The First Lich Lord
Chapter 3

Stretching in bed the next morning, I let out a contented sigh. The previous night had been a lot of fun. My new body as a Lich gave me so much.

From what I could tell, I was near indestructible. Thanks to the time compression of WOM, I was able to try out my new body and complete a number of quests. I even hit level 250.

Even though it was Saturday, and I was eager to hop right back into WOM, there were a few errands that needed to be done first. Mainly food. My sister was busy that weekend, so she wasn’t going to be around. All that meant was I had a necessity of supplies for a weekend marathon of gaming.

While picking out some hamburgers, a wave of nausea barreled into me. The lights in the store became painfully bright, and a blinding headache absorbed my mind. It was like someone set off a thunderclap inside my head. A vague awareness of falling came next. My world swallowed in blackness. Somehow, I knew I was dying.

Is this really how I die? Far as I could tell, my head never hit the floor.

I found myself floating in a void. There wasn’t an awareness of light or dark. It was just a strange kind of existence. No light to move toward, no voices calling me onward. Just a void, like I was waiting for something.

Then a pressure surrounded me. At first, it was a weak sensation, rapidly growing in strength until I found myself being pulled through this void. Not in any particular direction, just pulled, faster and faster.

The yanking forces were unrelenting. But it had a certain familiarity to it.

In this nothingness, I was pressed against an unseen barrier before suddenly bursting through. My vision returned, and what lay before me was both strange and beautiful.

A pristine orb of energy captivated my every sense. It was nestled on an island in the middle of a great lake, surrounded by rolling hills of waist-high grass. Vibrant blue rivers spread out from the lake like ribbons of stardust, all existing in an infinitely large plane.

This mesmerizing place of grandeur clawed at the edges of my sanity, tearing my mind apart.

But I couldn’t bring myself to look away, even as I knew something was wrong.

Flying over the lake and then the field, drawn by that unrelenting force, it occurred to me what was wrong. Time itself was visible in this place. How that’s even possible, I don’t know. Things I saw, I simply understood. From what was and what would be.

As I took in more of the sight, the more my mind began to unravel.

Speeding away over the hills, I tried to will myself to stop gazing, except I couldn’t.

Leaving the lake and its rivers, the differing planes rolled on. Occasionally I passed over other rivers and streams, but nothing as vibrant or as powerful as that initial wonder.

My destination soon loomed ahead. In a blink, I slammed into an orb made of a pale blue energy, though it was smaller than the one I’d come from. I sank into it, and the world changed again.

This place was oddly familiar. Though I didn’t know why. There was just something about it…

The force pulling me grew even more powerful, but instead of floating in disembodied nothingness, I found myself lying down. I had a body again. My eyes were closed. A sense of unease filled me. Opening my eyes, the sight that greeted me truly gave me pause.

A ceiling I’d only ever seen ingame was above me. Slowly sitting up, I looked around. I was where Vito stashed my phylactery. But… that was in WOM, and I’d never logged in.

Looking down, I jumped to my feet in alarm. My body was a skeleton—my bones black as tar. That by itself shouldn’t be alarming. After all, I’d become a Lich. Except for the fact I didn’t remember logging into WOM. On top of that, whenever I played WOM, I had a slight feeling of disconnect from my character body that always reminded me it was a game. That disconnect wasn’t there. This skeletal body felt as real as my real body.

With growing horror, I tried to access the game menu. I’d watched and read my fair share of stories about people transferred into another world to understand what could be happening. But while the stories were fun to fantasize about, very few people would actually replace that good. As I gestured, trying to access the game menu, I got a very strange message.

Error, invalid access request. Game menu not available to NPCs.

Error, entity registered as a player.

Error, conflict, and reports.

Elevating…

Elevating…

Well, you have certainly found yourself in a pickle…

We knew this was a possibility, but we hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Anyways, to get you on your feet, I’ll give you limited information.

You are in my universe. The game World of Magic is just a means of accessing my universe. You are no longer a player. In fact, you’re closer to an NPC than a player. This means if you die, you’re dead. Though you do have the advantage of having your phylactery. So, you can come back from death, assuming that it isn’t destroyed.

There is no way back, so don’t bother looking. Getting here has burned up all of your levels and then some. Technically, you shouldn’t have had the soul strength required to make the jump, but that weapon of yours is something special. It just barely gave you the boost to get here.

You will still have access to your character screen and base character traits, but access to the skill menu and other normal player things is gone. You made the transition away from the normal game systems to the more immersive system, so this will be less of a change for you than it could have been.

Well, that’s all I got for you.

Brad Rutherford, CEO of New Universal Frontiers

Altor, creator

I reread the message with a sinking heart. At this point, everyone on Earth knew who Brad Rutherford was. Altor I’d only heard from second-chance players. He was the supposed creator of WOM. The second-chancers—Immortals, as they call themselves—believe WOM was actually a real place. I don’t know the full story behind it. New Universal Frontiers was said to be the ones who brought them fully into the game. They were often people who had no future ahead of them due to, often, very tragic stories. They believe they were on a mission to bring intelligence, actual self-awareness, to this place.

“This can’t be happening,” I muttered as I opened my character sheet. Trying again, I attempted to open the gaming menu. This time, the menu popped right up as normal. A heavy groan escaped me as I read over it.

