“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” said the soothing voice.

Raymond turned and met the eyes of the High Priestess.

“Truly, I never expected the Evelyn Raymond to visit me, let alone for her to become a Tether. I must say, you look quite young for one of the oldest immortals.”

Raymond stared at the High Priestess in bewilderment, her thoughts racing. This woman knew what she was. Despite that, she seemed non-aggressive. Also, she knew who Evelyn Raymond was.

“Though I suspect that has to do with the rather interesting state of your status. I’d heard a rumor that you were the greatest Assassin in the world but you only have a capped Tier 0 class. Most intriguing.”

Raymond approached the vibrant woman and reached out a hand carefully, just as she’d seen Jonathan do before. The High Priestess looked down at the hand in amusement for a moment before reaching out and softly accepting the offer. She shook Raymond’s hand gently, smiling widely.

“Well, well, aren’t you the polite one... I suppose I should introduce myself?” she mused, “My name is Eileen Van’Stroffelson, High Priestess of the Temple of Cairel. You may call me Eileen or Sister Van, either is fine.”

Raymond released Eileen’s hand, taking a step back. “Sister Van, clearly you know much about me. I’m curious…” she trailed off, unsure whether she should finish the question.

“...why I’m not a zealous bigot trying to enslave you?” Eileen finished.

Raymond nodded wordlessly.

Eileen walked over to a large window and stared out at the city below them. “I actually knew you were here before you entered the Temple. There are only two people in this city who can perform a full appraisal without consent. As you already know, I’m one of them. You met the other at the gate.”

“Max…” Raymond breathed out.

Eileen nodded. “He sent me a message telling me that a True Vampire was coming to the Temple. Not only that, but this True Vampire was Evelyn Raymond and a Tether! Imagine my surprise! 1595 years with only four Overseers and a new one appears that chooses a monster as a Tether! Unprecedented! Historic! Astounding!”

Raymond took another step back as Eileen flailed her arms emphatically, her voice rising in pitch. Her eyes sparkled and Raymond couldn’t help but be drawn to her enthusiasm. She shook her head. This was really suspicious.

Eileen's voice took on a reminiscent tone, “I don’t suppose that answers your question though. I’m what you might call a ‘deviant’. Perhaps I’ll tell you the full story another time... suffice to say, a goblin saved me many years ago from a human man who couldn’t control himself. I learned to not judge by race but by character. I’ve waited for decades for an opportunity to change the system while I worked my way up to my current position.”

She reached into the folds of her elegant gold-fringed white rope and withdrew a sharp, brutal-looking dagger.

“This is the weapon that goblin gave me to defend myself. It has served me well over the years.”

She turned and looked at Raymond. Her expression had mellowed slightly though she still displayed a warm and inviting smile.

“It seems you have a story as well. Your status is very… confusing.”

Raymond shrugged. “I honestly don’t know very much myself. I woke up on a mountain with no memories, got eaten alive by a bird, killed some very persistent, dead adventurers that attempted to enslave me and then came here.”

Naturally, she omitted details about her skills and how she had accomplished said events, though she suspected Eileen had already seen them.

“Oh, you poor thing!” she exclaimed when Raymond finished, “Eaten alive… that sounds terrible!”

Raymond smiled grimly. “It’s in the past now. I try not to dwell on it.”

Eileen walked over and embraced Raymond. Raymond stiffened, wary of Eileen’s potential hidden intentions but she gradually relaxed into the warm embrace.

It felt nice.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” she whispered, “Unfortunately if you go through with what you came here to do, I have to warn you that it’s only the beginning.”

“What do you mean?”

“The moment you finish registering the Great One, every entity in the world that is bound by Kraveloz’s curse will receive a notification. Evelyn Raymond was very well known. Every zealot on the continent will seek your head and I suspect some of the monsters won’t be too pleased either… politics can be a nasty thing.”

Raymond shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. The Great One is my friend and he’s been there for me all throughout this hellish week. Now, it’s my turn to help him.”

