<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 17>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 18>
<...>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 25>
<[Words Will Always Retain their Power] has Reached Level 15>
<[Words Will Always Retain their Power] has Reached Level 16>
<...>
<[Words Will Always Retain their Power] has Reached Level 18>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 11>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 12>
<...>
<[Library of Akashic Records] has Reached Level 19>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 9>
<[Universal] has Reached Level 10>
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 12>
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 13>
<...>
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 15>
It had taken them six hours. Six full hours to fully pay back Alex's mana debt. Her meditation, even aided by her potion of mana regen, was too slow. So Tom had needed to enclose her in a ritual that dragged all of the ambient mana towards her and then stuffed her full of mana. Everyone else actually lost some of their mana regen as a side effect. Even with all of that, it took her six hours to recharge all of her mana. It was two in the afternoon at this point, and all they had done was kill a bear.
Skippy and Abaddon had been testing Hopkins. Going in, killing a few imps, grabbing some paper for Tom, and then leaving. They'd both been steadily gaining XP and even got to level 13, thanks to their actions. Chloe was playing on Alex's iPad while Lucy patrolled the massive parking lot. That just left Tom to his own devices.
With his sudden free time, Tom returned to his Legend of Noralon strategy: exploiting every glitch, bug, and cheat code the game had to offer. Normally, learning new spells required a spellbook or scroll, but there was a tiny bug. If you had the skills to create scrolls—which Tom’s bloodline granted him—you could craft a spell scroll even if you didn’t know the spell. All you had to do was copy the symbols from the wiki, at least for the low-leveled spells.
Tom had always wondered why the devs never fixed the bug, but if the game was actually meant as a tutorial for what was happening now, maybe they weren’t supposed to? That idea was disturbing, but he’d save that for later.
For now, Tom focused on using his [Library of Akashic Records] skill to recreate mountains of high-level, single-use spell scrolls, either as learning material for Alex or as ammunition for himself. He started with the free spells he’d earned in the tutorial—ten light spells and eleven life spells. But Alex, as a true spellcaster, wasn’t nearly as limited. She added twenty more of the more valuable spells they knew to the collection.
Alex had a skill called [Grimoire] that filled the same role as his [Library of Akashic Records]. It was basically a memory skill, only specialized for magic, not system stuff like his. But more importantly, Alex could summon the [Grimoire] as a physical book and give it to someone else to learn any of the spells she knew.
That person could then learn any spell that Alex knew, and unlike the scrolls, they could repeat this. So Tom went wild. He recreated every spell he knew with [Library of Akashic Records], helping him remember things he was sure he had forgotten.
Once Alex finished paying back her debt, she went through every single scroll Tom had created. With his skill level, only around 10% of them were viable, but they still added over a hundred spells to Alex's arsenal.
"Damm, this is great," Alex said as she opened up her [Grimoire].
"You didn't get all of the spells," Tom pointed out. "We wasted so much paper."
"Meh, I got most of them," Alex said as she handed the [Grimoire] over to Tom.
Tom went through the book and chose to learn all of the water and earth spells first, as he was planning to pick up water and earth magic skills next. Technically speaking, he could learn and cast any spell he wanted, but without the right skills to boost the spells, he would only ever cast the most basic version of the spell.
"Tom, where's Lucy?" Chloe asked.
"Um," Tom looked around. "You guys see Lucy?"
"I think she wandered up to the school," Skippy said.
Tom grimaced.
"Chloe, can you play with Skippy for a bit? We're going to go look for Lucy." Tom said.
"What?! NO!" Skippy said.
"YEAH," Chloe cheered as she hugged skippy like a giant stuffed animal.
Skippy struggled but wouldn't use any real force against Chloe in case he hurt her.
Tom, Alex, and Abaddon all walked through the front entrance of the school where skippy had said Lucy had wandered off to. Tom felt his face go pale as he stared at the broken body of Ms.Lewis. Everything below the waist had been cleanly sliced off, which was also the part of her body that had been within the threshold of the school. Tom reflected that the inside of the school might be working like a dungeon and would dissolve any dead material inside.
Despite the fact that she was bisected, it was the massive gouge in her neck that appeared to have killed her, leaving a massive pool of blood on the pavement. Lucy was already liking up the pool of blood.
"Is that Ms.Lewis?" Abaddon asked as Lucy licked up their teacher's blood like barbecue sauce.