Character Soul Level: 0

Name: Ezekiel Verniac

Race: Human Lich

Unspent Stat Points: 0

Spent Stat Point: 0

5 Stat Points per level

Health: 68

Health Regeneration: 2.725/sec

Death Energy: 101

Death Energy Regeneration: 2.23/sec

Mana: 62

Mana Regeneration: 1.926/sec

Carrying lbs.: 106.15

Stats:

Intelligence: 6.55 [multiplier: 1.311]

Spirit: 6.15 [multiplier: 1.23]

Vitality: 5.75 [multiplier: 1.15]

Resilience: 5.75 [multiplier: 1.15]

Death Core: 10

Agility: 5.5 [multiplier: 1.1]

Dexterity: 6.05 [multiplier: 1.21]

Experience: 11 of 50

I was pleasantly surprised to see my multipliers were still in place. You got multipliers every time you completed a step of soul compression. Having them early on would be game-changing. I modified the settings some so it didn’t show those decimal places on the stat points. Now it would round down to the nearest whole number.

I reviewed the death core.

When I first became a Lich, I hadn’t taken the time to look more in depth at this new stat that replaced my strength and endurance. When I focused, it pulled up a small amount of information.

Death Core

The death core is a central aspect of many powerful undead creatures. It provides the source to fuel their undead body with death magic, giving them mighty strength and endurance. The death core also slightly increases the undead creature’s mana and health attributes.

What really surprised me was my character level of 0. Didn’t even think that was possible. From what I’d seen, every character started out level 1. And my starting attributes had just been applied fairly evenly across all stats. That 10 to my death core was a nice little bump, since it couldn’t be increased by stat points.

Moving to my character’s trait page, I ignored Lichdom and the increased magical learning trait, my old human starting trait. Two new traits caught my eye, and small text boxes came up when I focused on them.

Remembrance of the Soul

Your soul remembers a time in which it was much more powerful. When you reach soul compression, it will be automatically completed for you as your soul regains its strength. You will also gain experience 10% faster.

Time Warped Mindscape

Your mind has perceived something you should not have. Seeing time as dimensioned on the planes of eternity has forever changed your Mindscape. Entering your mindscape right now may be dangerous.

Taking a deep breath, I closed the menus and looked around the chamber. This was a place Vito and I had carefully prepared to provide me safety when I reincarnated. It could only be opened from the inside, a heavy steel door barring the way. Scattered throughout the chamber were supplies, gear, and books.

Checking for my soul-bound gear, and found the only item I had with me was my weapon. My rings of storage, my armor, and all my other magical items were gone.

In some ways, this was an even greater blow than losing my levels. That gear was powerful and had been hard to get. Though, upon reflection, I likely couldn’t have used it even if I still had it. Much of that gear had high stat and level requirements, and I most certainly did not meet those requirements now.

I picked my weapon up off the floor, glad it was here at least, and examined it.

Gone were the elaborate runes that once covered it. Gone was the powerful blade. Instead, this weapon was a simple black staff as tall as I was. The last half meter of the staff was a straight black blade with a rounded tip. Only one side of the blade was sharpened, and there was a small guard at its base. I opened its description.

Mercy

Weapon Class: Blade-staff

This weapon is a soul-forged weapon, its power will grow with you. It will adapt and change to fit your fighting style as you use it more. It can also be improved by adding things to it, though careful choices must be made when adding new aspects.

Despite no longer having all of its great power, this was still a good weapon. The sharp blade would prove lethal, and the noncircular handle provided me great control over the weapon. I spent some time rummaging through the room, looking for the gear Vito had stashed—simple robes and other items.

Before long, I found a simple set of what looked like monks’ robes, tied them around my waist with a rope, and a backpack which I stuffed with various supplies.

As I worked, a troubling thought occurred to me. My guildmates weren’t a great lot to be around, especially to NPCs. Most of us were here to vent our stress on this world. If I’m really an NPC, I should be careful about letting people know. Heck, I better get the hell out of the city! I wouldn’t trust any of them to believe me. I hardly believe what’s going on myself.

With those troubling thoughts swirling about, I finished looting the room and sat next to my phylactery. One thing was for sure, I couldn’t trust any of my old guildmates. Vito might be safe, along with a few of the other NPCs. They were more loyal and predictable than the players. But I couldn’t risk contacting them.

When I went to pick up my phylactery, I noticed something was off about it compared to the last time I’d seen it. Nothing had physically changed, but the aura of power it normally gave off was gone.

I recalled Vito mentioning this once before. He’d told me the phylactery would be charged up, and if I died, the charge would be spent in order to rebuild a body for me. However, once the charge was spent, it would take time for it to rebuild. If I died before the charge was rebuilt, Vito warned I would be trapped inside the phylactery until the power built back up. Because of that, I would be completely vulnerable to anyone who found it.

At the time I hadn’t given his warning much heed since I was a player. The functionality would inherently work differently for me than it would if I were an NPC.

Now I looked upon the depleted phylactery with dread.

At this point, my only option was to run, taking my phylactery with me, and replace a new place to call home. I’m not a bad person, but I’d only ever played the bad guy. And now I am that character. What does that make me?

An undead monster?

Ezekiel from back on Earth? Just your regular guy no better or worse than anyone else.

One thing was certain, I didn’t want to be the bad guy.

Resolving myself, I gathered up my phylactery, tucking it away in my backpack, and headed for the door. All right, the first step: Get the hell out of here.

I pushed open the door and drew my hood down. This would take me to a set of stairs that led up into an alley. Sticking to the shadows, I made my way toward the main street. Stepping out, I set my eyes toward the city walls and trudged for the gates, leaning on my staff to help sell the image of an old, crippled man.

Glancing behind me, the ziggurat reached up into the skies. The place where I’d become a Lich.