarding the creature. A wariness that the majestic creature in front of me might get skittish and turn violent at any moment. ¡°So you wanted to talk?¡± said I. Finally speaking after a few minutes of awkward silence. ¡°Mhm...Yes, yes. Really, it¡¯s quite interesting, you know...not only did you come early you even came prepared.¡± ¡°Prepared?¡± I said. Puzzled and more than a little apprehensive. ¡°Unh...nevermind, you¡¯ll find out soon anyway...I¡¯m glad that you¡¯ll get to keep that humanness though. Congrats¡­.Um...what was it that I wished to say again...Ah, yes¡­.Do we really have to do this?¡± said the metal-king. Lost in the soft, gravelly digressions of the old iron fleshed king there was really only one thing I could say. ¡°....What?¡± ¡°Do really we need to fight. I hold no strife with you. You hold no strife with me. Can we not perhaps part in peace?¡± Taken aback, I considered the metal-king¡¯s words. It had been a while since I¡¯d had a chance to face a foe that was all willing to end things with words. To be fair, it had also been awhile since ¡°I¡± had considered the possibility of ending things with words. ¡°Al-, alright¡­Depends on what you¡¯re thinking of.¡± said I. ¡°For most this world, is one of dreams and nightmares, but for this old man, it¡¯s just a very comfortable place to rest. A realm of good cosmic vibrations if you¡¯d please.. I care not for the goings on of the people running across the surface. Nor do I care for the destruction you¡¯ve wreaked upon my city. I want you to understand that...To me...in my eyes...all this is but a game. A Diversion from the real matters of this universe, just like all the other worlds in the mortal realms, are just games and diversions¡­¡± said the Metal-King. ¡°Okay¡­.¡± said I. A little unsure whether or not to be offended by the giant¡¯s devaluation of my world. ¡°And thus...having said that, it should be understandable why I hold no reservations with doing this... ¡° ¡°Doing what, exactly?¡± ¡°Doing this? I give up.¡± ¡°Huh!¡± I said. Getting the gist of the old giant¡¯s intention but not understanding his follow through. The space we were in began to shake and then the steel skinned giant faded from view. Puzzled I just stood there trying to figure out what had happened. Then all of a sudden I felt a rush of mana into my core. ¡°Wait you mean, I can level up by just talking to people?!¡± I said. Astounded. In a way, I guess it made some sense, this world was game like enough that I supposed that I ¡°could¡± see there being chances to absorb the exp-like magical energy from surrendered opponents in certain rare scenarios. And having it confirmed made me start wonder if there was quest system I¡¯d yet to interact with, also available and waiting for me to stumble over. I called up my status as felt my strength soaring, then mid-way through the process of the level up I felt something beginning to go awry. ****** [Level Up!] [Level Up!] [Level Up!] [Level-&%$#] - [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ****** ¡°Well...bollocks¡­¡± Arc 4: Chapter 11: Premature Release In one of the many log rooms of a certain tower that hung suspended in the void that lay above Agartha¡¯s surface there sat a choir of blindfolded, winged women. The observers of Agartha who held the duty of observing the realm¡¯s goings ons and the countless instances of the Asphodel system that were networked through every aspect of the world. They were attended to by aides, who seemed to made up entirely of beautiful gray haired youths. All of them running back and forth, collecting the paperwork and hard copies of the many files that the blindfolded observers generated as they observed the cascade of data that flowed down the holographic display that took up most of the room. There was a cry of a claxon that startled the winged women and caused them to momentarily call for a pause of reality. ¡°It looks like we¡¯ve got an issue in Sector-Alpha Ninety-Two Epsilon, Ma¡¯am.¡± said one Observer. Standing up and saluting towards the back of the room. ¡°An Anomaly.¡± asked a voice from the back of the room. ¡°No, it looks like one of our set triggers. It normally wouldn¡¯t have been flagged, but the system says that this trigger wasn¡¯t set to go off till the ten thousand year mark. It¡¯s eight thousand years too early.¡± ¡°...Is it a misfire?¡± said the voice. ¡°No, it looks like it was a proper trigger ma¡¯am.¡± said the observer. ¡°Damn...Looks like I have to call this in. Just in case let¡¯s put things on pause.¡± ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am.¡± said all of the observer¡¯s in the room. Once again the whole world was halted and once again, not a person in the world below would notice. The Observer in charge of this particular floor¡¯s team looked at the display and then looked at the information on her console. She looked at the display once more and then stood up, leaving her desk to take the print out she¡¯d made of the current situation, over to her direct superior. Her superior was a beautiful woman made entirely of gold with a tongue made of jade. The woman read the report, her golden eyes scanning the paper in its entirety. She looked up at the observer in front of her with a front on her flawless, golden face. ¡°Really? The bosses aren¡¯t going to like this.¡± said the Supervisor. The Head Observer for Log Team Thirty-Two of the ever-expanding wonderland of Agartha, simply stood there, neither nodding nor shaking her head. Feeling slightly put upon by the other woman¡¯s complaint because despite however much the other woman glared, even the Head Observer could only observe. Things getting flagged by the observation system wasn¡¯t the Log team¡¯s fault. Their only duties were to monitor and log the happenings of the world below and the system that had been integrated into every facet of it. It was actually against the rules for them to do more. The golden woman eventually just sighed. Giving the other woman and mumbled thank you before heading to hand the report in to her superior. Who in turn gave the paperwork to his superior. An ominous, dour looking little girl who sat at a glass topped desk her figure lost behind a thick stack of paperwork. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°Ma¡¯am¡­¡± said the woman of gold. Looking plainly uncomfortable in the little girl¡¯s presence. There was no response from the girl, she continued typing into her console. Fingers flying over the keyboard, the clacking of the keys being slightly drowned out by the grinding of the little girl¡¯s teeth. Though it went unnoticed and unmentioned by the subordinates and the multitude Administrative Managers who worked below her, the air around the girl had changed of late. Slowly shifting from its usual ominous vibe to one of quiet stress and subtle franticness. The shift in atmosphere bringing about a shift in demeanor and behavior that paradoxically led to the girl being even more feared than before. ¡°M-...Ma¡¯am? Director Morrigan?¡± said the Golden Bodied Woman. ¡°What do you need?¡± said the girl. Sternly swallowing a sigh that was about to escape her. ¡°We seem to have situation for Sector-Alpha Ninety-Two Epsilon.¡± ¡°Okay? What is it? What¡¯s the situation?¡± said Morrigan. Her hands halting, hovering over the keyboard as she gave the golden woman her full attention. A turn of events that left the golden faced subordinate more than a little shaken up. As if she were a rabbit standing at the heart of a wolf¡¯s den. ¡°*Eep!*....Er, it seems there¡¯s been early trigger for one of our Campaign lines.¡± ¡°Is it tied to a system feature?¡± asked Morrigan. ¡°Yes, Ma¡¯am. The Calamity King Campaign was supposed to be part of the introduction to the system¡¯s new factional features.¡± said the golden woman. Trying not to think of how good she¡¯d had it back when she was a minor goddess in a minor world, in minor realty branch and didn¡¯t have to spend her days working under scary little girls. Ambition was good and all and the pay, benefits and incentives were indeed fairly generous but peace of mind were important too. ¡°Mhm¡­.How early are we talking?¡± said the girl. ¡°Ma¡¯am?¡± ¡° The Campaign, you said it¡¯s been triggered early. How early are we talking? A few years? A few decades? Maybe a century or two?¡± ¡°Um, about ten thousand years ma¡¯am.¡± The girl frowned, the heaviness of the atmosphere around her growing thicker and more oppressive. For a few seconds no one said anything as the little girl tried to thank.Then she nodded, moving slowly, as if she were the living statue come to life instead of the woman of gold. ¡°Alright then, ten thousand years...ten millennia too early got it...got it...got it¡­.Okay, what would Grandp- I mean, his majesty the Chief Director do...Um...Okay...How about this. Let¡¯s just call for a mulligan, kill whoever triggered the campaign and force a reset?....Wait...no nevermind I¡¯m pretty sure Gran-...I mean...the Chief Executive Director, probably wouldn¡¯t like that¡­¡± said the girl. Speaking more to herself than to the golden bodied subordinate. Killing the idea she¡¯d uttered aloud, just as soon as it came to mind. The Gray System Administration, as they called themselves, was only supposed to monitor and police the system and ensure the stability of the Wonderland below. They weren¡¯t supposed to interfere too much or it¡¯d set a bad precedent to all the other cosmic beings watching. Either that or start a war by giving certain twitchy parties the feeling that the empire was trying to take the rapidly expanding, energy and resource rich wonderland for themselves. Add to this the fact that the reports seemed show signs that a certain troublesome individual whom the girl¡¯s grandfather was playing favorites with was involved in this. Add to that the fact that, honestly though the factional feature rollout had been slated for ten thousand years from now, when the level average for the world below was expected to be ready, the features themselves were all good and ready to go, though heaven''s only knew what they¡¯d do to society down there. Add this and all the many other situations going on in a world that existed like a ticking time bomb for the paradoxically purpose of keeping the universe and several of its neighbors from exploding, and it should be understandable why the girl felt a bit of bile rising up at the back of her throat. This and many other pressing issues that were arising from below and above the tower, all sat squarely on the girl¡¯s shoulders. She¡¯d have loved to just kick this issue upstairs to her royal grandfather, but it seemed that a race of realm-jumpers from a higher plane had made the equally foolish and suicidal decision to try and take over one of the universes that were under the Gray Empire¡¯s protection. It was a bit of issue but not so big an issue that it was worthy of Imperial forces being sent out. Instead her royal grandfather had gone to handle it himself. Not even bothering to create a duplicate to leave behind. This meant the Emperor would be away for at least the next two weeks which was just a tad too long for a system pause. Which meant the onus for making decisions in times like this would fall on the girl who worked as ¡°his¡± direct subordinate. ¡°Okay, you know what? It¡¯s fine.¡± said Morrigan. Speaking with slightly less tension in her voice after taking a breath to center herself. ¡°Ma¡¯am?¡± said the golden bodied woman. ¡°Alright...It¡¯s ten thousand years too early, but this is still manageable. We¡¯ll just go with option B for the Calamity King Campaign¡¯s rollout...Make a call to those groups who¡¯ve been trying to get people from ¡°up there¡± down here. It looks like we¡¯ve just gotten a few new positions open.¡± said the girl. Arc 4: Chapter 12: PVP...FTW In the end, Innes ultimately decided to go and participate in the tournament. After much deliberation, she¡¯d decided that fighting in the tournament and doing well, but maybe not too well, was probably the best she could do. Not participating would lower her stock in the school and possibly land her with nowhere to go. But if she did especially well, there was a hope that the school would place just enough importance on her not to allow anything troublesome to come her away. In other words, she was steering into the bend that she¡¯d found herself driving towards. Hoping that if she followed this curve in the road, she¡¯d end up somewhere good. For while she was aware each increase in her total strength was a step towards independence she just wasn''t sure she was ready to head out on her own and take on the world yet. While she wasn''t weak, she was still far from strong and even without all the general Agarthan knowledge that was available in the "Moonlit Tower", the girl still didn''t think she knew enough about her new world to try and live in it on her own. She¡¯d asked her ever shadowy and amorphous master what he thought of her decision and again he said whatever she decided was fine. Which had her wondering whether he was really that accepting of her or if he just didn¡¯t care. She suspected it was probably both. In any case, less than two weeks after making up her mind she found herself in Bernardo, the free-city that lay between the kingdoms. Where the tournament was always held. She current stood in the little building that housed the sign up offices for the tournament. An old oxman with large gold-tipped horns on his head stood at the door watching everyone who entered. A slightly younger mouseman with large, round, dinner plate ears stood at the back of the building, standing at the counter taking in names. The room was full, congested with youths, seniors and the soft murmur of dozens of quiet conversations. ¡°Alright little Miss, Mind giving us a [Status Reveal]? We need it for our records.¡± said the man at the counter. ¡°.....Okay...[Status].¡± *****
Name: Innes N. Kaufman
Age: 13
Level: 72
Race: Human-Darkling
Affiliation(s): Dusk-Sea Academy(Student), Red Moon Sovereignty(Student) (Hidden)
Title(s): First Disciple of the Red Moon Sovereign(Hidden), Descendant of Vel(Hidden)Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Talent: 85
Affinities: Darkness, Space, Life, Illusion
Abilities: Stalwart Physique(Passive), Inconspicuous(Passive), Neural Enhancement(Passive), Energy Efficient(Passive), Mana Efficient(Passive), Endurance Boost(Passive/Active), Auto Recovery(Passive)
***** The man frowned at the window that appeared in the air before him. Only giving the girl¡¯s talents a single glance as the number of abilities and traits in the world were so numerous that even his seniors were generally hard put to know what each of the abilities a person had were. His gaze drifted upwards towards the top of the window, his eyes widened and his bushy white eyebrows shot up towards his receding hairline. The man looked at the girl¡¯s talent and level. He looked at the numbers and then he looked at the girl and then he looked at the numbers again. Momentarily forgetting his own status as the administrator in charge of the Tourney¡¯s sign-up process. He took the chance to curry favor and chat with the old mage that stood behind her, as he found himself feeling it become more imperative to put pay attention to the people in front of him. After seeing the gem that the little group had brought with them, the old clerk looked to glean benefits in the same way ivies climbed the tallest trees to gain sunshine. Even if the only benefits was information to use to tell his friends and acquaintances when they came to him to ask which names would best for betting on. The old mage the clerk spoke to was yet another Teacher and Master among the multitude of teachers and master that were gathered her in the small little building. Teacher Malone had been sent to escort the Academy¡¯s youths and see that they were properly signed in to the tournament. Other teachers of the Academy and even a few elders waited outside and nearby. While the half-decade tourney was generally supposed to be a safe enough affair for the children, the stakes and the tension were such that it wasn¡¯t unheard for ¡°accidents¡± to occur. An outcome that would be disastrous for a small school like Dusk-Sea Academy. ¡°Nice...Very nice. If you don¡¯t mind this humble sir, commenting.¡± said the old man. While the children and teenagers that stood at Malone¡¯s side couldn¡¯t see the window, the old mage was close enough and strong enough that he could bring a copy of the status that hung in the air before the other man, into his view. He glanced at the status and just barely managed to avoid gasping in shock. Eyes bulging out just a little, despite his intentions to play things cool. The old man just barely managed to cover his surprised retort with a timely cough and a stiffly held expression. He let the window fade shortly before the clerk did. Pointedly avoiding looking at the girl who still stood at the counter as he responded. . ¡°Hmph...our Dusk-Sea Academy has only ever taken the best.¡± said Malone. "Ah...Of course, Of course....I expect Dusk-Sea will shine gloriously this year then..." said the clerk. "Why wouldn''t we?" scoffed Malone. Hearing the cockiness of his words and wondering whether he was being too excessive or not being excessive enough. His words were met with a small startle from the other students waiting in line. And some increased murmurs and looks of interest from the other teachers of other schools who happened to be nearby. The old clerk merely laughed. Eyes turning into crescents as he thought of how much money he could make with information he''d gained today. The girl was just one part of it, each half-decade brought new young geniuses, new stars to dazzle the world on the open stage. The other teachers and students looked as if they wished they could get a peek at what had garnered so much of the old clerk¡¯s interest. For all that his current position was a humble one, the importance of the Half-Decade Tournament held towards to secular, martial and magical was such that only individuals of the Elite rank and above were allowed to hold it. Considering that old Dudu was a freakish leveller who¡¯d still managed to reach the True Elite Rank. Reaching the rank by his hundredth year despite having to temper himself against his own violent impulses, his sloth, his lust, his simple lack of focus and myriad other issues. Working like a dog to manage it. Famously doing it for sheer spite and the hand of a woman he''d ultimately only sleep with once and then brusquely cast aside. They knew two things. The first, was that anything that could make the old freak surprised was probably significant. The second, was that trying to sneak a peak at whatever the old man was looking at would probably earn them a beating and possibly, a partial disqualification from the tournament. Dudu had made his stance on those who went above themselves and tried to cut in on his profits quite clear in prior years. Thus they could only lean in and try to eavesdrop, hoping to catch a useful word or two to take back to their seniors. Arc 4: Chapter 13: Out in the Spotlight The announcer stood by the referee, both of them seasoned levellers, with over a hundred levels or more under their belt. ¡°Ladies and Gentleman we give you eighteenth match of the evening...It¡¯s Dusk-Sea Academy vs the Four Green Winds Sect. Innes Kaufman Vs Rusty Brilles. Both little known but what heaps of potential. It¡¯s anyone¡¯s game folks!¡± The announcer''s voice echoed through the arena. His spiel more for the bookies than for the actual audience or the contestants. This was the eighteenth match that had taken place in this small arena. One of the six matches that were presently taking place in Free City of Bernados¡¯ Grand Halls of Glory. She and her opponent stood before a roaring crowd of thousands. The winners from these small matches would fight get to fight in the big arena that lay at the center of the colosseum. Fighting before millions. Standing in a grand circle of magically enhanced marble that had been set inside of a basin of warded walls. The audience looked down on them, watching from a coliseum like open air theatre. An audience of commoners and nobles. An Audience of ordinary men and levellers. Almost of them shouting till they were red in the face. Some of them shouting names. Others amongst them shouting simple one or two word epithets like ¡°Win!¡± or ¡°Do it!¡± or ¡°Kill!¡±. As if they¡¯d forgotten that they¡¯d come here to watch ¡°children¡± fight instead of the actual adult gladiators that they¡¯d usual come here to watch struggle to the end. Rather than be paralyzed by stagefright, as her mind, body and soul were threatening, Innes forced herself to focus on almost anything else that was happening at the moment. Innes had learned that from her last three matches. Having been forced to beat her stage fright before she could beat her opponents on the other end of the arena. Having fought in the small arena three times already, she liked to have imagined that she was more at ease by now, with being in the spotlight. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. She wasn¡¯t, but it helped to imagine that, that was so. ¡°Combatants¡­.Fight!¡± called the Announcer. The crowd went wild, but once everything started moving, Innes no longer had the time to listen to them. The entirety of her focus fell on the young man in front of her. As the Unicorn-horned young man ran towards her sword in hand, the young woman couldn¡¯t help wondering just why on earth the martial artists and wizards in this world were competing directly against each other. In the books and games she¡¯d read and seen, Wizards were more background fighters than foreground fighters. If the method of testing their scheme had to be through fighting, her sense of aesthetic said that such a fight should be more of a stationary thing. With both parties hurling their best spells at each other from the other side of the arena. Instead here ¡°she¡± was a self-defined witch/mage whatever engaging in CQC with knights, barbarians and junior kung-fu masters. To be fair, almost all those individual had come prepared with own area-of-effect and range abilities of their own. All of them magical in nature. But that actually just displeased the girl more. She couldn¡¯t help feeling that the line between cultivators and mages should be more distinct and yet here she was. Deflecting the force beam coming out of the tip of the boy¡¯s sword with a bubble of force dispersal. She then used brute force and simple physical speed to grab the boy from the air and slam him into the ground. The impact hard enough that she heard both the ground and a few of the boy¡¯s bones go snap as they met. For a full twenty seconds the audience, referee and announcer said nothing, simply staring at the small crumpled body that lay in the slowly self-repairing crater on the ground. It was announcer who reacted first. His wide-eyed flamboyance cuing the referee in on who what he should be doing. ¡°And that¡¯s it folks our Boy Rusty with the Four Greens Winds is out and down for count. All hail this rings new champion. Innes N. Kaufman. May she long taste victory!¡± said the announcer. ¡°May she long taste victory!¡± screamed the crowd. As for the girl herself she was mostly just shocked that things were going as well as they seemed to be. Unsure whether she could or should keep up the winning street but aware that she wouldn¡¯t give it up till she¡¯d stepped foot onto the big arena. Arc 4: Chapter 14: Open Beta Two weeks had passed since Morrigan had, had the people of the Administration make several discrete calls to some of the other higher powers that were observing Agartha. Her royal grandfather returned at the end of this period and as always he returned bearing gifts. Some general souvenirs that he had distributed to some of his favorites amongst the staff. His most loyal, most hardworking employees in the lower ranks. Those whose names he¡¯d begun to watch for the sake of grooming them for bigger and better things. As well as a few special presents he¡¯d brought for the people he knew personally. As his granddaughter, it was a given that Morrigan, or Morri as he called her, would be counted amongst the number of those that he knew personally. ¡°Hiya, kiddo¡­¡± said William. The little girl startled, face reddening as she realized that she¡¯d been caught doodling instead of dealing with the stacks and stacks of paperwork that sat on her desk. ¡°....Good to have you back, sir.¡± said Morrigan. ¡°Good to be back.¡± said William. He plopped himself down in the couch that sat in the corner of the girl¡¯s office. Which was fine because he¡¯d created that couch for that exact purpose. It was his plopping couch, for when he wanted to bug his precious grand, grand, grand to about the fiftieth power, grandchild. There were several such plopping couches in existence throughout the cosmos. Sitting in the corner of presidential offices, royal palaces, corporate boardrooms and war room throughout all of time and space. ¡°Um...would it be safe to assume that things went fine?¡± asked Morrigan ¡°.....Nh? Yeah. How about here?¡± ¡°Nh...for the most part things were fine. We had a few issues but¡­¡± William nodded, legs crossed, fingers steepled with his hand resting on his knees. ¡°I can imagine...anything of note?¡± asked the blank faced man. The girl bit her bottom lip as if unsure if she wanted to reveal what had taken place. Then scowled as she mentally chided herself. ¡°Well it seems that the Calamity Campaign we were planning to use to rollout some changes to the system got triggered ten thousand years too early.¡± said the girl. ¡°Ah...that sounds bad. I wonder how that happened¡­¡± ¡°Well it seems your friend...er...Mr.Redmoon. It seems he might have beaten one of the guardians...One of the Demonkings we put in charge of the quest¡­¡± ¡°Ah...so he¡¯s a calamity beast I take it¡­¡± ¡°No, he seems to have found one of the stones of reason that we left littered around that particular territory¡­¡± said Morrigan. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. William nodded, tapping his leg with his forefinger. His brow slightly furrowed. His heart simultaneously lightened and bothered. Lightened that he wouldn¡¯t have to kick his friend from the system to save him from losing his reason...bothered because whether purposeful or not the young immortal had gone and kicked over anthill of sorts. ¡°Mhm...Well that¡¯s good then...Honestly the real question is how he could have managed to defeat the guardian...the folks and territories we set up should have been beyond the populace''s ability to deal with...at least for now...Even Redmoon shouldn¡¯t have been able to beat one of them¡­¡± ¡°Well...we looked into it and it seems Gilgamesh, the metal deity we put in charge of the territory seems to have forfeited¡­¡± William¡¯s eyes grew gloomy and sharp. ¡°He did, did he?...Ah...well, I guess we¡¯re going to have to have a little chat with the old Sage about dereliction of duty now won¡¯t we?¡± said William. His words making the girl shiver though his tone was light and his expression as bland as ever. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m assuming you must have done something to remedy the situation...Mind telling me what your solution was?¡± said William. Again the girl felt a bit anxious, it wasn¡¯t that she thought her fix was a bad one...It was more that she was concerned that her grandfather would think so. ¡°Well...since the feature rollout was supposed to be done at around the same time the average global energy level was at our next charted benchmark for a stable Status quo...I figured we could avoid an imbalance by bringing in higher energy beings from outside¡­¡± said Morrigan. William nodded, and she felt the knot in her chest loosen. This was her first major position since getting into the family business so to speak. After going through imperial Overlord Academy, and then deciding that she didn¡¯t ¡°want¡± lord over anyone, after all...the girl had been lost for a bit. On one hand she wasn¡¯t even fifteen yet, so there was no one who thought she really needed to figure her life out quite yet. On other hand ¡°she¡± still felt a pressure to hurry up and become something¡­ ¡°Mhm...A good fix..so that¡¯s an A-plus on that end but I¡¯m going to have to take off quite a few points for forgetting the big picture.¡± The girl blinked. Feeling a lump rise her in throat. ¡°....The...the big picture, sir?¡± ¡°What¡¯s the point of the system...hell, what the point of this whole little project of ours?¡± The girl was quick to respond. ¡°To ground and neutralize divine energy outflow from the core of heavenly mass that makes up the bulk of this world.¡± ¡°Right...or rather the point of the system is to do this humanely, instead of just anchoring every living thing on this planet to that core and forcing them into some kind of messed up hamster wheel scenario...still you¡¯ve got the gist of it. The mortals level up and do their part and the stars of this little show the heroes and the demonkings go to war which serves as the driving force for most of the energy conversion and as Agartha slowly changes from a quarantined world to a proper and most importantly a safe realm for the cosmic community to have in its midst... we gently move things into place to make sure that the transition is relatively harmless for the countless other worlds that are out there.¡± ¡°Yes, sir¡­¡± said Morrigan. ¡°And that¡¯s the problem¡­.¡± said William. ¡°Sir?¡± said the girl. Feeling just a little lost. ¡°The ten thousand year mark isn¡¯t something I just made up on my own convenience...its not an arbitrary date. It¡¯s the point in time where Agartha will have finally transitioned from a wonderland land to a proper stabilized realm, either heavenly or otherwise...It¡¯s also the point where the energy levels would have been safest for us to just immediately try to drain to get the job done.¡± ¡°Oh¡­Oh, no¡­¡± said the girl. Her look growing gloomier as she caught onto what her grandfather was saying. ¡°So...I wasn¡¯t fixing things by allowing all those other higher energy beings in?¡± William shook his. ¡°No...Don¡¯t get me wrong, you didn¡¯t screw up on that account but you left the job half done.¡± ¡°Half done?¡± ¡°Unfortunately there was a reason we were being careful about who we let in and who we didn¡¯t...The empire has worlds nearby now so we now have a personal stake in this¡­¡± ¡°Oh...okay then, so what do we do?¡± said Morrigan. Not at all surprised that her grandfather had acquired even more realms during his brief sojourn off the planet. ¡°Simple. We open the doors wide...and then we reset the system¡­¡± The little girl''s eyes opened wide. ¡°Reset the system? I don¡¯t think the council of chaos and order would go for that?¡± ¡°Wouldn¡¯t they? You forgetting what we¡¯ve done in the last few thousand years. Forget proving we can guide and control the development of multiple civilizations at once. Forget the fact that our company has been responsible for keeping the rest of the realities safe from the toxic energies of this planet. Forget that through our guidance and technologies we¡¯ve slowly molded the very nature of this planet to the point that it¡¯s become a veritable treasure trove. Just the system...just the leveling system alone is enough to assure that they and everyone else who''s watching will cut us just a little slack..so long as we say that they too can get in on the action.¡± said William. The girl¡¯s eyes grew bright and sharp as understanding struck her. ¡°Ah...in that case I¡¯ll go have someone make the necessary calls, sir.