Romanus and Valens left to go on a hunt and get their achievements for leaving the safe zone. Meanwhile, I learned the Rogue class and began another period of hunting experience points to level my two new classes. I ended up renting time in the studio where Constans and I trained in weapons so I could stay late and practice my martial arts. Our trainer had no issue with me using the space at night, when it was normally closed anyway. I spent my nights training on my own, my mornings training with the trainer, and then my afternoons and early evenings finding and completing as many dungeons as possible. Fighting a true swordmaster had shown me the value of training even more, especially because the styles I knew from Earth didn’t exactly work in this world, where the attributes that people could get changed everything so dramatically. Learning to fight with high attributes took even more careful practice than just learning how to use a weapon in the first place, something that people used to dedicate their whole lives on Earth to doing.

  I spent some time scavenging every few days, continuing to collect things for Constans to sell so I could help her Merchant class grow. I also ran a few dungeons with Romanus and Valens when they weren’t out hunting, and even though I enjoyed their company, I found I preferred running the dungeons on my own more often than not. It was just simpler and faster and I didn’t have to worry about a tragic accident. My Regeneration perk, my revolver, and my high attributes let me handle everything these dungeons in the “safe zone” could throw my way.

  I leveled my Rogue class quickly, choosing Evasion as my level 1 skill. Evasion was a passive ability that gave me an improved chance to avoid attacks and scaled off of my coordination, which made it a very powerful defensive tool for me. I didn’t exactly need more defense right now, but my other options were lackluster and Evasion helped me avoid entire attacks. It synergized well with Regeneration because I got hit less, so I didn’t have to tire myself out healing smaller injuries.

  I kept my Gunslinger class inactive, wanting to see if I could get an evolved class for Warrior or Rogue first. I also wanted to get as powerful as I could with the physical classes I had access to now before I entered the Emperor’s enclave.

  A month passed surprisingly fast. Constans and I had dinner together most nights and Romanus and Valens joined us whenever they were in town. A month of practice every night and instruction every morning had me making significant improvement with learning how to actually fight. Our combat trainer was shocked at how fast I learned, but it was only impressive if you didn’t know I spent almost every night drilling, practicing, and fighting in the studio to teach my body how to properly utilize my attributes. Having the advantage of being an artificial intelligence, and the memory to remember everything perfectly, made it easy for me to dedicate myself to repetitive tasks, and I pushed myself mentally and physically every single night.

  I also managed to level both of my new classes to twenty within the month, thanks in big part to my Duel Me ability, which seemed to favor stealing experience from dungeons for some reason. It was an incredibly productive month of training, gathering experience, stealing experience and the occasional attribute from monsters, and completing dungeons. In total, I gained +3 endurance, +4 strength, and +2 coordination from leveling my Warrior class to level 20. I gained +8 to coordination, +5 to strength, and +4 to endurance for leveling my Rogue class to twenty. I also managed to steal more attributes from my duel victims, giving me a +1 to strength, +1 to memory, and +2 to magical power.

  I was an attribute powerhouse. I was fast enough to run across the city in under ten minutes, from the ancient harbor on the south side, across the water, and through Sycae to stop at the northern wall. And that was with having to use Stealth in Sycae to avoid drawing too much attention to myself. I could jump so far I didn’t even need my Dash to leap across streets anymore. I had to remind myself, as I became more and more accustomed to the new power and speed of my body, that there were plenty of monsters and people out there that were more powerful than me. The fight with the demon played through my head many times, keeping me humble and grounded.

  I also practiced using my Trickster’s Dash to leap high into the air and maneuver around as if I was flying. I had known, intellectually, it was possible, but until my fight with the fiery bird, I hadn’t fully conceptualized how easy it was. Since Dash completely stopped my momentum when I came to the end of it, I could dash high into the air and maneuver myself with ease, then dash downward to land, settling to the ground as if gravity had no hold on me. It was exhausting, requiring multiple dashes in a row without having a chance to stop, which seemed to drain me significantly more, but it gave me a makeshift form of flight that was exhilarating.

  Leveling my classes also earned me two more Warrior skills and two more Rogue skills. For my level 10 Warrior skill, I chose a skill called Shatter Armor, which let me make an attack that pit my strength against the durability of the enemy’s armor. If I was stronger than their armor was durable, their armor was shattered and became useless. I practiced on some cheap armor I bought from an outfitter’s shop. The results were impressive. I strung up the armor in one of the safehouses I was using to hunt dungeons in the city, and when I struck the armor with my new skill, my strength was enough to cause the armor to explode outward, sending chips of metal flying to embed themselves in the nearby wall. The first time I tried the skill in a dungeon, it not only shattered the armor of my opponent, but the shrapnel from the broken armor pierced deeply into the chest of the armored monster I was fighting and injured the companions standing behind it.

  I had started to get a sense of where I wanted to focus myself. My attributes, building exponentially off my actual body, gave me an overwhelming advantage over my enemies. Even if I encountered something that had the equivalent number of attributes, mine scaled off a significantly stronger and faster body, exponentially increasing the value of each +1 I gained, making me much more powerful than someone my own level.

  When I was first trying to figure out a way to survive in this world, I thought my revolver would be my biggest advantage, but I was finding now that my attributes were even more powerful in the long run. I was so fast these days I could run circles around even the fastest of monsters I encountered in the dungeons. And when I struck them with my sword, fist, or foot, my power was colossal compared to even the strongest monsters in the safe zone.

  With the long-term potential of building on my attributes, I started looking for skills that scaled based on my attributes or enhanced them in some way, seeking to magnify my advantage as fully as I could rather than looking for interesting or unique skills.

  My level 20 Warrior skill was called Steadfast Endurance, which gave me a twenty-five percent increase to my endurance and reduced the exhaustion from using skills repeatedly. Using my Trickster’s Dash in the way I had been doing lately—leaping through the air over and over—was a significant drain on my body. Steadfast Endurance immediately helped make it more manageable, although the increased endurance was great even on its own.

  For my Rogue class, I picked Improved Evasion for level 10 and then Absolute Evasion for level 20. Both skills were an evolution of my first skill choice, Evasion. I hadn’t come across an evolving skill before. Evolving the skill left me with only having one actual skill from my Rogue class, but the skill was very powerful and gave me my first chance at resisting magical attacks. Improved Evasion gave me the ability to sense attacks even if I couldn’t see them, giving me a chance to evade an attack from any direction.

  Absolute Evasion took it a step further and applied my evasion to spells, giving me a chance to evade spells—even spells I didn’t see coming or spells that targeted my mind or tried to paralyze my body. It didn’t seem possible to evade an attack on my mind, but somehow, the skill made it happen. All three forms of Evasion scaled off my coordination, giving me a massive boost to the skill. When I had read the description of Absolute Evasion, I knew I had made the right choice. I had found my first way to shore up my weakness to spells.

  For some reason, I had stopped receiving perks or skills from the dungeons as rewards. Part of me suspected this was because the dungeons were no longer a challenge for me. The perks and skills I had received before had always come from clever ways I had managed to survive or from dramatic and dangerous situations. Now that I was more comfortable fighting with my sword and had my revolver and grenades for a diverse answer to whatever the dungeons threw at me, I wasn’t scraping by anymore, so I suspected the dungeons weren’t giving me extraordinary rewards any longer. It was probably expected that a person would complete a few dungeons in the city they were born in and then graduate to the harder dungeons outside of the city soon after. I didn’t want to take those kinds of risks yet since I still had lower-level classes that benefited from easier dungeons. And the monetary rewards were still significant.

