I had a strong desire to just sit there on a log, like a log, and think—about what the hell happened to me, about where I was and whether I could get back, and lastly, about Merildwen's tentative plans to take over the planet Earth.
I wasn't sure I could blame her—due to my pet goat, we were both a lot more insane than we were yesterday, even if it wasn't entirely apparent from the outside, and I probably would be doing the same thing if I suddenly got the same powers as a Wizard when nobody else had them. I probably wouldn't have thought that yesterday, though, and my main issue was one of slight discomfort at someone doing such things in my body.
Before our connection snapped, I could tell Merildwen had similar concerns, and she was upset, thinking I had gotten the vastly better deal here when you compared a humanoid in their mid-thirties to an elvenoid in their mid-twenties. Half-elves didn't work like in the tabletop game I was so familiar with, either.
Merildwen was indistinguishable from a full-blooded elf. The only way that someone could tell she was a half-elf was the fact that she looked almost like a clone of her mother. The genetics of an elf were, apparently, so dominant that they override most of the human genome. Half-elves had the same lifespan as regular elves, and it kind of reminded me of the space babes Asari from Mass Effect.
As the connection between me and Merildwen snapped, she was already meditating and using the Mental Palace technique to commit all of the books I read into memory. That was a good idea since they formed a rather complete Necromantic education, at least up to level seven spells. Eight, if you included Clone.
Perhaps I should do that, too? The memories from when we were both disembodied souls seemed incredibly vivid, but I didn't know if they would start to fade after a while.
However, just before I closed my eyes to consider it, I noticed something... off about the forest I was in. The canopy above seemed thick at first glance, but Merildwen's vision was a lot better than mine. Darkvision noticed that what I thought, at first, was a thick forest canopy was actually webbing that bridged individual trees. A lot of webbing. Like from spiders. Giant spiders.
A part of my brain reminded me that Giant Spiders were only a challenge rating 1 monster and that I could be considered something close to a level four Wizard since I could almost cast level three spells. But the rest of my brain reminded me that a challenge rating was designed for a full party, Wizards were notoriously squishy and difficult to play solo, and most importantly, this wasn't a fucking game!
I quickly stood up and looked around.
"Holy fuuucck!" I yelled as I saw a spider the size of a calf descending slowly and silently down a strong silk line just behind the log I had been sitting on. Another minute or so sitting navel-gazing, and it would have been at pedipalp level of the back of my head. The fucker was quiet!
I thrust out my hand, twisted it into an odd shape, and yelled the verbal component to the Fire Bolt cantrip. Merildwen, and as an extension, me were not good at Evocation. It made me incredibly sad because while I was close to casting level three spells, the most complicated Evocation I could cast was Magic Missile. No fireballs for me any time soon. And what kind of Wizard didn't spam fireballs?!
That was another way that my "reality" was different from the tabletop. In the game, you could cast all spells from the entire Wizard spell list, so long as you met the level requirement. Here, you had to study each spell individually and more advanced spells in a school built on the lower-level spells. To cast Fireball, I would have to put a lot of study into other Evocations.
That was a total nerf, I thought. Normally, when I played Wizard, I was all about fireballs. Who wasn't?
The cantrip was completed, and a relatively small bolt of fire shot from my outstretched hands and accurately struck the descending arachnid. I chose Fire Bolt because spiders, and especially their webbing, were weak to fire and also because a giant fucking spider was coming to eat my head! Burn it with fire!
I was a little surprised that the Fire Bolt seemed to be kind of weak, though. Was this a function of me or the place I was in? From Meril's memories, it seemed as though the spell was harder to cast while delivering only two-thirds of the effects. Still, it struck the spider accurately, splashing across its exoskeleton with the creature screeching in pain. The fire spilt over the creature's rear, catching fire to its spinneret and setting the webbing it was descending to on fire, snapping the strong web line and causing the arachnid to fall a good eight metres to thump, hard, against the ground below.
I had already started backing up after making sure nobody else was behind me to put some additional space between us. When the spider hit the ground, I pulled out a bit of fleece from one of my pockets and cast my second spell, Phantasmal Force—a second-level spell from the Illusion school. Merildwen's primary school of magic was, obviously, Necromancy. The school she was next best at was Illusion.
This seemed like a terrible choice from my perspective, as I generally hated both schools when I played a Wizard. Necromancy was both weak and expensive in gold and resources, while Illusion was generally always up to the DM as to how well it performed, and DMs hated illusions, typically. Also, I hated people who played Necs because most of them took forever, rolling each individual skeleton's dice one at a time. It made their turn take the equivalent of everyone else's turn combined and was a drag on the game.
