The darkness wrapped around Jacob like a tight glove. The Catacombs had a dusty rank smell that seemed to fill Jacob's lungs. He was almost certain that if he could see anything it would be covered in dust. And probably mold.
He seriously doubted any of the maids came down here to tidy up.
One pro for being in a dark musty hellhole tomb, Jacob thought dryly, was that you didn't have to hear the dying screams of a rebel army battling the royal guard. Thank god for small miracles.
Jacob's mother had always told him to look for the positives in a situation.
Even if you were trapped in a ridiculous fantasy world where you were made a virtually powerless king, and with a crazy demonic general leading an uprising against you with the intention of eating you alive like an oyster on the half shell.
"Gotta find the positives," Jacob muttered to himself.
Jacob held a hand out in the darkness.
"Magelight," Jacob said. He felt a slight pull as the mana was drained from his body. A red ball the size of a fist pooled in Jacob's hand. The light lazily floated up to the ceiling.
Red light dully illuminated the room in streaks. Shadows twisted and writhed around the floor and ceiling.
Jacob squinted up at the light. "Wish it came in more colors than red," He muttered.
Positives, his mom's chipper voice drilled into him. Focus on the positives.
"At least I can make light," Jacob said, trying to sound optimistic or thankful. Or something.
Jacob looked around the room appraisingly. "Otherwise I wouldn't get to see anything."
Jacob neared a white marble wall, dyed pink by the red light. Carvings of Dragons dancing with men and demons wove their way across the stone. "I mean," Jacob said absently, "That's kinda cool,"
Jacob's eyes followed the wall carvings as they looped around the room. They stopped when the walls gave way the arch of a hallway. The red light stopped before it reached the hallway. It almost looked like someone had cut a neat black hole in reality.
Jacob felt a shiver tickle its way down his spine. That hall led to the vault of the 12th Demon King, Jacob's predecessor. Nergal, he had been called. Jacob had only been there once. A few priests had dragged him there shortly after being summoned to this world.
They had all ooed and awed over Nergal's preserved corpse. It was propped up in an obsidian throne. Jacob had been made to kneel before Nergal's body.
"Pray," the priests intoned to Jacob. "Pray to your predecessor so that he might lend you his power and wisdom. Pray to Nergal the Diseased."
Nergal the Diseased, Jacob remembered thinking, is amongst the saddest names someone can probably get as a ruler. It probably means that Nergal died of some gross illness, with oozing pus and stuff gushing out of his eye sockets. Gross.
But Jacob had lay his head down, and he had prayed. Send me home, Jacob asked. Please send me home.
But Nergal the Diseased had not answered. And so after several more days of praying that Jacob would receive power, and dramatically higher levels, the priests gave up.
They dressed Jacob in fine silken black robes that ended in red cuffs. They gave him slippers that while comfortable were cumbersome to walk in. They placed a crown of gold and obsidian glass on his head. Finally they left Jacob alone with Alberich in a beautiful room, and left the matters of government to the various ministers and generals.
And then a decent portion of those ministers, and the strongest of those generals decided to revolt. It was hard, Jacob mused, to find a positive in that.
Absently Jacob looked down at his black silken robes. They were comfortable, he supposed. Like very nice pajamas. So there was that. Besides-
Jacob froze as he noticed a shadow crawling its way across the sleeve of one of his arms. Barely keeping himself from making a sound, Jacob slowly lifted his arm up to get a better look at the form scuttling across his arm.
Then, Jacob screamed.
"SPIDER!!!" Jacob shrieked. He began throwing his arm desperately to get the bug off of him. "EEEW EEEW EWW!"
The spider, which resembled a tarantula but with thinner legs, hung on to Jacob, sleeve. It began to slowly scuttle towards Jacob's elbow.
Barely aware of what he was doing, Jacob began to throw himself against the wall.
"Get off!" Jacob wailed. Oh how he hated spiders.
Jacob slammed the arm with the spider on it against the wall. The spider was unfazed the first time it hit the wall.
But Jacob did not stop to check until around the tenth time he had slammed his forearm against the marble. By then the creature had been reduced to a twitching orange mass of legs bent at odd angles.
Jacob breathed slowly.
He looked down at his sleeve, covered in spider guts the color of a sunset.
"Gross." Jacob moaned.
He looked around for something to wipe his sleeve on, and he had no luck.
"Gross. Gross. Gross."
"I need to get this off me," Jacob muttered. He could almost still feel the spider on him.
A screen popped up in front of Jacob's face.
"Lesser Blood Spider Slain!" The screen read excitedly. "2 exp gained!"
Jacob frowned. "Delayed reaction there." He had almost forgotten that this world functioned like a video game. You gained exp through certain tasks, like killing monsters or learning magic. Eventually Exp. would translate into levels.
Oddly some insects that populated the castle seemed to count as monsters.
Jacob had learned that the first day he had been confined to the king's quarters. He had found a massive glowworm in a closet and killed it with a shoe. Jacob had leapt back in surprise with a yelp when the status screen appeared to congratulate him.
Alberich had come running when he heard Jacob's surprised cry. The old butler had laughed when Jacob told him what had happened. Then Alberich explained that this was how the world worked. He had seemed surprised that Jacob's own world did not function on the laws of Exp. Levels, and skills.
Alberich had made Jacob look at his own skills then, and then…
Jacob slapped his hand to his head. "Idiot!" He couldn't believe that he had forgotten.
Jacob reached out a reluctant finger and touched the oozing guts of the dead spider. "Assimilate." Jacob said.
The spider's remains seemed to dissolve into smoke and drifted into Jacob's finger. In a matter of seconds, Jacob had a clean sleeve again.
The status screen returned almost immediately. "Lesser Blood Spider Assimilated." it read. "1 exp gained. Skill: Spider Silk gained."
Assimilation. The only useful thing about Jacob in this world. With a single touch he could absorb a dead monster and gain Exp, along with some skills or spells though that was rarer. He hadn't had the chance to use it much.
It made the priests squeamish when they found out he could use assimilation. "Unnatural." They had hissed. "A cheap skill to make up for an utter lack of power."
Cheap maybe, Jacob thought now. But still kinda cool. Not as OP as it could be though. It only worked on things that had once been alive. Not objects or currently living things. Mostly Jacob had used it on bugs he killed in his rooms. The Exp. you got was directly proportional to whatever was assimilated to, so the bugs did not offer that much. Only things he had gotten out of that were Mage Light and Lesser Healing.
Well that and now Spider Silk.
Jacob raised his hand out. "Spider Silk!" He called. A rather large part of him was hopeful that Spider Silk would be some awesome ninja like technique, where impossibly thin but strong threads shot out and tore stuff into ribbons.
Instead, something remarkably similar to the silly string used at children's birthday parties came out of Jacob's hands making a farting noise. The twisting and knotted threads fell to the floor unethistically landing near Jacob's slippered feet.
Jacob sighed. That was the problem with Assimilation. You never knew what you would get. If you got anything at all.
Jacob paused. Assimilation. The catacombs. The catacombs where the 12 demon kings were buried. The 12 allegedly absurdly powerful demon kings.
How much power would he gain if he used Assimilation on their bodies?
Jacob shook his head. No, that was probably only a step or two above straight up cannibalism. He wouldn't stoop that low.
But then Jacob paused, and looked around the small room he now stood in. Inevitably his eyes found the white door from which he had entered the catacombs. The white door that General Belial and his rebel army waited behind.
"Do I really have a choice though?" Jacob wondered to himself softly.