¡± said the girl. William smiled. Giving the girl a pat on the head and handing her the colorfully wrapped box that he¡¯d originally come into the office to give her. ¡°That-a girl¡­¡± Arc 4: Chapter 15: Death...Birth...Rebirth I sat at a prime seat in the Bernados¡¯ Grand Hall of Glory. A seat that I¡¯d possibly stolen from someone else. As to what might have happened to the original owner...I can¡¯t really say. I¡¯d been out of sorts lately. For the last two weeks to be exact. The two weeks since a certain metal skinned giant had bowed out instead of fighting and I¡¯d suddenly found my status window broken. And like I¡¯ve said, a simple bad mood for others might be the beginning of possible psychotic break for me. My internal workings were both steadier and more fragile than the average person. Things that would break sane people didn''t phase me. Things that a normal person would laugh off could end in tears and blood for both me and everyone around me. I sorely wish this world still had some psychiatrists in it. Or anyone professionally trained in the area, really. I almost certainly was in need of both someone to talk to and some form of medication, from someone who knew what they were doing. Sure, I was doing a little tinkering on my own noggin here, but...I was kind of afraid of going too far and lobotomizing myself. And though I had the archive I still didn¡¯t trust that all that fiddling with the inside of my own brain meats wasn¡¯t going to end with me driving myself even farther off the deep end. Thus whoever had originally owned this seat might well have been killed by me, or worse I might have politely told them to leave and then warped their minds to make them do so. I can¡¯t even remember whether that other person deserved it or not or ¡°I¡¯m¡± the asshole here. The answers probably a mix of the two. The area I¡¯m seated is filled with noble types. Rich knobs that came with slaves and servants who were carrying all sort of amenities to make their viewership of the inter-kingdom tourney more pleasurable. And by that I mean that they were getting everything from hand jobs to pretzels up here¡­.Which was gross because there were children present, but whatever. ***** [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ***** I remember being a kid and having school functions and not being able to help feeling bad when I looked out into the audience and saw that there was no one sitting there, who¡¯d come there for ¡°me¡±. Thus despite all the nonsense ¡°I¡± had going on in my neck of the woods, I¡¯d come out here to be here for the girl. Clapping and stomping my feet and pretty much being your typical obnoxious parental type...Not that I thought of myself as a parental type. I¡¯d never thought of myself as parental type. Even during those few times where my ex-girlfriends and I had to deal with pregnancy scares. I just know that I was doing my best to make sure that the girl knew I was there for her. I¡¯d even materialized a big banner with her name on it. In the air. ¡°Go Innes Go!¡± ***** [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ***** Today was the last day of the tournament the day of the final thirty matches. Where the top thirty students from out of all the dozen or so schools that were competing in this tourney would compete. Competing for personal glory and rewards as well as for the fates of each of their sects and schools. I dozed through the first dozen or so battles. Sitting in a waking nightmare. The anxiousness eating me up inside. I didn¡¯t realize how important being able to see one¡¯s own status had become till suddenly I couldn¡¯t see mine. ¡°Damn..Damn...Damn! What the fuck...Come on¡­[Status].¡± It was like not being able to see one¡¯s own reflection in the mirror. Or like not being able to wiggle a toe. Important but not important at the same time. I felt the same sort of frustration that one would get from having to deal with a vital but non-vital piece of tech going dead. It was like staring at a laptop blue screen or looking down at one¡¯s cellphone in a toilet bowl. In my head I knew it probably wasn¡¯t the end of the world but it totally felt like it was. And unlike in those scenarios I couldn¡¯t just run down to an electric store, or over to my girlfriend¡¯s place to order a replacement. ***** [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ***** My thoughts were interrupted by a groan from the announcer and the roar of the audience. It looked like another of the little snot-nosed punks competing with my disciple had just been blasted off the stage. Losing to some kid with actual fire for here and dragon wings. The announcer ran to the victor, lifting the girl¡¯s arm into the air as medics took the loser away on a stretcher. I looked down and forgot my mood as I saw the girl, she was wearing a light gray chiffon dress. The bottom of it flaring out like the petals of a blooming flower. It was the one she¡¯d chosen for herself after an announcement that those who intended to participate in the tournament would be advised to bring some formal wear in the case they managed to make it onto the main arena¡¯s stage. I know right? Formal wear for a battle tournament? I didn¡¯t get it either, but apparently even for the grown up battles, a lot of what went on here was at least fifty percent pageantry and looking good. Which I guess makes sense because for the adult battles looking good and being strong were the two halves of what it took to get sponsorship. I waved like an idiot. Standing up. Whistling. Hooting and Hollering. She saw me, looking puzzled and then making an embarrassed teen face. I got some looks from my compatriots in the vip areas as well. And few looks of curiosity came from the area of the people in her school. I bet they were trying to figure out just who the hell I was. Which was fine. They¡¯d get to know me real well soon. Part of the girl¡¯s decision to come out and compete in the tournament was reliant on the idea that we were going to reveal my connection to here. Level resets or not. Status menu issues or not. I was plenty strong enough to make sure that fine folks at Dusk-Sea learned to step carefully where that girl was concerned. I¡¯d surprised us both by suggesting she stop hiding her status as my student. I don¡¯t know why but I felt that since I was the one who¡¯d initiated this whole mentor thing I best do it properly. In any case, I was kind of excited to see the girl show the world what I taught her. The winner of the last fight got off the stage and was replaced with a green haired boy who¡¯d won a few fights beforehand. He rose up into the air, supported by a fact flowing cyclone. Two small tornadoes of green light shot out from the palms of his hands. Innes threw her guard up. Deflecting the green cyclones with a dome of black and pink light. She jumped up into the air, the movement augmented with force magic. And then allowed gravity and more force magic to bring her down on her open. Swinging her fist as she did so. The boy hit the ground so hard that he bounced. Hitting the ground with enough force to chip the arena¡¯s stone floor and cause me and the rest of the peanut gallery to wince in unison. ¡°And we have a¡­.WINNER! Let¡¯s have a hand for the little lady in black!¡± cried the Announcer. Raising the girl¡¯s hand in the air. The audience went wild. I went wild. Then the girl walked off the stage, and I went back to being anxious again. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.***** [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ***** I stayed anxious till the next time Innes walked onto the stage. Shelving my worried thoughts and the bad premonitions I was feeling while I watched the girl trounce a little girl with the ability to create magical constructs. I watched with the bated breath, especially interested because that was yet another skill, I¡¯d taught Innes. Hard light constructs were just force and energy stabilized. A tricky thing to make at first but almost stupidly easy to use once one knew what one was doing. Innes matched the girl sword for sword. Her movements sharper, cleaner. Her weapons stronger and more realistic envisioned. I couldn¡¯t help chuckling. Wondering if the girl knew just how very cruel she was being. ¡°Come on, girl...no need to drag it on.¡± Since I doubt that she could have heard me from all the way down there, I imagine that she too knew that she was mostly just wasting time. Since the next thing she did after making the girl tire herself out by creating and breaking over fifty swords, was to teleport behind the girl and knock her out with a blow to the temple. The girl crumpled to the ground and again the crowd went wild. I sat back feeling mostly contented. Looking down at the Dusk-Sea Academy¡¯s section of the Arena. I saw the school elder¡¯s appraising Innes appreciatively and was pleased to see that they could recognize her talent. My hope was that they didn¡¯t do anything to bother the kid and make it necessary for me to step in. If they could just play nice and do as any good sect or school would be expected to do with a good seed, I¡¯d been happy to possibly even lend the Academy my backing as well. It had occurred to me that I should probably do something else with my time than just farming for mana and sleeping in comfortable shadows. Before certain things had gone down, I¡¯d been thinking about trying to get another job. ¡°...Status.¡± ***** [Status System Down: Calamity King System Initialization In Process] ***** ¡°Fuck...You know what? It¡¯s cool. It¡¯s cool. I¡¯m fine. Everything¡¯s fine. Calm down.¡± I said. Speaking aloud as I felt myself growing more agitated. I sat there feeling miserable till the girl got back on stage again. By now she¡¯d earned herself a place in the top ten which was enough to make any non-insane, non-braindead sect Deans and school Headmasters, treat her like she was made out of fucking gold. So long as nothing went wrong, even if she lost the next round there were good odds for her being fast tracked into being one of the Academy¡¯s elites. In fact you can forget what I said about there being ¡°good¡± odds for the matter, because from what the archive was picking up from the conversation the Dusk-Sea Academy VIP booth, it was more or less a certainty. ¡°Hey¡­.¡± I jumped, heart racing. One bad thing about knowing almost everything that was happening, had happened or was about to happen in ones surroundings is that you increasingly sensitive to surprises. I looked to my side and saw the oddly beautiful, blank faced man sitting next to me. At first I was wondering what had happened to guy who¡¯d been sitting there before but then I saw him seated just a seat away. I was struck with the realization that the dapper gray suited stranger had likely somehow added his own seat to the layout of the place. Casually warping time and space for his own convenience. I wondered if I could do the same and was pleased to find that I could, but annoyed to find that it¡¯d take practice for me to able to do so with as much ease as he¡¯d done so. (Of course¡­) ¡°Hi¡­.er...it¡¯s William, wright?¡± said I. I knew his name. Heaven help me, I was just trying to pretend that his sudden presence there wasn¡¯t spooking the hell out of me. ¡°Right¡­¡± said the blank faced man. ¡°You¡¯re the one in charge of the system right?¡± said I. ¡°Right¡­¡± ¡°Ah...in that case I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯re the guy I¡¯d go to complain about my broke status window or the fact that I haven¡¯t been able to level up weeks?¡± The guy looked at me, quirking his brow. Frowning but not really frowning. Giving me this look like he couldn¡¯t really understand what I was trying to say, but somehow that was okay¡­since he at least got the gist. I couldn¡¯t help gulping because it was both the sexiest and scariest thing I¡¯d ever seen. The kind of move I¡¯d see in the movies as a hopelessly awkward teen and spend hours staring in the mirror, trying and failing to pull off. Back before I¡¯d given up ever being cool and before I realized that what I really wanted to be was normal. Just a normal person living a normal life. A guy who didn¡¯t spend his days running into random strangers or getting odd calls in the night. Or being hounded by news reporters because he was the last survivor of that sex-cult that was being talked about on every channel and social networks for the last half-decade. (And in that moment I suddenly realized this guy whoever the fuck he really was reminded me of my father¡­.I mean, if my had had been a murdering, rapist, egomaniac¡­.) ¡°Er...Nevermind, it¡¯s not the end of the world¡­¡± I said. Coughing. Cutting my train of thought short. The man sat back looking slightly uncomfortable¡­. ¡°Well...actually¡­.¡± I stared at him...And I stared at him...And then I stared at him some more. Then suddenly I had his collar balled up in my fist and I was standing over the guy. ¡°Are you fucking kidding me, man! Seriously! Don¡¯t you think this world has been through enough? That I¡¯ve been through enough?!¡± I was panting, heart pounding a mile a minute. My grip on his collar so tight I could feel the fine textured fabric pressing through my skin. Finally he stared back. His look flat as it had always been. A part of me had a sense that I was holding a dragon by its whiskers. The rest of me, just noted the muted, patience in his gaze. I let go. I fell back into my seat. ¡°When¡¯s it going to happen¡­¡± said I. ¡°Now¡­¡± My heart rate spiked again, I bolted upright. ¡°Are you fucking kidding?! Now it¡¯s happening now?!¡± I exclaimed. All he said was¡­ ¡°...Yes. Red Moon. It¡¯s happening now.¡± And all I could say was¡­. ¡°Oh...okay¡­.So uh...what are you here for?¡± ¡°Well...I still kind of oh you...so I figured if there¡¯s anything I could do that¡¯s allowed within my powers as Administrator¡­¡± ¡°Oh...How about not letting the world end?¡± I said. My mood whiplashing, surging back towards whatever direction it took to make me feel like I could fight an immortal that could produce other immortals like myself for a living. ¡°No¡­¡± ¡°How about letting me and a few other not-ass people escape this world so that the world before everything goes down?¡± ¡°Mhn...I could do that...but I¡¯m not going to, because that¡¯d actually be kind of hurting you. Believe it or not, the apocalyptic reset of the Agarthan Wonderland¡¯s reality is a party that many, higher existence...existence much higher than you and a few much higher than me...are pretty much falling all over themselves to get invited. After all sure this world is ending, but the one that¡¯ll be set up shortly after to stop the whole reality erasure issue will be even more rife with opportunities for immortals and immortals-to-be both young and old¡­¡± I looked at him frowning¡­.and then I sighed, because it looked like he wasn¡¯t going to budge. ¡°Okay, since you can¡¯t stop this and you won¡¯t save me, why ¡°are¡± you here?¡± That question actually made him think for a moment. He spent long enough thinking that Innes actually beat her opponent and the next set of fighters were already on and off the stage by the time he spoke again. ¡°Mhn...I guess I¡¯m here to apologize and to explain¡­¡± ¡°...Alright¡­¡± said I. Feeling the old grimace acting up. Feeling my brow furrow. ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡± ¡°You¡¯re not forgiven.¡± I said. Arms crossed. ¡°I figured as much.¡± he said with a shrug and a sigh. ¡°Okay...now out with the explanation, please.¡± ¡°So here¡¯s a funny story...You remember a few weeks ago when you might have wandered through a town and defeated an old giant made of metal?¡± I paled as the archive filled in the blanks and I realized that the administration''s sudden need to end the world was my fault. The world was ending no matter what they did. The system they¡¯d set in place would be imbalanced no matter what they did. Even if they erased my existence the damage was already done. The only difference was that they could have tried a slightly less drastic if still very large scale option if they¡¯d gone and erased me anyway¡­Which in a weird way made me see how much this dude valued my life. ¡°I didn¡¯t beat the guy...he uh...he sort of gave up and ceded me the win.¡± The man nodded, reached into his pocket and plopped a large heavy cube with a very intense antigravity charm on it onto my lap. I felt my bones creak despite all the spells that were walking on the cube to negate its weight. ¡°I know¡­.He shouldn¡¯t have done that...otherwise you would have died and respawned and none of us would be in this mess.¡± A bit of irrational pride flared up. ¡°You don¡¯t know that...I could have¡­¡± ¡°No, Des...No you couldn¡¯t. I was very particular about that set of Demonkings. You have to graduation level and above. Mostly above and none of you levellers are at that stage yet¡­.not even you¡­¡± ¡°....Ah¡­.O-,...Okay¡­¡± I said. Finding that thought I still felt guilty, I felt slightly less guilty knowing that it wasn¡¯t entirely my fault that the world was ending. ¡°Is it safe to assume that this isn¡¯t the only reason why you¡¯re here? To tell me that this wasn¡¯t my fuck-up?¡± ¡°Yes¡­I¡¯m also here to explain what¡¯s about to happen¡­¡± ¡°What¡¯s about to-¡± ¡°.....¡± he didn¡¯t even say anything. He just stopped me with a look and I finally realized that I was probably pressing my luck here. ¡°In a few minutes you¡¯re going to see a bright, black, white and gray light and then everything is going to go away. We¡¯ve joined up with a few angeles, a few gods of life and death, and few creation gods and we¡¯re going to remake the world. There¡¯ll be some background changes, and besides fixing this whole situation, we¡¯re going to take the opportunity to hurry some things we were planning to just weight on and change some things we¡¯d been wanting to fix but were holding back on touching since you know this world had people living on it and shit¡­¡± ¡°Oh...and...so?¡± ¡°For us the process will take maybe a few centuries, maybe a thousand years, but for you it¡¯ll be as if this world had never been. Everything here will be gone. Ancient history and less than that¡­¡± ¡°Oh...uh...so we¡¯re all going to die¡­¡± I said. Feeling numb inside. Feeling like I very desperately needed to smoke, to drink, to hit something. ¡°Yes and no¡­¡± ¡°What we¡¯ve got planned is something closer to a staggered, planet wide respawn but from your end of things, it¡¯ll look more like reincarnation. You¡¯ll still be you...but at the same time you won¡¯t be. New lives. New experiences. New world. New families. It¡¯ll be the same for every other new life that¡¯s brought over, and that¡¯s been brought over.¡± It finally clicked why he was here. ¡°New lives right?...And let me guess you guys can pull some string to control what kinds of lives we get.¡± He nodded. ¡°For the most part we¡¯re planning to just seed the new reality off a sped up simulation that would decide how society got built up for the rest of souls that¡¯ll be reborn in this new world but we at the Administration do have some privileges and some measure of control¡­¡± I considered and then I considered again and then I got up to go throw up a little. And when I got back I decided. ¡°I...I don¡¯t really care about me, but I¡¯ve got this disciple...my only student...this little girl I know who I¡¯d like you take special care of.¡± The guy looked at me and then he smiled. It was a beautiful smile. Light and slow like syrup. ¡°We can do that¡­¡± Volume 1 Ends - Volume 2 Begins Hey guys, I.Sharpe here. As to where I was last week, I was enjoying the beautiful spring weather. Meeting beautiful people. Just plain winning at life....Honestly though, I mostly spent my time holed up in my room playing Persona 5. Was it worth the sixty bucks...? Hell yes. I also spent some time doing RL stuff too, but it was mostly just me chilling. Now on the subject of the story, basically the last chapter of arc four was the last chapter of the first volume of the series. Now I''m going to start with the first arc of the second volume which is why I''m putting this hear as a divider. While I was taking my one week break I did some thinking about the direction I wanted the story to go in. I decided it was probably going a little too slow as far as actual plot was going. I mean the idea was for it be like a slice of life in a magical dystopia but I also kind of wanted it to you know move forwards, which for whatever reason I wasn''t doing a good job of making it do.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Ultimately, I decided that maybe a few changes needed to be made. I thought I''d also maybe take a new direction for the plot. maybe take some effort to make sure things are a little more structured rather than the freeform, journal type narrative I had going before. So this new volume will be a little different than the last volume. I''ll also maybe not being doing the same kind of bulk updates that I''d been doing with the first volume to make sure I''m taking proper time with the writing. (Also because I''m pretty sure my RL stuff is going to make it unsustainable) Hopefully this will be an improvement on what I''ve been doing thus far. In any case, thanks to everyone whose been reading. You guys are f-ing awesome as always. - I. Sharpe. Arc 1: Chapter 1: The Reboot Roughly three hundred thousand years had gone by since Agartha¡¯s big reboot. Long enough for all of the out-of-control energy to stabilize to a reasonably safe range. Long enough for the climate and the land to be remolded for the sake of the great machine. Splitting into two substrata, one in which reality flowed mundanely and one in which the chaotic divine energy could freely and safely flow with effecting either Agartha or the myriad universes beyond. A subjective three hundred million years more was made to pass before the world¡¯s wheel of Samsara could begin spinning again, allowing for lives to be born and reborn. Converting the myriad souls of the mortals who¡¯d been brought there and the gods, demons, and celestial monsters who¡¯d decided to descend, into a more standardized form of being. During this process of great rebirth for the great Wonderland of Agartha, the good folks of the Asphodel Administration and the Divine Council of Chaos and Order worked in tandem to seed the beginnings of this new world¡¯s new civilization. Several eons more passed before everything came to fruition. First a pantheon was established for the new world, made up of various gods and immortal beings from the council of chaos and order, all them young and old. Paying through the nose for the opportunity. Paying in effort and labor and resources. Then small kingdoms rise up. Born from the small tribes of reincarnated souls that had been slowly been placed all around Agartha. With their progress expedited by the help of the immortal administration. The kingdoms gave birth to empires and nations. Those nations were then put through a sort societal pasteurization. With all the monarchies and dictators being democratized, while the sects, guilds and immortal powers held the reign of various shadow governments that fought both within and amongst themselves. This would be done to avoid any of the greater players, or divines from taking advantage and monopolizing the wonderland. In case of any unprecedented events, both the administration and council would have observers and fail-safes in place to keep any one power from growing too strong. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. While all this took place, while society to a standard that might be analogous to that of an optimistically founded twenty-fourth century earth, the two realities of Agartha were slowly fused. Levellers were re-introduced shortly after the kingdoms arose. The immortals and the Immortal (Calamity) Kings were phased in during the empire phase. Their introduction made a part of the final stabilizing process of the world¡¯s divine energy flow. The menu system was reworked, and simplified with most of its processes automated. Instead of a full status menu there was just a projection used for finding an individual''s level number and their name. In the same vein that stat points were found extraneous, was decided that giving anymore information than this was unnecessary for ¡°player¡± world interactions and the proper function of the system. Information concerning affiliations, and affinities would still be store and collected by the system and made extractable via certain menu access spells that would be given only to the churches, the sects and the state. ¡°Monsters¡± were introduced shortly after, made out of modified flora and fauna. With sentient members of the Monster race being formed from volunteers in soul pool. The monster level would be staggered to match population number and average leveller level. Biomes would be established and strictly controlled. Myriad safe measures would be put in place to avoid the same overflow events that made the reboot necessary. Thus the new world would be born. Modern yet not. Feudalistic yet democratic. Chaotic yet orderly. A world of infinite possibilities where even gods might reach higher standing with enough luck and perseverance. The world would be populated by humanoid beings all of them genetically compatible and bearing a roughly humanoid form. None of these ¡°humans¡± would actually be human and all human souls that migrated over from the other worlds would be assigned a new race. The assignment either done randomly, made dependent on their patron gods, or done according to their inner nature. The inhuman ¡°humans¡± would be made up six broad races with various variations; the fae, the demons, the beast, machines, the spirits, and the elementals. Strengths, affinities and physiology would be roughly what one would expect from these races¡¯ otherworld analogues, if a little humanity was mixed in. Interbreeding would be encouraged to avoid abuses and divine favoritism. Once past the pasteurization point, society would be allowed to unfold on its own with little to no outside intervention. Again observation would be put in place and care would be taken to keep things from getting out of hand. Thus the new Agartha would be born. Arc 1: Chapter 2: A Marriage of Wastes In a certain continent, in a certain empire, in a certain city-state there was a church, a temple really. One dedicated to the goddess Hildred who was said to govern duty and family for the people of that particular region. In this hallowed hall before a great stained glass relief of the goddess herself a marriage was taking place. A man and woman stood before a priest. The man dressed in a suit of black. The woman dressed in a gown of lacey white. The priest droned on for nearly three hours time, speaking of duty and family and his goddess. Speaking of the journey that this man and woman would be going down as they left their family homes and joined as one to create a new family, a new home and eventually a new life together. No one paid much attention to the priest prattle. Not the groom who simply stared into the distance, his gaze glassy and somewhat vacant. A loose somewhat indolent smile on his face. A thin line of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. Not the bride who stared down at her feet. Biting her bottom lip. Her eyes hard and dry as if she had been on the verge of crying tears of anger but a harsh wind had blown all her tears away. The atmosphere in the temple was gloomy. Besides the couple not seeming all that ecstatic about what was taking place, the two family¡¯s who come together to be joined didn¡¯t seem to be taking much interest either. The youths all fidgeted in their Sunday finest, sneaking looks at their phones, and the various electronics they¡¯d been able to sneak within them when their parents weren¡¯t watching. The adults all watched clock, occasionally shifting in their seats uncomfortably, as if ¡°they¡± were the ones who¡¯d been forced to stand all this time. As for the seniors, the mixture of senile and sly, venerated elders, they amiably chatted amongst themselves. Or napped. A lot of them simply taking the occasion as a change to get out of the house and see old friends. At some point a few people had just gotten impatient, getting up to go to the bathroom and then simply never coming back. For the younger half of these people there would be punishment and scolding coming but the adults present in this place that noted these absences would feel a bit of envy. Wishing they could leave as well. Two families had indeed come together joined for a purpose. Coming to witness the joinder of the young couple in front of them, but the reasoning wasn¡¯t love, and this was no celebration of anything quite so fanciful. What this was, was a business deal, and an inconvenience for most who were attending. What this was, was two groups of people with too much ¡°positive¡± reputation for open hard-heartedness, getting rid of their families¡¯ trash and trying to get some small benefits while they were doing so. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. The Caldwells, the groom¡¯s family had traded a small restaurant chain and a single medium grade level twenty magic artifact to the bride¡¯s family to make this wedding happen. This was the price they paid to get rid of their mentally handicapped eldest son without it being seen as them throwing him out into the street. Institutions of mental health were expensive so they couldn¡¯t just throw him into one of those for the rest of his life and hope that the world forgot about him. Besides the fact that institutionalizing the boy would have publicized the already well known secret that the boy was a waste. Doing so sustainably would have meant having to arrange for the boy¡¯s demise. Which would have been even riskier for the family¡¯s reputation. Possibly marring their righteous name. In return for the restaurant chain and the magic artifact the bride¡¯s family, the Andrases, paid for the wedding. Providing a dowry of the 1.2 million, just large enough to pay for the possible blood price in case anything went wrong. They also provided the bride. A young woman whose meteoric rise within the family, the city and the Leveller sect that that two families were part of, was halted by scandal. Bringing shame and the ire of a genuine noble house onto the family. This was her punishment for acting against the family. In a few months if she changed her recalcitrant ways it was possible the boy would just ¡°die in his sleep¡± and she¡¯d be allowed back into the fold. If not then she could just go and bear the idiot¡¯s children and do good by the family that way, staying far out of public sight. The priest finally ran out of words to say and there was silence. Heavy, oppressive silence. Only occasionally broken up by coughs and sneezes. ¡°You may kiss the bride¡­¡± said the old man. ¡°You. may kiss the bride¡­¡± he repeated. ¡°Give her a kiss, Desi...come on just like we showed you. We don¡¯t have all day dammit!¡± shouted a gruff voice in the pews. The father of Groom, one Matias Caldwell. Eventually, the dull eyed young boy leaned over and gave depressed looking bride a moist, inexpert peck on the lips. Satisfied that all the particulars were taking care of the priest closed his holy tome and clapped his hands together and announced that the ceremony was over. ¡°Now before our great Lady Hildred who watches over the hearth and blade, I now pronounce you man and wife.