After the End: Serenity

An instant and an eternity later, he felt the change.

[Death Concept Unlocked]

[Death Concept Completed]

[Welcome to the Necropolis, Deathlord]

[Use of advanced Runic Magic has been Noticed. Additional Paths are opened]

[Completion of the Concept of Death has been Noticed. Additional Paths are opened]

[Completion of a Concept upon Initiation has been Noticed. Additional Paths are opened]

Serenity hadn’t realized just how much information he’d once taken for granted from his surroundings was missing until he saw it again with opening his Concept. Still, he concentrated and pushed the information to the back of his mind.

“Why are there little wisps of .. I guess that’s Death affinity? Floating around you?” Kerr sounded overwhelmed.

“Downside of completing a Concept, makes it much harder to hide. But it’s not really safe to use a high Affinity without opening the Concept, so -” Serenity shrugged. He’d been skirting the edge of safety with his Void use, and that had just been removing light from an area. He couldn’t risk using Death without his Concept at all. “I’ll just have to live with it. It’ll die down a lot over the next couple hours, shouldn’t be obvious to anyone who isn’t looking for it.” Serenity looked down at his left hand. The crystal was nearly completely black, with only the occasional speck of color. It was doing a good job of representing the state of his magic, unfortunately, but hopefully no one else would be able to read it before it went away.

“You have a completed Concept. And you know Rune magic. And - and - “ Kerr didn’t seem to know what to say.

“I told you I still had secrets. Now. The important requirement.” Kerr didn’t seem to be paying attention, so he waved his right hand in front of her face.

That seemed to get her attention, so he tried again. “The important requirement should be pretty simple. I still need both classes and time to run Trials.”

“There should be plenty of time - we’ve got the whole sequence, you can take as long as you want. The Trials can only be done for full rewards once each anyway.”

Serenity shook his head. “I only have this Trial. I have to get back to Earth. The invasions will already be starting. I mean - I could take a little time - but I certainly can’t take the half a year or so the tutorials will run in realtime.”

“You can train others to handle it - it’s not that long. Surely they can handle things - “

“It doesn’t matter if they can handle things. I have to be there - that’s - that’s important.” Serenity wasn’t sure how to express what he was trying to say any better than that. Surely there was a way? “My Path isn’t that of a teacher - I need to be there, to help -”

[Serenity must complete the initial tutorial as a student]

[This means Serenity will not be present as an instructor for all tutorial segments]

[Minimum requirements for qualification as an instructor have been modified for Serenity due to special circumstances]

[Serenity must participate as an instructor in Phase One (training phase) of a tutorial at least once per Real-Time Day on average. Student participation is permitted when it does not conflict with instruction]

[Student participation into later portions of each tutorial attended as an instructor is permitted]

[Serenity may participate in additional tutorials as an instructor]

[A Death-attuned instructor will be provided for tutorials Serenity does not attend. A Rune Magic instructor will not be provided.]

Well, that’s convenient.

[You’re welcome]

….I must really be exceeding expectations.

[You are]

Serenity decided to settle on “glad” as his reaction to the System’s interference. This was … well, really, this was perfect. He was pretty sure it was a bribe, but it was good enough that he didn’t care. He couldn’t pass that up.

“I accept.”

[Welcome to the tutorial, Instructor Serenity]

[An instructor has been added to the tutorial]

Serenity was pretty sure that the last message had been sent to all instructors - or at least to all instructors in the building.

Kerr looked at him, confused. “What changed your mind?”

“Oh, you didn’t see that?” Serenity flicked the messages about “modified requirements” to Kerr.

She was still reading through them when the door opened. It was the woman they’d passed on the way in. “You - are Serenity? What can you teach?”

“Death affinity, some weapons use. I can manage the basics in rune magic and rituals, those are my only real crafts unless you count making undead. Void affinity - is 60% high enough? I know how to use what I’ve got, at least.”

