Three Months Later, Nal Climbers’ District, Clephas’s Stomach Boarding House

Le’enaia To’Ardun sat at one of the long tables in the dining hall of Clephas’s Stomach Boarding House, drinking from a stein of dark beer as she observed the owner, who seemed to be perpetually perched on a cushioned mat in the corner, cultivating. Clephas was a curiosity. When she’d first met him at the gates, she’d thought him just a slightly capable new Climber from a newly-arrived batch of humans. However, the months since had proved her wrong, again and again.

The human was infuriatingly calm, no matter what was going on, and he seemed to handle his tenants, some of whom were at the peak for the 1st Tier, as if they were squabbling children instead of hungry power-seekers and adventurers. When the first humans from his wave arrived a month before, he’d put to rest any worries about favoritism when he killed four of them for trying to ‘insist’ he put them up in his place for free.

It wasn’t that he was as overtly powerful as some of his tenants. He wasn’t, as far as she knew. His martial skills were simply on another level. It didn’t matter if you could shatter bones and pulp flesh with a grazing blow if you never managed to land a hit.

As a dark elf who had chosen not to climb, she had been a Nal guard for over four hundred years. She wasn’t old for her race, but she wasn’t young either. There was just something… ‘off’ about Clephas.

From the very start, he just didn’t add up. He was too capable, too powerful for someone who seemed to be relying on skill and slowly-building mana cultivation to rise. It was like he’d seen everything the 1st Tier had to offer before and was just waiting for his turn to transcend it.

She’d slept with him, twice, in an attempt to get an idea as to what kind of person he was. He was a giving lover, which had surprised her, always seeming to find what she needed at the moment she needed it to give her pleasure. Most human males were the other way around, as were most Climbers. She’d slept with enough of both as part of her work.

However, it was like his emotions and personality were somehow… blurred. It wasn’t like he was trying to conceal them, as she had expected at first. No, it was more that the human seemed to be partially disconnected from who he was, as if there was some kind of barrier between him and his full range of emotions.

It made him a dangerous curiosity.

If it weren’t for his value as an information broker when it came to the human Climbers trickling into the city, she probably would have been given a kill order for him weeks ago. As it was, his calming influence and obvious efforts to prevent the increasingly arrogant humans from making a power play in the city made him too valuable to eliminate, for now.

He had some support from the Adventurers Guild and the Mages Academy, for reasons she hadn’t been able to worm out of either. His dungeon dives were frequent enough and his willing payment of the tax on spoils also added to his value, in the minds of the council. It was only her advice that kept them from dismissing him as just another new citizen.

She caressed the pommel of the dagger hidden inside the leather bracer on her left arm, considering whether she should disobey her orders and just eliminate him here and now. The council would see it her way, eventually, and she’d be able to come back in twenty years or so, when the incident was forgotten.

The truth was, even though she believed she should kill him, she didn’t want him dead. In fact, she was growing to admire him for his ruthless pragmatism and disinterest in the factionalism that seemed to always grow up when Climbers gathered together in large numbers.

Not to mention he was good in bed. The value of a good bed partner was never to be underestimated, in her mind. When you’d had as many bad ones as she had, you started to cherish the ones that treated you well.

She thought briefly about simply ascending with him, becoming a partner to him as he rose. It would not be difficult. She was already at the very top of the peaks of power allowed to one who stayed in the 1st Tier. All it would take is actually manifesting powers she’d taken steps to keep internalized sufficiently to keep the Tiers’ system from detecting them.

Then she sighed, deeply. She’d made her vows after coming to Nal centuries before. It wasn’t in her nature to break a vow once spoken, and she had kept it even when Nal had broken faith with her, repeatedly. It was not to be.

___________________________________

I considered the guard captain, Lena (so I called her in private) as I meditated, drawing mana into my core. I knew she’d been set to watch me. However, I also knew that, at this point, it was on her own initiative that she kept doing so. My sources on the council were clear that they had no real concerns about me any longer.

Lena was another matter entirely. She was known as the ‘Old Guard’, the most senior officer in the guard, the leader of the council’s private army. Most of the time, she let the city as a whole think that the elderly dwarven warrior, Reg, was the leader of the guard. It wasn’t entirely a fiction, either. The old soldier was simply a better administrator than she was, whereas she was better at seeing the big picture and knowing when things were about to go wrong.

In my previous life, I’d only seen her from afar, and I hadn’t recognized her initially upon my arrival. However, I knew what her fate was, last time. When human influence reached its peak in the first decade, she ignored the council’s orders and purged the American and Western European Climber sects preemptively, to prevent them from taking over. However, traitors within the guard assassinated her and Reg before the plan could be completed, causing the organization’s collapse and a complete takeover by the human Climbers.

After my previous life, I wasn’t very fond of my own race, so I’d taken steps to disrupt the unity of the human sects and ‘warrior guilds’ that began trickling into the town. I’d begun with convincing the other experienced Climbers to draw the best from each, using the Adventurers to draw out the greedy, and convincing the Academy to send invitations to the ones who sought knowledge for its own sake.

All in all, it was working. Sects that had eventually unified into a ‘Humanity First’ movement in Nal in the previous timeline had already vanished or been crippled beyond recovery. The Warrior Guilds were split between treasure hunters and true Climbers, both of which were being strategically cherry-picked by the groups that wanted them.

It was working out well. One of the main reasons humanity had suffered so many losses in the first place was because we’d kept our national identities and racial unity, dragging those who didn’t want to Climb up with us while constantly clashing over old feuds from Earth. It was better if those who just wanted to settle remained on the 1st Tier, whereas those who desired to Climb did so with a less insular and humanocentric viewpoint.

The fact was, Climbing the Tiers required a naturally ambitious spirit, a desire for power, and an ability to do and endure whatever was necessary to obtain what they wanted. Too many had Climbed out of a futile hope of returning to Earth, which I knew was now a barren, airless brown rock floating through the void.

My other self would likely Climb. The drug of power was something neither of us was built to resist. The difference between us was that I had no interest in immediate gains. Immediate gains were something to be sacrificed for greater power later, to my mind.