¡± There was applause if half hearted. Then came the reception which was actually not that terrible. The catering was decent, and the alcohol was fairly high class. High enough a class that when all this was over enough adults were good and soused and merry as they watched the groom and bride clamber into a limousine with crystals tied to the back bumper and a just married sign in the back window. Merrily throwing rice, even if they didn¡¯t particularly about the blessedness of the union. The bride and groom drove off from the church and immediately were sent to the train station where a small group of servant staff waited with luggage. The couple were helped to undress and redress and quickly boarded the train. This train would take them to the nearest neighboring country, Ashok where in theory the new couple would start a new life together. Eventually forming a new branch family and new foothold for the Caldwells and Andrases, in Ashok. At least that was theory¡­ A few minutes later, the bride, one Henrietta Eloise Andras would sit in the train watching the city in which she¡¯d lived most of her life. Feeling miserable, but somehow determined. The spite that had kept her eyes dry running low, now that she had no one to perform for. Then as just as she was about to break down. The trembling in her shoulders building up into some silent sobbing, she heard a voice. A soft, low voice that shattered the quiet of the moment. ¡°Mnm¡­.Bloody hell, I thought that was never going to end.¡± She looked up and saw her groom, her husband looking at her, his eyes bright, alert, focused. He looked at her, with the faintest grin on his face. An expression of wry chagrin. ¡°Hi...I¡¯m pretty sure it''s ¡°way¡± too late to be saying this, but since we really haven¡¯t actually met yet, I¡¯ll say it anyway...Hi, my name¡¯s Desmond. Nice to make your acquaintance.¡± Arc 1: Chapter 3: Her Axe It should go without saying that there was no actual honeymoon. The wedding itself was expensive enough, and there was no reason that the two families would spend money to let their two wastes bandy about on a sightseeing trip. After all, that would have been almost counter to the point of the whole marriage. For one family it was a way of relatively inexpensively casting out a legal and financial liability. For the other family it was a punishment and exile. The wedding was just for the purpose of getting those two out of the way and out of public view. If there was anything that could be called even the littlest bit honeymoon-like after the wedding, it was the one month period after the couple¡¯s train ride to Ashok. Cyrillus¡¯ nearest neighbor, close enough that it wasn¡¯t too expensive for the families to set up the move. Far enough that even if things went awry and the two proved to be beyond redemption, there¡¯d be little to no splashback on the main families in Cyrillus. They were given one month to get themselves to get oriented in their new lives. One month to get used to the rickety old house that their families had bought for them as a final wedding gift. One month to make some connections with some of the names, phone numbers and emails they¡¯d been given as a bit of familial kindness. One month to furnish the house and set up all the necessary services. One month to settle the paperwork involved in finalize the immigration process. For the bride she had one month to change her mind and do what her family wanted to allow her out of her wretched situation. One month in which it¡¯d be possible to take all that had happened back. For the groom it would be one month of nothing in particular as a caretaker had been sent along with them on their trip. And as everyone knew the unfortunate and loathsomely disappointing young man was near catatonic. Cognitively impaired to the point that besides following simple instructions, breathing and hopefully breeding, there was nothing else he was good for. All in all it was a one month prologue to a very dreary story. A single four to five week span in which the couple, or at least the bride could sit and contemplate the rest of their lives together. ***** That month was spent relatively lazily. Henri, the bride, now bearing the name Henrietta Caldwell-Andras, more or less took charge for everything. She made all the phonecalls and emails that needed to be made. She did all the paper. She was the one who set up the house and got them settled. Finishing her tasks with one final call to the cable company to make sure their internet was in order. Afterwards she shut herself up in her room, turtling-up in much the same way she¡¯d used to do, when she was a child. An awkward slightly asocial adolescent with a mother who stubbornly believed that all she needed to do was come out of her shell. Completing everything with the same perfectionism and efficiency that she always showed, the whole setup was done by the end of their first week. Henri would spend the next three weeks in her bedroom. Sometimes just sitting on the floor in front of her television, playing console games. Sometimes on her desktop pc playing pc games. Other times on her laptop browsing forums, comics and videos, eschewing her usual social media haunts for fear of any of her former friends messaging her. Either sending snide comments or sending seeming sympathetic missives that were really just a way of phishing for information on her current status. She spent most of that three week period just trying to distract herself. Trying not to think about how she¡¯d gone from being father¡¯s little girl, to being ¡°that wretched little wench¡± who¡¯d ruined everything. Trying not to spend another handful of hours second guessing herself, wondering if she really wasn¡¯t the one in the wrong after all. She was ¡°pretty¡± sure she was in the right. Common sense and simple decency said she was in the right. In any movie with a plot line where a rich so-and-so from a powerful family, invited a co-workers and friends over to his place only to try and take advantages with the help of a few of his friends, would probably have been considered well ended if the so-and-so and his friends ended up in a jail hospital. Their skulls cracked, and their reputations ruined. In real life though, things weren¡¯t so simple. Powerful families when sufficiently powerful could push back against even the worst of charges. If they had enough connections, they could prepare enough false testimonies to make up into down and black into white. There was a brief period during the very worst of the ordeal when there talk about the Anderson House possibly making charges against. Suing her and her family for aggravated assault and defamation. There was an actual point where the police called her in and made her explain her actions asking questions about where she¡¯d been on any substances or whether she knew about illegality of using offensive magic without proper cause. The only good thing was that it was over almost as soon as it began. It was a very brutal, very ugly, very brief conflict between a shih tzu and a dire wolf. The Anderson family steam rolled the case, but for whatever reason they chose not to push things further than that. Simply content to have their son¡¯s good name restored. Almost overnight she became the liar, the girl who cried wolf, the crazy bitch who assaulted the future head of one of the country''s biggest corporations and a future lord of Cyrillus Royal Senate and somehow got away with it. Somehow she ended up on trial. The media dedicated three entire weeks to just tearing her apart, which would be one of the many times she¡¯d be thankful that she¡¯d lived most of her life shut-in and had little to no dirt to dig. The friends she thought she was saving distanced themselves. She got fired from her job. Demoted from her position within the Moon-Fire Mages Sect. Her family¡¯s position on things hurt the worst and despite being the most neutral. At first they¡¯d been on her side. At first there were people saying she¡¯d been brave. Praising her for doing the right thing. Praising for saving her friends. Then the pressure started coming. Then business started closing down. Then Deals started getting broken. Then the family¡¯s most vital contracts and covenants started getting cancelled. It was around then that a few of her cousins started to question whether she was sure that she saw what she thought she saw. There were the rumors that the Anderson¡¯s rumors about her just being a crazed, jealous fangirl, who pushed things just a bit too far, were true. Those seniors who knew better would just see her and shake their heads. Asking what she¡¯d thought she was doing exactly by accepting some playboy¡¯s invitation. Questioning why she¡¯d gotten involved instead of just getting out of there, or why she¡¯d made things become so complicated. Before she knew it, She¡¯d gone from being her family¡¯s young ace, the hope of their future, to being the brat that nearly ruined them. Then came the day where her mother and father made her rescind her testimony, taking back her case, so that the Anderson¡¯s would take back theirs. She did it, but it killed her to do so, but she still did it, because by then her¡¯s was the only voice still saying the Cerwyn Anderson and his friends had been trying to rape them. The other girls had either pulled out and moved out of the city-state or been bullied into changing their testimonies as well. Henri changed her testimony because she had to, she changed her testimony because the Anderson¡¯s had enough connections and pull that the mere hint of their displeasure was enough to quietly crush her family to death. The three months during the very worst of the trial, the family lost enough stock and position, that they were on the brink of being dissolved. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. So she did what she had to. And then had to go even a little further by issuing a formal apology to the Anderson family. Afterwards she turtled up and went into her room as she usually did whenever she wasn¡¯t sure what to do with herself. Disillusioned with the world beyond her bedroom door. Her parents were wrong about everything and all things that they¡¯d said to her and her siblings were apparently all lies. People weren¡¯t just basically decent. Making friends wasn¡¯t a rewarding experience. Right and wrong weren¡¯t important to anyone. The truth did not set people free And Heroes didn¡¯t exist beyond comic books. The funk she fell into was bad enough that she considered talking to someone about it. She didn¡¯t though because that would have meant leaving her house and up till a few months ago there were still a few camera men lurking around just to take a photo of her. She considered suicide but decided against it, because it meant letting ¡°them¡± and she was entirely sure who ¡°them¡± was, either her parents, the media, her so-called friends or Cerwyn win. Months went by. Things quieted down. For once she thanked all the gods for her being born in a world of monsters, and chaotic magical super calamities, because eventually the world forgot all about her and the stupid case. She eventually calmed down from the worst of that period. She eventually managed to leave her room again. She figured she was over the worst of it. Her family was still being pretty cold, but she was, at least as far she knew, the same girl she¡¯d been when they¡¯d been hyping her up. She knew the same spells. She had the same talent. She was...possibly a little weaker than before from all that time holed up in her room, but that wasn¡¯t anything a little training couldn¡¯t change. She figured soon everything would go back to normal. Then one day, ¡°he¡± showed. Cerwyn Anderson, built like a bear, handsome like he was made for tv. He showed up at the office she was working at. She hid feeling like a cockroach. Feeling that same, falling the down stairs sensation she¡¯d felt while everything had been going down. Wondering what kind of world she was living in when scum got to stand tall and the people who tried to stop, people who fought back instead of just being victims, had to duck low. Slinking into the shadows with their tails between their legs. Of course, her luck being her luck, he spotted her. He came up to her, smiled that big aw-shucks smile of his. Perfected from over a thousand years back when the Andersons were still farm folk. He chatted her up as the last year had never happened. He had the gall to ask about a few of the girl¡¯s who¡¯d been part of the case who¡¯d simply disappeared. Vanishing before the trial. Henri took it stride. She too was part of the elite after all, and she now knew how the game was played. She smiled. Made small talk, even shook the bastards hand and pretended like everything was all water under the bridge. A few weeks later a letter came, addressed to her, but sent to her parents. It was a proposal. One laced with nauseating prose that went on and on about her forthrightness, her honesty, her integrity and dedication to the truth. Just a lot of twisting knife. The note dancing around their history without ever once directly bringing it up. Apparently Cerwyn Anderson of the Jewel City Andersons wanted to very much have her hand in marriage. Not as a wife of course, considering their history and her status. No, he wanted her as a ¡°partner¡± the current age¡¯s equivalent to a legal mistress or concubine from back in the day. She took it as a joke, a mean final fuck-you from the winners of that whole incident. Her parents and the family elders however, thought otherwise. The family was still recovering, and in the same way that Anderson''s had nearly crushed them without directly acting, having an Anderson-Andras in the family could have not only helped aided their recovery but brought them to new heights. There were many voices including that of her father and mother, who thought that she should do it. If only as a way of apologizing for all the trouble and dishonor she¡¯d brought to both of their families. This was her sticking point, the line she wouldn¡¯t cross. She didn¡¯t know it, till she knew it but once she did there wasn¡¯t anything she or anyone else could do. They said she should accept the proposal. She said no. They said she should do it for the family she still said no. They said they would have her do it even if they had to trundle her up and toss her into the Anderson compound by force. She threatened to kill Cerwyn and then kill herself if they tried anything of the sort. Henri was resistant to mind-alteration spells, that¡¯s what got them all in this trouble in the first place. And she¡¯d been stronger than Cerwyn by at least fifteen levels. If it came to it, she really would kill the man before she let him touch her and then she¡¯d kill herself, or maybe run, but since she didn¡¯t really have anywhere to go, there was a very bleak part of her that was pretty sure she¡¯d kill herself. Either way, she knew that¡¯d she¡¯d definitely kill the city¡¯s golden boy and leave her family and the Andersons to sort things out if they pushed her into accepting the man¡¯s proposal. Her father still wanted to push things, but her mother knew, she KNEW. Before they made her lie the girl was never a liar, thus if she said the boy would die, then she¡¯d definitely do it, or at least die trying. That was straw that finally broke the camel''s back. The family and her parents thought she was being selfish. She thought so too, but that wasn¡¯t ever going to be enough to change her mind. There were numerous threats and ultimatums and eventually it came down to the old fashioned, ¡°you¡¯re over twenty-one, what are you waiting for argument?¡±. As if they were still living in ye olden times when sixteen years old and pregnant wasn¡¯t a hot button issue being talked about on the news. She¡¯d rebutted with an ¡°anyone but him¡± as in if the family really thought she should marry, she¡¯d marry, but Cerwyn Anderson would be very last man in world she¡¯d ever agree to as a spouse. This time she was bluffing, but they pressed her bluff by bringing in the Caldwell boy. Drooling and mute. Mussing himself. Incapable of doing anything without that caretaker of his to help him. This was her choice, this was what it ultimately came down to. Marry the attempted rapist who nearly ruined her life, or marry a literal drooling imbecile. She made her choice. She walked down the aisle and was now waiting out the month''s time that remained before that choice could no longer be taken back. Distracting herself from the implications of her decision in any way she could. Besides not thinking about the past she was also trying not to think to hard about her future. It had been bad enough when she had to consider her future life being caretaker for her mentally impaired husband. It had been bad enough knowing that she¡¯d never be able to step within her childhood home again. Or talk to the few good friends that she¡¯d somehow, miraculously managed to keep after everything went down. She still didn¡¯t think she¡¯d been in the wrong. She didn¡¯t really regret what she did, but that didn¡¯t change the fact that people were hurting. Especially those people who had been relying on her family for their survival. It had been bad enough knowing that eventually she¡¯d had have to wrestle with the issue of having children with the man who slept in the room across from hers. She¡¯d been doing a fair bit of soul searching and moral questioning on the morality of being intimate with someone with the mental capacity of a toddler. Wondering where that stood in the range of wrong and right. Wondering if it was at all possible to discreetly find a doctor to retrieve the necessary ¡°material¡± for her, so she wouldn¡¯t be the one doing herself. Still, even then, she had a hunch that the key morality issue wouldn¡¯t be much fixed. In which case, what did she do then? The whole point of this marriage, besides just being a punishment was that she was supposed to somehow ¡°redeem¡± herself by making the family a bunch of few young talents. Starting up a new branch of the family. And while she wasn¡¯t entirely enthusiastic about the prospect, she knew that eventually her family would start asking when the babies were coming. One line of thought had her looking at the prices for suborbital flights to the nearest neighboring continent. Measuring how long she¡¯d have to save to be able to start a new life elsewhere on her own. The other line of thought was looking into the price of high potential seed, from magically talented donors. To leave her family would mean stepping into a world that filled with pitfalls and hungry beasts. Without either funds or status she¡¯d soon find herself out in the ¡°Winding¡±, the wonderland wastes and out there were literal monsters both in human and inhuman form. While Henri was talented enough that she wouldn¡¯t be completely helpless, the Agarthan wonderland was like a sea, a her own, all her current power would count for, was making her, just a slightly bigger fish. A slightly bigger target for the myriad predators of the leveller deep. To stay with her family meant towing the line, doing as they expected it meant eventually producing a bunch of extraordinarily magic-potent offspring. Who in theory would eventually make up for her ¡°gaffe¡± through service to the family¡¯s cause. And despite what she said, despite having thought she¡¯d made her mind up about it all, she was still very hesitant. After all if she wasn¡¯t sure that ¡°she¡± still wanted to be part of her family, how would she be eager to bare and raise more members for it... Inside her head was a never ending argument. Both options were almost entirely too expensive to be realistic at the moment. Costly in both boldness and resources. Of course there was also the option...the one she¡¯d been going by all along, the option of biding her time, dragging her feet on the things she didn¡¯t want to do and wasn¡¯t sure and going along with the thing she could tolerate or weren¡¯t all that bad. This was the option she could see herself hanging onto till she really had her back up against a wall. These were the issues that had been going through her mind both before the wedding and on the drive over to the train station. They sat nested next to her anxieties over her new workplace. Her fears that the news of what had been happened in Cyrillus would have spread to Ashok. There was a more mundane concern over what her new job would be and whether she¡¯d be good at it. There were some fairly conflicted feelings over whether she was going to actually put her blood sweat and tears into the process of building up some business and territory for the Andras and Caldwell families in Ashok, or whether she¡¯d just sort of coast along till finally they stopped sending her allowances and they kicked her out of the house for being the selfish brat that they thought she was. On the one hand she was pretty sure she at least kind of hated her family right now. On the other had she felt guilty because while they were still technically a clan of elites, her actions had made it, so that they were only barely so. With much of the family still going through financial and social hardship because of all that happened. If they still counted as rich, it was because they were in enough debt to be able to fake it. There were all these decisions she had to make, all the thoughts going through her head. She already had enough on her plate when she thought she was going into this on her own. Then the man spoke. Staring straight at her as if he were looking through her and introducing himself. Revealing that no, he wasn¡¯t the waste that his family had thought he was. Revealing that for various reasons he¡¯d been hiding that he was perfectly normal, perhaps even better than normal as far as his mental capacities went. Railroading various thoughts and plans she¡¯d been building up by adding a second player into the mix. Now Henri didn¡¯t know what to think. Thus she didn¡¯t think at all, she just focused on what was going on in the screen in front of her, and tried to keep her combo count up. Arc 1: Chapter 4: His Grind Across the hall from the boudoir of the mistress of the house, lay the bedroom of the house¡¯s master. He sat inside staring at the ceiling while a reality-tv show about the housewives of several semi-famous levellers played out on the screen that was projected up onto the wall. Around him were various bottles and cans of drinks that were of the fizzy, sweet and decidedly bad-for-you persuasion. On the ground were books. Books and papers. Loads of papers. All of them spread out like leaves during the falls. Covered in Desmond¡¯s untidy scrawl. Covered in thoughts and suggests and recollections that would all be swept and tossed into the dustbin by the time the night was over. ***** Could one have all of one¡¯s own memories and still feel like an amnesiac? Desmond wasn¡¯t sure. What he did know, was the for the last decade or so, approximately fifteen years, he¡¯d spent his days living in a fog. In either case he was just glad to be Desmond again, in all sorts of ways. The unique nature of his consciousness had led to complications during his reincarnation. Desmond was a being that was made up of fragments of other beings. He was an existence closer to a hive mind, albeit one that was pretending to be a single person, than an actual person. Thus it was, that when he deposited within his new body, it took a longer period for his mind to adjust. He had a hunch that if it weren¡¯t for the added priority placed upon him by a certain blank faced individual, whose name he couldn¡¯t recall, he might well have just stayed an idiot for the rest of his life. He wasn¡¯t sure what they were exactly but he knew that measures had been taken to help him along. Even with those measure He still spent fifteen years in a near vegetative state. The better half was spent living like an undead from out in the wastes. Highly susceptible to command. His actions lead by vague instinct. The worst was thankfully unrecollectable. He spent that time with his real-self locked inside his head, trapped within layer upon layer of nightmares. Escaping from the countless recollections of the other lives of the other minds that made up his core personality. Sometimes he was a deity overlooking worshipers. Sometimes he was king condemning traitors to their deaths. Sometimes he was a soldier fighting an impossible, never ending war. Sometimes he was a rogue beast, mad with rage, his flesh pierced by the arrows and spears of his divine foes. Sometimes he was a scared child, tied to a bed while some hulking hairy monster crept up onto the creaking mattress. Trapped as he was, he had no choice but to visit countless mental worlds and live countless illusory lives, before he could finally get back to his real one and become himself again. At the end of it, all things considered he couldn¡¯t hold his parent¡¯s actions against them. Yes the Caldwells, were cold to him and yes they had all but thrown him away, but to some extent he understood their actions. To some extent he couldn¡¯t help feeling grateful to them for all that they¡¯d done so far. He must have been such a disappointment. His archive had pulled the data from his birth and medical records. During his gestation his parents must have been ecstatic, according to the doctor¡¯s reports, both before and after his birth, Desmond had shown signs of a near unprecedented magical potency. Though this current world¡¯s current incarnation seemed to no longer have a full menu, or a statistical display for an individual¡¯s talent, they knew enough to know when individuals and children were born with potential. And Desmond was born with more than just potential. The readings for his internal mana levels and magical affinities were such that had he been born normal, had everything gone as planned, his place in the upper echelons of Cyrillus¡¯ imperial guard was as good as certain. His place in the upper Echelons in the Moon-fire Sect was as good as certain. There were even signs that he was an immortal. Signs that he¡¯d died in the womb and come back. He was born large for his age and would continue to grow large. His body built, broad, strapping and impressive as if he were a demon of the pride circle rather than the circle of lust. He should have been the star to bring his family up into nobility. Instead he was born broken. Empty. It wasn¡¯t even that he was born slightly simple, slightly slower. ¡°That¡± could have been worked around. The problem was that, there¡¯d been nothing there. For the young Desmond, whatever it was that made a person a person. He didn¡¯t have it. ¡°It¡± was a hundred billion worlds away fighting dragons and eating children like some kind of boogeyman knight. Worse than not ever having been given hope at all, was being given hope and then having it fall through. Desmond knew this from multiple instances where the few good foster homes he¡¯d been to looked like they¡¯d become something at least semi-permanent, only for the caseworker to show up the very next week, asking if he¡¯d packed. He knew this from having friends and girlfriends simply disappear shortly after he¡¯d opened up to them. Not even rejecting him, just simply removing themselves from his life. Erasing themselves as if they were being chased by something. Disappointment could be a very dreadful thing, just like greed, just like hate. Another poison for the heart. Thus while Desmond couldn¡¯t particularly say that their actions were entirely excusable, as far as he was concerned, he owed Caldwell¡¯s a debt. For while they could have simply just thrown him out. Possibly having someone drive him somewhere distance and just have him get out. Possibly just having some of his other nursemaids that had come before the present one, smother him in his sleep. They didn¡¯t. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Instead they waited, and they prayed. Instead they sank millions of dollars into him seeking answers and cures. Trying to see if he¡¯d get better, to see if they could make him better. They couldn¡¯t though. And because they couldn¡¯t fix him, they could only move on. Making sure he was taken care of while they focused on their other prospects the other hopes for the family¡¯s future. The next prospect would be Desmond¡¯s young brother. A highly intelligent, moderately talented young man by the name of Alvis. Alvis would be the house¡¯s future. Alvis would be the next head of the family. Alvis would be the one to bring the family to greatness. The only thing in Alvis¡¯s way were the empire¡¯s laws of inheritance and near vegetative younger brother. And again Desmond, found himself feeling at least a little grateful to his family, or at least he felt grateful to his parents. Despite the fact that it would have been cheaper and simpler to just arrange a timely downturn in his health, and a speedy demise, they didn¡¯t. Though there were several senior members of the family telling them they should kill the boy, they didn¡¯t. They went through all the trouble of finding another family to take the boy in. Another family to take care of him. Had he been born to the sorts of people he usually found himself with, he likely wouldn¡¯t have found himself lying in a bed. Had he been born to a family that were as bad as Desmond knew families could be, he wouldn¡¯t have woken up in a bed. He would have woken up in a gournay. Or in some cage. He might well have woken up strapped some contraption that harvested his body fluids for their superbly high magical content. They might not have been the most loving. They might have actually come to hate him a little. Resent him a little. But compared to narcissists who didn¡¯t recognize that orgies and ritualistic human sacrifices were things that no child should either witness or be forced to take part in. Compared to angry, drug addicted, pedophiles who killed their wives and then made their sons take on the rest of the burden...His current family, the Caldwells were the very best family amongst those that Desmond had ever been born into. And for that he felt he owed them a debt of gratitude. Now here Desmond was, feeling both, like and unlike himself. His thoughts were different from his original self¡¯s thoughts might have been, born from a fusion of countless other minds, but still patterned after his own mind. An amalgamate existence pretending to be singular entity. Before him lay a new world. One that was both like and unlike the one he¡¯d lost, the one that had been purged in nuclear fire. He¡¯d been back for quite some time, really. Three years to be exact. He¡¯d spent the first year just adjusting. Convalescing and resting from his long journey through mental space and mental time. Just lying in bed letting the archive fill him in on what was what. Then once he understood a little more about his new world and his new self, he continued to pretend. He drooled, and he smiled because he felt that he¡¯d been enough of an inconvenience. At first he¡¯d considered immediately revealing that he was fine, that he was indeed as they wanted him to be and available to play the part of their son. Then after some thought and a little research he realized that this would be the very worst thing he could do. He¡¯d already broken his parents hearts. He¡¯d already disappointed them. And so, they¡¯d already moved on. Just as they¡¯d put money into trying to fix Desmond, they had now begun to put money into grooming Alvis. Plans and hopes were already fixed on Alvis. ¡°Desmond¡± suddenly rising up and revealing himself would just be getting in the way. Just him acting for his own sake. At the best he would cause a great amount of people a lot of trouble. His re-entrance into the family as a player and his status as eldest son possible causing a fracturing of the family over who would inherit. At the worst the Caldwell¡¯s would finally be forced to try and directly act against him to stop said chaos. Most likely resulting in their destruction as his current self was far from weak. He couldn¡¯t even just leave either as that would lead to the family trying to search for him. Magical potent inpatients didn¡¯t just disappear on their own, it would have looked like a kidnapping. Which would be a blow to the Caldwell family¡¯s reputation and call for the use of all their resources to enact a manhunt for either the boy or his kidnappers. Resulting in something that would be both an inconvenience for Desmond and far too ingracious an act against the Caldwell¡¯s who had more or less done right by him, for his preference. Thus he¡¯d continued to pretend. Playing sick till he saw a window in which it would be appropriate for him to disappear. A point in time when he could go missing and no would come looking for him. It was beyond his expectations for that opportunity to come in the form of a marriage. One in which his disappearance would just be seen as a sign that his ¡°purchasers¡± the Andras family, had decided to do a ¡°return¡± on their purchase. Burying him in a shallow grave somewhere or just tossing them out since his presence in their daughter¡¯s life was no longer needed. Now here he was, escaped. And in another country. No longer a citizen of Cyrillus. No longer part of the Caldwell family. It no longer mattered if anyone found out about him, but he was still keeping low while he figured out his next move. His only question now was whether he had any obligations to his spouse and whether it was appropriate for him to continue staying in the house, whilst being almost an entirely different person than the one she thought she was marrying. He didn¡¯t quite know where else to go, or what to do with himself now that he was free and himself again. ***** There was a knock at Desmond¡¯s door. He didn¡¯t look away from the ceiling. Simply mumbling a response and absentmindedly opening the door with some telekinesis. ¡°Well, Come in then.