So as I sat there with my mouth hanging open at the realization that I was apparently “immortal,” Mathilde let out a sharp snort that snapped me out of it. I looked over at her just in time to see her lean back slightly and start talking, already sounding annoyed with the idea before I had even finished processing it.

  “Don’t get too excited,” she said. “All those advantages you’re imagining don’t really exist when everyone else lives forever too. Banks exist here, sure, but there’s basically no situation where money just grows on its own. No interest worth mentioning. Anyone with money who buys land and waits for opportunity is competing with a hundred others doing the exact same thing.”

  I turned that over in my head, and it took a surprising amount of wind out of my sails. It made sense, even if a part of my brain was still stuck on the simple fantasy of living forever and doing absolutely nothing with it.

  She wasn’t done.

  “And as long as you’re alive in this world, someone is trying to kill you,” she continued. “Living longer just means more opportunities for people to try to kill you.”

  …and there went the rest of the steam.

  Ephraim cut in with a quiet grunt and shot her a look. “It ain’t as bad as Math’s making it sound,” he said. “When you get here, your body stops aging at the point you arrive, and most of the bad things you brought with you start clearing up over time. Scars fade. Diseases burn out. Cancers disappear. Even arthritis stops being a problem.”

  He hesitated for half a second. “That said, whatever change happens makes everyone sterile.”

  “Well,” I said weakly, “that’s… something.”

  Mathilde leaned in with a sneer that somehow managed to look playful. “Yup. Even sexually transmitted diseases disappear,” she added, finishing with a wink.

  …What the hell was that wink about?

  “Anyway,” Ephraim said, throwing her a questioning glance before turning back to me, “since we’re talking about the body, we might as well talk stats and leveling. You’ve made it to level twenty-seven, so you’ve probably got a decent handle on the basics.”

  “Everyone starts at ten in every stat they have unlocked, and everyone begins with the same five unlocked by default: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, and Wisdom. There were ten stats total, with anything beyond those five only unlocking through abilities.”

  Huh. That was interesting.

  “So,” I said slowly, “I have Charisma unlocked. Is that what you mean?”

  He smiled at that. “First thing, don’t volunteer that kind of information. Stats and skills are better kept quiet. Makes it harder for someone to figure out how to kill you.”

  I felt my face heat up.

  “And second,” he continued, “yes. You’re right. Charisma’s one of the unlockable ones. Don’t worry about us knowing, though. It’s common knowledge that [Bard]s have it, and you already told us last night.”

  That sent an unwelcome flash through my mind of being naked and tied to a post in the barn. Telling them my entire status probably had not been my smartest move, though at least I hadn’t told them everything.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you’re probably wondering what the remaining stats are.”

  I wasn’t. I was busy wondering if the information I had already shared could be used to kill me.

  “The confirmed ones,” he continued, “are Charisma, Perception, Luck, and Soul.”

  I frowned. “Wait. Confirmed ones? Shouldn’t there be one more? Why isn’t it known?”

  Neither of them answered right away, and that silence told me more than the explanation would have.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s where things get strange.”

  He shifted slightly on the bench as if settling into a story he had told before but never quite liked telling. “People who’ve unlocked that last stat don’t talk about it. Or if they do, they don’t agree with each other. One’ll say it’s Magic. Another says Endurance. Someone else swears it’s Agility or something close enough to sound believable.”

  He shook his head. “Either the ones talking are lying and never unlocked it in the first place, or they did unlock it and have reasons not to say what it really is. No one’s been able to prove either way.”

  “It’s spawned more conspiracy theories than anything else in the system,” he continued. “You’ll hear folks claim it’s Shadow, or Time, or Evil, or Fate. All sorts of nonsense. Problem is, in a world where magic exists, even the stupid ideas get just enough plausibility to stick.”

  I sat with that for a moment, letting it settle. It was unsettling in a quiet way, the idea that even the rules themselves might be hiding something.

  “Anyway,” he went on, moving forward before I could dig too deep into it, “the five base stats do more or less what they say on the tin. They take your actual body and multiply what you can already do based on how far over ten the stat is.”

  He tapped the table for emphasis. “If you’ve got twenty Strength, you’re about twice as strong as your baseline. Doesn’t give you muscles you don’t have. It just multiplies what you can already put out. Which means you can game it by working out and building muscle first. Stronger base, bigger return.”

  He explained that Dexterity and Vitality worked the same way, higher Dexterity meaning better speed and reaction time, higher Vitality meaning more resilience and a harder time dying.

  Then his tone sharpened.

  “Don’t let the numbers fool you, though. No matter your level or stats, you’re still very killable. I’ve seen level fifty men brought down by a mob of level fives. Doesn’t matter how tough you are. A knife to the eye is still a knife to the eye.”

  That landed.

  “The last two base stats are Intelligence and Wisdom,” he continued. “Intelligence helps with memory and learning. Wisdom helps you think clearly, sort things out, and keep the mental cobwebs from piling up. That matters more than you’d think once you’ve been alive a century or two.”

  He added that they had diminishing returns compared to physical stats, that most people couldn’t feel the difference past a certain point, though higher values did increase overall mana.

