CH4: Dreamer Of Annihilations (Patreon)

Her pride was a victim of random chance. A single fault in the system had changed the game entirely. Two hundred seasons and a human evaded the trap. Hair glistened on steel, but no blood was shed. Her hare was free to hop back to its den.

Jill covered her face and looked through her fingers. Pieces of a shattered moon, a base of the old enemy, were destroyed before they could bring doom. Her ancestors were strong and decisive, but neither of her minds could spark a plan to fix the issue.

She had been trained in the sacred practices to guarantee success. The humans were scouted, and while they couldn’t perfectly predict who was chosen, they could narrow down the selection. So why did a human manage to throw shit at the perfect time to screw everything up?

She glared at a floating black orb covered in cracks. Tiny roots and stems grew out of it, sickly weak and shedding matter. If the shade didn’t grow larger soon, she couldn’t plant it. Her connection to Zack’s power, she held it together and fed from it. Green and silver streaks filled the cracks from the shades of lost members who decided to risk the nightmare soldier. She had shattered their shades that would never grow and used the pieces to finish the malformed shade formed from Zack’s initialization. One crack refused to close, and it leaked.

Her pride was the victim of a human's whims. After getting the map, she expected him to find his way to her, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he fought ice elementals to preserve their numbers. From her assessment, he shouldn’t have been loyal. Both of her streams of thought argued but failed to reach a consensus. Would she have to sleep with him to get what she wanted?

Worse, would she have to suffer the indignity of coming back to him?

Jill replaced the full collector from Zack’s shade’s drippings. She dumped it in the condenser.

Tiny crystals of XP fell from the condenser. Jill could sell them for credits and begin paying back her debt or at least she could pay off the interest and reinvest. In a few short decades, some new real estate will open. Her more analytical mind proposed they purchase government bonds.

Jill hated waiting, so they met in the middle and searched through stocks.  As she searched the net, the condenser poured crystals into a collector.

The republic ran on xp crystals, so the republic turned a blind eye to the games in the forbidden region. So long as the crystals flowed, no one cared what happened in the Brass region. Mere savages nerfed couldn’t hope to contend with the monsters roaming the lands. While they may make cities, the whim of a mighty monster could end their civilizations at any time. Once the amount of XP they held was worth the effort, a true beast of the Devas would destroy them.

Only Zack wasn’t nerfed as she expected. The nightmare wasn’t driven mad by taking pieces of it to form a shade, and she couldn’t control his system.

How long until he became a worthy meal for a demon, and then he was done with the rest of her humans? If they died too early, then there was no way she could pay off her debt.

Her pride was a victim of distress caused by a human’s power. Zack was valuable. He gained XP without killing, but any changes she tried to make were altered. Even the additions she made to the shade to stabilize the connection were absorbed by the nightmare and imparted into his system.

She was the admin in name, but the nightmare was the admin truth. Her name remained, but the control was in Nightmare’s hands.

Jill’s level remained a respectable 30, not high enough to attract anything dangerous and not low enough to be too weak to fight. That was expected, yet she never anticipated that she would feel powerless.

She had given Zack a book to tempt him with more knowledge. It languished abandoned like trash before his greater powers. Ice, he had developed soul ice without unlocking it with an ability. What did he know about the power he possessed? Soul-based anything was powerful and prone to advancement. It didn’t have the same structure as skills. No, all things soul were intuitive to their user and so personal.

Her monitor flashed, and she was notified that her patch had succeeded. Jill hadn’t run a patch. She read over it, and Body and range became attributes that could be advanced with points. That was good; dividing Zack’s focus would ensure he was weaker overall. The nightmare had made a mistake. So long as she kept this information to herself, it would be fine.

She stared at the chat racing on a monitor.

Chat

KarsElfLord: Look at him go.

Jarknob: When are we going to see some human-on-elf action? Jill is being lazy.

Lady Macbeth9: Do you want to see an elf fornicate with sheep as well?

KarsElfLord: Ew, to both of you, humans are so primitive. They only have one train of thought, and it’s so dull. All three of my consciousnesses agree that humans are dumb.

Jarknob voted with 20 credits for Jill to sleep with the human.

Lady Macbeth: Voted with 50 credits for Jill to sleep with the human.

KarsElfLord: Voted 30 credits for Jill not to sleep with the human.

