With my helmet in hand and my sword on my back, the kind quartermaster Dean dismisses Michael and me.

It's only when we reach a corridor on the other end of the warehouse that he breaks the silence.

"What was that about? I've never seen that part of the armoury. What did he give you?"

I smile at his rapid talking. In his mind, I must be becoming more confusing by the second.

"He gave me a sword. One strong enough to correctly use my stats."

Satisfied with the answer, Michael nods.

"I won't ask what your soul stat is, but is it really high enough that you need a custom sword?"

I look up at him. Despite him being almost a foot taller than me, his young face is... envious. It's rather cute.

"Yeah. But I won't bore you with the details. Can you tell me about stats though? You got interrupted earlier."

He opens his mouth to argue but shuts it quickly. Resigning to his duty to explain, he tells me what I want to know.

"Fine. So there are three base stats. Body, mind, and soul. The value next to each represents the measure of it. Most people are born with ones and twos in each, and as you level or fulfil certain criteria, you can improve them."

He looks at me to see if I'm keeping up, and I nod for him to continue. It's not hard to connect these stats with a person's natural state. In my case, it's a little different, but I'll think that over when I know all the facts.

"The body stat is, well, for your body. For every point you have in body, you get ten more health points added to your maximum health. Perks and items can increase that further. Each point also makes you a little faster, a bit stronger, and increases your reflexes. Mind is a little more complicated. Every point in mind gives you ten more mana points added to your maximum. Each point makes you a bit smarter and makes magic easier. Some claim it makes your reflexes and aiming better too, but that's just a claim. I don't think anyone's tested it, though..."

He trails off as he decides which branch in the corridor to lead me down. Taking another look at the directions on the note, he makes his choice and walks on.

"Where was I?"

"Soul."

"Oh yeah. Soul is mostly a mystery to us. Each point in soul gives a tiny boost to the regeneration of your health and mana pools. We call them pools by the way. But aside from that, nobody really knows what the soul stat does. The perks you can get are fairly random too. The only useful one I have gives a small boost to experience gain, and that was at 25. Only got that last month."

"Ok. Is there anything else about my status I should know about?"

"Um... if there's a cross next to any of the stats, it means you can pick a new perk for it. If you get access to three or four at a time, you probably won't be able to choose all them. Maybe one or two. The same goes for your class. If you choose one, then the cross means you can pick a skill or spell."

"Cool. Cool."

I spot a sign of a cross on the wall ahead. We must be near the surgeon. Despite myself, I'm afraid of what's going to happen. They keep mentioning implants, and that scares me. I can't get a good gauge on the time zone I'm based in right now, so medical prowess might be something to be desired.

My mind raced for another question. Anything to keep Michael talking to distract me.

"Um. Is there any other way to learn skills or spells aside from a class?"

Michael appears deep in thought for a second.

"They're not very good ones, but yeah. You might get a tough skin skill if you've been stabbed enough. Maybe a mana manipulation one if you try to stretch your spells. Practice something enough and you'll probably get something. But you'll receive a stat-up far faster than a skill. And these are all things that require so much time to get with so little layout, you have to wonder if it's worth- oh! We're here."

The green halls have given way to a white waiting room. Despite the chairs and rows of benches, it's empty.

"Huh. Guess no-ones here."

"Why?"

"Not sure. I guess after everyone got patched up and got a health tonic, they don't have much to do in here."

He walks up to a set of shiny metal doors and knocks on them.

Almost immediately, they're pushed open by a woman with short, black, slicked back hair, wearing a red lab coat.

"WHAT!?"

She barks at Michael, causing him to falter.

"Ah. Um. This."

He hands her the note, and she glares at it. Then him. Then back at the note.

"I don't suppose you're this unknown are you?"

Thoroughly shaken, Michael shakes his head and points at me. The woman sharply looks at me. After a moment of scrutinisation, she snatches the note from Michaels stiff hand and reads through it.

"Lancers second lieutenant? Ok. What do you need?"

"Uh. Implants?"

