My 7th life was sort of memorable, in fact it’s one of the few early ones that I can clearly remember. Most of the rest were short and unpleasant.
I think anyone that had died as much as I had would eventually break, one way or another. My break just kind of happened all at once. Since that, quite literally, crazy life, I had been able to keep it together. At least as long as you use the fact that an Emerald Hexa-Wolf knew to run as soon as it saw you as your metric, refusing to eat seafood for several lifetimes because you spent a life as one of the tastiest fish in the ocean, is mild in comparison.
I sighed and stopped watching the rain.
-I’m just a bit depressed but not Loony Tunes. Get up and figure out how I'm get back to the Town, and back to my gold.
I started to move, then stopped as I had a realization.
-I don’t remember the Town’s name! Come to think of it I don’t really remember many of the names of places I have been.
I leaned back and mulled it over.
-Do I just not care enough to remember, or do I have a memory problem.
I had worried about the nature of my ability before, even going as far as to spend significant amounts of my time pursuing spiritual awareness, meditation, and chasing down anything to do with soul magic. All with not much to show for it but a lot of dogma and worries. Well, strictly speaking I had also learned the ability to sit still for long periods of time, which comes in handy more often than I thought.
-It would really suck if my soul couldn’t hold any more now that I'm back in a modern world.
“Once I’m done everything else, I should go back to Soul magic research.”-Me
-… And I‘m bandaged, dressed in dirty cloths and talking to my self about souls in public. In the hospital. Yahh, not Loony tunes at all.
I laughed, then winced from the pain moving my shoulder caused. When the pain subsided, I got up and walked towards the reception desk in the center of the lobby.
-Time to get moving back too.... Cheese-man Town? Damn I really have to learn the name of the place.
.....
I stepped off the bus beside the corner store, rubbing at my shoulder. The day spent waiting for the bus’s departure time and the long ride following had not helped with the existing pain.
Shouldering the small backpack I had bought and filled with new cloths, I turned and walked towards the Cheeseman.
-This is becoming an unfortunate habit. I wonder how many times Fate will ship me out of this town, and how long till Fate gets the point that I do what I want, not what it plans.
My chuckle was cut short as a Police vehicle drove down the street. I watched it silently as it passed by, then pulled a U-turn and headed back.
-You have got to be fucking kidding me! Did Fate hear me a whole dimension away in the other world and decided to prove who’s more powerful?
Dropping the pack I had just picked up, I quickly looked around noting how many people were in ear shot. A small crowd was milling around the bus, fellow riders taking the chance to stretch and get some fresh air. A few more returning from the corner store with snacks in hand.
-Ok there should be enough witnesses to keep this civil.
I waited, trying to keep a scowl of my face as the cruiser pulled into the lot and rolled to a stop next to where I was standing, the driver's side window rolling down. My half-suppressed scowl turned to a relieved smile as the window revealed officer Parsons.
“Hello officer Parsons. I should have guessed it was you when a normal cruiser pulled up instead of the over compensator on four wheels.”-Me
Parsons paused for a moment, her face showing amusement for a brief moment before returning to her normal “work face”.
“And I would have guessed that I wouldn’t seeing you outside of the board of inquiry. I heard that you got shot and had been moved down to hospital on the coast”-Officer Parsons
I nodded, noticing for the corner of my eye that passenger crowd had gotten a lot more interested in our conversation.
“Yes. Any luck finding a hunter that admits to shooting someone in the back and leaving them to die?”-Me
She paused a gave me an appraising look.
“I read the report, and no one has come forward. Do you have anything to add to your statement, like a better description than “3 hours hiking west of the road” for where you were shot?”-Officer parsons
“No. I made my statement through my lawyer, and no offence to you Officer Parsons, I think that I’ve had enough interaction with the local Police force.”-Me
She frowned and flicked her eyes towards the crowd of people watching are exchange.
