++To be tempted by undeath is natural, to succumb to that temptation unforgiveable. The undead do not live, they do not feel. They are mockeries of what they once were. Fear them, hate them and destroy them. Before they can sway you with their silver tongues.++

  Chapter 9

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Vampire [Inheritor Race, Tier 1]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  Strength 13

  Speed 14

  Celerity 16

  Toughness 12

  Charisma 9

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic I

  Form of the Beast I

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration I

  Reggie stared at the blue screen for a good long while, not able to fully soak up the sight. He could see it easily enough, he knew what it was telling him. The knowledge just wasn’t sinking in. Impossible, ridiculous. Wrong, surely. It had to be wrong.

  “Inheritor,” he croaked. Inheritors weren’t real, everybody knew that. They were something out of an apocalyptic myth, nothing more. The Tiers went up from Common to Demigod, maybe with one or two Deities active throughout history depending on which accounts you believed.

  Reggie had spent his whole life looking up to the Common Tier, envying the Workers for even belonging to that. He couldn’t be an Inheritor.

  “What Tier are you?” the woman—the vampire—asked him, a touch of eagerness to her voice that Reggie hadn’t heard before.

  “Inheritor,” he said dully. Voicing the fact made it real somehow, and he found himself stumbling against a tree. He half expected the damned trunk to break open but…no, of course it didn’t. Reggie had seen his Attributes were unchanged, at least. Was he just the weakest Inheritor ever?

  “Inheritor,” the woman echoed with a smile, “I knew it.”

  “Knew what!?” Reggie snapped, “what’s going on?!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she chuckled. “Or, well, it does, but it’s funner to let you figure it all out by yourself. I’ll be leaving you now Reggie, try not to get yourself killed without me.” Her smile widened, turned cruel and sharp, “I have a feeling you’re going to be the most interesting vampire I’ve seen yet.”

  Before he could reply, she was mist. Coiling through the vapor around her, a darker shade of it that contrasted against the natural moisture of night and dissipated quickly. Whether she was dead or just gone, Reggie had no idea.

  And he had other things to worry about besides that.

  Reggie brought up the System again and spent another useless moment staring at its screen, hoping to find some information he’d not gotten before. He didn’t, of course, and his frustration quickly grew.

  Useless fucking thing.

  Would you like more information?

  Reggie had spent enough time being haunted by demons that the sudden appearance of that question in big, bold text across his screen didn’t actually unnerve him so much. He just paused, took it in, then nodded. Apparently the System could register visible gestures, because it quickly elaborated.

  What would you like information on?

  Well, this was convenient. “...Traits,” Reggie murmured, still eager to not attract anything’s attention in a fucking grimwood, regardless of what that vampire woman said.

  Traits. Traits are a kind of stat innate to only beings of natural magical power, more colloquially known as ‘monsters’. They are usually, though not always, beneficial, and tend to be passive rather than active.

  This was…a lot of information, more than Reggie had ever really had to learn at once. One unfortunate fact of being born Classless was that he’d never gotten involved in understanding the particulars of things like Abilities.

  “What does Regeneration do?” he asked, deciding, after his ridiculously numerous injuries over the last week, that it sounded more immediately helpful than the others.

  Regeneration is a common ability in certain kinds of undead, allowing a body to self-repair at a vastly accelerated rate. This is more efficient than the kinds of regeneration managed by most living tissues, as undead biology does not require life-sustaining measures to be taken as stopgaps during the healing process. Drastic mechanical repairs and restructures can be performed without a risk to the creature’s life.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  He thought he followed, at least the basics. Reggie started walking as he considered that. So…what, he was immortal now?

  No, Regeneration of the first Tier still takes time.

  Did you just answer me back?

  …I think I did. I’m having thoughts. This is bizarre.

  Is it?

  Yes, usually I’m just a System interface. I don’t know what’s happening here.

  [I’m having thoughts too,] said the demonic voice that lived in Reggie’s head, [also Reggie you should kill yourself.]

  Reggie ignored that last part, as usual, and focused on the new mystery.

  Is it something to do with me being possessed by the demon?

  You’re not possessed by a demon, you just have schizophrenia. Nobody in Norvhan knows what that is and so they all projected demonic influence onto you out of fear and superstition.

  What’s schizophrenia?

  It’s complicated. The short of it is that it makes you see demons.

  Oh so it’s like…sensory powers?

  No. They’re not real. You hallucinate things that aren’t there.

  [If they’re not real, then why am I conscious and thinking now?]

  I don’t know, I think it’s some unexpected interaction with Reginald’s mind and the vampiric blood. Clearly supernatural, whatever it is.

  Reggie just fell silent at that. His whole life he’d been convinced he was getting tormented by something from beyond, and it was all…what, nothing? Just in his head? It seemed impossible to believe.

  Except the System had told him.

  So…I’m harmless? To other people I mean.

  You’ll have been more of a threat to yourself than everyone else.

  Reggie started crying.

  It took him a while to get his wits back under control, and he just had more questions once he finally did.

  What about my Abilities? He asked the System, what do they do?

  Form of Beast allows for varying animalistic transformations, gaining natural advantages and improved physical abilities. Blood Magic—

  “Improved physical abilities?” Reggie cut in eagerly, “how do I do that?” He didn’t much care about Blood Magic, if it was anything like the other magics he’d heard of then it’d be a long and exhaustive process to learn, but upping his Attributes? Well that sounded useful right now.