"Lucy, no, get out of there, get out of there," Alex said, pulling Lucy away from Ms. Lewis's dead body.
"What happened?" Tom asked as he tried to use [Augurs Eye] on her. The skill only called her a corpse.
"Well, I guess we won't need to hand in that fucking homework." Abaddon joked.
"That's not funny," Tom said.
"This is so unfair. She was so hot." Alex pouted.
"Oh my god, we are bad people," Tom groaned. "Come on, let's bring her back."
"I'm not helping you resurrect her. No matter how good-looking she is." Alex said. "I just got my mana back."
Tom rolled his eyes as he activated [Thirst for Knowledge]. The skill had already proven to be able to identify corpses.
<[Thirst for Knowledge] has Reached Level 4>
<[Thirst for Knowledge] has Reached Level 5>
<[My Mind is a Temple the Soul the Altar] has Reached Level 9>
<[My Mind is a Temple the Soul the Altar] has Reached Level 10>
<[My Mind is a Temple the Soul the Altar] has Reached Level 11>
"Brainfreeze"
Tom groaned as he gripped his head, blood leaking from his eye. He had to cast a healing spell to recover his hp. But now he knew everything about Ms.Lewis, from how she had gotten here to how she died to her damn measurements. It would have almost been impressive if not for the brain freeze. Why was it so painful?
"She's only Level 1. We can bring her back with a little under two thousand mana." Tom pointed out.
"But I just got my mana back," Alex complained.
"We can use Abaddon as an extra battery," Tom said.
"Hey, don't bring us into this!" Abaddon complained.
Abadon grabbed Skippy and walked over to Alex.
"Let's get this over with," Abaddon said.
Alex activated [Synchronized Chanting] as Tom moved in closer. He knelt down next to Ms.Lewis. Her skin was cold to the touch, and her clothes were soaked through snow melt. She must have been freezing when she got here. And yet, according to his [Thirst for Knowledge], she had died as a result of blood loss, not the cold. She also had a broken ankle.
"What are you doing here?" He wondered aloud as he started gathering magic into his perk.
Activating [Hand of Mercy] immediately reduced his MP to almost nothing. That was painful to watch. On the other hand, he was glad she was only level 1 and cost just under two thousand points; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to pay the mana cost.
<[Art of Life] has Reached Level 3>
<[Hand of Mercy] has Reached Level 3>
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Tom watched as Ms.Lewis's body was flooded with life magic. She sprouted new legs and pelvis, and the little injuries dotting her body knitted themselves back together, and the color returned to her cheeks. Ms.Lewis took in a huge gulp of air, nearly causing her breast to tear through what was left of her shirt, and then she threw up right into Tom's lap.
"Well, shit." Tom groaned as the mix of congealed blood and bile splattered his priestly robes.
"That's okay, Ms.Lewis. Get it all out." Tom patted her back, and she kept heaving and sputtering.
Then Ms.Lewis started to cry. Not the crying you see in movies, but the big gulping sobs that you dealt with as a kid when your emotions were so out of control you didn't even remember your name. Tom felt awkward as he rubbed her back as she sobbed. He had never done this with anyone but Chloe. So he wasn't really sure what was appropriate. So, he was just there for her as she dealt with her trauma. That and the fact that she was completely naked from the waist down didn't help his situation.
“Did you finish ?” Tom asked awkwardly, trying to break the moment.
Alex punched him in the shoulder.
“You have a naked girl in your lap. Don't make me jealous, or I will kick your nuts open."
Ms.Lewis had finally stopped crying, but her face remained resting on his chest. She didn’t let go, and Tom could feel her shaking body ease a little.
"What happened?" Ms.Lewis asked.
"You died," Abaddon said as he came into her field of view.
Ms.Lewis looked up at him and screamed. She pulled out a knife from somewhere and stabbed him squarely between the legs. Tom winced in sympathy as Abaddon dropped like a bag of bricks onto the snow-covered asphalt. His hands cradled his bleeding groin.
“Ms.Lewis! Stop!!” Tom yelled, grabbing her arms as she tried to plunge the knife into Abaddon's head. “Ms.Lewis, calm down. Put the knife away. Goddammit!! That's Hector!!!"
“She cut my dick off,” he said, rolling around on the ground in agony. Blood seeped out from below his sweatpants.
"How is that, Hector?!" Ms.Lewis asked.
"We're in the game noob," Alex said.
