Essence was not something exclusive to the System’s denizens or the magical world or any other people capable of extraordinary capabilities; everyone was born with it. If they hadn’t then they would not have been born, simple as that. ‘Essence is the intersection where life meets power’ was how Alex had been told it, but the significance lay in where that intersection existed: The soul.
He took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, his posture relaxed where he sat cross legged under a tree. His senses didn’t have to dig deep to find it there his soul, power, but not strictly his, not yet.
[Balance: 5,090 Essence Crystals]
It hung there in his soul with the sort of ethereal weight he imagined a rich woman’s purse might have in a shopping mall, each crystal desperate to be free of its constraints. Every form of power ends up as currency eventually, that was the way of the world. The foundation on which the System was based on. It harvested Essence and then converted it into crystals. Into tangible resources. Power unbound from life now, quite literally, was in his hands. There was only one method to free a soul of its Essence and that was through death.
It was simple in concept, but hard to rationalize when it was given to you with a ding! and a cathartic level-up. It was only when you sat alone in silence with your soul, feeling that weight settle in, that understanding came with it. Essence, essentially, was unbound power.
Alright, how much should I use?
Essence required to Level 3: 150
Essence required to Level 4: 250
Essence required to Level 5: 350
Essence required to Level 6: 500
Essence required to Level 7…
Alex did the math for a quick second. His body ached all over, his stamina bar was low to the point where he could feel the exhaustion in his bones, and his mind was hazy and hard to focus. Truthfully, he just wanted to dump the whole thing into levels and wretch himself from this paper-skinned cage of a body that could crumple with a touch, but he knew that would be a waste of Essence. Leveling up was easy, it was getting the most out of those levels that was the hard part.
There was an ideal pace to the process. One that took weeks, if not months to completely figure out. Alex had had fifteen years.
As he reached out, that ethereal weight seemed to shudder, sensing his intention for it.
Unknown Essence-Refinement Method has been Triggered. Are you sure—
Alex groaned. He would have to disable the safety check on transactions, those things could get people killed in the heat of battle.
Yes.
750 Essence Crystals have been consumed!
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
+3 Skill Slots
[Alert: You are currently Charged]
Alex’s body gave off a light shimmer as his veins flushed with power. Threads of Essence wove his flesh and mind like traces on a circuit board, soldering that essence into his very soul.
The System also had a basic refinement method that came with the sign-on bonus. It couldn’t just let them die before figuring out how to even level after all, but the process was… sterilized. Efficient, clean, and without a soul. It was blunt in its operations, and it would only do the bare minimum of one stat per level. But those with talent—those like Jun— would figure out that it was a suboptimal method. That there was more to gain from the essence if you implemented some simple changes.
And if his hunch was right, Jun had figured that out on his first try.
Goddamned monsters.
And yet, now he was one of them. If not ahead of them in this area. It had taken him over a month before he finally figured out how to refine his essence outside of the system given methods, and it had immediately made a massive difference. Essence that was once unbound became fused with his existence, nestling deep into his soul and eroding and mending with what was already there until it was simply a part of it. A part of him, and a part of his power over the world.
His skin didn’t stop tingling however. He was still Charged, that power still vibrated there and it needed an outlet before that feeling went away.
[Alert: You are currently Charged. Your time is limited. Apply Essence to your stats]
Alex’s attention went to his stats. Mind, Body, and Spirit. If Essence was at the heart of existence, then stats were its lifeblood. They were what allowed him to exert influence of any kind over the world and it was only through binding that Essence to his stats that those three pillars grew further tethered to the soul, that he became more singular.
Refine. Bind. Affix.
There would be no affixing, at least not right now. Alex could do with just his [Stealth] skill for the moment. Instead, he focused on the Binding part of the process.
