CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR

  Beneath an artificial gray sky, a light snow falls. Snowflakes alight on tall pines, bare branches, and otherwise blanket the uneven forest floor. Burying fallen twigs and pine needles, just as surely as they do blood spatters and dead bodies. A line of them all told, each bestial and bloodstained. Chronicling a tale of wholesale slaughter, leading from one end of the forested expanse to another.

  The sounds of snowflakes a gentle pitter patter. The only ones to break up the eerie pall of silence. White flakes filling in smoking craters and freshly carved ravines, just as surely as they did the line of tracks that struck out into the white expanse. The barren flat tundra which lay just beyond the forest tree line.

  The very same tracks which trail unerringly towards a looming wall of gleaming metal. More specifically, the pair of circular double doors prominently stamped there. Doors which gave an affirmative beep at the behest of a diminutive figure’s voice command. His head barely clearing an eighth of the massive entryway as he stood there, breaths puffing to vapor, seemingly unbothered by the cold.

  With a sharp release of pressure the doors slid aside to reveal the small airlock-esque room he remembered from so long ago. The sudden vacuum tugging at his long locks of auburn hair, while his masked face remained otherwise unbothered.

  Richard tapped the toes of his footwear against the metal of the entrance, ridding them of snow, before stepping deeper into the barren, greenhouse like space—glass windows and skylights a prominent fixture. Once inside, he jammed the button on the wall to close the door behind him, before he crossed the distance to the control panel. Nimble fingers flying over the machine. Flipping switches and turning dials, slowly but surely he lowered the time dilation to more reasonable levels.

  And all the while, as he worked, he kept up a companionable dialogue with the ghost of shaper’s past.

  I guess that would make me Scrooge? Huh. Honestly? That tracks.

  “Hmm? So this is earth, huh? You know, in your memories it was a lot bigger.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. Sent a glare up at the intangible figure, casually doing backstrokes through the air.

  “At the risk of sounding like a broken record, while I find it infinitely fascinating that tutorials in your day used to happen planet side, even if this was the tutorial, which it’s not, earth is still about four years away.”

  The self-imprint left behind by the original Shaper for educational purposes—tethered to shaper’s legacy, though no longer trapped inside of it following Richard’s comprehension of the first lesson—pouted.

  “Four years?! But that’s-! That’s basically an eternity!”

  “Remind me, how long were you trapped in that magic eight ball again?”

  “That’s besides the point.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I’m the victim here!”

  “As you say.”

  The ratty-haired kid’s pout turned into a full on scowl

  “I was promised things! Wondrous things~!” he stared off into space with a dreamy expression, before snapping his head back in Richard’s direction. “And- you want honest? Well, I’ll give you honest. Quite frankly, your failure to live up to expectations does not bode well for our future working arrangements.”

  “You’re joking,” Richard deadpanned.

  “I am not! My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. I mean, you fill my head up with all of these grand novelties, and then I’m, what? Just supposed to wait?”

  “Ostensibly… yes.”

  “But that’s directly opposed to all my wants and desires!”

  “Which are… what exactly? I’m sorry, I seem to be drawing a blank.”

  “Obviously, to experience all of the great wonders of your world!”

  “Oh!”

  Richard was actually somewhat flattered. To think a being that’d witnessed galaxy spanning empires, and had walked through grand palaces of unimaginable opulence, some the size of entire continents, would be at all interested in their little blue spec. Though, he supposed, the pyramids were pretty darn coo-

  “I want to look up into a night sky entirely devoid of stars. Start a blood feud with a stranger over your interconnected web on the proper way to fire an earthenware jug. I’d already made a list of the most promising streaming services in hopes of further growing my power.”

  “Growing your power…?”

  “Yes! A woman in one of your memories? She had a shirt that said binging was good for the soul. Well, I’m mostly made up of soul, so I figured what better to use as a cultivation aid.”

  “That- that’s,” at a loss for words, Richard promptly threw in the towel with a shake of his head.

  The unexplained cost of using Shaper’s Legacy—ie the wholesale ransacking of his spotty, and sometimes contradictory, memories—still something he’d yet to properly come to terms with. Although, he thought it needed mentioning this gross invasion of privacy wasn’t an inherent cost attributed to the legacy itself. No, instead the blame for this clear violation lay primarily with the nosy little gremlin which inhabited it.

  And here I’d thought Ultraman was simply a galaxy spanning IP. Who would of guessed I just had a bad case of the mind parasites.

  Richard finished tinkering with the control panel. Easing off his tippy toes as he readjusted to the normal flow of time. Immediately, Richard felt the mantle of urgency settle back onto his shoulders. It wasn’t exactly something he’d missed, though it was something he’d lacked over the course of the last year. So much of his time spent learning, training, and developing. Growing in leaps and bounds, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent on his status screen.

