Jogging wasn't so bad after the sprinting exercises I had done before. This wasn't agility training, so we were taking it easy. While jogging, I would ask about her guild mates, and she would ask for details about my skill levels. It seemed that skills with additional features unlocked them every ten levels. Not every skill had things it would unlock, such as Ambidextrous. It would make me more capable in my off hand as I leveled it, but it wouldn't unlock anything. I think.
She wanted to know things like if there were other skills like cooking (there were), if skills leveled up passively when gaining knowledge about them (they did), and if my always-on skills leveled passively (again yes). Alchemy had an incredibly small chance of making a perfect potion. I was relatively sure that would be the case with all my crafting type skills. Reading through the various science material I had absorbed leveled my mathemagics slightly. After the 'pinky incident,' I had checked my HP System and it had gotten up to level 22. The two unlocked additions, Lesser Regeneration and Lesser Durability, hadn't been anything to write home about.
I wanted to know about the fights the guild had participated in (classified), their interpersonal relationships (not her story to tell), and their powers (I would have to wait until I joined). Where was Matt and his gossip when I needed him?
There was a day and night difference between running on your own and jogging with a partner. Even when we weren't talking, there was a body language conversation going on. Sometimes the conversation only amounted to “keep going this fast, turn left here, stop crowding me,” but it was company and I was glad for it.
One of the things I did manage to get her to talk about was the library. I had gone up to the 44th floor and found increasingly strange things on my way up. Even there, I could see up through the gap that there were at least another 10 floors. Valerie explained that the library was a repository of all Terra's knowledge. If the game's massive AI knew something, I could find it in the library. It was organized by how likely people were to want/need that knowledge, as measured by the AI. Maybe the next time I was in there searching for something I would offer up a prayer.
We just chatted the night away, jogging all the while. I was feeling good, but I was just shy of peak human. I wondered if she was using magic or had boosted her stats in the game. Maybe both. I know she had a privacy shield up so we could talk, and was doing something so she could see in the dark. Every time I thought I had a grip on what she was capable of, she surprised me with something else. I guess part of that was her other past selves learning and thus passing new knowledge to her every night, but some of it must be her keeping a few dozen aces up her sleeve.
“You seem to know, or will know, everything about everything. What are you even doing this reincarnation?”
“Magitech. I've fiddled with it before, but I've had better things to study when I had a high-tech or high-magic world. This world has magitech beyond any of its sciences or magics, and I am on the cutting edge of this world's magitech. The way my power works, I have to specialize. I have to learn as much as I can about one subject in the smallest amount of time so it will be available next time as early in my life as possible. It's my duty to all the future generations of me.”
“And what do you do with all your knowledge in your incarnations?”
“Usually save the world. Sometimes if it doesn't look like the world is ending I'll take a vacation.”
“So what you are saying is that you know how to throw a party.”
“I don't think I was saying that, but yes. I know how to throw a party.”
“Excellent. When are we having a party?”
“Why do I put up with you?”
“That sounds like one of those wisdom questions that I'm not good at.”
Your Vitality Has Reached 50! For Passing Peak Human Vitality, Skill 'Metal Flesh' And 'Stamina System' Have Been Unlocked!
Wow. Let's see if these skills live up to the hype.
Metal Flesh – Level 1 (0%)
You are able to give a certain volume of your flesh the durability of metal. Area affected starts at up to 10 cubic inches in one contiguous area with the durability of copper. Higher levels will increase total possible volume, number of contiguous areas, and durability.
Not exactly the full body HP protection I was looking for, but it has potential.
Stamina System – Level 1 (1%)
You now have a pool of stamina points that are expended depending on activities. Until these points are depleted, no fatigue will affect you. Stamina and fatigue regenerate at an accelerated rate. Higher levels will increase the number of stamina points, and increase the speed at which stamina and fatigue replenish.
That sounds like a solid buff. I don't think it will interfere with training my stats, except for Transcend. I can hardly transcend my fatigue if I don't feel it.
