2

Powerful instincts drive me forward as I smash my way through the unlocked, partially opened door. I hear a pained grunt and the sound of someone hitting the floor hard as I step into the small hall just past the door. I don't immediately see whoever opened the door, the "Father" I'm assuming, and I quickly realize that whoever it is is behind the door that I wrenched open.

I step towards the door, in search of the person who unintentionally let me in. When I step past the door I spot him, I grin at the figure. The person sprawled on the floor is indeed the church's "Father", and I inelegantly lunge at him. I do mentally note the desire I feel to inflict death on this man, which I realize is not anything particularly personal but seems to be the result of a natural inclination I personally possess. My desire to kill this man is far less keen than my desire to kill the strangers in the vat-filled chamber I was just in and I know that I could easily resist such urges in the future if I had no specific reason to kill somebody.

At the moment there is nothing graceful about me. I seem to embody brutal, senseless violence as I close the distance between the man and myself. He cries out in pain when I land on top of him and I deftly wrap my hands around his throat. He looks at me and I study him curiously.

The man begins to panic as I strangle him. He was blinded by pain when I first mounted him but within milliseconds of my hands wrapping around his throat he regains his wits and I feel his heartbeat quicken as I keep my hands tightly wrapped around his throat. He hits me but I quietly tank the hits, unmoved in any sense by them and aware that the energy it takes him to uncoordinately resist me will only accelerate his demise.

My victim has light brown hair and normally gentle brown eyes. He seems to be decently young, though he's far from a child. At the moment his eyes are bloodshot and panicked, and his hair is messy. His robes are dirtied, due to a combination of his blood and the impact of the door scuffing them, and I can feel his frenzied heartbeat as he tries to cry out. The sound is strangled and muffled, and even the act of him unwisely attempting to verbally protest only accelerates his fate.

"You could try that again…" I remark, taunting the man, curious to see if my purposefully bad advice will egg him on. My words are slow, purposeful, and spoken with precise intent because I only "Know" this language thanks to my enhanced learning rate. He glares at me and his efforts to toss me off of him or even just loosen my hold on his neck intensify but they are futile and I only smirk when I sense his body beginning to slow ever so slightly. His uncoordinated resistance is not enough to stop my attack and I watch as his eyes begin to dim a touch.

The funny thing is that if I hadn't tossed myself onto the spear of one of my foes just minutes ago I likely would have been moved by the man's blows. My ability to grow stronger based on the injuries I take is a curious thing, especially since it's not like I have immunity to punches and kicks it's just that the force needed for such blows to successfully damage me or even momentarily push me back is more than the man is capable of generating in his disadvantageous position.

"Sleep." I tell the figure, my voice much calmer than when I was taunting my victim. I smile slightly as his eyes begin to close. During this time I tighten my grip on his neck and it takes a few moments before I sense his life fade.

It takes a few more minutes of uninterrupted strangulation before I feel his life vanish completely. I know his life is over when I feel the majority of what makes the man himself begin to seep into me. I remain on top of him as the sensation of almost everything he was seeps out of him and into me.

The sensation of the man's… essence, for lack of a better word, becoming mine is a bit strange. As the Anti-Immortal, a font of death itself, I receive a considerable number of things, things stolen from my victims, whenever I follow my instincts and snuff out a life. The first things I feel change within me are my raw attributes.

I feel the thin but not nonexistent muscles of the figure I now understand to be a priest become mine. My arms don't widen or anything like that but I do feel every ounce of his muscles metaphysically overlay themselves on my actual muscles, enhancing me physically.

His knowledge is the next thing to be absorbed, and as I feed on his wisdom and identity I feel my awareness of my current situation tremendously increase. I gain knowledge of my location, of the purpose of the building I'm in, and much, much more as I bask in my victory.

This is a world named "Earth" and I am in a small town in the middle of a "Country" named "The United States of Solanos". This man is a priest named Victor, who is the local head of a religion named the "Lunarian Faith" and he was in the midst of some salacious, solitary activity when I approached the church. Technically his activities were against the rules of his faith, but I also know that he knew that such rules were often disobeyed.

By absorbing his knowledge I have gained a tremendously handy base of knowledge about this world. I can instantly sift through what he knows and while I need time to make his knowledge as instinctual for me to understand and make sense of as my innate knowledge happens to be I greedily begin to sift through it looking for knowledge about interesting targets.

