Alex scrambled out of the mists, half-stumbling and half-clambering over himself as he latched onto a tree for support. He retched, shuddering uncontrollably as his dangersense shrieked.

  They were still tearing him apart with their eyes, even if they couldn’t pass the mist’s barrier to do the act for good. Alex hadn’t forgotten how terrifying Wraiths could be, but the ones that tore him apart in his dreams didn’t compare to the real things.

  He teetered on weak knees and retreated further into his side of the forest, wiping vomit from his lips. When he’d gone far enough that his trait stopped telling him how screwed he was, he mustered up enough confidence for a weak smile.

  Proficiency with [Stealth] is 72% towards Apprentice.

  Mana: 13%

  It… had worked, at least. Wracked by exhaustion, he collapsed against a tree trunk. When his adrenaline finally fled him, he noticed the sorrow and hatred that hung in his heart.

  Lost souls, he thought with a pang. These weren’t his emotions, but no one went through the mists without taking something extra out with them, especially not him. Taking on too much could drive a person mad. He’d spent far too much time stranded in those mists once, and had nearly become a lost soul himself. This method of training Stealth wasn’t something he’d made up on the fly, it had once just been how he’d staved off his untimely death.

  Alex sighed, craning his neck to get a look at the night sky. The view shifted in and out of the forest’s canopy in tune with the wind, a dark blanket embroidered with stars. It felt odd seeing them now. There hadn’t been a night sky in Dykriest.

  Though, the Constellations always had their ways of peeking through regardless. They glimmered and Alex could only look upon them for a short time before averting his gaze. They each had their own stakes in Nightmare, their own chosen pieces, and cared little for what pawns were sacrificed, placing them where they pleased. For now, Alex was not even on their board, and he was thankful for that.

  He took a breath. Alyssa, are you seeing the same sky as me right now? Or are you already…

  Well, he could just say the word: Dead. Alex didn’t know the System’s metrics for potential, but where there’s one there’s often more, so Alyssa likely received the same invitation to Nightmare. Or at least, Alex had never found her body on Earth.

  If she did choose Nightmare, he just hoped it ended quickly. Their talent wasn’t comparable to Jun’s or even to those with paltry capacity for magecraft. The distance separating them wasn’t even measurable, yet, however unfortunately, in the entire population of Earth, that yawning gap spanned an infinitesimally small percentage. Truthfully, Alex wasn’t even a pawn, but part of the board itself. Another sheep to the slaughter, all for the birth of 217 Nightmares.

  Camilla, the Immortal Death Priestess, Xuan Yuxiaun, The Betrayer, Anne, The Red Mistress. One had killed him. One had ended Earth. One had taken his reason for living. And Alex couldn’t get it out of his head that one of them needed to die.

  He knew it was illogical. He knew it was beyond his limits to face the most powerful Nightmares the tutorial had produced. Nightmare had an upper limit for how strong their invitees could be, and Alex was far, far below that. He was so weak that any meager mageling could come along to finish him now. That would need to change.

  I can’t…be… weak any…

  Alex jolted himself as he’d started dozing off. He scanned his surroundings then settled down. If he’d planned to catch any sleep tonight, he would’ve slit that girl’s throat when she’d shown him an opening. She’d attacked him once. There was no guarantee she wouldn’t do it again, and his body was so fatigued that even his dangersense might not wake him up. However, killing a girl his sister’s age over what she might do was not a line he wanted to cross.

  So no sleeping. He needed to get powerful as soon as possible anyways.

  Right, I just have to move…forward.

  Alex chuckled. How the hell was any of this moving forward? He laughed harder at that, to see if it might get endorphins flowing to his brain. It just made him feel like a lunatic. He had none of his skills, none of his weapons or gear, none of his levels or stats…

  …but also, no curse.

  He looked up at Orion in the sky. The hunter had practically shot Alex down with his arrow, and when he’d unlodged it, taken pieces of him with it. He had been rearranged, down to his very soul—his fire stolen.

  Now, Alex was whole. He was whole, but those precious parts of him were so hard to find again. They were there, but diminished. Reset. And who was to say it wouldn’t just happen again? All of it. Did he really have that much faith in himself?

  Faith isn’t what you need to move forward. Think about it after you’ve slept, dumbass.

  Alright… fair point, me!