I knew from the information I’d gathered that my other self was quickly making a name for himself in the starter zones for his powerful bloodline, ruthless pragmatism, and passionate pursuit of ever greater amounts of power. He hadn’t formed a sect, but he’d gathered a few close allies into a powerful group of Climbers. He knew many of the mistakes I and others had made, through our sharing of a body and mind. It was likely he was acting on the principle that he would be able to avoid making too many mistakes by referencing ours.

Idiot, I thought affectionately. It was much harder to dislike my younger self when we didn’t share the same body. The arrogance of my youth had been particularly bad, even by young human standards. I did hope he survived the dashing of his hopes without breaking.

I went back to considering Lena once I was done ruminating on humanity. Lena was… very close to my ideal woman. She was intelligent, loyal, and determined. She was also good in bed, but I was fairly sure that sex meant little to her, one way or the other. It was interesting how much my surviving emotions had attached to her. It wasn’t – quite – love. However, I was definitely fond of her.

I’d spent the last three months exploring my partially-restored emotions, rebuilding and redesigning the buffers I’d used for so long. I’d discovered that restoring the absolute barriers between my emotions and actions was impossible. Apparently, since my body was clean, I didn’t possess the tools necessary to create complete emotional buffers.

My emotions were back to stay, which meant I would never be able to directly utilize the massive reserves of Eldritch power I possessed again. The Eldritch was too apt to take hold in emotion and use it to worm its way into my mind and body.

My dungeon dives served a number of purposes. One was to increase the variety of weapons I managed to master. The other was to increase my mastery of Conceptual Magic in battle. The last was to give me a cover for remaining in Nal for so long. As long as I was paying a significant amount of coin in taxes, the various factions would consider me a valuable part of their city. If I stopped, I became a problem that would need to be solved.

To my annoyance, my spear skill was too close to Master rank to keep using. So I began using the handaxe and the short sword and shield. I’d tried both styles in my previous life, getting both up to Journeyman. However, in the end I’d fallen in love with the lochaber and reveled in the sensation of chopping through flesh with a halberd. I’d reveled in sending heads flying just like one of my favorite fantasy characters, Sir Bevier, and I’m afraid I gathered something of a reputation for decapitating enemies, both dead and alive.

I wasn’t a natural with a sword, and I was better with the axe. More importantly, I didn’t take any joy in using the sword, whereas I found the sensation of an axe severing limbs gave me an almost sexual burst of pleasure. I also liked the sensation of crushing a goblin’s skull with a mace, but axes were just more fun.

When I was younger, I’d tried to wield a katana, much like my younger self was doing. To my embarrassment, I simply didn’t have the right mindset for the surprisingly subtle weapon. While I could twist my wrist to subtly alter the trajectory of an axe or halberd without thinking about it, for some reason the heart of the sword eluded me.

My younger self knew that, but he hadn’t been able to resist. It almost made me laugh. Considering his stubbornness, though, he probably would keep up with it. The fact that I’d abandoned it relatively early on would only give him incentive to force himself to master the weapon.

I felt the core of mana just below my navel pulse as I compressed more mana drawn from my surroundings. My cultivation was going more quickly than I’d anticipated, most likely due to my Greater Enhanced Body. I’d already formed a core and my mana was taking on the form of a dense mist within my body. It was only the first stage, but it usually took years for a cultivator to form a core.

The core increased the amount of mana I could produce and store within my body, even in low mana areas. It also increased the amount I could draw in to supplement the mana being created within me. For anyone pursuing magic, mana cultivation was the only way to go.

It also had the side effect of making me physically stronger, but to a lesser extent than a chi cultivator would have been at the same stage. I frowned internally. I was fairly sure Lena was a chi cultivator at the peak of power for the 1st Tier. In truth, it was a miracle she hadn’t already proceeded to the next stage, as the difficulty of restraining cultivation breakthroughs (a choice made by those who wanted to revel in their power in the lower Tiers) was such that most attempts ended in failure, either destroying their cultivation or forcing an ascension.

I sensed a chi cultivator with an aura I’d never contacted before teleport behind me, Someone with a bloodline or ability that allows for teleportation… an assassin? Well, then…

I reached behind me with a speed that caused my elbow to dislocate and touched the assassin’s knee, “Shatter.”

I was rewarded with a scream of horrific agony as the concept I’d invaded his body with ‘shattered’ anything hard within the space I’d specified. The iron greave and bones of his left leg were instantly shattered into thousands of pieces. The assassin toppled over onto his side, his leg now unable to support his weight.

I rose to my feet and looked down at him, noting his features, Aaah… Lander McMahon, the Night Reaver. The overconfident assassin who made an ill-conceived attempt on a demon lord and spent twenty years spiked to a wall with his skin torn off.

I sighed, “Mr. McMahon… I do believe you made a poor choice of targets this time around.”

McMahon was fairly powerful… at mid-rank for the 1st Tier as a chi cultivator already. It was an impressive achievement, considering how slow chi cultivation was to grow. However… I couldn’t see a use for him. McMahon’s history in the original timeline was a series of petty betrayals and meaningless murders followed by a fate worse than death. I would be doing him a favor to end it here and now, before he had a chance to repeat history.

I nodded to myself and knelt at his side, patting him on the shoulders with both hands lightly, powdering the bones of each much as I had his left leg. Another shriek of agony exited his mouth, but the residents and customers of my boarding house’s cafeteria merely looked on with a mix of expressions mostly made up of amusement, contempt, and indifference. Climbers didn’t have any pity for the weak and those without the sense to measure their own strength against that of their enemy.

I forced my elbow back into alignment absently as I considered what kind of concept I wanted to test on him. I hardly noticed the pain.

I could sense Lena’s eyes on me, so I decided to go for something a bit less than subtle.

I placed one finger on his forehead and said simply, “Burn.”

The man’s eyes opened wide in horrified realization as his skin began to be eaten away by pure white flames that didn’t seem to give off any heat. He tried to writhe in pain, but I spoke another command, careful not to ‘overlap’ it with the instructions for the previous one, “Be Still.”

He locked in place, as my command removed the law of reality that allowed his brain to send commands to his limbs. Within his body, information other than pain could not be transmitted through the nerves save within his skull.

His expression twisted, even as the skin burned away, not touching his armor or clothes. It was followed by his muscles, which somehow continued to function despite being incinerated. Last were his organs (with the exception of the brain), which burned away in moments. The bones I left as is, perfectly clean and white, every scrap of blood and flesh removed. The only flesh on his body was his brain, which I maintained with a secondary command, “Live,” at the moment it should have shut down.

