Title: Cultivator Monster in a RPG World.

By Arne, July 2025. Zeeon Ga'ol quite inconveniently died on the morning of his 13000th birthday, not even getting a chance to greet the one million celestial guests gathered in the great hall of his autumn fortress. The conqueror went peacefully, simply losing consciousness after having adjusted his favourite socks and getting back up a little too fast. The star beast silk socks had been a gift for his 9000th birthday, but he had since long worn holes in the heels that could not be fixed without finding another of the rare star beasts, and a celestial weave master. His death was honestly to be expected—as a 9th stage celestial realm cultivator he had reached the end of his life span. He felt more than a little regretful not having died fighting an opponent of equal power rather than, well—his socks. What would people think? Nor had there been a dramatic dagger in the back, ancient curse, or an over powered hyper-celestial threatening to cleave in two the sun-sized home world he had lorded over. The former World Lord sighed deeply where he now stood, stripped of his cultivation and fine clothes, dirty bare feet pressing into the blackened soil of the underworld. Behind and ahead, people from all walks of life obediently waited in line to drink Meng Po's mind wipe soup, but the line hadn't moved in a while and Zeeon felt his feet beginning to ache. Then there was a bit of a stir and the line began to move again. When it was finally Zeeon's turn, he found that it wasn't Meng-Po serving the soup, but an incomprehensible mass of tentacles and eyes. The terrifying creature politely explained that it stood in for Meng Po who had an emergency to take care of. When the creature took a closer look at Zeeon it hummed and its eyes took on a strange glint. —"I've got something special for you.", it said, putting the soup ladle aside. It instead brought forth a black cube and deftly pressed on the sides with its tentacles. A glowing wheel appeared floating in the air, each of its spokes marked with strange symbols. Zeeon was asked to spin the wheel and nervously did so. After a while the wheel had nearly stopped, but it seemed to gain more and more spokes with more and more information as it drew closer to a halt. Zeeon got the notion that the strange wheel had an infinite number of spokes. However, it did eventually stop and the creature announced the result. "System type universe, Level subvariant, Abyss cluster, Lec'thron sector, Planet Ururth, Northern island of Skuldland, The forgotten necropolis, Undead skeleton (F rank)." —"...That's a bad draw." it said apologetically, quickly adding "but it could be worse!" The creature then looked thoughtful. —"I guess I can let you choose whether to keep your memories or not. I'll just add the option in your system menu. Mind, you might have an easier next- uh, unlife without lingering memories, to be honest. Skeletons apparently just chill in dungeons or in their coffins most of the time. It can be quite relaxing for those who manage to not ever think about that time they made a complete fool of themselves at an important social gathering. Argh!" The creature whacked its central mass with a tentacle three times, momentarily seeming upset about something before recovering. —"...anyways" it sighed, "proceed to the left and walk into the red long distance portal. And... good luck to you. Next!" —o— Location: Skuldland, Oribro city, Main guild office. It was Linn's first day as a guild secretary and she was a bit nervous. Her very first task had been a document delivery going straight to the guild master in her fancy office. Now Linn simply stood idle by the side awaiting further instructions—or a dismissal—while two imposing higher-ups were having a conversation Linn wasn't sure if she was meant to be a part off. While Linn was pretty, it was primarily her rare Inspect skill that had landed her the job and she could easily see how powerful the two were. [ Dherdi Nilsan, Female Human, Level 28, C rank, Guild Master ] [ Severos Ryn, Male Human, Level 22, D rank, Knight ] —"These reports are strange. Say... captain Severos, could the missing scout party by any chance have detoured though the necropolis area? It was a sturdy and grizzled gray haired woman in robes who spoke. She didn't look up at the armoured man standing in front of her busy looking desk. Instead she slid the reports Linn had brought to the side and revealed a well worn map, her one working eye lingering at a point while she frowned. Severos leaned in to have a look. —"It's... possible, guild master... but only if they for some reason took the unpleasant old Deadlands road from Varnabro town up towards the swamp tower, or the other way around... otherwise it's too far out of the way. What are you thinking?" —"Well, it's just that according to the new scout reports there were no emergency flags or other traces at any of the main stops our missing scout party should have visited." Dherdi said, stabbing the map with the stump of a mutilated index finger. —"What would the scout party have been doing passing through the necropolis though? Also, I highly doubt a few F rank monsters could have taken out a six man scout party." Severos said as if talking more to himself, leaving his question to linger in a room growing silent. Linn wasn't sure if it was her place to speak, but as a secretary she had already gone over the reports and had some ideas. —"Um, is it possible they were looking to plunder or gain some easy Exp? A few of the party members were close to leveling up." She interjected hesitantly. —"Doubtful" Severos sternly replied, "You see, skeletons are notoriously bad at leveling up in the wild so—like all monsters at level 1—they are zero Exp encounters. Additionally, they aren't even that common up above ground. Most remain trapped in the soil until the necromancy field wears off... and that was cast half a millennia ago from what I've heard. As for plunder, there might not be much left at this point." Linn's face reddened from having been lectured after taking the initiative to speak. She of course already knew what Severos had just explained, but was thinking about the other types of monsters also reportedly roaming the necropolis area. Dherdi seemed to pick up on this and glanced at Linn. —"...were you perhaps thinking about the slimes and ropers?" It was Severos who replied. —"Only the ropers would be worth hunting, but aren't they quite rare and also quite unpleasant?" he questioned, frowning behind the great helm he always insisted on wearing. —"Yes, reportedly there aren't many of them there, but sometimes they move out from the swamps and they do like to nest in dungeons and catacombs... The last scout report from the necropolis is unfortunately outdated. Like you said Severos, not much to do there— the skeletons only got one thing going for them, and that is their spooky factor... which doesn't make them much of an attraction..." Linn coughed. —"Um... The missing scout party had a skilled tracker, so they could have followed... something else there. And they had a scholar too—perhaps he wanted to study the tombs, or skeleton speech?" Linn suggested after mustering some confidence. —"Maybe..." Dherdi said, then she looked straight at Linn, "Well then, issue a scout quest—and make it 150 silver." —o— Location: Skuldland, somewhere in the necropolis area... Zeeon couldn't see anything after having transmigrated into his new body. Was it because it was really dark where he was, or because his skull didn't have any eyeballs? After having fumbled around in the complete blackness for a good while he found his