The supposed surgeon frowns deeper. Evidently, I upset her.

"What ones?"

"I don't know. Whatever ones I'm supposed to have?"

"Fine. Basic helm comms, nervous controller and attribute booster coming up. You allergic to anything?"

Luckily, I know the answer to the last thing she said. None of my bodies has ever had any allergies or illnesses beforehand. Anything that goes wrong with them is completely my doing.

"No."

"Good."

Before I can object, she seems to teleport in front of me and stabs a long needle in my neck.

Her sly smile and Michael jumping for me is the last thing I see before my vision darkens.

----------------------------------------

"Wake up miss sleepy head."

I'm lying down on my front with a dull pain in my back. I can't feel my arms or legs either. Whatever she used to numb me must still be in effect.

"Um. Whu?"

"Oh good. I was worried I'd killed her. Her body must be in the single digits."

"It. Is..."

Suddenly, a concerned face ducks into view.

"Shit. Really? You should have said. This going to be a rough couple of minutes for you then."

There's a pause as she disappears and then reappears with a metal cup of some black liquid. Despite the weird angle that my heads at, I manage to sip at it enough that the pain in my back dissipates. It has a pleasant taste. Not really sweet, but still fairly fruity.

"Kid. What did you say your name was? Nickel? Fetch me a grade three health tonic. Now."

I hear a mumble of 'it's Michael' as someone leaves the room. It's reassuring to know Michael stuck around. I have no idea how long I've been knocked out, and being alone with the eccentric female surgeon for too long worries me.

"Don't worry sweetie. You'll be up on your feet soon enough."

She rolls me onto my front and with some alarm, I realise I'm completely naked from the waist up. Only a white sheet with a few specs of red keeps me halfway decent.

Shock and embarrassment must show on my face as the surgeon pops her head into view with her sly smile again.

"Don't worry. He didn't see anything. That was a fantastic set of undies by the way. If you could remember where you got them, I would ask. Michael tells me you can't remember anything though. Nice kid. Managed to keep his dignity while I was stripping you."

With a wholly unconvincing wink, she pulls up the sheet to cover me, and she's gone again.

"I'm... hungry..."

I speak almost to myself, testing the limit of the anaesthetic.

My extremities are beginning to regain some feeling. I can move my head a little and twitch my fingers and toes.

I can't really feel anything different about my body, despite apparently having three different implants somewhere in me. And with the inconsistent time I'm set in, I really have to wonder what exactly is in me.

I couldn't have imagined that a culture that fights with swords would be capable of invasive surgery. But magic does exist here. I have to remember that I can't limit my way of thinking.

Michael runs into the room with a small metal bottle with three red stripes running around the neck.

"Oh. Hey Ventra. Did Liz go?"

Coming to the fairly obvious conclusion the surgeon was called Liz, I do my best at nodding.

"Ok. Um. We should wait for her before you drink this. It'll fix up all the damage around the implants, but it will also remove the painless tonic Liz gave you. As soon as that starts to go, you're going to feel it."

"What?"

It might be my imagination, but the pain in my back is returning. By my best estimate, at least one of the implants is in there. Probably the nervous whatever.

"Hey, Michael?"

"Yeah? Can I get you anything?"

"No... It's just... how do you level up?"

"Oh. I didn't say?"

"No. You said stuff about what you get when you level your class, but not how to increase the level of you or your class."

"Huh. Ok, so the class one is simple. To level your class, you have to do what your class is supposed to do. A soldier has to fight, a mercenary has to do the same but for money. A merchant has to buy or sell, a surgeon has to... well, do surgery."

"And my own level?"

"That's a bit harder to explain. To level up yourself, you have to achieve something you consider to be an achievement. For most, killing monsters is an easy way to do that. But if you do something too much, you're no longer really achieving anything, so you stop getting experience for it. I've been fighting these undead for so long that only a wraith, thrall or zombie can give me experience for myself."

"Is experience the stuff that you collect to level up?"