  Alex slapped his face and slicked his oily hair back, breathing in Nightmare’s cold air. It was a little acrid—if that wasn’t just Alex catching whiff of a man who hadn’t showered before his tutorial—but it was still far more breathable than the stale air of Dykriest’s underground levels. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, rhythmically, until his consistency was as reasonably near as it would get to the microseconds that the Refinement Method’s manual had described.

  The dusty, missing-pages, Fallen Feather of the Phoenix Basic Refinement Technique was the culmination of thousands of hours spent digging through texts where Alex had no right to be. And it had one flaw: It wasn’t written for someone as untalented as he was.

  For all the years that Alex had practiced it, he had never once actually refined Essence. He’d sensed it around him, in the atmosphere of Uern, Dykriest’s world, but he lacked one crucial thing all mages had—the ability to actually manipulate Essence. That hadn’t discouraged him. Meditation was healthy; and it was much easier to trick himself into it if he hoped it might make him a mage. But he’d known deep down that it wasn’t possible.

  Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  Alex focused his senses inward, deeper than he’d ever ventured before. The world around him faded—the wind, the cold, the ground he sat on, the tree he rested against. Then he faded. His body’s ache, his mind’s haze, it all went away as he went deeper and deeper into himself. He found in himself a place of calm darkness—his inner-world. And deeper still, a light embraced his skin—his sun, his soul.

  Returning a bare trace of his attention outward, Alex saw Essence. In the bushes, in trees, and in the terrors that flitted far in the mists. He’d told Jun that not all living things had Essence, only those with souls, and that was true, but not strictly. Because planets themselves had souls. And where on Uern, that Essence felt stilted, here, its flow felt almost alive, alight like glowing blurs of emerald green in the dark.

  I guess the world of Nightmare still has some life to it.

  Who would’ve thought? It was a beautiful sight, all things considered, and much clearer than in Alex’s senses than he had ever managed before. Sensing Essence was as far as he’d ever gotten with the technique, but now, he could sense it within himself too. Bright green wisps of power gravitated around his soul like the corona of a sun—his Vital Essence. It was the power that created his soul, patterned in the ways that made him who he was. The distinct patterns that made up his Essence Signature.

  Then on the fringes of his existence, in his body, mind, and spirit, there was more Essence, but that was harder for him to sense. Because what tethered that power to his soul was the System, and it created a gate he could not bypass.

  Well, let's do the simple part first.

  For the sake of simplicity and not being punched, Alex had told Jun another white lie: That it was impossible to manipulate Essence directly. Essence reacted to the flow of mana—that held true for almost all types of Essence. Except Vital Essence, which Alex could now sense through his Soul. And more than sense, draw on.

  He drew on those wisps carefully, and in miniscule amounts. He did not have a Core, a place where he could do this safely, and if he drew too much Vital Essence it would leak from his Soul away into the darkness and he would die. His Arcane stat was low anyway, and he could barely handle the amount he did draw, even with this new sense of his.

  It felt like hot vapor in his fingertips as he tried to shape it. It moved slowly to his will, but he cycled it in the pattern the technique described and its momentum built upon its movements until it flowed like slow river currents within his inner world. The flow will swoosh like the Phoenix’s tail-feather, creating slow fire in the belly of your diaphragm—the instructions sounded ridiculous, but after years of assimilating his breathing to the technique, such movements seemed intuitive to Alex’s mind. And by the time he had fallen into the rhythm, the mana in his body, mind, and spirit, began to react to his Vital Essence.

  And then the Essence out in the world began to stir. Essence didn’t just react to the flow of mana, Mana also reacted to the flow of Essence. His method was tedious, and one step removed from how mages did it, but for the first time Alex refined Essence through his own power. And that refined Essence traveled straight through the System’s Gate, as Alex binded it to a separate reserve in his soul—where it was his to shape into whatever pattern he wanted, into magic.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  After an hour of intensive focus, he had refined the equivalent of three Essence Crystals. He chuckled. Good. I can become a mage in a few centuries then.

  After all, he couldn’t actually create magic without a Core tethering that Essence to his soul the way the System did for the Skills it affixed. But oh well, he hadn’t expected to just reverse his fortune like that, it was already a good enough excuse to not get lazy about meditation in this life. It had done something and that was all he really needed it to do.

  Right now, Alex didn’t need real magic. What he really needed was magic like Houdini’s for the System’s bothersome shackles. And it was a crazy idea, but he thought he might just have all the tools he needed to pull it off.

  Let's see if I can work a fast one on the System.

