Thump. Thump. Light noises came from a dark room of a cheap inn. It was so low that it didn’t pass through the walls, leaving the nearby folks to enjoy their needed rest.

A child was moving through the room, fast and precise: she moved through stances and swings, holding an imaginary blade in her right hand.

Silvy had felt bored after lying in bed for a while. After a while she realized she was not going to sleep, so she had decided she might as well be training herself.

At first, she went through the forms slowly, correcting any mistake she sensed in her posture: recalling the instructions of Jekhum was easy and her body felt clear in her mind, making it easy to correct every mistake she encountered.

After a while she had stepped up the pace, going through forms faster, trying to minimize her errors.

A banging on the wall and screaming made her stop and realize she had been making quite some noise, moving heavily from a position to the other. So she had started concentrating on being quieter without losing form or power of her imaginary strikes and dodges.

Light came inside her room from the half-closed shutters, and Silvy stopped her training to look outside. Dawn was rising, and with it the first people were moving down the street, going to work or preparing wares on their stalls for the day.

Deciding it was time to move out, Silvy went down in the main room of the inn. A man was sleeping on the counter, probably a waiter that was supposed to be ready to serve night customers. Not that he was going to do it while sleeping.

Ignoring him, she went outside, where soft light shined on her. The shadows on the ground were long, and the only noises you could hear were the steps of the few people around and a whispered conversation between two folks on the other side of the street.

Silvy had experienced such mornings in the past: the hour or so before this time was one of the best times to break into a house because people were deep in their sleep, while at this hour, shopkeepers were at their lowest guard, distracted by the preparation of their stall. They were hardly an attractive target, as they didn’t have the earnings of the day before but just a few coins for change, but those few coins could easily buy you a meal. But she was not out to rob today: not anymore.

She moved down the street quietly, not wanting to break the sacred silence of the mornings. The Adventurer’s Guild came in sight, with doors open but with the hall mostly empty. A single person was looking at the requests, and a single receptionist was behind the counter, clearly hoping she was still in bed.

Silvy drew near the counter, coughing politely at the half-sleeping receptionist. She opened her eyes completely, composing herself.

“I’m here for my badge. I was told it would be available in the morning. I’m Silvy.”

The receptionist was clearly not convinced, and after checking a few papers and making Silvy repeat the sentence on the truth tablet she gave her the badge.

It was a brooch made of metal, probably iron. The design was quite beautiful: it had the form of an extended wing, with a B on top of the plumage. It wasn’t exactly a piece of art, but it had probably cost a few silver coins. On the other hand, an organization as big as the guild probably had a few deals with [Blacksmiths] of the town, so maybe that didn’t cost as much as she thought.

Silvy looked up from the badge, seeing the receptionist watching her and speaking fast as if she was reciting something from memory.

“That’s your badge: you can secure it to your clothes if you wish to, but most of the seniors can tell you it’s a bad idea, keeping it in their bag or pockets for two main reasons. One, you can lose it easily when fighting with clothes on top of your armor; two, it attracts attention from all kinds of people: merchants who want to sell you wares, people in need of help but refusing to pay or even reckless thieves. The first badge is free of charge; any subsequent badge will be fifteen silver coins. If you don’t have the coin to pay it, don’t lose it. Now, here are the rules of the guild: you can read them calmly. There are not many, and mostly it’s just common sense.”

Silvy nodded, taking the small book handed to her. Scrolling through it, most of the rules were what indeed you would expect from common sense: no killing other adventurers, no stealing from them and stuff like that. There were other rules in there as well of course: rules on how to reserve a job if you couldn’t do it at that moment, how treasures between two or more teams were to be divided, how to settle disputes… She skimmed through the text, reading as fast as possible. That was to say, not really fast: she had picked up reading through her mother when she had been alive, and in the following years she didn’t exercise much.

The sun was halfway to the peak when Silvy finished reading. Even at her best, she was slow: maybe she would train her reading skills in the future, but now it wasn’t essential.

Silvy brought the book back to the receptionist, who was studying Silvy with worried eyes.

“Are you alright Missy? I’m sorry to pry, but I’ve seen symptoms of dehydration in my career, and you seem in need of some liquids. Do you wish to have some water?”