He thought of the ache in his bones as he’d run through the forest. The protest of his legs---not only to move---but to move with the deft precision required of the skill, it’d been like trying to swim the butterfly with limbs made of lead. The shudder in his lungs was again made tangible in his mind. He could still feel the cold of the night as he zipped past plumes of lost breath and his brain's foggy haze as it tracked every single gaze that landed on his back---all the while working out how to shake them off it. He was still in that forest, dead leaves crunching to dust underfoot, dagger tight in hand, the Necromancer in sight of its edge. It’d taken will, it’d take composure, it’d take Fortitude.
His eyes snapped open.
Essence has integrated with the Fortitude stat!
Fortitude +3
Essence has integrated with the Vitality stat!
Vitality +1
Essence has integrated with the Dexterity stat!
Dexterity +1
The charged feeling left Alex like electricity through his fingertips, leaving behind a version of himself that was suddenly more. He whistled as the notifications flickered by.
Five stat points with three levels hm? Not bad, not bad.
Alex couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his face. That was a much better conversion than he expected given how short his role in the battle had been. It grew exponentially harder to level up and gain stats with each level the higher up you went, and with how long he’d been stuck at a dead end he’d forgotten how satisfying it felt to increase his stats. Especially at the beginning when even the smallest improvements were like steroids to his work-crippled shape.
But that’s exactly what they were, steroids. You couldn’t simply pop a pill in your mouth and expect your body to bulk like a barbarian’s, you had to train your stats to squeeze the most out of the upgrade.
Sure, his stats would still increase if he leveled up some more this instant, but like it’d be a waste. Post-battle meditation had its limits as a training method and that just hadn’t been more than a three-level fight. Moreover, he couldn’t yet guide his essence when in a charged state. The essence simply binded to wherever he would be the most exerted, and right now Alex needed Strength more than he did Fortitude.
Not that I’m complaining.
Perhaps it could’ve been a tad more efficient with a proper cycling technique rather than just his modification of the system’s default refinement method, but this would do. There wasn’t much incentive in choosing a specific method until he had his Foundation Class, and that wouldn’t happen until he reached Level 15. He opened up his Interface to see how it all reflected on his stat spread.
Alex Smith
Race: Human
Class: N/A
Level: 5
Titles: N/A
Attributes: [Half-Dead Persistence]
HP: 87%
Mana: 39%
Stamina: 28%
Skills:
[Stealth] Lvl 6 (novice)
Stats:
Vitality - 3
Strength - 1
Dexterity - 3
Fortitude - 5
Perception - 4
Arcane - 2
Mmh. Good.
Having had a small taste of power Alex had the intense urge to grab the other three-thousand or so Essence Crystals and guzzle them right down. Instead he grunted, turning the screen off.
He stood up and stretched the stiffness out of his legs from the hour he’d spent sitting. He brushed dirt and dust from his butt, setting out for a walk. His pace was brisk, more energized than it had any right to be at his stamina level and his logical side told him to conserve his energy. He listened, if only a little.
It wasn’t by much, but this body felt just a tiny more like his now and for what it was worth he did have more energy now. Not a lot—more Fortitude only increased his Stamina pool, not the bar itself—but 28% of a bigger pool was still more than before. It was progress. And progress was a refreshing feeling for him. If he’d felt any ounce of regret for how the night had gone, well, he certainly didn’t anymore.
The things people do for power.
Alex hummed. He skipped for a little, before he decided it was in ill taste with all the blood shed this night. Then he just walked.
The night took an unnaturally somber tone as he listened for the sounds of life in the forest and heard none. The trees still had leaves on them, but shriveled as they were they more scraped against each other in the breeze than rustled. And the trunks that they belonged to were hollow husks of the things they should be, with bark that peeled like scab and roots that writhed in dusty soil.
Animal calls carried over every so often but undead only did it out of habit more than anything. There was little in this world that was still living, and so naturally, little life to listen for. The surge of power-high he’d experienced quickly faded from his hum, replaced by the reality that it was not nearly enough. Afterall, Alex knew all too well the things people did for power.
Which was why he was heading away from the clearing rather than towards it.
