Prologue – Legacy

 

Archibald Goldfinger was nervous. It was finally here. His awakening was just a few seconds away.

He was standing in a mostly featureless room together with four mages fueling the ritual circle, that he was here for. Blue mana drifted out of them like smoke and was drawn to the collection runes. The warm orange glow of mage-lamps fought for dominance with the bright flickering white-blue radiance from the intricate lines covering the floor.

He may only be the son of two humble merchants in a rural town, but he had a dream. He wanted to leave a mark in history. It did not have to be a big mark, but he wanted to be remembered. Archibald would settle for being a sidenote in a historic document, so long as he was in there.

To get there he would need to be exceptional. And to be exceptional he would need to have exceptional skills. Skills he may already have and could now discover.

The ritual finished and information flooded his brain.

The result of his awakening was utterly ordinary.

All he got were the ordinary core skill Human Knowledge, the ordinary Citizenship title, and a single rank two innate skill.

Archibald’s mood did not drop. Having an ordinary start would simply make his later achievements more impressive. His Vivid Memory would guarantee him a job in any scholarly profession. He would join the city council as a scribe and from there he could work his way up the ranks.

“Move it! Other people want to use the room too.”

He snapped back to reality, stormed out of the room, and only barely avoided collision with his parents, who had waited for him at the exit.

After some congratulations they exited the ritual tower and walked back to their house at the edge of the commercial district. As they walked through their shop, which took up most of the ground floor, the cashier greeted them with a friendly smile. Before entering the training room in the cellar, the family stopped in the common room in the back.

“You know what you want to focus on?” his mother asked.

“Yes. I don’t really need weight at all. It only makes me harder to push around and I would rather avoid having to rely on it at all. So, I want to focus on life and acceleration. Then I can work faster and sleep less!” Archibald nearly vibrated from unreleased excitement.

His father let out a hearty laugh and handed him a small booklet. “I knew you would say that. Here is a guide to getting the Fitness skill. That should help you with your training.”

In less than a second Archibald disappeared into the cellar, new training method in hand and dreams of greatness in mind.

 

---

 

After graduation from school, Archibald started working as an accountant for the city hall. It was honest work and allowed him enough free time to train and provided a reasonable wage as well as opportunities to work on his memory skill. It had already evolved into Soul Memory, a skill that let him preserve memories directly in his soul. And he was working on another evolution. An evolution, which would allow him to filter the preserved memory and extract their raw information. He was training this by internalizing paperwork with a focus on only text and even recalling the memories again to forcefully forget detail like the color of the paper, the smell of the room and other noise.

He could feel his efforts bear fruit. The day was nearly over when something in his mind clicked. A click that resounded through his soul.

 Satisfied Archibald closed his eyes and focused on his status.

He had made tangible progress. After raising his Life aspect by another six points he would reach rank tow. This would make training his skills and further raising his aspects a lot easier. The penalty for progress was after all a whole factor of ten to the difficulty for each rank difference between the respective aspect or skill and his core skill.

The fact that he had not only trained his Soul Memory to 100% proficiency, but also evolved it to rank four, clearly demonstrated, how hard work and a good compatibility could alleviate this somewhat.

Pride swelled up in Archibald. Surely, he was destined for greatness.

 

---

 

This was it. His chance for greatness had come. Archibald had discovered the tax evasion scheme of a large quarry company. His research was well documented and would allow the city to reclaim a small fortune in unpaid taxes. He had handed the evidence to the official in charge of tax fraud and was incredibly happy with this job excellently done. A rank three accountant had outsmarted the combined efforts of a rank five business.

He had to celebrate. He grinned and unlocked his door. The dark wood swung to the side in silence. It produced absolutely no noise, which could have ruined his mood.

Archibald walked into the living room and frowned. Why was his window open? He was sure he closed it before going to work.

His anger was interrupted rudely by a hard wooden bat hitting his head. The soft carpet adequately softened the fall.

“Did ya really think, you could just tattle to your boss? Actions have consequences. You try to take the money for the chief. Now chief sends me to take your life. Shut up your annoying mouth, before you talk about his secret to somebody he didn’t pay.”

