Sam took Eric’s silent smile as an invitation to continue, so he did just that. “Of course, most people still have to start as Conscripts, just to rank up their stats and skills to whatever they plan on graduating into. And if you have anyone in your immediate family who survived the pods, you’re more than 50% likely to survive yourself, even if you don’t have any other exceptional experience or skill. We learned that much already. Grandfather hasn’t been idle these past six months. He’s been doing everything he can to figure out the best path forward regarding classes, leveling, what goes beyond what they call ‘White Tier,’”

“Bronze, for those exceptionally few make it to the end of White Tier and have the resources and natural aptitude to actually break through to the next tier,” Eric helpfully interjected. “And just from what my Blue Corp friend most specifically did not let slip, that’s less than what 1% of 1% of all adventurers here on Earth will achieve. Just getting past level 50 will take a shit-ton of effort and a natural affinity not everyone has. So yeah, if people had known all this six months ago, then humanity might be a better place right now. Less people would die to the pods and far more people would be willing to try them, which would boost our odds of surviving on our own world considerably.”

Sam grinned. “Exactly! Grandpa’s been researching all that! It seems that you don’t just want a powerful class that you might apply for, but one that also suits you. Hopefully really well, if you don’t want to bottleneck around levels thirty or fifty, let alone somehow get all the way up to level one hundred. But as to specifics… well, grandfather’s been making inquiries that he hopes will pan out into a whole library of information we can use! He even sent his favorite disciples to help obtain the resources he needs but, um… maybe we’ll talk about that another time.”

Eric flashed his young friend a sad smile. “Ever find that sometimes, despite our best intentions, things don’t always go quite according to plan?”

The boy frowned. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means that the goblins are backstabbing assholes and were just teasing you all with the lure of a library so they could snap chains around all your necks, rob you all of your wealth, and do everything they can to destroy necromancers, bloodmages, and everyone else with unusual powers in Freetown as part of their own campaign to weaken humanity, entice us all into usurious debt, and enslave us all while laughing in our faces as they loot the entire damn planet. And of course that included keeping your necromantic library for their own ends. Because power too good for you isn’t too good for them, as far as they were concnered.”

Eric, having decided that knowledge now was more important than delaying what he had hoped would be a nice surprise for later, calmly relayed to the now trembling boy exactly what had happened in the time Sam had been away.

“Those bastards!” Samuel said, his eyes flashing. “They’re going to pay for what they did!”

Eric flashed a cold smile. “Oh believe me, some of them already have,” he said, before pulling out his admittedly awesome looking high tech arcane blaster that looked so much like a Tac-50 anti-materiel rifle that Eric couldn’t help but grin as the boy’s awe-struck gaze.

“What the fucking fuck!”

“I know, right?” Eric enthused. “Fuckers were trying to use this thing to cut me in half with concentrated plasma blasts like beams of Fire magic! Talk about convergent evolution! Difference between this and a Nova Wars rifle is… like… nil. Anyway, if if the armor I’m wearing…

“Which is absolutely infused with so much essence and necromantic energies that even grandfather would be proud,” Samuel noted.

“Right! If it weren’t also immune to heat, I’d be dead. Fact is, it still seared a hole in my chest plates,” Eric said, before putting the arcane blaster rifle away. He then frowned down at his chest. “And since I now have full access to my ES Space again…” His armor disappeared in the blink of an eye, earning another surprised gasp from Samuel… before reappearing right back on Eric, wholly repaired once more.

“Don’t know why I didn’t do that earlier. And it hardly cost any experience at all.”

The boy gazed at Eric for long moments. “You know you’re totally using revenant repair and infusion techniques on your armor, right?”

Eric paled. “Shit, I forgot. I’m an idiot!” He wanted to sob.

His friend looked at him strangely. “What’s wrong?”

Eric winced. “Whenever I tweak, reshape, or reinforce any carcasses on me, the meat gets really tough, and great at resisting sword slashes and orc musket balls and shot. Maybe. Especially with greater lizard hide. But the minute I do that, all the meat in storage gets, well...”

“Inedible, because you just infused your carcass with necromantic energies, and it’s totally infused your ES space?”

Eric groaned. “I can store both fresh meat and undead together with absolutely no problem, so long as I don’t actually fuck with any of it in my ES Space. I’m an idiot!”

Sam gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat. “Look on the bright side. You still have that whole pig carcass sitting there, waiting for you to finish dressing and prepping and frying it up! Even better, all the spirit beast warthogs you got in storage will be absolutely perfect for raising as your first zombies, brains fully intact!”

Eric gazed at the carcass in question and smiled with a certain amount of relief. “When you’re right, you’re right. And all the carcasses and goblin rations and spices are still 100%. You know what? I think that goblin ES pack is going to come in handy after all.”

He furrowed his brow while Samuel gazed down at the goblin supplies now litering the floor, after Eric emptied and organized the ES pack. “Of course, best I break down our carcass here and try storing cuts one bit at a time. And I might as well make as much jerky as I can, just in case it doesn’t keep forever, like food seems to in my personal ES Space does.”