¡± The door opened and in walked a nine or ten year old girl, dressed in a dark blue gown and a white apron. Frail looking. Pale. Her skin looking like porcelain. Her dark hair unruly. Tied into an untidy bun in the back, with the bangs left to hang over her eyes like a curtain of black cobwebs. She carried a tray that looked just slightly too large for a girl her size to be carrying but did so resolutely and steadily. Bringing it to Desmond¡¯s desk and placing it a safe distance away from the stack of laptops that also shared the desk. ¡°Your dinner, Master.¡± said Jack. Jacqueline Weiss, the new Caldwell-Andrases family¡¯s only full-time maid and Desmond¡¯s current caretaker. As she left the tray on the table and bowed, Desmond spared her a glance. Seeing her hair in the state it was and knowing that she¡¯d likely end up bumping into something if neither of them did anything he sighed and called her over to him. ¡°Oi, come here before you hurt yourself again, you silly thing.¡± said Desmond. Shaking his head like a world-wearied mother hen. ¡°Yes, Master Desmond.¡± The girl bowed a second time, before acquiescing. Her face still stony though a more attentive ear might have heard a bit of satisfaction in her voice. She pulled a chair over to sit down in, while the large man did her hair. Arc 1: Chapter 5: New Kid The ¡°honeymoon¡± ended with little fanfare. Henri only realized it was over when she got an email from herself reminding her to actually get some sleep that night. According to the email Henri had to go to work tomorrow. When she got the email, it was Sunday night and the orientation period for her new job started the coming Monday. Henri couldn¡¯t help grumbling to herself wondering what had possessed her to send such a message to herself. Bemoaning her ingrained goodie two-shoes nature as she informed her team in the shooter she was playing that she¡¯d have to log off in a few minutes. She slept fitfully that night, spending most of that evening staring up at the ceiling telling herself that she was worrying for nothing and that everything would probably be okay. Eventually blissful unconsciousness came, but it only lasted as long as it took for the alarm clock by her bedstand to suddenly glitch and start blaring. According to the clock it was six a.m. by then but of course the clock was glitched. According to her windows the sky outside was already beginning to brighten, glowing a glorious golden orange but naturally both the sky and windows were glitched too. Still just in case she was wrong and all of reality ¡°wasn¡¯t¡± broken, Henrietta dragged herself out of bed. Heading into the shower and using up pretty much all the hot water in the house so she could feel human again. Which was pretty much simply impossible to do when one was a ghost. She managed to get to feeling at least halfway human before the water started to run cold. Then she got out and hurriedly dressed. Then she looked at herself in the mirror, decided that she didn¡¯t like what she was seeing and dressed again. This went on for a few minutes more till she and the girl in the mirror called a truce and decided that a conservative pantsuit with a favorite t-shirt worn for good luck beneath the blouse would be a fair enough outfit for her first day on the job. She headed downstairs to the ground floor. She went through a sitting room and saw the maid, Jack. The quiet little girl who somehow managed to keep the house cleaned all on her own. She went into the kitchen and saw that someone had made breakfast. She considered eating but her unsettled stomach and a chirrup from her phone warned that that would probably not be the best of ideas. Instead she settled for a coffee fresh from the pot. Poured for her by a strange handsome, dark skinned, man, with pink hair, red eyes and small horns. Still warm and smelling slightly cinnamony. She was sipping that coffee from out of a thermos as she passed through the living room. Her purse on her shoulder, her keys in hand. ¡°Bye¡­.¡± said a voice. ¡°Bye.¡± said Henri. Slightly startled by the interruption in her train of thought. She was already in her car and out of the driveway before she realized that that strange man had in fact been her husband. Then she was startled by the reminder that she did in fact ¡°have¡± a husband. First she¡¯d expected to be taking on a burden, another responsibility. Then it turned out that burden could talk and was completely aware of all that was and had been happening around him. Typical of her cowardly nature she¡¯d run away and hid from the issue by holing up in her room. Forgetting all about it till now. Now as she drove she couldn¡¯t help thinking about what on earth it meant, or if it meant anything at all. She thought so much that she ended up stopping at a light just a tad too long. Long enough to get horned at by the driver behind her. ¡°Oops, sorry...sorry.¡± muttered Henri as she continued on her way. Compartmentalizing and putting her personal issues away for later. ***** They say the caliber of a man can be seen by looking at the things that he cherishes. Unlike most other leveller sects, the Moon-fire Mages Sect, was more focused on academia and research than its fellows who focused on wealth and power accrual. However despite being a sect of middling size and power, they held a reasonable measure of influence over most of the continent. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Mainly spreading their name through affiliate schools that either catered to ordinary folk, levellers or most often some mixture of both. As well as through research groups, libraries and brain trusts that were usually nested within those schools. Henrietta¡¯s new place of employment was within one of those schools. She was to be an assistant-Teacher at the Aybek Preparatory Academy. It neared the bottom rankings for all the country¡¯s schools. The Sect¡¯s only real reason for keeping the school running being to use it as tax right off, as well as a place to store the sects¡¯ unwanted cast-offs, orphans, as well as any cultivation servants that they¡¯d purchased but had turned out to be of little worth. Rumor had it that there was a chance that the sect might just cut their losses and walk away any point in the near point. Rumor had it those rumors were maybe more than rumors. Henri could believe that since she couldn¡¯t see either the sect or her family tossing her anywhere that they still cared for. Besides the Moonfire Sect had plenty of other schools operating under its banners, school where people from richer families went. Schools that taught students with talent and potential, students worth cultivating. Henri didn¡¯t really care about any of that. She was more concerned about whether she was going to be terrible at her new job or not. Henri was a Lvl. 98 Mage, with a master¡¯s degree in Spellcraft and Warding from Cyrillus¡¯ Imperial Moonfire University, this plus the online teaching certificate that she¡¯d earned a few months prior meant that, Henri was technically qualified enough to teach magical physics, regular physics, spellscripting, advanced mathematics, oceanography and meteorology. Having said this, the real question that Henri was worried about had nothing to do with her technical qualifications and everything to do with whether she¡¯d be able to actually play the part of a teacher. On the upside, she was pretty sure, she had the background. Now all she needed was to make sure, she didn¡¯t have to talk to anyone, speak in front of more than two people at a time, and she¡¯d probably do perfectly fine in her new position. ****** Henri reached her workplace on time, she maybe had to skirt a few traffic laws to do it, but she did reach the school on time. The only parking space was one at the very back end of the lot, in a corner that wasn¡¯t clearly marked. Honestly she wasn¡¯t entirely sure that it was an actual parking space and not, let¡¯s say, just a piece of drab lawn that happened to be spattered with asphalt and ruined by bulldozer when they were making the rest of the lot. The inside of the school was clean and tidy, but it was the kind of drab, vaguely dingy sort of clean that one usually saw in businesses that had either just closed or were about to close. The floors were a gray-tan. The walls were a diamond-patterned, faded sort of sea-foam green. Hanging above entrance was a banner that said ¡°Welcome Students¡± but still had a layer of dust on it that said, ¡°this probably should have been laundered before we put it up but we couldn¡¯t be arsed to do so¡±. Henri crept inside, unsure of herself, feeling like she was new student rather than a new teacher. Her heart rising out of place, moving into her throat. Right by the entrance there was a booth, a little office that was shaded by a sort of plastic awning. Within that office sat an admin, a clerk. A portly woman with light red, panther print skin, and sharp triangular ears on top of her head. Her auburn hair pulled into a tight bun. ¡°Um...excuse me. I uh...I¡¯m new here, there¡¯s supposed some kind of staff orientation? I don¡¯t suppose you could tell me which room it¡¯s in?¡± said Henri. Asking for directions. The woman looked up from magazine, looking like she was barely resisting giving the girl the eyeroll of all eyerolls because this was the thirty- somethingth time she¡¯d been asked that question in the last hour or so. ¡°Head straight, look to your right. The auditorium will be right at the end of the hall. You can¡¯t miss it.¡± ¡°...Thanks.¡± said Henri. Meaning it. She got to the auditorium and saw someone who looked a lot like a badly aged version of the picture that school site, had of their principal standing on the stage. A sweaty looking point-eared man in a plaid suit, who was working with some techs to make sure that the speaker and microphone were in order. In the seats of the auditorium there were about a hundred or so, teachers and staff members, all them having roughly two hundred separate conversations. The sound of their voices collecting into an almost hypnotic drone that hung heavy in the air. At the back of the auditorium there was a table set up with a couple coffee machines at the ready and a few mostly empty boxes of donuts. With her stomach still roiling and a thermos of coffee in her hand she only gave them a single cursory glance before looking down at the seats. With the seating being enough for the schools thousand plus students she was very tempted to sit apart from the crowd of teachers near the front. It was only knowing that it would make her seem to much like a loner that made her sit near to the clump of teachers at the front of the auditorium, rather than by herself off to the side. Between fifteen and fifty minutes went by while Henri sat fiddling with her phone. Occasionally making awkward conversation during the rare times that someone came by and stopped to say hi. At some point she looked up and saw that the principal and a stern looking woman standing on the stage. The principal took the podium, tapping the mic, the sound of his thumb thudding through the speaker. The sounds of the conversations that were taking place in the room gradually calmed down. The man waited, standing there for a few minutes more till he had the room¡¯s attention and then he finally spoke. ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen, Teachers and Staff Members of Aybek Preparatory Academy. I am Principal Howard Redfang and once again, at the start of this new term, I welcome you to my school.¡± Arc 1: Chapter 6: House Husband While his wife was over at the school getting oriented through a long series of lectures and workshops, Desmond sat at home. For once he once he wasn¡¯t just sitting in his room mostly because Jack was busy cleaning it. Thus he sat in the living room. Watching the morning news on the big screen. According to the blond woman on screen there was some kind of giant monster attack in one Cadeyrn¡¯s factory district. Though the mundane world and the magical wastes were split, the dividing line created by divine law and the monolithic towers that marked the landscape, spillovers did still happen. Especially in places like Cadeyrn where the land just a little more rural and less managed. The video footage of the metal fleshed beast that rampaged through the town on screen looked like something out of a b-movie, but screaming sounded just a tad too real. Frowning Desmond changed the channel. Switching over to the cooking channel. He didn¡¯t cook much these days since Jack was around to handle most of the house¡¯s domestic issues. But that didn¡¯t mean he was against picking up the occasional new recipe. Jack walked in though this version of her looked to be entering its teens. Slightly taller, the frame gangly and slightly out of proportion as her body tried to make sense of what the hell ¡°budding womanhood¡± was supposed to mean. Since he could still hear the drone of the vacuum going on upstairs, Desmond assumed that one of the maid¡¯s other bodies was still cleaning. Very few people had ever caught on to it, but maid had multiple bodies that she could operate simultaneously, and was good enough at her job that the young couple, kept neglecting to hire more staff. Which might well have been the girl¡¯s own intention. Even when Desmond was still playing lame with the Caldwells, she¡¯d somehow managed to take over the entire task of being his caretaker. Quietly ousting the two other nursemaids that the family had had assigned to the task. Desmond frowned at the tv not liking the host of the cooking show on screen or the look of the food that they were cooking. People had a right to live as they pleased but in his opinion, vegan Buttercream frosting was simply not Buttercream frosting. He switched the channel over to another news network. This one focusing on financial news. The hyped up, balding host spat out numbers and company names, as he made a litany of semi-exaggerated statements which the archive would either agree with or harshly deny as false. Desmond a mental note to maybe see about making some investments as he immediately realized that he could probably make a fair bit of money with all the knowledge that free flowed into his head. A few minutes more went by, wherein he took a few more mental notes. Then when he looked to his right, he realized that the girl was still standing there. Currently utilizing one of her older bodies. Looking to be between late adolescence and early adulthood. She stood eerily still and unblinking. Standing in the corner of the room. Her eyes fixed on where Desmond sat. ¡°Yes? Did you need anything?¡± She shook her head. ¡°No, Master Desmond. Are ¡®you¡¯ in need of anything, sir?¡± said Jack. ¡°Er...No. I¡¯m fine thanks.¡± said Desmond. He resumed watching television, changing the channel to one where an action packed cartoon was playing. He settled in to watch scantily clad princesses fight giant robots, pretending that there wasn¡¯t anything the least bit unsettling about having someone standing in a corner of a room just staring at him. He was just about to change his mind and have Jack go fetch him some tea, despite the cool, half drunk coffee that sat in front of him, when the girl seemed to startle. ¡°Mhn¡­?¡± said Desmond. Not quite asking what the issue was. ¡°It seems your orders have arrived, Master.¡± Desmond¡¯s face brightened as he clapped his hands together. ¡°Oh, is that so...Jolly good then¡­¡± ¡°Would you like to begin setup of the study now, sir?¡± said Jack. Desmond hesitated, looked at the tv and the coffee in front of him and then just shrugged. Stretching as he rose to the seven-plus feet of his height. ¡°...Well, I don¡¯t see why not.¡± He was a house husband after all and with neither work nor children nor errands to look after, his time was more or less his own. The Maid took the lead and Desmond trailed her, his hands in his pockets, a jaunty tune whistling out from betwixt his lips. ***** The house that the Andrases had arranged for the newlyweds was an old place, badly needing some repair, or even a full renovation, it was also fairly large. Having plenty of guest rooms. Over the four week period when the two were settling in, Desmond had handled most of the repairs. Alchemy could be used to make old things new again. And spatial magic could be used to change the proportions and layout of a place, especially when one had a sufficient amount of legal and symbolic ownership. While Desmond had left many of the guest rooms and dens as guest rooms and dens, besides his bedroom he¡¯d taken one other room as his own. He¡¯d added wards and glamours to make it invisible to all but Jack and himself and then altered the space within to make the room dramatically larger than it had originally been. Desmond similar to how he had no clue as to what the next steps for his own life were and what he eventually intended to do, he wasn¡¯t entirely clear what this room was for, or what he was going to do with it. He simply called the room his study because he thought it sounded nicer. Calling it a den sounded too stuffy, and he¡¯d always felt that after all the hardwork mankind had done to get out of living in ¡°caves¡± making a new one that was apparently just for men seemed counterintuitive. Desmond walked into the room and saw several Jacks working in tandem carrying crates that looked far heavier than the doll-like little girls should have been to deal with. They opened the crates unpacked the contents and began assembling the room. Desmond would occasionally give instruction, telling the girls what he¡¯d kind of had in mind, but it was Jack who gave the orders. Managing her subordinate selves like a general at war. The package heap was made up of a mixture of industrial equipment and entertainment devices. Chemistry stations sat next to ice-cream machines. Computer terminals stood next to arcade games. Ingredients for cooking were placed in the deep freezer that the ingredient for making potions and serums were placed. The end result was a confused room. One, that could easily have been a kitchen, or living room, library or lab, or all of the above. There were even a few beds, both medical and ordinary, placed at the back, for naps and the occasional operation. The room was simply just filled with things that Desmond had bought figuring that they¡¯d just eventually come in handy. A fair amount of the things he¡¯d bought were just parts of things. Computer motherboards, car parts, pieces of military equipment and martial weaponry. All of it coming in bits and pieces because he figured he could eventually use them to build something, or mod something, or fix something that broke. It was chaos, but the stony faced maid brought it all into order. Doing her utmost to fulfill her master¡¯s intent. Once it was all done and in place Desmond took at look at his purpose, spending a few minutes playing with this and that. Satisfied that he¡¯d more or less purchased what he¡¯d intended to, he left the maids to finish the rest of the work. Heading to his room to take a short nap. Feeling slightly exhausted despite the fact he hadn¡¯t really done much of anything at all. *****Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He woke up a few short hours later. The first thing he saw was the girl. Standing in the corner of his room. Just staring. As this was fairly common occurrence that he¡¯d accustomed to during the three year span of their acquaintanceship he only had a ¡°minor¡± heart-attack. Recovering a few second after with just a bit of labored breathing. ¡°......Did-, did you need something?¡± said Desmond. ¡°No, sir.¡± said Jack. ¡°Don¡¯t...don¡¯t you have anything else to be doing right now?¡± said Desmond. ¡°No, sir. In truth all of my alternate-selves are currently on standby, sir.¡± ¡°Ah¡­.Okay then.¡± said Desmond. Taking another deep breath to steady himself. He got up and headed for the bathroom. The maid asked if he¡¯d be needing any assistance in the shower. He gave her a very firm No. He got out of the shower and hurriedly dressed. Throwing on whatever the maid had prepared for him before his exit from the shower. Today it seemed she¡¯d thought he¡¯d possibly catch cold because she¡¯d prepared a long sleeve tunic, a turtleneck, some thick canvas trousers, and a pair of even thicker wool socks. His estimation of the temperature both within the room and in the world outside said she was probably worrying a bit too much. However he still wore the clothes anyway because his physiology made him more or less apathetic to even the most extreme heat and cold. He left his room, his gloomy, aproned little shadow trailing after him. This time bearing a body of between fourteen and fifteen years of age. He headed down the stairs and saw his wife standing in the living room, looking a little aghast. It seemed while he¡¯d slept there¡¯d been more packages delivered. And the fact that the maids had left a few of them in the plain view suggested that the Desmond might well have underestimated how big he¡¯d be needing to make his study. ¡°Uh...hi¡­¡± said Desmond. ¡°Hi¡­¡± said Henri. Goggling at him a bit, wearing the same slightly shocked, slightly bemused look she¡¯d worn when he¡¯d first revealed that he was brighter than he¡¯d let on. ¡°How was work?¡± said Desmond. She frowned at him as if not catching his meaning. Then she blinked as it struck her. ¡°Oh, ...er right. Work was fine...Um, what are all these boxes?¡± asked Henri. Her gaze drifting over the small cardboard city that had been built up in her living room. ¡°....Mhm...Just a few purchases I¡¯d made.¡± She didn¡¯t say anything for a little while, just gave him that look again. ¡°Purchases?¡± ¡°You know, just a bit of this and that, that I¡¯d thought I¡¯d need.¡± ¡°Oh, okay¡­.er¡­.right¡­.¡± ¡°No worries, I bought with them with my account and I¡¯ll have Jack take them into the study in a bit¡­¡± ¡°The Study?....Um...er...I mean, no, honestly it¡¯s fine I was just kind of curious. Take your time, I guess. I¡¯m not sure where you¡¯re going to fit this all but I¡¯m sure you know what you¡¯re doing¡­¡± said Henri. Alternating between looking at the boxes and the man. Trying not to nag, trying not to pry. Even though there was a part of her that kind of wanted to. If only to get a better read of the man. A better feel for the way he thought. Once again she was left unsure of the man, she¡¯d been unceremoniously tied to. At first she couldn¡¯t help wondering what funds a man who¡¯d been near brain dead could have accrued, after all as far as she could guess his family definitely didn¡¯t know that he was as self-aware and uncanny as he was. But then she remembered that she didn¡¯t really know much of anything about the man, which meant that all bets were off. For all she knew he could well have built himself a small fortune, or at least embezzled one from somewhere. Which left only the question of how exactly he was going to store all those boxes in the little rooms of their house. While the house had many rooms, it wasn¡¯t all that big. It was just very honeycombed, with the moderate spaces being divided and subdivided. ¡°Er...right. Thanks.¡± said Desmond. Smoothing back his pink hair because he didn¡¯t really know to do with his hand. The husband and wife pair just sort of stood there not knowing what to say. Besides the wedding day and the few times they¡¯d happened to run into each whilst meandering through the manse, they¡¯d spent almost no time together. Thus to each, the other person was a mystery. ¡°...Um...Anyway, I¡¯ve got to¡­¡± said Desmond. Waffling, pointing towards the front door. Henri looked at the men and then she looked at the door and then she looked at the man again realizing that he was dressed to go out. ¡°Huh?...Oh-... oh! Uh, of course, let me just get out your way.¡± she said. Stepping around the man and a stack of boxes that were directly next to the man. Desmond mentally quadrupled the spaces of his study, swaying slightly from the heavy mana drain. His stomach roiling, his blood seeming to go flat. He turned towards the maid who was still following him all this while. ¡°Hey, Jackie, be a pip and see to this please?¡± The girl bowed elegantly her hand to her chest, like she was a knight given her marching orders by her king. ¡°Of course, sir. The rooms shall be clear by the time you¡¯ve returned.¡± ¡°Room? Er...whatever great. Thanks.¡± said Desmond. Slightly startled at the girl''s words and his archives quick assessment of the spaces of the house made him realize that he might have over-ordered. His fading sense of the importance of money, making him not to dwell on the issue all that much. Desmond headed out the front door. He considered the possibility of setting up an inventory space for the study. He reckoned that it¡¯d be some relatively heavy magic, but it¡¯d probably pay off in the long run. The only thing that stopped him from setting one up before, was his uncertainty over how long he¡¯d actually be living in that house.. ***** Desmond was somewhere between eighteen years and eighteen infinities in age. As to how long an ¡°infinity¡± was, he had no clue, it was just his guess from a human standpoint. He¡¯d long stopped paying attention to his actual age, and the hundreds and trillions of lives that he¡¯d absorbed tended to span for eons. Blurring with his own life in the same way one might blend multiple decades¡¯ long film anthologies with a single, thirty-minute, Saturday morning cartoon. At the same time that he was truthfully still very much a young man, he also knew what it was to look up at the stars and see them slowly fade from view like candles dying at the end of a long evening. At the same time that he was somewhat ecstatic to be in a society that was fairly reminiscent of the one he¡¯d been born in, he knew what it was like to watch multiple civilizations collapse and knew that it was only a matter of time till this one did as well. With the exception being those that he¡¯d seen ascend, to a type of societal divinity. With all their members becoming as gods. In short Desmond was a man who ¡°knew¡± a lot things, and couldn¡¯t entirely be sure how much of what he knew was true. He didn¡¯t know how much was just conjecture and how much was just his odd convoluted mixture of optimism and pessimism when it came to the world around him. To deal with the various dissonances that came with being the kind of man he was, he¡¯d long ago decided that the best way to deal with living a never ending existence, was to live it one day at a time. Taking only the minimum necessary amount of time to look forwards or backwards lest the unfathomable future and the endless past drive him to madness. At the moment Desmond stood at a crossroads, a literal crossroad, not the metaphorical sort. He¡¯d passed his metaphorical crossroads some time ago. On the right path there was a small shop that sold brass furnishings. On the left path there was a bus station. He headed down the left path and then waited for the bus. It occurred to him that he could have probably, possibly, asked his ¡°wife¡± for a ride, or for the car and she¡¯d likely have probably, possibly, acquiesced. He¡¯d chosen not to because he hated to impose and because for whatever reason talking to mousey green-haired young woman made him uncomfortable. He decided that he should probably buy a car next if he had any money left from setting up his study. After giving it a little more thought he figured that he probably did have money left. In fact he was fairly sure of it, so when he was done he¡¯d look into it and between his archive and little Jackie¡¯s research he¡¯d probably have a decent vehicle by the end of the week. It occurred to Desmond that he was taking the question of his personal wealth lightly, but at some point when he was fifteen and still pretending to be ¡°broken¡±, it had occurred to him that he might well be beyond such concerns. All the things that men valued, counting their worth in coins and jewels, he knew how to make. He could even make the coins and jewels themselves if he so chose. Inside Desmond¡¯s head lay the knowledge of how to make entire worlds. On top of all the knowledge that his now defunct future-self had beaten into him, he had the knowledge and memories of countless celestial beings, devils and divinities. Meaning try as he might, and despite how it went against his aesthetic of pursuing normalcy, he couldn¡¯t quite make himself get all hot and bothered over wealth. He couldn¡¯t feel any enthusiasm at the prospect of working a normal nine-to-five. It no longer made any sense for him to go down that route. Work was something normal people either did because they enjoyed it and found value in the work itself, or because they had no choice, using it as a means to an end. Desmond could very well had used his advanced computational abilities to get some kind of degree and crunch numbers for a living but he didn¡¯t. He didn¡¯t because neither needed the money, nor would he have enjoyed doing so. Put simply, as ostentatious and arrogant as it sounded he was ¡°beyond¡± such things. Too big and too empty. There was nothing he loved so much that he wanted to dedicate his life, his very endless life, to doing it... And working just for working¡¯s sake seemed pointless. And yet, here he was, riding a bus to Cadeyrn¡¯s downtown area. He walked down main street. The heat rising in his cheeks as he felt people glancing at him. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself that other people had more important things on their plates than to be taking the time to stare at ¡°his¡± funny face, he still felt that they were staring. It was ridiculous that a man who¡¯d once been kings, queens, legendary generals, immortal pop idols and gods could be so self-conscious but he was. Frightfully so... The awkwardness made him grimace, his grimace all but indistinguishable from a smile. A few people nodded in his direction, perhaps charmed by his jaunty carefree seeming expression. Which only served to make him more self-conscious. Eventually Desmond reached his destination. A tall tower of gleaming glass and steel stood before him. Nondescript looking like every other office building and luxury apartment complex in the area. Shiny but drab. He entered the building and was immediately greeted by the sight of uniformed guards and a severe looking elfin receptionist. The bored guards stayed at their position, their training making them tense ever so slightly at the sight of a newcomer. Ready to react in case anything untoward took place. The receptionist rose from her desk. Her tone even. Her manner curt but not insulting. ¡°Excuse me, sir. This is a private establishment. If you¡¯re looking to use the bathroom, we have one down the hall that you just passed, but besides that, I¡¯m afraid you are going to have to¡­¡± Desmond cut her off by showing her the sigil that all his employees were trained to recognize and then showing her his I.D. Desmond¡¯s second I.D. The one that bore the name he¡¯d used during those times when he¡¯d have Jack lie in bed using a male body that was built to look like him. Going out to see his brave new world and alleviate the dreadful boredom that always overtook him when he could no longer just drown the hours in deep black unconsciousness. The Receptionist gasped as she saw the two markers of Desmond¡¯s true identity. The guardsmen saluted. ¡°My lord¡­.