NOVEL NEXT Mortality is for Chumps
6/14 afternoon
Well that sucked. It wasn’t exactly painful or anything, I died too fast for that to be a concern, but I was very dead and so were all of my assault team. The attack had been going so well, too!
It could have been worse, I thought to myself. It was all I could really do after all; I wasn’t quite a ghost. I was loosely aware of the spirits of my chromatic draconid assault team floating nearby, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. It was a bit like being in shock, but there must have been something deeper than that since it bypassed stress defense. So instead my thoughts were turned inwards, focusing on why this was probably fine.
For one thing, basically everyone here could be resurrected. I’d only employed demons and Heroes, and heroes only cost energy to bring back. An amount of energy that would have been substantial once upon a time, but really just wasn’t anymore. Nanna and the Chromatics would be a pain because they didn’t have bodies anymore, but clinically speaking Nanna’s power and skills were probably empowering some random person halfway across the world and I had a Stormwind Guard by the name of Irene currently pretending to be her in the Halls of Stone. She wasn’t a high priority to resurrect, even if she probably deserved it.
I’d successfully taken down a fortress that Nefarian had obviously taken over, if G’huun had been willing to go full Kamikaze on my ass. It had been extremely well defended, too. I didn’t actually get jack shit out of doing so except depriving Nefarian of an old god minion and a fallback position, but that was a pretty sizable thing to do, right?
My mind wandered in a reverie much like the first time I died. I couldn’t tell exactly how long because my amulet was buried in a mountain of reoriginated material and I didn’t have access to it. However, I wasn’t blind. I definitely noticed when a group of angelic women approached my position. I felt a quick surge of panic and started to run. I wasn’t ready to be really dead yet.
“Master,” spoke a comfortingly familiar voice that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, “don’t worry, we’ve got you.” I kept running. I was sufficiently depleted that I couldn’t have explained why, but I absolutely did not want to be taken to the afterlife.
I was physically lifted by the arms into the air, which was an unpleasant experience, and had a warm chain placed around my neck. “Alright master, this won’t be a pleasant experience, but it should make you more lucid.” As she spoke, waves of agony flooded through my body as searing light infused and hardened my ectoplasmic flesh. After an eternity of agony that was objectively less than a minute, I was in a much better headspace to appreciate the large angelic titties I was being pressed against.
“Ok. Ok, I’m good.” I told the Kyrian that I now realized was Abby.
“Oh? Are you sure?” She asked archly, “You don’t want to keep running?”
“Nope, not unless you’re planning on keeping me dead.”
“Not likely; you still own my soul, don’t worry.” We landed together in a small clearing where the kyrians of my retinue were gathering together the dead, both my own heroes and the spirits of the enemy. My team were each turned into Kyrians or Nathrezim, which helped them think more clearly even if we were still in a very depleted state.
I’d kinda forgotten about the team I’d employed in the border of the shadowlands; until they secured a path to some proper afterlives, they were just another mass recruitment team. I hadn’t even considered this use for them, and we still needed to examine how useful this really was. I opened up a portal to my pocket plane; I could barely remember how to use any of my non-instinctive abilities, and I was listed as temporarily tier 2. A pretty massive downgrade from tier 8, where I was normally sitting these days. That said, I also didn’t count as dead in the PVP tab; you take what you can get.
Each altar took around 5 and a half hours to resurrect one hero, and deploying Erich’s Angels here had only taken two. I was currently at the front of the queue, and would hopefully be rubber banded back into my own body when the altar finished up. It was a perfect time for bookkeeping, though the first thing I did was pop over to the Darkmoon Faire and offload my extra swag for credits.
On the way over, I checked Talaada’s log for any more rewards. She was still focused more on mass capture than missions, but despite that I still had a handful of extra resources. The corruption fruit and fading dream mushroom were added to the pile to sell and one mission had just directly rewarded a credit, so my total was going to be 55 after this trip to the vendor, plus ten credits for house upgrades only. There were a few more interesting options mixed in, but no game changers.
