I found myself waking up when I in all honesty thought that I was never going to even open my eyes again let alone be able to form coherent thoughts. But low and behold I find myself sitting down in something akin to a meeting room, sitting in front of me are two men who are both familiar to me. The first being the representative of undeath mana, and the second man being the one who sent me to this world. Only after looking at both of them do I notice that there is a table in front of us in the shape of a triangle, each person sitting between the points of the triangle.

“Good morning, how have you been doing recently?” That sweet caramel smooth tone, lulling me into false confidence but also completely selling me the idea that he was genuine with his question. Even if I personally wanted to avoid buying it. “Good sir, and you?” When I spoke I felt like I had grown skin just so I could have hair to stand up on the back of my neck, slowly my head turned towards the person who sent me to this world.

The man's face now that I have seen a few more examples of human faces from my memories I can say that he looks like the stereotypical grandfather. Until I noticed a few discrepancies the man’s eyes never blinked; they almost always moved exactly enough to meet your gaze and his almost cheery attitude was so far long gone that anyone could have convinced me that I had imagined it when I first saw it.

“Young one please don’t encourage him, I dislike spending time in this place.” The man said straightening his clothes, those being a full suit complete with stopwatch. I could almost hear it ticking away inside his breast pocket.

“Please, you know this is the most interesting thing that's going to happen till the other people get to this world.” The representative said matter of factly then seemed puzzled with something also straightening his clothes, oddly I remember him being in a suit but now he looks like he’s wearing nothing. Leaving a pitch black skin like material stretched over his gaunt frame. Every part of him being that same dark color including his fingernails, I could tell his fingernails were made out of bone though even from my seat.

“I’d hate to intrude on whatever you two have between yourselfs, but I can’t tell what's happening here. And would really like to be told why I’m here.” “Ha told ya he’d skip all forms of niceties and just want answers, pay up.” The fellow skelly bro said towards the suit. “Oh come on, he should have been scared about two beings way stronger than him.” The old man in the suit groaned at losing some pre determined bet.

The two smiled for a second then focused back on me. “You’re here because someone had to create an incident that could affect quite literally an entire world.” I could almost feel the pointed stare from the grandfather in the suit when the skeleton mentioned ‘someone’. “But what did I do?”

“Are you having issues remembering?” The grandfather in the suit suddenly stopped being angry as soon as there was a possibility of me being hurt, I would say I disliked him being worried but I suddenly had flashes of an old man in bed smiling, his mouth moving yet no noise coming out.

“You could have been hurt by what you did, I’m not sorry for what I’m about to do, please forgive me nonetheless.”

And with me having almost no time to even question what the grandfather meant by that my entire mind and soul went white in burning pain and I lost consciousness once again.

Coming back to consciousness I find that this time only the skeleton is in the room. Rather than being on a chair I wake up on a couch with a really comfy blanket. The skeleton was looking down at me from a reclining chair. “Hey you doing better?” The tone of his voice was concerned with none of the earlier smoothness. “I can’t tell, what happened?” As I was asking this I sat upright on the couch and wasn’t able to not notice the surroundings were damaged quite badly.

“He used his authority as the gatekeeper of reincarnation to look at your soul, he found that you were almost completely fine except for one of your abilities I think it’s called “split mind’? Anyway, regardless of what you call it, he found that it was an ability from your past life. He took it upon himself to remove said ability, I did fight him off from doing it but it had some negative side effects... You see in your past life you had a type Multiple Personality Disorder.

(Author note, I understand this might not be how this disorder works in real life but I’m taking liberty with it for the sake of storytelling. If anyone has the disorder and would like to ask me questions about why I felt the need to use the disorder like this then I’m more than open to answer any sort of questions or concerns. Hope you guys continue to like reading.)

In your case the main you was a creative sort who was fairly intelligent, during his youth people didn’t enjoy a kid knowing what was going on around them. They also felt like you being a creative person wasn’t going to get you anywhere in life… Those and a couple extra outside stressors for good measure, caused you to eventually form two consciences one of those being the original and the other being someone bordering on sociopathic in terms of willingness and capability to disregard human life.

When you came to this world those two combined into one person.” Looking at the representative of undeath I wanted to believe that he was lying but the more I thought about it the more I was able to find things clicking together.

“So that means that I’m not the person from my memories? And that can’t be `the negative` in the situation because that already happened.”

“I was getting to that. I just wanted to give you some time to process everything before I kept going. But I’ll say this no matter what memories you have from your past life, this is your second chance you don’t have to let anyone or anything join you during this time.” The skeleton paused at that and looked away from me towards the table. I could have sworn that the table had nothing on it, but now it has two cups of liquid. “What's inside the cup?” The skeleton let one of the glowing orbs making up his eyes turn towards me leaving the other one to continue eying the glass. “Hehe, it's a special potion for undead, it makes them relive parts of their living life. It will taste, smell, and feel like your entire life in a single cup. Personally, once you get as old as I am drinking it can be a toss up for how long you're going to be out of commission. Once I was out for the better part of a whole cycle!”

“I’ll pass then… I’d rather not drink it, especially, if what you said about not needing to let my past life affect me, is true.” And at this I pause in the same way he did earlier for me, I think undead when they do speak to each other pause a lot considering.

The skeleton only seemed silent for a moment before nodding then like I’d imagined them the glasses disappeared. “In that case I’ll keep to my word and respect your wish… I do need to explain this to you before anything happens so forgive me for continuing I hope you’re mentaly prepared for this.”

The skeleton and I stayed silent for half a second then the skeleton continued from earlier without dropping a beat. “The fragments of the things making up you were split apart, making you now two entities again. Only this time it's like two personalities who are two sides of the same coin in a sense.”

“What does that even mean for me? Considering that I seem perfectly in control of my faculties.”

The skeleton looked at me and almost nodded his head in understanding before answering “well that's cause I’m sorry to say but I’d rather not have, and taking this out of your memories, my champion being a murder hobbo because they were driven insane by having to constantly fight their other half from taking them over.”

The skeleton stared at me to the point where I imagined eyebrows on the thing, said imagined eyebrows were raised up and slanted indicating that it wanted me to agree to at least some of its earlier statement.

“So what did you do exactly?” Considering that if the negative was completely removed I highly doubt that my skeleton buddy would have even mentioned it. “Oh and before I forget, thanks for doing whatever you did, because it seems to be working pretty well.” I added hastily almost interrupting the skeleton

“I wouldn’t start thanking me yet without me telling you what I did. See I couldn’t help but notice a dungeon was trying its darndest to develop on the island, till someone decided to nuke the island, it was doomed to die and while that's not a big deal, I did take note that you wanted to take the dungeon over and seeing as it dying would make that very difficult if not impossible. I cut out the little terror that was trying to create pandamonium inside your soul and forced it into that dungeon.”

The skeleton looked like he wanted to add more but was trying to be polite and let me ask questions, I can’t really come up with any questions. “Please keep going, is there anything else?” Asking that the person more knowledgeable continue talking was a good decision in my last life and it seemed to serve me well in this one too, as the skeleton soon started speaking

“Can do, so currently the dungeon is under new management, and your body is stuck in a mana induced coma. The two of us pulled your conscience here so we could run damage control and see if you were being malicious in your actions. A large percentage of the elements want no part of you and are suggesting that we cut all ties with you, this would result in the loss of some of your mana related traits. On the other hand another percentage of elements want you to become their champion, and the largest percentage of them wants to live and let live as long as you swear to stop messing with refined mana.”

My first response to being told not to mess with something I’d already sworn off messing with was surprising to even me, ‘oh guess my split mind trait is still a thing,’ that fact barely registered over the steam engine going through my head, ‘who did they think they are giving me a trait that literally says that i'm loved by them then to turn around and tell me that if I don’t do exactly what they say they’ll take that “love” away from me.’

“I’m going to be very frank with you boss, what faction do you subscribe to? And will the ones who want me to become their champion meet up with me so we can discuss what this is all about?”

Please for all that is holy and unholy don’t let the super skeleton fall into two out of the three categories. I continued repeating that like a mantra over and over, almost missing the skeleton raising its hands but considering that I was sitting right in front of it that would be quite a magic trick to pull off.

“Well now first I thought we were making progress here. I'm not your boss, if anything I’m a concerned friend trying to not burn the world down to make your situation better. In fact I’d go so far as to ask for you to call me Olly from now on. And onto your questions, seriously? For a person who literally has multiple ‘hims’ going all at once you seriously don’t pick up on social cues do you. I mentioned repeatedly that I was looking to have you become my champion. And as for meeting up with the faction who wants to have you become their champion? I can get something worked together but I would need to send an official reply of your response about you leaving refined mana alone. And one more thing before you respond to anything else, I want to ask you if the other guy even told you what becoming a champion even means?”

Looking towards Olly I thought about what he asked and for the unlife of me I couldn’t remember him or anyone else telling me, so I shook my head not trusting my voice being able to contain how angry I was about the possibility of losing something that I had worked hard for, and risked my life for.

Olly responded jumping straight into telling me about what becoming a champion would mean. “

So let's just say that you wanted to become my champion, in that case I would tell you a mission, something I felt you did to deserve recognition for it all depends on the person and what you want. But after we came to an agreement you would get a power or a bonus or something like that, and if you complete your mission that I gave you then I would no longer be able to change or affect your ability. Then we could make a new deal, and since you’ve proven to me that you're able to complete the missions that I want you to do, then I’d be more willing to give you stronger powers and bonuses, for harder missions of course.”

At this Olly paused and looked at me, now that he had a name rather than a title I was able to empathise far more with him. This included being able to tell that he wanted me to comment about some of the things he said during his sales pitch so to speak.

“Would you be willing to make me a champion for something I’ve already done? I feel like I wouldn’t be able to do much from the island, so anything I was given so that I would go do something would start to feel like some blood debt with a horrible compounding interest rate.” I say to Olly in only a half joking tone considering that no matter how much of a friend Olly is I can’t just accept everything he throws at me at face value.

Olly looked at me for a solid second before I heard a noise I could almost swear was him clicking his tongue. “Darn well can’t blame me for trying can you?” He said in only a half joking tone, I honestly can’t tell if he was upset about me calling him out for it, if he would have done it, or even if he was joking about seriously trying to do it.

“Ummm sure if you say so Olly, anyway does that mean yes?”

Olly looked at me and with a face I could only describe as pouty he answered. “I can give you a blessing for nuking that island, but it's not going to be anything fancy, I’d really like to give you a task even if it just motivates you to get off your island wasteland.”

“As long as it's not too horrible I might be able to do a mission for you but I would like to know what said mission is before I agree to anything.”

Olly responded without missing a beat. “Well you were already planning on doing it, I want to see an undead empire, I want to be able to look at the world and see a prosperous undead empire spanning miles of miles above ground and underground for millennia to come.”

“I want to do the same, but I also want to grow in strength so that I can build an amazing empire from the ground up rather than trying to fix the errors of my younger self after I gain more experience as the leader of an empire. So it might take me a long while before I can do that.”

Olly thought about my response and stated matter of factly. “Well since you seem willing, we could work something out here, what would you like to properly motivate you in completing the mission before you?”

“Are you legit asking me to just name a random price? I don’t even know how hard it's going to actually be to make an empire of undead, considering I highly doubt they would be sentient like me so I could realistically call anything an empire as long as I learn how to raise things from the dead.”