“Can you do a big demonstration tonight? Since you weren’t here from the beginning - it could be useful to let people know to come to you. Other than that, I can set up your times - “

It took several hours to get everything set up for someone who was both a student and an instructor, and Instructor Ekari was still going to have to juggle things in a few days to line everything up with the other instructors.

Instructor Ekari wasn’t thrilled about the effort or the special dispensation, but she was overjoyed to have someone who could teach the (apparently) oddball specialties Serenity knew - thrilled enough that she set up special permission for student Trial runs at off hours and some one-on-one sessions with different instructors so that he could learn what he needed without sitting through the information he already knew.

All in all, it was a much better schedule than he’d expected. He even managed to keep every 4th day clear to do back-to-back Trial runs with other students who needed help.

After a quick trip to his new instructor’s room to drop off his things, take a shower, and change clothes, Serenity headed to lunch. He was beginning to feel perpetually late. He found Rissa worrying at her food while Echo and Lancaster tried to cheer her up.

Echo was the first to see him, and she charged halfway across the room to hug him. At that moment, he felt like an adopted older brother who’d been gone for weeks. “We were so worried about you! We didn’t see you at the Trial! Lancaster and I ended up with a couple other people. They were pretty useless. But I figured out sonar, so I could tell everyone when stuff was coming!”

“What did you end up fighting?” Serenity steered Echo around the other tables. He hadn’t picked up food yet, but he was pretty sure he needed to see Rissa first.

“Skellies! And a giant one at the end. It was really really slow. Even I could hit it! I don’t know why the other two couldn’t. They just sorta waved their swords at it. Then Lancaster hit it REALLY HARD and it fell down! Then it was easy. I snapped a leg so it couldn’t stand and it kept trying and Lancaster took the skull apart until the core fell out.”

“Well done.” They’d reached the table, and both Rissa and Lancaster were watching him. “Sorry I missed the Trial, my morning thing took a lot longer than I expected. I was just going to plan out my schedule, but uh ... “ He indicated his shirt, which clearly showed the Instructor’s badge.

Lancaster found the snarky comment first. “So, did you steal the shirt or is the badge real?”

Serenity smiled. He couldn’t have found a better way to begin. “Even if you steal the shirt, the badge won’t appear for anyone that isn’t an instructor. Since I’m both an instructor and a student, we’re pretty sure it’ll disappear when I’m acting as a student, but there hasn’t been a chance to test that yet. Can you give me a moment to go get food, I’ll be right back and tell you all about it?”

“You and food…” Rissa looked sad, but she waved him towards the various serving lines.

Echo, Lancaster, and Serenity carried the burden of conversation during lunch. At the end of lunch, Serenity offered to try to figure out a way for Rissa and Lancaster to deal with the darkness. A lot of the Trials seemed to use darkness as a way to increase the difficulty. He needed to stop by the Armory anyway, so he discussed it with them on the way.

Rissa had Time, Healing, and Mind affinities. They were excellent for a dedicated healer, and she had spent the morning finding someone who could help her learn the basics. She’d sat in on a couple classes, and then the instructor had offered her some one-on-one training since she was so well specialized. Serenity suggested that Light would fit fairly well, and told her to think about every sort of light she could while they walked. She didn’t seem to want to talk more, so he moved on to Lancaster.

Lancaster had Earth and Water affinity. He wasn’t really working on them, but Serenity told him that they were both excellent for a physical warrior - the strength of earth and the power of water could do many things. He suggested Fire leading into the four physical elements as a path Lancaster might consider.

Serenity already knew Echo’s affinity was Sound, and when he asked her about it, she started spilling over with ideas on what she could do with it. Apparently, figuring out sonar had made her start experimenting with other things. Her current focus was on breaking objects with sound, but she was thinking that maybe she’d work on reshaping them next.

Serenity knew better than to get in the way of someone who was eager about experimenting with using her Affinity in interesting ways, so he encouraged her and didn’t try to guide her path. By then, they’d stopped at the Armory and made it to the Trial area, anyway.

Sillon was sitting at the desk again. He waved at the four of them. “Ready for another Trial? I know you’re on - wait. You’re an instructor?”

