“I have reviewed all the footage available to me since the system was established.”
I felt like I should have been horrendously hungover. I remembered black ooze coming from my pores, my nose, mouth, ears, even my eyes. I had been covered in the oily substance, sitting- well, laying in it. My clothes had been ruined. I cracked an eye open.
Nothing hurt. That alone caught me by surprise.
“How do you feel, young master?”
I sat upright and shook my head. “Don’t call me that. I don’t like that title.”
“Very well. Mister Blackwood, you have ranked up. How are you feeling?”
I felt… good. Really, really good. Better than I had the first time I leveled up. Granted, that had been just minutes after my death, so a bit of a rocky start there. This was different. My skin felt healthy without being oily. My hair was soft. My muscles felt… strong. Stronger than they had been before the level up. Stronger, even than the extra stats warranted. I stood and stretched, and was shocked when nothing popped.
“What the…?”
Anubis smiled from where he sat, and that caught my attention. With my newly enhanced vision, I could see his skin was completely flawless.
“Yes, you are starting to grasp what a rank up means.”
I nodded while looking at my hands. The texture was so easy to make out, yet looked smoother than I had ever remembered my skin being. “More than just a quantitative jump, then.”
I could hear the smirk in Anubis’ voice when he answered. “Quite so. You have taken the first step, though a small one, to joining the greater cosmos. Now, about what I said before.”
“Yeah,” I interrupted. Anubis quirked an eyebrow, but otherwise did not respond. “You were talking about reviewing footage of me. There was something before that, though. You were muttering to yourself. Something about… threads? Am I remembering that right?” I looked up at his face, and just as I did, I swear his eyebrows had been trying to climb off his face. But I blinked, and it was back to that mask of neutral pleasantness.
“Perhaps you were dreaming while undergoing the rank up. It would not be the first time I had heard of that, though it is rare.”
I snorted. “Buddy, rare things seem to happen around me with startling regularity.”
He smiled again, though this was the practiced, public-persona smile, all plastic and shiny. “So it seems. I reviewed the footage, and you have had a hand guiding you along your rather… tumultuous journey.”
I huffed air. “You could say that.”
“I did. What I find interesting, however, is how often you willingly enter seemingly impossible situations, only for you to waltz out like it was a breeze.”
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
Anubis shook his head. “I don’t think you understand. Your friend, Basil? He’s a prime example of a slow-growth adventurer. His kind live inordinately long lives, but proportionally, he’s around average in his growth through the levels.”
“A hundred years a level?” I scoffed. “Right.”
“Yes, for a species that lives thousands of years with only a little effort. That’s before they rank up.”
I opened my mouth, thought better of what I was going to say, then shut it again.
“Yes, now you are starting to see. You took Basil in, which you did not need to do, and you forced him to grow three levels in a day. That isn’t just unheard of in the Undead Empire, at least, without significant resources. That’s an impossibility. That is the sort of growth royals might enjoy, if there is a weak enough world on one of their front lines.”
“Okay, so I’ve been a good influence on my weird undead friend.”
Now Anubis snorted. The very act caught me by surprise, with how buttoned-down he appeared to be. “A good influence.” He shook his head as if he enjoyed a joke only he knew. “You just ranked up. You are the first of your kind to do so. You are three weeks into your three month tutorial, which, impossibly, you are not part of.”
“Well, there was a necromancer,” I started to explain. Anubis waved my explanation off.
“I am aware of the exploit that was used. That branch of the Undead Empire has already been pruned for sanctioning an exploit. It was only a few million, but the point has been made to them.”
I blinked at him. Was he saying several million zombies were killed, all because the house party I was at was gate-crashed by an over-enthusiastic necromancer?
“And then you made your way into this dungeon, well before it was ready. That was the second day in the System. Not a single human had escaped their tutorial room yet. Despite that, you walked in the front doors of a dungeon. And then you beat the first level in a day. Would you like to know how long the average adventurer is projected to take to speedrun the boss?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, how long?”
“Three days. If they come in prepared, with potions and elixers on hand, and a blessing of luck. It’s been nearly three weeks since you last saw your friend. Aren’t you concerned about him?”
It finally clicked in my head. “Oh, holy shit. Basil. It’s been three weeks? Seriously?”
“Yes.” The grave finality of the angel’s tone told me everything he thought of my thoughtlessness.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Is he okay?”
The gathering storm of negative energy was wiped away in a second. “Of course. Would you like to see?”
I nodded, and Anubis made a little square with his hands. He expanded it, and a window flickered into existence with video showing Basil sitting at a slot machine.
“Woah, he’s still on the first floor?”
“He is. And he discovered a hidden quest.” He paused for a moment while his eyes flicked around, seemingly looking at information on the screen that I couldn’t see. “Yes, it seems he is on the verge of completing it. He’s a fine young man, very diligent. A hard worker, as you would say.”
I shook my head. “He’s playing a slot machine. How does that make him a hard worker?”
Anubis grinned. “He’s playing his one-hundred-thirty-eighth machine. Of one-fifty. It’s taken him weeks. Even he is not aware of the time spent in each dive. But he will walk out of that floor a millionaire, even if he loses to the boss.”
“Good on you, Basil,” I said with a whistle. Anubis’ eyes snapped to my mouth as he looked at me for a moment, and it looked to me like he was going to ask a question, then the moment was gone.
“That title, should he never meet up with you again, never fall into your influence again, will be enough to catapult him into the lower echelons of high society in the Undead Empire.”
“Are titles that important?”
This time, the laugh that erupted from Anubis was a loud bark, more like a sharp yip from a dog the size of a horse. He wiped a single tear from his eye before speaking. “I brought it up, and still I forget that you did not go through the tutorial. That will put you at a significant disadvantage against the rest of your populace. They will understand the framework that you now operate under.”