Olly stared at me for the longest time before getting a glint in his eyes. “Did you just say you personally want to be able to resurrect things? Because it's been a long time since there was a proper necromancer in this world, and I think I have the perfect way to implement it. But before I tell you I have one thing to ask, do you want to bother the ever living daylights out of mister gate keeper of reincarnation over there?” With a tilt of his head indicating the aforementioned person being away from us.

Without much thought I responded, “Yes I’d like that very much so in fact, so lay it on me my good friend how are we going to go about doing that?”

“Well it’s going to cost you a pretty penny, but what I can do is allow you to gain access to a class. Normally you wouldn’t be able to have one since you're an undead, the best you would be able to do normally would be to get an addition to your race type such as you being a crab knight that allows you to get bonuses to gaining skills. But with the ability to gain a class you could gain power at a ridiculous rate, along with evolving as a monster, oh and the ranking system which can boost a monster very efficiently into the stratosphere. I’m confident that you could bother `mr. High and mighty` over there.”

Unable to stop myself I shoot an obvious response to whether or not I’m willing to accept a deal with the devil.

“Hey, I’m gonna stop you there, this is my realm and as the embodiment of a primal element I’m as close to god in this room to the one that was in here just a little while ago. Meaning that I can see everything inside this place, including reading your every thought like pages on a book. Please for the sake of our continued friendship never compare me to the devil, especially because if ever there was a thing like that you spoke to him right before he sent you to this world.”

I was cut off before I was able to ask my question but still this was not the first time I’ve had to deal with someone being able to read my thoughts.

“Olly, I was only joking about the possible similarities, and you can’t possibly tell me that you don’t see the resemblance between the two of you? Both trying to cut a deal at someone's expense and being unable to help yourselves from doing it.”

“Before you respond Olly I’m talking as fast as I can here so you can’t read my mind about what I'm going to say. The second benefit to doing this is that it grants a type of trustworthiness to what I say, since ya know I didn’t stop and think about the perfect word choice to make you not get peeved at me.”

Olly took a moment and he seemed dumbfounded that I switched from being so meek to talking so fast that I don’t even have time to think for myself let alone him being able to read my thoughts before I let loose.

“Oh… Sorry about that, I don’t generally deal with people who make jokes around me so I’m not very used to other people making them. I’m normally the person who’s making a fool of themselves so others don’t have the time to do it themselves.”

“Olly I’m not going to tell you that threatening someone you call your friend is okay, but since I have no interest in dying, and from your earlier word choice I think I’m your only champion at the moment. Those make me think that being a champion is more of a lifelong thing rather than a quick way of getting a power boost.”

Olly looked at me, his mood was hard to figure out, ‘wonder if that comes with age, or something else’

“Thanks, I’ll try not to over react like that.” Olly paused, seeming to be thinking over a word in particular, probably something I said earlier.

“Were you being serious? About not thinking this was only a fast way to gain power and nothing else?”

In that moment I had to take a moment rather than being me. I thought about this from his perspective, someone who has been around for only the person in question would know how long. How many people must have come through their long life saying the same things only to be lying through their teeth. Could I blame Olly wanting to get one over on me before I was able to do the same to him? Thinking like this is starting to make me want to show the pitch black skeleton that I’m being serious, that I want to partner up with him, for as long as we are both able to help each other. I feel like some part of my head is demanding that I couldn’t become a burden to someone who cares about me, almost compelling me to help my first friend in this life.

“Olly I can only imagine how dull it is living the life you've had up till this point, but I promise by the end of whatever constitutes our relationship, be that friends, enemies, or champion and godly figure. Heck even a mix of all three of those if that could be possible, me and you will have stories to tell for ages, learned a few odd things. And I hope by the end of it all we’ll have managed to make each other better for knowing each other.”

Olly had continued to level firm eye contact the entire time, I could see how much he wanted to point out that he knew I was joking or lying but wasn’t finding that from looking at my eyes.

“Thank you”

Olly ended the emotional moment with two words, but all the same I knew that I was going to make a difference in the skeleton's unlife.

“Yup, no problem Olly.”

Keeping with stereotypes from my old world when your friend wants to end the touchy feely moment then you stop and make sure to avoid it for as long as they want. ‘Glad at least some of the information I had in my old life is coming back.’

“Well what's next boss?” I ask, looking vaguely in Olly’s direction deciding to twitch gears onto more business rather than friendship.

“I assume that means you're willing to become my champion?” For a second after Olly asked, I sat there wondering who had the gall to tell me that I couldn’t pick up social cues.

“Olly.. Considering you can read my mind I’m not going to repeat what I was thinking, but I’m going to make a statement here.. I called you boss for a reason, so what's next on the roster, boss?” Adding in the boss after a millisecond because I thought it was still a good idea not to get too lax with my new super powered gift giving taskmaster.

“Taking into account that last bit of what you thought, the next thing up is deciding if becoming champion with the elements who are willing is something you'd like to do. Then we have to go over your bonuses you got from being a reincarnated soul.”

“...So out of order I know, but what bonuses?” Olly at this point looked at me confused. And I felt like he was the odd one telling me things then expecting me to know what he was talking about.

“Um you reincarnated, that means you got some bonuses even if you were the equivalent of a stepchild in this whole thing. You have an easier time leveling up, you don’t have a limit on how high your stats can be. And you get traits and titles easier too. Those are the ones that would be noticed by you, cause the other ones don’t really matter to you. Like not dying due to old age, and being immune to any form of genetic disease that would kill a normal member of the species that you get reborn as.”

“Oh that's pretty nice, I assume that makes reincarnated people very popular with the ladies?”

“You would be correct, but reincarnated people also get reborn infertile, and as of now not even the most stubborn of people have been able to figure out a way to have kids. Meaning that if a reincarnated person were to try and use the fact that they’re immune to get some sort of alliance it would work up till after years of having an alliance based around having kids, just kind of sitting there not even doing anything. People start asking questions, to say the least.”

“And am I in the wrong to assume those questions start turning into reasons to strap the reincarnated person onto a table to figure out just how this immunity works?”

Olly responded with a nod and a careful glance behind his shoulders, “I’d call you lucky for being an undead and not having to deal with the two main drawbacks of the whole reincarnation thing. But you being an undead does come with negatives.”

Not being in the mood to interrupt Olly I mentally signal him to continue. “You get negatives from being in sunlight, and to rank up or to level you need to get varying levels of life force, and undead depending on what type have weaknesses from damages, in your case blunt damage causes right around twice more damage than it normally would.”

I mean duh Olly I was able to figure that out, no need to look so shifty like someone will hear you giving away these dark mysteries of life… I might have forgotten you can hear me..

“Well ignoring that let me get my head in order Olly, I’m not very organized right now.”

As of right now I have Olly backing me up, and an unknown amount of elements that want to see me disallowed from using mana if what I’m thinking is correct. I could get the elements who want to give me a one off reward for nuking the island to do so. I also need a way to get more information without having to bother the closest thing to a friend I have. So two goals, let's get to work.

“So Olly you might have been following along but I have two things I have to do, are you willing to help with that at all?”

“Sure, I’ll be able to handle both of those.”

And with a wave of his bony hands a stack of paper appeared out of nowhere, slamming onto the old wood table, causing a surprisingly small amount of noise for how much a stack of paper at least one meter tall must weigh.

(I don’t know if I mentioned it but some people have asked me to change over to the metric system so I’ll be doing just that, if you would like otherwise pm me or leave a comment.)

“That's every element who is wanting to make some sort of deal, you can go ahead and sort through if you want to make deals with them or not. I’ll mention that some of them are definitely not worth considering, but other than that feel free to pick whoever you'd like and I’ll try and contact them for you.”

And with that I started sorting through the stack of paper. First going by if they seemed crazy. Like one element was asking for me to sell my soul and never use any other type of mana other than his super special secret mana, that would totally make me the strongest thing to ever walk the land.. That was obviously stupid and not possible.

Then by the ones that I couldn’t tell if they were being serious, ones were they promised that they were like me kindred spirits who wanted nothing more than to make sure they survive, just like me in a way. But I could feel that something felt off about them, it was their honeyed words with nothing actually linking me towards them other than what they claimed to exist.

Soon I was left with a third stack, and they were the worst. If someone told me they were disguised hate mail I’d have believed them in a heartbeat. Such as one such gem reading that my mother was the type of woman to spend her time lying with dogs then claim to have lain with my father when my father was clearly a mule. That letter did use more colorful words but I’m unwilling to use the exact words they used as that would taint all of my future vocabulary.

Having Olly get rid of the ones in the last stack I felt happy that I would never read those again. I can’t stay focused on my small victory, rather I have to start back on my task of further sectioning the different letters, the two stacks further into another three stacks.

After reading so many I was able to take the malicious ones out and leave the ones who at second glance seemed to fully believe what they were selling. I once again asked Olly to get rid of the ones being malicious. Leaving me with the final pile that I was able to break down into two much smaller stacks. The ones that I was now able to tell if they were being malicious or better known as these elements all seem like a-holes and I never want to have any sort of long term dealings with them.

Asking Olly to get rid of all but two letters, I looked over the two of them, enjoying how different they were in comparison to the other letters but also from each other. The first one being written on dark parchment with faint and small gray or silver handwriting, the lettering being difficult to read on the equally dark parchment. And the other letter seemingly being written on new, modern paper with brown blocky almost runic handwriting.

Starting with the easier of the two to read. That being the albeit blocky still very well written letter. It read `Hello, I’m fairly certain that Undeath will have already made a contract with you by the time you read this, unlike popular belief me and my fellows do not consider each other enemies, if you would be so inclined to ask Undeath to summon me to his realm so that we could speak, I would find that quite pleasant, with care Life.`

Looking towards Olly, I asked a question without asking it ‘is that for real?’

Olly looked up from his book getting lost in catching up to what I’d been doing, before honing in on the letter. “Yup that's Life if I’d had to wager a small sum of mana. Do you want to try talking to her? She's very pleasant to be around.” If I hadn’t been dealing with Olly for the better part of two hours, I’d have missed the small glint in his eyes, now from my experience any sort of glint in a being's eyes if they are stronger than you is not to be messed with. But this time it seemed warm, like he was hopeful that I’d say yes.

“You're the boss, if you think it would be a good idea then I’m sure it couldn’t hurt, I want to finish this last letter first though.”

Getting a nod I moved from the actually readable letter to the barely crabbed together letter the lines flowing from one sentence to the next, and the only section that I was able to read being the words closest to the comparatively monolithic lines in the parchment from what I assume to be some dudes pocket, or a folding… folding, there’s another word for that… I think it's called origami?

Deciding that spending my time trying to decipher some archaic possibly origami puzzle wouldn’t be worth my time I set the letter down and looked towards Olly. “If you want to call Life and have her come over then now is the perfect time.”

Olly once again nodded then pulled out a small writing desk, it was raised at an angle even when it appeared on the table, Olly was able to lean over, and grabbed a fountain pen, even though they normally wouldn’t need ink from the inkwell resting in the thick sides of the table mounted desk, that didn’t stop him from dipping the pen lightly into it and with a fluidity that I’d consider illegal for an animated pile of bones to be capable of. But here it was a skeleton writing a letter hand penned with a precision befitting a master of any craft.

Then with a flourish of his wrist he added something at the very end of the paper. Then with a smoothness brought only by experience he pulled an envelope out of a small drawer in the slanted writing desk, and sealed the letter in it. As soon as the envelope was fully sealed with wax it was gone along with the writing desk.

