Eric soon found himself walking silently along mist-shrouded corridors lit only by the brilliant rainbow stars glittering high overhead.

No matter which direction he looked in, he saw endless rows of leather-bound books and tightly bound vellum scrolls upon countless rows of obsidian shelves glittering with their own inner fire, somehow perfectly mirroring the stars above.

Yet whenever actually Eric turned to face those bookshelves, every step forward found him approaching titanic vessels that were vast beyond comprehension. Or perhaps he was just shrinking, gazing up from the view of a mouse… or a microbe. It was an experience so chilling that Eric would immediately flinch and step back… only to sense the shelves just an arm’s reach away from him on either side of the mist shrouded corridor he walked along.

Heart racing, he bent over, taking deep ragged breaths, before his eyes bulged at the sight of endless twinkling stars beneath his feet.

His throat let free the tiniest whimper, suddenly certain he could feel their gravity pulling him through a floor that didn’t exist, knowing with absolute certainty that were he to die in this terrible place, he’d never return. Not in this life, or any other.

He squeezed his eyes shut, sensing in that moment a million billion shrieking souls locked in inconceivable torment… and then nothing.

Nothing but the dry rustle of pages turning upon a varnished hardwood table.

Eric snapped his gaze upward as fast as 170 Quickness and constantly fighting for his life for over half a year would allow. It was all he could do not to chuckle with relief as he stepped forward onto what was now a grey sheep’s wool rug (a skein of a thousand souls!) soothing his feet and softening his footsteps as he approached a massive reading table and the bespectacled gaze of a young woman who would have looked at right at home in any campus library. She flashed him a quick smile before turning her attention back to the three leather-bound tomes she was presently placing on the hardwood table, before checking the back pages (tearing her claws through quivering flesh… rivulets of blood… the gaping wounds of letters forming words of wisdom to Penetrate his mind. Feed his soul. To caress his flesh (her flesh) with their pain!)

He beheld a vast inky face made of a single blinking eye locked in an eternal…

Eric shivered and blinked, relieved when the odd flight of fancy left him and all he saw were three entirely mundane tomes and the bemused face of a young librarian who didn’t look any older than he. Though her appearance was striking, graced with the flawless skin, merrily crinkling eyes, and high cheekbones of a northern Asiatic tribe; perhaps Mongolian, perhaps something else. She wore a tight-fitting cheongsam, her silky dark hair bun ornamented with pins of jade and gold.

Her teeth, though. (Rivulets of blood) Ivory white, with an almost pearlescent sheen, her lips the color of (blood) rubies the bemused twinkle of her (crimson) violet eyes was that of a girl well used to startled guests in this strange place.

Her lips softened into a bemused smile, a lacquered fingernail (don’t think about it. Don’t!) giving a gentle bemused tap upon the book covers before her. (You can still hear their screams!).

“Eric Silver?” Hers was voice husky and sensual, sending shivers down his spine beyond what a teasing Alice’s most seductive taunts could inspire.

Eric cleared his throat. “Maybe?”

She snorted. “Definitely.” She tilted her head, peering thoughtfully at him. “It’s rare… very rare for someone so young to enter my family’s library.”

Eric winced, taking in the vast, not that large, almost cozy chamber filled with book cases and spiraling stairs stretching all the way (to the vast heavens above!) to an observatory barely higher than the third story of his favorite house.

He frowned and shook his head. Not quite sure why he was feeling so much tension.

But here he was being rude, when death was gazing at him so intently.

“I apologize if my visit was… unexpected,” he offered with a weak smile. “Things have been going at sort of a breakneck… I mean crazy pace. And the next thing you know, I’m walking up the steps to your house and just barging in unexpectedly, I’m sure.”

She chuckled softly, the bookshelves trembling with her husky laugh. “Oh Eric, that’s adorable. Silly boy! If you were unexpected… or unwelcome, you’d already be dead.”

She winked, and Eric felt his soul freeze with dread, no matter how reassuring her husky voice. “So no worries. You’re welcome. More than welcome, after helping so many come to the riveting ends of their own stories.” She mocked a stage whisper. “I do like things neat, after all. And there are far, far too many open tomes on Terra at the moment, if you ask me. Too many competing threads to too many conflicting stories.”

The girl tapped her chin thoughtfully. “So many sagas in desperate need of neat endings tying it all together.”

