Power: Part 3

Hell sniggered as he collected the funds from the two losers. I couldn't care about their bets. I'd realized that I could create level two hundred skeletons at will. From any corpse. I wasn't sure what had changed the bones from imp to human, but that was what happened when you used a massive spell built of script that changed its definition based on the script around it. The meaning of a ring could even be influenced by the surrounding rings. "What is your will, master?" I could instinctively understand the script, but the ramifications of said script were still beyond me. I needed to respond, though. 

"Follow and protect me." That should be simple enough. But I was being followed by impossibly powerful skeletons. I shrugged and returned my brand-new level ninety uncommon gear to my inventory. No point pretending to be normal when I obviously wasn't. I equipped the crown gear. Which brought to mind another issue. I added a blanket statement to all of my pets to bring legendary, unique, and mythic items they might come across to me. In all probability, they'd be killed by the protector of such powerful gear, but they might find some laying around. It could happen. Since players died for good, their corpses would retain all the gear they lost. Some might have powerful gear and still die. Would monsters loot the body?

"Can you teach your pets classes?" Hell asked. I'd tried with the boars, but they were stupid beasts. Maybe skeletons were different. I tried linking myself with the skeletons and used their stamina to use the Assassin's first ability. The ability activated but the skeleton didn't get a class. Too bad.

I rushed a tree, blasting it to shards before I realized I was still linked to the skeletons. I'd used a Barbarian's rush ability. Something felt different, though. There was a reaction, though I still didn't see any class information in the pet. I shuffled through my skills until I realized that my skill of Pet Strength Training was level one hundred. It gave me the ability let my pets use my melee classes! Beautiful!

I couldn't stop my laughter as I realized that it would be so much easier for my pets to kill monsters now that they had abilities. Most of them couldn't activate because they lacked weapons, but they were still worlds more deadly than they had been. Could they learn skills too? "Can you learn skills?" More to the point, could a level two hundred monster respond to questions?

"We know your skills, Master." The skeleton replied tonelessly. It had a very gravely voice. Unsurprising since I doubted that it had a voice box. They knew my skills? So they could combine spells? Were they smart enough to understand the arcane script? But they weren't trained in rogue or mage classes, so a lot of the script would be useless. I'd have to test it another time.

I could feel Hell's presence approaching behind me. "They're true Knights of the Black Hole now. Or was it Black Hole Knights? Whatever." He was right. Their cursors look the same as ours to the eye. It wasn't until you concentrated on it and got all of the information stored in the cursor that you realized they were pets. My pets. "And they can talk. So, that makes them the most powerful of all. More than double your level, and you're the strongest of us. Think you could win?"

"Nope. Doesn't matter. Pets can't rebel when you own over a hundred of them." And I was extensively grateful that that was a fact. "And nobody can take your pets from you. They'll die first. Even I couldn't take the pet of some useless player. I could kill it, torture it, or torture the player while the pet watched. Wouldn't make a difference. Pets are one hundred percent loyal. The player would probably give me the pet when I started torturing them, though."

"Torture works on monsters? I didn't know that." Blitz seemed to be rethinking his idea to join me. He sounded nervous. Really nervous. "You like playing the bad guy, don't you?" no. Players named Void and Hell obviously wanted to walk the path of righteousness. I didn't even bother answering that question. "Should have known. I want out of your guild. I don't like players like you. Games are for becoming a hero, not a villain." It took me several seconds to understand what he said. It was so shockingly…stupid.

He thought I'd just let him walk away? After I'd shared my knowledge with him? I shrugged and took back the guild seal. He smiled, as if it was over. It was. I blasted him with a cone of fire, just like I'd used on the imps. He was tougher, so he was still alive. "Give me back my pets." No need to waste a hundred boars and a panther.

He coughed and shook his head. I grinned as I used the Red Lightning to remove the rest of his hp. I sapped his mp, too, just in case he decided to fight back. He glowered at me. I smiled as I hit him with another blast of Red Lightning. He shrieked and screamed as he twitched on the ground. It was…off, though. Higher.

"This isn't the way we do things, man." Hell growled. He was a fighter, not a torturer. "Just let him go. You're not going to kill him, so let him go."

"Do you realize how hard it was for me to get those panthers? No. He can't have one." I blasted him with another bolt, but he was holding out. His body was warping, though. That was kind of weird. I started building them, a circle of glowing spells. His eyes widened as he saw me powering them up. He knew what I was capable of. He'd realized the truth when I started using torture spells. "If you don't have the stomach for it, go somewhere else. Plug your ears and hum, or something, but this is happening." Blitz screamed when the maelstrom of crimson bolts ripped through him. When the lightning was gone he had lost his defiance. And he had tits. And he was a human, now. A blonde girl.

