Book 2, Chapter 11: A Change of Goals

[Alen]

Alen stared at the apparition standing in front of him. The man shrugged and began to walk over, which caused Alen to take a wary step back. His hand glowed with an eerie black-green light as his mana tore through the space to gather in his palm. “What do you want?” He asked, his eyes laced with murder. He’d killed this person multiple times already, just like he’d done to all the enemies that had attacked him in this trial. What was another pebble in the mound when he’d already piled enough for a hill?

The person in front of him scratched at his stubble and looked at him with interest. “Your seem different,” The man said. “How long has it been since you killed me?”

“Two minutes.”

A laugh entered Alen’s ears. The man waved his hand dismissively and grinned. There was something savage in his smile. “Why am I asking you? I still remember. It was six days and seventeen hours ago,” He said, his smile turning mirthless. “I’ve counted every second since then.”

Alen frowned at him, his magic flaring. “Don’t pull this bullshit in front of me. You attacked me first.”

“And you killed me for it. You’re a murderer now. Just like the ones you’ve killed.”

The necromancer’s words faltered in his mouth. A long moment passed. “I’m a murderer, yeah,” He slowly said. “I killed you, along with the rest of your friends, because you tried to take my life. I don’t give a fuck about how morally wrong it is. I’d still destroy your group of rapists and pillagers with my magic if it meant keeping myself alive.”

“It looks like you’re finally realizing what this world is like,” The man muttered. His irises flashed to become an eerie red. A tense moment went by.

“We were killers and pillagers,” He agreed, finally, before his now blue eyes hardened. “But we were not scum. Don’t try to fool yourself into justifying our deaths by piling sins we never committed onto our heads. Accept the weight of the lives you’ve taken, just like we did ours.”

A complicated expression made its way into Alen’s face. “If they weigh so much, then why did you do it?” He simply asked.

The man shrugged. “Hard times called for hard decisions. A famine hit the Sandsea after the western countries closed their trade agreements with us, and all but the larger cities were affected. Unless you wanted to starve to death, robbing the richer folk or eating monsters were the only ways to survive. I take it you already knew this?”

“The west closed its trade agreements?” His brows knitted together.

“Some bastard son of King Gulderk started a rebellion and mucked things up over in Crasys. With all the commotion, merchants were forced to leave the country because bandits became a bigger problem by the day. Of course, it caused people like us to resort to banditry too,” The man spat. “Always been like this. Some person higher up always ends up causing problems for the people down below.”

“That doesn’t justify you attacking my party with the intent to kill.”

“It damn well doesn’t, but no other choice was presented to me. Telh’ran had eyes for your Galeboat, and the weak had no choice but to follow the strong. Simple as that.”

“What do you want?” Alen asked again, more a statement than a question as his mana slowly died down.

The man nodded. “I’ll get to the point,” He sucked in a breath, before raising his head and looking at the necromancer with a steely gaze. His eyes had changed color, turning into a bloody crimson. “I want you to keep my soul here, in this space. Away from the clutches of the God of Death. I won’t dissipate like the rest you fought, and in exchange, I’ll give you powers you could only dream of. After all, my time dead hasn’t been spent on nothing,” He said. “All I need is for you to slaughter my enemies for me, and to keep my soul from Thagathos’s grip.”

Alen looked at him silently. Something about the sudden change was profoundly suspicious—as if he was walking into a contract with the devil. He didn’t want to risk it. “No,” Alen decided.

“You don’t have a choice,” The man growled. “I am—“

He was interrupted by an explosion of Rotflame, the black-green fire swallowing him whole. It roared, lighting the surrounding area in a flickering green light. Finally, the flames died down to reveal a skeleton with bones the color of twilight. On its head and body were precious gems that seemed to have naturally formed along with the skeleton itself. It looked at Alen, and the bones in its face were distorted, seeming to smile widely at him. “Color me impressed,” It said, its voice reverberating and powerful. The necromancer stared at the skeleton with a frown, too tired mentally to feel shocked. Right now, all he wanted to do was to lie down and sleep.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” Alen growled, his magic flaring with a howl as a circle of green flames exploded out from his body, slamming against an invisible shield that protected the undead. Killing, killing, killing. He just wanted to rest. He could feel the blood in his hands, heavy and viscous, even though none stained his physical form, he could feel it. The numbness—the weight.

The skeleton waved a hand, and the fire in the area coalesced into a single black-green crystal the size of a fingernail. It threw the piece at Alen who caught it. “Now, now. Our chat officially starts as of this moment,” It said. “Wouldn’t want to end it on a sour note, yes?”