Archibald’s thoughts were hazy, but agitation gave him renewed energy. No! This is not how it ends! A foot to the side interrupted the scream he didn’t even realize he had produced.

The impact rattled his insides, and he coughed out a few drops of blood. They landed on the otherwise clean carpet and left stains, which would be a nightmare to get out.

No words were necessary. He accepted.

He closed his eyes. Life was fading out of him, but he was filled with satisfaction. His memory would live on. It would outlast him even longer than expected.

Archibald Goldfinger died as a happy man and left behind a legacy. He may not have known, but it would outlast the very world he was born on.

 

The Start of Something

 

I flopped onto my bed. Today was my fourteenth birthday and it was exhausting. People I barely knew congratulated me with the sincerity of a snake oil salesman and I had to pretend to be grateful and happy to see them.

The bed had a fluffy softness combined with a subtle springiness, that made me want to keep laying there. I still had my day-clothes on, but who cares? Well, I cared. I got up reluctantly leaving the soothing embrace to prepare for sleep.

A short shower later I was in pajamas and finally ready to end the day. The new book on the wooden bedside table caught my attention. It was the continuation of a story I had really adored. Reading a few pages wouldn’t hurt. Right?

 

A knock on the door rudely interrupted my reading session.

“It’s already past midnight and tomorrow is a long day. You should really sleep.”

“Yes Mooom.”

Dangit! I was just getting to a good part. I suppose the book won’t run away overnight.

“Don’t forget the awakening potion. Sweety.”

Ah, right. The potion was given to me by a city official. It was an alchemical mixture, that stimulated the soul and caused the dormant system magic of a person to activate.

The process was straining, so it was advised to only drink it directly before going to sleep. The strain was also the reason, why it was given out at the fourteenth birthday. Apparently, that was the age, where everyone was developed enough to avoid strong negative side effects.

The grey potion left a bitter aftertaste. Would a tastier potion really be too much to ask for? Everyone has to drink it, so some rich folks would pay well to avoid the taste. Are they doing that? Did I just get the inferior version? My thoughts grew cloudy and unfocussed. Guess that’s the signal to finally sleep for real.

I woke up, with a slightly altered sense of self. I instinctively knew my LAW scores and skills. I also could visualize them with a mental demand. Even knowing that this would happen hadn’t prepared me for the reality of it. It felt weird. Like an itch under the shirt. A constant low presence and an urge to indulge it. Instead of scratching myself I would “look” at the so-called status page my core skill provided. But as soon as I stopped the urge started to grow again.

Wow! I really didn’t expect a Rank ten skill. It sounds like I just got luck and inherited a bunch of knowledge. Let’s see:

This is the legacy of Archibald Goldfinger.

He died of unknown causes, before he could leave any more detailed information about it. This leads me to believe, that he the Archivist Legacy skill was something he got only shortly before his death.

The last record he left was about tax fraud of an organization vastly more powerful than him. He may have died of natural causes or an accident, but I believe that the cause of his death was violent and rather sudden.

Let his demise be a lesson to you, to be careful of what information you share with others. Especially if the information is about forces more powerful than you.

I am Kara Ironforge and I hope this legacy will prove as useful to you as it was for me.

It was very considerate of Kara to put this information at the start. I’d thank her, but sadly she is already dead, if the skills description is to be believed. As far as I know skill descriptions cannot lie.

The information is neatly organized, but the sheer amount of it will make getting through it a long process. Sadly I, don’t have time to start this progress right now. School is about to start, and I want to be on time.

 

The Continuation of Something

 

The characters main name is withheld on purpose and also because I am not sure how to name them[/author]

It had taken years, but I read all the recorded information from the Archivist Legacy. It painted a bleak picture.

The world was ending. It was a slow decline, visible clearly when looking at the relative time of the stored information.

The decline began, when two opposing pantheons clashed it the center of the world. Armies of gods batted against another and irreparably damaged the foundations of reality. The world was fraying at the edges, losing energy and letting in monsters from beyond.

When the damage became apparent most immortals paced up and left. They took their treasures and most important followers with them leaving a giant power vacuum.

