There was only one entrance for the ziggurat, about midway up the steps. The door to the temple, unlike the rest of the necropolis, remained sealed shut. Two enormous solid metal slabs of blackened iron, a similar material to the door we’d entered the necropolis through, barred the way. An intricate bas relief of deathlike figures holding scythes adorned both gates. I instantly recognized the figures as Tomb Guardians, like the one that gave me a monster core.

“Do you think Tomb Guardians will be there?” I asked Rissah while she examined the door, trying not to sound too enthusiastic.. For obvious reasons, I was a bit of a fanboy of them.

“I hope not,” Rissah said. “They keep semi-sentience and I’m not sure one would welcome my presence.”

“Well, then, do you think we should even bother going in?”

“Of course!” For a split-second, Rissah looked irritated at the suggestion. “We need to find out what happened here,” she said, more calmly.

I wanted to know why she believed that nonsense, but not enough to halt my own plans. Weirdly, this seemed a little too important to her. Between our earlier conversation and the fluctuation of her intensity, I was starting to conclude that I didn’t much care for the handmaiden. Spacey I could handle, but mean was a deal breaker.

While Rissah looked to see if she could pick open the magic binding, I climbed ahead to the top of the ziggurat. I left my skeletal unicorn Vlad behind to watch over the wraith, partly because it struggled to go up the steep steps.

My new ability, Enhanced Agility, made the steps duck soup.

I lept three at a time, danced along the edge, then did a round off to a step four below where I started. Flipping into a handstand, I worked my way back up the steps, laughing the entire way. The ease with which I controlled my body was by far the best trait the codex had given me. I’d have sacrificed every other choice for the freedom.

After taking a deep breath that was purely for theatrics, I front flipped the rest of the last few remaining stairs upward. A shout of glee bubbled out of me, and I held my hands out like I’d just stuck a landing in the olympics. Handybro gave me a weak clap, but that was the best it had, so I appreciated it.

I expected the rooftop to be a barren surface. Instead, what I found were more carvings of mana vents and a blue-robed corpse. Laying on its stomach was the long dead remains of a man with a bunch of obvious holes in his back and head. Whoever had done the guy in hadn’t been playing around. The murderers had stabbed him at least a dozen times.

Before I got close, I checked him with Sense Undead. When he came back as just dead, I bent down and flipped him over. My brief contact with the bones told me that this man had been an accomplished mage. Stored within the long dead remains was an expert level generalist magic-user. A person who had prized versatility over specializing in a particular magic field.

I reached down, grabbing his finger and channeled his expertise into myself through Necrometry. Then, with my free hand, I attempted to cast a spell that he’d mastered. My right hand waved in the air resembling a sign language interpreter at a cow auction, but nothing happened.

Ah, Necrometry gives me muscle memory but not knowledge. That’s why it works with spears but not spells.

It was a little disappointing that I couldn’t grave rob my way into being an Archmage, but I still kept a pinky bone. At the very least, I could use the skill to make funny hand gestures.

I rummaged through the semi-desiccated corpse’s belongings. At first glance, I thought there was nothing on the dead scoundrel, but inside of the lining of the old robe I found a hard shape. Whoever had rolled the guy probably hadn’t noticed the object. The thin and deteriorated state of his clothes was the only reason I did.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Tearing open his robe, a silver and gold ring with a black onyx stone set in the center tumbled out. I had only a second to glimpse it, but I already knew what I was holding.

A signet ring.

Slowly, I lifted the decorative band up to my eye and saw a golden rune carving in the shape of a stag. Oran’s memories came flooding into my consciousness, informing me that what I had was precious beyond measure.

Signet rings were the designated symbol of authority over a noble house. They were magic items, only removable upon death, and one could not govern in Allwyn without one.

Of the original ten great houses that formed the kingdom of Allwyn, there were only eight left. The other houses eradicated House Lanford for engaging in treason with one of the northern Heartland kingdoms. And the loss had only been half a century ago. Because of that fiasco, there had been famine and food shortages for nearly two decades before Allwyn reestablished a good trade relation.

House Stilhart was another story entirely. Nearly a thousand years ago, the brash leader of the great house disappeared without a trace. Caspian Stilhart was an adventurer who had become rich and powerful from his addiction to exploration. Allwyn was, as it still is today, a frontier kingdom mired in difficulties. Adventuring has always been the chief export and import. So, Caspian’s proclivities were not as strange as one might expect from nobles in other lands.

One day, the Patriarch of House Stilhart went out with a team and never returned. The inquisition found his companions and executed them all after they explained he had gone off to explore alone. No one could prove they’d lied, and everyone knew Caspian was infamous for doing that very thing, but the government at the time killed them just to be sure.

Without the ring, the house fell into a sharp decline, before losing their status as nobility altogether. No one had access to the vault, and thus the central wealth of a noble house, unless they had the ring. A minor war started as the other houses went all in on a free-for-all to claim Stilhart’s properties and resources. The other houses forced King Galforn the Paynim to intervene and prevent a full-blown civil war.

Centuries of legendary sightings, false treasure maps, and tall-tales have succeeded the loss of the ring I now held in my palm. Oran loved hearing stories about treasure hunters trying to find the lost signet ring when he was a kid. The myth had traveled far and wide, giving rise to stories that reminded me of the search for the Holy Grail back on earth. Yet, Caspian’s ancient spoils still sat untouched in a locked tower in the trade district.

The simple act of placing the ring on my finger would make me the undead inheritor of all that wealth and treasure, and potentially put me at the head of a reestablished house. All the problems that poor Oran faced as a living man solved from finding a random piece of jewelry on a body.

And I thought American politics were bad!

Caspian had probably been the one that killed all the sleeping undead in the broken tombs, but I wondered why he hadn’t bothered to open the ziggurat. Had the poor sod just come up here for a look and gotten himself killed by something? I looked at his wounds again, and the possibility that a tomb guardian had murdered him made a little sense. The only one I’d seen had a scythe, which it used to cut off limbs like my ex-minion. But if one had a spear, then the cause of death would make perfect sense.

Now with a signet ring of my own, I considered putting it on my ghoul claw minion ‌for a gag, but reigned in the impulse. What the magic would do was still unclear, and would take some research on my part. Afraid that I’d lose the precious item, I wrapped it in a piece of cloth and used the magic of my belt to fasten it to the inside of my waistband on my right hip.

Not but a few moments after that, I heard Vlad clopping loudly to get my attention. I’d instructed my skeletal minion to alert me if Rissah opened the door. After her insistence on gaining entrance to the structure, I was afraid that she might “forget” to call out to me if she succeeded in her endeavor.

Unfortunately, I was right. By the time I cartwheeled my way back to the entrance, Rissah had already gone ahead.

The imposing structure sat barely cracked open an inch, but with whatever magic powering the seal gone, that was a big enough space for a wraith to glide in. I stuck one of my mundane daggers into the crack and pried the door open big enough to let my fingertips slip in. From there, a little elbow grease was all it took to open the hole. Surprisingly, the metal doors were silent as they slid toward me.

I found myself in a once luxurious hallway, covered in dust covered rugs and tattered banners of the four undead gods that had their symbols engraved throughout the necropolis below.

Rissah was practically sprinting ahead of me, causing magical lanterns to ignite as she passed. Her sudden bout of urgency filled me with a similar emotion, and I shot forward to catch her.

My magically enhanced feet ate up the distance at a frightening rate, and I felt a grin find its way on to my face. I could run across the entire continent at this pace and never once tire.

Over Rissah’s shoulder, I saw a glowing purple crystal floating over a pit. Then she blasted me off my feet.