CHAPTER 1

Matthias became aware of the world around him instantly as if a bucket of cold water had been poured on him. Probably because one had.

He sputtered and coughed, sitting up at the waist and shaking the leaves and dirt out of his hair. Spitting the remains of the water that was in his mouth out, he looked around him. He was in a clearing, inside of a forest. And it was old. Very old.

The smallest tree near him must have been more than sixty feet in circumference, with others many times larger than that. They were all spread out quite a bit apart, with little in the way of underbrush. Looking up, he saw that the canopies scraped the sky, and while thick branches jutted out far above him the leaves were spaced just enough to allow a bright scattering of light through the canopy.

Suddenly remembering that he had been doused with water from something, he scrambled to his feet and looked around. He couldn’t see anyone; however, he did see a large, thirty-foot container with a large label on the side that read, ‘CRATE FOUR, WAREHOUSE NINE’, on the side.

Muffled laughter, light and bright, echoed through the glade he was in and caused his eyes to go wide. He backed up to the huge container, ensuring that nothing could sneak up on him.

“Hello?” he called out cautiously. After all, if the creature that soaked him had been malicious, he would be dead right now. Not uncomfortably damp.

Only silence responded to his call, although he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. Whatever had dumped water on him didn’t seem inherently aggressive or malicious, so he wouldn’t worry about it for now. He was sure that they would cross paths at some point, revealing their nature to him. Turning his attention inward for a moment, he checked his stats;

MATTHIAS R. MOB

{RACE}

SHADOW GOBLIN

{SUB-RACE}

INFERNO IMP

{CLASS}

NEXMANCER

{CLASS GRADE}

LEGENDARY

{STAGE}

1

{LEVEL}

1

{STATS}

CONVERTED TO POWER

POWER

25

{ABILITIES}

CONVERT WEALTH

CONVERT NEX INTO POWER

CONVERT POWER

CONVERT POWER INTO NEX

CONTRACT

CREATE A SYSTEM-ENFORCED CONTRACT BETWEEN PARTIES

POWER OVERWHELMING

SPEND POWER TO ACT UPON THE WORLD AROUND YOU

POWERHOUSE

CONVERT POWER DIRECTLY TO PHYSICAL STATS FOR A LIMITED TIME

He nodded to himself. Normally classes receive one or two {ABILITIES} to start with. Matthias, however, had received a staggering five. His class was directly related to utilizing NEX and Power in a symbiotic relationship. He hadn’t had much of a chance to fully explore his abilities, as his prior Contract of Servitude limited his use of abilities. But now he had free range to do as he pleased, and based on what experiments he could conduct he was going to make a lot of NEX.

Matthias walked over to the large container and unlocked the door. Pulling one side open, he revealed neatly arranged boxes, shelves, and drawers on both sides of the interior, with a narrow walkway down the center. He headed down, looking at each of the carefully labeled sections. It had taken him nearly eighty years to accrue what was in this container, all without raising suspicion. Although, based on his conversation with the HR Demon he was less certain of that now.

Regardless, he was promised some time to establish himself. How much, he wasn’t sure. But in the end, it didn’t matter, as long as he accrued enough NEX he could beat anyone they sent after him. Short of perhaps the CEO of Trion himself.

He carefully moved down the line of boxes, stopping when he found what he was looking for.

“The Business Starter Kit,” he whispered to himself almost reverently.

The BSK was reserved for those few beings who proved themselves to their parent Corporation, accrued enough wealth to purchase one, or had one gifted or passed on to them. It enabled the user to create a Corporation within the System itself… and they were insanely expensive. If that HR demon had known this was in this crate… the contents he traded back to them would have been nowhere near enough. After all, just a base standard BSK ran several billion NEX.

He carefully opened the drawer and pulled out a leather pouch. Looking inside, he confirmed the BSK Orb, a small cyan orb of perfect roundness, was present. For something so expensive, it was utterly unassuming. Nodding, he put it in his pocket. He would have to find a place to deploy it later.