Here was another problem. Yes, she had heard of dehydration, and she had seen some symptoms as well: dry skin, fatigue, asking for water to everyone in sight. She didn’t feel any of it, but thinking about it, she hadn’t drunk anything for days. She decided to accept the water, even just to calm down the anxious woman.

As always, water went through her mouth and disappeared just beyond it. That was another problem. Not drinking meant looking more and more like a dead person: not something she wanted to experience.

She concentrated: this was her body dammit. She must be able to intake water, or she’d have to escape the city and live far from everyone: she would be exposed, and they would not let an undead walk around.

Silvy felt her body, the energy in her. It wasn’t easy at first, but after a bit, she managed to pinpoint two big lumps of energy: one in her head, the other in her heart. They were the source of all of her mana: she just… knew it somehow. And they were the culprits of the missing water: she was relatively sure of that.

She brought the cup to her lips, feeling the energy in her head reacting to it, trying to snatch it away. It was fast and unexpected, and the water disappeared again.

Again. Another sip, this time expecting the reaction. She willed the water to pass and the energy to remain back, and after a bit of a tug war, the water went down.

The water went down, and the heart energy now tried to snatch it. Again, willing to let it pass did the trick, and the lump of energy stopped trying to absorb the water.

She opened her eyes, a little smile on her lips for a small victory. The receptionist was looking at her with a mix of worry and confusion, but after a bit of reassuring, Silvy drank a few more cups of water, making it pass easier and easier each time. Apparently it was free as well, because “it looked like you really needed water.”

Next stop: the Mages' guild. Asking for direction from the kind receptionist, whose name was Liria, Silvy moved quickly towards it.

Apparently the Mages' guild was close to the noble’s wall, quite far from the Adventurer’s Guild, but always on the main road.

And indeed, after half an hour of moving through the crowd, she reached the guild. Or, as it was better described, the Mage District.

The place was huge: a fence enclosed dozens of buildings, all made in stones. Another building was in the place of the gate, with a big sign “Mage Guild” over the entrance. There was no guard manning the double door of the entrance, so Silvy just walked in unhindered.

A long counter was placed at the back of the room, facing the entrance. A few people just walked in and out of the doors positioned to the side of this counter, while four queues were in front of it.

She didn’t know how to listen to a public lesson, and neither she knew if there would be one today. So she joined the shortest queue, with a well-dressed old man in front of her.

The queue moved at a decent speed, and soon she had a few people behind her. A line was drawn on the ground, with a sign saying to stay behind it while waiting for the turn; Silvy could see people talking at the counter, but no sound was reaching her, making the experience a bit surreal.

Her turn came at last, and Silvy managed to ask her questions.

“Good morning. I’m interested in an open lecture: can you tell when one will be available?”

The receptionist didn’t even answer and instead pointed behind Silvy to the front wall. Turning, she saw many posters with lines of text written on them: she was too far to read them.

“On that wall is the poster with the schedule for public lectures, among others. There will be one after lunch today if you wish. If you prefer coming another day, you can check the written schedule. Anything else?”

Silvy was annoyed at not having checked before queuing up, but she had other questions anyway.

“I want to know the rates for the students and the lessons available. Can you tell me that?”

The receptionist pointed again at the far wall, indicating a bit more to the left this time. A slight smile was starting to sprout on her lips, no doubt amused at her ignorance.

“There’s the list of the rates and all the lessons available on that wall as well. Keep in mind that for a course to take place there must be at least five students. If you want to take a lesson not ongoing, you have to find other people to join you. Anything else?”

Silvy was getting irritated: why did they put the posters on the wall with the entrance? How was one supposed to see them?! She wanted to stump this receptionist with a hard question, or at least not a stupid one, just to have a bit of revenge. But she didn’t have much time, so thinking quickly she came up with this one:

“I’ve got a friend who’s lost her sense of taste after an accident. Can you do something for it?”

The receptionist pointed again at the far wall, not trying to hide the smile anymore.

“There’s a poster-”

“Fine, I’ll go read the posters on the wall!”