¡± said the guards. ¡°My Lord.¡± said the receptionist. ¡°My Lord.¡± said Jack, who¡¯d come downstairs to receive him. Speaking out of one of her adult bodies. The body that always stayed in the tower. Overseeing all of the tower''s proceedings. Looking after all of Desmond ventures while he continued playing the part of a waste. She bent at the waist after stepping out of the elevator. Desmond scratched the side of his head, frowning. ¡°You know I hate that shit, Jack. ¡®You¡¯ at least should just call me Samhain, or you know...one of my real names, Desmond, or Sam¡± She bowed again, her cold expression warming slightly, showing the barest hints of a smile. ¡°Yes...Lord October.¡± Desmond sighed, shaking his head. He looked back at the rest of the group that stood in the entryway of his tower. ¡°You guys take it easy too¡­We might not have really met in person before but that¡¯s no reason to make this weird.¡± Arc 1: Chapter 7: Apropos The dining room of the Caldwell-Andras home, was softly lit and filled with the sounds of cutlery clinking and squeaking across dinner plates. A group of three identical, dreary looking, dark haired, young maids moved in between the dining room and the kitchen. They carried platters and trays, heaped with myriad items of savory, salty and sweet. In the dining room sat the Master and Mistress of the house, with yet another young iteration of a Jack, standing by in case they needed anything. ****** Desmond and Henri ate in silence, eating at the dining table for the first time since they¡¯d moved into the house. They hadn¡¯t intended to share a meal. Usually Desmond took his meals in either the living room or his study and Henri usually ate her meals in her bedroom. The two technically were cohabitating but only technically, having claimed their respective territories and left the rest of the house as a sort of neutral zone. The fact was that though their interactions were mostly friendly, and gradually growing less awkward, the two were still very much strangers. The distance between them only slowly closing if at all since the two seemed content to operate in their own little worlds. The meal wouldn¡¯t have happened had Jack not asked Desmond to taste a few of her meals. The woman took her cooking almost a tad too seriously and was constantly trying to expand her repertoire. Desmond agreed because all he had to was eat, which an easy enough thing to do, with the woman¡¯s food generally being quite good, restraunt level at a minimum, and also because he often found himself feeling quite starved. His body requiring more energy than simple caloric intake could provide. Henri¡¯s joining the dinner was a fluke, a combination of her having come home from work early enough to walk into the meal, Jack¡¯s tendency to overcook, because she knew her master would inhale everything she put in front of him regardless of how it tasted. As well as the couple¡¯s awkwardness with each other. Basically Henri only peeped into the dining room because neither she, nor Desmond had used it yet seeing activity going on inside the little used room, had made her curious. She didn¡¯t think about what to do after she¡¯d finishing seen whoever was in there. Desmond on the other hand, feeling a bit out of sorts, because he¡¯d been caught making a pig of himself, eating a manner that wasn¡¯t entirely human, had tried to play it off. Pretending to magnanimously invite the girl to dine with him. If all had gone as planned she would have said no and then retreated to her room as she usually did. Unfortunately Henri¡¯s stomach began to growl just as she¡¯d been about to utter her declination. Her usual recourse when it came hunger was either raiding the fridge for Jack¡¯s tasty leftovers, or ordering out, both of which would have been odd to do when there was an abundant amount of fresh food available and being offered to her. Not wanting to make it seem like she was purposefully trying to avoid the man, who also happened to be...her husband, for the time being, she accepted. Now here they were, eating in silence. Keeping their focus on their plates because their occasional instances of eye contact were painful. ***** Comfortable silences were one thing, like walking on a flat, well paved path, on a day that was neither too warm nor too cold. Uncomfortable silences on the other hand, made one feel like one needed to act. Like one was climbing up a steep incline, on an unpleasant, blustery, day and the destination was still very far away. Henri sat chewing a mouthful of a savory stew of squash and lamb. As she ate, she kept she telling herself to try and say something. And yet, course after course had gone by with hardly a word being said. ¡°Um...this is nice¡­¡± she said. Finally getting something out, in between bites of stew and cornbread. Desmond startled, as if the woman had sworn loudly in a church. Whatever thoughts that had been going through his mind, falling through the cracks that had been created by her interruption. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°...Er, yeah. Do you hear that Jack? She likes your cooking.¡± The stiff-lipped made, gave a slight bow. Her gaze as cold and dire as it usually was as she responded. ¡°....Thank you, Mistress.¡± ¡°Um...No problem...It was really, uh, really good.¡± ¡°Thank you, Mistress¡­¡± said the maid. Looking neither thankful nor enthused. ¡°Right, crackerjack, job as always, Jacqueline. Maybe try going a little lighter on the salt next time?¡± said Desmond. ¡°...Of course, master. Thank you, master. I shall endeavour to improve.¡± said Jack. Her manner growing significantly less frosty as she responded to the man. Henri returned to her food. Taking a sip of fizzy, sparkling cider as she tried to recoup the guts she¡¯d expended by speaking up. A part of her, wondered why on earth she was suddenly so shy. It was answered by memories of her hiding in her mother¡¯s skirts as a child and the times she¡¯d had to be forced out of her room. Her brief time as social beautiful having come to a painful end shortly before the sect and her friends in the sect all but cut ties with her. ¡°So...uh...how was your day?¡± said Desmond. His words breaking into her thoughts. She blanked and ended up having to spend a moment thinking of what he meant. Spending even longer trying to think of an answer. ¡°...It was fine?¡± said Henri. Answering the question with another question, as if she herself wasn¡¯t entirely sure of the answer. In truth, she really wasn¡¯t. It had been a few weeks since she¡¯d started working at the school. Weeks of orientation had finally given way to the first days of teaching the students. They had her teaching a math class like she¡¯d thought they would. They¡¯d also put her in charge of her own homeroom. The class was okay. At the very least the kids didn¡¯t seem to hate her, and no one was sending her any complaints about them coming back stupider than when they¡¯d met her. Nor had anyone asked her about the scandal back in Cyrillus, which made her hopeful that they either hadn¡¯t cared enough to do a web search on her name, or the world hadn¡¯t cared enough to make too many online articles on the matter. Given in a nutshell, Her days were occupied with paperwork, lectures, recording keeping, grading, lesson planning and more paper work. She kept her lessons and assignments as simple and basic as she could for both her sake and the students¡¯ sake. Occasionally the school would have some workshop or the other that she¡¯d have to take part in, but besides that she¡¯d thankfully not found herself in over her head yet. ¡°Good...Good. That¡¯s sounds, uh...great.¡± said Desmond. Another lull fell, this one slightly less uneasy. Something that might have had something to do with the fact that the dessert course was starting. Beginning with pies and working its way up to cakes and puddings. Henri liked sweets and from the happy sounds coming across the table, Desmond shared her addiction to sugar. Shovelling plate after plate of baked goods and iced-custards into his maw. ¡°So...Hey...this might sound weird but I was wondering if you wouldn¡¯t mind us changing our name to October¡­¡± Henri paused, spoon hovering above an egg-custard. ¡°October...Change our names?¡± She was thrown for a loop but it wasn¡¯t the prospect of the name change that did it. Normal families, plebs, were fine with hyphenated names. Ditto for the higher level patricians, such as the noble houses and royalty. Elite clans however ran on different rules. Had their marriage been one of love or at least one born from a desire other than that of wanting to get rid of two useless wastes, the normal thing would have been for one of the two to give up their name. Most likely Desmond would have become an Andras since he had technically been married into Henri¡¯s family as part of their agreement. In cases like their¡¯s, where the goal wasn¡¯t for two families to be bound by blood, but it was instead intended that a new family to be formed, it was actually common practice for a new name to be chosen. As a way of keeping the already cluttered and confusing heraldic factions of the continent from becoming more so, new families were expected to register new names and new crests. Thus Henri had always known that she¡¯d likely have to at least think about choosing a new family name at some point. What gave her pause, was that she hadn¡¯t thought it would be so soon. And she definitely hadn¡¯t thought it would be Desmond making the suggestion. As much as she was really sort of happy to not be all alone in this, things had been much simpler when she thought she was going to be married to a catatonic inpatient. Having to deal with someone who was cognizant and aware, someone who knew what was going on around them and had opinions and thoughts about those things, that made things complicated. Desmond as a person was different from Desmond the waste. For one, she now had to think about what Desmond the person, thought of her. Whether she wanted to or not, she found herself caring about how she came off to him. Now that he wasn¡¯t just a weight chained to her ankle, she now had to be concerned about whether he still wanted to be married to her, and whether she wanted to be married to him. She needed to figure out whether they were going to continue doing their own thing till they eventually separated and whether they were going eventually get together and form some kind of team. And whether the man knew it or not, asking her to change her name for him, was as good as saying that he very much wanted to continue their marriage, in a real sense. Because adopting a new name with the man would effectively mean starting a new clan with him. In her head there were too many questions, and too many variables, to be honest Henri was still not exactly sure whether she wanted to stay married, or whether all this was just the intermission before she figured out what her actual plans were. After a tick, she realized that she¡¯d been silent just a few seconds too long. Blushing slightly under the man¡¯s gaze. ¡°Um...Do you mind if I think about it a bit?¡± Desmond blinked. Clueless of her thoughts but aware of that some thinking had been going on. His archive informing him of the storm of neuronal firing that had passed shortly after he¡¯d asked his question. ¡°Sure, sure...It¡¯s cool. No problem. Get back to me whenever. It¡¯s just that the name change would make some things on my end, a bit more convenient. Having two identities is kind of a bureaucratic nightmare.¡± Henri blinked. Some men, just knew exactly what ¡®not¡¯ to say to a girl. Henri had enough problems trying to figure out the man, when she¡¯d only known about his one identity. It wasn¡¯t his fault, it wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d lied to her or purposefully hidden anything from her. In fact as of late the man had seemed to go out of his way to be nice and helpful and absolutely candid about the few questions she¡¯d asked. He also seemed to be quietly doing renovations to make their place look less run down. Even seeming to have managed to somehow increase the spaces of the house. It was just that knowing that there was so much she didn¡¯t know, made her teeth itch, making her feel increasingly uncertain about him and her and whatever future they were going to end up having together. Making her uncertain on whether there was a future for them at all. ¡°Uh...Right. So,...like I said, later¡­¡± said Henri. Arc 1: Chapter 8: Halloween Knights Printed on nearly every business card, missive and monogrammed piece of office ware belonging to the Samhain Foundation, was an eyeless smiling moon. A red moon, surrounded by red stars, set in the center of a black sky. The sigil was something a fifteen year old, Desmond, created when he¡¯d been lying awake one night wondering what exactly would become of him in this new Agartha. He knew he wasn¡¯t weak, but he knew his power was still far from absolute. Looking at the little drawing he¡¯d made, using just magic and ink, it occurred to him that perhaps he should begin preparing for life without the Caldwells. He¡¯d need some kind of backing when he finally found an opportune moment to leave the family without causing them undue harm. Though he was strong enough to keep himself from immediate harm, some political and financial strength would be needed if he wanted to keep himself afloat in this new world of powerful leveller clans and prideful principalities. He knew that he couldn¡¯t just hope for the best. A peaceful and worry-free life was something that one had to work towards. After a moment he decided that he¡¯d work on that while he was in bed, calling Jack so he could begin his plans. ***** For three years, a certain force had grown, growing in bits and pieces. Collecting businesses, collecting families, collecting guilds, collecting gangs. Slowly increasing its influence in Ashok and the neighboring lands both in the mundane world and the wonderland wastes. Skittish like a spider, boneless like an octopus, insubstantial like a ghost, with all the power and fluidity of fast flowing air. Though the other factions and powers that operated in the land, serving beneath the three great sects of the Black Sky Union, were aware of it, none of them could ever get close, none of them could ever touch it, nor could they stop its slow and steady expansion. With no other recourse, its presence and power were simply accepted. Thus it soon simply became known that any group that bore the black and red, red moon insignia were not to be touched. Those criminals who operated in the shadow knew such companies were under protection. Those powers that operated in the light knew that such groups, be they in the black or the white, were being looked after and were not to be carelessly trifled with. And all knew that there consequences that came with not respecting this rule. Of course naturally there¡¯d a few who would buck these rules either coming new to the party, or growing slightly and believing themselves some sort of exception. Such individuals and groups would in turn enjoy the privilege of playing the chicken that gets used to scare the monkeys. ***** A non-descript black van pulled up to the side of an office building. Pulling into a blind alley and parking in such a way that kept it slightly hidden from view. A team of twelve men and women dressed in black piled out of the van. Their apparel was a mixture of bullet proofed padding and enchanted leather plate. Their weapons ranged from firearms to good old fashioned swords, knives and spears. On their faces were masks, simple masks like those worn for masquerades and costume parties. Enchanted and imbued with far more power than one would expect their thin material to be able to hold. The eyes and mouths of the masks radiating with an ominous orange-red light. These men and women were from the Jack O¡¯Lantern Corps, also known as the Wisps, the fists and hammers of the Samhain foundation. Made up of former soldiers, young talents pulled from various gangs, young talents from the smaller sects and other specially recruited levellers. All of them having been trained to the named expert level and above. They were the one¡¯s that the organization sent whenever someone forgot the rules, or otherwise went against the foundation¡¯s interests. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. That same force had now been mobilized, called to act by a certain company of mercenaries¡¯ insistence on raiding caravans, storage facilities and trailers of some of the Samhain Foundation¡¯s affiliates. The night had been a long one, filled with various unraveling plots and revelations of a certain sect¡¯s intentions of taking a bite out of the foundation¡¯s trade connections, by lowering their reputation. No warning was given, the time to talk of second chances was expended once lives were lost. The Jack O¡¯Lanterns moved with a practiced ease. The majority of the tension they felt on that particular evening not coming from the task that lay ahead of them, but rather coming from the two observers who trailed them from behind. ***** Even simple work could be made nerve wracking when one had one¡¯s boss breathing down their neck. And today, two such bosses were shadowing this particular squad of Wisps. A man and woman trailed the squad as the group silently entered compound that was owned by the Iron Wing Sect. If the wisps moved like ghosts, silent, and nigh invisible, then the two that followed the wisps, were like two trails of living moonlight. Innately untouchable. Almost illusory in nature. The breech point was on the roof of the innermost building in the compound. A portion of the Jack O¡¯Lanterns had split off to create a distraction and make sure that the main team wouldn¡¯t be interrupted. The sounds of screaming, gun fire, mage fire and clashing metal serving as a signal that the timer for the main teams tasks had begun. Up on the roof, the squad leader, glanced over his shoulder at the two who watched from the very back of the group. The female who bore a snow white mask that wasn¡¯t much paler than the face that lay beneath, said nothing. The male who didn¡¯t wear a mask at all, smiling eerily in the dark, his red eyes glowing like hellish fireflies, simply laughed. ¡°Don¡¯t mind us...I¡¯m just here to see how the magic happens¡­¡± Between the two of them, the squad leader, couldn¡¯t tell which one made him more ill at ease. On the one hand, the female observer, was known to all the wisps. She was the foundation''s chief of operations and planning. People either called her the Executive or Executive Weiss and she served as the head wisp and the de facto leader of the foundation. She had been responsible for training and recruiting the first Wisps. The first squad of Jack O¡¯Lanterns who would be ultimately responsible for training all the proceeding squads down to this one particular squad of Jack O¡¯Lanterns. She was the legendary mother of the foundation. Powerful, brilliant, beautiful amongst those with the security clearance to actually know of her, that knowledge was almost always tied to a reverence. On the other hand, there was the man, speaking extremely figuratively, since an organization as nebulous as the foundation would almost certainly not use a normal payroll system, his name was the name on all their checks. Speaking literally, if the lady in the white mask could be trusted, and not even the most foolish amongst them would dare gainsay her, his name was the one on the building. He was the Samhain, for which the foundation was named, the one who created group, and the one who pulled its strings. The Squad Leader wasn¡¯t entirely sure how he felt about that. The ¡°man¡± looked more like a boy, tall and looming yes, but still a boy, and that boy had a tendency of grinning like someone who was both mentally slow and just a little bit insane. Not quite drooling, his mouth not quite hanging open, like a dog on a very hot day. His mouth was filled with far too many teeth. And the man¡¯s aura, the feel of his presence, it seemed to alternate between nothingness and sheer terror. Like the transition between a dead sleep and a nightmare. From the way the higher ups and the Lady Executive treated the man, he was probably a big deal. As for the man himself, his conduct was casual, and he seemed to act as if everything around him was just some interesting spectacle he was taking in. A manner that was half annoying and half unnerving. ¡°Is there a problem¡­?¡± said Executive Weiss. Her sharp whisper snapping the Wisp out of his momentary fugue. ¡°Uh...Er...No, ma¡¯am.¡± said the squad. Cheeks reddening beneath his mask. The operation continued, with one of the Wisps chantlessly casting a spell to make a section of the rooftop vanish. Once they were inside the building they quickly made their way down to the highest of the living quarters where they¡¯d find their target. Three of the Wisps hung back, splitting off from the others. Two Wisps would guard the third and the third Wisp would cast a spell that would affect the flow of time for the building and incapacitate all who were inside. The rest of the team would find their target and old man with a curled blue beard, who slept beside two beautiful young women. ¡°Wake up, sleepy head.¡± drawled the squad leader. The old man would awake and see actors from a nightmare carnival looking down at him. He¡¯d open his mouth to scream and find that no sound came out. He¡¯d try to fight and find that his body wouldn¡¯t obey him. The last thing that he¡¯d see was the black bag being put over his head, then there would be brief explosion of pain and then nothing. A wisp would carry the man off taking him back to where the other three were waiting at the exit point. He would be pumped for information and then properly dealt with. In the meantime the rest of the group fanned out, to quickly and quietly cull the remainder of all those who slept within the building. Not everyone would have to die, tonight''s targets were just those who¡¯d been responsible for the decision to go after the foundation¡¯s territory and those who would be likely to try retaliating after tonight¡¯s operation. Inter and intra- factional conflicts were common in Agartha and this was just standard procedure. Despite seventy percent of a sect vanishing overnight, in all likelihood, it would only be the ghastly discovery of the sect leader¡¯s body that made its way onto the nightly news. Arc 1: Chapter 9: Miss Teacher Henri was in class, sitting at her desk. Today was a testing day, which meant that most of the thirty or so young faces in her class, were tilted forwards, focused on what was on their desk. The class portion of things would be easy, but the following days would almost surely be a slog of corrections and grading. As the proctor Henri was supposed to be walking around and making sure no one was cheating. To be fair, she was in fact doing just doing that, but there were only so many times that one could be expected to make a circuit around a classroom. The cheaters were fairly obvious, either staring openly with their eyes roving, or conspicuously ¡°praying¡± their heads focused on something that lay either on their desks or on their laps. There were a few magical tools and charms that could help someone cheat, but a week before the testing period started, the school had given her a sensor that picked up on the usage of the more common ones. The more uncommon cheating tools, were rare enough and expensive enough that the school didn¡¯t worry too much about them. If a student could pay for one of ¡°those¡± then they or rather their parents, could likely pay for a better school. Or at least afford a tutor for whatever subject the child was cheating for. Finding herself with time to spare and nothing but the sound of number two pencils scrabbling across answer sheets, Henri discreetly brought out her phone. She looked down, pretending not to be the slightest bit bothered by the lack of any calls, emails, or messages from the family and friends she¡¯d left in Cyrillus. The sting of it, having been much removed after nearly four months time in Ashok. She thumbed the icon for the phone¡¯s web browser and was immediately greeted by the a series of stacked images. The top and biggest being one involving a toppled building and a small cadre of police and firemen, working to clean and cordon off a part a nearby city that had been attacked by fiends. The smallest and oldest image was a picture of a ground breaking ceremony for a new school that was being built. A confirmation that yes, the Moonfire would be closing down a few of its old schools, but in return they¡¯d be opening a bunch of new better ones. News that had more than a few of the staff here in Aybek Prep feeling a little worried. Somewhere in the middle was a picture containing a cordoned off crime scene with Pixelated smear in the background. A picture taken from a story that was still running after a full two weeks had already passed. A story concerning the mysterious and ghastly demise of the head of certain small sect. The man was found half submerged into the side of one of Ashok better-known financial institutions. His arms and legs were broken, and the word ¡°fool¡± was scrawled across his forehead. The Police still had no idea of how it had happened, but to be fair, since this was clearly the result of a factional conflict, it wasn¡¯t like they were trying very hard to find out. Henri looked at the time and glanced at the class, making sure that most were paying attention to their work. One boy was raising his hand, so she got up to see what he wanted. ¡°I¡¯m done, Miss.¡± said the boy. She took his test with her when she returned to her desk. He asked if he could go to bathroom, and she said he could. Back at her desk, she returned to her phone, she used search browser to type in her own name and while she was somewhat depressed to find that there were still plenty of articles concerning the scandal, she was pleased to see that none of them were new. With the most recent dating back from three months before her wedding. Then she typed in the word ¡°October¡±. She got a bunch of pumpkin recipes, some articles about fall fashion, and some ads for old horror movies. As well as an offer for spooky, romantic hayrides, in the more rural parts of Cadeyrn. She went through a few pages of search results finding nothing, before deciding to try her search a second time, using the words, ¡°October Last Name¡±. That had very few relevant results as well. But she did find a Clyde October, who lived in Zurich, a Roger October who lived in Bolton a few towns south of Cadeyrn and a Samuel October who apparently owned a few businesses in Cadeyrn. She tried to search for a ¡°Desmond October¡± and got no results. There was nothing to explain why Desmond wanted to change their name, nor anything to make her particularly suspicious. She frowned at the screen, because the lack of information, meant that the only context she had to use for making the decision was her own feelings, goals and intentions. A problematic thing, since he barely knew the man enough to have any feelings whatsoever, not mention ¡°strong¡± feelings, and her goals and intentions, had consistently remained murky since the move to Ashok. ¡°...Hmm¡­¡± Unsure of what to make of it, or what do, she spent the next five minutes distracting herself with a cellphone game. A well textured, tower-defense clone chock full of micro-transactions and enough reminders to buy those little power-ups to turn her off of the game, by the time the five minutes was over. The day ended with her back in the homeroom with one of the school Admins going over some things on the school P.A. system. Henri went over some things in the class. More or less just reiterating what had been said on the P.A. system. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She passed out some paperwork for the kids to take home and have signed. The Paper work ranging from the usual forms to confirm lunch status, school status, living status and health, to the specialized forms for those who were trying to get into the sect-admittance track by the beginning of their fourth year in the school. Then it was class dismissed, with a few of the kids actually taking the time to say ¡°goodbye¡± to her. From there, though the students were done for the day, her job still went on. She left the homeroom and headed to the shared office where the teachers of her year all did their paperwork. She spent fifteen minutes making sure her attendance logs were in order and copying the records she¡¯d taken during all the gym classes she¡¯d taught that day into Mr.Sato¡¯s record book. When that was done, there was a small staff meeting in one of the lecture rooms on the third floor, which was followed by more workshopping because apparently the orientation hadn¡¯t cut it. Since networking was always important no matter where one was, Henri made a friend, a work-friend. A bunny-eared woman named Marie who taught mathematics to a quarter of the first and second year classes. They¡¯d met before during the pre-term orientation and gotten along well enough that Henri felt it¡¯d probably be safe to go the extra step and try and get on friendly terms with her. Exchanging phone numbers and emails. It was around six by the time she was able to get out and leave the Prep School in her rearview window. Fortunately traffic was light that day. She arrived at her home and the first thing she saw was a dark haired woman stepping out from the front door of her house. Whether it was her personal experience or her simple instincts as a leveller she couldn¡¯t ¡°not¡± ask who that other person was. Having strangers in her space was the kind of thing that made Henri twitchy. ¡°Er, hello¡­?¡± ¡°Good evening, Mistress.¡± said the dark haired woman. Hearing the other woman speak as if they were familiar with one another Henrietta immediately tried to place her. Trying to see where the other woman might sight in her memory. The dark haired woman was tall and dressed in simple blue-black gown and white apron. A satchel hung, slung across her shoulders. Her build was athletic and well formed, perfectly settled within that holy middle-ground that lay between the lean and the curvaceous. All together that amounted to grand total of nothing in Henri¡¯s memory as aside from the gown and satchel. Though her form was moderately more high caliber than the norm, there were still a great many people that walked and drove by on the streets that could be said to share the girl¡¯s features. ¡°I¡¯m sorry if we¡¯ve met already, I don¡¯t suppose you could¡­¡± The other woman blinked looked down at herself and then nodded as if understanding something. ¡°This one is Jacqueline, Mistress.¡± Now it was Henri¡¯s turn to blink taken aback. It wasn¡¯t all that big a surprise, bloodlines that came with some form of minor or major shapeshifting included weren¡¯t all that rare. Especially with the fae, spirit and machine races. As a Gloom Wraith, even Henri herself could do it a little, altering her height, between its normal five foot nothing, to something just a bit taller as she so choose. ¡°...You¡¯re Jack?¡± ¡°Yes, Miss.