"I guess so. People call it different things, but as it's something you get when you experience it, most call it just that. Some shorten it to xp though."

"Huh. So if I were to write a book, I would get xp?"

Michael chuckles to himself.

"If you knew how to write, then probably."

It dawned on me that I don't know how to read or write his language. Verbally, it seems identical to English, but that's where the similarity ends.

I laugh with him. The shaking hurts my back, but it's nice to be able to laugh at myself despite all that's going on.

"Hey, Michael. Why are you still here?"

"What do you mean? Still here as in the battlefield? Because I have-"

"No. I mean why are you here with me. Don't you have skeletons to cut down? Injured maidens to kick?"

I finish with a smile to show my joking nature, and he thankfully takes it the right way.

"Well, that's kinda why I'm here. I felt bad for kicking you. And I didn't even really plan on it. I was just going to apologise and then be on my way. But we didn't know you had hurt your head that bad. I couldn't just let you run around without any idea of what to do. I called a few favours to get the day off though. Dean owed me."

It warms me that Michael would spend a day off helping me. We don't know each other, not really. Yet he wants to help me.

"Thanks, Michael."

I smile at him as warmly as I'm able to despite the growing pain in my spine.

He smiles back. It's cute on his young face.

"Ok! Who's ready to get off the dullnerve potion?"

Liz storms in with a scary looking needle in her hand, completely ruining the moment.

"Kid, you get the tonic?"

Michael meekly holds up the bottle and shakes it.

"Good. Now, this is going to get ugly. Mickey, you're going to want to get out of here."

She snatches the bottle from his hands and shoves him through an open door.

He tries to protest, but the surgeon need only wield the needle threateningly towards him for him to back down.

"Good luck Ventra!"

He yells as the door slams shut on his face.

Enough has been said that I'm very scared of this final step in healing. Michael spoke of it with a chill in his words. Liz claims it will get so bad that Michael won't want to see it.

"Will it hurt?"

Liz looks down at me with only a hint of sympathy.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I won't lie to you. This is going to suck."

----------------------------------------

Extreme pain levels endured.

+3 body

"Ow."

Liz chuckled as she walked away with the now empty bottle of health tonic and similarly used up needle.

"That was pretty good. You must have a decent mind stat. If you didn't know, mind helps you deal with pain."

Breathlessly, I lie on the surgery table, cooling off after sweating extensively while the health tonic fixed me.

"So how do you feel?"

"Not bad."

And I'm not lying either. Aside from feeling both physically an mentally exhausted, my body feels rejuvenated.

"Good. Here. Drink this."

She offers a cup filled to the brim with more of the green liquid. I have to sit up to get it, causing my abdominal muscles to cry in protest.

"Stamina tonic?"

Liz nods in approval.

"Grade two. Good stuff. It'll get you on your feet instantly."

I hastily drink down the green-tasting liquid and sigh in relief as the aching and fatigue just fall off of me.

"There's a shower through that door. And your clothes are by the door back to the waiting room. The kid is in there still, and he'll take you to the Second Lieutenant. You can get your stuff activated there."

I nod briefly and step off of the table, keeping the sheet covering as much as I can.

"Thanks, Liz."

"Liz? My name's Lich. Where did you get Liz from?"

"Um. Michael. He said Liz gave me the numbing tonic."

The so-called Lich laughs out loud for a second.

"That idiot. He was too busy paying attention to you to listen to me. Don't correct him though. This is hilarious."

"Um. Ok."

Lich goes to leave the room, turning can at the last second to look at me.

"Good luck miss unknown. With a regeneration like that though, you may not need it."

I freeze in shock at how she so easily figured out my secret. Of course, she would know that a high regeneration meant a high soul stat.

Lich sees my expression and laughs as she leaves. The sound reaches me long after she has turned a corner.

"Friggin' eccentric surgeon."

----------------------------------------

One very relaxing but only barely warm enough shower later, I feel alive again. Not like I'm dreaming, and not like I'm just playing a game. I realise now that I'm devoted to this life as long as I am living it.

