Silas scowled at the message before him.

He had kitted out Walker, his new necromancer character, which took time as it required logging in and out as his various alts to gather all his accumulated low-level gear in order to determine what would best suit the new necromancer. He ended up buying a few expensive cosmetic items from the auction house as well, because why not?

He stared at the character on his laptop, kitted out in the best available gear for his level, looking like a true necromancer in his stark white bone-covered armor, the enchantments to increase his maximum skeleton count by one on each armor piece represented by a visual effect of five tiny ethereal black skulls circling above his head like a halo of death energy. A ragged black cape fluttered on an invisible breeze, its effect causing the character to float just above the ground. Walker would be able to walk across any liquid as if it were solid ground, and should he fall from a height he would remain able to walk upon the air as he drifted down. Best of all, an enchantment on the cape let its wearer rocket upwards once an hour, resulting in a most useful combination of effects.

Between his giant black scythe, the enchantments, and various pieces of equipment, Walker had an absurd plus ten to his maximum skeleton count. Silas hadn't even realized he could get it that high. Two more levels, to gain and spend two more talent points, and he could unlock earth mage skeletons and the earth golem, a fairly powerful combination on their own, as the mages could heal the golem. Another level and point for fire mage skeletons and Walker would be quite the powerhouse for his level. Which was fairly standard when discussing low level characters kitted out with the absolute best available gear for each slot, to be fair.

He stared at his amazing character and just considered the potential. Only, Silas had wanted to check the mana drain of the level one character first before taking time to level him up, as he feared all that gear might be more than his baby skill could handle.

Yet that wasn't even the problem. When he tried to summon Walker he got the message:

Notice!

Summon Character's Character Roster is full!

Mentally focusing on the words let him pull up a window he hadn't seen before.

Character Roster

1. Woof

2. Vox

3. Taylor

4. Ensign

5. Lieutenant Ai

6. Lucky

Sure, that represented every character he had summoned, ignoring Eve who turned herself into a different Skill.

But why only six slots? How could he swap out the useless Ensign for a better option, like Walker?

As for Woof… He'd honestly forgotten about summoning the druid. He should see if the guy managed his long rest and had Speak with Animals available. If not, maybe he could get his long rest on the floor of Silas's room? Would be useful come morning, when he had to deal with the rats again.

Although, come to think of it, he hadn't yet tried Ai's translation skills on the rats, either. Why had he gone with Vox, last time? The tiny dragon just seemed like the natural choice when facing a horde of rats. He hadn't even considered other options.

First, he needed to figure out what was up with this Character Roster. With a scowl, he used the dreaded Help.

Help: Character Roster

Roster of Characters available for the user to summon via Summon Characters.

Roster size determined as the integer value of the user's Charisma halved.

At each tier of Summon Character, the user may remove a number of characters from the Character Roster equal to Summon Character's tier.

Talk about fine print. He hadn't noticed any mention of that within the Skill's description. Maybe his Help skill needed to be a higher level? Ugh.

Still, as he looked at his Status, he decided all wasn't lost. He couldn't swap out any characters yet, but Summon Character had been stuck at nine for a while. Soon it would tier up to level ten and he'd be able to remove the Ensign from the list. There wasn't a single thing the Ensign could do which Ai couldn't do better, except perhaps relate to normal people, but that wasn't a skill Silas needed in his minions.

As for increasing the length of the list… When did he get twelve Charisma? He turned the Attribute increasing notifications back on.

He had been a bit more sociable lately, out of necessity. Back home he could hide in a crowd. Here, not so much, though he did fall into old habits after spending his morning at the tailor's shop. Dealing with people like that, so up close and personal, being polite as they try to keep him engaged in conversations on topics he had zero interest in, was just so draining.

Maybe he'd be better off focusing on the leadership aspects of Charisma. He had no problems telling people what to do, especially if those people were his summoned minions. Minions couldn't talk back, ignoring Eve. And Taylor. The rabbit, the android, and the pseudodragon certainly didn't talk back. And he barely interacted with Woof and the Ensign.

Well. Still. He'd focus on improving his leadership skills. Maybe try to get a Leadership Skill?

"I did wonder about your Skill's limits," commented Eve. "Seemed just a bit unbalanced, being able to call up any solution to any problem, even with the mana costs acting as a limiter."

Silas shrugged. "Walker should be a good solution to most dangerous problems, I hope. And I can always respec him into different talent trees to solve different problems, if I need a tank or healer. I'm really hoping the skeletons can be given simple tasks, like taking pictures of books page by page in a library. Even if one is tasked to turn pages and another to take pictures, that should speed up the process immensely. His minions don't have an ongoing cost, so assuming that works I should have a bunch of skeletons to order around, assuming they can follow basic commands. And I can level him up to match whatever I can sustain, assuming I can sustain him at all. Need to work on leveling Summon Character, first."

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"Seems like you should have one summoned, then."

"Ah. Right."

He summoned Woof.

The man blinked, looking around. "Sir," he nodded.

"Did you manage to get your long rest?"

"Aye."

"You in the guild house with Taylor and the others?"