  “Mana?” I asked.

  “Magic fuel,” he said. “Powers active abilities.”

  Ah. My magic juice.

  I nodded like that explained more than it probably did.

  “Now,” he said, “the unlockable stats are where things get… esoteric.”

  “Charisma shows up in classes like [Bard] and [Warlock],” he said. “It’s not just how much people like you either. It’s how things respond to you. How situations bend a little when you act. It’s a strange one, and most folks get uncomfortable around people they think have too much of it.”

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

  “Perception’s more straightforward,” he went on. “You’ll see it unlocked in classes like [Rouge] and [Ranger]. It sharpens your senses, sure, but more than that it helps you understand what you’re noticing. Not just that something’s there, but what it means.”

  He paused before the next one, his mouth tightening slightly. “Luck belongs to the odd classes. [Corsair]. [Probabilitus]. The kind that twist outcomes. They draw good fortune to themselves, but it doesn’t come from nowhere. Bad luck tends to spill onto the people around them. Nobody really understands how it works. Just that if someone’s gaining luck, someone else is paying for it.”

  “And then there’s Soul,” he finished. “Unlocked by classes like [Shaman], [Druid], and of course [Soulblade]. Best anyone understands, their magic works off something deeper. They don’t just spend mana. They expand whatever the soul is supposed to be so their power has somewhere to live.”

  He paused there.

  “And that,” he said, “is about as clear as anyone’s ever been able to make it.”

  Mathilde pushed her empty plate away and leaned back. “Are you done dumping lore on him?”

  Ephraim looked over at her. “You got a better way to explain it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Tell him the parts that keep him alive.”

  He sighed. “Fine.”

  He turned back to me. “You know math?”

  My eyes drifted to Mathilde as she stood and picked up the plate of pancakes next to me, already moving toward Silas.

  “No,” Ephraim added quickly, “actual math. Numbers.”

  A flash of spreadsheets and late nights staring at Excel cells ran through my head. “Unfortunately.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then this part matters. To get past level one, you need 1,000 experience. Level two needs 110% of that. Level three needs 110% of level two. It keeps scaling like that forever.”

  My stomach dropped. “Exponentially,” I said quietly.

  He smiled like I had passed a test. “Exactly. It keeps climbing. To go from level 49 to 50 you need 106,400 experience.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yup,” he said. “Level 50 and up is what most folks call the ‘don’t fuck with them’ range. If someone’s class didn’t unlock an extra stat, they’ve got 50 stat points spread around. That makes them five times stronger and faster than baseline, at least. On top of that they’ve unlocked five abilities.”

  He leaned forward slightly. “And your status shows total experience, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You cross one million total experience right around level 50,” he said. “That means whoever you’re looking at knows exactly what they’re doing.”

  That was a lot of squirrels.

  “The ugly part,” he continued, “is how people get there. You remember us talking about folks being dangerous? Groups like the ones hunting you?”

  I nodded again.

  “When you kill someone,” he said, “you get 10% of their total experience.”

  My jaw tightened.

  “If that person has a million experience,” he went on, “that’s 100,000 for the killer. That’s a dozen levels for a lower-level person. Makes high-level people very tempting targets.”

  I sat with that for a moment. If this system had been designed, it had been designed to reward predation. It felt uncomfortably familiar, like certain games back home that encouraged players to snowball by crushing weaker ones.

  Silas suddenly spoke up. “We are in the middle of nowhere.”

  “That we are,” Mathilde said as she set a fresh plate down in front of him and took her own seat again. “On purpose. We like our privacy.”

  She shot me a look that made it clear this was not negotiable.

  Ephraim nodded. “We’re on a peninsula. That’s not an accident.”

  He leaned over and started drawing lines in the dirt with one finger. The table tilted slightly, and both Mathilde and Silas shifted without thinking to counterbalance it, like this happened all the time.

  “This planet has one continent,” he said. “Everyone just calls it “The Continent”. North of us is a war that’s been running about a hundred years now. The Evergrowing Empire on one side. Necrotic Kingdom on the other.”

  He drew two rough shapes. “Empire’s about fifty thousand square miles. Ruled by Emperor Felix. Lucky bastard pulled a rare lord class. [Emperor], fitting enough. His ability buffs everyone under him.”

  He drew the other shape. “Necrotic Kingdom’s about the same size. Ruled by King Gus. He’s got the [Necromancer] class. Supposedly around level one hundred fifty.”

  I stared at him. “Wait. Level one hundred fifty?”

  He looked up. “Yeah.”

  “Levels go that high?”

  He met my eyes. “Higher.”

  “Yup,” Ephraim said. “Best guess is the level cap sits around 1,000, but no one’s ever gotten anywhere close. The highest I’ve personally seen was 187.”

  He paused, eyes drifting off. “I was working a forge in Gearhaven about 70 years back when he walked in straight from the sea, and you wouldn’t believe the—”

  “Focus, dear,” Mathilde cut in.

  Ephraim frowned. “It’s important.”

  Silas chimed in like he’d been waiting. “Level 187 means about half a trillion experience points!”

  Ephraim slapped the table hard enough to rattle the plates. “Exactly. That number’s ridiculous.”

