++It is yet unknown how certain undead are able to regenerate, despite lacking the bodily functions of living creatures. The most popular theory by far is that the magics responsible for reanimating them induce a sort of stasis, and that their bodies will, should the magic be powerful enough, naturally return to their condition upon death. As is so often the case with those dark magics, however, the answer remains a mystery. ++

  Chapter 18

  The next woodlouse was about as big as the first, and not quite as aggressive. That was just fine by Reggie, it gave him ample opportunity to shoot it in the face. Upon doing so, he found the creature quite a bit more eager to fight him than before, and quickly backed away from its hole in the ground. Reggie coaxed it after him, then called on his Royal Presence and blasted out an aura made of one single word; nutritious.

  He felt the insect’s thoughts snagging on his power, felt its hunger. Woodlice didn’t eat flesh, but this one had just been supernaturally convinced Reggie was a better meal than all the rotting roots in the world.

  As he saw the thing curl up and start rolling for him, Reggie began to wonder if maybe that was not the wisest decision he could have made. Then the fight was on and there was no more time for any thinking about anything. Blood was drawn, guzzled, imbibed.

  ***

  Four woodlice, that’s what Reggie had managed in the end. The boulder had split in half on the second, forcing him to finish it off with nothing but strength and claws. The last two had attacked him at once and ripped one of his arms off before he’d managed to incapacitate them. But in the end he’d drained four woodlice.

  +1 Charisma

  +1 Charisma

  +1 Speed

  +1 Celerity

  Progress to next Tier, 16/50

  “What is it with these Charisma gains?” Reggie sighed. Even knowing they helped him long-term with blending in, he figured they weren’t what he wanted. More physical power meant less time he’d need to blend in.

  Now that you have evolved to a Blood Courtier, your body is naturally improving its Charisma to align with that evolution path’s specialties. It will slow down once the Attribute has reached parity with your others.

  “So I’m stuck improving Charisma until it’s already as good as my physical abilities,” Reggie groaned.

  [You should be more grateful, this means we can do more killing.]

  “Oh, you. You’ve been quiet for a while.”

  [Did you miss me?]

  “No.”

  [Kill yourself.]

  There it was. Reggie sighed again, spared a glance at the slightly lightening skies, and started back for Norvhan. If nothing else he was full of power, though he soon found a new problem assailing him.

  He’d sped up his Regeneration to deal with injuries sustained during the fighting. Woodlice lacked the natural weapons that allowed most of his other prey to mangle him so much, but Reggie had still been hurt by their sheer size and strength. Now most of those wounds were gone.

  And so were his burns.

  Healing was all or nothing, apparently, and Reggie had known that when he’d started regrowing things. He was now beginning to wish he’d at least tried to hobble his way back to Norvhan rather than ruin his disguise so hastily.

  Or brought some fucking oil with me, stupid mistake.

  But there was no point dwelling on it, Reggie couldn’t undo the mistake now and agonizing over what might have been would only delay him more. How did he fix this? Maybe claw his face off again? Start another fire in the grimwoods?

  No and no, the former wouldn’t look remotely like a burn and the latter wasn’t something he even knew he’d be able to manage before stumbling onto some wolf spider. Never wise to stay in one place for too long when you were within a grimwood.

  Eventually Reggie stumbled onto the only option he could really think of, and decided to just risk going over the wall again. He transformed, sprinted back to Norvhan and took it in one bound after a brief period spent making sure nobody was nearby to inconvenience him by screaming or firing a musket at his head.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to scoop any brain matter back into his skull before he’d finished bounding across the street and reached Ludvich’s house. For all the added defences, it didn’t seem Norvhan’s security was any tighter. There were no patrols, no sentries, nothing.

  Which was to be expected, it wasn’t like the place was worried about people infiltrating it, but also didn’t mean Reggie would be risking this more than he had to. Knocking on Ludvich’s door felt like punching a sleeping bear in the balls, except Reggie would probably win that fight now. The answer came fast enough that this wasn’t much more dangerous either.

  “Get the fuck inside,” Ludvich snapped, and Reggie did so. With how quickly the Witchfinder slammed his door, Reggie would’ve thought it was his first time seeing him out without a disguise. “How did it go?” Ludvich asked, calming down slightly now he was in.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I gained five Attribute points,” Reggie grinned, then launched into a more elaborative explanation that left Ludvich finally slumping down into a seat.

  “Five,” he echoed, “in one night…I’d…I’d heard that monsters were…strong, but this…”

  Reggie didn’t flinch at being called a monster, if anything it was refreshing to actually be one when people said that, he just waited for Ludvich to process things.

  “So this is working?” the Witchfinder asked.

  “So far, yeah,” Reggie confirmed, “I won’t be able to sell those woodlice, I ruined my disguise and couldn’t risk carrying them into the town with me, but if I keep at this I think I’ll be powerful enough to kill them without trouble soon enough.”

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  Reggie found another bunch of woodlice near sunset the next night, and opted to head back to Norvhan before engaging. Better to do so with a full night to work through. When he returned they were still there, and he got to work quickly. It was still tough getting through their shells, and with no boulder nearby Reggie might’ve been in trouble.

  If he hadn’t brought the pickaxe.

  Pickaxe, Tier 0. Mundane.

