Right, okay, ow. Turns out spending years shuffling papers instead of cracking skulls makes you a little rusty. Like, leave-it-out-in-the-rain-for-a-decade rusty. Seriously?
All those brutal training sessions, all that spilled blood, and my brain picks now to forget which end of the fist goes forward? Fantastic.
But as Ronald swung the datapad, something deeper, older, surged through me. Something buried deep under all the research notes and lab protocols. Something that I had buried.
Call it instinct. Call it muscle memory honed in brutal training yards and desperate skirmishes I thought I''d left behind.
[ [ D ] Astral Perception ]
Suddenly, the world went sharp. Like switching from grainy VHS to 4K Ultra HD. The flashing red emergency lights stopped being annoying rave strobes and became... useful? Huh. Didn''t see that coming. This old skill I swore I wouldn''t touch again... guess promises are made to be broken when someone''s trying to rearrange your face.
[ [ D ] Phantom Surge ]
Agility +1000!
A faint shimmer of mana flared inside my body and enveloped my legs for a fraction of a second. It wasn''t much, just a tiny burst of extra agility.
The big, fancy active wards hummed, probably trying to figure out what that little blip was, but gave up pretty quickly.
See, that''s the flaw in these wide-area formations – they''re great at stopping ambient mana, but the mana inside body could be easily used. Even the fancy military-grade ones. Suckers.
It was just enough juice. I twisted, throwing myself sideways in a roll that was probably way less graceful than I imagined. The heavy datapad crunched into the floor right where my skull had been milliseconds before, cracking the tile like an egg.
Ronald grunted in frustration, recovering quickly. He kicked out, aiming for my ribs. I scrambled backward on hands and feet, crab-walking through the debris, loose papers sticking to my palms.
My hand brushed against something solid – a thick book on Blood Hexes. Heavy. Good weight. Thump-thump material.
He lunged again, relentless, moving low and fast. One hand clawed for my throat, the other balled into a fist driving towards my gut. No finesse, just brute force fueled by desperation.
I swung the book in a wide, desperate arc. He deflected it easily with his forearm, the impact jarring my wrist.
He was faster, stronger, clearly keeping his skills sharp while mine had dulled. He grabbed the front of my lab coat, hauling me towards him. His fist drew back.
Close quarters. Too close. No room to maneuver. Trapped between him and a sturdy metal workbench littered with clamps and wires. His knuckles were white. His breath hissed between clenched teeth.
Think! Use the environment!
My eyes darted – vials (too fragile), loose cables (too thin), a discarded chocolate tube (useless). Panic clawed at my throat. No easy outs. It had to be raw power.
[ [ D ] Phantom Surge ]
Strength +1000!
[ [ D ] Phantom Surge ]
Strength +1000!
[ [ D ] Phantom Surge ]
Strength +1000!
Skill Limits Reached!
Skill Cooldown: 9 Minutes 59 Seconds
A wave of heat flooded my right arm, tingling, tightening the muscles, like static electricity building to an explosive discharge. Power crested, a humming pressure beneath my skin, straining at some unseen limit.
As Ronald''s fist shot towards my face, I didn''t block. Instead, I lunged forward, inside his guard, using my enhanced grip to seize the wrist of his attacking arm.
His eyes widened, shock warring with fury at the impossible strength halting his blow mid-strike. I didn''t give him time to process. Using his own forward momentum, I twisted hard, leveraging his weight against his joint. Simultaneously, my free hand slammed flat against his chest, shoving him backward, off balance. He stumbled, his captured arm wrenched at a brutal angle.
He roared, a strangled sound of pain and rage, trying to rip his arm free, but the surge-enhanced grip held like forged steel. With a grunt, I slammed his captured hand – wrist-first – down hard onto the unforgiving metal edge of the workbench.
CRACK!
The sound was sickeningly loud in the enclosed space, followed immediately by his high-pitched scream of agony. He instinctively recoiled, clutching the mangled wrist, his attack forgotten in a wave of blinding pain.
That was the moment. The surge was already fading, the intense tingling receding from my arm, but the opening was there. Before he could recover, before the pain fully translated back into coherent rage, I moved.
I hooked my leg behind his, dropped my weight, and drove my shoulder into his chest. We crashed to the floor together amidst the scattered debris, me landing on top. His head hit the ground with a dull thud.
He thrashed beneath me, trying to throw me off, his good hand clawing at my face. But the fight was draining out of him, the shock and pain taking their toll. I pinned his arms with my knees, my heart pounding like a drum against my ribs.
My hand, still tingling slightly from the [ Phantom Surge ], clamped around his throat. Not hard enough to crush, just enough to restrict air, to assert dominance. Control.
"Yield," I gasped, my voice ragged. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a tremor in my hands.
He struggled for another moment, his eyes wild in the red light, then went limp, his body shuddering.
Just as the tension began to ebb, a new sound joined the klaxon''s wail.
Hisss…
We all looked up as white gas began to spill from the ceiling vents, swirling like frost-kissed mist under the red lights. It was almost pretty. Almost.
