“…Huh?”
Cal stared at Nick as though waiting for the question to become less ridiculous if he gave it enough time.
It didn’t.
Nick leaned back in the wooden chair.
“No demon king?”
“…No?”
“Ancient evil?”
“Like vampires?”
Cal scratched his head. “I mean, there’s all sorts of stories, but they generally keep to themselves, right?”
“Stories about something currently threatening to destroy the world?”
“Uh…” Cal considered that more seriously. “No. Not that I’ve heard of.”
“Is there a Sealed God?”
“Probably?”
Nick frowned.
Cal raised both hands. “There are a lot of gods, sir. Someone probably sealed one somewhere, right?”
That was less helpful than Nick had hoped.
“Extradimensional invasion?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“An army from another world.”
“There’s only one world, sir.”
“You’re certain?”
“No, I ain’t the scholarly type.”
Cal looked toward the other bandits gathered around the campfire as though hoping one of them might possess information he had somehow missed.
A few heads shook.
One woman shrugged.
Someone near the back called, “There was that thing with the talking fish last year.”
Cal twisted around. “That was a festival float.”
“Oh.”
Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“So nobody summoned a hero.”
“If someone had, do you think we’d know about it?”
That left him with remarkably little information.
Nick had expected the question to sound ridiculous. It sounded ridiculous to him, and he was the one sitting in an unfamiliar forest after getting impaled by a piece of burning timber.
Still, there had been a certain logic behind it.
If someone had dragged him across worlds intentionally, then presumably they wanted something.
Saving the world was at least traditional.
Apparently reality had elected to be less considerate.
Nick looked back toward Cal.
“Where are we?”
The bandit hesitated.
“The… forest, your lordship.”
Nick waited.
Cal cleared his throat.
“A forest in… Rovar?”
An unfamiliar name.
Nick searched his memory anyway.
He had spent most of his adult life crossing battlefields that eventually stretched across every surviving territory on Earth. Before the Ascendants, he had traveled enough that Seren once accused him of treating international borders as suggestions. After the invasion, borders had mostly become descriptions of which army was currently losing ground.
Rovar meant nothing to him.
“What country borders it?”
“Depends on the direction.”
“Pick one.”
“The Wastes to the east. Voskeg Mountains are to the south. Don’t go that way, lemme tell ya. North of here is mostly a lake.”
“What is the nearest settlement?”
“That’d be Cairel.”
“How far?”
“Couple days walking if you know the roads.”
“And Cairel belongs to Rovar?”
Cal nodded.
Nick let the silence stretch while he watched the fire between them.
There were possibilities other than another world.
This could be a fabricated environment or an illusion. Some Ascendant prison designed to convince him he had escaped. Both Phineas and Alice were capable of making something like that.
He could think of half a dozen increasingly improbable explanations if he tried hard enough.
None accounted particularly well for the ‘system’.
Nick looked toward the pile of goods the bandits had surrendered.
“Tell me about the system.”
Cal blinked.
“The System?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
Nick considered how to phrase the question without sounding completely insane to a local.
“What does it do?”
Cal stared at him.
Nick stared back.
“You really don’t know?”
“I’m beginning to suspect that asking questions is the reason I kept you all alive.”
That helped.
Cal sat straighter.
“Well, everyone’s got it. Humans, monsters, beastkin, whatever else. You’ve got skills, traits, sometimes bloodlines. Magic, if you’re lucky enough to get any. Kill monsters, earn skill points. Use skills enough and they get better.”
That was significantly more information than Nick expected from a bandit.
“Skill points?”
“You’ve never—” Cal stopped himself. “Right. Questions.”
Nick motioned for him to continue.
“You kill monsters, sometimes you get skill points. Then you spend them.”
“On what?”
“Skills.”
Nick waited.
Cal waited with him.
“I feel like your explanation is missing some details.”
The bandit grimaced.
“You’ve got a skill, right?”
“Fireball.”
“Then you can improve Fireball with skill points.”
Nick thought about the notifications that appeared during the fight.
His Fireball had already improved simply from use.
“So skills improve both through use and through these… points?”
“Usually.”
“Usually?”
“Some are weird.”
That, Nick suspected, was going to become an irritatingly common answer.
“And how do I see all of this? Skills, points, whatever else the System keeps track of?”
“Your status?”
“Presumably.”
“Just say ‘Status’. Or think it.”
Nick looked at him.
“That’s it?”
“What else would you do?”
He considered opening his status immediately, but there were still nearly two dozen armed bandits standing around him. Whatever the System chose to show, he would rather examine it without an audience.
“And skillbooks?”
Cal glanced toward the leather-bound book resting among the surrendered supplies.
“They teach skills.”
“Any skill?”
“If someone wrote a book for it, I suppose.”
“How?”
Cal spread his hands.
“The System.”
Nick disliked that answer on principle.
He picked up the book.
The symbols across the cover remained meaningless. Whatever allowed him to understand spoken language apparently did not extend to the written form.
“Can anyone use one?”
“Most people.”
“What prevents someone from learning every skill they find?”
“Money, I suppose.”
Nick looked up.
Cal shrugged.
“Good skillbooks are expensive. Also, stories say there is a skill cap, though nobody I know ever reached it.”
A skill cap…
“Anything else?”
“Some skills don’t work for everybody. Some need other skills first. Sometimes your bloodline matters. Sometimes the book just doesn’t like you.”
“The book.”
“That’s what people say.”
Nick opened it.
The pages were covered in tightly packed script accompanied by several diagrams he couldn’t interpret. One depicted a humanoid figure with dark markings concentrated around the chest and neck. Another showed what appeared to be a sword entering beneath the ribs.
The illustrations at least gave him a guess.
“What does this one teach?”
Cal leaned forward, then immediately recoiled as if remembering that being close to Nick was potentially unhealthy.
“No idea.”
“It belonged to your boss.”
“That’s right.”
“And none of you tried it?”
Cal gave him an incredulous look. “Only one person can use a skillbook. Boss would’ve killed us.”
“Your boss is missing.”
“He’ll come back.”
Nick considered that.
Apparently optimism survived under unusual conditions.
He closed the book.
“What else should I know?”
Cal took a moment.
“About the System?”
“About surviving long enough to reach Cairel.”
That produced a much more thoughtful expression.
“Stay on the roads.”
“Why?”
“Monsters.”
“What kind?”
Cal laughed uncertainly.
“Depends on what finds you, right?”
Nick did not laugh with him.
The bandit eventually continued.
“Most things this close to Cairel aren’t too bad. Night wolves or boars. Giant insects, sometimes. There are worse things deeper in the forest. The real scary stuff is in Voskeg.”
“And the vampire?”
Cal glanced toward several of his companions.
“We don’t know where she is.”
“Is she more dangerous than the local monsters?”
“Can a baby survive in a nest of vipers without its mum?”
No hesitation.
“What exactly makes a vampire dangerous here?”
Cal’s eyebrows rose. “Besides being a vampire?”
“Humor me.”
“They’re fast and strong. Hard to kill. Some can use blood magic.” He scratched at his beard. “There aren’t supposed to be any around here.”
“Yet one visited your camp.”
“That’s right.”
“And your leader voluntarily followed her.”
Cal’s mouth tightened.
“…Right.”
Nick turned the book over in his hands.
The boss disappearing after meeting a vampire mattered.
It simply didn’t matter as much as reaching civilization alive.
Nick stood.
Several of the bandits flinched.
“You can take a third of the supplies.”
Cal blinked. “Sir?”
“Food, weapons, whatever else you can reasonably carry. One third exactly.”
Nobody moved.
Nick sighed.
“I am releasing you.”
That produced considerably more activity.
The camp came alive as the bandits hurried toward the supply pile, though several continued watching Nick as though expecting him to change his mind and incinerate the slowest among them.
Cal remained.
Nick looked at him.
“You’re either very brave or remarkably poor at following crowds.”
“I was wondering why.”
“Why what?”
“Why let us go?”
Nick glanced toward the people sorting hurriedly through food and equipment.
“Would you prefer that I kill you?”
“No.”
“Then I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to negotiate against your own interests.”
Cal’s mouth opened, then closed.
Nick almost turned away before another thought occurred to him.
“You want advice?”
Cal regarded him carefully.
“Is saying ‘no’ dangerous?”
“Probably not.”
“Then yes.”