She nodded her head in thoughtful approval when Eric lurched and stepped back, feeling like a scab had just been picked clean of his flesh, leaving his skin tingling and clean after a brief moment’s tingling pain. “Like this delightful right orb here. Perhaps you will allow me to put it on my tree?”

She flashed him a confidential smile as a tree of bone and blood and a thousand thousand smoky orbs filled with writhing dark spirits screaming silently in the void manifested behind her. “Tis the season, after all. The tree of life and death could always use fresh nourishment, and I always enjoy reading the final chapter of a riveting tale.”

Eric blinked at that. The absolute screaming terror crawling up his throat froze, and it was all he could do not to smile. Feeling strangely comforted to face his darkest fear, and find her gazing right back at him.

Death herself.

Or one of her many, many avatars.

That which he had delivered to so many.

That which would eventually claim him.

Eric bowed his head. “I greet you, my lady.”

She chuckled throatily. “It is always a pleasure to truck with those who embrace their work as… avidly as you do. Who aren’t monsters lost in their own power fantasies. Who are still awake enough to appreciate their place in the grand skein of things… so to speak.”

She gazed fondly at his Soul Orb, vibrating with the screams of some 11,000 orcs he had slaughtered that day alone, Eric only now sensing the endless howls and cries of their warrior’s souls.

When she stroked it, it trembled, and Eric could sense the confusion and fear of spirits unable even to fathom their own demise.

“So many stories locked inside this treasure alone.” Her eyes twinkled in merriment. “Is this a gift to me, Eric Silver?”

Eric smiled. “Let’s just say it is. Assuming it doesn’t cost me my Soul Orb perk, of course.”

Death rolled her eyes. “Of course not, silly boy. And for your gift… a life.” She winked. “One you value.”

Her cherry red lips then stretched wide as she swallowed the entire globe of screaming souls, looking impossibly exotic and horrific all at once, arching her back and shuddering with sweetest ecstasy before popping the now empty globe and handing it back to him.

And the moment he touched it, he was blinded with a wave of euphoria he was horrified and exhilarated to feel. Darkest pleasure that shuddered through him like the sweetest rush imaginable as the girl’s husky lips caressed his ear. Shivered into the depths of his soul.

“There is no greater joy than the one we embrace, disciple. Glorious sweet violence. The rapture of fear, desperation and desire. The climax of victory. The grandest of exultations! Feasting upon the flesh and potency of all those we kill. Growing ever stronger, ever more powerful. Savoring the tales we read from all the tomes that came before us, growing ever wiser, ever more learned, adding to the richness and depths of our own tales until we too are claimed… and our masterwork one day inspires countless future authors to ever more glorious heights!”

She stretched her milky white arms high as she straddled his bucking form, her aureoles a stark contrast to her creamy white skin, the exact same shade of crimson as the sigils of blood caressing her flesh.

Eric howled with a communion as sweet, savage, and intense as the shudder and glassy-eyed stare of so many orcs whose desperate eyes had locked with his own, right before he tore his crimson blade free, reveling in the arterial spray of their blood.

Caught between horror and sublime ecstasy, with Death now laughing at the heavens as she rocked him with her hips, he cried out with savage release as she bent down for a kiss both sweet and deadly, the promise of oblivion and ascension as they became one in a dance as old as time, Eric happily embracing the darkest reaches of his crimson path with Death’s bloody lips locked upon his own.

Before stepping back with a gasp, wildly blinking away the twisted flight of fancy, seeing nothing but the ancient ruins of a library abandoned long ago.

Utterly and completely empty.

Save for three dust-covered volumes and a single note.

Two for you.

One for your twin.

Weak and fragile, she would not survive here.

But with your aid, her work will be grand.

Hunt well, my lover.

When next we embrace, I shall savor your climax for eternity.

Death.

Eric gazed at the note for long moments before carefully folding it and placing it in his ES Space that seemed to work perfectly fine here, against all expectation. And his hands were most definitely not trembling as he stored the tome he sensed had been left for his sister, wrapped in a vellum sheath for reasons he could guess all too well.

Before gazing down at the pair of tomes with no such sheath at all.

His heart skipped a beat.

He could tell that they weren’t meant to be stored away in some storage space, eventually forgotten in some ancient bookshelf.

They were meant to be read.

Right here.

Right now.

But first, the insistent blinking in the corner of his mind’s eye, the sense of changes both glorious and catastrophic inside him, made it clear it was time to check at least the stat page of his character sheet and come to terms with whatever changes his communion had wrought.