“Well Life is a busy one to say the least so you might not get a response any time soon, so what else did we have to do?”

“I wanted a way to get more information without having to bother you with every question I have.”

“Oh that's easy to resolve, I could also deal with an issue that you haven't realized you have yet, you see once you find your dungeon core counterpart the way to kill it is by having a mental battle of wills inside the core. You can use mental energy, good one for figuring out how to do that by the way, but the way you’re using it, I doubt it would do more good than harm in this case.”

Stating that dubious factoid I wanted to further question what he ment but was unable to so much as utter a syllable before I felt like a wave of cold wash over me forming on the left side of Olly. This cold wind left me even further speechless as it began forming into a man of Asian heritage.

The man was at the very cusp of being two meters tall, when standing at his full extension, though he only stood at that for a split second while he breathed inwards, then with an exhale his posture went from perfect, to only looking perfect his body somehow managed to hide his height leaving him standing at 1.84 meters tall, and now being shorter than Olly by just a hair since Olly stands at 1.9 meters. Only after this impressive display of control over his body did I notice his attire, a blood red kimono that left his hands completely hidden. Doing a double take the blood red of his attire is broken by faint golden threads seemingly placed at random.

The man had only been standing for the briefest moment, but in that time I’d seen his cold gray eyes observing the entirety of the room with only the faintest hint of his head moving leaving evidence that he wasn’t a statue.

“My lord, how may I be of service to your holiness” The man spoke while keeping his eyes firmly away from Olly, I was able to tell from the sheer amount of loyalty the man was ejecting that he was making an effort to avoid eye contact out of respect. And the tone of the man brought me pause, it seemed to be a question, but was in reality a statement that his purpose was to fulfill Olly’s any request.

“Old friend please just because of our guest being here doesn’t mean you have to be so formal. But we can fix that sure enough, for a first and foremost your task for as long as you're able, and willing. Will be to act as our guest’s guide, answer any questions he might have. And taking that into consideration you will be taking up a title to stop him from gaining a title that would assist his growth unfairly.”

Olly stated as much like I’d know what he meant by a title giving me an unfair advantage. Olly looked towards me from the unnamed man.

“Before you ask that, let my friend here create a title so that he can tell you.”

Olly then nodded towards the man, who even though he was avoiding looking in Olly’s direction seemed to be able to see what he was doing.

“As my lord wishes me to be a guide, my new title will be `The Guide` and in the interest of meeting my lord’s expectations please refer to me for all questions.”

Olly and I shared a look that said ‘really that's your oh so original title?’ But I still had questions and it seems like Olly has better things to do as he nodded towards “The Guide” before poofing out of existence.

And with that I was left in a room with a man who seemed even as relaxed as he seemingly is, could ruin my day harder than one of those martial bears, even the one who leveled up.

“Hello, Guide from what Olly said you’re the person who's going to be answering my questions?”

“Yes”

...Well that's annoying. Is he going to answer questions like that? “I hope you don’t mind. I have two questions right from the get go, what are titles? And can you explain the whole status screen for me?”

Without even leaving a moment of silence between me saying that he was answering my questions.

“Titles are the way the system recognizes people, you can get them by doing things that normally wouldn’t be possible. You might get a title for destroying that island, you could have gotten a title for being guided by me if I used my true name, because of who I was in my life and the fact that I’m dead now so normally I would be unable to guide you. And the status screen is something that only exists for reincarnated people, I’ve never had one but I could explain what some of the things mean if you felt like opening your status page.”

Without much hesitation I brought up my status screen

Name: N/A

Race: lowest undead Lv5 EVOLUTION IS AVAILABLE , ENERGY LEVELS UNKNOWN

Str 14(+5)

Con 17(+7)

Wis 20(+10)

Int 20(+10)

Dex 12(+5)

Cha 13(+2)

Free points: 0

Abilities: Life detection*2-9/20, Observe-20/???, Bad aura-13/???, Bone Manipulation*2-13/100, Mana manipulation-40/???, Undead healing*2-5/20, Mana craft-21/50, Life force manipulation-17/??. Undead energy-8/10, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*2-6/10, Split mind-9/????, Form manipulation-6/30.

Limitations/Traits:

Undeath- You have no normal negatives of being undead, you will even find your strength, speed, and mana abilities increased during both the night and day,

Undead- You have no stamina, you have no need to sleep, and any desire to do so is magickly influenced,

Hunger for life- Your body has no life in it, you must take this life from somewhere lest your unlife ends.

[Mana Blessed- Somehow you have gained the attention of mana itself, your mana has gained increased awarness, and mental abilities are exponentially more powerful and easier to use. Removed.]

You have unlocked a skill normally only available for high ranked undead, it allows you to heal from damage.

Life force user- Now that you have such fine control of your mana your life force is now completely under your control.

Blessed by representative of undeath mana- You were blessed by the origin of all undead mana, you find mana of the same or similar type are much easier to use and when ever a being less to or equal to in strength to the representative tries to see your status/ affect your mind they will be unable to do so. You also gain access to higher level undead abilities sooner, they are much stronger that they should be at your level.

As an undead blessed by pure undeath mana all limits on having stats vs. not having stats. Are removed as long as it was caused by your being undead, and your stats are slightly higher.

Life force cultivation- you have compressed your life force into a higher purity than an undead would normally have access to, this has made it so that you are quite capable of using your life force to heal and strengthen others and yourself. You now have a bonus to how fast you heal, how effective your Con, Str, Dex, Int, and Wis are and will be able to heal even as an undead due to your blessing from a representative of undeath.

Bone purifier*2- Your bones have undergone a number of baptisms by earth mana, you have pushed it away continually your bones now will be stronger against creatures with earth mana inside them. You can choose to expel all of your current earth mana to regain bonuses from the earlier level of this trait. Those are your mana being able to freely move through and outside of your body. You will find a bonus to Con, and that now you can fit far more energies inside of yourself. Your Str and Dex also get a bonus

Form modifier- You have modified the base nature of your body, this normally wouldn’t provide any noticeable changes other than in height and other things of that nature. But you took it one step above the norm by modifying small details to make the body more efficient, by modifying your form you can increase or decrease the bonuses to most of your abilities, earning bonuses to your future modification attempts and you can now with enough time and patience.

“How can I let you see it?”

The Guide looked at me, before speaking “Remember I don’t have one, but I’m sure if you think about sharing it with me I’ll be able to see it.”

Having only this small reassurance that what I was attempting to do was possible I mentally grabbed the screen.. And received a light tap to the back of my head.

I looked towards the only other person in the room to find The Guide not behind me, and the room we were in previously had suddenly been swapped out for a very large expanse of white skies and a strange straw floor. For a brief second my mind flared a warning before I was sent tumbling to the ground.

Forcing my falling body to collapse in on itself using the fact that I don’t need to keep any of my limbs in any one shape, I found myself landing on my knees sliding for a second making a slight mound of ground under my feet, and the knee that was dragging along the ground.

My head was sent snapping into the direction the hit came from, then spinning towards the same angle I was hit last time, using what little momentum I could gather I attempted to stab out using my hand. Something odd that I never really paid any attention to was the fact that my hands, even without me changing their shape, were natural weapons, each finger ending with a jaggedly sharp needle.

My admittedly weak attempt at an attack was blocked by a single equally half hearted arm allowing my attack to harmlessly slide past the rest of him, I for a split second confirmed who was attacking me it was the guide. I don’t know why he was attacking but I highly doubt that he’s being serious considering I’m still alive.

I was forced to rip off my hand as I jumped away, Rolling and standing in as smooth a motion as possible, I had to continuously tell myself that I was a skeleton, I had no pain receptors as for some ungodly reason I was bleeding and my entire left arm was burning with a white hot kind of pain that can only come from doing something with your body that even the idea of doing it should have remained a joking remark in the back of your head. ‘Oh yea sorry about the blood let me just gut myself here.’ I mentally quipped as my mantra continued to fail in getting rid of the blood loss or the pain.

“I can’t say that you are all too bad at this.”

My vision was swimming badly. I had kept the guide in my vision, the problem being that my vision was clearly not working all that well because as soon as he started moving he disappeared. ‘My eyes stopped responding to movement, depth perception is next in the list of things to go due to blood loss. I need to wait until he gets within blurry angle vision.’ Rather than keep my laugh internal I let it out hoping to upset the guide's walking pace just a little.

“Haha, well can’t be too much of a compliment considering what little I can see of you.”

I could almost hear the guide stop walking before I could see it, that does make sense considering hearing is the last thing to go before the silent dark takes you. But I’d hate to lose him now that I’d gotten his movement to halt. I zeroed in on his location and started shakaly dashing towards him.

While yes I couldn’t see him while he was moving, the fact that he thought I could. made him pause, meaning that he didn’t think I could see him in the slightest and me calling him out like that forced him to reconsider his strategy.

My dashing ability had improved tremendously with the addition of new stat points. But I overestimated how fast I was in comparison to how slow my opponent would react to the charging and somehow bleeding skeleton…

I soon got within viewing distance away from the guide and was forced into realizing that rushing into a fight with something way faster and better at hand-to-hand combat than me was most definitely a bad idea. Each and every single one of my individual minds were firing on all cylinders faster than ever before pushing my speeds to a… Seemingly lazy crawl if the guide's half hearted attempts were any indication.

And the fast pace of my heart beat was not helping my blood loss…

‘Why is my head hurting so much? What's up with this fog? And why can’t I hit him!!’

I tried to break free of the engagement but couldn’t get out scot free, losing a huge chunk of flesh from my groin down to the very bottom of my calf, exposing.. Pure alabaster white, and like a metric ton of bricks it hit me, Olly said there was some damage he couldn’t fix, or at least he implied it. What if the damage was that my two ideas about who I am are causing me to experience all these different things, bleeding, pain, exhaustion, anger, not a single one of those are things that I as an undead should have. Option two because option one is too happy go lucky, the guide can make illusions, very realistic ones at that. How would I be able to tell th.. I’m tired, that can only mean something is making me tired. And I have a million dollars betting on it being the guide.

“How do I overcome illusions?” I might as well test how loyal the guide is to Olly, because he was ordered to answer any of my questions, so if he doesn’t answer then I’ll have one last nail in the coffin about what is happening here.

“An odd tactic there, but it will work only because of my loyalty towards my lord. The way you deal with illusions is by finding flaws in them, for instance an illusion for you being an undead we both know being tired is a one way trip to one possible solution to that particular problem.. And once you find a flaw you have to announce it to yourself. Make the part of your mind being affected come to grips with reality.”

‘Well thanks for the hint I guess.’ Considering the guide's words I diverted half of my total mental copies, considering that I now had a real “life and blood” clone in the world I couldn’t just say copies.

This left me exposed for no longer than half a second, during that time the guide who had stopped moving to explain my question had started moving at a leisurely pace making him completely disappear from my sight raising my desire to strongly react to my situation, but also made it all the more obvious that some of my emotions were not in fact mine.

Not letting the loss of sight concerning the guide stop me from trying my hardest not to get my illusionary guts ripped out through my nose or some such nonsense. ‘Can’t be too sure when you're dealing with something stronger than you, especially when they’re trying to prove a point.’