He was now nothing more than a brain inside a skeleton devoid of tissue.

I raised my voice to the room, “Any necromancers that want to have a bit of fun?”

An eager-looking high elf in black leather armor raised his right hand, his tongue wetting his lips, “Could I?”

I waved at the body, which was dead except for one portion, “Be my guest. My spell will keep his brain alive for a few days. I do believe that his teleportation ability will remain if you are careful.”

The necro cackled happily as he waved his hand over McMahon’s skeleton, causing it to rise jerkily to its armored and bony feet, “Come now, my new friend. I do believe we will be having a great deal of fun in the near future.”

I smiled faintly and wrote out a short set of equations in rune language on a scrap of paper, handing it to the necro, “This should get you started. It is based on a book I happened to read a few weeks ago on the subject.”

The necro looked at the note for a moment, his eyes glowing with fascination at the concept of the base spell construct I’d written, “Oh dear… I never thought… but yes, that should work. Oh the possibilities.”

Some of the other Climbers shuddered as the necro began cackling again, his beautiful elven face glowing with evil joy as his new slave followed him out of the cafeteria. Undeath was not a pleasant fate for anyone to face, and they all seemed to share the feeling that what I’d given the necro would make it much worse.

They weren’t wrong. What I’d given the necro was a technique by which a living brain could be enslaved and made to run an undead body without losing its intelligence or creativity. He would have to add flesh and blood to the bones to make it work, but necros were creative that way.

It was used heavily by the Tower of Chaos on the third tier to create armies of intelligent and powerful undead incapable of disobeying their necromancer masters. The resulting half-undead monsters were as much or more dangerous than they were in life, some of them becoming so powerful that they would have ascended to higher tiers, had they been alive.

I wondered if my actions weren’t crueler than those of the demon lord… but then I dismissed the idea. McMahon would find release whenever the necro ascended, his brain dying and his flesh becoming just another zombie. I wasn’t being especially cruel by condemning him to a few years of acting as an undead slave to a Climber, considering he’d tried to kill me.

“That was a bit much, don’t you think? Whatever you gave that necro, it has to be worse than death for that assassin,” Lena said, approaching me from behind.

“It’s best to make it too costly for assassins to make attempts on my life,” I replied with a shrug as I turned to meet her beautiful lavender eyes.

“I find it amazing that so many of your fellow humans have tried to kill you in the last month,” She said, her expression inquisitive.

I smiled faintly, “Most likely, they think I’m some kind of racial traitor. Given human nature, factions and sects will have already begun to form, and a total independent with power in a town like Nal would be seen as a threat.”

It was true. The information I’d tortured out of the third assassin to make an attempt on me had confirmed that certain newborn organizations were eliminating those who refused to join them or showed too much familiarity with the other races. My position as a land-owner in the Climber area of Nal made me a person of influence who was more affiliated with the ‘natives’ than with his fellow humans. As such, the desire to dispose of me was understandable, even if I found it contemptible.

“Just what did you do to make your own race hate you so much?” She asked, looking a bit exasperated.

“It’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t let their agents stay here for free while they established themselves in the city, I didn’t offer them discounts on the food in the cafeteria, and I didn’t bow to their representatives,” I replied, counting the reasons on my fingers.

“What? They actually tried to get you to do all that?” She asked, a faint expression of disbelief on her face.

“Yes. It was most… unpleasant,” I was fairly sure some kind of wannabe mafioso was in control of at least one of the sects. The tactics being used were pretty familiar from bad movies about organized crime.

Lena looked infuriated. In my experience, her distrust of foreign influence was only overwhelmed by her absolute hatred of foreigners making power plays in her town. I was pretty sure a few human sects were going to find themselves denied access to the dungeon.

“Oh, Lena,” I said, recalling some information I’d picked up from the Adventurers Guild after my last dungeon dive.

She looked up at me, obviously still focused on whatever plans she was making for dealing with the sects, “Yes?”

“The Guild is reporting attempts to infiltrate their ranks by apparently ‘unaffiliated’ humans. They wanted me to do something about it, but I think it would be better if I left it to you,” I said, watching her eyes spark dangerously as she realized just how bad the situation was.

If I were to be honest, I’d been holding back with her. I needed time without her observing me, but I didn’t want to make it obvious I was maneuvering her out of the way. I liked Lena too much to use lies. Obfuscations were one thing… women like her would forgive half-truths and evasions as long as it wasn’t too frequent (and the man was punished properly after). Lies? Not a chance.

She was obviously fuming, though her dark skin didn’t show her rage. She didn’t realize my misdirection as she left, and my customers and tenants got back to eating their dinner.

I didn’t return to my woven mat on the floor, instead heading for the cellar. A moon elf witch awaited me in the dark stone cellar, her luminous white skin and azure eyes illuminated by crystalline mage lights set into the ceiling in the far corner.

“Master,” She said, bowing deeply. She was my business manager, a slave girl I purchased off the market and freed specifically so I could hire someone loyal for the task.

She was obsessively loyal and determined, and I was training her up to follow me as I Climbed, which was one of the reasons I wasn’t advancing as fast as I might. She’d absorbed the knowledge I gave her on accounting and psychology, as well as the chi cultivation techniques from the manuals I’d purchased for her quickly, showing that my eye for buried talent was real.

I made a point of leaving her free to manage my interests in the city without giving her any orders beyond a few general directions. I served as the open ‘face’ of the business, drawing the unsavory characters who would want to take over, and she took care of the nuts and bolts, keeping things running.

Climbing was expensive business, and I was only just getting started. I would need a strong financial base to gather as many resources as possible while on the 1st Tier before ascending. The more resources I gathered early on, the faster my ascensions would be later.

“Shaia, you don’t need to bow to me. We are partners, even if this began with me buying you from an auction,” I admonished.

She shrugged, “Old habits are hard to break. My parents were slaves, as were their parents.”

I shook my head, wondering how it was that slavery was so strong in the lower Tiers. Considering how easy it was (relatively speaking) for the average person go grow in power, if they put in the effort, it had never made sense to me that slavery was able to prosper. However, slaves were everywhere throughout the first two Tiers. Some families had been slaves for dozens of generations, even.