He was shocked by the severe cost of his daring. Had he really made love to Death? It hadn’t just been an odd vision? He shook his head. Still not quite sure how he felt about the act, or himself, with all his masks torn free, reveling in his absolute butchery of his enemies. His glee so fierce that even oblivion was savoring the madness by his side.

Yet as much as he was discomforted by a glimpse into the darkest reaches of his soul, he couldn’t deny the fierce joy he felt at the magnificent boon that would push his rate of learning with his deadliest skills to new heights. And if he understood correctly, it would give him a 30% bonus to maximum damage output as well.

So long as it was delivered with lethal intent, or resulted in a fatal blow.

Congratulations! You have earned the Master Title: Death’s Consort!

Only the most devout disciples or savage killers could ever be said to love death as much as you do.

And it shows!

You have successfully made love to an avatar of destruction! Yet it is but one side of creation’s coin, and as necessary for evolution as life itself! If you like any form of life more advanced than slime molds, then you must accept that death is every bit as important as life in the cycle of evolution and change.

You now benefit from a +5 bonus to all physical traits as you transform and evolve, because the crucible of survival demands nothing less than the most pristine of physical specimens! And a +5 to Willpower shows you’re happily willing to transcend whatever you thought your limits were. (In and out of the bedroom)!

Note. There is a (severe) penalty to being chosen as one of Death’s consorts!

The tendency to die!

You have suffered a permanent reduction of 20 points to your Soul Reserves! Any mortal, even the most blessed, would have been consumed by oblivion while savoring Death’s caress.

You were not.

Because you’ve left humanity far behind.

There is an upside to your choice in lovers as well.

You now enjoy a permanent 30% bonus to the mastery and application of all killing arts, including any blow delivered with killing intent!

_____________________________________

Eric Silver Level 30 Master Adventurer

Rank 20 Cultivator

Level 23 Master Necromancer

Physical Characteristics (+27 Unspent Points)

Strength – 179

Vitality – 199

Finesse – 131

Quickness – 175

Appearance – 24

Mental Characteristics

Scholarship – 22

Perception – 121

Willpower – 67

Charisma – 13

Potency Pools

Arcane Potential – 118

(Mana Pool = 1416)

Spiritual Energy – 177

(Qi Pool = 2124)

Soul Reserves – 103 (95) -20! = 83 (75)

*Stamina – 1980 Points

Health – 2614 Points.

Resistances & Recovery

Physical Resistance – 35

Physical Regeneration – 19.4 health per second

Elemental Resistance – 20

Qi Resistance – 32

Mental Resistance – 23

Primal Adventurer Powers:

1. Runic Lore – Rank 8

2. Unified Restoration – Rank 2

Qi Powers

Fire Fist – Rank 4 (10 Qi)

Windfire Strike – Rank 6 (30 Qi)

Necromancer Perks:

Basic Class Perks

All necromantic (and blood magic) skill use is modified by Master Necromancer Level.

All Summoned & Forged undead have their potency enhanced by Master Necromancer Level.

All spells conjuring forth any number of creatures have summoned total modified by Master Necromancer Level.

One additional enhanced class perk is earned every 2 Master Necromancer levels.

Enhanced Class Perks:

1. Soul Orb: Tier 1

2. Undead Legion: Tier 6 (6 Ranks)

3. Undead Tactical Interface map access.

4. Vampiric Restoration

5. Mixed Unit Tactics

6. Mark of Resilience

7. Call to Battle

Interface Recognized Skills

Acting – Rank 5

Bardiche (Unified) – Rank 21 (Cleaving Blow, Battleforged,*Piercing Strike)

Blade and Shield – Rank 11

Boar Riding – Rank 7

Bow (All Types) – Rank 19 (True Strike)

Crossbows – Rank 16 (True Strike)

Small Blades – Rank 4

Demolitions – Rank 14 (Path of Mastery)

ESS Manipulation – Rank 10 (Arcane Resonance Mastery)

Find Weakness – Rank 23 – (Spell Cleave, Qi Perception, Additional Magus/Cultivator Bonus)

Identify – Rank 1

Gunnery – Rank 10 (Cautious Gunner)

Healer’s Aid – Rank 3

Iado (Fast-Draw) – Rank 14 (Doom Flurry)

Javelin Throwing – Rank 21 (Piercing Strike, Deferred)

Negotiation – Rank 9

Repair – Rank 1

Sling – Rank 12 (Precise Shot Adv.)

