Book 1, Chapter 11: Beneath a Starry Sky

[Alen]

“So um, are we all set?” Alen tightened his hold on his bag’s strap that was slung over his shoulder. His face was a bit pale, and every breath he exhaled would turn into faint white mist. Behind him were Draenys’s walls, and beside him were his two new companions.

Lynn looked like she wasn’t bothered by the cold as she took a glance at the gates behind them. “Yeah. Roland should be back with the commissioners any time now,” She said.

Alen sighed and sat down on the stone rails that flowed out from the gate, the yellow light of the torch beside him granting him a bit of warmth as he looked at the scar on his palm. The elf took a curious glance at him before deciding to stay silent. She watched the gates and Alen idly reached into his pocket to bring out a sleek, black object. He pressed a button and the screen lit up, displaying numerous icons. He glanced at the bar displayed on the top right of his phone and sighed. Seventy-six percent.

He’d been using it sparingly, almost too sparingly, but every single decrease to his phone’s battery life felt like a stab into his heart. Alen held down the power button and shut it off. Eilynn caught sight of it and tilted her head. “Is that...?”

“Yeah. It’s the phone I told you about,” Alen said, thinking for a moment before continuing. “I try to use it as little as possible though.”

“Well, if I ever catch you listening to that music you talked about, I’ll snatch up an earpiece and have a listen too. I’m curious what music is like where you live,” Lynn said, pointing to her long ears and sitting down beside him.

Alen shrugged. “Sure, I’ll let you listen,” He glanced at the sky full of heavy gray clouds above and sighed. “It’s stupidly dreary for a morning, right? I swear to god, these clouds are foreshadowing that something shit is going to happen to us in our trip.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist, it’s probably just a little snow.”

“See, it’s not pessimism, Lynn. It’s the flags. The flags speak to me,” Alen paused and looked up, his eyes shining slightly. “And the snow, huh? I’ve never seen snow before.”

“Really? Does Earth not have snow?”

Alen shook his head. “Nah, we do. I just lived in an area where snow doesn’t fall.”

“A desert?”

“The tropics,” He said, a slight smile on his face as he looked up.

The elf looked up with him and spoke. “Don’t you miss your old home? New arrivals are somewhat hard to find in this massive continent, but I heard most of them just want to go home.”

Alen nodded slowly, his face downcast. “I miss my old home. A lot, actually. Thinking about it kind of gets me depressed, really. I have three siblings and two parents whose hairs were turning gray. I had a dog, too. If my closest friends hadn’t been taken with me, I don’t know what loneliness would’ve done to me in my first two weeks here.”

“You don’t look sad to me,” Lynn said.

“I practice,” Alen smiled.

“What?” Lynn blinked and looked back at him, only to see that the grin that was almost always present on his face was back.

“They’re here,” He said, standing up and walking towards the orange-haired warrior that had just left the gates with a man in his sixties surrounded by mercenaries and familiar faces from the Com-House. Behind them, three carriages trailed behind, pulled by large horses that had deep blue goat horns on their heads.

“Yo Roland. Let’s head out dude.”

“Let me introduce you to the commissioner first. Gam, this is Alen. He’s one of my companions that’ll be joining us, and he’s plenty capable.”

“Yes. I’m like, Roland, but better. Just ask Roland.”

Lynn looked on at them, still sitting on the stone railings. She looked down at herself and back at Alen who was laughing and exchanging banter with Roland and the merchant. With a sigh, she looked back up at the sky. Why did that last conversation feel so heavy to her?

Eventually, she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She looked up and found Roland staring down at her.

He pointed at the carriages passing by them and spoke. “What are you doing? Come on, I’ll introduce you to Gam. Though you and Alen are already in because I know him, he’s a man that prefers to personally know each and every one of the people he hires.”

Eilynn looked at him for a moment and stood up, the clop of horse hooves on stone and dirt reaching her ears as she breathed in the cold winter air to clear her thoughts.

After four days of repeated hunting inside the forest, they were finally off.

Their final destination?

She honestly didn’t know.

Roland walked alongside a carriage, a fur cloak draped around him to prevent the cold from seeping into his bones. He looked up and found Alen sitting on the roof of a carriage, staring at the road ahead and drumming a beat into the carriage as his legs dangled down from above. He was singing some sort of song, a tune Roland didn’t recognize.

He sighed. “Can you get down from there, Alen? The moment this carriage makes a sharp turn, I’m in danger of your foot planting against my face,” Roland said, grabbing his sword by the sheath and prodding at Alen’s leg with the pommel.