He assumed the fetal position as he whimpered. "I give you all of my pets." And I felt them return to me. They followed the blanket orders and I turned my attention back to Blitz. "Now, will you let me go?" How naive. I checked his cursor just to make sure he hadn't shifted into a girl to try to get sympathy, but the cursor confirmed that it was actually a girl. So it was a girl playing a boy in the game? The pain forced her to assume the form that she actually associated with herself? Interesting. So she'd never considered her new body as her actual form. Still playing a game. Maybe if she took this seriously it wouldn't be happening in the first place.

"Sure. You can go to Hell." Hell glanced at me, but I wasn't referring to him. "The place, not the person." I used a wind spell to flick him in the forehead. His hp was so low it ended him. "The only way to leave my guild is with a body bag. Skeletons, eat him." They obeyed. Meat was meat, after all. No point wasting it.

"He won't come back. He's dead for good. How could you do that to Blitz?" Hell demanded. His voice broke on his former companion's name. "You just killed a human being! There are only so many of us, man! You want us to go extinct? Your cursor turned pink. He's really dead. You're a murderer!"

Was he that naive? Did he still think of this as a game? Even after everything? All the pain he'd gotten as feedback of overcoming the limitations any real game would set in place? "This isn't a game, Hell. This is real life. There are consequences to everything. If she got back to Zezhria, what do you think would happen? First, she'd reveal my classes. Then she'd reveal that people can teach each other classes as long as they can link their mana pools. She'd share the secrets of creating an infinite army of pets. She'd eventually build a guild and challenge me. Maybe not for a hundred years, or a million, but it would have happened. How many players would have died then? Besides, it's not as if we're going to run out of players." Hell's anger and fear got completely blown out of his head at the last sentence. "What?"

"How could we not run out of players? There are only so many people that died to enter this game. Once they run out, we're finished. Extinct. Dead. That's it." He hadn't been paying attention, apparently. How could he have thought Ryne was so shortsighted?

"Ryne built this world to last. Not just the original players playing forever. Eventually they'd get sick of each other and start dying off. Or they'd play too hard and die. Or they'd get assassinated by npcs after becoming an emperor, which can happen, too. Blitz could have been instrumental for them too. Eventually the players would all be dead." Obviously. Who knew what else she'd done to this world to make it survive longer? "Every player can have three kids. If we reproduced too fast, the npcs would become irrelevant and die out, so we have a limit. Npcs don't. I'm not entirely sure how it works for monsters. She told me that they can't become extinct, but I'm not sure if we'll eventually be swimming in dragons or not." I wanted a pet dragon. That would be awesome! Or one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Those were said to be some of the uber-monsters. Like some of the old gods. I knew that Zeus and Thor both existed, but I wasn't sure about any of the rest. Uber-monster pets would be amazing!

Hell kept on asking questions, much less aggressively now that he knew we weren't headed for extinction, but my mind had gone on to imagine the potential of pets. Eventually he was satisfied and allowed me to fully wonder about how many monsters this world had and how powerful I could become when all of them were tamed or made into skeletons.

That was when we walked into the massive clearing. I gaped as I looked around. We were back in the Pasture! No! How had this happened? I pulled out my map and realized it wasn't the Pasture. It was just a clearing. That was filled with boars. Damn. Boars were a plague in this game. I was sick of walking, though. It was such a slow way to move. I built a leap spell that worked a hundred yards at a time. I set it up to launch me five times, then I thought about the others. How could they follow me? Could I use the leap as a ward-type spell? I bound it to the ground and watched the symbols be burned into the grass. The mp cost was ten times what it should have been. I studied the script as it burned into the ground and realized it only had ten charges. Maybe permanent spells required a different surface to bind it to. "Step on that to follow me." I stepped on it and was launched through the air. I landed and was instantly hurled again. And again. And again. It was fun. It was like riding a roller coaster. Maybe the next one would have more jumps from different angles? I landed the fifth one and started laying out the next leap course. I started with simple leaps, only connecting with the ground, but I got more ornate as I waited for Hell and Lethe. The skeletons had followed me without hesitation, but the players were having issues with courage. Or Hell might be considering running away. He didn't like what I'd done to Blitz. I couldn't tell what Lethe thought. She'd vanished when he asked to leave and I hadn't been paying close enough attention to follow her thin form. She hadn't leveled her stealth to one hundred, but she was much more stealthy than the imps.

The distances I added to my course grew as I continued to wait. We explored the map as we flew, so I didn't need to keep within visible area, like with teleportation. I planned out the course to fill an area as large as the pasture around Zezhria. I was careful that the path didn't intersect anywhere. If two people were taking the course at once, I didn't want them to collide midair and die.