Spear – Rank 23 (Piercing Strike, Battleforged)

Stealth – Rank 14 (Hunter’s Grace)

Swordsmanship – Rank 24 (Doom Slice, Battleforged, *Piercing Strike *Cleaving Blow)

Swimming – Rank 2

Unarmed Combat – Rank 12 (Empty Fist)

Essence Related Skills:

Burst of Strength – Rank 14 (Path of Mastery)

Dominion’s Resilience – Rank 3

Dominion’s Command – Rank 6

Heat Surge – Rank 11 (Path of Mastery)

Unified Perception Rank 21 (Sense Heat, Spiritual Energy, Magic, & Qi Flow.)

Arcane Skills

Wands (Fire) – Rank 6

Advanced Arcane Weapons (Blaster Rifle) – Rank 9

Necromancer Affinities & Skills

Blood Mastery – Rank 27 (Blood Claimance, Lesser Healing, Essence Infusion)

Spirit Mastery – Rank 29 (Path of Dominion, Forced Obeisance)

Rituals of Summoning and Binding – Rank 30 (Tier III Path of Dominion, Ritual of Greater Spirit Summoning, Instant Transcription)

Flesh Sculptor – Rank 22 (Tier II Path of Dominion, Basic Revenant Preparation)

Blood Ward – Rank 2

Potency Binding – Rank 4

Necromancer Spells

Unorthodox Abjuration – Rank 20

Interface Enhancements

Full Neuro-Linguistic capabilities

Extradimensional Storage Space

Essences Claimed:

Fire – Blazing - (Rank 3, White Tier)

Wrath (Rank 1, White Tier)

Dominion (Rank 1, White Tier)

Path of Endless Bounty – Rank 11

Now grants 2 lesser land enhancements when you grant your conquests the mercy of the gentlest of feedings. Drink deep… and share with your supplicants!

Crimson Balance: Each territory feeling the bite of your Necromantic Consumption now gives you a 50% bonus to baseline Strength and Vitality earned

____________________________________-

Eric whistled, allowing himself just a moment to truly savor just how far he’d already come, glad he had been able to disguise the last traces of Oblivion’s Path from his character sheet.

‘Path of Endless Bounty’ definitely sounded a lot more wholesome.

Still, there was no denying just how sweet was the boon he earned, daring his path.

A careful use of Identify of Lord Drevyn and Lady Valorn... use of skills that would have considered been rude as hell were he not their prospective commander, had shown Advanced classers with physical stats in the 50s who had access to trainers their entire lives. True elites, who blew the level 30’s in Freetown who had earned their levels the hard way totally out of the water. Yet compared to Eric, they were puppies before a wolf, just a third of his strength. A third. And many stats were even less. Even if they had limited themselves to the level 30 immigration limit cap, and Eric could only wonder how many years in advance his mother had planned things out. Because if he was this far above his mastermind mother’s favored commanders, could it really be attributed to the vagaries of wildest chance, or had his mother, somehow… influenced the path he had taken while seeming to have abandoned him entirely?

He frowned, giving a frustrated shake of his head in this library of the dead. Because he knew that was a question he would never get a straight answer to. Best he focus on what he actually could control. Like the unspent points for 3 levels worth of stats.

It was so, so tempting to want to slip a point into Vitality to round it up to 200, and 21 more for Strength, to do the same. But considering his ability to feed off entire territories to boost those very stats, they were the last things he should be investing in. At least he could be pleased with his steady advance in his Mana and Qi Pool Reserves, thanks to titles, boons, and desperate allotments that, despite his initial regret, had led to a vastly increased army for himself.

It was only Soul Reserves that he had to worry about, though he still had what was effectively 75 points free, with 8 permanently reserved. Yet he couldn’t deny how vital a component it was for Necromancy, Blood Magic, and of course, tapping into the power of his essences abilities.

He gave a quiet nod. Soul Reserves was a stat he would not ignore. Even if he was extremely reluctant to stick points in arbitrarily, not without days or even weeks of cultivation, mediation, and focus. At least enough so that he felt like he was expanding his own consciousness, his own awareness, his own sense of potency, when he slowly dripped his level-up points into his Potency Pools.

Not simply tainting his mind with silvery worms of System potential.

And much as he wanted to boost his considerable Mana Pool even further, working to transform his budding knowledge of a runic alphabetic to fantastic effect, given time and the right circumstances, for now he had a fair grasp of the path that would suit him best.