Keeping my form as relaxed as possible I try to reach out towards the energies that I previously had access to. “If you so much as look at an energy then I’m going to start using them.” If I’m being honest with myself that was scary, but I’m bleeding out when that shouldn’t even be possible so my choices are limited. But hearing the guide say that from a much closer distance than if he had been using the relaxed walk that I saw him start out using. Doing a mental guess at how fast the guide was moving I rolled out of the way. Standing up I see no evidence that I dodged some great attack but at least I made the attempt.

“Good reflexes.” Was the last thing I was capable of hearing before two sharp stabbing pains began radiating from my head. Using that I mentaly called whatever energy I had access to in my form. The only thing my mental stranglehold was able to latch onto was a faint wispy yellow liquid deep inside my bones. ‘Life force, and some of it that I purified as well.’ Using the fact that I knew exactly were the guide was, I launched a sharp elbow directly towards the guides right lung, I felt the impact it felt like stone, surprisingly my bone didn’t shatter but I still forced my body to move rolling backwards behind the guide and my arms snaked around the guides neck and under both of the guides armpits.

Using my life force like a certain country burns fossil fuel in my old life I start applying as much force into staying connected to the guide who had broken from the short shock he must have received I’m sure. With a casual show of force the guid’s hand was forcing my combined entire body weight and life force enhanced arms to slowly let go of his arms, thus leading to me having my arms in a much tighter hold on his neck. The guide was losing patience with me “You do realize I’m undead right? You can’t kill me by strangling me.” He said this with a tone that spoke volumes of how unimpressed he was at my attempt to kill him. “Who said anything about killing you?” ‘Me and my damn mouth, why would I find it necessary to tell the scary ghost looking dude that I had a plan other than hold on for dear unlife!!!’

And it was like a switch went off inside the guide's head, the slight arrogance poofed out of existence like it never belonged on the same plane of existence as this man before me. And as if to show me that he was playing around his arms acting more like elongated fishing hooks grabbed hold of me and started to pull.. The guide stopped in bewilderment for a moment then continued pulling me to no avail. “Stop holding on, otherwise I’m going to hurt you.” I’d rather choke on a particularly peeved snake than let go, is what I wanted to yell but that would break my concentration and I honestly was surprised how little the guide was paying attention to its surroundings and I’d like to keep it that way so silence became my best friend.

“Very well then please tell my lord that I tried warning you.” And with that the guide began pulling twice, no! Three times harder than before! And while his pulling might have nearly pulled me off like I was a leaf stuck to his clothes. Now I was holding on a lot more firmly than a leaf and the effort he was exerting to pull me off was causing my bones to want nothing more than the sweet release of being shattered by the angry ghost man. Thus leading me to using my favorite ability undead healing, this time fueled solely by my life force. I was unsurprisingly running out of life force but I still needed to hold on for just a little longer. My others were getting close to removing the illusion and as long as that was done then I might have a fighting chance.

“For the love of all that's unholy just. Let. Go!” At this point I’d been holding on by a thread for the better part of three minutes, I’d slowed down the pace of the combat to something a snail would be forced to experience road rage if stuck behind us in traffic. But my others needed at least another minute so I engaged in the time honored tradition. “Make me you ghost of tsushima wanna be!” Ah yes trash talking I would avoid using the deep magic known as ‘yo mama jokes’ and insinuating that I’d had relations with his mother till I knew if that would result in me being vaporised…

Why did this have no effect! ‘It was such a well placed insult I worked hard to come up with that ya know.’ “Hoho I see you’re used to verbal abuse, isn’t that funny the servant has a fetish for being treated like trash.” Not the most classy I fully admit but once you start trash talking the only way to victory is to fully commit and talk even more trash! I could feel the guide’s whole body language change. I psyched myself up ready to meet the guide's pull considering how angry he got when I called him a servant.

What I didn’t expect was to very suddenly be experiencing what it was like to fly. Then sliding across the ground like a ball, continually rolling and bouncing. My battered body came to a stop after creating a deep gouge in the ground. I couldn't feel my arms or even my shoulders other than the phantom pain and the lizard part of my brain knowing darn well that I didn’t have anything to be feeling pain with. My breathing was slow and shallow, the pain in my lungs was oppressing and for the first time being in this illusion I noticed there was a sun.

Then it clicked the illusion on me broke, I could tell my others were far from being done picking it apart, meaning.. With the will of a dying animal I forced the shell of a living being that is me to stand and face what's coming towards me… Rage incarnate, the humanoid visage that the guide had been using was thrown into the trash as a monster easily three and a half meters tall, its body completely covered in what looked to be metal, in a fashion only capable of being described as red samurai armor, its head floating disconnected behind the monstrosity. I could see the eyes, crimson red eyes behind the black and gold oni mask.

The gold part being made up by both the familiar flower pattern from his earlier outfit being engraved into the mask, and each of the three horns. One sticking out of the forehead and the other two acting as tusks from the left and right sides of the mouth. Pulling my eyes away from the mask knowing that in legends from my old world the masks had special powers that affect those who look at them. I started to look for those legendary swords. I found that they weren’t drawn yet, but the larger of the three swords was easily over three meters long, the second longest being two meters long, and finally the last sword being a one point nine meters in length.

“I’m assuming you're going to be a lot more silent than before ya?”

After waiting for a few moments my question was answered by the sound of heavy foot fall as the guide began walking towards me, not the calm carefree walking of earlier but the hate fueled and purpose filled steps of a man better called a killing machine looking to kill. As his legs carried his giant form with grace that discredited his anger I soon started to notice a heat mariage being formed out of an equal crimson red to that of the guide's eyes.

Soon the guide was within striking distance, or more aptly I was in his striking distance with his considerable advantage in range. With my wobbly stance I knew well in advance before the guide even started walking that this was going to end badly, my only regret was that I had yet to earn the trust Olly put in me, nor had I repaid him for all that he did for me. ‘If there’s one last thing I can do it’s prove to myself that becoming a dullahan was a trashy idea and that team calcium was 100% the winning choice.’

“You wasted all your time looking fancy, didn’t you? Just in case you did, I bet I can dodge your first swing.”

I could practically feel the guide's eyebrows twitching inside his mask, ‘looks like trash talking can still get to people when they’re peeved off.’ But with the little knowledge of how samurai in my world worked I quickly pulled all of my others off of the tasks they might have been doing, I combined them into one conscience leaving me and my other surprisingly alone inside the barren mind scape inside my head. ‘We won’t be enough will we?’ I ask looking towards my half who at this point has more in common with artificial intelligence than to me. Looked confused before it answered “We could form as one, enhance the effectiveness of our abilities by at least two fold.” My Dex score combined with how close the guide was alerted me that its arm was moving towards the largest of his swords.

‘No choice but to try then.’ And with that me and my half and I made our way towards each meeting in the middle we did the only thing that seemed natural in this situation, we both fist-bump each other willing for the two of us to make something greater, then everything went dark.

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As the guide looked down on the freshly minted champion of undead, his mind was split down the middle one part saying that something wasn’t right and that they needed to move and the other part was more a color than any complex emotion, the color red. The guide was used to dealing with people saying things during fights, it's one of the first things you learn to ignore when you fight to the death as the single most constant thing in both life and undeath. But the idea that he the single most devout and loyal worshiper of undeath would be compared to a mere servant was something that no one could claim and at the very least not have this rather massive mistake resolved. By having their clearly corrupt head removed from their shoulders.

The guide had yet to realize that the skeleton in front of him had broken free of the illusion, nor had it noticed the rather interesting burn marks, more like spider webs of an off color yellow following the gas the guide's head was releasing as it floated in place. Also known as where the skeleton had been holding on for dear unlife. The only reason at this point that the guide had yet to kill the skeleton was due to his lord making an investment in the skeleton providing all sorts of entertainment till the other reincarnated come to the world, he was only trying to scare the skeleton, to make sure he wouldn’t repeat the rather large blunder in assuming that he was a mere servant, ever again.

The guide couldn’t help but want, no the guide felt a need to test the claim that the skeleton would be able to dodge his first swing. So the rage machine that the guide is at heart forcefully calmed down enough to allow the skeleton at the bare minimum a fighting chance, lest this not be a lesson but an execution, seeing the skeletons eyes close, on one hand hated the idea of allowing the skeleton to make closing his eyes a habit, but on the other felt that this was the perfect time to start getting ready to make a nice clean swipe towards the skeletons neck considering that wouldn’t kill the spectacularly low level undead. Thinking of how the skeleton in front of him was personally responsible for the vaporising of an entire section of an island ecosystem, and the rampant mana mutations on said island to the surviving animals. You could never honestly say that the skeleton looked like he was capable of doing this but that was the beauty of reincarnated people. They loosened the laws of the natural world and caused some of the most wondrous things sometimes while never truly understanding how or even why.

Thinking about the so-called “laws of the natural world” and how when he was alive he’d personally redefined almost as many as a reincarnated would break caused the guide to wonder what the low level undead in front of it would do with it’s unlife. Deciding that the skeleton had enough time to prepare the guide began to move his hand slowly as to cause as much noise as possible, the guide was not above being petty and hoping that his obnoxiously loud movements would throw the skeleton off any sort of balance he had been able to cultivate in these few moments of silence. Keeping both of his eyes locked on the skeleton the guide noticed how the little undead almost bristled at the sound of chafing armor, almost causing the guide to chuckle considering that reaction isn’t the worst knee jerk reaction to unexpected external stimuli, if the guide was being honest.

Looking deep inside the ancient armor from a time thousands of years long in the past, the guide felt at home in the suite of armor made solely to contain the malice and spite that a spirit of his age is capable of producing. The guide avoided becoming lost in those ancient memories, showing remarkable restraint for someone who in reality is, well boiling with rage, but soon the guide found exactly what he was looking for unlike what many would assume a ghost is not unable to use life force even if it’s a lesson in futility to learn how to handle being both insubstantial and having a very real physical presence, it could be done and the result was that a spirit would be able to use life force to enhance their ghostly form to the point that it would be able to make contact with the mortal realm.

But in the case of their current location, that being the realm of his lord undeath. Any undead here would find that they no longer hungered, no longer feared some elements and spirits no longer had to use their life force to remain corporeal so the experience in sufusing the guides body in life force to allow him to have a physical form now made him capable of feats no living or undead should have any right to be capable of.

The guide pulled this energy with an ease like a mother duck leading her children towards water, or in this case the guide pulled the energy down his chest towards his hip, allowing the energy to gather in that one location he then allowed it to breach the armor giving his body more, and more boosts towards his swords, the guide forced his old habit of only reinforcing one blade, supercharging the effect. To not happen, it made the guide, a creature of habit, feel off but he persevered knowing that a blade with that much life force would no doubt kill the champion of his lord. The guide made one last check to ensure that his reinforcement wasn’t over-kill, finding everything to his liking the guide allowed his gauntlet covered hand to firmly grasp the longest of his swords. The guide bit back a prayer, yet another old habit from when he acted as the enforcer of his lord.

Then the guide waited, knowing that as soon as the skeleton in front of him opened his eyes he was going to risk angering his lord, thinking on how long it was since his lord was angry at him he let himself smile at the old memories, happy memories.

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We began opening our senses, knowing that our main had been avoiding using the full extent of these stats of ours is one thing, but seeing the world in yet another way different from the dull world were our body remained inside a mana induced coma, but also different from the hues of red, orange, and blacks from our life detection. It was more a passive, always present buzzing of all our senses coming together to tell us about the world. And now since we became us, the buzzing has stopped. The senses now remained at a heightened level similar to when our main ordered us to focus on that deer. Yet we could tell this “guide” was standing just out of range for any possible counter attacks, unlike what the sounds might have been telling us.

