Julian awoke in darkness, before remembering the curtain around the arena he slept in. Groaning and rising to his feet, the budding necromancer trudged to the arena opening, swept back the curtain, and stepped out into the common room. Red-tinted light streamed through the windows and highlighted a room full of people just starting to bury themselves in drink. After closing the curtain behind him, Julian walked out into the room proper.
Marge spotted him rather quickly, and held one finger up to him before she finished her current hand of a game that looked similar to poker. He nodded and sat at an empty table for just a minute or two before she settled herself across from him, the chair groaning under her musculature. Before long a drink was in her hand, and she began to speak. “Welcome back, glad you didn’t die. How’d you feel about your first day?”
“Tired. I’m not excited to repeat that nineteen more times just to unlock the basics, but it’ll be worth it,” Julian replied with a half-hearted smile.
Marge chuckled, her usual booming laugh subdued by sympathy. “Yeah, it sucks alright. Especially with a damned twenty-hour activation time.”
Julian coughed, glad he didn’t yet have food or drink in front of him to choke on. “Twenty hours? It took that long!?”
“Yuup. Your particular Skill’s a real pain for training, takes so long you can’t get a proper rest schedule, and you can’t even store many activations’ worth of reagents since they’ll go bad. Well you could, but you’d miss out on progressing some peripheral Skills. You’ll be taking a day and a few hours for each full round of training, between gathering reagents and using them, and there’s really not much we can do to speed it up.” Marge finished her spiel with a loud belch, having chugged half her current mug before she spoke.
It took Julian a few moments to process just how long it had been since he began the Create Zombie ritual, but eventually he realized how little it mattered. He had nothing else to be doing; the stressors of daily life on Earth were behind him, replaced with an entirely different set of stressors, which he was now training to handle. There were no hard time limits, just an approximate month, and room and board were provided. After his short pause to process the time spent, he mentally returned to the conversation. “So with the offset, will I be hunting at night?”
“Yep. Daisy can keep you safe, and it’ll be good for you to fight in different lighting situations while you have his protection.” A server arrived with a plate of food for Julian, and he happily dug in as Marge continued speaking. “After you’re done with breakfast, I’ll send you on your way; Daisy’s pretty much always ready so you don’t have to worry about him. I’m happy to check in with you daily if I see you, but don’t worry about it if you miss me; just keep going. Oh, and you don’t have to worry about cleanup; we have people for that.”
With that, Marge shook Julian’s hand and left, returning to her game of cards. As soon as he had his hand back, Julian continued to scarf down the food in front of him, his appetite somehow growing with every bite instead of being satiated. After a couple minutes, he was done, and off to find Daisy.
Daisy was quickly located, and the pair set out the front door into the nighttime streets of the Town of Beginnings. As they left, Julian asked, “What’s the name of that inn anyway?”
“The Miracle,” Daisy replied with his usual minimalistic approach to conversation.
Julian nodded, returning to looking at the Town. The dark Town had an entirely different aura about it than in daylight, one he was now able to recognize since he had properly experienced its daytime. It did not feel like a dangerous slum, but neither did it provide a feeling of true safety. Guards of various sorts patrolled the streets, though he could see multiple aggressive conversations between guard groups belonging to obviously different factions. Several buildings had lights inside, sounds of revelry pouring out of the windows, but the streets themselves were nearly empty, and the only non-guards wandering about kept themselves in groups.
It took about the same time to reach a monster rat’s location as it had in the daylight, and while the lighting was much less reliable, Julian dispatched the creature with barely more effort than the previous day. They returned to the Miracle, and Julian found his arena cleaned, with no evidence of the ritual that took place only hours before. He ended up using the same arena, and Daisy placed the corpse down before helping to draw the blinds. Twenty hours of magically altered perception later, Julian dispatched the Zombie Rat with much less trouble than he had the previous attempt, having been much more prepared for when exactly in the ritual the creature would animate.
The next several cycles weren’t much different, and Juilan began to adjust to the routine. Each time, he had more energy, and he began to socialize with the other members of Marge’s Miracle in the short periods between waking and hunting. More than socializing though, he saw evidence of just how strong these people were.
Billy was the name of the man who woke Julian up after his first rest at the Miracle. The only times his smoking pipe was unlit were when he left the common room, whether to the city proper or to the guest rooms. He often came back inside with fresh blood on his daggers and ruffled hair, but always cleaned up before he began his festivities for the evening.
The receptionist, Astrid, made a lasting impression. She stepped in when the bouncers had issues dealing with problematic guests, and Marge wasn’t around to scare them off. Her twin batons made swift and painful work of any such troublemakers, and multiple times he had seen her break straight through shoddier blades with her strikes. Even she held nowhere near the awe Marge now inspired in him.
When Marge had to deal with the rabble causing trouble, she overwhelmed them so thoroughly it was almost hilarious. Blades, when drawn, hardly phased her as she picked up the troublemakers by their heads and carried them outside. For those who drew weapons or tried to abuse her crew, her hands made a few pit stops against brick walls and other skulls before finishing transporting the problems out of her inn. Not to mention the time he witnessed her return from an expedition outside, covered in blood and injuries head-to-toe. Instead of receiving medical attention or getting some rest, she simply grabbed a drink and joined in a round of cards with other bloodied members of her outing.