blindness was actually because he was trapped inside something like a sealed stone sarcophagos. The lid was extremely heavy. Would he have to wait until a grave robber came and pushed the lid aside? Then jump out and scare the guy off, making the spookiest gestures he could come up with? Probably—he found he couldn't even make the lid budge even just a little—his skeletal arms were pretty much locked to his side in the tight stone coffin space, and he was just a weak "Level 1" monster according to a peculiar text display that had appeared out of nowhere. While he could see the display, it unfortunately did not provide illumination and might just be an illusionary overlay happening in his mind. Without much to do, Zeeon just looked through the system provided information on his display over and over again. Rather than having a cultivation divided into stages and realms, he now had a level and a dozen of attributes like Strength, Agility, Vitality, Luck and such. He didn't really know what they did, but his values must be considered low. In his past life, a casual palm strike of his would turn a mega mountain range into dust, but here he was as weak as a mortal and couldn't even lift a small slab of solid rock. His only outlier was the Luck attribute. It had a mysterious A next to it instead of a single digit number. Thinking about it, the strange creature had wished him good luck. He really didn't feel lucky though. The system timer ticked on. As a 13000 year old monster he of course knew hundreds of fancy cultivation techniques, but here, in a world without Qi, practicing them was akin to lifting a fine jug of spirit wine to the lips and instead tasting lukewarm water. His hollow skeletal body of course had no spiritual root or meridians at all, and there was no inner space he could retreat into. Hibernation was one of his few innate "skills" as a skeleton, but using it felt like a massive waste of time compared to cultivation. More than two weeks passed in this darkness. Everything felt so meaningless and the memory wipe button seemed more and more attractive. One day he decided to go ahead with the mind wipe and just be a dumb skeleton. Zeeon readied himself by using an esoteric mind calming technique—the impenetrable nine-leaved gravity lotus. He got lost in the feeling for a while, submerged in a vaguely familiar sensation. Hmm? Was it an influx of Qi he sensed? No... it was something else. He stopped and took a careful look at his display. Could it be this "Mana" attribute? Impossible—that number was at 0 out of 3 so it hadn't gone up. His level was still at 1. Had any of the numbers changed? Well, there was the constantly ticking system timer, and his age. He was 603 years, 1 month and 4 days old, so his body might have been dead for at least 500 years, assuming he had died a simple mortal. It was currently mid-year 5692 of a local "Uur-Azor" calendar. It could be either winter or summer depending on the solstice situation. When he hibernated, the timer would speed up, but now the minutes instead slowly ticked by as he carefully scanned the display. Nothing else had changed, except for maybe a mystery attribute called Exp that he hadn't paid attention to. It was now at 1. Nothing in the display had any kind of explanation though. Hmm—was this Exp an explanatory ability that could be used to open up a help display? That could be handy. Or what if it was expansion points that unlocked new and useful tomb-escaping abilities? Or perhaps his body would directly expand as the number went up, and the sarcophagus lid could be pushed off. Maybe Exp was something related to expressiveness... certainly useful to skeletons who naturally didn't have flexible faces. Expulsion of impurities? Sensory exploration, like a spiritual sense? General expertise? Ah, how would expressiveness and expertise help him? No, it better be something useful. But whatever it was, Zeeon felt a sense of renewed interest in this new unlife of his, so he returned to practicing the impenetrable nine-leaved gravity lotus, keeping at it for several hours before checking his display again. When he looked, the Exp value had only risen to 5. How long would he have to keep it up to sense a tangible change? Still, now he had something to do. A day later he was at 18 Exp. Nothing else had changed and he was already getting a little bored, so he tried every meditation technique that he knew, excluding those which didn't rely on supplements like pills, herbs and spirit stones, or required organs he no longer possessed. One of the techniques—the silver snake's conduit—slowly refilled his Mana up to his maximum, and another—the hundred fold revolving heavenly spring—gradually increased his Exp. He realized that the latter technique had something in common with the impenetrable nine-leaved gravity lotus. Zeeon then spent hours devising a new technique from the two that he called "the hundred fold gravity abyss". In his old world it would have been nonsense, but here it quickly snatched the mysterious Exp out of the ether or wherever it came from. However, there was a big problem—after just a short while, the influx of Exp slowed to a crawl. Only after two days of trouble shooting did he notice his stupid blindness—the Exp didn't come out of the surrounding ether at all, but from his own Mana pool. His Mana would slowly recover naturally, or when he practiced the silver snake's conduit. So it appeared it was actually Mana that came from the ether. He got back to work, devising yet another technique which combined Mana siphoning and conversion. The new technique name got so long that he just shortened it to "100 snakey slurps". After just half a day of practicing the new technique he broke through to level 2. There wasn't any bottleneck or lightning tribulation, just a strange little musical ditty that quite startled him. His attributes got a plus sign next to them that seemed to be a button, though there wasn't one next to Luck. He immediately mentally pressed the one next to Strength since he had to get out of the sarcophagus. When the lid still wouldn't budge he got frustrated and dumped everything into Strength. After an hour long struggle he had managed to slide the lid to the side far enough to reveal a slight gap, just big enough for his now damaged bony finger tips to get a good grip. Would he have to increase some healing related attribute next? His health and stamina had actually temporarily dropped if he was reading the display correctly. What if there was a tomb raider out there waiting to wack him? Being so weak, he got a bit paranoid and spent days practicing the 100 snakey slurps to reach level 3. He put the plusses into health related attributes even though he had already naturally recovered at this point. The last two plusses went into Agility—he might need to run, and Mind—he was a cultivator after all. Only then did he notice his mistake and he felt blind and stupid again. Mind increased his rate of Mana recovery. Had he immediately invested into a faster Mana recovery and larger Mana pool then he would have been able to level up much faster. Now he could only grin regretfully. What business did he have outside of the sarcophagus anyways? Getting smashed into loose white bones? —o— Location: Skuldland, Oribro city, Main guild office. Linn came rushing into Dherdi's office. —"Guild master, the party which took the necropolis quest a month ago just returned!" —"They found bodies?" —"Um, it's... it's best that you speak with them directly." Soon three ragged looking scouts entered the office. Dherdi eyed the three. —"Weren't you five going out?" The solemn silence answered her question. —"I see. What did you find?" —"Big trouble... Literally. Found a level 24 Black Cerebus nesting in the main ziggurath. When we saw it we just ran. Svenn and Eruk weren't fast enough. Neither was I." a man with a missing arm replied. Dherdi stood up so quickly she knocked over her chair. —"Damn! Level 24 is already bad, but with A rank growth it might reach level 25 before we can get to it. If that thing is left alone it'll move south and our towns will be toast—those two-headed bitches love to torch cities!" Dherdi snapped her head to Linn, startling her. —"Linn! Issue a high priority extermination quest. Uh, level 15 minimum, 18 for the tanks. 