A young woman, looking human save for the black horn emerging from her forehead and the slightly pointed ears hidden in her black hair, ran toward the goblins plaguing the subway station, the katana in her right hand slicing across the throat of one wielding a sword while a spear of fire shot out of her left into the face of another, boiling its brain and rupturing its eyeballs instantaneously.

She was dressed in the ragged remnants of the cosplay Shinsengumi haori she was wearing when the Sublimation occurred over a pair of denim jeans covered in plates of hardened leather and a chain mail shirt that glittered with enchantments, dropped from one of the first monsters she encountered. Dozens of others, some in similar haoris, others in old police body armor or the ragged remnants of various costumes fought desperately against the horde. Flashes of lightning, blasts of fire, and waves of ice crystals obliterated entire squads of goblins, but the horde seemed limitless.

A grin stretched her face at the odds before her, and her sword began to glow with metal mana as she enhanced its cutting edge through her Samurai Class’s base technique, Yoreba Kiru. She activated another technique, shukuchi and felt the world stretch around her as her detection aura showed her where to place the edge of her blade to kill her enemies. When she was released from the stretched time and space of the technique, a dozen goblins fell into pieces, splattering blood and gore across their fellows behind her.

She had placed almost all of her AP into Willpower, Dexterity, and Agility. As a result, when she used Yoreba Kiru, she had yet to find any creature she couldn’t bisect in a single strike. The feeling of warm blood staining her clothes and body only made her smile widen, and her crimson eyes glowed with their own light as she threw herself into battle.

Michael Richardson, her partner, came in behind her, his lips set in a grim line as his energy blade cut through those that came at her back and his Force Magic threw arrows that otherwise would have pierced her slightly off course. The Energy Blade technique created by his Custom Class, Force User, was a inch-thick cylinder of pure energy that fed off the rapid nuclear decay of the metal rod in his hand. It wasn’t precisely what he was looking for when he created the Class as part of his reward for being the first Earthling to reach Level 10, but it did feed his internal fanboy enough to satisfy.

He looked ahead at Kasumi, his eyes worried as he automatically used his magic to react to his ESP detecting attacks directed at the both of them. His MP was dropping but only slowly, as he had put a great deal of points into Willpower and Intelligence. Maintaining the technique wasn’t the issue, as it was self-maintaining, but using magic constantly took a toll.

He saw four larger goblins, in plate armor, approaching from Kasumi’s front, and he sighed as he sensed her grin widen. The woman was incorrigible. No matter how many times she almost died, she always threw herself at the strongest enemies she could find, sword in hand. If he hadn’t fallen for her the first time she decapitated an orc during the Akibahara Cleansing, he would have left her to her fate long ago.

By now, most of those fighting with them were accustomed to fighting monsters, enough so that none had fallen thus far. The goblins were relatively high level, but they were still goblins, stupid and easily outmaneuvered. Reclaiming the Raid Zone that had formed in the sewers and subway system was a priority if they were to secure a safe place for the survivors, but no one wanted to lose any more people after all those already lost since the Sublimation.

Michael was a High Human, his features smoothed and refined instead of altered fundamentally after Sublimation. He stood out as the only person in the Earthling force that still looked human, as all the others had undergone a race-change of one sort or another.

He channeled a stream of lightning into a crowd of goblins sheltering a shaman, ignoring the shrieking of the dying creatures and the foul stench of roasting goblin flesh. His energy blade bisected three more goblin warriors in as many seconds, and a surge of Force Magic threw a dozen more back from Kasumi as she engaged with the champions.

The energy blade required more care in its usage than he had imagined, even from the warnings in the books and movies. Without his ESP skill, he would probably have lost fingers or an arm somewhere along the way (not that he hadn’t considered doing so on purpose when one of the men in his Marine unit awakened the Cybersmith class and began making magically-animated prosthetics for the wounded). He was a fanboy, after all.

Four more Samurai, Kasumi’s ‘students’, all of them of the same race she had been reborn into, were cutting their way through the horde together, albeit much slower than their high-leveled mentor. The irony that all four had been Americans before the Sublimation sometimes made him smile wryly when he had a moment to rest, but they all took it so seriously he couldn’t bear to show it in front of them.

They were all dressed in light chain armor, most of it pieced together from damaged orcish armor and made out of that weird lightweight yellow metal they seemed to prefer, over tabards made from thick curtains, and they wielded makeshift katanas reforged by their crafters from the crap-quality iron blades dropped during the Cleansing.

A kitsune in a ninja costume (who actually had the newborn Ninja Class) occasionally appeared to drop explosives or poison smoke bombs into the crowds of enemies before fading back into the shadows, wreaking havoc wherever he went. Three young Dark Elf women with the new Battle Miko class threw buffing talismans at their allies while shooting arrows from their yumi at any casters they could find.

This was the result of a faction rallying around a bunch of game-obsessed otaku and military freaks, and it would have seemed absurd if their actions weren’t so brutal and calculated to slaughter on as large a scale as possible.

Sakurai Nobuharu flew over the battlefield, his Stealth advanced enough that he could strike without revealing himself even as his black Tengu wings sent him shooting from crisis point to crisis point. He looked on disapprovingly as his students became visible when they dropped their payloads of explosives and poison, and he thought, I’ll have to retrain them later.

Unlike many of his students, who seemed to like Fire or Lightning Magic, he wielded Wind and Darkness, concealing himself and directing dozens of poison needles into goblins at key points of the battle, disrupting their attempts to break through. He still had thousands of poisoned needles in his inventory, so he wasn’t worried about supplies becoming a problem anytime soon.

More problematic was the sheer number of the goblins and their relatively high levels. If it weren’t for Kasumi’s berserk charges (with Michael covering her back) to slaughter the Hobs and champions whenever they appeared, things would not be going nearly as well. Still, he decided to send a quick telepathic message to Command, I think it is time to switch out the line fighters. The Ninja and Samurai can keep going for a few more hours, but the Mage Corps and the Tanks are starting to run out of steam.

Understood. We will send in the replacements in the next few minutes, Command, telepath strategist who both led the Shinsengumi Guild and controlled the communications for their entire force, replied, his dry emotionless mental voice fading away a moment later.

