So … this was different. More different than it should be if any even remotely reasonable span of time had passed. He didn’t know how long it took for the environment to reshape itself like that, just that it was far longer than not only a human’s lifetime, but also the lifespan of the written word.

Long enough that Sundiata had no idea if it took a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, or even a hundred thousand years, just that it was a ludicrously large number.

Deserts could not transform into mountains in any reasonable amount of time. Not even remotely.

Had it truly been this long? Had Zerzura truly kept him past the entire lifespan of Mali, perhaps even past the end of humanity?

Sundiata doubted that there was any situation where the world had survived but humans hadn’t. Humans could live through anything. Someone would remain.

Where to go from here?

Return to where Mali had been, then look for something else to do, he supposed.

His [Internal Compass] said that was south, straight south. Which … that was the wrong way. Yes, he’d be approaching Mali from the north, but that was after journeying west above the Sahara to ensure the shortest possible path through the desert. At present, it should be in a south-western direction.

How much had the world changed? Could the world change like that?

Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t Mali that had changed places, but Zerzura. Which would also explain why his surroundings were so radically different.

After all, if the city could trap him in an impassable sphere of warped reality, throwing him around like a ball in a children’s game to ensure he stayed within, who was to say it could not change locations as well?

It was a relief, compared to what else could have been happening, but trouble nevertheless.

Mali had already been far from Zerzura before. How distant was it now, assuming his empire still existed?

Yet it would take more than a few dark thoughts, starvation, and two month’s worth of dehydration to stop him.

He could keep going even in his current state. Something to eat and something to drink would eventually cross his path.

And thus, Sundiata Keita set off on his journey through unknown lands, across an unknown distance, in a time that was utterly alien to him.

***

Creatures. Beasts. Monsters.

That was new.

Not the existence of monstrous creatures, mind you, but to have them exist in such numbers, such variety … now it was obvious as to why it was now, of all times, that he’d woken, even if Zerzura had kept him for an uncomfortably long time.

A large snake, massive and strong like a constrictor despite clearly being a viper of some variety, lunged at him and his grab was slightly too slow. Instead of grasping it directly behind its head, which would have trapped it, he’d only caught it half a meter further down its body, leaving it with more than enough free movement to bite him.

The venom burned as it entered his blood, but what should have been the serpent’s victory instead turned into defeat as he took this as his chance to grip its skull directly, using [Mind over Matter] to weaken the bone while [Spirit over Flesh] made his muscles bulge, reducing the creature’s head to a fine paste in an instant.

Then, he simply pulled his hand back, wiped it off on the ground, then did his best to remove the gore clinging to his biceps. As he did so, the same two Skills began to work in concert to repair the damage.

[Mind over Matter] to pull out the venom, [Spirit over Flesh] to stitch his flesh back together.

They were powerful, yes, but always made quite the mess.

A suitable weapon was needed, some tools, perhaps even followers. But for now, he would settle for a nice and sturdy stick. One much like the one he’d used to force himself to stand for the first time.

And then, the magic would do the rest, something called [Worthy Weapon] would ensure that something suitable would be able to withstand the kind of battles that seemed to be annoyingly commonplace nowadays.

As he continued his journey, the voice of magic informed him of how his “Level” had increased. Why it was called that, he didn’t know, but then again, as long as he knew what it meant, it didn’t really matter what its name was.

[Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 43 -> Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 44]

[Skill Boost gained]

Once again, the verbiage was strange, but self-explanatory.

He strengthened [Spirit over Flesh], figuring that despite the name of his “Class” indicating that he was meant to build empires, in his current situation, personal power seemed to be the most important.

… Maybe once he’d found something to drink first, his throat being dry as the desert he was trudging through got old after a few months. Very old.

He continued to walk in the direction of where Mali was, or at least used to be until eventually, finally, he reached something approximating an oasis, which, at the very least, had a pool of water … which promptly exploded out of the ground to form into a vaguely humanoid shape, elongated limbs already lashing out towards Sundiata like some kind of bladed whip.

Vengeful Oasis (manifested pond), Level 45 Field Boss

Just one more obstacle to overcome, he supposed as he flung himself back to avoid the strike. For something made up from water, it hit quite hard, ripping clean through the ground as though it were an ox plow, leaving a furrow big enough for Sundiata to lie down in before snapping back into its body.

Which meant that water wasn’t used up when attacking, he needed to kill it.

… How?

How did one kill a living mass of water?

An arrow tipped with a rooster’s talon could break many a magical barrier and disrupt a sorcerer’s working, however, this was neither a barrier, nor a sorcerer.

Which meant he’d just have to rip it apart, piece by piece, until it stopped regenerating. It’d take a while, a day, maybe two, possibly as much as a week, until it finally died.

He supposed that was how it’d have to go.