AMDrkElf: The men already slept with the female humans. Why is everyone betting on this?

KarsElfLord: Why would I want to see another man’s dick? Humans have weird penises. It's different.

Jill watched the money come in. It was still a month before she would close the poll, and maybe it would be enough to pay off her debt.

Chat

LadyM: Voted 100 Credits for Jill Not to sleep with the human. Human penises are icky.

Jarknob: Voted 30 Credits for Jill to sleep with the human. I’m not tying one down to another elf’s dong. I can pull credits all month. Watch me bitch.

Jill let the hate flow and fed the flames when they appeared to die down.

…

Fifty men trudged through the oppression of knee-high snow as the arctic wind lashed them to the bone. Fifty torches acted as a lighthouse for the lost, cutting through the dark, sleet, and hail. The pounding ice and squelch of a hundred feet blocked out all sound. Only Zack heard the song. As they left the Agios sprout, it grew louder until it roared with thousands of voices added as one. Together, they were strong, and apart, they could be picked. Under the light of torches lit by his soul flame and the wood of the Agios tree, they made their way toward the Green Bottom.

Anything could be hiding behind the shroud of hail. He could almost hear something scratching. It must have been his imagination, or maybe some animal was digging a hole to escape the cold.

They might as well have been in the deep sea with so much water in the air and the dark.

It felt good to Zack, thanks to his recent breakthrough in Soul Ice. He was more like a fish in these waters than a human. He was already workshopping something that was going to be awesome.

Only their map showed them the way and exposed the truth. They were in the middle between their hill and the Green Bottom, well past the point of no return.

Zack spotted a torch in the distance, suddenly changing direction. He moved to intercept it. The light bobbed in the dark, telling everyone where it was. It was good for Zack and hungry monsters to see a lone group member cut off.

A song stood out from the rest its goal felt different. He quickly tore off pieces of his shirt and pushed them in his ears. Through the snow, he came upon Ronny Birch, a warrior class. The tip of his nose had gone black hours ago and his cheeks followed. He didn’t see Zack standing beside him. He only clawed through the snow in an odd direction.

Zack grabbed ahold of the man. He was frozen like everyone else, but only worse. Ronny didn’t have much time left. He stabbed his torch in the ground and set it fully ablaze. Yellow flames sizzled under the hail’s pounding wrath. Wind blew cutting holes in the snow to snuff out the flame. Ronny slowly blinked as his body thawed. Maybe Zack bought him time enough to make it. Zack clutched a hand around Ronny’s and lit his torch brighter.

This journey was only possible thanks to the system's attributes. Everyone had massive Endurance, body, and constitution gains depending on the attributes. It helped them get through the storm and proved that xp wasn’t the only way to get stronger, even for those with classes.

“You’re going the wrong way. Get back to the group. We’re almost through this storm.” Anyone could check this lie, but people needed to hear they had hope.

“She’s mine. You can’t have her.” Ronny swung his torch like a bat.

Zack dove away, barely dodging the flaming club that would have brained him. “Snap out of it.”

The humming grew louder, and Zack pushed on his ears, forcing the cotton deeper.

Hail rained harder, and the silhouette of a woman appeared behind a curtain of falling ice. Blue eyes flashed in the darkness, and its skin was marble. Zack smelled something sweet, like cherries, in the air and turned his attention fully to the creature. Its face was beautiful; he would give it that.

Zack left Ronny and moved to flank the silhouette. It reached out arms wide but didn’t move. That was strange, its name and level should have appeared above its head. Zack turned quickly and saw the group had made little progress, but their torches were growing dimmer. The temperature was dropping. They needed to get back, but there was strength in numbers.

Slowly, he approached the monster, careful not to touch any of the stone spikes sticking out of the ground, and it came into focus. Its skin wasn’t marble, and the blue eyes and lips had thick, bulging veins. Oh, and the body wasn’t the monster; it was only its tongue.

He fired off three compressed fireballs in rapid succession. They fired off one volley after the other as he backpaddled.

A roar shook the ground, and he sprinted over the snow and ice to the side as its mouth shut moments after it had eaten Ronny. Crab legs ripped up from the ground as the monster began to pull itself out of the snow.

Ronny turned and started running at all ten eyes of the crab locked on him. It opened its mouth, a wide caver filled with barbed tentacles, and the woman shook her fist at Zack.

