Chapter 19

-subject to change,(IE: Polishing and editing and what not.) 

I sat up and rubbed my head and looked around. I was lying on my cot in my office. Thankfully Kharon had the foresight to put me here. I glanced towards my menu to see that a few days had passed since I lost consciousness. 

Congratulations, you have achieved your first class. +500 essence points

You have unlocked five t1 elite mobs. +1000 Essence

You have 5 attribute points.

Well, I guess I should probably go ahead and put those points into my stat tree and get this ball rolling. I made a motion and opened up my menu, and looked through my stats to figure out where I wanted my stuff to go.

Please use your attribute points.

Status Page

Name: Calixa Asteria

Main Race: Human

Subrace: Domain God

Affinity: Undeath

Level: 1

Class: Soul Catalyzation

Health: 130/130

Stamina: 130/130

Mana: 100/100

Stats:

Health: 6

Stamina: 6

Will:4

Agility: 5

Dexterity: 7

Strength: 5

Constitution: 3

Endurance: 3

True to my class, I lost all my stats related to the mana and got will in turn. I went ahead and dropped two points into it, bringing it to six, since it was vital enough for it to replace mana. That left me three more points.

Everything else seemed to be nice, so I went ahead and dropped a point into constitution and endurance, bringing them both up to four. I'll keep a hold on the final stat point for later, just if I need to use it as an emergency. I confirmed my choice, and a strange feeling began to course through my body. It felt like I just finished running a mile, plus a strange tickling inside of my body, deeper than my organs. But it wasn't unpleasant. I dismissed the screen and brought up the next notification.

You now have access to your class. You are now level one. Please select your first skill! You can go back into class tree and reselect any skill that you may want if you have the appropriate class points.

You have +2 class points.

Basic Soul Manifestation: Grants the ability to transform the soul in your medium to a specified shape and hold it for as long as your soul can handle it. +1

Basic Soul shot: Concentrates your soul in your medium into potent blast. +1

Basic Soul Shield I: Manifests a shield that will absorb incoming damage. +1

Basic soul flame: Transforms your soul fragment into a burst of flame that negates a portion of all defense and deals damage over time. +1

So, I only had two class points to get my first two skills. What would be the best? I carefully read over each skill. I lacked magic, which would be detrimental, but this class looked like it made up for it. It would even allow me to retro-pick skills as well.

Soul Manifestation would have to be a definite pick. It would be far more efficient for me to pick that as a first skill since I could do a variety of things with it since it would allow me to transform my soul fragment. I confirmed the first choice, and a vague idea of how to manipulate my soul entered my brain. Good, I will experiment with this later. I still have to decide on my next skill.

I could choose soul flame, soul shot, or soul shield. But they all looked like substantial skills. I read over each one before I crossed off soul shield. I was using soul manifestation, so there was no need to select that: that left soul flame and soul shot. Soul flame would give me solid damage over time, but soul shot would give me range, which would make me feel safer. I looked between the two and selected soul shot, with the intent to come back to the others soon.

Once I confirmed the skill, more knowledge flooded into my brain, giving me the vaguest idea of using the skill. I dismissed the menu and took a moment to look at my medium. My hand was covered in the black metal from my phone and glittered in the light. I ran my fingers across the top of my hand, marveling at how it felt like the screen of my phone. I'm going to miss it, but at least it will always be with me now. I rubbed my hand mindlessly and stood up to check on the notifications I unlocked from the domain.

T1 Elites unlocked:

Ghostly squire

Skeletal Bowman

Zombie Pugilist

Oh nice, They have been hard at work since I passed out. Maybe I should go check on them and see what they are doing. I straightened up and adjusted my clothing before teleporting back to the outpost to get a bearing of what I missed.

I appeared in the courtyard and saw a large stack of various materials in front of the building. The undead was at work tearing down the walls, expanding out the area like good little workers. Two ghosts were close to transforming and were close to the ground overseeing the other undead. They looked like they were on the brink of evolution, and the lack of other ghosts in the area helped solidify that fact.

Alessia was at work. If memory served correctly, they were squires, something like a knight in training, which was nice. I was developing a little army at my command. Hopefully, I would be able to fend off the adventures once they came. I made a quick motion and activated the storage function, and began to eat away the pile of various materials that the undead was leaving for me.

"Oh, mistress, it is good to see that you have recovered." I heard Kharons voice behind me as I started to work at chipping away the various materials.

"Ah, hello, Kharon. How are you?" I asked as I started to mentally tally up the number of units of material I was bringing in.

"I am well, thank you. I see you have recovered quite quickly after your soul fracturing." He stepped up and crossed his boney arms, and watched the undead work like mindless ants.