“That’s a lot of words to call me ignorant.” I crossed my arms.
“Forgive me, you are right. To answer your question: yes, titles are immensely important. He will get not one, but two. One for finding and completing the hidden quest, and the other for being the first to do so.”
I shook my head. “I already got that one.”
Anubis’ eyes locked onto me, and I felt a surge of adrenaline as his gaze was like a particularly vicious predator sizing me up. “Explain.”
I shrugged. “I got Sleuth and Investigator a while ago. Got it for befriending the guys on floor ninety-nine.”
Anubis put a hand to his face and held it there for a long moment before wiping downward, making his already long face much longer. It was almost enough to make me laugh. Almost. I didn’t want to find out if his teeth were as sharp as they looked.
“Of course you did.”
“Yeah, that’s why I was wondering if the titles were really that important. It feels like half the things I do get me a title, these days.”
Anubis set his gaze on me again. “Explain.”
“I have…” I paused, pulled up my sheet, and checked it over.
Name: Alabaster Blackwood
Race: Half-dead Human-Zombie
Faction: Blackwood Company
Job: Half-dead
Age: 20
Renown level: Unknown
Renown: 1270
Level: 10
XP: 1/150
HP: 3700/3700
HP regen per second: 1.85
MP: 880/880
MP regen per second: 0.44
Stamina: 1700/1700
Stamina regen: 0.85
Strength: 190*
Agility: 85*
Constitution: 185*
Wisdom: 44*
Intelligence: 56*
Charisma: 47*
Luck: 46*
Free points: 4
Titles: Centurion, Delver (100), Investigator, Noble II, Pacifist, Primal Rebirth, Prime, Prime Realtor, Primordial, Reborn, Royalty, Sleuth, Star-born: Dragon, Titanic
Skills: Unarmed Combat
Abilities: Earthen Bulwark I
Spells: None
Notes: English, Zombie Common
Chakras:
Crown: Locked.
Third Eye: Locked.
Throat: Locked.
Heart: Locked.
Solar Plexus: Locked.
Sacral: Locked.
Root: Unlocked. 1 of 3 assigned: Earthen Bulwark I.
“Fourteen.”
If I had thought his eyes were big before, that made him look positively cartoonish.
“Fourteen? At level ten? What kind of mon–” he stood, hands on his head, taking a step away, then another. “I can’t.” He looked at the sky and started shouting. “I WOULD BE BETTER OFF–”
The scene froze. The wind through the trees died. There had been no animals making sounds, not that I heard. But the silence became so loud, it hurt. His form fuzzed, then blinked like an old signal on a TV. Red, green, and blue interspersed with static flashed like a filter over him, though I was positive he had been with me, in person.
“Uh, hello?”
I stood, walked around the still open video of Basil sitting at his slot machine. The lights were still revolving, still glittering away in the video.
“Anubis? Hello?”
I took a step closer. I could feel something in the air. His legs were long, and the three steps he had taken had added something like twelve feet between us. My steps were a lot shorter, but at ten feet away, I could feel a charge. My hair stood out, like when I put my arms too close to my grandparent’s old TV. It was static electricity, and a hell of a lot of it. Despite it clearly being a stupidly dangerous idea, I took another step closer. The charge built even higher. At just over six feet away, I couldn’t approach any closer. It felt like there was an actual wall in front of me. I put my hands out and felt like I couldn’t even turn. The pressure on my front was incredible.
“Anubis?”
I took a step back, then another. Finally, I felt the static charge lessen, and all at once, it disappeared. The shimmering effect disappeared from around him and he turned to appraise me.
“Forgive the interruption, Mister Blackwood.”
“Uh, no worries,” I said.
He waved to where we had been sitting and led us back. Once we were seated, he spoke again.
“I have been… cautioned. That is as much as I can tell you. However, I am told I should extend congratulations for your success thus far. Which brings me back to the original point, before we devolved into a never-ending rabbithole of knowledge you are lacking.”
I nodded. He sat up straighter, adjusted his already perfect tie, and went on speaking.
“You have been flippant, ignorant, and downright stupid. You have the greatest opportunity of this world. Possibly that has ever existed. And you are squandering it.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “I am not!”
“You are acting as if you are owed everything you are getting.”
“I am not!” I repeated myself, feeling a flush climb from my chest up my neck to my cheeks. “I’m not being entitled. I don’t know why things keep happening in my favor. I was lucky before the system, sure, but nothing like this.”
Anubis shook his head. “You are beyond lucky. The highest I have ever heard of was eleven. What is yours?”
“Uh, forty-six.”
I saw a flash of anger run through him, so weirdly recognizable despite being so alien.
“That is what I am talking about. Most people, with all their titles, get maybe eight-to-ten extra from their titles. And that is when they are high level and high rank. You have the highest luck ever recorded.”
“Okay, so?”
“It is going to grow higher. You need to understand that. Not just understand. You need to leverage it. Make it work for you. And you need to stop acting like this is all a game. This is your life now. Make the most of it you can.”
He stood, an action so stiff and full of bearing, I found myself standing with him.
“You are to move on. I believe the next floor that is open to you is one-forty-one. That will be an interesting one. Good luck, Mister Blackwood.”
“Wait,” I started, but I blinked while saying it, and I found myself standing in front of a dingy, beaten elevator. It dinged and creaked open. This was a far-cry from the opulence I had seen before. This looked like where all the freight and dead bodies were hauled. I swallowed, looked around, and realized I was already in the elevator with the doors closing. I just saw Anubis standing in the darkness beyond the doors, and then they were closed. I had no idea what was going on.