Nick looked toward the white bandana around the man’s head, then the axe-horned unicorn tattoo beneath it.
“You’re bad at this.”
Cal grimaced. “I thought we did alright.”
“You attacked an unarmed stranger without knowing what he was capable of, lost several people, surrendered your camp, and are now leaving with a fraction of your possessions.”
Cal considered that.
“When you put it like that—”
“Find another profession.”
“What would you recommend?”
Nick almost answered immediately.
Build something.
Find people worth protecting.
Spend whatever time you had making a life that mattered after the fighting stopped.
The words gathered and caught somewhere behind his ribs.
For an instant, he smelled smoke.
Warm fingers rested against his wrist.
Memory supplied Seren at a nearby table, scratching notes across paper while muttering because Shinhwa had once again reorganized something he had been explicitly told not to touch.
Nick looked away.
“Something with a lower mortality rate.”
Cal waited for more.
Nick gave him none.
Eventually the bandit nodded.
“Fair.”
Within half an hour, the camp was quiet.
Nick watched the last cart disappear between the trees before turning toward what remained.
The bandits had left him enough food to last weeks if he rationed it properly, assuming nothing spoiled first. There were blankets, several battered weapons, rope, basic cookware, clothing, and a modest assortment of coins whose value he had no way to estimate.
The supplies were useful, but most of them were effectively immobile.
He had no horse and wouldn’t trust the half broken carts around the clearing. He also had no interest in hauling sacks of flour through monster-infested forest.
That problem could wait.
The book could not.
Nick carried it back toward the campfire and sat.
He had already used Fireball enough to know that the System could construct magic around him with very little input. If Cal was telling the truth, this object could do something similar with an entire skill.
That should have been impossible.
Nick had spent years learning the intricacies of mana reinforcement. Seren had devoted most of her life to magical theory, and by the end she could spend hours explaining why something that looked simple required twelve different principles working together.
Here, apparently, all one needed to do was read a book.
He opened the book.
Nothing happened.
Nick turned a page.
Still nothing.
“Use the book,” he murmured.
The System remained unimpressed.
He pressed mana into it.
That produced a response.
A faint vibration traveled through the cover, followed by the familiar chime inside his skull.
A window unfolded above the page.
=Would you like to absorb and learn the skill Execute?=
-Yes/No-
Nick stared at the word.
Execute.
The diagrams suddenly made more sense.
He focused on the name to pull up the detailed description.
=Execute=
-Active Skill-
->Rank: 1/100
->Description: Execute a sufficiently wounded enemy.
->Threshold: 10%
There is no room for mercy, only the certainty of an ending.
Nick reread it.
The flavor text was dramatic.
The skill itself was practical.
Disturbingly practical.
Every fight eventually reached a point where the result was already decided before the enemy actually died. Nick had learned young that those final seconds could still cost lives—a last spell, a pulled trigger, one desperate strike from something that should already have been dead.
Hesitation at the end of a fight was rarely mercy. It usually meant someone else paid for it.
Ten percent.
He wondered what exactly the System considered ten percent.
Health points?
Physical integrity?
Probability of survival?
The terminology implied that somewhere beneath the abstraction, the System was measuring something.
He selected Yes.
The book dissolved.
Nick nearly dropped it.
Ink and leather faded into translucent wisps that curled around his fingers before sinking through the skin of his chest. There was no pain, only a brief pressure behind his sternum followed by something stranger.
Understanding.
He knew how to use Execute.
There was no lesson attached to it, no explanation of the underlying mechanism. The knowledge simply occupied a place in his thoughts where nothing had existed moments earlier.
Nick sat very still.
That was terrifying.
He lifted one hand and turned it over.
Magic granted by a System was one thing.
Knowledge inserted directly into his mind was another.
Seren would have burned the book.
She would probably be correct in doing so.
Then she would have studied the ashes for a hint at how the book accomplished such a miraculous feat.
The thought came easily.
The absence behind it did not.
Nick closed his hand.
There was one other thing Cal had mentioned.
“Status.”
A translucent pane appeared in front of him.
