Julian awoke to sunlight streaming through the gap above his curtains, for once actually sleeping in his bedroom, and with a smile on his face. He knew it wouldn’t amount to much in his future, but for now he had accomplished his first major task since arriving here – he had unlocked a new Skill, and one vital to the main Skill he selected on transference.
After taking a moment to stay in bed and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, Julian finally made his way downstairs. He still wasn’t late by any means, but this was the first day since his arrival he’d taken his time getting ready rather than rushing to training. He took his brunch, a simple thing of fruit and eggs, by himself, but Marge did show up at the end of his meal to speak with him.
“I hear you’ve finally made some real progress, good job. Knew you could do it.” Her smile was the widest he’d seen on her, prominently displaying several teeth replaced by gold and precious gems. Julian finished the last bite of his meal, before he smiled in return and Marge continued. “Just need you to finish training up those basic combat Skills, can’t have you die because you couldn’t survive the second you lost your zombie, now can I? Once those are touched up, we’ll get you introduced to the factions that will be your future. Sound good?”
“Yeah, that’ll be great, thanks. How long do you think it’ll take?” Julian replied.
“Eh, couple days? More if you fuck it up and get hurt, though, and with unlocking Toughness that’s almost inevitable. Daisy’ll carry a couple healing potions, but with the ones we can afford you’ll still be out of combat for hours on a bad injury, though a light one won’t hamper you too much. Don’t try to rush, there’s a reason we aren’t power leveling you; it never ends well for the bozos with Skill levels they’ve never used in a real fight or twenty.” Marge, as was her custom, unleashed an ale-tinted belch before she stood and walked away, calling over her shoulder, “Good luck!”
For his part, Julian was excited – and trying to ignore the implications of training Toughness, as it had only leveled the couple times he’d been injured during previous battles with the prolific monstrous rats. His conscious ignorance didn’t last more than five steps out the front door, as Daisy interrupted his usual stoicity to present the afternoon’s training plan, reaching out to take Julian’s spear as he began speaking. “No spear today. Open with the crossbow. Punch or kick them before you kill them with the dagger. The reduced reach will train Toughness.”
Nervous about changing his combat patterns, Julian followed Daisy for several minutes before they found their first extermination of the day. Exactly as planned, Julian opened up with a single shot from the crossbow, then set it gently to the ground and brandished his dagger. The rat, limping from a crossbow bolt in its chest, responded with a predictable charge down the muddy, waste-strewn alley. Julian shuffled left, pivoting off his left foot to drive his right toward the creature in a roundhouse kick. Outmassed and off the ground as it leapt at Julian, the rat was sent back several feet, though it left deep claw-marks on Julian’s leg in return. He gave chase, his dagger sinking into the creature’s spine before it could fully recover from his kick.
As the adrenaline faded and the pain in his leg caught his attention, Julian sat down with a grimace. Daisy didn’t take long to proffer a glass vial of dull-red liquid, one of the lesser-quality healing potions, which Julian gratefully accepted. The scratches barely even qualified as a flesh wound, but it still took most of half an hour for the damage to heal fully. It was miraculously faster than modern medicine, but it still took time, during which the pair sat together in silence.
The rest of the day passed in a similar manner. Julian did manage to avoid injury in the second brawl, but a grunt of disapproval made it clear Daisy hadn’t meant literal proximity would train Toughness, so from then on he made sure to take some damage in each fight. Another time his crossbow bolt caught a rat straight through the eye, killing it outright instead of allowing him to train other Skills, so he had to correct his targeting more toward center mass. Altogether, twenty battles were waged against the monsters over the next ten hours, and even with plenty of time to rest in between runs, Julian was exhausted.
He trudged through the evening foot traffic at the Miracle, up the stairs, and to his room. With a shower planned for the morning, he stripped off his sullied clothes and collapsed in bed. His Status appeared without fanfare, and he was happily surprised to have completed the training task faster than expected.
[Status]
[Name: Julian Barth]
[Race: Human]
[Attributes: 10 10 10 10 10 10]
[Skills: Create Zombie (1), Control Zombie (1), Corpse Stitching (2/20), Crossbow (1), Dagger (4), Spear (1), Toughness (4), Unarmed (4)]
Satisfied, he drifted to sleep. The next morning he rose with the dawn, took a shower, and headed downstairs to speak to Marge; he hoped his good news would surprise her a little. A full common room greeted him, most of the people he’d sporadically seen during his short breaks from training present. Marge wasn’t busy and was quick to join him once he had grabbed a breakfast of sausage and a potato-based food similar to hashbrowns.