The healers and buffers were in good shape, as the former tended to have high MP regen and the latter used very little MP in the first place. However, the stamina of the Warrior Classes was wearing thin, as was the MP of the Intelligence-focused Mage Classes. He often thought the Mages should balance Willpower with Intelligence, but most of them liked wide-area destructive spells rather than focused damage spells.

Nobuharu disliked being in charge of the defense, as he was at his best leading small units to cause chaos behind enemy lines. However, the goblins were little more than a chaotic mass of murderous imps. There were no great leaders whose death would cause the collapse of their forces, nor did they have supply lines that could be cut by a few ‘bandit attacks’ at the right spots. The tactics they had used against the Fallen Orcs would not work here, so he was forced to use his literal birds-eye view to act as commander while preventing the advance from stalling through applications of poison and explosives.

Michael sighed with relief as Kasumi beheaded the last of the goblin champions before making her way back to him, the few goblins that had survived their advance falling back in terror as the lines advanced and ground them to hamburger.

She looked disappointed, which was typical of her these days. Ever since she hit Level 40 and gained the Samurai Class, she began to run out of challenges. Her previous Class, Blade Demon, was powerful enough, but the Samurai Class she had gained the right to design by reaching level 40 before any other Earthling was just… overpowered.

The techniques it used were all refinements of ones she had developed for her own use previously, created by the System. Including her sword style into the Class loadout, in particular, had had some unexpected benefits, such as the creation of the Yoreba Kiru and Shukuchi techniques, whereas her body-enhancement techniques had advanced to a higher level. The Class had no magic, but it did not really need it, as it was possible for Samurai to create powerful techniques through discipline, battle experience, and study.

I think she is probably going to leave the Guild soon. There is no way she’ll be happy hanging around in Akibahara, slapping down goblin hordes and slaughtering orc remnants, He thought with mild depression. Personally, he was perfectly happy remaining in Akibahara, fortifying the city against the threats from the rest of Tokyo, rescuing survivors and helping others level up.

“Take a rest, you two. The lines are switching out soon,” One of the unit captains, his blue and white haori bloody and tattered, said as he passed by. He was former JSDF and was wielding a long spear, the katana sheathed at his side a symbol of his authority rather than something he got much use out of.

Kasumi simply nodded, her features filling with boredom as she went through the lines, heading for the mess tent near the rear of the station.

Michael cut off the technique for his energy blade and slipped the rod of metal into a sheath belted to his right hip before following her. Behind them, the screams of dying goblins and the clash of metal against metal rang, but neither of them was bothered. The last month had inured them to the sounds of battle, and they had faith the lines would not collapse with Nobuharu directing the battle.

The mess tent was at the top of the stairs leading out of the station. As they walked, they passed the slowly dissolving corpses of looted goblins, numbering in the hundreds, as well as unarmed civilians dragging them into the corners to make room for the changeout of the lines.

The mess tent was an abomination made out of anime wall-scrolls, sewn together by the Cosplayers Union as part of their contribution to the defense. Girls in apron dresses served hungry fighters at the long tables inside while the more advanced healers worked on wounds and the Cybertechs worked on repairing prosthetics and mechanical weaponry.

At the rear of the tent was Command, a former gamer who simply went by his handle from playing 4X strategy games. He was a young humanoid with a massive head, the brain visible beneath translucent blue skin as it pulsed, his natural telepathy networking the entirety of Akibahara’s defenders on his own. The race he had been changed to was the Venro, a race that was naturally telepathic and magically-talented but had no real aptitude for physical combat. Command was useless on the battlefield, but his ability to link together the entire army through his mind made him irreplaceable. The System’s Party and Raid Party mechanics didn’t allow for silent communication or communication across distances, after all.

Kasumi’s Kenki race was actually one that had apparently spread its blood far and wide on Earth, in secret. Those that had even a drop of the blood in them were given that race when they were Sublimated, so there were almost forty of them in the Shinsengumi Guild alone.

Discovering that Earth had had almost fifty sentient races hidden in the greater population of Japan alone had… disturbed a great number of people who survived the first days. Kitsune and oni variants in particular seemed to have spread their blood to at least a third of Tokyo’s inhabitants, and even some of the Japanese-descended Marines had manifested as one or the other.

Other Earthlings had turned out to have Fae, angelic, or demonic blood, resulting predictable race changes. The rest had been changed based on personal disposition, and these tended to be more varied than with those changed by bloodline. Michael was one of those. High Humans were apparently what happened if a human variant evolved and purified his essence beyond human limitations. It was possible, even on Earth, to become a High Human, though nobody knew that until the System pointed it out.

This latest battle was one of almost a dozen ranging across Akibahara, as the Shinsengumi Guild and its allies began the slaughter of the goblins, using the surviving subway and sewer access points to access the underground. The surface was cleansed and mostly secure, despite a few nearby Raid Zones being potential trouble. However, there were at least a hundred thousand goblins in the underground of Akibahara, and they would only increase with time if left to their own devices.

“I wonder if the rest of Earth is like this?” Michael wondered aloud as they sat at one of the tables and bowls of soup were placed before them.

“Worse, probably. We were lucky we managed to organize and absorb so many survivors. The rest of Tokyo never managed that much,” Kasumi replied as she began rapidly spooning the thick stew in her bowl into her mouth as fast as she could move her arm.

“I hate to think what must have happened in America, given how useless guns are to anyone who isn’t a Gun-mage or Gunslinger,” Michael said, his eyes growing sad. The sheer number of people who had martial arts training in Japan, however basic and pathetic it might be, compared to the rest of the population was just that much higher. That most of it was sports-related or taught in gym-class was irrelevant, it built a base that could be used to build a Class affinity. America mostly had people trained with guns, and many other modern nations were probably worse off.

“I think they might do all right, since the otaku seem to have prospered here, and there are many in America,” Kasumi remarked. It was true. The sheer number of otaku who had gained a mage, healer or magic-hybrid Class was staggering, though aptitude seemed to vary wildly.

Warrior Classes required some kind of martial skill to be present in the individual. Rogue-types were… rare. To be blunt, most people in the modern world didn’t know anything about stealth, so Akibahara only had a few wannabes who had somehow become rogue-variants (all of which had been retrained into Ninja by Nobuharu) after Sublimation, which limited their options more than most of them wanted to admit.