Angler Crab lvl18

Did it have to be bigger than two double-decker buses stacked on each other? Zack fired two more volleys as he ran, and the creature shot sideways. Zack stopped and threw himself backward just in time to hear wolves howl. He took a chance and turned his attention to Ronny.

When he looked back at the crab, it had turned and raised a claw and shot it at him with blinding speed. He decided then that fuck this thing and its linear attacks.

Curve balls hit the monster’s joints and exploded. “I’m going to cook and eat you,” Zack shouted at the beast.

A bubble formed in its mouth and shot forward as Zack tossed a fireball in its path. The bubble popped, and his eardrums burst. Wind pressure blasted Zack back on his back. Warm blood dripped from his ears as the crab raised its damaged claw and shot forward.

He rolled, and the claw scraped the edge of his shoulder, drawing a deep biting gash. Blood gushed from the wound as Zack flew across the snow, rolling over ice.

Zack didn’t have many good options to stop the bleeding. He held a hand against the bleeding gash and burned it. He screamed and hoped the wind and hail drowned out the sound.

The torch he lit for Ronny went out when a crab claw slammed down on it. Maybe it sensed heat. Three fireballs appeared, spun, and fired as quickly as he could manage. The crab shifted in his direction the moment they appeared and moved. Zack had already adjusted his aim. Three fireballs targeted its closest eye. The crab raised its arm, but the fireballs flew in a curved path. His reward was a bright explosion doused by bright purple fluids.

Zack heard the monster shriek and ran for it.  He felt something zoom past him and knock him aside. The damn Angler Crab was going after the group. Zack ran, sucking in frigid air the whole way and coughing from the cold while the ice tried its best to make him slip.

He couldn’t let anyone die. This was his job, and he was going to do it right. He flung three more fireballs, raised his hand, and decreased his temperature. Soul Ice gathered, and it was easy to do so when the element was all around them. As it turned out, Zack was pretty good at figuring out elemental affinities. It only took another day of marching in the hellish blizzard to figure out soul ice.

Through the march, half of his attention was on a project. Strands were easy enough to figure out; it was only splitting existing mass. That was useful for testing ratios between his soul fire and ice. He needed to test how much heat his soul ice could take before it exploded.

Moments after he popped it with a fireball, Zack watched the area bubble, and a new eye began shaping.

Zack tried to focus instead of giving in to despair.

He had a method that might kill it. Since both ice and fire were his affinities, they were flexible. What he wanted to do could take hours to set up, but it would kill the crap. He had to do something, so he made a giant fireball and chunked it on a hill. The crab turned and began scuttling toward it.

Zack watched the torches vanish in the distance, all 49 of them, and got to work. He was killing the damned crap and cooking it. Then, he was going to build a sled with its shell and pull a pile of the meat to the group.

Despite the size of its eyes, they weren’t how they found prey. Zack was starting to think they were more for spotting predators. Which meant there were things large enough to hunt the crab. He felt a chill crawl up his spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

He stared at the retreating group. Why bother trying to assassinate him when it was so easy to lose people in the snow and ice? Clint needed to be dealt with, and there could be no peace while he lived. Jack was a clown, acting the way Clint had told him to. Earl was along for the ride.

Why couldn’t Clint let Zack go along? He formed a hollow ball of ice as heavy as a canon ball and filled it with a big ball of compressed flames. The crab continued to fuss.

This was going to be a shitshow.

…

Zack threw the ball, watching it shoot through the air and arc beautifully. The ball spun and curved entirely off-target. Zack ran for it and hid behind a bluff as an explosion lit the night. He immediately formed another one as the crab shot through the snow, waving its claws around and smashing everything.

He felt his heart hammer in his chest one direct hit, and it was over. A smile spread across his face. This was so much fun. He formed the ball, placed the fireball inside, and pushed hard against his limit to get a little more acceleration. A comet shot through the air in an arc, dancing on the wind before arcing.

He was already moving when the bluff behind him exploded. Ice chunks peppered his back as he threw himself into a trench from the crab’s claw, smashing the ground. The crab seemed to have gotten wise to him. It wasn’t targeting heat anymore. Even dull eyes could see movement. The monster also had eyes on all sides of its body. When he moved, it would be on him.

Was it time to risk it all?

A claw smashed next to him as scuttling legs pierced the ground. Ice blasted him in the face. The crab passed him by, but for how long?