“Yes, hopefully we shouldn’t have any reason to interact officially in the future.”-Officer Parsons.
I smiled wryly, shrugging before I was going to speak again, only to be interrupted by the radio in the cruiser. Officer Parsons listen then responded into the radio before looking back at me.
“Excuse me, but I have to go now. We’re a bit short handed.”-Officer Parsons
She smirked as she started to roll up the window. Then paused before speaking quietly.
“I talked with Timmon’s wife. She says that he has disappeared, and his hunting rifle is gone. It might be a good idea to not tempt fate and leave town.”-Officer Parsons
She rolled up the window the rest of the way and drove off. I stood and watched the cruiser disappear down the street.
-As much as I appreciate the warning about who you suspect shot me, and since no one has arrested me for a dead body showing up, I'm pretty sure that Timmon’s isn’t going be a problem.
With that thought I picked up my pack, nodded to the people by the bus, and headed across the street to the motel to get a room. Tomorrow was probably going to be a busy day.
.....
After a very tasty breakfast at the Cheese-Man, I spent a frustrating hour at the accountants where he explained that yes, the government can just take money from my account for things like back taxes and medical. By the time I had finished up buying some extra supplies at the everything hardware store, my shoulder was throbbing, and I was not really in the mood to start hiking to the lake. I paid for an extra day at the motel and went back to my room to lay down and think.
-I should get back to my camp and clean up before someone else finds it.
I stared frowning up at the ceiling.
-If I get caught, I’ll just jump into the next life. Have I gotten so callous about my reincarnation/dead body possession power that I don’t care if/when I die?
I shook my head and waved a hand like I was pushing something aside.
-Phycological introspection later, practical introspection for now.
I sighed and dropped my hand back down onto the bed.
-I should be dead.
Guns were a pretty simple concept when you got down to it, accelerate a mass to high speed towards whatever you want to put a hole in. Everything from throwing a rock to a railgun worked on this basic concept, however fancy you wanted to carry it out.
-So why am I still alive? I certainly got a hole poked into me.
It had been a very, very long time for me since a gun had been something readily available. But even then, I remembered that getting shot was supposed to end up with you dying.
-It's not like I haven't had a bullet’s lesser evolved cousin poke holes into me and end that life. So why didn’t getting shot at close range with a hunting rifle put an end to Steven Callows? Luck?
I laughed then winced from the spike of pain from my shoulder.
-I transmigrated into a slave superhuman body in another universe or dimension or magic somewhere else. I possess dead bodies, fix them, and live till I die again. I’ve been everything from a fish to a Prince with his own harem. Less about luck and more about random extremes.
I paused stunned for a moment
-That was supposed to be from worst to best, but thinking about it, I was way happier being a fish than trying to juggle a harem of women. At least as a fish I didn’t have to worry what I was eating had been poisoned by a wife that had to pretended to like me.
I shuddered remembering the panicked fear as a fish, swimming for my life away from a ravenous female humanoid with a mass of tentacles instead of arms and legs.
-OK, maybe those two examples were more similar than I care to admit. Both of those lives didn’t end all that well.
I have no real idea how long I lived under the waves, fish don’t really have a good sense of time. They mostly just go from moment to moment looking for food or running from something that considers them as food. Fish also don’t have adequate health care. Me: Fish was smarter than your average bear, which came in handy avoiding fishing nets and large predators. Not so helpful when you catch a disease that blinds you. I've no idea what got me in the end, just felt a large pressure wave in the water, then a crunch.
After waking up as a Prince that had just been successfully poisoned by one of his five wives had been decidedly odd. Fortunately, I had the convenient excuse of been near death to explain why I had no idea who I was. A tactic I really didn’t like using as it only worked about half the time, the other half I ended up being killed/burned/exorcized for being an undead/abomination/demon possessed.