The ones that stayed were the Creators. Gods so powerful, that their inner worlds had started bleeding into reality forming mystical realms at the side of realty, that bound them here. The only option for them was becoming even more powerful. So powerful, that their realm could become a complete world and separate from this dying one.

The war between them still raged, forcing the remaining population of the world to cover in fear in the few areas, that were not yet falling apart, but unimportant enough to slip the notice of the waring deities.

The more time passed, the more knowledge got lost. Some got obsolete as the level of ambient energy dropped and things like ambiently powered rituals stopped working. Sometimes whole civilizations got overrun by monsters slipping through the cracks in world-membrane. Other times vast libraries were simply casualties in ideological conflicts, where the culture of the defeated was systematically erased, often taken whole branches of magic with them.

Some people that got this Legacy before me had tried to revive some of the lost knowledge, but they failed most of the time and even the few recorded successes were only temporary.

 

Life still went on. It marched forward with grim conviction. Why bother about an eventual end of the world, that was so far in the future that civilizations could rise and fall while the current status changed in ways too small to comprehend with a mortal mind?

I would have liked to revive some of the old technologies I learned about, but the warning at the start of the Archive had prevent true again and again. I did not have the background or power necessary to introduce change.

So, I turned to reading. The stories born from creative minds were a welcome distraction from the signs of the creeping apocalypse, which was slowly devouring the world. The stories were full of optimism and the characters in them were facing overwhelming odds and coming out on top every time. Even if the success of the main characters was fabricated, there were stories like this happening in the real world. The wins may be temporary, but they signaled that not all hope was lost, that if somehow more people decided to try and act like those heroes, the world could become a better place.

 

The skill I had gotten by pure chance helped me get the required grades to delve into enchanting magic and try to make the world a bit better. They may only be quality of life improvements and not directly saving lives like healers were doing, but in this world every improvement to living quality was welcome.

Most of my magical growth was thanks to me having a rank ten skill. The vast amount of information made Weight necessary to avoid a headache and the recovery from said headache let my Life grow even beyond that.

The days were getting a bit repetitive, but that also meant that nothing overly bad was happening.

I felt a bit lacking in sense of purpose, but my favorite author would release a new book next month, so things were looking up.

 

The End of Something

 

“It has broken through the wall!”

I knew that the city would fall eventually, but it still came as a surprise, that it happened in my lifetime.

A research team in a nearby city made a discovery with the remains of a vitality devouring void-beast too far. He learned how to turn the Life aspect into energy, but the process was slightly flawed. It turned living creatures, that were drained of Life into undead.

Understandably the research was canceled, but the head researcher decided to carry on in secret.

Something went wrong and three months after the official cancelling of the project, the city was overrun by undead, that turned every living being they came across into one of their own.

Once they spilled into the wilderness, there was hope, that the magical beasts would stop the problem. After all, one of the reasons there were no wars in our small corner of the world, was that those beasts would annihilate all armies, that were outside of the protective wall of a city or fortress for an extended amount of time.

The gigantic undead boar that just tore a hole into the city wall is clear proved, that those hopes were unfounded.

I stood on a nearby section of the wall and tried to repair a faulty anti-climbing enchantment, when it happened.

Then the guard captain, that is organizing the defense team I am in suddenly screams: “Brace yourself!”

I only had time to disconnect my analysis tool from the enchantment, when multiple explosions send tremors through the earth and shake the wall. If I wasn’t already kneeling, I would have fallen over. Several others were not so lucky.

“What was that?” a militiaman asked.

“They have started the scorched earth protocol.” The captain explained in a grim tone. “The undead can not only turn those they kill. When they are destroyed, they release a kind of energy, which turns any recently deceased bodies into undead as well.”

He was shaking with barely restrained anger “So it was decided that the best course of action would be to detonate the emergency shelters as soon as the wall was breached, to avoid any civilians becoming part of the undead horde.”

“I don’t think it was the best course of action. I had family in those shelters too. But I prefer this over letting them turn undead. Now then. The plan has another component.” He said, while taking a small box from his pack and opening it. “In here are berserker pills, that will allow you to consume your Aspects to gain temporary power. Use them to ensure, that when you die, the resulting zombie is as weak as possible. The explosions may have thrown off the bastards trying to climb the wall, but that is only a temporary reprieve. Try to end as many zombies as possible.”