The necromancer looked down at him. “Shhhh, I’m out of those lizard-camel teeth, so I’m on the lookout for more. The moment I spot one of those things, I’m sending—rather, splattering some of my black fire-jizz onto it and making it into a mount as soon as possible.”

“You ran out already?” Roland was somewhat dumbstruck. “We helped you hunt over a dozen of those a few days ago. Where’d the teeth go?”

“Well, I summon one when I’m outside the city because I’m too lazy to walk around. Come to think of it, I really need to re-program my spell for that so I can turn them back into teeth form. They’re way too disposable as-is.”

“Wait, so how many undead are in your disposal right now?”

Alen paused. “I don’t know. Lemme check, actually,” He said, pulling up his side pouch and rummaging through it. After muttering to himself for a few seconds, he looked back down at Roland. “I have about… seventeen gray wolf teeth, eight striped gorillas, eleven chickens, six of those orange bear teeth, and three really hard horns from well, horned lions.”

“You hunted some more without us?”

“Yeah man. I mean, we are going on a trip. Figured I’d resupply.”

“Why didn’t you kill some Hunchback Lizards then?”

The necromancer shook his head. “Couldn’t find any. Lynn knows where to find where they burrow down to hibernate in the winter, but I don’t. Hey, at least I have three horned lions. Those should be pretty strong when Empowered.”

Roland nodded, then scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Speaking of chickens, where’s that skeleton chicken that always follows you around?”

“Oh, you mean Cuck?” Alen brought up his bag from the side and opened a side compartment. From it, the skeleton chicken’s head poked out and stared at the warrior. “He’s right here. It’s pretty easy to fit him into here when he’s made of bones and all that.”

Roland pursed his lips. It really was like this guy to name a chicken Cuck. He took out his waterskin and took a drink, savoring the water’s cool temperature. He chatted with Alen a bit more, until he heard his name called by a different mercenary walking along the second carriage.

“Ah, I remember him. Deev, I think. I’ll go ahead and see what he wants,” Roland said.

“Aight. See you later man,” Alen said, watching as Roland waved goodbye and jogged ahead to catch up to the second carriage. He looked around and sighed when he noticed Lynn wasn’t anywhere nearby either. She was probably sent scouting by the merchant dude. With a huff, Alen laid down on the top of the carriage, looking up on the darkening gray sky above. It wouldn’t be long until nightfall from what his watch read.

He thought about talking to his friends over at their chat window, but he didn’t feel like it. It was one of those moments. Alen let himself relax and stared at the sky above in a trance. He wasn’t thinking about spells, or his plans for tomorrow. He wasn’t thinking about anything. The blankness felt nice, like he was a fresh sheet of paper left untouched on a table, just waiting to be drawn and written on. It was peaceful. Quiet.

Alen’s fingertips were a bit red from the cold, so he dug them into his pockets. Slowly, he began to sing a song softly. It had been stuck in his head for a while, especially after he’d listened to it half a week ago. His voice rose up gently like the mist that left with his every breath.

‘The world’s a fucked up place, but it depends on how you see it.’

‘Life is full of change, you grow up and then you feel it.’

‘Smooth seas don’t make good sailors, jump ship and head for failure.’

‘Find yourself a tragedy, slowly lose your sanity…’

He closed his eyes and smiled, warmth filling his chest as the song itself seemed to playin tandem with his voice within his ears. Alen’s singing was soft, but the enhanced physiques of the people around him were nothing to laugh at. Some mercenaries nearby simply chose to ignore him, but some listened and found themselves listening to the lyrics.

Unbeknownst to him, Lynn was sitting on a box inside his carriage, reading a map and trying to figure out their route after they escorted the merchant caravan to the city about a week away. She blinked and looked up, recognizing his voice. The elf smiled and put down the map, stretching and jumping out of the wagon. She walked alongside it, thinking that she definitely had to force some music out of the young man above her. The style was weird, unlike the ballads and poems bards in the city would sing, but she found herself humming along to it even after Alen quieted down.

Eventually, the sun set and bathed the surroundings in darkness. The merchant ahead over in the first cart had them pull into a clearing to rest. Immediately, the mercenaries went to work in setting up their tents and fires.

Torches were placed around the perimeter, and a few minutes later, the smell of food being cooked wafted out. Lynn glanced at Roland who’d finished setting up their tent and decided to get their necromancer down to eat with the rest. She climbed up the carriage with ease, only to find out that Alen had fallen asleep on top of the carriage.

