As Voulos pulled himself up to lock eyes with me, my life flashed before my eyes. Luckily, my life, or what I remembered of it, was blessedly short. My former master began lifting his arm to point at me. He gathered a ball of fire at his fingertips, but I was faster. I flexed the stub of my neck and launched my head forwards. It didn’t launch me forwards by much more than the breadth of hand, but it was enough to put my [Poisoned Bite] in range of Voulos’ shin.

My former master clearly had no health left as a buffer because my bite passed through bone and muscle like butter. His tibial shaft snapped like a twig and blood from his femoral artery spurted all over me. Now that I had a moment to process the events, I realised that I should have followed through my [Corpse Explosion] attack immediately. I knew he could cast [Negate Death] twice a day, and it had been foolish not to assume he would always keep it active on himself.

The leg wound left by my attack was crippling, but not fatal. At least it caused him enough pain to break his concentration. The swirling fire at his fingertips died as he reflexively scrunched his eyes and let out a gasp.

Despite all the suffering he had inflicted on me and countless others, I wasn’t familiar with Voulos’ pain tolerance. He might regain his wits long enough for one last attack, and given his power, he could easily take me with him. I just hoped that the poison would reach his heart before he recovered. I still held my [Blood Whip] in reserve in case poison alone wasn’t enough to finish him.

Once the poison had spread throughout his body, Voulos floundered like a fish for almost an entire minute before he finally came to a stop. If I had lungs, I would have held my breath. I had defeated him twice in quick succession, but I didn’t know what other contingencies he might have in place. He was a paranoid man, and my victory felt altogether too easy. Could I have got that lucky?

Eventually, I got bored with waiting. If he wasn’t dead, then he was a much better actor than I gave him credit for. To be sure, I used my [Blood Whip] to cut off his head. I had to recast the spell twice to finish the job, and I made quite a mess of his face in the process. The whip was unnaturally sharp, but it was hardly the best tool for the job.

With that done, I considered my next move. First things first, I wouldn’t be going anywhere lying on the floor with my cheek pressed down to the stone. I sat in a pool of Voulos’ blood and his brutalised corpse took up my entire vision.

To get things started, I reached out to the party chat and contacted Hans.

‘Hans, can you come back in the room to pick me up, please?’ I asked politely. Good manners were something Cordelia wanted me to learn, alongside a bunch of confusing rules she said were simply common decency. In response to my message, I heard the door swing open, and soon enough, Hans picked me up.

What to do next? I half expected the entire tower to come crumbling down, but nothing so dramatic occurred. I knew that my former master’s absence would have an impact sooner or later.

There were several powerful rituals that he maintained daily, the most obvious example being the perpetual storm maintained by his [Control Weather] ritual. How long would that last without him? Then there were the zombie hordes. How would his death affect them? There were thousands of zombies in and around the tower. What would become of them?

As my thoughts spiralled out of control, I questioned if killing Voulos had been the right move. Though our relationship had grown sour, he had been the centre of my world, and I couldn't imagine life without his regimented routines. While I hadn’t agreed with every choice made for me, he had at least had a plan. Now that my future was metaphorically in my own hands, I found myself gripped with indecision.

In the end, I decided that my priority should be to go check on Cordelia. She was the smartest person I knew, especially now Voulos was dead. It had been her who suggested I kill Voulos with [Corpse Explosion]. She had been joking, but that joke was the seed of my master plan. Her knowledge of the system had been crucial, though she had assumed it was a purely theoretical exercise.

With a goal set, I broke my long silence and asked Hans to take us down the stairs. To my surprise, he ignored me. Hans usually went along with any request or suggestion I made, so his lack of reaction was odd. When I craned my neck to look up at him, I saw him looking at Voulos’ headless corpse.

“Master dead.” Hans simply said when he looked down at me. He was a zombie of few words but spoke more often now that his intelligence was above the threshold.

‘Yes Hans, Voulos is dead.’ I replied over our party chat. There was a long pause, then;

“What do now?” He said, looking around the room as if taking it in for the first time.

‘What do you want to do?’ I asked in return.

“Want… brains.” He eventually replied.

‘Brains are good, but what else?’ I pressed the issue.

“More brains.” He asserted.

I considered my companion. He might be smarter than most zombies, but only his intelligence and wisdom were past the first threshold, and even those were only just.

When I gained sentience, all three of my mental attributes jumped up in one go. The sudden flood of emotions had been overwhelming, perhaps because my charisma had increased the most.

Without charisma, Hans wouldn’t have those same emotions. Perhaps basic zombie instincts were all that drove him. Maybe he wanted a simple life of killing people and eating brains. Even though I shared those basic urges, my other emotions and desires kept them at the back of my mind.