However, there wasn't really a DM here right now, as far as I knew. If that were true, maybe the Illusion school could be overpowered. Phantasmal Force was one of the most powerful second-level spells in the game if the DM lets you go wild with it. When the spell succeeded, you could create an illusion that the target believed so much that it could cause them damage, and their belief in the illusion was total. The standard example was that if you created the illusion of a bridge over a chasm, the target would walk over it, fall through, and then try to rationalise why it fell from a perfectly good bridge, thinking up something like a gust of wind blew it off or some similar explanation.
In this case, I created the illusion of a sphere of fire with the spider at the centre of it, although it wasn't in the fire. The fire was just the edge of the sphere. If it were an illusion of being inside fire, the illusion probably wouldn't work, or if it did, the spider would immediately leap out of it to try to save itself. However, if it moved very much in any direction, it would touch the fire. It was basically the illusion of a cage of fire.
This would cause real damage if it touched the walls—of the psychic type, as well as likely immobilise the creature in the centre, as most animals wouldn't willingly walk into fire. That was my main objective.
I saw the arachnid right itself shake itself off and then glance around. It cautiously extended a foreleg and then snapped it back when it touched the illusory fire. Phantasmal Force created a purely mental illusion in one creature, so if anyone else were here observing, they would be quite confused.
Nodding, I shoved the rest of the fleece back into one of the small pockets on my robe and shifted my fingers into a different shape before calling out the verbal component to Eldritch Blast. This was generally considered the best cantrip in the game, even if Merildwen wasn't a real Warlock. While she did have a pact with a devil and got the ability to cast this cantrip along with her Imp familiar, it was not on the level of a Multiclass. Basically, it was the same as if she had taken the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat at level four, I supposed, although I didn't think things worked precisely like that.
Realistically, it wasn't a feat that Wizards often took because, in the game, it would cause the spellcasting stat to use Charisma as on rolls still. Wizards needed all of the Intelligence they could get, so they generally treated Charisma as a dump stat, but I had the feeling that things in "reality" weren't as cut and dried as they were on the tabletop game.
She didn't have any of the Warlock invocations that made Eldritch Blast really deadly either, but that didn't stop it from being one of, if not the best, damage cantrip in the game. I just aimed in the centre of the illusory sphere, which I was keeping up through concentration. A single beam of force lanced out from my hand and struck the spider dead-on on its head, causing it to shriek in pain again.
Before it could psyche itself up to try to jump through the fire sphere, I shifted and cast Toll the Dead, a Necromancy cantrip and another one of the best damage cantrips available.
While the fact that you had to learn spells individually and couldn't just cast any spell at your level was a huge nerf, it was somewhat offset by the fact that I didn't have a limit to the number of spells I knew or could cast. If this were a game, I would only be allowed four cantrips, but instead, Merildwen knew basically all of them—including a lot that did not exist in the game at all.
This wasn't unusual, either. You had to learn all of the cantrips because you had to practice cantrips in a school before you could learn level one spells reliably, and then you had to practice level one spells in the school before you could cast level two spells, and so on. It made a Wizard's spellbook very expansive at lower levels but more specialised at higher ones.
To my surprise, Toll the Dead flew from my fingers as if it wanted to be cast and, with a sorrowful gong, smashed the spider to death. I didn't think it was generally that effective. In Merildwen's experience, I was expecting to have to cast it again to finish off the spider.
I didn't want to wait around to think about the differences in my cantrip's effectiveness, though. I glanced around to make sure there weren't more spiders coming and quickly attempted to summon Merildwen's familiar, an Imp named Tistix.
Instead, what appeared was a ghost of a Chinaman floating in the air... I shook my head, as that wasn't the preferred nomenclature, and I didn't want to offend. Rephrasing my thoughts, the ghost of the Chinese person, who happened to be a man, floated there, glancing around. He had an odd outfit, as one would expect from a kung-fu period film.
I hissed at him, suddenly wary, "Who the fuck are you, and where is Tistix?"
He replied in Chinese. Or at least, what sounded like Chinese. Of course. Merildwen knew Common, Elvish and even some Drow, and I knew English and Bad English. If you took our knowledge combined, I could be considered quite cosmopolitan in the languages I knew, but none of them were fucking Chinese!
I was also quite bad at casting Divinations, despite Merildwen's mother attempting to teach her often, but I could cast Comprehend Language. But... did I have enough time?
I glanced around and figured I maybe did. I wasn't presently being swarmed yet. I had intended to ask Tistix to fly up around the webbing in the canopy and tell me which direction to run that looked less spidery. That was important. I figured I was on the edge of whatever territory these spiders had, on account that I hadn't been swarmed by more of them, but it would be difficult to tell which direction led to more spiders here on the ground. Aerial recon was needed.