“I heard that one of our scouts found angels near the Tokyo Tower,” One of the wounded muttered as a Cybertech repaired his damaged prosthetic arm. He looked offended, as if something about angels being present in this new world was wrong.

“Fallen Angels, dude. Don’t go screeching about blasphemy on me now,” His partner, an American replied wearily. Apparently, it was some kind of religious hangup.

“I’m not… it just seems like God would have taken the Angels with him, even if they were Fallen,” The other grumbled sullenly, his white Moon Elven brows scrunching up as he scowled bitterly.

It was common knowledge, gained from Fallen Orc captives, that creator deities sold their worlds to the System before they could be Sublimated. As such, the more devout Christians seemed to be wallowing in a more-or-less permanent crisis of faith, made worse by the fact that their beliefs were affirmed to some extent by this revelation, if not in a way they had wanted them to be.

Thankfully, Michael had never been particularly devout, so it didn’t bother him that much. Sure, he felt it was a bit sad that their creator had had lost interest in them enough that he’d sold his world, but he had more immediate concerns, like trying to keep his love interest from getting herself killed while she indulged her hobby of monster-slaying while pretending to be a heroic warrior of legend.

The other man, a blue-scaled Dragonkin, shook his head sadly at his friend’s words. There was no getting through to some people.

“So… when are we leaving, Kasumi?” Michael broached the question casually, not-so-subtly stating that he would be going with her.

The young Japanese girl’s eyes widened with surprise and she stammered, “W-what are you talking about?!”

“C’mon now, girl. I know you don’t want to hang around here anymore. You’ve taught your Class to those idiots just like you promised the Commander, so I can’t see you sticking around any longer,” He said as he slurped his soup happily, enjoying the look of startlement on her face thoroughly.

Kasumi’s Class was symbolic to many of the Shinsengumi Guild’s more fanatic members, of which there were many. As such, the Commander, one Takeda Hirofumi, had commanded her to train at least two dozen warrior-types until they gained the Class before she could leave. That was not even mentioning that, even with Kasumi’s bonuses as the Class’s creator, it was still a powerful advanced Class.

Michael’s Class was iconic to a certain subset of the otaku community, but he was even less inclined to train others than Kasumi. He had still trained a few hybrid-class people in the prerequisites as a favor, but he didn’t bother helping them once they got it. He had never liked being a trainer, even when the Marines asked it of him, and the Sublimation hadn’t changed that part of his personality one bit.

He looked at his status to see if anything had changed since he last looked, out of curiosity. His notifications were permanently turned off, mostly because they almost killed him several times early on.

Name: Michael Richardson

Level: 39

Race: High Human

Profession: Soldier

Class: Force User

Title: First to Ten (right to create customized Class, 10% reduction to all costs of Class abilities), First Force User (Grants 10% increase to power of all Class techniques and magic)

Available AP: 0

Available SP: 0

HP: 3200/3200

MP: 6300/6300

Str: 14

Agi: 25

Dex: 30

Con: 24

End: 24

Int: 52

Will: 53

Cha: 10

Lck: 10

Martial Skills: Long Blades 50 , Barehanded 40, Stealth 25, Mind Reinforcement 20, Firearms 75

Magic Skills: Force Magic 25, Lightning Magic 20, Flesh Magic 5, Life Magic 5

Crafting Skills: Blacksmith 10

Knowledge Skills: Military Formations 10

Spells: Telekinesis, Force Strike, Pull, Channeled Lightning, Chain Lightning, Self-Regeneration, Flesh-shift, Lesser Self-Enhancement, Lesser Heal

Weapon Style: Weaving Crane (Energy Blade)

Non-Combat: Sense of the World 20, Mana Cultivation 12

Abilities: Energy Blade, ESP (Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy, Empathy)

Perks: ESP Master (Force User Perk, all ESP abilities are reduced in cost by 20%), Cruel Lightning (Force User Perk, increases pain caused by Lightning magic in direct proportion to user’s hatred of an opponent)

Racial Perks: Universal Utility (Can master any basic or general skill)

Talents: Force Magic Evolution (Access to all Force Magic skill evolutions), Energy Blade IV (Can completely master the use of an Energy Blade)

Michael couldn’t help but snort in self-derision at the perks his Class had given him, apparently drawn from his subconscious perception of what the Class should be when he made it. It probably said something interesting about him that the Cruel Lightning Perk had popped up at all.

“As soon as the goblins are finished off, I’m leaving,” She admitted, “The scouts we sent out found a city to the west, and I want to check it out.”

“You mean you want to escape having to play at leader and teacher by going elsewhere,” He corrected, an amused grin on his face.

“If I wanted to lead men, I would have gone for the officer corps when it was offered,” She grumbled.

“Well, I’m going with you. There won’t be anything holding me here when the goblins are gone. The Raid monsters from the other Zones don’t seem interested in crossing over, so the Council and our Guild won’t have much need of us after, anyway,” He said, meeting her eyes with a firm stare that denied her the right to refuse.

“Michael, I…” She averted her eyes.

“I know you aren’t interested, Kasumi. If you were, we’d already be doing something about it,” He interjected, his expression wry and self-mocking. It was true. He was definitely in love with her, but she didn’t share his feelings. At best, she considered him a good friend and reliable ally.

“What will the Commander think about you leaving? You are the Vice-Commander, after all,” She shot back, obviously wanting to leave without him.

“I already got him to agree, as long as I send telepathic reports to Command on what we find,” He replied with a shrug. Her answering grimace of distaste drew a faint smile from him, as he knew she hated being monitored or even the appearance of being monitored.

“Very well, I won’t try to leave you behind,” She said sullenly. Despite appearances, she was quietly relieved he was coming. She knew very well that her sense of self-preservation was lacking when she got excited in battle, and Michael was pretty much the ideal person to keep her alive, given his build.

“See that you don’t,” He grinned mockingly, making her wish she had managed to find someone less irritating to watch her back.

___________________________________________________________

Lyam hid in Stealth, his Cloak of Shadows enveloping his body as he watched the gruesome tableau in front of him with horrified fascination.

What looked like a gigantic rabbit, roughly twice his size with a spiral horn coming out of its forehead, was sucking the brains out of a Ragar Shaman’s skull with an unnatural straw-like tongue that had erupted from its tiny mouth. The sight of the seemingly adorable fuzzy creature predating on a humanoid (however ugly and inhuman it was) in such a gruesome manner had managed to get through his emotional armor, simply because of how unexpected it was.

