NOVEL NEXT Chapter 3: Unlimited Power
I groaned. "There’s no way it’s 6:00 already…"
Then I noticed that my vision was a fragmented purple, and remembered that I wasn't rolling out of bed. I was waking up in my Phylactery.
I tried to look around and hop back into the skeleton I'd been piloting before, but it didn't work, and I soon realized why. The corpse has been turned to ash from the strain on my spirit.
As a lich, I possessed bodies, but they weren't strictly my own body. Instead, they were reinforced by my mental energy and death magic shenanigans. That meant that, when my mental energy had been completely drained, all that was left was uncontrolled death magic energy, and large amounts of it, too.
While death magic, or Necrosis, or whatever you want to call it, strengthened the undead, it was still a destructive energy that sought to rot and destroy all things, until all that was left was death. When I lost control of the energy in the corpse, that power had taken over and, finding no living things to destroy, targeted the nearest thing: the skeleton.
In other words, I no longer had a body to control. At least, unless I wanted to use one of the Caerbalopes, but I'd really rather not try that out.
Luckily, I'd been prepared for this situation, and pushed energy into my Boon, Reconstitution. Immediately, I was prompted with a simple question. What did I want to look like?
I thought about it for a long moment.
I could try to reform my body from my life on Earth. It would be sustained by Necrosis, and I still wouldn't need food, water, or air. Eventually, with an internal sigh, I pushed the image of a bare skeleton into the Boon.
The simple truth was that I wasn't human anymore. Trying to look like one would only invite terrible confusion. Not to mention, I'd gotten used to the lack of major nerves and sensations not directly related to the energies of life and death, and was concerned that suddenly regaining my nervous system would send my new fleshy body into shock, or that it would hurt. Furthermore, I wasn’t exactly living in opulence right now. Sitting in a cave all day was already boring, but with an actual body, it would start to be physically painful.
Best to just stick with the skeleton aesthetic for now. I'd make it closer to my original height, though.
As I pushed energy into the Boon, it pulled me in to watch it happen from an isometric view, and had me allocate the spent energy. I started with the bones in the feet, and realized that the Boon wanted me to decide how much energy to put in each bone.
I decided to be generous, and my entire supply of Necrosis was drained by the time I'd gotten to the knees, and my mental energy was gradually converted into Necrosis to refill it. I forced more through, my newly improved Willpower giving me greater force and more effort with that power source.
Eventually that gave me a migraine, and I had to slow down on the conversion or risk damaging my mind.
The rest of the body formed more slowly, to the point where even I, with the patience of the undying, grew bored. It was like watching grass grow. Sure, I would live forever and my perspective had changed somewhat to match that, but this was just… boring. I was effectively doing nothing for days, maybe even weeks.
The worst part was that I had to stay focused on the process the whole time, or I would lose control of the design. If I thought about Caerbalopes for too long, then flesh would start to form around the bone I was working on, forcing me to mentally lop it off with Shape Necrosis and start on that part again.
Eventually, after way too long, a complete skeleton stood before me. The thing had taken way too long to make, but it seemed that the energy hadn't gone to waste.
The skeleton had a slight blue tint to it, which I assumed related to the fact that it was made almost entirely of Necrosis. The moment the skeleton was complete, and I'd gotten a good look at it, my consciousness was sucked across the bond made by Reconstitution. A moment later and I was staring into the reflection of my black, deathless eyes in the red and blue of my Phylactery.
Then my status popped back up, reminding me that I still had a choice to make.
Seif Ambrose
Spatial Lich 1
Phylactery 1
Undead Possession 1
Reconstitution 1
Necrosis Manipulation 2
Deadsight 2
Animate Necrosis 3
Shape Necrosis 3
Domain of Undeath 2
Spread Undeath 2
Mold Terrain 2
Transmute 0
Spatium Manipulation 1
Delinear Sight 1
Available Boon (Stitching, Banding)
Calling 1
Taglock 1
Nomantic Call 0
Enhancements: Willpower
Named Belongings: Caerbalope
I still needed to pick between the two Spatium Boons. I looked away so the images and whispers wouldn’t enter my head again, but still got a flash of pain when I looked at the words. It was less than before, more of a minor ache, but I would still rather avoid it.
