Kyle Brill, and a few other people had been hiding in a basement for months. One of his neighbors was one of those people who stocked up a bunch of survival equipment and food. “Preppers.” He reminded himself again. When the apocalypse began, he’d remembered the old man a couple of houses over who had bragged about his preparations one day at a barbecue, so he immediately ran down the street to take shelter from the weird storm that had begun outside.
He almost got struck by that weird crystal-forming lightning a few times, but he managed to make it to the man’s house and down into the shelter. He was welcomed inside with open arms by the old man; “Charlie,” he reminded himself gave him a warm meal, and tried to make everyone feel comfortable. Kyle hadn’t been the only person to remember the weird old man, there were at least ten of his neighbors crammed inside the already stuffed basement.
The storm only lasted a few hours, but at the end of it, a screen appeared in front of Kyle offering him a class. He’d always enjoyed playing video games, the violent ones were the best in his opinion, but he’d played several RPGs as well; so when the system told him that his highest aptitude was to be a bard, he was disappointed. When he opened the options for bardic classes though he couldn’t help but be intrigued by bardic poisoner.
He remembered a few years prior when he’d been taking care of his father. The man had been sick for a long time, and he didn’t have the money for a nursing home to shove him into. Kyle hated taking care of him. “Why should I have to take care of this asshole? I have a masters in communication! I should already be on T.V. not taking care of this useless old man.” He used to think that stuff all the time, and he wasn’t above telling his father what he thought either.
Kyle finally got tired of it one day and decided it was time for him to start living his life. His father needed to go, and he had a plan to do it. For several months Kyle started slipping monkshood into his fathers’ meals, just a little at a time. He’d even call emergency services to report his father’s declining health. He only did that a few times, and after explaining his medical history no one looked deeper into it. Instead, most doctors gave him that pitying look, and after a few basic tests, they’d go home.
After the third time this happened, Kyle finally got the news that he’d been looking forward to. The doctors didn’t believe that his dad would make it much longer. Kyle would make sure of it. His mind came back to the bardic options and made his decision feeling an excitement he hadn’t felt since his father had taken his last quivering painful breath.
A woman from a few houses up started freaking out about the screens saying that she had to get back to her kids. She swung the door open, but as soon as she stepped through the door, we saw a monstrous bird swoop down and rip her head off. The old man slammed the door shut and lowered a metal shutter in front of it. Everyone started talking all at once, asking what the hell was going on or praying to the heavens. “Like the heavens would answer useless people like you.” He thought to himself, but to everyone else, he acted with kindness and attempted to help them calm down.
“Hey, you’re ok you’ll be fine.” He said soothingly to a little girl while she cried loudly. Kyle wasn’t paying attention to her though, instead, he was looking at a screen over her head.
Kyle Brill: Bardic Poisoner
LEVEL 1
STRENGTH: 8
CONSTITUTION:8
AGILITY:10
DEXTERITY:8
INTELLIGENCE:6
WISDOM:6
CHARISMA:10
PERCEPTION:5
0 Free Stat Points
Kyle was mostly happy with his stats, except for his intelligence and wisdom. “Can’t be a very good system if it can’t tell how smart I actually am.” He thought but never once allowed his displeasure to cross his face. He figured out the skill sheet too and immediately placed the free skill point into the conversation portion of the skill tree. Unlocking a skill called “Minor Charm,” he read over the skill description.
“Minor Charm: To get anything from another person you must convince them to do it. Minor Charm raises charisma by 10% while trying to convince a target to do something for you.” He automatically knew how to use the skill. Looking down at the little girl for the first time since he’d started to try and calm her, he said.
“Hey, everything is going to be ok.” Then he activated Minor Charm. “Believe me.” As soon as he gave that command the little girl stopped crying and smiled up at him.
“I believe you! Thank you, mister!” Kyle smiled back at the little girl and watched her walk away to go chat with someone else. Internally though he was buzzing with excitement. A notification appeared in front of him saying that he’d gained essence and he’d leveled up. The feeling of using his skill on another person made him want to put another point in charisma automatically, but he’d already gotten two points in it so instead he decided to start evening out the others as he leveled up.
Person by person Kyle practiced his skill, he convinced each of the other people in the basement that choosing a class right now wouldn’t be a good idea. As he leveled up it became an effortless task to get the others to do what he wanted them to do. It was enjoyable for a while and every five levels he’d get a new skill. Just manipulating these people gave him enough essence to get to level 10 and it was then that he was whisked away into darkness.
When Kyle opened his eyes again, he stood in front of three men in identical golden bird masks. Black wings cascaded down the backs of the men and a ring of pure light shone from behind them. They stood still in front of him not saying a word yet, but they exuded a pressure of some sort that pressed down on Kyle making him kneel in front of them.
