Chương 1: Throw me a bone

Villains were always easier than heroes. To be fair, there wasn't a great deal between them from my perspective. But there was something honest about a villain. Heroes wanted to change the world; villains wanted to change who was in charge of it. The familiar pain of transmigration faded away, and I flexed my new body. Bipedal with two arms. Good. Having more than the usual allocation of limbs always took me a while to get used to again.

Dusty Arbuthnot Emissary of the Wise Old Ones Versal Classes (locked): Aardvark Knight (level 9001), Archmagigigius of Life (level 523), Archmagigigius of Botany (level 345), Archmagigigius of Space and Time (level 33), Primate of the gods of Light (level 101), Music (level 4/8ths), Death (level 404), Spanking (level 69), Administration (peak Karen achieved), Satisfaction (also level 69), Blamer of the Moonlight, The Good Times, and The Boogie (various levels), Hierarch of the Sword, the Mace, the Spear, the Bow, the Shield, the Warpick, the Frying Pan…

I skipped past the endless list of classes I'd had the misfortune to level in my many lifetimes. They were all locked anyway, and while it would make things easier if I were to luck out and get one that I'd had before, I'd never had a repeat in all my millenia of tidying up the messes left by the uncaring Overgods. All previous classes and skills are locked in the local world. Thanks, IMPS, but that should be all the skills bar one, well technically two. The one that mattered was my favourite ability.

All of us minions of the self declared Wise Old Ones had our peccadilloes, and in addition to an innate Identify ability we each got one power we could take with us from life to life. Some people went for total annihilation spells; Nuke The Site From Orbit was a popular choice—it was, after all, the only way to be sure. Others favoured something like Can't Touch This. Sure, they had to spend mana to interact with anything physically, but they were basically unkillable.

Local Class Bonecaster General Level 0 STR 14 AGI 7 MAG 22 ARM 16 XP 0/50 Bone Matter: 75/75 Skills: Boneshaping, 1/10 The hardest Bone grows soft and malleable in your grasp. Bone Throwing, 1/10 Launch spears of Bone to impale your enemies. Give it to them hard! Calcify, 1/10 Accrue more Bone Matter over time. Used to heal and create ammunition for Bone Throwing Horde Leader 1/10 Enhances your summoner's undead minions. Grants a minor speed buff.

Masters Current Horde: Bonecaster General, Bonedog Humidor of the Gods Your favourite power. Summons a lit cigar to your lips, or teeth in this case. Infinite Cubans available. No lips? Not the first time, but what the hell sort of body had I been given? I raised a hand to my face and held it close to my eyes. The tiny sparks of magic that joined the bones together, instead of the more traditional ligaments and tendons sheathed in skin and muscle, flickered a dull grey colour.

I clicked my shiny white fingers, and a smouldering cigar appeared between my teeth. I took a deep drag and tried to ignore how the smoke leaked out from the bottom of my skull to twine around my ribs and spine.

"A Bonelord!" The voice was high and had a whiny note that set my teeth on edge. This was not the voice of a master-villain in his prime. He was skinny and short, covered in freckles with an unruly mop of ginger hair poking out from beneath a tall, wide-brimmed and pointy hat. I tend to think of anyone less than three thousand years old as little more than a babe, but this was literally a goddamn kid. He spun in a circle, dancing and cackling like a loon.

His midnight black robe came down to his knees and swirled behind him. I noted with displeasure that he was wearing socks with sandals. This was going to be a very long lifetime indeed. The socks had little pink elephants on them.

"Bork, I presume?" My voice was a basso rattle in comparison to his tenor. I looked the kid up and down again and pulled on my cigar. Aba, my divine boss, was such a douche; he hadn't mentioned in the briefing that Bork the Necromancer was a teenage dork.

"You can call me Bork the Maleficent! Now, minion, what are you capable of?" I stepped forward, careful to avoid kicking over the black candles that flickered at strategic locations on the elaborate pentagram around me. The chalk lines were carefully filled with esoteric runes that were painful to look at for too long. There were neat gaps in the middle of the arcane chalkwork, places where the materials used to summon me would have been placed. Bork retreated, his back bumping against the rough wooden walls.

We were in a small room, perhaps ten feet on a side, the centre of which was occupied by my summoning ritual. I blew a cloud of smoke at him and peered more closely, using the second skill all Emissaries got from the gods, Identify. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Bork Von Heffleslump the Third Necromagus Level 5 STR 6 AGI 9 MAG 28 ARM 3 The kid must have some talent. Necromagus was a mid-tier class, and his magic stat was high for his level.

Smoke poured out of my bony throat as I pondered my new master. He must have picked Basic Summoning Ritual at level five, which meant he also had Plaguebolt, Withering, Reanimate Corpse, and Wand Mastery. Usually, people who were that way out—inclined to necromancy, I mean—started with something like the Corpse Fondler class and worked their way up to the good stuff when they got an evolution at level fifteen, if they ever made it that far. But Bork had started in the middle of his class progression. Interesting.

I stalked back and forth. My feet clicked on the stone floor as I pondered my new master. Skinny, his knees made his legs look like a pair of snakes had each swallowed an apple. The wrists that poked out of the voluminous sleeves of his robe were equally thin, and his pale hands, covered in chalk dust, looked delicate but capable of fine work when they weren't shaking with fear.