The longer I was forced to wait, the more extravagant the leap-path became. I ran out of space within a hundred meters of the ground, so I lifted the path to double the height.

My course was reaching five hundred meters into the sky before I heard a thump and saw Lethe's shadowy form fall to her knees. She immediately rolled out of the way. I understood why as Hell crashed to the ground. He stumbled forward and landed on his face. Leaping left you with a solid landing. Why had they fallen forward? "You decided to show up. What took so long?"

Lethe released her stealth. "Hell was debating whether or not he was going to bolt. I convinced him that your ruthlessness is a perk, not a detriment." She was grinning at me. She'd enjoyed the leap. Good. She'd like my course better. I finished the course, making the landing right next to the start point. Then I could finally bind it to the ground. "An emperor has to be ruthless to remain emperor. An immortal one more so than most."

"Good to know." I had had doubts about her, but if she actually didn't mind that I'd just killed a fellow human being, so to speak, then I'd have a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. But that didn't mean what she'd done was actually assure Hell. Maybe she'd just convinced him to wait. I shrugged off my paranoia as I pointed to the genesis point of my course. "This one's better." In that we should be able to explore the whole area in a day. I didn't really need to use it, I'd planned it all out. The skeletons could test it out for me, and then I'd have all of it explored. "Two skeletons." I pointed to the symbol. They nodded and marched onto the spell. They cackled as they flew off. Apparently monsters could have fun too, or they were just amused for some unknowable reason that had nothing to do with their current situation. "I'm going to explore with the other skeleton. You two can do what you want. That should be fun, but it isn't necessary." Since I'd made it so ornate and complicated it would take a full day to finish, and that was with speed being a massive part of each circle. "It's like a roller coaster." 

Hell immediately rushed to the spell. I still wasn't sure why he'd stumbled. He was laughing as he launched himself into the air. Each leap peaked at three meters above the lowest point regardless of the distance leapt. The only times the height changed was when the end point was higher than the start point or there was a tall obstacle in the middle and you took that into account when you started your leap. I watched my map as the skeletons rocketed through the course. They explored the land as they passed it, but they hadn't found the town or city that was the center of this clearing. I was convinced that it was there. It had to be. There was no other purpose for such a clearing. Pastures meant npcs. Npcs meant farms or villages. Otherwise, what was the point? If you had to go through an area of level fifteen monsters to get to level one monsters…that made no sense whatsoever. It was another starting location.

I dispelled the first leap chain I'd cast as I waited for the skeletons to find my target. "Why did you make a roller coaster?" Lethe's voice was a welcome distraction from looking at a pair of dots traverse empty space.

"I was bored. Hell must have been really hard to convince." What he had been convinced of was another issue altogether. I pushed that thought from my mind. I needed to trust someone, or I'd end up going insane. All she'd really need to convince him of was that the guild leader had the location of guild members on their map. He couldn't escape me if I decided to hunt him.

She sniggered at a memory. And then her eyes got really passionate. I couldn't have said what changed, apart from her eyes. The rest of her expression was the same. "I had a good reason to convince him. He was worried that you'd get drunk on your power and overreach. But in this world…all overreaching gets you is dead. And we can come back. Zezhria is yours. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. So long as she remains that way…we are invincible." Essentially true. The fire didn't leave her eyes as she looked at me. "You don't have to doubt my loyalty, you know. I know you are, because nobody gets as good as you did in the beta without a guild by being an easy friend. Believe me when I tell you that you don't have to worry about me." Exactly what a person I should be worried about would say. I needed some way to prove her loyalty, but that was a really difficult concept. People had been trying to find a way to prove loyalty for a long time. Most methods required killing someone in some way. All that proved was that the person liked killing, or was willing to kill. Loyalty was much harder to prove.

I stopped thinking about that as a town was shown on the map. "You can imitate any melee spell I use, correct?" the skeleton nodded. I grabbed Lethe around the waist and built the correct leap in a second. Before she had the time to squawk indignantly, we were flying.

We landed with an explosion. I hadn't remembered putting that into the spell, but it happened anyway. I looked around and saw our target. A dilapidated house sitting right at the edge of the fog two miles away. Vision was so much clearer in this world than the old one. I wouldn't have been able to focus on a single house two miles away on Earth. Here, though, it was easy. I could even see a rat skitter around the corner as it sensed my presence. It was annoying that the fog was just a reflection of the current area. "A little warning would have been appreciated." Lethe growled. I'd forgotten I was still holding on to her. I released her hurriedly as I tried to assess how offended she was. As far as I could tell, she wasn't. And she hadn't vanished, so I assumed that meant there wasn't a significant emotional response. A good sign.

