Dark Fate: Book 2 – The First Night

There was a bit of a stir as the four of us left the apartment building, armed and armored as we were, but I ignored it. Despite me returning to my human disguise, most people weren’t at the point where they were going to be going out into the city yet. They were still in shock, still waiting for a return to ‘normalcy’. They didn’t understand that ‘normal’ had left town the moment the apocalypse started, and it wasn’t coming back.

But they would, soon.

Thankfully, things like the internet were still up and running. Oh, sure, social medial was basically one huge freak-out session, and monsters had caused power to go out in some areas due to their rampages, but the systems didn’t just go poof when the System turned on. Which meant that Google Maps was able to tell me that we had a solid eight hours of walking to get to my new house.

Of course, things weren’t exactly as easy as walking across town. Oh, it wasn’t traffic. There were barely any cars on the road. Anyone who didn’t absolutely have to leave the house wasn’t going anywhere. It felt like the city was holding its breath, waiting for what was about to come.

No, the problem was that there were monsters that had spawned in the city, and not all of them had been cleaned out, leaving them to get stronger and group up. It wasn’t the Goblins that were the biggest problem. Anywhere they showed up, their natural tendencies to violence drew a response from anyone who was willing to fight, limiting their numbers.

The Slimes were also not a major problem. They were easy to kill with a bit of magic. Even a normal level 1 character with the simplest magic attack could take one on. Those things made up for their lack of HP with incredible physical resilience, reducing the physical damage they took by 90%. Trying to pierce, beat, or cut a slime was an exercise in frustration, unless you used magic weapons.

The problem, really, were the zombies. They were mindless like the slimes, but aggressive like goblins, driven to seek out and feed on any living creature they found. And when they killed someone, their victims returned as zombies, adding more fuel to the fire.

Unfortunately, they were between us and my new house. Just like last time, the local mall had been overrun by zombies, according to Rachel. We could go around, sure, but that would take us through the area I knew would have the first Orcs show up. I would be fine, but my slaves would be hard pressed to fight against the orcs, especially if there was a whole band of them. There’s only so much one guy can do on his own, after all.

The zombies, however, were easier to deal with. They were the slow zombies, like the ones from the movies, which would make it easier for us to lure them into choke points where I could deal with them, and keep them from getting to the girls. They were mine, after all, and no monsters were allowed to kill them. Not that there was any true risk against zombies. With my abilities and their support, clearing out the mall would be easy, so long as we didn’t get swarmed, or one of the girls got stupid and went off on their own. We might even blow through it quick enough to get to the new place by nightfall. Even if we didn’t, it would give us a huge jump in levels.

However, my plans for a lovely campaign of zombiecide were put on hold the moment the Lenox Square Mall came into view. I’d been concerned before then. The streets had been quiet, as one would have expected with zombies nearby. But I realized that it was too quiet. There weren’t any zombies trying to get out of the mall, and get to the people in the nearby buildings. Something was wrong.

So, when we finally got the mall in view, I was more than surprised. The mall was different from how I remembered it. Instead of the normal white walls and storefronts, there was a blue wall, the same shade as the blue screens, and a sign that had no words, but a large white shopping cart.

“What the hell? There shouldn’t be a System Shop here!”

Rachel frowned. “This wasn’t here yesterday, Master, I promise you!”

I sighed. “No, it wouldn’t have been. System Shops appeared at midnight local time. One per city. But ours shouldn’t be out here. It should be further downtown, near Five Points. I remember it being in Peachtree Center, actually.”

Hibari shook her head. “Master, if you changed things by coming back, is it possible that someone else did, too?”

I groaned. Hopefully that wasn’t the case, because it would royally suck if I had to deal with others who had my power levels. “Let’s go find out. We were going to have to visit the System Shop eventually, anyways.”

“Hihi! Welcome to the System Shop! How can we serve you today?” Stepping through the door, we were greeted by a Succubus dressed in little more than a leather harness that hid nothing. A name tag was pierced through her left nipple, identifying her as Kylith. Completing the look was a black leather collar around her neck with a skull over her throat.

“Yes, I am Zayn Greene. Is your owner around? I’d like to ask a few questions.”

“Ooh! That’s the name Master said to look out for! He knew you would be coming by today. Hold on, and I’ll get him for you.” With a smile, the succubus turned, and went into the back room, giving me a good view of the shining heart-shaped jewel inserted just below her swaying tail.

I tried to keep the surprise off my face. It was bad enough that something as big as the placement of the System Shop had changed so early, but for someone to be expecting me by name? Someone had to have come back from the future along with me. But who could it be?

A moment later the succubus returned, and with her was a skeletal undead creature dressed in board shorts, a Hawaiian shirt with Day of the Dead skeletons dancing and playing instruments on it, flip-flops, sunglasses, and a straw hat. At that moment, if you had looked up the definition of the word ‘poleaxed’ in the dictionary, you would have seen my expression pictured there. Never, and I mean never, did I expect to find an Elder Lich who dressed so… frivolously!