My ruse had me sequestered to a private estate with my wives with the hope that I would regain my “lost” memories. It didn’t take long to find out that the prince had been raised as your typical rich prick with little to no consequences to his actions. The staff of the estate avoided any but the most basic interactions and his wives barely much more than that. All of which meant that I was left alone, which I was thankful for.
The first week I lazed around. Sleeping in a huge comfortable bed, eating delicious well-prepared food, and pretty much doing nothing. It got boring way too fast. The next couple of weeks I spent wandering the estate or reading in the library. I tried to interact more with the wives, but that didn’t go all that well. I either got monosyllable answers or bare distain hidden under polite speech. I could only come to the conclusion that they hated the prince so much that none of them even bothered to try to take advantage of my “lost memory” state. They were all packed and gone the same day that I suggested that they would be more comfortable where we had previously resided at the main family estate.
Over the next months I continued to enjoy a quiet life slowly working my way through the estate's library and exploring the grounds. The staff remained aloof, if only to eventually treat me less like a communicable disease and more like an unwanted guest you have to be polite too.
As summer turned to fall, I discovered a locked cupboard subtly built into the cabinet that held the writing supplies in the library. I wasn’t hidden, more like unremarkable. Placed so you wouldn’t know it was there unless you happen to be searching through the ink supplies. My curiosity aroused I searched the cabinet further which led to the discovery that the back board, usually obscured by the supplies, was carved in runes. After a thorough search it became apparent that there was no hidden catches or keyholes, and the runes were the lock.
A quick inquiry with the head butler revealed that the cabinet had been part of the built in shelves since the estate had become part of the current kingdom. Not much was known of the estate's history prior as the previous owners had died during the invasion, the estate eventually being claimed by the royal family.
By this life I had learned a simple offensive Elemental casting as well as the original Embroidery magic, but nothing about runes. The library was roughly sorted into subjects, disappointingly none of which had been on magic, but it had contained a section on languages, including two books and a folio that had something to do with runes.
The first book was an illustrated collection of runes that had been collected from locations across the continent the kingdom resided on. Some of the runes had been different, but many were obviously from the same language. The author postulated that they were from an earlier civilization. I was intrigued considering that it had been written from before I was summoned to fight in the invasion.
The folio containing 42 very old loose pages with runes and second language. Each page contained a single rune with the second language covering the rest.
The last was a research diary, written in the current common language, cataloged the authors efforts to translate both the runes, and the second language from the folio. While they had not gotten anywhere with the runes, they had been able to translate sections of the second language using many of the books that were present in the library.
Over the winter the head butler was able to procure more books on the second language at my request, but nothing on the runes. With the new material I was able to continue the translation of the folio’s pages, which I soon figured out were a teaching text for a Runic magic. By the end of spring, I had learned enough of the Runic magic to activate the carved runic structure on the supply cabinet.
The locked cupboard had actually been empty, with the runic structure transfiguring the wood of the cabinet, to reveal a hidden shelf of books in the cabinet's deceivingly solid looking base. I had been impressed with the creator's ingenuity. The runes were just carving until activated and would not have attracted any attention for anyone searching for any magic. The empty cupboard would have discouraged anyone to search further if they a broken into it. The books tightly packed into the base probably would have had a good chance of appearing to be solid wood if someone was able to scan for empty spaces and were only accessible if you used the runes or destroyed the entire built-in cabinet.
The majority of the hidden books were written in the second language and were account ledgers, personal diaries, folios of letters, maps, official documents, deeds and several patents of nobility. Interesting as those were, the books containing a complete study of Runic magic was what caught my attention.
Runic magic was interesting in many ways. It was systematic, complex, but avoided the convoluted and often contradictory mess of rules, exceptions and dogma that most magic mature magic systems were. It required no special materials other than a surface to be carved into and was incredibly flexible in the effects it could produce. From transfiguration of the environment around the rune, elemental attacks, defensive shields, to scrying. If you could describe the effect, you wanted in the runic structure you could make it happen. A runic structure was magically inert until it was activated, and quickly returned to a natural state when not. This made it ideal to be hidden, when magical interactions where a concern, or when you wanted an installed magic you were going to use repeatedly. It also had its draw backs. The had heavy mana requirements limited the practical size of a runic structure to what the user could channel or supply through other means. Also being magically inert meant you couldn’t set trigger conditions and had to personally activate each runic structure.
