Recovering was slow. Normally, I bounced all over the place and my attention was constantly consumed by one interesting task or another, but just doing nothing? It sucked.

I couldn’t even split up my attention with Multithreading to free myself from the boredom, since my Repository was so seriously damaged.

It was a bit of a wakeup call. If that Mana had been a little bit stronger, I would have died.

In a way, part of me had died.

All I could do at the moment was review my legend and come to fully accept the change that I’d mostly ignored until now.

Ambrose

Ancient Seeker 5

All I needed to look at was the first line.

My name had changed. Seif was nowhere to be found.

A long time ago, Azrael and I had a discussion about how the system determined our names, and I recalled something about her telling me that it had a bit to do with how others knew us, and a bit to do with how we knew ourselves.

Everyone in this world knew me as Ambrose. That was, obviously, part of the name change. But could it really have happened if I hadn’t changed?

My vision was right, and my legend was right.

Seif was dead, and he wouldn’t be coming back. I couldn’t carry his spirit along with me anymore. Ever since I’d come to this world, my morality had been twisted, but part of me had fought it. I hadn’t sent out hordes of undead to conquer the living, I’d let those who slighted me live, and most of all, I’d allowed others to treat me as something less than I was– in fact, I’d insisted on it.

Seif had been too kind. He’d been a mortal from Earth, and he’d lived in a world where the only cruelty and suffering that there was to endure came from his own flaws. I’d tried to keep him alive in my heart, to carry on with his ideals so that I could lie and tell myself that I was still him.

I wasn’t Seif, though. I was Ambrose, an Ancient Seeker and a lich– a ruthless creature with a hatred for all things living.

I could maintain my relationship with the kingdom of Kerenth, since they’d proven themselves useful to me, and I’d grown attached to Azrael and, by extension, the small town that I’d created and she’d looked after.

Everyone else, though?

I was undead. They were living. We were anathema to one another. It would have to be me against them.

Ambrose would settle for nothing less than total victory, leaving his enemies in ruin with no chance of ever rising against him again.

Yalten, I supposed, would be a good place to start.

I returned my thoughts to my healing Repository, all of my power pouring into it to bring me back to complete health. It was a fragile thing, in spite of all the effort I’d put into protecting it. In this moment, if an unexpected threat approached, they could destroy my soul with an almost insignificant effort.

I hated that thought.

In that moment, I swore to myself that I’d never again be so vulnerable.

The question was, how would I rid myself of a weakness that was so integral to my existence?

I cast my gaze about, idly considering the thought, when my gaze locked on the seed that Cadavrrhizae had left behind when it died.

I considered the odd, fleshy thing, and felt a slight whisper in the back of my head– a nudge, rather than the harsh shoves I was used to.

My Encompassing Knowledge told me that this thing was an incomplete, malleable creation– seconds away from completion, yet incapable of ever reaching its full potential.

This seed was full of the energies of Life and Death, but lacked a binding agent– the intent of the Cadavrrhizae, most likely, seeing how the energy within it felt. Without that, it would never amount to anything on its own.

However, I happened to specialize in the subversion and manipulation of Conceptium.

I couldn’t do anything so intensive until my Repository had finished healing, though, so I took a quick moment to glance around my tower, finding that the caravan I’d spotted a while back had made its way into town. They seemed to be behaving themselves, so far, and none of them had any crimes registered by my Runic Orbs, so I decided to leave the girls to handle them. Hopefully, one of them would try their luck and I’d get a good taste of some new advanced energies– energies that I could use to force open portals and draw even more power out of them. I was also rather interested in seeing what that did to an affinity’s wielder– would their magic lose potency, or be subverted somehow and take on traits resembling my own powers?

Could I create my own flavor of magic? Not that it would affect me too much, but it would certainly be a fun experiment.

Yet more ideas that I wanted to test but couldn’t act upon until I’d fully recovered. This is taking forever. I wish I could take a nap.