20 heads." Dherdi gnawed on her finger stump. —"18 gold and 50 silver to be divvied up. Make it 22 gold if it has hit level 25. One promotion point for a killing blow. Also, send a rider to warn Varnabro and Burghelm right away." —"It's a pity Severus just left for the dungeon, we could have used him for this." —o— Location: Skuldland, somewhere in the necropolis area... While now a bit reluctant to leave his safe confines, Zeeon's had grown more than a little curious about this new world, so after some deliberation he worked the heavy sarcophagus lid to the side. A long inconspicuous rumble heralded his ghastly appearance, then he rose into a dimly lit grand chamber full of lingering echoes. Careful not to let the lid tumble to the floor, he inched his torso out and then stood up straight in the sarcophagus. His eyesight wasn't bad and he quickly noticed that his sarcophagus was in a central position flanked by two other with engravings of mysterious women on the lids. He tapped his bony chin. Could they be ceremonial afterlife prison guards? Relatives? Priestesses? Wives? Bodyguards? Servants perhaps? His own lid depicted a masked king or a great sage, impressively dressed. Zeeon himself was naked to the bones though. He stepped out of his stone sarcophagus and paced around it. Looking at it, he immediately found a bottom compartment that could be opened by sliding an engraved stone slab to the side and out. Inside he found coins and a partial armour made from precious metals which hadn't corroded. That said, there were also piles of destroyed pieces of cloth, scrolls, and a few clearly spoiled strange potions. What piqued his interest though were a bunch of rocks—he could sense Mana coming from them and replenishing his own. They worked a bit like spirit stones. He immediately sat cross legged and got to converting the stored Mana to Exp. He was now sure Exp meant expand since it expanded his level and attributes. Two days later he had drained all of the stones in the compartment and reached level 4. He put all of the points into Mind, ignoring Mana since he pretty much would drain the points as fast as they came anyways. He tried the armour on. Its remnant parts consisted of a breast plate with a ringed collar, pauldrons, hanging protective shield blades, and a fine chainmail-like fabric that draped around the shoulders and back like a partial robe. The clinking of his armour echoed in the sealed chamber as he explored it more carefully. It was dimly lit by glowing stones set into a dozen wall alcoves. These all appeared to be Mana stones, but siphoning those would be a real good way to blind himself and never get out. He couldn't read any of the inscriptions on the other sarcophagi, but their bottom compartments all held armours and ruined cloth. People here were apparently buried with their valuables—the stuff seemed a lot like something a rich mortal might be buried with. Over his lifetime as a cultivator, Zeeon himself had prepared multiple inheritance sites, secret spaces and... a few pranks that fated cultivators could stumble upon. His fellow celestials loved the topic and bragging about having outdone each other whenever there was a gathering. Zeeon wasn't much for huge mazes, illusions and riddles and instead liked to do the nine-fold "this is not even my final form" guardians, and cheeky tests of character that inflicted appropriate punishments. His absolute favourite one was rather simple though—he'd hide a teacher spirit inside a trashy last place tournament price and watch who was fated to learn a few mid-tier secret techniques or some alchemy recipes. He liked making unexpected people soar, like the trash of some noble family or a random old woman working in a bakery, though sometimes things ended quite badly and once he even had to step in and palm strike a country because of an alchemy recipe falling into the wrong hands. Zeeon stopped reminiscenceing, continued to search and was pleasantly surprised to finally find some useful weapons—a scythe, a flail, a long war hammer, and a bundle of throwing spears. His own compartment had held none, suggesting his body indeed had not been a warrior in life. Unable to resist the temptation, he slid the lid off a woman's sarcophagus. Unsurprisingly there was a skeleton lying inside. But surprisingly, it sat right up—its head immediately turning to him with a click. She then rose to her feet, spun elegantly and finished with a graceful bow. —"Master Zeeon... thank you for awakening me, and- and oh my, you look very handsome today my master." she said in a voice as clear and pure as a celestial fairy's. Zeeon figuratively blushed. The last few seconds all took place in his head of course. He was startled out of his vision when the still sitting skeleton finally spoke. —"Wak-awk-wawakwak-wakwa-aak! Awk-wak-wak?" What? Was she just goofing around? He decided to ask. —"Awk-wak wak?" was what came out. He shut his jaw, stunned. He hadn't really had a reason to speak until now. This... might prove to be a problem. How was he supposed to gather intel like this? After opening up the other sarcophagus he encountered the same situation. —"Wak-aak-wakwakwawak-wak?" she had asked, and he could only shrug in reply. After that the two female skeletons just loitered about in the chamber, not even putting anything on. Zeeon got back to cultivating, but seeing the two just walk about, he wondered how much there was to his two companions. Then he took a bit of a risk and handed them the flail and war long hammer respectively, just to see what they would do. They immediately livened up and started making test swings, even conversationally wakawking about it. He picked up the scythe for himself. He had been quite profficient with one back when he was only 3000 years old so the weapon held some nostalgia value. After a few days of cultivation he hit level 5 and there was an extra system notification listing nine new skills, though he only got to pick three. He figured these skills were a form of technique handouts. Level 5 might be a realm threshold, but except for a lighting tribulation people here got free gifts. That was a bit unfair. How many times had he not been nearly killed by tribulations? He snorted and flicked his missing nose, then tried to focus on his options. Two of the skills were listed as "common" and essentially would just increase a few select attributes by a fixed number—obviously powerful early on, but maybe not a great investment. The third option was "uncommon" and would give him 1% more of the Exp from kills. But since he could already safely cultivate these Exp, risking his weak second life in combat didn't at all seem like a good idea at this point. Next up was a "rare" skill which would scale his Mind attribute by 5%, which seemed like it would be extremely useful as his attribute went up. That said, right now it wouldn't have as much of an effect as the fixed increases. Then there were three more "rare" ones, but these appeared to be actual