===Status===
Name: Nicholas Draegan
Age: 27
Race: Overseer (Human*)
->Characteristics: Immortality, Avatar Creation, [Locked], [Locked]
Health: 100%
Mana: 27%
Magic System:
Echelomancy
->Unused Skill Points: 0.03
->Skills: Fireball (3/-), Execute (1/100), Infinite Wardrobe
->Bloodline: Avatar Rank 1 (Basic)
Nick read the list.
Then read the first few lines again.
“Overseer?”
His finger settled over the word.
Another window unfolded.
=Overseer=
An architect and custodian of reality that wields godlike powers accessible through the accumulation of faith and souls. Overseers can originate from any race; the term acts as a racial modifier.
He stared.
“An architect of reality.”
The System offered no further elaboration.
He glanced toward the abandoned tents, the stolen wagons, and the cooking pot someone had left behind.
His current accommodations were somewhat lacking for an ‘architect of reality’.
He’d known gods. He had fought alongside them, argued with them, and watched them die. They were not abstractions to him, though becoming one was an achievement he had long since realized was impossible due to the path he’d walked.
In all his conversations with the gods of Earth, he’d never heard them mention the term ‘Overseer’.
And the description was peculiar.
He’d seen gods perform miracles that defied explanation, but the idea of being able to shape reality itself suggested possibilities that went well beyond anything he understood.
What exactly could an Overseer create?
Did their powers obey the same limitations as other forms of divinity?
And what did faith and souls have to do with it?
Nick looked back at the status window.
There was a time when he’d have given almost anything for answers to questions like these.
Now, apparently, he had a chance to find out for himself.
“Immortality.”
=Immortality=
-Overseer Characteristic-
-Passive-
->Description: Complete immunity to the ravages of time and disease.
Nick waited for the rest of the description.
There wasn’t any.
“No immunity to swords, then.”
It was a rather important omission.
He touched Avatar Creation.
=Avatar Creation=
-Overseer Characteristic-
-Active-
->Description: The ability to create an Overseer Avatar.
->Number of Active Avatars: 1/1
->Available Forms: Human
Nick looked down at his hands.
One active avatar.
If this body was an avatar, what exactly was it an avatar of? He could feel his pulse, his breathing, the lingering ache in his jaw. Whatever it was, this body felt real enough.
But the wording suggested that the number could eventually increase.
Nick considered that.
Two bodies.
What an absurd thought.
He could barely imagine the practical implications of being in two places at once. There were obvious combat applications, but the more he considered it, the more possibilities occurred to him.
He could explore places too dangerous to investigate alone. He could study two subjects simultaneously. Perhaps he could even send one version of himself exploring while the other stayed home to help around the house.
Assuming any of that was how it worked.
He’d have to find out.
He tried selecting one of the locked entries.
=Locked=
-Unknown-
->Conditions to use this characteristic have not been met.
“Of course.”
He looked again at the list of skills. Fireball. Execute. Infinite Wardrobe.
It was a new beginning to his life, with a new world, and a new magic system to explore.
A custodian of reality armed with a spell, a finishing move, and a piece of… furniture.
Nick laughed.
The laugh surprised him enough that he stopped, then found himself smiling again.
“Seren would never let me hear the end of this.”
He could almost imagine the questions she would ask. How did the System determine his remaining health and mana points? Why did it distinguish between an Overseer and the body it inhabited? If he created multiple avatars, would they share a consciousness? What happened if the existing avatar was destroyed?
He had questions of his own.
For the first time since waking in the forest, some of them were questions he actually looked forward to answering.
He dismissed the window.
He needed to reach Cairel.
Whatever had happened to him, the answers were unlikely to be waiting in a bandit camp.
He spent the next several minutes choosing what he could reasonably carry: food, a waterskin, a blanket, the best of the available swords, a knife, some rope, and a small pouch of coins.
The sword offended him.
He took it anyway.
Before leaving, he climbed onto one of the wagons and studied the surrounding trees.
Cal had said the road to Cairel lay east.
Nick had no compass.
The afternoon sun gave him enough to start.
In hindsight, he hadn’t asked if the sun rose in the east in this world…
But something was better than nothing.
He could find the road, establish his bearings, then decide whether returning for more supplies was worth the effort.
He left the camp behind.
The forest thickened quickly.