For so long on earth, I had become complacent with letting myself drift from life to life. I can't even remember the last time I've made a significant change in the world.

Now, I can do something big. I have the power, and I have the potential. I am better than I was, and in this world, I can only improve.

I leave the surgery, somehow perfectly cleaned in the few minutes I was in the shower.

Michael stands up from a chair and looks me over, likely making sure I'm ok.

"You ready to go see the big guy?"

I take a deep breath and nod. Despite how nervous meeting the boss might make me feel, there's no way to avoid it.

"Let's get it over with. I can't wait to see what happens when these things get activated."

I indicate my body and the implants laying dormant within. Michael smiles at my innocence.

"It's pretty amazing when it happens. Come on."

He leads me out the shiny doors of the waiting room and we continue again down the drab identical looking hallways. I feel better after having seen the spritely surgeon, especially after drinking that stamina tonic. The effect reminds me of having a perfect nap and waking up full of energy.

Despite that, I'm still nervous and need to fill the near-silence with speech.

"So what can you tell me about what the fighting about? Why are we fighting the skeletons?"

A sly grin edges onto Michaels' face.

"Countless moral reasons... could have applied, but we're mercenaries. We fight because we get paid to."

"So do you know why we're getting paid to do this?"

He looks thoughtful for a second.

"I think it's actually the moral reason. When a few undead stumble together, they can raise more from dead bodies. Doesn't matter if it's cattle, or a giant or a dragon. They can and will raise more humanoid undead from the bones. Can you see why this might cause a problem in the long run?"

I nod, seeing how a random handful could raise armies without any indication to the living civilisations nearby.

"So how did so many get to one place?"

He grimaced, not comfortable with the answer he's reluctant to give.

"Someone messed up. The plain giants of this area were trying to expand their borders without any combat potential. It only took a handful of the low-level skeletons to take out one of the poor pacifists. And as soon as one giant fell, there were suddenly a dozen more skeletons. The pathfinders were too spread out to warn their tribe, and the rest of the tribe was too far from anyone else to warn them in time. Eventually, their tribe of several hundred turned into an army of several thousand undead."

Though I'm shocked at the tragic result, I can't help but feel it was rather inevitable.

"Surely they should have hired guards if they wouldn't fight?"

Michaels' face hardens, and anger crosses it.

"That's the bit where someone messed up. We were the only mercenary group even remotely nearby. They only requested two divisions for guard duty, but the Lancer corporal denied their request. Without guards, their tribe was wiped and we suddenly had hordes of undead at our doorstep. They would have passed us without issue, and frankly, we wouldn't have done anything about it. But the human cities nearby paid for us to take care of it since we're so close."

"So it's our fault this war is happening?:

"Yeah. We started it so we're going to finish it."

"Do you think we're going to win?"

"I don't know. I've only been here about a year. My idea of tactics is basic, to say the least. We had maybe four thousand combat-ready fighters against roughly thirty-five thousand assorted undead. That was three days ago. I'm not sure what the numbers look like now though."

"I thought you said there were only a few thousand after the plain giants fell."

"There were. But the plains are home to far more than just peaceful giants. All kinds of other animals and monsters were caught up by the undead tide and got assimilated. Hence the growth of the army."

"Shit."

"I know, right? I've been fighting for two days already and cut down a hundred maybe. The issue is I'm above the average level of a mercenary. We have a handful of people with stats in the hundreds, most of us have a combined total of around a hundred, but there are too many with stats barely above twenty."

"So we might lose."

"We might. It's near impossible to help an injured ally because the undead always go for a killing blow and then make sure we're dead. You were lucky. Probably got away before it could finish you."

"Mmm."

I mumble and nod. I'm deep in thought about what I'm doing here. I'm certain I can make a difference, but only if I can train with my sword. I don't have time for that though. I'm certain I'll survive this, no matter how many times I die. But I have no idea if I'll respawn somewhere else in this world. If so, the mercenaries might lose and the numbers of undead will only grow.