As the year continued, I ignored everything else and devoted myself to learning this ancient Runic magic that would later become one of the major inspiring influences for my Circuit magic. Letters from other nobles and the prince's wives were left cursorily scanned in a pile on the study desk. Invitations to balls and social engagements ignored to be later thrown into the fire when the pile got in the way. Everything else was left up to the staff to deal with. I had little interest in anything happening on the estate and none for anything beyond, which was a grave error.
Being so isolated I had no idea of the increasingly bloody conflict over the succession, until at the end of the year a cousin rode onto the estate with his hired mercenaries. They slaughtered their way through the staff capturing me in the library. It was the first time I was unhappy that the library had been so thoroughly sound proofed. He was only too happy to fill me in on the details as he laid out my will for me to sign. I, being tragically killed as bandits assaulted the estate, left my title to the newly born son of my second wife, a son that he would adopt when he married my tragic widow. He gleefully shared how the child was actually his, conceived with the prince’s second wife when she took him as her lover. The mercenaries in the room had a few chuckles at that. The poisoning that killed the prince had been their first attempt at removing him. After I had awoken as the prince with complete “memory loss” and they had learned about her new pregnancy they had changed their plans. With the combination of the child’s inherited title, the second wife’s family connections, and the cousin’s own blood, he would solidify his claim to the throne. Since no one would care if the “damaged” prince was removed, they only needed to secure the title.
After the cousin had finished his monolog, he stared triumphantly at me, waiting. I think I confused him as I had said “OK. I'll get my quill.” I moved over to the large table in the middle of the library and reached over the thin slab of clay that I had been laying out a runic structure on, picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink pot my other hand touching the clay. The last and most important drawback of Runic magic was how wildly unstable a wrong or incomplete structure was. My last sight as I pushed mana into the structure was the library going up flames as my head was severed from my shoulders by one of the mercenaries.
-I don’t think I ever learned what happened to the prince’s wife or cousin.
My next life I had awoken as a poor share farmer, which was a hard enough life without the country descending into a civil war. I was rounded up in the peasant levy of the local lord and sent to war under the banner of first prince. I survived the poor excuse for rations, the month-long march, and given my experience, the first battle. Being recognized for my ability, and the better treatment that came with it, didn’t help in the second battle when we were thrown towards trained soldiers to buy time for the Lord to run away. I had been put in charge if a group of peasants, which only meant that I got see the soldiers we were ordered to fight slightly before the others.
My next two lives were extremely short, having awoken as a solider on on a battlefield only to survive till a group of mounted cavalry swept through. The second was in a refugee camp that had been overrun by goblins. I had killed quite a few of the disgusting little horrors before I had been showered in posioned arrows.
After that I had awoken as monster. Me: Slime didn’t have much interest in humans other than the garbage they left behind.
As long as you don't get hit in certain places gun shots are rather survivable with modern medicine. Bleeding out is the main problem if there is no organ damage. For lungs, drowning is an issue. Heart and brain you die. Major arteries and veins are a fast way to bleed out.
I did a bunch of research on gun wounds when I was writing about the MC getting shot. I needed a wound that he could possibly survive several hours holding and hours beyond that to medical treatment. I sorry to say that I went with the old hack writer's standby, the shoulder wound. Which btw there are several major veins and nerves running through, so it's not as safe as you'd think.
I was also trying show that the MC has been gone so long that his knowledge of guns is, point, shoot, target dies. Which is what usually happens when someone is shot at close range with a high calibre hunting rifle out side of a hospital.
PS thanks for reading and commenting.
Thank you for the chapter!
