“If she’s undead, what is the point of her eating?” Tera asked once they were out of Mora’s supposed earshot. Sylver chose not to tell her that she heard her loud and clear, partially due to her connection to Sylver, but mostly due to one of her perks.

“I think I mentioned before that dead and alive are a sliding scale, right?” Sylver asked, as Bruno mutely followed along.

Sylver empathized with the man. After multiple lifetimes of hardship, having something go your way, in every way imaginable, was about 10 times as shocking as having everything go wrong for the 100th time.

And even if Tera wasn’t actively holding onto Bruno’s arm, like some sort of love-struck teenage girl, there was an almost sickening aura of joy around her.

Sylver wasn’t jealous…

Alright, he was a little jealous, but not enough that he was going to comment and spoil their mood.

“I don’t think so,” Tera replied.

“Well, they are. If 0 is dead, and 100 is alive, I’m somewhere in the high 80s. I grow, I’m affected by my environment, I can hypothetically starve to death, and I need air to breathe… That’s not entirely true, but let’s pretend it is for the time being… Since Mora copied my body, to a certain extent, nothing I say will apply to her either…” Sylver said as Bruno gestured left, and the group turned left and continued walking down the tunnel lined with glowing threads.

“Wait, high 80s?” Bruno asked.

He momentarily snapped out of his shock at Sylver’s words.

“I’m a little less “alive” after my modifications. I don’t have a digestive tract, my lungs have been minimized and no longer function the way regular lungs would, and my reproductive system has been all but discarded,” Sylver said and continued before Tera could ask a follow-up question, “everything is still there, in one piece, I didn’t cut anything off,” Sylver added hurriedly.

Tera was quiet for a second, and then seemed to remember something.

“Are you going to go to Torg anytime soon?” Tera asked.

Sylver thought the question over, and mentally mapped out the path he would have taken to get to the Schlagen mountains.

“On my way back, maybe… Why?” Sylver asked.

Tera already had an overly smug smile on her face, but upon hearing Sylver’s question, it became just a tad bit more unbearable.

“No reason,” Tera said.

“I did mention that Syl was the one who pushed me to tell you everything?” Bruno asked.

“She said there’s a level 90 [Necromancer] currently working for some noble. He removes curses from cursed artifacts, and his employer sells them for a huge profit,” Tera quickly explained.

“What’s his name?” Sylver asked.

“I don’t remember, I’ll need to check. He’s quite old, human, somewhere in the 120 to 150 age range, but he’s not undead. Do you know him?” Tera asked, and Sylver refrained from scoffing.

It took him a couple of seconds to wait out the snarky response.

“No… Did she say anything about me?” Sylver asked, in an attempt to change the subject.

“She said Sophia, the ex-head priest of Ra was at Torg for a couple of days and paid extra to keep the items she won anonymous. That’s all,” Tera said.

Sylver was sure he didn’t make a face, but Tera thought differently.

“Did you want her to ask about you?” Tera asked, with that ever so slight hint of pity only women were capable of.

“I mean… It’s better like this, I have been gone for 5 years…” Sylver said, and even if he didn’t sound like it, genuinely did believe it was for the best.

“Don’t worry about it, there’s someone out there for everyone,” Tera offered, and Sylver refrained from rolling his eyes.

“I’m not…” Sylver realized how sad this sounded, even as he said it, “I’m not lonely,” Sylver said.

Tera and Bruno both had this aura around them, the kind newlyweds often had, like they were better than all their unfortunate single friends. Bruno at least had the courtesy to keep his face plain and blank, but Tera was just a little too happy about her amazing reincarnator husband.

“What are you looking for in a woman?” Tera asked.

Sylver refrained from explaining to her the checklist he had long ago decided was necessary for any kind of relationship to work.

“Tall, big, and I have a thing for warrior types with muscles and scars from fighting,” Sylver explained, and Tera looked shocked for a moment. He explained his explanation, as he gestured at himself.

“I’m a big person, and I prefer… what’s the polite word for it… I like it when things get a little violent, and I can’t do that with someone that I can break like a twig if I’m not careful enough. When you meet the dark elves, there’s a woman there called Dasha. She is the lower limit of the kind of woman I would be open to meeting,” Sylver said.

The trio walked in silence for a bit, as Sylver regretted his momentary lapse in judgment, Tera regretted prodding Sylver’s preferences, and Bruno barely heard a word Sylver had said, as he was still in the process of recovering from the shock of Tera falling in love with him a second time.

“You went on a quest with Henra, right?” Tera asked after some time had passed.

Bruno had kept the prepared corpses far away from the main area because the preservation spell was the kind of dark magic that would harm the weaker chimeras if it was closer.

“Henra the warrior, part of the Pixie part… I mean… No, I think she has a thing against necromancers,” Sylver explained.

“What about the other one, the druid? Edna,” Tera asked after she recalled the name.

“Unless she suddenly had an urge to train alongside Henra and copied her physique, no…” Sylver said.

“Hmm… Why did you sleep with Leke then? If you like big women, I mean?” Tera asked.

“I almost want to say she pressured me into it,” Sylver said.

This got Bruno’s attention.

“She pressured you?” Bruno asked, and Sylver responded a little too quickly.