¡± said the maid. Henri chewed the tip of her tongue, it was a very touch and go thing to ask about a person¡¯s true nature. Depending on how one asked and what one asked it could be fine, otherwise it could offensive and Henri was the kind of person who usually would bend over backwards to try not to offend, if she could stop herself from putting her foot in her mouth, that is. ¡°I...uh...okay.¡± said Henri. Jack gave her a kind, soft smile. Seeming to understand the other woman¡¯s difficulty with words. ¡°This one, is a machine, miss. In my case I can operate as many bodies as I have cores.¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s interesting¡­¡± said Henri meaning it. She¡¯d met many machines in her time, and as far as the online world went, she could have been said to have quite a few machine friends. She never heard of any bloodlines with an ability quite that remarkable. Fascinated she shifted from one foot to the other deciding to ask a follow up question. ¡°I hope you don¡¯t mind me asking but...Just how old are you exactly Jacqueline?¡± The maid replied, with an offhand, ¡°This one will be turning twenty-seven this year.¡± That particularly revelation took Henri aback, she hadn¡¯t expected the other woman to be older than her. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s,...wait, then why are you usually a little girl?¡± The maid shrugged. Her gaze shifting to the side slightly. ¡°My forms vary depending on purpose and primary task. This form is because I have to go on errand that would be inconvenient to attempt while looking like a child. My general-use units are based on a smaller model that I grew accustomed to using during my time working at the Caldwell¡­¡± ¡°...Mind explaining that, please? I¡¯m not sure I follow.¡± ¡°For some reason, operating as an adult led to incidences in which various hindrances would get in the way of my work. Operating as a child has generally proven to be both more energy efficient and has also served to make me a smaller target. Which has also proven handy for stealth orientated tasks.¡± ¡°Ah, alright...er...thanks...Sorry for the hold up...It just er nevermind... Let me get out of your way.¡± said Henri. Realizing that she¡¯d spent the last five minutes grilling the other woman. She stepped off the path to Jacqueline pass. The maid just shook her head, bowing at the waist. ¡°Not a problem ma¡¯am. This one quite literally lives to serve.¡± Henri watched the other woman walk off, watching the almost hypnotic sway of the maid graceful, yet efficient stride. Watching till the girl had disappeared from view. Watching just a little longer till she found herself blushing, realizing that she¡¯d been staring at the woman, almost hungrily. Henri shook her head. Having heard the maids words and seen her in action, Henri more than understood what Jack was talking about. If those at the Caldwell house, were like those at the Andras house and at the houses of her former friends amongst the elite circle and the sect, then there was no doubt that more than a few ¡°hindrances¡± would pop out. Loutish men and the more aggressive amongst those women who preferred their company female. The girl looked average at first glance, with the impersonal iron fortress that was her expression and bearing, but given enough time even an idiot would realize that the girl was actually quite attractive. The kind of attractive that usually got a maid turned into a bed warmer, or a mistress, or got a maid kicked out of a job, if the wife or husband happened to be the jealous sort. It occurred to Henri that she probably should have reassured the young woman that she wouldn¡¯t be having that kind of trouble within their home. Which led to Henri worrying that this might not necessarily be true, for various reasons. She didn¡¯t know what the situation between the maid and her young master was like, Honestly the way ¡°she¡± herself had been standing there. Staring. Her mouth open wide enough to let the flies come in, Henri couldn¡¯t be certain that she wouldn¡¯t end up doing or saying something stupid in the near future. This line of thought led into, and was diverted by, a sense of relief. For while she hadn¡¯t been entirely clear what the situation between her enigmatic husband and his maid was, she¡¯d been sure ¡°something¡± was going on there. While she¡¯d yet to say anything about it, she¡¯d been harboring worries and suspicions that the man was one of those with more ¡°unpleasant¡± tastes. While such things weren¡¯t necessarily illegal per se, in the same sense that there wasn¡¯t much that was perfectly legal or illegal in the land of Agartha, they weren¡¯t something many, including Henri herself, approved of, or abided by, so it¡¯d had been becoming something of a worry for her. Watching the little maid go in out of the man¡¯s room at all hours of the night. Seeing the woman¡¯s true form, alleviated those worries. Though it did beg the question of whether Henri was going to be the kind of wife who let her husband have partners and mistresses. Before she might have said no, but here she was, trapped in a sham marriage, with a person who was more or less a stranger, so she didn¡¯t know. By her way of seeing it, despite the rings on their fingers, their relationship was so vague and nebulous it seemed a bit unwise to try and put rules on it. In the same way that the man had little to no real claim on her and her activities, she had no real claim on him. Which she supposed she was fine with, for all that she hadn¡¯t expected such state of affairs for her life. Henri stood there at her front door for a few moments more, then it began to rain and the water droplets splashing down on her and through her, falling through her ghostly form, shocked her out of it. It wouldn¡¯t be till much later in the night that she¡¯d think to wonder what the maid had been talking about when she¡¯d mentioned ¡°stealth oriented tasks¡±. Arc 1: Chapter 10: Close Calls Henri hardly got any sleep that night. Here ¡°hardly¡± meant, none at all. It was her own fault, really. One of her online buddies had a leveller friend who¡¯d just come back from a foray into the wonderland wastes. In celebration, he¡¯d messaged his entire friends list and organized a raid in one of mmos they tended to frequent. Though Henri usually wasn¡¯t all that much of a joiner this time she¡¯d gone along with things because she¡¯d just happened to be online when he sent the message and it had seemed like it¡¯d be to rude to pretend she hadn¡¯t seen the message. Especially when most modern chat clients generally had that annoying feature that let others know whether you¡¯d seen their message or not. To her surprise, she¡¯d enjoyed herself. Maybe it wasn¡¯t that big of a surprise after all if she hated the game then she wouldn¡¯t have sunk so many hours into the game. The real surprise was that she¡¯d enjoyed herself to the point of losing track of time. Not noticing till her cellphone alarm started ringing on the desk beside her. She probably wouldn¡¯t have stayed up quite so late had she noticed the sun creeping in through her windows. Unfortunately, like the good little wraith that she was, it had long been her habit to keep her private surroundings as dark as possible. Keeping the window blinds almost permanently drawn down. The good news was that as her level was high enough that going through the day with no sleep wouldn¡¯t be too much of a hardship. The human mind being what it was, this was still going to suck, since she would at least still ¡°feel¡± like she should have slept, but it¡¯d be manageable. Even if it wasn¡¯t manageable she¡¯d still have to suck it up and power through it, because today was a school day. Which meant she had work to do. She tried to remedy things a little bit. Her usual fifteen minute shower of pure hot water, was followed by ten minutes of bracing cold. And she made sure to get a double helping of Jack¡¯s coffee. Black and hot and chock full of enough caffeine to possibly give an ordinary man a heart attack. She knew she was just putting a bandage on a broken knee there, but she wasn¡¯t willing to call in sick just for the sake of catching a few extra z¡¯s which meant there was nothing else she could really do. She caught a few minutes of the morning news. Watching with a kind of muted interest as the reporter announced the birth of a certain celebrity''s first child. Which made her start thinking about her first child, and when exactly that was going to happen. Which made her start questioning whether she actually wanted children and questioning why she was even thinking about this when in her head the whole marriage thing still didn¡¯t feel all that real. All this thinking lead to her feeling hyper-aware of the other occupant of the living room. Desmond sat there, stretched out on the sofa, still wearing his pajamas. His lean yet prominent musculature on display, visible beneath his pajama bottoms and t-shirt. Making him like a character from a romance novel, one with a full day of wooing female protagonists and looking tough yet vulnerable, ahead of him. She found herself staring for a bit, reminded that she had indeed married an incubus. A devilish-being, sculpted by dark gods of lust for express purpose of, not only tempting and charming the opposite sex, but for tempting and charming the entire world. Henrietta shook her head, not sure she understood the direction her thoughts were going in, but not too concerned. Explaining it all away with the excuse that she was tired. In the recent weeks, things had gotten decidedly more normal between Henri and Desmond. They were still awkward with each other, but that was more due to their personalities than anything else. Though she still wasn¡¯t sure about where they were going or whether she wanted to adopt a new name with the man the uncomfortableness of their situation seemed to be fading. While the two still had yet to see each other as man and wife, they did at least see each other as roommates. Their communication and interactions growing friendlier. ¡°Hey¡­¡± he said. ¡°Morning¡­¡± she said. ¡°Good Morning, Mistress.¡± said Jack. Who stood by the wall. Ever present at her Master¡¯s side, like a porcelain faced sentinel. He offered her pancakes. Fresh made by him, not Jack which she¡¯d learned actually meant a small uptick in quality. For though the made was skilled, the man¡¯s food was often restaurant quality. She thanked him but said she didn¡¯t really have the time. She was honestly somewhat tempted but as was usual for her, she didn¡¯t want to end up running late. In the end she¡¯d kind of regret not just staying and having breakfast anyway, or not just flopping onto the couch and seeing if she could catch a few minutes of sleep. Despite all her efforts Henri Caldwell-Andras would still end up being late for work that Monday. This was only made slightly better by the fact that ¡°everyone¡± ended up being late that morning. The monoliths that were evenly spread across the land separates the mundane, relatively safe Agartha from the wonderland wastes that lay beyond but occasionally something would break through. Traffic was backed up for about three hours while the city of Cadeyrn had to deal with a creature that had broken in from the wastes. It was a monster, one of the humanoid breeds, a fiend, with a great golden snail¡¯s shell on its back. It had appeared in the middle of the downtown area, glaring at everything with its swiveling stalk eyes and mumbling scripture from an unknown religion. If things had just stopped there it would have just been yet another Agarthan oddity, but then the snail-fiend started killing people. Pulling people from out of their vehicles and drawing all the moisture from out of their bodies. Slowing theirs lives into its slime while its victim¡¯s bodies grew dessicated become mummified. The fiend¡¯s mumbling continuing through its entire killing spree. The scripture seeming to have a disorienting effect on all that heard it. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. People panicked, with the pedestrian scattering out of the way of the creature. Accidents took place as drivers tried to back away, smashing into the cars behind them in their futile haste. The police tried to intervene but their bullets did nothing, either bouncing of the creature¡¯s shell or being diverted by its thick aura. Their levels were too low for them to go up against the creature using melee weapons or hand-to-hand, but they still tried, but as should be expected the results weren¡¯t particularly positive. A grand total of twenty-two civilians and police officers would die before a squad of mages and warriors from the Eastern Cloud and Moon-Fire Sects came to handle the creature. Managing to slay the fiend with only one amongst their number being badly injured. The events would likely be covered in the news later, but in truth it wasn¡¯t all that unheard of, for things like this to happen. Most of the news coverage would likely break down into political bickering over who was to be held responsible for the breakdown of the city¡¯s barrier. There would be a memorial for those who¡¯d died of course but death in Agartha was such a regular thing that things would be back to normal within the week. With repairs to the road and the surrounding buildings taking place and being completed within just a few hours. Luckily, Henri didn¡¯t get caught up in any of this, which was a very good thing since her 98 levels wouldn¡¯t have done much to help her against the level 250 hundred Snail-fiend. She and the majority of her fellow morning commuters were diverted down a side-street after two hours of being stuck in traffic. She wouldn¡¯t know how close she¡¯d been to disaster till much later when she was doing the attendance for a mostly empty classroom. Many of the students didn¡¯t come into school that morning. Fortunately none of them had fallen victim to the snail, they¡¯d just simply been kept home. Either because the school bus¡¯ couldn¡¯t get to them or because their parents had wisely decided that a monster rampaging through the downtown area, was roughly equivalent to a snow day. Thus the only ones in school that day were the teachers and those students who happened to live within the academy¡¯s dormitories. Henri learned about the fiend attack while she was having her first break. She was in the cafeteria that was only used by upper-classmen and staff members when she learned of it. One of the physics teachers had a cousin who got killed by the snail-fiend. The upshot was that the man hated his cousin and was apparently counting the day till it was appropriate for he and the man¡¯s second wife to come out about their ongoing relationship. The down-shot was that many others had died as well. Just as Henri was busy being appropriately unnerved by both the deaths that had happened and the one that nearly happened, keenly aware that she¡¯d been one street away from being wrapped up in the whole debacle, there was a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and saw Marie standing behind her. A can of iced-blood in hand from out of the soda machine that sat in the corner of the teacher¡¯s lounge. ¡°Hey, hey, did you hear?!¡± said the energetic woman. All but spinning Henri in place as she tugged on her arm. ¡°Er...yeah. This last fiend attack was pretty terrible huh?¡± said Henri. Careful not to spill the coffee in her open thermos. The other woman blanked for a second, momentarily confused. She, Marie Wilkinson was originally from Normansburg, town quite aways away. A town that sat near the outer edge of Ashok, on the outer edge of Ashok¡¯s civilized lands. Where she came from, the divide between the real world and the wonderland wastes was thin. Where she came from monster attacks happened all the time. Taking place every other week if not every other day. For Marie a fiend attack in the downtown area wasn¡¯t something to get upset about. At least so long as you and yours hadn¡¯t gotten caught up in it. Still she wasn¡¯t a bad person, or without any sense of decorum, it was just a gaffe. An awful gaffe but still unintentional. Like not seeing the big deal about snowstorms when one lived in a place where it snowed all the time. Sensing that something was awry Marie frowned, trying to look empathetic while she hurriedly tried to make up for her mistake. ¡°...Yeah...terrible¡­¡± she said. Letting a pause fall before moving on to what she¡¯d really wanted to tell the other woman about. Marie¡¯s look of empathy was replaced by a sparkling smile as she pulled the younger woman over to a table so that they could sit down. ¡°So...uh, there was something else I wanted to tell you about.¡± ¡°Okay, what is it?¡± said Henri. Already made aware of this fact by her friend¡¯s the demeanor. ¡°So, you know how at the end of every year the school recommends a few students to Moon-fire people?¡± said Marie. ¡°Er...yeah.¡± said Henri. The recommended students would be sent to special sect preparation classes. A grade that sat in between the grades and catered more to what a future sect leveller would know. Henri knew all about such classes because she¡¯d once briefly been a student within one. Graduating out and being inducted into the sect before she¡¯d even entered middle-school. ¡°Well, the person who makes the final call is the Sect¡¯s representative. Er, you know, the representative the sect sends to the school.¡± Henri just nodded feeling slightly glum. More than a little bummed out by the reminder of how far she had fallen. Being a normal person wasn¡¯t a bad, but having to walk when you¡¯d flown through the air was a dispiriting thing. ¡°Yes¡­.I am aware.¡± said Henri. Stifling a sigh, turning it into a yawn that she swallowed with some difficulty. Marie frowned, not quite understanding the change in her friend¡¯s mood. She pushed on, her own enthusiasm slightly dampened. ¡°....So...the sect representative will be showing up in a few days. I figured uh...it¡¯ll probably be neat?¡± Henri frowned, not seeing what the big deal was. Then she realized that to an ¡°Ordinary¡± person, which was most people one would see on the street, real levellers were thought of a bit like superheroes or movie stars. The real powerhouses were nobility or even royalty. As for the levellers above the lords and kings, ¡®those¡¯ were treated like minor deities or the servants of the gods. Chosen children of heaven. ¡°Oh...yeah. I guess so.¡± Marie sighed, not getting the response that she¡¯d been hoping for. ¡°Come on...I bet he looks all magick-fied or whatever¡­¡± said Marie. Pushing on, not quite giving up. Henri considered. There were six great races on Agartha and asides from the beginnings and ends of their lives, they more or less all looked like regular humans with a few extra skin colors and parts. The only time that this wasn¡¯t true was after magick-fication, which was what normal people and the media called the process of an individual growing more anomalous in nature as their level and cultivation grew. The magic in their systems making them smarter, stronger, faster. Making them into existences that were closer to their ideal selves till they finally reached their Platonic or celestial ideals. Their perfect forms. During this process a person¡¯s ¡°inhuman¡± features would grow more prominent. Beasts became more beastly. The Fae more fantastical. The Spirits more otherworldly and haunting. The Demons more fiendish. The Elementals more elemental and wild. The Machines more sophisticated and mechanically impressive. Aware that she was ruining her friend¡¯s fun, Henri tried to play along. ¡°Um¡­.I guess that ¡®is¡¯ neat.¡± said Henri. Similarly considerate, Marie saw that the other girl was trying to fix the mood of their conversation and tried to get back into the swing of things. ¡°I know right?!¡± said Marie. Spoiled moods were hard things to fix yet somehow they managed it, the conversation shifting, to cover classes, Marie''s¡¯ pet cats and a few other thing. Eventually the warning bell rang announcing the end of the break and that the teacher¡¯s should probably return to their respective classrooms. Class was typical. After two months of working as a teacher she¡¯d gotten apt enough at her job, that a day with half the students missing made for a relatively light work day. Although it was also one that was somewhat troublesome to do the paperwork for, it was still a day with less people to watch and less kids to supervise and thus naturally easier to handle. After school was out, and the kids had mostly gone home or gone to the various after school clubs Henri did some paper work. She and Marie sat together as they worked. Amiably chatting as time went by. The day would end on a good note when a casual check of Henri¡¯s cellphone would inform the two of a news notification, that announced that the number of casualties from the day¡¯s incident was far less than had been previously thought. With emergency workers sent out by a certain Samhain Foundation, somehow managing to save eighteen of the original twenty-two victims. Arc 1: Chapter 11: As Good as Gold The one thing Desmond didn¡¯t expect to find while he and Jack were taking his new car for a spin in Cadeyrn¡¯s downtown area, was religion. He was on his way to the mall. Mostly going just for the sake of going. His attraction to the place having been born after he¡¯d realized that all his purchases up till then had been by online order. Thus making him want to see what this version of the Agartha¡¯s malls looked like. It was three o¡¯clock on a Saturday so naturally the streets of the downtown area were jammed. Packed full of every kind of vehicle, with the crosswalks cluttered with all sorts of idiots who jaywalked, cutting the flow of traffic while they took their lives in their hands. Desmond tapped the steering wheel, wondering what the cause of one particularly long hold up was. Jack sat beside him, pouting. She¡®d wanted to drive, because according to her such things were below her master¡¯s dignity and also because she kind of just wanted to drive. For such a stern looking little lady, the girl liked to go fast. Perhaps it had something to do with having ancestors who served as the piloting AI for faster-than-light, freight ships. Whatever the case was, Desmond just barely managed to placate her, by promising to install one of her cores into the car once he was done enjoying the car as just a car. Which would probably be soon, since he was quickly re-discovering all he¡¯d hated about driving during his first life. Mollified, she¡¯d responded quite positively, her usual impassivity giving way to a shy blush and smile. ¡°Ah...does this mean, I¡¯ll finally get to have master inside me?¡± He¡¯d reflexively replied with a forehead flick, a sigh and a scolding. ¡°....I...get what you¡¯re trying to say, but please refrain from making such easily misunderstandable statements while you¡¯re walking around in the body of a ten-year-old.¡± Like all trips that didn¡¯t include an unexpected change of heart, an accident, or a death, their trip downtown, ended with them getting to where they¡¯d been headed. The mall was nice. At the very least, had Desmond enjoyed his first hour or so there. Walking surrounded by people of all shapes and sizes. Wandering in and out of the stores and occasionally giving the carts and stands that couldn¡¯t rate their own store space, a look. Passing the couples who meandered through the stores. Passing teenagers who loitered about while chatting with their friends. Around the end of hour two of their stroll through the mall Desmond and Jack hit the food court which lay near the rear portion of the mall, near its back entrance. He bought a liter of sugary, slushed, whatever-in-a-cup, and a pretzel for himself. Jack said she didn¡¯t want anything, but her eyes kept going towards the miniature ice-cream parlor, so he bought her an ice-cream sundae. Which she ate with look of conflicted pleasure. On the one hand the girl liked her sweets. On the other hand she was quite the stickler about playing her roles, be it as a maid, a knight, an advisor, a steward, or a general. Jacqueline Weiss would perfectly play any parts she accepted to their logical extreme, it was both her greatest strength and weakness. He smiled as he watched the young lady eat her ice-cream. Affectionately tousling her hair, wondering why she¡¯d never once accepted his offers, to adopt her as a little sister or daughter. Considering the difference between their subjective ages, it had seemed appropriate at the time. Instead she¡¯d insisted on becoming his first mistress or partner. By his reckoning she could and should have at least asked to be his wife, he owed her at least that much, and if she had he wouldn¡¯t have gone through with the marriage. Or if he¡¯d had to go through with it, he would have asked for a divorce once they were in Ashok and out from under their families¡¯ influence. Thinking that he was thinking too much of himself and missing some nuance of what the woman really wanted he¡¯d asked about her goals. He asked her dreams. He asked about her deepest, darkest ambitions. With his inherited memories, Desmond was no stranger to playing demon, god or djinn, and he believed he owed the girl enough to see her suitably repaid for all that she¡¯d done and continued to do for him. Being the surprisingly open and guileless girl that she was, she¡¯d answered directly smiling shyly as she did so. ¡°To watch you die, master¡­¡± An answer that naturally called for clarification. As while Desmond had still not been sure that he entirely understood the girl and what she wanted or felt, he¡¯d at least thought that she didn¡¯t hate him.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. After all neither he, nor the Caldwells had been responsible for the deaths of her royal family...nor had they been the ones responsible for her fall. Sure, the Caldwells had thrown her away, broken as she¡¯d been when she¡¯d first fallen into their hands. A mere extra that the vendor had tossed in when the Caldwells had purchased the contracts of a group of her more able bodied countrymen. But Desmond had nothing to do with that, as the plans for tossing ¡°him¡± away had already been started by then. He asked her to explain, and she spoke of porches and rocking chairs and watching him die of old age, which though slightly morbid also sounded like she did in fact like him as he thought she did. He explained that he¡¯d probably never die, of old age or anything else...And though she gave him a look that said she didn¡¯t entirely believe him, her response was modified. Her wish becoming a desire to stay by his side, and watch the stars fade, together. Again, it sounded like she didn¡¯t hate him and while their type of affections were somewhat different in nature, it at least looked like they both liked each other to the same extent, if not to the same extremes. Their two lonely souls reaching out to each other. So he asked her to marry him and she said no, insisting that she would instead be his mistress. He asked why a mistress, she said, because her mother was a mistress and though she still ended up dying, she died happy. Surrounded by her war-sisters, and their shared husband, all of them standing and fighting together, against their final foe. She didn¡¯t want a simple nuclear family, what she wanted was to be part of a tribe, a clan. She was a child of a big family and wanted the same in her adult life. Desmond didn¡¯t quite understand that logic, even if he didn¡¯t particularly have anything against the concept of non-monogamous unions, he ¡°was¡± still somewhat influenced by the practices of his past. He asked what she¡¯d do if he never got a first wife, wondering if she¡¯d marry him then. The strange mechanical woman simply gave him a look like he was being silly, and said that she would handle that when it came. Soon after his parents brokered the deal with the Andrases. Desmond had the sneaking suspicion that somehow, someway, she was the one responsible for his marrying the Andras girl. There had been other families willing to take the Caldwell¡¯s deal, but somehow her¡¯s managed to make it to the top of the stack. Those his guess was of course, correct, unbeknownst to Desmond, the machine girl was actually somewhat regretful of her actions. She¡¯d wanted her master to marry for the sake of her being able to be the mistress that came in between the two. Her plan had gone off both better and worse than she¡¯d hoped. The two barely interacted, yet there seemed to be something there, some connection. Though her beloved, was naturally considerate, he seemed to be slightly moreso where the green haired ghost girl was concerned. At first Jack just told herself that it was just because the woman happened to be his wife, but there was nagging feeling, this bit of instinctual understanding that there was something else to it. ***** The time to leave came and the man and his maid headed towards the exit, heading towards the mall¡¯s back entrance because that led to the lot that they¡¯d parked in. They were almost out when suddenly Jack stopped mid-stride and turned. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± said Desmond. She pointed to a door, that was right next to the entrance, one with a sign over it, like the signs they¡¯d seen over all the other shops and stalls. He frowned as the archive read past the innuendo on the sign and just told him everything that was going on in the floor below. If he had his way Desmond would have just continued as he¡¯d intended and headed out to the car, but Jack was insistent. Standing stock still and using her not at all childlike strength to make sure he stayed as well. With a sigh, he gave in, as if there was ever a time where he didn¡¯t just give in. He walked through the door and down stairs to the basement of the mall. At the bottom of the those stairs was a hall with yet another sign over, one identical to the one on the floor above. Desmond took a breath and gave the girl a look just to see if she¡¯d possibly changed her mind. What he saw, was her taking the lead, striding forwards to pull the door open. The door, they entered led to a small chamber, like a miniature version of the hall they¡¯d just walked through. There was a man in a domino mask and a khaki colored dungaroos, like some mixture of zoo keeper, farmer, and card shark. The man was a doorman, just one of the few visible bits of security that the shop had in place to keep both the customers and the wares, in line. The man looked at Jack and smiled in a way that made Desmond grab her hand and pull her back despite the fact that he knew she was A)a grown woman, and B) more than strong enough to take care of herself. Even though it wasn¡¯t needed Jack didn¡¯t mind the gesture. The two of them met the eyes of the doorman and the man stepped aside tipping an imaginary hat. They entered the shop and the first thing that struck Desmond was how loud it was, like a circus or a concert. Last years top hits played at a level that drown out most conversation and the dozens of conversations happening in the room were turned into shouting matches to make up for it. The second thing that struck Desmond was the smell. The shop felt like a cross between a zoo and a strip club. And in this case, the sensation was absolutely accurate. With men, women, children, and beasts being kept locked in various cages on the elevated stage that lined the walls of the shop. All of them in a state of undress. Some of them looking scared, some of them looking angry, others looking like they weren¡¯t really looking at anything at all. Their souls seeming to have left their bodies while their hearts were still beating. This was a place where they sold slaves. Technically, if signs were to be believed it was in indentured contractor market, a Labor-Mart. But that was just sophistry. Slaves were slaves no matter where you were. And all but the most enlightened countries allowed slavery in some form or the other. Some places were better, some places were more humane, with more rules and regulations to protect the sentient product. Still it was, what it was... And what it was, was yet another reminder to Desmond that no matter how much the world looked like his old one, it was still a very brutal and barbaric place. A place where family conflicts almost always ended in massacres. A place where one bad loss, one word in the wrong ears, could mean either death or a slave collar for you and yours if you were unlucky. A world that every inch as feudal as it had always been despite being democratized. He knew this very well. The archive that picked up on each and every atrocity and horror within its million mile range, wouldn¡¯t let him forget. He knew that even if the savage creatures. around him were suits and ties and makeup, that didn¡¯t make them any less dangerous. Frowning at the dark spectacles around him, he let Jack lead him, aware that she wouldn¡¯t have brought him there without good reason. He kept close, to keep any idiots from think she was just a product that someone had let loose. Or one of the enslaved staff. He followed her and was led to a cage, where a girl in tattered underwear, lay curled up on her side, her bare back covered in bruises. Jack turned to him her eyes solemn and bright at the same time. Her gaze calculating and sharp. ¡°Look...Really Look.