Reinforcing the back of his palm, he smashed his hand through the next water lash, breaking the link and letting the liquid spatter across the ground. Where it did stay. For about five seconds, before flying back into the monster to regenerate its form.

Back and forth they went, ripping into each other,

It was only then that [Bane of the Supernatural] finally chose to inform him of the fact that it was, in fact, functional, and that ending an elemental was as easy as crushing its core … where was its core?

Slowly, he retreated in the direction of the now-empty pool, and the single sorry tree that stood there, a baobab that looked like it could fall down at any time. It was a miracle an intact one was in a place this dry and inhospitable, but it would do.

The monster hauled itself after him, arms rending the ground, thicker watery tentacles leaving massive craters as he dodged, until a direct strike to the tree outright cut it in half, obliterating the tree in its entirety.

Sundiata grinned and leaped, grabbing at a falling branch and ripping it clean off with his sheer momentum, [Mind over Matter] reducing its durability at the breaking point to almost nothing, allowing him to remove it with ease.

The branch of a baobab tree. An ordinary piece of wood, yet it wasn’t the first of its kind that he’d used, far from it. In fact, it had been a stick just like that which he’d used to learn to walk, as he made his useless legs function through sheer determination.

And that decisively made it a [Worthy Weapon]. A perfect weapon.

Power flowed from him into the staff, changing nothing on the outside but warping its insides, transforming it into a tool worthy of royalty, an eternal, nigh-indestructible weapon, unparalleled in durability and toughness.

Another watery limb came down from above and Sundiata met it with his staff, blasting it apart and sending the liquid spraying further than ever before.

[Spirit over Flesh] strengthened his body, [Mind over Matter] flowed into his weapon, both Skills fusing to ensure that whatever else happened, by the end of this fight, it would be the human still standing, not the monster.

This time, the “regeneration” was slower, each strike dispersing the water further than before, until suddenly, he finally spotted a single point on the monster’s body which was not clear liquid. In any other situation, he’d have thought it to be some kind of dirt, but he was searching for a core, the one thing in his liquid menace that was different.

Sundiata launched himself straight at it, leading with his staff and creating a massive crater in its chest as he dispersed it, only for it to surge back at him in an attempt to engulf him.

He let it.

Because as flexible as the monster was, attempting that particular attack while that thin and dispersed failed to leave very much space for the core to move.

Even as the living oasis covered his mouth and nose, Sundiata’s hand closed around its core and a single powerful jump powered by everything he had flung the pair straight into the empty pool the monster had been born from.

Killing it on the desert sands would waste almost all of the water. The pool, on the other hand? Something in there had been keeping the water aboveground.

His hand flexed and the core crumbled like wet clay, coming apart and dissolving into nothing while the monster around him lost all cohesion, just in time for his knees to painfully slam into the bottom of the hole. And then, the entire mass of the monster crashed down on him like an angry elephant.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sundiata emerged from the top of the oasis spluttering, then started to swim over to the side soaked to the bone, dragging his new staff with one hand while pulling himself forward with the other.

After a couple of seconds, he dipped his head lower to take his first drink in months, the water seeming to burn as it hit the dry and cracked inside of his mouth, but he simply couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

By the time Sundiata flopped onto the bank, he was surprised the water level hadn’t noticeably dipped. In fact, it felt like a genuine miracle that there was any water left.

He’d drunk to the point where he was starting to feel genuinely ill, and as much as he might have wanted to stay there, lying in the wet sand, enjoying a lack of thirst for the first time in what felt like forever, he had a journey to continue.

So he got up, pushing himself to his feet with his new weapon, though he’d now demoted it to the rank of “walking stick” and resumed his march while the voice of the System informed him of the fact that this fight had brought more rewards than mere water.

[Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 44 -> Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 46]

[Skill gained: Imperial Waypoint]

[Skill Boost gained]

Another chance to strengthen himself, and the ability to mark waypoints that not just he but also his subjects could find from very far away, allowing for easy navigation.

Sundiata turned around the way he’d come, marked the oasis with a thought, then resumed his march.

Now that he was no longer in need of water, some food would be appreciated. He felt like he could eat an elephant, but that was hardly realistic. Cactus figs, perhaps, would be easier.

***

Either humanity truly had died out in this day, leaving the world to the monsters, or something about him was attracting every single monster within a hundred miles.

The Desert’s Due (raised caravan), Level 42 Raid Boss

Lower-level than the first monster it might be, but what had to be an accumulation of at least a dozen doomed caravans, fallen to the final stretch of the journey to Mali, the most treacherous part of desert on the entire continent.

It was a wide, barren, dry stretch of land that no caravan could ever possibly carry enough water to make it across, which necessitated the sending ahead of someone to the other side, to buy water and bring it back to meet the caravan, four days of travel before the end of the sands.