I went over the vague descriptions of the two Boons in my mind. Stitching would let me transplant space, but Banding would let me bend it. That was hard to wrap my head around. It basically meant nothing to me.
With that said… Stitching felt like the stronger of the two. The images I’d seen had shown areas that seemed to overlap, mix with other locations, and so on. Banding was also very powerful, though. It showed the space between two points collapsing, bringing two things together, and stone bending like putty.
As much as I didn’t fully grasp what the situation was… I felt that Stitching was more likely to bring unique tools into my arsenal.
I took it without looking at the prompt, and felt something sear itself into my mind, or rather, my soul. Then, I knew. Why had it eluded me so before?
I turned up my Delinear Sight, which seemed to have evolved from my selection of Stitching, and looked at the space around me, then converted mental energy into Spatium, using it to fuel Stitching. I tugged at the weft and warp of reality, pulling its threads into itself.
A hole in reality appeared before me, a place where there was simply… nothing. It wasn’t a vacuum. A vacuum required space to exist. No, it was a place where nothing could exist. In fact, not even light could pass through, and my regular sight simply stopped in front of it, showing nothing. No color, not even blackness, simply nothing. My Delinear Sight alone allowed me to see the place where the threads of reality had been cut. It defied physics. It was a place where all things bent in on themselves. The space there was simply detached.
I bent my mind to the task of weaving the threads I’d pulled apart back in on themselves, trying to form them into loops, but I felt a migraine coming on, and the clarity was slowly fading. Reluctantly, I released the threads of space, allowing reality to return to its natural state.
I glanced down at my boney hands, and noticed that they were shaking. I clenched them, then looked back at my Phylactery.
Spatium Manipulation 1
Delinear Sight 2
Stitching 0
Clearly, my display of omnipotent power wasn’t enough to be worthy of an increase in my Stitching Boon. That probably made sense though. It was extremely powerful; the issue was with my ability to use it. What I had done with it was overboard. With my current capabilities, using Stitching to cut was foolish.
I waited for a while, but then I reactivated my Delinear Sight and Stitching, once more viewing the universe as interlaced strings. Instead of cutting them, I put a firm mental grasp on a handful of them. I felt a slight pull from that area, and stretched a hand towards it.
It was gravity. An increase of the density of space in a given area. I released my grip, having burned through mental energy and Spatium to accomplish even that much.
It would take a long time to get better at Stitching, but well… I had plenty of that.
Anyways, back to what I was doing before all of these. I'd just finished shaping all of the rooms with Mold Terrain, and now it was time to populate them.
Now, I had 36 Caerbalopes. 23 were made from two zombies, 9 were made from three, and the last 4 were made from four jackalope corpses each.
That… might not be enough.
You see, I wanted to have spares, just in case, and I still didn't have a boss. I could solve the final problem another time, but for now…
It seemed that I would need to summon more jackalopes. Bleh.
This time the process moved much more quickly, my new experience with Spatium aiding in my lagomorph abduction spree. However, I did have to stop the Caerbalopes from eating the jackalopes. It seemed that they had the capability to absorb the jackalopes' flesh to increase their own size, and perhaps to heal themselves as well, though I had yet to test that.
In any case, I quickly accumulated a supply of mostly-intact jackalope zombies. Then I started the process of imbuing them with more Necrosis, but I was interrupted by a buzzing sensation. I turned to check out my Phylactery.
