Realm cores are not natural to humans. In the age of antiquity, the ancients, in their infinite wisdom, had discovered that by touching a saurian’s core a person with a specific body structure could absorb it and develop a new organ.
These organs come in three varieties. The two partial cores are called a heartcore and a mindcore, while the dualcore is the perfect form of the human core. Those who awaken it will have both a heartcore and a mindcore mystically linked into a single organ, the rest will have to settle with a fraction of their power and potential.
— Excerpt from Introduction to Realm Cores
Day 1, 1:00 PM
Instead of the abyss of death, I opened my eyes to soup. It was thick, and I was drowning in the thing, my brain throbbing inside my skull. I raised my head to the dull pounding, my ears buzzed, and my eyes felt like they would pop out in the worst migraine I’ve ever survived.
“Townlord! Thank heavens you’re alive!” A shaky voice bled relief as I wiped my face. Two simple cries told me several things — I was the lord of a town, an elderly man in smart clothes who stood to my left was extremely glad I was alive, and the previous owner of my body enjoyed a very greasy chicken soup for lunch before he suffered a lethal stroke.
While sorting those discoveries in order of importance, I checked Redo. The skill was red, six hours and twenty minutes until it became available. I had to survive those six hours. Townlord was by far the best starting profession I’ve gotten in my reincarnations thus far.
With that out of the way, I grabbed my crotch to confirm my sex, a boy, and summoned my stats, to see who I was. Much to my, and probably general population’s, relief, this world’s local administrator was literate.
[Name - Dandelion Blackfist
Class - realm knight level 3
Health 24/24, Strength - 25, Agility - 25, Physique - 24, Wisdom - 15, Intellect - 16, Willpower - 16, Presence - 21, Charisma - 24, Composure - 20
Abilities - Initial Appraisal, Initial Forest Ambush, Advanced Looting, Literate, Inferior Heartcore, Initial Mana Gathering, Initial Mana Circulation, Initial Black Fist Arts, Advanced Body Reinforcement, Master Rider.
Attribute points remaining - 7
To level up, reinforce your body to the point of damaging it.
Statuses - Mindburst Poisoning, Vertigo, Tinnitus]
What the hell? I looked at my mental stats, unable to believe what I was seeing. Dandelion’s intellect was two before I took over and my bonuses applied! The dumb bastard must have died from being too stupid to breathe, which partially explained swimming in soup.
Even with Godly adding flat ten to all my stats, and Anarchist skills liberally sprinkling bonuses to my body, my faculties were just above average. Unused to such poor mental acuity, I trudged through the swamp of information, lamenting my fall from forty wisdom and intellect to mid teens.
I gulped, holding the massive table to steady myself and check what my statuses do.
[Mindburst Poisoning - Wisdom, Intellect, and Willpower greatly reduced.]
Well, that bit of information was a relief. Dandelion knew how to walk and chew chicken at the same time, but the poison obliterated his brain. I checked the other two conditions, but they were just combat and movement penalties. The actions of checking my status were once a fraction of a moment, but with my reading and processing speed down, the awkward silence in the room stretched, much to the old butler's dismay.
Finally, I pumped four points into wisdom and three into intellect, and suddenly everything seemed easier, my thoughts catching up with my reality. A bunch of questions remained unanswered, but they could wait until I ensured my safety.
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“I’ve been poisoned.” I grabbed my stomach, making heaving sounds, more for the old man’s sake than anything else, but the servant seemed well aware of what caused Dandelion’s demise. The man shook, pale as death. He was terrified of me, as well as of the consequences of his soup slaying me.
“My mind is foggy. Is there a safe place where I can avoid assassins for several hours until I recover?” I offered him a way out, and the man pounced at it, so eager he tripped over his tongue, doing everything in his power to avoid my wrath.
“Nobody would dare invade the imperial library or attack you while you are inside, my lord.”
Library. Imperial library. Several implications to consider there. Was I allowed in? Was I a member? If not, could I purchase membership? I was in an empire which funded libraries. That sounded promising.
Whatever the case, I would need money, but money as such didn’t really exist in my previous life. Did they have coinage here? Paper bills?
“Bring me my wealth,” I used a broad term, “and I will need you to guide me to the library using the back alleys and rarely traveled corridors.”