"Sorry about that. Should have warned you." I kind of had. I'd asked the skeleton if he could follow me. Why would I do that if I wasn't going somewhere? She couldn't imitate my abilities. I turned and headed into the city. As soon as I touched the first building, the whole town bloomed to existence on my map. That was nice. I could see a few Dark Elves, and one pale one. So this wasn't exclusively Dark Elf. I walked up to the first Dark Elf. "Where's the bank in this town?"

He scoffed. "There's no bank, oh powerful one." He bowed with a grin on his face. Town clown. I laughed and resisted the urge to destroy him. I needed their property. Every house would be valuable, given time. "Nobody in town wants anything from you lot." He sniggered again, as if he'd made a joke. Maybe he didn't need to live.

My staff cracked across his face, the automatic burning spell activated, destroying his head completely. "I want quite a lot of stuff from you lot." I faced the next elf in the street. The explosion had drawn a lot of attention. "You there, gather every citizen of this town in the square. Or run, and force me to hunt you down." The elf rushed off. Hopefully he was going to do as I asked.

"They might not like you for killing one of their own in such an…offhand way. For nothing but speaking his mind." Lethe didn't sound like she was arguing morality. She was arguing efficacy. I was probably imagining the tightness in her voice. "They might bring their militia against you."

"How long do you want to spend in this town? Earning respect takes time. Earning love takes even longer. Fear springs up as fast as I am willing to make it spring up. I want to own this place and be obeyed by everyone in it as fast as possible. That means fear. Killing people might breed hatred and anger, but it also feeds fear. So long as I have the power to annihilate every person in town ten times over, they won't resist." I didn't need them to be loyal. I needed them to obey. That was all I wanted from them. Their children could be loyal. "I'm giving you advance warning this time." She didn't look like she understood, so I just grabbed her around the waist and launched us to the square. It really was an effective means of travel. Since I was using the most basic form of the spell, it required very little stamina. Even advancing in circles, I could add efficiency to make it even cheaper. I'd gotten good at plotting the trajectory while I was making my roller coaster. Adding nothing but distance script didn't cost all that much, either. All the stamina costs for the abilities in the list were more for the damage and area of effect script. It was like running the distance instantly, much easier than exhaling so hard bodies shredded themselves.

"To warn someone, it is required to specify what you are warning them about." She sounded a little breathless as I released her. She didn't look scared, and breathing wasn't any more difficult while in a leap than any other time. "You can't just say 'I'm warning you' and then walk away. Doesn't work that way."

"Sorry. I'll specify, next time." She nodded, but it didn't seem like she was angry. What was going on? No point trying to figure her out. Girl brains worked weird. I put it out of my mind as I turned to the population of the town. People were still trickling in, but there were a couple thousand residents. For a feudal age, the population was amazing. Granted, it was a game. So…how could I make all of them fear me enough that they'd obey me completely? I could destroy the town, but that would destroy the bodies too. Bodies. Undead pets. I could turn all of them into skeletons!

I wouldn't need them to be powerful, I just needed them to obey. They had my skills. Could they learn skills for me? No, I didn't think it would work like that. Maybe they could increase a skill I already had, though.

Before I killed everyone, though, I needed to be sure I wouldn't be making a stagnant city. So…what did a city need? Resources. I didn't have any skills in that area. "Make sure nobody leaves the square. I need to check something out real fast." I rushed across the grass to the nearest citizen. "Come with me." The woman followed, cautious but unafraid. Good. "How do you get stone, wood, leather, grain, water, or any other resource required for town life?"

"We mine stone and metal. We skin the carcasses of boars for leather. We plant food. I don't know what water is. Oh, and we chop down trees for wood. We make rope and clothes from the hair of the boar, so we don't need any other resources. Do you know nothing?" she was just curious. Maybe she would work as the overseer for this town. Did I need one? "Our Chief would teach you these things if you asked." I'd need to figure out who the chief was, though.

