Luke walked through the undead city with Frank by his side, their footsteps echoing crumbling buildings and abandoned streets. Having already cleared the surrounding area, Luke felt relaxed.

At his hip, Fenn hung comfortably, its weight a reassuring presence. Now that he was paying attention, he could feel the hammer’s [Murderhobo] domain resonate with his own. Fenn didn’t have a human level of intelligence, but it had some awareness of what was happening around it.

In contrast, Frank was as twitchy as a meth addict. His eyes darted around nervously as they navigated the eerie streets, his fur standing on end and his whiskers twitching at every sound.

Luke already regretted bringing him along.

As they passed the overgrown park, Luke noticed activity. It had been a few days now since he cleared it out, but a new shambler had either wandered in, or respawned.

It was only level three, so Luke ignored it.

Frank, however, gripped his axe tightly and charged at the shambler. The shambler was a little shorter than Luke, and was shaped like a garbage pile. A monster that Luke looked down on made the little ratling look even smaller by comparison.

Luke watched as Frank struggled.

The ratling hacked away, but his wild swings didn’t penetrate nearly as deep as Luke’s hammer blows would. The shambler’s flesh knit back up too fast for Frank to make much progress.

Maybe I was luckier than I realised, Luke mused.

He had already attuned four concepts by the time he faced his first shambler. Frank’s armour protected him from the worst of the shambler’s necrotic tendrils, but his movements were frantic and uncoordinated, and his attacks lacked force.

Soon, the shambler had grappled the ratling with several spiny tendrils. It pulled Frank close and poked at his armour. The metal protected him well, but wasn’t perfect; there were gaps at the joints, and the shambler’s rot domain would eventually turn it into scrap.

Just as Luke was considering if he should help, Frank got lucky. Flailing with his unrestrained arm, Frank’s axe found its mark and penetrated just deeply enough to strike the shambler’s core with a squelch.

The creature shuddered and collapsed, its body shimmering with the telltale glow of aether as it slumped into a puddle. Frank stared at the remains with a puzzled expression, panting heavily, with his axe hanging limply at his side.

When the ratling made no move to take the aether, Luke’s loot lust kicked in.

“Are you going to use that?” he said.

“How?”

“Just touch it.”

When Frank poked the mass, a couple of sparks of aether jumped across, yet more remained. Worse, it started fading into the surrounding dungeon.

It struck Luke that perhaps he didn’t appreciate all the heavy lifting his [System] seed did for him. Harvesting aether this way was common, but it wasn’t necessarily easy or efficient.

Luke stepped forward and tried for himself, and found that it was relatively easy to pick up on his first attempt; his soul already knew how to do it. The aether was weak, particularly after filtering out the [Rot].

For the next few minutes, Luke tried his best to guide Frank through the process.

It was like asking a five-year-old to teach advanced calculus; Luke knew how to do it, but he didn’t know what he was doing.

Still, Frank had at least absorbed some of the death echo before it completely dissolved. Luke couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for everything to respawn.

Hopefully not too quickly, he thought, casting his gaze around his surroundings. It would have been nice for Rurik to tell him how fast things respawned before he spent days clearing the dungeon, even if the loot had made it worth his time.

Luke speculated that the aetheric density must be unusually high. It would explain a few things.

Curiosity about the dungeon respawns gnawed at his thoughts until he could no longer contain it. As they walked further away from the forge, he turned to Frank and asked, “Do you remember respawning? It’s something Rurik seems to remember but won’t talk about.”

Frank furrowed his brow, deep in thought. His eyes were distant as he searched his memories. At first, Luke thought the ratling had simply blanked again. It was a bit much to expect the echo to remember dying, when he didn’t even remember his own name.

However, after a few seconds Frank’s eyes widened with awareness. “I... remember,” Frank said slowly. A shudder ran through his frame as he spoke.

“I punched an overseer, and her blade cut me down. Everything went black, and I felt like I was falling. It was all so dark.”

While he didn’t want to traumatise the ratling, Luke mostly wanted to know what the respawn time was like. “Then what happened?”

“It’s all a blur. I drifted a while, and then… I was back in the mine. When I spat at one of Nemangor’s overseers a few weeks later, my punishment was to be part of the next cleansing ceremony. Then you came,” Frank said with enough reverence to make Luke uncomfortable.

It didn’t really answer his question.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“How long were you in the dark? Do you remember?” Luke said, pushing for something a little more concrete.

“Five sleeps? Maybe more,” Frank said.

Luke nodded. That was at least a little helpful. A bit more back and forth established that a ‘sleep’ was usually about four to five hours for the viran, so five of them were about a day. Even if Frank was a little vague, it was more than Luke had expected him to remember.

It all meant that he could probably expect much of the local wildlife to respawn soon, as it had already been a few days. Given that, it was odd that they hadn’t already respawned all around him.

He presupposed that the act of respawning one aetherling depleted the local supply.

As they continued walking, Luke reached out with his aura sense. His consciousness expanded to probe Frank’s essence. He was curious if the ratling had changed at all from absorbing the death echoe.

While Frank’s level remained the same, his aura felt a little stronger, and better defined.

Interesting, Luke mused, maybe I should feed him some kills. A pulse of Fenn’s [Murderhobo] domain told him that his hammer wasn’t keen on the idea.

