Kazuto was depressed.

Most of those he knew before the Sublimation were probably dead, the city below him was plagued with Fallen Angels and Orcs, and Akibahara of all places was the center of Earthling resistance there.

However, that wasn’t the worst part, for him.

No, the worst part was his race change and the resulting… alteration in circumstances.

Name: Inugaya Kazuto

Level: 160

Race: : Long Dragon (Tier 4)

Profession: Clerk

Class: Youngling Dragon

Title: Ruler of Minato, Slayer of Zuriel (Raid Boss), Dominator of the Fallen

Available AP: 0

Available SP: 0

HP: 450000/450000

MP: 89000/89000

Str: 791

Agi: 117

Dex: 199

Con: 421

End: 572

Int: 421

Will: 295

Cha: 10

Lck: 1

Martial Skills: n/a

Magic Skills: Fire Magic 55, Lightning Magic 50 (Blessing of Takemikazuchi) Draconic Magic 75 (Race Specific)

Crafting Skills: n/a

Knowledge Skills: Draconic Wisdom 25

Spells: Draconic Breath, Draconic Flight, Draconic Strength, Draconic Endurance, Draconic Constitution, Draconic Aegis, Whip of Fire, Fireball, Blazing Inferno, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Manipulation

Weapon Style: n/a

Non-Combat: Draconic Insight 50

Abilities: Draconic Flames, Territory Control, Terraforming II

Perks: Dominator of the Fallen II (Grants control over 50 Fallen Angel Servants, Fallen Angels are soul-linked to the master and will resurrect within three days as long as the master exists, Fallen Angels are half the level of their master), Ruler of Minato (Have personal control over the Minato Raid Zone, may purchase improvements and alterations, may alter the behavior of defenders and wandering monsters)

Racial Perks: Draconic Gift (May ‘gift’ others with a drop of your blood to make them your vassals, altering their racial composition), Hoard Protection (You instantly sense all attempts to violate your territory or steal from your hoard), Long Nature (As you are a Long, an Eastern Dragon, you can perpetually float in mid-air with no expenditure of mana or stamina, and your sense of time is skewed toward the passing of ages rather than the passage of years, effects increase with time)

Talents: Fire Magic Master, Draconic Magic Master, Territory Master (it is easy for you to take control of and dominate a territory, but in exchange, you find it difficult to endure the presence of those not ‘owned’ by you within it), Blessing of Takemikazuchi (All lighting and fire spells are reduced in cost by 25%)

He was undeniably powerful… so powerful that killing the Raid Boss at the top of the Tokyo Tower had been ridiculously easy. However, becoming a dragon had removed all sense of pleasure in anything other than gathering gold and slaves from him.

He used to enjoy reading, eating good food, and having sex with beautiful women. Now beautiful women seemed like food, he couldn’t flip the pages of a book, and sex… well he could forget about sex.

He called up the first notification he had received from the System after Sublimation for what had to be the millionth time.

Human race is invalid for newly-Sublimated species, scanning for existing bloodlines… bloodline found. Tier 3 Long Dragon bloodline discovered. Bloodline origin contacted for permissions… granted.

Congratulations! Your ancestor has allowed you to ascend as a member of his bloodline! You are now a Long Dragon!

Note: Fully draconic species are defined as Sentient Beasts under System rules, thus limiting access to Classes accessible to dragons. For your first 200 levels, your Class will be restricted to Youngling Dragon.

The process of changing into a dragon had been… unpleasant. He had felt every moment of the twelve hours of bone crunching, flesh-swelling, scale-growing nightmares of pain and body dysmorphia. It had taken him almost three days for the System’s alterations to his mind to overcome the remnants of his human point of view.

He sighed internally, careful not to show his depression to his ‘followers’ inside the Tower below.

The Fallen Angel Angriel looked up at her master with frustration. Like many of the lesser angels selected to be left behind, she had Fallen as a result of her sense of abandonment. She was two ranks above the lowest, least sentient of her kind, and it showed in her extra pair of pitch black wings and the high level of intelligence in her gaze.

Her master, the great dragon Kazuto, had defeated her previous master with casual ease, and she was one of the fifty Fallen who had been bound to his soul for eternity. She sensed his depression as if it were her own, and his pathetic attempts to hide it were quite irrelevant to her.

It was still better than when she’d served the foul bitch Nuriel. Nuriel had Fallen centuries before the Sublimation, and her indulgences in corruption and hedonism had been revolting even by Fallen standards. Nuriel’s death had sent most of the Fallen present into a state of absolute bliss, as their souls were no longer bound by and connected to the cesspool of filth that was that monstrous female.

However, they were still low-rank Angels, even if they had Fallen. The need to be dominated and controlled was essential to their beings, even if time would eventually wipe away that part of their psyches. Kazuto’s unwillingness to give commands beyond the elimination of the false Fallen who patrolled his territory and the prevention of Orc encroachments was deeply unsatisfying for them.

Angriel could sense that her master had immense potential as a lord, even aside from the fact that his draconic nature made him naturally domineering when he could stir himself to action. However, he had continuously disappointed her need for being mastered since she had become his.

Angriel ceased to reflect upon this when she caught sight of an all-too-familiar white-winged Angel flying down into the streets below. She nearly fell into a state of absolute, gibbering terror at the sight of that particular monster.

Abdiel?! Why would the Lord have given him, of all His Angels, to the System?! All fully-sentient Angels below the rank of the Four Seraph were terrified of Abdiel. His brutality in the wars, his purges of the gods and demons, and his obsession with getting stronger all made him anomalies in the mostly passive Angel species.