‘Well, if that is all you want, there are fresh brains over there.’ I sent as I nodded towards Voulos’ severed head. Hans considered my words a moment, then he shuffled towards it. He picked it up by the hair and tucked me under his armpit. For a moment, he stared into Voulos’ bugged out eyes. Without warning, he abruptly crouched down and bashed the head repeatedly on the hard stone floor.

Skulls are hard to break by design. So watching Hans get inside to the tasty goodness was less like a fox crushing an egg, and more like a squirrel smashing an acorn. He even dropped me on the floor so he could use both hands. I tried to growl at him, forgot that I couldn’t, and instead clicked in frustration as I rolled across the floor.

Still, I didn’t interrupt Hans. I was practically dribbling myself at the thought of sinking my teeth into the succulent pink flesh. Skull fractures grew into open cracks until they were wide enough for Hans to dig his fingers through, revealing the bloody prize.

‘Hey, Hans! Don’t eat it all, share some with me.’ I demanded.

“Ok.” He said and put a nice chunk of the cerebellum in my mouth. The grey matter tasted even sweeter knowing who it came from.

‘Hey, Hans?’ I asked.

“What?” He said between mouthfuls.

‘Thanks.’ I answered with a smile.

While we stuffed our faces with brains, I used the downtime to check my character sheet. I was hoping to have levelled up, and perhaps even break into the next level tier. I opened my sheet to find a couple of new notifications waiting for me. The last notification I received had made me royalty, so I eagerly focused on the message.

Notification: You have gained the [Team-Killer] status for killing a creature you were formally allied with. As a first time offence, this status will expire naturally in 1 year. Subsequent offences will increase the time this status is applied for. While this status is active you lose -1 Charisma.

Once I finished reading, I felt the change take effect. It was like a wet blanket thrown over my emotions. My residual anger at Voulos lost its edge and the joy of my victory dulled. It was less than ideal, but if this was the price of freedom, it was worth it.

I knew that Voulos would have been pulling his hair out. He would make an egotistical comment about how hard he had worked to get my charisma that high. However, I wasn’t nearly as obsessed as Voulos had been in the art of optimising. I knew that the change made me weaker, but I didn’t care enough to give myself a headache staring at all the stupid numbers.

Once I dismissed the first notification, I remembered I had two more to read through. With a bit of apprehension, I opened the next one.

Notification: Congratulations, you have earned an ability ranked in a higher tier than your current level. This ability is marked as [Restricted]. You may use this ability, but you won’t be able to level it up until you reach the appropriate tier.

A new ability was good news at least, even if I was a bit confused about what I had done to earn it. I barely had time to crack my award-winning grin before a new message filled my mind’s eye. Unlike the calm blue the system usually used, this box was a bright red. It reminded me of my nightly baths, and with a tinge of regret, I realised I wouldn’t be having a blood bath tonight, or perhaps ever again.

Notification: You have gained the [Red-Handed] title for cheating. You gain +1 intelligence. Congratulations!

This title marks you as a cheater for everyone to see. Your alignment will show as evil, and your hands have been permanently stained with red [Dye]. In addition, a level 16 [Enforcer] will spawn here in the next few hours. It will be hostile to you and will track you down and kill you.

Finally, to make sure you have learned your lesson you have been reset to level 1.

Good Luck!

What the nether? This time, as soon as my eyes reached the bottom of the message, the changes hit me. Most noticeable was my charisma falling beneath the mortal threshold, like going from full-colour vision to black and white, except with emotions instead of colours.

It got worse. My relatively high charisma had been doing a lot of compensating for my weaker attributes. With all three of my mental attributes below ten, I could almost feel myself getting stupider by the second.

If it hadn’t been for the backhanded intelligence boost, I’m not sure I would have even remained literate. My character sheet had changed all over. The numbers grew smaller, and I shed multiple features. It marked almost all of my abilities as [Restricted], so it was difficult to work out what had triggered this reaction. It took me several long minutes to locate the problem.

[Corpse Explosion] was the culprit. It took me far longer than it should have for me to work it out, but I got there in the end. It was now listed as a level two steel tier spell, instead of a copper tier ability with no level. The mana cost was way too high for me to even consider using it, but the altered ability seemed incredibly powerful.

This clue was enough for me to recognise Voulos’ scheme haunting me from the grave. This was why he had spent the last few weeks blowing me up every single day. He had been hoping for this to happen. Why, though? In my current state, I had no chance of figuring out what was going through his strange and twisted mind.