It’d been maybe thirty minutes by his count since he’d set out, and he kept walking until suddenly there was a barrier before him. It was a wall of heavy mist, stretched to each of his horizons in a curved line as if it formed a massive circle around the clearing he’d come from, encircling them. He could hear ill whispers from inside, light, airy things. They tugged at his emotions, made gaps in his thoughts, and attempted to penetrate his mind.
Then further in he could hear more sinister things. Creatures that he had no hope of surviving. Things that would tear him limb from limb if they ever found him. Stepping into the fog would mean death, and not a quick one either.
Best hope they don’t notice me then.
[Stealth]
A cloak of night followed Alex as he stepped into the mists. He needed his proficiency with the skill to rise quicker than it currently was. As far as training methods went, this would be as effective as any.
***
Alex scrambled out of the mists, half-stumbling and half-clambering over himself as he latched onto a tree for support.
Je-jesus christ…
He shuddered uncontrollably as his dangersense shrieked. They were still tearing him apart with their eyes, even if they couldn’t pass the mist’s barrier to do the act for good. Alex had forgotten how terrifying Wraiths could be, cause thankfully it’d been a long fucking time since he’d had to deal with them
He picked himself up on weak knees and retreated further into his side of the forest. And when he’d gone far enough that his trait stopped telling how fucking screwed he was, he mustered up enough confidence for a sly grin.
[Stealth] has leveled up.
[Stealth] has leveled up.
[Stealth] has leveled up.
[Stealth] has leveled up.
Proficiency with [Stealth] is 50% towards Apprentice.
[Mana: 13%]
Four levels… It was hardly a small bounty for the amount of time he put in, even considering his improved proficiency rate from his “aptitude”. It wasn’t quite so many levels as he’d gained in half the time with the Chimiks, but it’d come at a much lower cost to his mana and that counted for something. As long as it didn’t dip below 10% his bar should still recover enough for tomorrow with some rest.
Besides, in the long run, genuinely trying to improve the skill was a much more consistent way of leveling than putting yourself in situations that nearly breaks it. The game with the Chimiks had been more tag-and-seek than complete stealth because he’d known deep down he could get out of whatever sticky situation he’d landed himself in. Here, he hadn’t been so sure.
He allowed one more shudder to pass through him before he composed himself. The ghastly shrieks and whispers of the mists faded away as he put more distance between them.
Lost souls, he thought, with a pang of sorrow.
He let that pass through him too. It wasn’t his sorrow, he knew. But nobody went through the mists without taking something extra that wasn’t their own out with them. And if you took too much, it could drive a person mad. He would know, he’d spent far too much time stranded in those mists once. This method of training his [Stealth] wasn’t something he’d made up on the fly afterall.
Alex sighed, his legs still a little wobbly at the memory. He took a breather and slumped up against a tree trunk.
One thing at a time, he reminded himself.
If he set himself up well during the second scenario this time, something like that would never happen again. So he began calculating his chances. The second scenario.
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He didn’t entirely know what methods the System used to sort people into their Scenarios, but he knew it couldn’t entirely be random. Afterall, there were hundreds of Initiation types and he’d somehow ended up with the exact same one—if not with the same people, which meant it wasn’t entirely pre-determined either. So would the second scenario end up being the same as last time?
There was no way to tell. He’d just have to be ready for anything.
Some people speculated that the System’s placements were roughly based on power level or more accurately, power potential.
Particularly high level mages would be spawned in with lower tiered players, or a gang of averages might be placed in one together. Jun wasn’t a mage, but Alex imagined he ranked pretty high up there in the system’s estimation, so it wouldn’t be odd if he didn’t come across any others until the third scenario.
That’d be good. As I am right now, a single mage or Vampire finds me and I’m as good as dead.
He decided it didn’t matter whether or not the second scenario was the same as last time. He would crush it regardless. And once he did that he’d be better equipped for anything he might come across. Or almost anything.
Thankfully, the System didn’t allow any previously awakened beings into Nightmare if their translated level was above its threshold, so he wouldn’t be meeting any level 100 practitioners or anything but he knew it still wouldn’t matter if he came across the wrong ones. He’d survived worse things.