  The glare Mathilde shot him could have cracked stone.

  He cleared his throat and pushed on. “Anyway. The Empire and the Necrotic Kingdom have been at it a long time. Where we are now is a peninsula which is know to be a spawn area for new people. Plus its safe from anyone invading. That’s why we came down this way.”

  “Why’s that safe?” I asked. “What stops one of them from invading through here?”

  He laughed. “Actually, the Evergrowing Empire’s the one that expands by force. The Necros don’t, they have expanded by diplomacy and reputation of fairness and safty.”

  I blinked. “Wait. Really? Doesn’t ‘necrotic’ mean death and all that?”

  “I get why you’d think that,” he said. “But death turns out to be useful. The Necrotic Kingdom runs on [Necromancer]s. They raise the dead and use them for everything. Farming. Road repair. Monster cleanup. Fighting. They don’t waste living people on that sort of work.”

  Silas nodded eagerly. “They farm dungeons for bodies.”

  “Exactly,” Ephraim said. “King Gus is supposedly around level 150, like I said. Word is he can raise 5,000 dead at once. The kingdom’s popular because there’s no draft and it’s stable. Hard to threaten a place where the soldiers don’t need sleep and the workforce doesn’t complain.”

  “Is there no limit to how many undead a [Necromancer] can control?” I asked, immediately thinking exploit.

  He looked at me like the question itself was odd. “Why would there be?”

  “And… dungeons?” I added as my brain caught up.

  “We’ll circle back to that,” he said. “Complicated.”

  He drew again in the dirt. “What keeps us safe are the free cities where the peninsula meets the mainland. Two of them. First is Gearhaven. Ruled by a [Golemancer] and a [Lord]. High tech. Forward thinking. They buy gadgets from fresh spawns too. Including black squares like the one you’re carrying.”

  My phone, I hope it's okay.

  “They’ve got a bridge to the mainland,” he continued. “Heavily fortified. Hard as hell to take.”

  He hesitated. “The other city is Raven’s City. Smaller. Meaner.”

  “The Raven Bitch,” Silas chirped.

  “Yes, Silas, thank you,” Ephraim said with a sigh. He looked back at me. “You know he likes you. He’s usually not this talkative.”

  I glanced over at Silas, who was staring straight ahead with the kind of intense focus that suggested he was thinking very hard about absolutely nothing. His plate was completely clean, every last crumb gone, and he sat there quietly like the world had resumed its normal shape now that breakfast was finished.

  “Anyway,” Ephraim continued, steering things back on track, “that city is ruled over by Margaret Atwood. Most folks know her better as the Raven Bitch.”

  Mathilde shot him a warning look.

  “She’s suspected to be one of the most powerful people on the planet,” he added, then stopped himself and cleared his throat. “But we’ll get into why later.”

  North of us, he explained, was the city of New Town. A place most fresh spawns drifted toward after arriving in this world. A hub. A sorting point. Somewhere between opportunity and danger depending on who you asked.

  “I’ll be heading that way in a few days,” he said, tone casual but deliberate. “You’re welcome to come with me.”

  The way he said it made one thing very clear. Staying here was not an option.

  “We’ve covered a lot,” he went on. “Why don’t you find somewhere to sit and digest both the food and everything you just learned. Math, you mind helping Lloyd get his things?”

  Mathilde nodded and stood, gesturing sharply for me to follow.

  I pushed myself up and followed her toward the house, doing my best to keep the blanket wrapped around me in a way that felt dignified, though I suspected I was failing badly. The moment felt strange, like I was being politely escorted out of a holding pattern and into the next phase of my life.

  “Oh,” Ephraim called after us. “One more thing.”

  I turned.

  “I’ve got a project you might be able to help me with later,” he said. “Something that you'd have a problem with. We can talk then. I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got.”

  He turned back to his plate and finished his last pancake like that settled the matter.

  I followed Mathilde inside.

  The interior of the house was rough but surprisingly spacious, built with the same practical mindset as everything else on the property. The kitchen held another flat metal cooking surface like the one outside, thick counters made from solid slabs of wood, and a large walk-in cupboard stocked with jars, sacks, and bundles of dried goods. Everything had a place. Everything looked used.

  She led me to a table near the wall.

  My clothes and packs were laid out neatly on one side, everything arranged with an almost obsessive care. No dumping. No rummaging. Just clean lines and order. My phone caught my eye immediately, and I crossed the room without thinking.

  I picked it up and pressed the power button.

  The screen lit up.

  Low battery, but alive.

  That small glow felt like a lifeline.

  Mathilde watched me the entire time, her eyes sharp and assessing.

  “Everything there?” she asked.

  I glanced back at the table, then nodded. “Looks like it.”

  “Good.”

  She stepped forward without warning, grabbed my genitals, and kissed me.

  My brain shut off completely.

  There was no buildup. No explanation. Just the sudden shock of it, brief and decisive, and then she pulled back like nothing unusual had happened at all.

  “Get dressed,” she said gruffly. “We’ll talk later.”

  And with that, she turned and walked away, leaving me standing there holding my phone, wrapped in a blanket, trying very hard to remember how thinking worked.