Well, at least I was able to do something about Shaia, I thought with a faint sense of guilt, remembering what her fate was in the previous timeline.

“So, how is the trade in cultivation pills going?” I asked.

“About as well as can be expected. Regis’s alchemical skills are getting good enough that the quality has stabilized, and the Climbers are buying the chi and mana versions as fast as he can produce them. We’ve already made back the two platinum initial investment, and we are well on our way to our first platinum in profit,” She replied.

The first week I was in Nal, I’d searched out Regis, a gnomish alchemist whose cultivation pills became famous in the previous timeline, and paid for his release from slavery. Shaia had cost me forty gold, but Regis cost a full platinum coin, due to his ability as an alchemist. The gnome was too autistic to feel much in the way of gratitude for being saved from slavery, but the use of a platinum to pay for a full lab setup had endeared me to him enough that he’d promised never to leave my service.

“And our sponsorship of the White Flame?” I queried.

“The party is doing well in their dungeon runs, just as you predicted. I anticipate that their debt will be paid off within another month, along with the interest. The Adventurers Guild has expressed its thanks for bailing them out,” She replied.

I nodded, satisfied, “The White Flame is a capable party with blood connections to the higher ups in the Adventurers Guild. Saving them from bankruptcy will pay far more than the interest on the loan, in the long run.”

The White Flame’s founding members were all related to the de facto ‘aristocrats’ of the Adventurers Guild, spread out across the first three Tiers. In the previous timeline, their deaths in the southern iron mines had occurred before their relatives could purchase their indenture. I would use their gratitude to make my position in the lower Tiers stronger as I Climbed.

“Master, I realize it might be above my station to ask, but how is it that you knew they needed help? Even the Adventurers failed to notice them being sold into slavery,” Shaia queried.

“I could lie to you… but the fact is, I had pre-existing knowledge of their fates. I am unwilling to share the origins of this knowledge with anyone, even my own blood, but it is not that I don’t trust you. Rather, I would prefer that the source of my knowledge not be known to anyone,” I answered, being as honest as I could with the girl. Shaia, for all that she was twenty years older than my body, was trusting in ways I sometimes found disturbing, save that that trust only seemed to be directed at me.

So it was no surprise when she merely bowed again, “I understand Master.”

“I will tell you that there is another who shares my name wandering the world, as well as my younger brother. Neither is to be allowed access to my business affairs, though if they arrive at a time when I am not present, they are to be provided a room in the secondary lodging, at your discretion. If you feel they cannot be trusted, then offer them a room at the southern boarding house,” I instructed. I’d been meaning to warn her about my other self for some time, but setting up the three boarding houses, only one of which I ‘officially’ owned, had taken up more time than I anticipated.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The secondary boarding house was for human Climbers, and its rooms, while clean, did not come with food or services, unlike the primary one above. The southern boarding house was almost as nice as the primary, but it was sufficiently far from my other businesses that observation of my affairs would be virtually impossible. The secondary was officially Shaia’s business, whereas Regis lent his name to the southern boarding house.

“How goes the effort to find a decent smith to set up a repair business in that lot just outside the city?” I queried. I’d purchased a small lot of unused land to the north of the city with my extra funds, and I planned to set up a repair business for Climbers and Adventurers there, when I could find a smith to occupy it.

“No luck so far,” She shook her head, looking a bit shamefaced.

“These things take time, Shaia. Since the land is outside the city proper, the taxes are sufficiently low that it won’t bite deeply into our cash flow. I anticipated that it might take time, so I won’t blame you if it is still unoccupied a year from now,” I soothed her. One thing Nal seemed to lack was a sufficient number of smiths to handle the needs of the Adventurers and Climbers using the dungeon.

The dungeon produced a significant amount of resources, including magical armor and ores, on a daily basis, but most of the armor was damaged in some way or needed adjusting. This meant that, if the finder wanted to use the armor, they needed to get it repaired and adjusted, something that could take months with the backlogs of orders at the four smithies in the city. Moreover, only one of the smiths had the level of skill to work on Journeyman magical armors, as it required at least a working knowledge of enchanting.

My connections in Nal were becoming numerous, but I had yet to expand significantly outside the city. I schooled myself to patience, knowing that the more abilities I could refine before I ascended, the more prepared I would be. The time would be well-invested.

Lena was going to be a problem later, though. I wasn’t willing to arrange her death, but her nosiness was going to cause me a great number of problems if she so chose.

“I may have to have a talk with Lena,” I admitted aloud to Shaia.

“Master?” Shaia asked curiously. She was aware of the casual relationship between me and the dark elf captain, but I’d never told her of my worries over Lena’s watchfulness.

“Lena is a rather serious woman when it comes to her work. I am considering letting her know of my business interests, in hopes that having an eye on them will keep her from trying to squish me like a bug later,” I admitted. While I could overwhelm Lena if I was willing to wield Eldritch power, it would likely cost me everything. It would also force me to ascend.

“Master? Are you certain? Not all of your interests are… palatable to official eyes and ears,” She asked me hesitantly.

“They aren’t illegal, just shifty as all hell. It would be too easy for Lena to find out about my interests from another angle, then step on me for hiding it from her,” I replied, slumping my shoulders slightly. I’d avoided doing anything actually illegal. There was nothing illegal about buying and freeing slaves, nor was there anything illegal about allowing one’s employees to buy property under their own name with your coin. It was just… somewhat improper, if one looked at it in certain ways.

“Mistress Lena might decide that our efforts are criminal anyway,” She pointed out, almost causing me to smile with joy at her personal growth. When I first freed her, she hadn’t been willing to even speak an opinion on the taste of the bread from the kitchens, much less point out possible problems with a plan I made.

“There is that possibility,” I admitted. However, with Lena, the real problem would be if she found it out later. If I revealed our assets to her now, she would be far less likely to ruin my day later.

Moreover, meeting her eyes in the cafeteria made me remember the warmth of her body in bed. If it weren’t for the way my emotions were dulled, I was fairly sure I would be panting in lust at the memory. My younger self almost certainly would have headed straight to his personal room for a bit of right-handed pumping.

“Master, just what is it that you want from Mistress Lena? I know you wish to Climb with me… do you also want her at your side?” She asked, probing gently.