I fished through my pockets and found some salt, but I didn't have any soot with me. Growling, I picked up a small branch and burned it to ashes, somewhat painfully catching some soot with my hand before casting Comprehend Language.
Comprehend Language only worked one way. I could understand him, but it did nothing to let him understand me. However, intelligent ghosts were often like Devils and other extraplanar creatures and had something to the same effect on them continuously. I hoped he was the same.
"Can you understand me?" I hissed out in a whisper.
He nodded, "Of course!"
"Then, where the hell is Tistix and who are you?" I asked him again, forcefully. Theoretically, anything summoned by Find Familiar just cannot be hostile towards you, but did this ghost count as a familiar, or did it just take over the extradimensional space that Tistix waited in when I didn't have him summoned?
I didn't know, but I was quite cautious. Ghosts were dangerous opponents when you were alone, even to Necromancers. I didn't want to be possessed with nobody around to drive the spirit out, so I had a fistful of ghost dust ready as well as the level-two Necromancy spell Chain Spirit, although I wasn't entirely sure how effective it would be, as this ghost looked unusual. Normally, such a low-level spell wouldn't even work on an uninjured ghost, but through the familiar bond, I had the capability to cast spells directly at it, bypassing the ability to resist.
This would be considered breaking the familiar contract, so I would only do it if I felt that it was going to attack me first.
The ghost seemed somewhat sympathetic to my plight, which was already more than I would have expected from Tistix, before he replied, "I am Chen Lu, a lowly third assistant to a page to the Assistant Junior Yama King, Judge Wu. When you appeared in this plane, the uhh..." he paused, and tilted his head up, "...Erinyes Oriella sold your soul debt to Judge Wu. It would be difficult for her to collect here, obviously. The clause in your contract that specified assistance by this ... Tistix... can no longer be provided, but I am here due to the substitution subclause. I will provide all assistance that this Tistix could and would have provided for the contract term, subject to some limitations."
Sold Merildwen's soul debt?! The contract was really, really specific on when that was permissible. Oriella couldn't sell it to just anyone. She could only sell it to someone she knew would comply with the provisions. Practically, this only meant other devils. Perhaps Angels or other highly Lawful entities, but it wasn't like Angels were in the business of buying souls in the first place.
This meant that whoever this Assistant Yama King was... no, wait. Assistant Junior Yama King. Whoever this Judge Wu was, I could be pretty confident it was a very lawful entity. Assuming the ghost wasn't lying.
Sighing, I considered my options. I had the choice to dismiss the familiar or even sever the familiar bond if I didn't trust this ghost, but I kind of really did need the intelligence it could provide. It was a lot more intelligent than Tistix, but I didn't know if I could use that intelligence or not. It might just be explaining things now and would refuse to use a lot of its intelligence beyond what Tistix could have done. That's what I would expect if it were a Devil, to fulfil only the strict terms of the agreement and no more. I would have to test it if I decided I could trust him.
I decided I would use its help for now. I said, "Okay, let's table that for now. I need you to go up above the trees and find a direction to travel that looks the safest. Practically, that means not further into the nest of spiders in this forest. Use telepathy to tell me which direction to go."
I made sure to specify those last two items, as that was important information that Tistix would have needed to be told. Otherwise, it would have been possible that Tistix would lead me, with loud shouts and shrieks, directly into the spiders. Imps were just... not incredibly bright, and while an Imp familiar couldn't harm you directly, sometimes they could indirectly if you were stupid about it.
The ghost man paused and then nodded, floating directly up into the air. As he floated away, I grabbed the material component for one of my most useful spells and cast Invisibility. This wasn't as godly in a forest as one would think, as a lot of animals and monsters just as often used hearing and scent instead of vision, and this wouldn't stop me from crunching a twig underfoot or anything.
Still, it was one of the best spells I had for this situation. I glanced around, seeing a number of things on the ground where I had appeared in the forest. There were a number of things that might be useful. But nothing spectacular. A few unenchanted swords, a couple of the books I had already read, but not the most interesting ones. Those went straight into the packs of Meril's mom and dad. It was all generic loot that we intended to sell off.
Both my hammerspace and my backpack were filled with more valuable things and food. I put mainly the heavy spell components that we found in the vault in my hammerspace, like ghost dust, which I had the feeling must be made out of lead or uranium. I didn't have enough room to store those random items on the forest floor, nor did I want to try to haul them away, so I just left them. Perhaps I could come back and retrieve them, but I wasn't missing out on too much if I couldn't.
The familiar link seemed to be working. We could communicate telepathically, and I could see through its "eyes" as well. That boded well for it to be telling the truth and not being a malevolent spirit that somehow managed to hijack the summoning. Sighing, I used a combination of my Darkvision and seeing through the eyes of the ghost to navigate my way through the forest. We passed a couple more spiders and a few other dangerous-looking creatures, like a surprisingly agile-looking giant snake, which snapped at the ghost but whose attack just passed through it.
