The smell of decay mixed with moist odor of drifting fog as Elijah approached the pile of servitors. None of them even twitched, and as he drew closer, he verified that they were dead. Perhaps they’d never truly been alive, though he suspected that he’d gained some experience from each one, because his levels had skyrocketed after killing the Creator. He looked at his status:

Name

Elijah Hart

Level

66

Archetype

Druid

Class

Animist

Specialization

N/A

Alignment

N/A

Strength

99 (77)

Dexterity

84 (69)

Constitution

77 (67)

Ethera

75

Regeneration

89(69)

Attunement

Nature

Cultivation Stage: Cultivator

Body

Core

Mind

Soul

Stone

Hatchling

Quartz

Neophyte

While five points in each attribute wasn’t the huge boon that it had been when he’d first washed ashore on his island, it was still a large enough increase that he could feel the difference. He felt stronger, more coordinated, and far tougher. Most importantly, his pool of available Ethera continued to increase in size, enabling more casts.

But Elijah was even more interested in the new ability he’d gotten at level sixty-five. He looked at its listing in his spellbook:

Nature’s Rebuke

Curse an entity to endure the power of nature, doing damage over time. Triple damage against unnatural creatures. Lasts two minutes.

It was exactly what Elijah needed, as far as he was concerned. In his caster form, his damage capabilities trended more toward area than single target, which in a lot of cases, was great. However, aside from Storm’s Fury, which was underwhelming without his old Staff of Natural Harmony to increase its damage, he had nothing meant for a single entity. So, he hoped that Nature’s Rebuke would fill that niche.

It was especially nice because he could cast it, then switch into one of his other forms while it did its damage. It was just one more affliction he could pile on, and he was eager to see how well it worked against monsters like the servitors, which definitely would have qualified as unnatural.

In any case, there was nothing around that needed killing, so he continued on his way until he reached the manor. Once he did, he saw hundreds more servitor corpses, each one looking as if it had simply dropped dead mid-stride. Perhaps they had. Still, as he circled the large building, he couldn’t escape just how eerie it all felt. He almost preferred the unrelenting hordes of monsters to the silence hanging over the grounds.

Eventually, Elijah reached his destination. He could have entered the manor via the front door, but he couldn’t bring himself to be that brazen. Instead, he’d chosen one of the side doors intended for servants. Of course, Elijah didn’t think the tower’s scenario actually included a domestic staff, but the architectural layout still clung to that illusion.

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After ensuring that there were no threats in the vicinity, Elijah shifted back into his human form, then reached for the door. The red shield rippled like he’d just plunged his hand underwater, but he felt nothing until he grasped the door’s handle. It felt strikingly normal, and he pushed it open before stepping inside.

And he was confronted with a normal-looking kitchen.

Sure, there were no modern appliances, and there was an enormous fireplace in the center of the room, which hosted an equally large cauldron, but it didn’t really seem abnormal. There were no cooks, though. No scullery maids. The fireplace was cold, and according to One with Nature, the cupboards were completely empty.

But Elijah was more interested in the silver box he found at his feet and the notifications that flashed before his eyes.

Congratluations! You have completed Level One of The Magister’s Estate. Grade: B

To progress further, complete your Task.

That was expected, though he thought the system was generous with its grading scale. Certainly, after how wrong everything had gone because of Badu, he’d expected a much worse score. However, the relatively high grade suggested that the reward would be better than Elijah expected.

So, it was with some eagerness that he reached down and opened the silver box. Inside was a large parcel of grey leather. When he touched it, he received another notification:

Reward for completing Level One of Magister’s Estate:

Ghoul-Hide Satchel

“Ew,” he muttered to himself, resisting the urge to drop the disgusting thing. The notion that it was made of the skins of those creatures outside was troubling. Yet, Elijah knew that any item he received from conquering a tower level was bound to be useful. Doubly so, considering the high grade. So, he resolved to ignore the satchel’s dubious composition.

Instead, he took a few moments to inspect its dimensions. And to his vast surprise, the inside was at least twice as large as his current pack. More, as a satchel whose strap could be worn across his torso, it was much more convenient. Finally, he could tell that it had some degree of weight reduction, because after he transferred his belongings from his old pack to the new satchel, he could feel the difference in the burden.

All in all, it was a huge upgrade, even if it wasn’t quite what he’d expected. Thankfully, now that it was empty, he could throw his old pack inside the Ghoul-Hide Satchel, so he could travel much more lightly.

After that, he took a while to inspect the kitchen, but his first impressions turned out to be accurate. It was empty, both of people and of any goods. Even the pots and pans were gone. Or perhaps they’d never existed. Whatever the case, it didn’t take him much longer to move on. Of course, he did so in his draconid form and under the influence of Guise of the Unseen.

As it turned out, it was almost entirely unnecessary, because the manor was completely deserted. Still, he could smell the odor of people, so he followed that trail through expansive building. However, he didn’t do so without checking every room right down to the closets. And he found nothing, save for a huge set of locked doors that shimmered with the same protective barrier as the entrances. Elijah expected that it was the way ahead, which meant that he needed to find another key.