I use the Metal Flesh ability on my hand. It's slow, but not painful. It feels completely natural. I poke it and stub my finger. Ow. It stops halfway, and refuses to finish covering my hand. That is not a lot of volume to work with. I let go of the ability, and then call it back to just cover my skin this time. It manages to cover my hand and my wrist, but runs out of volume there. Good enough for now, I'll leave it on so it will level and I can do something more useful with it.
I tell Valerie about my new skills and she agrees that my Metal Flesh needs more volume to be effective. Just covering the skin leaves my hand vulnerable to shock from impacts. I don't want my HP to drop because my bones are shattering. On the plus side, I probably won't feel pain from punching someone now.
The sky is a little brighter now. You can tell the sun will start to peek over the horizon soon. I forgot to get cups. Damn. I still have the french press and coffee, but nothing to drink it in. Valerie pulls a fist sized chunk of rock out of the ground and shapes it with magic into two coffee cups. She is in charge of heating the water, but I am in charge of actually making the coffee. It is perfect, as usual, and we watch the sun come up together.
* * *
We eat some fresh bread on the way back to the city. I have a beta tester meeting after work today, and I'm going to bring up the issue of food. I've got my own supply, but everyone else is subsisting on medieval fare. People aren't going to want a game with only crappy food. There needs to be a culinary revolution.
We are heading to the library for a few intermediate books on magic. I'm not really ready for it, but I can hardly hurt myself in here. Well, I suppose my death could be suitably gruesome.
There's no need for Terra's guidance today. Valerie knows where we are going. We hit up the 8th floor. It's not as big as the floor with basic magic, but it's still massive. We have a small stack of books before we head back to the desks. Valerie hands me one massive book on mind magic and a regular sized book on elemental combat.
“Go through these now while you scan the others. I want them read before we leave.”
“Aye aye captain.”
She zaps me. “Be serious.”
I zap her. “You be serious.”
She scowls and I am reminded of the birthday party I ruined by pushing her into the cake. She had the same scowl then. I had run away at the time, so I never discovered what comes after the scowl.
My hair freezes. Somehow my scalp is merely chilly, but the hair itself is frozen solid. She flicks it, shattering a small section. I'm going to look like I have an incredibly stupid haircut when that thaws, which was probably her intention.
I could escalate but there's no chance of my really winning. My 6-year-old self had the right idea. Run away before she can retaliate. I suppose it's time to act like an adult.
I scan the books in question and switch my mind partitions over to reading them. I've had my partitions up and reviewing the sword and hand to hand demonstrations from earlier. It's leveled to the point where I can run four at a time at full speed. I find an interesting book in the pile. Time magic. I switch my last full partition over to reading that.
The mind control book is interesting. It was written by a collaboration between a necromancer and a druid. The druid would talk to animals and try to see how their minds worked, and what motivated them. The necromancer read the memories of animal corpses to feel out the same. It was fairly evenly split between magical and non-magical beasts. It doesn't go too much into the magic itself, it's more of a guide for people who already know how to use it.
The elemental combat book was...different. It talked about personifying the elements and creating temporary elementals with your magic. Some would only last long enough for a bolt of fire to curve around an obstacle and hit someone behind cover, others would gain a form and fight alongside the caster for as long as mana sustained them. It boiled down to infusing your magic with intelligence, for which I gained a skill, and seemed like it would be useful in all sorts of magic. Could I make a healing elemental? Yes. The knowledge was there.
Time magic was less straightforward than regular magic. Going back in time was practically impossible and even when it was done, it was virtually useless. Changing the past was beyond merely difficult and pushed the bounds of godhood, which is to say, impossible so far. The intermediate book only had things for slowing and speeding time. I would have to practice and see if I could accelerate myself to 2.5x normal speed, so I could use all my many partitions at full speed. The book said it was possible, but difficult. It started you off with things like simulating superhuman reflexes by accelerating your body to 150% speed. Any further and you would start to run into problems like needing more air than normal and increased air resistance. At that point, it just became easier to slow your opponents. Doing both wasn't practical due to the interfering time fields.
“I'm done reading the first books.”
“Good. Let's go to the Adventurers Guild and find something to fight.”
* * *
Mom and Dad looked cheery this morning. Does the game not have hangovers? Maybe they got an antidote or healing potion.