  I made sure I reached level 20 on both my Warrior and Rogue classes on the same day. After selecting my skills, the familiar warmth began to build in my chest, indicating I had achieved an evolution for one, or both, of my classes.

  Congratulations, you have unlocked an evolution of your Warrior class. Based on your unique use of the class, you have unlocked Duelist. Your class rating is Rare. Do you wish to adopt this class now?

  Congratulations, you have unlocked an evolution of your Rogue class. Based on your unique use of the class, you have unlocked Pirate. Your class rating is Common. Do you wish to adopt this class now?

  It was a bit frustrating that I couldn’t tell what skills each class would eventually unlock for me. If I focused on the announcement in my head, I could get a bit of a sense for each class, but no concrete details. I wondered if, before the city was overrun, there had been scholars who did nothing but document skill paths and what each evolution offered. I could sense that the Pirate class was focused on scrappy fights, movement skills, and blinds or disarms. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did.

  The Duelist class had likely been unlocked because of my Duel Me skill and maybe because I had won all my duels so far. The class was about fighting opponents one on one, showmanship and misdirection, and self-buffs and debuffs of enemies through witty banter—which was a very strange concept, but that was what my sense of the class was telling me.

  I wasn’t that impressed with Pirate. It was only a common class, which meant it could only be leveled to forty. And I didn’t really need more mobility; my Trickster’s Dash was probably one of the best mobility skills in this world. Blinds and disarms were also less than useful for me.

  Duelist, meanwhile, was intriguing. It synergized great with my Duel Me skill, which was essential if I wanted to scale beyond what others were capable of. And it was a rare class, meaning it could level to sixty. It wasn’t the most powerful of classes, but it was unlikely I was going to find anything better soon.

  I decided to select Duelist but did not accept Pirate at this time. As I felt the Duelist class open up to me, my remaining experience funneled into the class, leveling it to level 2.

  Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Duelist class. You are now level 1.

  Please choose a level 1 class skill:

  You Dare Challenge Me: Pick a target. You gain +3 to all attributes until you or your opponent are defeated.

  Look Over There: Distract your opponent, guaranteeing one attack hits a vulnerable area.

  You Fight Worse Than Your Mother: Insult your opponent, reducing all of their attributes by three and reducing their coordination by 10%. Your attributes are increased by +1 for the duration of the fight and your coordination is increased by 10%.

  If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get: Pick a target. The longer you fight your opponent, the higher your attributes soar. Gain +1 to all attributes once every minute you are in combat until you or your opponent are defeated or surrender.

  Never Bring a Mob to a Duel: Gain +1 to all attributes for each nearby enemy that is actively attacking you or planning to attack you. Whenever an enemy is defeated or surrenders, you lose their bonus attribute. This skill may only be used once per week.

  All of the skills were strong and amusing. The Duelist class clearly had a sense of humor about itself. I could just see myself fighting a dragon and having to yell, “Your scales are weak like your father’s bloodline!” or some such nonsense to activate my skill. It was a hilarious image but not very practical.

  I ruled out Look Over There to start. While it could be powerful, it wasn’t as good as the other skills. You Fight Worse Than Your Mother had potential. It both debuffed an enemy, buffed me, and gave a percentage-based buff to my coordination attribute, which made it very strong.

  I needed to decide what my greatest weakness was right now. I was easily winning my duels, primarily because I only used that skill when I was sure that I would win. If I wanted to guarantee more wins against a single opponent, then You Dare Challenge Me or If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get would be my best bet. But if I wanted to supplement my ability to fight a large number of opponents at once, then Never Bring a Mob to a Duel would be extremely strong. If I was attacked by, say, twenty opponents at once, that skill would give me an incredible bonus to not just my damage but my survivability. It would almost double my physical attributes, not to mention increase the percentage bonuses I receive based on my underlying attribute. The negative was that it had the largest cooldown between uses of any skill I had seen so far. That must mean the skill was extremely powerful, though I would just need to be judicious in its use.

  I did some quick math. My current coordination was thirty plus twenty percent from Gambler’s Eye. If I used Never Bring a Mob to a Duel on twenty opponents, my coordination would soar to fifty and the twenty percent increase would go from a +6 to a +10, bringing my total coordination to sixty. That was insane, considering every point was around +20% to the human base speed and coordination. Even without my enhanced body, a sixty coordination was the equivalent of someone being twelve times faster than a normal human. For me, that was more like fifteen to twenty times faster.

  I had my Explosive Bullets, Explosive Grenades, and Confusion Grenades to let me handle large groups of enemies, but if I was ever caught unaware or if a large group was resistant to that type of damage or control, I was vulnerable to being overwhelmed. I had survived a few close calls in dungeons against large groups that didn’t die easily to fire-based attacks, surviving mainly through extensive use of Trickster’s Dash and whittling down the pack slowly by attacking the vulnerable members around the edges. If I had Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, I could probably confront a group of enemies without having to be as careful. In fact, the more enemies I fought, the more powerful I would become.

  I couldn’t pass up such potential strength. It could scale incredibly high and it supplemented a current weakness of mine. I would lose the attributes again as I started to defeat individual members of the group I faced, and it wouldn’t assist me in winning one-on-one duels, which people who took the Duelist class probably found to be a great weakness of the skill. To me, though, it was too good to pass up. I selected Never Bring a Mob to a Duel for my new skill.

  After that was done, I reactivated my Gunslinger class now that I had achieved level 20 on both my Warrior and Rogue classes.

  That left me, finally, with no more excuses for avoiding the Emperor’s enclave. Winter had rolled in as the month passed, and temperatures had dropped significantly. It didn’t impact me too much, but the rest of Sycae fell into a bit of a slump, the lively markets more empty and food quickly becoming more expensive. Sycae seemed to live in perpetual denial that the outside world was in trouble, but even the residents there couldn’t ignore the hunger growing in their bellies and the cold houses that never had enough firewood to warm them.

  Constans and I had made enough money to keep ourselves warm and fed for a long time to come, so I wasn’t too worried about her. She confessed to me that this would be the first winter she could remember when she had a meal to eat every single day and had warm clothes to wear. Most of her winters were spent huddling with other orphans and begging for scraps since visitors became fewer during the winter season. I wasn’t sure what to say when she told me about her past, but hearing about her life made me realize that she and I had a lot in common. In many ways, I was an orphan back home as well. I hadn’t starved on the street, but I had also known little joy or love in my prior life. Maybe that was one of the reasons I had felt a kinship with her from the moment I met her.

  Now that I had achieved my short-term goals of leveling my classes, I needed to take another step forward. I needed information about possible physical classes that could resist spells or help me fight spellcasters better. And I still had my Glass Meteor skill stone, which I had decided to sell. While Constans and I had replenished our wealth from salvaging and dungeon running, I had a few very ambitious ideas that required even more wealth to make a reality.