She watched in horrified fascination as the false Fallen ‘mobs’ began gathering by the thousands around him. She also noted that hordes of Fallen Orcs began arriving from the surrounding Zones, carrying their sheet-metal ‘tents’ on their backs. This was not an incursion… it was the gathering of an invading force!

She tried to get Kazuto’s attention, but the dragon merely gave her a disgruntled mental shove (which incidentally nearly sent her into euphoric paroxysms due to her essential nature), ignoring her concerns.

Her subordinates looked to her for direction, and she could sense their eagerness to follow her orders, so familiar to her from her own experiences in reverse.

“We will not leave the Tower until the Eternal Soldier departs the Zone. All efforts to clean out newly-spawned mobs will be delayed until the departure of the force below,” She commanded, much their disappointment. They all wanted something to do, a sentiment she understood intimately.

She had to wonder, though, why the System had sent such a disproportionately powerful agent to the First Realm. She only had a basic understanding of how things worked in the System, but she was fairly certain that the System preferred never to present a challenge that couldn’t be overcome with effort, skill, and luck…

… and Abdiel was one of those few things that none of those would help with. She knew for a fact that someone with his power had no business even setting foot in this Realm of the System’s world.

Her wings twitched in agitation before she suppressed the outward indications of her distress.

Nothing good would come of his involvement. Perhaps it was for the best that Kazuto was so apathetic, considering how hopeless any effort to interfere would be.

_________________________________________________________

Veha read through the profiles of her prospective companions on her upcoming diplomatic trip with frustration. Dugrit was about as thick-headed as any of the Night Elf clansmen could get, and most of his followers were of a similar bent. They loved to fight and run into danger, and she was fairly sure that keeping them under control was a test from her father.

Veha’s father was a High Elf, but her mother was a Silver Dragonkin, the Countess of Dohrn, a county to the south of the Daena Forest with around twelve thousand denizens packed into a small fortress town. As such, she had inherited her father’s fine features, with a layer of silver scales on her elbows, knees, temples, and the back of her hands. Her nails were composed of mithril, and she needed to eat shavings of the metal with her meals (though a tenth of an ounce a day was usually sufficient) to maintain her health. Her eyes were snake-like and golden, much like her mother’s, and her hair was platinum blond, two curling silver horns emerging from behind her temples, her pointed ears barely visible beneath them.

That aside, she was also assigned several staff members and adventurers that she couldn’t change, one of which was added to the list with the understanding that he would only be informed a day before departure, Who the hell is Lyam Aldren anyway?!

Veha wasn’t stupid. Her father never did anything without reason, and he most likely had a good one for including a new adventurer, even if he was iron-rank, in her retinue as a… liaison? With whom?

She really wished her father would have sent the man’s full profile to her with the rest, but he seemed to be keeping it back on purpose.

She sighed, shaking her head slightly before dismissing her annoyance and curiosity from her mind. Neither would help her, and she had neither the intelligence resources of her own to investigate nor the time to do so personally. She would wait until she had a chance to meet him in person.

She returned to considering who else she should add to her retinue, knowing that if her father was putting this much effort into contacting the survivors of a new Sublimation, things were probably more troublesome than they appeared on the surface.

________________________________________________________________________

Lyam awoke to a sensation of softness… and intense heat. When he opened his eyes, he found that the bunny had burrowed under the covers and latched onto him like a large pillow. At some point, she had also discarded her clothes, and she had a firm grip on a certain overly sensitive part of his anatomy, a pleased smile on her slumbering face.

Unconsciously, he reached out and rubbed the spot in between her ears, causing her to bury her face in his collarbone. In his half-awakened state, he was extremely vulnerable to the effects of the bond, so he had no objections… until his mind cleared and a wave of icy cold enveloped his soul, suppressing the urges dominating his sleeping consciousness.

He sighed deeply before slowly, carefully untangling himself from the bunny, ignoring her nudity as he threw the blanket off the bed and did some stretches, removing the kinks from his joints. He then used his Cloak of Shadows to form a black robe to cover his own nudity before sitting the floor in the lotus position.

He closed his eyes, then began the process of cleansing the last of the foul karma that had built in his system from the creation of his Annihilation Codex spell.

If he were to try to describe the way karma tainted his mana channels… it would be like stubborn oily spots that slightly inhibited the flow of mana through his body by building up at curves and other turning points. Thankfully, the taint from creating a Blood Curse Tattoo appeared to be minimal, so it only took him an hour to rid himself of the last of the corruption.

You have reached 30 in Mana Cultivation by successfully cleansing yourself of tainted karma!

He almost smiled at the skill gain before delving deep within himself. The knowledge he had gained from the various karma and cultivation-related skills and spells he had gained had begun to meld with the understanding of himself he had gained during his battles in the dungeon. At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but the memories and knowledge now itched at him, driving him to dive deep within his own mana core and the center of himself.

It was odd but somehow natural to delve into both at the same time… until he realized that his true self seemed to be linked to the core somehow. He began to compress it once again as he had before reaching Daena, and for the first few cycles, it was easy. Cycling his mana required almost no effort, and he saw tiny drops forming, then being devoured by his core every few minutes. The mana in his meridians began to take on a liquid consistency, even as it flowed into his core.

At the same time, he entered a state of transcendent self-knowledge.