Seven other Ragar lay scattered throughout the room adjacent to what he thought was the boss room, all of them with a quarter-sized hole in their foreheads from where the cute monster had fed on them. A few minutes before, he had witnessed the creature’s appearance as he was preparing to take them out.

It had burrowed out of the ground and immediately blasted the Ragar with Fire Magic before kicking their chests in one by one, apparently rupturing their hearts fatally. The creature was easily the most terrifying monster he had ever encountered, but its appearance kept threatening to make him forget what it was.

The information from his True Sight was even more horrifying than its brain-sucking habits though.

Magic Bunny

Level 300

Race: Magic Bunny

HP: 42354/42354

MP: 80135/80135

Str: 85

Agi:170

Dex: 111

Con:94

End: 77

Int: 180

Will: 165

Cha: 354

Lck: 512

Description: A mutated rabbit from Earth that managed to enter the Challenge Dungeon and survive until it reached its current level, it has gained full sapience from the devouring of the brains of sapient creatures

Abilities: Fire Magic, Wind Magic, Earth Magic, Carnivorous Mutation, Fate’s Mischief (Serendipity is always beneficial to this individual)

Titles: Roaming Raid Boss, First to the Pinnacle (First Earthling to achieve racial ascension), Destroyer of Fields (destroyed the agricultural lands feeding more than 10,000 sapients), Devourer of Intellect (grew intelligence stat by devouring sapient brains)

There were so many things wrong with that stat page that Lyam didn’t even know where to start. For one thing, that a rabbit, of all things, had managed to mutate into something that frightened him more than anything else he had seen so far in the System’s world, struck him as both horribly absurd and utterly appropriate at the same time. For another, he also found it highly amusing that the adorable bunny was eating the brains of creatures that seemed to do the same to other species, based on his examinations of their proboscis.

He had no intention whatsoever of challenging, attacking, or approaching that bunny. While a large part of him had already grown to enjoy the fighting in the dungeon, the part of him that was razor-focused on survival above all else made certain that he didn’t even consider it.

The problem was that it was sitting in front of the doors he had intended on going through. While he was by no means impatient, waiting until it left in Stealth probably wasn’t an option. He had a feeling that that massive Luck stat it had would probably cause him to trip up at some point, based on the stat’s stated function. Moreover, he was unsure if it wouldn’t just pierce his Stealth if he was stupid enough to stay around.

Before he could shift away, however, he saw an odd golden light form beneath the bunny, black chains emerging from within to envelop its body. When he tried to examine it with True Sight, he got a skill boost notification and information that sent him deep into contemplation.

Forced Transcendence Circle: A magical artifact sent by the System to capture and forcibly transcend those who have evaded past attempts to force them to the next realm.

You have reached 50 in True Sight.

You have reached Adept in True Sight.

For reaching Adept in True Sight, you are granted xp and a reward box.

On the other side, the bunny was frantic. Since it had gotten bigger, the bunny had done everything it could to survive, from growing a horn to let it kill those who threatened it to discovering that brains tasted even better than grass and made it easier to find ways to get more brains.

It instinctively understood that allowing the golden lights to take it would make it the weakest of creatures in a new place once again, and it was desperate to avoid going back to being afraid of everything. The large stone burrow it had found itself in was full of food that never ran out, and it was stronger than anything else there, so it had not felt fear in a week.

However, unlike the other times, where simply hopping out of the way or burrowing into the walls had been sufficient to escape the golden lights, the golden lights had gotten clever. They were holding the bunny down with chains while preparing to take it away from its kingdom.

For all its Intelligence, the bunny was still an animal. While it was immensely clever by bunny standards, it was still a bunny and thus incapable of truly complex thinking. If it had time to build a background of experience and knowledge, it might have gained the capacity to possess a high degree of true intellect, but that would take years, if not decades given its fundamental nature. It could only barely be considered sapient, and that was only because it had realized where its best interests lay in a manner that was logical, if highly simplistic.

Thus it was that, when Lyam had to hold back a sudden sneeze due to the bunny’s incredible luck drawing a dust particle into his nostrils at precisely the right moment, the bunny’s gaze somehow looked through the twisted space connected to Lyam’s soul and caught sight of something that would salvage its current predicament. Its tongue, now a tube of flexible flesh that magically hardened to pierce space and dimensions, plunged into Lyam’s inventory…

… and pulled out the Soul Familiar Core, swallowing it whole, much to Lyam’s horror.

Instantly, the golden light burst, blinding Lyam even as a presence fused with the piece of his soul inside the core and created a link he instinctively knew could never be truly severed.

You have entered into a Soul Familiar Pact with a Level 300 Magic Bunny (Unique, Nameless). As it is currently 2 racial Tiers and 1 Realm above yourself in power, the greater part of its potential and levels will be sealed until your powers are equal.

For being the first Earthling to successfully gain a Soul Familiar, you are granted the Unique Title, Soul Master (You gain the ability to manipulate the stuff of souls as if it were mana).

For bonding a creature more than ten times your current level, you are given xp and may choose one of three Legendary Perks.

Perfect Soul: Your soul has reached Perfection and can no longer be influenced by outside forces. Attempts to control or alter your soul from the outside will always fail, and you will always be yourself, even if your flesh is lost to you. However, soul-healing effects will also fail to take hold, and your soul will recover more slowly from damage inflicted by your own actions.

Tyrant’s Will: Your Will is as massive and strong as the mountains, dominating all those who would oppose you. You gain the ability to dominate the wills of those with 20% less Willpower than yourself without expending mana or the use of Domination Magic. However, those who have equal or greater Willpower to yourself will instinctively dislike and resent your presence.

Eyes of the Fallen God: Your eyes have been replaced with those of a long-dead god. Over time, you will discover what powers, benefits, and banes that they will grant you.

Note: You must choose one.

His head was spinning. Unlike the previous time when he was able to pick a perk, they all seemed to have as strong a potential demerit as benefits. Perfect Soul seemed great on the surface, but the inability to heal from soul wounds (which were apparently a thing) seemed like a pretty bad side-effect of immunity to outside influences. Tyrant’s Will, on the other hand, seemed to be guaranteed to make him enemies and make it his social life difficult.