“Welcome Kyle Brill, we are the Nosoi gods of light and healing. You may stand and behold our majesty.” The pressure disappeared from Kyle, and he was able to stand. He was annoyed at having been made to kneel, but the power coming off the three men in front of him made him forget about it. “We have come to combat the evil forces that wish to destroy your world. For us to do this we have chosen you as our champion. We offer you the boon of the passenger so that you may spread the message of our mission and raise yourself up as the champion of mankind.”
Kyle was flattered. Finally, here were people that recognized his greatness and were wanting to reward him for it. “Of course, they would want me.” He thought to himself. The Nosoi continued to look at him as if waiting for his response. He was smarter to just agree to something without asking questions though.
“What would that entail?” He asked and the smallest of smiles appeared on the middle ‘gods’ face.
“You would use the skills that we bestow upon you to bring all of humanity under your banner. With you at the helm of your people, you will be able to fight against the powers of darkness. You would be our mouthpiece and any actions you take in your journey to that end will be sanctioned by us. You have been chosen as the king of humanity, and we have chosen wisely. The boon of the passenger will give you the skills and power to bring all of humanity together. By enforcing your will on others, they will become your strength and you will be theirs.” As Kyle listened to the explanation a wide smile spread across his face. “King.” The word echoed through his mind, and he made his decision. There was a small price for this new power a 20% tax on his essence gain, but Kyle was fine with this as long as he became king.
He faded to darkness and disappeared from in front of the Nosoi and as soon as he was gone the three men broke into laughter, happy with the trick they’d played, and looking forward to the gains they would make using this lowly human.
As soon as Kyle opened his eyes back in the basement, he instinctually turned on his essence sight. There were what looked like billions of multicolored stars filling his vision. He focused on the people he’d spent the last week with and found them to be extremely lacking. Their bodies seemed dull and lacking any direction, unlike when he looked inside himself. The Nosoi had given him a core of blue, and in his mind, he had the knowledge of how to cultivate dream essence.
He'd also been given a skill that didn’t show up on his skill tree called inject. Because it wasn’t part of the skill tree, he had no way to read the skill description, but he already knew what it did and how to use it. “I am the chosen of Gods, I should have a name that reflects that.” He said and called Charlie over. The old man had spent a lot of time reading the bible while they had been stuck in the basement.
“Hey, buddy what do you think would be a good biblical name for someone chosen by gods?” The man looked puzzled for a moment and then argued that there was only one God, but Kyle didn’t have any use for that. He grabbed the man’s head and told him to be calm using Minor Charm, then he placed his forehead on the other man and injected a good amount of dream and water essence into him. Kyle asked the question again and Charlie listed off some names that would fit him. In the end, he chose “Samael.”
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From there Kyle didn’t have to do anything. Charlie began talking to the others exalting the virtues of Samael. He watched with his essence sight as each of the other people was infected with his aura. Whenever he wanted, the others would shower him with compliments and rush to fulfill even unspoken orders. Samael finally ordered each of them to accept a class. They revealed all of the information from their screens, and he told each of them exactly which classes they should take.
After that, he sent them outside to fight for him. As they leveled up, he gained essence through them. It wasn’t much between the 20% tax and there only being seven people left. The little girl and Charlie died on the first day. They were weak and Samael didn’t feel any pity for them, only disappointment that they wouldn’t provide him with more essence. As the weeks passed Samael kept his hunting party going out to make him stronger during the day. At night he would bring them back in to serve him. After a while he got bored though.
He only had one skill in the poison skill tree so that he could defend himself in case his charm skills failed. He planned to rectify that though. Once more he thought about the enjoyment, he’d felt poisoning his father, and he became excited.
He started experimenting on his group, watching as his poisons caused different and terrible effects on his subjects. He’d chosen to allow one of his subjects to be a healer, so it was easy to keep them alive as he tortured them. The auric ability would break any time he subjected the person to the trauma of his torture, but that was better for Samael. Without any dream essence holding them, they felt all of the pain, and he enjoyed it as they screamed and begged for mercy.
He never used his poisons on the healer because he needed that subject to keep the others alive, but overall, it was fun. “It’s also sanctioned by the gods! The heavens want me to do this!” When the leaderboard came, and he found himself on the low end of almost all of the lists he beat some of his subjects within an inch of death. “How dare they attempt to outdo the heavens chosen. I will show them my fury soon.” By the end of the month, he stayed in the top three for cultivation and managed to just barely scrape into the top 10 on the bardic list.
Samael promised himself that he would make every single person on the top 10 lists suffer for daring to take the top spots for themselves. As more time passed, he and his subjects gained more strength and Samael learned more about what was happening close by in the city. There was a dungeon close by called the Venom Trap and an entire jungle had popped up in the area of Madrona Park. He ordered his subjects to go take over the dungeon.