She stomped off toward the far wall, stopping in front of a lot of parchments. All kinds of information were on them: schedule of private and public lessons, rates of enrollment, prices for the creation, maintenance and repair of magical items, rates for the diagnosis and treatment of all kinds of ailments…

There was, literally, a wall of information on these posters, with many parchments hanged by students as well that were searching for all kinds of things: from other students to complete a course, to a group for studying or practicing together; one was even searching for a sexual partner.

Her irritation for the receptionist smug attitude quickly subsided, followed by embarrassment reading about sex. She knew what it was, but it was something done by adults, not by children.

Changing the focus of her attention, she went back to the schedule for the public lessons and the rates for private lessons.

A public lesson was indeed that same day after lunch; the phrase for the time was literally “after lunch.” Lunch of whom? She decided it was probably “after lunch” of this professor and realized she didn’t know where to go, not having asked it at the receptionist. Irritation came up again but quickly subsided.

The rates for the private lessons were expensive for her, but it was probably not a bad price in general. The lessons as listening-in student under “Basic” were around two gold pieces each for the entirety of the course, which apparently lasted “minimum ten lessons, at least two hours and less than four hours long each, with at least 24 hours of rest between them, with the starting hour between 8:00 in the morning and 17:00 in the evening. A professor may, at his discretion, increases the total number of his lessons, always maintaining the above rules.”

She was getting the impression that something happened in the past to make a rule as specific as that, but decided to not think too hard about it. “Intermediate” classes were five gold coins each, while “Advanced” went from ten to a maximum of fifty; pricy.

Having all the information she needed, Silvy turned around and walked to one of the unguarded doors at the sides of the counter, going through without being stopped.

A paved path started from the door, branching off in multiple directions, with a number of benches on the sides. A meadow extended around, with few trees to the side of the various paths. This place was tranquil, with silence interrupted only by people moving around on the paths, speaking and arguing between them; students read books on the benches, or just relaxed dozing off in the grass. A few dozens of meters in front of her a wooden stage was set up, with a wooden lectern at the center. Grass was all around it, broken up only by two paths directed towards the sides of the stage, reaching the stairs that brought to the top.

A couple of people were sitting there, relaxing or reading. Coming up to them, Silvy had confirmation that this was indeed where the open lesson would be taking place in a few hours: having nothing better to do, she sat down, waiting.

In the beginning, she didn’t feel anything different, but after a time she realized her thoughts were clearer as if someone had woken her up from sleep. She started thinking about her last few days in deep, and particularly at the death of her friends. Silvy considered them her family after the death of her mother a few years back but realized the reactions were very different. She was devastated after losing her mother, but she had felt very little from the death of her peers. Not only that, but she had eaten them with little concern. No, not with little concern: she had felt sad at the beginning, now she remembered. But then emptiness… Something was very wrong, and only now she realized her emotions were… fading. Every time she would feel emotions for a few seconds, forgetting them right after. The same thing had happened with the receptionist: she had been irritated at her smug attitude, but then she went on as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even feel any malice towards her right now: nothing at all.

That was scary; someone was taking her emotions away! She concentrated on the fear she was feeling right now, trying to keep it alive. With no luck: after a few seconds, it just vanished, disappearing into the oblivion.

Trying to look at the positive side of things, she understood that she would be calm in any situation, give or take a few seconds of her emotions flaring up.

Well, not much she could do alone: she had to find more information about herself, hoping to answer some of her many questions. She waited, relaxing in the soft grass, passing time trying to call forth emotions and keeping them, failing each time.

People started coming in, sitting in the grass, talking between them. It was only after another half an hour that a young adult strode towards the stage with some parchments in his hands. He was moving fast, with a confident stride and attracted the attention of the whole crowd in moments, which became silent. He raced up the steps two at a time… and fell down at the last one. It was a spectacular fall: his right foot stuck on the step, his arms up in the air, mouth wide open in surprise, but not emitting any sound. All of his papers went flying, most of them on stage, a few of them in the grass below. And then his face met the wooden floor, with a resounding smack. The crowd started murmuring, a few standing up and going quickly over to the stage, a group to the side laughing loudly. A laugh almost came out of Silvy, but she coughed to avoid it, not wanting to offend the poor guy.

The guy apparently was fine; he picked himself up, scrambling around picking up his notes, with a few helpful bystanders passing him the parchments fallen to the ground below.