The nameless butler nodded so hard I was afraid the elderly man might break his neck, but he scampered out of the room alive enough. Finally, I had a few moments for myself.
I looked around. I sat in a large chamber made of massive whitish stones with faint bluish-green natural patterns. The light-grey hardwood floor was lacquered, the pieces too big to really call it a parquette, but smooth and well made. For some reason Dandelion was eating in a small study, the bowl of soup atop a dark desk, the shade of walnut wood. Ink was pooling from an overturned inkwell near the plate, probably the work of the dying man’s spasms.
Stacks of papers lined the two shelves which flanked the massive door through which my trusted minion had scampered out. And finally, there was a large, open window, letting in the sunlight and unknown melodious screeches from the outside.
I stood up to get a better view and realized I was above ground level, probably on the second or third floor, judging by what little I could see.
Outside stood a fortified town, its defensive wall some sixty feet tall, assuming the single story houses were normal-sized. The wall revealed I was either in a really tall building, or atop a hill. Probably the latter if the wooden carts and beasts of burden indicated this world’s level of technology.
Flatland fields and forests dominated the world beyond the stone wall, with a wide mountain range severing the horizon in the distance. I lacked skills for estimating distances, but I’d say my vantage point offered a good two hundred miles worth of view.
So what are my priorities? Stay alive, find a safe place, learn about the world and about my body’s previous occupant, try to become a god or at least level up Anarchist. Those were the most important goals. Next on the list came Redo loops in which I reset the two weeks over and over again until I mastered everything I needed to thrive.
I was a townlord, but someone assassinated me. Finding the assassin was high on the list, but off the bat, the list of suspects included an unknown rival, an heir, a spouse, and an advisor sporting suspicious facial hair. Then again, no matter who the killer was, they had killed dumb-dumb Dandelion, but with dumb-dumb out of the way, they faced me, and I would destroy them.
I checked out my body, my pockets, and jewelry.
Dandelion was a vain man or a gangster, wearing heavy rings studded with massive gems. Just the wealth on my hands boggled my mind. I also wore a heavy golden chain with a ridiculously small, fragile key attached to it. My clothes were lavish, purple, pocketless, and lacked practicality. Even if I didn’t hate the color, which I did, they had to go. What I needed was black, battle-ready, with lots of pockets.
At least Dandelion’s body was to my liking. Possibly too bulky, but fit and strong, his black hair too long. I clenched the spoon in my hand, and it turned into a mangled piece of silver.
That was off. Over the course of three lives, I had developed a decent benchmark for human strength, and what I’d done was beyond the expected. I clamped the desk’s thick tabletop, and the hardwood gave way beneath my fingers. Not for the first time in those two-three minutes, I regretted the drop of my mental prowess.
So, Dandelion was as strong and as dumb as an ox. Well, stronger and dumber, based on the evidence provided. Since he wasn’t what one might call an intellectual, it was apparently his physical strength that made him the ruler of the town. A rather contradictory piece of information for an empire which built and protected libraries.
Before I could consider anything else, the butler returned with a pillowcase-sized sack.
“The manarium you ordered, my lord.” The balding man in his late fifties offered the bag, his gaze firmly locked below my knees.
His outstretched arm shook from the weight, but once I took it I found it weighed hardly anything at all. That reminded me to ask another question.
“What’s your strength?” I once believed I was the only one seeing floating words and numbers, but Everrain taught me otherwise. Sometimes, others could see those numbers, and if they could, that meant outer gods were out to devour the world in question. Making such assumptions on a sample of one wasn’t very scientific, but the paranoid old me preferred to err on the side of caution and planning around the eldritch abominations out to eat me.
“Strength, my lord?” The man shook, the fear for his life clear from his cracked voice and the slightly furrowed brows under which his eyes searched for the right answer.
They don’t have their Guide franchise.
“Yes, your number one strength, the reason you have such a high position.”
Confusion rampaged across his face, but the butler recovered when I gave him something to work with.
“I would say my loyalty, my lord,” he lied through his teeth, but that was normal.
Worrying about the consequences you would suffer rather than your master’s suffering should be natural. Fanatics worried me more.
“Good man.” No reason to let him in on the fact that I could read him, especially given how dumb Dandelion was. “Now lead the way to the imperial library, make sure to choose the paths nobody would expect me to take, and where you don’t believe anyone important would bump into us accidentally.”
