Lily sat on one of the sofas in the small living room on the first floor of her mansion, right next to her own bedroom. She had not bothered going back to bed. Morning had already begun to creep in, and whatever exhaustion she had felt earlier was gone. Sleep was not coming back now, no matter how much she wanted it to.
She looked down at the phone resting in her hand.
If she was guessing right, it was an old Nokia 3310. Or at least something built in that style. She recognized it instantly from the countless memes she had seen back on Earth.
The unbreakable brick phone.
Her fingers tightened slightly around it.
So, if she used this thing, she would be able to communicate with one of her friends. Or at least arrange a meeting with them, whatever that was supposed to mean. The wording alone made her uneasy. Arrange how? Under what conditions? And with what consequences?
Because if she really thought about it, using the phone would not be a neutral action. It would move something. It would push events in a direction she could not see, and she had no guarantee that direction would be a good one. If she pressed that button, was she just inviting her friends into this mess? Or worse, was she setting them up to be dragged over here the same way she had been?
Lily let out a slow breath and leaned back against the sofa.
She was absolutely certain that she could not trust a random mannequin that had been squatting inside Sevrin’s soul to decide things like that for her. Especially not when that same thing had outright said: “I am the one who pulled the strings of fate to bring you here.” The words echoed in her head, sour and infuriating.
So, what did it mean by that? Was it a confession wrapped in excuses—denying that it killed her, yet admitting to interference, to deciding that her death at that specific moment was acceptable simply because it claimed she would have died there anyway?
And that brought her back to the night she died.
Would she really have died without the summoning? She had heard Sevrin’s voice that evening, calling for her. It had distracted her while some hobo was pointing a gun at her, and there had also been moments that were simply missing. Blank stretches where she could have acted—where she should have reacted—and yet she could not remember doing anything at all.
No, it was more like small time skips. One moment the guy was pointing the weapon at her, then he said something about giving him the money. But instead, she did what? She couldn’t clearly remember, because there was a blank space in her mind.
Why wouldn’t she have just followed his orders? And yet the fucker thought she’d pressed the alarm and shot. Yeah, no. There was no way she would have died there without interference. Lily was sure of it, and so, she concluded that her fate hadn’t been to die that night at all. It had been constructed from the beginning.
Lily looked down at the phone again, turning it slightly in her hand. If she used it, and one of her friends ended up dead because of it, then that would be on her. No god, no balance, no cosmic excuse would change that fact.
So even if she wanted to hear their voices again, she could not use it. Not like this.
“This damn mannequin,” she muttered under her breath.
At least, its explanations made sense in a twisted way, just enough to sound convincing, but it had very clearly ignored things. It had never said its name. It had never said what it actually wanted. Also, how fishy was it to sit inside someone’s soul and wait until she somehow stumbled across it there? If it had already influenced Sevrin, and if it had truly been so bored inside his head, then why not approach her right away?
Maybe it had not been planned at all that she would find it. Maybe it had planned more, and Lily had somehow changed its plans.
She stared at the phone, jaw tightening.
“I am the fucking spark for what, exactly,” Lily said quietly, the question hanging unanswered in the empty room.
With a slow sigh, she finally made the decision for herself. She could not use the phone. Not now, and not like this. A moment later, it vanished from her hand as she dismissed it into her inventory, out of sight but very much not out of mind.
Also, in the moment, there were other more pressing matters to deal with anyway.
Even if the mannequin had fed her a fair amount of bullshit, she found herself believing it—at least its explanation of why she was here in this body, why she was inside her game avatar. It made sense, especially when she thought about how she sometimes felt influenced, not by some completely foreign voice, but by herself, which she now realized was probably her former self. Old instincts and habits from another life were slowly aligning with who she was now. It was no possession, it was convergence.
Another pressing matter was that she was supposedly the first of many to come to this world in one way or another. If Lily understood it correctly, and if Tiara was somehow representative of the world’s overall state, then everyone arriving here in their former game avatars would have a massive impact on their surroundings. And at least this part was believable. Because aside from the mannequin, Sevrin’s book had hinted at it as well.
She bit her lip, staring at nothing as she tried to decide where to even begin.
Some things were already in motion. That much was undeniable. But she needed to adjust her plans again. A simple base hidden out in the wild was no longer sufficient. In the span of a single day, her responsibilities had exploded. What had started as a one-woman empire in the morning, with a handful of idiotic cultists clinging to her, had turned into officially founding that very same empire again and laying claim to an entire city.
And it didn't stop there.
Other factions were already moving, even before she had fully realized what was happening, all because she had wanted to access an old account in a fucking bank. Catacrum. The Ecclesia. Powers that didn't care about her comfort or her doubts. With every decision she made now, she was no longer influencing just a few individuals, but potentially hundreds. Maybe even thousands.
