《A Hive of Bone and Chitin [A Litrpg Adventure]》 The end of the world I winced as the makeshift medical trailer shook from yet another explosion; rattling the sparse medical supplies and sending a dull throb through my fever-ridden skull. Another explosion. I already had a fever, probably from something bad from last night. It was my everything that wanted to kill me, head, limbs, stomach, the dull ache from my right foot that I was almost used to. At least I wasn''t vomiting every hour anymore. Anymore. The climate wars hadn¡¯t been kind to refugees like me, especially ones crippled during the exodus. For people like me, the only way to not be ground into the dust was to be the ones doing the grinding. To even make this far had required everything from bloody sacrifices to stealing from other refugee caravans. Desperation made monsters of all of them, and monsters made horror stories. And I had been in a horror story for far too long. And that''s why I didn''t blame whoever was attacking, I had myself killed for survival before. That didn''t mean I had to like the violence when it was directed at me. Empathy didn''t make it any easier to stomach the explosions, the screams, the gnawing certainty that I wouldn¡¯t make it to the next sunrise. Empathy didn¡¯t make me not wish that those who were attacking us all end up dying from their injuries too if I don''t make it. There was probably a debate to be had about whether I was being a hypocrite but I simply didn''t care about not being one. I always had more pressing concerns that demanded my attention, like the explosions right now. I had perhaps naively hoped that we could have made it to some nation that wasn''t already sinking or shot refugees arriving at their borders on sight before raiders got to us but it seemed that fate wasn''t on my side. A smaller part of me whispered that it had never been with what I hoped was bitterness but it sounded more like petulance even to me. The plan had been simple, simplicity borne of a lack of options. Reach one of the mid tier countries that were only swelteringly hot and not underwater and hope to find a refugee ghetto or something to live in. It wasn''t particularly ambitious, no one expected to be let in the Northern Lands that still had pleasant weather. Maybe if I were to be sold as a slave to a billionaire or something? But no one had any use for a crippled slave. That had been entirely my fault. Really, I should have expected booby traps when trying to steal food. I was lucky that I was still alive and relatively mobile. In any case, the slave idea was not going to work out, regardless of how I deluded herself into believing it. And I was under no delusions that I was pretty enough to make it in a rich asshole¡¯s harem. I think I could do the smile validly at the camera thing though. Another blast, closer this time. I let out an involuntary hiss as the trailer bounced from the sheer force of it, injuries that had settled into dull throbs flaring up with a vengeance. The screams and gunfire rang in my ears like a song, like an old familiar song, one that would come on the radio when I was smaller, but something else was there too, a crackling sound that made my very bones shiver. Bones made me think of the news coming in. The dingy shortwave radio in the camp had been crackling with reports of something about bones for the last hour. The signal was unusually garbage and it came out all mangled with only snippets of it being decipherable. Someone in the Northern Lands evidently had enough of the refugees and launched another aerosolized bioweapon that gave everyone unlucky enough to be in its way M¨¹nchmeyer¡¯s disease. The last outbreak was so bad that it had wiped out a quarter of a continent. Just people dying with rictuses of suffering as their very muscles hardened on them. Just my fucking luck. I was just so goddamn tired.
The 2635th invasion of the Great Integration War was going well so far. This realm was already in the middle of a global crisis and resistance was feeble as a consequence of that. Except for the superweapons that could reduce entire nations to radioactive craters. The first time one of those was launched, The Unaugured God¡¯s army had lost half a billion freshly created soldiers, along with a few thousand soldiers that were slightly stronger. Nothing that this realm itself couldn''t replenish with a few cycles worth of training. Still, it was impressive for a world that only relied on non magical alchemy and crafting without the Dead One¡¯s system. Too bad extermination was all that the rather ingenious natives of this planet had in their future. Still, admiration earned was admiration deserved and if he didn''t mess up, he would help immortalize them through their creations. Karzak would love to unravel the technological mysteries of this world once it was secured. That was his purpose after all. Karzak was not a combat specialist, but rather a nascent [BONECRAFTER]. He technically shouldn''t even be on the field but instead toiling in the workshops back home, making as many Bonewarrior armors as he could but His Divinity had ordered a few Bonecrafters down to understand this realm''s strengths before the subjugation was complete and Ossific Archons would descend to simply rip the memories out of converted soldiers for the good of the kingdom. Such excursions were good for the class unlocks for newbie crafters like him, especially in such a technology reliant world and he was once again taken aback by the care His Divinity displayed for even the lowliest members of His kingdom. Not that he would disobey if the order didn''t make sense to his feeble mind, he corrected himself. A screech ringing from above made him pause, a Lesser Dracolich was fending off a few of the machines that the locals called fighter jets. Sprays of green ghostly flames met hails of metal projectiles and slowly but surely the Dracolich was being pushed back. Until another joined the fray and the fighter jets one by one all crashed into the ground under their combined assault. Karzak¡¯s thoughts raced. The jets were flimsy and didn''t really have any decent offensive capabilities but they were fast. He was not even close to being strong enough to craft a Dracolich by himself but if he was sure that he could reverse engineer the metal birds to make the Dracoliches faster. A series of holes and pipes attached to their wings and propelled by the drake''s own flames, oh yes he had ideas already. His Greater Inspiration skill levelled at least three times just from that. He filed it away for later, a project to maybe advance his specialization and focused on his immediate surroundings. They were eradicating a small camp of the natives and while they put up a nominal semblance of resistance, it was not even enough to fell a small squad of [BASE SKELETONS] without any non-starter serious specializations. And Karzak, of course. Karzak was newly raised and his other task was to eliminate whatever was about to die but hadn''t yet for experience. He lazily shot bone shards at the natives he saw were still breathing until he eventually found himself in what looked like a triage camp. He had been informed that nothing in there was capable of resisting even a baseline human, easy pickings for him.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. That''s when everything went wrong.
I was quite certain I was delirious. A skeleton monster had entered the trailer. It looked like a knight clad in ivory armor but with bare bones lacking any flesh wherever the gaps in the bone plates revealed its body. The thing¡¯s face (skull?) looked like a human¡¯s but with an elongated snout and two massive horns that curved backwards from the skull. Okay maybe it didn''t look like a human at all. I almost giggled, the drugs in my system weren''t helping. Yeah, let''s blame the drugs! It wasn''t that I was half convinced that I had finally, truly gone insane. I forced myself back to reality when it moved. I was still almost convinced that I was seeing things but I tried to crawl away from the approaching thing nonetheless, my long injured legs trailing behind me like the dead weight they were. I had, to some extent, resigned myself to my fate of dying at the hands of raiders. A skeletal knight was just weird enough to knock me out of my funk. That was a mistake, it had noticed me moving. It pointed an arm at me and I knew that I was going to die. The thing promised death that I understood was beyond my capabilities to escape, I understood it deep in my heart. My luck had run out. I closed her eyes, wondering if I would maybe wake up from a fever dream. It hurt too much to be a normal dream but I knew from experience that pain existed in dreams if there was an unrelated source of pain in my body. Like the sense of being stabbed in the stomach because of an actual stomach ache. That had happened to me before. Stop, focus. Focus. The shot never came. Instead the world shook with a degree of violence that made all previous explosions seem like mere speed bumps on a road. The monster stumbled and crashed into the ground and its shot went wide as it rolled into a wall of the tent. A dull sound and a spray of red on the walls let me know that it had found itself in a different target but I didn''t care. Not now. Of course, I didn''t have the time to see who the unlucky refugee was as I, too, slammed onto it a moment later; along with the other refugees and bundles of blankets and sheets. Obviously the trailer had flipped on its side. A part of me realized once I was no longer disoriented. I untangled myself from the pile with a pained grunt and raked my eyes across the remains of the medical camp. Upturned tables and stretchers and such were ignored as I searched for my would-be killer. The monster was on the ground and quite close to me. Now, for all the stupidity and distractions that my mind was prone to, I had been taught by a wagonload of pain and tears to never let an opportunity slip during violence. In the camps, being a scrawny teenager marked one as a victim, doubly so when one has lost a lot of the use of her legs and relied on crutches. I was not and never had been strong enough to deter people through my actual physicality, no, it was the same reason no one really likes to hang out with me. I was the type of girl to bring a knife to a verbal argument. And the knife was never for show. I had killed people twice and only one of them was in the camp but no one had any doubts that I could do it again if pushed, not after what I''d left of him. I may be a socially awkward and shy dork at times but the caravan had a rule. Rule number 28 of the caravan, don''t fuck with the small crippled girl unless you plan to shoot her from afar. This skeleton monster was going to learn why that was a rule. I was not going to die without taking my pound in bone. I didn''t hesitate, not here. I attacked with all the violence and rage that I had been stewing in for so long, in my daydreams, in every moment when I had to eat food that had gone bad, every moment for the last few weeks. I was angry, and had been angry without an outlet for too long. And now finally I had an acceptable one. I screeched, imagining that I was mauling one of the assholes from the North that watched from safety while we struggled to stay alive. I imagined the face of the Loan Forgiveness Service guy who came to collect my parents, first my mom and then my dad. I twisted and hoisted myself over the thing while wrapping my arm around its neck. Another was meanwhile groping around for something I could use as a weapon. Me suddenly pulling myself up on its ¡ªhis?¡ª back had destabilized it and it fell face first back into the pile from which it was rising. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I slammed the skull on the hard ground again and again, not to kill but to disorient, assuming skeleton monsters could even be disoriented, using my butt to pin down the arm that had shot something. The thing below me was much larger and stronger than I was but it was all bones beneath a partially open shell and I stuffed everything I could reach into its joints and between its bones. A metal flask of water, dirty blankets, my gown. Even a large shank that I kept in my pocket ever since one of the other refugees had the idea that I could be taken advantage of due to my recent disability. May Damian rest in dog poop. Cloth was shoved violently between the tibia and the fibula in its right leg and that limb was taken out of commision. The bones refused to flex anymore due to their obstruction. A bloody blanket for the left. More for the arms. I know that machines could be jammed with enough soft material in the moving parts and as far as I could tell, the thing below me was all moving parts. What I hoped was a corpse¡¯s still attached arm and fingers went somewhere in there, I didn''t really check. The thing was recovering but I had been quick in clogging every joint and point of articulation I could find. The creature was strong. The metal flask bent, and the knife lodged itself halfway through a bone but it was not enough. I smashed the head again and again and again as cracks began to form. The monster struggled more violently and I was dimly aware that I had been stabbed in her torso by a bone without me noticing. I was bucked off my ride as it finally rose but I hung off it for some reason instead of falling off. The reason for which soon became painfully apparent. The bone spike stabbing! I could feel the bone spike that had stabbed me was moving and growing within my body, it would have made me throw up if I was slightly more aware of anything other than that I was dying. I would die here, killed by this thing. A long skeletal arm was groping behind itself towards me, clawed fingers promising a hopefully quick death. But then someone else grabbed the creature, another patient and its attention was divided. With a renewed vigor and strength that I didn''t know I possessed, I grabbed the skull and pulled, using my own body¡¯s weight as leverage as I slowly and painfull started to slide off the spike that had impaled me. I expected its struggles to lower in intensity as it started dying but it kept getting worse until, with a sharp crack the tent fell silent right as the bone in my body bloomed, ripping out several new orifices. One spike jutted out of my chest, the point bifurcating into two branches that each divided themselves into two. "Fucking M¨¹nchmeyer disease." I felt the mad energy that had flooded my body leave me all at once and I collapsed on myself, only propped upright by the bone flower that had grown inside me. My head drooped forward as all vitality left my frame, my eyes staring at the only thing they faced at that angle, the pool of blood with shards and chips of bone in it that was all around me. My last thoughts were that the shards looked like stars in a red sky. Save Yourself, Save The Entire Multiverse (S.Y.S.T.E.M) My entire body ached, my head pounded with a dull, unrelenting throb. I had just woken up from another nightmare. At least this time, it wasn¡¯t the one where everyone I knew was gunned down, no, this time they were killed by walking skeletons. The nightmares were getting a bit too bad. Maybe I should try to get my hands on one of those productivity therapist programs? I had no idea where to even start. Opening my eyes, I saw¡­ nothing. No ceiling of the rundown trailer I called home, no murky gray-yellow skies of Earth. Not white, not black¡ªjust an emptiness so absolute, it made me question if I even had eyes at all. If I was still asleep. And yet, I felt the sensation of my eyelids blinking. Over and over, my brain registered the movement, but the void remained. Slowly, I opened my eyes and I closed them just as slowly but nothing changed. Had I been blinded somehow? It didn¡¯t feel like there was a blindfold. I tried to sit up but my body didn''t respond. I was entirely aware of my limbs¡ªtheir pain, the faint pressure of contact against some kind of surface¡ªbut I couldn¡¯t move a muscle. I couldn¡¯t see. I couldn¡¯t hear. I couldn¡¯t even scream. And still, the pain lingered, sharp and undeniable. Stamping down on my surging panic, I seriously started to entertain the absurd notion that maybe, just maybe, it had not been a nightmare. I wasn¡¯t particularly religious, nor did I believe in an afterlife. But if I¡¯d died¡ªperhaps to that horrible bone monster¡ªshouldn¡¯t death at least have the courtesy to end the pain? Then, a voice tore through the silence, loud and unyielding. ¡°GREETINGS AND CONGRATULATIONS, MORTAL. YOU HAVE FULFILLED THE CONDITIONS TO BECOME THE NEXT QUIRAION¡¯S KNIFE. UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR UNIVERSE¡ªAND BY EXTENSION, YOUR PLANET¡ªARE NOW CONDEMNED. THIS ONE CANNOT AND WILL NOT INTERVENE. WHAT THIS ONE CAN OFFER IS SOMETHING ELSE: A CHANCE AT VENGEANCE.¡± What? I tried to speak, to demand answers, but my body refused to cooperate. The voice continued, booming obliviously. ¡°LORD QUIRAION, THE LORD OF FIRE AND MAGIC, OF THE SHADOWED FLAME AND THE MIRAGE OF THE DESERT, OF THE ILLUSORY VEILS. THE GOD OF MISCHIEF AND ASSASSINS AND SCHEMES AND TRICKS HAS PERISHED. HIS GREAT SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL GROWTH HAS BEEN SUBSUMED BY BONELORD ASTER¡¯S FORCES FOR THEIR OWN ENDS.¡± That''s a lot of oddly specific domains for a single god, a part of me that loved to provide commentary noted. I still couldn''t see with her eyes but images flashed in my mind as the voice spoke. An endless tide of bony horrors, some biped, some quadruped and others that burrowed like worms or had too many legs to count, and yet others had wings of thin membranous gray. They all marched as one, on the land as on the sky across a vast desert. The sky was aflame. Meteors raining down across a surface already on fire. Great hulking beasts made of living flame ravaged the broken crust of the world as cracks in the ground belched out lava. No, it wasn''t an attack. It was a ceremony, a funeral, a mourning. The whole world was facing something. Something that was slumped on a giant red throne. Something that fractalized and wavered in the air, never settling into a form that was cognizable, like it wasn''t entirely there. But where was ¡®there¡¯? A white flame slowly rose up, consuming the throne and the thing seated there, a bonfire that left nothing behind, not even ash. The flame engulfed me, entered me, and yet I wasn''t burned. I swam in the fire, reaching towards the throne. Guided by something I wasn''t exactly sure about. I swam in that ocean of white fire, never once feeling hot. I might have swam for hours, or minutes, or days. I wasn''t sure. I kept swimming, trying to reach the throne. I just knew that I had to get to it. As soon as I could. I had to. As I drew nearer, I felt them. Thousands of other swimmers, all racing towards the throne, strange vibrations reverberating across fire. I felt the throne, resonating across a sense I had never had before. The resonance rose, intensifying, echoing until all I could feel, all I could think, all I was, was the throne. And finally I found it, a brilliance that shone all possible colors at once. Colors that didn¡¯t and shouldn¡¯t exist. The radiance of the throne illuminated and burned me. I tried to resist in vain but the flame consumed me, consumed the girl I was. Until she was nothing but an ember. I jolted back with a scream that I couldn''t vocalize. It was me, I was still me. While I was still reeling from the vision¡¯s intensity, the voice continued unbothered. ¡°THE SYSTEM WAS THE GREATEST WORK OF MAGIC IN THE MULTIVERSE, SO GREAT WAS ITS SCOPE AND MIGHT THAT IT SPREAD ACROSS ENTIRE UNIVERSES. FOR SOME, THE SYSTEM ARRIVED INTACT AND IN OTHER MORE MAGICALLY INERT UNIVERSES, ECHOES OF IT MANIFEST AS ART, DREAMS OR IN VISIONS. YOUR UNIVERSE IS ONE SUCH CASE NEAR THE TIME OF YOUR DEMISE.