She poked him with her shoe and called out his name, but it didn’t look like he was going to wake up any time soon with what she was doing. Lynn sighed and crouched down beside him, repeatedly slapping his face lightly. “Alen. Alen, wake up,” She said loudly, his eyes finally fluttering open.

He squinted and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he stood up. “I’m up, I’m up. Jesus Christ, Lynn. You don’t just slap a man awake, it’s not nice.”

“You’d complain if I didn’t wake you up,” She said. “Plus, you wouldn’t want to catch a cold on the first day of the journey, right?”

“Fair enough,” Alen yawned out, stretching his arms. “Anyways, what’s up? Is the tent ready or something?”

Eilynn nodded. “It is, but dinner is too,” She jumped down from the carriage and looked back at him. “Come on, I’m hungry and those mercenaries don’t look like they’d leave any of that deer meat for us.”

Alen jumped and landed with a grunt, following behind her with a light jog. Roland spotted both of them, but he seemed to be enjoying talking to the other mercenaries, so Alen didn’t bother calling out to him. The warrior shrugged and took a large gulp of what looked to be the bottle of alcohol in his hand. When he looked back, it looked like Lynn went off somewhere after getting her food, so Alen shrugged and grabbed himself a serving.

He walked to the far side of the camp, sitting on a rock near a carriage as he idly ate his meal. As he ate, he grabbed a stick and started drawing on the dirt below. It was a program for a spell he wanted to try.

His biggest problems were his mana capacity, which he could either fix by improving his spells’ mana programs, which was a given, increasing his total capacity somehow, or finding a way to regenerate his mana faster. Alen had figured out how to meditate, but never got the hang of it. It was boring and idle, and he couldn’t stay in it for long. It also confirmed one of his conjectures about his magic system. It looked like any spells he didn’t configure through Mana Programming wouldn’t show up on his skill list now, even after his control over mana increased.

His other problem was his lack of debuffs and spells related to his undead. Now that he had personal defense covered with Deathchill Touch and Rotfire Bolt, he needed to get back to making his undead stronger; better.

In front of him, the program for Lesser Undead Empowerment was slowly scrawled out into the dirt. It was way shorter then when he had created it the first time, the result of his continuous refining and revising of the program that ran the spell. Each segment when uncompressed would be a program in and of itself, and to improve the spell, Alen needed to have an image, and a way to make that image manifest through the program.

The system had helped him out with Dominate Undead, but it looked like he was on his own when it came to this spell. It was the same for Blightbolt. He’d simply improved it to a point that it could no longer be compressed into a smaller program, removing the ‘Lesser’ tag beside it. To get it to the next level, he’d have to change the spell itself, then probably repeat the program-compression process.

Alen needed something else. Right now, Empowerment would nourish the bones of the undead with his mana, and flood the strings of magic-muscle that let his skeletons move. Due to his created skeletons being made of enamel and dentin, they were plenty durable as-is, but they lacked offensive power.

He took out a tooth from his pouch and summoned a bone wolf, placing his hand on its head as he examined the threads in its head with his mana.

Alen poked at the purple strand, the one that contained the information about bone structure and anatomy. He sent his mana into it, covering it with a program and examining it. Every small piece of the strand represented a bone in the wolf, and Alen felt it. He reached one for an individual rib and ‘activated’ it with a program in the same way he would when he summoned the wolf. His mana surged, and the rib visibly bubbled, seemingly about to grow in all directions when Alen stopped.

Too messy. He took the time to create a finer program with his mana, before sending it into the purple strand once more. He activated it.

Immediately, the rib bubbled and grew a spike two inches long. Alen stared. He’d essentially made the rib grow… another rib. He took back the program and adjusted it a bit more, before sending it in again. He repeated this over and over, refining his control over the bone-matter as he adjusted the program again and again.

Finally, he sighed and released the spell, the mana receding into him as he looked at the messed up bone wolf in front of him. Lumps of bone grew at random parts of its body, and spike protruded out at seemingly random locations.

He’d probably get some sort of spell for this, but from what he saw, his current programs weren’t complex enough. If he wanted to pull something like that off, he’d probably have to spend a few days programming. That wouldn’t guarantee a solution to his problem, nor improve Empowerment. Alen jutted down the program for the bone-adjustment in his notepad and let it there. He’d get to that in the future.

Back to square one. He stared at the wolf. Empowerment was basically a temporary mana-muscle steroid. He needed to either make that steroid more potent, or give it another effect.