  On a blistering cold morning, I caught Constans before she left to meet her tutor and gave her the news that I would be leaving for a few days. She had been just as busy as me, so we hadn’t seen much of each other except for at dinner. She had grown and filled out in the last month, thanks to regular meals, her training, and the healer I had hired. She had gone from being a mere skeleton to looking more like a typical, healthy teenager. I was proud of how hard she was working; she had truly embraced the opportunity I had given her and had made it her own. With a warm goodbye, she promised to continue her work while I was gone.

  I decided to approach the Emperor’s enclave on my own. I knew Romanus and Valens would be willing to go with me if I asked, but if something went wrong, I was confident I could escape, and I worried they could be arrested or killed. I had no issue with fleeing for my life if needed; my pride was more than willing to take a hit in the name of survival. I didn’t think the two men could escape as easily, so it made sense for me to go by myself.

  I strapped on my magical sword and armor, covering as much as I could under my scavenger’s cloak. I made sure my revolver was concealed under my left armpit, then checked and double-checked that all my satchels were full of bullets and my bandolier was full of grenades. I left Constans with a fair amount of my wealth, with instructions to find a good she could buy in bulk and sell for a profit as her next project. It was wintertime, so I suggested she think about something that might be cheap now but expensive in the summer. We could afford to store it for a few months and then resell it for a profit if she found something appropriate. I had no idea what that could be, given how little resources everyone had this time of year, but that was why I gave her the project. She could figure it out. She was the merchant.

  As prepared as I would ever be, I took a walk to the west side of Sycae, where the bridge to the Emperor’s enclave was still intact. The bridge was beautiful, held up as if by magic as it arced high over the channel between Sycae and the main city. I could see what Perama must have once looked like before it became the last refuge of the misfits and outcasts of the city.

  As I crossed the bridge, I finally got to see for myself why so many people thought I was a Varangian. Guarding the towers and gate on the far side of the bridge were tall, pale-skinned men dressed in chain armor and carrying a variety of dangerous-looking weapons. The men all had long hair and beards, with trinkets braided into both. They were as tall as I was, and one was even taller than me. Many had tattoos on their faces or bodies, and all of them looked like dangerous and competent fighters.

  When I reached them, one of the guards asked me a question in a language I didn’t immediately recognize. It took me a moment to review what was said and determine it was in Old Norse. They were asking if I was one of them.

  I didn’t respond, not wanting to mislead them or give away that I spoke their language.

  “I’m here to negotiate a sale of a rare skill stone and to visit the Imperial Library,” I told the guard in the hybrid Latin and Greek that was spoken in the city.

  The guard turned to one of his companions, speaking in Norse again. I pretended I didn’t understand as he insulted my mother and called me a coward in his language, obviously trying to see if I would react to the insults. After a bit, seeing my lack of reaction, the guard finally stopped trying to get a rise out of me and let me pass.

  Inside the gate was a massive palace that filled almost the entire enclave. The palace was beautiful, covered in stained-glass windows and decorative stone. Gargoyles and other adornments decorated the walls and rooftop everywhere. The building stood five stories tall and stretched over a mile in front of me. The palace walls were made from marble that glowed in the early-morning sun with a pearlescent beauty. There were no outbuildings or breaks in the palace, which seemed odd. The entire enclave appeared to be built to protect nothing but the one large building.

  What little space that wasn’t taken up by the palace itself was turned into beautifully manicured gardens. Trees, grass, shrubs, and an abundance of flowers filled the grounds between the palace and the walls that protected the enclave. Elaborate fountains appeared here and there. They made a soft tinkling sound as water splashed down into their ornate basins. Winding paths led through the garden, creating a picturesque and beautiful setting. The beauty was only slightly marred by the large, ugly walls that surrounded the enclave, its brutal utilitarianism contrasting with the pristine and gentle gardens.

  I walked down the larger path that led from the foot of the bridge to an ornate gate that led inside the palace. As I approached, several more Varangian guards and a man in a formal robe stopped me.

  “Business?” the man in the robe asked me.

  “I’m here to sell a rare skill stone and visit the Imperial Library,” I told him.

  He looked me up and down, seeing that I wore a scavenger’s cloak. If he was sharp, he would also notice the quality of my armor and visible weapons, but he didn’t seem interested enough to look further. I got the sense the Varangians weren’t as unobservant, though, as they stared at the quality of the armor under my cloak. The man in the robe nodded absently and opened the gate for me. He turned, leading me inside, and I followed him.

  The inside of the palace was a bit of a disappointment. The decor could only be described as ostentatious. After the subtle and beautiful gardens outside, I had expected something more . . . classy. The hallways of the palace seemed stuffed with as many things as could be fit in every inch of the palace, as if to declare the owner of the palace was so wealthy they had more than they knew what to do with. Art, tapestries, armor and weapons, and various collectibles adorned pillars everywhere or hung on the walls. None of it matched, colors and styles clashing. Many of the weapons and much of the armor blocked other pieces, making it impossible to appreciate the artwork and tapestries. There was no room to let each piece breathe, showing how little the collector really valued what they displayed.

  My guide led me on a winding path full of lengthy hallways and wide marble stairs. We turned left and right, the hallways so long I thought we would hit the outside walls several times, but we never did. The layout inside the palace was almost a maze, maybe deliberately so. Eventually, my guide led me down another marble staircase and into a basement. The walls in the basement were bare, which was probably meant as an insult to whoever stayed down here, but I considered it an improvement over the tacky displays above. The guide stopped in front of a small door in the middle of a darkened and dusty hallway. We had passed several more doors just like this one, all of them closed.

  “This is where you stay,” he told me, opening the door. Inside was a small bed and a table but nothing more. The room and location were definitely intended to be an insult.

  “Someone will get you when you are to be summoned before the Emperor,” he told me. “Until then, do not wander the palace. You will get lost.”

  I had kind of hoped to avoid the Emperor himself, but apparently that was not meant to be. I stepped into the room and settled down on the bed. I decided to just go ahead and follow my guide’s instructions. I was pretty sure I could find my way around the palace on my own, but I didn’t want to insult someone and find myself in trouble before I sold my skill stone and got a chance to look over the library.

  Hours passed as I sat in my small room, and I found myself getting annoyed by the deliberate rudeness, despite my best efforts to rise above the insults. By late afternoon, after still not hearing from anyone, I was about to leave and try my luck exploring the palace on my own when there was finally a knock on my door.

  I stood and opened the door to see a small boy around the age of ten standing in front of me. He wore a smaller version of the formal robes the last guide had worn. He had a serious expression on his face.

  “Follow me, sir,” the boy told me. He turned and walked away without waiting to see if I followed him. I hesitated but had decided to follow the rules of this place as best as I could, so I followed the young boy without saying anything.

  The boy led me back up to the main floor and through a number of twisting and turning hallways before coming to one that was guarded by several Varangians.

  “Through there,” the boy said, pointing to a large gold-encrusted doorway at the end of the hallway. I approached, and the guards opened two ornate wooden doors for me without any comment.

  Inside, a spacious hall greeted me. A vaulted ceiling stretched upward, and the back of the hall was covered with stained-glass windows depicting a man on horseback battling a swarm of monsters. The floor was covered in different mosaics, and the walls were even more ostentatious than those in the hallways, every inch filled with tapestries or artwork. Across the hall, a large golden throne was perched atop a platform, with several stairs leading up to it.