Eyes of the Fallen God… was much vaguer. Apparently, he would actually have his eyes replaced with those of a deity, which seemed to be a powerful boon. However, he wondered if the things a god might see were things that mortals weren’t meant to handle seeing…

However, his curiosity surged when he saw that one… and picked it, only recalling the bunny once again just as his eyes popped like balloons in their sockets, causing him to go blind for a moment, a moment of pure agony that faded the next, as his new set of eyes appeared in their place. His new eyes also had an abyssal quality, the sclera still black, with a diamond-shaped green iris flecked with crimson and amber and a pupil of pure violet.

Even as this happened, the golden light that had enveloped the room vanished… and a humanoid female with white fur covering her lower arms and legs, with two rabbit-like ears and a fluffy tail, plopped down in front of him, stark naked. Her features were preternaturally beautiful, with large red eyes and a perfectly symmetrical face with vaguely Asiatic features. Her hands and feet both had inch-long talons curving from where fingernails normally would have been, and she had the teeth of an omnivore rather than a herbivore, with two slightly lengthened incisors visible when her mouth opened.

He used his True Sight on her once again.

Name: ???

Level: 41 (300)

Race: Magic Bunnygirl (New Race, Tier 3) (Magic Bunny/Original body is sealed until humanoid form reaches the same level)

Profession: Soul Familiar

Class: None

Title: Roaming Raid Boss, First to the Pinnacle (First Earthling to achieve racial ascension), Destroyer of Fields (destroyed the agricultural lands feeding more than 10,000 sapients), Devourer of Intellect (grew intelligence stat by devouring sapient brains) All Titles sealed until equivalent level is reached in humanoid form.

Available AP: 0 (All non-Class AP automatically distributed until equivalent level is gained)

Available SP: 0 (All non-Class SP automatically distributed until equivalent level is gained)

HP: 9360/9360

MP: 5210/5210

Str: 25(85)

Agi: 50 (170)

Dex: 30 (111)

Con: 20 (94)

End: 20 (77)

Int: 60 (180)

Will: 60 (165)

Cha: 80 (354)

Lck: 120 (512)

Martial Skills: None

Magic Skills: Fire Magic, Wind Magic, Earth Magic

Crafting Skills: None

Knowledge Skills: None

Spells: Instinctive Elemental Manipulation

Weapon Style: None

Non-Combat: Burrowing 100 (Grandmaster), Stealth 50 (Adept)

Abilities: Humanoid-Beast Transformation, Danger Sense II, Fate’s Mischief, Carnivorous Mutation

Perks: Resilient Body (HP and physical toughness valued at 4x base Endurance and Constitution), Soul Familiar (Familiar will be resurrected within three days at a cost of 300 Max HP from their master, Familiar will die permanently if master dies, enhanced intellect from soul fusion, Familiar is incapable of disobeying master)

Racial Perks: Biological Immortality III (Will never age, will regenerate from wounds at an accelerated pace, can regenerate lost limbs over time), Precognition I, Survival Sense, Beast Cultivation (Mana Cultivation is carried out similar to intelligent monsters rather than sentient humanoids)

Talents: Elementalist IV (All Elemental Magic schools can be mastered), Survivalist (All skills related to the obtainment of food, water, shelter, and safety will rise at an accelerated rate), Hibernator’s Gluttony IV (Can consume three times her own body weight in food in a day and store excess nutrients in a Nutrient Inventory up to 100x what is consumed in a day of moderate activity)

It was interesting how the bunny’s stat pages had changed now that she was his familiar. It was as if he were looking at any other person’s stat page, one like his own. Her power was being suppressed, apparently by his level… which made him take a look at his own stat sheet.

Name: Lyam Aldren

Level: 41

Race: Saevere

Profession: Hired Killer

Class: Curse Blade

Title: Cain’s Successor, Kinslayer, The First Curse Blade, Soul Master

Available AP: 100

Available SP: 24

HP: 4320/4320

MP: 3815/3815

Str: 26

Agi: 40

Dex: 40

Con: 28

End: 20

Int: 43

Will: 43

Cha: 14

Lck: 15

Martial Skills: Light Blades 42, Long Blades 32 ,Backstab 39, Stealth 42, Magic Resistance 6, Shadow Manipulation 15

Magic Skills: True Sight 50, Gravity Magic 29, Curse Magic 15, Soul Magic 10, Karma Manipulation 1

Crafting Skills: Blood Curse Tattoo 25, Enchanting 30, Skinning 3

Knowledge Skills: Anatomy 15

Spells: Psychokinesis, Gravity Arrow, Blood Curse, Create Soul Familiar, Blood Curse: Bloodfire (invocation and manipulation, basic invocation consumes 1 HP and 1 MP per second), Karmic Sacrifice, Gravity Manipulation, Levitation (Gravity), Blood Curse: Gravity Manipulation, Blood Curse: Wind Manipulation, Blood Curse Array: Annihilation Codex

Weapon Style: Cat Dances with Swords (Novice)

Non-Combat: Perception 50, Mana Cultivation 25, Dissection 1

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Novice), Shadow Cloak (Novice), Dimension Thrust (Novice)

Perks: Kinslayer I (5% damage boost to sapient humanoids, -5% to damage taken from sapient humanoids), Absolute Metabolism (Perfect immunity to and absorption of poison, disease, and curses), Eyes of the Fallen God (Unknown Aegis), Soul Familiar: Humanoid Magic Bunny (Luck +2 per level gained)

Racial Perks: Mana Core, Innovative Nature II, Inspiration

Talents: Compartmentalization (This individual can shuffle his emotions to the side almost at will), Cold Mind (This individual will ignore all attempts to sway him emotionally from a chosen course, whether born of magic or conventional means), Persona Creation (This individual naturally adopts personality traits that will give him a better chance of success in his chosen endeavors), Greater Magic Affinity (potential to master at least 3 schools of magic, two basic, one Celestial, Class Schools do not count for Affinity Talents)

He blinked. Before he encountered the bunny, he had been Level 29, verging on 30, just as planned… and apparently he had shot up twelve levels in the space of just a few minutes. Not only that… it seemed she’d also given him a perk that would increase his Luck by 2 for every level he gained while she was his familiar.