  -|—Status—|-

  Name: Richard Penn

  Level: 15 [Locked]

  Age: 1 year old

  Class: None [Pending]

  Body Grade: F

  Soul Grade: G

  Core Grade: Corrupt (-14th Level Purity)

  Master Formation: G

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  Peerage: Lowly Serf

  Noble Regalia: None

  Strength: 448 (MAX)

  Endurance: 448 (MAX)

  Resilience: 448 (MAX)

  Regeneration: 448 (MAX)

  Control: 448 (MAX)

  Mana Capacity: 1150

  Free Points: 24,311

  Abilities: (0/2)

  Class Skills: (0/3)

  Equipment: (7/7)

  Gloves of the Jaded Functionary [Nimble Fingers] (Rare)

  Ring of Plenty x3 [Spacial Storage] (Epic)

  Cloak of Clandestine Conspiracy [Concealed Exchange] (Epic)

  Jika-Tabi of the Wandering Ronin [Borrowed Mileage] (Ancient)

  Martyrs Myriad Mask [Sacrificial Lamb] (Legendary)

  Title: |Liora’s Embrace| [Legendary]

  Not half bad if I do say so myself. That additional fifteen percent to all attributes is really showing it’s value. Kinda skimped on prestige but that wasn’t really the priority. Bit of a shame I couldn’t push my mana capacity further, but I’d honestly rather be safe than sorry.

  Richard’s gaze briefly strayed to his right arm. He let his mana circulate, drawing it out to his palm with an effort.

  Never does get easier does it?

  A creeping line of inky blackness clearly visible through his skin. Traveling from his core, up his torso, and down his arm—moving at a glacial pace. Gritting his teeth through the strain, the “mana” eventually reached its destination. He pushed a dollop of the stuff out through his skin.

  A puddle of gelatinous black gunk pooled in his palm. It was odorless, tasteless, and operated just as mana should, and yet for all intents and purposes, it felt dead. As if his mana core produced highly responsive ink, instead of willfully defiant mana. It went without saying that this change had made the creation of talismans an absolute breeze—he’d basically become a mana rich ink dispenser—but it was the implications of such a boon which immediately gave him pause.

  Nothing so outwardly beneficial came without significant cost, after all, and his constipated mana channels were an inconvenience at most. All it took was a thought to suck the mana back through the skin of his palm. At which point, without any mental prompting of his own, the mana streaked back into his core as if it couldn’t do so fast enough.

  Yeah. Definitely get this whole negative purity situation figured out first. Then we can worry about pumping up those numbers. Otherwise, I’m a little frightened of what I might become. It’s already not the greatest look at minus fourteen. What on earth would minus fifty look like? Minus one hundred?

  He wasn’t even sure what it meant and he shuddered to think of it.

  “If you’re done playing with your heretical mana, do you think we can get this show on the road? The sooner we beat this tutorial, the sooner I can get to my shows.”

  “I will if you finally tell me what that means.”

  Hovering upside down, the spiritual imprint pouted—glaring at him from a few inches away.

  “That’s not fair. You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yeah I know,” Richard sighed. “Figured it was still worth a shot.”

  Richard waved a hand through the boys head, making him recoil.

  “I thought I told you to stop doing that!”

  “And I thought I told you the meaning of personal space. Seems we’re both hard of hearing. Should probably get that checked.”

  The boy grumbled, but eventually acquiesced. Gliding backward by two whole inches.

  “Happy?” the brat asked.

  “Immeasurably,” Richard replied, sifting through his center most spatial ring for a very specific item.

  He fished out a crudely written I.O.U.—what was effectively a crumpled up post it note bequeathed with very limited system authority. Richard shot one last glance towards the evergreen forest that he’d called home for the last year, flicked his eyes up at his supposed master and wisened mentor—currently in the midst of cleaning out his ear with a pinky finger—before he finally tore the post it note in half. Unceremoniously transporting him, and his ghostly hitchhiker, back to the tutorial.

  An anticipatory smile already tugging at the corners of his lips, at the reactions he’d receive following his total transformation. He couldn’t wait.

  +++

  The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was harsh and acrid. The scents of burnt meat, grass, and hair lingering on the air. Smoke laden and choked, every breath he took felt like the prelude to a coughing fit. The smells of burning followed very swiftly by the sharp scent of iron. And after that, all the other less than savory odors which wafted from the dead.