"Answer me, minion!" he barked at me. What I had taken for a pile of dry bones in the corner of the room turned out to be a tiny skeletal dog that leapt out and interposed itself between the boy and me. Tiny flares of blue light in the pup's hollow eye sockets glowed brightly. Bonedog Level 2 STR 8 AGI 14 MAG 2 ARM 7"Who's a cute little dog?" I bent down to pet him and his teeth clicked closed on my wrist. I stood back up, the Bonedog dangling from my arm, chewing happily at my bones.

"I'm not on the menu, mate." I carefully detached the beast and put it back on the floor with a pat on the head that sounded like coconut halves smacking together. There were many ways to play out this moment; I'd had sixty-one previous opportunities to practice. The first time I'd taken things seriously, taken it slow, done my best to inveigle my way into my mark's trust, make myself seem invaluable to him before I started dropping truth bombs. But now? Meh.

"I'm an agent of the gods sent here to see you fulfil your evil dream." I tapped some ash off my cigar and replaced it between my teeth.

"The name's Dusty." He did an admirable impression of a goldfish for a few seconds. I loved watching the shock sink in. You could see the expressions on their faces as they went through doubt, fear, anger, resignation, and wonder. It was the opposite of the six stages of grief in about thirty seconds. One of the rare highlights of an otherwise shitty job.

"Which god?" The local pattern gods were small fry. As it stood right now, even the weakest among them could obliterate me if they were willing to piss off the WOO and the Overgods. In my full power, between jobs, they were local sheriffs compared to my FBI agent. They would respect my authority if they knew what was good for them.

"Not one that you'd know. Corvax's boss would crap his pants if my boss popped by to check on him."

"The God of Death has a boss?" His eyes were wide, the pupils little black dots in a sea of white.

"Everyone's got a boss, kid. And while you're technically mine at the moment, just remember I've accidentally obliterated better planets than this one in the past, so show a bit of respect."

"Crow's feathers! And… what's my evil plan?" he asked breathlessly.

"Well, obviously it's—you mean you don't know?" The boy shrugged.

"Mum and Dad let me practice the Black Arts in my spare time, but mostly I spend my days at school. Mum was… disappointed by my class choice. Say, now that I've got you, I can actually make some progress! I can't afford the materials to resummon you if you get broken, so you'll need to be careful."

"Kid, I'm here to babysit you, not the other way around. Look… We shoul—""BORK! YOUR DINNER'S READY!"

"TEN MORE MINUTES, MUM!" he yelled back. I rested a hand over my eyesockets for a second. This was going to be a long, irritating job, and even if I died—my go-to way to hand in my resignation—I'd be brought back as soon as this pimply nerd saved up his pocket money to buy the reagents again.

"NO! GET IN NOW AND EAT IT WHILE IT'S HOT!"

"BUUUUUTTTTTT MUUUUUMMMMM!"

"DON'T YOU 'BUT MUM' ME, YOUNG MAN! GO AND WASH YOUR HANDS!" He looked at me sheepishly, and I blew a cloud of smoke in his direction.

"Better run along, kid. Look, after you've had your dinner, we should head out to the Moulders. You can't be a proper necromancer with a general who's leading an army of none."

"Really? You'll take me there?"

"Well, it's either we go grave robbing, or we need to start murdering people to reanimate their corpses." I looked him up and down.

"And you ain't ready for that yet."

"You're the best, Dusty!" He blew out the candles, plunging the room into darkness, then swung the door open. It was a dark night outside, and the moon must only be a sliver of its full glory. Perfect for my plans.

"I'll be back in half an hour. I'll bring you something to eat." The door slammed shut, and I heard a bar slide into place on the outside.

"I don't need to eat," I muttered, peering around in the gloom. Yet another reason this life was going to suck. No steaks, no beer… Sliding my back down the wall, I sat and stretched out my legs. While I'd never had this particular class before, I'd had similar ones. Hydrocaster was pretty much the same thing, but for water, and the spell templates were largely identical, bar the thinly veiled dick jokes. The Interdimensional Memetic Progression System, or IMPS for short, varied from verse to verse.

The more insane universes were almost unintelligible due to it indulging in bad puns and obscene humour. I held up a hand, illuminating it with the light from my flaming eyes and the crack under the door. A nub of bone began to grow from my palm, an inch wide. When it had grown to about ten inches long, I broke it off and checked my Bone Matter. Bone Matter: 70/75 Not bad. It would get more efficient as I levelled up my skills.

I switched to Boneshaping, and began running the fingers of my other hand over it, willing the bone to change form and become what I needed it to be. The dog came over and curled up next to me, whining slightly. I sighed, pulled off one of my fingers and tossed it to him. His bony tail whacked me in the side as he jumped and snatched the disposable digit off the floor. It would grow back in a few minutes as Calcify got to work. With my remaining fingers, I continued my first task in this world: tooling up.

With so little Bone Matter capacity at this stage, my materials were going to have to be used carefully. But Boneshaping only needed me to touch a bone and have some time to work the material. It didn't cost me anything to use it. Once the blade was roughly complete, I began working on the pommel and grip. Examining my handiwork, I was pleased with what I'd achieved. I began running my fingers down either side of the blade, gradually honing the edges to a razor sharpness. Boneshaped Gladius (basic) Huh.

I could get it to uncommon if I had a couple of days or got my hands on some better bones… I eyed the dog speculatively but decided against it. He was too cute, in a bony sort of way, to turn into a weapon or piece of armour. Besides, I wasn't going to get that much time; I'd need a weapon to deal with the denizens of the Moulders when I took the kid graverobbing this evening. Wholesome, healthy teenage fun awaited, along with hideous creatures of the night, myself included.