Only the low level stuff, we'll take the higher level aether for ourselves, he thought. Fenn didn’t pulse back in agreement, but the hammer didn’t argue either. It was a somewhat surreal victory; he was negotiating with a hammer.

This was his life now.

As they ventured further from the forge, Luke’s mind wandered. The air grew colder as he walked into undead territory. It was nothing compared to the frost storm from his vision, but it was antithetical to his burgeoning [Fire] concept.

The domain was close to the next rank, and being so low wouldn’t take much to nudge to bronze. Luke idly opened the marketplace to look for cultivation resources.

Suddenly, a flicker of movement caught Luke’s eye, snapping him out of his reverie. There, perched upon a nearby rooftop, was a [Plague Rat], its beady eyes fixed upon Frank, its body coiled and ready to strike.

At that moment, Luke had an idea; there was still one of his new abilities that he hadn’t played with.

With a flick of intention, Luke activated [Epicentre], becoming a gravitational magnet.

It caught him off guard when Frank stumbled into him, before realising that he hadn’t specifically targeted the rat, and was in danger of everything nearby falling on him.

With his mind, he reached out to grab hold of the rodent and pulled. The creature let out a startled squeak as it plummeted towards him, its body flailing helplessly as it hurtled through the air towards Luke’s waiting shield.

Preparing himself for impact, Luke activated his [Brace] ability, his muscles tensing as he stored the energy of the impending collision. The rat slammed into his shield with a satisfying crunch, its body crumpling against the unyielding metal, the momentum of the fall rippling through Luke’s arm and into his soul.

The rodent hissed angrily as it dropped to the cobblestones; he had broken a few bones, but needed to finish the job.

In one fluid motion, Luke channelled the stored momentum into Fenn, his trusty hammer gleefully pulsing red as he unleashed a [Kinetic Strike].

The energy of the impact amplified the power of his swing, and he brought the weapon down upon the hapless rat with a savage cry. The hammer connected with a resounding impact, pulping the creature into a grisly cloud of red blood and silver coins. Fenn made a thud, but didn’t crack the cobblestones this time.

Only silver? Luke thought indignantly.

As the remnants of gore rained down around him, Luke felt the weak aether of the kill draw into him. It wasn’t something he was doing deliberately. He tried to cut it off, but his [System] seed acted autonomously.

Luke scooped up the silver coins, feeling their essence flow into his soulspace. Frank watched, whiskers twitching. The ratling’s beady black eyes blinked rapidly as he took in the strange phenomenon.

“What are those?” Frank asked, pointing a clawed finger at the coins.

“They’re credits. It’s a side effect of the domain I share with my hammer: [Murderhobo],” Luke explained, holding one up so Frank could get a better look. The coin glinted dully in the low light, its surface engraved with a rat’s skull.

Frank’s nose wrinkled as he sniffed at the coin. “Smells similar to the domain of the masters,” he said with a snarl.

Luke nodded, slipping the coins back into the pouch at his belt. He mostly perceived auras as different tastes, but they had a bit of a smell to them as well.

“It’s similar, yeah. I got it by accident,” Luke paused, but didn’t elaborate on the exact nature of that accident. “It’s a strong domain, so I’ve kept it.”

Despite his initial reluctance, it had grown on him. As a new concept, he had a good deal of control over its development, so he could shape it to his needs, even if he couldn’t reinvent it.

At least, that was what Rurik claimed.

There wasn’t time to explain further, because as they spoke, several [Plague Rats] emerged from shadowed alleys like a pack of undead wolves. Among them, a larger figure loomed: a [Rat-King], its body a writhing mass of rodents joined by their scabby tails.

Luke grinned, his grip tightening on Fenn’s haft. “Get ready, Frank,” he said, his voice filled with anticipation.

With a flick of his wrist, Luke activated [Epicentre], focusing his gravitational pull on the [Rat-King]. The creature let out a shrill squeal as it fell towards Luke perpendicular to the ground, its amalgamated bodies flailing helplessly against the inexorable force.

Luke activated [Brace] as it plummeted through the street and repeated his move from earlier. It was harder to pull off against the larger monster, because even with [Brace] the mass of rat-flesh knocked him off balance.

More mass meant more momentum.

Luke swung Fenn with all his might, the hammer pulsing with eager bloodlust. The weapon connected with a sickening crunch, pulverising one of the nine bodies into the ground.

As the smaller [Plague Rats] backed away from the explosion of gore, Luke used [Epicentre] to pull them towards him. “Your turn!” he called out to Frank, his voice ringing with exhilaration.

Frank gripped his axe tightly, eyes widening. Despite his obvious surprise, the ratling was eager, and as Luke caused a pileup of [Plague Rats] around him, Frank tore into them from behind.

Frank hacked and slashed at their diseased flesh. Ichor sprayed through the air as the ratling whirled like a dervish, cleaving his way through the tide of undead vermin.

You got this buddy, Luke thought, and focused on his own opponent. With the armour, the aetherling should be fine and if not, he would ultimately respawn.

The rat-king was an annoying opponent. Its multiple bodies made it awkward to hit the tail-brain in its centre of mass, so Luke had to destroy several of them before he smashed the knotted ball of tails. It took him just under twenty seconds.