James’s body was drained almost to the last drop in terms of Health, despite Mina and Yulia’s best efforts to heal him, but his Mana pools were completely full.

  He could have tried to heal himself with Laying on Hands, but considering that he had passive healing Skills already, and Mina and Yulia had spent hours using magic to try and patch him up, he guessed that the process would not be rushed by adding mediocre self-healing efforts.

  Instead of wasting Mana trying to repair his broken body, James began testing out his new Skill. First, he used Basic Elemental Magic: Earth to lift the floor and move a mirror that his wife had set up across the room until it was positioned on a raised platform, poised so that James could see his full frame reflected.

  Then he started casting.

  First, it was picking apart the floor with his earth magic, seeing how many rocks he could levitate at once. But the better demonstration of his new abilities was when he started using Basic Elemental Magic: Water.

  That Skill involved him creating water from nothing, in a quantity dependent on the amount of Mana used, so it was easy to play around with it while also gauging the cost of each new orb of water conjured.

  The combination of his Elementalist Talent and the Hidden Magic Skill meant that water simply appeared as soon as James willed it, with no glow of Mana, and then moved according to his whim.

  This really feels magical, he thought, as he ordered the collective ball of water to swirl around in circles over his head. It was almost like psychic power. Magic used at the speed of thought.

  He was very cognizant of the fact that his Silencer Title meant that in an actual fight with an average Mage type, he would likely be the only one able to use magic—since unlike most Mages, he did not require chanting.

  A slow smile spread across his face as the water spun faster and faster in its arc overhead, while he watched his Mana barely decrease.

  As soon as he allowed the ball of water to move with its own inertia, he noticed, his Mana started to quickly refill itself, as he would have expected from his Rapid Recovery Skill. He observed that when he stopped casting, the rate of recovery seemed to be about 36 points of Mana every ten seconds.

  At that rate, my entire massive pool of Mana could be refilled in three hours, he estimated. If Rapid Recovery is doing something similar with Health and Stamina, then the only reason for my failure to recover must be some form of System-imposed penalty for anyone caught within the radius of the attack that destroyed Vidarr’s avatar.

  As James was patting himself on the back for his deduction and thinking about what this might mean for the next steps in his recovery, he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of the room.

  His eyes darted after it, narrowed, and then spied the source.

  “Is that you, Hester?” he asked quietly.

  The little spider stopped crawling around for a moment.

  “It’s me, sir,” she said in a tired but pleased voice. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling a bit better.”

  “I was going to say the same to you!” James replied.

  They shared a quick laugh, and Hester explained that she had actually recovered enough from laying her eggs to regain consciousness around the time that Mina brought his seemingly lifeless body back to the room.

  Seeing the situation, however, the spider had chosen not to distract Mina and Yulia as the sisters began the healing process. Instead, she entered her sleep-like state and continued recovering her own energy until she sensed James moving around on his own.

  James, in turn, explained all that had happened while his chronicler was unconscious.

  “Wow, so you were interacting with a god all this time, huh?” Hester said awkwardly. “Crazy stuff. I had no idea…”

  James was not wearing the Ring of Lies, but his personal bullshit detector started blaring loudly.

  “So, you knew?” he asked bluntly.

  “Lord Anansi telling me anything at all about a mysterious visitor who you were unable to Identify gave it away,” she replied. “I couldn’t be sure, but I did have an inkling. The System polices this fairly strictly, I think, and if I had voiced my suspicion, it’s possible that he would have been booted sooner.”

  “Hm.” James was not happy to be the last to know anything, but he decided it would let it slide this time. “How was the egg-laying process?”

  “It was magical, sir,” Hester said in a deadpan that made James laugh.

  Soon, they were both chuckling quietly, any ill-feeling forgotten.

  “This does shorten my lifespan, though,” Hester admitted.

  “How long?” James asked sharply.

  “I probably have about a year left with you, maybe a little more or a little less,” the spider replied, trying to affect nonchalance. James could hear the slight melancholy in her tone.

  “That’s terrible, Hester,” James said quietly.

