Kegan was slightly disappointed with the low number of points he had left to spend. Especially as he viewed the perks available:

  “Why are the costs so different?”

  “Good question! The cost of perks is determined by the achievement it took you to unlock the perk, and the amount of energy and magic needed to implement the perk. There are also some limits on how much magic we can stuff into your body. Imagine trying to fill a large sack with more and more stuff. That is why I stripped you of the class perk options so long ago. It would be like putting a big set of metal armor into the sack. The sack would be full much sooner, but it would limit the other things you can put into the sack.”

  “You are much more helpful than the blue spirit, I am not used to my questions being answered. I think I’ve decided on my perks.”

  “What would you like?”

  “These perks” Kegan pointed to the ones he wanted.

  The subsistence perks were to deal with his increasing problem of not having enough food to eat. The homeowner perks had taken on a whole new level of value to him after living in the Keep. The magic perk had been the hardest choice. The metal mage perks would have been better for improving his combat abilities, but he couldn’t afford it without sacrificing some other perks. The vision he’d seen of his past reincarnations had also bothered him. His past self had seemed obsessed with avoiding pain. Since he might not have too many remaining perk options, Kegan had wanted to get something that blocked pain.

  “Good choices! How would you like to handle your respawn? Start in a new world? Go back to the one you’ve been in?”

  Kegan selected a respawn option:

  “You’ve spent 3050 points, leaving you with just 550 remaining. The respawn won’t cost you any additional points, but it will take 30.5 hours for your body to form. Are all of these changes acceptable to you?”

  Kegan smiled at the politeness of the gold spirit.

  “Yes”

  Kegan awoke on top of the small mountain where he always began. The blue spirit was there hovering on its pedestal, but looking … subdued.

  “Have I been replaced, adventurer Kegan?”

  The voice was definitely sad.

  “Yes”

  Kegan started walking off the mountain down into the valley. There were things he needed to try.

  Before he reached it Kegan could tell that the cabin was in shambles. There was a partially collapsed corner of the roof, multiple holes in the wall were causing it to sag, and a terrible smell was coming from it even twenty feet away. He thought he saw movement inside, so he approached cautiously with just one javelin in hand. As he got within reach of the cabin a goblin screamed, and suddenly the whole house burst with activity. Small goblins, no more than two feet tall burst from every hole and crevice in the house.

  Kegan backed up, ready to use his javelin as a makeshift spear, but it wasn’t necessary. None of the goblins even came within reach of him. They all fled into the forest screaming in fear. They weren’t very fast, but Kegan wasn’t going to bother chasing them.

  Instead, he turned back towards the cabin, and checked the interior. The inside of the cabin was in an even worse state of disrepair, and the terrible smell went up a notch.

  He knew from his intuitive sense of the homeowner perks that this house was still considered one of his claimed homes. He figured it would be a good test for his new clean home and castle owner perks.

  There were other perks he wanted to try out, so he left the cabin and walked a short distance into the forest. There was a clearing where he’d cut down a tree with a good amount of sunlight. He sat down and started activating the subsistence living perk. A tingling sensation spread all over his skin, and even his eyes had an uncomfortable tingling feeling until he closed them. But the strongest tingling sensation was in his mouth. He opened his eyes briefly to see that on each exhale there was a small faint green mist. Within a few minutes he knew the activation of the perk was complete. There was a bit of a green tint to the air around him, as if some spring pollen had just been kicked up.

  The activation cost him some calories, but he knew those calories were slowly being returned to him. He activated the perk again. The cloud grew a little thicker, and spread out a little further as well. After a half dozen more activations of the perk the amount of calories he was gaining was similar to how much he’d get while eating. He continued activating the perk. After an hour he could tell his initial activations of the perk were starting to fade away. He let the rest of the activations fade away over the next hour.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. There was no vegetation within twenty feet of him, just a gray dusty looking ground. From twenty to thirty feet there was nothing green, and no leaves on the ground, only wood that looked like it had been eaten away by an army of insects.The same gray dust covered everything, but it seemed to have built up in larger piles around the wood. Further than thirty feet out there were random spikes of devastation.

  Despite the apocalyptic scene around him Kegan stood up with a smile on his face. He’d never been this full in his last life.

  Kegan's perks:

  Memory User: