“So, who are you?” Rev asked, interviewing the zombie he had trapped on his second day in the world. After exploring the cell block from which he originated, he had learned that nearly the entire block was empty, with only a few occupied cells. Also, the guard post at the end of the long hallway was marked as “3S” which he took to mean that this cell block was south, and the other was north. This time, he avoided entering the guard post; afraid that the guards would still be present.
Instead of answering, the woman sobbed incoherently while curling into a ball in the corner of the cell. Sighing, Rev unlocked the cell, and moved to awkwardly pat her shoulder. Before his comforting gesture could land, the woman scuttled away, staring at him in incoherent horror. He checked the remaining time on her purification as their gazes locked.
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Purification Time Remaining: 2:52
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Rev sighed in frustration, and held up his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just wanted to ask you some questions.”
“Who are you? Why can’t I understand what you’re saying? Please don’t hurt me.” The woman babbled, before breaking down again.
Rev smacked his forehead when he realized the problem, before casting his translation spell on her.
“Can you understand me now?” He asked her.
She nodded meekly, and he tried again. “Alright, then can you tell me your name?”
“It’s Chun Go.” She squeaked.
“And who are you, Chun Go? A guard? A prisoner?” He pressed her.
She shook her head. “I’m a janitor. Please, I don’t know anything. I’ve been lost in the darkness for so long.”
“Actually, I was just hoping you could give me directions.” He told her, chagrined.
Chun blinked as if the inanity of the request caught her off guard. “Directions?”
Rev nodded. “I can’t seem to find a map anywhere, and I was hoping to find my way to the town where the civilians are.
Chun shook her head defiantly. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”
Rev sighed. “Look, how much do you understand about what’s been going on?”
Her face went blank. “I… I was so hungry. I couldn’t think or move. Then I saw… someone. I don’t really remember it very well, but I know I fought them, and they locked me in here.”
Rev frowned. “Chun… you do know you were a zombie right?”
“A zombie?” She asked. “No, that’s not right…” She stared off into the distance as if trying to piece something together.
“Wait, what did Fi say he was?” Rev muttered. “Oh ya. I think the proper term is a voidling. You were a voidling.”
She shuddered and startled as if jolted by an electric wire. “No, please, I don’t want to go back there, don’t make me go back.” She began babbling incoherently.
Rev sighed, and moved to pat her shoulder again. This time she let him, and he sat there awkwardly petting her back as she went through the stages of a mental breakdown; collapsing into his lap while sobbing. He almost lost track of the situation, but remembered at the last moment to check her timer.
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Purification Time Remaining: 0:10
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Relieved that he caught it in time, he poured his last few points of essence into purification; watching as Chun shuddered in what almost seemed like ecstasy. Naturally, he left himself a point of essence to avoid spending the next twenty minutes cultivating to maintain his core.
“What was that?” Chun asked, looking up at him with her eyes red from tears.
“I purified you. It should buy you a few more minutes.” He replied awkwardly, checking the timer.
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Purification Time Remaining: 7:00
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“Thank you.” She said, curling into him with a lost expression on her face. He rested his hand lightly on her shoulder; sensing she needed the comfort. That was the moment she realized how little the shreds of her dress actually covered; scuttling back to press into a wall with her knees pulled up against her chest to block his view.
Rev shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’m not really in the right headspace for that. The whole zombie thing is a bit of a mood-killer.” He informed her with a dry tone.
“But I’m not a zombie,” she informed him.
Rev shrugged. “Zombie, voidling, what’s the difference?”
She screwed her face up into the scowl of someone trying to remember an old science lesson from high school. “Zombies are reanimated corpses. Voidlings are… the opposite of alive?” She stated uncertainly. “It was something like that.”
Rev nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that sort of makes sense? Anyway, I was still hoping you could give me directions.”
Chun shook her head defiantly. “Why should I? The whole point of there being no maps is to make sure prisoners don’t escape. You’re too weak to be a guard, you’re not dressed like a clerk, and I know all the janitorial staff, so you have to be a prisoner.”
Rev shook his head, and decided pressing the identity issue would be futile. “Because I want to purify the townspeople. Most of the… voidlings I’ve seen are either too powerful to purify for very long, or they’re prisoners, which I wouldn’t trust even if they were purified. I’m hoping that if I can at least purify some of the weaker townspeople, then I can at least get started on… I have no idea, but it seems like a good place to start.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Chun nodded, clearly conflicted. “Why should I trust you though?” She asked. “It’s my duty to my sect to…”
Rev shook his head. “You don’t have a duty to anyone anymore. Everyone is dead. The whole world is nothing but voidlings. Do you understand? What happened to you has happened to everyone. You all got zombified, or voided, or whatever, and now I’m stuck in the middle of all this trying to clean up someone else’s mess!” He punctuated this by slapping his hand against the stone floor; wincing as he watched Chun quiver in sudden apprehension. “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough couple of weeks.” He said, moderating his voice down to a more neutral tone.
Chun nodded, staring at him apprehensively. After staring at him searchingly for a moment, she sighed. “Fine. I’ll help you navigate, but you have to bring me with you.”
Rev blinked. “What? How am I supposed to do that with you turning into a voidling every few minutes?”
Chun shrugged. “I realize it’s a difficult request, but I don’t want to be a voidling forever. At the very least, this way I will get to be human again from time to time. Besides, if I tried to just give you the directions, there is a good chance you would get hopelessly lost.”
Rev sighed. “Fine, but I hope you don’t expect me to keep you human the whole way there. Just buying you fifteen minutes is costing me hours worth of essence generation.”
Chun stared at him. “Wait, how much essence did you spend on me?”
Rev shrugged. “Fifteen points?”
Chun blinked. “And that was hours worth of essence?”
Rev shrugged. “Yes?”