None of them returned that night, and he knew they were all dead. Samael couldn’t feel any of them anymore. He was alone. “How can the king of humanity be alone? A king has subjects! How dare they die without my permission!” He spent weeks in the basement alone and as he did, he became more and more angry. Then one day the monsters stopped. He peered out several times, but he never saw the hoards of beasts that had been terrorizing the city for the last two months.
Samael decided that it was time to move. The chosen of the gods needed subjects, he needed to bring humanity under his banner. Slipping through the streets quietly he looked for somewhere safe to stay, somewhere with people. That’s when he saw them.
A group of people stood on a rooftop watching as another man fought off a cyclops with a small sword. He didn’t seem to be very good with the sword, but he was fast, and in Samael’s essence sight he saw an incredibly dense and powerful aura. There was no way that he could take over this man, not without several more people making his aura more powerful. Samael rubbed dirt on his face and cut his own face with his soul-bound weapon a small signet ring with a blade in it and a small gem that held his poisons.
He ran up to the group and put on a performance, he made himself small and pitiable. It was a performance that he had perfected when he was in school in order to keep bullies from beating him up. Of course, that was before he’d joined sports and put on 60 pounds of muscle. The group welcomed him, and a pretty girl named Autumn said that she would take him somewhere safe.
Samael kept his aura tight against his core, this girl had a powerful aura as well, but not as powerful as the man with the sword. He asked questions of Autumn as they traveled.
“Where are we going? What is that place called? Who’s in charge?” He knew the girl’s name from the leaderboards, but unfortunately, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to make her suffer the way he wanted to. She was a healer, and he didn’t torture healers, they were too valuable. “I’ll have to find another way to make her suffer.”
When they got to the camp, she handed him off to someone else. A smaller old woman whose name he didn’t care to learn. She was weak, and he could work with that. She took him to a small one-person pop-up tent and apologized for the lack of space. He just smiled charmingly at her and used Minor Charm.
“May I hold your head?” He asked and she gave him an odd look, but then nodded her assent. Implanting his aura into the woman was incredibly easy. Samael knew that he had to be smarter about taking over this camp with powerful people than he had been with the basement. So, he ordered her to just spread some news to just a few people about a nice man named Samael that just came to camp. She did just that and by the end of the day, he had three more subjects.
It was difficult in the upcoming days to get his subjects to avoid anyone with a core. There were around 20 of them walking around the camp but hardly any of them consistently used their essence sight and almost none of them had an aura. His army of subjects grew, and he started leveling up again. Not being able to continue his hobby made him cranky, but he couldn’t afford to be caught before he’d succeeded in his other goals.
By the time a week was over half of the camp was already under his control. Some of the cultivators had started getting suspicious of the empty-eyed subjects, but there was no way to connect it to him. The first cultivator he brought under his control was a man named Donnie. He was the weakest of them, but still stronger than any of his other subjects, and with that, his control grew exponentially. Donnie would convince his fellow cultivators to come see Samael, convincing them that he had alcohol or dirty magazines.
When the cultivators got there, he would inject his aura into them directly. Every few days he would feel his control slipping from some of the subjects with higher wisdom, but he would order them to come to him quickly and he would inject more aura into that person. Eventually, he just told them that if they felt disconnected from him at all come to him and he would bless them again. Once the entire camp was under Samael’s control it was time to move on the leaders.
His army gathered in the night, ambushed, and captured Damien, the “leader,” of the camp. It took slightly longer to get him under control, but he had next to no aura, and it was easy to get him under control in the end. Unfortunately keeping him under control was not nearly as easy. The man’s wisdom was hundreds of levels higher than his own, and he had to always keep at least 20 subjects with him consistently exalting Samael to keep from having to inject the man with aura every five minutes.
The next target would be the bard. Samael scowled every time he saw the man, a few days after he’d arrived in the camp Santiago had noticed him walking around. The other bard had scolded him for walking around without a charisma-dampening mask. “This lowly beast dares to order a king?” He had thought. Samael took great pleasure in capturing Santiago. The man was so beautiful under his mask it almost made Samael want to release him, but then he thought about how beautiful Santiago would be if he was screaming.
Autumn was the last to fall. As her two friends held her down, she screamed and tried to suppress his aura with her own. With all his subjects expanding and strengthening his aura though it was just a matter of time. Three full days passed, and she fought him the entire time, but just having people under his control gained him essence, and he would cultivate every day to gain more strength. She fell on the third day as the sun set.
Samael spent the next several weeks preparing for the man he’d seen in the city and his friends. They were strong too, but they would fall. He made his subjects tell him any information about the group that they could remember. A lot of the information was about the leader of the group. When he asked his subjects who the man had been Santiago stepped forward faster than anyone else to tell me the man’s name.