  “I knew what I was signing up for when I asked for this assignment,” she replied. “And you don’t have to worry about my duties going unfulfilled. By the time I pass, I’ll have trained my children to replace me and passed on your whole story to them. I promise—”

  “That’s not what I was worried about,” James said, cutting her off.

  “Yes, I know, sir.” Hester let out a tiny spider sigh. “Believe it or not, I’m not as upset about it as you probably are. Spiders have a different sense of mortality. Every day, there’s a chance to get eaten. Every year is a much more meaningful decrease in our lifespans than it is for you—even if we have not had the honor of accepting work that is explicitly expected to shorten it.”

  “That’s true…” James said. He allowed his voice to trail off. For once, he felt at a loss for words. Yes, his Skills would probably give him exactly the correct words to say to sound like he gave a damn about Hester’s apparent impending death, but he did not want to signal anything right now. He was actually upset, and he imagined she felt the same way.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Well, I just wanted to check in on you and see how you were doing,” Hester said quietly. “And I’m glad we had this chat, painful though it was. I knew it had to happen eventually.”

  James nodded.

  “I’ll go back to resting now,” Hester added.

  Get well soon, James thought. But of course he couldn’t say that. The spider was dying, after all. Not getting well.

  “I’ll go back to optimizing myself,” he said after a moment. “When you feel well enough, you go back behind my ear, all right? It feels cold without you there. Bring your little ones, too. I might as well get to know them sooner rather than later.”

  Hester waited a moment before responding with a simple, “Yes, sir.”

  James waited for her to go back to her sleep-like state before he finished manipulating the water. It had held still, hovering in the air, through the entire conversation with the spider, and James was now ready to stop fooling around with that and return to further improving his Skills.

  He pulled the water through the air with his mind until it was right above his head, and then he slowly drank it all down.

  Then he opened his Status screen again, and he began considering what to do with some Skills that were borderline useless presently.

  Thick Skin, Soul Bind, Blame Avoidance, Spellbinding Words, and Compulsion were all abilities he wanted to get rid of for one reason or another. He suspected Thick Skin would not make him noticeably safer and more durable than he already was. Soul Bind was too limited by requiring him to touch another being and anchor them in place by holding their soul still. Blame Avoidance simply seemed unnecessary with his other political management Skills. Spellbinding Words was redundant with his other verbal Skills.

  And lastly, Compulsion was just loathsome. James had wanted an excuse to be rid of it for some time. Maybe today would be the day.

  He started experimenting with Skill Fusion again.

  The first temporary combination he made was Compulsion with Spellbinding Words. That resulted in a Skill called Soul-Swaying Speech. It was basically Compulsion, if applied by speaking rather than eye contact and usable on a mass audience.

  Powerful but creepy, he thought. Just like Compulsion…

  He could not immediately discount the value of the Skill, but he defused it nevertheless. If he could find something a little less coercive, he would prefer a slightly less transparently evil Skill. Controlling masses of mind-controlled minions through speech was hardly compatible with the hands-off way he wanted to perform most of his leadership, anyway. If anything, James was politically too attached to liberty for his own good, considering that he was currently an absolute monarch.

  He tried fusing Soul Bind and Otherworldly Shriek next, which resulted in Soul-Shattering Shriek. It was exactly the sort of Skill he had expected to generate with that Skill Fusion, though considering that it could destroy the hearers’ souls, there were obvious problems with it.

  James had heard his own voice when he performed the Otherworldly Shriek. It was loud. This meant that he could only use this Skill if he was fighting by himself against large numbers of enemies who had the ability to hear him. If there were any allies nearby, James might well rend their souls to pieces with his voice.

  Nope, next…

  The next Skill Fusion felt more promising.

  Compulsion and Soul Bind combined to make Soul-Freezing Gaze, and James knew almost immediately that the Skill was a keeper.

  [Soul-Freezing Gaze: Paralyze an enemy’s body by freezing their very soul. Requires eye contact. Requires that the user’s Will overpower the target’s.]