As he got to know them, Julian slowly grew attached to this little group. He certainly wasn’t a part of their inner circle, but he started to consider himself a friend of their little family, and he enjoyed his time at the Miracle. He had had some friends on Earth, but no-one he was particularly close to, and the casual camaraderie was pleasant.
And so the training continued in relative monotony for several training cycles. Out into the world under Daisy’s guidance, then immediately back for a twenty-hour ritual of undeath, followed by a deep sleep. Julian was just glad he didn’t feel any physical sensation from his body during the ritual, and afterward he was too tired to care; otherwise he might have failed to complete the rituals due to severe pain in several joints.
Every time he slept, Julian checked his Status, and watched his Skills get closer and closer to unlocking. His Control Zombie Skill progressed every single cycle, as did his Spear Skill. However, he was annoyed to note his dagger and unarmed Skills falling behind, and he had yet to even use his crossbow in combat. Daisy indicated this was expected, however, and once his initial grind for Control Zombie levels was over, he could rush the rest to fruition in a series of battles against monstrous rats while supported by his own zombie.
The seventh time he went to sleep since starting the grind he was greeted by a pleasant surprise in his Status sheet. That day, he had finally managed to kill one of the monstrous rodents in a single clean blow through the head; most days, they just barely managed to dodge like they had the first. The zombie he created from its corpse took slightly more effort than usual to kill, and his sheet contained a possible explanation.
[Status]
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[Name: Julian Barth]
[Race: Human]
[Attributes: 10 10 10 10 10 10]
[Skills: Create Zombie (1), Control Zombie (5/20), Corpse Stitching (1/20), Dagger (1/20), Spear (5/20), Toughness (1/20), Unarmed (1/20)]
Another Skill was in the process of unlocking; this must have been one of the peripheral Skills Marge mentioned. He wasn’t entirely sure why it had begun unlocking, but since Marge’s comment about deterioration implied the state of the corpse mattered, maybe it had something to do with his clean kill? Regardless, he was happy with any new progress, and while the name certainly implied a disgusting time, if it worked anything like corpse stitching in novels it would be a powerful Skill. He smiled as he fell into sleep proper, the nightmares that plagued him after his battle with Joseph hardly able to manifest through his exhaustion.
On his fourteenth training cycle, his confident slaughter spree was finally interrupted. Julian was stalking down a random alleyway toward a feasting rat, as he normally did, but something seemed off. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, and simply kept his attention higher than normal while he approached. It was only when he attempted his usual surprise attack that he realized what was wrong; the monster was not actually eating anything from the garbage heap in the center of the crossroads between alleys. Not entirely sure why he was so concerned, Julian under-committed to his attack in an effort to quickly fall back to a defensive position.
His heart rate spiked well above the rapid rate it was already at as adrenaline flooded his system in full, because right before his eyes a jumping rat had closed its jaws where his head would have been had he committed fully to the attack. It landed directly on top of a rat emerging from the shadows on the opposite side, as the “feasting” monster turned around and bared its yellow, broken fangs at Julian.
He immediately began to back up, while looking for a location in which to, preferably, bottle-neck his foes, though he’d happily take some room to maneuver if the first option couldn’t be found. Daisy perfectly maintained his distance behind the retreating young man, seemingly unconcerned with the assault. Eventually, Julian managed to bring the fight to another crossroads between small alleys but without a pile of refuse in the center, which opened up the space a bit and gave him at least a fighting chance.
Barely noticing his own heaving breaths, Julian drew the rats into the new space and began to circle them. Fighting two opponents was only marginally harder than fighting one in such a place, because as long as one had room to maneuver they could keep one opponent between themselves and the second. Adding a third to the mix complicated the matter greatly; no longer could Julian try to fight only a single enemy while keeping the other off him. Instead, he had to constantly rotate between enemies, always keeping the closest one between himself and the other two as perfectly as he could. Fortunately, the rats relied on animalistic instinct more than any form of higher thought for their battle coordination, so while they swarmed and scrambled to gang up on him they never attempted any true tactics or tricks to change the situation, allowing Julian to maintain the status quo as long as he needed.
Unfortunately, he needed to maintain the status quo nearly indefinitely. While Julian wasn’t overwhelmed immediately in his dance around the trio of monstrous creatures, he still hardly had effort to spare to bring them down. He had to maintain situational awareness of all the little obstacles in the clearing, from boxes to piles of refuse, so that he would not trip or be pinned. More exhaustingly, the dance to keep a group of three enemies under control required both speed and focus at all times, leaving him little time or energy to spare to attack, especially when his mistakes brought his squishy flesh within reach of the teeth of multiple unnatural rodents.
