Chapter 3

The AI stood up and a blackboard appeared “Here this will make it slightly easier. You can do this yourself, by the way, edit the space so you can find what’s important to you.”

This is what appeared on the blackboard.

Class selection:

Necrolord.

Short summary: Hybrid class. Commander/summoner/fighter

Army commander that at later milestones get buffs to administrating areas like fortresses, towns, villages and even whole kingdoms.

As a summoner part of your army can be summoned units. In the Necrolord’s case, those units are undead. Paths, perks and milestones decide what types of units are available.

As a summoner/commander hybrid you get a certain amount of max summoned unit slots and per slot a certain amount of points that denote the max unit size. Unit type for that slot is fixed when chosen, although at later milestones or paths may give perks that allow switching or upgrading of unit types.

As a fighter, you are expected to lead from the front.

Beginning level cap: 5

“Before I decide, So what are milestones?” I asked having seen that word crop up a few times now.

“Everyone has a level cap, which differs per class. More generic classes have a higher base cap than the more unique ones. Yours starts at 5, while a farmer might have a cap of 20, to begin with. To increase your level cap you have certain milestones you have to hit. As I can't tell what yours will be until you take the class, let’s take the farmer again as an example.” The AI said.

“The farmer might have as one of his milestones to get a certain amount of income in a year from selling produce. Or he might have one that says, own ten cows. Usually, the more difficult the milestone the bigger the bonuses. Usually, it's a level cap increase but some might have perks or stat increases instead. You always have at least 3 milestones available, you can do them in any order. You can sometimes get new milestones by discovering things in the world.”

“Back to the example farmer. While out in the woods he discovers a new vegetable. He might unlock a milestone to plant a certain number of fields with it and have a harvest of a certain size. Once he completes that he got a +2 level cap and a 10% increase in the quality of that crop. If that then drops him below the minimum of three available milestones, he gets a new one. The ones discovered in the wild are usually harder but give better bonuses than the random ones the system gives.”

I think I got it, slow and steady growth just doing normal stuff or going out discovering new things, and get better rewards if you complete them.

“One last note. Some milestones might also unlock titles. You can only have one active title at a time and when you change it you are locked in on that title for at last 7 days. Title’s give a bonus for as long as that title is active. Back to the farmer again, after a milestone for breeding a few different plants together he might gain the title Hybridizer giving him a 25% bonus success chance to make a hybrid plant.”

“So will you accept this class or do you want me to put up two new ones to choose from? Just as a reminder the new ones will probably be more generic and less powerful than the one presented right now.”

As I knew that time stood still while I was in here, I took my time to weigh the decision. Having undead troops to help during adventures and help keep my friends safe was a plus. If I'm reading it right it would also push me into building towns and so on. With the amount of free space on the new continent that wouldn’t be as hard to do as in other places.

On the other hand even though undead by themselves are not evil, there are some religions that from upon their use. That plus the stories that always go around taverns. Everyone has a friend who has a tale that goes something like “My cousin’s barber has an uncle whose best friend stayed the night in a cemetery on a dare and got eaten by a zombie.” Or some variation of that makes it that a lot of people mistrust undead.

In the end, the deciding factor was, the undead are just way too cool, and as I will have my own kingdom hopefully. The people who don't like undead will just not be invited.

“Well sign me up for some undead action.” Doing a double-take on what I just said and turning red. “I meant ill take the Necrolord class”

My AI counterpart chuckled “I'm linked into your subconscious, I know exactly what you meant.” And he winked at me while pushing a button.

Class: Necrolord

Level: 1

Stats:

Strength: 5

Dexterity: 10

Stamina: 8

Intelligence: 9

Willpower: 11

Charisma: 8

Paths: PP available 5

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Path of the skeleton (5)

Path of the zombie (5)

Path of the commander (10)

Path of the revenant (25)

Skills: current rank/max rank (Potential rank in brackets)

*authors note, my skill list was huge so only writing down the important ones for now.

Cooking 0/1 (5)

Fishing 1/1 (5)

All weapon skills were at 0/1 (5)

Light armour 1/1 (5)

Medium armour 0/1 (5)

Heavy armour 0/1 (10)

Perks and Traits:

Fast regeneration: +1 HP and +1 stamina regen per character level

Immortality: If you get killed you will reappear in your designated place of rest after 1 day. Timer double after each death. The timer resets back to 1 day after a year alive without deaths. Will not visually age past the age of 30.

Dark-vision: Can see in total darkness as far as in daylight. Colours in total darkness are in black and white.

Light sensitivity: Takes you longer to adjust to sudden changes in light level.