While Eric did that, Samuel continued to give him a primer on Necromancy, teaching him the very basics of the profession.

Unceasing lessons that continued despite Eric’s growing fatigue, and thank goodness for superhuman vitality keeping him awake and focused, until Eric, now scrubbed clean of all traces of blood and gore he could will away with a thought, found himself carefully scribing patterns of blood on the cavern floor in the half of the chamber they designated their workshop, creating an intricate design of potency and power that straddled the barrier between the realms of the living and the dead.

Eric couldn’t help but smile, fatigue replaced by a sense of accomplishment, feeling a certain satisfaction when he stepped away and gazed down at his complex sigil, somehow know in his gut that his drawing was complete.

Samuel gazed at Eric for long moments. “You did it,” he softly said.

Eric tilted his head. “Are you sure I didn’t fuck up in some disastrous way that’s going to have me summoning unholy chickens and you laughing your ass off all the while?”

The boy solemnly shook his head. “No, Eric. No chance of that.”

Eric frowned, realizing that his young mentor’s solemnity was genuine. “What are you saying?”

The boy bent down, gazing down at the crimson pattern for long moments before smirking at his own of chalk. “You made yours of blood.”

Eric nodded. “Yes. But only after I made sure my pattern matched yours perfectly.”

“Why did you trace over it with your own blood?”

Eric furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “It just felt right? Like it was giving the sigil more presence. Making it more real both in this realm, and in the realm of the dead.”

Sam grinned approvingly. “I think you’re right. It’s even infused with something else. Something that will make it very, very hard for spirits to resist your call.” Soft brown eyes met Eric’s own. “But it cost you,” he said softly. “It must have.”

Eric nodded. “I infused it with a bit of my own potency, but that’s okay,” he quickly assured. “Honestly, I’ve bounced around level nine, peaking it out to super-saturate my core before cashing out to strengthen one tool or weapon or another so many times that I’ve lost count! The important thing is that my skills keep growing, my core keeps saturating, and I’m not losing any more of my life span!”

The boy blinked. “Life span.” He paled. “Shit, you’ve already been walking this path.”

Eric nodded. “With my friend Morlekai. We… had a few close calls. But we pulled through, and that’s all that matters.”

“Shit, Eric, how much did you lose? Days? Hours? I hope it wasn’t too much. Because when you’re just a novice—“

“Over twenty years of my life,” Eric said, the lighthearted mirth now gone from his voice. “So could we please just drop it? I already paid as steep a price as anyone can.” He flashed a bitter smile. “No need to look at my like a sad puppy, Sam. Believe me, daring this madness has opened up a crimson path to unbridled power like you wouldn’t believe!”

Samuel’s eyes widened with sudden interest. “Tell me!”

Eric winced, realizing he shouldn’t have said anything at all. “I gained over 35 Vitality, earning rare Titles and taking out foes by the hundreds. I wouldn't’ be surprised if that alone added decades to my life,” he said at last, earning another sympathetic smile from Sam.

“Maybe it will,” the boy conceded. “I hope it does. At the very least, I’ll bet you’ll look as strong, vital, and movie-star handsome...”

“Ha ha.”

“As you do now, until the day you go to sleep, feeling happy and satisfied with life...and gently wake up into your next one, without having been tormented by the pangs of decrepitude and illness that plague most people when we get older.”

Eric grinned. “Yeah… if I have to go, may it be after a fulfilling life where I accomplished a lot, surrounded by family who loves me. I’ll bet that’s been every man’s dream for the last 200,000 years. Since long before we were anything like modern man. But who cares, right? Point taken. Live life to the fullest, savor every moment, and don’t sweat the small stuff.”

The boy flashed a pitying smile, and Eric decided he was just glad the kid had focused on the Vitality… not on the path of power that might lead Eric to truly monstrous Vitality and Strength, with a world’s worth of territories to claim.

And consume.

He flashed a cold smile, suppressing a delicious tingle of excitement. As much as he savored this opportunity to learn all he could in a relatively peaceful sanctuary free of anything more than massive insane spirit beasts trying to kill him, a part of him couldn’t wait to embrace the sweet rush of consuming fresh territories once more.

“Exactly, Eric. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” His young friend gave a final careful examination of his blood sigil once more. “Shit, Eric, I don’t see any of a half dozen flaws I know gramps would be pointing out within a minute of my own attempts during those first few months. And the canings I earned. Ha! Grim’s definitely old school. And he said I could quit any time I couldn’t take it.”

The boy flashed a hard smile. “Of course it just made me want to learn all the more. Anyway, I can’t find a single thing wrong with your sigil!”

“I’d be surprised if you could,” Eric confided. “It’s a complete circuit. I can feel the mix of necromantic and arcane energies shivering through my blood, all of it infused with my essence. So we know it’s working, right?”