Necrosis Manipulation 3
Deadsight 2
Animate Necrosis 4
Shape Necrosis 3
Available Boon (Create Undead, Imbue Flesh)
Dang, these Skills were leveling quickly. Or, perhaps my perception of time has been screwed with, since I don't have any bodily functions to remind me of its passing? Also possible.
The first Boon was very good. It would allow me to construct corpses for animation in the same way that I built myself up with Reconstitution. It did have a limitation, in that it couldn't construct anything I hadn't raised before, but it would mean that I wouldn't need to summon endless amounts of jackalopes to make undead. I could tell that it would be able to easily create my Named undead. Additionally, the bodies would be made straight from Necrosis, making them sturdier and stronger.
Imbue Flesh was actually the same thing I was doing freeform with my Necrosis Manipulation. It saturated a body with Necrosis, enabling certain skills to work with greater efficiency. Sadly for it, I would rather add a completely new synergy to my arsenal than improve the efficiency of something I already did. I would improve in that area as I leveled Necrosis Manipulation.
I picked up Create Undead, and set down the zombie I was using as a Taglock. Finally free, it leapt away… only for me to Shape it into the body of a nearby Caerbalope.
I finished up the set of combinations I was working on, then focused on the biology of a Dualjack Caerbalope–I'd decided to refer to them as Dualjack, Trijacks, and Quadjacks for now–and pushed the image into Create Undead, pushing Necrosis and mental energy into the shape.
Slowly, my smallest type of abomination began to form, created from pure energy. It shared the blue tinge of my own artificial body. Eventually, a corpse–could it be called a corpse when it was never alive?–slumped to the floor, and I targeted it with Animate Necrosis. I suddenly sensed that I had a choice; I could animate it with a single mind, or keep it true to its original self, with multiple distinct driving forces.
I ultimately chose to keep it true to the original design, deciding that the split personality was a unique and integral quirk of the creature.The creature rose under its own power, multiple minds working together to drive the action. It was much more whole than the others–a result of it having been initially formed as a single entity, I was sure.
The monstrosity felt stronger than the others, as though I had already used my rudimentary Imbue Flesh on it, and it must have weighed at least half again what the normal Caerbalopes did. Very nice.
I turned my attention to the remainder of the Caerbalopes, and tssked in consternation. The color of the Created Caerbalope was different from the ones I'd made by hand. I thought over what I would do with them, but then realized that I was thinking in the wrong direction. I turned to the Created Caerbalope and smiled, readying my Boon to spawn another.
Time to make a boss, I guess.
I created another nine Dualjack Caerbalopes, making a total of ten, far and away the most I had ever used to make a creature. I then used Shape Necrosis to alter their forms, and their flesh changed into something like a gas, flitting around to obey my will.
Slowly, a shape started to form, and I smiled a cruel smile.
Before, I had thought that the Caerbalopes had seemed like wendigos, but the truth was that I hadn't even gotten close. This thing though?
The beast before me stood on two feet, with two massive antlers sticking through its outer skull, which functioned as a helmet for the head inside. The remainder of its form was skeletally thin, its flesh tight around its bones. It had long, sharp claws, and a hunched, slightly deer- or antelope-like form.
Its muscles were tight and lean, having inherited the twitch power of its lagomorph ancestors but improved upon by Necrosis. It was denser and heavier for it, and where the Caerbalopes combined may have originally totaled somewhere between 200 and 300 lbs, this thing was well over that. It seemed that the Necrosis I’d infused it with had managed to materialize into additional matter in the same way that Created flesh did. I'd also managed to compress its muscles further than they normally would have been, hence how its frame appeared slim when compared to its height.
I named it an Antigo, a mix between antelope and wendigo. The name was accepted by my soul, and I knew that it would do well as the boss of this dungeon.
Sadly, it took most of my mental energy just to create a single Antigo, and I needed to take a while to recharge after that, but that honestly just made sense for a boss monster. It should be the strongest thing I could create at the time.