  Of course his immediate thought was that he’d been taken to the wrong place. Surely this couldn’t be the same quaint little clearing he’d left- what was that? Four? Five hours ago? When the smoke finally parted, however, and the true extent of the damage was revealed—the trampled tents, the scorched earth, the bloated, rotting bodies—all thoughts of denial summarily vanished. Unable to withstand the grim sights before him.

  Standing stock still in the middle of a war torn field, the burnt out remains of a peaceful camp, his mind simply refused to compute. A shrill ringing worming it’s way into his ears. A wall of white noise roaring in place of rational thought. One that only seemed to be growing louder and louder and louder and-

  “Hey! Hello? Earth to Richard, come in!” intangible fingers snapped impatiently before his nose, breaking him from whatever trance he’d fallen into. “Ugh! Mother, I know I’ve said it once before, but, of all people, why is this the one you saddle me with?”

  Richard scowled up at the ghostly figure. Tensed. Flared.

  “Stop that!” his teacher exclaimed, trying to swat him over the head in rebuke, but only managing to swipe his hand through him instead.

  That said, the disconcerting sensation was just enough to snap him out of it fully. Alerting him to the fact that vaporized blood was currently venting from his pours to form a sanguine cloud around him. Richard blanched. Or would have, were his bloated skin not an unnatural scarlet hue. Covered in bulging veins, swollen, and feverish. The telltale symptoms of a very bad time. Immediately, Richard clamped down hard on his life energy. Dousing the unchecked conflagration before it could cause any lasting harm.

  Only once he’d gotten his life energy back under control, and his visage reverted back to normal, did his master shake his head with a disappointed huff.

  “What is the first rule of life energy manipulation? I’ve drilled it into your thick skull enough times that you should remember. You-”

  “Never go full burn. Yes, I know, I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Hmm…” his master—the domineering figure the boy became when he dropped all his pretenses—frowned. “Yes well, just see that it doesn’t happen again. That little stunt was at least a few weeks off of your lifespan, and, out here, I’m just going to assume there are no conveniently life aspected beasts waiting to top you back up. And another thing-!”

  Taking his rebuke in stoic silence, Richard began to make his way around what was left of the camp. Checking over bodies while trying to ascertain the course of events, as well as how recently they happened. In the end, he came up with very little, which was both a good and a bad thing. No bodies, at least none that he cared about, meant there was still a chance everyone was okay.

  Yet he was also left unsure how exactly to proceed. He could follow the clear trail that led deep into the forest, but he couldn’t know if that would lead him directly to them, or on a roundabout trail that would find him too late to save anyone. Going purely by the stiff state of the bodies, he had a feeling the latter was all too likely. It was just as he was beginning to think his search a waste of time, that he stumbled upon his to go bags.

  Or, at least, the plundered remains of one. A few strips of tattered, heavy-duty cloth the only recognizable detail. And while he’d like to believe that his care package had reached its intended recipients, he couldn’t rid himself of the sick feeling pooling in his gut.

  “Well, whether it’s with them or not, this at least gives me somewhere to start.”

  “And don’t even get me started on reality television, I mean I- what? Oh good, we’re leaving. This place was really starting to bum me out. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Richard plucked an item from around his neck.

  The communication talisman he’d had on his person ever since he’d left for the corporate hunting grounds. He’d thought it a good sign that they hadn’t once felt the need to ask for his assistance, even if their words would’ve been absolute gibberish due to the time dilation. Little did he know…

  Richard shook his head, pressed his finger to the complex series of runes, then, after a slight pause, slipped a bead of silver dew from the pad of his thumb into the paper. A liquid energy which flowed through the ink like a rushing river through a series of complex channels. Setting the entire talisman to blaze with otherworldly light, before a series of silvery lines shot away from the talisman in several different directions. And while the vast majority of the silver lines led back to his spatial rings, a few—though not nearly as much as there should’ve been all told—led deep into the forest.

  All lining up in roughly the same direction.

  Without even a thought for the possible consequences of what he’d just done, Richard took a single step in the direction indicated, and promptly disappeared with a theatric puff of smoke. The world around him blurred as that single step traversed hundreds in a fraction of a second. With every step he took after that only taking him further and further. Until he was little more than a blur. An optical illusion flitting between the trees. Eyes transfixed by the silver tether which promised either retribution or tragedy.

  And while he tried his best to avoid another incident—losing control was the last thing he needed right now—the rage was just as prominent as ever. A pressure cooker just waiting for it’s time to explode. Not yet, but soon. Once he found those that’d thought to take advantage of his absence, to harm—kill—those he’d genuinely grown to care for, he swore on her memory his retribution would be as prolonged as it was terrible. He owed them that much at least. Should the worst come to pass…

  Don’t be too late. Just don’t be too late! Please- please! You’d BETTER NOT BE LATE!