Memories that aren’t mine flood my mind. A small life of only 8 years, a life of sickness, of strife. It clashes with my current memories of being 22, memories of earth and everything that goes with it. The faces of my family and friends are blurred though, I can’t remember any specifics.
I lay still trying to process it all. I can’t remember how I got here; did I die? The previous soul that inhabited this body is gone, so I am pretty sure they must have died, and I must have taken their place? No idea how reincarnation works, but that’s what I’m going with. The final memories this body has are of feeling hot and numb, barely clinging to consciousness.
Radical acceptance is a skill one can use to deal with difficult situations, a skill I used a lot in my previous life, so I will continue to use it here.
The room is dark, it must be night, there is time for me to sort through the new memories. Apparently, I am now in a medieval world called Aros. Not too many differences between it and earth other than the monsters, dungeons, and magic, of course.
A system governs over all, granting strength to those who seek it. It’s a lot like an rpg, all you have to do is think about it and a menu should appear.
I think status and a blue menu pops up in front of me. It lists the following.
Renna Level 0
No Class (5 available)
HP 10
Mana 50
Str 2
Dex 4
Vit 1
Wis 5
Int 5
Apparently, 5 is the standard stat level for children, while 10 is the standard for adults. I immediately see the problem, 1 Vit. Vit governs how healthy you are, the amount of damage you can take, your resistance to disease, how much endurance you have etc. If I don’t find a way to increase that soon, I will die again.
My mind races, how do you raise stats? My new memories answer, by leveling up. Immediately, the blue window pops up, 5 classes available. Select Class?
There are 5 choices. Warrior, thief and mage are expected. The other two are much more interesting, shadow summoner and soul traveler. Everyone is offered the basic three, the other offered classes are usually based upon your life experiences or stats. My new memories have no idea what a shadow summoner or soul traveler are, so they must be rare. My current body has been bedridden her entire life, so it’s not surprising I don’t have many choices.
My body is so weak, the physical classes are out. Wisdom and intelligence are only average, so the mage doesn’t seem too promising either. Obviously, I am going to select one of the rare ones, and I decide upon the summoner. Soul traveler sounds too esoteric, and using summons to support my weak body appeals to me.
Selecting the shadow summoner, I feel a rush of warmth wash over my body. A new window pops up.
Congratulations! Shadow Summoner selected! You are now level 1! +5 Wis and +1 free point rewarded!
Dumping the free point into Vit immediately brings great relief.
New skill unlocked, Summon Whelp! New Passive unlocked, Darkvision!
Having an extra point in Vit is a relief, but I need it to be at least 5 before I really feel safe. That means I need more levels. To get levels you need experience points. To get XP you need to do stuff related to your class or kill something.
I focus on my skill. Summon Whelp
The darkness in the room briefly converges on a single point as a small creature forms before me. It is about the size and shape of a cat, but a little lither and long. Smooth black skin stretches over the beast, two small bright red pricks of light mark where the eyes are, a skinny tail wags behind it. It opens its maw, revealing rows of deadly teeth, its feet are all tipped with sharp claws. This thing could easily tear me apart, but there it stands, waiting for my command.
A rat is terrified by the sudden appearance of a predator and scuttles out from under my bed towards the walls. My whelp immediately responds to my desire for it to die, and pounces. In an instant the rat is snatched up and crushed in the jaws of my summon. A small notification appears, +1 XP
So, I get XP for my summon kills, the thought brings a smile to my face, I can do this, I can survive.
I want more whelps, and the summoning seemed to only drain a bit of mana. Mana is equal to your wisdom multiplied by 10. My wisdom is 10, which means I have 100 mana. Summoning the Whelp cost 10 mana. Meaning…
Using my skill, 9 more whelps appear in the room. I order the first one to guard me, the others I direct to sneak around town and hunt rats. My creatures don’t look too scary, honestly, they are kinda cute, but an adventurer wouldn’t care and would surely kill one on sight.
My first whelp sits at the foot of my bed, while the other nine crawl out my window into the night. 1XP really wasn’t much, I feel I need many more rat kills to level again.
I am vaguely aware of the presence of my whelps, as they get further away, I feel the connection weaken until it disappears completely. The distance is… short. I only have awareness of them for about 10 feet, pretty pathetic. Focusing on one of my whelps still in range and closing my eyes, I open them to find myself looking through the eyes of my summon, only for my vision to distort and switch back to my own as soon as my Whelp leaves my range.