  I had to blink several times to fully appreciate what I was seeing. Gold was everywhere, as if the designers of the room had forgotten other metals even existed. Even the mosaics on the floor were inlaid with gold, as if to say the Emperor was so rich he could afford to let people walk on gold.

  Seated on the throne was a visibly drunk middle-aged man. He sat slumped over, a jug of some drink in his hand. He was mumbling to himself and clearly hadn’t bothered to shave for some time. His hair might have once been stylish, but was now long and greasy, clinging to his scalp and forehead. He looked like a homeless person who hadn’t showered in weeks. His eyes were closed and he seemed unaware of where he was or anyone around him. The contrast between him and the elaborate throne room almost made me break out in laughter. The sight was so incongruous I wondered if I was being played with.

  A number of other people stood around the hall, talking and pointedly ignoring the drunk Emperor as he mumbled to himself. Each person was dressed in what was probably their finest clothes, heavily adorned with rings, necklaces, and other signs of wealth. They all looked slightly overweight and unhealthy, as if they had never exercised in their lives.

  “Step forward and kneel!” a voice rang out as I stepped forward into the hall in a bit of a daze.

  Looking around, I found the crier next to me. He glared at me until I followed his directions, walking forward and then taking a knee before the Emperor. While sitting in my room, I had reviewed the proper etiquette for greeting a Byzantine emperor and hoped it hadn’t changed too much in this world.

  Nobody objected and the Emperor seemed oblivious to my existence, so it must not have changed too much.

  “Stand and state your business before the throne!” the crier called out behind me. I could see a man standing behind the throne and slightly to the right of the Emperor. He had a pedestal in front of him and was writing something in a large book as he spoke. He seemed to be the only one near the throne who was actually paying attention to me as he raised a quill, ready to record what I said to the Emperor.

  “I’m here to sell a rare skill stone,” I said. “And I wish to visit the Imperial Library.”

  A few of the nobles turned when I mentioned I had a rare skill stone, and the man on the pedestal recorded what I said in a book he had in front of him. “State the name of the skill stone,” he said as he wrote.

  “It’s a magic-based skill called Glass Meteor,” I said.

  I heard murmuring from the nobles at the name of the skill, but the Emperor never reacted, lost in his own world.

  Conversation picked up around me, and I could hear the nobles speculating about the stone and how I came across it. One comment in particular stood out to me.

  “Isn’t that the rogue Varangian the Patriarch told us about?” I heard someone to my right whisper. They were trying to speak quietly, but with my hearing, I was able to understand what they said perfectly. I turned to see who had spoken, and a group of men wearing priests’ clothes stared back at me.

  “I think you are right,” one of the priests said, not bothering to whisper back. “What was the bounty on his head again?”

  “Two hundred blues,” another priest said, still trying to whisper even though the other had spoken loudly. “For killing several priests and two paladins, I heard.”

  I kept my face neutral and made sure that I didn’t react. This issue with the priests was getting out of hand. I did not want to get dragged into the stupid politics of this dying city. It was like nobody here wanted to admit they were all barely surviving, instead wasting all of their time picking fights with each other or crippling their own economy to grasp a modicum of power. I had only been here a short time and I was already sick of it.

  “Your sale is recorded,” the man behind the throne said. “A servant will collect bids for you over the next day. Your auction will close tomorrow at this time. The treasury will take ten percent of the sale. In return, you are granted access to the Imperial Library for one week. Dismissed.”

  I bowed to the Emperor and slowly backed away from the throne. Outside, another young boy was waiting for me.

  “Follow me, sir,” the guide said. “I will collect the bids from any interested party and bring them to your room. Do you want to return to your room now or go to the library right away?”

  “The library, please,” I said. My guide nodded and led me away.

  The most interesting thing about the palace was that while it was all one large structure, the inside was like an actual city. As the guide led me deeper into the palace, I saw hallways that had been turned into entire markets. Other areas had been opened up into training grounds for the palace guards, and there were entire residential areas full of families, several massive kitchens and dining areas, and everything else I’d expect to see in a city. It was odd to turn a corner and find myself in the middle of a busy market. Shops occupied each side of the hallway and people bartered and traded in the halls as my guide and I pushed through the crowd.

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  The library, when we finally arrived, lived up to the elegance I had expected inside the palace. Soaring bookshelves stretched five stories high all around the room. The ceiling, made of glass, allowed in plenty of light. The entire left side of the library was stained glass depicting scenes from some mythology I didn’t recognize. A large winding wooden staircase filled the center of the library and led up to walkways every ten feet. These walkways ran all around the outside of the room, allowing people to easily peruse the bookshelves at each level. Around the central staircase were wooden desks and comfortable chairs. The library was moderately busy, people reading or searching for books on the shelves above.

  “What time should I return to get you, sir?” my guide asked.

  “What time does the library close?”

  “It technically doesn’t close, sir, but most people leave when it gets dark outside. There are a lot of glass windows and people prefer the safety of their rooms at night.”

  “Hmm,” I said, looking over the library, feeling a surge of pleasure at the collective knowledge in front of me. “I’ll just stay here, then. Bring me the bids for my skill stone whenever you get them. I’ll stay until I’m ready to leave the palace.”

  “But . . .” the boy started to say but stopped himself. “Uh, okay, sir. I will do that.”

  I nodded to dismiss him. As he left, an older man with long, bushy white hair approached me. He was hunched over slightly and looked to be at least in his seventies, if not older. I tried not to stare, but he was one of the oldest people I had seen in the city so far. It seemed that not many people survived to old age in the other enclaves.

  “Hello,” the man said in a deep and sonorous voice, “my name is Agathon. I am a librarian here. How may I help you today?”

  The older man didn’t look particularly friendly, but he was coolly professional. He had taken a look at my size and features and clearly judged me nothing but a barbarian, a slight disdain coloring his words. That was fine with me. As long as he was willing to help, I didn’t mind if he looked down on me.

  “I have two areas I’m hoping to research,” I told him. “The first thing I’m looking for is information about physical classes that have magical resistances or deal with magical classes. I’ve heard this library used to keep records of such things.”

  The librarian stared at me for a moment, considering what I told him. “You heard right, of course. Our library has the most comprehensive information on classes in the world. Is that all you wanted to learn today?”

  I considered telling him the rest of the world was probably dead, so having the most comprehensive amount of information in the world wasn’t much of an accomplishment anymore, but I held my tongue.

  “I’m also looking for information about orichalcum. Specifically, its various properties, if there are any scholarly books that explore such a subject, historical uses of the metal, where it was commonly mined before the city fell, information such as that.”

  The librarian’s eyebrows rose. He clearly hadn’t expected that question. “Very interesting,” he said, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time.

  I really wanted to tweak his nose for his condescension—I probably had more information in my head than he could read in fifty lifetimes—but I restrained myself again. Maybe Constans had been a bad influence on me lately; her rambunctious attitude seemed to have rubbed off on me a bit.

  “Come with me and I will show you our information on physical classes first.”

