A regular respawn wouldn’t have taken longer than a few days, having to have my essence collected, re-glued together and then shuttled down the path of full reincarnation took much longer.

According to the archive, over three thousand years have passed since “I’d” last walked the earth. And you know what?....I was kind of over it.

I think it’s a sort of strange-ness fatigue. There was only so much that one person could be wowed or devastated before they ceased to feel anything about a given scenario anymore.

Wave the same gun in someone's face enough times and you’ll find that sooner or later they’re likely to make you either put up or shut up.

It was a big deal when I first respawned and found that seven hundred years had passed since the end of the world. It was an even bigger deal when I somehow let fifty years pass by without my noticing.

Just simply losing three thousand years all at once? It was meh. A loss too large to actually feel. It was like someone telling a normal person that they were suddenly three trillion dollars in debt, right while they’d been barely handling being under several hundred dollars of debt.

If anything, it was almost freeing. I was officially so deep in the shit that I no longer had to worry about digging myself out again.

According to the archive in my head, the culture had changed so drastically, that “my” age was an age of myths to these people all but forgotten. Only vaguely recalled by a few of the older immortals who’d not given into their devils or dissolved themselves, and a few older AIs.

It was a still a very violent world yes, they still used mithril bills as money, yes, but that was just the way things were now, and not some, temporary thing, like I’d been half hoping it’d be.

Simply said, this world was what it was. It wasn’t my world. It was something else, an entirely different Agartha. Going on an entirely different path, they were no longer in recovery, they were no longer “rebuilding” they were what they were.

And if that was the case, I had no need to worry my head over it, for there was absolutely nothing I could do.

Thusly freed, I turned my attention to more pressing matters. Issues such as, just exactly what, was going with my Status.

******

Name:

Dudley Walkins

Age:

12

Level:

1

Race:

Humanoid Existence

Affiliation(s):

Title(s):

Partially-Omniscient, Child of the Emptied Skies

Talent:

95

Attainments:

Body

0

Mind

0

Soul

0

Affinities:

Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion

Abilities:

Mandate of Black, Mandate of White, Mandate of Gray, Devilish Good Looks

Virtue:

Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence

Vice:

Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony

******

Looking at my status I suspected that the future-me was up to hijinks again. Everything was changed even my name.

I glared at the status, feeling betrayed by the status menu, completely aware that all this was of sign of more plotting by my future-self.

It was this sense of creeping violation akin to waking up and finding a doctor leaning over your bed, doing...something...after operating on you while slept. This sense of seeing evidence that someone had changed the way you were without your consent.

I suppose I should have been more concerned about having seeming been de-leveled and lost all my attainment points but the thing was, I didn’t “feel” any weaker than I’d been three thousand years ago.

The archive confirmed my suspicions, if this leveling system had proper stats display, mind would have been more or less the same as they’d always been, save a possible diminishment to my agility, health, and stamina, because of my current, badly malnourished, pre-pubescent form.

Yes, I’d have to start over with leveling again, but it wasn’t like it'd be hard, I was no less stronger, then I’d been before, so more likely than not this could considered a boon.

All that I’d managed to achieve before had now been rolled into my base stats. Investing my talent points, which seemed to have gone up by the way, would now be even more impactful when applied to the accumulated stats of a former level three hundred leveller.

Rather than caring about the change to my levels and attainments I was more taken aback by change to my race, titles and abilities.

First off, what in the nine hells was a [Humanoid Existence] supposed to be? The boy had just been a regular vanilla human as far as I knew, so I wasn’t sure what sudden switch was for.

While I was happy to have shed the embarrassing “grandiose” mantle of a [Cambion Lord] and [Living Nightmare] I had the sense that I might have been turned into something even fishier.

Doesn’t being something that’s merely humanoid, mean that I wasn’t human anymore? Why did I feel like I’d become even less human than I was when I’d been some kind of nightmare demon?

Losing most of my titles only made the feeling worse. The archive had no clue what a [Child of the Emptied Skies] was, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

My abilities were gone too. All of them. Instead there were new abilities in their place. [Mandate of Black], [Mandate of White], and [Mandate of Gray]. And again the archive had no specific information to tell me about them, or what they did, or how they operated.

What I “did” have was a little note, that had been left with me, pinned to the back of the inside of my head, as if that was a place where it was okay to just leave things.

It read:

“Buck up, buttercup...you’re still more or less, what you’re supposed to be...plus a little extra. XOXO...-Desmond.”

That explained nothing! That was barely even a message and in my opinion was more a form of trolling. If I could kick my own ass and know that future-me would feel it I swear I would, but knowing that I’d feel it worse kept me from trying to do so.

Interestingly enough the only old ability “he’d” let me keep [Devilish Good Looks]. Which pretty much confirmed my theory that my future-self was fucking with me.

“Well, whatever...I guess since I’m not dead I still have to get on with living.” I grumbled to myself as I wandered across the arid wasteland that lay between Potter’s Run and all the nearest inhabited settlements in the region.