He loved the feeling of overcoming obstacles. While it might have seemed to those who watched his last few battles in the dungeon that he enjoyed battle, the truth was that he simply liked the act of removing overcoming adversity, an addiction that he hadn’t had the psychological leeway to really understand on Earth. Climbing a mountain, winning a drinking contest, making one more push-up… it had never really mattered to him what it was.

He simply enjoyed the process of struggling against the odds, relishing every step without ever realizing he was doing it.

He was thankful to the System, for giving him adversity, for giving him the chance to struggle. His core shifted, opening his spiritual realm to his sight for the first time. A shattered azure mosaic stood before him, poorly put back together with oddly-colored melted glass, stone, and even glue in places. As he watched, the poor-quality bonds were washed away by a flood of crimson blood, once again shattering the mosaic that was his spirit.

The agony of this moment was beyond description, tearing at his mind and soul, even as he unconsciously reached out with his will… and flooded the gaps with his new understanding of himself. The poor bonds between the shards of the mosaic were slowly replaced with silver metal and chips of gemstone, rough but somehow complete in a way it hadn’t been before.

Curiosity about what lay beyond the next hill became emeralds.

A love of the possibilities of magic became diamonds.

A passion for the chaos and danger of combat against stronger foes became rubies.

And the knowledge that obstacles, suffering, and adversity were the soil in which he thrived became the rivers of silver that bonded it all together.

In the world outside, mana surged in from the world around him, plunging into his flesh, refining it, removing impurities and the leftovers from his old world. Large swathes of his growing aura, rotted by the karma of Earth, were burned away and replaced with the brilliance of a spirit freed from some of the false assumptions he had always made about himself before. While patches of that blood-soaked karma remained, they were somehow… healthier than they had looked before. The dark brown of dried blood became the brilliant crimson of spilled blood, blackened patches were replaced by silver and violet streaks that represented his partial rebirth.

Transcendent understanding detected, Dao Formation Stage 1 Complete!

For achieving Dao Formation Stage 1, you gain the Cultivator Perk!

Cultivator Perk: You have successfully gone beyond the basics of the Mana Cultivation skill and achieved a small amount of enlightenment about your Way. You gain a 10% increase to Mana Regeneration and the ability to form your own Root Technique! (Warning: Only one Root Technique may be formed for each stage of Dao Formation)

Mana Cultivation is now 40.

Lyam didn’t even notice the notifications, despite the fact that they had ignored his System settings. He was too deep into his epiphany to comprehend them.

The bunny twisted and turned on the bed as the excess transcendent essence from his epiphany was absorbed into the monster core that lay under the surface of her forehead, refining it and enhancing its strength in ways both profound and impossible to define. The bunny, being a silly creature, inevitably dreamed of eating brains by the thousands, and her stomach rumbled as she wondered if her master would like to sample them with her.

They remained like this for some time, neither of them aware of their surroundings as the silvery-white essence, so different from azure mana, began to dissipate from the area around them.

__________________________________________________

Lyam considered his options for his new Class. Apparently, his old Class, Curse Dagger, would remain but his levels from now on would go to his new Class, once chosen. Given that his was an advanced version of two base Classes, he was somewhat behind the curve compared to others at his level.

At present, he was given ten options, based on his abilities, achievements, and skills, rather than his previous Class choice.

Accursed Spellblade (Uncommon)- This is a Class offered to those who have reached at least Journeyman in one bladed weapon skill and have demonstrated at least a minimal mastering of Curse Magic. This Class relies on debuff curses and using the blood spilled in battle to strengthen one’s self and harm their enemies. It’s primary skills are Curse Magic and blade skills. Class Perks: Karma Resistance (passive), Accursed Aura (passive).

Gravity Master (Uncommon)- a Class offered to those who have reached Journeyman in Gravity Magic and have achieved at least one feat of hybrid magic utilizing Gravity Magic. This class focuses on wide-area damage and the creation of ‘territory auras’ to allow the holder to control the battlefield. Class Perks: Immune to Gravity (Passive), Metamagic Master (basic)

Hidden Cultivator (Rare)- a Cultivator Class that focuses on stealth-related skills and striking at enemies from the shadows. Requires Journeyman in Mana Cultivation and at least one stealth-related skill at Journeyman. Must have killed at least twenty sapient beings (dungeon creatures are considered sapient if their base species was sapient) while hidden. Class perks: Darkness Magic Affinity (passive), Darkness Magic: Obfuscation (spell),Body is as Shadow (active)

Dimension Blade (Epic)- A Class focused on using the Celestial school, Dimensional Magic to dominate the battlefield. Possessors of this Class are focused on solo combat against numerous enemies and possess a wide variety of damaging, movement, and survival-related techniques. Requires access to at least one Dimensional technique or spell, at least one immunity, and at least one weapon skill at Journeyman. Class Perks: Dimensional Magic Affinity (passive), Dimensional Magic: Blink Step (spell), Spatial Orientation (passive)

Suppressor (Rare)- a spellcaster/warrior who focuses on suppressing others’ use of magic, abilities, and techniques. This Class is offered to individuals who have successfully prevented a dungeon boss from unleashing any of their abilities while at a lower level. Class Perks: Null Magic Affinity(passive), Null Magic: Dispel (spell), System Aid Disruption (technique), Disruptive Aura (passive)

Destroyer Mage(Epic)- A Mage that gains access to all non-Celestial schools of magic in exchange for the inability to use them for anything other than destruction. Offered to those who have successfully created at least one hybrid destructive spell and have at least one school of magic at Journeyman. Class Perks: Magic Master: Destruction (passive), all un-acquired non-Celestial schools of magic (skills), Metamagic Master (passive), Incidental Entropy (passive)