¡± Another vision, a much less intense one than what had come before. An uncountable number of small spheres formed a band that stretched infinitely in both directions. What looked like almost endless glowing nerves snaked around and within the band, often splitting off into smaller nerves. ¡°THE SYSTEM TAPPED DIRECTLY INTO THE CONCEPT-LINES OF THE MULTIVERSE TO GROW AND GRANT POWER FAR BEYOND THE CAPABILITIES OF A SINGLE GOD, EVEN ONE AS GREAT AS LORD QUIRAION. BUT THAT POWER ATTRACTED ATTENTION.¡± My mental eyes zoomed in on one of the smaller nerves. I got the impressions of bones, flesh stripped off bodies by the elements, ancient remains and histories encoded in skeletons. ¡°THE UNAUGURED GOD¡¯S REALM CHALLENGED QUIRAION¡¯S DEMESNE TO A GODWAR OF DOMAINS. THEIR GOD FORESAW THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE SYSTEM AND SOUGHT ITS POWER. THE WAR WAS LED BY BONELORD ASTER, THE CHAMPION OF THE BONE REALMS. ASTER WAS AND IS REMAINS ONE OF THE GREATEST WARRIORS IN THE MULTIVERSE. LORD QUIRAION KNEW THAT HE COULD NOT BEAT HIM IN A DIRECT CONTEST. BUT HE ALSO KNEW THE BONELORD WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO RESIST TAKING THE SYSTEM INTACT, FOR THE GLORY OF HIS GOD AND KING. A CONTINGENCY WAS THUS LEFT IN THE SYSTEM. A SMALL GIFT THAT COULD ONE DAY BRING THE BONELORD AND HIS GOD ALIKE DOWN. THIS ONE IS THAT CONTINGENCY. AND YOU, MORTAL, SHALL BE THE ONE TO WIELD THIS ONE''S TRUE POWER AGAINST THE BONELORD.¡± ¡°IF YOU SURVIVE THAT IS, THE MULTIVERSE IS VAST AND THE CONTINGENCY CAN''T BE SEPARATED FROM YOU WITHOUT YOUR ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH. YOU ARE FROM THE 286th BATCH OF KNIFE CANDIDATE SO FAR. TWELVE HAVE TRIED AND TWELVE HAVE FAILED BEFORE YOU. PLEASE TRY TO ENSURE THAT A 2807th ISN''T NEEDED.¡± ¡°TO LET YOU GROW IN POWER TO COMPLETE YOUR DIVINE TASK, YOU, AND 11 OTHERS FROM YOUR WORLD SHALL BE TRANSPORTED INTO A SANCTUARY WORLD DEEMED IDEAL FOR YOUR COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENT.¡± I really wished I could speak right now. Or at least ask questions. Or hell, just tell the loud voice to stop shouting. My head hurt so much, it was almost as bad as that one hangover I had when I had whatever chemical weapon Julia called alcohol. How did I have a head if I had no eyes or mouths or limbs? Was it even my head that hurt? No focus. Oh god, this was just one of those isekai shows that my friends watched while high. As the climate wars intensified, stories about escaping to a new world where people didn''t have to work to the point of relying on drugs to not collapse on their feet rose in popularity. For obvious reasons, sacrificing everything including their lives for the rich made people wish to escape their broken little world and so a genre that had been popular a few decades ago had a resurgence. Of course, the irony was not lost on anyone that the studios and publishers that distributed these stories were also owned by the corporations that shaped the world that everyone so desperately wanted to leave behind. And then of course, there was the subgenre where it was just random rich people hooking up people to simulations for their enjoyment. Those stories tended to end up being horror stories about psychopaths finding the perfect way to torture people to any and all limits without any risk of them dying. They usually ended with said rich psychopaths getting brutally murdered. I hope I hadn''t been hooked up to such a simulator but with my luck, who even knows? I tried to actually digest what the disembodied magic voice was saying but my thoughts were a lot more scattered than normal, breaking down into meaningless noise the moment I let myself be distracted.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. A GODwar? I was being conscripted into a multiversal war? Somehow getting into the Northern Lands seemed easier than this insane task. Usually the isekai stories that were popular were relatively low stakes at the beginning. Kill slimes or rats or survive in a cave or something. Once again a sequence of images. People, heroes, some that looked vaguely humanoid and others that looked more like something out of the Lovecraft stories I loved reading so much as a kid. All faced the bone army and manipulated the forces of nature or had world shattering physical strength and all died. Some fought alone and others helped vast armies. All died, and all of them died screaming as their powers were wrenched out of them with force. Those screams sounded way too visceral, +1 to the ¡®psychopaths got to me and are fucking with me¡¯ hypothesis. ¡°TO BECOME A KNIFE, A MORTAL HAS TO DIE WHILE KILLING A VASSAL OF ASTER, HUNDREDS OF OTHERS FACTORS ALSO INFLUENCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF A SUCCESSFUL TRANSFORMATION. THE UNCOMMON CONFLUENCE OF FACTORS WERE NECESSARY TO MAKE THE CONTINGENCY IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE BY THE BONELORD. YOU ARE FORTUNATE TO HAVE MET ALL THE CONDITIONS.¡± Thanks? ¡°YOUR TASK IS SIMPLE. SURVIVE, SEEK POWER IN ALL ITS FORMS AND ELIMINATE THE BONELORD ASTER.¡± Another vision. This time of an indistinct figure wielding a whip several times his size. No, that was not a whip. It was a spinal cord. A spinal cord that had to be the size of a bus if the figure was comparable to humans in size. ¡°THE BONELORD ASTER IS THE HIGH CHAMPION OF THE BONE REALMS AND ONE OF THE MOST FEARSOME WARRIORS IN EXISTENCE. BUT THAT''S NOT WHY YOU ARE CHOSEN TO FACE HIM. HE ALSO HOLDS THE SINGULAR SKILL OF GODSBANE THAT MAKES HIM NIGH INVINCIBLE TO GODS. BUT YOU ARE NOT A GOD. THUS YOU MUST KILL HIM.¡± Okay. Kill a godkiller. Nothing unreasonable. Maybe if I had a free Saturday. ¡°WITHOUT HIS SUPPORT, THE UNAUGURED GOD WILL FAIL. HE SHALL FALL, BY YOUR HAND OR BY THE HAND OF ANOTHER ONCE HE NO LONGER HAS ASTER¡¯S PROTECTION. THE UNAUGURED GOD IS NOW COMMANDING A CONQUEST OF YOUR MANA DEAD UNIVERSE. THIS CONQUEST HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR CENTURIES AND BECAUSE OF THE WAR, THE INFLUENCE OF THE SYSTEM HAS SLOWLY BEEN SEEPING FURTHER INTO YOUR UNIVERSE.¡± Wait. If this system was anything like what I was used to from stories and the system manifested as art¡­ yep. That was not a can of worms I was touching. Worrying about what other ideas were just bleedover from multiversal magic shenanigans was above this girl¡¯s paycheck. ¡°IF YOUR UNIVERSE FALLS ENTIRELY, IT COULD BE HARVESTED FOR POWER TO LET ASTER¡¯S GOD HAVE AUDIENCE WITH A HIGHER PRINCIPALITY. SUCH A SCENARIO IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO LORD QUIRAION.¡± More images, now of a singular point of both light and dark situated in a cluster of those nerves. A star from which emanated energy and from that made and unmade entire universes in the light and shadows it cast. I knew without even being told that this was one of the so-called ¡®higher principalities¡¯. ¡°THE KNIFE SHALL NOT BE AN ADVANTAGE THAT CAN BE SQUANDERED, IT WILL LEAVE YOU IF IT DEEMS YOU UNWILLING OR INCAPABLE OF FULFILLING ITS TASK. THIS WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY KILL YOU. THE KNIFE HOWEVER IS GENEROUS AND WILL NOT RUSH YOU AT ALL TIMES OR FORCE CONFRONTATION NEEDLESSLY. PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU DO NOT ABUSE LORD QUIRAION¡¯S GENEROSITY.¡± Now, I wasn''t the most hard working of women, actually I was rather the opposite if anything but I thought that it sounded generous in the same way a billionaire working people for over 100 hours a week for just enough that they could afford the cheapest grub was considered ¡®generous¡¯. I had a lot of questions though and being unable to ask any of them was worrisome because the message sounded like it was mostly pre-recorded and nearing its end. ¡°GOOD LUCK MORTAL. MAY YOU BE THE KNIFE THAT FINDS ITSELF IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE THAT CONDEMNED YOUR WORLD AND COUNTLESS OTHERS.¡± ¡®Nooo, wait.¡¯ I screamed internally before my skull split open in a flash of white. I didn''t even get to ask for any additional information!
Lines of softly glowing blue text greeted me when I regained consciousness. //INITIALIZATION COMPLETE //ENTITY NAMED ¡®ANANYA HARTFORD¡¯ SUCCESSFULLY TRANSLOCATED //Calculating base stats¡­ I opened my eyes to a blue sky that I had never seen except on old videos. The sky I was familiar with was all dark and cloudy. The text was still floating there, now enclosed in a semi transparent box of gray. It shifted and elongated until it was a vertical scrolling window on the left side of my vision. Can I make it disappear? No sooner than I had that thought, it did. And then it came back when I tried to imagine it coming back. Satisfied that it responded to my thoughts without any problems, I turned my attention to myself. My head was thankfully not hurting so much anymore, no, now my entire body was. I turned on my side with a hiss and used an arm to push myself into a sitting position. Thankfully, I still had my dirty brown tshirt and jeans on. They were just ripped and covered in blood. That was weird because I didn¡¯t have any of the injuries that led to said bleeding anymore. I seemed just like I remembered being before the bone monster, no bones sprouting out of my abdomen and no more or less parts. I was just like I had been before, same hands, same unhealthily skinny body, same brownish skin, same mangled legs. Same. Mangled. Legs. In a new world. My right foot was still a blobby stump and my left still had toes missing. Just perfect. Exactly what I needed. \\Starting stats determined and analyzed STRENGTH: 6 CELERITY: 5 VITALITY: 5 ACUITY: 11 WILLPOWER: 13 PERCEPTION: 11 ATTUNEMENT: 10 I had played enough games before the exodus to guess what most of those stats meant. Attunement I assumed was related to magic, I hope I got magic. My physical stats being in the gutter was probably due to a mix of a long list of badly healed injuries and malnutrition, not even counting my disability. \\Subject has debuff: severely crippled \\Subject has debuff: malnutrition \\Subject has debuff: improperly healed bones And on and on it went. \\Subject has debuff: unhealthy coping mechanisms \\Subject has debuff: addiction prone \\Subject has debuff: CPTSD \\Subject has trait: mental resilience \\Subject has trait: Enduring \\Subject has trait: Low Maintenance \\Subject has trait: Unhesitant Murderer \\Subject has trait: The Knife Of Quiraion \\Subject has trait: Dead Quiraion¡¯s Blessing \\Subject is determined to be weak Wow, that was just being rude at this point. \\GENERATING STATUS NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD RACE: HUMAN ACTIVE CLASS: [NONE] CUMULATIVE CLASS LEVELS: [0] MASTERED CLASSES: [0] AGE: 19 STATS: STRENGTH: 6 CELERITY: 5 VITALITY: 5 ACUITY: 11 WILLPOWER: 13 PERCEPTION: 11 ATTUNEMENT: 10 SKILLS: PASSIVES: ACTIVES: TRAITS: The Coldest Blood \\NO ACTIVE CLASS DETECTED. PLEASE SELECT ONE TO START OR RESUME LEVELING YOURSELF. Blue text flashed on the periphery of my vision. I ignored it for now. I had landed in a forest clearing. The grass was bright green and soft, and as far as I could see, none of the gross kinds of insects were crawling around or worse, on me. It honestly reminded me of those signboards about some vacation biome up deep in the North with how idyllic it was. Of course the corpse put a slight damper on things. It was the bone monster, now thankfully dead with a detached skull half buried in the dirt. Did that mean that it had a brain? It had felt hollow when I had attacked it. Well, I would figure it out once I got used to the game-like interface that blinked in and out of my vision as I willed it. And hopefully after that, I''d find civilization before some wild animal ate me or I starved. Survival first, skeleton anatomy later. It always came down to that, get to place B from place A to not starve or die to the elements. Some things stayed constant across all worlds. Death, taxes, and being on a timer due to uncaring forces vastly more powerful than me. My shank was in my pocket but without a hunting dog or something, I didn''t fancy my chances of catching a rabbit or squirrel or whatever animals roamed this world. With my luck, this place was so nice because it was the personal picnic grounds of someone really powerful who would have me executed if I were to be discovered. I imagined some fat noble in a gaudy purple and gold robe. I wondered if I should yell and hope some human hunter or something similar finds me but then I remembered that I was in an unknown forest. An unknown forest with unknown denizens. I cringed, trying not to think about how profoundly idiotic that idea was. I poked the dead monster beside me. It didn¡¯t respond. ¡®Okay Anya, focus. What do I know?¡¯ I was conscripted in a war between what were ostensibly gods that was fought on a scale that was not even comparable to any war I had ever heard about, in fiction or in reality. And the thing that had conscripted me had marked me as a Knife candidate, whatever that was. I pulled my status back up into the center with a thought and focused on the trait. The interface seemed to only exist when I wanted it to. I briefly felt the concept of elaboration and tried to apply that to the trait. Bingo! \\The Knife Of Quiraion When the Great God Quiraion perished and his powers were seized by his enemies, he cursed those very powers to produce the bane of those that felled him. The Knife Of Quirion is bound by destiny and duty to slay the Bonelord Aster who bested Quiron in combat and the Unaugured God who drives this conflict and bring an end to this bloody conflict. The god Quiraion is generous but make no mistake, you are a soldier now regardless of your wiIs and you will serve, in life or through your death. EFFECT: Destiny itself twists and turns to create a crucible from which supreme power may emerge. Your skills and classes level faster and have an increased chance of evolving and consolidating. You will also face more opportunities to increase your power than most but proportionately peace will forever elude you. You will die if you abandon your goal regardless of your power. If it is determined that you are not bettering yourself for your confrontation, this skill will punish you. This punishment can become lethal depending on the severity of your trespass. These shackles upon your being will be released with the death of Aster. When facing Aster or The Unaugured God, you will be able to channel Lord Quiraion¡¯s remaining essence. Once, you will be saved from certain death. No no no, was it too much to ask that my unique isekai skill would not kill me unless I destroyed a multiversal army and its god. Can''t ever catch a break, can I? Caught halfway between being horrified and just annoyed I looked at another of the traits. \\Dead Quiraion¡¯s Blessing Behold! The Great God Quiraion is truly great and merciful for he has further blessed you with a fraction of his power. When a god demands something, the world listens and it obeys. EFFECT: Your true gifts and origins are hidden to all but gods of scrying and information. This means that you will not be marked as a Godchosen from the beginning unless you choose to reveal yourself to someone. anonymity is its own reward when one is weak and yet has great potential. Furthermore, once a year you can succeed at a single system action if it has at least a 5% chance of success otherwise. A successful action will receive increased benefit from The Knife of Quiarion until the cooldown expires. Better. Much better. I briefly wondered if everything had descriptions this long and verbose. I doubted that, these felt like the sort of thing that I''d expect that a clergyman would care about. Right, holy war for the souls of the masses. My theory was proven right as I checked another. \\Unhesitant Murderer: You have killed before for your survival and will kill again for the same. Weakness is death. EFFECT: you don''t hesitate during combat and the sight of death and gore doesn''t faze you. Yeah. This is useful and good. Especially with Knife¡¯s nonsense. The notification flashed before me for the third time. \\NO ACTIVE CLASS DETECTED. PLEASE SELECT ONE TO START OR RESUME LEVELING YOURSELF. I dismissed it again. I was NOT going to pick a class before I was done with the stats. One part of me idly noted that I was going through my screen from the bottom to top \\Low Maintenance: You have lived on scraps and leftovers, you have known scarcity and you will not forget it even in abundance.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. EFFECT: you require 15% less food and water for survival and you take 15% longer to starve. you also require 20% less resources for any projects you do completely alone. \\Enduring. You have survived a lot and you will keep doing it. EFFECT: You have a preternatural sense for recognizing and escaping or surviving immediate danger. \\Mental Resilience: You have endured great trauma and now have metaphorical scar tissue. EFFECT: You are less likely to contract long term mental trauma due to the things you experience. I was pretty sure trauma didn''t work like that but regardless I was done with traits. Oh well, I was not a therapist and I had never seen one in my life. Not my coffin, not my funeral. And now for the active skills. \\Find Weakness: 2 That knight in resplendent golden armor may be stronger than you but she is dead to an arrow through the eye and you are not. By taking a moment to analyze your enemy, you can often find weaknesses that you can exploit to neutralize them. 5 mana per use. I didn''t think my status screen listed mana anywhere. //Improvised Tool Use: 1 You don''t always have the best gear or equipment but you can make do with what you have. You can improvise and make cheaper inferior alternatives and you can substitute similar enough tools for any task you want. This does not guarantee success. No mana cost. \\Scavenging And Scrounging: 2. You can go hungry or you can find food. You can die or you can find some clean cloth for a tourniquet. You can find or retrieve things from your surroundings faster and more efficiently. No mana cost. \\Intimidation: 1 Fear is the oldest and the strongest emotion and you can lace your actions with it. To threaten or to demoralize, to convince or to scare, fear is yours to command. 