His arm was no longer moving yet the material the armor was made of clearly was forced to expand to allow the guide to move his body like he was, causing the armor to continuously make noise. And without making a single sound and so smoothly that you could tell a person that he’d been like that since before you started looking and even with my senses telling me he moved I’d believe the person telling me that he was always like that.

The guid’s form changed from a natural standing pose to a bent forward and turned pose, leaving only one of the large shoulder guards of the guide still visible ‘he’s trying to his attack from us. How efficient, we would make sure to remember this when the main became himself and we became ourselves again.’

We could almost imagine a countdown now the guide seemed in control of his emotions but the heat mariage had yet to dissipate rather had condensed to the point where we could assume that if the guide continued with the compression, of well at this point it could be called an aura rather than a mere heat mariage, then something similar to when we compressed our life force to create liquid would begin to happen.

Knowing that the sword we’d last seen the guide holding was the longest one dodging would be impossible if we tried stepping back, stepping forward could allow us to let the sword simply go right over us. And as per the tradition of our main we felt it a good idea to come up with one last plan other than bum rush towards the guides sword, the plan wouldn’t be clean but it would force the guide to hesitate even for a second and that was worth its weight in gold.

We would loosen the strings of life force holding this body together letting us fall to the ground in a pile, then we would condense as much life force as we could into forming a lance of bone and shoot it at the guide's chest.

We moved my stance as well, making it impossible to tell where exactly we were planning on shooting ourselves to other than we would have a very fast take off speed. And with one last moment where we all wondered if this was the right idea.. We opened our eyes, directly looking into the guide's eyes. Like a deer in a headlight we froze, then we noticed the guide's sword was hanging loosely by his side, his foot tapping at the ground impatiently.

Then our body fell out from under us, our head rolling away before coming to a stop due to our skull not being a perfect sphere. “While I appreciate the confidence, I had my doubts about you being able to dodge it. I hope that this teaches you not to stick your nose in other people's business.”

We could feel our main coming back from the surface now, we pushed him towards the surface so that he could regain his control over us, we then dispersed as to not make his transition harder than necessary.

The guide spoke while kneeling directly next to me, no longer the imposing giant but back to what he looked like before, a serious but normal looking man of asian heritage. Acting as if he hadn’t just beheaded me then seemingly teleported behind me. Oh and from the looks of it my others have gone back to doing the random little tasks that I can’t help but remember not telling them to do.

“Oh I bet you can’t talk due to the whole `jaw can’t move` thing, is that right?”

……. “I am going to take that as a yes, unfortunately I and my lord will not be standing for that since the ability to speak mentaly is very useful when ordering hordes of undead, since according to the agreement between you and lord undeath you are going to be spending quite a lot of time acting as a general for an army. And eventually a king, or emperor if you play your cards right!”

The guide was very excited about that last part for some reason, I wanted to worry about why but he did have a point that I’d agreed to becoming exactly that so it was pointless to worry about that and more useful to worry about what I’d do after I became the undead emperor that some future hero would try and make his mission to slay.

Not soon after I thought that, did the guide pick me up and plop me onto my extra lifeless pile of bones… “Well? I saw you using undead healing, and it felt like you touched your life strings before I put an end to whatever plan you might have been concocting. So start using either of those, and once you can talk again, I’ll answer any questions you have for a little while.”

The guide was able to sense me even looking at the strings that had been keeping my body up? And also people in my last life had the audacity to say my naming sense was bad? But the guide had a point that staying as a head was very tedious to say the least. ‘But could I use this to my advantage?’ Thinking this a devious idea started forming.

I started off my little plan by using my mana to pull my body upwards before quickly deciding against using mana for the foreseeable future, and switching to using undeath mana. My little fanatics, as I was using undeath energy to pull my body towards I felt some of undeath mana change it went from the bland faceless mass of undeath mana to my undeath mana with speakers included. They didn’t speak, those familiar emotions filled me for a flash then I realized what happened. This was my undeath mana alright. And they were here with me because they died protecting me. I tried to push my will onto them to bring them some semblance of their previous intelligence, the… Parts that made them, them! But it didn’t work. They remained inert to my will, other than following my orders.

Once again in my new life I felt my emotions swell in my non-existent chest. I wanted to ask the guide if I could do something to help them, but I felt an idea come to the surface of my mind. From what I could tell the energies in this world were unlimited, as long as you weren’t using them then they regenerated almost instantly. That included life force, and if anything could bring the dead back to… Undeath? It was pure life energy.

Deciding to put the guides orders on hold I started gathering my life force, then with a slight push I started compressing it like I’d never done before, the high level of the skill combined with how much life force was at my disposal I was able to begin creating liquid life force at a breakneck speed. Soon I didn’t even have a single drop of the gaseous life force instead only having a pool of light yellow liquid.

I glared at it for a moment, then for another moment my will flexing bringing my halves to do my bidding, I had the most ability to focus on one task so I gave myself the job of holding the puddle of liquid life force in the air so to speak since i could tell now that I’d gathered so much more of it that I’d ever previously had, that the liquid didn’t in fact take up a physical amount of space.

A mental nudge almost brought me out of my focus but I knew he wouldn’t stop so I left the task to my other halves to tell the guide that I have higher priorities than learning to speak mentaly. So when I leaned into the mental connection the guide was pushing onto me I never expected..

“What are you-doing! How do you know how to do that!” The guide was inches away from me. His skin no longer had the healthy color, rather he was now almost paler than my bones. He seemed frightened and upset at the same time, but I could tell he wasn’t upset at me so I answered.

“I’m purifying my life force so that it will be more useful in bringing my currently dead mana back to undeath. I know how to do it because it's something I read about in books from my world. Now leave me alone. I have more important things to do.”

And with that I shoved the guides' mental tether away using what I learned during the nuclear mana incident. Then continued to go through with my plan, even going as far as to build a wall of sorts so that the guide wouldn’t be able to distract me from my plan.

The mental prods became stronger, almost desperate but seemed to lose steam rather quickly. ‘Good maybe now I don’t have to worry about him bringing the walls down on top of me so to speak.’ Looking at my others I see them struggling to fully compress the liquid life force any further so I join in as well. Me joining in isn’t making much of a difference but me spinning the life force “water” makes it so that my others just need to focus on putting as much force as they can and by holding it up they can also push from the bottom and the top.

Soon the liquified life force started shrinking at first this changed almost nothing but after the total size of the ball of liquid shrunk down to about a meter in diameter we as a whole felt that something wasn’t right it started by a few of the halves feeling like balloons, I let them stop helping so I did the only thing I could that being picking up the slack they were leaving for me. Soon I noticed more of them getting sick and they started leaving me one by one. I wanted to order them to stay so that we could finish this, the only thing stopping me was the feeling in my heart that if they died then I’d lose them permanently and trading my undead mana for parts of my fragmented mind doesn’t seem to add up to any form of good thing.

……Almost as if things couldn’t get worse, Olly decided to join me inside my mindscape. “Now what in the blue hells are you doing!?” Giving Olly the respect that he deserved, with a speedy nod and a quick response as I continued to fight the ever shrinking and expanding mass of liquid life force. “Olly I’m trying to get my dead mana back, they died so that I could survive and I need them back.” Acting as if that answered Olly I made yet another push shrinking the size of the ball of life force, from half a meter its size has gradually shrunk down till now with that last push I’ve taken the total size down to about a quarter of a meter.. Now I can see what my others were talking about. The life force has stopped fighting me in the traditional way of pushing back, rather it is now releasing massive amounts of life energy into me, most likely trying to kill me off. If Olly hadn’t given me a resistance to life energy I’d have killed over by now, and that does mean that my resistances are carried over in lesser effect to my others. Using my ability to see through the eyes of my others I see Olly sitting on a chair eating what a stray memory informs me to be popcorn.

Pulling my focus back I think only for a moment before asking them, even if I’d call them faceless undeath mana they can be useful in a sense, to get to absorbing and purifying the life force so that I can actually handle this process. Now I don’t want to give them too much credit because here in a bit I’ll be able to show them what real undeath mana does, but they did show a familiar zeal in taking care of and absorbing the life force that they could.

My curiosity gets the best of me as I ask Olly a question mentaly so that my focus can remain solely on continuing to push more and more on the sphere of life force. ‘Olly what's going on?’ Seeing from my others point of view I can see Olly stop from throwing a kernel of popcorn into his mouth, then respond equally mentaly to my question (mental responses will use “*” from now on) *Glad to see you can talk mentally, the guide wanted me to force you to focus on getting that before doing this whole thing. And it seems that your mental fragments are stuffed to the brim with life force meaning that they are trying to not turn into some new varieties of abominations.*

*Good I’m happy to hear that their vacation is warranted, but if I let the undeath mana absorb the excess life force will that allow me to continue refining my life force?*

At this Olly looked like a picture perfect version of the definition of the word perturbed, before speaking. “Didn’t we talk about refining energies? And that being a bad thing to attempt without the proper tools and information?”

Olly’s voice was sending ripples through my mind, *please stop Olly* Olly didn’t stop but the ripples slowed down “My champion you are endangering yourself. I’d hate to make you not trust me but needs beget wants, I order you to halt your actions until you are better prepared to do this so as to not endanger yourself.”

And like that my life force refilled and even if every drop of it was the liquid form, all of the hard work I’d put into compressing it into the next level was reset, not by much considering now that I could look at it without having to be constantly fighting it. I felt that the current amount was almost enough to cause it to begin forming the next level by itself.

*Olly, why did you stop me?*

A simple question and one I needed an answer to now rather than later, now that I wasn’t solely focusing inward I could see Olly sitting down beside me now, his face still filled with concern. I honestly don’t enjoy seeing him like this but I know what I have to do. And Olly is stopping me from doing that.

“Well my dear champion what I was doing is something many would like to call parenting. You were doing something that could only result in damaging yourself or worse killing yourself. Now I understand that you are an energetic type, you saw a problem and had to solve it as fast as possible. But doing that is dangerous, and taking precautions to protect yourself is something you need to start doing.”

I’m angry Olly can understand that if his seemingly omni presence is any indication of his abilities. But since I’m stuck here I don’t really have much of a choice in if I follow Olly’s rules.

*Olly I want to do this, I need to do this, something happened to my undeath mana. While they were protecting me, how is it right that I don’t do my best to bring them back.*

Olly who was still sitting down looking at me, now not with a seemingly warm look but one of understanding. He nodded before sighing “Look I understand why you want to do the things you do, just be better prepared that's all I’m asking. I’ve seen what you can do when you use your intelligence rather than acting like some berserker who’s never heard of thinking.”

Olly might have a point, fine then I’ll make sure to be ready to do this as soon as I can. Thinking this I look towards my undeath mana they seem much stronger with the abundance of life force. Gathering them I pull my body back into some shape, now looking into my body in detail I can see that the bones are now full of different particles than they were previously. Meaning that I’d have to start over again, as I tried to use my ability to expel waste in my bones and I received the back the feeling of the powers “hands” pushing against very watery putty. With all of the earth and nature aligned elements being pushed out of me with no issue. Yet still leaving vast quantities of other elements for me to deal with.

Now with a body I looked towards Olly even as a skeleton my stare was enough for Olly to understand that I wanted to be left alone. “If you need some alone time then I’ll let you make a room for yourself.”