That realization settled heavily in her chest. And for a brief moment, she saw her father’s face in her mind. That familiar, infuriatingly calm grin, and the sound of his voice as clear as if he were standing right in front of her.
“I told you, Lily. You can’t run from responsibility forever. It will find you anyway, because you are who you are. A Carter.”
Her fingers curled into a fist.
“Oh, how I fucking hate you,” she muttered into the quiet room.
With that, Lily pushed herself up from the sofa. She glanced toward the window, where the first light of dawn had already turned the sky a deep, crimson red over the lake outside. Sitting here would not help. Thinking in circles would not help. What she needed now was action, and she needed it immediately.
For a brief moment, she considered checking on Tessa. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly. The girl had gone through far too much the day before, and if Lily was honest with herself, rest was probably the best thing she could give her right now. So, she left it at that.
Lily walked down the stairs, passed through the wide gallery of her mansion, and stepped outside. Cold air filled her lungs as she drew in a slow breath, grounding herself as her eyes drifted across the lake once more. Even now, with everything spiraling out of control, it was still beautiful.
“So,” she murmured quietly, “first things first.”
Mana gathered behind her back as her wings unfurled, and she lifted off the ground, accelerating smoothly into the air. From above, the layout of her domain became clear. Her mansion by the lake. The legendary forge standing solid beside it. Farther away, the clearing where the cultists’ house stood, small and exposed among the trees.
Her original plan had been simple. Talk to the cultists. See how the tasks she had given them were progressing. Expand slowly. Add a few buildings, maybe some defenses, and let things grow naturally. But that plan was dead. The audience with Cale had made that painfully clear.
She had been thinking far too small. There was no time for organic growth, not when forces were already moving. Not when someone like Cale could simply walk out of nowhere, cross half the forest, and stumble straight into her territory without resistance.
Cale himself had not been a threat, not to her and certainly not to Igrath, but that had never been the point. If he could do it, then others could as well, and that reality left her with very little room for hesitation. So no, she didn't truly have a choice in the matter. Even what she was about to do would be visible from far away. It would announce her presence, her claim, and her intentions in the loudest way possible. But she had already declared her power over these lands. So, hiding in the forest while pretending otherwise was pointless.
When she had climbed high enough to see the forest stretch endlessly in every direction, a vast sea of trees surrounding the lake, Lily stopped. She raised her hands and formed a triangle with her fingers, peering through it as mana surged inside her.
Runes flared to life around her, glowing bright and sharp against the dim morning sky.
She could feel it immediately, because this was different and far heavier than anything she had attempted before. The pull on her mana was immense, far greater than anything she had used since arriving in this world, and her reserves began to drain rapidly as everything funneled toward the space framed by her hands, marking the moment she was about to cast her first legendary skill in this world.
When she felt the momentum peak, she slowly pulled her hands apart and spoke clearly.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“[Build: Stronghold].”
The world below her answered.
Everything she had seen through the triangle was swallowed by a deep, radiant purple light, encompassing the lake, her manor, the smithy, the cultists’ house, and the surrounding forest alike. Countless complex and multifaceted runes appeared in the air around her, each carrying a meaning she instinctively understood.
She guided them downward, placing them across the glowing land below. Walls. Foundations. Wards. Infrastructure. The runes moved where she willed them, sinking into the ground one by one as the shape of something far greater took form.
When the last rune settled, Lily brought her hands together in a single, sharp clap.
“Let everyone know,” she said, her voice carrying across the forming domain, “that I hereby claim these lands as my own. And that I am ready to defend them with all my might.”
Thunder rolled across the sky, and the ground began to tremble.
Where the runes had landed, structures began to rise, as tall black stone walls surged up around the lake and a massive stretch of forest, their outer faces lined with black metal thorns that sealed the land within a single, unified perimeter. Buildings followed, emerging from the earth as barracks, sleeping quarters, storage halls, and workshops, while streets of black cobblestone formed between them, connecting everything into a coherent whole.
A tall keep rose between her mansion and the cultists’ house, its presence unmistakable as it anchored the stronghold at its center. Lily hovered above it all, her mana still draining as she watched her territory take shape beneath her.
After a few minutes, the pull on her mana eased, and the skill finally came to an end.
High above the newly formed base, something else took shape. A flag manifested in the air, bearing the sigil of the Xares Empire, the faction Lily had chosen and the one this stronghold would now represent. It was made of almost translucent light, like a hovering hologram, and could be seen from miles away.