  He led me up the spiral stairs to the third walkway. We continued along the walkway until he stopped in front of a section that he indicated contained all the books they had on physical classes. There were at least four large shelves full of books on the subject. An older man was already perusing the books, but he ignored us as we approached.

  “Is there . . . a system for searching these books or directing me to ones that are close to what I want?” I asked.

  “No,” the librarian said, giving me another condescending smile, “but I will get you a few books we have collected that should get you started. It’s part of our role here to find what our visitors need.”

  I stood by while he proceeded to search the bookshelves, grabbing and handing me books as he came across them.

  “Monk of the Pristine Mind,” he said, handing me a book. “Vampire. Witch Hunter. Psion. Servant of the Dead God. Berserker.”

  After he called out each class, he handed me a book.

  “Those should be the best that we have available for what you are looking for,” he told me. “I will look into what books may help you find out more about orichalcum and let you know what I find.”

  “Uhh,” I said, balancing the books carefully. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and left me. I carefully navigated my way back to the main floor and claimed a table to read at, then dove into the books with a smile.

  Hours passed quickly as I read. I had always enjoyed taking in new information, and there was something very pleasurable about reading in such a grand library. There was a sense of dignity and age to the place, one that made me feel safe and welcome. It was a place for scholars, and despite my foray into violence since coming to this world, I had always been a bit more introspective than my siblings back home.

  I read until night fell and most of the people in the library had left. Several librarians tried to subtly encourage me to leave the library with some pointed questions about my plans for the night, but I politely told them that I planned to stay all night and thanked them for their concern.

  The boy who had guided me here brought me a few offers for my skill stone as I worked, but I ignored them for now. I would let the bidding rise until tomorrow and then see what people offered me. I was mostly interested in currency, but a quick glance at some of the offers showed me that people were offering all kinds of things like unique magical items, other skills, or “favors” in return for my stone.

  The books about the physical classes were extremely informative. I learned that at some time, the Byzantine emperors had commissioned librarians to travel the world and collect guides on the various classes that existed. They bribed, threatened, traded, or kidnapped people to get info about their classes. Wandering librarians had become a force in the world, powerful enough to intimidate locals and protect themselves as they traveled and learned everything they could. I couldn’t help but think if I had arrived in this world earlier, I would have enjoyed being such a librarian.

  On the other hand, I also learned the extreme methods they went to in order to secure information about classes. The librarians had no shame explaining in detail what they did to secure the information inside the book, quite openly speculating on the accuracy of the information when it was learned through torture or blackmail.

  For instance, the Vampire class had been written about by a librarian that agreed to become a servant of a Vampire and spent years collecting victims for their master. When they finally learned the class, they detailed everything about the entire process of turning undead and then continued traveling the world to collect more information, feeding whenever necessary. The librarian had apparently been awarded a medal by the Emperor of the time for their dedication.

  The class was as fascinating as it was disturbing. It was both a class and a mutation at the same time. You could only unlock the class from a current Vampire by way of a process that was remarkably similar to the myths back on Earth.

  Once you became a Vampire, you had the same strengths and weaknesses as vampires on Earth, including the weakness to sunlight. Vampire skills could focus on physical skills or mental skills. Mental skills included things like charming others, resisting spells and mental intrusions, and spellcasting. Physical skills focused on utilizing high strength attributes, unholy speed, and natural weapons like claws and bites. The guidebook specifically said that many of the skills that allowed a Vampire to resist spells and mental intrusions were not magical in nature but rather mental powers distinct from magical power. They scaled based on a mental attribute and did not require someone to use mana to power their abilities.

  It actually sounded like an ideal class for me, other than the weakness to sunlight and needing to drink blood to survive, not to mention the being undead part. Of course, I had no real way to find a Vampire, nor would I want to serve one for years on the chance they gave me the class. And the downsides really weren’t worth learning the class even if I had the option to do so. Ultimately, even though Vampire sounded like it would synergize well with my current attributes and skills, I put it in the no pile.

  Witch Hunter was similar to the Vampire class. You had to be inducted into a hidden society that dedicated itself to killing witches and warlocks. It didn’t sound like these societies had survived to today, and I wasn’t really interested in a secret society that hunted people based solely on their use of magic, so it also joined the no pile.

  Servant of the Dead God and Berserker both had significant problems. Berserker could gain total spell immunity but only when the Berserker was enraged out of their mind. They were just as likely to kill their allies as their enemies in their rage, and despite some of the anger I had experienced in the past, I wasn’t sure I could reliably get angry enough to use the class often enough to make it worth learning.

  Servant of the Dead God required sacrificing a fairly large number of people on a hidden shrine buried in a sea cave on a remote island in the Mediterranean. The description of what the librarian did to learn the class was extremely graphic. Despite that, I put it in the maybe category. It would likely be hard to get to the shrine, but the class seemed extremely powerful if I could manage to unlock it . . .

  Psion and Monk of the Pristine Mind seemed like my best bet. A Psion class could be spontaneously awarded if someone suffered an extreme mental break. It didn’t sound like recovering from the mental break was required, just having one, which led to the class having quite a bad reputation. Despite that, it was a class that didn’t require mana, and the skills of the class were very similar to spells themselves. The class also came with inherent resistance to mind-altering spells and the like. I was a bit deterred by the fact that the librarian who had learned the class spent almost half the book writing about how birds weren’t real and the Emperor was using them to spy on people, but a note at the start of the book said the author’s obsession with birds was just a minor side effect of learning the class.

  Monk of the Pristine Mind was the most realistic option, unless I wanted to try to break my own mind. The monks were a secluded order that had a monastery in the mountains several months’ travel north of the city. The monks had a legendary class, and rumors persisted that the original monk who had unlocked the unique version of the class still existed. The class was both a non-combat class and a combat class at the same time. The class awarded skills and attributes from both paths but also required a person to level both of them at once. You couldn’t advance to level 2 in the combat path until you were also ready to advance in the non-combat path.

  The non-combat class was focused on meditation and personal insights about yourself and your relation to the world at large. The non-combat path awarded skills that strengthened the mind and made it immune to control and suggestion while improving focus, decision-making, and other aspects of a person’s brain.

  The combat class focused on speed and martial forms. The librarian detailed some of the skills that could be learned. These included skills that let a monk float and run on air, bend reality around them and change the nature of the world itself, and even tap into the primal elements of the world to control earth, air, wind, or water like a mage but through physical attacks instead.

  The downside of the class was that if you couldn’t manage to level your non-combat class through meditation or personal insights, then you were stuck and couldn’t level the combat class either. No amount of hunting experience would let you level the combat class if you didn’t spend months or years meditating.

  It was unlikely that the monks still survived, but maybe if I found their monastery, there would be clues about the class or even a class book I could salvage. It was the best lead I had found so far.

  When morning came, the librarian who had helped me before brought me seven new books.

  “These are all the books we have about orichalcum ore. It includes several scholarly discussions of the metal, some crafting guides, and chronicles of trade agreements at the height of our empire that show how common the ore was and other detailed information of that nature,” he told me. “It will be dry reading, but this is the best way for you to find what you are looking for.”