techniques. He was offered Dash, which sounded like it might be useful for running away and- well, not dying for real. Spiderman seemed related to climbing. If the tomb was deep he might need it to get out. Identify offered a way to identify threats and items. It sounded similar to the spiritual sense technique from his old life, and Intel was perhaps what he needed the most at this point. The eighth skill offer was "very rare" and called Concept Transfer and related to communication. Again, his old world had something similar where techniques could be mentally shared by simply putting a finger to the forehead of a recipient or a piece of inscription grade jade. The final skill option was "super rare, one time" and would increase his Luck from "A" to "S", giving it an "area effect". In his old world luck was very much a real force, but here he suspected it might have something to do with how this system behaved. Didn't he get offered an unusual amount of rare skills? Getting to pick three seemed generous, but if all nine had been common or uncommon then it wouldn't be much of a gain. He'd have to experiment to find out what the area effect was useful for, but he had a hunch. He picked the three last skill: Identify, Concept Transfer and the Luck upgrade. The notification disappeared and he didn't know if he'd ever see the other options again. It would be a real shame losing out on 5% extra to Mind, but right now he had two potential allies, and- well, numbers were very powerful in a fight on a mortal scale. Zeeon immediately used identify on his Scythe. [ Scythe primarily made from duralium and silver. Faded sharpness enchantment. ] He didn't know what duralium was, but enchantments probably worked like the ones applied to weapons and spirit tools in his old world, adding extraordinary abilities. While the system description wasn't particularily verbose, it was still very useful to someone in his situation. His armour had a similar description, but it sported a "faded defensive enchantment" instead. Perhaps he could recharge these enchantments somehow? He quickly found that he was able to transfer mana into the enchanted objects, but after wasting half a day transferring everything he had there was still no changed to the "faded" status. It was possible that some structure had deteriorated over time and it was like trying to drive a faulty formation with expensive spirit stones. He might need to keep a look out for an enchantment skill when hitting level 10. When he used identify on himself he just got a highly truncated version of his main display. [ Zeeon Ga'ol, Male Human Skeleton, Level 5, F rank, Unknown ] As for his two companions they both had the same description and he couldn't even tell them apart. [ Lost name, Female Human Skeleton, Level 1, F rank, Wild ] Level 1 of course wouldn't do. According to the obtuse description of the Exp boosting skill, monsters could level up by killing other monsters and- well, people presumably. Zeeon had another, safer way that he wanted to share but hadn't been able to because of the communication issues. This might have just changed. He walked up to one of the skeletons, put his finger on its forehead, and used Concept Transfer to just say "Hello". The skeleton jumped and looked a bit startled. —"Awkwak?" it replied. Well, that was a bit of a foolish test—the conversation was at best one-way, right? He approached the skeleton again but it just nervously backed off. He instead tried using the skill from a distance, and transferred "please stand on one leg". At first there was no reaction, then the skeleton slowly raised a foot, studying him with equal tension. He clapped his bony hands and grinned like only a skeleton could. —"Wak ak ak wak wak!" it cheered. Soon all three skeletons were clapping their hands, the one left out of the conversation just kind of tagging along. When asked if the two could understand each others speech, the skeleton just wiggled its hand. A little? He didn't get a chance to get a clarification because the skill stopped working—he was out of Mana for now. Communication this way was a tedious process and it made it impossible for him to cultivate the Exp. The only common language they seemed to share was that of the system display, as they were all able to draw familiar figures in the dust. The two female skeletons both had E luck, but when he got close it apparently changed to D, and even C if he sat between them. This was something he hoped to greatly exploit, and next he tried transferring his 100 snakey slurps cultivation technique. This was much harder than transferring a simple question—he would need to think of the entire technique all at once—impossible for a normal person, but not for a 13000 year old veteran. This also meant the entire technique could fit into a single transfer. His two companions immediately understood the usefulness of doing the 100 snakey slurps after hitting level 2 and seemed quite excited. Zeeon however had a keen sense for trouble and felt like they all didn't have as much time as he had hoped for, so he told them to keep cultivating alone while he went to explore, carrying his scythe. He'd have to be back before they reached level five though. With his strength he was able to swing the stone door to their chamber open. The door reminded him of the thick and finely balanced vault doors mortals used to store their useless gold. Right outside he discovered a bunch of dead and dusty skeletons. There had apparently been a skirmish in the murky hallway at some point in the distant past. Walking through the macabre debris, he came across many corridors leading to the left and right. His standard protocol in these types of situations was "keep going left". However, he found that he wasn't actually in a tricky maze—the side paths simply lead into various chambers, all seemingly looted and in a big mess. There were signs of fighting everywhere and he was beginning to suspect there might only be three skeletons up and about in the entire complex, one being himself. He didn't run into any trouble until he ventured down a level. Here the signs of fighting seemed a bit more recent. Just as he bent down to inspect a dry human corpse he was ambushed—a blue blob the size of a human head came pouncing at him out of the darkness. Thankfully it was slightly luminescent and easy to see even in the corner of his vision. He cleaved it in two, then he realized that he should have tried to identify it first. However, he soon got another chance as he got swarmed by the things. [ Unnamed, Blue Slime, Level 3, F rank, Wild ] They weren't all that dangerous, but a few managed to stick to his bones and use some kind of slow corrosion attack. After having killed over 20 of them he finally had time to look at the notifications he had been getting. He got a total of 6 of the Exp, which wasn't much at this point. Were there fractional Exp, or were some of the slimes were worth none? Or did his F rank play a role, working a bit like a spirit root, scaling how fast he could grow? If that was the case he was better off just cultivating. But then he noticed something on the ground that might change that way of thinking—the dead blobs had dropped something. [ Minor small mana heart ] He picked up one of the dark red crystal marbles. It didn't have much mana in it, but even a fly has meat. Unfortunately he couldn't carry a bunch of round marbles with his skeletal fingers. After a bit of searching he found some still intact rags on a dry human corpse and made a satchel. There were no more of these blue slimes ahead, so perhaps he had just stumbled into a nest. He only came across a few one-eyed black bats, but these were just as weak as the blue slimes. This section of the structure seemed to have housed a whole lot of corpses stashed into shelves in the wall, but nearly every one of these were empty. He counted the shelves. 