"Hey, Ventra."

I ignore him for a moment before I remember that's my name and look up.

"We're here."

"Oh."

Michael knocks on the door in front of us and a gruff but distinctly female voice rings out.

"Come in."

Michael opens the door for me and I step into a very normal looking office. A bright light overhead illuminated a heavy wooden desk with stacks of paper on it. A plain wooden chair faces the desk; my immediate goal.

The woman behind the desk is scratching on a piece using a petite green quill. She's large, but it isn't fat. She looks like a veritable powerhouse of muscle. Even her blonde hair looks official pulled back into a tight ponytail.

"Not him. Just you."

I hear Michael stop walking behind me, push the letter into my hand, and then shut the door after retreating.

"Sit."

She doesn't look up but manages to command the room nonetheless.

I heavily land on the chair opposite her and despite the blood pounding in my ears, I calmly wait for her to finish writing.

"Unknown 397-F I presume."

She looks up at me with steely blue eye and I somehow force myself to nod.

She has a large face shot it her body. It's obviously feminine, and despite the resting frown she holds, she manages to seem moderately attractive.

"I'm the Lancer Corporals Second Lieutenant, Mary Scott. Your name is?"

"Um. Ventra Cass."

She writes what I assume to be my name down on the paper. The figures still seem foreign to me though.

"I can tell you've been to the quartermasters already, but you got your implants replaced?"

I nod again, and subconsciously twist my back, trying to feel the anomaly that must be inside.

"Can't imagine having them torn in the first place. What was it that took them out?"

I shake my head, feigning a little confusion.

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't tell you. Whatever it was hit me enough to make me forget."

Mary raises an eyebrow in response.

"Forget how much?"

"Everything. I barely remembered my name, but aside from that, memories, knowledge, it's all gone."

I choke up as I finish my sentence, and watch with some satisfaction as Mary's face softens. To my surprise, she opens a drawer in her desk and pulls out two glasses and what I assume to be a bottle of alcohol.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. And it was a good thing that young man stuck around to help you. Here. Drink. It'll calm you."

She pours a more than healthy amount into each glass and downs her own in one impressive gulp.

Never one to back down from a drinking competition, I try to imitate her, but the burning that meets my throat forces me to cough and gasp before I can finish it.

Mary laughs at me. It's a deep laugh befitting her voice and it brings me some ease. The growing warmth in my stomach helps too.

"Better?"

I nod, then finish my drink. It's easier the second time around and reminds me of vodka mixed with whiskey.

"Now that you're calm, I have to ask a few questions before I can activate your implants. Luckily, I can put amnesia for a few of the longer ones. Ok, so I know your name, then... age?"

I've never known my exact age, so I have to ballpark it.

"Twenty-two."

"Ok... what's your level?"

I grimace internally. I have no idea what my level is supposed to be. Another stab in the dark.

"Forty three."

She nods with some approval.

"Not bad for your age. Class?"

"I don't have one. Michael, um, the guy who was with me called me classless."

"Oh? That's unusual. Well, would you like a class now? I can give you mercenary if you'd like."

I shake my head again. I don't want to limit my horizons so soon.

"Fair enough. I guess you have a build already. And since I'm assuming you have no combat spells, what is your highest stat?"

"Soul."

"Ah. That makes sense. Ok. All done. Your new designation is soldier 715-F. Don't forget it."

I nod hastily, burning the code into my mind. Mary reaches into her desk again and pulls out a small triangle shaped piece of metal. It's engraved with all kinds of shapes and has a bright green symbol painted on it that looks vaguely like a "q".

"Ok. You won't remember this, but this is going to feel strange. So I want you to relax. I don't have many spare chairs. And you're going to want to have your helmet on for this."

I push the helmet onto my head, marvelling at how secure it feels. Mary reaches over her desk and pushes the triangle to my forehead.

"Ready?"

"Yeah..."

"Good. Remember to relax. Acreati."

With a loud snap, my vision burns to white, and electricity fills my body.