Unbound Warrior(Epic)- Requires at least one flight-capable spell, one flight-related magic School at Journeyman, Mana Cultivation at Journeyman, a weapon skill at Journeyman, and at least one immunity Perk. This is a Mage/Warrior hybrid Class that focuses on rapid movement across the battlefield and high damage fighting techniques. Class Perks: Perpetual Flight (Method varies based on existing flight-capable spells), Death from the Skies (Active technique)

Array Master (rare)- A Class that focuses on using enchantment arrays to create various effects. Requires the individual to have created at least one hybrid magic array and used it. Requires Enchantment or related skill at Journeyman or higher. Class Perks: Array Knowledge (Knowledge skill), Bird’s Eye View (active), Perfect Image Memory (passive)

Seeker of Knowledge (Epic)- a Class offered to those who have shown a thirst for knowledge significant enough to be acknowledged by the System on multiple occasions. This Class focuses on knowledge skills and skills relating to exploration and the retaining and/or gaining of knowledge and its related skills. It is not uncommon for holders of this Class to become Masters of multiple crafts simply to gain an understanding of the crafts involved. Class Perks: Innovative Nature III (passive), Thief of Knowledge (active), Passive Defense (passive), Unbound from Chains (passive)

Pinnacle Master (Legendary)- A Class offered to those who have mastered a Pinnacle Existence at less than half their level and Tier. The Pinnacle Master focuses on the control and enslavement of beings of higher Tier and level than themselves. Class Perks: Familiar Enslavement (active), The Weak Overwhelms the Strong (passive), Pinnacle Boost (Active), Pinnacle Merge (active), Sacrifice of Power (active)

That last one in particular he found somewhat repulsive. The descriptions of the last two perks were particularly nasty.

Pinnacle Merge: When activated, the user absorbs their familiar permanently, consuming their soul to power their transformation into a Beast, gaining all the powers of their familiar in addition to their own (can only be used once per familiar).

Sacrifice of Power: When activated, the user sacrifices their familiar to power their ascension to a higher racial Tier (can only be used on familiars of a higher Tier, can only be used once).

The Class seemed to be entirely focused on ruthlessly using a familiar that was also a Pinnacle Beast and capturing more to be used in a similar fashion. While Lyam had a strong dark side and he found the rabbit disturbing, he found the idea of taking a Class focused around using her to make himself stronger at all costs disgusting.

Gravity Master didn’t really appeal to him. He wasn’t in love with gravity, it just happened to be his first magic school and one that was extremely versatile. He rejected the Class out of hand.

Accursed Spellblade he rejected for similar reasons. Curse Magic was an interesting tool he felt he would spend years researching when he managed to settle down, but it wasn’t who he was at his core.

Hidden Cultivator would probably make him more attractive to Felinor, given their preference for Cultivator Classes, but he wasn’t about to pick the path of the assassin all over again just to get a few cat girls in bed… no matter how tempting the thought was, given his experiences with Mirrha.

Array Master… was oddly attractive to him. He had noticed it in the dungeon when he was making the tattoo array, but he seemed to enjoy the process of creating enchantments. Unlike spells, enchantments felt like they were… productive, somehow. However, taking a Class based on large-scale enchantments didn’t really fit his personality, when it came down to it.

Destroyer Mage seemed like a ton of fun… at least until he got bored of only being able to do one thing. The one part of magic he truly enjoyed was its flexibility. Destroyer Mage would remove most of that, taking the little bit of pleasure he took out of creatively messing around with magic away.

Suppressor was just boring. It was the kind of Class a dumbass kid would choose because he liked dragging others down more than building himself up. He honestly couldn’t see a reason to pick it… not to mention that he got the feeling the System was needling him with the Class description.

Unbound Warrior seemed like an enjoyable Class… but at the same time, he felt that it was a downgrade from the Dimension Blade Class. It was a Class based on aerial combat and avoiding being tied down by enemy crowd control abilities, from what he could tell. One thing he was noticing as he went along was that his mind seemed to gain more knowledge of the Classes as he considered them.

Seeker of Knowledge spoke to his racial nature on a visceral level. It was frighteningly hard to avoid picking it the moment he saw it. His Saevere side wanted that Class more than anything else, to the point where he had to actually force down the impulse through an effort of will.

It was the first time his Saevere side had tried to take over so completely since the first day in the burning Montana town after Sublimation. That time he hadn’t bothered to resist, but he had already decided against the Class when the impulse took him.

In the end, it came down to Dimension Blade. He very badly wanted access to Dimensional Magic… teleportation was just so attractive to his core self. The ability to go anywhere he wanted with magic, the ability to store objects in a pocket dimension… and beyond that any number of possibilities he could think of instantly.

He started to select Dimension Blade… and he was startled to find that his Saevere self had suddenly burst out of its partition. What followed was a war inside his spirit as conflicting impulses and desires began to fight to control his core consciousness.

A headache came on, and his vision began to warp and blur. He felt like he was being torn apart from the inside as his body and spirit began to fight one another ferociously.

Detecting Class choice… Class parameters unknown.

And of course, the System immediately latched onto this conflict as an opportunity.

Class combination analysis start… resulting Class, Dimension Walker. Analyzing new Class… complete. Matching new Class conditions to subject… complete. Conditions met. Class Tier Master… compensation for level difference… beginning racial evolution. Racial evolution failed. Beginning racial evolution… Racial evolution failed.