¡± she said. He did as she asked and seeing the true nature of the girl in the cage, seeing how bright she glowed he couldn¡¯t help sighing. Patting his maid on the shoulder as they both basked in the light of what seemed to be a fallen divinity. ¡°...A good find indeed.¡± Arc 1: Chapter 12: Grudges and Gratitude, Intentions and Commitments Henri sat on the couch alongside her husband. Her thumbs frenetically flicking the two joysticks of the controller to make her onscreen character recover before his could get in a finishing blow. Sighing in relief as she watched the avatar leap onto its feet and even manage to get in a counter. She set to work trying to make a comeback, despite character¡¯s health bar being two-thirds of the way down. All while wondering, just how it was, exactly, that she¡¯d ended up sitting on the couch playing a fighting game when she was supposed have been headed to work forty minutes ago. All she could recall, was coming down from her room as she usually, did, making ¡°okay¡± small talk over a cup of coffee, like she usually did, and then grabbing her keys from the keyring by the door. Then just as she was about to say ¡°bye¡± and head out, Desmond had sat up and broke the routine by asking if she didn¡¯t mind waiting up for a little bit. Getting to work early usually meant driving for around twenty minutes to get to the school. Being as conscientious as she was, and wanting to make a good impression on the school¡¯s senior staff, Henrietta would usually leave the house a little early to ensure that she got to the school around thirty minutes before she had to. So that she could help out, if she needed to, and had enough time to do a little last minute prep before her classes. Thus technically she ¡°did¡± have the time. And in recent days, she and he, had been growing steadily friendlier, friendish. Their interactions less formal and stiff. So she said yes. He had her sit down next to him on the couch, she sat, with one cushion left between them, as she usually did. Then Desmond turned and met her eyes and said, ¡°So...I¡¯m probably going to be moving out soon¡­¡± She shocked them both by gasping a little. It was this small high things, that sort of slipped out. She wasn¡¯t even that surprised by his announcement. The two of them didn¡¯t really know each other, and though they didn¡¯t hate each other, it wasn¡¯t like they were committed. At the very least she knew that she Henri, had no clue whether she¡¯d wanted to stay married to guy or not, so she¡¯d assumed that the situation was the same on his end of things. Still it always sucked to get dumped. ¡°Um...okay, so...I guess, you uh...I guess, you¡¯ll be wanting a divorce then?¡± she said. Hearing her own words as if they were from slightly far away. Most of her attention and focusing, fixed on keeping her expression steady. He froze for a good two seconds, and then blinked rapidly the following second. ¡°I..uh, that¡¯s kind of skipping...a couple steps in the conversation but...not really?¡± said Desmond ¡°Not really?¡± said Henri. ¡°I mean...I was get to it, but what I wanted to ask was if, you wanted a divorce...or¡­¡± ¡°Wait, so you don¡¯t want a divorce?¡± said Henri. Interrupting. Her thoughts confused, because for whatever reason she felt relieved. ¡°Well, no...I¡¯m fine with the way things are...kind of...what I wanted to ask is if your fine with the way things are.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re okay that we¡¯re to-¡± said Henri. Trying sort of her own reaction and parse his reaction at the same. Desmond interrupted whatever she was going to say, raising one hand to call for time. ¡°Hold up...Uh...Let me get through with what I was going to say first, for a moment...like before I lose, my nerve please?¡­.So, uh..shit...where was I? Wait, right...So, I¡¯m not what you thought you were getting right?¡± Henrietta just stared at the man, not trying to point out his understatement. Noticing how flustered the big man seemed. ¡°...I¡¯m a bit secretive. I¡¯ve definitely been up to stuff that you should know about don¡¯t because you know...just because...I-, I¡¯m already kind of, sort of, in a relationship with our maid, since before we were married. I maybe might have adopted a daughter the other day because of well, that¡¯s another secret...I¡¯m also an immortal, an immortal-king even, and a reincarnator, and because of the aforementioned daughter, I might have entered into a feud with certain members of the Venris¡¯ pantheon of light... So, yeah I come with a lot of baggage...The point being I¡¯m probably not the guy you thought you were going to marry and I¡¯d totally understand if you want to be¡­.¡±not¡± married to me anymore. Hell, I¡¯m probably not even your type¡­¡± Processing the heap of information that had just been dumped on her head, Henri ended up reacting to the one thing she¡¯d have rather just let lie. ¡°What are you talking about? Of course you¡¯re my type.¡± ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°You¡¯re incubus...a luxuriae...you¡¯re even from one of the higher classed bloodlines, you¡¯re everybody''s type.¡± Desmond, sat, brow furrowed. Not knowing what to say. Henri, frowned, feeling herself blushing furiously, because that was the last thing she¡¯d expected to end up having to say. She wasn¡¯t gushing, it wasn¡¯t some great confession of love, or attraction. It was just an objective fact. Luxuriae, lust demons, were attractive, magically and memetically so. Their looks automatically adjusting in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to match whatever the standard of good looks was for any time period they were in. In the Caldwell¡¯s case, they were of the type that would actually go extra step and exemplify that standard. Which was how the little family had managed to build a small media empire, starting with store catalogues, then expanding outwards to fashion modelling and movies. There were even some rumors of one of the current Emperor of Cyrillus¡¯ courtesan¡¯s being a distant relation of their. Some very true rumors. ¡°See, sir...It¡¯s as I¡¯ve told you all along, you look perfectly fine.¡± said a prim but plainly excited, voice from the corner of the room. Both Henri and Desmond jumped as they saw an adult Jacqueline standing there. She¡¯d likely been there all the time they¡¯d been talking but the girl had a way of blending in with her environment her presence seeming to thin out, in pretty much the way one would expect of an ideal maidservant. ¡°Uh Jack¡­¡± said Desmond. ¡°Yes, Master?¡± ¡°Er...be a dear get us some drinks, please.¡± said Desmond. Bluntly finding an excuse to get rid of the woman. If only for a moment. Jack frowned, her stiff, professional veneer cracking for a moment to reveal a childish pout, before falling back into place. ¡°....Of course, Master.¡± said Jack aware, that she probably shouldn¡¯t have interrupted. She just been unable to help herself, her master seemed to always doubt it when she was the one trying to tell him he was handsome. Henri and Desmond spent a moment in silence, not sure how to pick up where they¡¯d left off. In Henri¡¯s case she was pretty sure she¡¯d didn¡¯t want to pick up where ¡°she¡¯d¡± left off and was trying to find another angle to re-enter the conversation from. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Finally Desmond broke the silence¡­ ¡°...Um, be that as it may, it still doesn¡¯t necessarily mean you want to be with me right?¡± Henri frowned, perturbed but not entirely clear why. ¡°Why does it sound like you¡¯re trying to talk me out of staying married to you? Are you sure that ¡°you¡¯re¡± not the one who wants the divorce?¡± Desmond startled, his red eyes growing wide for a moment before his sank into a look of awkwardness and sheepishness. ¡°Um...no, that¡¯s not what¡¯s going on here...Really.¡± he said. Meaning it. It really wasn¡¯t that he was trying to talk the girl out of staying married to him, he was just trying to be absolutely honest. Perhaps even brutally honest. ¡°I was just trying to make sure you knew what you were getting into.¡± Henri looked up into the man¡¯s face, her eyes narrowed as tried to see whether Desmond was blowing smoke up her skirts or not. Satisfied that he was being honest she sat back and sighed, her arms crossed as a million different conflicting thoughts when on in her head. ¡°Okay, so you said you¡¯re feuding with part of our continent¡¯s pantheon of light, right?¡± ¡°Er...yes..¡±said Desmond. Relieved to find that she seemed to have stop suspecting his intentions. ¡°Which ones?¡± ¡°Not entirely sure, mostly just a few of the gods of light and chaos, with most of them being direct competitors...gods of the wastes who regularly butt heads with us immortal kings... maybe a few of their underlings. And then there¡¯s some extras who might be added to the list because of the kid I just adopted.¡± said Desmond. ¡°So not, Hildred?¡± asked Henri. ¡°No¡­¡± said Desmond. ¡°Um...Okay then¡­.Then I guess it¡¯s fine.¡± said Henri. Not feeling one hundred percent sure of her words, but not particularly minding. Agartha was a world of countless gods, god-like being, many of which would make physical appearances to their mortal followers. While atheism and agnosticism could not exist in such a word, atheism and lack of faith, were still around. For many people their patron gods were like congressmen or their state¡¯s senate represents. They knew they were there and what they did was important but there wasn¡¯t necessarily any emotional significance to it. Thus while Henri was pretty sure that having a god mad at you was a bad thing, the fact he didn¡¯t seem to be sweating it very much, made her not worry all that much either, especially once she knew that it would end up being an issue with her family and their faith. Since Hildred was more a goddess who leaned towards the gray than the light. ¡°Okay, how about the kid then? You said you adopted a daughter.¡± ¡°Er, right...I mean I had Jack adopt her since I didn¡¯t want to get you wrapped up in anything without asking so¡­¡± ¡°Wait, so you and Jacqueline have a kid together.¡± said Henri. Not sure if she liked the sound of that. She¡¯d assumed the two of them had something going on together and as a child of a big family, hadn¡¯t particularly minded the idea of having a big family of her own one day, but still there was an etiquette to things. The wife was supposed to have the first child¡­.if only for the sake of keeping some semblance of order when it came to matters of inheritance. A rule that had always struck Henri as old fashioned, till she was the one in the position of the wife, and sitting there feeling more than a little unhappy. ¡°So...uh, how old is she?¡± said Henri. Searching her own feelings. Trying to sort them out because they seemed to stubbornly remain mixed. ¡°Huh?¡± ¡°Your daughter. How old is she?¡± asked Henri. Her words coming off a little sharper than she¡¯d intended them to be. ¡°Uh...I think thirteen?¡± said Desmond. Aware that something was going wrong but unsure exactly what it was. If only because there were too many options. Henri blinked at him, doing the math. Her husband was eighteen, his daughter was thirteen...he couldn¡¯t have had the child when he was five. ¡°Like I said, I adopted her for...reasons...secret reasons. That I guess you¡¯d need to know, if we¡¯re actually staying together, but if we¡¯re not, then knowing might just get you into trouble instead so¡­¡± ¡°Oh,...Okay...I guess. So it¡¯s like for work?¡± she said. Making a guess. Startling Desmond because it a highly accurate guess. ¡°Right! Exactly.¡± Which made Henri want to ask what exactly this secret job of his was. Except that she knew she really did need to decide what her own feelings were about staying with the man or leaving first. Especially if whatever he was doing was ¡°that¡± sensitive. Her understanding of the situation being supplemented from her own experiences working for the Moonfire sect. She sat in silence, thinking, mulling over all that the man had said. She was surprised to find that she didn¡¯t need to think long or particularly hard. The space between to her thoughts seeming calm, like the waters of a lake after a rain storm. ¡°Okay.¡± said Henri. ¡°Okay what?¡± said Desmond. ¡°Okay, I don¡¯t want to have a divorce...I mean so long as you don¡¯t want a divorce I guess I don¡¯t want one either¡­¡± said Henri. ¡°Oh...uh...great! Mind if I ask why?¡± said Desmond. Henri frowned, once again getting the sense that the man was trying to talk her out of staying with him. She eventually, if somewhat begrudgingly, decided that the question was fair. If they were actually going to give this marriage a shot the man at least deserved to know why. ¡°Al-...Alright, if you insist, well, when you say you¡¯re not the man I thought I¡¯d be with. You¡¯re totally right. You are absolutely not the kind of man that parents would have set me up with.¡± said Henri. Her tone slightly darkening as she said that last bit. She watched the man droop, not understanding that his falling short of her parents¡¯ expectations was actually a good thing. ¡°And yes you seem to have a lot of secrets, at least a few of which, I¡¯d need to be let in on, if we¡¯re going to really do this...but besides that I don¡¯t see any reason why we shouldn¡¯t stay together. I mean, I sort already figured that you and Jack were an item, but it¡¯s not like you hid it, nor did you throw it my face, you were just sort of normal about it. Which is pretty cool, since, till this moment right now, it wasn¡¯t really any of my business...I guess¡­And...And beyond that, I¡¯m not sure why you mentioned being a reincarnated as one of the reasons why I might divorce you. Since it¡¯s honestly not that big a deal.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the reason why I spent the first fifteen years of my life catatonic¡­¡± said Desmond. Cutting. Henri¡¯s face grew thoughtful, as she absorbed the information. Then a bit of sympathy entered her expression. Speaking of parental expectations, she couldn¡¯t imagine what the Caldwells would do if she heard all this. Perhaps just the fact that the boy was speaking at all would be enough for them to lose their minds. ¡°Oh...I. I guess that makes sense. I¡¯ve heard that there can sometimes be complications with people coming back from more than one life. But in general reincarnations aren¡¯t that rare you know...or that big a deal. Heck, ¡°I¡¯m¡± supposed to be one too, if you believe the church of Hildred status-seers.¡± said Henri. It was true. When her parents reported the information to her superiors they weren¡¯t surprised. Reincarnations held the same level of commonness in the population as people with an allergy to peanuts did. Though in some regions the incidences of reincarnator status¡¯ were drastically higher. In generally, they were rare but not unheard of and according to historical records in the earlier ages they were actually quite common, with about half the population being labelled as such. Desmond frowned, cocking his head slightly, as he took in her words. A thought coming to him and then slipping from his reach. ¡°And...well, I guess being an immortal is a slightly bigger deal...but it¡¯s not like it¡¯s a bad thing right.¡± said Henri. She wasn¡¯t entirely clear on what it meant for her husband to be an immortal, but she knew enough to know that had it been revealed to his family, they absolutely wouldn¡¯t have let the Andrases have him, even if he was a waste. Which he wasn¡¯t¡­ ¡°So yeah...Like I said...I¡¯m not really seeing any reason why we shouldn¡¯t stay together. I mean, forty percent of marriages on Venris are arranged marriages. And when it comes to clans like ours the number rises to sixty or so, if not higher...No matter what I always figured that eventually, my parents would end up setting me with ¡°somebody¡±...Maybe not so soon...and maybe I¡¯d have had a little more of a say about when or who..but still that¡¯s just how people do things...at least that¡¯s how it is in Cyrillus anyway, so my not knowing you isn¡¯t all that big a deal to me...I mean you seem like a nice enough guy¡­.¡± Desmond stared and then slowly nodded, a wide, somewhat relieved smile spreading across his face. He was surprised to find that he was happy. Pleased that this stranger that he called his wife, still wanted to stay his wife. ¡°So¡­¡± said Desmond. ¡°So¡­¡± said Henri. ¡°So...we¡¯re really gonna give this thing a shot huh?¡± ¡°I-, I guess so...I mean so long as you¡¯re okay with it, that is.¡± ¡°I am. I totally am.¡± said Desmond. ¡°Great¡­¡± said Henri. Which was around the time, when Desmond invited her to play games with him. She¡¯d argued against it, saying that she needed to head to work, honestly surprised that she was only running late and not completely late as it was. The talk had exhausted her, leaving her feeling like she wanted to lie down, despite the fact that she still had a whole day of teaching ahead of her. Desmond pushed, insisting, saying that school would probably be cancelled. She¡¯d been hesitant but eventually he talked her into playing one round with him. Part of his persuasiveness lying in the fact that the game he was playing was a new one that she¡¯d ordered online, and was eagerly looking forward to playing when her own copy arrived. As well as the fact that she didn¡¯t want it to look like she was running away from the man after insisting that they were going to stay married. Just as her character knocked his off its feet, the electricity went out for a second and the whole world seemed to shake. Dull rumbles like thunder sounding off in the distance. The lights came back on and Henri frowned mouth ajar. When she looked outside the living room window she saw flames and smoke in the distance. She saw their neighbors standing on their lawns, she saw getting out of their cars. All of them look up in the direction of the part of the city where most of the smoke and sound was coming from. ¡°What the hell was that?!¡± Desmond dropped his controlled and got up off the couch. ¡° ¡®That¡¯ was someone doing something very stupid and fucking up a lot of people¡¯s plans. It¡¯s also ostensibly why I..and I guess, if you want to come with, ¡°we¡± are probably going to end up having to move.¡± Desmond left. Stalking out of the front door, towards the driveway. His maid, and a second copy of her current adult form, trailed after him, both of them carrying a polearm and a rifle respectively. Both of them wearing the kind of padded leather, warded armors that sect elites and leveller soldiers were known to wear into battle. A third copy of Jack in a pantsuit following soon after with a cell phone in her hand. Her tone clipped and commanding and not at all maid-like as she gave orders to whoever was on the other end of the call. The world shook a second time, with the electricity flickering once more. Left on her own, Henri just gaped, uncertain of what exactly was happening. She looked up at the window and then she looked at the door and then she looked at the tv screen that was occupied by a splash image of the game that was currently restarting itself. With a sigh, she dropped her own controller and headed for the door. Chasing after her husband, who was still parked in the driveway. Waiting for the third iteration of Jacqueline to enter the car. It seemed that her period for being filled on his so-called ¡°secret¡± life started now. Arc 1: Chapter 13: In Other News Today That day, the city of Cadeyrn was rocked by an attack from one of the feared and reviled, Fiendlord¡¯s of Agartha¡¯s wonderland wastes. One of the immortal monsters that warred with the people¡¯s gods and the immortal kings. A small army of high level, Snail-fiends descended from the sky, spewing mantra while they sucked the life from every living thing within their reach. They landed like golden meteorites, their spiral shells tearing through man and building alike. Creating craters whenever they landed on the open roads. Blood and fire rained down from a broken sky as the world was reduced to bedlam. Their leader, Fiendlord Aspersum descended, his body bathed in golden light. Rather than being a mere man-shaped snail, or snail-shaped man like the other, what he was, was an amalgam of millions of radiant garden snails, all of them merging together to form his main body. Which was a thing that was almost beyond words. Heavily armored, broad shouldered, made of spirals stacked upon spiral. His body was powerfully made, undeniable in a way, seeming stretch towards perfection and over-reach. Being a snail that stood head and shoulders amongst other snails, Fiendlord Aspersum was covered in mucus. His skin glistening, crawling upon itself, as he power manifested itself as the viscous floods that oozed all over his body. The mucus shining like quicksilver beneath the afternoon sun. Aspersum set his minions loose on the city while he marched to towards the halls of the Black-Sky Union. The home of the powers that lay behind the powers, that ultimately ruled the city of Cadeyrn and all its neighbors. The fiendlord''s attack was too sudden, the ordinary authorities were too weak to react, the adventurers guild to scattered, and the sects too unsure, waiting on their elders because sending the people they had on hand, would only be sending them to their deaths. Buildings crumbled, cars were crushed and the people cried to be saved, but in that moment it seemed to that it was all to no avail. Then suddenly they appeared, a group of skull and star masked first responders. All of them uniformed, dressed in black body armor. Their backs emblazoned with the smiling moon and stars of a certain Foundation that many had heard of, but no one really knew about. The first team of Samhain agents was soon joined by a second group of leithe figure elites, who appeared from out of the shadows. Their faces hidden behind plain white masks. It was these elite that took on the snail-fiends while the others rescued the troubled citizens of Cadeyrn. They leapt into action, with flashy spin-kicks and multi-colored fireworks like spells. Thing that were meant to distract and pull while the real elites within their ranks swept through the wasteland, like evil razors and poisoned needles, hidden within a pile of clown scarves. Fiendlord Aspersum would get halfway to the Union HQ before being stopped by a being covered in black and pink flames. A being with eyes of crimson flame. A being with great black horns sprouting from its head. The horns sweeping back and then jutting forwards like crooked bolts of lightning. His face hidden behind a mask of fire and shadow, His head crowned with spikes of metallic bone. This being would be known to the media as the horned king. Eyewitnesses wouldn¡¯t be able to catch what the two sinister creatures ended up saying to each other. What they and several traffic cameras and news drones ¡°would¡± be able to catch, was what came after the little tet-de-tet ended. The two monsters slammed into each like two speeding trains, the shock wave from the collision shattering all the glass in a mile radius. Aspersum might well have still continued speaking as it threw its bolts of corrupted mental-energy at the horned man. As for the horned man, there was no mistaking the haughty sneer that contorted what little that could be seen of his face. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Again the words were lost, but honestly at this point there wasn¡¯t anyone who cared. The citizenry were all too busy running for their lives, the leveller response teams from the sects and guilds were all too busy saving imperilled people and facing off against the lesser snail-fiends. Only the few lookie-loos and lucky reporters who happened to be close enough but safe enough to have the leeway to simply just bare witness to all that was happening around them, had time to pay the two titanic beings any mind. The fiendlord and his mysterious, equally monstrous, opponent exchanged punches like the drunkest patrons in a bar brawl. Neither of them seeming to exercise any restraint, finesse or self-preservation. They simply wailed at each other delivering blows that sounded like thunderclaps. One couldn¡¯t seem to dodge, its every attempt at warding his fiery opponents blows all coming to naught, only serving as waste of effort and flesh. Its magics and techniques sealed by the relentless assault of its opponent. WIth blows that rocked both body and mind forcing it into a mental corner. The other side simply didn¡¯t care to dodge, seeming to suffer no damage, no matter how many time he was hit. Their match would come to an end in just fifteen minutes time, when the snail fiend would suddenly tire and the Horned King would grow bored. Ending the snail¡¯s offensive with a devastating backhand that removed the head of creature and the killed off half of the snail monsters that made up its towering mass. The horned being would then wrap his foe¡¯s torso with his arms and lurch backwards, supplexing Aspersum into the ground with enough force to turn that portion of the street into a desolate crater. The Fiendlord was then tossed up into the air, with the Horned King standing beneath it sending out a ghastly roar, and a beam of fiery pink light that followed that roar. Roasting the Fiendlord and reducing him into ashes. With the battle done the horned being would stand in the middle of the devastated city and as he crossed its arms all the worst damage caused by the fiendlord¡¯s invasion would undo itself. The broken glass flying back into the windows and doorways. The damaged buildings righting themselves. The surviving snail-fiends would all expire at the same time, either struck by some connection to their fallen lord, or falling to whatever magic the horned king might have cast while he repaired the city. Then with a single bound he took to the air. His body tearing through the upper canopy of the clouds. Once he¡¯d disappeared, so too, retreated the agents of the Samhain Foundation. Either climbing back into their vans and vehicles, or slinking back into whatever shadows they¡¯d come out from. The next few weeks would be a media frenzy of people wondering what manner of being the horned king was. Asking questions about his level, and his allegiances. Questions that couldn¡¯t be answered since all attempts at appraising him had failed on that momentous day. A few people wondered if the devastation to the city wasn¡¯t in fact all its fault, perhaps due to some grudge between fellow monsters. Such voices seemed to be part of a minority however, seeming to fade just a few hours after they¡¯d been heard. Grainy footage of the fight would be spread on the web, where posters would discuss the battle itself, and nature of the two combatants. In the echelons of those in the know, the true nature of what had happened was known, and it was of no particular surprise to anyone that what happened that day. Happened. The fiends, enlightened monsters that they were, were always trying to take over the civilized territories. Sometimes they could be reasoned with, often they could not. It was just the way of things. It was the Wonderland waste¡¯s way of pushing back at the forces of man. Their only questions were concerning, who on earth the Horned King was, and what his ties to the Samhain foundation, that got a majority of the credit for the evacuation efforts that saved most of the city, were. Aspersum only attacked because he thought he could get away with it. And he would only have thought he could get away with it, if he were stronger than most of their sect elders combined. Which going by the auras reported by their agents that were present that day, had seemed to be the case. What troubled these group was that, if Aspersum only had been strong enough to require a full response from all their factions, then it went without saying that the one who beat him was even stronger. This was a cause of worry for these factions. An unknown player was a fearful thing to have on the board, and a powerful unknown, worthy of losing sleep over. ****** Elsewhere on Agartha, things weren¡¯t quite so, tense. Even if Cadeyrn had actually been destroyed the rest of Ashok, might well, have still gone on with their lives with little more than a few weeks of twenty-four hour news coverage and memorialization. Never mind the rest of the continent and the rest of Agartha. In truth, the push and pull of the forces of ¡°man¡± and the forces of the waste, were so ubiquitous and constant that all but the most catastrophic losses were just considered matter of course. If the sects and powers were strong then the nation would live, if they were weak, then the monsters would win and the wonderland would take over. It was on this principle that the new world had been built. It was within such a world that the cycle of conflict and karma, that the leveller system had been created to sustain, continued its endless revolutions. Thus it came to pass, that even if the rest of the world didn¡¯t necessarily ignore the Cadeyrn crises, they didn¡¯t it pay it too much attention either. Most of the news cycle for the rest of Venris and its nearest neighboring continent would be focused on politics, leveller celebrity gossip, magical technology breakthroughs, and movie debuts. If there was anything that ¡°would¡± manage to get that portion of the world¡¯s full attention it would be a small incident in Cyrillus, one of Ashok¡¯s nearest neighbors. A certain Edgar Caldwell, brother to of the Caldwell Media Conglomeracy, would be said to have stumbled upon a key and map that led to an old world inheritance. A discovery that would be celebrated by most of the world, regardless of whether they knew or cared for the Caldwell family or the Empire of Cyrillus. The discovery of great treasure was always a thing to celebrate. Especially when it was well known that those that had made the discovery, weren¡¯t necessarily strong enough to keep all the benefits to themselves. . Arc 1: Chapter 14: Halls of Power There was a continent that lay separate from all the other continents of Agartha, separate in more ways then one. Its location in time and space was just slightly off from the rest of the Agarthan Wonderland. Lying in a limbo of sorts, a meta-realm where time, matter, and energy took a backseat to the power of thought and ideas. This place was used as a substation of sorts. It was initially used by the Moderators of the Asphodel System and the gods, spirits, demons and celestials of the Council of Chaos and Order, who¡¯d called for the system¡¯s creation and installation. This substation was the gate, that lay before yet another gate, that served as the sole point of entry and egress from the Universe of Agartha. It was eventually made into a sort of observation point, from which one could observe the world and all that happened within it. Once other means of Observation were set up and other means of segregating Agartha¡¯s reality from the rest of the cosmos could be safely put into place, the substation was given over to the more powerful players of the world below. Entrusted to the various gods and monsters of the Agarthan Wonderland and the New Agarthan World Order. The powerful cosmic laws that severely limited the flows of energy and force, and prohibited to possibility of permanent harm to either body or soul, made the realm a perfect middle ground. The fact that the space seemed to make lying and deception exceedingly difficult, reinforced such thoughts. In time this place would be recognized as one where the people were forced to solve their problems with words since, besides talking, there wasn¡¯t much else that could be done in that place. This place would in time, be known as the lobby. The Lobby of Transcendental Proceedings. The realm in which the various warring tribes of immortals and heavenly courts hashed out their problems and brokered their deals. A place that could be reached so long as one possessed a certain modicum of power. ***** In this lobby there were two main spaces, one was the General space, used by the various immortal beings and high powered levellers, whenever they needed a safe space to broker deals. The second space was the Hall of Powers. The Hall of Powers itself was split in two, divided between the Legends and the Divines. A distinction that was made between the nine-hundred and ninety-nine Immortal Kings, and the One thousand, Nine-Hundred and Ninety-Nine, Ruler Gods of Agartha. Naturally there was some contention between the Legendary Powers and Divine Powers. While the gods were ¡°gods¡± their power and authority to directly act within the realm of Agartha was limited. As for the Immortal Kings, unto them dominions were given. Realms of rule, that covered a certain percentage of the entire world. With the percentages fluctuating according to the power of each individual Immortal King. A balance between Legends and Divines was kept, with the two sides cooperating. Either a god would patron, or dominate an immortal king. Or an immortal king would suppress his share of the Agarthan heavens and sit as the supreme ruler of his or her dominion, with the gods dealing with him as something that lay somewhere between a foreign dignitaries or a vassal ruler. The line between legend and divine could fluctuate with gods temporarily giving up their godhood to become immortal kings and immortal kings climbing to the realm of godhood. Who was what and what was who, could shift, but the number of powers in Agartha was always the same, three thousand or so. ***** If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. With that being the case, two days after the failed invasion of Cadeyrn, the Hall of Powers would echo with the rage of the Immortal Lord of Spirals. He threw a fuss kicking apart the chambers and seats belonging to him, his neighbors and his underlings. He threw up a storm of chaotic energies that didn¡¯t do much, considering the setting, but still was loud enough and discordant enough to garner attention. Eventually, a man dressed in simple cotton robes, with eyes like spinning wheels and two quivering nail-like antennas on his head, rose from a seat adjacent to Aspersum. He came and put a calming hand on the shoulder of the much diminished and much aggrieved Immortal King. ¡°Calm thyself, brother. What has you so riled?