Samuel stared at him open-mouthed for long moments before shaking his head. “Of course you can feel it as naturally as breathing,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “After all, grandpa wouldn’t send a complete idiot to save my ass, right?”

Eric smirked. “Hope not. So, what’s next?”

“Well, we have the corpses we want to raise, right?”

The boy blinked when 2 massive tuskers appeared in each of their sigils. “Shit, you weren’t kidding. They’re both saturated with necromantic energy!”

Eric nodded. “Once you made it clear that we’re going to be raising all of them, I thought, hell, why not? I already saturated them all. I think it bumped up a skill or two, but I turned off my interface for the moment.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “Interface? Oh, what the System gives us once we pick a class in the pod. Sweet! It will be just like playing Skydragon.”

Eric grinned. “Pretty much, except for the whole you really can die with the slightest fuck up thing.”

“Yeah,” Sam winced, looking down at his still mending leg. “Trust me, I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that lesson any time soon.”

“At least the wound looks clean now,” Eric noted. “And that’s everything. Now you just need a chance to heal.”

Sam gave a solemn nod. “And that could take weeks, and I might still have a limp.”

Eric gave a reassuring smile. “You’ll be walking without any sort of limp in no time at all, so long as you take the time to both stretch and build up your strength. And I bet the residual from the healing potion will have you feeling fit as a fiddle in less than a week.”

Eric gazed down with a bemused smile at his own sorely used body, now fully healed. “Credit where it’s due. Fucked up as both the pods and the starting class options clueless rubes here on Earth are given, one undeniable perk is that diseases are now a thing of the past, and you’ll fully heal from pretty much anything and everything, after a complete night’s rest, so long as you survive the shock and blood-loss of the original injury.”

Sam blinked at this. “No shit?”

Eric grinned. “None at all. And pro tip. If nothing else, get your Vitality to 20 as soon as you can. That let’s you survive… not thrive, but survive indefinitely, on 1 hour of sleep per day. It also opens the door to honest, genuine regeneration. It starts slow, but fuck it, we’re talking actual regeneration! No better lifesaver right there. After that, put your stats where you’re build requires it, but don’t forget to also throw a few points into Perception and Quickness... to sense trouble and dodge the fuck out of the way before you’re a note on someone else’s kill sheet. Even a few points might make all the difference, especially when dealing with increasingly desperate classless normies. And it just might keep you alive when facing thugs and assholes who could ambush you out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason at all, when you least expect it. That’s the only thing I’ll add to whatever your master’s stat distribution recommendation might be.”

This earned a grin for the boy. “Sounds wonderful. And hey, who knows? Maybe it resets the biological clock too, so you never age more than a day! Except for, well, the 20 years you already aged,” he said with a weak smile.

Eric smirked. “I doubt it’s quite that easy, but it’s a nice thought.”

The boy’s features fell. “yeah, you’re probably right. But hey, it’s not like you aren’t in a mystical pocket realm that holds the secrets of youth, right?”

Eric blinked at this, slowly sitting himself down on one of his rough-carved stone chairs, thanks to his gladius of sharpness that doubled as a pretty handy stone carving tool. “Please explain?”

“The peaches, my man!” Sam declared with a smile. “Because even if those goblins turned out to be slimy little genocidal shits, and thanks for spotting that, and saving my old man, by the way, Grim did get some useful tidbits from less slimy parties. Did you know that there are potions and gems that can permanently boost your stats? I hear they’re not too uncommon, but supposedly you shouldn’t use those unless you’re a pure system sanctioned Classer without the taint of cultivation or a non-System-standard potency path, like Necromancy and Blood magic. Point is, there are also mystical fruits, and divine springs and other sources of power that can act sort of like fountains of youth… or infuse your body with mystical warrior energy, or otherwise enhance you!”

“Like the peaches,” Eric whispered, recalling how brightly they had blazed with spiritual energy in his mind’s eye. “But wait, I thought trying to take them was a really bad idea, unless you were already a cultivator?”

The boy flashed a sad smile. “Correct. And would you believe grandfather was actually able to get his hands on a decent cultivation manual that taught a universal form, free of bullshit and traps? Hell, even Blue Corp checked!”

Eric blinked at this. “Wait… they can sell us cultivation manuals?”

The boy grinned. “No, of course not! Those guys are total rule sticklers… but they’re also high-end facilitators. If you’re able to pay the price, they can get you anything, top quality… for a price. And that includes authentication! So even if it’s against their code, or galactic protocol, for them to sell us the manual, they were still able to authenticate it, once it was in our possession. No questions asked!”

Eric soon found himself gazing with no small amount of wonder at the small leather-bound tome the boy casually tossed his way, alarm bells ringing in his mind when he caught the exquisitely crafted tome, each page a soft silky sheet of vellum, both supple and crisp, now holding a work of exquisite calligraphy without a single smudge or bleed.

If this volume was what he thought it was... his wildest dreams were suddenly within reach.