  It was such a cathartic thought that laughter came easily now. Alex refocused his attention inward, feeling the System’s alien presence in his soul, and stared directly at its first Gate—the Gate of Awakening. Through it, he could feel all the Essence he’d refined and bound to his soul, but hadn’t affixed into a skill. Yet although he could feel it, he couldn’t touch it. No one could. It was the System’s Essence, and only it was allowed to affix its pattern.

  As such, the only Essence remotely accessible to him from those reserves was the Essence already affixed into the pattern of Stealth. It was intertwined with the very fabric of Alex’s Soul, and a lesser imprint of that pattern was woven into his Vital Essence itself.

  But what if he could reverse that process? What if, rather than his Vital Essence shifting to accommodate the System’s Skills, he could force the System to accommodate him. He’d essentially be stealing the System’s Skills, and he was probably the only one in the world—no, Universe—who could do that.

  He doubted he was the only one who’d ever thought of it, but the System’s Skills had a fool-proof defense against being stolen. The biggest difference between Skills and Magic, was that Skills weren’t learned. They weren’t, and so they couldn’t be replicated either. The System was the only entity that knew how to weave Essence into the patterns their Skills affixed, and the imprint those patterns left on the Soul wasn’t something that could be communicated to another.

  But Alex didn’t need it communicated, he remembered. And now, with the sense he had for his soul, and the capability to directly shape his Vital Essence, he knew those imprints with more intimacy than he’d ever known before. There was one Skill he’d need no matter what, and slowly, he began shaping his Vital Essence into the imprint it had left behind.

  A nervous sweat went down his back. Was this smart?

  Who cared? Alex wasn’t stealing. He was stealing back what was rightfully his!

  His languid and clumsy manipulation of his Vital Essence began to pick up speed, its shape taking form, and soon the Essence locked behind the System’s gates began to stir in response. It resisted his tug, but Alex willed the imprint into his soul, and that resistance broke.

  [Examine] has been affixed.

  And just like that, it was done. He hadn’t paid anything. He wouldn’t have to level it as slowly as he had in his first life, with his proficiency boost. The Essence simply affixed itself, twisting into a familiar pattern that—when mana flowed through it—did nothing more than tell him more about an object.

  Alex smiled. I guess this isn’t so hopeless after—

  Suddenly, his soul pulsed, his vision doubled. He saw two moons in the night sky.

  ERROR: Anomaly Detected.

  Initiating Corrective Measures.

  Alex fell onto his side, spasming as his Soul started to reshape—

  Corrective Measures Overridden.

  ERROR resolved.

  What…?

  Just as suddenly as it had come, the agonizing sensation stopped. Alex sat back up, massaging his head, dusting off dirt. Well, shit. That hadn’t been a smart idea at all. But… it had worked?

  Examine.

  Grave Bush

  A variety of thistle-bush that grows over buried remains.

  Status: Decay

  Yeah, it had worked alright, but he didn’t want to sit near this bush now. He sighed, standing up and heading away on another walk to ward off his sleepiness. And as he did, he ran through the logistics of his situation.

  At level 5, he was screwed if he ran afoul of a mage or a vampire, or even just an exceptionally talented member of society. Thankfully, he also had reason to believe he wouldn’t anytime too soon. The Initiation Scenarios were like a lottery, but the System didn’t like to bunch its talent too closely together. Jun was… well, also a dud ticket in those terms, but Nightmare’s evaluation of his potential was probably very high. Which meant Alex probably wouldn’t come across anyone who could kill him until Scenario 2’s end.

  And by then…

  Good, the math added up. He’d have to work for it, but it should be possible to reach Level 15 and attain his Class before Scenario 3 even started. It was shockingly early, but unlike everyone else, Alex didn’t have to split his Essence between leveling up, buying skills, or god forbid, a Skill Path.

  At least, under one assumption.

  Alex’s fist shook a little, from both mana exhaustion and from nerves. He’d been away from the clearing for maybe a couple of hours, and the smell hit him before he had even exited the forest. It was always so much worse after the bodies had time to marinate. He swatted in irritation at the air around him, a buzzing sound filling the space.

  Christ, I forgot. Even the flies are undead.

  He spotted Jun on the slope of the hill. His chest rose and fell peacefully. It seemed at least one of them had managed to sleep. Everyone reacted differently to shock, he supposed.

  Withstanding the smell even a few seconds longer wasn’t something Alex took great joy in, but he found himself wading through the corpse-field, to the Northern side. He felt a subconscious pull, an inexplicable feeling that he’d overlooked something. Soon, he stood before that woman again, the one he’d tricked. He felt a twist in his stomach at the sight of her mutilated corpse, a rising anger. He met her eyes.