Step one: Blow up Zed over and over until he snaps.

Step two: Piss off the all-powerful system that controls everything.

Step three: …?

So now I had two unknown entities to worry about. I had no way of knowing when the adventurers would arrive, but Voulos had been happy to leave his preparations until the morning. From that, I inferred they wouldn’t suddenly appear in the middle of the night. The more immediate danger seemed to be the [Enforcer], which would arrive in the next few hours.

I was way out of my depth and was regretting everything. I had only just won my freedom, and I already desperately wanted to be told what to do. Was that ironic? I’ll admit that I didn’t really understand the concept particularly well. I needed to speak to Cordelia to live through the night, and to explain what irony was.

Hans had long finished eating when I asked him to carry me down the stairs. The system had stripped me of the [Pack Leader] skill, but in a stroke of luck, the system hadn't touched the party, and it remained the same as before. I could still talk to Hans, but the loss of wisdom had left him a bit spaced out. He responded to orders and direct questions but did little more than that.

As we went down the magical staircase, I directed Hans to press a particular sequence of keystones that stuck out on the wall. We had to go slowly so that I could remember the correct order. I had cracked the secret of the staircase only a few days ago, and the memory was quite fresh.

After a short flight of stairs, I arrived at the door to Cordelia’s ritual room. Getting it open was more of a challenge than I had been expecting. I had seen Voulos open it many times, but he had always had his back towards me when he did so. I had a vague idea that it involved tracing a shape in the air while rotating his hand and wiggling his fingers.

I would never get Hans to open the door in the intended way, so instead, I tried to get him to open it the zombie way. I got him to put me on the floor, then watched for several minutes as he hurled himself against the unyielding wood.

Perhaps eventually the door would give, but I wasn’t sure if it would break before Hans. Without Voulos I didn’t know any way to reduce a zombie’s decay, something I would have to keep in mind as I went forwards. I had a sentimental attachment to Hans and didn’t want him to fall apart. What I needed was a hulk or two to bash the door down. Voulos kept most of them working in a mine somewhere, but he kept a handful in the tower as servants.

Most of the time, these serving zombies simply appeared in the door whenever Voulos wanted them, without any visible orders on his part. I didn’t have any way to telepathically reach out to the horde, so I had to find help a different way.

I cast my mind back to the last time Voulos took me for a walk. He carried me with him to the top of the tower to recharge his [Control Weather] ritual, which was guarded by a couple of massive hulks and a screamer. He had been quite drunk at the time, and had cruelly dangled me over the edge whilst he explained something about [Storm Crow] feathers losing their charge over time.

It wasn’t a pleasant memory, but at least I remembered where I could find a pair of hulks to bash down the door. My first two attempts with the staircase keystones took us to completely random floors, but on the third try, I landed on the correct sequence. After walking up a few dozen stairs we walked out at the top. The tower’s apex had an open roof, surrounded by a black gothic fence. There was a small spire in the center of the roof that housed the storm ritual. Dark clouds billowed out from the ritual in all directions and obscured the dark woods below.

I was in luck and the two large hulks hadn’t moved a muscle since my last visit. They stood like statues guarding the door. A single screamer was crouched down with its face pressed against the fence. It swiveled around to glare at us as we arrived. Hans came to a halt and the screamer jerked upright, and then approached. It stopped right in front of my face and leaned in to sniff.

I abruptly remembered that despite my indisputable genius and dashing good looks, I was weak and vulnerable. My level had been reset, and I had only thirty health. The screamer was at least level ten and could probably crush me with ease. When the screamer circled behind me, I forced myself to stay calm.

Nothing happened. The screamer shuffled away, and I chided myself for being so paranoid. It had no reason to attack me; we were both bereft minions of Voulos. Even wild zombies never fight amongst themselves. Unlike most animals they don’t compete over food, territory, or mating privileges. We are actually quite a peaceful bunch if you ignore our urge to kill all living things.

I considered asking Hans to follow after the screamer. It was clearly intelligent, so it would understand what I wanted better than the dumb brutes. However, it was that intelligence gave me pause. Was I imagining things or had it seemed distinctly unwelcoming?

Instead, I had Hans approach the two hulks. They turned to watch us approach, but that was the extent of their reaction. I asked Hans over the party chat to broadcast my words.

“Hello?” Hans said. There was no response. “Hey, can you help?” Again, they said nothing. Hans scratched my head while I pondered a different approach. “Want brains?” That got their attention.

“Braaaaaaaains?” They groaned.

“Follow. Brains this way.” Hans said. He wasn’t a very convincing liar, but the hulks needed little persuasion.