Closing the drawer, he moved down the aisle and removed several other objects. One was a backpack that generated basic food and water and had nine square meters of dimensional storage space. He stole this from Warehouse Seven during its financial collapse. He also took a Gauss Pistol, magically enchanted with the four elements, a Home Starter Kit, a Tech Starter Kit, and a Home Defense Kit.

While there were plenty of items left to remove, he came to the final box he would be taking for now. Sighing, he opened the front of the box, dropping it down to reveal a small pile of gold bars, two piles of gold coins, and a pile of silver coins.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Matthias pulled a bar out and examined it. It looked like a generic gold bar, with the exception of the ‘10K NEX’ stamped on the front. He had seven of these, along with the ‘1K NEX’ and ‘500 NEX’ coins. They were the sum of his savings, his skimming of accounts, and his outright thievery over the last hundred years of his indentured servitude. This would serve as more than enough to keep him empowered… and in business.

He put the NEX piles into his backpack and locked the opening to his Mana signature. Sighing once that was complete, he reached into the far rear of the crate that had contained the NEX. Feeling around, his hand landed on a long, cylindrical object. He pulled it out, revealing an ordinary-looking spear.

Giving the weapon a professional twirl, he collapsed it into a much smaller object and placed it on the inside of his suit’s pants pocket using the clip. Once that was done he hefted the backpack and headed out of the container. He closed the doors, secured them with the magical lock, and then opened a small panel on the side of the supply crate next to the doors.

The panel popped off, revealing a set of runes. Matthias tapped them in a specific order, causing the entire container to vanish in a flash of light. On the grass, where it had once been, was a simple-looking stone token. He could toss this token anywhere that had enough space for the container, resummoning it from its dimensional space. It was an amazing, and expensive, feature. One that he had blackmailed an enchanter into completing for him.

The bad news? While the container was now much, much smaller and infinitely more portable in token form it was no less heavy. Matthias would need either some heavy equipment or immense strength to shift the item. He had a solution of course, but before he spent the resources to put it into action he would need to find a safe place to put it.

“Time to take a look around the area,” he muttered absently to himself.

He covered the token with a bit of dirt, he could always come back and find the thing. It was tied to him after all. Then he stepped back and took a look around him, examining the area in full for the first time since his arrival. In hindsight, he should have done this first. If there had been threats, danger, or anything that could harm him it probably would have been a rough fight at first. But it was worth it to ensure that he was properly equipped. The gamble certainly paid off. He was armed, had basic supplies, and just needed to find a place to operate out of.

A cave would be nice. You could do a lot with a good cave.

He began his trek through the woods, amazed at the glade-like wonderland around him. He could hear birds, and wind shuffling through the trees, and even saw a few scampering rabbits. But he didn’t see any larger creatures whatsoever. This was both a relief … and mildly worrying. A lush verdant paradise such as this should have larger animals… and predators.

Matthias walked for an hour and found exactly nothing. More trees. More rabbits. More birds. More nothing. Nothing that he could use or utilize at least. For a moment he thought about climbing a tree and taking a view from the top to see what he could find. However, he dismissed the idea. He had a much more eloquent, and far less physically exerting, solution.

He stopped. His idea had merit, and what he was doing wasn’t working. He couldn’t wander aimlessly right now. Shelter, a defensive position, and a place to set up shop were essential.

“{CONVERT WEALTH}”, he said calmly, mentally targeting one of the solid gold bars. The ten thousand NEX bar exploded, being converted directly into Power and absorbed into Mathias’s reserves.

He sighed at the enormous cost. If only it had been converted at a one-to-one ratio, he would have been set. But no. As versatile as his skills were they came at an immense cost. His {CONVERT WEALTH} skill converted NEX to Power at a one hundred to one ratio, the entire gold bar netting him a solid but painfully expensive one hundred Power.

“{POWER OVERHWLEMING}”, he said with a grimace, feeling his Power drain by nearly a third. Also expensive, but making his intent a reality was always expensive. The cost for the ability always reflected what it would have cost him normally under optimal conditions. He learned through his limited experimentation that ‘op0timal conditions’ factored in time, effort, tools, and labor.