I am surprised upon switching back that I can still see perfectly in the dark. Right, I did receive Darkvision too. It seems mildly useful, probably?
The XP alerts come in pretty steadily, +1XP, +1XP, +1XP. There are an unending number of rats in the city, and my creatures were feasting. Although I get the feeling that my summons don’t have any physical needs, they still greedily gobble up any rat found. I think that I quite like having things do my bidding.
While I wait for the XP to come in, I need to get a grip on my surroundings. Now that I can see in the dark, I look around my room. It’s tiny, a closet with a window really, the only furniture being my bed and a bucket that smells rather foul. I am wearing a sweaty, grey excuse for a dress, and I feel disgusting now that I think about it.
Beyond the door is the rest of the orphanage. Every room is full of children, apparently the only reason I got my own was due to my illness.
The city I am in is known as Ironhill, a fairly large city in the kingdom of Lothris, my geographical knowledge doesn’t seem to extend much beyond that, it seems the previous owner of my body was too sick to attend many lessons. Outside the city there is a forest, it runs deep all the way to the mountains that apparently serve as a border between this kingdom and the next. I was warned to never go deep into the woods, because there were dangerous monsters. There were several dungeons in the woods that monsters would wander out of if left unchecked, and they were unchecked. Normally adventurers would cull these dungeons regularly, but there is a war going on that is keeping everyone busy. The mountains are said to be even more dangerous.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A war is going on, it is frustrating, my new memories have no idea who is even attacking, only that there has been fighting at the border for a while now.
I need more information; this is a dangerous world, and I am extremely small and alone.
At some point I must have fallen asleep. When I next open my eyes it’s daytime and a new notification is waiting for me.
Congratulations you have reached level 2! +1 Wis, +1 free point!
My mana has fully recharged by this point, I think it takes roughly half a day to recharge your mana. I now have 11 wisdom, which gives me 110 mana, that’s 11 more whelps. I immediately summon and unleash them upon the town, the local rat population is doomed! I also assign my free point into Vit, immediately feeling a little better.
I am grinning ear to ear, my army grows!
My totally normal thoughts are interrupted by the door opening and a woman walking in. She wears the simple grey smock of the orphanage, and I immediately recognize her as Leza, she often takes care of me.
She gives me a warm smile, “Good morning little one.” She approaches me and feels my forehead, then sighs in relief. “Your fever has broken, thank the gods.”
Are gods real in this world? I find my memories to be annoyingly lacking.
I let out a squeak as I am scooped up into the woman's arms and carried from the room. My guard whelp doesn’t attack and remains under the bed, it seems without me directly telling it, it is able to discern what I would want it to do.
Being carried is embarrassing, but as far as this woman knows I have 1 Vit. To be fair, I only have 2 Vit, so maybe being carried is warranted.
Leza quickly and efficiently navigates the halls, taking me to a washroom where I am stripped and settled into a warm tub of water. It seems that my body is used to this, as I feel no shame. I guess I am technically only 8 years old anyways.
I want to ask questions, but being washed is so relaxing, my eyes are already getting heavy. Just this much is exhausting me? 2 Vit sucks!
The bath doesn’t last too long, and I am efficiently dried and dressed in a clean smock. Then I am fed some stew and tucked back into my bed. Leza sits on my bed and sings to me as I fall back asleep.
The weeks pass pretty much just like that. Apparently, the other kids don’t get baths nearly as much as me, but it is important for my health to stay clean. I have been using my whelps to gather information, listening in on conversations and such. The nation of Karnaka is attacking Lotheris, and Lotheris is losing. There has been fierce fighting at the southern border for years, but recently Karnaka has pushed through and is now invading. Refugees from the southern towns and villages have been fleeing north, to the safety of the first city they could reach, Ironhill.
The fact that the invaders are slowly approaching is concerning, and the waves of refugees are starting to strain Ironhill’s resources. The lack of meat in my stews is evidence of that. The only good thing is that the refugees brought rats, and rats mean more XP. I periodically would lose a whelp, but my army was quickly outgrowing the city, given I was summoning 20 Whelps a day.
Congratulations you have reached level 3! +1 Wis, + 1 free point!
Congratulations you have reached level 4! +1 Wis, +1 free point!
Congratulations you have reached level 5! +1 Wis, +1 free point! New skill unlocked, Summon Drone.