Once again Olly gave me what I needed, would he eventually take them back if I made a big enough mess? Needing to keep my mind off those thoughts I mentally spoke to the guide. *I still have some questions if you would be willing to answer*

The guide looked at me with an odd half cock to his head then he looked at Olly who shrugged. “My lord has yet to tell me otherwise so yes I’d be more than willing to answer your questions, can I assume you want to know how to go to your room?”

I nodded and while the guide was explaining how I needed to imagine moving to a different place, then I’d be able to make a room to my specifications. I was guiding my halves to start pushing out the foreign elemental particles. And was met with an interesting trait the particles seemed to have, two elements could be in the same space as each other yet not even touching. They also seemed to be more willing to share space with elements of the same type.

Leaving my halves to deal with that I started doing as the guide had instructed. Slowly forming my will to move to a different location away from here….

Looking around the first thing I was able to know about my new location, I was in the dark, it seemed that since I hadn’t tried to build anything the power I’d called upon was perfectly happy to leave the room blank, or more accurately a void. And seeing as I couldn’t see even with my undead eyes that normally would make short work of some darkness, I honestly found this a relaxing change with the only thing needing modification being that I hadn’t a place to sit, as needless as that might be it felt right.

And like that I found a small square of material floating under me, the oily void raising the.. I’d call it a prayer mat till I decided on a better term. I watched as the oil that picked the mat then began pooling off the sides back into the floor.

I stood there wondering if I was sitting at the bottom of a deep ravine in the ocean, fully surrounded by some horrid oily muck that had at some point been the undoing of millions of lives. I wondered about the place I’d be calling home for a while. Before deciding to sit down cross legged. I took a moment to breathe, closing my senses to the outside world. Now without my senses slowing down my mental capacities I looked inwards calling up the information that my others had been able to glean in the short amount of time I’d been not paying attention.

So far my others have made very little progress other than finding that the earth element inside my bones doesn’t respond to my ability. Coming to the rather odd decision to watch my others working for a little while I soon see some issues. For one the number of them has increased from the earlier ten to an uneven eleven and they can make copies of themselves. But only a few of them are using the ability. And as the final issue, I can see that the few who are using their ability seem to be using it to be lazy and not do their work.

Seeing this I call my others and start trying to get to the bottom of this issue. “Hello everyone, I was just watching you doing good work and couldn’t help seeing a few of you doing things that are bringing the whole efficiency of this operation down. Like a bunch of people aren’t using their copies to do their work as fast as possible, and then there were the ones who thought their clones could do their jobs so well that they didn’t even have to try and help.”

Now watching my others I can see them doing a few things, the ones who weren’t using clones looked embarrassed that they could have been doing their job easier. The ones who were being lazy looked like they wanted to pretend that I wasn’t talking about them. And the ones who were doing everything right seemed bored out of their minds.

“And so after pointing this out I’d like to leave it up to your discretion on how we go about doing our tasks. Have a nice day and I’ll be joining in working the elemental particles out in a little while.” With this I dismissed them all back to their tasks. They left in a considerable hurry before I could continue to tell them what I was doing wrong.

Taking a moment to think of anything else I had to do I summoned up my profile.

(So guys I’m going to update how the status screen works and looks because it wasn’t doing what I wanted. Plus I updated the stats cause the MC leveled up.)

Name: N/A

Titles: Champion of undeath.

Race: lowest undead Lv5 EVOLUTION IS AVAILABLE , ENERGY LEVELS UNKNOWN, CLASS OPTION AVAILABLE.

Str 14(+2)

Con 17(+3)

Wis 20(+5)

Int 20(+5)

Dex 12(+2)

Cha 16(+3)

Free points: 0

Abilities: Life detection*2-9/20, Observe-20/???, Bad aura-13/???, Bone Manipulation*2-13/100, Mana manipulation-40/???, Undead healing*2-5/20, Mana craft-21/50, Life force manipulation-20/??. Undead energy-9/10, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*2-6/10, Split mind-10/????, Form manipulation-6/30.

Racial traits:

Undead- You have no stamina, you have no need to sleep, and any desire to do so is magically influenced.You have no normal negatives of being undead, you will even find your strength, speed, and mana abilities increased during both the night and day.

[Hunger for life- Your body has no life in it, you must take this life from somewhere lest your unlife ends. In stasis till you leave the realm of undeath.]

Blessed by representative of undeath mana*2- You were blessed by the origin of all undead mana, you find mana of the same or similar type are much easier to use and when ever a being less to or equal to in strength to the representative tries to see your status/ affect your mind they will be unable to do so. You also gain access to higher level undead abilities sooner, they are much stronger that they should be at your level. You have been accepted as the champion of undeath, your lord wishes for you to build an empire for the undead, follow this decree and be rewarded.

As an undead blessed by pure undeath mana all limits on having stats vs. not having stats. Are removed as long as it was caused by your being undead, and your stats are slightly higher. You have unlocked a skill normally only available for high ranked undead, it allows you to heal from damage.

Bone purifier*2- Your bones have undergone a number of baptisms by earth mana, you have pushed it away continually your bones now will be stronger against creatures with earth mana inside them. You can choose to expel all of your current earth mana to regain bonuses from the earlier level of this trait. Those are your mana being able to freely move through and outside of your body. and that now you can fit far more energies inside of yourself. You also get a bonus to Con, Str, Dex, and Cha. Currently unavailable due to the amounts of other elements inside your bones.

Limitations/Traits:

Life force cultivation*3- you have compressed your life force into a higher purity than an undead would normally have access to, this has made it so that you are quite capable of using your life force to heal and strengthen others and yourself. You now have a bonus to how fast you heal, how effective your Cha, Con, Str, Dex, Int, and Wis are and will be able to heal even as an undead due to your blessing from a representative of undeath. The previous bonuses have been increased and you now have resistance to future attempts to use life force against you.

Form modifier- You have modified the base nature of your body, this normally wouldn’t provide any noticeable changes other than in height and other things of that nature. But you took it one step above the norm by modifying small details to make the body more efficient, by modifying your form you can increase or decrease the bonuses to most of your abilities, earning bonuses to your future modification attempts and you can now with enough time and patience.

(All traits that no longer apply/ have been removed are here Life force user- Now that you have such fine control of your mana your life force is now completely under your control. Removed. Mana Blessed- Somehow you have gained the attention of mana itself, your mana has gained increased awarness, and mental abilities are exponentially more powerful and easier to use. Removed.)

More Options--

You can’t evolve in your current state. Your current evolutions that will be available are.

Fair Undead, Skeleton variant. Leaving behind the more simplistic habits of lower ranked undead such as being hostile to each other, and randomly freezing while they're doing things. This rank of undead now forms complex family structures allowing for greater chance for co-operation between undead in the general area. Cha improved, Int improved, Wis improved.

Fair Undead, Zombie variant. Leaving behind the more simplistic habits of lower ranked undead such as being hostile to each other, and randomly freezing while they're doing things. This rank of undead now forms complex family structures allowing for greater chance for co-operation between undead in the general area. Unlike their skeletal counterparts they are able to use their flesh to protect themselves from blunt based damage. And are more physically imposing than other undead. Str improved, Con improved, Cha improved.

Fair Undead, Ghoul variant. A more socially dynamic undead, they live in small groups of three-five but each member will only interact with the others if they are trying to protect something or to eat something rather large. They focus on speed and damage to the extreme. They can cause other creatures that they bite to be turned into ghouls. Str improved, Dex improved, Cha improved.

(I didn’t go over the ranks for the races yet, but I’ll do so in a little bit, just hang on.)

You can also now take a class and profession due to the deal the lord of undeath made with you.

Class

Mage:

Necromancer:

Fighter:

Knight

Professions

N/A for now learn trade skills or study under a master of a craft to learn a profession.

Looking at my rather cluttered profile it was an interesting change from how barren it was previously. My new options for changing my race were odd and I’d never thought of an undead as fair, wondering why it was named as such I mentaly called the guide, signaling that I was ready to start asking questions.

After a moment I could feel the farthest most floor sink down with the additional weight of the guide. I looked over and the guide was looking around as if he was expecting more to be here. “Do you need help decorating? Because I’m not the right person to ask about that type of thing.”

Great now the guide was cracking jokes, just what I needed in my life. “I enjoy the mood of my current residence. Thank you very much, I have some questions for you if you are willing to answer?” The guide nodded then looked at me, his face stretched and contorted to show his thoughts while he was looking at me. ‘Never would have thought he would be this expressive.’

“I’ll start with something new that is bothering me, what are these ranks next to my race? For instance it shows lowest undead, but in my evolution options they show fair undead. Then the variation.”

The guide looked at me before speaking, his eyes said he wanted to ask questions of his own. But as the professional he is he answered my question first. “Those undead are only alike in “ranking” if you could call it that in terms of a fairly old method used mostly to categorize monsters as useful or harmful to a nation's interests.”

“The only thing I’m wondering realistically is why you have such weak options for evolving, as a first evolution it's not too bad but there’s an obvious best choice considering you have the ability to manipulate the things that compose your body, adding fat, muscle, skin, and all of the parts that make up a body.”

“Well two of them fit that category, the ghoul, and the zombie option both fit the description. And what are the rankings of monsters in that system? And where do I fit in that?”

The guide looked into my eyes searching for something before answering “I didn’t know we were making jokes, zombies are not even worth looking at considering they’re evolution path goes for quite some way before cutting off leaving you with no future options. The ghouls can take you to far higher ranks than the other two. But I’d suggest waiting till you are able to get a higher rank evolution option.. And the ranks are in order from lowest to highest. Lowest, lower, low, natural, fair, fairer, fairest, superior, and monarchs. All monsters under the rank natural, could be taken out by a determined peasant with a spear. And those in the rank of natural being considered stable. Monsters mutate rapidly to be able to survive up until they are able to survive then they reach the rank of natural meaning that if you're fighting a natural rank monster that can spew acid, all the other ones of that same type will be able to do the same.”

The guide stopped waiting for me to digest this new information, that for the entirety of my new life I’d been at the bottom of the monster totem pole struggling to kill monsters in my own rank. And I’d suddenly jumped all the way into a new world of what I’d be able to do. “Does that mean those options are strong?”

“Well they're not weak, but think of it like this, normal monsters undergo evolution maybe once then stop, you are starting off at a higher level than them with you being intelligent and being able to pick what stats you get, and as the final thing. You can choose to wait till you have better options. And I’d suggest that you do wait till you are able to pick out a more rare variant for your first evolution.”

Okay the guide was wanting me to wait in the same way Olly does, except the guide was explaining his reasoning and not just slamming me over the head with a metaphorical rule book to get me to stop. I can follow the rules for now. “Next up, my free stat points haven’t been added even though I’ve leveled up. That could mean that I’d be able to train till I get maybe one more to the max level for the bonus, after all I’ve gotten four points in Cha since I’ve been here. How would you suggest I train my abilities more while I’m here?”

“I don’t know what the max amount you can have in each ability is” “20 for my current rank” I interrupt, before pushing my status screen towards the guide to let him see. “Continuing. With 20 being the max your stats can go up for now, your Con would be your best bet to get to 20 before you can leave this place, but we know you can raise your Cha and that's a very important skill for a necromancer to have.”

“What does Cha do for an aspiring necromancer, and how does it compare to having more health?” Being fully honest with myself, I’ve started to regret making that deal with Olly considering my class is going to be taken over due to this.

