Shinra had always been a curious boy. Ever since he could remember, he was always asking questions of his parents, the village elders, anyone who came by, even the village priest. That is until his Father told him why the priest wasn’t looking out for him. His Father didn’t believe in a religion that said Zombies were outside of the circle of God’s love, and that is why they were bereft of magic. “That is just the bull$hit they are selling so even Zombies will listen to the priests.”“But why, Father? If we already don’t have magic, how much more can God punish us?” Shinra had asked.“You see Son, you’re talking as if the priest is right, and we are being punished. That is how they want us to think. So when they tell us to do something for the church, we will. And if we listen well, maybe we will have magic in the next life. That is all garbage.” His Father told him this while working in the back garden, planting the vegetables they would later store for the winter.“So it is
Shinra felt more powerful than ever. Creating Shadow Meld seemed to free something in his mind. Or his soul, he wasn’t sure which. ‘I wonder if this is how mages feel when they wield magic. Do they feel it on their skin? Alive with possibility?’ He could sense shadows in a way he couldn’t before. He was a part of them now, and it was closer to magic than any Zombie should be able to do. ‘Am I really a zombie if I have the system? I’ve changed so much…’Honestly, he had barely been a teenager when he acquired the System, but his sister might not recognize him now. His body was covered in muscles, well defined and lean like a boxer. He had grown taller too, and his face had the angular look of someone much older. His eyes had a depth to them that was new. He’d already understood loss and pain, but facing death and danger had forced him to mature in unexpected ways, and his eyes betrayed a hard fought wisdom.In the last 2 hours, he had gone from a young man who had dealt out
“Being a noble is really going to interfere with my work! How can I do Military Intelligence when every noble within a day’s travel was here tonight?” Raisd was doing his best not to shout at the Emperor, but he was feeling stressed.His anonymity was very important for the Military, and for the Sheriff’s too. At least he wore a helmet in the Arena, so Dsiar could probably still compete…“Think of it this way. You have been promoted into greater responsibility, Raisd,” the Emperor said. His eyes twinkled as he looked at his great great grandson over the rim of his wine glass. The Emperor had been in a great mood all day, and Raisd assumed it was because he liked seeing him so uncomfortable.“Emperor. I don’t want to be embroiled in politics, I want to be contributing to the Empire. In the Military I found threats to our stability and peace. With the Sheriffs, I protected the people of the Capital. As a Noble, I’ll just be attending parties and arguing about legislation in the
‘7 more left, probably.’ The Manor house was really big, and easy to infiltrate. The guild felt safe here, clearly, and didn’t have locks or sentries on the doors. It was too easy to slip in through the window of the receiving room and fade into the background, waiting for a target.He had acquired all new weapons, armour and gear from the 8 corpses in the town houses. He was surprised to find that almost all of them had blades that were clearly designed for throwing. Several had leather belts of knives that made it easy to pull a knife from under a jacket, or from the hip. ‘I guess killing from far away is part of the trade,’ he had thought.He’d found a tight fitting vest that looked like cloth but was cut proof, a pair of boots that felt like something a noble would wear, and a light jacket with a clever setup to hide a short sword. Everything seemed spelled for defence, and now he knew that, someday, he’d be able to understand the weaves, maybe.He picked up two high qualit
The room was so bright, it was hard to believe it was in an underground house. Maybe that is why they lit it so extravagantly with magic bulbs and sconces, in defiance of the surrounding darkness. Great brightness created deep shadows, but Shinra didn’t have time to play with shadows, because even greater brightness was heading his way.He didn’t need to be a mage to see the magic bolts, fireball, stone shrapnel, and intense blue power blast heading his way, or that the mages were still chanting and casting. ‘They were fast,’ flashed through Shinra’s mind, but his vision was filled with data.This is when Daemon prediction showed its true worth. He could see the trajectory of each attack, and he knew that if he didn’t move, the stones would miss him, but everything else would hit. More than seeing where and when the attacks would land, the data revealed the safest path forward to avoid the attacks. Except it wasn’t forward. Shinra felt like he had all the time in the world to m
The money had started coming every week. Naori was very confused at first, after all, a mage on a horse wearing some sort of uniform just arrived at her small little hut and handed her the sack with coins in it."You must have made a mistake," she had said. The man didn't have much to tell her other than that there was no mistake, Naori was the addressee. Every week the same man came to deliver her a small sack of coins, and every week she tried to get more information from him. All she learned was that the money was coming from a mage named Wintersbane, and that he sent it from the Sheriff's headquarters.Naori was young, but she knew that this wasn't normal. After 4 weeks, she had more money than she'd ever seen before, and she cried. A lot. She wished her parents and Shinra were here too.After 6 weeks, she estimated there was enough money for them to move to a better home and not work for over a year. Without Shinra though, she didn't need a better home, so she might not have
In some ways, the room was as familiar as her lab at home. It was filled with books, and several workstations with bubbling concoctions and glass beakers and tubes. Loren wasn’t study wine making any longer though. She had started with a focus on agriculture, but found that the discoveries she had implemented in Innisrillin were decades ahead of the research in the THRUST agriculture department. She spent a few weeks there, but quickly tired of teaching her professors, instead of learning, so she switched to the weather department. Surely something as important, and elemental as the weather had centuries of research behind it. And it did, but the professors and students there had a very theoretical approach. They were nearly philosophers instead of Magic researchers, and she bored of it even faster than the agriculture group.Loren had despaired, truthfully she thought, ‘If this is the state of magical research in the Capital, why did I leave my friends and family?’. Then it ha
Loren was energised like never before. She tried to speak to the professor after the lecture, but he was surrounded by a throng of students and she lost her nerve. Instead, she went straight to the Administration building and switched her major, again. “What is your new Major?” the administrator asked, a slight smile tugging at her lips. She had processed Loren’s other transfers and thought it was funny. Not a lot of students could afford to be so indecisive, but this one brought out her banking sigil like it had unlimited funds behind it. Banking sigils were small mithril plates with a simple but powerful spell on them that could be used to transfer money between sigil holders. Their use had revolutionised commerce so much that the banks no longer moved silver, gold and platinum between accounts, they just maintained the architecture and log books of the vast and complex banking sigil spell.Loren’s sigil had a delicate engraving of grapes on a vine, and she waved it towards