"Why does a town need a chief? Or a government of any kind? Is it just for organization or what?" I'd found an anvil. I pulled out the equipment I had no use for and set it on the anvil. I started taking it apart. I put it back together, but the craftsmanship was sloppy. I got a level two broken result. Oh well. Crafting and salvaging were useful skills. A stall nearby had meat for sale. I walked over and noticed a boar behind the stall, roped to the ground. I glared at it and it seemed happy to subjugate itself to my will. I pulled it close and told it to salvage the armor I'd only half taken apart. The boar touched its nose to the armor and it fell apart. My salvage skill went up by a tiny margin. Barely recognizable. I grinned as I started putting it back together. I stopped after a few seconds, just enough to get the skill started. They'd make it better. That was all I needed. Pets could advance me in skill experience as well as basic experience. Excellent. Now all I needed was all of the skills it required to run a city. I told my new boar to join the blanket order and added this pasture as a place to go from level one to fifteen. I doubted I'd be allowed to skin my pet. I rushed to another empty stall, miraculously left open, and grabbed a skinning knife, a woodsman's axe, and a pick axe. I stole an apple, carrot, and a handful of grain from the next stall. I saw a cake in the next stall and stole that too, out of curiosity. That was all of the food groups, right? No. I needed dairy. "You have cows? Or some milk-producing animal?" the woman was actually running after me. I'd thought she'd lose interest and I'd need another helper, but she was quite accommodating.

She was a really low level. She stopped to pant for a second before she could say anything. "Our chief provides direction and legitimacy to our claim of sovereignty. Without him, we would be slaves of the nearest city. We still pay a tax, but we make our own laws." That wouldn't matter if all of the citizens were pets. "And his claim to the land stops the forest from reclaiming the land so long as he's on it." So I would need an overseer. She might work, though. That would be nice. "And we get milk from the boars." Ew. Boar milk. Oh well, I guess that was just the way it had to be.

We'd gotten out of the city. I grabbed the pickaxe and slammed it into the ground. The ground split and I got a new skill. Almost no experience for the skill, but it was there. I picked up the rock I'd just made and ground it into a ball. I threw it hard enough to destroy a boar's skull. And I'd gotten a new skill. Cool. 

I dug out four holes and stuck the apple, carrot, grain, and cake in their own hole before covering them back up. Now…how to make them grow? I tried a healing spell, but that didn't do anything. Maybe an aging spell, but that would destroy them. Aging while healing? Sure. I mixed the spells together and four little plants grew long enough to emerge from the grass. Perfect. I didn't get a skill for each, but that was fine. It just meant that skill would grow faster. 

Now, chopping down wood. I leapt to the edge of the forest. I'd destroyed plenty of trees, but I'd never used an ax before. I took the ax and swung at a tree. The ax snapped in half, but the tree fell over. Skill acquired. Learning so many skills so fast was fun, never something I'd do in a normal game, but this wasn't a game.

Boars time. I threw the skinning knife at the nearest boar. It squealed before it died. Such a tiny knife shouldn't have been able to kill a boar the size of a coffee table. Oh well. Too late. I grabbed the next one and started skinning it alive. I had to work before the imp scavenged the skin and replaced it with gold, so it couldn't be dead. My aid looked horrified from where she was watching me at the edge of the village, but it wasn't long before I got the skill. Success. I rushed to the next boar. I really didn't want to milk it. Maybe it would milk itself? It was just a matter of pressure. I lifted a boar and used a compression spell until it burst. Then I used another spell to separate the parts of carnage. The pool of white milk was much smaller than the rest of it, but I separated it. Apparently it wasn't valuable enough for the imp to sell. Nice. As soon as my finger touched the milk a new skill appeared. And that was that. I launched myself back to the civilian. 

"Last question. How would you like to be chief of a dead town?" it would be more accurate to call it an undead town, but that was just semantics. She grinned at me. Good. I liked this elf, no matter how pale her skin was. "Excellent. Let's go kill it." I wrapped a spell of protection around her before I threw her back toward the square. I leapt after her. No princess carry for a village overseer.

The elves gasped and cursed when they saw my overseer bouncing in a bubble of air across the grass. She was having the time of her life. "What was that about?" Lethe demanded in a whisper. She'd conjured an army of skeletons that were keeping the citizens in the field. Apparently they'd tried to leave.

"I figured it would be easier to have a city of slaves than a city of potential rebels." It took her a second to connect the dots. Until she looked at the black knight. Then she grinned. "Attention! This town, whatever it was called, is now my property. All of you will give me the ownership of your homes, if you wish to continue breathing." A few npcs could be useful.

"I own all of the homes, beast." This elf was pure white. So white his skin almost looked metallic. High Elf. I almost spat at him. Hmm. That was a bit…aggressive. "And I don't respond to threats from a thug like you."

I grinned at him. He backed away, sensing my hatred. Apparently he did respond to threats from thugs. I didn't mind the racism that came so easily to my mind. It didn't even like it was mine, but I didn't care. I would have to control it at some point, being controlled by this body would be as bad as being controlled by my other one, but that could come later. High Elf players were usually as stuck up as the npcs. I hated them myself, but the racism added a new flavor to the hatred that I didn't dislike. "Chief, I presume? How would you like to be the one to die first?" I glanced at my overseer, checking to make sure she understood her cue.