Julian’s attempt at speaking first to surprise Marge with the success failed entirely as she called on approach, “Congratulations!” He must have looked flabbergasted, as she explained, “We can’t see your stats, but Daisy said you’d taken out plenty of rats yesterday to finish your task, and the look on your face today confirmed it!” Marge let out her signature booming laugh, clapped Julian on the back, and took a seat.
“That brings me to our own little surprise for you. No doubt you’ve found humans have better stats than rats, eh? Well,” she leaned in close to whisper, “that means they’ll make better zombies, and I managed to get someone with Corpse Preservation to keep Jasper around for you.” She leaned back and resumed speaking in a normal voice, “Just go over to the only closed-off arena after you’re done eating, it’s all prepped for you.”
Julian was completely stunned, more because he was touched than any horror at the handling of human death; handling the rats had rid him of the last of his squeamishness as far as he could tell. They’d gone to extra effort on his behalf to give him the best minion they could. Yeah, no matter what his future with the “factions” held, as long as he was still alive – and for all he knew, maybe even if he wasn’t – he’d come back here to say hi and repay the favors piled on him. Payment or otherwise, Marge was giving him a leg up in this world he suspected few others would have.
“Thanks, Marge. I owe you guys.” Julian spoke with a warm smile.
“Ah, none of that. We’re getting paid, remember? Speaking of which, best you get on with unwrapping your present so tomorrow we can finally get you introduced to your future handlers.” She waved him off, grabbed both of their now-empty plates, and departed towards the kitchens; she of course handed the plates off to the first worker she came across and went to join a card game instead.
For his part, Julian eagerly made his way to the closed off arena. Inside was Jasper, preserved almost exactly how Julian remembered him, wounds and all. It was a bit eerie, but nothing he couldn’t get over. The ritual was routine for him at this point, and most of it went smoothly, but he did note one difference. When reality rushed to fill the void left behind when he removed the concept of Death from Jasper, it couldn’t quite fill the void entirely; the ritual still succeeded, but he had the sense his zombie was somewhat lesser than it had the potential to be. Maybe humans were strong enough to need higher levels of the Skill to properly raise? He didn’t really know, but that was his best guess at the moment.
Regardless, it still felt stronger than anything he’d raised before, and as the ritual completed he hurried to activate the Control Undead Skill before he had a problem. Fortunately this Skill operated on a less structured basis than the ritual, and was quick to activate. He felt his mind briefly clash against something resembling the shape of a human’s but without any of the substance, then the Skill took hold; it felt like a rushed version of the perception-altering phase of the ritual, which dragged his view straight back to the void of definition in the center of Jasper, where the Skill added several new definitions which together felt like some kind of leash between Julian and his zombie. As quickly as it began, the Skill ended, and Juilan was staring into the dead eyes of his creation. There was now a link between them, almost a rope he could tug on or send thoughts through, and he sent some basic movement commands through the link as a test. The zombie responded perfectly.
Utter excitement waned to exhaustion, as Julian had finished yet another many-hours-long ritual. He left the tent to look around the common room in the very early morning light streaming through the windows, and found Daisy sitting nearby the arena. On seeing Julian, Daisy came over and pulled back the curtain. “You can defend yourself now. Secrecy is no longer necessary.”
While not full at this early hour, the common room was not empty either. Nearly every member of Marge’s Miracle present was sitting close to the arena, and as soon as Daisy pulled back the curtain they stared with open curiosity. There was some surprise, but overall not as extreme of reactions as Julian expected; mostly there was a series of thoughtful nods, and one older man called out, “Nice job!”
In seconds the commotion died down, and several of those present went off to bed; it seemed they’d been aware of the pending reveal, and now that it was over they were ready for some real sleep. Julian shook his head in amusement, glad he wouldn’t have to worry about hiding his rather obvious zombie, before he followed the departing members of the crowd to a feather mattress which called his name. His Status hadn’t changed, and he quickly dismissed it for some real rest.
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The noon-day sun awakened him seemingly instantly, though in reality he had gotten the several hours of sleep he needed. He performed his morning routine quickly and headed downstairs. Daisy met him while he ate, and after Julian finished he was directed towards Marge’s office, reached in a similar roundabout way as the armory; it seemed this business was official enough to warrant a more formal setting.