It was almost depressingly easy to trick the hulks, even though I suspected that they both surpassed the wisdom threshold. I had trained with plenty of fodder zombies over the weeks, and they didn’t even acknowledge anything less than a direct order. The hulks might be stupid, but zombies below that threshold were barely smarter than the corpses they were created from.

They might not have been geniuses like me, but the door to Cordelia’s room proved no match for my new friends. They had a superhuman level of strength that probably came from crossing the heroic attribute threshold. One solid kick to the door from Pecs was enough to send it flying open. The hulks charged forwards, desperately searching for the promised brains.

Watching the hulks stumble about, I worried about their reaction when they realised I had deceived them. That moment never arrived. The brutes had some intelligence, but they were still almost painfully stupid. I told them someone else must have taken the brains, and they saw nothing wrong with the blatant falsehood. In fact, they barely reacted at all. Once Hans finished speaking, it took a moment for my words to sink in, and their vacant expressions slowly returned.

However, my lie hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed. There was a small sigh from just outside the door. It was the screamer. When Hans turned, I saw it creepily peering in at us with wide eyes, and its ears flared out at the sides. It oddly resembled a giant undead mouse. The enigmatic creature had followed us down the stairs without being noticed. When I looked at it, the screamer scarpered out of sight.

I could figure out how I was going to deal with the screamer later. For now, I had to keep my priorities in order. Cordelia’s silver flask was still there, standing undisturbed in the middle of her summoning circle. The sight of the flask reassured me, but I worried it was empty. I didn’t know if Voulos’ summoning magic would continue without him alive.

If Cordelia was in the flask, it was a simple matter of speaking the activation phrase to bring her out. Cordelia had described being inside the flask as similar to hanging out in the spiritual realm. The fundamental difference was that when she was floating around the afterlife, she was surrounded by her friends and family, whereas when Voulos trapped her in the flask, she was completely isolated.

Over the last few weeks, I had heard Voulos say the activation phrase dozens of times. However, it still took me ten minutes of back and forth with Hans over the party chat to get him to say it correctly. I was getting worried that the flask was indeed empty when her cloudy essence started pouring from the bottle.

Cordelia floated forwards before greeting me.

“Hello Zed, how are you today.” She said in click-speak. It was how she always opened our language lessons. I tried to reply telepathically, but without Voulos there was no mental link between us. I was going to have to communicate the hard way.

“Hello Cordelia, I’m good.” I clicked back reflexively.

“That’s good to hear! What makes you so happy?” She said with a laugh.

“Voulos is…” I trailed off.

Despite all of our lessons together, I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what had happened. I could introduce myself, comment on the weather, and ask for a cup of tea quite fluently, but I struggled when conversations veered into unfamiliar territory. I typically asked Cordelia for help when I came up blank, but that wasn’t possible without the telepathic link.

“Voulos? Where is our petty dictator today? He usually gloats a little before leaving to get intoxicated.” She asked.

“Voulos is dead!” I clicked with joy as I finally remembered how to say something was dead in click-speak. It had actually come up a fair few times when Cordelia gushed about her favourite descendant fighting on the frontier.

Recounting the events of the evening took longer than I would have liked. To save time, I had Hans do most of the talking. Waiting for him to repeat what I said was much faster than trying to describe things in a language I could barely speak.

Cordelia cheered at the news, but didn’t believe me at first. My story was so improbable that she thought I was playing a prank of sorts on her. Did she really forget all of our scheming? I had discussed many aspects of the plan with her when we were alone, but she claimed that she had written those comments off as wishful fancy.

Whilst it was tempting to waste time boasting, I was working against the clock. I asked Cordelia about the adventurers, and her reaction caught me a little off guard. “Excellent! A mage will certainly know how to release the binding that keeps me here.” She exclaimed.

“What about us?”

“Hmm, as long as you get away from the tower, you should be fine. I can’t imagine that they will chase down every zombie Voulos has scattered around the woods.” Cordelia stroked her chin before continuing. “They will come to the tower, see that the necromancer is already dead, loot the place down to the last coin, get bored and leave.” Cordelia said with a shrug.

“Just run away?” I asked

“You should grab anything worth looting first. Voulos was a Dompfast, but he had an impressive collection. If anyone deserves to inherit his treasures it’s you. Adventurers won’t travel through the night. Many undead are stronger in the dark, and the living need sleep. You have plenty of time.” Cordelia explained.

Suggestions like this were why I knew going to Cordelia had been the right move. She knew things about how the world worked that I didn’t, and had a veritable hoard of memories to draw from. There was only one problem. “Don’t have all night. The system said [Enforcer] coming soon.” I explained.