She did. She rushed to him and stopped so close their noses were almost touching. "I challenge the right of rule! Chief, do you accept?" he sneered at her. "Choose your champion!"

He wasn't a moron, at least. He picked up on what was happening immediately. One glance from me to the woman and he was fully clued in. "Delfina! How dare you align with this…beast! I am my own champion!"

She grinned at him, still less than an inch away from his face. "My champion is Emperor Void of the Dark Elves!" so all npcs could recognize me, regardless of affiliation. Damn. Not that I was hiding anymore, but still. "As soon as he kills you, I will own this town!" nice of her to tell me how to buy it. So that was how it worked in cities that didn't have a bank. She was a gifted pawn. Maybe I'd make her a more valuable asset in the future.

I put my staff back into my inventory as I pulled out twin swords. I hadn't crossed swords with anyone in a bit. The High Elf was level sixty. A foe that could be fun. He turned to me and drew his single sword. And a shield. He didn't have a class. I grinned behind my helmet. "Don't underestimate me, Dark Elf!" the man didn't seem to like that Dark Elves were elves. A common idea. High Elves and Dark Elves hated each other on sight. A Dark Elf walking through the High Elf city of Allstaria was ignored like he didn't exist. High Elves elsewhere didn't contain their hate as well as the noble Allstarian High Elves. They were the snobs of the snobs. Dark Elves were the ones that ruled the underworld above ground while the High Elves pranced around their fancy manors. Self-righteous snobs, one and all.

I chuckled as I brought one sword down as hard as I could. I'd overestimated my foe. The blade went right through the shield, forearm, shoulder, chest, stomach, and hip before ripping out the other side. And I didn't even feel resistance. His golden blood was an offense to my pure blade. I whipped it to the side, raining the golden blood on the surrounding commoners. Delfina screeched in joy. I turned to her. "Swear obedience to me." She dropped to her knees in front of me. She reached out and grabbed my sword, kissing the blade. When she pulled back, she had a cut to mirror mine, though hers was a single scar. It was even red, though hers was dripping blood where mine was crimson paint.

"Until the skies burn black and the earth glows white through its broken surface I, Delfina, will serve Void of the Black Hole Knights in any whim or wish!" the cut she'd just made burned with a dark red light that extended until it enveloped my hand. It was odd. I had one mental inventory for pets, but her promise opened up another mental tab for my inventory. Familiars. My mind supplied itself with a name for this new list of slaves. So I could enslave npcs. It was different. The other npcs around didn't join my familiars, though they were all terrified. I could see it in their faces.

A deep red light ripped between the town and the light of the pale sky. I looked up and saw a massive grinning black skull with a red scar floating over the town. I smiled as I saw it. Proof that the place belonged to me. This one didn't have a crown. Fitting.

I expected it to vanish. Or for the ambient light to return to the yellow that mimicked the sun. But it didn't. I waited for ten minutes or so before I realized it wasn't going anywhere. I thought back, and realized that the sigil over Zezhria hadn't vanished either. It was still bathed in crimson light from my black skull. So that was what happened when I literally owned the ruler of the town. Maybe there was a mayor of Zezhria or something. A ruler that still technically held power in Zezhria without owing direct loyalty to me. Keeping track of all the mundane parts of ruling a city. Too bad I didn't have a mental list of all the property I owned. I wondered if this town was part of it. Probably not. It seemed to work on a different system from the cities. "Might you give me the dead city you promised?" Delfina asked from her kneeling position. I couldn't help grinning down at her. She really would be a wonderful pawn. I wasn't sure what influenced my luck to get such a perfect person by randomly selecting someone out of a gathering crowd, but she was exactly what I wanted her to be.

I switched my sword for the staff. Now, how to kill them all without destroying the bodies? Their levels were too varied to kill all of them with the same spell…unless…Lethe had given me the answer. Summoned skeletons. I didn't need anything fancy. I created a few thousand simple skeleton summons and placed one in front of every elf in the town. The red light made their emergence from the earth look like they were breaking out of caskets made of frozen blood. "Kill them all." I ordered my temporary servants. They obeyed instantly. And their weapons were swords and spears. They didn't obliterate the bodies, or leave them missing parts like I would have if I'd used my swords on them. I turned to Lethe. "Would you like to raise some of this batch? I'm not going to spend as much time on them as last time." She grinned as she skipped across the grass to the battle that hadn't even lasted ten seconds. Two of the elves had been strong enough to survive the first hit. They'd managed to punch the skeleton's skull once before they'd died. Combined. I started up on the animation spells. Lethe pulled two of the corpses away from the rest as she started on hers. I linked my mind with hers, allowing me to use the staff to block her drain as well as mine. She nodded appreciation as she turned back to her pair.