"Aye. Some of them ain't right, though. Walk about like they're stuck in a waking dream. Ain't worth talkin' to. Least there's some farmin to be had. 'Side from that, ain't no plants anywhere. Just disgusting fake greenery in some of the rooms. Spend most of my time in the stables. Got a right amount of variety there, ya do."

"I don't really know how all this works, Woof. This is all new to me too. I can't even call on all those animals. Not sure why they're all there like that, or why you're there and not somewhere else." He waited, but Woof just shrugged so Silas continued, "So what spells can you cast?"

"Got Druidcraft, Mending, and Poison Spray as cantrips, meanin' I can do 'em all day long. Prepared Speak with Animals and Cure Wounds, plus Entangle. Can cast three times, in any combination, before I'll need a long rest to recover the expended spell slots, though I can recover one slot with an hour rest between long rests."

Silas had forgotten how disappointing low level dungeons and dragons casters were.

Seeing the disappointment on Silas's face, the druid continued, "Can also Wild Shape for up to an hour, and will regain the ability after an hour or more's rest."

"Right. There was that. What can you turn into?"

The dwarf shrugged. "I'm well traveled, and can turn into any beast I've seen which qualifies. Pretty much any forest beast the size of a horse or panther, or smaller. But nothing that can swim or fly, or anything the size of a bear or bigger, as I can't quite manage their particulars yet. Want to hear them all?"

Silas considered. "Could you turn into a rat and speak with other rats?"

The dwarf shook his head. "Need Speak with Animals for that."

Still. A horse? Would he be faster than Lucky? Might be good to know, if he needed to run away really fast.

Silas looked at the lump nestled within a pillow he set aside for Sable. The rat had climbed inside the pillowcase and curled up atop the pillow.

"Why don't we go ahead and use that spell, then. Got a rat here I want to question."

The lump moved to the edge of the pillowcase, and Sable poked her head out, squeaking a question.

The dwarf muttered to himself and spun in place, moving his arms further and further apart, occasionally pausing to contort his face into absurd positions, until he completed the rotation. With arms outstretched he stood in place and closed his eyes, bringing his hands in until they were upon his face, covering his eyes. He slid his hands back to his ears then let his hands drop.

"We have ten minutes," he said, turning to the rat.

"Ask her why she's with me."

The rat squeaked a few times.

"She understands us. Says she'll alert the colony when you're ready to… Ready to sell them more cheese?" The dwarf gave Silas a confused look.

He shrugged. "We met in jail. I had cheese, they had money. They seem happy with the arrangement."

Sable squeaked some more.

"'Very happy,' she says."

"Right." He focused on Sable. "Well, you guys need to be more discreet, or the locals are going to hunt you all down."

More squeaks.

"'Boss smart. Hunters paid to not kill rats,' she says."

He chuckled. "That is pretty smart. But a bunch of people saw you yesterday. Those hunters' bosses are going to start asking questions now."

Squeaks.

"'Then we'll pay the bosses too,' she says."

"Right," he laughed. "Where did you guys find all that money?"

Squeaks.

"'Secret places,' she says."

"Fair enough. Anything else you want to tell me?"

Squeaks.

"She likes her name."

More squeaking.

"Also, she can lead you to a quiet place in the morning, for tomorrow's trade."

"Sure. That works." Leadership. "Thank you, Sable. It's a pleasure to have you around."

Squeaking.

"'Same," she says."

"Right then." He turned to the dwarf. "Anything you need, or want to do?"

"I'd like to turn one of the plots of farmland into a proper grove."

"I have no problem with that. Coordinate with Taylor? She's my main point of contact."

"Need seeds, saplings," he continued.

"Ah. Right. I can keep an eye out? See what they have here. I know they have a bunch of fruit and nut trees here. Would stuff like that work?"

The druid got excited. "Fruit would be great. Nuts, acceptable. If you let me see the seeds I can tell you what will grow."

"I can do that, yeah. Later, then."

The druid nodded. Silas dismissed him to again summon Vox, on a corner of his room's mattress since the room didn't have a couch.

Sable chittered and zipped back under her pillowcase.

"Sorry Sable. Vox won't bite, if you want to stay out in the open."

Hidden atop the pillow, she squeaked once, their signal for no.

"Fair enough." He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.

"So, what have you been up to, Eve."

"For one, I don't think your summoned modem connects back to your Earth, I'm sorry to say. If connected to a frozen or infinitesimally slow timeline, security handshakes wouldn't resolve. You wouldn't be able to log into any website, much less run around World of Fantasy. I thought you should know."

He sighed. "Yeah. I was trying not to think about it. That's not really how computers work. Magic is involved, but even so, the computers on the other end wouldn't be supported by magic. The WoF server would probably have blocked me by now for sending millions of requests its way in under a second, were it real."

"Indeed." Eve's avatar, a white furred cat girl in some flannel pajamas, appeared, sitting on the edge of his bed, facing his way. "Silas, I need to tell you something." She looked worried.

"Okay?"

She bit her lip. "You're not going to like it."

"Okay…"

"Your Skill, Mana Magnet?"

"Yeah…"

"Based on what I overheard at the Academy, it might as well be called Danger Magnet."