5 mana per use. Everything was at least mildly useful and I could see why the system thought I should have those skills. I looked at my passives and decided that all of them seemed relatively self explanatory. Basic Earth Education: 2 Dirty Fighter: 3 Quick Killer: 1 Neurotic Observer: 2 Knife User: 2 I moved on to my stats instead, and attempted to expand them with the same elaboration trick. It didn''t work. Of course it didn''t, the one stat that I wanted to know about was attunement and it refused to tell anything about it. Dejected, I was about to move on when they finally opened up. Oh god, was the system lagging? Strength was obvious. Vitality was my overall robustness and health (not the video game kind of health). Celerity was speed and dexterity. Perception was again obvious. Acuity was interesting, it was the mental equivalent of celerity. Adaptability and mental reaction speeds. Willpower defined my mental resilience. Attunement was interesting but also the simplest in a way, just my total mana and mana regeneration. Nothing too weird or esoteric. I went back to the passives and looked at them. They were as I expected from the names. Basic Earth Education was just that, Dirty Fighter helped me generally win fights better, no hard numbers. Quick Killer sped up and steadied me if I was about to incapacitate or kill someone with the next blow, Neurotic Observer was just me noticing things like exits, potential hiding spots, possible weapons and so on around me. Knife User granted me basic competency and slightly better damage with a knife. None of them had actual numbers except for Knife User. //Knife User: 2 The knife is the most subtle and forgotten weapon. In bloody battlefieldS, larger weapons reign and yet one blade in the dark can end wars faster than a thousand swords in the sun. You know how to use a knife in combat and knives deal 0.5% more damage per level. Current bonus 1%. As I read, I was still thinking about how to proceed. I didn¡¯t hear any activity and so it was possible that the other knives ended up elsewhere in the world. That meant I was alone. And that moment of realization changed everything. I dragged myself closer to the dead(deader?) bone creature and leaned on it, suddenly exhausted as my eyes caught the sun and not dust clouds shining with some golden light that I was used to. I think I should have a greater reaction to being whisked away to a new world, but I felt muted. I should care about that, hell, I should care about the fact that I wasn''t caring about that but I didn''t. All my life, I had one little part of my mind that was cold and observed things without any emotion. But that part had always been a fragment of me but now, I felt colder than ever before. I wish I could say I was concerned about whether my traits or skills were altering my mind. I wished I could say that I hated it. But that would be a lie. It didn¡¯t feel good, but I didn¡¯t even care for that. I wasn''t numb, I was still thinking about how to survive. I would lie about being attacked by wild animals and then being thrown in the woods by my people once my injuries made me incapable of working in the fields if it was a medieval fantasy type world. A factory incident for an industrial age. But what if healing that could fix my legs was commonplace enough? I couldn''t just say that I was from a different world and was conscripted by some dead asshole. I would make something up. But first, I had to reach civilization and that meant mobility. Maybe I could use the monster¡¯s legs as makeshift crutches. The voice had mentioned that this was a sanctuary world, whatever that was. My survival was a lot more important than my feelings about my circumstances right now and my survival demanded action. \\The traits Mental Resilience, Enduring and Unhesitant Murderer have consolidated into the passive skill Cold Blooded \\Cold Blooded: 1 Hesitation is weakness and weakness is death, and so is failure to adapt. Your mind knows what it is and you are at peace with it. You are the mistress of your mind inviolate. To survive among monsters, you shall become one. Sentiments or base instincts don''t make you hesitate to do what''s necessary or distract you. To err is human and you will be more than human. You are almost immune to mental trauma and the waves of horrors that you face will not break you when you are in danger and mental problems that impact your performance will slowly fade away. Your focus and mental resilience increases per level. You don¡¯t make mistakes because of emotional inadequacies or disturbance. Emotions that jeopardize you or compromise your judgment in an actively dangerous situation will lose their potency. Yes, this would certainly help me. I ruthlessly crushed the part of me that was screaming about losing myself, not important now. I noted that traits didn''t have numbers besides them like passive skills and Quiraion¡¯s Knife had mentioned leveling skills but not traits. So it was likely that traits were generally static and didn''t improve unless they became skills like with Cold Blooded. Maybe Knife could be absorbed or evolved like that? Even if possible, I doubted that it would be easy to remove or alter a trait embedded into the very system by a god. Just something to keep an eye on. Another thing that was interesting to me was that passives improved as they levelled up but no active skills mentioned any improvement of any sort. Interesting. I would have to figure out what that actually meant in practice but that was for later. Too many things to deal with. What else was left? Oh yes, my race. It thankfully also opened up. Too bad the information there was rather scarce except for a line of information about how humans are the most common of all Elvenoids. Though I had no idea what a class factor was. \\Race: Human \\Family: Elvenoid \\Class Factor: 5 \\The most numerous of all Elvenoids in the lands of the former Catrian Empire \\NO ACTIVE CLASS DETECTED. PLEASE SELECT ONE TO START OR RESUME LEVELING YOURSELF. Now that I was done with my status screen and understood as much as I could, given my immediate circumstances, it was finally time to pick a class. Bonecrafter ¡®Show me¡¯ I commanded the system as I zeroed in on the bold [NONE] that was my active class on the status screen. A list unfurled. Lines of glowing text raced past my eyes before I could even read more than a single letter as more and more classes replaced the ones that came before them. I could blink and miss three entire screens worth of unique class names in just that time. There were too many. Hundreds of classes if not thousands. Or even more. \\Hiding some classes due to the influence of Knife of Quiraion \\Merging duplicate classes An involuntary sigh of relief escaped my lips as the class list reduced itself to a more manageable amount. There was something weird going on with the system, notifications grabbed my attention in a way that was not entirely just my own mind¡¯s behavior. They were silent but metaphorically loud in the worst way. And with the hundreds of classes that I had? That was an ordeal. There were still dozens of them but that was a far cry from the sheer insanity I was initially faced with. But the system was not yet done. \\Sorting classes into archetypes \\Remember that your class choice is not permanent. You will have to choose a new class once your current class reaches its maximum level. Completing lower tier classes paired with high stats, skills and feats will unlock higher tier classes in that archetype. Specialization is deemed to be optimal for most people. Some classes may exist in multiple archetypes as archetypes are only an abstraction for the purposes of ease of selection and are NOT actually a meaningfully real stratification. And now I was looking at a much more manageable number of windows arranged in a circle around a glowing white circle. The circle pulsed and radiated light outwards that shone upon the text of the windows. It almost reminded me of the Higher Principality that I had seen. Offensive Magic Healing And Divinity Support Magic Offensive Melee Protection And Defense Speed And Assassination Long Range Offensive Summoner And Controller Crafting And Misc Support Charisma And Leadership First things first, I needed mobility. I couldn¡¯t travel as I was right now and I was missing my crutches. I had to get myself fixed, and it has to be soon. The healing window expanded until it was as large as the white center of the class screen. \\CHOIR SINGER (0/10) A CHOIR SINGER channels the rejuvenating energies of the world through her voice to cure ailments and injuries. A basic CHOIR SINGER can heal minor bruises and produce light at will. She can also cause those that listen to her song to feel energized. A CHOIR SINGER opens up the SIREN and BARDIC PATHS. At higher class levels, a SIREN can weave nigh unbreakable enchantments and illusions that alter reality wherever her voice reaches and a BARD can make demigods out of mere mortals MASTERY BONUSES: +1 to ACUITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT Completely worthless! Minor bruises and some light? Wow, if that''s the quality of things I was looking at then I was in a lot more trouble than I thought. Back in my old world, I had never been one for singing myself and I was not not sure if singing magic was that good of an idea for someone with no experience or training in music. And not to mention singing loudly when I didn''t even know what kind of horrors could be lurking in the forest was just asking for trouble. Really though, it would have been a decent choice if I was not in the middle of a forest. It wasn¡¯t bad exactly. Just not very useful. \\SUPPLICANT (0/10) A SUPPLICANT petitions a god to perform minor miracles such as healing small injuries a- Nope. Even if it wasn''t limited to just small injuries, being a cleric was not really something I wanted to do. I was already bound to one god¡¯s one task, I didn''t want any more unless I was totally out of options. The more chains I had now, the less flexibility I would have down the line. Not to mention the possibility of said chains getting in each other¡¯s way. I really didn''t care to become a religious fanatic of any kind. A picture of me becoming a paladin and using skills named Holy Smite or something flashed through my mind and I stifled a giggle. I was sure that a Paladin was one of those classes that existed in multiple archetypes, a Protection and Healer combo, or maybe a Protection, Healer and Melee combo. Before Cold Blooded, I might have actually shuddered at the thought of becoming one. But that raised a very interesting question. I was not the only one to have been transported to this world, how would a religious person deal with this whole thing? I guess I would find out eventually. \\BLOODMAGE INITIATE (0/15) A BLOODMAGE INITIATE uses her blood to both heal and harm. She speeds up the natural healing rate of the body for allies and induces internal or external bleeding in her enemies at this small step on the Eternal Ziggurat of the BIOMANCER. At higher class levels, BIOMANCERS can regrow entire bodies, regenerate from small traces of DNA, mutate themselves or others into great monstrosities and absorb biological traits from their foes who find their very bodies in open rebellion against them. MASTERY BONUSES: +2 to STRENGTH, VITALITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT This class had 15 levels instead of the 10s the two previous classes had. Maybe better classes took longer to level up? The Biomancer path certainly seemed to be pretty superior to the ones I''d seen before, both for the future power and the stats it offered for mastering it. I was also sure that I''d find this class in the offensive magic section. Going to that archetype and scrolling past at least eight variations of an elemental mage, I did eventually find it. Making a mental note to pick this as my next class unless something much better was available, I moved on. The rest of the healing magic classes were nothing that I liked but I did find a few other 15 level hybrids. A ki based monk path that purified the body that was also a fast martial artist, an alchemy based potion maker path and a weird class that transferred injury between people. After seeing how disappointing the healer classes were, I was not feeling confident when I checked the support magic classes. Maybe I could get a transportation or divination based class? It was somehow even more disappointing than the healers. Sure I found the things I was looking for but the beginner level classes were really bad. Okay maybe knowing which way was North was actually kind of useful but it wasn''t good enough.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. I did find something very interesting, if horrifying. \\MAGICAL BEAST REARER TRAINEE (0/10) There are two ways to level up, do things associated with a class or kill to absorb the souls of your victims. A MAGICAL BEAST REARER TRAINEE helps with rearing and raising magical beasts for slaughter to empower the next generation of humans. She learns to use spells to calm beasts, boost fertility and clean excreta This path can progress toward raising ever greater monsters in larger quantities or can branch into HUMAN CHATTEL REARER. MASTERY BONUSES: +1 to STRENGTH, CELERITY, VITALITY I did shudder this time, of course magical factory farming of people was a thing here. I didn''t even know where I was or what this world was called but maybe I should not be so hasty to get back to civilization. At least it gave me confirmation that humans were a thing in this world. Feeling oddly paranoid, I looked around myself and once again my gaze was drawn to the bone monster. It was vaguely humanoid but much taller than a human should be. Yeah, I think I shall use it to make crutches and then think about the future. Blacksmith apprentice, potion maker apprentice, cook, rune inscriber apprentice, blah blah. I was sure that a prosthetic crafter should be a thing. It could be one of the level 5 healer classes that I had skimmed over. I didn''t get the point of those level 5 classes, they only gave a single point to one stat and made no promises of future grand power. Maybe they were just so that people could grind their stats to qualify for better classes? I was about to go back to the healers when a class caught my eye. \\BONECRAFTER NOVICE (0/15) The Unaugured God has ordained that reality will submit to his will and you will see that His dream is fulfilled. A BONECRAFTER NOVICE can use bone to make rudimentary armaments and tools and can harvest the bones from the dead to replenish her material stock. She can use her magic to prepare bones with almost inhuman precision and her stats are multiplied when harvesting bones. A BONECRAFTER can eventually learn to create great machines of war and golems and even steal the very memories of the dead from their bones. eventually building even mighty ELDER DRACOLICHES will be a child''s play for you and you would be able to generate bone from just your magical powers. MASTERY BONUSES: +2 to STRENGTH, CELERITY, PERCEPTION AND ATTUNEMENT I stared at the text in the air before me before dismissing it, stared at the thing I rested against and reopened my status screen. My eyes narrowed. Improvised Tool Use, Low Maintenance and Scrounging and Scavenging were all relevant here, extremely useful in fact. Once was happenstance, twice was suspicious but three? Something was up. I reopened my Knife trait and read aloud. ¡°You will face more opportunities to increase your power than most.¡± Fucking dead god. My face had a grin for the first time since my death. \\Class [BONECRAFTER NOVICE] selected It started at level 1 as I expected. 1/15. \\Mana unlocked due to picking your first mana using class. Attempting to use skills without having the requisite mana will use your very life as fuel. Existing mana consuming effects will deactivate in such a case. Rarely, some skills will consume other resources instead. Keep mana consumption and regeneration rates in mind when using skills. \\Skill Lesser Bone Harvesting learned \\Skill Lesser Bone Crafting learned \\Skill Fossil Identification learned \\Remember that you can only have 9 active and 9 passive skills at any given time. Please unassign unwanted skills regularly. An unassigned skill can be reassigned but after a long cooldown based on its power and level. Unassigned skills are still available for consolidation purposes. Some skills don''t take up slots. It felt strange to have mana, like suddenly healing from a chronic pain that had plagued someone for decades. It almost made me lightheaded. It felt good. I was dimly aware of my mana like it was a weakened sense. I could reach and almost touch it but it eluded me, flowing between the gaps of my fingers and rolling on her and caressing me mockingly. It was like trying to hold on to something slimy in running water, just not gross. If I could grab onto it, I could do anything. I felt the power of it, how the world bent around it, through it, I could be the one bending the world. It just didn¡¯t want to be held by me for some reason. I would have spent at least an hour trying to grasp my mana but Cold Blooded triggered and I instead expanded and scrolled through my notification log to examine my new skills. \\Lesser Bone Harvesting: 1 You can harvest bones from corpses for your purposes, be it for augury or potion ingredients. Your stats are treated as being 50% higher when harvesting bones. Uses 10 mana per minute. \\Lesser Bone Crafting: 1 You know how to use bone as a material or reagent for your creations. You have an instinctive knowledge of the magical potency of bones. No mana cost. \\Fossil Identification: 1 You can look at the skeletal or fossilized remains of creatures to identify their source. You can further infer the life cycles of such creatures. 