“Oh please, like you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about! Did you think wearing your shirt collar a little higher would hide the markings? Have her wear gloves, she’ll be able to get a better grip, and the nails won’t scratch your neck,” Sylver offered.

This got a chuckle out of Bruno and made Tera’s smug face turn as red as a tomato.

“Anyway, as I said, I’m good. I’ve got all the women I could ever want in my life, I’ve got Lola, Misha, Masha, Ria, Chrys, Leke, Maul, Lao, Chloe, and let’s not forget the literal army of dark elves, the majority of whom, are women. And now Morana too. Not to mention about 100 of my shades are women, I think,” Sylver said.

Spring whispered the actual number in Sylver’s ear, but Sylver didn’t bother correcting himself.

At some point, Tera had to be left behind. Even though she complained about it, and gave Bruno the look, the old reincarnator wasn’t willing to risk it.

He trusted Sylver not to fuck around with his magic, but it would be a pointless risk to the two weak souls inside Tera, in the event something unforeseen were to occur. She left and was carried away by the serpent that had been following them.

“There’s going to be a gathering at my home tomorrow evening. You’ll need to go to Ron’s Rest and have him open a door into my house. I know there isn’t much point pretending I’m not connected to Lola and everyone, but I’d like to keep it up anyway,” Sylver explained and got a nod from Bruno in response.

“You asked me to remind you that you have 2 skills that have ranked up. And that you have some attribute points to distribute,” Bruno said, and Sylver mutely opened up his status.

Sylver decided to put all 10 points into intelligence, for that slight boost in mana capacity.

Total Level: 139

[Koschei-10]

[Necromancer-100]

[Swamp Lord-29]

CON: 200

DEX: 110

STR: 110

INT: 287

WIS: 238

AP: 0

Health: 2,000/2,000

Stamina: 997/1,000

MP: 8,873/11,480

Health Regen: 23.34/M

Stamina Regen: 20.00/M

MP Regen: 6147.54/M

“I now regenerate over 100MP per second,” Sylver said without any emotion in his voice.

“What’s your constitution at?” Bruno asked.

“200, and I have exactly 2,000 health,” Sylver answered.

Bruno was quiet for a while.

“So classical glass cannon… Although, in your case, it’s more to do with you being an undead, than a mage” Bruno said.

“Yes, yes, I remember, but I already died and came back before I met you, so not much I can do about it now. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? Even if I become “dead,” I have more than enough control over my soul to walk around perfectly fine for several weeks. More, if I’m able to use Morana as an anchor,” Sylver said.

“Then forget I said anything… Did you figure anything out about your unique class? I tried to research it, but the [Koschei] class isn’t mentioned anywhere,” Bruno asked, and Sylver shook his head.

“I initially thought it was something to do with how much danger I put myself in… But it gave me a level when I locked my needle and heart up in my ribcage. I got another level when I got Nyx’s grimoire back. I got 3 more when I forced the thing I prefer not talking about into a deal… And I got another one when I created Morana,” Sylver counted out.

Bruno was silent for about a minute and seemed to arrive at the same conclusion as Sylver.

“It’s level increases whenever your “power” increases. You became more powerful when you made your weakness harder to harm. You became more powerful when you got a master-level necromancer’s grimoire. You got more power when you forced the you-know-what into working for you. And the same is true for the horse chimera,” Bruno said.

“What about the perks that don’t do anything? And the trait?” Sylver asked, and Bruno went quiet again.

“I’ve never seen it before, but my money would be that you should have those perks, but you haven’t met all the conditions. Normally you wouldn’t even know about them until the conditions were met, but maybe… The order is important? So they are placed there as placeholders?” Bruno explained.

There was a line between thinking about perks, levels, attributes, and thinking about why they were a thing. The system seemed to accept that Sylver wasn’t trying to pry details about it from Bruno, and was doing what the system wanted, and was just playing along as if this was all normal.

On that thought, Sylver decided against ranking up either skill and postponed both until he had Ria near him.

“Egg, hare, chest, and duck,” Sylver said out loud.

“See, now that rings a bell. I can’t for the life of me remember what exactly, but I think I recognize the pattern. I certainly feel that I do,” Bruno said with a finger pointed at Sylver.

“On that note, I’m going to need some time to see if anything happened to your bodies or souls while I was gone. Faust will be staying at my house, up until we leave, but do keep in mind that you might feel a little woozy after the checkup, so plan accordingly,” Sylver said.

They arrived at a large wooden door, and every inch of it was covered in faintly glowing burned in sigils. Bruno gestured at it, and the door shimmered and swung out of the way.

“How is he?” Bruno asked as Sylver followed him into the overflowing with mana room.

“Terrible. But I’ve seen worse. What he needs is something to distract him, and a fair bit of tough love. With things like this, trying to fix what set him off is pointless, the pus might be coming out through the skin, but the rot is probably somewhere deep inside,” Sylver said.

“What a lovely analogy,” Bruno said, and what surprised Sylver was that he meant it.

Sylver rubbed his hands together and caused golden sparks to fly everywhere. He stretched out his pitch-black bone fingers towards the first chimera and waited for the liquid-like smoke to engulf the creature.