The First Legendary Beast Master

The next morning, they went down to invite Mira to breakfast, and the Cleric was sitting on the front steps, staring at the sun and contemplating the clear morning sky.

“Stuck on a thought?” Karl asked, as he took a seat beside the cleric.

The man nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been searching for the key to immortality. You see, I’ve got an incurable curse on me, placed by a Demigod. Nothing in this world can break it but intervention by the Gods.

Only, the Lord of the Underworld told me that there was a way to avoid it and live forever.”

Karl nodded. “A curse to die young, that can be avoided forever? I am likely going for the obvious here, but isn’t that just a curse of Undeath?”

The cleric stared at Karl as if he had just dropped legendary lore on him out of nowhere.

“I don’t think that you’re wrong. But wouldn’t I lose my humanity?”

Karl shrugged and gestured out at the Orcish tribe. “You might lose your humanity, but not being human doesn’t mean that you can’t be a decent person. The Orcs barely understand human sensibilities, but once you understand how Orcish culture works, you’ll find that they’re not a bad bunch, and they are living their best lives.

It’s the same with the Dragons.

They have their own ways of doing things, and it has little to do with how humans do things.

I also know a few vampires, and while one is batshit crazy, the other one is a really sweet girl. She works at our guild house in the store.”

The Cleric was lost in thought for a while, then stood up. “I will go speak to my God. Perhaps he can help me choose a path. Not many of the undead are suitable for an eternal existence, but if anyone knows how to achieve it, the God of the Underworld will.

Thank, you, Beast Man.”

The Cleric returned to the shrines, while Karl stared out at the sky in his place, wondering what sort of chaos might come during the next few days. The changes had been short so far, so Karl didn’t expect to be in this region for long.

But if they made the best of their time here, they might be able to head off some of the early issues in the region, or they might gain a greater understanding of the myriad Divine Beings who were worshipped by the various species of this planet.

Eventually, Karl got up and went for a short walk around the Temple, mirroring the path that Rae had taken earlier looking for trouble.

There, in the middle of a hedge maze in the backyard, he came across the most curious platform.

The fact that it was there wasn’t surprising, he had been following a stone walkway through the maze, and there were many sitting areas, like the hedge maze at the Academy, which brought memories of his first few days with Dana.

Karl was so lost in the pleasant memories that he almost missed that this sitting area was not like the others. There were no benches, and there were actual magical runes written on the stone, not just the poetry and historical messages like the others.

“Is this a portal platform?” Karl wondered as he deciphered the runes.

He could tell that [Runemaster] was translating for him, as this was no language that he knew or had seen before. But it was no normal portal platform, the spell was much too complex.

But many of the runes were similar to the Portal spell that he knew. So, it was a transport platform of some sort, but not a portal.

Could it be a form of long-distance teleportation?

While he was standing there, recording the runes from the spell, Karl sensed a presence as someone joined him.

“Good afternoon.” He greeted absently, only to be met with the surprised face of a pixie appearing in front of him.

“You knew that I was there?” The creature asked in shock.

Karl nodded. “I sensed you there, but I couldn’t see you until just now. I thought that you were behind me.”

The tiny woman, no more than ten centimetres high, rubbed her chin in confusion.

“Interesting. I wasn’t in this world until you said hello.”

Now it was Karl’s turn to be confused.

“Then where were you? I was examining this platform when I sensed you.” He asked.

The pixie laughed. “It’s a gate to the Fae Realm. A mirror of this world, but not for humans. I was looking out of it to see what sort of strange thing had happened to this Realm lately when you said hello.”

Perhaps it was a side effect of [Planeswalker]? The skill was supposed to let Karl move between Realms, but he had no idea how to actually operate it. Or, more correctly, he knew how to operate the skill, but he had nowhere to go.

Only, now that he thought about it, he did have somewhere to go. The Fae Realm was adjacent to this world, and it felt like it was one layer above.

Then, there should be a layer below.

Karl focused on the skill, and found that he could feel the cleric from this morning communing with the lower layer. That meant it was most likely the Underworld, the land of the dead.

A definite asset, should he end up there.

But he could also sense another place, immensely and overwhelmingly powerful.

The pixie poked him on the forehead. “Don’t just go looking into the Immortal Realm like that. They don’t like people spying on them, and we’re both far from Immortal.

Until you gain immortality, they don’t even consider you a sentient species there, and even the weaker Immortals usually live like slaves. Kind of like what happens to the humans who can’t access the System in the Monster Nations, or the Dark Fae Kingdom.”

Karl withdrew his mind from the Immortal Realm, which appeared to be a collection of massive continents floating in a void.

“Thanks. I just gained the skill that made that possible, and I hadn’t tested it before.”

Because he hadn’t known it was possible.