— Lindel —

Lindel could hear the sounds of the village returning to normal as she walked over to the bins and barrels holding the new produce. The four mostly full bins, and the partially full barrels below, looked a little sad in the mostly empty store.

Normally Lindel would have left the store closed in favor of a stand in front of the shop with so little produce on offer. In her experience few things were worse for morale than seeing an empty grocer. Unfortunately her stand was destroyed along with everyone else’s during the attack. The market had also degraded back to a standard square after so long with no stalls or business so even if the resources hadn’t been needed more elsewhere, there was no point building a new stand yet.

With a sigh like wind brushing through leaves she turned her focus back to the task at hand. Sitting in front of the barrels were a few bushel baskets full of produce the dryads had delivered shortly before the morning’s alert.

It was their second harvest but even with Lindel over paying for the produce their next one would take at least a couple of weeks. Even with the magic of dryads making crops grow to maturity in days was a costly prospect.

Lindel quickly and efficiently transferred most of the contents from the baskets into their corresponding containers.

With the first part of her job done she moved the baskets and their remaining contents to a workstation set up behind the counter. The cutting board, knives and other tools were speckled with the crystal flecks of the System.

With practiced ease Lindel grabbed a bunch of the strange grapes and placed them on the cutting board as opened her Shop System screen. Immediately she was greeted with the same notifications she’d received every time since returning to life.

The Harvest Oak System Interface: Notifications Pending

Still-Village Tier Two unlocked new Shop Archetype options (Expand for full list)

Shop Archetype selection locked due to severe structural damage.

Lindel barely scanned over the notifications before dismissing them and navigating to the utility section of her System.

She found and tapped into her Product Processing Utility and began retrieving the seeds from the grapes. Farmers had a similar Utility but theirs used their farmer level and focused on seed tier. Lindel’s only produced basic seeds and seedlings but it focused on quantity.

Since they were unlocked through the village system she could simply purchase the seeds and seedlings through her Shop System, indeed she had done so with the first batch. It also cost considerably more Improvement Points; almost exponentially more points in fact.

The new produce was unusual and so were their seeds, or in the case of the mushrooms, spores.

The grapes contained oddly anatomical heart shaped seeds.

The oat seeds were sharp edged spirals before processing them into usable grains.

The rice itself wasn’t much different from the finished product but the seedlings were quite interesting to look at. They were at least as durable as any other rice seedlings but they were semi transparent and looked almost intangible as their leaves were moved only by winds so gentle as to be almost imperceptible. Strong winds instead stilled the leaves as they stiffened under the pressure.

Lindel wasn’t entirely sure how unusual the fungus spores were, as she had little experience with selling spores. She wasn’t sure if the small clear pouches filled with a red mist like powder were normal or not, but was fairly sure the way it constantly swirled wasn’t.

Either way she soon had the seeds, seedlings, and spores packaged and the remaining detritus ready to dump into her compost box. In return for allowing her to extract more seeds than were actually present in the produce the rest of the plant was rendered into inedible scraps.

After taking a few moments to clean her station she gathered the fruit of her labor and took it over to the section of her store intended for such things. With nothing of immediate use to do she walked back over to the chair behind the counter.

Since she had returned to life she found the strange vines that largely took over the bulk of her motor functions didn’t need rest in the same way her withered desiccated muscle once had. They would grow weaker for a time if she over exerted herself but normal activities didn’t bother her. She could technically stand behind the counter for days without needing a break but she still preferred to sit when not busy. It just made her feel a little more normal

In the quiet of her empty shop it was hard to ignore the faint rustle of vines coming from her body. Even when she sat still, the vines were never entirely motionless.

Stolen novel; please report.

After what felt more like hours than the few tens of minutes it really was, the door to her shop opened with a dull jingle of the slightly corroded bell above the door.

Lindel was already happy for the distraction but when she saw the chitinous form of Celylia step through Lindel smiled widely.

When the beautiful mothkin noticed Lindel behind the counter she smiled back and in the voice of a stack of old paper rustling she said “It's good to see you Lindel.” She paused for a moment before carrying on with an almost tentative tone “My new form’s weakness at least gives me a reason to come here fairly often.” As she spoke Celylia toyed idly with one of her fluffy antennae and the mist filling her form was silver tinted green.

They’d discovered fairly early on that the rarer the undead, the less often they needed to sate their hunger to remain comfortable. Of the few who decided to test the limits, even the simplest forms of undead were still fully rational, albeit somewhat miserable. By contrast the higher forms who were doing the same, including Ahti, barely even noticed the slowly growing hunger.