  I thanked him and piled the new books on the desk next to me. I grabbed the first one from the new stack and began reading. It was indeed dry, but I had plenty of experience sorting through endless amounts of dry, uninteresting data from my previous life. The crafting and scholarly books were interesting, but ultimately, nobody knew much more than that the metal seemed to be mined from places of high mana concentration, was able to make more powerful enchanted items, and didn’t need charging like a traditional enchantment did. Orichalcum itself drew mana from the atmosphere, charging any enchantments made from the metal. Nobody really knew why the metal did what it did, but the books at least detailed what it did for me.

  The other books detailed trade agreements, shipping invoices, and various military and civilian contracts related to the various goods the empire produced. The entries were dated year by year through the height of the “Eternal Roman Empire,” as they called themselves.

  By the fourth book of records, I was pretty sure I had found what I was looking for: shipping invoices containing an unidentified ore. They repeated every month and came from a small coastal city called Miletus. The ore wasn’t identified as orichalcum, but the receiver of the ore shipment was always designated as “Royal Enchanter’s Consortium,” which clued me in that it wasn’t just normal metal.

  I pored through the rest of the books, finding some other possible locations for what I wanted, but it seemed like the majority came from the first place I had found. There were a few explicit trade agreements about orichalcum ore in the books, but they all related to trade between nations without listing where the ore originated. I wanted to find where the ore came from in case there was a way to reclaim the mine or at least visit it and gather some of this magical ore for myself.

  I asked the librarian next time I saw him, and he showed me a large, ornate atlas that detailed the empire at its height. I found Miletus on the southern coast of what would be modern Turkey in my world.

  That evening, the bidding for my skill stone ended. My guide appeared, waiting for my decision on whom to sell to. I carefully reviewed all of the bids. They varied wildly from laughable offers to some that seemed more than fair. The best offer, I decided, came from someone who only named themselves as the Emperor’s archmage. He offered one hundred gold orbs and my choice of a skill stone from the Emperor’s own armory.

  I handed my guide the bid I had selected. He looked at the paper and ran off. An hour later, he returned.

  “Your sale has been approved,” the boy said. “If you will follow me, I can take you to our armory to select your skill, and your ninety gold orbs can be collected there as well, minus the treasury’s cut.”

  I stood up from my desk and stretched, working out the kinks from sitting and reading for so many hours straight. “Lead the way,” I told the boy.

  He took me out of the library and I followed him through the halls. It was getting to be night, so everything was much emptier than it had been before. My guide led me through several winding passageways and up and down several flights of stairs. The Byzantine layout of the palace was full of nonsensical passageways and deliberately inconvenient ways forward, it seemed to me.

  We turned down a stairway that led to the basement and began to walk down yet another long hallway, although this one had no lights at all to illuminate it. I started to realize something might be wrong as the hallway seemed more abandoned and emptier than anywhere else I had been so far. The necklace I had received from one of my earliest dungeons let me see perfectly in the darkened hallways, but it seemed unlikely the armory would be through such an unprotected, poorly maintained area. I tensed, looking around me, and reached for my revolver, although I didn’t draw it yet.

  As if sensing that I had caught on, my guide sprinted down the hall in front of me. I could have caught him, or shot him in the back, but he was just a young boy, so I let him go. Two men stepped out of different rooms ahead of me as the boy ran past. I checked behind me and saw two more were blocking the hallway in that direction. They weren’t Varangians, which hopefully meant I hadn’t upset the Emperor himself, but they were still large men and they all carried swords. None of them seemed young or inexperienced in the way of violence, though, so they had to be connected to someone important around here. I checked their clothing but couldn’t see any identifiable livery on them to give me any clues.

  “Give us the skill stone and you can go on your way,” one of the men in front of me said, hefting his sword threateningly.

  I sighed. None of the men appeared to be spellcasters, so I doubted they were a true threat to me. This was just a waste of my time and had the makings of a potential scandal. Killing armed men who could be working for a noble or another important figure could get me killed by the Emperor, even if I was defending myself.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not interested in getting involved with any of this kind of nonsense. I just want to make my sale and move on.”

  The man who spoke narrowed his eyes in anger. “Then hand over the stone and you can leave. Now.”

  I turned my head and eyed the two men behind me again, trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t really want to kill these men, but I didn’t know what classes these guys had or how powerful they were. I wasn’t sure I could risk not using every weapon I had against them if it turned out they were high-level fighters of some kind. But if I didn’t kill them, maybe they would just run away with their tails between their legs and I wouldn’t be summarily executed by the Emperor for killing his guards or some noble’s personal retainers.

  I decided to at least try not to kill anyone.

  I used my new Never Bring a Mob to a Duel skill, boosting all my attributes by four, and then I activated my Trickster’s Dash, launching myself down the hallway. The two in front of me were just barely registering the fact that I had disappeared when I reappeared right in front of them. I unleashed a right hook into the man’s jaw, not activating my golem-empowered gloves, but my Empowered Strikes, my Natural Weapons perk, my boost from Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, and my base strength of twenty-seven magnified my already strong body so much that I shattered the man’s jaw, sending him crumbling to the ground. It was a testament to the man’s own endurance that I didn’t break his neck or kill him on the spot. I wanted to resolve this peacefully, but I still wanted to make sure I won, so I didn’t hold back too much. And it was clearly a good thing I didn’t; if my punch had been any softer, the man might have just shrugged it off.

  The man next to him didn’t have time to react before I struck again. I kicked him in the stomach, throwing him back against the wall, where he slammed his head against the stone with a grunt of pain. While he was dazed, I followed up with a series of blows to his face until he fell unconscious, his face bloodied and bruised but hopefully not permanently damaged.

  I turned to look at the other two men, who were just now realizing what had happened. With cries of outrage, they charged down the hallway at me, completely unfettered by how easily I had just dispatched their two companions. Clearly, neither of them had points in whatever constituted the intelligence attribute in this world.

  One of them closed the distance quicker than his companion, shooting down the hallway with some kind of Charge-like ability. The second man activated a protection skill, encasing himself and his ally in ephemeral purple armor that flashed around them both and then faded after a second.

  Faster than I expected, the first attacker was on me. He swung his blade overhead, the blade encasing itself in fire. I frantically slapped the flat of the blade away with my hand, scorching my palm but pushing the sword to the side thanks to my high strength. I threw a quick jab at the man with my other hand, but my fist hit a purple barrier that protected him from my attack.

  The second man reached me as well, stepping up next to his ally and swinging at me. I dashed backward, turning invisible and giving myself space from their attacks.

  “Some sort of invisibility skill,” one of the men said to the other. They both began swinging their swords in front of them, checking if I was standing right in front of them while invisible. I reappeared twenty feet down the hallway and they stopped swinging wildly, focusing on me as soon as I became visible again.

  I noticed that the first man, whose jaw I’d broken, had started to rise from the ground. He was holding his broken jaw but otherwise appeared ready to rejoin the fight. These guys were much tougher than I had anticipated. I had tried to spare them, but it was time to stop holding back. I’d deal with the consequences later.

  I drew my revolver. The two men who had been behind me originally helped their companion up and collected his sword for him. Then the three of them turned and faced me again. The man whose jaw I’d broken was glaring at me, clearly enraged but unable to speak. The other two were more professional, their gazes measuring me for any weakness they could exploit. I had definitely underestimated them.