“Uh, as of a few hours ago, yes. Apparently you didn’t have anyone with a good Death affinity.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for Death affinity. I guess that does explain all the swearing about badly-made knockoff skeletons and the Bone Golem barely qualifying as necromancy, though.”

“You’d get a better Bone Golem by reanimating it using Earth affinity. It’s really badly done.” Serenity could probably have done better with his terrible Vapor affinity than had been done with Death affinity in that dungeon - well, okay, he couldn’t have. But it was really bad.

“Why not that attack you were using in the plant dungeon? It looked like a Fire variant, but not one I know. I’d be interested in it.”

Serenity was surprised by that. Surely Plasma wasn’t that unusual? “I only have Plasma at 40% … it’s not one of my best affinities. It’s just useful against simple plants if you can control the beam properly. It's also really, really slow since it's just an Affinity.”

“A high tier affinity and you’re worried it’s only 40%. I can promise you’ll have instructors lining up to learn that one. Even if it’s only a small chance to upgrade their Fire affinity, it’s a start.” Sillon shook his head. “I’m lucky I ended up in this tutorial. Are you taking them in as an instructor?”

“No, I’m planning to go in as a student. I am one, after all.” Serenity looked down at the instructor patch on his shirt and found that it had vanished. That was a relief - it worked as they’d suspected. He looked up to find Sillon staring at the same spot.

“Very well, but no teaching while we’re in there. I don’t want you accidentally swapping. Two instructors isn’t permitted.”

Serenity agreed.

Sillon looked back up at the rest of the group. “So. I can already guess that Serenity won’t care, but for the rest of you - do you want to do the next one in sequence for Rissa, since she’s behind, or continue from where Echo and Lancaster left off?”

Echo was almost bouncing in excitement. “We should get Rissa caught up! She’s only one behind us! It’ll be fun, we can kill more skellies!”

“Sounds good. There’s no quest for this one, so that doesn’t matter, but you should all know that anyone repeating the Trial will only get half XP.”

Before they stepped through the portal, Serenity gave Rissa a Energy-spark ball to study to think about Light and Lancaster a Plasma-fire that would float a little to his side and avoid hitting him (making it cool to the touch would defeat the point, after all).

Once again, the skeletons in the first few rooms were no threat. This time, Serenity had a large hammer as his primary weapon, and it could simply crush them in a single blow.

They all let Rissa take the lead after they’d each killed one. This was for her benefit, after all, and it wasn’t like the skeletons were dangerous. When they got to the bone golem, Rissa still wanted to be in the lead, so they all moved in behind her to support her.

Rissa stabbed the Golem’s skull with her spear, and managed to fracture the skull. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough to split the skull and destroy the Golem - and she’d committed a little too much to the stab and tripped when her spear connected. Lancaster caught her before she landed on the ground, and Echo YELLED something at the Golem, which finished splitting the fracture. The Golem collapsed in a pile of unconnected bones.

Skeleton Dungeon 0.3 Complete

4 Participants

Rewards increased for reduced party size.

Rewards reduced for repeated completion.

Monster extermination: 125 XP

Boss Killed: 31 XP

Total Extermination Bonus: 31 XP, 31 Ev

Dungeon Cleared: 31 XP, 31 Ev

The dungeon wasn’t very rewarding to Serenity - although he did end up with a few more skeleton cores - but it had been very easy, so that was fair.

“Another?”

Serenity shook his head. “I’d like to, but - I have a demonstration to plan for tonight. Do you happen to know where the cemetery is? I’m going to need to set up near there anyway.”

“I don’t, but I’d check on the hill on the other side of the camp. I haven’t been there yet, but that’s relatively close to the mage area so it would make sense.” Sillon suggested. “If you aren’t going to do another dungeon, I suggest looking around the crafting area. There may well be some people wanting to trade for monster cores.”

Echo scampered off immediately, and Lancaster quickly said “I’d better keep an eye on her” as he hurried off in her wake.