Embracing the Path of Endless Bounty, drinking deep of the land’s power while gifting it back in turn, and balancing his ever growing might with a Quickness and Perception that, one day, just might be enough to let him sense and counter his enemies’ deadliest trump cards.

Because sure as heck, even 200 Vitality wasn’t going to do anything to prevent him from getting obliterated by 24-pounder cannon shells.

But a 200 Quickness just might.

Quickness he already had, he sensed with a shiver of wonder, his now exquisitely sharp memory replaying his insane dance against gunners, cannon, and explosive shells, realizing he could have only pulled off the madness if his Quickness had already been that high, a single point in Strength and Vitality also neatly rounding up those stats as perilous gambles and wild luck became the calculated advancement of a hyper fast tactician who always knew exactly what the hell he was doing.

“Sure, we’ll go with that,” he said to himself with a rueful chuckle.

And if his combined stats also allowed him to turn the most obnoxious speedsters in Freetown, or any other would-be assassins, into meat paste before they could even blink, then that was just icing on the cake, as far as hew as concerned.

Eric flashed a bleak smile at the thought of taking on a certain band of CFA bounty hunters, if they came after him today. He couldn’t help but feel humbled by just how far he’d come, in a very short period time.

From a kid crippled with hideous scars, wheezing in agony as he fought for his life against a handful of rats, to a Contender willing to take on an entire regiment of Orc troops. His stats told the story as well as anything. Stats that kept growing with every level earned, every title gained, every territory he consumed.

He didn’t bother pulling up all his interface notes regarding the nuances of his necromancy skills and blood magic, his Necromancy class now being an excellent proxy for the power he wielded in that way, though he did find it almost ironic that he’d both directly and indirectly taken over 10,000 orcish lives, and raised even more, yet his Necromancer class was still at Level 23. Of course, it was a Master Tier class, and with an extremely powerful perk earned every other level, he certainly wasn’t complaining.

Especially since it was listed as a Profession, not his primary stat-boosting class. Which meant that he earned considerable experience for the dead he raised, and for the necromantic rituals he embraced. Not necessarily for the kills his revenants made. Even if he had been prudent enough to choose Soul Orb as a backdoor way of grabbing the potency twice, because he could then use that stored potency to raise fresh undead above and beyond what Undead Legion and a Call to Arms allowed. And that would raise his Profession level, as using the actual arts, not making the original kills, was what leveled that branch of his synergized class.

He sighed and shook of his head, still awed by the 13,000 revenants he now claimed, thanks to a pair of Master Chants he now knew so intuitively that they were an extension of himself.

He supposed one could only grow so much, professionally, with a couple castings of a single spell, no matter how ridiculously powerful it was. Especially if the creatures he was raising, particularly the classless musketeers, had just a fraction of his own potency.

If he wanted to continue advancing at an absolutely absurd rate as both a Necromancer and a Primal Adventurer, he knew he needed to kill increasingly powerful foes before raising them to fight under his banner. The higher their level, the better.

Of course, it might also help his Profession to have a formal instructor in the Necromancer Arts. Because even if he did have 13,000 revenants he could summon before any battle on the fields of Earth, he wasn’t any more formally trained than he had been while learning the basics of both cultivation and necromancy, at the feet of Samuel and Pavel. Two masters far wiser than him in their chosen specialties.

Eric sighed and shook his head, still awed by the glimpse had gleaned of his friend’s distant lives, filled with discovery, adventure, and wonder, now forever separate from his own.

A lost school found. An entire population raised from deathly status to welcome as heroes Samuel and Pavel both, as they embraced the start of a tale that would forge an empire, and so much more. He could only hope they were okay, wherever they were, whatever they were doing, and were able to savor lives filled with all the adventure and wonder they could hope for.

In fact, he was almost positive that they already had.

A thought that made him wince, not sure how he’d be able to tell a certain necromancer that his beloved great, great grandson might no longer be among the living, but had already lived a long and fruitful life, ascending as a cultivator and siring a loving family of his own over a span of centuries that, for those on Earth, had passed in a mere handful of days.

Then he froze. Recalling things that were not his province or his purview, seeing snippets of pasts and futures that were not his own. Could not be own.

He shivered, finally shaking free of his oddly distracted musings, remembering once more where he was. In the dusty remnants of a forgotten library that might or might not be the hall of the dead, with two tomes he’d best open now, or never dare touch at all.