“Ho Gabriel, Morganna. How doth ye fare?”
“And good morning to you too Jack. What are you up to?” asked Dad.
“Looking for something to hunt. I just picked up some new magic and I want to try it out. Want to tag along?”
“Would love to. We used the gold to get some training ourselves. I picked up chaos magic while your mother got summoning magic.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“I didn't realize summoning had its own energy type. Did you have to form a pact with something to summon?”
“No. There are two kinds of summons. Constructs and Avatars. Avatars require an agreement, but I don't have any influence to get something worthwhile to agree. I can maintain three humanoid constructs right now.”
Valerie comes up to the table. “So, who's up for some grave robbing?”
* * *
We stood on a small hill overlooking a graveyard. Mausoleums dotted the grounds, with some as big as houses. Someone had stashed an artifact in one of the mausoleums and we were going to be paid for its retrieval. The artifact, a crown I'm told, is cursed. It belonged to some high king who had been assassinated and his kingdom destroyed.
His shade, fairly angry about the whole thing, had inhabited the crown. He wasn't keen on cooperation, so wherever he went bad things tended to happen. Where best to keep an artifact that's dangerous to the people around it? Where everyone is already dead. At least that's the story we heard.
In reality, the best place would be a warded vault, but the kind of vaults that have sufficient protections to keep things in, don't often lend them out. This crown, when properly harnessed, could easily double or triple a mage's power. Giving it up to never see it again wasn't in the past owner's plan.
The reason we were here was that there had been some reports of zombies attacking the town. Investigation led to the discovery of the crown's presence. I was actually rather happy about this, as it meant we would be fighting something objectively evil. Not all bounties would be like this. Some would be giant animals encroaching on civilization, or perhaps merely having a high magical potential and wanted for it's ingredients. In any event, that was the future and this is what's in front of us now. It was daytime, and these monsters didn't appreciate the big burning ball of fire and life that soared in the sky. We would have to go in after them.
“It's in there somewhere. Probably on some zombie's head controlling it. He's set up his own little kingdom again and we are here to assassinate him and destroy it just like the old days,” Valerie mused.
“What do we know about these zombies? Fast, slow, disease spreading, armed?” I ask.
“They won't be disease spreading, it's magic that keeps them animated, not a virus. They will be faster the closer we get to the main power source, which is the crown. The faster the zombies, the closer to our objective. As for whether they are armed, it depends on what they were buried with. Soldiers in life would often be buried with their swords, that would rust and degrade over time. We won't see shining iron, but a rusty sword can do a great deal of damage, especially when held by someone not afraid of...well anything really.”
“Sounds great. Let's find some slow zombies to practice against and then either circle around or push to the center depending on how long it takes. We have until noon game-time before we should log out, and I wouldn't want to miss the chance to finish this.”
Mom summoned her constructs and we headed down to the most outlying crypt. The door was broken, and there were nine or ten bodies huddling around the back of the crypt.
“Fire?”
“The answer isn't always fire Jack,” said Mom.
“A little fire?”
“No.”
Mom sent in two constructs first to act as meat shields. It was a little roomier in the mausoleum than it had been in the cave, so we wouldn't have as much trouble fighting side by side.
I was up front, ready to use my sword skills, while Dad took on a supporting role flinging chaos magic from the back. Mom was right behind the constructs ready to smash anything unlucky enough to make itself a target. Valerie, as usual, was in the back and wouldn't interfere unless we were dying.
We advanced, and as soon as we stepped out of the sunlight and into the shade, the zombies attacked.
Mom's meat shields held up quite well. They were more than human, that was clear. Almost zombie-like themselves, taking wounds without pain.
I was chopping, and thankfully dismemberment seemed to remove the animating spell on the limbs. I dashed in, got one under the chin and into the brain, and it collapsed. Classic.
“Go for the heads!”
Dad, with a target, started lobbing spells whenever there was room between us. Every head he hit seemed to wither and age. It must have destroyed the brain because they went down after every hit. Mom just smashed heads with her metal staff.