The part of my mind that is suffused with Victor's knowledge immediately begins to passively inform the rest of me about political and social power structures on one hand, and things like gyms and martial arts schools on the other, both of which greatly intrigue the part of me that is distinctly and uniquely myself. He also knows about something known as "Mythology" which I sense that I'd be interested in, once I take the time to study it. It has something to do with gods, which are naturally prime targets for me due to the degree of my ability to take powers and more from my victims.

I gently tremble when I sense the man's remaining attributes become a part of me. The figure has a casual charisma that I can subtly feel becoming a part of mine, and I even feel the tiny bit of arcane power he possessed enter me and add a tiny bit of weight to my small pool of arcane energy. I still can't use any magic, since all of the magic I know is big, reality-reshaping stuff, but I already know that meditation can increase how much arcane power I possess and eventually allow me to use the reality-shaping eldritch power I possess. This innate knowledge is due to one of my abilities being that I know how to train all of my powers and attributes.

I get up off of the man's corpse and I subtly gesture in the direction of the body when I'm standing over it. This causes the shadow the man's body casts to vibrate violently for a few moments before it becomes fully animated.

I watch, a look of mild interest on my face, as the thing wrenches itself free from the floor and takes a few seconds to assume the form of the fallen priest, its features subtly taking on the shape of the man I murdered. During this time I shut the door behind me, not that such an action would likely matter all that much since not one person or car has driven by during the time I was ending Victor's life. This is a very small town. When the freed shadow is physically identical to the slain priest the figure turns to face me.

"Hello master, how are you?" It asks, and I smile joyfully at the thing.

"Hello, Victor… I am doing well. I'm excited to see you.." I reply, and the shadow smiles radiantly at me. There is a curious serenity it radiates, a sort of subtly spooky joy it seems to feel that I fully recognize would be unnerving if I didn't know everything it knows and thus know the source of the joy it feels. Its servitude fills it with purpose and peace, and as the cause of those emotions, it feels an unhealthy joy in my presence.

The creature standing before me is a "Shadow Servant". "Shadow Servants" are shadows given form and some semblance of free will that I can create when I kill something. These beings retain the powers, knowledge, and skills of my fallen foes, as well as some version of their base personalities, just refocused so that I matter more than anything else they once cared about. Even a glance at Victor's shadow allows me to immediately detect its slavish loyalty to me and uncanny joy at being in my presence.

Shadow servants are immortal, fanatical recreations of my victims. They are the shadowy remnants of my victims, twisted and distorted by my dark powers. Victor is a perfectly mundane human, and as such his enhancements are primarily that he's been made immortal and that his body and mind have been pushed towards the human zenith. I can faintly sense minor improvements to his form, and I can see his mind working at a breakneck pace compared to what I saw when I glanced at him before his death.

I study the shadow for a second as I continue to passively absorb the knowledge Victor possessed, and I learn something surprising when I recall Victor's more recent memories: churches are community centers and thus often have things like donated clothes! I turn to the servant and issue my first-ever command.

"I need you to dispose of… Victor." I tell the shadow, who simply nods at me. I smile at him as he turns towards the corpse and silently lifts the thing. He immediately heads off in the direction of the nearest entrance to the church's basement. I turn towards the "Nave" of the building, the central part of the largest room of the church, and walk towards and then past the nearest pews. The section of the building where donations are stored and sorted is a large room past the office where Victor was sitting and sinning earlier.

I walk through the nave, keenly aware of how this society views nudity, and become happy that no one unaware of my circumstances can see me. As I absorb more of Victor's knowledge I reach the area just the nave, the crossing, and head towards the south transept, where the office and the storeroom are situated.

I step out of the church's area for congregants and enter a small hallway. I spot three doors: one that leads outside, one that leads to the church's office, and another that leads to the storeroom. It only takes me a few seconds to reach the large storeroom and I find myself inside of a large kitchen where tons of space is taken up by assorted boxes. I'm standing in the dark but my senses are sharp enough that I can easily see everything I need to see without any difficulty.

