Jay jolted awake already flailing, swatting at whatever it was that was spreading a burning sensation across the back of his neck. He hit something, a round-ish something that felt like it had a hard shell, but the pain didn’t stop. He contorted, swatting at the spot again and again with enough desperation that he didn’t realize he’d fallen over from his sitting position and was coating himself in mud with every movement.

  The window’s information wasn’t much help. Jay had no idea what a macabre parasite was or whether its toxin was severe. All he knew was the pain that was still spreading and – disturbingly – it felt like there was now something moving under the area where the burning had first started. Jay stopped swatting at the burning patch and started clawing at it, needing whatever part of the parasite had been left behind out now.

  His hand caught something. It was barely an inch of something squirmy and soft, but it was enough for him to get a slight grip on. The biting pain paused its forward movement the moment he had his hand around it fully. A good sign. That much progress, even if it was just changing the situation from “actively getting worse” to “stalling,” was enough to quell some of Jay’s panic and let him think again.

  That newly free brainpower showed its usefulness immediately as Jay realized he’d been thinking about the situation as if he didn’t have tools. As if he didn’t have magic. [Wither] had said it was targeted. How did he choose a target? How did he cast it? Jay forced himself to open his mouth, his jaw having clenched from the pain, and fell back on the fantasy staple of spellcasting: saying the name of the spell.

  He choked the word out, barely audible even to his own ears, and felt the panic begin to well back up. He shoved it back down and focused, closing his eyes to try to picture the box with the spell’s description in it. The rest of the System’s reactions had involved visual elements. Why would this be an exception?

  He spoke the name of the spell writing again, just to make sure. “[Wither].” He could tell the difference immediately. There was a low thrum of power to it, as if something unimaginably large was speaking alongside him, and he felt the drain start to take hold of the parasite in his neck. He didn’t recover much from the health-sapping effect but he didn’t have much health missing in the first place. That was interesting, especially with how long it had taken him to notice. Had everything the curse sapped from him recovered overnight? That would be promising. Jay could almost imagine finding a balance point where he just had to get an appropriate amount of sleep every night to make the drain bearable.

  The parasite began thrashing, still buried almost entirely in his neck. That new pain fought with the health recovery the spell gave him – which Jay idly noted was about 1 health every 4 seconds – but it seemed like the recovered health was enough to overcome the damage.

  [Wither] kept going. Once activated, it seemed like it would keep going until either the target was dead or he cancelled the spell. It didn’t even have a mana cost associated with it, which felt…wrong on an undefinable level. Was it not enough of a spell to qualify? Was it because he started with it? Was it something to do with the Divinity resource pool? He really needed to get started on finding some answers before his head imploded under the weight of all the questions that kept cropping up.

  The jerking motions began to slow and Jay managed to pull the parasite out of his neck a little more. Then it came further. Whatever it was using to keep itself nestled in his flesh, it didn’t seem to be able to keep up with [Wither]’s drain. All the better for him. Jay didn’t know what he’d have done if it had rotted without being able to be removed.

  The spell kept siphoning the health – and seemingly the energy, since the thrashing continued to slow – from the parasite. With every second of drain that passed, Jay was able to pull the parasite another inch out of himself. Something about the health drain [Wither] was giving him had to be numbing the injury because it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he thought it should.

  And then it ended. The spell’s drain died off, the last of the macabre parasite emerged from its burrow in his neck, and his health stopped ticking up. Jay noted with some discomfort that he wasn’t entirely healed. He was definitely in better shape than he had any right to be after having something tunneling into him, though, so he couldn’t complain too much.

  But what to do with the parasite itself? Now that he had it out, he could see what it looked like, but Jay wasn’t really sure that was a good thing. It was some strange combination of a worm and a snake, with black scales that almost shimmered in the sunlight. They didn’t feel entirely solid, though, not like scales should feel. Was it because the creature was dead now? It had certainly felt solid enough trying to slither its way into his brainstem.

  Jay’s arm jerked as if to throw it away but at the last moment, he kept his grip on it. He’d already tested one spell today. What harm was there in trying another one? For that matter, what harm was there in trying two more?

  “[Minor Healing].” Jay knew the trick to these spells now. Visualize, then speak.

