A man? I stood stunned looking at the bare-chested man in front of me. Another floor guardian? This early? Or is he another of the servants of Melphinoe? So far all the servants I had seen in the dungeon had been inhuman in some way, but I supposed appearances could be deceiving, just like my own living form.
"Welcome." He said, tending skewers over the fire. "Come, sit. Bring your prey here and we will exchange food and stories. We have much to discuss."
I looked down, remembering the bird in my hand. I was still in my skeleton form, but I remembered how hungry I had been in my living form. I looked at the skewers over the fire. They certainly looked delicious, though without hunger my body didn't react to them in the way I might have expected.
I set the bird down at his side and cautiously took a seat across the fire from the man. Rufi, followed my actions, trotting proudly back to me after laying down her kill. "We do?" I asked quizzically. Everyone else in this damn dungeon seems to know so much more than me… I lamented inwardly.
The man picked up one of the birds and began plucking out its feathers with practiced motions as he began to speak. "Have you checked you status recently?"
"Uh…" I paused, still evaluating the man. Damn, he knows about that too? Do all of Melphinoe's servants just automatically know about me? Is there some kind of newsletter circulating? I sighed, deciding to once again be forthright to a total stranger on the basis that they were presumably higher up the ranks than I was. "A little while ago before my last battle, yeah, why?"
"Check it now." He had finished plucking one of the birds and moved onto the second.
I glared at him, annoyed with his cryptic nonchalance, but figured it couldn't hurt. "Status."
[Name: Pick one! ;)]
[Race: Night Skeleton]
[Sex: F] [Age: 17 (Current form: 1)]
[Lvl. 9]
[HP: 675/675] [MP: 422/450] [SP: 510/550]
[Skills: Dark Slash lvl. 7, Dark Vision lvl. 10, Spirit Sight lv. 4, Dark Magic lvl. 8, Improved Balance lvl. 10, Improved Reactions lvl. 10, Corrupting Touch lvl. 10, Corruption Magic lvl. 3, Evernight Touch lvl. 3, Evernight Well lvl. 1, Summon Weapon lvl. 5, Living Form lvl. 4, Read Memories lvl. 3, Ice Magic lvl. 2, Drain Energy lvl. 1, Wind Magic lvl. 4, Mind Numbing lvl. 2, Cold Resistance lvl. 2, Mental Resistance lvl. 1]
[Titles: Undead, Blessed of Melphinoe, Dragon-Slayer, Infused Knowledge, Survivor of Arthuss, the Immortal Storm, Contracted Familiar: Rufi, Last System Backup: Night Skeleton lvl. 9]
I frowned. I hadn't leveled up, despite killing all those bugs. Some of my skills had gone up, and Improved Balance and Improved Reactions were both glowing, awaiting my choice of an evolution path, but I ignored them for the moment, looking back up at the man in front of me.
"Your point?"
The man set aside the deplucked birds, and lifted a skewer from the fire, examining it closely. "It's finished, you want some?"
"Uh, sure," I said, taking a couple of the skewers, and handing one to Rufi, who quickly began tearing into the tender meat. I hesitated to change into my living form in front of a man I didn't know, so I only took my few skewers and waited patiently for him to continue.
"Up until now, evolving has been a simple matter of acquiring more power. Your system may not know what to make of a monster's evolutionary path, but it does make the acquisition of energy from monsters you defeat far more efficient, meaning you've already come a lot further along your path than most of Our Lady's servants have by this point." He took up the bird carcasses again, and sliced them open, carefully removing the innards as he went. "But that also means you've reached the first obstacle in your path before we've had the chance to properly prepare you."
I frowned. I had just left Moira not that long ago, and I'd been level 9 then too, couldn't she have said something, if it was this important?
He looked at the skewers in my lap. "You're not going to eat those?" He asked. Up to this point his demeanour had been rather frank and to the point, if not still rather mysterious, but at this remark amusement played behind his eyes and a smile tugged at the edge of his lips even as he did his best to keep his expressionless mask.
I looked down at the skewers, nervously, feeling a muted sense of embarrassment as I wondered what to do. "I'll eat it in a bit. Please, continue." I tried to keep us on track.
"Alright," the smile tugging at his lips grew wider for a second, before he returned to the matter at hand as he began salting and seasoning the birds. "The undead have three basic forms: Skeleton, Ghoul, and Ghost. From those forms six different advanced species develop. From Ghosts, Phantoms and The Possessed. From Ghouls, Wraiths and Vampires. From Skeletons, Liches and Night Mistresses. You have had the seed of a Night Mistress planted within you, granting you life after death, and the powers and abilities of a monster. But as yet you've only scratched the upper echelons of what a skeleton can be. You've yet to fully grow into the potential of what you can be, you've yet to fully accept your form, and the restrictions that come with it."
"Restrictions?" I frowned. I hadn't given much thought to my species or my evolutionary path, though maybe I should have when I went from being a Skeleton to a Night Skeleton, but to me it had always seemed inevitable that as I went I would become more and more human, until I was basically a monster powerhouse in human form, but maybe I'd been naive to make that assumption.
"The Undead are those who have returned from death, as such, even as they are granted a semblance of life, there always remains some part of the domain of the living that lies forever out of reach." The man skewered the two birds and placed them on the wire grill over the fire to cook. "In their basic form, the restraints of the undead are simply the realms of life that lie out of their power to possess—ghosts cannot touch, skeletons cannot feel, ghouls are so driven by their desires they can hardly think, and so on.
"But as their power grows, they become more and more capable of overcoming those restrictions. Ghosts begin to be able to interact with the world, Skeletons begin to be able to enflesh themselves. Ghouls begin to regain their minds. But the power to break death's rules only stretches so far, and in the end they always reach the point you have, where death holds them back from further power, restraining their ability to break back into the realm of the living. To push past this, one must sign a contract with the Goddess, binding one's being to a restriction, pledging fealty for the sake of power, trading what could be, for what will be. If you wish to continue to progress, this is a step you must take."