“That’s—” Silas started.
“Containment gas,” Isabel and I said in unison.
I yanked my coat up over my mouth, but it was too late. The sweetness hit my tongue. A slow, syrupy warmth crept down my throat.
And then the scent registered.
Thick. Sticky. That metallic tang under the wave of artificial mint. My muscles knew it before my conscious mind caught up. They locked, spasming. [ [ S ] Dreamveil ]
My legs turned to jelly.
Isabel slammed back against the glowing terminal nearby, her body convulsing. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly at the runes etched there, smearing the light, breaking the sequence. A last, futile act of defiance.
They only use this on monsters, The world tilted sideways. I never thought it’d be used on me.
I should be safe. I’m on the Empress’s side…
…Aren’t I?
Then the darkness consumed me.
<hr>
The next time I opened my eyes, bam, here I was.
Dead.
In a void so complete it made the concept of light feel like a childish joke.
Dead. When my side, my Empress, was supposedly in control. Did she sign off on this? The thought landed like a lead weight in my stomach, cold and sharp. Betrayal?
Or did we just lose? Was this the enemy''s cleanup crew? Was I executed by the Courts? Honestly, I wasn''t sure which option was worse.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Problem for Future Me. I mentally tagged it, filed it under ''Existential Crises To Be Screamed About Later,'' and shoved it to the back of the queue in my head. Priorities.
I let the system display flicker back into view. Might as well see if the cosmic snail had moved.
?PROGRESS: [==========>-] 97.56%?
That was fast. Did the system speed up? Whatever the reason, things were apparently nearing… completion? The thought sent a jolt, not quite relief, more like bracing for the next unknown absurdity.
Banishing the display back, I narrowed my eyes – or the soul-equivalent thereof – trying to pierce the gloom.
The other… people… were definitely there — their presence prickled at the edge of my senses — but every time I tried to focus on one, my perception scattered like smoke in a breeze. Ethereal and indistinct. Hazy.
My mind started cycling through the usual panic options: Escape? (From what, exactly? And how?) Fight? (Again, what? And with what?) Play dead? (Bit redundant now, wasn''t it?)
Maybe this was it? The cliché afterlife recruitment drive? You die, get a cool system message, and boom – you''re the chosen one, destined to fight interdimensional space weasels or something equally glamorous.
Then it appeared. Or rather, changed. The previous display vanished, replaced by stark, blocky text.
SYSTEM INTEGRATION PATCH v.1011.DDefsd427 SUCCESSFUL
AUTHORITY ACCESSED
Before I could even process that, a surge went through me. Not physical, not magical, but something deeper. A sense of… solidity? Power? Like my very soul had just been plugged into a cosmic charger, lifting me head and shoulders above the listless static of the crowd around me. It felt good. Dangerously good.
SYSTEM STATS: UNAVAILABLE
SYSTEM SKILLS: UNAVAILABLE
SYSTEM SHOP: INACCESSIBLE
Great. Patched, powered up, and still locked out of half the features. Typical. Then the familiar blue interface settled back in, displaying my current, rather grim, status:
Name: Tristan Von Astar ( DEAD )
Level: 14692
Race: [ D ] Human
Authority: 1572
Abnormal Status:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Suspended Dead ( Ineffective ) </li>
</ul>
Equipments:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400">[ X ] Soul Aegis ( Fragmented: 1 / 100 )</li>
</ul>
For a solid second, my thoughts just… stopped, frozen in the face of the glaring truth. The word DEAD blazed like a torch in my vision.
Dead...? I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly tight.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t guessed—that gnawing sense of something fundamentally wrong had been clawing at me since I''d opened my eyes.
This… wrongness.
An absence where life should be. But to see it spelled out in stark, emotionless words shook me to my core. My breath hitched, the chill of panic creeping into my bones.
No. Wait. My fists clenched – a purely symbolic gesture, but satisfying. I forced my gaze down, past the glaring indictment of my current state. The system''s still working. That''s… something. Right? My mind desperately clung to the details, searching for a loophole, a glitch in the matrix of death.
Ineffective... Suspended Dead (Ineffective). Okay, that was interesting. Whatever soul-freeze was supposed to be happening to me clearly wasn''t taking. Explains why I''m lucid and everyone else seems to be running on afterlife autopilot. Why I was having this internal meltdown while they were all just… standing there.
My eyes landed on the mysterious equipment: [ X ] Soul Aegis (Fragmented: 1 / 100 ).
Soul Aegis? Never heard of it. Definitely didn''t remember picking that up. X Grade Equipment. The highest I had touched was the A Grade Awakening Artifact in the family. That too just for a second.
The fragmented state suggested it was incomplete, barely functioning. Yet somehow, it was keeping me tethered, grounded in my thoughts while others… drifted.
When did I get this? Why don''t I remember it? Where is it now? Is it even a physical thing? The questions piled up, bouncing around the inside of my skull with nowhere to go.
The answers weren’t on the screen. Only those cold blue lines, uncaring and distant, blinked back at me.