At a point when my Invisibility was about to wear off, we found a relatively open area, and I called the ghost down. I asked him, "Do you know where we are?"
It frowned and looked sympathetic before saying, "A forest is all I can say." I felt that he obviously knew more than that, but decided not to make a scene right now. Sighing, I ordered him up into the air again, right up to the limit where I would no longer be able to see through his eyes or hear his telepathy, which was about forty metres. I told him to float there and tell me if anything approached me.
I sat my backpack down, pulled out some food from it and then pulled out my water canteen from my hammerspace. I first thought that the teleportation just sent me to a random location on Borea, the planet Merildwen grew up in. But things were looking worse than that. I caused one of the two silver ingots I grabbed from the teleportation room to appear in my hand and peered at it. It didn't look like anything but silver, but a regular teleportation circle should definitely not be able to send someone to a different Crystal Sphere, much less an entirely different Material Plane like the ghost seemed to be implying.
He had said that the Oriella wouldn't easily be able to collect me here, which meant that it was either cut off from the Hells or featured an entirely different cosmology, which would imply that it wasn't the same Prime Material Plane, but instead something like an alternate dimension. There were numerous planets that scholars knew about and could even travel to, but it was pretty well agreed that they were all on the same "material plane." They were just located a long way apart like Earth's solar system was located a long way from Alpha Centauri in my old life.
This meant that my... or rather Meril's parents may find it a lot more difficult to rescue me. Theoretically, they should be able to communicate with me soon with Sending, a third-level Evocation that can deliver a short message to anyone the caster knew, regardless of what plane they were in.
It did feel as though the short message I sent when Meril's mom cast Message did go through, too, so that was a good sign that Sending would work as well. However, I wasn't sure anyone had ever tried it through different prime materials. I had copies of the Sending spell, but I could barely cast Magic Missile reliably, much less a third-level evocation, so I would have to wait until they contacted me.
A lot of assumptions in Wizardry were based on the fact that there was only one prime material plane. For example, how was I casting spells if there was no Weave? One could argue that the study of magic was the study of the Weave itself, and there were many different opinions on what it was. The most popular was that it was a plane-wide continual conjuring by the Goddess of Magic herself, an almost physical thing that allowed one to cast spells. But unless she also existed in this area, I could pretty much debunk that idea.
I sighed. I might never see them again. I didn't know if that was good or bad. If they could somehow detect that I wasn't actually their daughter, then not seeing them again was definitely good. I didn't want Meril's mom to pull my soul out of my body and give it to a Devil to torture or turn into a Lemure, and she definitely could and probably would. Or do worse if she thought I was behind what happened.
If they couldn't detect I was something of an imposter, then it was pretty bad, as they were both strong and devoted to keeping me alive.
I glanced down at my hands, which were still stained with blood and paused before I actually pulled any of my food out. The area around was fairly open, with the trees fairly thin, and there was a small creek about half a klick further the way I was travelling. I put everything away, grabbed my backpack, hiked the rest of the way to the creek and sat everything down again.
First was to take stock of what I had to work with, and after that find ways to secure everything I needed to live. That amounted to oxygen, water, food, and shelter. Fortunately, the oxygen part was taken care of by the atmosphere of this planet, but the rest I would have to work for after my stocks were depleted.
However, I desired to be clean first. I thought that would help my frame of mind. I got some soap and a few small towels from my backpack and took off my clothes, setting them aside.
Looking down at my present body in the buff, I sighed. This wasn't a welcome sight.
I was never really one to want to know how the other half lived. Being male was better, in my opinion, and that was in a modern liberal democracy. I really doubted fantasy lands were as egalitarian as the tabletop games suggested, especially if this planet was modelled after Ancient fucking China. I suppose it could be worse, though. Viking planet or Arab planet would both probably be worse for my present sex.
Also, although Merildwen was in her mid-twenties, elves aged slow enough that it felt vaguely creepy to be looking at myself from the mental perspective of a man in his mid-thirties, too.
Theoretically, Merildwen was right. I got the better end of the bargain since she could be expected to live up to five hundred more years while my body back in Colorado probably only had a good forty years left. Maybe less, since Alzheimer's ran in my family.
That said, I found it difficult to care too much about hundreds of years when I might not live to next week, depending on where I was and what threats were around.
Shaking my head, I used the soap and water to clean off my hands and chest. The blood had soaked through my robes before I used Prestidigitation to clean them, after all. There was a surprising amount of blood spatter when you ritually sacrificed someone.