“Nathan Schute.” I scowled at the name. This peasant dared to top him in all three leaderboards. Even after taking over this entire camp, that man still topped the cultivation leaderboard. It was infuriating, and Samael looked forward to having fun with the man even more than he had with Santiago, and after having had Santiago for the last few weeks he’d had a lot of fun. Finally, after hitting level 45, it was time to put his plan into action.
Samael sent Donnie, who had quickly become one of his favorite pets, to the city to retrieve Underdawn, the team of bards. He called all of his subjects to gather around the big tent and eagerly awaited their return. Through his subjects, he saw the group walk into camp. Samael was almost giddy as he saw his future subjects.
The fighter Susan fell first, her wisdom being the lowest, it was easy to overtake her. Now he had the highest-level fighter in the entire camp, she was quite a looker as far as a lower charisma person could be. The others all wore the stupid masks which angered Samael. “How dare they attempt to hide themselves from their king!” He thought fuming with the indignant rage that was perfectly reasonable for a monarch to express.
The performance started, Damien spoke his part well and the entire crowd performed their role. Every time they celebrated Samael his aura would reach out and attack one of the members of Underdawn. The fighter’s girlfriend fell next, the sniper would make an exceptional pawn. His auras strength grew more powerful as he took over these high leveled people.
The giant man Josh sensed something right before he fell and activated his aura. Josh grew half an inch but stopped almost immediately sinking into the lethargic state that all of his subjects had. Damien was almost finished with his introduction, and Samael stood and walked confidently out of the tent. Nathan warned his other friend Tony and the man's aura flared to life.
It had an odd feeling to it and some of the stars in its essence eroded away. Samael hadn’t expected that, but it didn’t matter. His army of subjects flooded the young man with aura until a couple of seconds later, Tony was completely suppressed. Nathan moved his aura attempting to fight Samael’s control. A king wouldn’t bow to a peasant though, and his army surged back attacking Nathan.
To his surprise, the Bard of War defended himself by drawing his aura in further. Samael was slightly in awe of the density and control over his enemy’s aura, and he internally smiled. He couldn’t wait to draw all of the information he could out of this man regarding cultivation. Since his aura wasn’t working he would use his conversation skills.
“Calm my friends! Be calm!” The crowd silenced but it never stopped attacking Nathan. From what he’d learned about the man it was highly unlikely that he would leave his friends behind. Samael walked slowly through the crowd that parted for him like butter. Every now and then he would stop and reset his control on someone but eventually, he stood just a few feet in front of Nathan.
“You must be Nathan, Santi told me about you.” He said to the man using a skill he’d gotten at level 25 called first impressions. The man didn’t make a movement and his aura stayed as steady as a brick wall. His eyes did flick over and looked at Santiago. “So, they’re friends good to know.” Samael thought to himself wickedly.
“I’m guessing you’re Samael.” The bard growled at Samael causing another burst of anger through his body that he didn’t allow to show on his face.
“You’re a strong one huh? Aren’t you tired? Wouldn’t you just like to relax for a while? I can help you with that you know.” Samael used a skill he’d just gotten at level 40 called “You’re Safe Here.” The skill clearly affected him, and the army surged the aura forward. To the king's surprise, however, in a moment the man had stabbed himself in the leg. Nathan's aura surged forward as well pushing Samael’s back. He was seething at this point.
“Oh wow!” He said giving the other man the widest smile he could. “I’ll do some good old-fashioned manipulation then.”
“Even the casters with incredibly high wisdom haven’t been able to fight me off for this long! You’re going to be so much fun.” Samael set up his reveal that should make the Bard of War drop his guard. “Your other friends have already shown me such… nice hospitality.” It was working Nathan's body language had changed to be more aggressive. He tried to lash out at Samael, but with a thought, the big guy and the fighter got in his way. When they moved again the king continued to speak.
“You know I’m really enjoying all the essence I’m getting from these people. I’ll be at the top of the leaderboard before you know it. Getting a boon from a sponsor sure is great, isn’t it?” Samael attempted to throw his enemy off balance to make him waiver. “You though, you’re going to be the feather in my cap, and once you’re under my control…” His eyes traveled down his enemy’s body imagining the painful boils and burns that he would inflict soon.
“Grab him,” Samael ordered and the fighter moved to follow his order, but then Nathan did something that he didn’t expect. He ran away, he took something else from the king! “I will burn his body to ash!” Samael grabbed Susan and threw her to the ground. He kicked her repeatedly in the face, she didn’t bleed or bruise, which infuriated him further. He turned ordering the top three back into the tent. The King needed to blow off some steam.