The necromancer stared on with a sour expression, the being in front of him was too powerful. He felt no oppressive pressure, but it was obvious this skeleton wasn’t his every day pile of bones. Alen forcefully calmed himself in the only method he knew how, and before long, his lips were slowly twitching upwards into a confident-looking grin.

Alen looked at the skeleton and animatedly waved his hand to the side. “You know, I’m getting tired of asking this question, but what do you want?”

It looked at him curiously, finding the human’s mannerisms… interesting. The smile the human in front of it wore was stiff, but any passing glance would suggest that his expression was normal. It seemed this person was used to behaving as such. Its voice rang out with a hint of curiosity, like a scientist observing a new specimen. “Do you have a love for posturing? Does the faked confidence dissuade the ones stronger than yourself, human?”

He raised an eyebrow upon seeing that he was seen through. He guessed it was too forced with the sudden change. Alen sighed and took the smile off his face. “Well, that, sure, but it’s mostly for other reasons.”

“Do pray tell.”

“I mean, what’s the point?” He paused, before continuing. “Of having any other expression on your face, I mean,” He looked up with his hands in his pockets for a moment, before looking back down at the skeleton that seemed to be waiting for him to finish. “Well, during hard times, at least. Frowning endlessly doesn’t do shit, and sulking like a little bitch won’t solve your problems, so why not stand up, tell yourself a joke, and face the problem with a smile spits in the face of your demons with a nice little ‘fuck you’?”

The skeleton tilted its head. “Few people find themselves telling clever jokes in difficult circumstances.”

A derisive laugh escaped Alen’s lips. “Who the fuck said I was clever? My sense of humor is garbage. I can literally say just the word penis and find it funny,” He pushed back his hair—an old habit, and went on. “It’s vulgar, juvenile, and people have criticized me for it. It’s found me friends, though. And it’s helped me through some hard times. As long as I can laugh, I won’t break. I appreciate it for that.”

“Interesting to hear from a person the Lord has found entertaining,” It gestured around itself. “Most of the other trial takers are quite serious. The cold glares and killing intent gets old after a few centuries, you know? Only the other servants have gotten ones like you, and they’re few and far between for a god with such a… bleak history.”

“So you are someone sent by Thanatos.”

“Thagathos,” The skeleton coughed, correcting him. “And yes, I am one of his thousands of minor servants, and I am here to observe you in his place.”

“Wow, he really stresses the ‘slight interest’ portion of that system message. Aren’t the gods omniscient?” Alen asked, letting out a silent breath and feeling calmer after talking about the things only five people in his life knew about him. Strangers had always been, and always will be great people to share secrets with, because they don’t really care about your secrets at all. Alen focused his gaze back at the skeleton.

It shook its head. “There are things even the gods themselves cannot see,” The skeleton waved its hand, and Alen felt a foreign mana surge into his space. An intense feeling of invasion flooded him for a moment, before it settled down as the ground began to quake. Slowly, a mansion as black as the color of his mana rose from the ground behind the skeleton. It slowly stepped in, closing the doors behind it. Alen felt his magic rise.

“My mana capacity… increased?” He muttered, looking dumbfoundedly at the magnificent mansion. “…Who are you?”

“My name is Selerius,” The skeleton simply said. “Hundreds of years ago, the world knew me as The Silencer—The Undying Lich. Consider it a little compensation for my… stay here, within your soul’s space.”

Selerius walked in and finally shut the door. Suddenly, the ground underneath Alen shattered, and the world was engulfed in an infinite black. He fell faster and faster, a powerful drowsiness flooding over his senses as he passed innumerable motes of light that seemed to contain all of his memories and experiences. His eyelids began to feel heavier. Heavier. He fell, and soon, his mind was conscious no more. He simply continued to fall.

He was falling, and falling, and falling. Deeper and deeper, until finally, it stopped.

Alen woke up with a start. His upper body jolted forward, his eyes completely wide as he panted heavily. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and a feeling akin to waking up from a nightmare filled his mind. He immediately raised his hand and opened his status.

Status:

Name: Alen

Race: Human

Type: Necrotic

Health: 100%

Stamina: 100%

Mana: 13%

Strength: 16

Dexterity: 18

Agility: 16

Constitution: 19

Vitality: 14

Resistance: 16

Intelligence: 36 (++)

Wisdom: 47 (+++)

Control: 41 (+)

Skills:

Mana Programming, Dominate Undead, Blightbolt, Necrotic Blessing, Numb Senses, Summon Skeletal Minion, Rotfire Blast, Deathchill Touch, Bone Spear, Skeletal Rupture, Vitality Drain

System Applications:

AutoBone, System Notepad

After seeing his stats, Alen let loose a little sigh. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to lose the strength in his body as he leaned against the wall. He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, going back to sleep.