:Master? He looked down in response to the voice that suddenly appeared in his head and met the red eyes of the humanoid magic bunny. He could sense the devotion in the transformed rabbit, the absolute faith in him being imposed by their bond, which he could feel went down to the very roots of who they were. A part of him, a part he quickly compartmentalized, felt an instinctive surge of love overflow, trying to connect to his sex drive. Thankfully, his ‘talent’ asserted its usefulness, suppressing that part of himself and relegating it to a subordinate persona.

She is adorable though, He thought, now unable to feel the fear that had been so justified a few minutes before. Another part of him was lamenting that he hadn’t been able to pick a more overtly imposing creature to bond, given that he had the feeling making multiple Soul Familiars would be… difficult, at best. However, the larger part of himself merely shrugged and accepted what was for what it was.

He didn’t fail to notice her tongue still had a small hole on the end, telling him it could probably perform an act similar to what he’d seen on the larger, beast version of his new familiar, I guess the brain-eating is going to be a thing, even now, he thought with resignation.

With a sigh, he reached down and ran his fingers through her hair, fondling her ears lightly. The bunny narrowed her crimson eyes and leaned into his caress, looking happy.

“Let’s go kill a boss so I can get out of this dungeon,” He said aloud, sighing. A part of him was responding to her joy with pleasure of his own, and he had a feeling it would be easy to get addicted to the flow of emotion going back and forth between them. Their souls were linked, so on a certain level, it seemed like her happiness made him happy.

That huge Luck stat of hers has to be why this happened. The odds of a mutated rabbit from Earth managing to appear in precisely the right spot to arrange things to become my familiar is just too far outside the realms of what I thought was possible, Lyam had considered his experiences since increasing his Luck stat above 10, and he realized that he had been unreasonably fortunate in those he met.

Given that ability she possessed, Fate’s Mischief, she had probably been drawn to him for some reason that would ultimately benefit her survival. He just had to hope that her luck wouldn’t ruin his at some point in the near future.

She rose to her feet without his aid, and he got a good look at her body, feeling a surge of lust despite having partitioned that part of himself thoroughly. He kept his desire to frown from having an effect on his expression with some effort. This… was going to be a problem.

A sudden urge drove him to take the reward box he got for increasing his True Sight out of his inventory. It was a mahogany box approximately four feet in length and two feet wide. When he opened it, he sighed and came to a realization.

Yep, the System had something to do with this, He thought resignedly as he took a black silk dress and hardened leather sandals from inside. He could tell at a glance that they were approximately the rabbit-girl’s size, so he simply gave them to her.

:Put them on, He commanded gently with his mind, focusing on the feeling he had when she talked to him.

:Yes Master, She obeyed, another flow of what he thought was information from his own spirit entering her, her movements losing their awkwardness as she pulled the high-cut dress on and slipped her near-human feet into the perfectly-fitted sandals, tying the leather straps around her ankles as if she had been doing so all her life.

Apparently, knowledge transfers automatically when it is needed… or is she drawing it from me? I’ll have to ask when we are somewhere safe, He thought. While her nude form had been provocative to him even aside from the odd surges of emotion she seemed to be sharing with him, she was merely adorable in the black dress, which contrasted perfectly with the white fur on her lower legs and arms.

He could sense that he was absolutely dominant in their relationship. However, the bond wasn’t one-sided… the degree to which she was able to influence his emotions with her own was more than a little disturbing. While his colder personas were not being affected, his ‘everyday’ personas would probably be doting on her within a matter of days, at this rate.

She suddenly hugged him, snuggling against his side, a surge of affection bursting through his spirit, :Master, I’m hungry.

Oh boy, He thought, his eyes going to the next room. He supposed that whatever was in the next room would probably be able to satisfy her predatory hunger.

_____________________________________________________

Lyam’s first sight of the next room was… stunning to say the least. Instead of yet another cavern, what he saw was an area open to the sky, sunlight from what he was pretty sure was a blue giant shining down on a group of Ragar positioned behind field fortifications. The fortifications were earthworks, roughly hip high on the Ragar, which included fourteen Warriors, twelve Scouts, five Shamans, and a single massive Ragar his True Sight pegged as a Commander.

The Commander Ragar was roughly twelve feet in height, its body bulging with muscle, an actual face with articulated features in the place of the usual tubular proboscis. In its right hand was a blade that would have been considered a greatsword on a human and in its left a rod with a blue crystal set into the top, glittering with sparks of black lightning.

The Commander was sitting atop a throne of polished obsidian and seemed… bored? If he didn’t know better, he would have thought it actually had emotions, as opposed to the automatic reactions he’d seen with other Ragar up to this point.

“Mortal, I know you are there, so you might as well drop Stealth,” The Commander suddenly spoke, its deep baritone full of ennui. It stabbed its sword into the ground, leaving its rod on the arm of the throne as it rose.

It left the fortifications and sat in the middle of the field, a brown sheet covered with fine foods suddenly appearing in front of it, “Please, come feast and talk with me before we have to go through the usual routine. It is unusual that anyone actually makes it through the soulless slaves wandering the halls to get to this point these days.”

With a sigh, Lyam left Stealth and approached the creature, sitting on the grass on the other side of the cloth and picking up a sandwich made out of the all-too-familiar jerky, something that looked like white cheese, and an unknown condiment. He took a bite and was surprised at how delicious the sandwich was. The ‘cheese’ was sweet and tart, whereas the condiment was slightly bitter and smooth. The bread was light and fluffy as white bread from Earth, which caused him to become somewhat nostalgic for a moment as he devoured it.

The Commander smiled, an expression that was full of pleasure… but somehow brittle, a sense of weariness radiating from its eyes, “Before we do this, I would like to thank you for killing so many of my old brethren in the halls before the door to this room. Normally, I am just as restrained by the dungeon as any other creature in its halls, but you managed to force the dungeon to take enough notice of you that I was able to slip my leash. I cannot ignore the imperatives of a Dungeon Boss forever, but it did give me enough independence to think freely once again.”

“Are all the Ragar in this dungeon like you?” Lyam asked. If so, it was more than a little disturbing. He had thought all the Ragar he killed up to this point were little more than automated meat dolls.