This was the second effect of [Build: Stronghold]. By activating the skill, she had not only shaped the land but officially claimed it as her territory, and the declaration was absolute and unmistakable to anyone capable of perceiving it. Within the rules she remembered from the game, other players would now recognize that these lands belonged to her, and they could choose to either challenge the claim or take it as a warning and stay away. That was why the flag would remain visible for an entire week. And that was exactly why Lily had hesitated to use the skill in the first place: she hadn't known how the effect would translate into the real world, although a hovering flag above her former hiding place wasn’t the worst outcome.
She slowly descended toward the top of the new keep, her wings beating steadily as she took in the finished fortress below. The cultists had gathered outside, staring up in stunned silence, while Igrath stood among them, his massive frame unmistakable even from above as he watched the transformation with quiet intensity.
As she descended, Lily became actually aware of how much the skill had taken out of her. A significant portion of her mana pool was gone, and if she had to estimate, the legendary skill had drained nearly half of it. A faint dizziness lingered at the edges of her perception, not enough to be dangerous, but enough to serve as a clear warning.
She couldn’t directly compare her combat abilities to large-scale construction skills, of course, but the experience made one thing obvious: legendary skills were far more draining than she had anticipated, and not something to be used lightly. If she ever had to rely on one in a fight, it would have to be a last resort, because she only truly understood her skills after using them for the first time, and exhausting herself at the wrong moment could easily turn deadly.
After landing on the keep, Lily found herself standing within the battlements on a wide rooftop terrace that crowned the structure. She took a slow breath and looked around.
“So,” she murmured quietly, “since the stronghold is staying, there’s only one thing left…”
She walked toward the center of the terrace, where a stone plinth waited. Set into it was a glowing golden orb, warm to the touch and humming faintly with contained power. It was the third and final boon of the skill she had just used. Lily placed her hand on it, focused, and said, “Activate.”
At once, her mind filled with shifting displays. Different templates unfolded before her awareness, layouts and compositions of stronghold garrisons; all standardized options provided by the skill itself. These were the default templates, the ones every player would have access to when using [Build: Stronghold].
Most players would never use the standard garrison. It was too basic, and usually replaced with carefully crafted NPC forces or custom creations. But Lily, however, had no choice. She had no NPC creation items on hand, and so she had to go with what was available. If anything, it was a small stroke of luck that the skill even came with this option at all. Considering how many restrictions it already had on activation and use, the inclusion of a basic garrison was simply logical. It was not impressive, but it was the bare minimum needed to hold a fortress.
She reviewed the standard composition automatically, the information flowing cleanly into her thoughts. The standard set consisted of one garrison captain at level 350, two sergeants at level 250, sixteen frontline soldiers at level 200, sixteen ranged soldiers at level 200, one healer at level 200, one battlemage at level 200, and five support staff members, namely a cook, an armorer, a blacksmith, a beast tamer, and a logistician, all at level 150.
The templates allowed for adjustments in origin and culture, including nation, people, and race, and they could also slightly alter levels and jobs within a fixed framework. For example, levels taken from the captain could be redistributed to the soldiers, allowing the garrison to better fit the environment and the ruler who summoned it.
As she scrolled through the options in her mind, Lily sighed. The available choices included the Kingdom Infantry Corps, the Northern Mountain Wardens, the Elven Sentinel Regiment, and several others, amounting to around twenty templates in total. After going through all of them, she was briefly tempted to choose the elves, if only to see how others would react when her fortress turned out to be manned entirely by them.
But in the end, she selected a different and more logical option, the Infernal Vanguard Cohort. When she focused on it, the details unfolded before her:
Standard Infernal Vanguard Cohort:
1 Legion Centurion (Level 300)
Infernal commander
2 Hellbound Lieutenants (Level 270)
Discipline enforcers
20 Infernal Guards (Level 220)
Heavy frontline equipped with demon forged weapons
12 Ashmark Archers (Level 180)
Ranged units using burning bolts
1 Warlock Healer (Level 230)
Blood magic based regenerative support
1 Hellfire Battlemage (Level 240)
Fire and curse based crowd control
5 Support Personnel (Level 120):
- Soul smith
- Armorer
- Flesh tender, specializing in regeneration
- Beast handler for infernal mounts and imps
- Quartermaster acting as logistician
The levels were slightly adapted compared to the default, and she found herself nodding faintly. She didn't need an overwhelmingly strong commander. She already had Igrath.
With a final mental command, she confirmed the selection.
The golden orb beneath her hand shifted in color, its glow deepening from gold to crimson. Then it dissolved into a flare of red light and vanished entirely.
In front of her, tiny points of light appeared in precise formation, hovering just above the stone, and one by one they expanded, solidified, and took shape into armored figures with weapons in hand, horned silhouettes, and disciplined stances. Moments later, her garrison stood fully materialized on the terrace before her, and it was getting a little cramped now that almost fifty of them were standing on the terrace.