“Yes, I want her by my side as I Climb!” I said, throwing up my hands in exasperation. Shaia was growing out of her subservience much faster than I could have ever anticipated.

“Then you should ask her. I believe she would at least consider the idea,” She said calmly.

It was odd. Shaia was drawing out emotions I was no longer capable of perceiving. I knew I was feeling them by my reactions, but the various restraints and buffers inside my mind and spirit were preventing me from recognizing them. The feeling was similar to (though not as extreme as) how I was in the prison. There, I’d logically known I was feeling emotion by my body’s reactions, but I couldn’t really ‘feel’ those emotions.

I really am a mess, I thought in self-derision.

I’d grown too used to being in total control in my previous life. Decades of torture had not broken me of that, as I’d never once been out of control of the situation. I couldn’t escape, but if I truly had desired it, I could have burned the gnome with a thought at any time. Arrogance, in its worst form… a habit I never did manage to rid myself of.

In some ways I’m still an arrogant teenager with a god complex and an overinflated view of my own abilities, I thought to myself before answering Shaia’s comment, “She probably would… before saying no. That is a woman who takes her vows seriously, and I’m pretty sure she took a rather restrictive set to the city, if my memory serves correctly.”

Shaia grimaced, “Damned dark elves and their vows… it is no wonder most of them are stuck working as patrol rangers or in guard positions despite almost being powerful enough to ascend. It’s one thing to be loyal to someone worthy of it, but cities don’t give you anything in return.”

“Are dark elves only found in positions like that?” I asked curiously. Dark elves in the 2nd and 3rd Tiers kept to themselves, so I never encountered any up there. The only dark elves I’d seen on the 1st Tier were city guards.

“Mostly. They used to have an empire to the south, but after their last emperor was tricked into ascending, they fell into infighting… The next thing they knew, the other races were invading en masse,” She said, obviously recalling something from one of the many books she purchased with her pay.

“He didn’t have an established successor?” I asked curiously. It struck me as strange that a nation of dark elves would fall so easily.

“He did… six of them. It was tradition for the ‘worthy’ children of the emperor to face one another in tests of martial prowess, intellect, and leadership skill. The children who were defeated too often and too soundly would die, until only one was left. Unfortunately, there were still four potential successors left when the emperor ascended, so...” She shrugged.

“Civil war because there was no legitimate way to determine a successor,” I finished for her.

“Yes. The dark elves that survived that ascended, for the most part. The ones who didn’t bound themselves to vows with various cities and kingdoms to put themselves out of the reach of people who wanted to see the race exterminated. I’m pretty sure she is one of the latter,” She finished.

“Any way you can think of that might get her out of the vows, if she was willing?” I asked, surprising myself with my own persistence.

She shot me a sly smile, “Well, if you can convince the council to release her from her vows, she would be able to make the choice herself.”

“Am I that transparent?” I asked softly. It worried me, somewhat.

She shook her head slowly, “The first few weeks I was with you, I couldn’t figure out what you were thinking. Your emotions almost never match your body language, and your aura doesn’t give any clues. It was only after I figured out that your emotions are somewhat… off that I was able to figure out how to read your more obvious cues, Master.”

I was glad she couldn’t read my aura. I’d been half-afraid that my aura was as leaky as my mental buffers, considering how difficult it is to feel it by oneself.

I shook my head in admiration, “Two months ago, I never would have thought that quivering, frightened elf waif would be talking like an adult woman of education.”

She shrugged, “I only looked like a ‘waif’ because my parents’ master never really bothered to feed me more than was needed to keep me alive.”

I snorted, “Idiot. Slaves that aren’t fed don’t work, and no one wants to buy a starved child that might fall over dead the next moment.”

Except brothels that specialize in that kind of thing, I thought with disgust at the old memories. I was truly glad that Shaia couldn’t read my mind at that moment. The trauma from reading that particular memory would probably break her, despite her progress.

“Our master was fairly standard as slave breeders go. Elf girls are valued for only a very short range of things in the slave trade, and he already decided where he wanted to sell me,” She replied with a shrug, covering up the old pain that briefly cooled her gaze.

“Too bad most slavers are idiots…” I muttered. It was ridiculous that elf slaves were treated that way. Yes, in the beginning, elves were frailer than other species. However, once they began to cultivate, their strength tended to outstrip the other humanoids rapidly. Moreover, they had a natural lifespan prior to cultivating which could extend to centuries or even millennia. On the 3rd Tier, Wood Elves dominated the Great Forest completely, and they had tens of thousands of individuals at the peak of ability for the Tier.

It showed that my viewpoint was somewhat odd that my mind immediately went to how useful elves were in battle. Most people would have said that their artistic bent or clever hands should make them useful, at least on the 1st Tier. Unfortunately, my ability to consider aspects that I didn’t think were practical was crippled by my past experiences.

I felt a surge of power that made me want to vomit on the edge of my senses.

“I’ll need Regis to try making this recipe soon,” I said suddenly, handing her a crystal containing the recipe for the Lesser Meridian Refining Pill. It was a peak 1st Tier pill, at the limit of the alchemic craft possible with the local energy density. It was possible to make up to 3rd Tier pills with an advanced enough mana-concentration array, but in that case, the ingredients wouldn’t be available, given the limitations of the Tier.

She raised a brow, “And you aren’t asking him personally for what reason, precisely?” Her voice was slightly acidic, telling me that she didn’t appreciate being used for such a petty errand, but I could tell that the real reason was she just hated dealing with the autistic gnome personally.

“Because I can’t afford to leave the boarding house for the next three days,” I replied, causing her to widen her beautiful blue eyes in surprise.

“Master, is something wrong?” She asked with concern.

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair (which was a nice and thick brown mop, after the body enhancement), feeling incredibly weary when I thought of what I’d just sensed as I came down the stairs, “Someone who will probably cause a lot of trouble just entered town, and I need to protect my investment.”

The individual I was sensing was giving off a dense Eldritch aura, one that was familiar to me from my previous life. I wasn’t the only one who had picked Eldritch Gift, but it always manifested in ways unique to the individual. One of them was in the aura they gave off to those who also possessed Eldritch power.

Why the hell is Jackie Alderson already in Nal? She should be in Londovell, skinning young dwarves so she can smoke their meat, I asked myself, worried deeply. Of my acquaintances from my previous life, Jackie was one of many I would enjoy never having to meet again.