¡± said the man, who wasn¡¯t a man. ¡°Brother Mollusk, we¡¯ve been foiled.¡± howled Aspersum. Mollusk, one of the twelve gods who oversaw Agartha¡¯s wheel of Samsara frowned. He looked around, aware that there were eyes on him and his brother. With a thought he transferred them out from the Hall of Powers, taking them to another more private environs within the Lobby. ¡°Speak.¡± said Mollusk. ¡°Our plot to begin movements in the Eastern, north Eastern Hemisphere of Agatha''s twelfth quadrant, has been foiled before we could even begin it.¡± ¡°What happened?¡± said Mollusk. Cold sweat, and consternation showing in his otherwise beatific visage. This plot was one that had been in the works for quite some time, it was a step that needed to be taken if Aspersum was to go from being an Immortal King to a god and Mollusk was to become a godking. Ruling in the true heavens that lay beyond the one that existed above the Agarthan sky. ¡°The two-hundredth and seventy-first is what happened¡­¡± spat a bitter Aspersum. Mollusk frowned. Of the nearly one thousand immortal kings, the two hundred and seventy-first was one of those few that were known to still be alive and kicking, but also had never made any great waves. Keeping to the background of things, never playing their hand or reaching for more influence, never so much as appearing within the lobby to meet with the other powers. Simply existing, their presence ominous like the shadow of a jagged mountain. In fact, with the way that his seat in the hall had only appeared just a little over a decade or so, there were some who¡¯d believed he was one of the newborn kings. The only problem with that theory was that none of the other kings or gods had been able to find him in the world below. Which suggested he¡¯d either already been under the control and or protection of another empowered party, or he himself was powerful enough to hide from birth, which despite not being entirely impossible, had seemed an unlikely possibility. In either case, the two-hundredth and seventy-first Immortal King¡¯s identity and whereabouts, were things that were oft speculated about by the beings within the hall of powers and the general spaces beyond. ¡°....And?¡± asked Mollusk. Aspersum calmed himself, with a shuddering sigh. ¡°And It seems that those territories were already taken.¡± ¡°By him?¡± said Mollusk. Aspersum nodded. ¡°By him.¡± ¡°Just like that? Just who does this Red Moon Sovereign think he is?¡± scowled Mollusk. His expression thoughtful. He could have sworn that the region lay largely unclaimed. With no beings of consequence in residence. ¡°I do not know brother. If I knew I would be busy culling his nine generations instead of complaining to you...or maybe not¡­probably not¡­¡± said Aspersum. Sighing. His slimy, yellow, face growing pale as he considered the possible consequences of such an action. The Horned Immortals brutal measures for a simple territorial dispute making the Snail-Fiend shudder at the thought of what having a true grudge with the being would be like. Mollusk saw his brothers pensiveness and frowned. Though Aspersum was slow like a snail, he wasn¡¯t a man of great patience of forbearance anything that could make him think twice would have to be major in scope. ¡°And he offered no terms?¡± ¡°Oh...he offered terms alright¡­¡± snarled Aspersum. ¡°What were they?¡± said Mollusk. ¡°Stay out of my territory or else¡­¡± ¡°Stay out of his territory or else?¡± echoed Mollusk. The Snail-man god could imagine how his little brother would have reacted to that. ¡°And then what happened?¡± asked Mollusk. Aspersum plopped onto an empty seat, a pool of slime spreading out beneath him as he sat and made himself comfortable. ¡°And then I died...A lot¡­.A lot - a lot. He killed me over and over and over again, while his forces wiped out my men and seized my assets. Ah...I¡¯d actually forgotten how painful death can be¡­. First I was driven out of the city. Then he chased me out of the region. Then he chased me out of part of ¡°my¡± region taking all that I had there, as spoils of war. Then he told me that he would coming for your assets too.¡± Mollusk¡¯s eyes widened, his above-it-all air disappearing as his expression darkened. ¡°The Scoundrel...He wouldn¡¯t dare!¡± Aspersum smiled, glad to have some company in his misery. ¡°Oh he¡¯d dare brother...I suggest you go back and save what you can...From the way he sorted me out I don¡¯t think he¡¯ll give you any face, even with the heavens serving as your backing.¡± Mollusk frowned, glaring at his brother. He wanted to believe that everything he¡¯d heard was just excuses and bluster, unfortunately, Immortal Kings were always an unpredictable sort and there was a precedent of so called ¡°quiet¡± kings turning the heavens on their head when angered. The god Snail snorted, baleful sparks coming out from his nostrils. ¡°Brother...I hope for your sake that things aren¡¯t as dire as what you¡¯ve described, for if they are, and I have to explain how both our assets were seized, to father...I will let him know about your lack of caution when it came to choosing our target.¡± Aspersum frowned...unhappy to hear that his brother would likely be throwing him under the bus. Then he shrugged, because he knew that their father had never been one for accepting his sons¡¯ excuses. Arc 1: Chapter 15: Adjusting Quickly That evening they hosted dinner guests for the first time. The guest was a beautiful, dark skinned, doll-like man. His face and tone of speech lacking any discernible expressiveness, but his manner seeming warm and affable all the same. He was apparently a friend of Desmond¡¯s and according to Desmond he was also the head Administrator of this world. Holding even more authority than the gods of the various pantheons and responsible for the operation of the leveling system around which Agarthan society revolved. An outrageous claim but one amongst many others that her husband had made and then substantiated with proof and introductions to a fair amount of other mostly pleasant people with scary sounding positions. . Henri wasn¡¯t sure exactly how much of that was the truth, but either way the general lack of tension to the man, certainly made her feel less intimidated than she¡¯d have been otherwise. The man was accompanied by a beautiful dark haired woman, who said fairly little, and had eyes that shined with the light of a million devoured stars set against a night of perfect black. She and Jack seemed to get along swimmingly which left Henri feeling, a little like the odd girl out. At least that was case, till the woman started bringing up her kids and her grandkids and her great-grandkids, which was a surprise since the dark haired, shining-eyed woman didn¡¯t look a day over thirty. She started asking if Henri and Desmond were planning to have any kids, any time soon. Which seemed a frightfully forward, frightfully awkward, turn for the conversation to make. Henri tried to change the subject which lead to the woman talking about her hobbies which sounded a lot like she worked on sci-fi genre resource management games, but turned out to about her management of an actual nursery of young planets. Which actually ¡°did¡± end up leaving Henri feeling just a tad intimidated, if only just the little bit. Making her reassess her position on whether the blank-faced man really was the Administrator of Agartha and the creator of the level up system after all. Or whether the two were just your ordinary run-of-mill god and goddess pair, out on the town, which in afterthought wasn¡¯t any less terrifying a prospect for Henri. Or at least shouldn¡¯t have been so... ***** In any case, the evening passed pleasantly. Now here Henri sat, alone with her thoughts, sitting on the front porch of her new home. Dressed in a light green sundress that went well with her dark sea-weed green hair, and a pair of tan, silver buckled sandals. After all her thinking, and rumination, the only thing that young Henrietta Eloise October could make up her mind on, was that life truly did move faster than one would think. Just a short three months ago, she was just a teacher, an exile from her family, an exile from the Moon-fire sect and only technically married to her husband. Now she was thinking of starting a new family, now she was getting calls from other sects who were interested in being friends, now she was married to what, if she understand him right, and if he was telling truth, might well have been one of the most powerful beings in this section of the planet. A being capable of dominating one twentieth of the world within a single years time. And honestly, Henri wasn¡¯t sure what to make of it all or what to do about it. The shift in realities was too dramatic. She hadn¡¯t been poor before but she now suddenly had access to the kind of wealth that let one buy as many minor hereditary, noble titles and townships as one pleased. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Her new house was a mansion, a palace bigger and more ornate than those belonging to many of the continents¡¯s rulers. A mansion that was currently sitting on a private isle. A private isle was currently floating, drifting amongst the clouds. The shift was so extreme she¡¯d spent the first day or so pinch herself, because the distance between this and the projected future reality she¡¯d had set up in her head, for her future-self, was wide enough that her life was starting to come across as some kind of nonsensical delusion. ¡°Ah¡­.It¡¯s raining down there isn¡¯t it? Or maybe it¡¯s going to rain?¡± said Henri. Realizing that the clouds below her island had begun to darken. She leaned forwards, standing up so she could see over of the edge of the porch watch the ground drifting below. She watched a cadre of pumpkin masked fighters firing into a castle of spiral shells. The castle trembled and then collapsed, as blazing, black and pink, horned figured emerged from its highest point. His shoulders drenched in blood, his eyes crackling with pink flames. The door behind Henri opened and Jack came out, sans her former maid''s uniform. She¡¯d stopped wearing it of late, sticking to casual wear after Henri and Desmond officially became an official thing. The iteration of Jack climbed onto the porch railing and leapt off, transforming into something akin to a mammoth, sub orbital satellite, its form a mixture of the mechanical and the feminine and the draconic. The ground shook and rumbled as the mechanical creature landed, the monstrous satellite strode towards where the former castle lay and then planted itself down. And just like that, a new fiendlord was born. According Jack, this Mechanical Monster would be the fifty-somethingth such existence that Desmond had scattered across the Wonderland Wastes. Its influence and the influence of the drones it would create would spread for several thousand miles dominating the area. The people of the civilized world wouldn¡¯t notice the difference but the beasts and fiends of the wastes would, either accepting the new management or being erased by the new regime. And all wasn¡¯t even something they¡¯d set out to do, this little subjugation of the last of Fiendlord Aspersum¡¯s territories was just something that Desmond had decided to do while they were on their way back from taking in the sights at the shore for a few weeks. The masked levelers scattered going separate ways, the horned king became a pink haired man with light brown skin. He vanished as the house and its floating foundation drifted over him, and Desmond appeared seconds later. Standing beside Henri on the porch. With the show below seemingly over, Henri sat back down in the chair she¡¯d been sitting on. ¡°So I guess you¡¯re done with that whole er...thing you were doing?¡± said Henri. Desmond nodded. ¡°Pretty much.¡± Henri didn¡¯t ask what that ¡°thing¡± was, after understanding the full breadth of her husband¡¯s secretive operations, Henri decided that maybe didn¡¯t need to know every single detail of what he was up to. Or rather, he was up to, too many things for her to spend her time just focusing on his business. Enough for an entire college course to be based on. Political coups, takeovers of sects and mega corporations, kidnappings, assassinations and installations of different bodied Jack¡¯s into positions of opportunity. It was all too spy movie-ish for her tastes, far too cloak and dagger for this t-shirt and sweatpants girl. She was fine just knowing the broad strokes and trusting that the man would inform her of anything important that went beyond that. Henri might have held more reservations over the whole issue if the man hadn¡¯t assured her that all this was just a means to an end. Less about him trying to climb his way up the steps of power, and more about him making sure that he was in control of his environment. ***** It took a few hours but eventually the floating isle brought their home back towards the civilized territories that the couple called home. Three months ago they¡¯d left Cadeyrn to avoid Desmond¡¯s falling into the public eye but it wasn¡¯t particularly desperate flight. They left the continent for a bit, taking in the sights while Desmond and Jack did business with a few overseas partners. It was nice, Henri had always wanted to see the Pagodas of Xin and the Art Houses of Kamala, not to mention the sunny shores of Astor¡¯s beaches and beach side resorts. Now she had about twenty photo reels on her cell phone to commemorate having seen them. All in all, their three months abroad was something more like a them finally getting a proper honeymoon than anything else. Pleasant, but oddly sexless, which Henri wasn¡¯t sure whether or not to be concerned over. She wasn¡¯t sure whether she wanted to just jump into bed with the man, but they ¡°were¡± married now and he ¡°was¡± a luxuriae a demon of lust. So she wasn¡¯t entirely certain what was going on there, or whether there actually was anything going on. It was entirely possible that she was just overthinking it. ***** Eventually the floating isle reached its¡¯ destination, anchoring into place above a tower whose ownership belonged to both the Samhain foundation and one Lord October. The tower had been built recently, built while the small family of three was abroad. Built in the town of Baldo which lay just a few miles east of Cadeyrn, literally just one town over, close enough that it was almost as if they might well have just stayed in Cadeyrn. Close enough that Henri could still keep her job at the Aybek school. Arc 1: Chapter 16: Genteel (Last Chapter of Arc 1) Ashok was a country that closely bordered Venris¡¯s wonderland wastes. Baldo was a township that sat on the most distant edge of Ashok. High poverty, high unemployment, high crime, with brigands and bandits taking residence while calling themselves hunting groups and security companies. A small podunk town, with all the businesses having either moved out or gone under. A town with no grounding, with everything up in the air, under influence of rampant magic. Or at least that was case before the Samhain Foundation moved in and the Octobers took residence. In the three month period, that came right before a certain floating isle first began anchoring over Baldo, all the gangs were run out. A few months after the isle came, a grounding tower was built, and the walls outside the outer edge of Baldo was torn down and rebuilt. Several businesses that had gone down or were in the process of closing shop were either bought up or replaced, and within a half years time, Baldo was alive again. Revitalized and strengthened, its population rising and expanding to that of a small city¡¯s. ***** Desmond looked down at what he had done, from the top most floor of his tower. Watching the lights and the people of the city below. His lights, his people. He held a glass in his hand, recently emptied. Just as he was considering pouring himself another drink, a small waterfall of amber liquor came flowing down into the cup in his hand. ¡°...Mhm...Thanks.¡± said Desmond. ¡°Not all, sir.¡± said Jack. She stood at his back, in one of her older iterations, looking somewhere between twenty and thirty. Dressed sharply in navy-blue business formal. While Desmond and Henri were having dinner with the old-young man and his dark haired wife, Jack, or at least one of her iterations had been occupied in negotiations with one of the man¡¯s doppelgangers. It would seem that Jack wasn¡¯t the only one who had more than one copy of herself running around. However knowing what Desmond knew of the man, it wasn¡¯t that surprising, just yet another trick up the blank-faced man¡¯s sleeve. ¡°So how did things go between you and the illustrious Mr.Asphodel?¡± said Desmond. Punctuating his words by taking a sip of brandy. ¡°Well...he¡¯s...a strange fellow, sir. Strange and objectively disturbing on a conceptual level...But on the good side of things...He seems to think very well of you, sir.¡± Desmond chuckled, tugging on the tie he was wearing, pulling it loose. For once it seemed that he and Jack were on the same page. ¡°I know right...I think it¡¯s because him and future-me were once rivals or something¡­¡± Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! ¡°Future-you, sir?¡± said Jack. Her brow both gathered and raised. Desmond shook his head. ¡°No...don¡¯t worry about it. Not like it matters now.¡± She shrugged. ¡°If you say so¡­In any case he¡¯s given you his blessing, so long as you don¡¯t break the world again¡­.Sir, have you...um, broken the world before?¡± said Jack, cutting her words half-way through. ¡°Don¡¯t..Worry about it¡­¡± said Desmond. Stressing the first word. ¡°...That was more that giant¡¯s fault than mine, anyway¡­¡± Jack frowned then shook her head, swallowing whatever following comment she might have wanted to make. ¡°....In any case, Master William said so long as your actions don¡¯t interfere with the workings of the system and overall flow of the world...you may do as you please.¡± Desmond nodded, finishing off the last of his drink and grinning. ¡°Nice...Let¡¯s get Operation Escargot wnderway¡­¡± Jack nodded and bowed before disappearing in a neat aperture that her power had cut into the fabric of time and space. ¡°Right away, sir.¡± ***** Jacqueline stepped backwards through the portal, instantaneously moving from Baldo to Cadeyrn. While they had indeed moved part of their operation out of Cadeyrn they¡¯d still kept their headquarters there active. Correctly, believing that the world¡¯s tolerance for a man of mystery wouldn¡¯t extend to the, little heard of, organization behind him. Which turned out to be the right call when they had to firmly step on the necks of a few troublesome voices that had wanted to spin Fiendlord Aspersum¡¯s attempted invasion, as being partially, if not wholly, the fault of the Samhain Foundation. The portal lead to Jack¡¯s office, which was currently occupied by two other iterations of her, one a child, around six years old. Another much older, her face wrinkled into a venerable, grandmotherly rendition of what Jack would look like, if she hadn¡¯t levelled past the point of being affected by age. Old and young, they were the Cadeyrn offices head of human resources and head of internal affairs, respectively. They barely registered Jack entrance, the little girl sucking on a lolly while she went through some reports. The old woman typing at a console with a furrowed and her chained spectacles perched on the very tip of her nose. Jack plopped herself down at her own work space, a small area that was occupied by a circle of phones, consoles and laptops. An impromptu cubicle with stacks of old, boxed up, paperwork for walls. Since she¡¯d started her relationship with Desmond, three to four years ago, her life had been slightly hectic, filled with endless toil. However it was gratifying toil, exhilarating. She met her master just a few months after his return to consciousness. While he was still pretending to be a mere boy. And in that same year he was able to use raw force to take over, not only this continent, Venris, but many of its neighbors. After force came guile, he used tricks and schemes to alter the structure of power of all those lands. Investing in friendly politicians, and up-and-coming levellers. Putting alternate iterations of Jacks in as many vital positions as he could without risking its becoming conspicious. As of now there were ten Jacks holding high-sovereignty over a major nation, and more than thirty sitting as the heads of sects or as the CEOs of powerful corporations. There were countless more Jacks in smaller positions, all of them quietly in cahoots with each other. The end result of all his work would his dominion of that was spread over a full one- twentieth of the entire planet. An immense amount of territory when one remembers that the world was constantly expanding. The work setting up the foundation in the years that followed was more a way of legitimizing his authority. According to him he¡¯d done everything so quickly and quietly that he was like a landlord, who¡¯d killed the old landlord, taking all the riches, and deeds of ownership. The hardest work would be making the tenants accept him and his power over them without too much trouble or fuss. ¡°Desi...Desi...Desi...You sure do make a girl work for it don¡¯t you?¡± she sighed. Preparing to make the calls to certain people, in certain groups that were all already in position near the temples and centers of power for a certain Snail-God. Jack had once asked her employer, what he intended to do with all this power he was gathering, he¡¯d simply stared at her, blankly. Eventually coming back to her with a few incoherent mumbled replies that all more or less just reiterated that this was the sort of thing ¡°normal¡± Immortal-Kings were supposed to do. It was at this point that she realized that the man she was in love with, was more than a little off in the head. Starting massive global conspiracies and campaigns for world domination for no other reason than, that he didn¡¯t see a reason to do otherwise. 2: Back to School Aybek Academy¡¯s campus in Cadeyrn was yet another of the casualties of Fiendlord Aspersum¡¯s invasion attempt. Considering that the school had been on the brink of being closed down anyway, repairs for the school and its dormitories hadn¡¯t been very high on anyone¡¯s priority list. Thus though Henri was returning to her job after taking three months off, she wasn¡¯t returning to the school she¡¯d taught at before. The school she was driving towards was Cadeyrn¡¯s St.Vincent¡¯s Academy. A much more prestigious school than Aybek, with ties to multiple groups and powers, including the Moon-fire Sect and its allies in the Black Sky Alliance. Inexplicable as it was to say, for some reason or the other, the school had kindly agreed to take in all of Aybek¡¯s students including the scholarship kids and those who¡¯d lived on campus. Accepting them all with no change in the tuition rate. And also hiring some its teachers. As to why one of the city¡¯s most exclusive and expensive schools, an institution that was equally selective and demanding when it came to who it hired, and who it accepted into the student body, would suddenly become so open, Henri couldn¡¯t really say. She had a very strong hunch that a certain Samhain Foundation and its very powerful friends might have had something to do with that. If so, she wasn¡¯t sure how to feel about that, on the one hand, if it was for her sake, then while she was thankful for the sentiment, she¡¯d have preferred to handle her issues on her own. She¡¯d never thrown around her identity as an Andras when she was still one of her family¡¯s darlings. She¡¯d never thrown around her identity as a sect member when she was one of their up-and-coming talents. And she wouldn¡¯t be throwing around her identity as her husband¡¯s main wife, now that she was married to the region¡¯s immortal-king. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. That was just the kind of person she was. If necessity didn¡¯t demand she do otherwise, and the situation wasn¡¯t especially dire, she was someone who tried to stand on her two feet and earn things through her own merits. On the other hand, if it wasn¡¯t for her sake, and it was just something he¡¯d done for his own reasons, or for the children¡¯s sake, then wouldn¡¯t she sound like some kind of raging egomaniac if she brought it up? Thus she¡¯d kept mum, swallowing all her questions and doubts. ***** ¡°You¡¯re late¡­¡± said the secretary at the front desk. A prim woman who sat with her computer, phone, paperwork and coffee mug properly squared, and equidistant from each other. ¡°Um...Sorry. I-...I was told that we had to be here by eight.¡± said Henri. The woman lifted a single brow. ¡°And you also should have been informed of an additional faculty-meeting being held for former-Aybek staff at Seven Forty-five.¡± said the Secretary. She hadn¡¯t been, so that was that. More to the point, Henri couldn¡¯t understand why this secretary was giving her the business. Did she really look that easy to bully? She wasn¡¯t...Not usually anyway. Not all the time¡­. ¡°Yes, again. Sorry. I would have come earlier, but I honestly didn¡¯t know about the seven forty-five meet.¡± said Henri. Apologizing profusely, and not entirely unsincerely, since Henri too understood the importance of punctuality. Hoping the old woman would let her go with a light scolding. The old woman simply sniffed. Handing Henri a packet. ¡°These the things that would have been given to you and explained had you attended.¡± Henri looked at the packaged and then looked at the woman. Deciding to just thank her and get out of their lest she somehow land herself on the woman¡¯s bad side again. From the way everyone else in the office had been looking the other way while the woman had been giving Henri whatfor, Henri was guessing that she was someone important. Either holding a significant identity, or position. ¡°Thanks¡­¡± Not A Chapter *Rubs back of neck* So....I know I said I wouldn''t be dropping this story but...yeah, I''m kind of dropping this story. Over the past few weeks I''ve continually put off writing it in lieu of writing the other stories I have ongoing, or writing new stories, and the final nail in its coffin, was starting school and realizing oh shit I''m barely gonna have any time to write the stories that I still love writing...I''m really sorry about this, especially since I said, I''d keep going, its just that by the time its second and third little sibling came around, I realized that I''d already sucked out, all the parts that I actually loved about it cannibalizing their concepts and remaking them into something that I hope was more cohesive. We have Monochrome Bleed that has a story about a harem battle-couple, and the harem of yandere mistresses, and then we have Transmigration Retiree about a dude who''s lived too many, too weird lives and just wants to be normal, whatever the standard for his age and world, would term that.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Those two things together were what made this story click for me, and now they''re else where, being reworked into other hopefully better stories Now I suddenly have to deal with this pain-in-the-ass course, for the sake of getting a degree that will eventually get me a job, that with some saving and smart investment, will hopefully afford me the freedom to live as a well-to-do hermit by the time I''m sixty....And honestly I don''t see myself being able to even remember my own name in the next few weeks, month...years..T-T(Shudders)...Not to mention this story that I''ll admit to having sort of cooled off on, even before things started explosively ramping up for me in RL. So...again, I''m really, really, really, really, really, really...*takes a deep breath*...really, really, really, sorry about this. But I''m gonna have to shelve this particular story. Thank you again, to all who read. Please accept my sincere appologies for not finishing the story. You guys were awesome and I super don''t deserve you, please stay my friends anyway, since I still have plenty in me to share.