Sadly, there was nothing for it. I was undead, and I wasn’t about to try and figure out how to magically induce sleep. Maybe I could go visit Kyle? But then I’d be leaving my core undefended, and I’d have to waste a bunch of energy getting there… not worth it.

“I’m bored.”

Nothing responded.

Then… something entered my dungeon.

I diverted my focus to that, reducing my speed of recovery but finally giving me something to do.

It was… a boy. A single young man had entered my tower and decided to… solo it? He looked nervous, but determined.

I tried to examine him, and he stiffened as some of my power passed through him. Is that… Yes, I think that’s Karma. Not too strong, either, but… he might be able to handle this floor.

I made a stone couch and splayed myself across it, imagining I was watching a movie.

I really need to figure out how to make popcorn.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

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Sakran gritted his teeth as the pair of lizards charged at him synchronously. The first darted to his right, where it was met by his shortsword, but the other nearly bit into his unprotected flesh, only dodged at the last moment.

He Pulled himself backwards, raising his shortsword and dagger in front of him in a defensive stance.

Strangely, both of the lizards were sporting cuts across their left shoulders. He was pretty sure neither of them had been noticeably hurt before they’d attacked, but it had been a rush so he could be wrong.

Both of the lizards approached again, impossibly well-coordinated, as though the fight had been choreographed ahead of time.

They were durable, fast, and outnumbered him 2 to 1, which was only further exacerbated by their ability to work together like nothing he’d ever seen. Even more than that, he got a sense that if they managed to sink their teeth into him, he’d be torn to bits.

He had two options remaining: flee like a coward, or fight, risking death for his advancement.

I need to survive and get stronger. To deliver this letter, and to become something more than I already am.

There was a path to accomplish both goals, and as long as there was a way, he would find it.

His Karmic Sight flared, and he felt his mental energy draining into the Boon.

He braced himself for the arrival of the monsters, and then he saw it.

A thread of something almost like Karma between the two monsters. Without thinking, he struck out with his sword and wasted the remainder of his Mentum on his lowest-level Skill.

Sever.

Karmic Sight ended, and Sakran stumbled, raising his blades to his sides blindly to defend himself.

But no attack came.

When he lowered his guard, Sakran witnessed both of the lizards lying prone in the grass. He still sensed Karma in the area leading to them, so he knew that they weren’t dead, but… they were immobile.

Not knowing if this was a temporary condition or a permanent disability, the young warrior rushed to plunge his blades into the skulls of the lizards, finishing them off.

Embracing the flow of Karma, Sakran checked on his Legend.

Sakran Betza

Karmic Blade 3

Karma Manipulation 3

* Karmic Sight 4

* Bond Alteration 3

* Intense Bond 2

* Fated Link 1

Entangled Bladework 3

* Pull 5

* Lucky Positioning 4

* Strike Vulnerability 3

* Inevitable Blow 2

Sever 2

* Karmic Empowerment 2

* Sunder Binding 1

* Available Boon (Rebinding, Aftershock)

Enhancements: Willpower x2, Reinforcement x1

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I looked down in interest at the Skill the boy had used, finding that the connection between the two Twinscales had been completely severed. Since they had been, in all ways except physically, a single creature, the breaking of that binding had rendered the bodies braindead.

I clapped for the kid. He probably would have lost if not for that sudden display of magical prowess.

Sadly, the kid decided to throw in the towel after that. While it was irritating that my entertainment had left, he didn’t have an advanced mana type that I could harvest, meaning that his death wouldn’t benefit me much, and he’d been pretty exhausted.

Since I wasn’t counting those soldiers who had wanted to kill me, this kid was my first real dungeon runner. Hopefully I hadn’t scared him off.

I watched him run off for a while, but he just ended up going back to a residence that had been lent to him. I also did another quick scan of his body to see if there were any anomalies that I hadn’t noticed the first time around. While there was nothing too interesting about the boy himself, he was carrying a letter on his person, one addressed to me.

I quickly speedread the note.

Dear Lord Ambrose, yadda yadda yadda, appearance in court, blah blah, sincerely, Queen Nadiya Sharjiil of Kerenth.