He’d survived camilla.
I guess there’s one other reason to not come across anyone too talented though.
Alex craned his neck to get a look at the sky. It shifted in and out of the canopy in tune with the wind, the dark sky full of stars.
It felt odd seeing them now. Dykriest, back on Uern, had been a region composed entirely of underground caverns— ‘the layers’ they called them. He’d lived most of the last decade there, without a sky to look upon. He’d grown almost used to it. Now, they glowed slightly brighter here than they did even back on Earth and it was beautiful, if not a bit unsettling.
The Constellations glimmered in the sky and Alex could only look upon them for a short time before he averted his gaze. Their brightness signified that they were watching.
Not him—not yet, but they each had their own stakes in Nightmare, their own pieces in the game, and the longer Alex could avoid their attention the better it was for him. They tended not to care what pawns they had to sacrifice in their games, but for now their attention lay solely on their own chosen pieces. It was best to keep it that way.
Luckily, there weren’t all that many from the magical world on Earth who had come to Nightmare. They had all known the dangers of the tutorial. And moreso, they knew the dangers represented by those who had been sent to participate within it. Only the strong, or the desperate would join, the rest would stay with their clans on Earth. Most would be heirs and scions from all sorts of deadly groups of mages, those that ran the world from the shadows, all while hiding their existence from the mundane. And while back on Earth they were officially under truce of the shoddy coalition, here it was a different story.
A lot at stake all around. He gave a wry chuckle as he pushed himself back up to his feet and continued on. A lot rested on which one of them ended Nightmare on top, and no matter who it was, the peace between the different mage clans wouldn’t hold. Not when the entire world was up for grabs now.
Of course, Alex knew which of them would take rank 1. The bastard was a Nightmare in human skin. A nightmare that to this day still hadn’t left Alex’s dreams. No, attracting attention would not do. He needed to grow a lot stronger first.
God knows what’d happen if I had let that slip out to Jun.
He walked on, taking the scenic route back, if there even was such a thing. His skin still felt so alien to him and he felt himself clinging dangerously to the familiar burn of exhaustion as if it were a pyre that would create the ashes from which he would rise.
Pace yourself, he chided, One thing at a time.
Jun, he supposed, was another mystery. Or perhaps less a mystery to him now than a puzzle. He had all but confirmed that he was born attuned, but there was something deeper there too, a unique singe in the back of Alex’s mind as he gazed at him. As if he’d just been given good metal and it was up to him what to shape from it. The puzzle was what he should do about it.
The answer was probably nothing. He was a different person now from the young, scared guy who’d barely survived Nightmare before making a desperate escape. He knew a lot more than he had back then, he’d experienced things that even though they had been cleansed from his body, still burned in his mind. He would see Nightmare through to its end, and he didn’t need help to do it.
Besides, he knew Jun’s type. Good men who refused to accept the injustice of reality. Good men weren’t built for Nightmare. But if broken, they could become good weapons.
I could break him. Chisel away the unnecessary parts. Narrow his will, sharpen it into something useful.
No. That wouldn’t work. He’d end up too broken, a failure. They always did.
I could go slower this time. Replace him piece by piece, bit by bit. He might not even recognize the change.
No.
No. Alex would not do that. Desperate times called for desperate measures and he was not fucking desperate. He had all the pieces laid out before him, and he knew something those fuckers in the sky didn’t—he knew where they would land. He was the one in control this time. And god knew he would press that advantage to its fullest.
I’ll keep it in the back pocket then.
He sighed.
It was then that he noticed it.
An odd scratching sound arose off to Alex’s left. A rhythmic, harsh thing like nails dragged along sandpaper, overlayed with a hushed, almost hoarse whimper. How long had it been going on for?
Irrelevant. Whatever it was, it hadn't noticed him yet. His trait was calm and the sound wasn’t coming any closer nor was it increasing its intensity. There shouldn’t be any hostiles in the area so far as Alex remembered, but his paranoia had saved him too many times to discount. Better to confirm it than risk being killed in his sleep. Especially if it meant a more restful sleep.