Different boxes are labeled different things, which I can make sense of thanks to Victor's knowledge. I read the labels and note the abundance of donated food, which the majority of boxes seem to contain. Victor's knowledge allows me to know that this town's total population numbers in the hundreds and despite that fact there are many boxes here that contain food meant to go to the downtrodden and unfortunate. I eventually find a few boxes that contain clothes and I take a few seconds to get one that contains men's clothes open and begin to sift through it.

I guesstimate my size based on Victor's knowledge coupled with his size, and eventually manage to assemble an outfit made up of jeans, and a plain black t-shirt, as well as a pair of donated shoes though I don't put on anything like underwear or socks. When the clothes are on I take a few steps back and I glance at the part of the room I just left. I activate my clairvoyant vision again and peer into the recent past, so I can study myself.

I see my whole body for the first time when I peer into the room's recent past. I am a decently tall figure, standing perhaps 5'11" as measured by humans of this particular nation, with dark hair and pale skin. Some of my features I recognize fairly easily, such as my pale and somewhat muscular chest, while others are completely new to me such as my black eyes and equally raven-colored hair.

I spend several moments watching the vision, only to pause it before it reaches the point where I move to my current spot. I circle the space and allow myself to see every detail of my body, including what I look like from angles I'd normally need a mirror to see. Doing this takes a bit of time and before I know it Victor's freed shadow enters the room behind me. I turn and nod at him, smiling before I turn fully and glance at the man.

He is wearing almost nothing, having stripped down to his underwear. He walks over to the box I opened and quickly grabs some clothes to put on. As he gets dressed he begins to speak.

"I have buried Victor. I also cleaned up the mess in the entry hall." The figure informs me, causing me to smile. I turn back and glance at the boxes.

"Why are there so many donations? This is a small town right?" I ask, causing Victor's shadow to smile softly.

"The people here are a generous sort and I am well-liked. We tend to… re-donate excessive donations to a city not far from here named Headsboro. We go there a few times a year to give our excessive stuff out to the local churches and to aid in their distribution." Victor explains, causing me to nod. It'd be a good idea for me to go ahead and assimilate as much of Victor's knowledge as I can so I can come up with plans that leverage things like this.

I instruct my servant to accompany me to his office so I can sit down and begin to absorb the knowledge the now-deceased priest possessed at the time of his death. In moments we are in the tiny room and I am sitting on the ground in a corner of the room. I shut my eyes and give my servant one casual instruction.

"Go ahead and complete as much of your work as you can. I need time to properly assimilate the knowledge I absorbed from Victor, and I can't properly strategize without having a decent knowledge base." I tell the shadow. The figure affirmatively responds to my command, and I hear it begin to go through the office and get to organizing the place as I shift my focus to the lifetime of knowledge, memories, and thoughts I need to digest.

My absorption of Victor's identity is thorough. I know everything he knows and have absorbed all of his attributes, potential, and charisma, as well as various other facets of what made the man a unique individual. Everything that belonged to him, other than his soul, resides within me. As I begin to focus on the part of my mind that stores the bits and pieces of knowledge that he possessed that I haven't yet assimilated, I faintly sense the base of knowledge that I possess quickly grows.

I sense what I consciously know about this world increasing with every passing second. Over the course of scant milliseconds days of Victor's life pass from the unconscious back of my mind to the part of my brain where I can actively recall them. In minutes I can recall the names of the man's earliest playmates and the face of his mother.

As this is occurring I create a second, less-focused train of thought. The purpose of this secondary stream of consciousness is to begin to scheme. As my primary train of thought focuses on transferring Victor's knowledge and making it a part of my conscious knowledge base the second train of thought is hard at work making use of my knowledge of my powers and my knowledge of Earth to come up with plans to allow me to accrue more power.

When I have been focusing for an hour I sense my rate of knowledge assimilation slowly beginning to quicken. The difference is subtle but not so subtle that it escapes my notice and minutes later I have absorbed enough of Victor's memories that I am just getting to see him go to school, an institution in this world that allows human children to gain an as universal as possible floor of knowledge that allows them to minimally participate in society.

Meanwhile, my secondary train of thought is formulating plots that revolve around experimenting with my powers. My internal wellspring of knowledge regarding my abilities is powerfully profound, and thanks to it I can easily envision various plots such as trying to see if doing something like poisoning someone would allow me to absorb their attributes, knowledge, and other such things as well as take their shadows and make them into my servants.