Eileen stepped back, grabbing Raymond’s shoulders as she looked her in the eye.

Raymond stared back, mustering as much resolve as she could into her expression. Eileen smiled sadly.

“For an infant to bear such a burden… but I believe you are up to the task. In fact, I want you to succeed. Let us change this rotten world.”

Raymond returned her smile. “As you said, this is just the beginning.”

Raymond wasn’t really sure what to make of this rather unexpected turn of events but she figured it didn’t matter in the long run. Whether she could trust Eileen or not, the most important thing right now was getting the Overseer registered. If Eileen was willing to do that then it would definitely be a few points on the trustworthy scale.

“Sister Van, please register him.”

Eileen stepped back, releasing Raymond as she walked over to a strange box sitting on the desk in the corner of the room. She sat down in a chair in front of the box and grabbed a small, rectangular platform with strange symbols carved into it. She pushed another button and the front of the box lit up.

She brushed her fingers across the strange symbols with an audible clicking sound for a few seconds before turning to look at Raymond again.

“What’s the new Overseer’s name?”

Raymond stared at her blankly.

“Uh… I have no idea.”

Eileen gave her a strange look. “You don’t know his name?”

“Nope. He never told me. Give me a moment.”

Raymond activated her skill and willed a connection to open.

*ring, ring* *ring, ring*

“Hey, hey! Plot armor is sweet, huh?”

“What?”

“Not important. I’ve actually been thinking about my new name for a bit now. There’s a few that seemed pretty good…”

“What did you pick?”

“I want something that inspires fear in our enemies and hope in our allies. Something that yells ‘power’! We’ll likely be against the other four Overseers and their legions of zealots, so I need a name that declares my overwhelming dominance.”

Raymond nodded in agreement.

“So I now declare through you, my prophet, that with my new name we will be the new unstoppable legions. We are... no, I AM LEGION!”

“Legion?”

“Hehe, I’ve always wanted to say that! Sounds cool right? So, the name that I was thinking of…”

Raymond cut off the connection. The Overseer tending to talk a lot if she let him and she wasn’t interested in wasting time at the moment.

“His name is Legion.”

A few clicks on the platform later and nearly every sentient being on the continent of Nathea paused, reading a small blue screen.

*System Announcement*

Rejoice, for Legion the Great One has joined us!

Bow before our new Overseer and his Tether, Evelyn Raymond!

***

Damn it!

I messed up. I took the opportunity to be dramatic and now my name is Legion. Honestly, I kind of like the sound of it… but I really wanted to be a ‘Steve’. It just felt right.

Mortals! Bow and tremble before the almighty Steve!’

Ah well, Legion it is.

I returned my attention to Raymond and Eileen’s conversation. I’d been a bit surprised when Eileen used a computer to register me but at this point, I decided to throw all preconceptions I had about this world out the window.

With a start, I realized I couldn’t hear what either of them was saying. Or rather, their words were disjointed and I couldn’t hear anything but stuttering sounds.

“...”

“Auto, what’s going on?”

“The Overseer System is loading. You are currently experiencing lag due to the huge amount of data being transferred.”

Lag?!… are you kidding me? Gods can lag? What are we, computers?

“Okay… what data are we talking about?”

“The transfer is almost complete. You will see.”

A minute later, my vision went dark and my mind felt like it was going to explode. Various shapes danced across my vision in the darkness but I was in too much pain to pay attention to them.

And then the pain stopped. My vision gradually refocused and I mentally blinked a few times, reorienting myself. I still floated next to Raymond and Eileen. I could hear them clearly again but I tuned it out because something else caught my attention.

I had a friggin’ video game UI. There was a chat box in the bottom left-hand corner and a series of boxes in the bottom right. Mentally focusing on them caused the name of each box to appear in my mind.

“Perks, Divine Mandates, Tenets, Prayer Log, Calculator”

I’ll definitely need to experiment with this. They all seem like really useful things for gods. Especially that last one… it would really suck if someone died because a god made a mistake in their mental math.