This alone would be troublesome in most situations, if this patch of desert weren’t also said to be haunted. Now, was unaware of the veracity of those rumors, however, he also knew that a lot of people had died here over the years. And now, he was facing all of them, returned from the grave, bone-dry skin cracking with every movement as they began to close the distance.

Clearly, much as the Field Boss was stronger than a monster devoid of a title, the Raid Boss surpassed the Field Boss to a nigh-immesurable degree. Even at a lower Level, this monster was a true threat.

Sundiata glanced to the left, then right, then past the horde.

Could he run around them?

Yes. But he shouldn’t. Unless whichever humans lived today used entirely different methods for transportation, caravans would be moving through here, encountering this mass of the desert’s victims, and be wiped out.

Sundiata launched himself at his enemy, reducing the first shambling monstrosity to powder with a downward strike with his staff, then flicked it to the left to crush the next one’s knee, and as it fell, yanking the staff up obliterated its head. All without any empowering Skills.

These creatures were weak. Very weak. But they were numerous, indomitable, and most likely, untiring.

He leaped back to avoid being swarmed, then ran away for a few meters before turning back to face them, and started to tear into them once again.

They thought the undead were untiring, eternal threats likely capable of taking on entire kingdoms by their sheer endurance.

Against any other person, they might have won. Anyone else, they’d likely have been able to hound and drive back and make retreat until they were too tired to play the keep-away game.

They were facing Sundiata Keita, not “anyone else.”

So he tore them apart.

An hour passed, then a second, and all that had changed was that he was becoming more economical with his strikes, targetting heads exclusively.

Then, another one of his Skills announced that its activation conditions had been met. After all, how could one declare oneself the [King of Lions] without any lions present?

As to why there were lions this far north, this far into the desert … that was a question for another time.

Actually using the Skill was simple. He commanded to attack, and empowered them to the full extent his ability allowed. And they tore the undead apart, one by one.

And then they got tired, so he told them to rest behind him while he kept fighting. Until eventually, the last monster fell.

[Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 46 -> Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 49]

[Skill gained: Loyal Empowerment]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Empire Sense]

The power to strengthen his followers, and the ability to instinctively sense what his realm was doing. Which, at the moment, wasn’t anything. Unless the sense also extended to his lions, all seven of them, but [King of Lions] also informed him of what they were doing.

A lack of information on Mali was nothing that would keep him down, there were plenty of reasons that could be, ranging from distance to him having stepped down to go to Zerzura to him needing a certain understanding of what the Mali of today was like to ensure this Skill would work …

Sundiata would find out.

So he kept walking, kept going, obliterating whatever monsters he encountered, until one day, he met people.

***

“I’m assuming that’s a weapon?” Sundiata asked, as the man pointed some kind of contraption at him. It was mostly metal, with a wooden end and a leather strap across the shoulder that kept it in place, with a hole at the end which was aimed at him.

A projectile weapon, then.

Of course, the man and his comrades were entirely focusing on him, having completely missed the lions that had long since melted into the grass and surrounded them, more than capable of tearing them to shreds the instant he gave the order, regardless of the power of this new-fangled weapon.

“Idiot,” the man spat, in a language that Sundiata somehow recognized as “French” despite only knowing it because it was one of the languages the System had taught him, alongside English and Spanish, two equally mysterious languages, and a dialect of Mande which, most likely, was what the people of today used as his mother tongue had changed over time.

“It’s called a gun and will turn you into a sive the moment I press the trigger. So, drop the stick.”

Sundiata shrugged and dropped his weapon. At this distance, retrieving it would barely take any time at all.

“My name is Sundiata Keita,” he declared. “I have returned from the city of Zerzura to protect the people of Mali from the monsters scouring the world. Who are you?”

“I’m the guy with the gun.”

Oh, it seemed like that man truly did believe that weapon to be powerful. But how strong was it truly?

Sundiata stepped out of the path of the “gun” while digging the dip of his foot under his staff to flick it back into his hand and then, he swung it at the weapon. Only to slow down at the last possible second, rather than striking with bone-breaking force, he simply nudged it to the side so that it was no longer aimed at him.

That was when it began to roar, a sound like a dozen thunderclaps in sequence almost startling him enough to drop his staff, while something tore apart the ground behind him.

This weapon … it would not have been pleasant to be struck by its projectiles, though most likely survivable. In this lifetime, at least. In his first, a few of those impacts would probably have been lethal. Nowadays, however …

The comrades of the man who’d done the speaking thus far grabbed their own weapons far tighter and started attacking but Sundiata wove between them, slight nudges with the tip of his staff throwing off their aim, ensuring that no one here, not him, not them, wound up hit.

Eventually, they stopped trying, after the leader gasped “you’re an ancient!”

“I’m very old,” Sundiata admitted. “But that sounds like a title.”

“You’re Sundiata Keita,” another man finally added, speaking for the first time.