Basically, she wanted me to show up to a meeting. I quickly looked around my influence for a calendar, eventually locating one that the merchants had brought with them, and I counted out two weeks– thirteen days, really– until the specified date. It was also supposed to be right at midnight, which was a rather interesting choice, and she made some other specific requests regarding how I presented myself to her council.

With that in mind, I refocused on my Repository.

It was going to take a while to heal up, and I wanted as much time as I could to prepare the things she’d requested.

While I didn’t really like being around most mortals, the queen had implied that the interaction would be… entertaining. Now I had something to look forward to while I slowly nursed my soul back to full health. Hopefully that meant the time would pass by faster, rather than slower.

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After a bit over a week of patient recovery, I was ready to get back to work.

The most urgent thing to do was to prepare for my meeting with the queen and her council.

First, I needed to edit my appearance. This was initially a bit wonky, since I normally made clones for use after my current copy had been destroyed, but it didn’t take much more focus to force my construct to maintain its shape while I abandoned it to imprint my soul on the new one.

As for the design, I made it a bit taller than I normally would have, and artificially blackened the bones to add a bit of menace. I furthermore draped scraps of flesh over certain bones and thickened others, even going so far as to lengthen and sharpen the points of my distal phalanges to appear like claws.

My next action was to carve tiny Light runes into my empty eye sockets to create the illusion that I saw through small, purplish flames. The runes had to be very small, otherwise they would force me to manually control their power consumption to prevent them from using my new body as a talisman, but I managed to get them to a good size that created the visual effect I wanted without reducing me to motes of colored light.

The final cosmetic change I made was to create a brand-new cloak for myself, carefully inscribing sigils into it to produce swirling fog when provided with energy. I left certain parts of the intent vague to allow my Forbodum to fill in the gaps with its own intent, hopefully allowing it to be more chaotic and mysterious.

In spite of my nature, I’d never truly leaned into the intimidation factor of being a terrifying undead overlord, and this would be my first real chance to do so. I wanted to go all-out, and hopefully make some noble jerks soil themselves. I, at least, wouldn’t have to deal with the smell.

Queen Nadiya had asked me to create a display of force and might, and my two most obviously dangerous weapons at the moment were my Sovereignty and ability to conjure an army. I had yet to incorporate any of the kingdom into my domain, but this would be a fantastic excuse to do so. For that reason, I built up large amounts of influence along the border and held it from spilling over. Some patrols near the edge of where I’d expanded might have felt a chill run down their spine or something, but that was of little concern.

As for the army, I folded a pocket dimension and tied it to my being, the same as I’d done with my many clones. Here, though, I expanded. Rather than just enough space to fit a single body, I made a wide, blank space, one without air or heat or anything substantial, and set down a large, marble floor.

Here, I considered my options. I had many different sorts of creations that I could use, and deciding on any one brand of minion was always difficult.

However, I’d only ever used one minion for battle outside of my own tower, and it felt appropriate to return to my roots.

I pulled up my old design for the Antigo and started working on a new variant. The original creatures were heavily focused on speed and power, but to be true shock troops, fit for both intimidation and war, they also needed to be tough. Luckily for me, covering the beasts in plates of reinforced bone seemed effective enough, and also gave the impression that they were wearing plate armor.

After a bit of testing them against the original design, I concluded that my War Antigos’ sacrifice in speed was worthwhile when in large numbers. In single combat, the original, more rapid Antigo design was more effective, but in the chaos of battle it was difficult to stick to attacking a single target.

Once I’d designed the new mob variant, I was able to spam my new pocket-space full of them. It was a bit straining to do so, since mobile seams were more difficult to sustain than stationary ones, but my recent increases to Willpower helped carry me through. My power generation was utterly monstrous at this point, what with my innate nature as a lich, my domain helping to funnel half a continent of power to me, and seven System-granted Willpower enhancements, which seemed to me like less of a flat boost and more multiplicative.

I was ready to turn Kerenth’s castle into an inescapable haunted house, and it seemed that the time for action was approaching.

Now I just had to wait for the signal.