Now, it was time to distribute the mobs, and do some decoration. I made more rooms to the sides of each of the main dungeon rooms, as well as hidden entrances for the Caerbalope burrows. I directed the Caerbalopes to disperse in ratios. I planned for the first battle room to contain 6 Dualjack Caerbalopes and 2 Trijacks. The next room would have a ratio of 8 Dualjacks, 4 Trijacks, and a single Quadjack. The final battle room would have 10 Dualjacks, 6 Trijacks, and 4 Quadjacks. Finally, there would be my Antigo, who would hopefully prove powerful enough to challenge any who reached that far in the dungeon.
Now it was decoration time. I sketched some designs on the walls of the entry hall. They were just squiggles, and had no real meaning, but I embossed them all across the three encounter rooms, having them become more sharp and chaotic the further in they went, until, in the final room, I planned for them to be entirely scratched off and broken.
Realizing that I probably should have done this first, I shaped the floor into flat stone bricks, once more becoming more and more cracked and broken in each successive room. The walls were also flattened and smoothed out, and I decided to make the roof into an open dome, curving upwards into a flat bit at the center of each of the rooms.
After I smoothed out the walls, I needed to make a replacement exit for the mobs. Eventually, I worked out how to make a rudimentary trapdoor with the help of Transmute, which reminded me to Transmute all the stone in the "dungeon" into the limestone, smoothing out its colors and adding a bit of strength in some areas that lacked consistency.
Behind the room for the Antigo, I Molded a secret door, in which to hide both myself and my Phylactery. Then I grabbed my Phylactery from the air, and started walking.
Immediately, a massive drain on my mental energy made itself known, and I realized that there would be some cost to moving myself around. Not only that, but the Phylactery moved incredibly slowly. I planned to leave and start over again somewhere else in the future, but maybe I'd have to push that dream back a few decades to find a way to move the Phylactery more quickly.
After some time, I managed to get my Phylactery into the safe room. Then I spread some Domain of Undeath influence into the surroundings and started carving out an area around the dungeon rooms. I wanted to be able to watch the fights so I could direct the mobs, but I didn't need eye holes because of my Deadsight.
Once I finished up with the additional side halls, I felt yet another buzz, and returned to the safe room to check my Phylactery.
Seif Ambrose
Spatial Lich 1
Phylactery 1
Undead Possession 1
Reconstitution 1
Necrosis Manipulation 3
Deadsight 2
Animate Necrosis 4
Shape Necrosis 4
Create Undead 1
Domain of Undeath 3
Spread Undeath 3
Mold Terrain 4
Transmute 2
Available Boon (Miasma, Omnipresence)
Spatium Manipulation 1
Delinear Sight 2
Stitching 0
Calling 1
Taglock 2
Nomantic Call 0
Enhancements: Willpower
Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo
Miasma was a Boon to infuse matter in my dungeon, including the air, with Necrosis. It was somewhat similar to both Imbue Flesh and Reinforce Death, Boons that I’d previously rejected. For reasons similar to those, Miasma felt illogical. I could already put extra Necrosis into the dungeon by thickening the amount of influence in it, and I didn’t particularly want my influence to be immediately toxic to the living. I wanted to incentivize them to explore, to risk themselves for their greed. Then, if and when they died, they would inevitably fuel my own desires.
Omnipresence suited my wants much better. It would allow me to see from any point within the dungeon, and sling spells without being in the room. This would enable me to quickly restock the dungeon with monsters once it was cleared, and my command of the mobs would be greatly improved.
I took the boon, then looked at the tunnels I’d just formed. Tunnels that were now entirely useless to me.
I guess it technically wasn’t a waste of time, since it’s what got me the Boon? Yeah. Right. That makes me feel a little bit better about the wasted time.
With a raspy sigh, I shrank all the tunnels I’d spent my time building so that only a Dualjack Caerbalope could squeeze through. Luckily, undoing my work was much quicker than doing it in the first place.
Right. Now what to do?