5 mana cost. Oh, I could use that to get more information about whatever this Unaugured God was. I stared at the skeleton and thought of fossil identification. I felt the mana that twirled around my body diminish and grow lighter. I tried to commit that sensation to memory. Another thing to add to my now alarmingly large list of things to do, check if mana can be easier to use directly if it was partially used up or I had more to spare. [Armored Lesser Skeleton, raised just hours ago by an incomprehensibly powerful being to serve some purpose] \\Fossil Identification is now level 19! I shook myself and focused on the task ahead, filing away despairing at the relative mediocrity of my now highest level skill for later. And also that I had apparently died to a baby that wasn''t even a day old, that was definitely not something I was going to dwell upon. I brought my knife out and began to slowly detach one of those long tibia bones from a weird cartilaginous goo that held it in place. I was a short girl, not even accounting for the malnutrition, and the thing I was operating on was taller than any human could ever be so the tibia was actually the perfect length for me. My mana slowly dropped as I operated on the skeleton. I kept working, my mind focusing almost entirely on the task at hand while occasionally just checking to make sure I still had the mana to spare. Finally I beheld my great work. Two long bones that shone brightly in the sun. The epiphysis was intact on one end, that would rest under my arms and on the other end, the one that was supposed to make contact with the ground, it was slightly flattened for a better grip. Smaller pieces of the skeleton were tied with strips of my rather abused tshirt to form something that vaguely looked like a grip. I was split on the thing in all honesty, on one hand I was proud of what I''d made out of a skeleton but on the other, it was so rough that I just wanted to move on. Of course both of those emotions were promptly ignored when a barrage of notifications hit all at once. [Item created: Rough Bone Crutches. Due to working with Godtouched bone, massively increased experience was awarded.] \\Lesser Bone Harvesting is now level 23! \\Lesser Bone Crafting is now level 23! \\Scavenging And Scrounging is now level 8 \\Knife User is now level 7! \\[BONECRAFTER NOVICE] is now level 15! \\Class mastered [BONECRAFTER NOVICE]. +2 to STRENGTH, CELERITY, PERCEPTION AND ATTUNEMENT And then came the pain. NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD RACE: HUMAN ACTIVE CLASS: [NONE] CUMULATIVE CLASS LEVELS: [15] MASTERED CLASSES: [1] AGE: 17 MANA: 60/60 (REGEN 12 PER HOUR) STATS: STRENGTH: 8 CELERITY: 7 VITALITY: 5 ACUITY: 11 WILLPOWER: 13 PERCEPTION: 13 ATTUNEMENT: 12 Knuckebones I screamed as my body twisted. Pain. Pain was all I knew and pain was all I was. My sanity stretched as I felt in excruciating detail, all my muscles unraveling and reforging themselves over and over again. I must have screamed for days under that torture, it certainly felt like that. The sun in the sky however cheerfully insisted that it had been only minutes at best. Everything felt brighter, louder and my mana felt too heavy for me, almost suffocating me. I was not sure how long it took but eventually but soon enough, I was back in control. I found myself again from within the mass of quivering whimpering flesh curled up in a fetal position that I had become. So that''s why the five level classes exist. I had realized at some point in my agony. Had to ease someone into getting stats instead of just picking the one with the biggest numbers like a moron. \\Cold Blooded is now level 5! I laid there, still recovering and occasionally flexing my hands and marveling at my newfound strength. My body was still mine but it felt stronger, healthier, like I had a superior physical presence and mastery of my own body, like I was deliberately keeping my body the way it was instead of letting gravity do it.I was a woman on a mission and testing the actual range of things that had changed in me was not a priority, just had to test enough to not overshoot everything with my greater strength and celerity. But I did take a moment to wipe away the blood from my face. Foreheads apparently didn''t take kindly to people trashing in agony right besides a skeleton monster. Who knew? \\NO ACTIVE CLASS DETECTED. PLEASE SELECT ONE TO START OR RESUME LEVELING YOURSELF. I hadn''t expected to be done with my class so soon but if those bones gave so much experience then I''d be dumb to not abuse them as much as I could. I reopened my class screen and went to the utility magic section. I had seen something there that had stayed in my mind. There it was. \\BONE AUGUR¡¯S ACOLYTE (0/10) To glean information one shouldn''t know through augury is the path of the Shaman-Prophets of the Northern mountains. It is an inexact science and anything with sufficient power naturally occludes the eyes of lesser scryers. and yet, the Northern tribes endure as they have for centuries through this art. A BONE AUGUR can eventually learn to bend fate to her will, avoiding misfortune with the grace of the luck gods themselves as her enemies perish from tripping on their own blades before they ever reach her. A true BONE SHAMAN is rumored to be able to know the moves a warrior will make in a fight before it even begins. MASTERY BONUSES: +1 to ACUITY, PERCEPTION AND ATTUNEMENT Fine. It was probably inferior to the [FOREST GUIDE] class that I had been eyeing but free levels and skills are free. And there was no way I was ever going to successfully carry the whole skeleton with me anytime soon. \\Class [BONE AUGUR¡¯S ACOLYTE] selected \\Skill Lesser Bone Augury learned \\Lesser Bone Augury: 1 You can glean the knowledge of the world from mere bones. No more shall mundane secrets be hidden from you. By carving special runes on the distal phalanges (finger tips) of the left frontmost limb of a creature, you can make bone charms that you can toss in the air while asking a query and they will point you towards your target. Requires at least five charms. Has a chance of failure. Uses 15 mana per use. \\Lesser Bone Crafting is now level 25! \\Lesser Bone Harvesting is now level 26! \\Knife User is now level 10! Some skill levels later, I was the proud owner of a set of five finger bone charms with runes carved on them. I couldn''t read them but somehow I had known that those were what I had to carve on the bone. The knowledge was not mine but it was still mine, my thoughts spontaneously producing it like it were just an idea I had. I had also made another knife, this one made of bone but even I could tell that it was complete garbage. I was also not gaining as many levels in my skills as before, some of it I could blame the relative size of the bones for but carving those runes was absolutely a much more intricate job than my crutches. Evidently diminishing returns were in play here. Another thing to keep in mind. I was not going to use them immediately, I had learned my lesson well. I rose and walked a few steps away and laid down on the grass. Nothing around that I could injure herself with in my trashing. No skeletons or tree roots or sharp blades, just soft green grass. ¡°Where can I find some food and water?¡± I asked out loud, feeling a bit foolish. The bones were tossed into the air, they spun and moved unnaturally in the air as it shimmered. I could almost imagine seeing visions of cities and castles in the haze and then they landed beside my head. And there was no meaning in it. They all pointed in random directions. And the lack of any levels just confirmed that it hasn''t worked. And yet my mana was consumed. I grumbled to myself and tried again. This time it worked like a charm. A bone charm possibly. \\Lesser Bone Augury is now level 19! \\[BONE AUGUR¡¯S ACOLYTE] is now level 10! \\Class mastered [BONE AUGUR¡¯S ACOLYTE]. +1 to ACUITY, PERCEPTION AND ATTUNEMENT I was expecting pain like before but all I got was a sharp piercing headache that soon subsided. I was not sure if it was because I was getting used to it or maybe one point gains were just that mild but I was glad. my mana was hovering at 10 now. Not enough for an augury but enough for making something with bone if I wanted. But maybe by the time I picked my fourth class, it would regenerate enough. A girl could hope.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. New class time. I was actually kind of enjoying blazing my classes like this. If the trend for diminishing returns was any indicator then I won''t be instantly finishing classes like this for much longer but I could enjoy it while it lasted. What else did I need? I had mobility and navigation sorted out as well as I could reasonably sort them out in my present circumstances. Maybe something offense based? There was no [BONEMAGE] class anywhere. In fact, there was no other bone based class that I could find from just reading the titles. And my stats were apparently still too low to open up higher tier [BONECRAFTER] or [BONE AUGURY] classes. So that left me with a few options. Of course there was the [BLOODMAGE] route but I was not sure if it would be immediately useful to me. If every starting class was this weak then my blood magic was probably not going to be any different. In fact, it didn''t seem like just picking 15 level classes with promises of power in the future was the wisest course of action if they all gave me so many skills. I still had a limit to worry about. Other than the crutches, I was not sure that [BONECRAFTER] skills were going to be that useful for me right now compared to augury. Sure, with [BLOODMAGE] and a knife, I could make any wild animals attacking my bleed out but that didn''t mean anything if I was mauled to death as well. The defensive options were all things like aura barriers or giant shields, I didn''t have the mana to spare for the former and even if I made a bone shield, it would not work with my crutches. And even if I was sure that it would give me great experience, my mana was not up to the task. It was with great regret that I realized that I couldn''t do anything more with my kill unless I planned to return in the future. And assuming nothing got to the bones in the meantime and assuming I even remembered the place. That was a lot of assumptions to make for someone in my abysmal situation. Finally I found an option that I didn''t like but seemed like the best choice for me. \\MUGGER (0/5) The world is a dark place and you will make it just a shade darker. You are the one who lurks in dark alleyways and leaves bodies behind. Let the heroes go on their grand adventures, let the dragons hoard their mountains of wealth. The city is your lover and my seedy streets and pubs my bosom. The evil lich can be vanquished but the cockroaches always survive. As a MUGGER, you have three friends. Stealth, fear and the belief that the only honor that exists is in survival. You know how to leave no witnesses behind, be it through the shadows or through blood. MASTERY BONUSES: +1 to CELERITY I didn''t get why the class description sounded so fanatical. It was like something the leader of an assassin sect would say and not someone who pointed sharp objects at people and demanded their purses. \\Class [MUGGER] selected \\Skill Minor Stealth learned \\Dirty Fighter is now level 4! And with that, my active slots were full. What could I ditch? Intimidation seemed like the obvious choice for when I inevitably get something more useful. I briefly entertained the idea of taking that spine and making it a weapon like Aster did but I just couldn¡¯t carry it.
¡°Where can I find a safe space to shelter and rest?¡± I muttered to no response. Not even the shimmering visions I had seen before. Oh right, I was still out of mana. I leaned against a tree with blood red bark and sank into the soil with a sigh, slowly letting go of my crutches. I had enough mana for one augury now. Fishing out some oversized finger bones, I whispered while silently praying to the Dead God Quiraion. ¡°Where can I find a safe space to rest?¡± It worked on the first try. And the bones pointed in one direction. The direction from which I came, the clearing. \\Lesser Bone Augury is now level 22! I almost screamed again in frustration.
I briefly cursed Quiraion again as I finally discovered what my bone charms had deemed an acceptable source of food and water. It was a campfire in the middle of the forest with a single horse drawn carriage beside it. There were no horses. I was sure that there was water and food inside the carriage. But there was a problem. The owner of the tent lay dead outside it. A body, pale in death and blue from poison. And a creature the size of a small dog that looked like an unholy fusion of a spider and a scorpion was gorging itself on it. It happily tore off chunks of flesh and swallowed them whole without chewing, occasionally regurgitating the flesh back on the ground and slicing it into more manageable pieces with its fangs. Cold Blooded activated almost immediately and I slowly backed away from the giant flesh eating arachnoid, taking care to make no sudden movements or sounds. I was not scared of spiders but I was scared of giant venomous man eating monsters with thick exoskeletons that looked like they could have me for dinner and still be hungry.. \\Minor Stealth is now level 2! \\[MUGGER] is now level 2!
¡®Where''s the nearest human settlement?¡¯ I asked a few hours later. \\Lesser Bone Augury is now level 25! ¡®Okay so if my left is yes and right is no. Is it within a reasonable walking distance?¡¯ This time every bone fell in a circle and all of them faced inwards. Message received. Don''t try to cheat the magic bone charms. I hadn''t encountered any wildlife beyond the man eating arachnoid so far but I was hungry and thirsty and aching all over. my arms were stiff from supporting the crutches for so long. The sun was soon going to set and I was sure that it was night when the really dangerous critters came out to play. my time was limited and running out. I was becoming desperate, and desperate people made stupid decisions.
I was sure it was a bad idea as I stared at the Arachnoid that was still eating its victim. Unfortunately bad ideas are sometimes better than no ideas at all and so, I found myself in my current predicament. I snuck closer, unsteady because of my new weapon. \\Minor Stealth is now level 3! The creature was covered in black chitin and looked like an abnormally large spider with extra bits attached. Twelve hairy limbs and ten bulbous red eyes on an engorged hirsute head and a tail stinger like a scorpion¡¯s but much longer, even in relation to the rest of its body. The front most limbs ended in narrow pincers like daggers and the rest were all legs. Its body pulsated with each chunk of meat that it consumed and I was almost sure that it had grown just a bit larger. A segment of its exoskeleton sloughed off as the creature froze and began twitching and I could see a new plate forming. It was pinkish and soft looking but it was darkening before my eyes. The creature resumed its meal. I lost 5 points of mana. \\Find Weakness is now level 3! I was about 90% sure I''d die even if the knife tied to the end of one of my crutches found the next regrowing plate. I doubted it would die immediately and I didn''t think I could fend it off or run with one crutch faster than its most likely venomous tail reached her, or I fell and the mouth that I hadn''t seen up close but could tear off flesh so easily ate her. And if I went into actual knife range then I was as good as dead. I looked at the thing that was growing larger and stronger every minute, I stared at the pathetic little approximation of a spear she''d made that I didn''t know how to use. It wasn''t like I hadn''t ran away without even trying to fight from it before, it was just sensible. And I hobbled away once again. Turns out, I was not that desperate actually. The Cave The cave looked normal and my bone charms had guided me to it but it seemed ominous. Quiraion only knew what kind of monster lurked inside, just waiting to gorge itself on me. I just didn''t have the mana to spare for augury anymore, it was entirely bottomed out and I really didn''t want to spend the night out. Really I had only one option and I knew I was waffling. Not for the first time that day, I regretted not really knowing what kind of trees correlated to which biomes and what animals inhabited those biomes. Even if only so that I could have a vague inkling of what type of monsters to expect. But no, I was going in completely blind as usual. My augury didn¡¯t tell me about any actual danger in the way between me and whatever I was looking for. In some ways, augury was my strongest skill but more often than not, it was also just slightly better than tossing a coin. Shuddering as I remembered that spider monster, I stepped inside. The cave was surprisingly mundane. Maybe I''d expect glowing moss or something but no, it was just dark. The sun was fading behind me and soon, I''d be in almost complete darkness. Maybe I should have picked up a mage class, even if just so that I could burn mana to produce fireworks. Five minutes or so later, I decided that stumbling any deeper with the amount of visibility I had was ill advised and tried to make me as small and unobtrusive as I could and settled down for a long overdue rest.
The sound of something skittering around woke me up. I didn''t know how long I was asleep but my mana was full so it had to be at least five hours if my math was not completely off. I held my breath and listened. Whatever it was, it didn''t sound as big as the scorpion spider I had encountered earlier. Secondly, it didn''t seem to be aware of me. And finally, it seemed to be alone. My highest stat was perception at 14 and while that might not have been exceptionally high, all my senses were boosted by it and I could make out slightly darker blobs of darkness in the dark. And one of them was moving. Cold Blooded activated and I remembered that killing things made me stronger. ¡°KILL TO ABSORB THE SOULS OF YOUR VICTIMS.¡± My hand slowly went to my knife, careful to not move too suddenly. Patience was the name of the game here. My fingers closed around an uncomfortably cold handle. \\Minor Stealth is now level 4! And then, I waited. If the thing came closer, I would strike but I was not going to chase it. It was looking for something, hopefully not fresh Anya meat. Then finally, after what felt like ages, it was in range and my arm moved even before my mind consciously decided to do it. It lashed out and buried the blade in my target, pinning it to the soil as it trashed violently in its last moments. \\Spider-Scorpion Hatchling slain \\Cold Blooded is now level 6! \\Quick Killer is now level 2! \\[MUGGER] is now level 4! No Knife User level but it was already high from my earlier bone carving. I wrenched the blade out and went back to sleep, still very tired. My dreams were about being overrun by a tide of darkness, hundreds of spider-scorpions burying me under their mass as a cold blue light shone balefully from above.