5 high and 30 long. Two walls. 300 missing corpses? He found the answer further ahead in a relatively large half-spherical chamber. Its entire circumference consisted of finely crafted columns carved into the rock. At the center of the chamber had once stood something valuable enough to warrant it being snatched from its pedestal. More interestingly, the entire floor was littered with bones. Thinking about it, this was precisely the kind of room Zeeon might have constructed for a final encounter when setting up an inheritance. He lightly kicked a loose skull and it rattled over, revealing a ghastly hole. It appeared Zeeon's present body was one of the lucky survivors of whatever calamity had entered this place of death. Well, since he had likely been entombed for some 500 years, the place actually must've gotten a lot of visitors. On his way back he came across something that looked like it belonged in a wetland--a large four-legged water strider. It was feeding on the slime corpses, but when it spotted him it stood up on its hindlegs in an incredibly unsettling manner, seeming more like a small spindly man than a bug. Zeeon was really quite relieved when it got back on all fours and scurried off like a real bug. Now in a rather weird mood he returned back up and continued to explore other interesting sections. He spent a full day just going through already raided tombs and got lucky a few times, coming across hidden stashes of mana stones. As for the mana hearts, he never found any of them near skeletons—they must have either all been consumed or looted, or his kind simply didn't have them, but thinking about it, if he actually carried one inside his ribcage he would have noticed it by now. On the third day he found a very promising area to explore, and a new albeit shortlived bony friend. It was a bit of a sad story. A natural cave-in had blocked off a hallway but after clearing a path through he found an untouched crypt and a level 1 skeleton. The guy was tassatern but absolutely loaded, having decorated his final resting place with a single mana stone so large that Zeeon actually had some trouble carrying it when they both left. Zeeon had figured that this was a good time to head back with the spoils. Encumbered as he was, Zeeon could not react in time when a hitherto unknown monster appeared. Its main body was a torso-sized round yellow sack, but instead of limbs and a head it had eight flailing green tentacles and a single eye. [ Unnamed, Yellow Roper, Level 9, D rank, Wild ] The Yellow Roper and the unarmed skeleton immediately charged at each other. Seeing the predictable outcome and nearly being hit by a fibula, Zeeon legged it. While the thing wasn't all that fast, it was persistent and Zeeon was greedily overencumbered. After a thirty minute flight he finally reached home, nearly having been caught a few times. He firmly shut the door behind him. He took the incident to mean that it was time for some highly focused closed door cultivation. The days passed quietly. Zeeon nearly went out to investigate when he felt a very faint rumble, but decided it wasn't yet time. It was perhaps just a minor quake, a cave in, or something happening above ground. —o— Location: Skuldland, Oribro city, Main guild office. Severus returned from a dungeon only to find the guild office in chaos. Apparently a Cerebus had been found in the necropolis. That was already unexpected, but to make matters worse, it had killed off a nest of Red Ropers—including the Red Roper Queen—and unfortunately reached level 26 which brought up the difficulty by a lot. The extermination effort failed and six people died. The guild master herself would lead the next party with him as a subleader. Severos now stood watching a strategical map. The logistics of the operation had gotten complex. It was both a blessing and a pity that the forgotten necropolis was so far out of the way. Geographically, Skuldland was an island, 1800km long but only 400 wide. Since it was situated up north, the advance and retreat of inland ice had once raked its surface, depositing stretches of rounded boulders that either proved difficult to walk on, or provided great cover for an ambush. The forests could also prove treacherous. Much of Skuldland was currently not agriculturally developed. One could say it was densely covered by forests, but sparesly populated by humans. The exception was the very south where the capital connected Skuldland to the continent and trade. Half a millenium back the situation had been different, but now all that remained of northern Skuldland's former glory was ruins and mounds hidden in deep forests. Oribro city was nestled near a lake near the middle of Skuldland. Trading vessels had access via a river to the east. On land, the roads heading down south were well maintained. Apparently three level 25 C rank adventurers would arrive from the capital in a weeks time. Three was not enough, but the southerners didn't much care for the troubles up north and likely had their own, especially with the dragon rumours flying around. While the roads to the south allowed for convenient travel, and the road between Oribro and Varnabro was servicable, the rest of the trip up towards the forgotten necropolis was reportedly difficult. There was the old Deadlands road, but the only reason it was still called a road was because the distance marker stones could still be seen here and there—the road surface itself had since long been buried by nature. Thus what should be a trip of a few days for level 15 adventurers who could run for half a day turned into a two week ordeal. They had to pass through dense forests with poison thorn and annoying bugs. This wasn't too bad, but the last team had spotted a Cockatrice and if someone got paralyzed by one of those and had to be escorted to safety, it meant they'd lose two people. Another part would take them through a 140km field of mixed size rounded boulders called the Deadlands. The hollows were riddled with camoflaged stone snakes and land crabs, and even without all that was needed to injure an ankle was a simple misstep. The healers would no doubt be kept busy—the extermination team would now consist of an unwieldy 30 adventurers, and Agility was not a priority for every class. Pace would very much be dictated by the weakest link. The next trial would take the party through a stretch of plains turned wetland. According to scholars, an uneven land-rise in the terrain had redirected a river 300 years ago. Inland ice was to blame for this too, apparently. Above the forgotten necropolis there was a larger wetland and a mysterious abandoned wizard tower. Yellow and Red Ropers had for some reason moved down south and into the general necropolis area. Why? Was there an even greater threat than the Cerberus up in the swamp? And did this mean the lesser wetland south of the necropolis was now getting infested by Ropers? —o— Location: Skuldland, The forgotten necropolis, Zeeon's chamber. With the help of the mana stones and mana hearts, the steady increase to Mind, and a new and improved cultivation technique Zeeon had named 200 snakey slurps, Zeeon's level had quickly shot up to 17 and the other two were at 15. It had only been a week, though now they were out of fuel and would have to rely on Mana from the air or venture out. Zeeon's skill choices at level 10 had been slightly odd. The previous level 5 choices reappeared along