It moved like a cataclysm, tearing snow and ice down to red dirt that could contain iron ore. Its claws caved in icy bluffs, freeing strange blue creatures from their nests.

Chill Mints Nest lvl14

Zack watched it through the ice as it attacked ruthlessly for hours. But his attention returned to the nest, slowly rebuilding its home from ice and snow. Bubbles fired off all around Agios Hills, blasting craters in the ground. To his damaged hearing, they sounded like short, blared notes. He turned his attention to the frenzied Chill Mints rebuilding their nest.

That Zack decided was how he would defeat it.

He hoped no one had died while he was gone. But the thought of bringing warm crab to eat was too good to pass up. Zack wondered how Gabby would like it. Maybe she would tell them it’s poisonous to humans and try to have it all to herself.

Zack worked slowly as the shattered moon appeared in the sky. He crafted a ball of ice that fit in his hand and filled it with three compressed fireballs. There was something he was trying. Zack set the fireballs to rotate around each other and withdrew his control slowly.

He felt their fire pressure as they rotated and didn’t explode. Zack rotated the ball slowly to get a feel for it, and the rotating fireballs remained. Then he took a chance and tossed the ball in the air before catching it behind his back. He sensed where it was going the whole time, but he used to do it with his baseball for fun.

Zack put spikes on his baseballs to ensure they stuck to his target.

The ball flew up to his finger and spun one way and another. Zack ripped his shirt off, made a satchel out of it, and began making more. It was his mistake to go into battle without any preparations.

A few hours later, he tied his shirt around his shoulder, and 15 balls were ready. He couldn’t make them without his total concentration.

Zack couldn’t sense the monster, but he knew how it hunted.

His ancestors hunted the mammoths, who were far more significant than themselves. This wasn’t much different.

Zack followed the path of destruction. Even after hours, the hail wasn’t enough to hide its path. While his eardrums had burst, he could still hear the hum of its spell. It led him right to the silhouette.

He lifted the balls out of his satchel one after the other with pressure. 15 was his limit since he didn’t have to focus on containing the explosions. They hovered before he fired them into the creature’s tongue.

It shrieked as he ran as the monster withdrew its tongue. Zack formed a single fireball, tossed it, and dove to the side while covering himself in ice. A claw slammed down where he had been before an explosion rocked his world.

…

Zack came to, covered in ice, bruised all over but alive. He smelled the sweet meat of a crab steaming close by. He stood up slowly, feeling every ache. Then, he caught sight of the crab's corpse. Its shell was mostly on fire, and ice boiled around it. Flames licked at its legs, and he heard the liquids inside them pop and sizzle.

He had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. All he had to do was use his brain instead of lobbing at it. Victory was his. Zack couldn’t wait to see those guys' faces when he showed up with a crab dinner fit for 50 people.

Soul matter poured into him as the creature twitched, still alive but unable to do anything about the flames burning it from the inside out. All ten eyes were burned out of its head, so they weren’t an issue.

“The System doesn’t level anymore after level 9 until I order you to do otherwise,” Zack said.

He hit nine almost immediately. A level 18 monster had some genuine XP.

Zack Sin

Soul lvl9

Mass 7890/10,000

Density: 9

Pressure 1.32 (12.166)

Max Output: 95,993

Soul Space: Locked

Range: 20.4ft

Body: 1 (1.5)

Compression: 1

Affinities

Fire 1 (1.5)

Ice: 1

It was another big jump. And his abilities had changed recently. Either the system admin had done something, or Zack’s powers were changing with him.

Ability Slots: 2/4

Embers I: Raise Fire Affinity by 1.5x

Upgrade: 10 Pressure

Enhance I: Raise Body by 1.5x

Upgrade: 10 Pressure

Choose

Price: 1 Pressure

Spark I: Unlock Light and 1.5x user base affinity.

Strand I: Mass can be divided into strings, each equal to pressure, and further divided by halving the pressure to increase the number of strands.

The range I: 1.5x the user’s base range.

Frost I: 1.5x user base affinity.

Dark I: Unlock Dark and 1.5x user base affinity.

Light I: Unlock Light and 1.5x user base affinity.

Price: 2 Pressure

Infuse I: Unlock the infuse ability and 1.5x effect.

Concentration I: Raise compression by 1.5x

Elemental Slayer I: 1.5x gains from defeating enemies with their affinity.