When he awoke once again, it was already late into the night.

His eyelids fluttered open. The eye bags weighing down his face had faded by the tiniest bit. Wordlessly, he left the cave. The canyon was dark, and the ribbons of light that fell from the moon were the only things that illuminated the area. As he idly walked, he found himself putting on a smile by reflex. He frowned and took it off his face. Alen still felt it in his hands. The blood—the viscosity, the thickness of it. He could almost see it. Smell it. “Fucking hell,” He muttered, dousing his hands in water. The water of course failed to wash it away, as the blood was not there at all. Flames exploded into life and covered his palms, drying them without harming himself. The remains of the water splattered onto the ground as the flames sputtered out.

The ground began to tremble, and far away, Alen spotted the segmented figure of a Droughtworm making its way towards him. Its figure slid in and out of the surface of the sand, stalking towards him patiently as if he was cornered prey.

Alen was not prey.

It charged out of the sand, causing it to explode in a wave of dust. Alen saw this as if it was slow-motion, his increased intelligence making the fifth threshold creature’s speed seem insignificant. It’s maw opened to swallow, but Alen had moved his hand as soon as the worm had surged out of the sand.

With a flick of his wrists, a small piece of bone shot out from his hand, shuddering from the sheer amount of mana filling it. It reached the worm’s mouth, and then—

Purple blood violently splattered into the sand. It was his spell, Skeletal Rupture.

Alen looked up at it. Thin, finger-sized spears of bone had exploded out in all directions, stabbing into the sand and into the canyon walls. It held the creature in the air, its insides torn and lacerated as it was held suspended in what looked like a massive web of spiked enamel. The necromancer waved his hand and turned it to black ash with a plume of black-green flames. Some pieces of the chitin resisted the flames, falling to the ground in various charred states. Alen looked down at them, the spears of bone fading away into dust.

He reached out his hand to grab them, but stopped. The necromancer stared and incinerated them too. Finally, he started walking forward once again.

A while later, he had climbed a slope to reach one of canyon’s upper levels, a place he’d found in his meaningless wandering. The horizon was lathered in darkness. He sat at the top and breathed in the air. All around him were pieces of chitin, scattered about as some sort of weaponized defense system. He reached into a pocket of his robe and brought out a small, green crystal. Mana pulsed inside of it, bathing his hand in a faint emerald glow.

“Gods, huh.” He looked up at the sky, wondering if some being up there was watching him. He shook his head. The dream was real. That meant Selerius was, too. He had the crystal, and Alen knew he could use it to cast some sort of empowered Rotfire Blast. The same kind he was able to cast in that… space. Was that what the inside of his soul looked like? He had a skeleton in there now, watching him. He clenched his teeth tightly, looking at the scar on his palm.

This was not the fantasy world experience he wanted.

He was alone on the first day. And now, he was alone again, with no way to contact anyone but his friends. Even that only served as a temporarily relief. Why wasn’t it going smoothly? They weren’t unique. They didn’t have special powers. From what books and people had told him, they were just unlucky enough to win a lottery and earned a ticket straight into hell. Alen wanted to see the world. He wanted to explore, but everything kept getting in his way. Undead, Alexandrius, and now, this.

To him, being alone was the worst thing possible. There was a clear dividing line between solitude and loneliness. The former, he could appreciate. But the latter?

Alen hated it. He despised it. He hated feeling alone.

Out in this desert, in this shithole of a canyon, who could he rely on? No one. No one but himself. There were no companions. There were no laughs. No bad jokes. Just his mind, and the silence that stalked it. He hated being unable to laugh freely. It was like seventh grade all over again; a time when he had to put a smile on his face to show that he wasn’t bothered. A time where when he pretended to be happy for long enough, he’d forget that he was pretending. He booted up his phone and stared at the screen.

Cracks webbed the interface, and some of the colors were distorted from the damage. It flickered to life and displayed the charge. Seven percent. He’d been using it a lot after he came to the canyon.

He ignored it and plugged in the earphones. Alen selected one of his favorite songs, and the slow, bittersweet tune filled his hearing. Six percent.

Images. He opened the gallery and scrolled through it one by one. The most recent ones were a few screenshots he took while playing games. One had him and Anne playing as female characters in an MMO and harassing random guys. Another was a video of Bernard tying a noose as a joke in front of their English teacher. Five percent.