After drying myself, I cast Prestidigitation on each item of my clothes to clean them again before putting them back on, along with a final cast to change the colour of my robe from an edgy black to a brown-green that matched the forest pretty well. Prestidigitation couldn't do camouflage; it could only change solid colours, no shapes at all—so I just went with a colour that would blend in as much as possible.
I also slid in the amulet underneath my robe. It was a bit gaudy. It was also, with the possible exception of the ritual dagger, the most expensive thing I had managed to take with me. The ritual dagger was expensive because it incorporated a large soul jar in the form of a large red ruby in the pommel.
That was where the soul of Jim was currently resting, and it could store maybe another twenty average people as well. It kind of depended, as the size of someone's soul varied on a number of factors. A good rule of thumb was that the more powerful someone was in life, the larger their soul, though.
I was pleased to discover inside the amulet was one Shadow, though. Shadows were one of the most deadly monsters for their challenge rating, and as such, the game never let Necromancer players control them at all. It wasn't that they were strong, but Shadows had a strength drain attack that would temporarily drain the strength of an enemy, instead of dealing them physical damage.
However, if someone's strength was drained to zero, they died. Not only that, but four hours later, a new shadow popped up. Merildwen had studied how the process of turning a sentient creature into a shadow worked, and like with many undead, it didn't actually have much to do with the soul, merely the spirit. If a soul was a peach pit, the spirit was the peach. When you died, the spirit often remained behind for one reason or another, and that could form non-sapient undead like Shadows and Wraiths.
Shadows were also ridiculously lethal to someone like me who had low strength to begin with. They could two-shot many low-level Wizards, which I counted as. I'd like to bring the Shadow out because it could provide some protection, but I wasn't a hundred percent confident on my Chain Spirit spell. I'd like to cast it as a ritual, instead, as that increased its effectiveness by at least half again.
It was probably just me being paranoid, but since the Shadow could and would rapidly kill me if the casting failed, I felt it important to do it as a ritual the first time, where I could have a contingency if the casting failed. That would give me twenty-four hours of control over it, and I could recast it as I pleased so long as the Shadow was still under my command.
So long as I had one Shadow, I could fill up my amulet with seven more of them so long as I found seven people I didn't like and fed them to the Shadow. I didn't think a few days ago I would have considered feeding people to an intangible undead as something I would do under any circumstances, but today, I would throw ten Jims to them as a matter of course, so long as if they tried to kill me first or even if they were deeply repellent to me.
The rest of the things I had were somewhat to highly valuable, but only situationally. Ghost dust was quite valuable, but only to necromancers and a few types of clerics. The other spell components were similar. I had about a dozen healing potions, though. Those were always valuable, but I would prefer to keep them to myself—just like I would prefer to keep my two most valuable items, my amulet and ritual dagger. Those I would not sell for any price despite their value.
They both might be irreplaceable, depending on the state of magic in this world. Also, since I had to capture souls in order to settle my debt, losing the dagger might be a real problem.
For reasons specific to Devils and which were enumerated in Meril's contract, I couldn't just offer a soul inside a living mortal body to settle my debts. It had to be completely within my power in something akin to a soul jar, a magic jar, an anima jar, or a similar receptacle. A devil couldn't take the souls out of people's bodies non-willingly, after all. They could buy them like commodities, though.
The only exception was Erinyeses. They could come physically into the material plane since they weren't bound to the Hells the same way other Devil's were. If I were still dealing with Oriella, then I could have theoretically offered her physical bodies, and she could have just thrown them through a portal to the Hells.
Once a mortal dies in the Hells, they stay there and become a lemure, regardless of how they got there or if they consented to it, after all.
But the fact that an Erinyes could kidnap people and throw them bodily into the Hells was a very good reason to never, ever summon her or create a portal for her, as she could do the same thing to you as well. So Meril's contract specified that only disembodied, restrained souls were acceptable.
Creating a soul jar was a fifth or sixth-level necromantic ritual, depending on if it was just the temporary casting like Magic Jar or if it was something more permanent. Meril's mom could do it, and that was how she made the dagger, but it might take me a long time to reach her proficiency. I had to keep the knife, basically, was what I was saying.
So, in physical currency or the equivalent, I only had what amounted to a couple of hundred gold pieces, along with two ingots of maybe silver that each weighed approximately five pounds.
Ten pounds of silver sounded like a lot of money, but at least on Earth, the price of silver was so much lower that two hundred gold coins, even small ones, would be worth more. Who knew what the economy of this world was like, though? Maybe they didn't use precious metals at all, although Ancient China was all about gold and silver, so likely it would be useful if I ever found civilisation and didn't die in this forest.
Of the spell components that had immediate value were likely a number of gems, including one diamond. In total, they probably cost more than I had in gold coins, perhaps the small diamond itself costing more than two hundred gold.