Jackie Alderson was known as the Horror of Londovell in the old timeline. She had chosen to enhance her body with her Eldritch Gift, but her lack of precautions had resulted in it spreading to her mind and spirit, warping her on a level that I’d managed to avoid. At some point, she had come to see people as delicious meat, and as a result, she had massacred the entire population of Londovell, one of the beginner towns. She had then smoked the meat and lived off of it for twelve years, before she moved on to Nal, where I had fought and killed her.

I frowned. Her presence wasn’t nearly as strong as it was in the previous timeline. However, she was definitely still corrupted. I would just have to figure it out when she came my way.

And she would. Eldritch horrors like us were attracted to one another, as the corruption of the laws of reality that could be sensed from our auras soothed the madness that tended to infect us to an extent. Normal people couldn’t sense Eldritch power when it wasn’t being actively used, as it masqueraded as a mundane mage’s aura. Only those of the same… persuasion could get a sense of things.

“I’d really like you to stay at the southern boarding house for the next three days. If I’m dead, the business is yours to do with as you wish,” I instructed her, tossing her a second crystal that contained my will, just in case.

“Master?!” She exclaimed, looking stricken.

“It isn’t likely, but it is a possibility. I am unsure if I have the power to handle what is coming,” I admitted. I couldn’t use my true power without destroying myself, currently, and my mana cultivation was still a long way from the peak of the 1st Tier. Conceptual Magic could, in theory, give me the options and power to shift the balance of things in my favor, but with someone as powerful as Jackie was in the previous timeline, I didn’t think it likely.

I went back up to the first floor and returned to my meditation mat, closing my eyes to cultivate while I waited for Jackie to come my way.

_______________________________________________________________

The Jackie Alderson that entered the boarding house’s tavern the next day was not the Horror that I knew from the past. There were no green worms swirling in her eyes, her skin was nut brown, her eyes a deep blue, and she didn’t have seven-inch claws and nine fingers on each hand. She also had plain brown hair, which was nice, given that the Horror I knew hadn’t had hair at all.

She was wearing a plain but serviceable shortsword at her side, and she was dressed in blue chainmail over a leather gambeson, two plated sabatons on her feet. She looked tired, not insane, so I flashed my true sight quickly to get a look at her from a higher realm.

What I saw made me wince, but it wasn’t as bad as it was in her previous life, So she chose Spirit this time around… but she is just as bad at keeping herself in check as in her previous life. Half her spirit is already corrupted.

I raised my hand in greeting as she entered before jerking my chin to indicate the stairs behind me. She nodded slowly in response, a flash of desperation in her eyes.

Ah, I remembered that stage. The point where you realize just what you’d done to yourself. Unlike with Mind, Spirit let you realize what was happening to you when you were being corrupted. It was why those who picked it tended to be more likely to adjust than Mind or Body users, who were usually beyond salvaging within a few uses of Eldritch might.

We came to a stop on the fourth floor, where my personal suite was situated. Nobody else was allowed on this floor. Like the second and third floors, its walls were of simple wood, but runes of protection and privacy could be seen glowing at regular intervals, protecting from casual attack and scrying. Anything more would be noticeable from outside the building.

We entered the office at the end of the hallway. My office was larger than it should have been, due to space-bending magic (expensive but possible to purchase, even on the 1st Tier) expanding the available volume of the room. A desk of black wood sat on one end, piled with papers I needed to look over, and two cushioned chairs sat across from one another with a low table in between before it. It was a room meant for private business and casual discussions, not for public meetings.

I sat on one of the couches and indicated for her to sit in the one across from me.

“Miss Alderson, why did you come to Nal?” I asked bluntly, showing off knowledge I shouldn’t have had, causing her to sit back on the couch, her eyes widening.

“How do you know my name?!” She asked loudly, so loudly that without the privacy spells, they likely would have heard her on the first floor.

“That is immaterial. There is very little in the Climbers’ District I don’t know. Now please answer the question,” I replied bluntly, if somewhat dishonestly. I hadn’t bothered reading my reports for the day, so any information gathered on her from the guards I’d bribed had been left un-perused.

I knew all the tricks of the Spirit path of the Eldritch Gift, so I’d already thought up a dozen scenarios for eliminating her. I even had the command word calculations completely mapped out so I wouldn’t have to move an inch. I really, really just wanted to kill her and get this over with so I could go delve the dungeon.

Body was much, much trickier to deal with than Spirit. Spirit required a flexible thought process and inspiration to master, whereas the other two paths tended to destroy their users before they could master them. I’d seen body-users of the gift turn into seventy-foot tall tentacle monsters who devoured entire armies, whereas even the most advanced spirit-user tended to look little different from their original race.

I didn’t doubt she was more dangerous to most people now than before. Her mundane appearance would ensure most people underestimated her. I wasn’t one of them, however.

She looked confused, “I… just sensed someone like me, and I wanted to ask some advice.”

That set me back and I put my hand to my chin, rubbing the three days worth of stubble there thoughtfully, “I see. Well, at least you chose Spirit, not Body or Mind. It’s still possible to salvage some of who you are…”

“Really?! Please, tell me how! I’ll do anything you say, just help me?!” The desperation in her eyes was obvious, and I could tell she was fundamentally just a normal person who had made a stupid mistake in the Between.

I was actually inclined to help her, now. She was still salvageable, with effort… but she would probably not like my suggestions.

“First, never use your Eldritch Gift again. You still have the majority of your spirit untainted, but a few more uses and you will find that most human emotions mean nothing to you any longer. Second…” I took out a card of blue crystal and set it to my forehead, pushing my knowledge of how to build buffers between the spirit, mind, and body into it. I then tossed it to her.

She caught it and looked at it with confusion, “What’s this?”

“A memory crystal. That one has a technique that will keep the corruption from touching her body and mind. It won’t heal the corruption of your spirit, but it will keep you from showing any obvious signs of corruption. Place it to your forehead and push a bit of your mana or chi into it,” I told her.

She placed it to her forehead and followed my instructions. A moment later, her eyes widened, “This technique… it is so… complex. I don’t think I can hold this kind of construct together.”