Pushing aside her thoughts of the differences between the villagers as well as her thoughts of how cute Celylia looked playing with her antenna. Instead Lindel hopped to her feet and walked over to meet Celylia at the produce, happy for a chance to spend time with Celylia.

— Serilda —

With the seemingly impossible story of the village being returned to the living world with their souls and minds intact by the goddess of death confirmed, the dwarven soldiers were gathered in an empty patch of land. An almost entirely collapsed farm house indicated it had been a fairly small farm but the land remained untended.

Serilda had been assigned to keep an eye on one of the farms on almost the opposite side of the small village and wait for orders. By the time word had not only gone around the encircling troops and finally been sent to those who stopped at farms, the troops by the road had begun making camp. By the time Serilda rode around to join the rest of the troops the ground was leveled and a large number of tents were going up.

Even as Serilda rode over to where the rest of the mounts were gathered, plenty of other troops still tending to their own mounts, nervous energy buzzed through her body and a thousand thoughts were fluttering through her head.

From what she’d heard, it seemed the Archmage who’d been sent along with them had met with the council, including the guard captain, to confirm the claims. Serilda was dreading needing to meet with the man. From everything she’d heard from her friend and most of the few other villagers she’d met he was kind of a dick. Unfortunately he was also her best, or at least quickest, way to confirm the status of her friend.

The rumor among the troops while they marched seemed to indicate her friend had returned from the dead, but other rumors sparked by the handful of undead they’d met on the way said not every villager returned through the veil.

Serilda tried her hardest to school her thoughts. She had plenty of responsibilities to handle before she could start her search. At minimum she would need to get her mount settled and her tent put up. More than likely she would receive other tasks during that time.

Unfortunately nothing she needed to do would actually take much focus. She’d tended to mount often enough to do so in her sleep, so her mind soon wondered.

As a soldier so close to The Great Beast Steppes she’d lost a few friends and fellow soldiers over the years. That had been somewhat expected however, even if it was never easy.

The fall of Still-Leaf was not at all expected. Even years later she could vividly remember receiving the news. She’d been on leave, spending time with Ella, her girlfriend, when a guard arrived at their door. At first she’d just been disappointed, assuming the guard had been sent to deliver orders saying her leave was shortened or canceled. The grim look on his face had soon made it clear it was nothing so simple even before he spoke. She could almost still feel the gut punch of emotion hearing about the near certain death of one of her closest friends. She could almost still hear the disparate disbelief in Ella’s voice when she asked if there was any chance there were survivors.

She was well into setting up her tent when she finally managed to push aside the memories. Unfortunately the thoughts that replaced them were not exactly an improvement. With her pack right there it was hard not to think about the rune covered sack Ella had spent many hours enchanting. Not only would they preserve bones for the proper funerary rites of the wood elves, they would lead her to the bones.

When she heard the villagers were returned she hoped she wouldn’t have any use for the bag. It would only detect bones with no life or will. After tying off the last line, her nerves got the better of her and she retrieved the sack.

Activating the enchantments was a simple task. A trickle of many into a specific rune powered the entire sequence.

Serilda barely felt the tears begin trickling down her cheeks when she felt a strong mental tug.

She was still standing there holding the thick silk bag when a soldier called out to her saying “Oy Serilda, the archmage wants ta see ya in front of ‘er tent. I think yer meant to lead a patrol in the forest.”

Serilda shook her head slightly, wiping the tears from her eyes, and tucked the sack into her pouch. She took a deep breath to center herself in her role as a soldier and stepped out of the tent.

She confirmed she received the message and set off towards the large tent near the middle of the camp.

When she reached the tent the soldier standing guard said “Ye can head on in. The archmage is meetin’ with the village guard captain to set up some patrols.”

Serilda wanted to curse under her breath but her professionalism was what was keeping her going so she pushed aside the tent flap.

The tent was only a bit larger than the soldiers tent on the outside but it was much larger on the inside. Even as Serilda noticed the size she saw the interior was in part lit by a dim scintillating light. She was in no mood to be interested in the magics lining the tent but for some reason she found her eyes drawn to the source of the light.

The archmage was standing by a table with a large map laid out across it. Serilda barely even saw her, however. Her eyes were glued to the tall lithe form of a familiar elf. Her right arm was the source of the multicolored light. Instead of flesh it was a strange spectral material.

Without meaning to, Serilda almost whispered “Visa?”

Clearly the elf heard her as she spun around before calling out “Seril!”

Serilda felt like she was flying as she rushed over, almost tackling her dear friend in a bear hug,