Lily had watched the process with faint curiosity. It felt surreal to her that people could simply be summoned into existence like this, formed out of light and mana, but she didn't have the luxury of dwelling on that thought for long.
The commander stepped forward. He was a normal demon-kin, unlike her Demonbounds, and looked almost human at first glance, aside from his red skin, purple eyes, and curved horns. He wore dark armor that bordered on black, trimmed with gold to mark his rank.
He stopped a few paces in front of her and went down on one knee, bowing his head deeply.
“The Infernal Vanguard Cohort greets the Princess of the Abyss,” he said in a clear, steady voice. “We are at your full disposal.”
Behind him, the rest of the formation followed suit in perfect unison, armor shifting softly as they bowed as one.
“We greet the Princess!”
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Skill Tier Overview (Xantia Standard):
The following level requirements apply to skills learned directly through the system skill tree or standard progression.
Skills granted through exceptional circumstances such as unique quests, world events, relic interaction, divine intervention, or extreme dedication to a specific discipline may bypass or reduce these requirements at the system’s discretion.
- Common / Normal: Level 1+
- Uncommon: Level 30+
- Rare: Level 100+
- High-Rare: Level 200+
- Epic: Level 500+
- Legendary: Level 700+
- Mythic: Level 950+
- Unique: No fixed level; requires singular or world-defining conditions
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Detailed Info — Skill: [Build: Stronghold]
Tier: Legendary
Skill Tree: [Structure Summon] → Subclass: [Build]
Type: Creation / Territorial / Infrastructure
Required Level: 925
Description:
Manifests a large-scale, defensible stronghold bound to the user’s authority and factional presence. The structure is not merely summoned, but anchored to the world through layered wards, territorial claims, and infrastructural logic.
Unlike lower-tier build skills, a Stronghold does not exist independently of its owner’s influence. The world itself evaluates whether such a structure is permitted to take root.
Core Effects
- Creates a large fortified base including outer walls, internal buildings, storage areas, command halls, workshops, living quarters, and layered defensive layouts.
- Automatically manifests a functional garrison, scaled to the caster’s faction status:
- Guards, sentries, and officers appropriate to the stronghold’s purpose
- Units are semi-autonomous constructs, factional NPCs, or system-generated retainers depending on alignment and origin
- Garrison strength scales with faction size, influence, and territorial control
- Integrates structural wards, anti-siege enchantments, and environmental stabilization, preventing collapse, decay, or easy magical sabotage.
- Recognizes allies, registered faction members, and authorized roles, granting:
- Access permissions
- Greater defensive buffs while inside the stronghold
- Faster recovery and coordination bonuses for defenders
- Includes logistical systems:
- Food storage, water access, and basic supply generation
- Armory stock appropriate to the stronghold tier
- Command structures that allow issuing orders to garrison units
- Once established, the stronghold persists without continuous mana upkeep.
However:
- It cannot be freely relocated
- Destruction requires sustained siege or overwhelming force
- Loss of territorial control can weaken or neutralize its functions
Scaling Rules (Critical):
The size, durability, and complexity of the Stronghold scale dynamically based on [Faction Authority], not raw mana alone.
Factors include:
- Guild or faction level
- Number of active members
- Territorial influence already claimed
- Historical significance and achievements of the faction
- Authority rank of the caster within that faction
Examples:
- A small guild manifests a reinforced keep or fortified manor.
- A mid-sized faction manifests a true fortress with layered defenses.
- A dominant empire manifests a citadel capable of controlling an entire region.
Attempting to exceed what the faction can sustain will result in:
- Structural instability
- Partial manifestation
- Severe backlash to the caster
- Or outright failure
Authority Restrictions:
Access to Legendary build skills is restricted by position within a faction.
- Guildmaster / Sovereign: Full access to all build tiers, including Stronghold-class structures.
- High Officers: Limited access to subordinate fortifications or extensions.
- Members: No access beyond personal or temporary structures.
A faction may only manifest a single Stronghold-class structure every three months in Xantia Standard Time (XST). Attempting additional manifestations during this period will automatically fail.
World Constraints:
- Strongholds cannot be placed arbitrarily.
- The land itself must accept the anchor. Contested, sacred, or heavily claimed areas may resist or reject construction.
- Building a Stronghold openly marks the location as a point of interest for factions, nations, and higher powers.
- Destruction of a Stronghold has lasting consequences, including territorial collapse and faction-wide penalties.
A Stronghold is not built by stone and spell alone. It stands because the world agrees that you have the right to stand there.