[Mana: 17%]
It’d recovered some from his rest stop earlier but he still grimaced. Then he entered [Stealth] for what, he hoped, would be the last time that night.
Alex’s night vision had always been good, even before any of this. He was sure part of it had to do with having Perception stat four times higher than the regular human, but part of it was just the way he’d grown up.
He’d always been scared of the things that went bump in the night, of the things he could almost sense but couldn’t quite confirm were real. His trait had been weak back then, practically just a figment of his imagination, but it was the one thing that’d been his even before he’d awakened. He’d grown used to getting the sense that things weren’t quite right before bad things happened and it’d made him into a rather jumpy child.
All that is to say, when his trait suddenly imprinted a cold burn in the back of his neck, he was taken back to his childhood again. Reminded of the scared boy who would hide beneath the blankets when the lights went off. It was doing that thing again, telling him things he couldn’t understand. It’d been doing that a lot lately, ever since he’d visited those boss chambers. Ever since he’d died.
He faded further into the night.
It was in the little things—in the way the twigs and leaves underfoot seemed to avoid his path, the way the dark shifted a little to congeal the most of his breath, or in how his breath itself seemed to come just short of a living thing’s cadence. He crouched low, circling the trees, his dagger at the ready well before it could’ve been heard leaving its sheath. The feeling suddenly faded.
That girl, Gloomy, was sitting there, hunched over, scratching at the ground. Her fingertips were raw and bloody, her nails chipped and crusted red as they drove fervently deeper. A dead world had no need for soft soil, she came loose with only a surface layer of dirt each time. But then he saw how deep she had already gone, the pile of dirt collected besides her. There was a determination to her seemingly senseless actions that made him grip his dagger tighter.
There’s something buried there, he thought.
There wasn’t. It only was when he noticed the second figure, hidden further behind some foliage that he finally understood. He was a scholarly looking man with dark skin and a business suit not dissimilar to Alex’s own. And he was dead.
A sharp line had split his throat, sharp and neat enough that Alex himself might’ve thought he’d done it if he’d woken up to the man after a night of too many spirits. It had him thinking of hasty actions as he looked at the young girl who must’ve drawn it. A pointless death at her hands. Pointless, because if she’d held off just a little longer they both would’ve lived.
The cleanliness of the kill still bothered him. A girl didn’t have to be a mage to be dangerous, he knew. Didn’t even have to be powerful.
But then there was that whimper again. A soft hic under her breath as she continued digging. A dry sound, the sound one made when there was no moisture left to give and all too much reason to give it. It carried right past his ears and registered on a level too personal to ignore.
This is private, he realized, this is not mine to see.
He left the girl alone.
He couldn’t say for certain whether the cold burning sensation had been a bad feeling after all. Just unfamiliar. That was the scary part. To not know himself after all those years was both terrifying and exciting. It meant he was changing. Not just him, but his Trait as well, and he didn’t yet know in what way.
Still, he didn’t trust the girl. Child or not, he would cut her out the instant she became a threat. But just as a priest didn’t take a life in his place of worship, Alex would not kill a person in their place of grieving.
It’d been maybe a couple hours away and before Alex had even entered the clearing the smell had hit him. It was always so much worse after they had time to marinate. He swatted in irritation at the air around him, a buzzing sound filling the space.
Christ, even the flies are undead.
He spotted Jun, up on the slope of the hill. His chest rose and fell just slightly. It seemed at least one of them had managed to sleep. Everyone reacted differently to shock he supposed.
As for Alex, he could already tell this was going to be a restless night. It used to be that he could fall asleep at will and wake himself at the first hint of danger, but this body was too used to shrugging off stress and sleepiness. After pushing it so far he couldn’t trust himself to wake if he needed to, and now the possibility that he might need to was there in his brain.