I let out a dry, humorless chuckle. The sound felt alien in my throat, like someone else''s voice. I dragged a hand down my face, fingers trembling slightly as my nerves threatened to unravel.
Pull it together, Astar. I forced myself to steady my breathing, squared my shoulders, and exhaled slowly.
Or at least I followed the motions.
Time to get on track.
First thing''s first: Death. Turns out it’s a thing.
I’d never been the religious type — hard to stay faithful when an apocalypse and a System Integration drop on you and throw the old rules out the window. I mean, talk about a divine retcon.
But I always assumed there’d be something after death. A reward, a punishment, maybe just a really long nap. Or maybe the reincarnation.
Well, there was something all right.
Shame it involved waiting in lines.
No grand welcome. No celestial chorus. No judgmental jury. Not even a cheesy orientation video. Just a whole lot of standing around and waiting — the afterlife equivalent of being stuck in a DMV line.
Seriously, where was the customer service?
I had no clue where we were going, why we were going, or why no one had the decency to provide some basic instructions. A sign, a pamphlet, anything would''ve been an improvement over this cosmic queue.
Then I looked down.
Oh. No. No, no, no, no, NO.
Pure, ice-cold panic slammed into me. My hands flew across my body, trying to cover… well, everything.
I was naked.
Birthday suit. Buck-ass naked. Au naturel. In the void.
A chill that had absolutely nothing to do with the surrounding void swept over me. I snapped my head around, trying to focus on the blurry figures standing in the line — or, you know, trying to. My eyes darted, searching, praying for some kind of… reprieve.
The fact that everyone else was indistinct and blurry was suddenly the single greatest blessing the cosmos had ever bestowed upon me.
Thank whatever cruel gods were out there that my vision couldn’t focus properly, hopefully, it worked both ways.
But standing buck-naked among this many… beings was unsettling on a level that defied rational explanation. It was a special kind of mortification.
A hundred times worse than that one time I got roped into that secret club event… Yeah, let’s not think about that.
Instinct took over. I reached for my [ [ E ] Storage Ring ]. Habit. My hand grasped at empty air where the familiar cool metal should have been. It hovered, useless, before dropping.
Right. Dead. No physical form. No convenient dimensional storage for spare clothes.
Grimacing, I tried the next best thing: mana. Reached inward for that familiar thrumming energy, the power that had always been there, coiled beneath my skin, ready to be unleashed. Nothing. Gone. Vanished. Just a hollow ache remained, like a phantom limb where my mana used to be.
Damn it! Of course!
And then the ridiculously obvious hit me. Like a cartoon anvil. Soul. Only my soul is here. No body, no mana pools tied to the physical form. Duh. Took me long enough
Okay, new plan. Forget mana. Focus inward. Deeper. Beyond the physical memory, into the core of my being. The soul itself. This felt vaguely like accessing my Soul Realm – that personal dimension thingy that was supposed to grow when you upgraded to a D-grade race. Except this was harder. Like trying move through ten feet of quicksand.
Come on, come on… You useless little s#!^... Work with me.
Pressure built behind my eyes, a dull throb threatening to turn into a full-blown migraine. My chest tightened, constricting, as if an invisible hand was squeezing the very essence of me.
Then, snap. Like a cork finally popping from a bottle that had been shaken way too hard. The pressure vanished.
And clothes appeared. Simple white tunic, plain black pants. Basic, functional, and, most importantly, not see-through. I''d take it. Minimalist afterlife chic. Better than maximum afterlife exposure.
Authority: 1552 ( 1572 )
That was not what I expected. The system screen that announced that only 1552 [ Authority ] was available to me.
[ Authority ] was the measure of your power, your influence, your very right to exist. The higher your it is, the greater your potential, and the more you can achieve.
Using 20 of it on basic decency felt… wasteful. But glancing at the potentially naked spectral horde shuffling around me? Worth it. Dignity ain''t free in the great beyond, apparently.
I took a few moments (minutes? hours? time is weird here) to just... exist. Recover from the exertion and the existential wardrobe malfunction. Then, I attempted to strike up a conversation, while fully focusing on the face.
"Hey,"
No response. Their features swam into slightly better focus – I could almost make out hair color, the shape of a jawline – but the details felt slippery, like trying to remember a dream seconds after waking up. Unfocused. Hazy.
Waved a hand right in front of their face. Snapped my fingers a few times. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Like talking to a particularly unresponsive shop mannequin.
Okay, maybe that one was just shy. Moved to the next one. Repeated the process. Focused hard on face. Tried a "Yo!"
Same result. They weren''t ignoring me; they were... absent. Vacant. Eyes glassy (or the soul-equivalent), faces slack. Like the lights were on, but absolutely nobody was home.
Hollowed-out shells just... standing there, shuffling on command. Is this what ''Suspended Dead'' is supposed to look like? Is this what the Soul Aegis fragment is saving me from? Being a mindless zombie in the eternal queue?
Creepy didn''t even begin to cover it. And I had a feeling the weirdness was just getting started.