The stalemate was getting Julian nowhere; worse, he was slowly tiring, while they spent comparatively little energy just trying to move around each other and occasionally strike. With a wince, he made the decision to commit to a proper strike against one rat, and just hoped he would both finish off the rat he targeted and survive any follow-up strikes from its companions, while remaining in decent enough shape to finish off the two survivors.
At least on the first hope, he found success. Julian took his target straight through the throat with his spear, before retreating as rapidly as he could to attempt to avoid the follow-up strikes. Unfortunately, the rats moved quickly once agitated, and one bit into the meat above Julian’s left hip while the other raked claws across his shoulder. The young man immediately tried to fall back and stack his enemies, but his fresh injuries both exacerbated his exhaustion and weakened his defense. Before long, a pair of closing rat denchers were headed for his throat.
Luckily for Juilan, Daisy was still present; with little fanfare, the brickish man stepped into the battle and dispatched both rats with unarmed strikes to their spines. “Hmph. Decent job.” The stoic man stuck out his hand, which Julian happily took to get to his feet. Daisy then tossed a single rat on his shoulder and started walking back the way they came, as he had after every other encounter. Julian looked at the remaining two corpses in confusion before he realized they would decompose somewhat before he could use them, and quickly set out after the man.
The rest of the cycle went according to plan, with the one addition of a healing potion much like that he received the night he arrived in the Town of beginnings. Julian resurrected the rat, killed the uncontrolled zombie, and quickly passed out. He was excited to note two extra points of progress on his spear Skill, one point of progress in his toughness Skill, and one point in the new Corpse Stitching Skill, before he dismissed the text and slipped into the realm of the Sandman.
It was a sweltering early afternoon, at the beginning of the hunting phase of Julian’s seventeenth round of training, when he experienced something entirely new and terrifying. He and Daisy were walking down the street, as they always did, and they were off a main road by only one intersection when he felt a pressure fill the air around him. His heart rate accelerated and sweat almost instantly began to drip off his face, as he started breathing heavily and had to resist taking a knee. Daisy’s face showed only a hint of the man undergoing the same struggle, but more worrying was the look of concern on the man’s face.
Without a word, Daisy beckoned for Julian to follow him back to the main thoroughfare. The walk back took less than a minute, as they had just barely turned off the main road. Conspicuously, there were no pedestrians in the center of the thoroughfare any longer; instead, they were all arranged along the sides of the road with various looks of distress upon their faces. Several fully knelt in a pose of submission, while others stood like Daisy and Julian, stressed but ultimately not giving in to whatever the strange pressure was.
Eventually, Julian was able to see the source of this new pressure. Walking down the center of the street was a lone feminine figure with short gray fur and triangular ears, like those of a wolf. As his eyes fell on her, Julian had to consciously control his breathing, as without his control he’d have likely fallen unconscious as his heart reacted poorly to this type of stress. He finally managed to avert his eyes to Daisy, who gave an explanation in his condensed way. “Higher Tiers have an aura. This is one Tier up, two would overwhelm us completely. Three would incapacitate us. Stay back, she’s dangerous.”
Julian did, in fact, stay back; the danger the wolf-woman presented was quite obvious. As the woman walked past the section of walkway where Daisy and Julian stood, her bow suddenly appeared in her hands and an arrow arced away into the crowd. As his eyes widened in surprise and horror, Julian watched the arrow fly and annihilate a rat that was sneaking up behind a young child who was helpless under the pressure of her aura. After the child’s mother scooped up her child, the huntress nodded and continued her march toward the center of the Town, while the young girl looked on in wonder.
After this display, Julian had many questions, but Daisy was moving on as soon as the pressure lessened, and soon his eagerness to continue training outweighed his immediate curiosity. His hunt reached its short but inevitable conclusion, and the pair returned to the Miracle. After another round of resurrection rituals and rest, he sat down to enjoy his breakfast, her dinner, with Marge, while discussing this newest experience. She revealed a little, repeating what Daisy had said in more words and mentioning that the huntress was named Luna and represented one of the factions he may be recruited by.
With that kind of power in a simple representative, Julian was more than curious about that faction, but Marge said she’d hold back further information until he was ready for recruitment so his decision could be more fair to any interested factions. That was fair enough in his mind, so Julian returned to his training. Three more rounds went by with little of note happening, and as he crashed into unconsciousness after his twentieth round of training, Julian could barely hold in his excitement. He looked at his Status page with satisfaction.
[Status]
[Name: Julian Barth]
[Race: Human]
[Attributes: 10 10 10 10 10 10]
[Skills: Create Zombie (1), Control Zombie (1), Corpse Stitching (2/20), Dagger (1/20), Spear (1), Toughness (2/20), Unarmed (1/20)]
Finally, after twenty-five days of hard work, he would be able to raise and control the zombie minion he had hoped for when he selected the Skill. The grind wasn’t over, Marge had been quite clear his basic weapons and defensive Skills would not be allowed to be neglected, but that could be done rapidly with his minion to support him. Soon, he’d be introduced to the factions outside of the Town of Beginnings, at least those friendly with Marge’s Miracle, and his true journey could begin.