Alen opened up his skill information screen for Deathchill Touch, something he wrote down himself as soon as he finished confirming the spell’s effects.

Skill Information: Deathchill Touch

Compound the effects of necrotic mana’s decay and numbness with the chilling cold of freezing type mana. The spell channels a creeping black frost onto one’s arm that corrupts all living flesh it touches, stiffening and numbing an area with freezing death energy and spreading necrosis in place of frostbite.

Skill Trees: Available.

Alen wondered… Empowerment cost him about 0.25% of his mana for a single active minute on one undead now, which was effectively nothing. Conversely though, the spell’s strength boost was constant and didn’t scale like he first thought. Due to this, he suspected that it would fall off from his most-used spells as soon as he got a little bit stronger.

Now, what if casting Empowerment granted his undead a lesser version of Deathchill Touch on each of their attacks?

The mana cost would probably increase by disgusting lengths, but it was worth it. Just thinking about the power boost made him eager to try it. Immediately, he began to work on programming the spell. He was no longer using HTML, but rather, a different kind of programming language he’d slowly developed over the month that he’d spent in this world. It was based on mana, still budding, and somewhat incomplete and lacking complexity, but it enabled him to create better spells with ease.

First, he basically sloppily inserted a Deathchill Touch with a reduced input into Empowerment’s program, but when he tested it on the skeleton wolf, he found that D-Touch was applied to its whole body, not only weakening the effect but making it cost a whole four percent of his mana for a single minute of active time.

Alen cringed and adjusted the program, taking more than half an hour to figure something out. What if Empowerment took reference to the purple strand inside the wolf in order to focus DT’s output on its claws and mouth instead?

It took a long while, but Alen was eventually able to have Deathchill Touch active on one of the wolf’s claws. He smiled widely and raised his fists into the air. “Yes,” he said. “Fuck yes.”

Saving the program to his notepad, he turned it off. He wasn’t going to merge it with Empowerment’s original program yet. He still had to have DT appear on all the claws and teeth before he could consider it an upgrade. As for tonight, he shivered and looked up. The sky was darker as midnight settled in. His head kind of hurt from programming so much, so he stood up and stretched, deciding to walk around camp.

Most of the mercenaries were asleep, but he’d passed a few that were sitting bored on chairs, keeping watch on the road to their left, and the dark forest to their right. Some of them even chose to climb trees, their legs dangling from the branches as they whistled and kept watch. Alen could almost swear he recognized the tune of one of them, but decided to pay it no heed. He probably heard it in a tavern back when he was in the city.

The cold air caused him to wrap his robe around himself tighter. With the leather armor off and stored in his bag, it was comparatively colder even with his insulated mage robes. Eventually, left the camp and took a walk around the forest.

It was chilly, and the air was full of the forest’s earthy smell. Every time the wind blew, leaves would follow and sway in his direction as if to accompany him in his walk.

He breathed in and out, closing his emerald green eyes as he listened to the subtle sounds of the forest around him. It felt good. Back at home, he never managed to walk around a forest like this. Most of his area was an urbanized mess full of apartments, cars, and factories. Alen took out his phone from his pocket and stared at it for a moment. Screw it, he thought, bringing out his earphones and plugging them in. His phone lit up his face with a blue glow as he opened his playlist. He chose a relaxing song and continued walking.

Below him, stones and plants he’d never seen before passed, the ground below full of the leaves the trees above had shed for the coming winter.

Alen spotted a nice rock and picked it up. It was smooth and transparent, like glass. He’d seen some before, but it was the first to be so smooth. He traced his thumb along the surface before walking forward once again, the rock jumping in his hand as he tossed it up and caught it again and again.

For a short second, he almost regretted having necrotic as his mana type. Whenever he used magic, he had the power to destroy life, rotting it away into nothingness. Trees like the ones around him would be reduced to rotten dust with a wave of the staff in his left hand. He looked at it, a long rod just a foot shorter than he was. It was made out of grey Rotwood, the same trees in the forest of undead he was leaving behind. He shook his head. His power was his to command, his to create; nothing would crumble by his hands without him wishing for it to be so. He was a necromancer, not a cursed child. His magic was his to control.

He caught the rock another time, grasping it tight in his hand as he looked at its clear surface. He looked around and found himself in a sort of clearing, the pale moonlight was being reflected off the stone, giving it a beautiful silver radiance.

Sighing, Alen smiled. It wasn’t like him to get so sentimental. This place was really trying its hardest to get his smile off his face, with all the problems it was tossing at him.