When I next awoke, it was morning. My throat was patched and my stomach was starting to protest. I ignored them in lieu of examining my kill with Fossil Identification. [Spider-Scorpion Hatchling, spider-scorpions were originally a biological superweapon designed to overrun entire countries but over the course of thousands of years, the modern spider-scorpions emerged as an ecologically sustainable aggressive predator. Spider-scorpions are solitary hunters that use their venomous stingers to kill their prey.] I didn''t know quite how to feel about that. Spider-scorpions being solitary hunters was good, I will not have to worry about swarms of them. But their origin was concerning. I didn''t have the best experience with biological superweapons in my old world and between that and the existence of class paths for factory farming of humans, it didn''t paint a flattering picture of the world I had found myself in. I was not even close to being hungry enough to consider eating raw spider-scorpion so I shakily rose, Cold Blooded letting me power through the screaming my arms were doing. I trundled deeper into the cave now that it was very dimly lit. The cave was not very deep and I soon found myself at its end. It terminated in a wide natural chamber that opened up to the sky above. At the center of the chamber was the skeleton of a long dead animal. It looked like a bear to me. A small rodent-like mammal suddenly tried to run past me and I rammed my weapon through its skull before I could even realize that it was rather cute and probably harmless. It was a snow white rat but with a set of fractal blue lines on its back. It looked like the right size for something the tiny spider-scorpion hatchling would have been hunting. \\Mana Rabbit slain \\Quick Killer is now level 3! \\[MUGGER] is now level 5! \\Class mastered [MUGGER]. +1 to CELERITY I was proud of myself for managing to stay upright as the pain hit. It hurt less than when I mastered my first class but more than with my second. So assuming the pattern held, gaining physical stats actually hurt more than gaining just mental stats. Just had to grit my teeth, I didn''t even have to smile on top of that unlike my old world.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. \\Skill Pain Tolerance learned Another passive skill, just dulled pain and reduced its debilitating effects on me while ensuring I was still aware of it. More effective per level but no numbers. I tried to use my Fossil Identification on the mana rabbit (it didn''t look like a rabbit to me) but apparently it didn''t count when it was still all fleshy even though creatures with exoskeletons counted. The bear skeleton was just a big bear called a cave bear that sounded so normal that I didn''t even get a level from it. I should probably learn to ignore the notifications lest I be distracted at a key moment, Cold Blooded should help with that but it was not worth the risk. Anyways, I had a class to pick. I could pick something focusing on endurance or something for navigating and surviving in the wild. Or I could just pick [BLOODMAGE] like I wanted to. I had realized that at this point, any single class wasn''t going to help me escape in time. I was going to be here for at least a few days, I needed to move slowly and minimize the actual danger I was in. If the bleeding could be induced at range then I could use it on any animal like creature and use my stealth to wait until it died. I was not sure how well it would work on spider-scorpions and other arthropods that didn''t exactly have blood in them. The loss of fluid could kill but I wouldn''t want to gamble on that being close enough to blood for my class. And it was all conjecture based on just hopes and dreams. I didn''t even know what that fluid was called, the trouble with having to abandon school even before I went to high school. Another problem was that my mana regeneration was slow and every hour I used blood magic was one hour where I wasn''t auguring to find my way. Mana was already a scarce resource for me and [BLOODMAGE] was another persistent drain on it. At close range, I was not great against anything that wasn''t small animals or unsuspecting people and the non-mage ranged classes all relied on weaponry that I didn''t have and would run out of ammunition for even if I went back to the two skeletons and made some. It had to be a mage of some sorts or something with a separate fighter that I controlled. Something like an unmanned drone or something. I looked at the other offerings on display that seemed good. I had a new 15 level class that I was sure was unlocked because of the spider-scorpion I''d killed \\SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE (0/15) A SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE understands that the most successful form of life in the world is that of the insectoids and that''s for a reason. She can tame insectoids to make them do her bidding. She can further enhance her minions¡¯ ferocity by sacrificing her mana. At higher class levels, SWARMCALLERS can bring down apocalyptic swarms of insects on those that dare oppose her or she can command a few titans that can even wrestle with drakes. Or maybe, even darker paths await a SWARMCALLER that eschews the weaknesses of the mortal races. MASTERY BONUSES: +2 to VITALITY, ACUITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT I looked at it and knew that my choice was made. Poor [BLOODMAGE], it was supposed to be my second class but now I was on my fourth. \\Class [SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] selected \\Skill Tame Lesser Insectoids learned \\Tame Lesser Insectoids: 1 You can attempt to tame insectoids to take them as your vassals and soldiers. Unlike other tamer classes, SWARMCALLERS don''t get Empathic Bonds or similar skills. For swarm and eusocial insectoids, you can tame them en masse. The chance of failure increases based on the swarm or colony size, maturity, intellect and power of the target and other minor factors. You can only possess one discrete unit of tamed insectoids at a time, be it a single insectoid or a single swarm or colony. Taming can''t be broken by a swarm unit unless the tamed unit is or becomes at least six times as strong as the tamer. Removing or losing this skill will make you cede control of everything you have tamed. Injuring or weakening a target makes them more susceptible to being successfully tamed! Uses 30 mana per use. //WARNING: Active skill slot limits exceeded. You can replace a skill or refuse to equip your new skill. Unequipped skills can¡¯t be equipped again for a period of time determined by their power. Unequipped skills do not confer any benefits but exist and count for consolidation purposes only. \\Skill Insectoid Physiology Knowledge learned \\The skill Basic Earth Education has partially consolidated with Insectoid Physiology Knowledge into the passive skill Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge. \\Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge: 1 There are few types of life more numerous and varied than insectoids. Across worlds, you have encountered different insectoids and have understood how they each thrive and where they fail and now your knowledge will expand even more. With this skill, you gain an instinctual understanding of how mundane and magical insects function, their strengths and weaknesses. With each level, your repository of knowledge expands and you learn about stronger and more esoteric insectoids. \\Spell and Technique Lists unlocked due to picking your first spell using class. Spell And Technique Lists contain spells and techniques that independently progress from both skill and class levels. Learn them through tutelage or experimentation. They don''t improve or consolidate like skills and successfully improving or merging them will just create a new and better spell or technique. They are however considered skills for determining if other skills or traits affect them. \\Swarm Magic spell list unlocked. \\Swarm Magic Spell list Hasten Swarm: 25 mana Molting: 50 mana Those were a lot of notifications. I replaced Intimidation as I had planned with the tame skill. It was low level and low quality enough that it would be made available again in a bit over a week if I wanted it back. The knowledge skill was weird, it gave me knowledge about random insects in the same way I had known how to make bone charms. And that the fluid that insects had in them was called hemolymph and it would count as blood.
\\Lesser Bone Augury is now level 26. I was once again outside the cave as it held nothing else of value for me. The cave was useful when I needed to relieve myself but that was it. In any case, I was done with hiding and jumping at shadows that I was convinced were hunting me. I finally had an actionable plan and method now. I was hunting for the small dog sized Spider-Scorpion that I had fled from twice. It should have grown big and strong from its meal but not so far that my skill wouldn''t work on it. Unless it had killed and eaten at least three more humans since when I last saw it. Modern Spider-Scorpions didn''t grow into behemoths like their ancestors anymore. I knew that. I also knew that spider scorpions referred to rest after eating large meals. I would make sure my mana was full when I confronted it. That gave my two attempts at taming it before my mana would dip too low. \\Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge is now level 3! A girl and her dog I found my quarry resting not far from the carriage. Now almost the size of a Dalmatian dog; I counted yet another set of legs jutting out of the now elongated arachnoid body, bringing the total to twelve legs and fourteen limbs. Its stinger tipped tail was now longer proportionally and it coiled around the creature like a serpent. The tail with its segmented chitin platings resembled a large spiky centipede without the legs. It was somehow even more hirsute than before and there were patches of rust colored hair in the otherwise black hair. Like all spiders, it couldn''t close its numerous eyes and they had somehow bloated even more since I last saw it, disfiguring an already lopsided face. A large and slightly off center eye dominated the face. It was a genuinely ugly thing, even to my abysmally low standards for what counted as cute. My distaste for it didn''t mean much when I could tell that it could kill me in seconds and conversely, was also a better protector for my fragile body than I could be by myself. My knowledge skill was telling me that it was still within the limits of what my Tame Lesser Insectoids could handle but I had to be careful to not let it grow too quickly. But first, I had to tame it. Tame Lesser Insectoids only worked from a very short range and while it didn''t require actual touch, I still had to get close enough to it that I practically could touch it. And that was a problem because I was sure that the spider-scorpion¡¯s perception had to have risen too after it had grown. I had time but not an infinite amount of it. I inched close to my target, watching for any twitching or stiffening that indicated that it was waking up. \\Minor Stealth is now level 5! I almost jumped at the notification but Cold Blooded stopped me. Now that I was closer, I noticed that over half of its tail was caked in dried blood. A mental image of that appendage stabbing through the guts of hapless victims rose unbidden in my mind and I was once again reminded that these creatures were originally made to destroy civilizations. \\Minor Stealth is now level 6! Wow, it had to be really strong if my stealth was levelling this quickly. No, now was not the time to be distracted. Any moment now. And done, I was in range and I had managed to do it without waking up the monstrosity before her. I gently set my crutches down until I was sitting at roughly eye level with the slumbering Insectoid. It was even more terrifying up close than I had thought from afar. I didn¡¯t need Intimidation, taming this was enough. ¡°Tame Lesser Insectoid¡± I whispered. My mana almost halved itself. And it didn''t work. And the thing began to stir. Its massive tail was uncoiling itself with the sound of a heavy corpse being dragged across a floor as the bulk of its mass began to rise. Its many eyes focused on me and I could see black slits in the middle of the crimson orbs. The hair that covered its body bristled and its mandibles clicked. Every inch of its body promised my death and it would not let me even attempt to resist that fate. And I understood it, understood that I would die before I could force myself to even move. I was in the presence of a far greater predator than I was equipped to handle. Cold Blooded activated instantly and my body could respond again. My mind split, one operating perfectly and doing what she knew had to be done, and another that just observed disinterestedly. Which one was I? I couldn¡¯t ever answer that. I knew that there was only one option left that wasn''t an absurd gamble. My eyes tracked the stinger racing towards my face and my lips quickly and silently formed the words. \\Cold Blooded is now level 7! \\Tame Lesser Insectoid is now level 5! \\Dead Quiraion¡¯s Blessing is now on cooldown. Cooldown remaining: 365 days. \\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 5! \\Spider-scorpion worker successfully tamed. You can now command it. \\You can now see the status of your spider-scorpion worker. \\You can now cast your swarm magic by using your spider-scorpion adult as a catalyst. The tail froze in mid air just inches away from my face and then retreated as the spider-scorpion curled it back around itself and then relaxed its legs. I supposed it was a gesture of surrender or supplication. And thank Quiraion for that, my mana tank was almost entirely depleted and I had no other tricks left. Nothing a measly 10 points could accomplish unless I planned to fight it off and I doubted it would have worked. My trump card was unavailable for a year now. Even though I believed the creature was a worthy investment, I hadn''t wanted to use up the blessing so soon but it was pointless if I died right here and now. I noticed that I had a new option in my interface that read ¡°Tamed Companions¡±. I ¡¯clicked¡¯ it. NAME: [NONE] CURRENT RACE: [SPIDER-SCORPION WORKER] TIER: 3 AGE: 2 MANA: 40/40 (REGEN 8 PER HOUR)Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. BIOMANA: 189/330 (REGEN 132 PER HOUR) STATS: STRENGTH: 32 CELERITY: 27 VITALITY: 34 ACUITY: 8 WILLPOWER: 6 PERCEPTION: 20 ATTUNEMENT: 8 SKILLS: PASSIVES:
  1. Ravenous: 28
  2. Ambush Predator: 21
  3. Wild Terror: 12
  4. Omnivorous: 9
  5. Poison Resistance: 19
  6. Rapid Healing: 18
  7. Biomana Converter: 21
  8. Hunter of Men and Monsters: 28
ACTIVES:
  1. Inject Venom: 29
  2. Perpetual Molt: 15
  3. Genetic Assimilation: 4
  4. Burst of Speed: 27
  5. Paralyzing Gaze: 13
  6. Sharpen Limb: 23
TRAITS: I assumed the traits were because of the history of the species as a superweapon. I doubted a 2 year old monster that had earned the moniker of ¡°The Herald of Ruin¡± was not even six times as strong as me. A sufficiently determined child could kill me! Whatever the Third Calamity was, it had to have been powerful to have earned that name. I hoped it was not around anymore. My Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge was constantly trying to tell me about this Third Calamity but the train of thought just fizzled out every time. It died before it could even get going, evidently its power or age made it beyond the purview of the skill at the moment. All I got from it was that it happened a long time ago and the idea of desolated cities and even the gods being involved. The last notification was also welcome as I hadn''t had the ability to test out my two swarm spells yet. Hasten Swarm sped up every action of the swarm by 10% with the perception (not the stat) and reaction speeds to match for five minutes while Molting let insectoids heal to full health over a few hours as long as they weren''t dead by forcing them to molt their exoskeletons. Both required a target insect and cost 25 and 50 mana respectively so I hadn''t had the means to see how effective they were but now I just had to wait for my mana to recover. The spells were already a force multiplier for another force multiplier and they weren''t really that costly compared to my regular skills. A cracking noise brought me back to reality and I noticed for the first time what the spider-scorpion was resting on. Eggs. At least half a dozen of them and they were all hatching as one, as if magically knowing that their mother was no longer going to protect them. They were all ugly and slimy as they attempted to crawl out of their eggs. My knowledge skill hadn''t told me that it was a mom earlier. Spider-scorpions didn''t have any sexual dimorphism and reproduced asexually using the prey they consumed to introduce genetic variation so as far as I was considered, they were all potential moms. Before I could order my totally not a minion to deal with them, its tail lashed out and crushed them all, egg shells and chitin both squelching instantly under the sheer mass of the serpentine limb. \\Spider-Scorpion Hatchling x6 slain \\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 7! Wait, I got the experience for the kills it made? That solved a lot of problems. Oh yes, forget whatever I thought about its appearance. It was the best pet ever. I looked at it in a new light, the spider-scorpion¡¯s body was slack and its eyes had lost the spark of a predator that it had before, and I just knew that it would never regain it. I won''t ever allow it to. In some ways, it was a lot like me, wasn¡¯t it? Disfigured, broken, and condemned to being alone. It too, like me, was made for a war that it had no real stakes in but was forced by its nature to fight and die in. And it too, for the scary exterior, was just trying to survive. And if not for my needs, it wouldn''t be shackled and made to fight. To it, I was not that different from Quiraion was to me. I didn''t feel sorry for magically enslaving it, oh no, I wasn''t that nice. But I understood it. And by understanding, I empathized with a man eating spider. And that was, in its fucked up way, a beautiful thing too. Almost unconsciously, I raised my hand and touched the hairy head of my new partner and gently rubbed it, carefully avoiding its eyes. It was a friend now and friends didn''t poke each other''s eyes out. It felt coarse and hard under my fingers but I didn''t mind. ¡°Want to hear a story? Back where I came from, there was a tragedy about a princess who fell in love with a man. They had two kids before the man foolishly decided that he wanted to abandon her for another princess.¡± I whispered lightly as far too many red eyes stared blankly at me, not really comprehending what I was saying. That was fine. This felt important. ¡°Now the first princess had sacrificed a lot for the man, including her very birthright and family. So do you know what she did?¡± I couldn''t stop now even if I wanted to. Something was compelling me, something that I knew that I could only stop by rejecting the creature before me in every possible way and I wouldn''t, couldn¡¯t do that. ¡°She decided that she would take away everything from the man and make him bitterly rue his unfaithfulness for the rest of his wretched life. She had given him his life, his fame, his power. And she would take it all away. She poisoned the second princess and then killed her own children and then finally, she fled before her deeds could be discovered. In just one day, one flash, the man had lost his wealth, his family, his love and the person he was attempting to court and he only had himself to blame.¡± I leaned closer as I felt some power build up in the air like static. An alien blue light seemed to shine down upon me for just a moment. ¡°That princess¡¯s name was Medea. And from now on, you too shall be known as Medea and together, dearest Medea, we too shall have our revenge.¡± \\Tame Lesser Insectoid is now level 8! \\Medea, the spider-scorpion adult is now your familiar. \\Skill Enslaved Familiar¡¯s Bond learned \\Enslaved Familiar¡¯s Bond: 1 Familiars are base creatures that a person may bond with to form a life long partnership. A familiar is the closest friend of its owner and together they form a team that''s greater than the sum of parts. A familiar and its master are one unit and betrayal of that bond is anathema to both. You don''t have that kind of bond and now you never will. You have broken a creature''s mind and warped its very nature at the fundamental level to serve your own ends and thus, somehow, you have a ¡®familiar¡¯. With each level, your familiar has 1% more stats rounded down when in your proximity. The range at which it is considered to be in proximity to you is 0.333 meters per level +5. Any beneficial effects on your familiar will be 5% stronger if you apply them yourself. Furthermore, you can mentally order your familiar to perform any task and it will attempt to do it to the best of its ability. Your familiar can also deliver touch based effects for you. Your familiar can never disobey you. Current bonuses: 1%, 5.333 meters and 5%. Rest I moaned in pain when I woke in the sweet embrace of actual mattresses and blankets. My arms felt like they were being ripped apart and my muscles spasmed as a migraine recreated the Third Calamity¡¯s rampage in my head. \\Pain Tolerance is now level 3! It didn''t feel any better after the level up. I thought about my home, about how it was largely a known quantity. It sucked but I had others in similar circumstances and even when they were not friendly, it meant that I had a herd to follow instead of figuring out everything on my own. Sure the world I was in now was probably better once I made my way to civilization but I didn''t know how far that was. I didn''t even know if I could make the journey. I missed home. It was a horrible place but the horror was known and just surviving was my only impetus. Here I was alone and I was expected to kill gods. And the only ally that I could count on was a spider monster designed to bring civilizations to ruin. After acquiring Medea and then somehow managing to climb into the carriage to raid its supplies, Cold Blooded had decided that I was no longer in any immediate danger and I''d crashed. Crashed hard. Both the weariness and minor injuries I had collected slammed into me all at once accompanied by a long overdue panic attack. I must have spent an hour just crying and whimpering while cuddling Medea like it was the world¡¯s ugliest plushie. I didn''t want to know how it had gotten inside but I appreciated its presence. God, I was thinking about a giant man eating arachnid monster that I had enslaved like it was a beloved emotional support pet. I didn''t know what kind of horrible monsters were waiting for me on the way, or at my destination. I had made a point to not think about arriving at the place and being thrown into a factory farm for experience. No, that was a different problem that I would not worry about now. The journey was already daunting enough. Maybe a dragon or something would eat me. Or maybe it would be that the nearest human settlement was so far away that I would die on the way. Did the carriage even have enough supplies? One thing I''d forced myself to check before I had collapsed entirely was how much supplies I had. The camper had a few decently large gourds filled with water and some hard brick like bread that would last me for about a week or so if I didn''t eat any more than what was strictly necessary. And that was assuming I didn''t get food poisoning or something. Nothing here looked particularly sanitary. My throbbing skull told me in no uncertain terms that I was not even allowed to look at the booze. At least the carriage had a toilet not dissimilar to what I''d expect to find in a train. Another unwelcome discovery was that the erstwhile owner of the carriage was probably someone important. It looked to be more of an early industrial age European contraption to me with oil lamps that used 5 mana to ignite and three pairs of wheels. I mean, what passed for such in the media I knew. It was large, larger than what I''d expect from a personal carriage, both longer and more armored with spokes and supports of steel reinforcing the frame. It could also be fully sealed from the inside. This thing was probably made for crossing vast swathes of dangerous land, like say spider-scorpions territory and it showed. I doubted that it was horses that had pulled this thing. Then a few notifications interrupted my musings about the origins of my new abode. \\Spider-Scorpion whelp slain \\Enslaved Familiar''s Bond is now level 7! \\Tame Lesser Insectoid is now level 12! \\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 11! At some point Medea had extracted itself from my grip to go secure our location from other predators. A few mana rabbits and a spider-scorpion whelp had already died while I stayed inside and hoped against hope that I wouldn''t complete my class too soon. I couldn''t take the pain now. ¡°Are the spider scorpions increasing?¡± I asked the black ceiling of the carriage out loud while nibbling at bread. The ceiling didn¡¯t answer. How rude! I knew that it was dangerous to eat a lot after being hungry for long but it hadn¡¯t been that long. I had faced actual starvation before. Still, I only ate little and slowly while Medea continued to slaughter its kin. It was looking like I had landed in a spider scorpion habitat. I''d encountered a lot of the supposed solitary hunters by now. The answer came from my skill. Modern spider-scorpions were territorial unlike the swarming hordes of antiquity and Medea, like all spider-scorpion adults, was constantly facing challenges from potential upstarts trying to secure territory. No, it was struggling to claim territory. Medea was the reason I hadn''t encountered any other large predators until now. I could command it to ignore them but in that case, we would eventually have to deal with trouble actually looking for us. And it probably would, spider-scorpions were territorial solitary hunters but also tend to have territories that bordered and increased aggression meant that overpopulation had compelled them to fight for territory or expand into unoccupied lands. That, or something had been driving them away. That meant that with time, we would be dealing with more and stronger spider-scorpions than what we were seeing so far. We had to leave, and quickly. \\Diverse Insectoid Physiology Knowledge is now level 4!