  That will be a great tool for finishing an opponent off, he thought. Depending on how paralyzing it actually is, I might even be able to kill someone with a glance, if they just stop breathing… Plus, the description doesn’t even mention it consuming any resources!

  The next winning combination in James’s mind was Spellbinding Words with Otherworldly Shriek. The two Skills fused into Hypnotic Shriek.

  [Hypnotic Shriek: Release a powerful shriek that penetrates the hearers’ bodies and minds. The sound has a probability of causing confusion, breaking the enemy’s will to fight, or causing enemies to fight among themselves or fail to defend themselves effectively. Effectiveness varies with the user’s Charisma, Will, and Strength. Consumes Mana and Stamina.]

  While less straightforward and probably less reliable than Soul-Freezing Gaze, this was a straightforward improvement to the Otherworldly Shriek Skill, and it did not come with any notable downsides. James decided he would keep this.

  Next, to replace the Natural Camouflage Skill that he had already disposed of, James used Basic Non-Elemental Magic to form a small invisible hand, he took his magic satchel, and he removed his Shapechanger’s Cloak. He had Pillaged the item from the Alpha Desert Coyote and hardly used it since departing Orientation. Now the invisible hand placed the cloak over James’s lap, and he used Skill Transfer to remove the Skills inside it and add them to his body—rendering the cloak nothing but a bit of cloth.

  Now I have Shapechange and Invisibility. Much better than just sort of blending in with rocks and other environmental objects sometimes.

  Finally, James decided to combine Blame Avoidance, Thick Skin, and Basic Non-Elemental Magic. The Basic Non-Elemental Magic Skill was useful, as James’s use of it just now had shown. However, the uses were fairly niche; it was unlikely that he would spend much of his life paralyzed. Basic Non-Elemental Magic did not seem likely, considering the times he had used it, to be more potent than other magic in combat. And unlike his other magic skills, it was not boosted by his Elementalist Talent, which meant that it would slowly lose efficacy relative to his elemental magic Skills.

  Plus, at this point, James was having a lot of fun playing with Skill Fusion. He wondered why he had been so reluctant to see any Skills disappear permanently before. He could get most of these back with Pillage eventually anyway.

  The result of this Skill Fusion was Passive Improbable Evasion.

  [Passive Improbable Evasion: You have attained an aura of mystical power that surrounds you constantly, like a second skin. Even without you consciously engaging in self-defense, such power makes it difficult to harm you. Deflects nearby movement that registers as aggressive toward the user, even if the user is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Consumes Mana when activated.]

  I bet that Skill gains experience whenever someone takes a swing or a shot at me, James, thought, amused. So it’ll be leveling up pretty much as soon as I can get out of bed. And I don’t have to worry so much about not being healed yet. Weak attacks, at least, will be unable to touch me.

  Still enthused after his repeated apparent successes, James decided that he was not done after all.

  He thought he could at least try to look for another Skill or two that he couldn’t use—or that could enhance each other with Skill Fusion.

  He spent a few minutes scouring his Skill sheet before finally making his selections.

  He picked the Dense Bones Skill, which he had seen no real use for. He already had bones strong enough for him to cave in the skulls of the ogres that he acquired the Skill from, after all, and he now had a permanent passive defensive ability.

  And he fused it with Illusion Magic. He hoped that the result would strengthen Illusion Magic somehow, but the actual outcome was far better than he could have imagined.

  [Complete Illusion Magic: Grants the ability to craft illusions that are more real than reality, affecting all senses of the target(s). Illusions have a non-zero probability of physical effect on the world, which increases with levels. Costs mana.]

  Wow. This might be the final form of Illusion Magic, he thought.

  You are going to wreak havoc with that Skill, master, Roscuro whispered in James’s ear. I cannot wait to see how you apply it to masses of enemies…

  That’s right, James replied. From now on, reality for my enemies is whatever I want it to be…

  A slow smile crept across his face.

  Then the door opened, and a light fell across the Fisher King and the bedspread.

  “James?” Mina’s voice rang through the air. “Are you awake? There’s something I wanted to discuss with you…”