  He watched his mana tick down at the same rate his health ticked back up. That answered that, much more conclusively than the System’s vague, exchange-rate-less description. He could actually feel the mana moving, seeping up through his body to his neck. Jay thought for a second about making a joke – something like “Look, mom! No hands!,” probably, since he’d really been expecting to have to touch the wound to heal it – but decided against it. It didn’t feel appropriate somehow.

  Since it was already dead, it seemed like a bit of a waste not to try out his other spell. [Lesser Resurrection]. The big one. The core of his Class. Jay wasn’t sure if he was entirely comfortable with taking something that had been in him and turning it into a skeleton or whatever other mediocre undead a spell with a “lesser” tag would generate, but it wasn’t like he had a ton of options at the moment. He hoisted the parasite’s corpse in front of him and spoke the words.

  Green energy wisped up from Jay’s palms, wrapping around and sinking into the macabre parasite as his mana drained nearly to nothing. The parasite’s flesh squirmed, moving like there were worms under the outer layer, then slid off entirely. Wasn’t snakeskin worth good money? Should he keep it? Before he could consider that idea too carefully – or think up any of the myriad objections to it – the long, thin skeleton that remained in his hand twitched.

  He dropped it. It was squirmy and somehow managed to feel wet despite the fact that it was just bones, so it slid right out of his grip. The skeleton kept wriggling as it hit the ground, wreathed in the green energy still flowing out of Jay’s hands and dripping down to it, but something about the movement didn’t look right. The rib-like parts coming off the center were undulating as the length of spine they were attached to contorted.

  For a brief second, it even seemed like they were lengthening, but Jay blinked and the optical illusion vanished.

  The green haze stopped flowing out of his hands and began jumping between each of the ribs, leaving a small portion of itself behind on the tip of each one. Three golden motes manifested just above his left palm, revolving slowly and shedding a small aura of golden vapor, but otherwise just floating in his hand. Jay raised his hand to look closer at the specks, squinting a little to see through the glow. They didn’t look like anything more than oddly cut gemstones that happened to give off a golden light that was somehow both deep and bright, but for some reason the fact that they weren’t a perfect, symmetrical cut bothered him.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  With no warning, Jay’s health ticked down twice. Then two more points vanished. And again. Ten total points – a full quarter of his health – slipped away without even a message to tell him why. There was just a twisting sensation in his stomach, painful but not debilitating, and in a weird way it was less painful than the macabre parasite had been.

  Then ten more points of his health drained away and the message he’d been expecting finally showed up, followed shortly by another that he hadn’t been counting on.

  This was way more involved than [Wither] had been. Jay hadn’t thought a single spell could become an entire process, but he was already involved. Investing more health didn’t seem like a good idea, since he’d nearly emptied his health pool within the first hour of being awake, even if he’d been able to replenish enough of it to avoid it actually being empty. He swiped that box away.

  Divinity, though…three available points, three floating gemstone-like things. The sheet had said he had ten total Divinity. If he didn’t put the three that had already manifested toward this, would he even be able to reabsorb them? Maybe it would be as simple as breaking them, but what was he going to break on them out here? The giant slab of stone he’d slept against? Maybe that wouldn’t do anything but waste it.

  Jay pulled up his summary sheet and saw that – to his complete lack of surprise – three points had been pulled from the pool of ten. There had to be a better way to do that than pulling up the whole sheet. Could he stack it on top of the always-present health box?

  He was getting distracted. There was still a box in his eyes and three glowing gems in his hand. That was what he needed to worry about first. Jay could worry about customizing the things he could see when he had a spare moment and wasn’t in the middle of breaking the natural laws of life and death.

  Since the points had already been removed and he didn’t know if he could take them back, he put all three of the Divinity points into the spell. Or at least he put them into the message box, sliding them through it like there was a coin slot. They didn’t hit the ground on the other side at least, and the number in the box ticked up each time one went through.

  If it was stupid but it worked, it wasn’t stupid.

  The box about the investments disappeared and he waited for another to take its place. Except nothing else appeared. Was there no confirmation? No announcement about the effect the Divinity had had on the spell?

  Something touched Jay’s leg, long and thin and curling around his ankle as if to trap him. He reflexively kicked out, his attempt to free himself sending whatever it was flying back into the swamp proper, then his brain caught up. He had just kicked his newly created undead servant before he’d even been able to see what it ended up as. He felt bad for it, honestly; it was his fault, not the creature’s.