with nine new ones. This time he chose the 5% Mind scaler, but he also got a duplicate of it. They stacked nicely for a 10% effect. The rest of the options had actually not been that interesting except for one called naming. It allowed him to name unnamed monsters, which wouldn't have been at all useful if it wasn't for the side effect—a system "chat window". Because this chat existed within the system and all inputs were automatically parsed into a shared language, he was now able to converse with Vyrre and Hrothe as he had named them. Neither of them had any tangible memories of their past lives, but otherwise appeared quite normal and- well, surprisingly lively, even a bit rowdy at times. While Zeeon focused on getting support type abilities, the two skeleton women appeared to be combat junkies and mainly picked skills that optimized their attribute growth. Vyrre focused on agility and Hroth focused on strength. With their Luck only at C, their options were more limited so they often chose to save a few skill points for a later level realm in case something showed up. Being able to safely hoard skill points was one of the perks of cultivation over being forced to keep a peak combat form. At level 15 everyone had gotten a very rare variant of a healing skill called regeneration. One could imagine that this skill was meant to regrow missing flesh and limbs, but since skeletons didn't have flesh and easily fell apart, regeneration instead increased the attraction force that kept their bones together. Vyrre and Hrothe unwittingly tested the effect during a sparring session that sent one of Zeeon's legs flying. The leg then kind of just slid back on its own from several meters away, and within a few minutes it was good as new. Zeeon also got a skill called Enchantment Sight which allowed him to physically see enchantments. It didn't help him to understand enchantments though—he'd need to find a technique manual for that—but as someone who was well versed in formations and talisman crafting it wasn't long before he begun to decipher how the faded enchantment structures placed on his scythe and armour were supposed to work. He could essentially use his mana to just draw any damaged or missing structures back in. Still, he really had too little to go on and only managed to bring the enchantments on the weapons and armours up from "faded" to "minor". He would definitely need to find a technique library later on. Though if humans ran libraries, him being a skeleton monster might pose a slight problem. That wasn't something raw power couldn't solve though. Or a clever disguise. He was used to both methods. Regardless, they'd have to venture out sooner or later, and with the three of them now they should be able to easily deal with that level 9 Yellow Roper. Vyrre and Hrothe wore their armours, which were styled in part blackened metal and part dull light silver. The colour combination reminded Zeeon of the maids he had seen in some mortal eating and drinking establishments. Zeeon pushed the heavy tomb door open with a single hand and peeked outside. No Roper. As a cultivator Zeeon felt that the real treasures waited deep underground, so he lead the party down a passage he had meant to explore earlier but hadn't gotten to. Good thing that, because it was packed with Yellow Ropers—all between level 6 and 12. That encounter would have surely killed him, then. But now... Vyrre had brought the bundle of throwing spears along and let one loose, chuckling in the chat after seeing the result. The spear had impaled two of the flailing creatures together, though they didn't seem to go down, other then being trampled by the Ropers behind that charged forth. Another spear went into the eye of a Roper that had pushed to the front. It fell and skidded along the stone floor, its green tentacles limp. —"So... aim for the eyes?" Hrothe said in the chat as she readied her warhammer. The passage wasn't a good place for wide swings. but fortunately her warhammer had a spiked tip and could be used to stab. It was perhaps the best weapon option in their situation, so she took the front and got to work. Zeeon's scythe and Vyrre's flail remained idle while Hrothe stayed busy. Ideally they should have withdrawn to a large chamber and funneled the Ropers in, but Hrothe seemed to be doing well enough against the soft bodied things, only really running into trouble once when the warhammer got stuck deep inside a Roper and she had to kick it off. A spear from Vyrre bought her the time she needed. Soon ten of the things laid dead, their eye sockets a sticky mess of clear blood, like that of a cactus. They hadn't given much of the Exp—their Mana hearts were probably the bigger gain. Compared to the ones dropped by the Blue Slimes, these marbles were both larger and more vibrant. Their party continued down another level. The narrow catacomb corridors here were laid out in a six by six grid pattern enclosing twenty five crypts. With the criss-cross of pathways it looked like a good place to get ambushed so they proceeded with caution, and something was definitely slithering about in the darkness. Whatever it was though, it seemed reluctant to show itself so they systematically explored the entire crypt array. The old crypts had once been sealed by bricks but now all gaped open—their brick doors smashed and their innards emptied of valuables. It almost looked a bit too neat, Zeeon thought. Just as an old memory was about to surface, he got a message from Vyrre who had spotted something to his left. [ Unnamed, Red Roper, Level 14, D rank, Wild ] It fled before Vyrre even had a chance to send a spear down at it. He though it was looking rather frightened and traumatized. Why was it hiding alone down here? Still, if it wasn't going to be troubling them, he'd take it. The whole level appeared to be the last one, or at least a dead end. The barren crypts were sloppily decorated and it didn't seem like they could have held much of value to begin with. Huh? Hadn't he used a similar setup himself once for one of his inheritances? No one had ever figured that one out. He had put 100 smashed urns into a reward room, disguising the fact that some of the urn shards had been especially made from valuable blood jade and imprinted with secret techniques. Zeeon stepped into the central crypt, hummed and almost reflexively made a beard stroking gesture. Vyrre and Hrothe seemed confused when he asked them to help him push against the bottom shell of a shoddy looking sarcophagus. It didn't budge. Huh? Had he been wrong? No way. —"Whatcha thinking? Secret path?" Vyrre asked in the chat, her turning head already scanning the crypt. Zeeon hummed, submerged in deep thought. Could it be a false wall instead? Something with the engravings? An illusion? Spatial tricks? A pass phrase? No... too complex. —"Hah, found it!" Hrothe exclaimed, kawkawkawing out loud with her skeleton voice as she dangled something between her fingers. Zeeon felt a bit outdone as he had turned to searched the walls for a hidden lever. The actual mechanism was much simpler, a sprint at the base of the sarcophagus. With the sprint out, the sarcophagus was easy to slide aside. It even sat on rollers. Underneath was a ladder that disappeared into eerie complete darkness. It was good that they had brought a supply of glow stones. Zeeon dropped one down and they all bent in to look. After a good while they saw a faint flash and then they heard it shatter against something hard. The pit wasn't waterlogged at least. Zeeon was last down and noticed a handle underneath the sarcophagus, allowing him to slide it back in place. This was good—that Red Roper