At the gate, I quickly rented a carriage straight to the capital, paying extra to travel alone, hood of my cape pulled over my face so they were not able to see it. I even changed my name to Victor Shrier. For some reason, it felt much more natural to use that than my actual name.
The carriage ride to the capital would take several weeks, stopping at inns along the road. The coachman promised me that he would ride through the first night so that we could put some distance between us and the city, once I promised him a little something on the side.
I felt beat after what happened during the day. Exhaustion took over, and I ended up sleeping in the coach like a log during the first night. As we rode through the following day, I woke up and decided to finally check out my bonuses. Everything the voice promised me was there.
Before doing anything, I had to check the status of this body.
“Status!”
▽▽▽
Soul tether: Unidentified minor beast soul
Rarity: Common
Tether level: 5
Tether skills passive: N/A
Tether skills active: N/A
Mundane skills: N/A
Special skills: Dimensional storage
△△△
I chuckled. Almost everything about it was bad. The only good thing was my special skill, which I received from the voice, but even that was just a normal skill that could be bought in skill shops.
The core of power in this world were the soul tethers—wandering souls that created contracts with human beings, allowing them to use mana and taking their excess life energy as a reward. The one I had, the common rarity one, was the worst you could get. It was basically just a parasite; all it could give to you was the ability to light up your lamp and check your status—absolutely useless in combat.
This made my decision on where to start easy. I pulled out a Lucky Coin and a Soul Tether Reroll Coin from my storage.
The Lucky Coin made sure that every random event in the next hour would give me the best possible outcome, while the Soul Tether Reroll Coin would sever my current tether and reroll for a new one.
First, I used the coin right away, and after I received the notification from the system that the coin was in effect, I used the Soul Tether Reroll Coin.
The moment I used the reroll coin, I lost access to the system. It yanked away the tether with everything it had ever given me. Luckily for me, it was pretty much just a system. I didn’t even feel any connection in my soul that I, according to the novel, should have felt. That was how weak the tether was.
Once the coin severed my connection with the common tether, I had to wait for almost a minute before anything else happened. I was slowly starting to get worried, when it started.
A strong connection started to form in my soul, but then the formation of it stopped. The process was about half done when a beautiful female voice sounded in my head. Just hearing her made me feel stronger, braver, and more battle-ready.
“Greetings, I am Alrune! I once was a Valkyrie, but I committed the worst sin a Valkyrie could ever commit. I killed another Valkyrie, my sister in blade. The Law of the All-Father makes no exceptions. To spill the blood of a sister is to sever your soul from him. There is no appeal. There is no mercy. There is only the Fall. Because of that, I fell. I was haunted, crippled, and killed. Now I am just a broken wandering spirit. I want to ask you, knowing this: are you willing to be my host?”
“Yes!” Not even a shred of hesitation in my voice as I spoke, knowing that I had nothing to worry about because my Lucky Coin was still in effect. Right now my biggest worry was to somehow contain my eagerness and happiness.
“Good! But I still have to warn you: my mana is thick, raw, and wild. Manifesting a skill with it is going to be most likely impossible for you. Don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty much unlimited amount of it for you to tap into; it’s just that it is too raw to be used for such delicate work. Are you still willing to be my host?”
Manifesting skills means giving mana a shape. The majority of active skills actually need this, but there are plenty of skills that don’t, like infusion skills or countermagic skills. I started to think about it—having access to unlimited mana for infusions, which get much stronger the more mana you pour into them, and countermagic, which always consumes double the amount of mana the skill you are preventing took. Just thinking about the possibilities made me smile.
“Yes!”
“Good! Lastly, there is one more question I would like to ask. I would like to restore my former body. I know exactly what I need, but I am not able to gather the ingredients on my own. So I am asking you: are you willing to find them for me?”
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Honestly, this last one was the easiest to agree to. She was about to become my tether; why would I not want to help her.
“Yes!”
The moment I spoke the last "yes," I felt it. The connection in my soul started to strengthen, and not even a minute later, it was finally complete. Shortly after that, a system message greeted me.
▽▽▽
Soul tether: Alrune, The Fallen Valkyrie
Rarity: Mythical
Tether level: 1
Tether skills passive: Heavenly body
Tether skills active: N/A
Mundane skills: N/A
Special skills: Dimensional storage
△△△
The moment I saw my status, I almost choked on my own saliva. I was sure that my new tether was going to be at least epic. Common, uncommon, and rare tethers would not be able to speak or create such a strong bond in my soul. But I would never even consider the possibility of getting a mythical tether.
