— Keira —

As sensation returned, a series of System Notifications rang through Keir’s head even before she opened her eyes. Recognition of the sounds came hand in hand with the memory of the battle. With a start she opened her eyes, squinting against the midday light. Something was very wrong but she couldn’t immediately put her finger on it.

Her camp drew her attention first as it was literally directly in front of her. What she saw made no sense. She knew it had been trashed during the fighting, but why was everything covered in layers of leaf litter and detritus? Where was the grass scorched by her scattered campfire, the torn up terrain from their fight? If she didn’t know better, she would have said that her camp was left abandoned for years.

As she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing, she noticed how weird her body felt. She was an adventurer and former heavy infantry officer but she still would have expected her heart to be racing with the strangeness of the situation and the memory of battle being so fresh. Instead her pulse rate was so normal she couldn’t feel it. What she could feel was a familiar temperature dissonance.

Before learning the importance of being well liked by the logistics troops and quartermasters her first officer's cloak was poorly enchanted. A poorly or lazily made temperature enchantment would keep you from getting too hot or cold, but it did so by perfectly matching the surrounding temperature with your skin. Sitting leaned against the tree she felt that same unpleasant feeling of the world being exactly the temperature of her.

She was working herself into a mild panic, even if her heart was still not matching it, so she took a deep breath and opened her notifications.

“Quest ‘Aid Still-Leaf Village with their viper infestation’ Failed.”

“New System Quest available ‘Avenge Still-Leaf Village’.”

“Your class ‘Steel Coast Tide Carver’ has been changed to ‘Stygian Tide Carver’.”

“Your Race ‘Elf’ has changed to ‘Abyssal Wight (Elf)’.”

“Some of your equipped Gear has undergone Advancement”

When the newly undead elf finished reading the list she realized not only was her calming breath the first she’d taken since waking, the reason for her apparently calm pulse was its complete absence. Rather than panic or dread the notifications calmed her still heart. She knew her undead state was something she would have to process later but it at least answered many of the questions she’d been grappling with. Before she could go too far down that particular rabbit hole she forced herself to focus on her notifications.

With not only the apparent passage of time but also the available quest to avenge the village the reason for her failed quest was obvious. She dismissed that notification and focused on the available quest.

“Avenge Still-Leaf Village: Still-Leaf Village has fallen and its conqueror has made its home among the bodies of its people. Objective: Slay “Ancient Viper Matriarch (Severely Weakened)” Rewards: “Variable” Accept Quest (Yes/No)”

While System Quests were never generated for easy tasks they were also at least theoretically possible. With both the chance and incentive to avenge herself and the village she’d been sent to aid there was never really a choice, so Keir mentally selected Yes. With that done she dismissed her notifications and opened her Stat Sheet.

Name: Keira

Race: Abyssal Wight (Elf)

Class: Stygian Tide Carver

Level: 1

Tier: 3

Affinity: Steel (Innate) Death, Tide, Dark (Undead Race)

Skills: Class Skills (Warrior’s Path Lvl 10, Tide Carver’s Stance Lvl 1, Blood Thorns Lvl 1 Serrated Strike Lvl 1)

General Skills (Bushcraft Lvl 4, Inspection Lvl 6, Survival Lvl 3, Tactics Lvl 9, Temperature Resistance Lvl 1, Toxin Resistance Lvl 1, Weaponsmith Lvl 2)

She cursed under her breath when she saw her level was one rather than forty three. Her anger didn’t last long when she saw that her tier had increased from two to three. Tier three was the highest tier any warrior Path could reach. Most, including her own, topped out at the peak of tier two. She hadn’t expected to reach any higher until she found a Path to transcend her basic class Path. Her new Death affinity was also a surprise. Ways to expand a person's Affinities were vanishingly rare. Her skills held fewer surprises but she still needed to examine them more closely.

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She knew what to expect from her advancement because of what she experienced advancing from a tier one warrior to tier two Iron Coast Tide Breaker. Upon advancement the class skills of the previous tier would be consolidated into a single level one Skill. At level one it allowed free use of the combined skills. As it leveled not only would their power and versatility increase, she would also be able to incorporate aspects of the following tier into them. Her new resistance skills were a result of her undeath but were not terribly useful as they were. She remembered one of her superiors she’d gotten along well with who’d gotten “Temperature Resistance” from his class had told her level one really only affected day to day issues. Things like food temperature or ignoring the cold sea spray at sea. There wouldn’t be a chance to level them either. The vipers weren’t elementally aligned and even diluted their venom was well beyond what her resistance skill could blunt even after a few levels.