Marge was waiting for him, and she flashed a smile as Jasper’s walking corpse barely made it down the stairs without falling, before re-donning a serious mask. Julian quickly took a seat across her simple, solid desk, and she began speaking.
“Your time with us draws to an end. I’ll be sad to see you go, but that’s life if you want to progress; you leave some people behind. I’ve given you the skills I consider important, mostly in the form of Skills. There’s plenty I haven’t gone over, from culture to calendars, but as long as you can stay alive you can figure out the rest later, and you’ll have plenty of time to do so.
“That time’ll be spent in the service of and learning from one of several factions that control territory just outside the Town. Four have shown interest in you, so you’ll have some choices to make; the price they pay us is the same regardless. After we’re done here, you’ll get a series of meetings with a representative from each faction. By the end of the day I expect a decision. Are you with me so far?” Marge spoke a little more slowly than usual, and she seemed to pick up some of Daisy’s habit for directness when serious. It made keeping up easy at least.
“Yeah, I’m with you so far. Can I get an overview of each faction?” Julian replied.
“Of course, that’s where I was going next. The four factions interested in recruiting you are the Wild Hunt, New Dawn, the Eczin Kingdom, and the Pact Binders.
“The Wild Hunt are a group that focuses on individual power and competence above all else; compared to the others their members have the highest levels, both average and maximum. They also have the highest death rate, as again, their members are expected to be self-sufficient to a large degree, and take many risks in the pursuit of power. They control a large swath of undeveloped land to the east, absolutely teeming with monsters to hunt.
“The New Dawn take pretty much the opposite approach. Strength through Law and cooperation, they’re basically the closest thing I know of in this world to a proper military. They train you to specialize and work together to fight stronger threats, and they hold by far the most territory of the known factions despite their levels averaging at the lowest end of the groups. Downside is you have to respect the hierarchy, and I’m sure your world has plenty of examples of the pitfalls military dictatorships can run into. They basically own the entire arc of territory north of the Town, and extend further out from Town than any other organization I’m familiar with.
“The Eczin Kingdom is a bit odd; they’re a smaller group that settled a swath of land to the south which is absolutely teeming with elementals. As such, most of them are minion managers of some form or another. They hold their own, especially on their home turf, but they don’t have the raw resources of either the Wild Hunt or New Dawn.
“Finally, The Pact Binders. Their entire faction basically lives in a single city that’s technically inside New Dawn’s western border, but they’re recognized as an independent city-state. Not sure why they’re interested, but while they’re worth considering I’d be very sure about the path you want before you join them. They focus on making deals with higher powers; obviously this leads to strength above what your level would suggest, but at the same time it puts a hard cap on your growth. You can’t grow past the source of your powers, after all.
“That’s pretty much it. Ready to start?”
***
Marge gave Julian her office to use for the conversations with the representatives. First up was the Wild Hunt, and he felt a familiar pressure spiking his heart rate as a knock came on the door. “Come in,” he called, and as the door creaked open the gray-furred figure of the wolf woman he had seen walking up the streets several days ago was revealed. Just as before, his heart raced and he had to desperately control his breathing to avoid panic.
With a cough, Julian did his best to control himself, in particularly making sure he remembered to breathe. He smiled at the woman, and released a somewhat strained, “Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The black lips running along her short muzzle pulled back, revealing sharp teeth in what he assumed was a smile. “The pleasure is mine. I will not mince words, especially as I’m quite sure you will appreciate brevity right now. I am looking for an apprentice to join me in the Wild Hunt. It will be harsh, and your life will be risked, but you will grow. Further questions will be answered on the road if you decide to join me, but there will be no hard feelings if you do not. I will await your decision, and I depart in the morning.”
With that, she left the room, and the pressure on Julian slowly faded. He sighed in relief, but he was enthused at the idea of the Wild Hunt. The ideal of personal power, and individuality, they strived toward enticed him, and to train under such a powerhouse would be an incredible opportunity. While they were only the first representative he spoke to, he had trouble imagining others with more enticing offers.
***
The representative for the Pact Binders was a withered old man with paper-thin skin who wore a thick robe, likely for warmth, and carried several grimoires. Julian already disliked the idea of restricting his personal power by binding it to a greater one, and the man before him did little to dissuade him of that dislike. The conversation was no better.