"Master, what do you want me to do with the town?" Delfina was looking at all the corpses and the skeletons that had ended them. "I assume you will populate it with monsters that made these look like kittens, so what purpose could you have for me?" Honestly, at this point I'd take her back to Zezhria with me even if I didn't want her as an overseer here. She must be a rare breed, and I wanted to explore everything that that would mean.

"You are my Overseer. I'll leave one of them with you," I pointed to the black knight that was still standing in the middle of the grassy field. "Your job will be to make sure this place runs smoothly. They'll have orders to obey you so long as you don't tell them to kill one of my people. You're responsible for turning this town into a city. Your first major task will be to build a road to Zezhria. Since none but Dark Elves are welcome there, no roads have been built. I trust that you know better than to enter the Darkwood personally." She nodded, her eyes still bright with excitement. I could almost hear her screaming that she was born for this, not being some rural peasant. "I also trust you to keep my monsters' power up. They will be, comparatively, weak when I raise them. You will need to make sure they're killing enough. I might end up sending you more undead, I'm not sure. Don't count on it." I activated the spell. The red light made the rising corpses look even more grotesque than they were, which was impressive. These undead were zombies, not skeletons. I didn't like their aesthetics as much, but they tended to be harder to kill. Maybe they'd be able to level skills faster if their bodies had more flesh that remembered having the skill before, as well. Probably not, since a boar could learn to salvage, but there was always a chance. They were all level ninety seven. "And don't forget yourself. You belong to me now, your weakness is my weakness. Never forget that."

She dropped to her knees again. "I would never forget that, my Master. Never. You will not regret accepting me as your loyal servant. I will win your pride!" I had no doubt that was true. I almost thought she was using some sort of charming spell on me, with how much I believed it. I separated the zombies and the skeleton I had with me from the rest of the blanket orders and commanded them to obey Delfina as long as she didn't command them to attack a Black Hole Knight.

I had no more use for my old uncommon gear. I handed it all to her. She gaped at me as she saw the gear. "Can you learn a class?" she shook her head mutely, still staring at the gear. "Why not?" her eyes raised to mine, awe shining through.

"It's never been tried. Classes are a property of Heroes. My kind learn spells, not classes." Did that mean npcs or elves? I'd guess npcs. "Though it might work. As I said, it's never been tried. If it's not too bold, I would like to request the skills of Necromancer, Shadow, and Warlord. If it works. As a Necromancer, I would be able to provide you with ever-growing armies of the undead! They would follow my orders, but your orders would be above mine as you are above me." That was a good idea. If she could raise her own armies, that would make her very powerful indeed. And I wouldn't have to worry about giving them orders. I linked my mind with Delfina. I gave her the three she'd asked for as well as Shifter and Destroyer. As far as I could tell it worked. The classes didn't enter her cursor information, but the sequence worked as well as if I'd done them alone. Then I shifted into an elf and a High Elf so I could get their racial bonuses before returning to my own race. As my attention turned back to her, I could see veins popping all over her form. "Thank…you, Master! My…supreme…" her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she dropped to the ground. I kept an eye on her to make sure her soul wasn't broken, but she seemed fine. Just a wimp. Now that she was a Shifter, she could continue her building path into the Darkwood.

"She's…interesting." Lethe sniggered. I had to admit that she was. And of all the odds, she was the one I grabbed to teach me what skills were required to run a city. Was that due to my luck stat or hers? She might have been the only one in town willing to watch all of her friends die for a little profit. Or maybe they were all like that and I'd just killed many possible slaves. Either way, this was the fastest result with a happy ending. "What do you need her for?"

"The town needs an Overseer, or the surrounding land takes over. It becomes monster territory once again. Besides, running a city takes more than just the ability to follow orders. A city of mindless obedience will never go as far as one mind with a million blindly obedient servants." Thinking of that, I reminded my new zombies to make sure they were leveling all of my skills, to remind her if she gave contradictory orders. Since she'd be a Necromancer, she'd be able to make her own undead for the menial tasks and such. That brought my attention to her new slaves. Her pair of corpses were walking. In full Viking armor. Level one twenty seven. "Well done!"

"Not well enough. I tried to match your servants, but this was all I could do. I couldn't get that last ring to open for me. Guess I don't have enough mp." Impossible. She had as much as I did. No, never mind. She was one level below what I'd been when I raised them and she wasn't wearing crown gear. "How are you already ninety eight?" I had a hundred cats killing other cats. She had five.

