A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

Yes, there were, indeed, books. Sadly, most of them were “picture books” depicting things that were entirely useless to me and I shall speak no more of, and the others were journals. Having read said journals with Omniscience, I concluded that this party didn’t have much in the way of brain cells. Alas, it appeared that I would have to come up with my own solution to figuring out each of the advanced magics, though it was quite interesting to read through that tough archer’s poetry. I’d expected it to be raunchy, but instead he was very… floral.

I was going to put that off for now, though. Instead, I was going to grind my Boons again.

“Gyah!” Uban squealed in a voice that was far too high for him, stumbling forward. “I can see why Lady Azrael declined to submit herself to this degradation.”

I tugged on my bond to him again, and he fell flat with an Oof! “I think you’re both just big babies. It can’t be that bad.”

The drake picked himself back up from the ground and glared at me. "While I may have been born a mere few weeks ago, I am not a baby."

Once more, the big dragon was brought to the floor by my Call Through Space Boon, and snarled at me. "Were you not my creator, I would bisect you!"

"I should hope so. After all, what sort of guard dragon would you be if you just let people waltz in through the front door?”

He flared his nostrils in frustration. “I must insist that you find another creature to subject to this torment! You have hundreds, so why me?!”

Hmm. He made a good point, I suppose.

I looked down at my earlier floors, targeting a Twinscale pair and using my new Boon on them instead. Their decreased mass and energy density made them much more vulnerable to my tugging. I laughed when I saw the confused lizards “jump” into the air.

I tried it on the Nailwolves too, but they moved even less than Uban. Their spatial density simply refused to budge, and even if I pulled with all of my might, they would simply block my Spatium from connecting with them through the bond. I’d never experienced anything like it before, but found it quite interesting. I could have commanded them to stop, but they’d taught me something interesting so I decided to leave them alone. The Antigos, though, were fair game.

The Boon also worked on physical objects. That made sense, since the base Calling Skill did as well, but I’d just never had Boons to let me use their connections. Well, actually, now that I knew how the mechanics of the Skill actually worked, I could probably Call just about anything I wanted to me as long as I had an adequate bond. Still, it was fun to watch things fly around the room as if thrown by poltergeists.

Something else that was interesting about the Boon is that it didn’t particularly care about who was being pulled where, only that the distance the bond had to stretch was shortened. Targeting objects with greater spatial density than myself would cause me to be the one who was sent flying. I was a little like Spider Man, except I was dead, couldn’t cling to walls, didn’t have super strength, didn’t have webs, and was using magic. Okay, so nothing like Spider Man, really. It was still cool, though.

Eventually, my Phylactery showed that I’d hit level 5 with the Boon, and I decided to move on. It wasn’t a hard ability to use, but I could definitely see why it was a capstone. Most creatures and objects that aren’t the size of buildings would have significantly less spatial density than I, considering that I used Spatium in the creation of my bodies.

Speaking of, I needed to level Mental Shield–though I felt I could wait on that one for now–Clone, Necrotic Restoration, Notions, Seaming and Sympathetic Bonding. Now, what one method could use as many of those as possible at once? Eventually, I came up with an answer, and dismissed both my clones and my current body.

For the shape of this next one, I chose to stick with the design of a bare skeleton. It was a bit nostalgic, considering that I hadn’t taken such a form since leaving the cave I’d originally been… Summoned to? Spawned in? Whatever. It had been a while, and it felt like I was returning to my roots.

Using Seaming, I created another layer of reality, but instead of covering the whole tower with it, I focused on just this top floor. Eventually, it was finished, and I got to work on the second part of my plan.

First, I tried to slowly, painstakingly move my Phylactery through a portal and into that Seam, but I found that my Domain started to weaken the moment that it passed through, so I quickly brought it back and strengthened my foundations. Even then, however, a bit of influence close to the camp of mortals was lost, as they seemed to have some Domain of their own. I inspected it, and was outraged to find that this aura was not only preventing my Spread Undeath Boon from functioning properly, but it was also weakening the natural Death in the air, meaning that they could have normal people in the Dead Belt.

With every day that passed, my urge to slaughter these people grew stronger, but I withheld myself. Fairness was important to me, and the last dungeon raid had already proven that going against that value of mine would suck. Even if I was undead, I had once been a mortal, and I suppose that there’s some sort of phantom pain thing going on, except with morality instead.

Maybe this is why all those rituals to make people into liches in games were so awful? Sacrificing 100 infants for your own immortality would most certainly kill off any virtue left inside of you. That did say something about me, though, since I was completely fine with just killing people. Then again, perhaps that was simply because I was an undead now? Azrael felt like a person to me, and I didn’t want her to die, but humans? Meh.

Anyways, back to my evil plan to net me dozens of Boon levels in a single go.