With those not very confidence inspiring words he took one of the pills himself and jumped down the wall to attack the giant boar that breached the wall. Wielding a greatsword like a wooden stick, he let out a flurry of blows, each of them sending out shockwaves, leaving deep furrows in the ground.

The undead beast turned to face him. It already looked damaged to a point, that would kill it, if it were still alive. The siege spells almost did their job in trying to stop it, but its blatant disregard for its own safety allowed it to outlast both the bombardment and the wall’s durability.

Man and monster collided and produced a shockwave, that felt nearly as potent as the explosion of the civilian shelters. A few moments later a brutal swing separated the beast head from its body.

The captain ran into the hole in the wall and swung with wild abandon. Just when it looked, like he may push back the wave of undead, his arms separated from his body after a particularly forceful swing. He still sent out a few bone shattering kicks before collapsing from mostly self-inflicted wounds.

As the horde continued to pour into the city a wall of flames rises in the opening. “They are funneling themselves into the hole. Use the increased density and let out you most powerful area attacks!”

It seems like the defense will still hold for now. I resumed the repairs and finished just as the first undead tried to climb over the battlement. The enchantments resumed their duty with a ripple of power and threw away a variety of undead animals, that were able to somehow climb the magically smooth walls. They immediately started trying to climb up again.

I used the small break to get one of the berserker pills and look over my status.

The progress wasn’t anything special, but I was doing reasonably well. A real shame, that I could not add more literature and research materials to the archive. Still a lot of the knowledge we had would not be completely lost.

“They are on the wall!”

Our section was still clear, but next to us the enchantments didn’t hold and now a bunch of zombie cats is wreaking chaos there and coming closer fast.

“Take the pills!”

Yes. I totally didn’t forget about them. There was no need to add my combat power to the invading horde, no matter how insignificant it was.

Those pills are certainly something. I feel so full of energy.

“Ha! Take this you abominatios!” The solder next to me certainly seemed to be enjoying the power boost as well.

Suddenly an oversized undead cat jumped at me. Time slowed to a crawl, and I slapped it out of the air. Its head flew over the battlements back into the wilderness. As time resumed its normal flow, I could feel my Acceleration drop by around eight points just before the rest of the body dropped at my feet.

There was no time for contemplation, as more and more undead beasts swarmed the walkway.

 

A New Beginning

 

While dodging the leap of another undead beast, I slipped on the blood coating the walkway and fell. Fangs sank into my arms as I tried to push myself up.

At least the zombies wouldn’t get a strong soldier from my body.

Life was leaving my body. Not just vital energy, the very Life-aspect coursing through my body was draining out of me.

As darkness claimed my mind, there was a notification from my core skill.

A while later my eyes opened again.

 I was certainly one of the least dangerous undead, the world had ever seen. Which was a good thing. I could not harm someone, even if I lost control of my new urges. I could feel Life around me some people were still fighting. So, I did the reasonable thing and played dead. No need to get killed again. Is it even playing dead, if I actually died?

I changed my main title immediately. It wasn’t even a choice.

Then I shifted to planning. I couldn’t really stay anywhere with living creatures, if I wanted to continue existing in this body. But, with my new general skill it may be a better choice to just end my existence as a zombie and start over. I could instinctively feel, what the skill considered to be my sense of self and it included my personality, thoughts, emotional affects and memories.

There was however a reason, why I stayed still and continued my arguably cursed existence. The other undead did not attack me. I could follow the horde and collect the information of any city they overran. I would be preserving knowledge. Also, I could gather information about the undead, from a new and novel perspective.

This was going to be an adventure. There may be danger, but the worst that could happen would just be the same as what would happen, if I chose the easy way out.

 

---

 

Against all odds the inner fortress held for multiple more days. Meanwhile I was roaming the empty streets and saving the books in private libraries from being lost in obscurity.