Cordelia was already as pale as a ghost, but as she heard Hans speak, she became paler still. Her form became so translucent that I could barely see her, and her normally bubbly essence went still. “An [Enforcer]? Minassa’s grace… are you sure?” She quietly asked. Perhaps because of my reduced charisma,, I didn’t pick up on the fear in her voice. If I was a little smarter, I might have considered my next words more carefully.

“Yes, spawn soon. Want fight, but I’m weak.”

“Gompta! Are you crazy? An enforcer is a goddamned angel!” She shouted at me.

“So? Less levels than the master.”

“If you think killing Voulos was anything but a goddamn miracle, you really are braindead.” She snapped back.

“But…”

“Raw levels aren’t everything. All angels have at least an A tier race, not even mentioning the celestial classes they can choose from when they spawn.” She said, exasperated.

I couldn’t help but think that Cordelia was being overdramatic. Voulos had clearly had a plan to deal with this monster that was coming after me. My scheming master had been trying to get [Corpse Explosion] to level up for weeks. He had been frustratingly cryptic about his secret plan, but I was almost certain that he had expected this to happen. He would know what to do. Maybe I could use some mimic saliva to glue his head back on?

“What to do?” Hans asked at my behest.

“What should you do? Run. Maybe you get lucky and escape. I’m going to hide and wait for the binding spell to run out. I will not risk my immortal soul against an angel’s banishment hammer. Those things kill first and don’t listen to reason. I should know; I’ve dated one.” Cordelia said, and true to her word she shrank back into her flask.

Zed's end of chapter sheet:

King Zed the ‘Red’

22:45, 20th of Iosi, 1465 3A

Total Level: 1 (Copper)

Levels: Overseer 1

Experience: 1/100

Type: Overseer Zombie (C)

Attributes:

Resources:

Dexterity: 6

Stamina: N/A

Strength: 13

Power: N/A

Vitality: 15

Health: 1/30

Wisdom: 5

Willpower: 10/10

Intelligence: 5

Mana: 12/12

Charisma: 9

Soul: 18/18

Decay: 24% (Stage 0)

Affinities: Nether (100%), Poison (50%), Fire (-25%), Holy (-100%)

Titles:

King of the Braindead: Access to Kingdom subsystem.

Red-Handed: +1 Intelligence, sets alignment as evil, hands are permanently dyed red.

Traits:

Made to Serve: +1 Intelligence, +1 Charisma. Understands system common, and the primary language of its creator (Orcish). Can follow simple commands based on the creator's intelligence divided by 10 (3 words long). Gives access to a portion of the knowledge contained within the host brain, better preserved brains retain more information.

Flesh Construct: Sustained by nether magic, does not need to eat, drink, sleep or breath. Does not regenerate Health. Does not use Stamina or Might, but instead uses Decay.

Overseer: +2 Charisma.

Not Braindead: +1 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma.

Skills:

First skill gained at level 5

Abilities:

Unarmed Strike - Copper - Level 1 (Unavailable):

0% Decay

1 Second Cooldown

Strikes at the target with an unarmed limb for 5 bludgeoning damage.

Dash Attack - Bronze- Level 1 (Restricted):

0% Decay

5 Second Cooldown

Dashes to a target within 3 meters for 9 bludgeoning damage with a chance to push back or knock over the target.

Poisoned Bite - Bronze - Level 2 (Restricted):

0% Decay

5 Second Cooldown

+1 Vitality, Bites the target for 9 piercing damage and a further 8 poison damage over the next 30 seconds.

Enrage Zombie - Bronze - Level 4 (Restricted):

50 Soul

No Cooldown

The user lets out a rage-filled shout at a target zombie to increase its Strength, Dexterity, and Vitality by +5 for 45 seconds.

Overseer’s Aura - Bronze - Level 3 (Restricted):

1 Soul / Second

No Cooldown

+1 Strength to all zombies within 12 meters.

Corpse Explosion - Steel - Level 2 (Restricted):

200 Mana

20 Second Cooldown

Explodes the targeted corpse to deal damage equal to the health it had when alive in a 2m radius. Any corpses in the range of the explosion have a 25% chance to explode as if targeted by this ability.

Attunements (3/0):

Ring of the Jester (Cursed): +2 Charisma but curses the wearer with [Jester’s Curse].

Princess Tiara: +2 Charisma and makes the wearer more attractive to Princes.

Intellect Ring: +1 Intelligence.

Status Effects:

Jester’s Curse: The target is cursed by the jester. The curse can only be lifted by a Sphinx’s laugh.

Team-Killer (359 days remaining): -1 Charisma