Azshara’s palace was made into the core building for the Naga tech tree, but apparently the Naga tech tree was being unlocked piecemeal from mission upgrades? Cool I guess. It gives me a way to train aquatic units, so why not? At the moment I could only train Mur’gul slaves, Mur’gul reavers, Naga sirens, and couatls. In other words, a worker unit, a basic foot soldier, a caster with a somewhat mediocre spell pool, and a light flying unit that could dispel magic. Not exactly a great haul, but thanks to Kerrigan and a near infinite supply of energy I’d be building a full compliment of slaves or reavers every day at minimum.
More amusing was Time Savers. Apparently I didn’t need to use the bathroom anymore, and any personal grooming I desired would be automatically completed perfectly. It would certainly save me a bit of time, but let’s be honest. Needing to take a dump occasionally isn’t that bad and most of the time I’m running around in a Visage that looks exactly how I want anyway. The fact that my need for sleep was cut down by about 25% was also nice I guess. Lots of little nice-to-haves today, it seems. The thing that I’d really be thanking Talaada for when I visited that timeline was the reward for the one moderate mission she arranged for, to kill a certain farmer from Zandalar.
VIP service- for 24 hours your importance is vastly magnified where it would benefit you. No door is locked unless it is held by an open enemy, power seekers will congregate around you, and people will listen to you and consider your opinions seriously. Some of this energy will linger, especially among those you met for the first time under this effect.
There are still a few places I haven’t taken over, and this was the kind of item I could use to speed run such a place. After the disaster in Uldir, I was planning on squaring away Ulduar before it escalated. It was time for prime designate Eros to assert control over the prison of Yogg Saron. From there I’d need to put a lot of thought into how I might capture the beefiest living old god while he was still locked down. That would be a good problem to have.
I considered my list of interesting options for credit spending. None were things that I clearly just needed to have, not anymore. I could have upgraded my laws, but honestly turning invaders into horny bimbos did the primary thing I needed out of laws. I scratched at my stubble, considering the Essence of Zerus to pump up Kerrigan. Did I need it? Not really. I had a weird tendency to overshadow any girl I invested in with shocking regularity, usually by just capturing someone else who could do whatever that girl did. Heart of the Swarm endgame Kerrigan was definitely powerful, and the tech tree expansion was probably an objectively substantial boost. Call me stupid, but I wanted something a little more fun. I wanted truck chan.
Space Truckin would allow me to capture and isekai anyone who I or my retinue killed with a vehicle. I wasn’t sure where to, exactly, given that this world was apparently disconnected from the rest of the company multiverse. The whole concept was just so dumb yet potentially profitable that I kinda felt like I needed to give it a shot, just out of reverence for whatever company programmer came up with this. Seriously, would they just end up as full beta testers? I’d be so down for that. I had a hard cap on how many people I could send based on the number of company recognized “true resurrectors” and Deities in my retinue. It was a depressingly short list. Dragon aspects or other similar demigods just didn’t count, so my budget of 22 isekai victims came from Tony (as a PC druid), Sally, Uther, and Katherine the Pure (my human Paladin.)
I decided to burn 60 credits on that. Not only did I pick up Space Truckin, I spent my home improvement budget on Pictures of Home. Pictures of home would give me a TV in my home that would let me watch my little isekai proxies at work. Why even bother if you can’t watch them?
The last 5 credits I had after that went to Bandwidth on my ritual circles. It gave me a slightly larger budget for designing my circles, but it did let me cut down ritual capture time by 66%, which is really nice for mass capture. Especially nice since this might be the primary capture method that any isekais would have; I couldn’t teleport to people I sent away like that.
I consulted with Nanna about what she’d be doing now that she was essentially a non-combatant. She was unfortunately having a mild existential crisis; she wasn’t particularly invested in combat, actually, but she was extremely emotionally attached to the concept of objective excellence. She wanted a job that she could do perfectly; how important that job was didn’t actually matter to her. Interestingly, that meant she found the possibility of being a maid extremely appealing, as a location could be objectively spotless. Maintenance or construction also caught her interest, but nothing glamorous did. She didn’t want a job in a competitive field, so combat or recruitment were out. I gave her the task of keeping my pocket plane clean and tidy; any time it was entirely spotless, she would sit in on Archaedes’s workshop and learn how to make company swag.