might get ideas. It couldn't put the sprint back in though as they had brought it along, but who knew how smart the tentacle best was. It was quite the climb down and they were fortunate the ladder had been made out of a material which didn't rust, or it might have been a ten second drop. Vyrre was the first to reach the floor. She gave an all clear in the chat and the others came down, finding themselves in a simple square room with some drains along the walls and a circular rolling stone door straight ahead. Zeeon felt the now familiar tingle of Mana. Hrothe got impatient and rolled the door aside. On the other side was not more catacombs, but a large natural pitch black cave. They all recklessly entered it. Hrothe started cackling again. —"Wow, the mana here is so dense... should we..." Vyrre started in the chat. —"I think the real treasure is up ahead." Zeeon said, his old instincts buzzing wildly. They walked deeper in, not knowing if the cave was a linear irregular structure or more sprawling. The dim pale blue illumination from their glow stones could not reach the farthest crevices. Eventually they saw a faint red light in the distance. The Mana density just kept going up as they drew closer. It took all of Zeeon's effort not to behave like a child and rush ahead. Hrothe lost that battle and sped forth, cackling, with Vyrre quickening her pace behind. Zeeon had an image to maintain, he told himself. —"Holy moly, that's a big heckin' Mana Pool!" Vyrre said excitedly in the chat. —"You say Mana Pool as if you're familiar with them." Hrothe commented. —"Well, isn't it a big pool of liquid mana? What else would you call it? It just felt right." It was indeed a large red pool of mana. Zeeon didn't really know what such a thing was doing down here. Had it perhaps been a secret retreat of someone? Well, now it had new owners, didn't it? Zeeon spent a full day upgrading his cultivation technique to fit these new conditions. In the meantime, Vyrre and Hroth had already caught up to him, reaching level 17. By the time Zeeon was finished he was one level behind. But it was well worth it. The three of them were able to drain the entire pool in just five days using "big slurp". Their levels had skyrocketed, with Zeeon taking the lead again reaching level 32. Vyrre was now level 31 and Hrothe had fallen behind at level 30 due to not getting as many options for efficiently increasing her important Mind attribute. On the other hand, she had gotten a super rare Oblitteration skill that made her very excited. With it she could temporarily double her strength and deal blunt damage through normal defences. Zeeon had also gotten a super rare skill—"Innate Magician". With it he was able to use his Mana to "cast chantless magic" which he initially took to mean that his scythe attacks could produce the kind of ranged effects he was so used to in his old life. He had known a sword technique called "Sky Phoenix Strike" that would turn mountains into molten valleys. Vyrre insisted that there was something similar here called "Fireball", but it was cast with a cryptic hand gesture and a vocal chant. Some magicians carried a special staff that helped them. But judging by the name and description of this skill, he should be able to do without, right? Fireball. Fireball! Fire...ball! Ball of fire! Frustratingly, he didn't even manage to produce a puff of smoke. As a skeleton he couldn't do a vocal chant, but a mental one should have worked. Well, it didn't. Nor did it help to envision the kind of devastation he had brought forth so many times. He imagined the heavens falling, 10 million lightning strikes, Buddhas palm sinking 50 kilometers deep into the ground. As he stood there making gestures and freezing in awkward poses, Vyrre was testing her new skills out some distance away, thankfully too absorbed to pay attention. She had picked up various agility boosting skills, including Dash and Spiderman. It was a bit difficult to follow her with the eyes as she scuttled and zipped around in the cave, even exploring the roof. It might even have been impossible to spot her if it hadn't been for the glowing red eyes that revealed her position. Everyone had gotten the glowing red eyes skill for free at level 30. They served no purpose and could be turned off. No one did though. —o— Location: Skuldland, The forgotten necropolis, 500 meters from the topside main ziggurath. Two human scouts sat crouched amidst overgrown toppled columns and more recently toppled trees. Not too far away, some Blue Slimes were grazing, revealing old graves and marble faces. —"Looks like something wrecked the entire top of the Ziggurath. Was that during the last battle?" —"Don't know. But there she is. See the dark mass moving just at the rim?" —"Good lord, it's massive. What does Identify say?" —"Hold on... Uh-oh, not good. It's level 29. And it's fighting something. Ah, it's a.. level 24 Razor Boar... and-" —"And? What do you mean and?" —"...and a level 19 Viper Lord. No- it just killed it." —"Crud. What are those things doing here? Looking to die? We should report in." Just then a short range communication gemstone buzzed. —"Niels? Malinn? Do you have anything?" —"Only bad news I'm afraid Dherdi. Looks like it's about to hit level 30. We might be facing a red-eye soon." A long string of expletives came out of the gemstone, then there was a pause. —"...Dherdi?" —"Alright, we need to move in now. Join the main attack formation." Dherdi commanded. The two scouts fell back to the main contigient. The extermination team consisted of 28 people as two had been recently injured and were now recovering. Their main hitters were three level 25 tanks from the capital, plus Severos who was at level 22. The main damage would however be dealt by the casters and archers in the back. Dherdi would use her buffing abilities. The formation stormed into position beneath the Ziggurath, and were now less than 100 meters from the Black Cerebus. The cat-shaped beast had grown to the size of a house. It had two heads, an in each glowed a pair of fierce red eyes. Dherdi felt her courage falter. Was it too late? Should she call a retreat and save lives? Then something very strange happened and really rather quickly at that. Three skeletons came out of a crypt some distance away. They were actually equipped with armour and weapons, which was quite rare. Could it be level 2 or level 3 skeletons? Unaware of their audience the skeletons pointed at the Black Cerebus. One of them shrugged. The other two shot up the ziggurath at great speed, apparently startling the skeleton suddenly left behind. By the time it had gotten halfway up, one of the charging skeletons had already launched several spears at high speed—two out of three went right into the eyes of the Black Cerebus. The other skeleton had made an impressive leap, and swung a long warhammer in a great arc. It came down with a sonic boom, crushing one of the beast's heads. —"Kawkawkaw! Kawkawkaw!" It seemed to be laughing and was almost caught by the now one-headed and completely enraged Black Cerebus. A sudden flail hit from the other skeleton knocked one of its wrists out of order. When it turned to deal with it, a warhammer hit to an ankle brought it to a kneel. The third skeleton now appeared on its back, swinging a scythe into its neck. The flail wielder elegantly dodged the spray from the jugular. The scythe must have been very sharp, because the head nearly fell off. The only reason it didn't was because of the difference in scale. After two more swings the head came loose and heavily tumbled down the ziggurath, leaving a bloody trail and landing neatly not too far from Dherdi