At first, Nick moved slowly enough to remember the route back, marking unusual trees and changes in elevation while keeping the sun whenever possible at a consistent angle. The terrain was rougher than it had appeared from the camp, with exposed roots winding through damp soil and a thorny undergrowth forcing him to change direction more often than he liked.
His new body tired sooner than expected.
That irritated him.
He had grown accustomed to treating exhaustion as something that happened after several days without sleep, not an hour of walking through uneven terrain.
By the time he found the tracks, sweat had begun gathering beneath his shirt.
Nick stopped.
The impression in the earth was enormous.
He crouched beside it.
The impression had four distinct toes, each ending in deep claw marks.
The shape resembled a paw print, though whatever had left it would have needed to weigh several times more than any wolf he had encountered on Earth.
Nick touched the edge.
It was fresh.
The soil had not yet dried where it had been compressed.
He stood and listened.
The forest had gone quiet.
A branch rustled to his left.
Nick drew the stolen sword.
Another rustle followed.
Something white emerged from beneath a bush.
Nick stared.
The rabbit stared back.
It was small enough to fit beneath one arm, with clean white fur and long ears angled curiously toward him.
Its nose twitched.
Nick looked toward the enormous track.
Then back toward the rabbit.
Nick had fought enough things that barely qualified as human to know appearances meant very little.
A lifetime of terrible experiences offered one explanation.
“No.”
The rabbit tilted its head.
Nick raised his free hand.
“Fireball.”
The spell crossed the clearing and struck it squarely.
Flame engulfed the creature.
For an instant, Nick felt faintly ridiculous.
Then something underneath the fur moved.
The rabbit convulsed.
Its spine lengthened with a series of wet cracks.
Nick took one step backward.
Flesh swelled beneath burning fur as the creature expanded violently, its body distorting faster than bone should have been capable of growing. The small paws struck the ground and widened, claws ripping through the soil as its shoulders rose past Nick’s chest.
Then his head.
Then the lower branches.
Blood poured through the scorched remains of its fur.
Nick stared up at it.
“By the gods…”
The creature screamed and charged.
Nick moved.
His instincts demanded speed that his body didn’t possess, and the difference nearly killed him.
The rabbit’s forelimb struck where he had been an instant earlier, tearing through the earth hard enough to shower him with mud and broken roots. Nick rolled, came up badly, and felt his ankle twist beneath him.
The monster turned faster than something its size should have been capable of.
Nick raised his hand.
“Fireball!”
He altered the construct as it formed, compressing the core without pushing quite as hard as he had against the bandits.
The spell struck the rabbit across the face.
One eye burst.
The creature reeled, but it did not fall.
Nick’s mana dropped sharply.
He backed away as the monster shook itself and screamed again.
The damaged eye poured blood down the side of its face. Fire had blackened most of its muzzle, exposing pale bone beneath.
Nick tightened his grip on the sword.
He could kill it with his old technique.
The thought surfaced without invitation.
All he had to do was reinforce his legs enough to get inside its reach. He could protect his spine and drive everything else into the sword arm.
It would just take one burst.
Maybe two.
The pattern was already there.
Nick felt mana begin gathering in his legs.
He released it.
“No.”
The rabbit lunged.
Nick dove sideways and felt claws tear through the back of his shirt.
Pain opened across his shoulder.
He hit the ground and rolled.
His body screamed at him to stay down.
Nick got up anyway.
The rabbit was already turning.
He needed another option.
Fireball could hurt it, but his mana would run out before he could afford many more. His sword was almost useless against something that size unless he could reach an artery or the brain.
The damaged eye.
Nick began circling toward the creature’s ruined eye. Its remaining eye followed him, forcing the rabbit to turn farther each time he moved. When he raised his hand, the monster tensed immediately, already learning what the gesture meant.
It charged before he released it.
He threw the spell low.
The fireball struck the earth beneath its leading leg.
Flame and soil erupted together.
The rabbit stumbled as the leg vanished into the blast crater.
Nick ran forward.
His ankle protested, but he ignored it.
The monster crashed onto one shoulder, and Nick reached its blind side as it tried to rise.
He drove the stolen sword into the ruined eye.
The blade sank several inches.
The rabbit screamed.
Its head snapped sideways.
Nick lost the sword.
A forelimb struck him across the chest.