His skill exploded outward in a burst of blue energy only visible to him. It suffused the forest around him before congealing into a single thin blue line leading off into the distance. Nodding, he now had a direction to go. His intent had been to find a place to set up camp, possibly a long-term base of operations at.

Matthias always had to be specifically vague with his intent. Otherwise, it would either be far too expensive for him to pay for and would fail or he wouldn’t get the result he was looking for. There were even times he tried to use his abilities only to have them backfire spectacularly. He even blew up an office cubicle once, blaming it on the fire elemental next door.

It was damn hard to be specifically vague.

He followed the blue line for another hour before he came across the first feature that broke up the monotony of this ‘perfect’ forest. A small river. He heard it long before he saw it, picking up his pace to get through the perfectly spaced giant trees and look at the water. He wasn’t disappointed.

He broke through the tree line into a clearing that stretched out on both sides of the river for about thirty feet. The river itself was clear, wide, and slow moving. It almost seemed… manicured. There were no rocks of any note and only a sandy bottom. Matthias did see several types of fish, some quite large, floating lazily in the water. Outside of that, it looked like any other river would. He was getting the nagging feeling that wherever he was, it wasn’t a normal place.

Eying the blue line, which clearly crossed the river and led off into the trees, he tentatively stepped into the water. It was ice cold. Colder than anything he had ever touched before. With a yelp he jumped out and backward, scrambling away from the soul-crushingly cold water.

“Nothing can be that fucking cold,” he said, shivering violently even though a single foot had touched the liquid. “Nothing.”

Grunting, he sat in the sun for a bit to warm back up. While it took a while, the feeling did eventually come back to his body. Shaking out the cramping from cooling and heating to such a degree, Matthias stood up and prepared for his next attempt to cross.

He glared at the river, “{POWERHOUSE}”, he said in annoyance as a screen came up in front of him.

{POWERHOUSE}

1 STAT – 1 POWER

{DURATION}

1 HOUR – X1 POWER

Matthias put fifty Power in Strength for an hour. While this cost him fifty Power outright, more than half of what he had left and leaving him with a paltry thirty-seven Power remaining, he had more than enough of the stat to simply jump over the river. He backed up a dozen steps and, with a bit of a lumbering run, picked up speed until he reached the edge of the water.

Then he leaped.

Matthias had grossly overestimated the Strength he had needed for this to work.

He not only leaped into the air and cleared the river, but he also cleared the open space on the other side leading up to the edge of the water. He then continued for some distance into the forest before his momentum was kindly stopped by the friendly presence of a very large tree. A very large, very hard tree.

The flying goblin smashed into the tree at nearly full force before sliding down the trunk to rest on the ground in a daze.

“F… f…” he muttered while spitting out pieces of bark. “Fuck me.”

Tinkling laughter echoed through the forest at his predicament, finally confirming that there was, indeed, someone or something watching him.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up,” he said aloud to his watcher. They apparently seemed content to remain hiding. As long as they did so, and didn’t make any attempt to become hostile or attack him, he really didn’t care. There were worse things in the world than to be watched. Privacy was an illusion, even with no one around.

After all, there were gods.

Matthias continued walking, the sun starting to take a slow dip past its zenith. It was telling him that the morning had waned, and that afternoon was rapidly coming. Then there was the night. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he had yet to see anything wandering around during the day. That could change significantly during the twilight and midnight hours.

Finally, after walking for most of the day, he exited the forest with a suddenness that left him stunned. In front of him was a broad rolling plain, endless in scope and size. The trees themselves simply stopped in a near-perfect line, no underbrush or saplings extending out into the vast open area that was covered with waist-high golden grass.

Turning to look at the area, he realized that he was not too far away from a large rocky overhang, a natural formation the blue guiding line led right to. It was an odd formation, but he was positive there was some kind of cave complex there. It was, after all, what he had intended to find.

“Perfect. I may survive this yet,” Matthias grumbled as he began to walk again. It wouldn’t take him long to reach, certainly before the sun went down.

Unfortunately, the few thins that had noticed his spectacular entry onto the plains didn’t wait for him to get to a safe location. A large lion-like creature sprang from the tall grass… and landed neatly on his back.