“...and that’s why it’s important for one such as you to worship Serin the Queen of Undeath, as she only grants boons to those that swear by her as their primary deity. Her boons completely replace the need to level Control Skills, allowing you to control an army far greater than you could otherwise.” The old man finished a rather long lecture about the nature of higher-leveled necromancy.
There was a lot of good information to be mined from the man. Already Julian had learned some juicy pieces of information, like the existence of Zombie Lords or the possibility of merging multiple undead Skills into one, but as he had no intention of worshipping anything or of joining the Pact Binders, he didn’t want to take too much advantage of the sage. “Thank you, Elwin. That was extremely informative; I am impressed by the Pact Binders knowledge, and will consider you carefully.”
Elwin chuckled, and spoke without any sign of annoyance, “Ah, no you won’t. You’re not the type, but maybe someday you’ll be truly strong, and you’ll remember the Pact Binders that love to make deals for power. Or you’ll die. Who knows.” He winked, then excused himself and departed the room, chuckling lightly the whole way out the door as he wobbled on his cane.
Julian was more excited than he should be, the prospect of attaining deific levels of power was certainly amazing. However, he knew he couldn’t count his chickens before the eggs were even laid, so he forced himself to focus on the next interview.
***
The New Dawn representative wore a uniform somewhat reminiscent of US Navy dress blues, and there was no visible armor. He was obviously an officer of some kind. Julian would guess a newer one, given the general sense of attempted perfection, but maybe the New Dawn were just that strict. Either way, while he was impressed by what the New Dawn had done and would study them if given the chance, he didn’t think he’d want to live under them, regardless of the pitch the representative made. Still, he had to at least listen.
After exchanging pleasantries, the officer, introduced as Lieutenant Ackrin Mildor, launched into a recruitment speech. “The New Dawn is looking for talent, and would like to invite you to join as a specialist, minion type. This role has the highest compensation package by rank in the Dawn. Additionally, after four years of specialized training, you could qualify to become an officer…”
The speech was stunningly similar to many of those given by military recruiters Julian had encountered in highschool. He supposed it was inevitable for a military exposed to doctrines from multiple universes to progress to something somewhat modern from Earth’s perspective, though he sincerely hoped they had found a way to navigate some of the pitfalls of military structure he had heard of. A couple minutes later, he thanked the officer, told him he’d carefully consider the New Dawn’s offer, and shooed him out the door.
***
The Eczin Kingdom representative was the second non-human representative of the day. They were a pile of rocks with water running perpetually, and impossibly, down them, and they spoke by rubbing certain rocks together to roughly approximate vocal cords. This resulted in a somewhat inconsistent voice, jumping up and down in pitch and tone, and Julian had to ask them to repeat themselves several times throughout the conversation.
Again he was given a prepared speech to start the conversation, but this time it was much more succinct. “The Eczin Kingdom rules a land of elementals. We have allied with earth, air, fire, and water, but we do not yet have inroads with the life or death elementals. You would be our first step on the path to peaceful coexistence with the undead that dominate our northernmost claimed territory. Your training would be a top priority, and by the time this task is finished you would have claimed much personal and political power. Please, ask any questions you feel the need to ask.”
This offer was the first one to compare to that of the Wild Hunt, at least in Juilan’s opinion. Follow-up questions verified that they’d train him to at least the next tier in all relevant undead-related Skills, and that he’d gain significant political pull largely through being the only member of the group capable of properly interfacing with their death elemental population. He thanked the moving pile of boulders, and they formed into a loose ball to gently roll away, leaving a rapidly-evaporating trail of water in their wake.
***
Hours later, he was sitting across from Marge to discuss his decision. He really only had one question, which he posed as soon as the door was closed. “How far can the Wild Hunt take me?”
Marge thought for a moment, then answered with a serious expression. “I’m not sure, but I can tell you the representative still carries the mark of a high apprentice; one allowed to take their own apprentice, but not so powerful or experienced as to be considered a master.”
That decided it for Julian. The Eczin Kingdom would definitely take him to the next tier of power, and he would almost certainly grow his political might as well, all at the lowest levels of risk that progression could have. The Wild Hunt however, based on who his teacher would be, would also take him to at least the next tier of power, and given Marge’s information they could likely take him even further. With the Wild Hunt he’d have to take much more dangerous risks, but what was a little danger in a fantasy world? Besides, the payoff for risks taken in this world was both tangible and grand; he could literally see his own power grow. It was exciting.
With those thoughts in mind, he told Marge, “I will join the Wild Hunt.”