Silvy had to admit: she was impressed at his boldness: after the incident, he struck to the lectern as if nothing had happened, while some people were still laughing and addressed the crowd with a loud and clear voice.

“Hello and welcome to my public lesson. I’m Marthyn Devon, and I’ll be explaining the basics of mana: what it is and how to use it; how to expand your mana pool with simple exercises, and maybe I’ll answer some questions at the end.”

The last sentence created a ripple through the crowd that stopped as Marthyn continued talking. He started moving up and down the stage, gesticulating while talking.

“Let’s start with the most fundamental question: what is mana? We know every living being can feel it in their body if they are taught what to search for. Energy inside them, coursing through their body, making it whole. We know that if a living being ever runs out of mana they will expire, just like they would if say, they couldn’t breathe. And we know we can make it answer to our will if we train ourselves: through it, we can perform a variety of feats, from the mundane ones, which effects can be replicated by common objects, to powerful ones, which can be hardly replicated at all. But what is mana? I've told you what it does, but ask what is mana to different [Mages] and they’ll have each a different answer. The will of God. The manifestation of the planet. A force of nature. Personally, I stick with the last one: mana doesn’t have a will: it just is…”

The lesson was interesting: mana was a force of nature, just like the sun and wind; it was shaped by your desires, and particular shapes could cast spells: these shapes were called runes. But mana inside humans was little, not enough to cast many spells: that was why mana of the caster was used to shape mana in the surroundings so that the amount of mana spent by the caster was only a fraction of the total mana used. And he talked on how to improve your mana pool: almost depleting your mana would start an expanding process afterward, increasing the total pool, if only by a small fraction. And why there weren’t many [Mages] of high level in the world: the bigger the pool the smaller the gain and the harder it was to deplete it: even casting hundreds or thousands of low level spells might not be sufficient, so you were obligated to learn more powerful spells, which were cast by incredibly complicated runes. Of course, closing a wrong rune would have consequences: while low-level spells had little consequences, such as burning some mana and maybe create harmless and short-lasting effects, errors in high-level spells could totally vaporize the caster or create devastating disasters in the area around him or her.

The sun was low when Marthyn stopped speaking, asking if there was any question. Silvy would have loved to stay, listen and maybe ask a few questions of her own: Marthyn had a friendly face and tone and gave the idea of a clumsy but knowledgeable [Mage]. But she had a lesson with Jekhum, so she reluctantly stood up and moved away while Marthyn was answering a question. She recalled that Jekhum shop was quite a distance away, so she picked up the pace. But the lesson was still fresh in her mind. The most interesting part was how to cast a spell: you had to make a shape with mana! And if you closed the shape and it was a wrong, bad things would happen. So she jogged through people, avoiding the slow ones while creating simple shapes with her mana, but always stopping just before closing them. A circle, a triangle, a square, and then to more complicated stuff, creating shapes with depth: a sphere, a pyramid and then-

Jekhum was closing the shop when Silvy arrived: she greeted him and received an annoyed look as an answer.

“You are late. Let’s go.”

That was the only thing that he said until they arrived at the basement in his home: that was when he started giving her instructions.

“This will be your first real lesson. If you are to become a good [Warrior], the first thing you need is a good body than can keep up with your mind. I will show you some exercises, and you will repeat them until you feel like you can’t keep going.”

Saying that he laid down on his stomach, explaining what to do while he was doing it.

“Watch me. Put your hands underneath your shoulders, slightly wider than them. Stay on your toes and keeping your back straight push up from the floor until your arms are extended. Then go back down, slowly, maintaining the back straight and without touching the floor, but getting close to it. Then go up again and repeat. Try it.”

Silvy had seen this stuff before, but she had never done it herself. She took the position, being corrected by Jekhum if she made mistakes. Up and down, that was easy. Breath in, breath out, even if she didn’t need to breath to begin with. She didn’t feel pain or tiredness as Jekhum was saying, so she kept going. Five, ten, twenty. At twenty-three, when pushing to reach the summit of the exercise, her right arm gave way, and she fell down.

“Not bad for a start: twenty-three is quite good for a child. Next time stop before reaching failure, or you could hurt yourself. One repetition less but made with form is better than one more without it. Now, get up and I’ll show you another one.”

