"Professor Cranium-" I remark as I look at the sleepy woman. She is tired but in a way that isn't normal for her.
"Rachel." She states, correcting me. She has insisted that we are on a first-name basis but I find calling her by her first name off-putting. I don't want to get overly familiar with her. I turn away from her as I speak again.
"Professor Cranium, have you been taking care of yourself?" I state, powering through a second attempt by her to correct me and fully ignoring me. She lets out a small laugh and shakes her head.
"Nope. But it's hard for me to do that." She states, cryptically. I turn and look at her curiously. She is studying me intently and I can see her focus intensify to an unseemly degree. Unlike with many other people who study me I don't sense attraction but a different sort of interest.
"My biology gets… funny a few times a year." She confesses after a few moments. I've long speculated about the nature of her immortality, and I've had a number of different guesses fizzle out. She's not undead, or at least not any kind of undead I'm familiar with.
"I just need a little bit of help. Can you take me to my apartment?" She asks, and I can hear quiet trembles in her voice. Tremors of different emotions. I nod quietly and move towards her. I wrap her arm around my shoulder and help her to her feet.
Professor Cranium lives in a space past the lab. She's the dorm's professor-in-residence and she is well-liked by abomination students. I guide her to the door and she asks me to put her hand on the knob. I do so with telekinesis which she doesn't resist and when she touches the door it supernaturally opens of its own power. Just past it there's a small living room. I put her on the couch of the space and she thanks me sleepily before telling me she'll see me tomorrow. I look at her and turn inward, examining my mental library of my powers.
At this point I've been living here for the better part of a year. I'm pretty familiar with my powers, though far from a master of them. I study my list of powers and perks and find that without more information I can't do much here. When I try to ask my professor to tell me what's going on she refuses to answer and tells me not to worry about her. I eventually relent and go back to my dorm, opting to look more into whatever might be ailing her.
I spend the time texting my friends while looking through my grimoire for any information I might be able to find. It is, unsurprisingly, not a fruitful search. When I see Professor Cranium the next day she seems fine so I decide to drop it, for the time being, though I don't forget what I saw.
The rest of the semester passes by in a blur. As it comes to an end I ace my classes once more, my buffed intellect proving to be more than a match for what I have seen. During the final week of class I am invited to Ankoros as Arsinoe's partner and as an official guest of the royal family. I accept this invitation immediately and when the semester comes to a close Dean Grendel invites me to his office.
Dean Grendel stands tall. This is one of the few times I've seen him standing and when he's standing he's quite tall. He nods at me brightly.
"Ah, Lalo. What a delight it's been to have you at the university." The dean tells me. I can hear the sincerity in his voice. He is appraising me joyfully.
"Professor Cranium has grown quite fond of you and it's rare for her to take such a shine to students. I've also heard from your professors that you are a true delight to teach." He adds, and I can see the twinkle in his gaze. He is incredibly pleased both with me and with himself. I realize now that in all likelihood he was the one who directly oversaw my swift acceptance and thus took a risk advocating for me. This raises my impression of him.
"Now I want to talk about your future." He explains and I nod. I listen intently as he begins to speak.
"We have a system here at MUU whereby a professor or some other significant faculty member talks to different students as the school year comes to an end. I was chosen to be your… faculty person for lack of a more formalized term due to your odd nature. Do you know where you want to go next in terms of your living arrangement?" The dean asks me, flashing me an intent look and studying me. I go silent for a moment thinking about the university and what I've learned over the course of the school year.
The university has a number of different dorms. My adventures have largely led me to two: the Abomination Area; for unusual monsters, and Castle Sombra; for the undead. I know of a few others though they aren't especially interesting to me. I ponder the decision he's asking me to make for a split second before responding.
"I'd like to live in Castle Sombra. I feel a kinship with the undead students that's difficult for me to explain." I explain, causing the dean to nod thoughtfully at me. He is quiet for a moment before he reveals something that doesn't surprise me.
