He handily dodged incoming attacks as hundreds of Undead, Wyverns, Naga, and even Dragons fell to his damage-over-time onslaught. Before long, Garath stood triumphantly atop a vast mountain, but when he looked down, he saw it was not earth and rock that he stood upon. His foot slipped in a puddle of blood and the exultant Necrologist fell face first into a heap of bodies.
Bones jutted from the rotting corpses and fetid remains. He pushed himself up from the gory heap, and was shocked to find the remains were not those of the Undead or other monsters. They were the lifeless corpses of his closest friends.
Athios, Sharon, Warrion, and even parts of Gary and his red-headed boys littered the decomposing mountain of flesh. The disembodied head of Leviathan smiled up at him wickedly from between a severed leg and a steaming pool of intestines. Garath knew why she was smiling. He had taken up her mantle.
A prompt appeared in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t make out the words. Garath squinted so hard that his eyes nearly closed, expecting the blurred letters to come into focus if he strained hard enough. Try as he might, the words remained a mystery.
He dismissed the prompt and looked back to the head at his feet, Leviathan’s haunting grin still wide on her face. She winked. The prompt appeared again, clouding his vision with an illegible message. Another popped up between Garath and the first prompt. And another, and another.
The Necrologist woke with a jump, equipped his silver staff, and waved it frantically as he spun around, searching for danger. After a deep breath, he dismissed the handful of prompts clouding his vision.
Garath’s cat, Tarzan, who had been sleeping soundly next to him on the moss-covered tree overlooking the Pacific, jumped straight into the air, startled by his sudden movement. The fluffy black Maine coon did her best Garath impression, looking around wide-eyed for the danger that had shocked her awake, but found none.
“I’m sorry, Tarzan. Bad dream,” he explained. The black ball of fluff with a tail almost seemed to sigh, then tucked her legs back beneath her torso and closed her eyes.
Once his conscious mind started working normally, Garath pieced together what had happened. He’d received prompt after prompt while he was asleep, and his subconscious must have been attempting to notify him. This was a concerning revelation to the Necrologist on two accounts. First, he would definitely need to search his MENU panels for a ‘do not disturb’ option. More importantly, it made him wonder just how deeply connected to his mind this ‘System’ really was, and what implications that may hold.
Garath took a few minutes to collect himself from the traumatizing content of his dream as Tarzan gave up on further sleep and slunk away, disappearing into the early morning twilight. The Necrologist opened the prompts that had so insistently demanded his attention. Most were notifications that he’d received private messages, but the last prompt was the single-most welcome system message he’d received yet.
You have received a friend request from Auto. Would you like to accept?
Yes or No
Garath excitedly chose ‘Yes’ and pulled up the messages his old friend had sent while he’d been sleeping.
Private message from Auto to Garath - 00/00/06 @ 23:54 (GST):
Hey fuck bag!
Private message from Auto to Garath - 00/00/06 @ 23:56 (GST):
Hey. Fuck bag?
Private message from Auto to Garath - 00/00/06 @ 23:59 (GST):
G. I know you are alive because I just sent you a friend request. I’ve tried that on people that died and the system wont let me. So, I say again: HEY FUCK BAG!
Garath laughed to himself as he typed up his reply.
Private message from Garath to Auto - 00/00/07 @ 00:13 (GST):
You realize it’s like 4am here. Right? I’m glad you lived through this shit dude. Not surprised, but glad either way. Your timing is also stellar. I am putting together a group for the Dungeon in Seattle, you in? Don’t you live in bumfuck Wyoming or something?
Private message from Auto to Garath - 00/00/07 @ 00:15 (GST):
*lived* - There wasn’t a whole lot holding me to Wyoming anyways. Now everyone’s dead, so like… I’m out. Yeah, I thought you lived up that way. That Seattle Dungeon is the closest to me. So me and some guys are actually heading that way right now. We left yesterday morning and I thought to myself, I know a sub-par but relatively okay healer that lives up there. Maybe he wants to come. And here we are.
Private message from Garath to Auto - 00/00/07 @ 00:16 (GST):
Sub-par but relatively okay :| Be still, my beating heart. Well, I started a Guild here. We’re holed up at a big building about 30 miles north of the Dungeon. Meet up here?
The two old friends exchanged messages as the sun peeked over the mountains to the east, reminding Garath that it was time to water his egg. Without much ceremony, the Necrologist willed a bottle of artesian well water from his inventory. A palm-sized black disk appeared, hovering in midair before him. He reached one hand into the tear in space, retrieved the plastic bottle, and pulled it out. No matter how many times he used the Items panel, Garath couldn't shake the feeling that some hideous monster was on the other side of the tear in space-time, waiting to bite his freaking arm off. He then dumped all 16oz of the high-quality water onto the soil surrounded by the circle of rounded, fist-sized rocks he’d placed the night before.
He watched the moistened soil with anticipation for a few minutes, but there was no visible change. That wasn’t surprising. Even without having planted anything in his entire life, the Necrologist wasn’t a complete idiot. Plants don’t shoot out of