He’d considered killing both Gloomy and Jun to just feel secure. But there were certain lines Alex didn’t want to cross. To stop even caring—that was when you truly lost your humanity. When he would become no better than the monsters that were causing all of this.
He looked up at the stars again. He would not break so easily. Not this time.
Deciding to just live with the fact that he would have to rest with one eye open, Alex started to search for a place to rest. Diving that deep into stealth even for just seconds had been enough to take his mana down to 13%. If he ever wanted to see that bar refilling he ought to still his movements.
He wasn’t quite so optimistic about his stamina bar returning on a sleepless night, but that would be fine for now. There was an idea starting to form, a way to put even that to good use, maybe, assuming things went as they once did.
Staying in this field of death even a few more seconds wasn’t something Alex took great joy in, but he found himself wading through it anyways, a purple-dark glint catching his eye in the dark. There was a subconscious pull to it, an inexplicable feeling that he’d overlooked something the last time he’d been here.
Soon, he found himself standing before that woman again, the one he’d tricked. She hardly registered in his vision anymore—hell, to a part of him this all felt like it had happened yesterday. Instead, he was looking at the empty suit of armor that had collapsed beside her.
It was a gigantic thing—crafted to fit a human, undeniably, but only if they happened to be eight feet tall. It certainly wouldn’t fit him, that was for sure. But he knelt down anyway and lay his palm flat against its cold surface as he used Identify. What he saw made him burst out into laughter.
[Abandoned Armor]
Trait: Malleability
A giant armor-set that stood in decoration long after its manor was abandoned. For its fifteen generations of existence and servitude, it has never had a warrior to call master.
It was a Nightmare-specific brand of irony; the most priceless item of the bunch being a giant-fitted, unusable set of armor that would’ve been overlooked nine times out of ten. But it wasn’t the trait that caught Alex’s eye. Malleability mostly meant that it would be pliable to soul manipulation, which was great no doubt, but its potential lay deeper than that. In something that only he was uniquely situated to take advantage of.
System, open Shop.
Welcome to your Shop Interface, Alex. Your shop is home to--
He quickly batted all that away.
Would you like to visit the System Shop, your Catalogs, or your Personal library today?
Alex had been about to head straight to the Main shop when a thought struck him. If the system had been interpreting his previous experience with skills as aptitude, then what about…
Personal Library.
Welcome to your Personal Library. Here, you will find all the skills you own but have not learned yet, including skills you have already bought, have loaned out, or have temporary holdings on. To see your sorting options…
Alex wasn’t listening as the guide continued. He just stayed there for a while, struck speechless.
[Meld]
[Instant Dry]
[Cut]
[Energy Pierce]
…
If looking at his stat page for the first time had felt like he shattered into pieces, then this was the opposite of that feeling. Like looking around you and finding that all those glass pieces still slotted perfectly in place when you fit them back together. It almost brought a tear to his eye, it was so beautiful. All the skills he’d once had… they were all here.
Oh, right.
He scrolled down until he found what he was looking for. Then he selected it.
Skill [Examine] has filled a skill slot.
And just like that, it was done. He didn’t have to pay anything. Heck, he didn’t even have to actually learn it. At least not anymore than he had all those years ago when he’d still operated out of something he could’ve called a shop. It simply affixed itself, taking that essence he’d bound to his stats and twisting it into a familiar shape, a pattern of essence that—when mana flowed through it—did nothing more or less than simply tell you more about an object.
The realization that it’d be like that for all the skills he’d already learned over his life made him think things might not be so hopeless after all. He placed his hand back on the armor and reached for the skill.
Examine.
Material: Oslumnen Ore
His smile cemented itself. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
With some strenuous effort, he tried to lift the armor set to place it in his inventory. Then he wisened up and simply vanished it piece by piece. The inventory augmentation was easily one of his favorite parts of Nightmare’s sign-on bonus. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it would’ve been to run a mobile smithy business with any sort of weight limit on the thing.
He’d been just about to store the last piece when a thought struck him. How did a necromancer go about animating a set of armor to begin with?