"I've heard of your friendships with the undead. It's admirable. There are living people who have difficulty interacting with the animate dead. It took me a while to begin to become friendly with them due to experiences I had as a youth." He tells me, causing me to give him an interested look. He spots it and closes his eyes.
"I am a type of troll. A member of a rare and powerful subspecies. I've had a quietly legendary life though that was more akin to a rambunctious childhood and adventurous youth. When I was younger I fought against a human king. He fell in battle against me but came back as a powerful undead warrior. We have had our clashes over the years." He tells me this and smiles before opening his eyes.
"Ah Beowulf. That man has never given up. I wonder if he'll win someday…" Grendel says, though it's clear at this point that he's not talking to me in any way that matters. I laugh and say farewell to the dean though as I move to leave he snaps back to the present.
"You don't have to tell me but where are you going over the summer? Do you have concrete plans?" He asks, and I smile, though the smile is again a rather toothy one.
"I'm going to Ankoros. Princess Arsinoe invited me." I tell him, with the same casual tone as someone quietly flexing that they plan to go on vacation. This causes the dean to laugh.
"Ah Arsinoe. I remember her father. I haven't met her personally yet, but I've heard she's got a lot of spirit." He tells me and I can see the twink of memory in his gaze. He's definitely thinking of Prince Kleoshebet. He bides me farewell and when the semester comes to a close a few days later I pack up my items and head to Arsinoe's dorm.
The princess greets me with a warm hug and a quick peck of a kiss. She is as kind and friendly as ever, though in her casually powerful way. I am almost immediately guided back to her sarcophagus and dragged through it, as she is the happiest I've ever seen her and eager to head home. When the door/lid of her royal coffin opens we are greeted by the intense heat and vibrant sunlight of the land of the festive dead.
"You have been given a room next to mine. I don't know why they insisted on that, but they called up a genie and had it made. It was a whole thing." Arsinoe reveals with amusing indifference. I ask her to come with me to explore the room and she happily agrees. We exit her room, while staying inside the palace this time, and enter what is clearly, to me at least, an Egyptian themed hallway. All of the furniture matches the sort of stuff I'd see in video games, museums, and art, down to the animal stuff. Arsinoe guides me to the room next to hers and I find it fairly relaxed in terms of furniture though I do note that it's not open-air like hers. I smile and opt to show my girlfriend a fun secret as we explore the large space.
"Wanna see something cool?" I ask Arsinoe as we both look around. She turns and tells me she's always down to see cool things. I close my eyes and cast the spell that allows me to store things in my soul. This causes the stuff inside of me to appear on the floor next to me. Arsinoe's eyes widen in delight as she takes in the sudden appearance of the materials.
"Lalo! Is that magic?! That's amazing." She tells me speaking with sincere joy. There's a cute glimmer in her eyes as she looks at the stuff. I smile and move it with telekinesis, allowing my eyestalk-hair to focus on it and fire rays of telekinesis at the items spread out in front of me.
We decorate the room and as we do I hear her say she's never had a knack for magic. This remark intrigues me and causes me to do something nice. When we're done unpacking I give her a gentle look.
"Earlier you said you weren't good at magic. I think you've just never had a good teacher." I tell her. She laughs and responds by asking if this is a cheesy attempt at coming onto her and I shake my head and smile.
"I can teach you magic. I want to teach you magic. Would you let me?" I ask. She looks at me more thoughtfully now and seriously studies me.
"You mean it don't you? You can teach magic." She says almost quizzically. In fairness to her magic is something genetic in this world, it's not supposed to be teachable. What she does with her powers is, according to this universe's goofy ass internal laws, some other thing, not magic. My powers, or rather my perks trump the rules of this curiously whimsical place and I've gained a nice number of abilities simply by going to school and interacting with my classmates. I also know I can teach her magic.