Altogether, with straight physical currency, gems and the two bars of silver, I had what amounted to an equivalent bankroll of what eight or nine thousand dollars could buy me on Earth, assuming that the economy here was similar to the one on Borea. That was not a lot when you considered I might have to start a whole new life with it.
But it would be enough to get started, though.
After I got dressed and ate a sandwich, I spent about ten minutes recasting Comprehend Language as a ritual before the ghost above me sent me, telepathically,
I brightened. Maybe all of this talk about how much money I had was prescient. Maybe I wasn't so bad at Divination after all.
I ordered him to float back down and then asked him, "Are random villagers afraid of ghosts? Can you translate for me?"
He shrugged, "Probably. And, no."
I scowled. However, asking an Imp to translate for you was pretty stupid. So it wasn't surprising he wasn't willing to do it.
I sighed, and he said, "You only have about an hour left for me to be around, by the way."
I stopped and frowned, "What do you mean?!"
"I can only be summoned for two hours per day," he said primly.
I scowled, "Familiars can be out twenty-four-seven! That's why they are useful!"
"Sorry. Some limitations apply, as I said earlier. Everything is quite in line with the contract, though, I assure you!" he said, and I tapped my foot. We were already close enough to the village that I could probably proceed alone. Comprehend Language would allow some form of one-way communication, and it was very good for learning languages, too.
I didn't even know enough about Mandarin from Earth to know if this was the same language, but it sounded similar. I knew Mandarin was a tonal language like Elvish was, so maybe I'd be able to learn it rapidly since I already had some experience speaking this type of language.
I nodded and decisively dismissed him, causing him to vanish with a pop. I was going to assume that the two hours did not need to be contiguous. I could pop him in and out as I needed him, for now, and look at replacing him with a different familiar later. I liked the idea of a ghost familiar, but not one whose primary loyalty was to someone else, especially if that someone else had a hook into me.
I supposed it wasn't that dissimilar to having one of Oriella's Imps as a familiar, just shittier since I could only have him out for two hours, but there was no way I would have agreed to that back then, either. I would have preferred a crow, a fluffy black cat, or something. It would depend on how useful he was in the coming days.
I stopped before I set out, and frowned. My appearance... might be a problem, depending on how things on this planet were set up. I looked like a teenage Aryan elf, which may be an issue. Foreigners weren't often treated well by primitive cultures.
I might be overthinking things. It might be possible that foreign-looking young women were treated great here, but I didn't want to take the risk. I didn't want to waste a level one casting, either, so I sat down and spent about five to ten minutes to cast Disguise Self as a ritual.
I picked a human woman in her late twenties of Chinese descent. It'd be hard not to give them the idea that I was a foreigner when I couldn't speak the language, regardless of what I looked like, though. But a foreigner who looked like me was always treated better than someone who looked different and might be a different species.
I would have picked a male shape as that was what I was more comfortable in by far, but Disguise Self didn't change your voice. Also, I was "petite" now, not quite reaching Meril's mom's height yet, so I would have to pick a pretty short man, too.
To do all that, I'd have to use Major Image, which I was close to being able to cast as a ritual, but it would only last ten to twenty minutes. Not enough time at all. I was far and away from being able to cast permanent Major Images.
After I was suitably disguised as a local, I proceeded off. I had seen the village through the ghost's eyes, so I knew the direction where it was, but it was still quite difficult to see at night, even with Darkvision. Finally, I noticed it in the distance. The architecture was typical of what I'd imagine an Ancient Chinese village to look like.
Although, it wasn't as though I had any experience. I hadn't even been to Chinatown, much less China, in my past life. I did like kung-fu movies, though, so it was congruent with what I expected from films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.
As I approached, I started to feel a chill in the air, though, and the edge of the village seemed to be coated in a fog, although it wasn't dense, and I could both see through it and over it.
As I got even closer, I paused and frowned. Something wasn't quite looking right. The village looked dilapidated and almost abandoned now that I was close to it. I summoned the ghost again. Wait, did surnames go first or last in China? Was he Mr Chen or Mr Lu? I frowned.
"Chen Lu, please take a look at the village up ahead. Something looks wrong. Look for any activity or anything you think is out of place and return to me," I ordered.
He nodded and flew towards the village as I resumed walking. I'd stop just before the village in case this was a Silent Hill situation. The fog was a little evocative in my mind.
I didn't have to wait too long, as he returned and said, "Miss, there doesn't appear to be anyone living in the village. There are bodies around. Sword and spear wounds on them suggest a violent end. Also, the level of yin qi in the air is incredibly high in this place."