Titles: none

Milestones:

Get your first unit to at least 10 troops.

Have one of your units develop a ‘personality’.

Get a weapon or armour skill to rank 3

Going down my list of skills I saw a ton of generic ones like cleaning running and so on that had the same stats as cooking at the moment. Apparently, the system decided that me spending a lot of my free time fishing already gave me a skill point in that. As did just walking around in plain clothes, which also fall under the light armour category.

My high potential for heavy armour was the one out-lier that I could see so far.

“Now before you ask any questions I'm going to turn on your HUD, aka your heads up display. You will see a few icons in your peripheral vision. These allow you to view a few things from your character sheet without having to come in here. It will also show you ongoing effects like poison and bleeds. And last but not least at the bottom, you can see a few different bars with numbers on them. The red bar for health, a yellow bar for stamina and a blue bar for mana.”

I blinked and everything showed up. Milestones were in a small box on the right, the bars at the bottom, and a small box at the top that gave me a little bit of info about what I was looking at.

Identify skill learnt currently 0/1 (10)

My HP was at 95, stamina at 80 and mana at 110. “So what's the breakdown on these numbers then.”

“Base HP is stamina + willpower divided by two. Then multiplied by 10. Mana is 10x Willpower. Stamina is 10x stamina. At the moment you regenerate a base 1 point of each per minute. Your fast regen trait adds to that, so at the moment you regen 2 HP 2 sta and 1 mana per minute. As you can see traits and such can have big effects on how these calculations go.”

“Now next up is paths. At each level, you get points that you can put into paths. Each of these will customise your class in certain directions. Each path has a certain length, for instance, the skeleton path is 5 points. Each point you put into a path will give you a small bonus, with a bigger boon when you finish the path. There are no refunds, and you cannot see what the unlock is before you put your points in, so think long and hard before you spend them.”

“How do I gain more path points?” I asked

“You gain a few each level up, and rarely milestones might give you a few as well. You can gain new paths in a ton of different ways, finishing a path, milestones sometimes doing a great deed or making a discovery.”

Looking at my current paths, skeletons and zombies were probably different unit types while commander would deal with units. Going by my milestones I needed at least one unit. So I started by putting one point into the Path of the commander.

Path of the commander (1/10)

+1 Charisma. Unit slot unlocked. Command points unlocked

1 Unit slot is available. 9 command points are available.

Next, I went with putting a point into skeletons.

Path of the skeleton (1/5)

New unit type unlocked

Skeleton infantry. Infantry types, swordsman and spearmen. Each skeleton has a cost of 1 CP (command points)

Before deciding how to spend the rest of my points. I went over to a new blackboard that now showed my units on them.

UNIT 1

Size 0/0

Type: none

I got a pop-up on my hud asking if I wanted to add command points to a unit and define its type. The system warned me that this selection would be permanent unless I got perks later that allowed me to redistribute things.

As I needed a unit size of at least 10 for one of my milestones I added all the CP I had to the unit and I decided on skeleton spearmen. The board changed to denote the changes.

UNIT 1

Size 0/9

Type: Skeleton spearmen

Equipment:

Weapons:

Basic spear

Armour: none

Unit traits:

Replenish at 1 CP per hour when not in combat. A random unit member gets resurrected.

Troops retain weapons and armour they had on them when defeated.

Skipping over zombies, for now, figuring they would add a new unit type. I added a point in Revenant.

Path of the revenant (1/25)

+1 potential to bladed weapon skills.

+1 strength

With now only two points remaining I put another point each into commander and revenant.

Path of the commander (2/10)

+1 charisma

+1 CP from charisma increase

1 Commander slot is available. Commander type unlocked, Staff-Sergeant.

Commander will present itself within a few days of being assigned a unit.

I added the extra CP and commander slot to the skeleton unit.

Path of the revenant (2/25)

+1 strength.

+1 stamina.

Looking over my new stats

Strength: 7

Dexterity: 10

Stamina: 9

Intelligence: 9

Willpower: 11

Charisma: 10

HP 100

Stamina 90

Mana 110

The AI chimed in at that point. “I think this is enough for now, time on the outside might not flow but you will still feel the time spent in here, and it's been a few hours now. Take a bit of time to get used to your new stats and skills. You can always contact me mentally to ask me questions.”

“In that case, I should probably give you a name.” Thinking it over I couldn’t come up with anything better than, “I'll call you Aime. Short for AI- me.” I know, not very creative.

“So how do I get out of here.”

“Just think yourself back to your body,” Aime replied.

And with that, I found myself back on the cliff-top