"Are you … Alex?! What game?! What are you talking about?!" Ms.Lewis asked.
Tom signed and started to explain what was happening: the legend of Noralon, the System Apocalypse, what happened to them, and why they were here.
<[Wordsmith] has Reached Level 16>
“So we're in a game?!” Ms.Lewis asked.
"Maybe. The system, magic, and monsters all act like they would in Legend of Noralon. And the sky has two of the three moons of Noralon. But at the same time, the Noralon map was completely different from ours. Noralon doesn't have Hopkins, Vancouver, or anything else." Tom said.
“Tom!” he shouted. “Shut the fuck up and Heal me seriously!!!”
“I’m right here,” said Tom. “What do you need?”
“What do I need?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe the question had been asked. “I need my fucking scrotum reattached!”
“Oh, right,” Tom said, placing his hand on Abaddon’s forehead. “Revitalize...”
“That’s not where I was stabbed,” said Abaddon between agonized gasps of breath.
“Dude, I’m not touching your balls. The spell will work.” He refocused his mind. “Revitalization!”
Ms.Lewis laughed and shook her head. “That was the dumbest thing I have ever …” She stopped, her eyes and mouth frozen wide open.
A faint glow shone from the point where the palm of Tom’s hand rested on Abaddon’s forehead. Abaddon’s eyes closed, and his breathing became heavy. A small moan escaped his mouth. His shoulder and arm muscles began to twitch. His fists clenched shut, and a spasm of pain rippled through his face. His hands opened suddenly, and his mouth widened into a grin. He began to laugh. It was a shaky but sincere laugh.
The kind of laugh your heart makes after you bet money you don’t have bluffing with a pair of fives and win. The wave of spasms continued down from his chest to his abdomen and then below it. Abaddon let out a roar that shook the leaves on the trees. Ms.Lewis took a cautious step back, and even Tom took a step back.
That was probably for the best because Abaddon evacuated his bowels in a spray that would have reached both of them otherwise. The spell coursed down his legs and sparked out at the tips of his big toenails. The roar ended, and Abaddon lay on the ground, panting and cupping his freshly healed balls with his freshly healed hands.
“What did you do to him?” Ms.Lewis asked Tom.
Tom stood up. “I healed him.” He touched each of his index fingers to the opposite forearm and whispered the words again: “I heal thee.” The blood didn't disappear, but the pained look on Abaddon's face melted away.
“Really? That worked?” Ms.Leiws asked as Abaddon rolled back and forth on the ground as he, held his balls in his hands.
“Hey, Abaddon. You okay?”
Abaddon’s eyes were still shut tight, and tears flowed back toward his ears. “Just let me savor the moment a little longer.”
Alex pulled out a pair of large sweatpants.
"As much as I'm enjoying the show, I do not want to resurrect you if you get hypothermia," Alex said.
Ms.Lewis snatched up the pants and quickly pulled them on, glancing between them.
"Where are my pants?" she asked as Alex handed her a pair of boots.
"Probably with your leg," Alex said.
"What?" she asked, confused.
"When we found you were missing everything below your waist," Tom said as he cleaned himself up. We had to regrow your legs when we resurrected you."
"I … what?!" she asked in shock.
"What happened to you?" Tom asked, trying to change the subject and gain some intelligence on what was inside of the school.
"I came to school when I saw the message in front of my face. There were animals attacking other people on the road. This was the safest place I knew about. I'm supposed to come here in an emergency. But when I walked in, it was empty. I thought I heard Mr.Vince, but inside these little red devils, they attacked me and clawed at my skin, my neck … I."
Tom grabbed her and held her, and she bent over and threw up again as she hyper-ventilated, tears streaming from her face as she relived her death.
"That's okay. I think we understand." Tom said.
"Should we be going somewhere? Somewhere safe?" she asked desperately.
"Ms.Lewis, would you be willing to do me a favor in exchange for resurrecting you?" Tom asked.
"Um, what?" Ms.Lewis asked.
"We have my little sister here. I'm hoping you can watch and entertain her while we clear out and claim the school."
Ms.Lewis's eyes went wide in panic.
"You can't. If you go in there, you'll die, you'll …"
Alex blasted an imp that had been near the front of the school with a lightning bolt, killing it instantly and causing Ms.Lewis to flinch backwards as she stared at the dead imp.
"We will be just fine," Alex said.