  I raised my revolver and fired at the man that had buffed himself and his ally. His armor flared purple as my first shot struck him, but my second bullet broke through and ripped a hole through his chest. The other two froze, turning in shock to look at what had just happened to their companion.

  I lined up my next shot, targeting the other uninjured man. When he saw me pointing my revolver at him, he didn’t try to flee or beg for his life. He just gritted his teeth and began to charge me again. I admired his courage, but it didn’t stop me from firing twice, killing him before he could make it more than three steps in my direction.

  The guy with the broken jaw didn’t seem to comprehend what had happened, staring numbly at the bodies of his two companions. I raised an eyebrow at him as I reloaded. When I finished, I pointed the gun at him, and he hastily dropped his sword and lifted his hands to show they were empty.

  “I’m sure most people would want to bargain with you to try to find out who sent you and unravel the dastardly plot that set you all in my path,” I said, “but it seems you aren’t able to talk with your broken jaw right now, and frankly, I don’t really care.”

  The man started to shake his head and look around fearfully.

  I shot him dead.

  I reloaded again and approached the last man. He lay slumped against the wall, still unconscious. Someone had to have sent the men after me, so someone would know I was the one to kill them when the bodies were eventually found. At the same time, if there wasn’t a direct witness, it would probably make it harder for someone to set me up for the murders. I debated for a moment, but ultimately I had to protect myself. I didn’t like my decision, but I couldn’t see a better way to handle the situation.

  Decision made, I drew my knife and slit the man’s throat.

  Emperor’s guard defeated—500 experience awarded.

  Emperor’s guard defeated—400 experience awarded.

  Emperor’s guard defeated—300 experience awarded.

  Emperor’s guard defeated—600 experience awarded.

  Nine hundred experience went to my Gunslinger class and nine hundred went to Duelist, my Rogue class being maxed out. That pushed my Gunslinger to level 11, giving me a +1 to my endurance. My Duelist had leveled to level 4, giving me a +1 to coordination and +1 to strength.

  I searched around and recovered my bullets to make sure nobody could examine them closely. I also searched the bodies to see if there was anything obviously magical. On the man who had originally spoken, I found a strange necklace floating above his chest. It glowed purple and I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there before when I had fought him.

  I grabbed the necklace and slipped it up and over the dead man’s neck. The necklace looked like an award of some kind, like a medal that would be given for courageous service. As I held it, the purple glow began to fade. I considered what to do with the item, but after a moment, I slipped it over my head to see if it gave me any benefits.

  As I placed the medal against my chest, it began to glow purple once again. I felt a warm sensation radiate from the item and the medal began to fade, as if turning invisible. When it disappeared completely, I tried to feel for the necklace, but it was completely gone. Puzzled, I wondered what I had just done when an announcement penetrated my mind.

  For your meritorious service, the Emperor has awarded you with a Triumph. You receive the perk Emperor’s Guard.

  Emperor’s Guard: You have been entrusted with the protection of the Emperor. You are authorized to pass the wards in the Emperor’s palace. You receive a +1 to all attributes.

  Well, that wasn’t ideal. The perk itself was great, but the fact that I had just killed one of the Emperor’s own guards was very unfortunate.

  I grabbed the bodies of the men and dragged them into one of the empty rooms nearby. As I carried them, I realized that this was my first time being close enough to a human corpse to truly inspect the body. I was already in as much trouble as I could get in around here, so I figured I might as well add some blasphemy to the list of my crimes.

  I released a series of diagnostic nanobots into the bodies, having them gather a complete picture of the people of this world’s biology.

  “Huh,” I said, reviewing the data as it started to come back. Each of the four bodies had what I could only describe as a core, basically identical to the orbs that sub-bosses and bosses had inside them. I had also noticed that the dungeons I completed called the “orbs” they rewarded “cores,” implying that orbs and cores were the same thing. Each of the men’s cores was a different size. Three of them were nearly identical, but the fourth was very small, about half the size of the others.

  I traced the differences between the bodies and compared this information to data from my world. The core wasn’t the only striking difference; these men also had secondary systems of veins that ran through their entire bodies. My nanobots traced the secondary system of veins and found that none of them connected to the heart, like veins normally did, but instead connected to the core inside each man. Their bodies had adapted to make room for these extra veins, including the thickest vein that ran from the core all the way up to each man’s brain, connecting the two.

  I finished hiding the bodies as best as I could and collected my diagnostic nanobots. This data confirmed that the people of this world did evolve to be able to use magic, as I had hypothesized when I first came here. I had expected that was true, but I was surprised by how thorough the adaptation was. The fact that their bodies had evolved to contain a magical core was extraordinary enough, but the fact that they also had a whole secondary system of veins that spread the magic of the core throughout their bodies was astounding.

  Could I ever figure out a way to adapt my own body to use magic if it required creating some kind of core inside me and an entire system of magical veins?

  I shook my head, putting the thought out of my mind for now. I didn’t have the time to dwell on that. Maybe someday, when I had more time and the luxury to investigate the matter further, I could work on a solution.

  I had already collected all of my bullets from the hallway and the men’s bodies, so I double-checked that I hadn’t left any other personal traces, then made my way back to the main floor. Once there, I went in search of another guide to bring me to the armory so I could sell my troublesome skill stone and get out of here.

  It didn’t take long to find a young guide running past me, his distinctive robes letting me know what he did around the palace. I grabbed him and ignored his protests as I made him take me to the armory. As we walked, I kept one eye on my guide while I pulled out my personal book to review my current attributes, skills, and perks.

  The most interesting thing I noticed was that my new perk that gave +1 to all of my attributes had also given me a +1 to my luck attribute. I wasn’t sure if it would have only given me a boost to my “main” attributes, but it seemed to work for any attribute I had unlocked, although it didn’t appear to be retroactive or my luck would have been higher from my achievements.

  The fact that all-attribute bonuses improved even my luck meant I would need to keep an eye out for those in the future. Gaining enhancements to the more esoteric attributes like luck seemed rare since my class didn’t seem to be awarding them.

  That also meant that my new skill Never Bring a Mob to a Duel was causing my luck to increase as well. Whenever I was attacked by multiple enemies, not only would my normal attributes increase, but I would also get luckier, increasing my chances of survival even more.

  The guide I had grabbed finally brought me to the real armory, where a guard handed me a small chest containing ninety gold orbs after I identified myself. Once I secured the chest in my backpack, the guard led me past several checkpoints manned by other guards and then ushered me into a side room protected by a thick metal door. Once the door was opened, I saw that the room was full of wooden shelving that stretched from floor to ceiling. Piled on each shelf were skill stones, more than I had thought had existed these days.

  “Take your time,” the guard told me, standing at the door and watching me. I nodded and walked to the nearest shelf to examine the stones on it. There had to be at least hundreds of skill stones in this room alone. Who knew if the Emperor had other rooms equally full of stones? In any case, the ones in here were enough to help hundreds of people survive the monsters that ravaged the city. It was an absolute tragedy that they just sat here, gathering dust. I felt outrage at the pure negligence and selfishness of the Emperor and his nobles. His city died around him, and he sat on a treasure trove of skills that could turn the tide against the hordes of monsters. It was outrageous.

  Letting out a sharp breath of frustration, I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it right now. Maybe someday, I told myself.