Price: 10 Pressure

Soul Smithing I: Unlock a crafting ability related to smithing.

Soul Chef I: Unlock a crafting ability related to cooking.

Why did soul smithing appear? Was it because he was friends with Clint? Did that mean making friends would give him more options for abilities? Would developing friendships also help? Could he get entire classes as singular abilities?

There were too many questions and no mentors to be seen. Also, he was right to stop at the level because he had a fat number, he was unable to deal with.

Who was he kidding? Something was going to force his hand.

Zack smiled. At least he had crab meat to share with his group and make friends.

A gust of air against his face knocked him off his feet and sent him backward. A single crab claw fell on the ground as the beautiful blue wings of a bird framed a majestic thief.

Arctic Hawk lvl25

He stared as it flew off with his crap in its talons. Blew feathers shifted, dropping gently to the ground as mighty wings carried the monster through the storm with the hawk’s prize.

Zack stared dumbly as the monster left with his food.

Ice covered his cheeks as he stumbled toward the massive claw, still popping and sizzling with heat. He made a saw out of soul ice and began cutting through the giant crab claw. When he made it through, it was to see glorious pink and blue crab meat popping and sizzling.

Zack grabbed a great handful of meat and shoved it in his mouth. Tears fell from his eyes. The meat was so good. He wasn’t going to share any of it. His satchel was gone, and he had nothing to carry it in. Another handful of sweet meat made him moan from the taste. It pissed him off so much he couldn’t take it. Another mouthful nearly burned his tongue, but he kept eating.

Pounds of crab meat filled his stomach, and he forgot how good it felt to feel so full. Strength returned to his limbs as he wiped his mouth from the greasy good food. Zack fell on his butt in the snow and slowly ate more crab meat. There was no way in hell he could fight that bird. It flew toward the Green Bottom, but that didn’t mean he should seek revenge. It was nature. Grease ran into his beard from the thick crab meat as he ate yet another handful of tender flesh.

“Hey, system, make me a quest to try the best-tasting monsters in the Brass Region,” Zack said.

Quest Generated

The Foodie 1 of 50

Requirement: Soul Chef Affinity.

Show those elves what eating yourself to death for views is all about.

Entre: Ultimate Rainbow Omelet

Golden Minotaur’s Milk butter: 0/10 sticks

Nocturn Sheep’s Milk Cheese: 0/5 wedges

Rainbow Dragon unfertilized eggs: 0/3

5 Tailed Thunder Lizard tail meat: 0/100lbs

Saint Pepper Dryad Peppers: 0/6

Zebra peppers: 0/5

Abyss Lake Salt 0/5 tablespoons

Jade Pepper 0/10 stalks

Sides

Golden Saint Hashbrowns

Seven color potatoes 0/1000

Abyss Lake Salt 0/1 tablespoons

Land Quake Catfish Lard: 1 quart

Pig Demon Sausage

Pig Demon meat 0/20lbs

Golden Pancakes

Treasure Wheat 0/1 bushel

Minotaur Milk Butter 0/3 sticks

Nocturn Sheep’s Milk 0/2 cups

Drinks

Divine Fruit Drink

Violet Oranges 0/3

Golden Apples 0/3

Pantao 0/3

It was an end-of-game fetch quest. The reward was the best breakfast of all time. The question was how quickly Zack could reach that level of power. He shut the claw shell after barely making a dent in it.

After he ate nearly 9 lbs of protein himself, almost 50 lbs of protein remained. That was still enough food to help 50 people. They wouldn’t all get fed, but it would help. Zack sawed off the tips of the crab claw and the ridged so it wouldn’t get stuck on something.

Then he opened the map and walked back toward the group. Even running through the snow, he was much faster than the desperate people about to die in the cold.

…

He knew he was on the right track when he found Ronny’s frozen, frostbitten, and intact body surrounded by wolves, not men. Ice spears appeared and shot at the wolves in quick succession. Two impaled a wolf through the belly while the others jumped out of the way and ran for it.

They looked back as Zack approached the wolf pinned to the ground with icy spears. He could manipulate ice in the tundra far easier than he imagined. Ice didn’t have to be hard everywhere; it could bend in places, making it almost impossible to shatter.

As a war hammer gathered from the falling ice, he watched the wolf bite its wounds. Zack raised his hammer and smashed it over the wolf’s skull. It screamed as he brought it down a second time.

