Despite the murderous, dangerous circumstances he was in, the first thought Darryl had as he stepped out of the prison was how wonderful it was to breathe fresh air. He had almost forgotten how oppressive the mildew smell actually was, and he stopped for a moment simply to take in deep lungfuls of clean oxygen. Once that was out of his system, Darryl walked forward, as quickly as his undead guides waddling gait allowed. It was only a few minutes before he ran into the first living human.

“There are undead in the prison! We need more soldiers!!” Darryl cried, startling the poor man, who looked like a member of the cleaning staff. “Go spread the word!”

The man scuttled off, looking frightened, and Darryl smiled grimly as he glanced down toward his side-satchel.

“Fear, reanimate all the prison guards, and have them block the chokepoint at the entrance of the prison. Make sure to have them fight back, and try to earn me a few more kills. If I’m over half mana, use oxygen bubble to kill anyone who’s giving orders, then reanimate that person.”

He heard a muffled squeak, at which point he resumed walking. A moment later he staggered as his mana took a massive hit; nearly bottoming out. Darryl grunted as he leaned against the wall.

Over the past ten minutes, as his rat horde had continued its rampage, he had earned a staggering number of kills, but had been temporarily ignoring the XP, simply swiping aside the notifications in favor of remaining focused on his escape. Now, he dumped the entirety of the earned XP into soul, bringing it to a nice, round twenty-five. As his mana pool very slowly refilled, Darryl shook his head.

“Damn, I didn’t think about how many guards we killed. That…” He suppressed his guilt, shook his head, and walked forward; any sense of adventure or excitement thoroughly squashed. He had three more encounters with frightened passerby who ran off when he exclaimed about undead in the prison. Luckily, they were so distracted by his declarations that they didn’t notice his guide scurry quietly behind his foot. Darryl grimaced when he began receiving an uptick in XP notifications, but continued forward. It took him ten minutes to arrive at Meryl’s room, which the rat guide indicated to him by pointing its snout, and squeaking. Darryl scooped up the guide, and stuffed it into his satchel alongside Fear.

Cautiously, Darryl knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Meryl called, his voice noticeably strained.

“Candygram for mungo.” Darryl replied. He took one final look up and down the hall to check for onlookers as he heard the sound of charging feet from within the room. It took barely a second for the door to slam inward.

“Dude!” Meryl exclaimed, catapulting into him so hard he was winded even through the guard armor.

“Damn what have they been feeding you?” Darryl half-laughed, half-choked as he hugged his brother back.

“Sorry, they’ve been forcing me to farm my stats. It’s been… I’ve killed so many goblins.” Meryl said, with a haunted look on his face.

Darryl’s face fell, and he nodded gravely. “I… know the feeling. I’m pretty sure I’ve killed half the guards in the castle by now.”

Meryl stared at him like he’d grown a third head. “What? How?”

“I’ll talk about it later. Have they been teaching you any magic?” He asked.

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Meryl shook his head. “The hero doesn’t have any magic skills. We’re pure warrior type. Honestly the only thing I have going for me is that I can buy stats way cheaper, and have a few special skills.”

Darryl frowned. “What about your knowledge shop? It doesn’t have any magic guides?”

Meryl shrugged. “What knowledge shop? I’ve only been able to buy skills and stats.”

Darryl frowned, and dragged Meryl into the room, then closed the door.

“Give me a second I need to check something.” He told his brother. In the constant rush for more knowledge, he had largely forgotten about the skill shop, but he experimentally bought “Reanimation 1” for ten points. It implanted an activation sequence for a spell into his mind, but none of the component parts. He could activate the spell, and had a basic understanding of what it did, but compared to his custom spells it was like the difference between clicking on a desktop shortcut versus writing the application yourself. Convenient, but limited.

“No wonder everyone else has such crappy magic.” Darryl muttered. “Sorry, I’ll teach you magic later so let the reunion resume. How have you been?”

Meryl shook his head. “It’s been nonstop fighting, training, and etiquette lessons. Apparently they want me to be some kind of warrior noble.”

Darryl nodded. “That makes sense. The saintess was saying she wants you to be a political pawn for her until you’re strong enough to fight on the frontlines. By the way, what are the frontlines? No one bothered to explain to me why they need a hero so badly.”

Meryl shrugged. “It sounds like there’s some kind of holy war. The kingdom of Terrana is fighting the empire of Revan over whether to follow god.”

“Which one are we in?” Darryl asked, gesticulating dramatically at their surroundings.

“We’re in Terrana. I think we’re technically the defenders, but only because Terrana tried to destabilize Revan by assassinating a bunch of nobles. I don’t think my instructor realized he was painting Terrana as the bad guys by being overly honest. Anyway, Revan invaded because of a mix of that, and the fact that the church was trying to pressure them into changing a bunch of laws. Now they’ve been at war for a few years. The church won’t let the kingdom make peace because they think if they don’t win, then it’s some kind of god deletes the world type apocalypse, and Revan won’t make peace because they’re tired of the church's bullshit, and want to make it go away.

Darryl frowned, and nodded along. “Who do you think is winning?”

Meryl shrugged. “Impossible to tell. The problem is that everyone has ridiculous defensive artifacts left over from some mythical age, so it’s impossible to really take any forts or cities unless you can defeat the resident golem. And since no one is strong enough to beat the golems, all they can do is lay sieges that go nowhere thanks to teleportation gates bringing food in. At this point, the war is pretty much just big battles that happen in the border areas, but don’t accomplish anything. It sounds like that’s where I come in. They think I could get strong enough to beat the golems, and then they’d be able to actually take territory.”

Darryl fingered his beard in thought. “Just out of curiosity, what are these golems made of? In terms of material I mean?”

“Mythril I think?” Meryl replied uncertainly. “I never really thought to ask.”

Darryl smiled. “The important part is, they’re made of metal right?”

“I think so.” Meryl nodded.

“Want to go poke the kingdom in the eye? I have a spell you’re going to love.” Darryl smiled deviously.

“Yes. That sounds like fun. You better teach me magic afterward though, cause there’s no way I’m missing out on magic.” Meryl exclaimed excitedly.

“Trust me, modding skyrim has nothing on this.” Darryl winked and waggled his fingers