What the fuck was yin? What the fuck was qi? Well, the latter I sort of knew about. It was like, uhh... the internal energy that kung-fu masters had, right? That allowed them to crush rocks with their fists. Merildwen's memories had more information, as there were Monk classes in her world that used Qi like that, but she didn't really know that much about it aside from that it made one's body strong.
And now that I thought about it, I knew about the Yin-Yang symbol, right? I just didn't know what yin was. Still, this was a lot more than I expected him to tell me.
"Can you tell me any more?" I asked, curious.
He shook his head, "No, sorry, Miss." Sighing, I nodded and said, "Stay above. Notify me if you see anything that might be a threat approaching me. Tell me before your time elapses, and you have to leave."
He nodded and floated up into the air a good fifteen metres above me. There was no way I wasn't going to investigate the village. I wanted, needed, someplace to rest and base out of. As long as I didn't see Pyramid Head around the village, then I didn't particularly mind if it was a deserted town. So long as there wasn't a gaggle of malevolent spirits here, it would be fine. Malevolent spirits ran the gamut. I didn't think I could take even one regular ghost, like my familiar, because they had ridiculously dangerous abilities like Possession and could hide in the ethereal plane. Ghost dust existed on both planes, and it would hurt any spirits, so it might allow me to deal with one ghost.
Ghosts were challenge-rating five monsters, though—actually really dangerous. Lesser incorporeal undead, like maybe a spectre or poltergeist, I thought I could handle.
As I stepped through the fog and into the village, I felt a slight sense of vertigo and a deep chill, but it passed immediately. The chill wasn't uncomfortable; in fact, I kind of liked it, and it felt refreshing. Brisk, even.
Ghosts could sense into the ethereal, as well as see magic as though they had the spell Detect Magic cast continuously, so he should be able to tell me if anything that goes bump in the night, other than him, appears near me. I hoped. I'd try to get my initial investigation done before he had to leave. This place felt strong to Necromantic magic, too, which would help me.
Wait... magic, huh? Perhaps that's what he meant by Qi? I frowned and opened myself up a little bit to magic in the local area. This wasn't like casting Detect Magic or anything structured like that. It was just an ability Wizards got after a while to notice the way the flow of the Weave shifted and moved.
Nodding. This place was fey, alright. The hint of necromancy was in the air, like static electricity on a cool, dry winter morning. The magic in the air had a feeling of coldness and etherealness. It felt quite good, actually, and I was pretty sure it was the reason I was feeling colder the closer I got to the village for the past hour.
That I liked the way it felt didn't mean I wasn't possibly in severe danger, though.
I came across one of the first bodies pretty quickly and peered down at it. Darkvision was good for seeing in the dark but not so great for seeing detail. It was kind of like forward-looking infrared; I could only see in shades of grey.
I looked around and grabbed a stick, casting the Light cantrip on it and using it as a torch, frowning as I held the light up to the body.
I wasn't a Crime Scene Investigator, nor was I an expert in the sword enough to say anything about the killer's swordsmanship technique based on the slash. But I was something of an expert on dead bodies these days thanks to Merildwen, and this one didn't look quite right. The blood was already congealed when they were slashed up as if someone hadn't slashed a living person but a dead body.
I sniffed delicately. To my calibrated nose, the body smelled of the undead—a bit like the natural type that rose on its own rather than rose through directed and controlled magic. How interesting.
I quickly moved through the village, finding a little more than three dozen similar bodies. They were all undead, as well. An entire village of the undead, risen naturally and then put to the sword? That didn't compute.
The ghost floated down to my head level and said, "I have to go now, Miss. I'll see you next time!" I nodded at him, still dissatisfied with his two-hour limitation. Still, we had looked through most of the village in the hour he had left, so I felt I had gotten some use out of him, at least. Maybe he could accept Jim's soul on behalf of this Judge fellow? I tried to remember to ask him next time.
I thought my ability to get out of this debt made in my name was a lot less likely in this plane compared to the one where Merildwen was born. There, the Hells kept detailed records and probably had one about the shape and composition of her soul. If those records hadn't been forwarded with the contract, then I might not be able to get out of the debt even if these ghost people were as lawful as Devils.
I decided to post up in the largest building in town. It consisted of a central courtyard surrounded by buildings on all four sides, made of made of wood, ceramic tiles and brick. I dragged two of the largest bodies into the courtyard and sat my things down.
It was a quirk of necromancy, but I wouldn't easily be able to reanimate a zombie that had already been killed. However, somewhat counterintuitively, I could reanimate them as a Skeleton if I got rid of all of their meaty bits. And you could reanimate Skeletons, so long as you repaired their bones if they got too broken. It was one reason why skellies were so much superior to zombies. You honestly didn't even need bones from the same person to animate a skeleton. You could mix and match.