Silvy did try to get up, but in the end, she had to roll on the side and get up using her left arm, a detail that didn’t escape Jekhum.

“Mh. Show me your arm.”

He extended his hand and Silvy complied. He touched her arm, and then his eyebrows shot up.

“You pulled a muscle! Why didn’t you stop before hurting yourself?! Argh, follow me.”

Saying that he went upstairs, rummaging through a chest at the feet of his bed, and gave Silvy a small flask of red liquid.

“A healing potion will repair the damage to your muscle. Here, give me your arm.”

While Jekhum was moving around, Silvy was concentrating on her arm, trying to feel the inside of it: it felt like a sensation in the back of her mind, just inside her reach, but hard to grasp. She saw her muscle tore in places; a part of it was still attached, but almost half of it was ripped in two. But she could feel something different too: it was repairing itself, fast.

Fast enough that when Jekhum asked for her arm again it was completely healed.

“I don’t need it; my arm is fine, really. Watch, I can do another repetition!”

Saying that she went down and made another push up before Jekhum stopped her.

“Stop, stop. There is no need to push yourself: your muscle is pulled, and it needs tending. If it’s for the cost of the potion don’t worry: it’s not a powerful one. Now give me your arm.”

Saying that he grabbed her arm before she could protest, feeling up to it, trying to pinpoint the damage. He kept at it for a dozen of seconds, expression sour at first, then confused.

“See, I told you I’m fine. I can keep going.”

Jekhum scratched his head, mumbling. They went back to the basement, starting to exercise again. He explained various exercises: push up, sit up, squats, pull-ups, and more. But this time he stopped Silvy at fifteen repetitions each, even less for more difficult ones.

“We will go through these exercises every two days, giving your body time to rest. Don’t do them by yourself, or there won’t be any benefit. Now, let’s see what you remember from yesterday.”

Saying that Silvy went through the basic forms and movements he had taught her yesterday, and Jekhum was pleasantly surprised at how much she remembered.

He decided to introduced new stuff, and the last thirty minutes were spent sparring with him, with only losses for Silvy, even if she managed to hit him a few times, but not in ways that would have been lethal.

Moving into the first floor, he asked Silvy to speak a bit.

“You know, I had my share of muscle tears in the past, and I’ve seen it happen to other people as well. Do you know what’s the same for everyone? The screams of pain. Now, I don’t want to pressure you, but you didn’t even flinch, and I know what I felt in your arm. If you don’t want to talk about your past, it’s fine with me, but as I understand it you are in this city alone. It can be overwhelming, especially if it’s the first time, but I just want to let you know that I can be a good listener.”

Another mistake added to the ever-growing pile of mistakes. He was referring to her lack of pain and her fast recovery of course; they were not Skills you would often see, especially in children. The point was that she had no Skill that made her immune to pain or made her recover faster, but Jekhum thought she did; that was a problem, especially if he started going around talking about it.

The best way to solve this problem would be

To eat him

of course, but she didn’t feel like doing it. Her second-best bet was to give him something, a part of her secret, to make him feel trusted, but not the whole story; after that she would ask him to keep the secret, and he would feel compelled to do it to gain her trust, or just to have more information in the future. She felt a little guilty manipulating Jekhum: he seemed like a nice guy, and hell, maybe he would help her even if he knew she was a zombie of some sort. But she was not willing to take the risk, so she settled for this course of action.

“Well, I… have a Skill, [Pain Immunity]... it makes me immune to pain, understandably. But… I don’t want to let others know, please? People might take advantage of that, using me as an easy way to remove traps from dungeons, or worse…”

Did [Pain Immunity] exists? She didn’t know. But she had barely stopped speaking when Jekhum took her hand and looked her in the eyes. His expression was riddled with pain.

“Don’t worry child. I won’t let anyone know. I… I had a daughter once, you know. She would have been around your age right now. I… I’m sure she would have asked me to help you, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing I refused to help. Your secret is safe with me, okay? But you have to keep it secret, at all costs. I’m here if you want to talk more.”

Now Silvy felt really awful. Not only she had lied to him, but his motives were actually pure. Guilt almost made her spill the truth: “Help me.”