  It was intact, though. He could still feel it. It was…trying to come back. Slowly. Apparently bones weren’t very good at whatever sidewinder-y type of movement the macabre parasite had used. Unless it had regrown the flesh and muscle it had shed? If it was going to do that, why would the process have removed it in the first place? It was probably still bones and it definitely wasn’t making fast progress back to where he was.

  At least he had something to do while he waited for the parasite to make its way back to him. He’d never gotten a chance to look at the other side of the monolith, after all. Now he just had to hope there was information somewhere on it.

  The back side of the stone slab had been a flat, nearly featureless gray. The front side wasn’t nearly so boring. The entire monolith was carved with letters outlined in a thin golden line, except for a small gap around the four words that were clearly some form of title or header.

  “Here ends Rukai’s Blight,” Jay murmured. Ominous, but really, was there going to be anything not ominous etched into a giant stone monolith at the edge of a swamp? He kept reading, noting as he went through it that the writing seemed to jump around frequently.

  Should the mire no longer end where this stone – and the others like it – lie, flee. Do not readjust these markers. With Rukai’s death, the Blight she grew should have remained within the boundaries of that moment. If this is no longer the case, another of the Cursed has taken up enough of her power to assume control of the Blight itself.

  That was an option? It didn’t sound like a good idea, especially if anyone checked this area frequently, but Jay hadn’t even known that was possible. Or that the swamp apparently wasn’t natural. Did that mean that the parasite hadn’t been natural either?

  Again, if that has come to pass, flee. Get as far from this place as you can. Cross an ocean if you can and pray that it is far enough to save you. Once I have ensured these words’ longevity, I will do what I can to scatter all remnants of her power. I will likely die doing so, and these will be my final words.

  But if I can bring peace to any of the fallen within the Blight, to any citizens of the Ostric Empire, or even to any of those that I grew up alongside, then I will die happy. Her focus, whatever it was, is here somewhere. At the very least I can destroy that before anything else can claim it. I can feel remnants of her power scattered, moving, throughout the swamp. They cannot be allowed to remain.

  A final warning, for anyone who may be reading this. If you are reading this, you would do well to flee regardless of the spread of the swamp. Time will pass. Another Necromancer will rise. If you are here, you are not safe.

  The writing was attributed to an “Inquisitor-Exalt Heriot Galter” of whatever the “Order Kisyon” was, according to the final line.

  That was a lot of information to take in. The Ostric Empire? Rukai? A focus? Jay didn’t know any of those words in that context. Was the rest of this land outside the swamp part of that empire, or had the swamp replaced it? Rukai, at least, seemed to be a now-dead Necromancer, but there wasn’t much more than that. Maybe she had been consumed by the Class Curse. Maybe she had just been evil. Was the focus some kind of spellcasting aid? He didn’t need something like that. Maybe it was only for more powerful spells?

  There were too many questions and far, far too few answers for Jay’s taste. He liked the process of discovering things, sure, but at some point it became too much. He didn’t even have a notebook to keep track of things. He’d end up forgetting more of the questions than he answered once he actually found a way to get those answers.

  Something touched his leg – again – but this time he stopped himself before he kicked it away. It was just the parasite that had finally managed to work its way back to him after the last time. At least he could finally figure out what his spell had done and how the Divinity had changed it.

  The thing was still literally all bones, but the green light must have been just for the resurrection process itself, since it wasn’t there anymore. It looked oddly adorable, honestly, raised halfway off the ground and looking at him with three golden eyes, the third set directly in the middle of the other two. Clearly that was where the Divinity had gone.

  Jay knelt down and stretched out a hand. The skeletonized parasite snaked its way forward and rested its skull on his palm. Two System boxes rose over its head.

  Sure, he’d give it a name. Jay couldn’t keep calling it “the Parasite” or “the skeleton.” It didn’t take him long to think of a name, though he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made him think that name was so appropriate.

  “Alister.”

  The naming box vanished and the text of the second box changed to include the name. Perfect. Since he was already holding the parasite’s – Alister’s – fleshless head, he tried giving it a couple of scratches under the chin like a dog. It didn’t react at first, then forced Jay to suppress a shudder as it wound itself around his arm and settled in just above the Crystalband.

  At least he had an answer to a few of the smaller questions. Divinity stopped the Curse from taking effect. He could name his creations. However much health he put into something was how much health it ended up with. But there was one more that Jay thought he’d get an answer to sooner than any of the others, one that had only become a question in the last few seconds: What was that on the horizon?