Not being able to get my Phylactery into the Seam did suck a little, but it was fine. I’d already come up with another idea to mix that Boon into what I was about to do.

First off, I needed a body. I concentrated on my energies, and started to form a skeleton at a pace I knew my Mentum Generator could keep up with. Once Necrosis, Spatium, and Mentum had all been blended together properly and compacted, I was shunted out of my Phylactery and into the body. Immediately, I started using Clone, and a copy of this body started to take shape. As it was going, though, I started to make a Notion all across it. Ever since I’d gotten Seam, I’d become aware that I didn’t have access to all of the dimensions used for Space magic, and this was my first attempt at putting something on a different axis of reality while still having it in this one.

Basically, I was taking what Seaming did and going halfsies on it, putting the threads just far enough from this plane that they wouldn’t be locked into place, but close enough that they could still affect it. Surprisingly, it worked, and I managed to make the body rest on a Notion that spread over it completely, one that was similar to a Seam in that it was separated by some invisible 4th dimension, but dissimilar in that it was also close enough to be attached to the skeleton I was making in this world.

It took an extra-long time to form this Clone, since I had to use another Boon at the same time and make sure I didn’t lose control of either, but it was eventually finished. At that point, I locked onto the Notion I had used to give the spare body some size in the fourth dimension, forming a Seam on top of it, making sure that it didn’t replicate the skeleton, but instead formed an empty space.

It worked. With a grin on my face, I started the process again, except this time I formed the body inside the Seam of the previous one. Once it was finished, I tried to mimic what the Nailwolves had displayed previously, condensing Spatium into a tiny point in the air and launching it at the Clone.

A hole appeared in its body, and the fraction of consciousness that I'd infused into it lost control of the energy, allowing it to disperse. That, in turn, caused a chain reaction of events. The Notion broke, causing the Seam attached to it to unfold. Luckily, it seemed that Seams breaking apart didn’t simply force the objects within to vanish. Instead, the clone that had been stored inside the other Clone popped out, completely fine.

I grinned, realizing what this would look like for people. Imagine landing the killing blow on a lich, turning them to dust, but right before you can go hunt down their Phylactery, they simply pop back into existence. They would seem to be immortal, would they not? At least, more immortal than a lich already was. Indestructible? That’s better.

Using the clone in front of me as a base for the next experiment, I made two Seams instead of just one. I then formed a Clone in each, with the same Notion method as before. With one, I created two more Seams, but for the other, I opened a small portal on the ribcage of both of the Clones, just large enough to see a tiny bit of the bone, Notching it to each of the skeletons.

Mental energy and Spatium flowed out of me as I used Sympathetic Bonding to link the two Clones. The knot was formed, the casing stripped, and soon, the two would be subject to the same forces. I took out my Notches and closed the portal, and found that the bond remained in place.

When I made a minute nick on the Clone that was in this reality, though, the other did not replicate it. After a moment of consideration, I decided that this was because the energies couldn’t pass through to the other side without a portal allowing it to happen. My solution for this was, of course, more experimentation.

I had made Folds that allowed physical objects and energy to pass through, but what if I wanted to restrict that, only allowing one of the two? Sadly, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t separate the two. It seemed that Earth physics won this one; no matter how hard I tried, I could not separate energy and matter. Energy required matter to exist, and matter required energy to move.

With this knowledge, I submitted to my fate and simply opened another tiny Fold inside the ribcages of the two Clones and used a bit of Necrotic Restoration to ensure that they were both in matching conditions. Their connection was reestablished, and I pondered over how I could improve this system even further. Currently, I was extra durable, and if I were somehow destroyed in a single hit, I would simply pop into the same place as my Clone was tossed out of the breaking Seam.

What about passive regeneration? Sure, I had a Boon for it, but did I really want to be focusing on healing myself in a combat situation? With that in mind, I created a Wisp with the knowledge of how to use Necrotic Restoration, instructing it to use its semi-intangibility to enter the Clone’s space and heal it whenever it was damaged. It did so, and this new Clone now had double the durability, the ability to rise from its own ashes like a phoenix, and healing-over-time. It was a tank that could ignore small damage that would be quickly healed and it was also immune to one-shots.

Actually, I guess it was more accurate to say that I would be. This was actually a great justification for me to act as something of a final boss. I still wanted to play fair, as long as people didn’t come with the intention to actually kill me using unfair means, of course, and this was a good step towards that. I could make minor modifications to the different Clones and set it up as a multi-phase boss fight.

Hmm. That sounds pretty fun, but for now I’ll just make myself an unkillable god.

I kept stacking more layers onto the Clone chain I had going on. The original Clone had two Seams, each holding one Clone. The first would be bound to the Clone with Sympathetic Bonding and would have a Restoration Wisp alongside it, reinforcing and healing the original Clone. The second would have another Clone with the same specs as the first, two Seams, one attached with Bonding and holding a Restoration Wisp and the other with two Seams.