He smiled and flicked through more. A sleepover. A short clip he’d recorded just in time of Adam pressing a stuffed bear to his behind and saying the words: ‘shuck my ass’. More images. There was a few of their trip after the end of a school year. He’d destroyed Sam in air hockey that time. They ended up running out of the arcade laughing madly because of the absurd play he pulled. Another one flashed into the screen. One of James being absolutely terrible at pool. Alen laughed.

Next, there were a few pictures of his dog. A spoiled one. Alen still remembered falling asleep beside it and waking up three in the morning after it got bored and decided to jump at his face. There was one with his brother. They’d gone out to steak that night, and his older brother had dragged him past the steakhouse to watch movies until 1AM on a school night. Over an hour had passed by now. He smiled, a brightness in his eyes. Two percent.

A few more of his family. One of his sisters, with his mom awkwardly fiddling with a remote in the background. One of a time when he and his dad went out and had a great night eating in a restaurant. His hair had grayed then. Was he okay right now? How did they react to his disappearance? Alen was grinning, but his vision was blurring. One percent.

What he knew would be the final song began to play as he stared at the screen.

Well we wander away from this normal everyday of this flooded town we call home.

I still lay awake, nostalgic for days when there weren’t any cracks in the road.

It’s all playing out. I don’t see a reason and I’ve had my doubts.

It was too easy; a long shot. It fell right in my hand.

A shortcut to a place with no end.

Whatever you want me to see…

I just can’t find it.

The instrumental came in, a tone he couldn’t identify as either sad or happy. It was both. Alen loved this song.

Captain, my captain go down with your ship,

He looked at his dad’s face. Then his brother’s—his mother’s—his sisters. He engraved them into his memory, afraid of forgetting their smiles. He didn’t want to forget them. He hoped they didn’t forget him.

You came and you captured,

Alen gripped his phone tightly, his hands shaking as he held his breath. His eyes stung, but he refused to let it out.

I think this is i——

The phone’s screen abruptly turned black.

It took the song away with it. It took his family away with it. Alen lurched forward and clutched it to his chest, the tears spilling from his eyes. Alen frantically pressed at the power button repeatedly, hoping for a miracle to come to life. “Come back, please… come back,” He repeated; the phone was dead. He screamed, the sobs turning into wails as his suppressed emotions exploded out like floodwaters from a shattered dam. Nails dug into his palm—the pain was sharp. He beat his fists against the sand.

He wanted to go home.

For the first time in many years, Alen truly cried.

Shuffling sounds echoed out from the sands all around him. Tens of thousands of ants the size of one of his fingers were crawling towards him. He had disturbed their rest. The sun was rising. Its light dyed their crimson exoskeletons in a sinister glint. Alen weakly looked up and saw them. A thought flashed through his head.

What if he didn’t do a thing?

They crawled closer and closer, snapping their mandibles in his direction.

Dying didn’t seem so bad.

His eyes dully stared at the horizon in front of him. The sun was rising. He saw the horizon slowly moving past, as if he was riding a slow car. Then, he saw it. Legs. Thousands of them. Massive, insect-like legs. They pierced the sand as the canyon moved forward on the back of a gigantic creature. Light glistened, reflected from the carapace. His face felt warm from the sunlight. It was like a scene from fantasy. A memory played in his mind.

‘Yo, when we graduate from college, are you guys down for a reunion?’

‘Yeah. Let’s meet up again man.’

‘No thanks. I never wanna see you fags ever again.’

Alen wanted to see them again. Not just his friends, his family too. Magic was omnipotent, right? He wanted to go back. He wanted his life back. Alen would take it back. He would do it—even if he had to kill. He wanted everything back.

His mana surged inside of him, roaring like a wildfire. He was in the Crawling Canyon. It was obvious by now. This was not fantasy. This was his reality now. All around him, the pieces of bone and chitin he’d scattered madly contorted, turning into numerous canines and large insects. The ants paused, examining the horrifying creatures risen from the dead. Black ice crept into their bodies and black-green flames flickered to life in Alen’s hands. His bloodshot eyes shone with an emerald light.

In the end, his plan didn’t change. His goals did. He wasn’t getting stronger to survive. He was getting stronger to live.

“Fuck the gods and their little playground,” He clenched his bloodied fists, the pain of his pierced palms clearing his mind further as he looked up at the sky. “I’m getting out of here and beating the shit out of them for throwing me into this mess.”

The loud laughter of a certain skeleton rang out from within his mind. His mana flared and he pointed his hand at the army of ants coming towards him. He issued an order to his undead.

“Get me my XP.”