We were having fun now. We took three each, and the room was clear. The next building proved much the same. We activated the Loot System after every fight, and gathered up the piles of cash. With no corpses left, no one would be raising them again.
Despite the speed we were moving at, the clock was ticking down on us. As we went further, we developed a rhythm. Mom would send in the first wave, sending two and keeping one back to tackle any zombie that became a problem. The constructs came with maces, so they were able to take out zombies on their own, but mostly they just created openings for us to exploit.
Soon we came upon our first skeleton. That was a little unexpected, but I suppose the most outlying mausoleums would be the latest built, and the ones further in would have the oldest corpses. Namely, the ones with only bones left.
Skeletons didn't go down as easy as zombies did, and they seemed to be a little faster. Slashing attacks were much less effective. I wish I had trained a little in my warhammer, as it would be extremely useful right now. Again, smashing the heads seemed to finish them off. Anything short of breaking a bone wouldn't do anything to the limbs. I was using my sword as a makeshift bludgeon when I decided to switch things up. Fire wouldn't do anything to skeletons, so I used my life energy. Jack uses Life Blast, it is super effective!
It was 10:30am in the game. An hour and a half to finish this. Based on the way zombies and skeletons had been moving, the largest and oldest building housed the crown. Typical. We decided on a spiral pattern moving to the building. It would let us gradually ramp up the difficulty without leaving too many enemies behind.
The difficulty did ramp up. Mom sent in all three summons at a time and some enemies still slipped the net and came at us directly. Dad was casting his chaos magic whenever he wasn't fending off undead with his short sword. Magic was winning the day now. We had to stop and rest in order to refill our magic every third battle.
It took us an hour to get to the central building. The other mausoleums were nice I suppose, not opulent but tasteful for the final resting place of loved ones. This building was different. It was entirely made of marble, and was an unending canvas for artistic carvings. There was tasteful gold and silver gilding, and some kind of paint or pigment that had withstood the test of time. It was a beautiful backdrop to the horror within.
Immediately we were beset by a mixture of zombies and skeletons. They did not all come at us at once. Every single one was armed, with some of the undead armored as well. Leather would have rotted away long ago, so it was quite a challenge to fight all varieties of metal armor. I am not sure what a zombie in armor is called, but the skeletons were certainly worthy of being called skeletal knights. Dad pulled a new spell out of his repertoire. This one put the chaos in chaos magic. It was almost random. Most of the time it would warp the armor we cast at, and leave openings. Other times, it would do nothing, or have unexpected effects. Explosions, fire, ice, and acid were not uncommon. Once the entire skeleton vanished, leaving only the armor it had been inside a moment before. We learned quickly to stay away from anything he was targeting. I did not want to be hit by a spell like that.
Each room had enemies, as if the intelligence behind this whole mess had been collecting them. I was starting to doubt whether we would get through this without Valerie's help. After clearing few rooms on the first floor, we paused to reset.
“What do you guys think? Can we finish before we are supposed to wake up?”
“We just have to go faster,” says Dad.
“We are going as fast as we can,” says Mom.
“Don't be a lazy bones,” says Dad.
Now everyone is looking at him.
“How long have you been waiting to use that one?” I ask.
“I dunno, it just struck me as humerus.”
“Oh please stop,” said Valerie.
“Oh come on. At least try tibia good sport.”
“I will hit you,” says Mom.
“I am dead-icated to my jokes.”
Mom hits him with her staff, and there is a solid crack. “How does that tickle your funny bone?”
I glare at the both of them. Dad only looks amused. His Hit Points must have absorbed the damage. It was nice to have a little dose of normality when fighting these things. I hadn't realized how gloomy it had become.
Our mental energy fills, and we move on with higher morale. After a little exploring we decide the first floor is clear, and we would have to ascend to the second floor.
It had become increasingly obvious that no one had renovated this building in a long time. Vegetation had infested the inner portions, weakening the building overall, but it was made of stone. It would take more than that to damage a building like this.