and the stunned extermination party. —o— Location: Top of the main ziggurath. Zeeon sat down crosslegged on the collapsed beast. This development was a little bit unexpected. How would he communicate with humans? He really did need spellbooks and information. Meanwhile Vyrre and Hrothe were flooding the chat. —"Turn on the red eyes!" —"What?" —"Turn on the red eyes, we've got an audience." —"Ok. Doing the red eyes thing." —"Hum. I think it's working." —"You think what is working?" —"The red eyes thing. We probably took their kill Exp, but now they don't even want to argue about it." —"The exp wasn't even that good though, and aren't they too many? Their share would be tiny." —"Hum. Maybe they were just passing by?" Zeeon stood back up and hopped down from the corpse of the big cat. He put his scythe aside, strode up between Vyrre and Hrothe, and looked down at the humans. He decided to try to talk to them straightforwardly—perhaps they spoke skeleton? But they would need an incentive to listen—a sign of good will, so he brought out one of his gold coins and flicked it down. Didn't mortals love gold? As it landed he raised his hands and spoke gravely. —"Wak awk ak ak wakaw wakawak-wak kwa wakawawkawawk. Kaw ak awk. Awak wakwakwak wak wak wakwakwak ak wak." Then he waited. And waited. The humans were slowly backing off. In the chat something was happening. —"It's not here. Shouldn't it be in the chest?" —"Keep digging. I'll chop. We better find it before the humans make a move." Zeeon turned to see Vyrre wildly chopping into the corpse of the beast using the scythe. It sent up large gushes of blood, and this spectacle had apparently been the backdrop of his speech. When he turned back to look at the humans, they had already moved quite a distance away and didn't seem to be stopping. They had taken his coin though—that was something. —o— Location: The boulder fields, 2km south of the necropolis. A large group of people had set up temporary camp in the cover of a house sized boulder. Around them in the undulating grasslands grazed a few blue slimes—too weak to be worth bothering about given the current situation. All of the scouts and rogues stood vigilant facing northward. —"What in the Hel were those?" XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX To be continued... WIP and notes below: No one in the group had an answer. Finally female rogue spoke without turning. At least they didn't seem hostile. Did you miss the part with the blood speech?! Perhaps they were extracting the mana heart? It seemed a bit excessive... you just make the cut and take it out. Anyways, we know for a fact that not all skeletons are hostile. We also know for a fact that very old skeletons lose their memories and Severos Could it have been visiting skeletons? —"The highest level skeletons ever encountered were level 9. I don't have identify, but everyone saw the red eyes, right?" She wore an orange armour of the bikini type, its pointy pauldrons making her back seem broader than it was. —"The highest one was level 32." —"Absurd as that is, didn't it seem like they took it down rather easily?" —"Yes, that warhammer blow must've been amplified by a powerful skill. I think I saw a few movement skills being used too." —"I took a look at a weapon. Noble metals, and a sharpness enchantment. A minor one." —"A minor one? Are you sure it wasn't faded? This necropolis is half a millennia old." —"They could've gotten it from an adventurer I suppose, but the styling of their gear seemed... a bit too opulent, right?" Move back, Found that corpses had been left for a day, salvaged some materials?) —o— In his youth Zeeon had been poor, but he had still soared because of his exceptional spirit root. If the rank system here represented the spirit root, then he was now in a bit of an opposite situation. It was as if he was one of those rich kids with a bad spirit root was bad but free access to the top floor of a sect's cultivation tower. Fortunately he wasn't the type of stepping stone who would lose to someone below his level—Zeeon had already gotten his share of fortuitous encounters and skills. In that respect his two lives were the same. —"" Order of events summary/recap: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Character names: Zeeon Ga'ol, MC, scythe Vyrre, agile sidekick, flail and spears Hrothe, strong sidekick, warhammer Linn, secretary Severos, knight Dherdi, guild master Niels, scout Malinn, scout Setting: System type universe Level subvariant Abyss cluster Lec'thron sector Planet Ururth Northern island of Skuldland The forgotten necropolis Ururth locations: Northern island of Skuldland (1800x400km) The swamp (wizard / mystery) tower The forgotten necropolis (500-750km or so from Oribro) Grazed block fields Lesser swamp / wetlands Deadlands (140km) -X +X scouting sites and ridges Dense forest (400km), river crossings Varnabro town Burghelm town Oribro city Main guild office. ??? capital (Continent) Monsters: Undead Skeleton (F) Blue Slime (F) Yellow Roper (D) Red Roper (D) mages? Red Roper Queen Razor Boar Viper Lord Cockatrice Cerebus (A) Stone snake, gray Land Crab, gray One eyed black bat Creepy water strider A dragon Something in the swamp [ Dherdi Nilsan, Female Human, Level 28, C rank, Guild Master ] [ Severos Ryn, Male Human, Level 22, D rank, Knight ] [ Unnamed, Yellow Roper, Level 9, D rank, Wild ] [ Unnamed, Red Roper, Level 14, D rank, Wild ] [ Unnamed, Blue Slime, Level 3, F rank, Wild ] [ Lost name, Female Human Skeleton, Level 1, F rank, Wild ] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Loose ideas and snippets: Slow cultivation 10 years gone? A to him rarely seen common grade skill: light projection. Descriptions, recap characteristics He gets flesh. Turns out he's naked, and not that old, maybe 33. They call him the coin king? A bunch of misconceptions? Work as receptionists? Loses head, nooooo, ooh it was okay. whomsoever obtains it shall ... X's eyes glinted with excitement. Omniglot skill? Or keep being illiterate as a funny flaw? they looked at his as if he was a monster grit his teeth Spurious Ronward Stiltglisten X understood this principle. / this very well. When he thought up to this point. Lies are not a thing in cultivation worlds due to swearing. He's confused that he can lie. He had always been very informal, except for when he needed to put on airs. To craft a scroll one needs to know the skill and the scribe skill Rank is only an indication of level up speed (talent/spiritual root), kill related. It's static and immutable for monsters, but variable for humans. MC cheats by cultivating though. Can humans cultivate? Maybe not. Rank F E D C B A S Exp 50 66 85 100 120 150 200 % There are Exp modifier skills though, but those do not change rank. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The surrounding terrain consisted of grazed grasslands, shrubbery and building-sized rounded boulders. As a 13000 year old monster Zeeon had lived long enough to experience many geological phenomenons, and he figured the boulders had likely been dropped off by moving inland ice. As for what grazed the fields... he did not know. Usually it was legged furry animals, but here all he could see was a few of the blue round blobs. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * These people didn't wear the robes of cultivators. Except for maybe one guy, but he also wore a strange and rather oversized conical hat. (wizard) One man wore only leather bands on his chest, and a pair of small pants that left the strings of undergarments sticking up. Zeeon pointed at it and inquired. —"Wakawkwak wak?" —"It's a class thing!" he cried and ran off.