Why had I stopped at five classes for my overseer? What reason did I have to believe that an npc couldn't learn all of the classes? I linked my mind with hers and tried to unlock her to the Druid class. And it worked! Six. I unlocked the Executioner class. Seven. Saint. Eight. Vanquisher. Nine. Assassin…blocked. So I couldn't accidentally broken her soul…wait. I'd risked breaking her soul? Why? In any case, none of the other classes worked either. Nine. Npcs could learn nine classes. What? Nine wasn't a number I was expecting. What special significance did nine have? It was another number like fourteen, totally random and strange. Maybe I'd done something different or npcs were nine thirty sixths of a soul. That sounded wrong, though.

"False!" Ryne appeared in a blaze of fire. And then it made sense. She had been why I tried to give more classes. That I hadn't noticed was my bad, not her being manipulative. Hail Ryne. Lethe jumped at the sudden sound and glared at her. Ryne didn't seem to notice Lethe's existence and just opened her grin wider. "Miss me?"

I decided not to answer her question. It didn't make sense for her to show up now. I hadn't become invincible or exploited some glitch she created…had I? "Why'd you show up all of the sudden? It doesn't make sense. I haven't really done anything special. Last time it was because I bought a respawn point. Did I get another one?" Not that I was complaining. Seeing Ryne was always a delicious treat. Hail Ryne.

"No. You did something better. You have a familiar! Yippee!" since when was she so happy? Apparently my not understanding the reason behind her joy wasn't enough to dampen it. "Enslaved souls! Npcs have enough of a soul to be considered humans. They're like retarded humans. Partial souls aren't enough to make perfect bodies making them slightly broken, but in a world of soul energy they do just fine. Just with less overall potential. This world works best for that. See, you gain power by destroying the souls and feeding them to the realm. Npcs can't take direct soul energy because they're missing that bit. But because you familiarized her, now she can. She can become a player! If she kills enough stuff, anyway. She piggybacks your ability to consume soul energy for direct power transfer, and you get a servant that can't disobey you. Fair trade, yeah? That's why she can learn nine. She's a third complete. She'll get better, though. Monsters are two thirds, so they max out at eighteen. But their will part is missing, so they can't consume soul energy to complete themselves. Npcs can't learn classes." She sniggered as if the very idea was ridiculous. "Of course it's never been tried! The world is a year old!" she leaned in close. "You're becoming a good little demon, though. Making soul slaves right and left, breaking the world's will to do so. Every time you do it tickles me," her tongue flicked out of her mouth, melting through my helmet to lick my cheek. "just the way I like it."

"How'd I make her into my familiar?" She'd just pledged loyalty to me. That sounded something more along the lines of a servant than a familiar. Familiars were more…intimate. And owned. Utterly owned. Like pets, but intelligent. Usually the other way around, though. Demons were the familiars of wizards, no?

"She spilled her blood on you while she pledged to become your vassal. Or your weapon. That works too. If she hadn't, she'd just be a vassal. Vassals work kind of like pets. Except…I think that's stupid. So…" she started glowing red. Black flecks of dust started floating around her as her glow became brighter. "Good. That's better. Npcs get to level two fifty. Monsters stop at two hundred. Players get three hundred. Uber monsters don't need to get any stronger. Yeah. Makes more sense." I got the feeling that she was trying to hide how much that large-scale of a change had drained her. Not that anything could possibly drain her. Hail Ryne. There were suddenly circles under her eyes and her hair seemed…wet, or heavy. Hail Ryne. She started to fade. "And I think I'll add one. I always thought aunt Beelzebub was pretty. Let's do that. She might not like it though, so we'll call her the Insect Queen. Don't you think…?" Her form vanished completely. So that was what happened when she changed the rules of the game. On a whim. Now npcs and monsters were more equal. Pets knew all the classes I could allow them access to, and npcs could learn all of my abilities if they got taught. I didn't know what those red flecks were, but each one that touched me gave me very intimate knowledge of what exactly Ryne was doing. Damn. I needed vassals. Fifty extra levels was a significant difference. Especially towards the end of progression.

I needed more pets, so they could teach my skills to my vassals. And I needed to figure out how to let them access my rogue and mage abilities too. I had lots of work to do.

"Aunt Beelzebub? So the Devil is female?" Lethe sniggered. Why was she surprised? Ryne was a woman, and she was a powerful demon. A goddess of hell. Why couldn't the Devil be a female?

"Informative. But now we need to move on. Time for us to see what the players are like in Melasia. And pick up Hell on our way out." Lethe sniggered at the thought of Hell flying around somewhere. I checked my map and saw that they were at least done with the first level. The whole area was explored. I turned the angle of the map to look vertical, and they were only on the second layer. Yeah, I'd need to interrupt that. Fast as leaping was, they'd covered a lot of ground.