“More of the former makes creating, controlling, and evolving the undead easier. That last bit doesn’t affect you unfortunately. And the latter can be made up with in numbers of undead. Before you ask for each point of Cha you have you can control up to two more undead. I say up to because some undead just don’t work like you want them to.”

“Understandable, can I have multiple classes?”

“Yes, but you need to get the first one to its max level. But you can have as many professions as you want and they provide bonuses to your skills and some of the rarest ones give bonuses to your ability scores.”

“How do you know so much about these things if you don’t have access to your status window?”

“A reincarnated person, he created a crystal out of a dungeon core that allows a person to see their status screen, and abilities like observe allows a person to get an idea of what abilities other people have. So obviously a person got that skill up to the max level then proceeded to use it on themselves while looking in a mirror.”

“You said like observe, that means there are other abilities like it?”

“Yeah dungeons when they're alive have a skill called analysis. It makes some of the more awe inspiring creations they make way less impressive but it deteriorates when they die only allowing a few uses a day, only working on things that are touching it, and you have to use special spells to feed it and teach it what classes are called and such… Yes, that means that there is a master copy that the same reincarnated person taught a huge variety of classes then just let it spread around making things like intelligent races having the ability to use observe naturally. People before were under the assumption that they didn’t but we can.”

…”Thanks for answering my questions guide, can you tell me how to increase my stats?”

“You have to use them, then use them more till what was challenging for you is easy, then go for something harder.”

“Is that the best way to do things, or is that what you think is the best way to level your stats?”

“I have no idea but considering you have the ability to see your stats grow I’m sure we’ll find out at some point.”

I couldn’t argue with that type of logic but I’d like to get to it sooner rather than later. My thoughts seemed to betray me due to the guide’s eyes glowing a faint red. “Am I that predictable? Or do I think out loud?”

“That’s beside the point, and you’ll learn during training either way.”

Gods, what have I done?

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POV Shift

Waking up my mind is filled with information knowing that my only salvation from living this cursed life of being buried alive with no way out, my body compelling me to dig my own tomb ever deeper into the earth. Is to kill my other half, I know that now I’m weak too weak I need time…

Months have passed, maybe years have passed me by slowly. My mana was able to corrode the stone around me enough to let me take a breath, at least one not filled with stone and dirt. That first breath was intoxicating, and with it came the rage that my other half was out there enjoying the outside condemning me to this place after all I’d done for him to protect him. I was going to make him pay…

I’d found a den of beetles, they look so worthless, at least to my goals, hence I did them a favor and over generations of their short lives I’d been able to kill off any beetles with traits I didn’t want turning them into energy to feed the growth of their betters. This resulted in these new beetles being born well past the size of even the largest beetles from my home world… So many months have passed the beetle's lifespan has only gotten shorter leading to them being able to breed faster, new mutations are cultivated strains that I’d thought to be perfect in the past cast away and culled from the gene pool.

Now I have a tool for my expansion. The seemingly instinctual ability for my mana to corrode the earth and minerals around me stopped long ago leading to me having a room only three meters by three meters. It’s only two meters tall and my efforts to push my mana to make the room an even three x three x three meters is still only a dream...

For many months my limitations had been eating me inside and out but now, with my tools perfected that is now those tiny weak creatures are gone leaving beetles that stand at a meter and a half while being two meters wide. They dig tunnels following my specific commands per what I’ve programmed into their genetics over the last… 60 cycles of breeding these animals that as new memories have resurfaced I know that some beetles can live up to six months, I’d shortened that down to around a month… I'd spent the last five years breeding insects when my other half has been getting stronger.

I spent one last month breeding the beetles making them self sustaining. Now that they have expanded my kingdom all the way to the surface all I need to do is wait till I find a proper animal to make as the base of my fighting force...

I’d found my muse a large being nearly dead, how it survived living under that mass of dirt for the last who even knows how long. I’d never know, but I was able to learn a lot from that beast. It had so much mana, tightly woven around each and every fiber of its being, that unique structure gave it form even when its body was shredded like it was… The image of that thing sweeping swaths of damage through my beetles was seared into my mind almost as well as what I learned when it finally fell like a giant dying to a thousand paper cuts. My other half had caused the beast to become trapped… And I now know where my other half is, with a wave of my mental tethers to each of my beetles they surged forth toward the crater my other half had been holed up in for the last five years…

My beetles have been reinforced with what I gained from the beast now each of my beetles can leave the dungeon when normally they would disintegrate into nothing, see fine mist, with how much of my mana was responsible for keeping their massive forms from collapsing in on themselves. But the greatest impact I’d had on this world so far is how even the normal animals now are filled with more concentrated types of mana. I’d taken to calling the different types as such, nature mana was green vibrant it made the creatures more themselves, a snake would be sneakier, faster, more venomous. And so on but they also healed faster they could kill undead in half the time it took for my normal creatures. Then there was the light mana. It was floaty, never wanting to stay long enough to reinforce one creature forcing me to use it on the land itself undead stopped showing up all together after I did that. But after a while some lucky creatures were able to gather small amounts. These would be the key to destroying my other half forever. Even a half hearted attempt from one of these was what took out the vast majority of the remaining undead on the island. And now it was only a matter of time till I took my place on the surface.

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I’ve been training with the guide for the last five years, this entire time has been a nightmare for me but the guide has lived up to his name and trained me to the bones so to speak.

Name: N/A

Titles: Champion of undeath.

Race: lowest undead Lv5 EVOLUTION IS AVAILABLE , ENERGY LEVELS UNKNOWN, CLASS OPTION AVAILABLE.

Str (25=16+3+6)| 25+7

Con (25=18+4+3)| 25+7

Wis (27=20+5+2)| 27+8

Int (27=20+5+2)| 27+8

Dex (24=16+3+5)| 24+7

Cha (25=19+4+2)| 25+7

Free points: 0

Abilities: Life detection*2-9/20, Observe-20/???, Bad aura-13/???, Bone Manipulation*2-40/100, Mana manipulation-40/???, Undead healing*3-7/40, Mana craft-21/50, Life force manipulation-99/??. Undead energy*2-13/40, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*3-1/20, Split mind-14/????, Form manipulation-20/30.

(I have a new way of calculating the stats to make the power scaling less of an issue, now a stat gets the bonus for being above ten, for every two points over ten it gets a plus one. Then for every stat over or equal to it, that gives it a plus one basically forcing you to have stats that are closer together rather than a person going down the potato barbarian route. Aka two Int, 27 str, and 20 con.)

Looking at my new and improved stats made me feel proud at how far I’d come, and looking at the variable desert that is my skills, I start to remember within the first year we realized that I wasn’t able to gain skills. I thought the guide would be disappointed but he seemed almost giddy to have a student who had to get better through whatever they could learn instead of getting skills that allowed them to keep up with a more skilled combatant.

We then noticed that my state screen could show me way more details than I’d been seeing before. Now it even tells me what those plus values mean after the main stat, they aren’t just good for showing me how many free points I’d get; they gave bonuses to my other stats.

I’d like to believe that I’d broken the system by having stats over 20 but after each of my stats went over 20 I stopped feeling like they were improving meaning that I’d effectively fully maxed out on my first tier and I’d be able to get a bonus when I was back in the land of the living. ‘If only I knew where the guide was, it's almost time to start training today.’

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Inside a well lit room two men sat drinking, the younger of the two was pouring the liquid into the cup of the older man. “Thank you old friend, have you found what is stopping my champion from awakening?” The older man's voice was smooth like caramel, it dripped with promises and showed just how beneath you truly were to the thing speaking to you. Even still the younger man straightened his back before answering, “Yes my lord it seems the dungeon core went rogue and sent its monsters rampaging across the island. More specifically towards your champion's resting spot, currently the area is so inundated with nature mana and light mana that the mana coma status effect is unable to go away.”

The older man, better known as undeath, looked towards the man who was better known as the guide. The silence to a person who was unfamiliar to the relationship between the two would find the tension so thick that it could be seen. But to these two old monsters they felt comfortable in knowing the silence meant that nothing was trying to ruin their plans. “Well then I know one way to make sure my champion wakes up, damage the rogue dungeon core so that the mana level will start to drop.”

Without a word the guide nodded before making his way out of his lord's domain, he paused and felt that it would be wrong to leave without checking in on the closest thing he’d ever had to a disciple. The guide, even at the quick pace he was going so as to not delay in fulfilling his lord's mission, was completely silent demonstrating why even as a spiritual being he was still the chosen tool for his lord's more urgent tasks.

Soon the guide was standing in front of his student, the skeleton sitting down cross legged meditating. The guide was almost going to leave when he felt something pricking at the edge of his senses, phasing away the guide could see his disciple standing now with a small knife made of bone hovering, being held by strings of will power. The guide wanted to comment on the progress of as his student called it “telekinesis” but he hadn’t the time nor the heart to tell his disciple any of this, instead speaking quickly

“My lord has found why you remain in a dormant state, he’s sending me to ensure that you are able to awaken. This might be the last time we see each other, so I’d like to say that you have made good progress as far as the situation would allow, make sure to continue training so that you can make the most out of your second chance.”

Almost saying too much the guide forced himself to exit the realm of his lord. The flash of suddenly becoming weightless was breathtaking for the guide, literally as for the last five years he’d been maintaining a physical form to better train his disciple, the shift from being a “living, breathing” being back into a soul form with all the hunger and lack of emotions that came with this form made the guide miss the realm of his lord all the more. Steeling his nerves the guide began looking around, three things stood out to the guides senses one his disciples body was laying beside where He’d entered the mortal realm. Secondly the air was truly packed full with elements that in high concentrations were considered the bane of undead all throughout the world. Those elements in question being nature elements, who’s enhancing properties made it so that the living were more alive and the dead were well and truly dead and gone. And the more problematic of the two being light elements. Their presence normally was enough to cause undead to start taking damage in direct sunlight, but this was different: the levels were more concentrated and thus pulling the other light elements towards them in a very similar way to how heavy objects pulled lighter objects when you put them into water.

The guide was not idle, already moving at a speed expected of his high level, mapping out a path so that he could avoid the vast majority of these light infused hotspots, but that was becoming more and more a fever dream as the guide traveled into mana infused territory of the rogue dungeon. Soon this became obvious as the guide found himself face to face with an enlarged beetle, easily standing over a meter and a half sporting a tri tipped horn.

The guide was not feeling like giving his opponent the opportunity to prove difficult or activate any useful abilities thus with a sneer the guide disappeared from the mortal plane of reality for just a moment in this fraction of a second the guide dashed towards the beacon dotting the waste making up this iteration of the soul plane. The beacon being the spark of life making up the obvious dungeon creature.

Now within arms reach of the spark the guide allowed his hand to glide over the surface of the “soul” even if calling it that was a mockery to the complexity of a real soul. The guide then returned to the mortal plane appearing just to the right of the beetle, whose whole body seized up joints locking the releasing faster than it’s mind would have normally allowed for fear of damaging something.

And like the beast had never existed it fell to the ground, disappearing into motes of mana, and with that the loud bang that a animal of its size falling would have made was halted by the fact that the beetles body while being more naturally constructed than a normal dungeon monster still followed the oldest rule of dungeon monsters, that being any dungeon monster that dies outside the dungeon wouldn’t leave any remains nor would it grant any experience to those who killed it.