"So, would you be willing to look after my little sister for a bit?" Tom asked. "If you don't want to, you can just leave now and try to find salvation from someone else out there."
Ms.Lewis looked around, grabbing for her keys and finding nothing. Tom suspected she was realizing just what walking away from this situation would entail.
"How long will you be inside?" she asked.
Tom shrugged. "A couple of hours. You are free to leave once we're done inside, or you can stay inside the school once we claim it. When we claim it, it will become a safe zone completely free of monsters."
That last part clearly pushed her over the edge.
"Alright, I can take care of her." Ms.Lewis agreed.
"Alright, let's head down. You can watch her while the four of us go inside." Tom said.
Turning and walking back into the parking lot. Back to Chloe.
When they arrived, Chloe was trying to do up Skippy's fur in cornrows.
"Chloe," Tom called out.
"You found Lucy!!" Chloe squealed as she ran up and hugged the black poodle.
"Yeah. So Chloe," Tom said, kneeling down in front of his sister.
"This is Ms.Lewis," Tom said, introducing his teacher.
"Hello. You can just call me Betty." Ms.Lewis … Betty said.
“Wait, Tom. Don’t leave me with her. I want to stay with you,” Chloe said, running up to him and wrapping her arms around his legs.
"We'll be back soon. Don't worry; this isn't our first dungeon dive," Tom said as he pried her off of him.
"Now look. I need you to be brave, okay?" Tom asked. We need to do this, but I need you to be brave and protect Betty from the monsters, okay?"
"Ok," Chloe said with a sigh.
"Great. We'll be back soon. Stay safe," Tom said as he turned and followed the other member of his guild back to the school.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Name: Tom Bruner
Race: Half-Elf ()
Type: Humanoid
LVL: 11
SubRace: High Elf / Caucasian
Age 18
Health: 380
Stamina: 490
Mana: 1980
Health Regen: 5.5 per hour
Stamina Regen: 6.6per min
Mana Regen: 11.0 per min
Titles: Beta-Tester
Immune
None
Resistances
Mental 8.5% Soul 8%
Weakness
None
Bane
Manslayer
Classes: Augur 10, Tactiction 1
Total
STR: 11
AGIL: 11
DEX: 11
CON: 33
END: 11
PER: 110
INT: 99
WILL: 88
SPIRIT: 22
EGO: 11
CHA: 66
LCK: 11
Base
STR: 11
AGIL: 11
DEX: 11
CON: 33
END: 11
PER: 110
INT: 99
WILL: 88
SPIRIT: 22
EGO: 11
CHA: 66
LCK: 11
Personal: +4 PER +4 WILL +3 INT +3 CHA
Racial: +3 WILL +2 CON +2 CHA +1 SPIRIT
Bloodline: +5 PER +5 INT
Level Bonus: +1 to all Stats
Bloodline:
[Bloodline of the Keeper of Akashic Records]—Forgotten: Through your vein runs the blood of the forgotten Keepers of the Akashic Records. These monks, scribes, and scholars helped create the system, and within their blood are the keys to its secrets.
- [The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] - Level 14 >> Level 25
- [Words Will Always Retain their Power] - Level 13 >> Level 18
- [Library of Akashic Records] - Level 10 >> Level 19
- [Universal] - Level 8 >> Level 10
- [Wordsmith] - Level 11 >> Level 16
- [My Mind is My Temple, My Soul the Altar] - Level 6 >> Level 11
- [Thirst for Knowledge] - Level 1 >> Level 5
- [Visions of Akashic Records] - Level 1 >> Level 2
- [Soul Forge] - Level 6 >> Level 10
- +5 PER per level
- +5 INT per level
Skill Slots: 13/60: Skill Points: 1
Personal Skills
- [Analyze Person] - Level 8
- [Best of Both Worlds] - Level 7
Augur 06/16
- [Augurs Eye] - Level 7
- [Bright Arts] - Level 19
- [Art of Life] - Level 2 >> Level 3
- [Prophetic Meditation] - Level 8
- [Far Seeing] - Level 1 >> Level 11
- Capstone: [Hand of Mercy] - Level 1 >> Level 3
Tactician 05/6
- [Tactical Leader] - Level 2
- [Leadership Ⅰ] - Level 1
- [Raider Ⅰ] - Level 1
- [Coordinate Ⅱ] - Level 1
- [Logistics Ⅱ] - Level 6