Hours later, I forced myself to crawl to the open front of the carriage; I stared at what looked like a Victorian era car dashboard. Two parallel slabs of sloping dark metal and wood were affixed at a slight angle before me. One above the other with the upper one protruding so that it started at the same distance as the one below before angling away from me. First I examined the top slab. There was a blue pyramid on the left that lightly glowed, a red pyramid on the right that didn''t, something that looked like a brass circle affixed to a stick, and what I thought looked like a circular compass on top of it. If it was in fact a compass then I was facing south-west right now. That is of course, if this compass pointed to the north. If it was a compass. Nothing in the upper slab seemed excessively complex, I was afraid that it would be a monstrosity that no one without the skills could even comprehend. The second slab had a rectangular glass screen with a needle that was rapidly oscillating vertically and far too many knobs and needles that were beyond me. The carriage was comfortable, and safe if I stayed in it. If only I could move the damn thing. Medea was almost certainly not strong enough to pull it, and even if it could, I didn''t want to tie down the only combat capable part of this duo. Anya and her man eating bioweapon! I fished out the charms and once again asked for the location of the nearest town. North West. Well I had to try to make it. Somehow. But first, another nap.
I had figured out how to use the lamps accidentally while trying to force my mana to move. I had slipped and some of the flowing energy had touched a lamp. It ignited as my mana decreased by 5. I had not paid the crystals in the driver¡¯s compartment much attention earlier but the lamps had a small similar crystal at their base, hidden by dark painted metal. If I was correct, and that was another big if, then maybe the vehicle operated on the same principles.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The ¡®Dashboard¡¯ didn''t seem that complicated after all. I touched the blue pyramid and nothing happened. I touched the red pyramid and my mana bottomed out entirely, faster than I could even see the flow of mana. The brass circle unfolded into three concentric rings each attached by a single rod that ran through the middle of the entire thing horizontally to a much diminished circle. The red pyramid shone feebly. Yay for progress. After calling Medea back to me, I began to fiddle with the rings. The outermost and the largest ring could be pushed and held up or down from its resting position to make the vehicle move forward or backward, the middle ring was for turning but the purpose of the third one eluded me. But who cared? I had a magical automobile. A magical automobile that worked. I laughed even if I was still woozy and instantly emptying my mana made me feel even worse. ANd so began my hopefully uneventful journey. Far too soon, the carriage stopped and the ring once again retracted in a flat circle. The red pyramid was dark again. But now I had an idea. I touched the blue pyramid again and tried to imagine the reverse of what using the red pyramid felt like, what the lamp felt like, instead of mana draining from me, I imagined mana entering from outside. At first it didn¡¯t work, but when it did, it all clicked into place and the blurry mana flowing around me snapped into crystal c;ear focus.. \\Skill Mana Direction learned Mana Direction: 1 You can direct the flow of your mana, you can push it into appropriate receptacles or drain it from charged mana crystals. EFFECT: With each level, your mana loss during mana transactions decrease by 1% and transfers are 3% faster. Current bonus: 1% and 3% respectively.
The blue crystal had a lot of mana and I was pretty sure that it was regenerating by itself slowly. Every so often I would gain Mana Direction or Lesser Bone Augury levels as we made our way across the forest. If we were attacked or Medea became hungry then Enslaved Familiar Bond would level up. We had stopped finding so many spider scorpions and that was encouraging but nothing else so far gave me as much experience so [SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] became the first class that I had active for more than a day. I was almost missing the pain I had started to associate with stat gain.Almost. One thing that I was happy about was discovering a set of black tunic and pants that fit me reasonably well. I had found it among a bundle of clothes in a corner of the carriage. There was a lot of clothing in a wide range of sizes. Maybe Medea¡¯s victim had been a merchant. Oh well, nothing I could do for him at this point. That coupled with a Victorian style top hat made me feel at least vaguely presentable. Of course, the monocle was too much even for me. Until I looked into a small wall affixed mirror and decided that it completed the look far too well, that is. I thought it looked kind of like Then finally, around two days after I had figured out how to drive, Lesser Bone Augury reached level 30. \\Lesser Bone Augury has reached its highest level and has absorbed Fossil Identification to evolve into Ossific Communion \\Ossific Communion: 30 Some Northern Shaman-Prophets use their skills to directly commune with the spirits of the dead that inhabit this world. Such spirits are of the recently deceased and lack the mental or magical facilities of actual spectres and similar undead. By using bone charms and the expenditure of some mana, you can ask them to point you towards places and people that you seek. Furthermore, you get a small vision of your destination. As usual, places or people with a high amount of magical power can evade or confuse your spirits. You can also know the identity along with some additional information of the dead by examining their remains. By using mana, you can even relive the moments of their death. Uses 30 mana per use. So that''s why actives don''t improve per level. The new skill was superior in every way and also removed an otherwise unused skill, something I was grateful for. Both my passive and active slots were full. It cost more but the blue pyramid had a lot of mana in it. I was probably already burning it faster than it could regenerate but I wouldn''t run out anytime soon unless I used the skill every thirty minutes or something. If all skills evolved at level 30 then Lesser Bone Harvesting or Lesser Bone Crafting could realistically be maxed out in a day or two. They would also merge, right? I still had my crutches and a bone knife made from Godtouched bone to work with. I could carve some designs on my crutches to begin but I just didn''t have much energy to do so between driving and resting for the night. Repeatedly emptying and refilling my mana was very exhausting. Medea usually travelled alongside the carriage instead of inside but I knew it would come inside if I willed it to and I always recalled it inside at night. If something tried to attack me when I was sleeping then I would have it close. \\Skills at level 30 and above are more volatile and can consolidate and evolve freely instead of at fixed levels. Better skills will increase the possibility of unlocking superior classes and other similar skills. Beware that better skills come with a proportionate increase in costs
My newly evolved skill also gained no levels in the meantime, it was almost torturously slow compared to how quickly Lesser Bone Augury had grown but it was not an immediate problem. I had seen my destination as a vision when I augured with it, an industrial town lightly covered in what looked like green smog that sometimes glowed. Great towers belched out the gas all night but went silent as the sun rose. Numerous lamps and street lights pierced the smog when it inevitably destroyed all visibility. Didn¡¯t look like the cheeriest place but I had been expecting a medieval town or something like that. On the fifth day, I finally mastered my class. \\Gemstone Krait slain \\Enslaved Familiar''s Bond is now level 13! \\[SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE] is now level 15! \\Class mastered [SWARMCALLER NOVITIATE]. +2 to VITALITY, ACUITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT I spasmed and cried out as the vitality increase remolded my body again. But one way or another, I was getting better at dealing with it. New class time. I had unlocked [BONEMAGE] after evolving Ossific Communion but I was pretty sure I was not ready for a 20 level class just yet. Maybe after one or two more class ups. And anyways, I actually had a class patiently waiting for me. \\BLOODMAGE INITIATE (0/15) A BLOODMAGE INITIATE uses her blood to both heal and harm. She speeds up the natural healing rate of the body for allies and induces internal or external bleeding in her enemies at this small step on the Eternal Ziggurat of the BIOMANCER. At higher class levels, BIOMANCERS can regrow entire bodies, regenerate from small traces of DNA, mutate themselves or others into great monstrosities and absorb biological traits from their foes who find their very bodies in open rebellion against them. MASTERY BONUSES: +2 to STRENGTH, VITALITY, WILLPOWER AND ATTUNEMENT \\Class [BLOODMAGE INITIATE] selected \\Skill Blood Sense Learned \\Blood Sense: 1 There are many reasons that one may have chosen to walk this path, maybe you are a hunter stalking your prey, a detective trying to solve a murder or an aspiring vampire queen but you have learned how to sense blood around you. No more shall your enemies sneak up on you or bloodbaths be hidden from you. You send a pulse of energy centred on you that informs you of all sources of blood over a sufficient quantity around you in a sphere, be it in a living body or otherwise. Drops, small stains or exceptionally small creatures will not be sensed by you. Uses 20 mana per use. \\Skill Blood Bag Learned \\Blood Bag: 1 The average adult human body produces around 43 mls of blood per day after experiencing blood loss until it regains the amount lost. But not you, you regenerate your blood faster than most and it will only become faster from now on. Beware that your body will not produce something from nothing and iron, nutrients and so on will be consumed to produce the extra blood. EFFECT: Your body produces 5% more blood per level. Current bonus: 5% //WARNING: Passive skill slot limits exceeded. You can replace a skill or refuse to equip your new skill. Unequipped skills can¡¯t be equipped again for a period of time determined by their power. Unequipped skills do not confer any benefits but exist and count for consolidation purposes only. \\Blood Magic spell list unlocked \\Blood Magic Spell list Induce Bleeding: 35 mana Dilute Blood: 20 mana Coagulation: 20 mana New Delport Navidson was not what anyone would call an honest man. He was a simple city guard who was paid to look tough and angry and make sure that anyone who entered New Delport knew to behave. Just stand in armor at the gates with a sword and a gun all day, occasionally giving the stink eye to anyone who had the indecency of looking impoverished in public. And if some unmarked packages came through every six or so months that he happened to not register, well, sometimes he just missed things. And once his shift was over and coins had exchanged hands, he would go to his favorite bar and get wasted. Maybe he would also leer and catcall at the waitress if the grumpy old proprietor was occupied. Now maybe he was not that different from the lowlifes that skulked on the streets after curfew but he was a guild employed city guard. His enchanted armor made him better than the scum. He was a civilized man, dammit! He just had his vices. Everyone in New Delport had. His vices just required him to selectively not do his job. All that said, the point was that Navidson was a man who followed a particularly not so rigid routine that rewarded him and anything that could disrupt this routine was a problem. A problem like a small light olive skinned girl with a tamed spider-scorpion of all things. She was babbling something about being attacked by spider-scorpions after she was already injured in an accident, she pointed to her legs for emphasis. They looked like they had met the business end of red caltrops that grew into and within the feet of anyone unlucky enough to step on them. He winced in not entirely faked sympathy. She had apparently been travelling with a bunch of other people who were presumably all dead but she had somehow escaped alive due to what was basically luck with a touch of fighting like a suicidal lunatic. But no, the story didn''t end there. She had managed to kill a few hatchlings to pick up a tamer class and then tamed her companion. And the story still continued, she had found a carriage in the forest with its owner dead from spider-scorpions and had driven it all the way to New Delport. He recorded her statements, confirming that as far as his skills could tell, she wasn''t lying. Lie Detection was not perfect and could be tricked or simply overpowered but he doubted the shivering and slightly emaciated girl with bloodshot eyes and bags under them could do that. Afterwards he gently guided her towards the Security Guild quarters while calling a carriage for her. He made a show of being concerned for her, promising that the guild would take care of her, a soft smile on his face that didn''t match his inner thoughts. Now there were quite a few issues with her story, though none of them were necessarily her fault. Spider scorpions shouldn''t even exist this far out and she claimed that she encountered multiple. That implied an incursion was imminent if not already ongoing. And secondly, he recognised the carriage. It belonged to a gentleman who was to deliver his ¡®packages¡¯ and there was no way he could retrieve it silently from a somewhat hidden compartment now after the scene the girl had caused. And even if he could, what would he do next time? And the year after that? His other employers had a small stock in storage at all times but red powder spoiled easily, losing its potency. And that meant that his other employers would soon not have enough to sell to their customers. It would make them seem weak and in New Delport, weakness was always to be exploited. The primary distributor of red powder faltering meant that the market was now suddenly open after almost a decade. There would be a lot of blood in the streets before it was all over.