After leaving that behind in search of such a key, he reached what seemed like living quarters fit for a princess. Ignoring the rich décor, which trended toward velvet and silk amidst wrought iron and dark wood, Elijah stalked forward. And that’s when the trail he’d been following ended in the scene of a massacre.

A blonde woman, all in white, knelt amidst a dozen bodies. Her porcelain skin was marred by blood that coated her dainty chin, while tears flowed freely down her cheeks. The corpses around her were dressed like all the other natives Elijah had seen, but it didn’t take him long to recognize the woman who’d helped him only a couple of hours before.

Her throat had been ripped out.

The blonde woman quivered with her tears. But then, she leaned forward and licked the congealed blood that had pooled beneath her. As she did, she muttered, “So hungry. S-so…hungry.”

For a long time, Elijah just watched the woman feasting upon the pool of blood, and though he was disgusted, he couldn’t help but feel pity. Clearly, she was in no small degree of distress. She obviously hated what she was doing. But she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t stop herself.

It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to come to the conclusion that she was a vampire, and not a willing one.

But as much as he pitied the girl, he knew he couldn’t afford to try to help her. Perhaps the natives had tried that route, and they’d paid the price for their sense of mercy.

Elijah wanted to let her live, the signs were too obvious to ignore. Perhaps someone else could have saved her. Maybe there was something he’d missed. For all Elijah knew, there was some cure for her condition somewhere else in the house. But the fact was that he didn’t have the time to search the entire manor. As such, he had one option, even he hesitated to exercise it.

But hesitation wasn’t refusal, and he slowly crept forward until he was only a couple of feet behind the weeping vampire. Then, after using Predator Strike and Venom Strike, he struck, snapping out with his powerful jaws. They closed around her head, clamping down with tens of thousands of pounds of pressure. She reacted just before his teeth connected with her skull, but by that point, it was too late.

Her head burst in a fountain of blood. A second later, her entire body melted into crimson liquid that, in turn, evaporated after a few more moments.

And just like that, she was dead.

But standing in the center of all those corpses, Elijah was a little disappointed. She had fallen too easily. Of course, he didn’t crave a life-or-death fight. However, there was a part of him that had expected his opening salvo to be just that – the beginning of a back-and-forth fight.

He knew it wasn’t because he didn’t know his own strength. He was well aware of how powerful he could be. Instead, he suspected that the vampire girl simply wasn’t that strong. So, she’d never really been meant to be an obstacle.

So, after making certain that the rest of the natives were dead, Elijah moved further into the living quarters. Soon enough, he found his way to a bedroom, and after a little searching, he found two items.

The first was a diary, and looking at the first few pages told Elijah that it belonged to the vampiric girl he’d just killed. He continued to read – or skim, really, given the time constraints – and he found himself engrossed in her story.

Predictably, she hadn’t always been a vampire. Instead, she’d been abducted from a nearby village, and when she was brought to the manor, Lord Lothgal had taken her to his bed. At first, even though she wasn’t willing, she had not resisted, thinking that he would tire of her company and let her go. That had never happened. Instead, he somehow converted her to vampirism and forced her to feed on her former neighbors.

But the girl – whose name was Sharath – hadn’t given up. Instead, she’d plotted to kill Lothgal, persuading a local wizard to create an item that would allow her to infiltrate the lord’s chambers and kill him in his sleep.

That was the second item Elijah had found.

He turned the locket over in his hands. He knew how it worked, and he knew what it would do, too. The diary had been clear on both counts. Yet, Elijah hesitated. Surely, there was a better solution to his issues than to use some untested magical device.

However, his hesitation only lasted as long as it took for him to hear a scratching at the bedroom door. Using One with Nature, he sensed that the corpses he’d left behind had risen as vampires, and they’d followed his scent to the bedroom. Soon enough, they would break down the door, and after that, it would come down to another fight.

But it wouldn’t get him any closer to the lord’s quarters.

So, Elijah took a deep breath, then slipped the locket around his neck. As he stepped forward to the spot described by the diary, the vampires burst through the door. He opened the locket, and the item activated.

Instantly, Elijah felt his body contract, and the item’s effect was not a painless experience. Instead of shrinking down, like he’d seen in so many movies growing up, it was more like his body imploded, collapsing in on itself. Which presented a problem, because when the effect completed, he was only about a quarter of an inch tall.

And he was hundreds of body lengths above the floor.

As the vampires burst into the room, slavering for blood, he fell. During the fall, he cast Soothe, then shifted into his lamellar ape form just before he hit the floor with a thud. Thankfully, he was more than durable enough to survive such a fall, and nothing broke. But that extreme of blunt-force impact definitely wasn’t pleasant.

Soothe helped, though, and he pushed himself upright before taking stock.

He’d positioned himself according to the diary’s description, so he wasn’t far from his destination, which was a crack in the baseboard. From there, he didn’t know what to expect. Indeed, all he knew was that it would lead him to Lord Lothgal, which was the ultimate goal.

Most importantly, Elijah knew that the item’s effect would only last for a little more than thirty minutes. Which meant that he was on an even tighter timer.

So, he set off, passing through the crack and leaving the vampires behind.