“No. In this dungeon, there are only three of us that actually have souls, the keystones that the dungeon uses to summon the flesh of our dead race. When we fell to Tier 0, we were reclassified as monsters by the System, but by that point, there were only a few of us left… and we were easily captured and turned into slaves of the dungeon,” The creature answered.

“Three of you?” Lyam asked, surprised. He hadn’t seen any Ragar that acted differently up to this point.

“The other two are acting as bosses on deeper levels. I am the weakest of my surviving brethren, so I became the boss of the 1st level. Unfortunately, as a boss, I have no choice but to try to kill you when you try to pass,” The big Ragar looked regretful at this statement. Lyam felt sympathetic… it sounded like hell to him to be trapped and forced to serve as part of the dungeon. Considering the Ragar respawned after a time, he was pretty sure the same could be said for the Commander… and that couldn’t be a pleasant experience, no matter how you looked at it.

“What happened to your people?” Lyam asked.

“Early after the Sublimation that took our world, we dug our first hives and settled in the wilderness. However, we discovered quickly that we had no aptitude for most Classes, even with training. Our Queens were the only ones who were capable of gaining non-standard Classes, and their minds were always obsessed with increasing our numbers at all costs. As such, we quickly degraded in Tier over the decades after our arrival. In the end, the fact that most of our race’s numbers were incapable of creating new Classes or gaining unusual ones led to the System considering us a sub-sapient sentient species, dropping us to Tier 0,” He explained.

“You seem quite intelligent to me,” Lyam stated.

“I have been alive for over forty-thousand years, even if it was inside a dungeon. I have also fought thousands of adventurers, sometimes killing them, sometimes dying. Even a total moron would have gained some knowledge and understanding after this long,” The creature replied dryly.

“Why can you…?” Lyam tried to search for a term that wouldn’t be rude.

“Why can I speak? Because my caste was tasked with command and interaction with outsider species. The Queens are physically configured similarly to the rest of the race, but we were bred to communicate with the other sentient species on our original world, who did not have a gestalt or empathic abilities,” He explained, seemingly unbothered by Lyam’s probes.

The Ragar popped a sandwich into its mouth and chewed slowly, sighing with pleasure, “I almost never get to take advantage of my ability to eat the food of other races anymore. I am glad that my control over the local dungeon space extends to this kind of thing.”

“That bad, huh?” Lyam replied sympathetically.

“Once a decade is about as often as it happens. Most people that come into the Challenge Dungeon head here as fast as possible, trying to go for the deeper levels to give themselves a real challenge,” The giant Ragar said, looking depressed.

“That’s what this places is for? To challenge oneself?” Lyam asked, confirming what he had suspected.

“Most dungeons are, to one extent or another. Given your basic capabilities compared to your level, I am guessing you are new to the System, hmm? Perhaps a few years since your world was Sublimated?” The Ragar queried.

“A few weeks… a little over a month now,” He admitted.

“Hmm… then you are more powerful than I would have thought. Most of the newly-Sublimated take years to reach your level. The Zone you arrived in must have been fairly horrific, then,” He concluded.

Lyam shook his head, “I gained most of my levels in the dungeon. I was only a little above level 10 when I came in.”

The monstrous humanoid looked incredulous, “You have only been in the dungeon for a week and you already gained thirty levels?! That should not be possible given how many you killed.”

Lyam gave him a wry smile, “Well…”

There were a sudden series of pained screeches as the Shamans and Scouts dissolved into a bloody mist, followed by a wave of magma rolling over the Warriors in a matter of seconds.

The Commander turned back around to find an orb of flame enveloped in a visible warping of space in front of his face.

“Sorry about this. I was enjoying our conversation, but I really, really want out of this dungeon,” Lyam said apologetically as he used psychokinesis to pull himself out of range.

The Ragar gave him a pained glance as the highly-compressed flames enveloped his head, burning it to ash in an instant. To Lyam’s surprise, most of his upper torso was left intact, though scorched and cracked.

The Commander’s headless corpse fell to its knees before collapsing forward onto the burnt remnants of the tablecloth, splattering the grass with blackened ichor and bits of burnt flesh and chitin. The rabbit emerged from the mist of blood, licking her lips, as she dragged two Warrior corpses behind her as if they were full of straw instead of meat and blood. Both had had their chests caved in and hearts burnt out with magma, leaving their heads (and the precious precious brains inside) intact for her culinary pleasure.

Lyam sighed with regret, almost wishing he’d been able to continue the conversation. He pitied the Commander’s fate greatly, but he wasn’t about to sacrifice the advantage of surprise if he could have it. If the creature hadn’t sensed his presence, he wouldn’t have bothered with conversation in the first place. However, since he had, he’d used his own presence as a distraction to let his familiar get behind the enemy formation to take out their ranged attackers, at the very least.

He hadn’t thought she’d kill them all in seconds though… the qualitative difference twenty levels made for creatures at a higher tier was frightening.

He looked at his xp and sighed, shaking his head. The Commander had barely budged the count. At level 41, he needed exponentially more xp than the levels before 40 had... to be precise, each level needed as much as levels 30 to 40 had needed all together. He was guessing there was another massive threshold at level 49 to 50, as well.

He’d had to go back into his more detailed notifications to figure out how much xp bonding the rabbit had given him, and it was massive… However, it required as much or more to reach level 42.

He leaned down and looted the Commander, ignoring the way the bunny-girl’s tongue lashed out and pierced the skull of one of the dead Warrior’s like it was made out of paper instead of hardened chitin and bone. He also ignored the way it pulsed as she drained the dead creature’s brains through the tube-shaped organ.

One scroll of the Beast Hands Style, one pair of open-fingered steel gauntlets fit for a certain rabbit-girl, and fifteen-thousand System Credits… not a bad haul, but I’m guessing that her Luck is going to make my loot benefit her more than me from now on… He grumbled to himself. The System description of the style, while brief, was pretty clear it was meant for beast-type demihumans. Moreover, the gauntlets were reinforced for punches and backhands, telling him they were meant to be used as part of a barehanded combat style.

With a sigh, waited for the girl to finish feeding on the two dead Warriors before handing her the scroll and commanding her to use it. She held her head, squeezing her eyes shut as the scroll turned to ash. It took her almost twenty minutes to come back to herself, whereupon she looked up at him with wet crimson eyes accusingly, :Hurts, Master.