I sighed internally in disappointment. I forgot sometimes that most people didn’t have the capacity to hold that kind of spell equation in place – even though it required virtually no energy – without it taking up most of their mental resources. Spell-craft, regardless of the branch, was partially math, partially instinct, and partially inspiration. The equations form the base, instinct forms the walls, and inspiration creates the final shape. However, without the capacity to master the equations, magic was beyond the reach of most of the 1st Tier.

Most people picked up some kind of spell-craft in the 2nd or 3rd Tiers, because their minds and bodies had changed sufficiently to do so. I should have known that it was possible she wouldn’t be able to at her current level of development.

I had a natural gift for mathematics, which had let me become an above-average spellcaster in the 1st Tier. However, my current mental capacity for spell-equations was tens of thousands of times larger than it was then. I’d forgotten one of the fundamentals.

I considered for a few minutes before shaking my head, “If you can’t handle the equations yet, abstaining might be enough to hold until your mind and body develop enough to Climb to the next Tier. You’ll need to train hard and reach the bottom of a few dungeons to gain the abilities and skills necessary to survive without it, though.”

Reaching the bottom of a dungeon for the first time let you pick a single ability or skill from those preserved in the core. There were usually tens of thousands of different abilities, scaled to the dungeon’s level, in any given dungeon. Some people hunted abilities and skills obsessively (I had been one of them in the previous timeline) for the power they granted. In her case, she would need them to compensate for the inability to use the Eldritch Gift.

Most of the skills I was reviving were, at their base, something I’d taken from a dungeon. This was because, unlike abilities, skills were knowledge imprinted into an individual’s essence. Thus, they had followed me on my trip through time, even if I had to use them to activate them. Abilities, on the other hand, were imprinted into the body, granting the individual specific powers that could be used by moving the body in certain ways with intent. As such, none of my abilities had come along.

The Eldritch Gift was different, since it was essentially essence from an Outer God implanted into a mortal’s soul, even if it concentrated on only the Mind, Spirit, or Body. It would follow me even through reincarnation, if it came to that.

“I’d suggest you get Middle Body Enhancement or an elemental manipulation ability from the dungeon core here. With that, you will be able to delve other dungeons on the 1st Tier with a good chance of survival. I also suggest you switch to mana cultivation if you are using chi cultivation. It will be painful and time-consuming, but you need the mental enhancements that come from mana cultivation more than the physical ones from chi cultivation,” I said after a few more minutes of consideration.

She still looked lost, and I wanted to sigh in exasperation. This girl was far more hapless than I had imagined… though in retrospect, it made sense. It took naivete or arrogance to take the ‘free’ Eldritch Gift at face value. I’d been the latter, whereas she seemed to have a dose of the former. Most likely, in the previous timeline, she’d probably fallen into corruption much more quickly. The advantage of the choice of Spirit was that it gave you a chance to recognize what was happening before the rest of you was corrupted.

“Girl, if you just want to live a normal life here on the 1st Tier, I still suggest you delve the dungeon to the end,” I said wearily when she failed to respond to my suggestions. This was not going how I had expected it to when I invited her to my office.

“Why?” She asked, obviously terrified at the idea. Arriving in the Tiers from the outside meant you had no backing, no support structure to give your life stability. That was the reason the relatively soft Americans had banded together early on. Still, the fact remained that Americans were soft, many unwilling to make the choices necessary to survive.

“If you don’t, you won’t even be capable of doing basic manual labor around here,” I responded. It was the truth. Abilities, due to their reliance on a connection to the body and mind, were often inheritable. As a result, most people born to the Tiers had at least a few abilities, as well as whatever bloodlines their ancestors picked up along the way. Those who just arrived had to strive to gain the power most people in the Tiers had at birth.

A good part of the suspicion that fell on me came because I seemed too capable for how long I’d been in the Tiers, to my disgruntlement.

She became thoughtful before giving me a big-eyed, pleading look, “Could you help me?”

I wanted to punch her at that moment. There was a difference between asking for advice and asking for me to risk my life for a stranger. If I hadn’t been curious about her, I would never have even bothered giving her the former, so her asking me for the latter was going too far, to my mind.

“Just… don’t. I don’t want to hear your begging or pleading. I am not your best friend or a government employee obligated to hand you a Social Security check. This is not the US, this is the Tiers. If you want something, offer me something of value in exchange. I’m already being nicer than I need to be by giving you advice for free,” I said bluntly.

This earned me her tears and a lot of crying, pleading, and wailing I won’t bother recounting.

I hate women’s tears… and not because I’m some kind of self-styled male feminist. I hate women’s tears because they are a weapon they can use against men without repercussions. If I still had any real humanity left in my soul, I would probably be frantically trying to calm her down.

Instead I tapped an inscription on my desk, and she was teleported out of my office to a random spot not privately owned within seven kilometers. The inscription was costly, but it had saved me time dealing with idiots countless times in the past.

It said a lot for how I had mellowed since my time-shift that I didn’t kill her once she started crying or shoot her with , which I could still use – if I was willing to pay the cost to my sanity and health.

I considered the implications of what I had learned and the likely reasons for the changes I was observing in the timeline, I suppose the theory that you cannot return to a point in your own timeline is true. I must have created an alternate timeline with alternate causality when I used the necklace.

It was unfortunate that the necklace had not granted me the power to change the fate of my original timeline. However, given that the basic flow of events was not too dissimilar, it was likely that things would be little different from the last time unless I took action to avoid it. A mass-murdering monster becoming a weepy woman was a relatively mild shift, compared to the larger series of events.

I can only work to keep humanity from making the same mistakes… and even then, I am not going to bother putting too much effort into it, I was not a philanthropist. While I had an obligation to do certain things given some old oaths I had made in the previous timeline, I didn’t have an obligation to save humanity from itself, when it came down to it.

I left my office and headed for my training room on the same floor. The training room, like my office, resided in an area enchanted to expand the available space, along with enchantments to repair the structure of the room and the training equipment within. It had cost seven platinum, almost as much as purchasing the land, though only half what it had cost me to purchase the boarding house and tavern along with the land.

Once inside, I began going through a basic unarmed kata, punching, kicking, and shifting my stance, each move flowing into the next as I followed instructions given to me in another lifetime as faithfully as possible.