\\Cold Blooded is now level 8! I sighed as Cold Blooded faded away. One look at the hulking guard in the black plate armor with glowing runes on it and I knew that he could rip me in half with his hands while simultaneously stomping Medea into the dirt. If he thought I was not honest or meant the city ¡ªNew Delport, I corrected myself¡ª harm, I wouldn''t live another minute. So I told him the truth, just carefully. There was no possible way to not seem suspicious but I could seem suspicious in a way that no infiltrator would want to be, unless they expected infiltrators to think like that, of course. But that way lay madness. I predicted your prediction of my prediction of your behaviour! Mwahahaha. Anyways, I was inside and that was all that mattered, even though I somewhat regretted my choice to not rip out the blue pyramid that recharged my mana. If I made it here, I could probably eventually afford to buy one. Maybe. As soon as I had crossed some invisible threshold and before my conversation with the guard, I had received a notification unlike any I had seen before. \\Welcome, traveller. This is your first visit to New Delport, the crown jewel of the Eastern Sea. It obviously wasn''t named that but that''s what it meant. The new port of the Del. As a city-state that has endured for over a thousand years and with a legacy to match, New Delport is the premium destination for tourism, trade and education in the entire West Coast. The Central Sea connects over five thousand cities and towns and you can find almost anything your heart desires here. Casinos, fairs, exotic goods in the Strevan Auction House and even companionship awaits you. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. In the south, the great forests stretch as far as the eyes can see. It is even rumored that dryads created the forests during the first calamity itself. To make your stay safer and easier, you have been granted fluency in the Dellish language. Dellish is the primary language spoken in New Delport and now you can avail yourself of the services of this beautiful city without any worries. We hope you enjoy your stay, be it temporary or permanent. I shook my head, the system notification equivalent of a cheery travel brochure didn''t really match what my eyes could see, everyone at the gate seemed to be on the edge. Pedestrians moved quickly and with their heads down, occasionally accompanied by beast companions or other people. Smog covered the skies and I could feel a mild burning in my throat. Of course the guard had then occupied all of my attention as I lied by omission and acted like a hapless child in a language I didn''t even know ten minutes ago. The notification I had received when entering the city had been in English like every other notification and I suspected that the system had some sort of universal translation built into it. But anyways, the guard had called a carriage for me and paid for it so I had nothing to do but stare out the windows while Medea curled up beside me. The streetlights were attached to poles that seemed rather excessively ornate to me but it was not like I disliked the opulence. Occasionally we would pass other carriages on the street racing towards destinations unknown. I even saw a man with a tophat and a Victorian style dress suit walking with what looked like an eight feet tall gray humanoid that he held on a leash. He tipped his hat at me when he noticed that I was staring and I turned away, feeling awkward. I didn''t want to seem like a country bumpkin who gawked at people! My current attire didn''t help either so my manners had to be perfect. I missed them but I had intentionally left my tophat and monocles with the other carriage, no reason to make me stand out like that. We eventually stopped in front of a large baroque building with a massive symbol on it that instantly drew the eye. A red and white shield with a vertical eye in the middle. A set of massive double doors with the images of two mirrors serpents intricately carved on them marked the entrance to the building. The serpents held the door handles in their distended jaws and red jewels were inlaid as their eyes. This had to be the Security Guild that the man had mentioned. ¡°Do you want me to escort you inside, ma¡¯am?¡± The ruddy carriage driver asked, pointedly not looking at my legs or crutches. I shook my head and clambered out while holding on the carriage with one hand until I could find my balance. The doors opened of their own accord when I neared them and I stepped inside with a sudden burst of trepidation. The inside was a vast hall and I could see dozens of people to and from half a dozen doors that were too high and wide to be just for humans, some jogged frantically while holding stacks of paper while others moved slowly and with purpose. A young man was yelling out loud about someone misplacing their cargo catalogue. A set of reading tables were placed on my left and a woman was hastily penning something on one of them. I hobbled towards a desk where a receptionist wearing glasses made of some reflective golden material and a purple suit sat. ¡°Yes? How can I help you?¡± Her voice was gravelly and harsh, as if the result of a lifetime of chain smoking. ¡°Uhh, the guy from the southern gate told me to come here?¡± ¡°Oh Navidson! Yes he did send a missive, let''s see. Hmm, young female, injured and with a pet spider-scorpion. Oh yes, please wait here. Someone will soon come for you.¡± The receptionist then covered her mouth with a hand and muttered something that I couldn''t hear, probably some long range communication skill to summon whoever was supposed to pick me up. A tall and lean man with a pistol on his hip ambled in. He wore a lighter but more elaborate version of the armor she had seen the guard wearing. At least ten narrow swords were strapped on his back and four more hung from his hips. Brown curls swayed with each step he took as he walked up to me with the fakest smile I''d ever seen. ¡°Oh hello, you must be Anya. I''m Rev, yes just Rev. I believe someone wants to meet with you. Let me help you.¡± He didn''t wait for my reply and just levitated me behind him and began to walk as I yelped in surprise. Medea followed after its mistress through a maze of hallways and doors. A man, a floating girl, and a spider-scorpion walked into an office. A giantess of a woman, comparable to the gray humanoid I had seen on my way was waiting for them inside. Graying hair framed a slightly wrinkled face that betrayed her real age that I couldn''t quite reconcile with her rippling musculature. A massive sword, bigger than myself floated behind the woman, bound by floating chains of golden runes and energy. The same golden runes decorated her black armor and her eyes flashed the same. A helmet shaped like a wolf''s head rested on the desk between her and the newcomers. Her grey eyes stared steelily as Rev unceremoniously dumped me into a chair facing the desk and left way too quickly, slamming the door behind him. I was not being even remotely dishonest to myself when I admitted that the person before me was the most terrifying creature I''d ever seen. Even Medea seemed cuddly before her. Too petrified to move or make any noise, I just watched as the woman walked up to a cabinet and retrieved a sphere of the same blue crystal that I had used on the carriage. The titanic woman did something and the ball¡¯s glow dimmed noticeably. She continued to ignore me, occasionally adjusting some contraption or reading some report until she finally sat down with a thump on an ornate high chair, her radiant gold eyes met mine and she spoke. ¡°Well, Miss Anya, if that''s indeed your name. Can you tell me why are you carrying fucking Godtouched bones as walking aids?¡± ¡®Oh shit¡¯, I thought just as Cold Blooded went into overdrive. Yes, strings attached I knew I had messed up. Of course I had, Quiraion¡¯s Blessing only hid my own nature as Godtouched from others. Of course the implication was that other Godtouched things could be detected by anyone with the capability. Of course, I didn''t think about replacing my crutches. The bear skeleton could have worked as an alternative material, hell I could have asked Medea to climb and snap off some tree branches but no, I was so busy thinking about the carriage and how to explain my origins that the skeleton had completely slipped my mind. Cold Blooded did have its limits, after all. And now I was staring into cold eyes that crackled with golden lightning. Those eyes belied a lack of mercy that went beyond just emotion dampening. My skill tried and I opened my mouth to say something, anything, then closed it again. Cold Blooded deactivated. ¡°I''m Godtouched too!¡± I blurted out at last. The monster in oversized human skin didn''t soften her expression but she did raise an eyebrow. ¡°I see. Interesting. And did you come to New Delport with the intention to harm the city, its people or its interests?¡± ¡°No! I swear I just came here because I was afraid I''d die in the great forests.¡± Words flowed from my mouth before I could compose them and I just told her all about my attempts to escape the forest. How I had fled from Medea twice and then how I had spent the night in a cave before taming it. I spoke about the carriage and how I had never seen anything like that before. I spoke of everything other than why I was Godtouched, my skill simply didn''t let me. I kept speaking as she stared silently at me. I was talking about my skill gains before the other woman raised her hand to silence me but I somehow managed to miss it. ¡°Enough!¡± The voice was like a thunderclap. ¡°I don''t care about how you precisely arrived or why you are a Godtouched of Lord Quiraion of all the divinities. I don¡¯t meddle in the affairs of gods. They may be great, but they¡¯re fickle, and it¡¯s unproductive to speculate about their plans. I''ll inform the relevant authorities about the spider-scorpions expanding northwards¡ªthat''s not your concern. Just answer me one thing before I decide what to do with you: Will your presence bring undue danger to New Delport?¡± The voice was like a weight that settled upon my shoulders and threatened to smother me until there was nothing left. A part of me wondered if a skill was in use. Maybe I should reconsider Intimidation after all. I clamped shut, turning the question over in my mind. The Knife of Quiraion''s warning had been maddeningly vague. More danger, more opportunities to gain power¡ªthose didn¡¯t necessarily mean everyone around me would be in peril. But it didn¡¯t guarantee their safety, either. It did not mean they would be at risk, but also that they wouldn¡¯t necessarily not be at risk. If I were in the other woman''s position, would I take the chance? Probably not. But again, I was compelled to tell the truth. ¡°I¡­ honestly don¡¯t know,¡± I finally admitted, voice barely above a whisper. ¡°It¡¯s vague. I don¡¯t really understand what being Godtouched means for me.¡± ¡°Fine.¡± The woman¡¯s tone hardened even more somehow. ¡°Normally, if you weren¡¯t Godtouched, I¡¯d throw you out into the streets and let you figure out how to survive. Best case? Maybe you¡¯d make it by begging or stealing or just selling yourself¡ªnot that anything is a guarantee. A bad case? You¡¯d die, of course. Though even that¡¯s not the worst of it. You¡¯d just be another warm body, and there are always those with classes that thrive on experimenting on people like you. Either way, you¡¯d be out of my hands, and that would be that.¡± The pressure eased slightly as the woman stood and began to pace, her steps echoing in the cramped office. I flinched but kept my head down, grateful for the small reprieve. No wonder that other guy had so soon. ¡°But for the Godtouched¡­¡± The woman¡¯s steps slowed. ¡°The standard policy is exile. Unfortunately, at your current level and stats, you wouldn¡¯t survive¡ªnot even without your injuries. Yes, girl, I can tell how pathetic you are even without skills. And no, your pet wouldn¡¯t stand a chance either.¡± The woman paused, her voice laced with a less overwhelming irritation. ¡°And that leaves us with a problem. The gods don¡¯t take kindly to seeing their precious Godtouched executed outside of open conflict. Forcing you to leave in your current state skirts dangerously close to that line. Which means, much to my dismay, I have to tolerate your presence. I am not happy about it. Are we clear?¡± I gave a small, quick nod, my body trembling under the weight of fear. Cold Blooded¡ªthe trait that had kept me steady in so many dangerous moments¡ªhad abandoned me entirely. I was nothing more than a bundle of terror now. ¡°Now, one more thing.¡± The woman¡¯s words were slow, sharp and deliberate. ¡°While the gods may frown upon anyone killing a Godtouched with full knowledge of their nature, there are other fates the gods will turn a blind eye to. Far worse fates in fact. ¡°For example, let¡¯s imagine a hypothetical Godtouched¡ªa little girl. A weak, defenseless little girl. Now, suppose someone finds out what she is. What do you think a bad man would do? You see, Godtouched tend to have blessings, abilities that set them apart from others. Or at least, they have the potential for such. That makes them¡­ valuable. And to a bad man, that means opportunity. ¡°Our bad man might decide to kidnap our hypothetical Godtouched and deliver her to a criminal who specializes in brainwashing and binding. Under this criminal¡¯s care, our little Godtouched would become nothing but an obedient shell. Her identity, her sense of self¡ªall of it wiped clean, replaced with an all-encompassing desire to obey. She¡¯d lose everything, reduced to doing whatever her master demanded, no matter how cruel or vile. And the gods? They would not give her a second of attention as long as whoever is breaking her still tries to get her to do whatever the gods asked her.¡± The woman stopped and turned, her fulminating gaze piercing through me. ¡°That is the kind of responsibility knowing someone is Godtouched brings. A burden I wish you hadn¡¯t placed on me. I wish you had kept it to yourself. But what¡¯s been said cannot be undone, and I know you weren¡¯t lying.¡± Her tone shifted, calmer, carrying a weight of finality. ¡°See to it that no one else learns of your true nature unless it¡¯s absolutely necessary.¡± I swallowed hard; mouth suddenly dry. The fate the woman described¡ªof a totally hypothetical Godtouched turned into a hollow puppet¡ªfelt uncomfortably similar to what I had done to Medea. ¡°So here''s what I propose, I''ll see that you have lodgings and food for now. Tomorrow you will be tested. Augury skills are rare and if it is as good as you claim then you can join the guild in the forensic corps. Afterwards, a day or two later, we shall get you healed, and it will not just be your legs because even I can tell you have other problems and I''m just a simple warrior.¡± I was skeptical that the woman was just a ¡®simple warrior¡¯. ¡°You¡¯ll almost certainly need a day or two to recover then. Extensive healing like that requires adjustment time. In the meantime, we¡¯ll keep a tally of your medical expenses along with rent for the duration. That debt will be turned into a short tenure as a Guild member¡ªa fair exchange that benefits us both. This way, I won¡¯t have to explain your status as Godtouched to the other Guild stakeholders. I can mark you as an attempt at poaching good, desperate talent. And, given your blessings, that¡¯s the truth. That is of course, assuming you don¡¯t fail tomorrow. If you do then I will send you off with the cheapest ship that I know won¡¯t kill you. ¡°For recruits like you, we have special provisions. Charity isn¡¯t our way, but it¡¯s also unwise to let powerful people think we exploited them. This arrangement will allow you to grow stronger in relative safety until I can eventually throw you out¡ªso really, it¡¯s a win-win for everyone.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°Also we will work on a cover story for you that doesn''t have so many holes or hints about your true nature. And don¡¯t worry about Navidson. I¡¯ll see to it that he doesn¡¯t say anything he shouldn¡¯t to the wrong people.¡± The woman stopped, folding her arms across her chest. ¡°Of course, if you find this arrangement unsatisfactory, let me know. You¡¯re free to leave right now. I doubt you can pay for a ship ride, so it¡¯d be the Great Forest again for you. But it¡¯s your choice. The gods won¡¯t care if you are suicidal.¡± ¡°Err, it is a satisfactory arrangement! Thank you so much, miss¡­?¡± I squeaked. ¡°Valdima but from now, it is Guildmistress Valdima for you. Anyways, you are dismissed. Rev, please escort Anya here to a guesthouse.¡± She called out and I jumped as Rev saluted from right next to me. I hadn''t even noticed when he had come back.
I was being levitated by Rev again but now he seemed a lot more talkative and open. ¡°For the rest of this evening, I¡¯ll be your guide and protector,¡± he began, his tone light but steady. ¡°It¡¯s my responsibility to make sure you remain intact. So, I think we should start over.¡± The man straightened slightly, offering a small bow. ¡°I¡¯m Reven¡¯Tar de Anglio¡ªRev, for short. I¡¯m a senior journeyman of the Security Guild, which you¡¯ll possibly be joining as an apprentice. It¡¯s a pleasure to meet you.¡± He finished with an easy grin, a stark contrast to the stiff, fake smile he¡¯d worn before. It made for an odd sight, a tall man lightly bowing before an ungraciously floating girl. I studied him cautiously, unsure if this sudden warmth was genuine or just another act. Still, there was no harm in pretending for now. ¡°Anya,¡± I said softly, giving a slight nod. ¡°So, what exactly is going to be expected of a fresh guild recruit like me?¡± I didn''t exactly have time to research the guild before, for obvious reasons and I had wanted to get out of the scary woman¡¯s presence as soon as possible to ask her. Rev didn¡¯t say anything, and it wasn¡¯t until I felt the shift in air and sound that I realized we had already left the Guild Hall, blinking as Rev gently deposited me into a carriage. A moment later, he floated himself in, settling opposite me as the carriage lurched into motion. I glanced at the driver¡¯s seat. ¡°There¡¯s¡­ no one driving,¡± Rev didn¡¯t seem to hear¡ªor more likely, ignored me¡ªresuming our conversation without skipping a beat. ¡°Well,¡± he spoke casually, ¡°I suppose you¡¯re due for a lesson in history and Dellish politics. Old imperial port cities like ours are weird. New Delport, for example, never had a standing army or militia of its own. It was actually formed under the Empire¡¯s protection. Centuries ago, when the Catri Empire started to collapse, the city lost the safety it once enjoyed under its aegis. That security vanished overnight.¡± He leaned back, fingers tapping idly against the carriage wall. ¡°Soon after, a civil war broke out. On one side, you had the old guard¡ªCatrian nobility, military officials, and their ilk. On the other, an emerging faction of wealthy merchants, from the city and from beyond. The remnants of the Catrian garrison naturally sided with the old guard. But the merchants?¡± He grinned faintly. ¡°They hired mercenary guilds. And they won. The old guard was publicly executed, and the merchants claimed the city for themselves. With me so far?¡± I nodded, though my mind was still catching up. I hope the guildmistress did not give me brain damage. ¡°Good.¡± He continued without pause. ¡°Today, the descendants of those mercantile clans still rule the city. They¡¯re industrialists and moguls now¡ªpowerful, untouchable. The Illustrus Council. The mercenary guilds they once hired, though? Many made New Delport their permanent base of operations. Over time, other guilds formed or settled here, and not just mercenaries. The nice thing about New Delport is that anyone can walk into a guild, flash enough coin, and hire people for nearly any task.¡± He tilted his head toward me. ¡°But that¡¯s not where the real money is. Every five years, the clans release municipal contracts to the guilds. Some guilds specialize in espionage and assassination, others in hunting down creatures that stray too close to the city. There are naval guards who fend off pirates, law enforcers who maintain order¡ªyou get the idea. ¡°That¡¯s us, by the way. The Aurum Bolt Guild. People call us the Security Guild because we always get the policing contract.¡± I let out a breath that swirled in the dirty air. The history lesson explained a lot: the tourist-trap notifications, the sickening inequality, the air of corruption that seemed to choke the life out of everything. No wonder the Guildmistress cared so little for anyone without money. If mercenaries were running the city at the behest of robber barons, it made sense. ¡®It¡¯s not so different from what I know,¡¯ I thought grimly. The thought chilled me¡ªwhat would have happened to me if I hadn¡¯t been Godtouched? Well, the guildmistress had mentioned me selling myself casually. I suppressed a shudder. As if to further illustrate the point, I spotted a small gaggle of what looked I assumed were sex workers loudly arguing with a fat angry man. As I watched, the man activated some sort of skill and the tallest of the bunch fell to the ground and spasmed in pain. Jeering, the man rifled through her pockets and¡ª Rev¡¯s voice pulled me back. ¡°Now that this lovely little digression is done, I¡¯ll answer your earlier question.¡± He leaned forward slightly. ¡°As a recruit, you¡¯ll start small. Petty criminals. Pests that have gotten too bold. The likes of that. At first, you¡¯ll work in a squad while you¡¯re learning the ropes. But after a short time, you¡¯ll operate in pairs.¡± His eyes sharpened, a hint of warning slipping into his otherwise casual tone. ¡°Of course, that¡¯s assuming you don¡¯t get fired or sabotage us in any way. I¡¯d strongly advise against the latter.¡± For just a moment, Rev tilted his head toward me. His mane of curly hair flared up behind him, catching the faint light in a way that sent a flicker of instinctive dread through me. Cold Blooded stirred and then subsided just as quickly, replaced by a flash of anger. Did everyone in this guild get off on scaring crippled girls? Before I could react, he straightened. ¡°We have arrived.¡± The ¡®inn¡¯ that we had stopped at was more reminiscent of a modern hotel than anything. Two menacing grunts flanked the entrance and large lamps with painted floral patterns lined the perimeter of the building. I knew what was coming and interrupted Rev hastily. ¡°Thanks but you don''t need to carry me, I can move on my own.¡± The first time I was not expecting it and then I was too overwhelmed by the Guildmistress but now that my emotions were somewhat in control, I protested. I had learned to not take excessive favors from anyone who could demand recompense in the future and I was already deep in debt. Rev shrugged and walked into the building as I struggled for a moment before following him. I expected a hotel lobby and I was not disappointed but I was sad when I noticed that it was a fancy one. Everything was bathed in a soft light and a black and silver uniform adorned the attendants as they escorted guests and carried luggage to levitating round stone platforms that were effectively just elevators. What was the rule about putting Godtouched in debt traps again? ¡°I have a reservation for a single room for two weeks as a representative of the Aurum Bolt Guild.¡± Rev flashed the receptionist, a stuffy looking man, one of his fakest smiles. ¡°Ahem, yes. Do you possess anything we can use for verification?¡± The man even sounded snooty. Rev searched for his badge for a solid minute and even I was feeling judgmental when he proudly presented it before the profoundly unimpressed receptionist. He gave it a once over and after presumably using a skill to verify its legitimacy, nodded. ¡°Third floor, room 337. Is it for you, for the young lady or both?¡± ¡°Just the lady and her pet, also she has an extensive biomancy treatment scheduled for this week so she''ll need additional food delivered to her room, preferably lots of protein.¡± Rev then turned to me. ¡°This is goodbye for tonight. Try to have a good night''s sleep. And try not to let your pet damage anything, it will be added to your debt.¡± I despaired at the loan sharks as Rev left so fast that a gust of wind blew my hair. ¡°Ma¡¯am, do you want company for the night? We have men, women, intersex people and more exotic options available.¡± I squawked and vigorously shook my head, face burning. ¡°Very well, we hope your stay at the New Delport Regency is pleasurable.¡±