  Modifiers; Strength +14, Speed -4.

  Eventually Reggie figured he’d not get any more mileage out of man-made weapons, given how wood and steel wouldn’t scale up with his growing strength like his claws did, but for now he didn’t feel like he was there. This opinion was vindicated when the first swing dug scarred metal inches deep into the woodlouse he targeted with it, cracking its shell open like…well, an insect shell. But a small one.

  That made things easier, though Reggie still had a fight on his hands. He kept dodging back, kept swinging, felt the wooden handle of his weapon strain where it was seated in the thick, awkwardly-long-fingered grip of his transformed body. It was a tough tool made to survive hard use by high level Workers, and yet Reggie was already close to as strong as any Worker could ever dream of being.

  It wouldn’t survive much more of his violence. Best enjoy it while he could.

  By the time Reggie’s new pickaxe broke, he’d gotten another six woodlice under his belt and glutted himself on their corpses.

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  (S)Strength 28(+10)

  (P)Speed 28(+10)

  (P)Celerity 28(+10)

  (S)Toughness 27(+10)

  (P)Charisma 4(-10)

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic I

  Form of the Beast I

  Royal Presence I

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration I

  Addictive Ichor

  Progress to next Tier, 22/50

  His stats were creeping up slowly, but surely. Reggie had noticed the biggest difference on this most recent round of killing. He didn’t feel overwhelmingly weaker than the woodlice anymore.

  Funny thing to notice. They were probably twenty times his size, more than a ton of weight moving around, making trees shiver on impact, but here he was with his weedy little body boasting almost enough brute force to match them. Every +5 points represented a doubling of power in Strength or Toughness, with speed creeping up at about the same rate for every +10.

  Well, by now, then, Reggie had probably become…what, ten times stronger than before? And maybe close to three times his speed. Two woodlice left in the den by his estimate. Could he take them both at once?

  He certainly wasn’t cocky enough to try, in any case. Reggie kept playing it safe.

  At this point his claws felt, if not sharper, then tougher. A match for the newfound strength he was stabbing and swinging them with, enough to actually break through the carapace and leave little scratches on the meat below. Reggie still found himself best served by prying open armour plating to slash the exposed flesh more directly, and after a brief pair of scuffles in which he didn’t even get hurt, he’d already added another two to his kill count.

  Charisma +2

  Damn, two more points right where he didn’t want them. Reggie couldn’t complain of course. Wait, yes he could. God fucking damnit!

  Charisma is more useful than—

  “I know,” he groaned, “would you stop it?” Fact was that Charisma just didn’t have as much use as raw physical power, from what he could tell. Reggie would benefit from posing as human, manipulating emotions—was he even powerful enough to do that with sapient humans yet?—and all the other subtle shit.

  But if he had more killing power right away, he’d be able to level everything fast. Including Charisma. It was a no-brainer. Nothing to do about it, though. He’d been told he was having his Charisma upped so fast due to it being by far his lowest stat, and Primary to boot. Once it evened out with the other Attributes things should all start raising normally.

  To do that, Reggie needed to find more things to kill. He was fairly aware now that his activity in these woodlands was less categorically akin to a Witchfinder, and really more similar to some kind of depraved lunatic who got his kicks out of killing things weaker than him. On the other hand, Reggie would also kill one million things for even a single extra Attribute point, so he certainly wouldn’t be slowing down on doing it for a 1 : 1 exchange. He kept moving, impossibly quick. The wind in his ears was like none he’d ever felt before, trees whipping by like he was shot past them out of a giant sling.

  At the very least it was easy to travel like this. Fast. Paired with Reggie’s unlimited stamina, he was managing about two miles every three minutes as far as he could estimate.

  But it wasn’t great for finesse. For situational awareness, for watching his own back.

  After just five minutes of his flight, Reggie caught a flash of light in the corner of his vision and twisted aside on sheer instinct. The musket-ball raced right past, cutting through the space his head had been occupying and committing a prompt suicide that took a large chunk of bark from the tree behind him. The gunshot echoed past a moment later.

  What the fuck?

  [You’re being shot at Reggie.]

  “I fucking know—” big mistake, saying it outloud. The shooter apparently had more than one gun, and wasted no time in leveling their second musket his way. This time Reggie wasn’t able to dodge, despite being a good thirty paces back. He felt the impact of lead against his skin and winced as it dug in, mushrooming out only slightly, bursting blood vessels, chewing up meat. There wasn’t a lot of bleeding, he could thank his dead veins for that, but the pain was…well, like a gunshot wound.

  Need to get out of here. Reggie straightened up and started running, willing to bet whoever was aiming at him didn’t have a third musket at least. They shot him with their third musket after his fourth pace and he almost went down again. Fortunately it’d hit his side, missed pretty much everything important, and served only to irritate more than mangle. Reggie hit his full stride a few moments later and took off faster than a horse’s gallop.

  It wasn’t until he’d put another hundred paces between himself and his assailant that Reggie risked a look back. He wasn’t really surprised to see one of the Witchfinders’ silhouettes greeting him.

  But then he was beyond their reach, disappearing into the grimwoods. He circled around and sprinted for a while longer before letting himself slow at last. After checking another few minutes to be sure he wasn’t being followed, Reggie finally relaxed.

  Damned close one, that.