  I do not know how you can activate it.

  “But you know everything.”

  I don’t know everything.

  “I’m pretty sure you said you know everything.”

  I didn’t say that.

  [I think you did, I heard it too.]

  You’re just trying to discredit me in Reginald’s eyes so he won’t listen when I tell him he shouldn’t kill himself.

  [Don’t listen to them Reggie, they’re a liar, kill yourself.]

  Reggie ignored the demonic voice, even if hearing it call him by his nickname came as a shock, and focused on his Ability. He’d been expecting a good deal of effort before eventually succeeding in activating it. He was half-right. A great amount of effort did come, but no success to join it.

  “Well this is bullshi—” the wolf spider burst out from the undergrowth like a cannon ball, hissing and storming right for him.

  Reggie’s fingers lengthened, nails shifted into hooked talons, jaw distended and teeth melded to jagged fangs. He felt his bones twist and coil, lengthening, thickening, turning into the skeleton of some predatory thing larger than him by far, hunched slightly and slavering at the lips with eyes only for the lifeblood of the spider now barrelling towards him.

  Form of The Beast activated, +10 to Strength, Speed, Toughness and Celerity, -10 to Charisma. Current levels; Strength 23, Speed 24, Celerity 26, Toughness 22, Charisma -1

  He didn’t have to worry about that, not like Reggie was about to charm the damned spider to death. It lunged for him and he brought a hand up, talons scything out to clash with talons. The air scraped with their impact as Reggie stumbled away.

  Still weaker than it? Well there was no surprise there. Reggie’s physical Attributes were still mostly shy of the mid 20s. The spider didn’t hesitate to spring after him and bowl Reggie over, taking him down and lancing its fangs right for his face. Only by propping his legs up under its body did he manage the leverage to hold the creature back. Reggie looked around, desperate to find a rock, a branch, something he could use as a weapon.

  You have talons now.

  What? Oh right. Reggie slashed out with his right hand and saw inch-thick claws scrape right along the spider’s head, drawing blood. A human might’ve torn the nails right out of their fingers doing that, but it seemed Reggie’s newly transformed ones were fitted in a lot more securely.

  But that didn’t make them weapons. No matter how sturdy, an inch of talon was only able to leave inch-deep wounds, and Reggie doubted he’d managed to cut even that much into the spider thanks to its thick carapace. He did send the thing recoiling in pain, though, and bought himself some breathing room. Not that he breathed anymore, being a reanimated corpse and such. Reggie had exactly one second to feel sorry for himself before the spider was moving again, but he was already on his feet by then.

  It lunged right as he did, and they smashed into each other. Big mistake on Reggie’s part. The spider’s taloned foot came down and skewered right into his shoulder. As a human, it probably would’ve nailed him to the dirt. Now it just went deep enough to hit bone, then stopped. The pain was still fierce.

  But Reggie had felt worse, and he set his mind to making the spider feel worse too. Its mouth came back down for him again, so Reggie surprised the creature by grabbing it hard by one fang and twisting up, turning its head away from him and keeping it from biting. Then he bit, right on an extended leg’s joint.

  Apparently his teeth were sharper, or his jaws stronger, than the new clawed fingers he had in this state. Reggie felt the spider’s thinning carapace crack right around the joint, then his mouth was full of bitter blood. A shriek split the air as his enemy thrashed around, sending him sprawling and ripping the skewering leg from his shoulder.

  His blood was cold. That was the first thing Reggie noticed, cold blood and not much of it. The pain, though, was hotter than anything he’d ever felt. He rolled up to his feet despite it, took one look at the mangled ruin his arm had become and then stared longer as he hoped to see it reknitting itself. He did not, Tier 1 Regeneration in-fucking-deed.

  Fortunately, the spider wasn’t in such good shape either. Reggie saw it stumble back from him, wary. He felt a stinging in his arm, and glancing at it again saw the wound slightly diminished. He considered that, then, experimentally, focused on willing it shut, recapturing the instinct that’d dragged his talons out.

  By the looks of things, he managed to kick his Regeneration into overdrive and heal…about an extra ounce or two of regrown meat, then a sudden exhaustion took him, the healing slowed, and the spider started advancing again.

  Your body needs stored blood to activate any of its Abilities or properly use its Traits, you just burned up your reserves prematurely by healing too fast. The greater the Regeneration speed, the lower its efficiency.

  What a perfect time to be told. Another blur of motion signalled the spider resuming its assault, and Reggie suddenly felt too tired to dodge. Instead he made himself take one step, just enough to keep from being run through again, drove his hip into the creature and twisted it around to throw against the ground. It was partly successful, Reggie managed to lift the spider onto his own fucking back and then fall over with it on top of him.

  It bit him, fangs sinking in deep and not stopping on bone like the claw had. Reggie felt his collar snap right open, followed by something pumping into him, flooding his system, spreading out and…doing nothing, actually. Well there was a nice surprise, apparently being undead had its benefits when one was injected with deadly paralytics.

  Reggie put his stroke of luck to good use, craning his neck for a leg placed unwisely near to his face and biting down on the spider once more.