The pain that came from this was many times worse than the agony caused by his first Class. While the Class in question wasn’t as far beyond him as his previous one, apparently the fact that it was a ‘Master’ Class required a racial evolution from him… and each failure for him to evolve caused him more pain and an accelerating dip in his HP that could be seen from the outside.

His eyes began to bleed, his clawed nails falling out, his muscles bulging, twisting, ripping themselves apart as his flesh attempted to alter itself over and over again in response to the System’s demands.

The corrupted mana being given off by him was sucked into the bunny sleeping at his feet, who drained it into her beast core instinctively, drool dripping from her lips as she ‘ate’ the corruption as if it were the most delicious of foods.

Suddenly, his mana core pulsed, the concept of his newborn and partially-formed Dao emanating from within.

Compatible Dao detected. Using Dao to enhance probability of racial evolution success.

Evolution success! Your Dao has allowed you to transcend the 2nd racial Tier despite your level!

You are now a Saevere Wanderer (Tier 3). You now gain 7 AP and 4 SP per level. Innovative Nature II becomes Innovative Nature III. Dimensional Wanderer Perk gained.

You have gained the Master Class, Dimension Walker. This Class is restricted to those with the Saevere race or a compatible Dao. Level cap increased to 150. Specialization of Dimension Walker Class available at level 50.

Since you failed to specialize the Curse Dagger Class before gaining a new Class, you are given 5 extra SP. Your AP have been automatically distributed to match the abilities of your new Class.

Aw fuck… I guess I should have used them before this, He thought, grumbling as he checked his status.

Name: Lyam Aldren

Level: 41

Race: Saevere Wanderer (Tier 3)

Profession: Hired Killer

Class: Curse Blade (Locked), Dimension Walker ( Legendary, Master)

Title: Cain’s Successor, Kinslayer, The First Curse Blade, Soul Master, The First Dimension Walker (75% chance to shift destination of dimensional travel that would otherwise be fatal to a safe zone)

Available AP: 0

Available SP: 29

HP: 6100/6100

MP: 8390/8390

Str: 30

Agi: 45

Dex: 45

Con: 30

End: 30

Int: 73

Will: 60

Cha: 30

Lck: 30

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, Dimensional Magic 1

Crafting Skills: Blood Curse Tattoo 30, Enchanting 25, 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, Blink Step

Weapon Style: Cat Dances with Swords (Novice)

Non-Combat: Perception 50, Mana Cultivation 40, Spirit Cleansing 75, Dissection 1

Abilities: Soul Weapon (Novice), Shadow Cloak (Novice), Dimension Thrust (Novice), Thief of Knowledge (Novice, gives a 25% chance to consume knowledge from a defeated enemy and a 100% chance to obtain knowledge willingly given by a friendly subject)

Dao: Formation I (Undefined/Unnamed)

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), Cultivator, Spatial Orientation (You can always tell where you are relative to your previous location, even without sensory reference points, as long as you are on the same world tier), Unbound from Chains (Immune to paralysis and mesmerize spells and abilities, and will automatically negate teleport locks below Tier 3)

Racial Perks: Mana Core, Innovative Nature III, Inspiration, Wanderer (you are happiest when wandering, -10% to all stats when you have remained in an area longer than a year)

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), Dimensional Magic Affinity (Dimensional Magic can be mastered without using a Celestial magic mastery slot)

The changes weren’t all positive… but he wasn’t surprised that Passive Defense hadn’t made it onto the list. That particular Perk was one that made the user invulnerable to physical and low-tier magical damage as long as they didn’t initiate an attack. It wasn’t a good fit for the fused Class he’d ended up with.

He was a bit surprised that the process had pushed AP into his Luck and Charisma, and he was a bit less so that it had focused the most on his Intelligence, as his understanding of Blink Step told him that mental processing power was integral to the casting of all Dimensional Magic.

In fact… Blink Step was going to be his limit for at least three more levels, as the grayed out entry for the next level of Dimensional Magic spells required a minimum of ninety intelligence to use. Blink Step required seventy, as it was merely the process of ‘stepping’ through local folds in the fabric of dimensions, with a limit of four meters in any given direction. Teleport, which allowed instant transport to any point within one hundred kilometers that the user could picture perfectly relative to their current position (thus the need for the Spatial Orientation Perk), was significantly more difficult.

He was also dealing with a massive residual headache from passing the benchmark of fifty in two mental stats. Apparently, all stats gave a bonus to effectiveness when they reached that level… and the rapid increase had left him with a migraine.

Otherwise, it felt like his memories were a bit clearer and easier to recall. For Willpower, he probably wouldn’t be able to figure out the effects until he had reason to.

There was nothing new in the skill shop to buy that he met the requirements for, though he did want Teleport, Dimension Box, and Basic Portal when they became available.

Since he couldn’t afford to wait any longer, he went ahead and pumped up his Dimensional Magic to 25 and his Enchanting to 30. The stream of knowledge that flowed into him made him wince again, as his migraine intensified.

For getting your Dimensional Magic skill to Journeyman, you receive the ‘Elven Runic Codex’. The Elven Runic Codex has been placed in your inventory.

He was interested in the content of his new book, but it would have to wait until he managed to recover from the headache.

It really was too bad he couldn’t get any new techniques, abilities, or spells from the shop yet.