I could not regain energy naturally, but there were a lot of plants, that the horde ignored to focus on the bigger prize of sentient life full of magic. I would not run out of energy anytime soon. The growth bonus from my new core skill also was showing great results.

I was slowly reaching the strength of rank two and increasing my aspects was easier, than it ever was in my life. After reaching 200 the difficulty of growth would be equivalent to when I was newly awakened, but I would be twice as strong and could therefore train more efficiently.

If I had any combat related skills, I could someday pose a real danger to unsuspecting civilians wandering through the woods.

An explosion interrupted my thoughts. It seems the inner fortress was finally breached, and they detonated the VIP-shelter.

I turned and started to slowly walk to the fortress towering over the rest of the city. There were books to save.

 

New problems

 

I had lost the skill used to store information. I could still scan books, but the retention was abysmal. The mind is simply not made to absorb a full book in a few moments.

Luckily, I had liberated a big special backpack in the fortress, that I could use as a stopgap measure until I got an information storing skill. It should not be that hard, since I was already able to gather the information with a skill. Now I just had to push myself.

“Stop right there, criminal scum!”

“What?”

“I don’t know how you survived the undead, but that bag and those books are property of the city lord and not yours to take.”

“The city lord survived?”

“Of course! The VIP-bunker has an ancient concealing enchantment. There is no way those savages could find it. In case someone or something intelligent is directing the undead we staged an explosion, to make them think we copied the tactic used in the main city.”

“Sorry. I did not know that. If the lord is still alive, I will of course give his belongings back. I simply wanted to save the knowledge there from being forgotten.”

“A laudable goal. You seem honestly surprised, so I will forget that I saw you and just bring those back. You better get going. Rations are limited and we cannot afford to feed you.”

“Thank you. Good luck in rebuilding then.”

“Off you go.”

I took the hint and left as fast as possible. It seemed I underestimated the defenses of the inner fortifications.

Suddenly I lost control of my body. As my head touched the ground it rolled off. I got a disorienting view of the street, the guard that had stopped me and my headless body.

“Sorry lad, but I can’t let information of the lord’s survival get out. Nothing personal.” With that he sheathes his sword and walks away.

 

---

 

I woke up, with a slightly altered sense of self. I instinctively knew my LAW scores and skills. I also could visualize them with a mental demand. Even knowing that this would happen hadn’t prepared me for the reality of it. It felt weird. Like an itch under the shirt. A constant low presence and an urge to indulge it. Instead of scratching myself I would “look” at the so-called status page my core skill provided. But as soon as I stopped the urge started to grow again.

I also had the feeling this had happened before.

What happened to the guard that beheaded me?

Wait! I clearly had my head still firmly on my shoulders. It must have been a bad dream.

Yes. The whole zombie attack probably was also a dream.

After sorting this out I stood up and prepared to go to work. And when I said work, I clearly meant school. I was clearly more tiered than usual, even considering how long I had slept. Must have been the nightmares.

Ok. Deep breaths. Clothing first. I slipped into my school skirt… Wait! A skirt? Wasn’t I a guy?

I looked into a mirror and saw a cute girl. Well, I saw a normal girl. The same one I always saw when looking into the mirror.

This mental dissonance is starting to get old.

I was… Me. I had two sets of memories.

One set of memories was that of a guy, who was living a boring life in a boring city, that got suddenly a lot less boring, when zombies attacked.

The second set of memories was that of a girl, currently visiting school, who had her fourteenth birthday yesterday and awakened her system.

A good start. The system awakened and my innate skills awakened. One of these skills was able to preserve my sense of self, even beyond death.

Then, this should be my second life.

My name was Mathilda, or Tilly for my friends and family. My other name was… Irrelevant. The person holding that name died. Twice even. Must have been some record. I decided to the name was clearly to blame for all that bad luck. Thus, I will forget it, since it died with the body holding it. It was a dead name.

Also, I liked this body a lot better. Less awkward and nicer to look at in the mirror. This was evidenced, by the fact I actually had a mirror in my room in this life.

I headed to school, feeling good. I fact better than I ever had in my life. Okay I had felt better than now in this life, but not in the first one.

Today was going to be a good day. I just knew it.