That wasn’t on purpose. He meant to kill it with a single blow.

Zack wanted to sag and fall beside his crab claw, but there were miles to run. It was a shame about Ronny; the guy didn’t seem bad. He was like a guy Zack would talk with at work but never see after work.

There were many people, but Zack never made the leap of faith, and it was too late for poor Ronny. He felt movement and turned to see Ronny turn his head in a loud crack. The wolves were only biting at him before they hadn’t gotten down to eating him. Maybe he was alive, but Zack didn’t recognize it. He moved fast and set the wolve corpse aflame.

Warmth immediately hit his skin as the wolf's hair burned, leaving a foul smell. Ronny turned to him and smiled, missing several teeth.

“Thank you, friend. With your fire, I will be on the mend. This flame is a sweet gift in the cold, but I fear we won't die old. Trust me, and to your back, I will defend.  No other blade would you need to depend.” Zack raised an eyebrow. “I see our need for speed has not been sold. The dangers are untold.”

Zack felt a similar, if more subtle, influence from the man’s words. “Where did you learn magic like that? If we do not stay to warm up, then maybe the wolf would have been better as a hat.” Zack said.

Ronny stared at him strangely. “You have a mighty will indeed. My words should have imparted a trust seed. But no, you are not controlled. Are you the one that is foretold?”

“I’m guessing you aren’t Ronny. Can you rhyme less and not cast spells on me without permission? It's very rude?”

“What magic protects you? I want it, too.” Zack didn’t sense the familiar static of magic, so he let the rhyming slide.

“That body you’re in was someone’s friend, son, and maybe father.” Zack shook his head. “At this rate, we probably will never see home. It's not a bother.”

“The elves can’t help their nature. Our old scholars believed it's what religions consider rapture.”

“Will the elves recognize you’re something else than human?” Zack asked.

“No, my words conjured a spell of forgetfulness. This was their one chance, and I hope it's one they regret.” A golden light enveloped them, and the creature inhabiting Ronny’s body sighed.

“That is better. I will follow hospitality to the letter. My name is Samuel, and this is not my body. My vessel Ronny is dead for the better. I am not here to do anything naughty.” Samuel said.

His stanza changed, maybe a different spell.

“My name is Zack Sin. Did you leave your body behind for the upgrade, or is this a projection situation?” Zack asked.

“Straight to the point. Very well, I will endeavor to give you the bones and joints. Open the map, and what will you see but my eye staring back at you? It is a trick of the spell that the elves use to nerf and keep you in view. Free me, and I will send you home. With your power, you would rule alone.”    

Zack sat down and sighed. He had only just started on his journey and already had a devil on his shoulder. Killing Samuel wasn’t an option. Even if he didn’t want to go home, the others would, and having someone around who could potentially block out the elves falling into his lap couldn’t be left on the table. If not Zack, then someone would snatch the body thief up only to learn how to steal bodies. That was immortality of a kind.

He would be a fool to say no and a fool to agree. There was no world where this would end well. Messing around with the ruling powers and starting a rebellion would be cracked down with no mercy. The elves held their leashes, but damn if he didn’t smell freedom. He practically heard the liberty bell ringing.

“Can you tell me the truth of this world?” Zack asked.

“The world’s truth was hidden from me. Locked away, I was left with no history to see. Eons passed in a blink as elves worked magic to bind my body and make my mind a receiver. I was made the final boss of my homeland, nothing more than a dreamer.” Samuel said.

Samuel lvl1

Class: Dream Of Annihilation  

 “Why now? Why appear before me after all this time?”

“You have a hope. I couldn't cope with allowing this opportunity to pass me by. I will train you and teach you the ways of magic and soul. Let me show you why you alone can be bold.” Samuel said.

He didn’t like it at all. Samuel made less sense than Jill, but he wasn’t speaking in butchered Shakespearean English. So Zack had a hope of resisting them, and with Samual, that hope increased by an unknown amount. This was a significant risk on Samuel’s behalf, and Zack could respect that. If they were messing with his mind, then it must have taken a lot of effort to steal a dead body. Ronny was dead, and Zack was sure of that. Maybe there were still some slow beats of his heart, but Ronny was most likely brain dead.

“All right, you can join us, but try not to rhyme too often,” Zack said.

“I will teach all magic. They will be ecstatic.” Samuel said.