Thankfully, the spells listed at present were all two points each, so he could grab two at each level once he managed to get his intelligence above 90.

He sighed and lay back on his bed, deciding to sleep away his headache.

___________________________________________________

Lyam grimaced as the metal ball on the opposite end of his sword-staff crunched through the skull of the giant rat to his left. He heard a screech of terror from his right, and he saw the young Moon Elf ranger he’d partied with had fallen on her ass, two of the three-foot tall beasties scrambling toward her, foaming at the mouth. He drove his sword-staff’s blade through the body of one, pinning it to the ground, and a ball of bloodfire blew the other back, setting its fur alight.

The scent of burning rat fur was actually worse than the stench of the sewers, as the enchantments built into the wall made certain the worst of the effluvia was banished over time. The creature wailed in agony, and the bunny unleashed an axe-kick on it, squashing it flat like a bug, splattering gore and blood all over the place.

The other two members of their part, both youngling Felinor with bo staffs, were easily handling their opponents. Their mana cultivation seemed to be heavily focused on enhancing their bodies, so they were much stronger and faster than their levels would indicate normally.

Knowing he would just get in the way, he edged over to the Moon Elf girl and helped her up, not showing his exasperation with her. This was the third time she’d panicked at the sight of the creatures since they’d entered the sewers, and he had had to save her each time. It was getting old, fast.

“Crecia, I do not think you are cut out for this,” He said bluntly, causing tears to well up in the deceptively young-looking elf’s silver eyes.

The Felinor returned, having finished their opponents, both of them shaking their heads. The older sister, who had black hair and fur with emerald green eyes and a slim frame simply looked at Crecia with contempt. Her name was Kaasa, and her Class was Water Cultivator.

Her younger sister, who had silver streaks along her tail and white tips to her ears, was named Fii. Her Class was Blood Cultivator, a berserker-like Class that specialized in using their blood as a weapon. She looked at Crecia with pity, “Not everyone fit for battle. Hunter, maybe. Not fighter.”

Like most of her kind, Fii’s words were oddly broken, despite the System’s inherent translation. From what Caluz had said, odd accents and broken sentences usually meant a species wasn’t made to speak the language the translation was interpreting to the listener. Caluz’s species, for instance, relied on a flexible tongue to get around the limitations of having a wolf-like snout, but this caused their words to seem slurred to other species when speaking System Common… as a result, most just spoke their original language, letting the System do the rest.

Felinor had other issues. Their vocal cords were not meant for use in constant verbal communication. Instead, a great deal of their ‘common’ language was in hand-signs and body language. Their Cant was even more that way, from what little he had been able to get out of them.

“But… I worked so hard to get through the Trial Dungeon and get my license… if I stop now, I will have wasted the money my village paid into me,” She whispered.

That was another interesting tidbit Lyam had picked up along the way. A lot of the adventurers that came out of small villages had their training and basic kit paid for by the village as a whole, putting them in debt to the village until they’d paid it back.

Crecia had done well against the goblins in the Trial Dungeon, apparently, but fighting the rats up close seemed to be too much for her.

“Is it just that they are rats?” Lyam asked. He knew some people couldn’t stand bugs or rodents, especially large ones.

She nodded slowly, “I never had a problem with the dire wolves or goblins around my home village. There is just something about the rats…”

He sighed, annoyed that Urgo had forced him to baby a party of his fellow newbies on a classic ‘rat hunt’. Apparently, because his rank was iron, he was a legitimate choice for escorting the low-rank newbies through what most considered a milk run. Fii and Crecia were tin rank, whereas Kaasa was getting close to iron but was still bronze.

Kaasa was experienced at the ‘rat hunt’ missions that served to pay the pills for most of the tin and copper rank newbies, but she was bronze, meaning she usually ran the local dungeons for ores and monster parts with her party. She was only with the party to help Fii get xp and battle experience.

He could see why Urgo had sent him with them. The rats were no threat to him or the rabbit at all. His immunity to disease and poisons made him ideal for an ‘escort run’ against the rabid creatures in the sewers.

More troubling for him than the rats were the zombies. He knew, from what others had said, that people died in Daena with extremely high frequency, and their corpses – unless they had some kind of inherent value – were generally dumped into the sewers to be purified by the enchantments. However, so far they had run across twelve zombies in various states of decay.

Oddly, Crecia didn’t seem disturbed by the undead at all. Instead, she laid into them with a somewhat psychotic smile with that flanged mace of hers.

“Are there usually this many zombies in the sewers?” He asked Kaasa.

She shook her head, looking troubled, “Cleansing spells burn dead. Enchantments damaged?”

Considering there was a standing reward for alerting the city’s administration to such damage, it had the potential to be moderately profitable. Still, he found the sight of dead people walking to be far more disturbing than he would have thought.

It probably had something to do with how many people he had killed over the years.

He pulled up his True Sight, taking a look at the glow of the enchantments on the walls. For a moment, the thought there wasn’t a problem… until his eyes came across several spots where runes appeared to have been scratched out by someone or something. He looked at the tunnel wall and noted the number. While there were bound to be a lot of other places with damaged runes, given the numbers, he imagined that simply informing the Association that there was damage at all would be sufficient for some reward.

He was far too lazy to go through all the tunnels looking for problems, after all.

“Fii, can you see those spots?” He pointed at the places where the runes had been damaged.

She squinted, her eyes flashing briefly as she activated her Spell Sight ability, “Yes. Broken runes. Inform Association?”