Evidently the second floor had seen more. Small natural pools of water littered the floor, and holes were evident in the ceiling. There was rubble complicating the battlefield, and it was a battlefield. There were at least twenty skeletons and zombies, each outfitted as well as anything we had seen before. At the back was a ghoul wearing a crown. This was bad. Ghouls were the type to keep fighting even after you had cut their head off. You had to incinerate or otherwise disenchant each and every piece of the body before it would stop. With the magic the shade had access to, it would likely be casting the entire time we tried to kill all of its parts.
Seeing as it didn't blast us the moment we came up the stairs, I was thinking its magic was tied up animating and controlling these minions. I was hoping that was the case anyway.
The undead army approached in formation. We formed up against the wall. Mom took point in the center, and constructs stood to the left and right. Dad was behind her, and I was off to the side with a construct of my own. Valerie was in the corner, and it seemed like the monsters were ignoring her. As they were closing in, I summoned my first full elemental. It was life natured, and looked like an angel. It wouldn't last more than 5 minutes, but by then the battle should be decided one way or the other.
The skeletons were close when I activated my time magic and rushed forward. I was a whirling dervish, deflecting the blades I could not dodge, disrupting their entire formation. I could see dad's spells hitting to the sides, and without a unified front, the undead broke on Mom's line. She and her constructs had no problem holding them back while reaching into the whole mess killing any isolated monster. My elemental had charged through the crowd, killing four simply by passing through them, and cornered the ghoul. It had enough magic to prevent instant death, but it seemed hard pressed to keep the angel off.
We whittled down the horde, each of us playing to our strengths. Dad focused on the helmeted targets, while Mom took out skeletons and kicked back zombies for me to deal with. Limbs were dropping everywhere. There were zombies missing legs, which complicated things slightly, as they continued to crawl into combat, but most simply lost their heads. The tide was definitely in our favor. Then the ghoul roared.
The elemental had finally managed to get a solid grip on one of the ghoul's arms, and the ghoul was not happy. A blast of magic blew out a wall, taking the life elemental with it. With nothing to distract it, and most of its horde dead, it was focused directly on us. Or rather, me.
I trusted my parents with my back, and rushed the ghoul. Its armor was the best of all the undead that had come before, with only its head exposed. I broke through the limits of my strength and smashed the side of my sword into the side of its head. Instead of cutting through, it was like hitting a brick wall. A section of the ghoul's torso armor crumpled in. So it's like that. His armor takes any damage to his head.
Would it work in reverse? I hit the torso, and besides a dent that would make it hard for any mortal to breathe, there was no effect. That's ok, roasting the ghoul was always part of the plan. I flung the most potent ball of fire I could summon on short notice at its head. Steam rushed out from the joints in its armor. I could feel the heat coming from it. It threw magic at me, and at my speed, I was easily able to predict the trajectory and dodge. Two more fireballs and I could see the armor start to glow with heat.
The ghoul roared again. I was really hoping it wasn't going to blow out another wall, because there weren't many left. Instead, it looked straight up, and took out the ceiling above us. While I was watching the ceiling fall on us, the ghoul grabbed me about the torso and fell backward.
The ceiling landed on me, and I landed on the ghoul's superheated armor. My HP was gone, and with the loss came a horrible burning. I tried to scream, but between the burning and the ceiling crushing me, I couldn't draw breath. It was just a moment before I lost consciousness.
You have died.
5 minutes until your soul is released.
I stood there, my feet stuck to the floor, and watched as Valerie flung the rubble off me. When she realized it was too late, the effort slowed, but didn't stop.
I was dazed. I had died?
I saw her pick up a heart, a crown and a coin sized token that featured a crown. The rest of the room was littered with cash, some armor, and potions. My parents were starting to gather that up when the scene dissolved.
You have been revived at a Church of Terra. You lose 10% of your total accumulated experience and gold.
Error: Death penalties for entity 'Jack Ambrose Webb' disabled.
After taking a few minutes to gather myself, I messaged my parents and Valerie and, seeing the time, I promptly logged off.
Jack Ambrose Webb's Statistics
Strength
39 (+2)
Wisdom
28 (+1)
Agility
58 (+2)
Charisma
38
Dexterity
59 (+3)
Luck
13
Vitality
51 (+4)
Transcend
8
Intelligence
70 (+2)
Unallocated
45 (+30)