It took a whole month, but I have finally gotten my next summon! The drone is… underwhelming. It is around the size of the whelp and has the same smooth black skin, it looks like a crab, but with the addition of tendrils that allows it to easily manipulate objects. It seems to be a worker of some kind? Not what I need right now, right now I need XP. My Vit has reached 6, while I am feeling much healthier, there is a new problem. I need to fake being sick, unless I want the caretakers to start asking questions. Right now I am completely unknown and I want it to stay that way, I need time to grow strong, and I don’t want the attention a rare class might give you during wartime.
The rats really aren't giving me nearly enough XP anymore, it feels like it might take another month just to get my next level up. So I have decided to send my whelps into the woods, they have become a force a few hundred strong. I was worried they would get destroyed by the monsters in the woods, but my worries were unfounded.
My whelps continue to prove to be sort of intelligent, they automatically apply strategies that I would have given them. The Goblins in the forest seem to be much stronger than my individual summons, so my creatures use stealth and extreme intelligence to kill the monsters. They wait until they can attack isolated groups before they swarm them with overwhelming numbers. This tactic has proved highly effective.
The welp swarm suffers many casualties with each encounter, but it is an acceptable amount. I am able to replace the amount I lose everyday by summoning a fresh batch.
Each Goblin is worth 50XP, skyrocketing my XP gain. It only takes one day before I get my next level up.
Congratulations you are now level 6! +1 Wis, +1 free point
I stick the free point into Vit, determined to pump the stat up to at least 10, I never want to feel so sick and gross again. My other stats have remained untouched so far, there doesn’t seem to be any point to them right now, my welp swarm is infinitely more effective than I could ever be swinging around a dagger. Unless I get skills that allow me to participate directly in combat, I am more than happy to let my summons do all the work.
I have spent all of my time lying in bed, watching the world through the eyes of my whelps, the range at which I can do so expands with every level up. My rise to power seems almost guaranteed.
Sitting up in bed, I look out my window. It is sort of novel actually looking through my own eyes and observing the world myself, it seems my whelp's senses are much better than mine. The street outside my window is packed full of people, they are dirty and hungry, huddled around the buildings here in the poor part of the city. I wonder how much longer I will be safe in the orphanage.
I think I want to disappear into the forest, my creatures can keep me safe as long as I don’t go too deep into the forest. I am worried about the stronger monsters though, already my summons have to be careful to avoid the larger hobgoblins and direwolves. I’m hoping to hit level 10 and receive a more powerful summon before the war reaches Ironhill.
So, I continue to lay in bed, really this is probably the most boring way to level up. I wonder about the warriors and mages who have to go out and take quests and risk their lives and stuff, pushing their limits, getting injured and other dramatic events. Maybe they get caught up in conspiracies or are threatened by rivals.
The first whelp I summoned has been guarding me loyally this whole time. He (I’ve decided he’s a boy) jumps up on the bed with me and crawls into my arms to join me in daydreaming. Scratching behind his ear nubs, I decided to name him One, because he was the first whelp I summoned. Strangely, I can easily tell him apart from the other whelps, he even seems to act differently. How much is him obeying my unspoken wishes for a companion to cuddle, and how much is him actually having a personality is a mystery to me.
Regardless, One’s skin is smooth and cool. It is very pleasant to stroke, and he even lets out cute little growls of pleasure.
+50 XP, +50 XP, +50 XP, +50 XP
Congratulations you are level 7, Wis +1, +1 free point
+50 XP, +50 XP, +50 XP
Congratulations you are level 8, Wis +1, +1 free point
+50 XP + 50 XP +50 XP
Congratulations you are level 9, Wis 1, +1 free point
+50 XP +50 XP +50XP
Congratulations you are level 10, Wis +1, +1 free point
New skill unlocked, Summon Hunter
Finally.
It’s time to go, the hunter is going to be way too big to summon in the city. I have a clear sense of what I am getting without even needing to summon it, It's the size of a wolf, sharing many of its traits, while maintaining the appearance of my creatures. One hunter could easily tear a goblin apart and a pack could even take down the hobgoblins and direwolves, I am confident my new summons will be effective pack hunters, like their little brothers the whelps. The only problem is mana cost, one hunter costs 100 mana! That’s about two hunters a day. Mana is currently my limiting factor, so I’m going to start putting all my extra points into Wis, until I have a reason not to.
Bringing up my status, I spend my free point in Wis.
Renna Level 10
Shadow Summoner
HP 100
Mana 170
Str 2
Dex 4
Vit 10
Wis 17
Int 5
With that done, it is finally time to move.