No, that wasn’t his actual concern, he knew far too much about necromancer business no thanks to the last few weeks he’d spent with Camilla. Things didn’t have souls, you would have to stick a soul inside of it. What concerned him was that he didn’t feel anything.
Alex’s trait made him especially sensitive to things that had once had a will, especially if it posed any danger to him. It was part of the reason he was more susceptible to visages like those lost souls in the mist. But even if a necromancer's hold of a soul disappeared once it died it wasn’t as if it just flew off into space. If the armor contained something so twisted and malicious that a necromancer would keep it in its back pocket he’d’ve thought he’d be able to feel it when he was this close.
On a snap judgment, Alex resummoned all of the armor, searching all surfaces for anything resembling a necromantic binding or even a summoning pentagon. But…nothing. There was nothing. Then he tried something else, something he’d only ever tried with Lys before, his precious Wyvern-blade sword. He tried talking to it.
Someone might’ve thought he was crazy, the way he murmured to the dismantled armor set in the heart of the carnage. Heck, he thought he might be crazy too. He’d always felt a special bond to his blade but that final attack before his death was the only time he’d heard her voice so clearly. For all he knew he could’ve just been talking to a regular chunk of steel for all those years after the war. The Layers were little for good company so what was a man to do, really.
In the end, he wasn’t sure if it was his words that did the trick or a few more inputs from his [Examine] skill once it had a couple more tries at the thing, but he figured it out before long. There was a slight tension to the pieces where they sat on the grassy ground and Alex had suspicions as to what was going on. Strange ones. This set of armor… it hadn’t just had a soul shoved into it, in fact it…it never really had a soul to begin with. It was not dissimilar to a Tsukumogami—or a failed one at least.
It’s said that a creation forged with clear expertise and once in a lifetime passion could sometimes take life of its own, and while Alex had never witnessed it he knew it to be true. Here, it seemed to have been mid-process when the necromancer found it.
But how does that even work? Becoming an undead without ever having lived…
There was something terribly sad about the idea. Like taking candy from a baby, only you’re taking its life instead. And then raising its corpse.
He sighed. It would never be a living thing, that much was clear. Sad as it may be, this wasn’t the sort of process that could be attempted a second time. But regardless of that, its material was still priceless for what it was. Together with the core he’d picked up from that necromancer, it seemed Alex would be in for a field day the next time he made his way to a smithy in any case.
Which might be soon.
He vanished it from his inventory for good this time and turned his mind to more important things. The second scenario. Normally it took a while to get to the Level 15 threshold where you can pick your Foundation class, but it was becoming clear to Alex that he had a whole host of advantages in that regard.
The reason it took so long had to do with resource management. Getting your first class was a whole lot longer of a process when you had to split your Essence between buying skills, leveling, and acquiring a skill path. But Alex already had most of the skills he needed right there in his Library. And when you also knew all the Class conditions for your desired class, they kind of became obsolete as well. All those things considered…
That soon huh.
If things went well he might get his class at the end of the second scenario. Once he did that, he’d stop having to cower so much. He could shed this weakness once and for all.
It wouldn’t be enough of course, he couldn’t stop there, not until there was nothing in the world that could threaten him. No Nightmare like Camilla who could steamroll his entire party. Or Immortals who could decimate an army in the blink of an eye.
Even so… it’d taken him so much longer the first time. It’d taken him weeks to get to that point. It still felt unreal, all this.
It is unreal, he thought. Coming back in time like this, it didn’t make sense how any of it could be real. But somehow it was.
Alex closed his eyes, careful not to let them stay shut too long. He made a fist with his hand and pressed it to his chest, feeling his heartbeat. He took some deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He let the emptiness into his mind and cleared space for it, erasing everything else. Then he asked the important question.
Do I still want to be a Blacksmith?
He remembered all the pain his path had caused him. His failure to integrate his Warrior skill tree into the Class, the things he’d had to experience because of it. Doubt filled him. And then he remembered Lys, and that final glimpse of what lies beyond.
He had to give it a shot.