Chapter 32 - Jim

  Half a year ago:

  When I woke up, I didn’t remember anything after the tentacle receded. I opened my eyes and saw a tree canopy. Skadi was sleeping next to me, while Val was reading a book. Once she noticed that I was awake she smiled and said: “Congratulations! You finished your first Quest, cleared your first Dungeon, and met your first extra dimensional entity.” The tentacle thing I presumed. “Now go on and look at your notifications. I didn’t pull you out of there to not hear about the juicy rewards.” I was happy to oblige.

  I asked Val about the name change of my class. She chuckled and said: “You can change your species. That means you could also change your biological sex if you want to. We’ll if you ever cut up a female and learned how the opposite side of naughty bits functions. At this point the system considers you to not have an inherent race or sex, so it uses gender neutral language. I am pretty sure you can change that if you focus on it.”

  That made some sense, although I really didn’t know how to change genitals, and I really didn’t want to kidnap and cut up a woman just to find out. Anyway, my ego wasn’t fragile enough to be rattled by the revelation that the system didn’t consider me as ‘male’ anymore. I knew who I was, so I continued.

  So that perk works retroactively. But why 16? One Mage and six [Rangers] that is only … oh … It must also count the [Ranger] I kidnapped from the Village. I killed him after my Oath that’s right.

  That was ominous as all hell. But at least it wasn’t obviously negative.

  Woah. That was not expected. When did I eat a dungeon heart? I should ask Val after this.

  That’s nice, but I shouldn’t look at more, before I forget to ask my questions.

  “Hey, Val? What exactly happened after the tentacle pulled out? I have a few weird things here.”

  “You know I figured there was a 50/50 chance you would just forget about that when you looked at your new toys.” She smiled warmly and opened her book to me. A scene from the ritual chamber played in its pages. It started right after the tentacles retreated. Even in a recording those green glowing things gave me the creeps.

  After they went away Skadi went to sleep, while I stood still, staring into the distance. Then I said:

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

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  I had a green-ish glow in my eyes. And I promptly started to devour the corpses around myself, [Rangers], the [Mage] and the dead villagers. Not ‘eat’, devour. Hair, clothes, bones. Everything. I even licked all the blood off the floor.

  After the floor was spotless, I stood up and another noise escaped from my mouth.

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  At this point the dungeon heart started to manifest above the point where the dungeon master’s corpse used to be. The thing was as big as a human head and was softly glowing blue with spots of green.I swallowed it in one bite. I must have used [Shapeshifting] to get that thing in my mouth. When I swallowed the dungeon heart I finally looked satisfied and collapsed right then and there.

  “So that green stuff - ‘Eldritch’ I guess - took possession of me? Why did it let go?”

  Val looked somewhat pleased. “Good question! My best guess is that they like you and ‘safe’ absorption of that dungeon heart was a gift of sorts.” she continued much more quietly “or an investment.” Interesting. I should probably look at the classes now.

  Only two of those were interesting.

  “Hey Val, class descriptions aren't actually prophetic, are they?”

  Val looked up from her book. “Got something flashy, huh? Don’t get your hopes up. Those things just tell you the extreme scenario. They aren’t even all that accurate most of the time. It still all depends on the person.”

  Hmm, so “give up your sanity” isn’t actually as bad as it sounds, is it?

  Well then I know what I am going to take.

  I could feel myself changing. And it felt so … so … good. Like all my troubles fell off my shoulders. Finally I could just do what I liked. Kill. Devour. Thrive.

  My flesh was yielding to my will, my bones became weapons. Thinking of walking and walking became the same thing. The grass around me began to rot. Skadi had already died. Perfect, my first meal in this new form. She was delicious. Like nothing I’ve ever tasted. I needed more. So much more. And the perfect snack was right beside me. I launched a couple dozen tentacles at Valeria, she would soon join Skadi in strengthening the great and terrible being I had become. Only my tentacles bounced off of some invisible wall.

  “Seriously? You took the insanity Class? Are you completely … Wait. That was what you were talking about? I thought you meant the Apex one. Gods and Demons you are stupid.”

  Her babbling was irrelevant. I would break this barrier, I would break her, I would break the world. Becoming the End was my Destiny and I would not be denied.

  Val’s POV:

  That Idiot seriously did the one thing she hadn’t anticipated.The chances were no more than a rounding error. Oh well, back to scouting new talent. Just have to crush this reject. She tightened his cage, but it would not compress completely. She was using an eighth tier Spell, how could a level 10 resist? Unless the Great old ones had imbued him with more potential than she anticipated. Maybe she could just leave him here? His Aura couldn’t penetrate the cage. Maybe she could starve him out. On the other hand, she couldn’t leave him alone like this. She would have to bite the sour apple on this one. She put a 3x3x3 metres area, including her and Jim into a time dilation field. Two hundred times should be good. She could wait the 10 years he would likely take to starve and still not lose more than three weeks objective time.

  After about a day in this field, she could feel the Mana being disturbed. Some kind of spatial magic. But who could be casting something in here. Wait! This isn’t spatial. It’s dimensional. Someone is trying to pull me out of this reality. Not as long as I have something to say. She reversed the mana flow in her dilation spell, slowing time to 0.5% of normal speed. Enough time to unravel what exactly was being tried here.

  Two hours subjective time later:

  That’s it. Someone is trying to transport Jim. Along for the ride is a tranquilising spell, some heavy illusion work, a bunch of binding enchantments and some mind control spell. Well, there is no way they get all that through me. Although I’ll allow the transportation spell. If someone wants to take Jim off my hands, then I will gladly oblige.

  Jim’s POV:

  Some weird magic stuff happened while I was railing against my cage. I didn’t know what was happening. After it was finished I was standing in some ritual circle. Just like the one I had met my destiny in, two days ago. Some cultist looking humans were standing around. One of them approached me and said: “Kneel!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re funny! I’ll let you live. Tell all you meet that the end has come.” Then I turned to the others. What a lovely buffet.