The world turned.
He hit the ground several yards away and stopped breathing.
For a few seconds, his body refused to explain whether anything was broken.
Then his lungs dragged in air.
Nick coughed and rolled onto one elbow.
The rabbit thrashed near the center of the clearing.
The sword still protruded from its eye.
Blood poured down its face.
It was badly wounded.
Something shifted at the edge of Nick’s awareness.
A vague certainty entered his mind.
Execute.
The skill was available for use.
He didn’t know how he knew. The knowledge simply existed.
Nick pushed himself upright.
The monster found him with its remaining eye.
It tried to stand.
One foreleg failed.
Nick felt the skill waiting.
Ten percent.
Apparently, the System had made its judgment.
He extended one hand toward the creature.
“Execute.”
Mana vanished from him.
Something crossed the distance between them.
Nick couldn’t see it.
The rabbit froze.
Its limbs went rigid.
For an instant, the entire clearing seemed to hold still with it.
Then the monster collapsed.
One moment, it had been dying.
The next, it was dead.
Nick remained where he was.
A chime sounded.
=You have defeated (1) Vampiric Rabbit-Bear=
=You gain 0.3 skill points=
=Execute has reached Rank 2/100=
Nick read the creature’s name twice.
“Rabbit-Bear”
Somehow, the name felt insultingly accurate.
His gaze settled on the first word.
Vampiric.
The amusement disappeared.
Cal’s missing boss.
The vampire.
A monster carrying the same designation.
It could be a coincidence, but Nick had survived too many wars to trust coincidences.
He limped toward the corpse and retrieved his sword. The blade came free with an unpleasant suction.
He cleaned it as best he could against what remained of the creature’s fur.
His hands were trembling.
Nick stopped.
He looked at them.
The fight had not been complicated. The creature was strong and fast. The old Nick would have killed it in seconds.
But he would have also destroyed half the muscles in his legs doing it if necessary.
Nick looked toward the place where the rabbit’s claw had torn through the earth.
If that strike had caught him cleanly, there would have been nothing left.
His experience had not changed, but the world had.
More importantly, his body had changed.
He could read an attack perfectly and still be too slow to escape it. He could know precisely how to kill something and lack the strength to carry out the technique.
That was dangerous.
Nick looked again at the notification.
Execute had ended the fight instantly once the monster crossed whatever threshold the System measured.
He didn’t have to ruin his muscles or tear his mana channels.
He didn’t have to force his shattered bones to last until the battle ended.
All it took was one skill.
A tiny smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“This is ridiculous.”
It was humbling to be near the bottom again. His status claimed he was a god, but he was nearly killed by a rabbit.
Nick let out a short laugh.
The smile faded as he looked toward the surrounding forest.
Cairel suddenly seemed farther away.
Nick glanced at the enormous corpse.
Dragging it back was impossible.
Staying here while its blood attracted something worse seemed equally unwise.
He checked his wounds, tested his ankle, and started back the way he had come.
This time, he paid considerably more attention to the trees.
***
The bandit camp remained empty when he returned.
Nick was relieved enough by that to be annoyed with himself.
He lowered himself beside the remains of the campfire and examined the claw marks across his shoulder. They were shallow compared to the injuries he was accustomed to, though this body had apparently developed opinions about pain now that it could feel everything properly.
He cleaned the cuts.
Then his ankle.
Then he sat quietly while the evening light faded between the trees.
He had learned several things.
He was almost certainly no longer on Earth.
The world possessed a System capable of granting skills, improving them through use, and somehow measuring the condition of living creatures.
The local wildlife included rabbits capable of becoming the size of small buildings.
There was a vampire somewhere nearby.
And, despite everything he remembered how to do, Nick was currently weak enough that a single mistake could kill him.
Nick looked down at his hands.
There were no scars.
No tremors from nerve damage.
Every finger still answered him.
He intended to keep it that way.
The System had already shown him Fireball and Execute.
There were other ways to become strong here.
He only had to survive long enough to learn them.
Nick leaned back against one of the crates and watched darkness settle over the camp.
Tomorrow, he would find the road to Cairel.
After that, he would learn what kind of world had brought him here.
And eventually, one way or another, he would find out whether there was a way back.
