The darkness seemed not to abate, but rather darken even further. A circle of impossible blackness expanded from between his feet, slowly pushing outward against nothing, the limiting factor being the lack of a source. Darkness was not the correct word for what surrounded it though, rather it was as though it simply was not what was seen, similar to how the edges of ones vision might feel like darkness but in practice is not. That edge now filled Bokans vision as he looked around, until the floor stopped growing and walls began to sprint up, covering his strange view with impenetrable blackness.
Suddenly, below his feet a view appeared. He rapidly realised he was staring at his undead, who had rapidly adapted to the situation and seemed to be trying to scout out the area and establish a perimeter around where he disappeared. He focused more, and the area around them began to fill with strange sights, the mana surrounding them appearing clearer in an abstracted view. Unattuned mana, or "normal" mana, was coloured blue, with death mana being coloured black and his radiant mana being a silvery-golden colour. Straining with all he had, to the extent of getting a nosebleed, Bokan managed to glimpse for an instance miniscule flecks of a few other kinds of these "attuned" mana forms, though he was unable to determine what they were, he was certain he saw some sparks of red and green.
He still felt his connections to his undead, only now they seemed to first go through a filter, allowing him to far more easily give instructions to the entire group and give them tasks. He could, for instance, instruct them to focus on recovering their mana, and they would be able to. He even was able to notice a very slight increase to their rate of mana regeneration, likely due to the instruction coming from him within his "field of bones".
Checking his resources, nothing had been spent, even his health had not gone down despite bleeding, and yet he felt truly exhausted. Evidently there was a cost to using this as a means of control for now, though more tests needed to be done to see how to maximise the effectiveness of this space.
Looking around, as his focus moved to the walls a new scene appeared before him. Suddenly, he found himself in the library he had spent so much time in as a child while he was Bokan. Only a small part of the library was shown, evidently the limit of the space with the resources he had invested into it, yet he could not say precisely where or how it ended. Clearly, the spell worked with some degree of mental magic, likely the fact that it depended so much upon his mind resulted in him being unable to see the holes it had even when he knew they existed. Improving his mind further would no doubt be the requirement in order to make this space more reasonable, right now it reminded him strongly of being in a particularly lucid dream.
Taking out one of the larger tomes from the many bookshelves lining the walls, it changed to a black piece of paper as he held it, with, in writing so dark it stood out against the black clearly enough to read, he began to understand.
Tier 1 Radiant domain of death (536/1000)
Area: 4mx3m
Vision: low-quality control interface, very low quality mana vision
Buff to undead: 4% to everything
Time dilation: 10%
Clearly, first of all ,he had managed to alter the field of bones effect somewhat, as he got a radiant domain of death instead. Whether or not that was better was up for debate, but not really since he had no idea what field of bones would have been otherwise. He could guess that it was responsible for the percentage buff given to his undead while in this realm, however whether or not that was true was not something he could prove at this moment.
The time dilation was interesting however. 10% was the exact tier of his domain multiplied by 10 in percentages... did that perhaps mean that a level 10 domain stopped time outside entirely? It was certainly an interesting possibility.
Finally, an interesting fact was that Bokan's mana had continued to be regenerated at a normal rate despite the fact that there should only be the mana he invested into the spell. All the same, it meant he could regain his mana 10% faster if he gave up moving anywhere for that time, so it had its uses.
Envisioning himself standing upon the ground, Bokan left this strange space and rejoined his minions. Giving a silent instruction to move out, they travelled up to the portal and straight through. It was a seamless travel, feeling as though they stepped through a doorway with a very light film over it, and suddenly appeared elsewhere.
The heat was immediately upon them again, though slightly less intensely than before. Looking around, Bokan saw the occasional tough root sticking out of a ground that looked almost exactly like the hunting grounds of the floor he had just come from. The portal seemed to be in the middle of a flat portion of the land, while a short distance away everything became broken looking, the ground appearing to have terrible scars rent through it. Slow moving streams of melted rock could be seen in the deepest of these scars, some of them so deep that the bottom was only visible due to the glowing lava, easily over 10 meters down.
A small path was also present, leading off into the distance, no doubt to wherever the mages resided on this floor. Before that, a dark, red-eyed boar that Egro had spotted was slain with a few death bolts, though Bokan barely noticed this occurring.
Unlike previously, however, Bokan could now gladly progress down the path immediately, since he intended to level up his professions here before moving on, and needed to do that as rapidly as possible. Ultimately, having enough power to negotiate with the humans on this world was necessary for now, or he may end up no more than yet another extremely pyrrhic victory for the "last empire".
POV: The emperor
"Do you mean to tell me that this man standing before me is a 6 year old child with the magical aptitude to potentially be one of our lost archetypes?" The emperor clarified with the attendant who had brought forth a captured individual.
"Your most glorious majesty, it is as you say. He was found killing beasts and orcs in the frontier towns illegally when they were attacked, despite not having a permit for self defence in such cases. He demonstrated powers such that he could probably pose a significant threat to the empire in just a few years. That's why we brought him before you to be lead by you." The attendant replied, diplomatically avoiding saying "indoctrinated by you".
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The man in question was dressed primarily in chains enchanted to restrict his use of magic and his physical motion. The fellow seemed to be the archetype of willpower, and although his body was broken and suppressed many times over, his eyes still burned with rebellion.
"Kneel."
In an instant, the emperor overwhelmed his pitiful mental defences, tore through his mind and re-arranged it as he saw fit. The man became a fanatic for the emperor specifically, and would gladly kill himself or his family or any other person or group if it meant simply making the emperor slightly amused.