The guide hadn’t stopped to confirm his kill nor did he care to stay and waste his or his lord's time. The guide was already moving, flashing between being solely on the mortal plane and teleporting dozens of meters using the soul plane…

Within minutes the guide had traveled what for his student would feel like an arduous journey taking over an hour and a half. All the way to the dungeon entrance, where the guide was able to see the veritable tide of dungeon monsters making their way outwards of the maw that makes a dungeon a dungeon. This of course provided zero interest from the guide considering that a bug no matter how large would always die like a bug especially for a being who had killed much stronger things over its long undead existence than anything on the surface of this dinky little island.

Deciding that bringing the total monster population of the dungeon down a peg or two would only help his student the guide was pulling one of his swords from its sheath before he could finish thinking on if slowing down would be better or if he should speed up instead. The blade wasn’t in as good of condition as it was in his lord’s realm. Even with the sword in question being the longer of the three when it was in its prime, it was equal in length to the middle lenght weapon now in the mortal plane.

The guide left his worries behind and put his all into drawing upon his spiritual reserves. This type of thing would normally never happen in a natural spirit but with him existing in a plane filled with an infinite amount of energy perfect for undead use, did have its benefits. The well of energy was quickly able to pool to the desired location that being his already drawn blade, the energy overflowed from his spiritual hand and flowed through the well worn channels in the body of the sword. And just for a moment the air that was filled with the cacophony of hundreds of bugs and their skittering movements, the gnashing, biting, and any number of noises went silent almost as if locally air and sound by extension needed to catch up. The crescent shaped flash of light that appeared behind the army of beetles before fading away, being the last frame of local space that had frozen.

One breath, two breaths, three breaths of time before the slideshow continued the only reminder of the guides' act against nature being the motes of dungeon mana escaping from the already disappearing bodies of the dungeon workers. The guide after killing such a large number of them had been able to discover that these monsters actually were a dungeon worker species, meaning that they could leave the dungeon without the dungeon responsible being qualified as a rogue dungeon but his lord had deemed the dungeon a rogue dungeon so he had to follow with treating it as such.

The guide continued moving without sheathing his sword, already knowing that he’d be unable to use the soul plane to skip any annoying parts of the dungeon.

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POV shifts to the main character, also right after the guide left to take care of his mission.

I stood there in shock for a minute hearing that I’d finally be able to leave this place and continue exploring the island and preparing for when the other reincarnated people came to this world. But with all the free time I had over this extended break I had thought my desire to be strong enough that they wouldn’t do something to me had been an over reaction.

Seeing no reason to continue thinking on this alone I thought of Olly and sent a mental request for us to talk. After a minute I felt a ping of response from the skeleton himself seeing a door leading out of my room as I’d taken to calling it. I entered and found myself in the room that I’d found myself in all those years ago. Olly sitting down at an old couch staring intently at me but I couldn’t pin the emotion painted onto his bony visage.

“I assume that the guide has informed you of how soon you will be freed from this place?”

I take that back. I can now see the emotion making itself known on my benefactor's face. “Yes that would be true, I just wanted to make sure we were good before I poofed out of here.” “Your desire to mend our friendship is commendable but I believe that you are missing the point where you are the one who has lingering feelings of anger here.”

Olly was able to point out my thoughts but I’d been unable to let Olly be forgiven for destroying my ability to bring back my undeath mana. So having nothing much to say to Olly I merely sighed and nodded my head. “That would be correct Olly but I’ll still have to prove you wrong and bring them back somehow.”

“And I look forward to this day as much as I can”

“How long will it take before I leave here?”

“Not long I assume that the guide is just taking his sweet time…”

Me and Olly stood looking at each other, one of us looking at the other like they just claimed that they snorted a whole bowl of hard candy and the other looking a tad confused before the realization of what they said started donding on him.

Olly suddenly closed those glowing eyes and started speaking so faintly and quietly that I could only make out a few words. The few that I could hear were of a language that I didn’t recognize, ‘al-e….. gie , ainw! --wickr al-e’ it made me feel something click inside my brain and for a moment I realized that somewhere in that Olly said the guide's true name. And just as quickly as Olly started speaking he stopped and a mist started seeping out of the floor making a poorly rendered picture of the guide. His face was as cold as normal, but his arms and legs were bound by some form of what looked like metal. “My lord, I apologize for not returning as soon as possible, but I’ve finished the mission as you ordered.”

And for the first time in my being here for the last few years Olly seemed have those gears inside his head stop and almost immediately began up again, the air in the room froze I could feel a pressure building inside my skull “What happened” Olly might as well have made a statement with how flat his tone was.

The guide was seemingly unaware of the rules of survival, mentioning that answering your boss’s rhetorical question was almost never a good idea, and so started answering the question. “Well I’d cut, stabbed and otherwise brutalized my way to the dungeon core, there I waited till the core was doing something important then proceeded to stab the core. What I didn’t plan on happening is that all the nature mana and light mana would both be in high enough concentration that it would survive and allow the core to capture me.”

Olly and I both looked at the guide with mixed emotions, Olly seemed to calm down only slightly but still quickly asked a question “how long will it take for the mana to dissipate enough for him” Olly pointed a finger at me “To wake up?” the guide looked at Olly for a fraction of a second and then stated “I’m surprised he hasn’t woken up already”

Olly and the guide kept talking and soon I noticed it was getting harder to focus, “Olly what's happening?” Olly didn’t even look at me but answered the same “Your natural resistance to being put to sleep is fighting to wake you up and winning at that”

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My body was standing almost before my mind was fully operational. The sudden feeling of the evidently massive amount of experience that had been dutifully waiting for me to wake up, slamming into me forcing massive channels of growth through me in a spiritual and metaphysical manner forced me to my knees.

Name: Raymond

Titles: Champion of undeath.

Race: lowest undead Lv5 EVOLUTION IS AVAILABLE,

Energies; HP 340/340 Undeath mana 300/300, Life mana 300/300, Death mana 300/300

CLASS OPTION AVAILABLE.

Str (25=16+3+6)| 25+7

Con (25=18+4+3)| 25+7

Wis (27=20+5+2)| 27+8

Int (27=20+5+2)| 27+8

Dex (24=16+3+5)| 24+7

Cha (25=19+4+2)| 25+7

Free points: 0

Abilities: Life detection*2-9/20, Observe-20/???, Bad aura-13/???, Bone Manipulation*2-40/100, Mana manipulation-40/???, Undead healing*3-7/40, Mana craft-21/50, Life force manipulation-99/??. Undead energy*2-13/40, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*3-1/20, Split mind-14/????, Form manipulation-20/30.

The familiar flashing green of my profile brought a smile to my face, knowing how close I am to getting stronger was making me almost groan in excitement. Quickly I schooled my mental state and chose my class and evolution option. This was a good time for me to admit that I was happy I’d been on my knees rather than standing. The sensation of bones long dry without protection from the elements suddenly finding themselves sheathed in layers of muscle, and fat, was disorientating to say the least. Seeing my profile screen blink out of existence right before the darkness took me was also disorientating but I knew this was a safe thing when undergoing this many drastic changes I mentaly let go and let the changes fully take hold of me, soon I’d be able to help my teacher and start to repay him for helping me understand my abilities better.

My eyes opened, and for a moment I was stunned into a mental clarity I had only been able to achieve when meditating. ‘I have actual eyelids, actual eyeballs and skin!’ I slowly got up feeling my bones crack and pop into position, trying to fit their confining meat suit.

Name: Raymond

Titles: Champion of undeath.

Race: Fair Undead, Goul.

Energies; HP 330/330 Undeath mana 400/400, Life mana 380/380, Death mana 380/380

Class: Novice Necromancer 1/30

Str: 32+16

Str: 32+16

Str: 32+16

Str: 32+16

Str: 32+16

Str: 32+16

Free points: 0

Abilities:Observe*2-25/???, Bad aura-13/???, Mana manipulation*2-40/???, Undead healing*3-7/40, Life force manipulation-99/??. Undead energy*2-13/40, Mask of unlife-???/???, Meditation*3-1/20, Split mind-14/????, Form manipulation-*2-23/60.

Bone manipulation has gained the ability to modify flesh, muscle, and fat. ERROR SIMILAR ABILITY ALREADY IN POSSESSION.. Solution abilities have been merged… Multiple abilities have similar errors… Resolution in progress Mana manipulation and Mana craft have been merged, Observe has cannibalized Life detection. No source of pure mana for abilities to use, making adjustments All issues have been resolved.

(Author note, I didn’t mean for his stats to be even like this but I will have to re-think the stats even more now)

Seeing my abilities get chewed through with no ability to stop it I found myself not for the first time nor the last time understanding the guide's hatred for people using the system like a crutch. But since I’m on a time limit here I do need to get going towards the dungeon. Considering this I started the rather long trek towards the dungeon, and while attempting to make use of this dead space between point ‘A’ and ‘B’ I started conversing with my different mana types soon finding that yes my undeath mana was the same as it had been but now rather than having pure mana I had a rather large reserve of three types of mana, although life mana did feel rather distinctly different than the other mana that I’d interacted with up until now. Being very uninterested in doing anything other than passively reinforcing me and I’m fairly certain that if I was injured they would be able to heal me passively.

My thoughts filled with potential usages for my newly labeled powers I made my way to the dungeon, finding that the guide must have done a number on the dungeon since there aren’t any scouts that Olly insinuated would be swarming about. I paused mentaly at this and made a goal to not waste the opportunity of being able to walk directly into the dungeon while it’s undefended. I started sprinting only to have to catch myself from falling flat on my face since my stats have gone up much further and faster than I think they normally would have done.

`Great, I need to take my time and get used to my stats before I can make use of them.'’ Thinking this I started trying to run a little faster rather than a full sprint. And found myself almost flying in comparison to what I’d been able to do in the past but I knew that my speed would only allow me to make the travel to the dungeon slightly faster, grimacing I push myself to accelerate faster willing myself to ignore the added weight of my body I noticed that my eyes had begun tracing the paths of sticks and rocks the second nature that I’d gained by training with Olly having not left me after coming back to the world of the living.

Letting myself get lost in the feeling of the wind battering my face and chest I realized that I had no clothes to protect my filled out body. I made a second goal to make myself clothes as soon as possible.

Not even encountering a single living creature was a juxtaposition from the earlier memories of an island with dozens of different species of animals, and even sub species of the same main species all competing against each other for the barest hint of survival. But soon I started noticing a pattern I was far more familiar with, after all I’d been seeing these same wounds on every hint of mana for the last five years. Every single mana particle was being forced apart down to their base types thus causing the mana to literally begin killing itself in mass. How could a person attempt to use mana when the very concept of your mana is considered the third wheel to a massive war going on amongst the pure mana types outside of your control?

And that was every move the guide made, even when he wasn’t trying he was causing a similar effect to what I’d done when I caused that explosion, the only difference is that they weren’t kept isolated and could freely separate and fight amongst themselves. But seeing the gashes that not only existed in the physical plane but also the spiritual plane as well, acting as dead zones where even the most toxic of mana couldn’t go.

I began following these tracks on the ground, I could see the currents inside the spiritual world left behind from the guide's favorite method of moving at a high speed. The spiritual realm was slow to react to outside influence, after all when time has no meaning to you why would anything move at any sort of speed other than that of a snail.

Following these currents I soon found an unassuming hole in the ground. It looked nothing like what I’d remembered but my eyes had already seen the signature of a dungeon and this no matter how corrupt did match.

Filling my lungs with air I found myself looking down into a dark abyss, and with that I let myself fall into the hole knowing I’d have a long trip down.