Alen decided to sit down where he was, hugging his knees with his arms and rocking back and forth as he stared at the sky above. The two moons in the sky stared down at him with their gentle glow, starlight shining down on his smiling face.

“That’s more like it,” He told himself. “Why bitch when there’s nothing to bitch about?”

Laughing, he took out his waterskin and took a drink. It was sweet, and tasted of fruit. The scent filled his nose even after it was in his mouth. It was the fruit juice his elven friend had bought him after they woke up in an infirmary. He’d spent a pretty absurd amount to fill two waterskins with just juice, but the cold drink sliding down his throat told him that it was worth it.

He heard a rustle behind him and looked back to find Eilynn pushing away a branch to enter the clearing. She smiled at him. “Hey,” She said.

“Yo,” He replied. “Speak of the devil. Well, think of the devil.”

The elf sat down beside him and gave him a look. “What are you doing outside brooding at this ungodly hour?”

“Aren’t ungodly hours the best time to brood? And nah, it left as quickly as it came. I’m just enjoying the view at this point,” He took another sip and felt a nudge on his shoulder. Understanding, he held out the waterskin full of juice to his right. Lynn took it from him and drank some as well.

“And here I thought it was alcohol,” She shook her head in mock disappointment. “You obviously don’t know that fruit juice is a horrible drink when brooding. It makes you conflicted and all with the sweet taste.”

Alen pointed at himself. “Do I look like I’m brooding?”

“Well, you did say you practiced looking like you weren’t,” She replied.

“You understood that? Whoa. You actually possess at least an actual decent amount of emotional intelligence. Hats off to you.”

“Oh shut up,” Lynn shook her head.

He looked at her. “How did you find me anyways? I don’t know if restraining orders exist here, but I’ll have to file one against you if you’re stalking me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” She laughed. “I was about to go to sleep on a tree when you passed by below me. Figured I’d check out what you were doing.”

“You know, that’s essentially stalking.”

“It isn’t.”

Alen looked back up at the sky above him before removing the earpiece in his left ear. He held it out to her. “Here, plug this in your left ear.”

She took it and examined it curiously. “What is this?”

“They’re called earphones. I’m listening to music through them,” He said.

“Oh,” She grinned and put it into her ear, her eyes widening slightly. “What kind of song is this?”

“It’s an acoustic song. Speaking of which, do you have guitars here?”

Eilynn paused. “I’m pretty sure they’re sold here and there. They’re uncommon though. Lutes are the more popular instrument at the moment.”

“That’s awesome. I’m getting one as soon as I can. Or you know, as soon as I have a place to put it.”

“You play?”

Alen shrugged. “A bit, yeah.”

The wind blew and swept a chilly breeze over them as they talked. From above, something white began to flutter down towards the ground. Alen looked up and found that one of the moons had been covered by large gray clouds. All around them, snow began to fall, gently touching and caressing the grass under their feet.

He was silent, only looking up at the sky in wonder. Lynn beside him was tapping her feet against the ground to the song when she stopped and looked up as well.

“It’s your first time seeing snow, right?” She asked, pushing a strand of hair out of her face.

“Yeah,” He simply said, holding out his hand and catching a descending snowflake.

“Hey, play that song you were humming on top of the carriage this morning.”

Alen gave her a look. “You heard that? Can you like, stop stalking me please? It’s pretty scary and it makes me feel like a vulnerable schoolgirl.”

“Everyone around the third carriage could hear it,” She said. “I was inside the carriage when you started singing.”

“Fucking hell, your hearing’s no joke with those ear flaps.”

“Whose ears are you calling flaps?” She elbowed him and laughed. “Just play the song already.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got you,” Alen said, bringing out his phone and opening his playlist once again. She watched the device curiously, seeing him type letters onto the screen. Eventually, the music in her ears came to an abrupt stop, only to be replaced by the beating of drums and the strum of an electric guitar. She tilted her head, the music was strange, but not in a particularly bad way.

The two lapsed into silence as the lyrics rang out within their ears.

‘The world’s a fucked up place, but it depends on how you see it.’

‘Life is full of change, you grow up and then you feel it.’

‘Smooth seas don’t make good sailors, jump ship and head for failure.’

‘Find yourself a tragedy, slowly lose your sanity…’

He smiled, and just like that, beneath a starry sky full of twinkling lights and falling snow, Alen sat beside an elf past midnight to conclude his first month in another world.

Book 1 End.