"Not quite; I still feel like total shit. But I don't have time to lay around." I clenched my teeth as my headache began to throb a little more. I really wish I had some medicine to drown away the pain—that or alcohol whatever came first.

"That is very true. Would you like a status update on what you have missed since you passed out?"

I glanced at my menu and quickly read through my notifications, and then nodded my head. "Sure. My notifications only really give me superficial information anyways."

"So far, Alessia has forced evolution on the spirits. As you have seen, they have the Squire class. I highly recommend that you try and transfer that class to the other undead variants for potential evolutions. Rikard has wrapped up all the mining operations and has moved all the undead in the area back here to begin working on construction. Aaron has been training the undead in this area and unlocked some elite mobs as well." I bobbed my head along as I was finishing absorbing the materials in this area before I brought up my map to hit the rock quarry.

"Good. I'll have Alessia find a few undead and give them the squire class. It would fall in line with part of my future plan anyways. Any idea what that ghast is up to?" That creature terrified me; even though it belonged to me, it still instilled a primal fear in my gut.

"It has taken residence in the northern forest and has consumed a few zombies that have wandered too close. However, it doesn't leave its territory." I shifted my map up and glanced towards the north, and made a mental note to avoid that part of the forest.

"Got it, thank you. I think that should just about cover everything I've missed. I gained a bunch of essence back so I can begin construction. Afterward, I want to work on some lore for the domain, and then I will practice my new skills." Kharon gave me a curt bow and stood next to me silently while I shifted my attention towards the pile of various items on the ground. I saved these so I could consume them and save the templates. They were nothing special, just, various pots and pans, along with ruined books and bookshelves.

The undead did an excellent job at tearing it apart. Normally I would have kept the original design, but I wanted to create something unique. I had no idea who knew of this area before I arrived, and I wanted to distance myself from the role this outpost played. I wanted to walk through and use the consume function on some of the smaller items to have the templates saved, but I wasn't going to risk walking to the building until I knew it wouldn't collapse.

I would also have to barricade that room upstairs until I figured out what it was. I considered leaving it out in the open, but I didn't want adventures tampering with it if it was something special. I walked closer to the outpost, storing the debris and tucking away some of the corpses that incurred from the collapse of portions of the building. Once I finished, I walked around the outpost's remaining portion and opened the map to get a better view of the surrounding area.

I had to ask myself, did I want this to be an outpost or something a bit bigger? I had total creative freedom here, just not as many resources as I would like to have, though.

I went ahead and cleared out a half kilometer of the surrounding forest and just straight consumed the trees instead of storing them, I just needed the essence, and I didn't want to wait for them to refine the wood for me.

You have gained one thousand essence.

Now, let's use this create function and start designing a wall to surround the future buildings. I activated it and began imagining the wall. I wanted it to be small to manage resources a bit, yet large enough to be imposing and make sense for a military installation. I moved over to the quarry to make sure that I gathered every piece of stone in the arguably not neatly stacked pile before I went back to the outpost's skeletal remains.

Now, what should be a good size of a mini-fortress wall that makes sense? I think five meters seems like a decent place, thoughts roughly sixteen feet or something in that area. That means it couldn't be scaled easily, though, in this world, I wasn't sure how stats would affect physical capabilities at higher levels. But this wouldn't be a high-level area, so it wasn't too problematic. I was also just trying to be somewhat realistic with it as well.

I scrolled the map around and imagined the wall to be roughly the right hieght, and began working on maximizing the wall size and strength while trying to reduce the number of resources that I was using. I could save portions of the wall as they were and then change minor details at will, though it was tough to keep the picture in my head at times with the throbbing headache that I had.

I kept the wall the same for the most part up until I found the point that I decided to make the entrance. I imagined a set of large double wooden doors that were rotted and torn from their hinges, and portions of the wall around it collapsed and ruined.

Once I was happy with how everything looked, I saved it and confirmed the choice. My heart broke as I watched my essence bar quickly drain along with almost half of my total stone reserves. My sweet, sweet resources, gone in a blink of an eye. At this rate, I'm going to have to set up a trade agreement with the adventures that entire this area, or hopefully get enough life essence saved up to do more things.

A few seconds passed, and small moats of yellow light started to rain down in the designated area the wall was. More started to appear with each passing second, and before I knew it, it became a downpour. The moats began to stack on top of each other, and the outline of stone started to appear. A part of me was hoping for something instantaneous, but I couldn't have everything going that easily for me.

While I waited, I shifted my attention to the far corners of my domain. I wonder what the world was like outside of my home, and I hope I could withstand whatever would come my way.