Humming, I pulled out my new wand and cast Flay on both bodies. Ugh, that was grosser than I thought it would be.
On the floor, I then drew out a simple necromantic circle, usable for both Animate Dead as well as restraining and chaining spirits. I would need both, so it made sense for the ritual to be as flexible as possible, as I would be able to reuse it.
I was just on the border of being able to cast level three Necromantic spells, so I was limited to casting them as a ritual, and also, it took me over three times the normal time to do so. That was fine, though. I wasn't in a hurry right now, and every time I cast, I would get better at it.
According to Meril's mom, it was better to remember that slow is smooth and smooth is fast when dealing with animating the dead to unlife. Kind of like what my pa said about shooting when I was a boy. And second, all undead hate the living and generally hate necromancers more than most. This was especially true with spirit-type undead, like the shadow in my amulet. One should always proceed with prudent caution.
Thirty minutes later, my first skeleton came to life. Smiling, I mentally ordered it to guard the entrance to the courtyard. There were no weapons on any of the deceased villagers, but one of them had a large sledge hammer, which I had taken with me, and the skeleton picked it up.
My next skeleton took another thirty minutes, and I started to realise that Necromancy was possibly a lot stronger than it was in the tabletop game. In the game, you couldn't cast Animate Dead as a ritual. You had to use a third-level spell slot to do so.
This functioned as a game balance limit, as otherwise, a necromancer player character could, if they had a lot of time, amass a truly staggering amount of undead under their control. There was no reason a necromancer shouldn't be able to do this, and all antagonist necromancer NPCs always did because they could have hundreds of undead under their control. It was, strictly speaking, a way to limit player characters.
Then you also needed to recast Animate Dead every twenty-four hours per four undead in order to keep them from murdering you. That I still had to do, although I could do more than four undead at a time. I could do as many undead as would fit in the circle, so at least six with this small circle.
Instead of using an improvised weapon, I handed the second skeleton the Drow-made bow and arrows that I had taken from the vault.
Lastly, I carefully and cautiously cast Chain Spirit on the Shadow in my amulet, only at the last moment evicting it from the amulet when it was already trapped in the magic circle. The spell settled onto the intangible undead, and it finally stopped trying to escape, although now that it was somewhat connected to my mind, I could feel its hatred for everything, and me especially, only increase.
Although, I wasn't sure hatred was precisely the correct word. Animus might be better. It was just opposed, completely and utterly, to everything that lived. Hatred implied that it could think, and it really couldn't.
This was why Meril's mom said you should never really feel sympathy for malevolent spirits. They would always, always attempt to kill you if you gave them a chance, but this predictability also meant that dominating them as I had just done was safe, so long as you didn't let the spell duration elapse. They were more a computer program someone made than an entity.
Shadows were even stupider than Skeletons. Probably stupider than zombies, too. I could control any of the undead under me directly as though it were an extra limb. That was how I walked Zombie Jim with the explosive amulets in the cave. However, I could only do this one at a time. Otherwise, they'd need to be directed through words or simple directions.
I directed the Shadow to hide in my own shadow, and it darted into it, disappearing. Without some way to detect the undead, the only clue there was anything amiss was my shadow appeared extra dark. It was a very good tactic to ambush someone, and Meril's mom always had a couple of Shadows living in her shadow just in case someone got the drop on her.
There weren't a lot of wards that I could cast, but I could cast Alarm, so I went around the exterior of the courtyard and one of the buildings casting it, picking the building on the north side of the courtyard on a whim. Before I laid down to rest, I cast three instances of Unseen Servant and ordered them to clean the building, starting with the room I had chosen for my bedroom and working outwards. They wouldn't get finished before they vanished, but they'd make good headway, and I could repeat it tomorrow.
I didn't lay down to sleep right away, though. Now that I was somewhat guarded, I sat, meditated, and duplicated what Merildwen had been doing in the forest back on Earth. I used the Mental Palace technique to begin committing every book I read as a spirit into memory. My memory from then was still as sharp as ever, but it might not remain so, and I may never see any of those books again. Unless I reunited with Meril's parents, they might be my only hope to continue my path as a Wizard.
They didn't have spells from all schools, but there were quite a few of them up to what I would consider level seven, along with an entire book on Clone, which was a level eight. I wouldn't be able to understand either for years, I was sure, but I would seriously regret it if I wasn't able to study them later because I didn't make the effort now.
I spent a good three hours doing this, and I hadn't completed more than ten per cent of it, but I finally couldn't continue any longer. I was both getting tired and started to get a splitting headache from the mental exertion. I laid down on the surprisingly comfortable goose-down bed, and my last thought before I fell asleep was that I hoped nothing attempted to murder me in the middle of the night.