  For now, I just needed to find a skill I could use and then get out of here.

  Hours later, my paranoia that someone would discover the bodies I had left behind had only grown. I finally finished looking over all of the skills available. Over half were magical in nature, which made them easy to dismiss. Most of them seemed rather weak as well, mostly rudimentary spells like Firebolt, Chill, Stone Shard, or other spells like that.

  Of the physical skills, I had narrowed them all down to a couple of possibilities. First, there was a physical skill called Leeching Strike, which let me steal an attribute every time I landed a blow against an opponent. The theft lasted for the rest of combat, but the attribute that was stolen was random. That meant I couldn’t plan to steal the attributes I needed. Plus, half of my own attributes were useless to me, so the skill wasn’t quite ideal.

  The next option was a skill named Prodigy. It was a passive effect that helped a person master weapons faster. It wasn’t a flashy skill, but it applied to any weapon and seemed beneficial overall.

  The last skill I was considering was called Blood Born. It gave me a +1 to my physical attributes every time I was injured. It would synergize well with my Regeneration and high endurance attribute, since I could take countless smaller injuries and heal immediately, gaining more and more attributes if I was fighting something powerful enough to injure me. At the same time, anything that could injure me was unlikely to do a small amount of damage. If something was strong or fast enough to hit me, it would probably do a significant amount of damage that would take time for even my Regeneration to heal. It was probably better to just not get hit at all—especially since I had just taken Absolute Evasion, which had some serious anti-synergy with Blood Born. If I had known about this skill in advance, maybe I could have planned differently, but I hadn’t been so lucky.

  I decided to go with Leeching Strike. It gave me an option for longer fights against strong opponents. Over time, I would get the upper hand as I stole more and more attributes. It synergized with Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, helping me boost my attributes in a fight. Even if half the attributes were useless, if I got lucky, I could take more physical attributes, and those scaled enormously well for me.

  Once I had learned the skill, the thoroughly bored guard led me out of the armory and left me to my own devices. I considered seeing what kind of mischief I could get up to with my new Emperor’s Guard perk, but I decided it was better to get out of the palace while I still could. I traced my steps back through the hallways, easily recalling the layout of the palace. It was the middle of the night by now, and the abandoned halls were eerily silent, but thankfully nobody tried to attack.

  I was out of the palace enclave, halfway down the bridge to Sycae, when I heard a rapid set of footsteps behind me and heard someone call out, “Stop right there!”

  I turned and saw an older Varangian man. He looked like he was important, his armor more ornate than the other Varangians I had seen, and he had a remarkable number of trinkets braided into his beard and hair. He also wasn’t alone; a dark shadow-panther, just like the one I had fought in the streets of the city so long ago, stood at his side.

  “Me?” I asked as innocently as I could, although I was clearly the only one on the bridge at this hour. The shadow-panther was sniffing toward me, as if it was tracking me by scent or some other sense.

  “Yes, you,” the large Varangian said. “I have tracked you from the site of several dead guards. You are to turn yourself in to me for questioning. Surrender immediately.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told the man. “I just concluded my business in the palace and am returning to Sycae.”

  “That sounds like a refusal to obey a lawful command to me,” the man said, giving me a bloodthirsty smile. He began to approach, clearly looking for a fight. I looked around me and saw that the other guards back near the palace hadn’t approached, clearly confused about what was happening. For a moment, I debated whether I should flee or fight the man. I hadn’t used my Duel Me skill for the day, and the fact that the man had an animal companion seriously tempted me to try my luck. Maybe I would get lucky and steal whatever skill he had that let him bond with a monster like the panther.

  I reached for my revolver and whispered, “Duel Me,” activating the skill.

  Duel activated. You and your opponent have both wagered a skill. Good luck.

  I smiled as I saw the stakes of the duel.

  I drew my revolver, not wanting to take any chances against the man. I aimed and fired at him, but when my bullet got close to his chest, it curved outward, missing him entirely. I swore, getting ready to fire again, when the man blinked forward, covering the remaining twenty feet of distance between us in a split second. He grabbed my arm, jerking my revolver sideways and causing my second shot to miss as well.

  I immediately tried to break his grip on my arm, using my left hand to pull his hand from my gun hand, but unbelievably, his strength was greater than mine. He easily kept his hold on my hand and began squeezing. The pain radiated down my arm, making me unable to squeeze the trigger of my gun again.

  I was . . . surprised by how much stronger he was than me. I knew it was possible, even probable, that people had leveled classes high enough to have significantly better attributes than me. I just thought it was unlikely to find them here.

  “What skill did you just use on me? Tell me and I may not kill you for your arrogance.”

  I seriously doubted he would stop if he learned I had just used a skill that would steal one of his skills from him if he lost his fight with me. Unfortunately, I had a sick feeling that I might have bitten off more than I could chew by dueling the man.

  Seeing the two of us fighting, the guards at the end of the bridge began to run over. Several more spilled from the towers that protected the gate at the end of the bridge. My luck had definitely run out this time.

  I activated Trickster’s Dash, pushing myself backward despite the man’s grip on my arm. The power of my dash was enough to pull the man off balance, but he didn’t release my arm. A moment later, I reappeared, standing in the same place; my dash had failed.

  The man frowned and flexed his hand, crushing the bones in my forearm with a casual strength that terrified me. I screamed, losing my grip on my revolver. It fell to the ground as the man released my broken arm.

  “You have no chance against me,” he said. “Tell me what you did and come with me. This is your last warning.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I told the man, “but I will not stay to be questioned.”

  I reached for my bandolier, grabbing a Confusion Grenade and throwing it forward before the man could grab my other hand and stop me. The grenade exploded into ten more copies of itself, several of them striking the man and his panther. The man seemed unaffected, but the panther looked confused for a moment and then began to growl menacingly. The man turned, surprised, and his own pet leapt forward, tackling him to the ground.

  I didn’t stick around to watch, knowing when I was thoroughly outclassed. I grabbed my revolver with my left hand and dashed backward as far as I could, throwing myself down the bridge until I landed on the far side. I turned and began to run, using my Dash at every intersection to turn invisible and hopefully lose anyone that might be trying to follow me.

  When I was several streets away from the bridge, an announcement entered my mind.

  Winner: Akolythos! You have permanently lost your skill Shatter Armor.

  “Damn,” I muttered, cursing myself for taking the risk of dueling the Varangian. One of the downsides to my Duel Me skill was that I had to use it at the start of a fight, so I never really knew if the person or creature I was challenging was more powerful than me. By nature, the skill was a gamble, and this time, I hadn’t felt that sense of luck I had felt in the past, so I probably shouldn’t have taken the risk. The skill was just so tempting to use against interesting people because they would have the best things to steal . . . but obviously, that backfired this time and cost me one of my very few skills. I was lucky it hadn’t been an even worse loss, like my Regeneration.

  And now I might have not just the priest coming after me but some of the Emperor’s guards as well. It was time to get out of the city for a bit to let things cool down. I wandered the streets of Sycae until morning came and then spent a few days across the water, not wanting the panther to track me back to Constans or the inn we stayed in. When I returned, I would plan my expedition to the north to see what I could find out about those monks who had a class that might help me deal with magic better.