This part of my mind also wonders if things slain by my servants can become servants of mine and get absorbed by me in the same way that things slain by me do. I am fairly certain that they can, and if this is true then that means that certain professions are potentially extremely lucrative for me from a death-centered point of view. That said, I still need to have Victor's shadow slay something in order for me to know for sure…

This same train of thought is also quick to apply facts that I internalize into its plots. It quickly constructs schemes that take advantage of the church's role as a center of community, such as using the place as a natural location from which I can easily pick more targets to either murder and make servants out of or to simply manipulate. My powers are not limited to murder, and I can easily and nonviolently manipulate or even seduce people into doing my bidding, it's just that murder gives me the most benefits for the least amount of action.

A tiny part of me also faintly detects my minuscule pool of magical energy beginning to very faintly grow as I meditate. As hours begin to pass the rate of growth my pool of arcane energy undergoes also begins to increase.

Every part of me can grow through training and this is something I am experiencing firsthand. My ability to grow is a critical component of my powers, and it is something that could someday allow me to actually end the lives of immortal and often immensely powerful beings like gods and demons. In my current state even taking down something like a bear would be a struggle, and upon mentally reviewing my memories of my… birthplace, I suspect that to take down the reptilian guard I was determined to get past I'd probably have to grow stronger by enduring many more of its blows before I'd have succeeded in slaying it.

Over the course of the next few hours I begin to absorb knowledge that intrigues me. I learn of "Mythology" which refers to stories this world's humans believe about beings like gods and various types of sapient non-human beings. These stories often take place during an ill-defined period of proto-history and include things like creatures that can lift buildings and monsters that can annihilate cities that this world's people believed literally and physically existed for centuries.

Religions were built around the characters of these stories, and to this day holy sites devoted to them can still be visited by well-educated travelers or the minuscule populations which still believe in these faiths, though in ways that sharply differ from their spiritual ancestors. I also learn that it seems many people either believe these things never actually existed or were somehow driven out of mainstream society or even exterminated…

I wonder about that. I know that I exist and that my powers work, I saw myself heal from being impaled by a spear over a few seconds, and I've snuffed out a life and absorbed the knowledge of my victims. I've even given form to the shadow left behind by the victim of my actions! I could easily be a mythological monster in some of these myths and I am quite difficult to kill. I wonder what fate befell the monsters and gods of this world's past, especially since even the Lunarian faith has its myths and monsters, as well as a deity, and people seem to believe that at least the deity of the faith is a real, if perhaps misunderstood, being.

My enhanced mind also allows me to realize that if I want to truly understand the myths of religions other than the Lunarian faith I need to either do research on my own or find and devour scholars of religion. Both of those prospects are entertaining and rewarding in their own rights, but both also require more resources than this settlement may offer. This is a tiny town, Victor's hometown, and it barely has a public library and a community college. If I want to learn more I'm going to need to pick and choose careful targets and figure out a way to get to a place with more resources.

By the time I finish actively absorbing the details of the last days of Victor's life, from his early childhood, to his time in seminary, to his relatively short time as a priest, the night has passed. The man was thirty-four at the time of his death and precisely absorbing the totality of his life took me much of the night. I glance at Victor's shadow, who is seated behind a desk and is busily tapping away at what I now know to be a computer. I grin at him and begin to speak.

"I'm glad I was able to find you before I found someone else less educated. With the knowledge and memories I have just finished absorbing from… you, I am now armed with a great deal of insight." I remark, brightly. Victor's wisdom is a sharp weapon in my arsenal. Armed with both Victor's shadow and his knowledge schemes and plots dance in the back of my mind, eager to be enacted. They all require some level of groundwork before I can get to them, and I need to create an identity for myself, but nothing I need to do is particularly complicated.

Faint sunlight trickles into the room, filtered by a tiny window at the end of the space, and allows me to see the distinct details of the grim grin that stretches across the face of the shadow. The man and I have work to do, but between the work the shadow has done on Victor's behalf and what I know we can efficiently begin to divide and conquer. I quickly give the shadow brief instructions and in almost no time at all the shadow and I exit the room, ready to begin the work needed for me to create an identity and for me to begin to expand my influence.