But guilt was suppressed quickly, like every other emotion, and her thoughts were clear again. He might be lying, or if he wasn’t, he might search for help from other people, who might not be so pure of heart.

She rose from her seat, followed quickly by Jekhum.

“Thank you, really. But I hope you won’t tell anyone. I can handle myself, really. Thanks for caring.”

“At least take this healing potion. Your arm looks healed now, but maybe there is still some residual damage. Just pour it on your bicep, as close as possible to the wound, and it’ll repair any damage.”

She accepted the potion, thanking him again and leaving the house with a silent Jekhum behind. She felt bad, but it had to be done.

Silvy moved to The Dry Ducks, renting the room for the night. The room was mostly silent, with only background noises of clatter and chatting coming from below. The shutters were closed, and Silvy was looking at the potion. Feeling her arm, she could tell there was no damage, but what would happen if you poured a healing potion on an undead? Time to test it.

A bare chest child uncorked the vial and spilled a few drops on her bicep before she changed her mind. A surge of energy started from there, swiftly working its way toward her chest. Instantly, the lump of energy in her mind rushed towards it, “fighting” it off. She could feel surges power rippling against one another, rushing and crashing, destroying each other in the meantime. But she could see with her eyes an even worse sight: her bicep was getting bigger and bigger, growing from the drops of healing potion, creating something like a spherical shape of flesh and skin, reaching twice the size of her head.

The energy from the healing potion subsided and disappeared, leaving Silvy with a huge block of flesh on her arm and less mana than she had had before.

Silvy admitted that this wasn’t the smartest move she had ever employed, but at least now she knew: healing potions bad.

She had no weapon to cut away the flesh, and she couldn’t just go back downstairs looking like this. She studied the lump curiously: it was pink and red as if her skin had received a sunburn. But part of it was “breathing”, moving up and down; veins were going in and out of the flesh, creating nightmarish forms similar to colorless roots moving inside and outside the earth. Feeling it with her energy, she saw that it was attached to her body extensively: her muscles had grown around and inside it, with flesh and skin following suit, creating a labyrinth of body parts. And it did feel like it was going to stay that way as if nothing of note was wrong. So she made the only thing she could do: she started clawing at it.

Pieces fell off easily: it wasn’t tough, and in fact, it was very soft. Tearing away one piece, she felt the mana trying to repair the damage. But it wasn’t reforming the bump, but it was actually receding. She kept at it, littering the floor of the inn with chunks of flesh. There was no blood for some reason, but Silvy was just thankful for that.

It took her the good part of an hour to remove all the excess flesh, and at the end, her arm was as before, with no remnants of this accident. She carefully closed the vial, putting it in the corner of the room opposite to her bed and dressing again.

Chunks of distorted flesh now littered the ground around Silvy. She obviously couldn’t leave them here and after a few minutes of pondering she came up with a possible solution.

She piled the chunk of flesh together, but there were a lot of them, and she couldn’t grasp them all. Looking around she located the pillow: inside of it, there was wool. Removing it, she piled it on the bed: the cover was what she wanted, and she filled it with the flesh.

With her gross, but at least not bleeding, package, she looked outside of the window, waiting for a moment with few people around. It didn’t take long, and taking the chance she leaped out from the second floor and rushed for the nearby outhouses. Fortunately, there were five next to each other, and one was unoccupied: she got in and locked the door, smoothly accomplishing the plan.

Emptying the content into the latrine, she felt now safer. That was dangerous! She knew the latrine was directly connected to the sewer system, so it was unlikely someone would find the pieces, and even if they did they wouldn’t be able to track them back to her.

Returning to the inn, she attracted the attention of the innkeeper, that did a double-take when she saw Silvy but didn’t ask her anything, getting back to the room safely.

The night had arrived for some time now, and Silvy decided to “sleep.” If yesterday was any indication, she would not sleep, but she would get levels, maybe Skills. So she laid down on her bed, eyes closed, waiting-

[Passive: Basic Footwork]

[Passive. Basic Self-Regeneration]

[Passive: Basic Mana Manipulation]

[Chimera level 1→2]

[Passive: Basic Body Awareness]

… What is that?