The attendants, knowing this would be the case, started removing his chains and brought out princely garments for him to wear. In an instant, he went from tortured prisoner to member of the royal court. A magic-user healed him as he waited for further instructions from the king.
"Go to the tower and grow until you reach the final floor. Then, return to me that I may send you to destroy the orcs you were originally captured for fighting against." The emperor did not need to invest any magic into these words to make him obey, however he did it anyway as it always amused him when he destroyed the minds of powerful individuals. Officially, he should have been nothing but a slave under the heel of this man, however that was simply preposterous. The old epitome of leadership was gone, and hopefully would not be returning. So long as there was no epitome of leadership or archetype of charisma, he would retain his power easily.
That being said... turning to his attendant, he instructed him "Tell the generals to begin a search for the archetypes, target everyone who was born about 6 years ago. Also, send out a royal decree that any who suspect their child, sibling, friend or neighbour may be one of the archetypes to turn them in to me immediately."
Instructions given, the emperor returned to resting on his throne, an unnecessary symbol but a vanity he still enjoyed.
POV The Hero
A young boy stood with a kitchen knife in hand, ready to defend his home and family. Orcs pillaged his village, which had been abandoned by the military by decree of the emperor. Still, he would fight.
His sister, a prodigy in speech, confused the orcs by shouting out instructions to them, using her monstrous levels of charisma and manipulation to precisely cause the maximum amount of chaos, as she calmly retained her composure on account of her ridiculous amount of poise.
The boy, called Lance, rushed between orcs, leaping up and slitting throats, then grabbing their weapon to use against their comrade. He moved with a speed such that he could not be tracked by eye, and with precision such that every strike was perfect. He had the strength to decapitate a hundred orcs with a rusty spoon if it didn't break, however they faced far more than a hundred orcs, and as such he pushed himself to be perfect in every moment.
The siege of the orcs continued, more falling every moment. The villagers were now almost entirely annihilated, with only the two young ones and their parents remaining. Levels poured in, with the boy and his sister getting more powerful every second. When the orcs struck him with steel, the weapons broke, when they shot him with arrows, the arrows shattered, yet he remained unharmed. His clothing had been torn to pieces by now, yet he remained utterly unmarked by any attack. His sister similarly remained unharmed, until the orcs thought of a creative idea.
If they couldn't get through the boy, they should simply go through the building.
An orc burst through the back wall of their abode, killing both parents in an instant and then holding the young girl hostage. However, time his hand had close around the young girl's head, it was cut off, along with his head, by the young boy, who was by this time a whirlwind of destruction.
Hours passed, and over 4 thousand orcs were slain. The boy and girl fell asleep exhausted.
POV Bokan
It took about a day to reach where the rest of the mages were, and Bokan rapidly began integrating himself with them. He, and all 204 of his undead, studied tirelessly, and with his high level stats, he learned more than 2000 times faster than before. What had previously taken months, could now be done in a few hours, although there was more to learn.
Every proficiency he had needed to be upgraded:
Profession(s): novice enchanter (5) (+1 to all magic stats every level) // novice alchemist (5) (+1 wisdom and willpower) // novice clerk (5) (+1 intelligence) // novice warmage (5) (+2 intelligence) // novice researcher (5) (+1 intelligence and wisdom)
Each of these could be upgraded here. However, the stats they gave were significantly lessened by the fact that Bokan had evolved his mental stats. As such, all these numbers could be seen as divided by 10 (evolved professions are a thing but only after reaching the peak of the base professions involved in attaining such a profession).
It cost 1 skill point per profession to upgrade it, thus costing 5 skill points total (53 skill points => 48 skill points). It took 2 weeks to upgrade every profession to apprentice(10), which gave the following stats:
Profession(s): apprentice enchanter (10) (+3 to all magic stats every level) // apprentice alchemist (10) (+3 wisdom and willpower) // apprentice clerk (10) (+3 intelligence) // apprentice warmage (10) (+6 intelligence) // apprentice researcher (10) (+3 intelligence and wisdom)
This meant his related stats now were:
Intelligence: 67.5 (Your intelligence is... acceptable. For an ancient dragon overlord.)
Wisdom: 58.5 (Your wisdom is sub optimal. There's simply no other way of putting it. If you are an elf of immeasurable age and wisdom. Otherwise its beyond impressive.)
Willpower: 58.5 (Your willpower is unreasonably high, and you are probably extremely unreasonable.)
On a side note, he made some "friends", and there were about 200 people on this floor. Bokan started with the strongest ones this time, and killed all of them in a single day. It went pretty much exactly how he had originally hoped the first floor had gone, so to avoid being repetitive, heres the breakdown:
- 50 minions died
- 50 minions were regenerated since the stones bound to their mental constructs were unharmed
- 206 minions were gained
- Bokan gained a bunch of levels
Now, he coincidently had 410 minions, 2 weeks after clearing out the first floor. It took 2 weeks to travel from the tower to the emperor, and as such the fellow sent to climb the tower had just arrived. The food deliveries had continued, however the fellows delivering it had yet to give a report to the emperor as they decided it was simply the tower being weird that their deliveries were not being collected.
It just so happened that, due to the emperor using his charisma to force the archetype of willpower to climb the entire tower before returning, he felt no obligation to report the missing members at the bottom of the tower.
During those 2 weeks, the archetype of stamina and the archetype of strength had both been discovered and captured, however all other archetypes had realised what was happening early enough that they had avoided capture. At this time, the emperor had bound 3 archetypes to his will, however had made an enemy of the remainder.
The archetypes of wisdom+willpower, wisdom+intelligence and intelligence+willpower had all fled to the elven lands, whereas the remainder had remained in hiding in the empire and wilderness.