Mythical tethers were complete souls belonging to mythical beings, having complete memories of their previous lives. Even the main protagonist didn’t start with one; he had to go through a bullshit deus ex machina event to get his epic one upgraded.
And that was not even everything. On top of that, I received a mythical grade passive skill from the get-go. A skill that was as strong as its name suggested, ‘Heavenly body’; it made me immune to normal weapons, diseases, and poisons. It was absolutely bonkers for me to have it right away.
Several minutes passed until I managed to somehow calm down after jumping around in the carriage like a lunatic and listening to the melodious laughter of Alrune in my head, who found my reaction hilarious and sweet.
I went and felt the mana I was receiving from Alrune, for the first time. The moment I called upon it, it started to twist and turn like a wild beast. There was no way I would ever be able to manifest a spell with it; it was too strong, it almost felt like it had a will on its own. Just trying to move it around felt like I was pushing around a tidal wave. Once I pushed it in a certain direction, it surged without compromise, any attempts to redirect or slow it would be foolish.
After feeling up my mana, I went into a deep thought. Now that I knew exactly what tether I had, I could proceed with the next thing: planning.
I had to find a way to observe the story of the novel and be close enough to it to get involved when necessary. The plot of the novel takes place in the royal academy that can be found in the capital of the Berklay Kingdom, the Royal city of Basthad. Most of the characters of the novel will enroll there three years from now, to be trained as professional dungeon delvers.
In reality, you didn’t actually need the school to delve into the dungeons, but most of the people that wanted to do that went there anyway; it made everything easier. The school provided you with plenty of resources, you got to pass the most dangerous part of being a dungeon delver—the beginnings before you properly understood your strengths and weaknesses—in a controlled environment without risking your life. And after completing the school, you even started as a rank C dungeon delver instead of the rank E you normally did.
As I was thinking about the academy, the solution occurred to me. One year before the novel starts, an instructor position at the academy becomes vacant and would not be filled practically until the end of the novel. The position is for an instructor for lectures about fighting other people.
Fighting monsters in dungeons is entirely different than fighting real people. The point of this lecture was to prepare the students for it. To teach them what mindset they should have and what to do when attacked.
Realizing this, I smiled. I knew that I found a perfect spot from which to observe the story, now I just needed to make sure that I was qualified enough for the position, when the time comes. I was going to register as both a dungeon delver and a bounty hunter. That will take care of both: making me strong enough to handle the story if the characters fail, and also creating a qualification good enough to teach in the royal academy.
With that settled, there was one more issue to solve: money. The novel had multiple plot points that could be solved very easily with money, so I needed to not only get strong, but also rich, in order to make sure everything goes smoothly.
I started to think about the industry in which I would be able to capitalize on my memories from the novel the best. After thinking about it for quite some time, it came to me. The answer was the real estate business. Granted, I knew very little about real estate, but thanks to my memories about the novel from the last life, I knew a lot about what was going to happen in the capital, and quite a lot of it will impact the prices of real estate.
With the plan formulated, I decided to go ahead and use the five mundane skill tickets I received from the mysterious female voices prior to reincarnating.
A mundane skill ticket was a very special item; after using one, you became a master in a chosen discipline. I quickly removed the first one from my inventory and used it, not wanting to wait any longer.
As I used the ticket, a large system window appeared in front of me with a list of hundreds of mundane skills. In other words, skills that had nothing to do with mana and could be used or learned by anybody, for example, gardening or horse riding.
Knowing exactly what I wanted, I just searched for the first skill: fencing. After confirming that I want to learn it, I braced myself for the pain. I sat there anxiously waiting for the painful process to start for several minutes, my eyes closed, bracing for pain, but nothing happened.
The moment I relaxed for just a bit, the memories started flooding in, and with the memories came the pain. It was so sudden and paralyzing that I didn’t even manage to scream. It was very similar to how I received memories of this body, the only difference being that these were actually first-person memories.
Just several seconds later, it all stopped and I could feel it. I was a real master fencer now. To my surprise, I received much more than I thought I would. Not only did I receive complete knowledge of all fencing styles with all kinds of weapons used back on Earth in the Middle Ages, I even received everything about HEMA and Olympic fencing.
Using the ticket made me absolutely exhausted. The moment the pain stopped and I came to terms with my new skill, I fell asleep, right then and there.