  Jun was correct; It wasn’t his right to decide how she died.

  It wasn’t his decision he regretted though. It was the fact that he’d had to make it in the first place. At least, That was what he kept repeating to himself. But for once, he tried digging deeper, beyond the words, into the locked box in his mind. Dark necessities were the reality of hard times, but his unique position made it difficult to accept that at face value. Sometimes, you had to ask the harder questions.

  How do I really feel about this?

  Alex imagined what she must’ve gone through in those final seconds, knowing all too well what dying felt like. I feel numb, he thought.

  Well, shit. That’s hardly a good enough answer. He supposed he’d have to think about it more after he slept—whenever that happened. But for now, this wasn’t what he’d come here for.

  He walked a little farther, a dark-purple glint catching his eye in the darkness. Then he was looking at the empty suit of armor that had collapsed when the Necromancer died. It was a gigantic thing—crafted to fit a human, undeniably, but only one that happened to stand eight feet tall. It certainly wouldn’t fit him, that was for sure. But he knelt anyway and lay his palm flat against its cold surface as he used Identify.

  Abandoned Armor

  A giant, unworn set of armor that stood in decoration long after its manor was abandoned.

  Trait: Malleability

  He chuckled. Christ, it was a Nightmare-specific brand of irony—the most priceless item of the Scenario being a giant-fitted set of armor that would’ve been overlooked nine times out of ten. It wasn’t the trait that caught Alex’s eye. Malleability meant that it would be pliable to soul manipulation, which was great, no doubt, but its potential lay deeper than that. In something that only he was uniquely situated to take advantage of.

  But the rust made it a tinge too dark to tell for certain. He placed his hand back on the armor.

  Examine.

  Material: Oslumnen Ore

  A smile cemented itself on Alex’s face. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  He reached for the pieces, then jerked his hand back, closing it in a fist. He knew what he had to do to reach Level 15 early. It was what he’d failed to do in his first life, and the only thing he’d wanted for so many years. But he was afraid his curse had robbed him of something that it still hadn’t given back.

  His passion.

  Remember Lys, he told himself, Our final attack, that glimpse of what lies beyond.

  But Lys was dead. She’d shattered for the sake of that magnificent storm of energy. No, worse than dead, she had never existed in the first place. Alex… he’d never even forged her.

  He knew he couldn’t be thinking like that. But it was true, wasn’t it? Even if he set himself back on this path, what was the guarantee he’d succeed this time?

  His hands shook as he turned the pieces over. Slowly, his expression grew more puzzled. Wait, how exactly did the necromancer animate this armor in the first place? He’d have to have stuck a soul inside of it, but he searched all surfaces for anything resembling a necromantic binding or a summoning pentagon and found nothing.

  Moreover, if it housed some malevolent soul, why was it Alex didn’t feel any malice? There was still something there in the pieces. He couldn’t explain it, in the same way he couldn’t explain how it was he could sense his own soul, but Alex’s dangersense—if he could even call it that anymore—didn’t warn of danger, rather it warned of something different.

  Maybe the armor hadn’t been possessed…

  He had, after all, read tellings of stranger cases. It’s said that a creation forged with expertise and once-in-a-lifetime passion could sometimes take life on its own. And well, he’d experienced it himself. Lys’s voice had always been so hazy that Alex half-wondered if loneliness had driven him mad talking to her all those years, but in those final moments he’d definitely heard it clearly.

  But even if an object developed a soul, could such a thing be considered living? And this armor felt even more incomplete than Lys; maybe it had only been mid-process when the necromancer found it. How did that even work? Being raised as an undead without ever having lived…

  There was something terribly sad about it. But sad as it may be, developing a soul didn’t sound like the kind of thing that could be attempted twice. He brushed the armor with his fingertips.

  “What’s clear at least, is that you were made with love,” he whispered.

  The rust was light enough that Alex could still see his reflection in the armor’s sheen. Corpses littered the field behind him, 750,000 of them. No, he could probably add almost the entirety of Earth’s population to that count. And himself. Their potential had all been snuffed out, them, this armor and he as well.

  Yet they were still here.

  Alex’s eyes reflected darker in the Oslumnen armor. In that moment he didn’t think about passion, his past, or the path lay ahead. The only thing going through his mind was that this would make a good sword.