I was, at best, adequate as an unarmed fighter. Oh, most people on the 1st Tier would probably think I was some kind of great talent, but I literally had almost no talent in the art. It was only because I had worked for years at it in my previous life that I had gotten it to Adept, and I lacked the inspiration and fundamental understanding to take it beyond that. I could probably cheat by hitting up a few 3rd Tier dungeons and buying higher ranks of unarmed skills, but without the talent to truly utilize them, I would always be pathetic compared to a true martial artist.

The training room was a massive dojo with a dozen armored dummies set up against the wall, waiting for me to activate their doll enchantments. Swords, axes, bows, lances, spears, pikes, guandao, katana… I had at least one training weapon of every type I could find up on the walls, even a simple black powder rifle and a hideously expensive gun that utilized mana or chi to unleash energy beams.

Weapons, except for the sword and bow, came naturally to me. For some reason, the sword never really clicked with me, and the bow… well lets just say I had a poor relationship with the bow and leave it at that. Fighting without weapons, however, was not something I would ever truly excel at.

Nonetheless, I used the kata to warm myself up before every session, the familiarity of each move soothing away the ripples in my soul caused by the Eldritch corruption. It couldn’t revert my soul to what it had once been, but it let me remember what it was like to be truly human, if only for a few minutes.

I quickly moved on to using twin daggers, then the great-axe, then the pike. The axe was my current obsession, its heft and weight making me grin with glee whenever I brought it down on a phantom enemy or cleaved an invisible shield in half. While it was unwieldy, it was impossible to deny the terrible power of the weapon. It was almost as good as wielding a halberd.

Halfway through the session, I set aside my weapons and activated the dummies, having them assault me at random intervals as I used basic Conceptual Magic commands to devastate them.

“Burn!” I commanded as one of the dummies slashed at me with a phantom greatsword. The dummy’s body burnt to ash in an instant, causing me to frown and berate myself. I’d put too much mana into the command and misjudged the area of effect by a few inches. A part of the stone floor had melted and turned into a crater as a result of that misjudgment.

I made a series of adjustments, and the next dummy merely lost its head to the flames, a much more efficient result than the all-enveloping flame I’d mistakenly cast a moment before.

Three more dummies rushed me, and I spoke a command I had only recently mastered, “Yin-Yang Hell!”

The dummies were instantly flash frozen by me redefining their molecules as being perfectly still, absolute zero cold stopping even the motion of the electrons. However, a half a second later, they shattered into dust as a second rewrite of their reality redefined them as being over a million degrees Farenheit for a single instant.

I collapsed to my knees as I felt my mana bottom out, and I croaked out the command for the simulation to stop. The remaining dummies returned to their places on the wall as I allowed myself to fall prone, closing my eyes to consider my choices during the training session.

Yin-Yang Hell is a long way off from being a truly useful spell technique. The mana cost is roughly two-thirds of my pool, and it is horrendously inefficient. While I doubt any corporeal enemy will survive it below the 4th Tier, that doesn’t really justify wringing myself dry for a single attack, I reflected.

Dungeon-delving was about stamina and mana management. I needed to build up small, efficient spells rather than flashy, immensely powerful mana hogs.

I pulled myself up into the lotus position and began cultivating, patiently separating the mana out of the environment, pushing it down into the core in my lower belly before forcing it to flow up through my heart and into my brain, where the energy gradually infiltrated my brain cells, streamlining the connections, enhancing the individual cells, and generally infusing them with power. This was the essence of mana cultivation. For the first few stages, enhancing the brain would take priority over enhancing the rest of the body, as mana was most effective when used that way. A chi cultivator would instead use the meridians to distribute chi throughout their body, remaking the muscles, blood vessels, bones, and organs, with the brain only happening as an afterthought.

This was because chi was horribly inefficient for enhancing the brain, the vital energy of life preferring to enhance strength and vitality rather than the cultivator’s mind and spirit.

Of course, I already experienced enhancements to my body from excess mana I had cycled, but compared to a chi cultivator, it was maybe one third as effective.

In exchange, every session increased my capacity for mastering more complex and powerful spells and my ability to multitask mentally. I’d also seen some of the buffers isolating my spirit begin to heal themselves as I went, albeit at a snail’s pace.

I will need to get to the Mortal Mage stage before I can completely repair the buffers, based on my current progress, I judged. Mana cultivation began with the Cleansing, moved on to Condensation, and then reached Core, just like chi cultivation. It was at that point that the two branched off until very late in the game (at the Sage stage). Whereas a chi cultivator would reach the Transformation stage, then the Mortal Warrior stage after Core; a mana cultivator would move on to Expansion, then Mortal Mage. Expansion was just what it indicated, it involved expanding the capacity of one’s body forcefully to allow a faster, more condensed flow of mana.

The body was only effected mildly before Mortal Mage by cultivation (in comparison to chi cultivation, anyway), but the mind and ability to manipulate the world around the cultivator was greatly increased with each stage. Even at Core, the range of my Conceptual Magic had expanded – at max and with great expenditure of mana – to almost two hundred meters.

Mortal Mage was also the highest rank in mana cultivation one could reach while remaining in the 1st Tier. Going beyond it, to Earth Mage, would immediately catapult the cultivator into the 2nd Tier.

Lena was a peak Mortal Warrior, something I’d figured out during our sessions in the bedroom. To put it bluntly, she could pulp me with a casual blow. This was actually the reason most chose chi cultivation. It gave power for less effort and required less intelligence to truly make use of. In the past timeline, roughly four-fifths of all humans chose chi cultivation over mana cultivation, simply because their mental capacity was not high enough to make most branches of magic useful.

I grunted in agony as my meridians made a crack, suddenly growing imperceptibly under the pressure of the mana constantly being drawn into my body and cycled through them. I was at the first level of Expansion, but I would probably spend at least four years in my current stage, given the exponential increase in difficulty between stages. Reaching peak Mortal Mage would probably take ten years after that, unless I got my hand on some really good cultivation pills or pushed myself beyond my limits constantly.

Draining my core of mana in training sessions like this would accelerate it, but not nearly as much as risking my life in a dungeon. My businesses were starting to take off on their own, and my connections were getting stronger. It was about time I began delving seriously, instead of just enough to keep the Council satisfied I was paying enough taxes.

That decided, I concentrated on my cultivation, meditating on what kind of spell commands I should master next.