“I believe I introduced myself,” Sundiata replied, frowning.

“There are multiple people who came back from the dead, who are supposed to have died centuries ago,” the leader explained, though it wasn’t overly helpful as he’d just contradicted himself. Were they dead, and had been resurrected, or only falsely been believed to have passed on?

Sundiata raised an eyebrow.

“They attract monsters with their mere presence and keep the land around themselves safe, and train others to …”

“Silence!” Sundiata ordered, raising a hand to cut the man off as he scanned their surroundings. Something was coming. Fast, powerful, functionally invisible.

Where was it, where was i- …

The instant the monster got too close to one of the lions, he was able to pinpoint it and his right hand snapped forward, hurling his staff with enough force to blast the air elemental apart in its entirety, then continuing on into the distance while the monster simply came apart with a moderately powerful shockwave now that its core had been shattered.

That may have been slightly too much force. Just a little.

“I apologize for cutting you off,” Sundiata said, with slight contrition. “We’ll continue this conversation once I’ve retrieved my weapon.”

Once he returned, staff in hand, he received a brief but surprisingly informative report on what status he had apparently gained with his return, how long he’d been asleep, and what advancements humanity had made in that time.

Until eventually, he chose to make his offer.

“I am giving you a choice. Join me, and I will protect you from all that could threaten me. Don’t … don’t and my standing between you and the monsters once more will only ever be a happy accident, a side effect of me guarding those who are on my side. Truly on my side.

“Join me, and I will forge a nation, a true union of people, for our prosperity, for our safety, for our children.”

“Join me, and live!”

They joined him.

***

The further south they got, the more grass grew, the lusher the plantlife became, the more people they met.

Sundiata’s procession grew and grew, even picking up cars and trucks. The promise of safety and stability was a truly fantastic recruitment tool, however, it was truly sad just how well it worked.

The fact that what he promised had previously been a pipe dream … this world had grown ugly.

Monsters attacked, of course, but nothing truly dangerous. Not to him.

In fact, it didn’t take too long for him to only be needed against the truly exotic elementals of the flame and metal varieties, the various lions that joined them took care of everything else. With [Loyal Empowerment] working on them as well, he was actually starting to have to hold them back so that everyone else could get some practice in as well.

And, of course, in due time, the voice of the System announced another increase in his power.

[Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 49 -> Indomitable Empire Builder Lv. 50]

[Capstone Skill gained: Will Eternal]

Capstone Skill: Will Eternal

Your life is as eternal as your will. As long as your mind can keep going, so can you, restoring you even from death … however, if you are slain, your return will clash against that of your slayer, with the power of this pushback massively increasing the more intimate the nature of your death.

Falling in melee combat against another warrior will see resurrection be difficult and repeatedly denying the reaper nearly impossible, while being obliterated by bombs or artillery can easily be returned from … as long as you have the will to continue.

Sundiata grinned.

Even death was nothing in the face of his magic.

***

Here they were. Niani. His hometown, capital of the Mali Empire, long gone. Disappeared beneath the Savanah. Perhaps a few of those large rocks had once been buildings, perhaps if he were to dive into that pool over there, he’d find old timber down there.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

That was not why he was here, however. No, he’d known there would be nothing left from when he’d first started meeting people.

He was here for a different reason.

Sundiata had been feeling the connection since he’d left Zerzura. At first, it had not been obvious what it was, or even that it was there in the first place, however, time had wiped away all doubts.

He’d left the far behind himself, yet at the same time, it was still there, around him, at all times.

[Trait gained: Bond with the Transient Metropolis]

And, it seemed, the System finally agreed.

At the head of the procession, he stopped, turned, and began to speak.

“Our world is one of chaos and uncertainty, filled with monsters and humans who take equally monstrous actions. You all chose to follow me so that I might grant you stability, give you a home, create a new kingdom in this land torn apart by war.

“Here is where we will

“I give you … ZERZURA!”

And with that, he pulled on his now fully-forged connection to the phantom city and manifested it around them, buildings manifesting wherever they fit, clicking into place, forming a grand realm, the capital of whatever nation he would create, smaller buildings fusing together to form a grand wall to shield the population, while a grand tower took its rightful position in the center.

Sundiata hadn’t even realized what the tower was capable of until he’d connected to the city, how it bent space and warped reality to simultaneously be a mere hundred meters tall while also reaching all the way into the sky, ten meters across yet being able to contain thousands on a single floor …

It would get cramped, but if they were attacked, keeping the civilians safe would be easy. In fact, that was the only part of this that would be easy.

But the difficulty just meant that this task was worth doing, didn’t it?

***

The next day, six Nation Bosses manifested on the planet. Sadly, one was of special concern to him, since the metal elemental had apparently chosen Zerzura as its target.

It would not be anywhere near as easy a target as the monster might expect, but Nation Bosses were a force onto themselves …