The only other thing that was new was the pair of Stygian Tide Carver class skills. She selected and read through the skills and smiled to herself. While still a bit weak at level 1 they seemed to have potential.

“Blood Thorns Lvl 1: For a single strike, enhance either your weapon or armor with thorny vines of frozen blood. A small portion of blood consumed by the vines is returned to the caster in the form of regeneration. Cooldown 24 seconds”

Serrated Strike Lvl 1: Sacrifice a portion of your health or regeneration to generate a serrated edge of blood to enhance your next strike. Cooldown N/A”

For the first time since waking Keir looked down at her body. She sat slumped slightly against the tree she’d impacted. A few plants had grown up around, and over her. It made her wish she was more familiar with the local flora. If she was she might have been able to use the rate of their growth to judge how long it had been since her death. As things stood the plants had little to tell her she could actually use, so she ignored them and focused on her gear.

Even with the notification she expected her armor to be a rusty and rotten mess, and she wasn’t entirely wrong. Her gauntlets and greaves were heavily pitted with rust, their leather straps dry and brittle. Fortunately the rest of her armor was in much better shape. Her leather armor was a dark gray instead of the brown it had been. It was also noticeably denser than it had been.

Her breastplate had undergone the greatest change. It had previously been a regular dull steel with a few minor dents and scratches before the snake had caved it in. When she looked down she saw a few small dents rather than the massive damage and a strange hoarfrost pattern of copper patina color spread across the metal from the seams. After a moment's hesitation she Inspected her altered armor.

“Leather Armor of the Wight” A simple but sturdy set of leather armor enhanced by passing through the veil of death with its wearer. (-1 DEX +2 CON)

“Blood Forged Breastplate” At the moment of its wearer’s death this breastplate drank deeply of the blood of its wearer and her foe. It is now imbued with the durability of its wearer and the strength of her foe. (+1 CON +3 STR Slight increase to the effectiveness of blood based regeneration)

Keir felt her death was a rather steep price for the upgrades but she knew her armor was exponentially more valuable and useful then it had been. She only wished she’d had a weapon on hand that received a similar treatment.

She stood and tried to give a cathartic exhale as the small vines and weeds snapped and fell away from her. No noise and only a tiny bit of air came out however as she hadn’t bothered to inhale after her earlier curse. It was strange to realize that every time she wanted to speak or even make a sound she’d need to deliberately inhale. As she did her best to focus on the implications of that rather than the more daunting issues undeath may bring she searched through her ruined camp.

The majority of her supplies were ruined. Her tent and bedroll were tattered and filthy. Her mess kit and helmet were partially crushed and rusted through, even her dagger was rusted into a solid mass with its sheathe. The only supplies that were still intact were those held in her enchanted pack. In addition she found five of the viper fangs that had been laid out by the fire and the broken fang of the ancient viper that had killed her.

Keir had no weapons worth the name but she did have some materials along with her small camp hatchet and a short knife that had been in her pack. She spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the night tapping into her fairly under leveled Weaponsmith skill. She almost stopped as the sun went down to make a fire, but she found the growing dark did little to hinder her vision. If anything the darkness seemed to make her vision more acute. She only stopped when she Inspected her handiwork and saw “Makeshift Viper Fang Longsword”.

The blade was made from the Ancient Viper Matriarch fang, the handle was the best preserved fang painstakingly straightened and deeply embedded in the broken end of the blade fang. The crossguard was formed from the shortened points of two more fangs. The makeshift weapon was held together with her spare tent stakes and reinforced with the metal of her helmet. Though the fangs were mostly very high quality materials her limited skill wasn’t enough to give the blade any enhancements. Truth be told it was barely enough to allow her to use sword skills with it.

She didn’t know if it was because she’d resurrected around noon or because of her undead nature, but she was not at all tired by the time she finished. She was stronger than she had been and if her quest was to be believed her foe was weaker. Despite that, she had no intention of charging straight into battle with the massive serpent with an unfamiliar makeshift weapon. Instead, she set off into the night to seek the weaker spawn of her foe to level and acclimate to changes to her body and her new weapon and skills.