After five links of this chain, I felt my control over the Clones I was making grow tenuous, and the amount of my soul I’d lost was becoming pretty noticeable. I stopped trying to make myself into an invincible killing machine and looked over my Phylactery to check on what improvements I’d made.

Seif Ambrose

Spatial Lich 5 (Max, Specialization Available)

Phylactery 5 (Max)

Undead Possession 8

Reconstitution 7

Incorporate Phylactery 6

Mental Shield 0

Mentum Generator 8

Clone 6

Necrosis Manipulation 5 (Max)

Deadsight 7

Animate Necrosis 8

Shape Necrosis 5

Create Undead 9

Necrotic Restoration 4

Construct Consciousness 10

Domain of Undeath 5 (Max)

Spread Undeath 9

Mold Terrain 10

Transmute 8

Omnipresence 7

Omniscience 5

Empowered Control 5

Spatium Manipulation 5 (Max)

Delinear Sight 7

Stitching 8

Folding 6

Notions 6

Notching 8

Seaming 4

Calling 5 (Max)

Taglock 6

Nomantic Call 5

Bondsight 7

Alter Bond 6

Sympathetic Bonding 6

Call Through Space 5

Enhancements: Willpower x5

Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo, Arachnomicon, Drachma’Uban

That's pretty good, but I should check on the situation with the humans before I get completely sucked into my work.

I looked out at the human camp with Omnipresence and found that it had gone mostly quiet. In fact, I could only see one person. In an unfortunate turn of events, he could see me, too.

"I presume that you are the lich liege of this land?" His voice was old and tired, but firm, as though his words were made of solid steel, unbreakable. When I saw that he was the Soothen user I'd encountered before, I'd intended to leave straight away, but I was intrigued by his words, so I stuck around.

"I see that your mental avatar is incapable of speech. That will be fine. I will speak plainly." He took a deep breath before continuing. "You have my thanks for handling the issue of the man-pup. His pride has been thoroughly crushed, and the work required to destroy the remainder of his confidence has significantly diminished. Our caravan will be retreating soon. Regarding this, I have two statements.

"First, I will be liberating certain individuals. You may consider them slaves. I would like to request that you keep them safe, but death is preferable to the scion's current plans for them." His expression was stone-cold as he continued, "Second, I will be returning. I am nearing the end of my life, and I require something you have: Immortality. I am not done with this realm just yet. I tell you this as a warning: Prepare yourself. I believe that everyone should be given a chance to prove that their path in Fate's grand design is higher than my own. This is yours.

"I will give you but a single year. At that time, I will siege your tower." A ball of energy appeared in each of his hands. The first was the same Soothen power as before, whereas the other seemed to burn the magic in the air itself, warping space, air… everything, its influence turning even the threads of reality into smoke.

Then, my Omnipresence was forcefully closed, and I was forced to stare at the wall, coming to the horrifying realization that he'd been using two combination energies at the same time. A man who was at least level 25 was right at my doorstep, and would be coming for my head in a year's time. Is this how Sir Gawain felt when the Green Knight suddenly picked up his head and walked away?

I'd felt pretty motivated to work on my own level before, but now there was an actual deadline on my self-empowerment. I had to beat… that, or he'd do… well something to me. I can only assume that his implication of stealing my immortality meant that he intended to kill me.

I checked on the spot again with my Omnipresence once I felt I could again, but the man was gone. "Least he could've done was leave his name," I grumbled.

I went upstairs, where Azrael had returned once it was clear that we were safe.

"Hey, you need something?" She greeted me with a smile. "And what's with the new look?"

I shook my head regretfully. "I'm sorry, but could you keep an eye out for when the humans leave? I need to do something once they're gone."

"Huh? How do you know they're leaving? I haven't seen a thing."

"I checked on their camp a minute ago," I explained, "A… mage, he saw me and, well, he told me some things."

One of her eyebrows curved upward. "He saw you? What did he say?"

"Well, apparently that guy who teleported out of here was some kind of noble. I guess we scared him off, and now they're leaving." I scratched my head, then remembered that I'd just shed my regular skin again, and was just clawing at bones that were made of pure energy. "He–the mage, I mean–is going to be freeing some… well, I think they're slaves. That's what he made it sound like, at least."

Azrael frowned at me. "And why is that our problem?"

"Originally, I thought the same, but look at it this way: if we could set up a town here and make sure that they were indebted to us and frequently fought against the monsters in the tower, we could reduce the chances that any armies that come here would want to kill us. Who's going to destroy a tower that's protecting and supplying a weak, feeble populous, right?"

"The Church of Shamsum," she started blandly.

"Fair point," I admitted, "But it can't hurt our chances, right?"

Azzy thought it over, then acquiesced. "I'll let you know, then."