Chun clicked her tongue, the uncertainty and fear seeming to melt from her body language as she realized his incompetence. “I’m sorry, but if I was your sect leader, I would smack you. Why haven’t you been devoting your time to cultivation? It should be fairly quick and easy at this stage in your development.”
Rev shrugged in embarrassment. “I’ve been busy trying to survive, and when I did find a safe place, I spent a lot of time reading and trying to take my mind off things.”
Chun shook her head in reproach. “I won’t take you anywhere until you have a law. There is simply no way to conduct this journey safely prior to that.”
Rev frowned. “But that would take months!”
Chun scoffed. “What are a few months compared to power, prestige, and eternal life? Do you have something better to do?”
“Well, no…” Rev replied, chagrined, before she cut him off.
“This is the overflow wing. The entire area should be deserted. Take over a guard post, and spend the next few months cultivating. I will still be here when you get back.” Chun demanded authoritatively.
Rev sighed. “Fine, I will. Do you mind coming with me? I could use the company.”
Chun shrugged. “You might have to drag me with you as a voidling, but I don’t mind. I just ask that when you cross the first tier, you purify me properly.”
Rev nodded. “Fair enough. Do you really think I’ll be able to afford a thousand essence at that point though?”
Chun laughed. “You really have no idea how much of a difference tiers make, do you? I have no doubt that you could be generating that amount every day once you complete your breakthrough.”
“If it’s so easy, and amazing, then why haven’t you done it?” Rev retorted.
Chun gave him a sidelong glance. “It’s illegal to cultivate before the age of twenty, because otherwise society would be stuck with hordes of hormonal teenagers running around in unaging bodies. I was only cultivating for a month before… this happened.” She said, waving vaguely at the world.
Rev nodded. “Fair enough. Is there anything you need to get, or are you ready to leave now?”
Chun shook her head. “I’m sure the guard post will have everything I need. Let’s leave now, so you don’t have to carry me too far.”
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Three months later
Rev beamed as the notification finally appeared.
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Congratulations! Through careful cultivation, you have qualified for a breakthrough to tier 1. You may now cultivate with a master to learn their law, or embark into the unknown by cultivating a law of your own. The choice is yours!
For prioritizing spirit as your breakthrough stat, you are also awarded the common ranked title:
Spirit Cultivator.
Spirit Cultivator:
Qi generation increased by 1% per point of spirit stat.
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Feeling like a kid in a candy store, Rev immediately began cultivating his law. After lengthy internal discussion, Rev had chosen his future law based on a simple premise. All his life, he had gravitated toward magic. Whenever given the opportunity in a video game, or dungeons and dragon sessions, he would always play a mage first, and rarely bothered with warrior or rogue archetypes. He felt like he understood magic on a visceral level, and Chun had assured him that instinctual attraction was an important aspect of selecting a law. A person who truly resonated with their law gained bonuses in using it, and would be generally stronger than if they picked a law they didn’t resonate with.
Rev felt slightly silly using what was essentially a kind of magic to copy another kind of magic. It almost felt like cheating to mix archetypes this way, but at the end of the day, he had the opportunity to realize his biggest dream. Under Chun’s instruction, he had formulated a plausible system for magic that would mesh with the rules of this universe, and as he began cultivating his new law, Rev prayed that it would at least partially emulate his wishes. It took him a full day, but Rev was rewarded with several notifications when he finally completed the process.
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Congratulations! A new law has entered the world. From this moment until the stars die in the heavens, your soul, whatever form it shall take in the future, will be guided by the Law of Magic. The general guide to the changes you have undergone is detailed here:
-You have unlocked the Qi resource: Mana
-Your body now generates mana autonomously when sleeping or cultivating in addition to the raw essence generated during that time
-Base cultivation speed before other modifiers is now 500% faster
-Maximum mana is now intelligence stat *10
-Base mana regeneration is now Spirit stat per hour of sleep or cultivation
-One power related to your law, selected at random, has been unlocked: Rune-crafting. See your character sheet for more information about rune-crafting. Other powers may be unlocked through practice, or investment of mana. Powers may be refined through both practice, and mana investment
-Mana may be converted to essence at a rate of 10:1
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You have received a divine message. Access your core interface to read it.
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Before he could get lost in experimenting with his new law, Rev ate his proverbial vegetables by opening the message. Given that she was his only contact, Rev was unsurprised to find the sender listed as Li-Sarin.
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Hello, and congratulations on your breakthrough! As part of certain obligations I’m under, I’m contacting you to warn you that the death god has now become aware of your existence. Don’t worry though, he is bound by certain oaths. Instead of him instantly wiping you out, the two of us have placed a wager on you. I know you must be thinking that this is how I got into this mess in the first place, but really the alternative was that he would simply send a high-tiered agent to kill you for him. So, with that being said, I’m duty-bound to inform you of the rules of this contest. He will send entities of his choice to try to kill you. Survive, and you will be rewarded with various boons, one of which will be selected at random once per day at midnight from a pre-determined list according to your current tier. The entities he sends have to be scaled according to your relative power level. You are allowed to receive aid from others, but 50% of their relative power value will be counted toward the invader’s power budget for anyone who can be reasonably counted as your ally. Remember that you need not kill your invaders. So long as you survive until midnight, you will receive your reward for the day. If you do kill your invader though, he must wait a week before sending another; allowing you a week to rest and recuperate, during which you continue to gain the daily rewards. While I am honor-bound not to give you specific advice, I do urge you to think carefully about when to flee, and when to fight. A dangerous opponent may be outgrown, given time. You have until 8 am tomorrow to prepare. My hands are tied in terms of directly helping you in this contest, but I do wish you good luck!
xoxo
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Rev groaned in frustration and held his head as she ruined what should have been the best moment of his life.