He nodded, “Yes, but unless you all want to spend the next few days searching the tunnels, I’m not going to bother noting every damaged rune.”

Kaasa grinned briefly before nodding, “Boring.”

“Killing zombies is fun, too!” Crecia said enthusiastically, a mad gleam in her eyes.

:Master, hungry, The bunny said demandingly in his head.

With a sigh, he removed a few zombie heads from his inventory and tossed them her way. She began eagerly sucking the rotting brains out of them as if they were delicacy of some sort, much to Cercia’s fascination and the sisters’ disgust.

From what the bunny said, the zombie brains were ‘well-aged and tasty’. Personally, Lyam would have vomited at the idea if he hadn’t immediately partitioned his reaction and fobbed it off on a sub-persona.

He still hadn’t named the bunny… though he still got prompts to do so every few minutes. He just didn’t want to acknowledge that he was the owner of the freakish monster that happened to look like a supermodel with bunny ears most of the time.

It didn’t help that she kept splattering enemies with her feet or sticking her tongue through their skulls.

“Well, time to get back to work. We still need ten more rat tails before Urgo will let me off the hook,” Lyam said, grumbling. The System Credits dropped by the rats were ridiculously little compared to what he had become used to in the Challenge Dungeon and other places (only four or five per kill), so his tolerance for the job that had been forced on him was getting lower every second.

Apparently, before he would be allowed to go off on his own with his license, he had to complete at least four missions that matched his rank with a group. Escorting the ‘children’ was killing two birds with one stone, but he really wished he’d found a group of his own rank willing to put his idiosyncratic build to use.

He’d already done three other similar ‘milk runs’ with other groups of newbies in the past two weeks. Two were goblin hunts at the edges of the forest, whereas the last was running a couple of copper ranks through the Trial Dungeon to the end to get an idea if they were ready to try for bronze.

The Trial Dungeon was, right down to the final layer, a goblin dungeon. The creatures were numerous, cunning but stupid (just like the stories), and cowardly to a fault when you outnumbered them. Unfortunately, that cunning lent itself to poisoned weapons, simple traps, and horde tactics, which had made the Trial Dungeon run almost as annoying as the current rat hunt.

It wasn’t long until another group of rats fell from the ceiling, hissing their rage at the adventurers’ intrusion. Once again, Crecia shrieked in terror, though this time she managed to fire her crossbow into the face of one rat instead of falling on her ass. Maybe she was getting better?

Nope, I guess I was getting overly optimistic, He thought with a deep sigh as he shot a half-dozen Gravity Arrows into the crowd in front of her, splattering three of the rats even as the bunny splattered two others.

The sisters easily handled the five that came from behind them, Kaasa shifting her form to water one moment and unleashing deadly strikes to rat skulls with her staff the next. Fii was giggling hysterically as her blood turned into crystalline blades that shredded her opponents before mixing with their blood and growing further as she swept through their ranks.

That girl is going to be seriously frightening once she gets that trick down, He thought admiringly, studiously avoiding staring at her shapely rear-end and the attractive tail that reminded him a little too much of his night with Mirrha.

If he had been anyone else, he would have failed utterly to notice as Crecia thrust her short sword at his lower back, a mad gleam in her eyes, her terror suddenly gone entirely. Unfortunately for her, he sensed her intent instantly, absently launching a ball of bloodfire behind him and into her face, blasting her off her feet and into the sewer water with a scream of utter agony.

His gaze, now as cold and still as a lake in winter, stared down at her as she struggled, her eyes melted out of her skull, her once-beautiful face now burnt down to the bone. If it weren’t for the preternatural vitality provided by the System-boosted Constitution stat, she would already be unconscious or dead.

Not that even that could save her as his sword staff’s blunt head shoved her head under the foul water. He looked on impassively as she struggled, the sisters looking on curiously but without any sort of surprise or disgust as he drowned the girl slowly. The bunny looked eager, sensing a chance for more food, and Lyam felt a hint of irritation break through the placidly still surface of his coldest persona.

Once he was sure the girl had gotten the point, he let her raise her head above water, “You know, I had trouble trying to figure out why Urgo was assigning me to an apparently incompetent adventurer who got her party killed in the Trial Dungeon of all places. However, I was pretty sure there was a reason why. I guess now I know.”

Her first party had wiped on the third floor of the Trial Dungeon, despite being led by two copper ranks, who could almost clear it by themselves. In retrospect, he should have been suspicious when he heard that bit of background from the orc, but, in his defense, Lyam was bored out of his skull and impatient to escape his ‘chores’ when he’d taken the job. It was perfectly understandable that he wouldn’t bother to read in between the lines properly.

“I am guessing you two knew?” He asked Fii and Kaasa.

They both nodded slowly, and Kaasa spoke, “Friends in party lost. Revenge. No forgiveness.”

“Sister friends, my friends,” Fii said simply.

Coldly, ruthlessly, Lyam pierced Crecia’s right shoulder with his sword staff, then the left, ignoring her screams. He then dragged her out of the water and tossed her over on her belly, slicing the tendons behind her knees and ankles. He then stripped her of her weapons and handed them over to Fii, who inventoried them wordlessly.

Whistling with false cheer, he carefully cut tendons in her elbows, to be certain she wouldn’t be able to move for some time. He had already examined her and determined her constitution was insufficient for her to heal those wounds any time soon without a regeneration Perk or healing ability, which she didn’t have.