:Put on the gauntlets, then we will get out of here, He merely replied, handing her the metal-backed arm-length leather gloves, gesturing to the glowing magic circle adjacent to the stairs to the lower floors.

:Why leave food-place? She asked curiously as she put on the gauntlets before promptly kneeling to pull up some of the grass and pop it in her mouth, seemingly unconcerned by the burnt bits of chitin and charred flesh mixed in with it.

“Food-place?” He muttered.

:Food-place is food-place. Much good food. Grass here and bug-men have delicious brains, She explained as best as she could.

“And how did you discover that brains tasted good?” He asked, wondering if she remembered.

Her face screwed up in thought, :Was in human-place. Human-place changed. Became hungry. Humans not humans anymore. Not-Humans died. Dead not-humans smelled good. Ate brains, brains tasted good, gained smarts.

She seemed to look proud at that last part. Lyam felt a headache coming on. Apparently, the little bunny had first feasted on brains the day of the Sublimation when she came upon a dead Earthling. Given that everything seemed to be in flux that first day, the action had probably given her her Talent and her first Title.

From there, he imagined that things had snowballed until she became the monster he encountered just outside the boss area.

“Let’s go. You aren’t allowed to eat brains without permission in town, by the way,” He said as he headed for the teleportation circle.

:But Master! She protested mentally.

“No buts, you silly rabbit! If you start eating people’s brains in town, I’ll end up having to fight off the local version of police just to keep you from getting killed and taking a bunch of my HP with you!” He scolded.

She wilted under Lyam’s tirade, sensing that he meant it. Her new master was very strange, nothing like the little girl who kept her before the Sublimation. She didn’t doubt the love and adoration she sensed over the link, but his soul kept shifting. She felt like she was only sensing a part of him, and her instincts told her that shouldn’t be.

“I’ll find you some delicious greens to eat in town. Just bear with it until then,” He said, grumbling.

:Yay! Greens! She squealed happily in his mind, forgetting her contemplations of a moment before in the excitement of possibly getting to eat crispy lettuce or tomatoes again.

Lyam winced mentally. It was like talking to a small child… or even worse since he couldn’t tune out her enthusiasm at all.

Once they were inside the teleportation circle, he was given a prompt.

Do you wish to leave the Challenge Dungeon? Y/N

Without hesitation, and with no small dose of relief, he chose yes.

_______________________________________________

Urgo sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, the big orc looking somewhat ill, “What… was that?!”

Laevarian rose to his feet and tossed the last of the bottles of spirits into the now-full box, “Whatever it was, I am getting out of here before he manages to find me. This just confirms that he is the kind of monster I have no business having dealings with.”

“Elf, that was a Pinnacle Monster! Moreover, it was in our Challenge Dungeon without our knowledge! Do you have any idea how bad that is going to look if anyone else finds out?!” Urgo screamed. As the local Association head, managing the Challenge Dungeon through his slave brand on the core was one of his main duties. The dungeon was designed to provide a leveling area for the higher-ranked adventurers, but it wasn’t supposed to have anything like the rabbit in it.

“So avoid telling anyone. The creature is now his familiar, and without an extremely high examine skill there is no way they will be able to tell what it originally was. It will be locked to his level until he reaches the Pinnacle, anyway, and when he dies, it will die with him. Be glad that is the case or we would all be in trouble,” Laevarian shot back.

Pinnacle Monsters were high-level beasts and monsters that managed to reach level 300 and didn’t transcend to a higher level of the System’s world. Most were sapient, cunning, and constantly voraciously hungry. A single Pinnacle Monster could destroy a civilization, as they tended to be up to ten times as powerful as a humanoid of the same level, despite seemingly even stats.

Of course, eventually Pinnacle Monsters would build up enough xp to hit 301 and be forced to transcend or die, but that could take years or decades as they continued to evade the System’s efforts to transcend them. During that time, the destruction they wreaked was horrific to witness.

“So what, I should keep my part of the deal and back him up?” Urgo asked bitterly.

“Yes, that is exactly what you should do. He will be an asset, now that he is over level 40. With all the levels he gained and three class-ups built up, he will be able to put together an excellent build if you advise him… one that will keep him effective until he passes out of your jurisdiction and keeps him useful to the Association while he is here,” Laevarian advised as he opened the door, breaking the time dilation effect on the room.

“I will get you back for this, elf. That monster and his pet are going to be nothing but trouble,” Urgo grumbled.

“Trouble is part of being an adventurer Urgo… even moreso being an Association branch leader,” Laevarian reminded him before closing the door behind him.

“I know, but you could at least sugarcoat it a bit,” The orc said wearily to his departed friend, already thinking about how to get his newest adventurer on his side.

__________________________________

Susanoo shook his head in amused wonder. Lyam had impressed him once again with his ability to draw serendipity to his aid in the new world. That rabbit was one of Tsukuyomi’s pets, like all of its kind, and it was marked heavily with his sister’s power. It was no surprise it had survived, but that it was the first creature to reach the Pinnacle from Earth was… scary.

Just how much of your divinity did you invest, sister? He wondered. Tsukuyomi-no-mikoto was the oddest of his siblings, often hiding in the shadow of their elder sister and avoiding contact with even her own servants. There were times when no one saw her for a century or more, and the mortals thought she was a man, so secluded she was from the mortal realm.

However, it was at times like this that he realized she was the most terrifying member of his family, by far. The bunny… the evolutions it had gone through and the Luck-specialized build it ended up with said everything.

Poor Lyam was just smart enough to have some idea of what had happened and what would continue to happen. That bunny was what they would have called a lynch-pin of fate on Earth, its passive influence on serendipity so strong that a simple whim could alter the flows of fate and destiny.

Worse, its whims mostly centered around food and pleasure, so he was fairly sure it was going to cause his champion all sorts of trouble in the future.

Not that he had any intention of doing something about it. Now that Lyam was linked to the bunny-girl, her luck would preserve his life as much as it had her own. While it was weakened, its Luck stat was still the highest in the lowest realm of the System.

Susanoo found himself anticipating future antics with even more glee than ever before as he stamped paperwork and grumbled aloud bout ‘goddesses with no sense of humor.’