I focused on the chat box, curious about who I could talk to. As I focused on it, five names appeared:

Dallin

Jocelyn

Loki

Mumblegrumble

???

So the other four Overseers and some mysterious unknown entity. Great. I started to move away when I heard a ding. I glanced back at the box and saw a little red circle next to Dallin’s name. I focused on his name and a separate chat box appeared.

xXxDallinTheDestroyerxXx: Heyyyyyyy! It’s a new guy! I’m Dallin!

I read his name and sighed. Kids.

Legion: Hey.

xXxDallinTheDestroyerxXx: What world are you from? What are you the god of?

Legion: Uh, not sure yet.

xXxDallinTheDestroyerxXx: Huh? If you want to keep it secret, that's fine! We try our best to work together here. Easier to farm off these humans and all if we have them fighting the monsters instead of each other, right?”

Legion: Yeah, no. My Tether is a True Vampire.

I waited for a moment, but there was no response. That conversation had given me quite a bit to think about though.

What is the purpose of Overseers?

Apparently, they were here to ‘farm’ off the humans, whatever that means.

I returned my attention to my new UI, opening and closing windows.

It felt like the first time I logged into a video game. That slightly overwhelmed sensation when viewing all the buttons, the awe at the intricate details of the system and the giddiness that comes with learning a new feature.

I laughed as I opened another window and began scanning its contents.

Finally, I was in my element.

***

After the continent-wide notification went out, Raymond sat down in a chair. She had accomplished what she came here to do. Though the task had seemed very difficult, it had actually been pretty easy, all things considered. It begged the questions though:

What should she do next? Can she really trust Eileen?

Eileen seemed very willing to help and her willingness to register Legion removed some of Raymond’s doubt, but Raymond felt like she needed more time before she could trust Eileen fully. The experiences of her thus far short life had not engrained a sense of naivety in her.

As for what she should do next, she didn’t have any other missions from Legion. She needed to find a class trainer to advance her Fighter class… that would probably be the next best thing. Which meant she had another question she had to rely on Eileen to help her with.

“Hey Eileen, do you think I could find a class trainer around here?”

“Sure, what class did you have in mind?”

“Uh…”

Eileen reached up and thumped the side of her own head. “Oh, right. You probably don’t remember how the Kravelozonian system works.”

“Kravelozonian?”

“The system is named after its creator, Kraveloz.”

Raymond nodded. “I assume he’s important?”

The High Priestess shrugged, “Nobody’s seen him in a really long time. He might not even still be around.”

Raymond filed the information away. Then she focused her questioning gaze on the High Priestess.

“There are four Tier 0 classes: Fighter, Thief, Archer and Acolyte. These classes have to be unlocked by fulfilling special conditions, as it seems you’ve already discovered. Once you reach level 10, you can upclass into a Tier 1 variant. As a Fighter, you’ll have a few options… one moment.”

Eileen walked over to the magical display box and strummed her fingers across the symbols. The display changed and she began to read information from it.

“In Cairel, you can find Tier 1 trainers for the Warrior, Guardian and Berserker classes. If you want to wait and travel, you can find Dragoons and Samurai in the Empire.”

“Give me a little more information on each option.”

“Certainly!” Eileen said. She started reading the information from the screen and Raymond listened carefully.

After a few minutes of deliberation, she decided which path she would take.

Something had been bugging her ever since she read the initial notifications when she first woke up. All her defensive stats were maxed… 'stats' as in plural. Yet her only defensive stat was Endurance.

If her suspicion was correct then there was one path she would get the most benefit from. Conveniently, it was the one that made it harder to get eaten alive so she was all for it. She had a feeling that Eileen’s prediction was correct. Though her first week had been terrible, this was just the beginning and the future was full of mystery.

Raymond had no idea who or what else was out there but this time she would be ready to fight it head-on.