The last two things I did were choose Vashj’s mission reward and check what Talaada’s first major mission would be, mostly out of morbid curiosity.
Strength: Let Me Be Her: Vashj will abandon her Heroic Naga Sea Witch abilities and instead be granted abilities as if she were a variant of Azshara. She will reach tier 8 by gaining all of the abilities that Azshara had as Queen before she became a Naga
Agility: Supporting the Queen: the reward for capturing Azshara is upgraded, granting the at-will upgrade to Dirty Minds and Lure Sharing for Alluring Whisper This allows literally any member to sexually proposition any person and get an agreement (though caveats such as “when I’m off duty” or “only if my spouse is included” may be included)
Stamina: Mana Shield: she will be able to teach her signature heroic ability of Mana Shield as a normal arcane spell, allowing members of the retinue to block damage by sacrificing mana
Intelligence: Massive Crush: Grants Erich a variant of the Tsundere Service Lure which works retroactively. Anyone who has ever acted aggressively towards him that he finds attractive (or would find attractive) will develop a massive tsundere crush on him. Aggression, antagonism, and any other form of opposition all count as long as they were directed at Erich personally.
Spirit: Retcon? Instantly capture her modern incarnation, currently found in the Serpentshrine cavern in Outland
Spirit seemed like a waste. Sure my first attempt hadn’t done great but I was already a majority stakeholder in Outland. I was sure that I could take Vashj honestly if I could bend my full forces towards her.
Letting Vashj copy Azshara would be a total waste in a world where Azshara is standing right next to Doan in an accelerated timeline. Just in case she hadn’t already thought of it, I reminded Talaada to have Azshara teach Doan everything she knew.
Stamina was just a combat buff. I didn’t really need more of those.
Agility would give my entire retinue a fairly powerful active use lure, and would make it easy to draw someone into a private setting. It would definitely make Vanessa and Talaada’s jobs easier, but a quick Bimbo polymorph could do the same thing in most cases.
I settled on Intelligence. Tsundere service was like an always on temptress bell as far as I could tell. It was a much weaker effect, but the important thing was that it would take the teeth out of any antagonism towards me. It would become impossible for someone I found attractive to actually hate me, and from the full description in the catalog it looked like deliberate provocation would magnify the effect. I smiled as I considered one person in particular I’d be happy to exploit this power with, especially now that I’ve confirmed that even death can’t stop me.
As for the mission?
Cattle
Have the Ancient Highmountain Tribe of Tauren willingly incorporated into the Kaldorei Empire as favored servants. At least 90% of the tribe must serve Kaldorei masters in some capacity with no active coercion for this mission to complete. Bonus if you directly convince at least half of them through your own actions.
Reward: 10 Credits, Hotel California
Bonus: Deluxe Mission Ticket
Huh. Deeply problematic, but I brainwash girls so I can sleep with them so this is a company mandated no-judgement zone. I’d leave it to Talaada to figure this one out. I was moving out of the stage in my life where deluxe mission tickets were worth getting off my ass for. Hotel California seemed like it would be a lovely little expansion of my recruitment efforts, even if I was slowly approaching the point where I was the majority stakeholder in every civilization on Azeroth anyway. I wondered what would happen if I ran out of things to be rewarded with in the catalog?
With all that done, I finished out my time dead by railing Abby and Eliza. I had never had a threesome with a lesbian angel couple before, and this seemed like the perfect time to correct that oversight. There was something extremely satisfying fucking Abby, knowing for a fact that she’d shudder with revulsion at the thought of any other man trying something like this. I even busted out her orb and installed a trigger for when she saw my penis. One moment she was largely disinterested, and the next she was on her knees with a needy expression.
Eliza, on the other hand, was incredibly jealous of both of us. When she saw Abby losing her mind, Eliza wanted to be in my position… but as she watched, she found that the role she really wanted to be in was Abby’s. She got it when she begged for it; how could I say no?