Her sightless, scorched face glared at him as she spat slurred epithets from her lipless mouth. Apparently part of her tongue was burned away, as well. Like an idiot, she had put most of her AP into dexterity and agility, with her endurance and constitution both at base levels for her race, nine. Even at its base output, the bloodfire had been enough to ruin her face entirely.

He heard rats scurrying for them, most likely attracted by the odors she was giving off.

He bent down by her right ear and whispered, “Sounds like you are going to be having some company soon.”

He turned back the way they came, absently looting the rat corpses as they left her to her fate. Both Fii and Kaasa were giving him hot glances, as was the rabbit… though the rabbit always seemed to be giving him looks like that these days.

He ignored her screams, his face and his mind devoid of emotion as he left the elf to be rat bait, the angry screeches of the large beasties beginning to echo behind him.

_______________________________________________________________

Loki smiled as he watched Lyam’s actions in the sewers. Lyam was one of his favorites, a toy he and Susanoo had both marked during one of their drunken revels… who had developed in surprising ways even before the Sublimation.

Unlike Susanoo, who liked to watch Lyam stumble around in the new world he found himself in, Loki was fascinated by Lyam’s spirit. Hel, his daughter, lounged on a nearby couch, her divinity providing the access, as most of his was tied up in keeping them concealed from Odin.

Odin is really overreacting… just because there is now a Raid Zone in space because of the people who survived being launched with the Eiffel Tower he decides he needs to punish me. It isn’t like they were Norse, He complained to himself. Odin was powerful, even in this new world. If he wasn’t careful, Loki would find himself chained up somewhere dark and dismal all over again. Typical of the chaotic god, he didn’t think it was even worth mentioning that several of Odin’s chosen were trapped on the Eiffel Tower Zone, which was rapidly expanding into a city-sized dungeon full of high-level monsters.

“Father, why did you pick this one? He is certainly capable, but you have always preferred fools and madmen,” Hel queried, her new face free of the undead side that once made her unwilling to reveal herself before living mortals.

“Look closer. I will give you access to my insight,” He said, sending a tendril of his own divinity her way.

She raised a white brow but claimed the tendril, her eyes widening in shock a moment later, “Just how did you manage this?!”

Loki smiled proudly, “Shattering the soul in such a way that it will re-conglomerate into something interesting is one my specialties. A few bad foster homes, a mother who sent mad at precisely the right period of his life to break him… and died before he was destroyed completely. After that, it was a simple matter of providing the right opportunities and obstacles at the right times.”

“Does Susanoo know just how much you interfered with him?” She asked curiously. Hel wasn’t bothered by her father’s needlessly convoluted schemes. Being his daughter, she had been caught by them thousands of times over the centuries, so she was accustomed to the feeling.

“No. I found the boy first and saw his potential. It was only after that potential was realized enough to take his interest that I directed Susanoo’s attention to him,” Loki admitted.

“If he ever figures it out, he’ll be furious with you, you know. You don’t have so many friends left that you can afford to lose any,” She observed. Loki was incapable of resisting the urge to scheme, by nature. It was why he and Thor didn’t talk anymore and why Baldur had been a guest in her halls for so long.

Loki looked pensive for a moment, “That is food for thought… I’m afraid I was just so eager to show the boy off that I didn’t think about how he would feel if he knew I was the source of the boy’s suffering.”

Susanoo, though he was a chaos-aligned deity, was rarely cruel. He would have found Loki’s excesses repugnant, and even Loki sometimes thought he went a bit far with Lyam. The boy’s soul had a natural resilience that had made Loki want to test it to the limits, and the chaotic deity had been incapable of resisting the temptation.

“Well, he is thriving now that the Sublimation has occurred,” He defended himself to his daughter.

“That’s not the point, Father. Even I think you were excessively cruel in this case. While such things happen incidentally all the time, deliberately inflicting such suffering on a child without divine blood goes beyond your usual scheming,” She scolded. For all that her realm had been one partially designed to punish the unchosen dead of the Norse pantheon, Hel had always striven to make her realm something more than just another place of punishment… though her efforts had been limited by the Earth’s creator deity’s definition of her divine role.

Loki didn’t even have the decency to look shamefaced… but then, she hadn’t expected him to be. Her father had always taken a peculiar glee in his role as the Norse pantheon’s trickster and antagonist. Personally, she sometimes wished she didn’t still love him as a parent (for some reason, he spoiled his children rotten in their early years). He was difficult to love, even for a deity who was accustomed to showing compassion to the accursed dead.

If only Jormy was still around… she might have been a gluttonous snake, but she was always good at getting Father to recognize his own mistakes and make restitution, She thought with a sigh. Jormungandr had escaped their universe when the System began to take over, so her sister was unavailable.

“I made sure he got Hecate’s eyes. With those, he will be able to become a true power if he plays his cards right!” He said, trying to divert her displeasure. His soft spot for Hel was one of the major reasons he’d held off on Ragnarok until it was too late. He knew she hated the idea of destroying everything she had built for the sake of a war she had no personal investment in, so he had found himself pushing the date back again and again… until the System arrived and he couldn’t use his plans anymore.

Fenrir was still pissed over that, last time he’d talked to her.

“You just did that because you know Hecate would have hated her flesh being used to empower a mortal. If you want to make up for this, you should be looking for a gift to give Susanoo personally, not adding to your toy’s power-set for your own amusement!” She scolded.

It could be perhaps forgiven if one were to describe the look on Loki’s face as his daughter continued to nag him about his failures as one of a puppy beaten for peeing on the carpet.