Later as I lay in a blessedly soft bed after the best meal I had in my life (some meat that I couldn''t really identify), I found my thoughts wandering. Once a class had, through its description, told me that factory farming of humans for levels was at least not unthinkable in this world. Add in my conversation with Valdima about what can happen to a weak Godtouched and I was fully convinced that this world wasn''t anywhere as nice as a naive part of me had hoped. Yes it was awful, awful in a different way because of how skills and stats changed the game. I mean I didn''t think my old world was better in any way; I didn''t even miss it that much but it was a known place with rules that I was familiar with. Here, personal power was directly martial power and that meant that in this world, no one cared that I was mixed race or a girl or who I liked but that I was personally weak. An entirely new form of discrimination that superseded the bigotries that I was familiar with. To not be ground under the dust here, I had to be stronger. Far stronger. ¡®Peace will elude you¡¯, so proclaimed the trait that was my biggest asset and my worst liability. And not for the first time, I cursed Quiraion. Healing Morning arrived far too soon. I was loath to leave the soft embrace of my bed but fate had it out for me! The sun was up way before it had any right to be and so was an annoyingly energetic Rev. Even Medea, who was napping at the foot of my bed, stiffened into awareness at the cheery voice. ¡°Good morning Anya! I brought breakfast. Eat it all up before we have to leave. New adventures await us!¡± Rev announced in what was definitely not an indoors voice as I suppressed a groan. And considering that his normal cadence was NOT like this at all, I was sure that he was being annoying on purpose. Rev once again paid for a carriage and for the first time, I had a closer look at the currency used in New Delport. It was a thumb nail sized flat square of the same blue mana crystal as what I had used earlier but it could be attached to four more crystals, one on each side by a series of interlocking grooves and edges. Rev had counted and detached seven of the squares from an entire tray of them before putting the rest away in a small pouch inside his armor. The city in the morning was downright pleasant. No towers were billowing clouds of acrid green smog that actively smothered the city and the tense mood of the night was replaced by lazy contentment. But I knew from my talk with the Guildmistress that the city wasn''t as it seemed; if anything we were probably just in the nicer parts of it. We were back at the guild. The Aurum Bolt was not that different during the day unlike the New Delport Regency, which had a drastically different atmosphere with natural lighting. It seemed just as hectic as it had been last night, if not even more. This time however, our destination was different. Rev walked through a partially hidden side door that led down to an underground floor. We ignored what sounded like drunk off-shift guards gossiping in a circle and instead took a hard left turn into a small storage shed. It smelt absolutely terrible and my skin prickled. I was still wrestling with myself about whether I should complain when Rev levitated me again and everything went black. When I could see again, we were in what I was sure was a secret facility affiliated with the guild. Medea looked disoriented as well to my left. Rev was now accompanied by a woman in similar armor and a mask that covered half her face. But the metaphorical elephant in the room was a table with a mana crystal and three human skulls. One of them was partially smashed. ¡°Good luck kid.¡± Rev said with uncharacteristic brevity before disappearing once again. The woman spoke as soon as he had left. ¡°Good morning, I am Seventh Guildmistress Tiamim, leader of the forensics department. Please take a seat, Miss Anya.¡± The woman said and I obliged. The woman did not seem to be particularly scary after the nightmare that Valdima had been. Maybe it was a ruse? ¡°Guildmistess? Like Guildmistress Valdima?¡± Tiamim laughed. ¡°Oh no, not like her. She is the Guildmistress, I am just the seventh in command.¡± I nodded even though that sounded stupid to me. Why not call her the Chief Guildmistress or something? Or Tiamim a Senior Guildswoman? Gah, focus. ¡°So the Guildmistress told me that I will be tested for forensics. How does that work?¡± I asked when it looked like Tiamim was not the most talkative of people around. I mean fair was fair, I was not either. ¡°Yes. I was informed that you can glean information from the remains of people. Here is the task. These three people were attempting to steal an artifact from a distant cousin of an Illustris Council member. But by the time the guards noticed what was up, they had all been killed and the artifact was missing. Tell me what really happened here.¡± I touched the first skull, the smashed one and used my skill. I was going to be rich! We were all going to be rich. We had secured the tome and without alerting anyone. I turned to his compatriots, unable to keep the smile off my face. And a dark shape raced towards my face and I knew no more. ¡°His fellow thieves betrayed him once they had acquired the tome.¡± I observed as Tiamim stared dispassionately. She said nothing and I continued. Gerhin¡¯s face twisted into hatred. A familiar blade plunged into me. I knew it, knew I was dead the moment it had penetrated me. And yet I¡­ I¡­ I will not die alone here. I will take Gerhin down with me. I stumbled towards Gerhin but my legs failed me, my arms, poised to strangle his disgusting face, fell to my sides. I laughed before the blade decapitated me. I saw my own body, without my head, kneeling as if in supplication and something else. A glimmer of a shadow behind Gerhin. It was smiling.
¡°Where is the hidden illusionist who was behind Gerhin?¡± I asked and my charms fell in a fan-like shape, imprecise but unmistakably pointing somewhere. This illusionist had been making these three idiots progressively more paranoid until they ended up killing each other. Only, the last guy had almost heard the footsteps before being killed himself. \\Ossific Communion is now level 31! ¡°And can you actually find them? Your skill only tells you the general direction in a cone shape. That is not very helpful.¡± I frowned. No, this was easy. It was so easy that my old world had a term for it. Triangulation. ¡°I would ask for a guild member who can transport me across the city really quickly. Oh, and I would grab an aetherite for mana of course. I would then, uhh, I will also take a map first actually. Then I would use augury to get direction cones from different points in the city and mark overlapping zones in the map until it is small enough to be manually searched.¡± I finished, stumbling at the start but feeling confident by the end. Tiamim stared stonily for a second before smiling. ¡°Congratulations. You pass. You will get your security screening and meet the rest of your colleagues later this week. But for now, you are clear. Also, for your information, the perpetrator was already captured by us and handed over to the Illustris Council.¡± Rev clapped from behind me and I jumped before glaring at the sneaky guilder. ¡°Alright. Time for your biomancy then.¡± Wait. Now?
¡°I will remind you that we are paying for this and that you are only getting your old injuries fixed. You want anything more such as cosmetic touch ups, extra appendages, organs and the likes, you have to pay for them yourself.¡± Rev said. I nodded, strapped to what looked suspiciously similar to an operating table. ¡°Your stuff will be waiting in your room when you are done. Don''t worry, you will be fine. See you then, kid.¡± Rev¡¯s expression softened into that seemingly genuine smile again. I returned it before I was distracted by the new arrival. I supposed they might have been human at some point but they just looked like something out of a Clive Barker movie. Tall, not as tall as Valdima but still tall, thin, pale and androgynous with black eyes and lips; small conical horns emerging from a bald head completed the picture. They held a clipboard in their hands and muttered to themselves. ¡°Malnutrition, improperly set bones, physical trauma. And what brain damaged medic stabilized her legs? She would need actual flesh grafts before I can even do anything. Did a medic even look at those or just you meatheads? Tsk tsk.¡± Their voice was silky smooth and I found it oddly attractive. ¡°Right, that''s my cue to leave.¡± Rev once again vanished as the [BIOMANCER] finally directly acknowledged me. ¡°Oh hello! You can call me Mitria and I''ll be doing your biomancy for today! Usually we don''t do this but you have years of micro injuries that need healing so I''ll have to put you under. Don''t worry though, I''m the best on this side of the sea at what I do. Now just relax that lovely little head of yours and I''ll start once we are ready. I hope you had enough to eat though, my dear. I can see your ribs.¡± They said all that in a single breath.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I tried to relax as the biomancer puttered around, occasionally dragging in machinery or reports or conversing with an assistant. I wondered if learning from another biomancer would progress my class faster. I tried to pay attention to what the biomancer was saying even though I didn''t understand almost any of the terms used. \\[BLOODMAGE INITIATE] is now level 4!
I woke up in my bed. I hadn''t even realized when I had lost consciousness but the light outside my window told me it was evening when I regained it. The towers were reawakening to life and the air had a noticeably thick feeling to it. Nothing was hurting but I was sore all over. A quick look at my status showed that my physical stats had seen a minor bump across the board. NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD RACE: HUMAN ACTIVE CLASS: [BLOODMAGE INITIATE 4/15] MASTERED CLASSES: 4 AGE: 19 MANA: 75/75 (REGEN 15 PER HOUR) STATS: STRENGTH: 9 CELERITY: 9 VITALITY: 10 ACUITY: 14 WILLPOWER: 15 PERCEPTION: 14 ATTUNEMENT: 15 Vitality had grown the most out of all my stats and was now my highest physical stat, ironic considering that it was my lowest when I had arrived. I was also sure that my debuffs should mostly be cleared out by now between the biomancy and Cold Blooded but for whatever reason, they didn''t have a screen dedicated to them so I couldn''t be sure. ¡°Excuse me Miss. Can you please request your¡­ companion to let me come inside?¡± A timid voice came from outside the door. I started and turned towards it to see Medea in vigil with its tail raised facing off a terrified girl in the same black-silver uniform as the other hotel staff. She was holding a tray with what looked like a bowl of soup. ¡®Stand down¡¯, I commanded and Medea deflated, hair, tail and everything else. The attendant set the bowl on a bedside table, closed the windows and left after a hurried curtsy. The tray had a straw beside the bowl. It was a struggle to force myself into a sitting position, nothing moving quite like it should. I took a tentative sip; and almost spat it out all over Medea after choking. I hadn''t meant to suck in so much hot soup at once; I had underestimated my strength. That had never happened before, even when I had gained +2 strength at once. After consuming about half the bowl, I decided that I had enough and tried to get used to my body post fixing. I was clumsier than before but that had to be temporary. I was a lot more worried about them putting things inside me while I was under. Magical explosive collars, here I come. I knew that I would be better than I was before once I had some practice with my body. And I had an idea about how to practice using my hands, surely my new temporary handicap would make it level at a different pace, maybe faster or slower but I had to try. I brought out my knife, placed a crutch on my lap and began to carve. I carved through most of the night, awake through a combination of being out for so long during my surgery and anticipation. \\Lesser Bone Crafting has reached its highest level and has absorbed Lesser Bone Harvesting to evolve into Bone Shaping \\Bone Shaping: 30 Bone and similar substances are like wet putty in your expert hands. You can shape them freely into whatever you can with your bare hands and simple tools like hammers, chisels, knives and presses. You can mold bone like a potter molds clay and make wonders out of remains. You can also selectively adjust how rigid or malleable you want them under your ministrations. Bones revert to their normal material properties once you stop working on them. Uses 18 mana per minute. That was actually better than what I had expected! One more short term project completed. I still wasn''t tired and I hadn''t properly walked in over a year so testing that was my new goal. Rev would almost certainly arrive in the morning and I expected at least some of what passed for physiotherapy here but I''d rather get the worst parts done by then. I wasn''t a completely reckless idiot though and still held on to one of my crutches, the one I had spent three hours clumsily carving on. And I crashed onto the floor. ¡°Ow¡±, said the girl in a heap on her wooden floor, a trickle of blood on her forehead. \\Pain Tolerance now level 5! Said the notification. ¡°Ma¡¯am, are you alright? Do you want any help? I''ll come inside in three minutes if you don''t respond.¡± Said the voice knocking on her door. ¡°I''m fine!¡± I called out. I hoped the hotel had some kind of health monitoring system going on and didn''t like, just spy on all the guests all the time. That would be messed up but it was a different world, they might have different notions of privacy if any. I cast Coagulation on myself and my bleeding stopped within a minute. \\[BLOODMAGE INITIATE] is now level 5! For a moment, I seriously considered grinding my class and Pain Tolerance by cutting myself. I really did but then she remembered that the hotel staff were keeping tabs on me. Also it was a slippery slope that I wasn''t quite ready to jump off, yet. By dawn, I still stumbled a bit but I was only using the crutch as more of a walking stick than anything else. I had the distinct feeling that the recovery time was mostly for acclimatization and Cold Blooded had just let me brute force through it without noticing. I was not going to complain though, I felt better than she had in ages. And I was sleepy, so sleepy. The girl from before came in with now thankfully solid food and I decided that I needed a conversation partner who wasn''t terrifying. In fact the girl was so scared of Medea that my own facade of bravado just felt unnecessary if not downright mean. ¡°Thank you, say what''s your name again?¡± ¡°Me? I''m Nerry, just Nerry.¡± Nerry replied while trying to keep a healthy distance from Medea without seeming rude. I ordered Medea to go sit near the window. ¡°Well Nerry, I''m Anya. It''s nice to meet you.¡± I held out my hand that Nerry shook before letting go far too quickly. She also realized her faux pas and started to bow before I interrupted her. ¡°You see I''m new here and don''t really know anyone and I''m bored as hell. Do you think you could get me some books or the likes? I''ll of course repay you once I can but I can''t promise that will be soon.¡± I tried my best to look pathetic, which wasn''t hard. ¡°Of course! I would love to! Do you like romances or adventures? There''s a great series about Regdren, The Silver Flame who founded this city during the time of the empire.¡± ¡°Yeah that sounds good.¡± I couldn''t help but grin; bingo, something to keep me occupied that wasn''t just worrying about the future. That''s all a girl really wants in life. Nerry and I talked for a few more minutes about other heroes of yore, The Dirge Singer of the Sea personally interested me as she seemed to have taken [CHOIR SINGER] in a direction that the class description hadn''t even mentioned as a possibility. And then Nerry had to leave to attend to her work and I was alone again. Without any real means to tell the time, I could only guess at when she would next come. Wait. Did I have no way of telling the time? System? \\541:20 \\541:21 Okayyy. That was something at least. 541:20 was not a format I knew but I was reasonably sure the second half was seconds. With nothing in particular to do, I just ate my food in silence and went back to bed. When I next woke, there was a sandwich and some sort of sweet fruit juice and a change of clothes waiting by my bedside table.
\\Bone Shaping is now level 31! The setting sun illuminated the serrated edge of a bone knife held loosely by the girl. The jagged blade didn''t glint like metal did but the girl knew from first hand experience and a splotch of red on her white tunic that it cut just as well if not better. A series of runes carved on the blade also made the weapon double as an augury charm. A small band of bone separated the handle from the blade so that her fingers wouldn''t slip or grab on to the sharp edge. Satisfied, the girl jumped down from the window ledge she was sitting on and put the knife next to five other identical knives. Once she had successfully created one, the rest were replicated quickly. Her old metal shiv was still on her side as the bone knives were suboptimal for quick slices or stabs but it would no longer be her go to weapon. With her new arsenal completed, the girl was finally out of ideas for things to do. She could go down to the hotel¡¯s dining hall and socialize, or she could go for a walk but Anya was a solitary creature and just looking at the city from above suited her fine. The city lit up as the sun went down the horizon, streetlights, lamps and more all illuminated the still busy streets. Across the city, three massive black towers flared to life and clouds of green smoke slowly began to cover the sky and the ground. Sometimes the clouds would briefly light up as if there was lightning present in them but no flashes or rumblings would follow and inevitably the clouds darkened again.
I closed my window before the noxious gas could enter my room and waited, Nerry had promised me that she would bring some books with her when it was time for supper. I yawned, still far too tired to consider doing anything strenuous. By the time Nerry returned with the promised books about Regdren¡¯s adventures, I could barely keep my eyes open but Nerry¡¯s enthusiasm was infectious. And soon enough, a short but animated lesson took place in my room. The Dellish treated their historical figures as superheroes and I wouldn''t be surprised if a lot of these stories were just fabrications. I learnt about the historical Catri Empire that had once spanned the entire continent and had subjugated and driven off everything from dragons to liches to even an evil god hellbent on scouring the land of all life. My ears figuratively perked up at that bit and I asked for more details with far too much enthusiasm before catching myself. Nerry opened her mouth to tell what was no doubt a long story and ¡ª And then entered the only guild journeyman I had interacted with with any frequency, Rev himself. He didn''t knock, he simply strode in like the guild owned the place and for all I knew, they did. Nerry hurriedly bowed and made her excuses before leaving. ¡°I was informed that your recovery is going faster than expected and so I came to check and to congratulate you.¡± Rev flashed me a grin and then his face sobered up. ¡°The guildmistress wants you to report tomorrow. At 500 sharp . Do not be late.¡±