“BLACK KNIGHT-SAMA! Oh, it is so good to see you, my old friend!” The elder lich laughed as he suddenly moved forward, at a speed even my eyes could barely track, and embraced me. As I tried to formulate some kind of response, I felt the brush of an appraisal skill washing over me.

“Ooh, a knight no more, hmm? Naughty, naughty! And are these delicious little treats yours? Ah, I was so worried about you, that you’d never learn to enjoy yourself! I am so glad you finally embraced the world of pleasure, as I have.”

I managed to gather my wits enough to use [Appraise Value] on the lich. He had used a similar skill on me, so it was fair play. Only, I did not recognize the name. But I did know that he was definitely in the Third Tier. Elder Lich was a third-tier race, but that could be gotten around, as I had proven. But True Eldritch Summoner was a Tier 3 class, the evolution of the Summoner and Eldritch Summoner, and Supreme Merchant was the third-tier evolution of Merchant and True Merchant.

The problem was his name. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Master Shadraus. I am not acquainted with any elder liches of your name, in this world or the last.”

“Hahaha!” The elder lich laughed, finally releasing me. “Of course, of course! I had completely forgotten! It has been a day, maybe two for you, but for me, it has been ten thousand years and an instant, all at once! You once knew me as Leon Taylor, do you remember me now?”

I blinked. “Taylor? The fat little merchant that followed the army around, always supplying anything the men needed, whether it was weapons, booze, or other, less socially acceptable items? If that’s true, then you’ve lost a little weight, my friend. But how?”

Shadraus laughed again. “A little weight indeed, indeed! But don’t worry, I’m still more than capable of enjoying any of the pretties I call mine. Come, let us go to the play room, and I’ll explain what happened.”

We followed Shadraus and Kylith into the ‘play room’, which was basically a hedonistic pleasure house that looked like someone had taken the best and worst parts of a 60s shag pad and a BDSM dungeon and melded them together. Like Austin Powers after he discovered that he was also a Dom. I took a glass from the offered platter one of the serving girls had, and downed it at once, since I was clearly too sober for this shit.

Wait, serving girls? I turned to look around the room, and there was a bevy of beauties, all dressed like Kylith, though lacking nametags at the moment. There was another succubus who looked like she could be Kylith’s sister, or daughter, a seraphim, a Sun Elf, and a Medusa wearing goggles to keep her from turning everyone to stone. All of them had matching leather harnesses and collars, and I could see that each of them had a heart-shaped jewel exactly where Kylith’s was. Matching outfits, matching collars, and each slave had a butt plug with an individually colored jewel.

My head spun as I sat on a comfortable chair, and not from the alcohol. The Leon Taylor I knew from the last timeline was a pervert, sure, and he sometimes talked about the games he had played before the Apocalypse, by a company called Illusion, but he was not at the legendary pervert stage like this Shadraus clearly was, and he had DEFINITELY been human. So, what happened?

Shadraus snapped his bony fingers, and the elf eagerly got on her hands and knees. She looked oddly pleased as her master used her as a stool. That done, the lich turned his attention to me. “I suppose you are wondering what happened, then?”

When I nodded, the lich smiled. (Don’t ask me how I knew he was smiling without lips or flesh, but I could tell he was smiling.) “Well, suffice to say that, over the years, many of the men in the camp came and availed themselves of the services I provided. Because of that, I often heard a lot of interesting information, which made me quite a bit of money.”

“Unfortunately, that also led to my downfall. I heard one of the lackeys loyal to that shit, James, bragging to his buddies about how their boss was going to be running things after they took you down. Well, I wasn’t about to just let that happen, not after all the times you saved my life. So, once the day was done, I closed up my shop, and went to find you.”

“Only, James’s guys found me first. They’d set traps for most of the key players in the army, the ones they didn’t already own. Let them hear the plan, to see who needed to be ‘taken care of’. They threw us down, into the depths of the nearby dungeon, the Decaying Catacombs of the Ebon Queen. They expected that we’d all die, or emerge too late for anything to be done.”

“As you know, the whole thing went down just as they planned, until you proved to be more than they planned for. I was the last one alive by that point, since we’d been tossed into the dungeon with no time to prepare, with only the stuff on our backs or in our inventories. But I’d had a potion that made one invisible to the undead, and, thanks to that, I was able to make it to the dungeon core unnoticed.”

“I was about to escape when I felt the surge of power from the Demon Lord’s defeat, the bitch’s curse, and your actions. I, also, had a [Philter of Bottled Time], but we only ever found one [Disk of Dark Rebirth], so I used an [Elder Lich Phylactery] instead. It was a snap decision, as yours was, but not nearly so successful.”

“As you might guess, I got thrown back in time, but not like you did. I became a Lich, but, because the System could not reconcile me being what I was while the System was not in play, I spent about ten thousand years in a pocket dimension, until the System returned. Oh, and I’m also bound to be the caretaker of the System Shops here on Earth, since my own mana wasn’t enough to complete the transformation, so I had to borrow from the System to do it.”