I nod at her, and the look on her face is one that reveals a fantastical hope that she is suddenly grappling with. I walk over to her and decide to start small though I also use "Sage" to give her a dramatic learning boost so she can master this faster. "Sage" is a Magic Essence Jump perk that among other things lets me share my learning boosts with my students and it's something I've used on students I tutor and like to help them more easily get what I'm teaching, and it's proven quite handy before.
"I'm gonna teach you the Soul Storage Charm. This is a spell from a distant land. It's not complex." I tell my girlfriend who gives me a worried look before I start to tell her the simple spellwork that goes into the spell. As I say the spell's name, memories flash through my mind, memories of a place that feels distant and far away.
She's not like me so I don't try to teach her the simplified version I can do but instead show her a longer version Rosalind once demonstrated for me. She watches intently and then mimics me and I watch her eyes widen as she feels something inside of her stir; a small pool of arcane energy that wasn't there previously but is now nestled in her soul.
I point at a shirt and telekinetically fling it to her. She catches it and then pulls it to her chest. I gasp in delight when she successfully pulls it into her and run and hug her.
"You did it!" I tell her, before kissing her cheek. She laughs as she takes in the fact that she's done magic now before immediately casting the spell again and retrieving the shirt. Tears begin to stream down her face as she takes in what she can now do before beginning to aggressively kiss my cheek in joy.
"So you can teach magic. That's amazing!" She tells me. I think I'll teach her more magic in the future…
Our summer vacation, which is just a month long due to a drawback I took, begins and I develop a new routine. I spend… most of my time with Arsinoe, happily doing so and establishing a "Lair" in the palace and the surrounding region.
As a Death Tyrant I have the ability to turn places I live in for a significant amount of time into a lair and while I didn't do this over in MUU I am happy to do it here. My lair is a place I call home and the region that surrounds it, which is then affected by my presence and proximity. I'm a Death Tyrant; a type of undead beholder and while I've kept this a secret the ways I affect the palace include subtly strengthening and empowering undead with negative energy and even causing simple, mindless undead to awaken.
For the first few days I keep my presence a subtle thing. I allow my powers to mostly idly empower the undead and to give them a new zest they aren't sure of the source of. This effect grows stronger over time though quite slowly.
Meanwhile I casually befriend both royals and the palace's staff as I spend days with Arsinoe. Daily we go on walks to explore the city of Nefros which I am unsurprised to learn is the capital city of Ankoros. We split our activities between my interests; visiting libraries, and attending cultural festivals, while Arsinoe is quick to show me off on social media and have me attend activities her family sponsors. I revel in being treated like armcandy, and Arsinoe enjoys meeting and interacting with the citizens of Ankoros.
It is about a week into my month-long summer that I take to embracing my true identity, relative to this jump, as a beholder. I more regularly adopt my true form, at least in this jump, and I begin to help train soldiers and guards in fighting creatures with odd anatomies like mine. During this time my nature as a Sorcerer Lord comes to the fore and I become a known figure in the palace and the surrounding area for sparring. I thoroughly train guards, and in turn receive training from them regarding both fighting and protecting a place.
I encounter bounty hunters from time to time and defeat them with striking ease. They grow in number over time, and now I encounter as many as four at a time, but I'm a bad opponent to try and outnumber. I give the bodies of the slain to the royal family who have necromancers reanimate them and put them to work doing simple tasks. I am still keeping my powers as a necromancer hidden, for now at least.
Halfway through my stay in the city I go down to the basement of the palace and meet the royal armorers; a group of undead blacksmiths. We freely exchange knowledge with me teaching them how to use simple dwarven sorcery while they show me how to create more artistic equipment. Each of us has a powerful drive when it comes to learning that gets to be shown off as we exchange ideas and I watch as they become more loyal to me with every dwarven spell and enchantment I teach, while they earn my respect with every ornate design and beautiful item they help me craft.
I get to see the subtle but ever handy effects of the acceptance perks I have from A Human Of Earth as I grow closer to Arsinoe's family and more appreciated by her people. People see the happiness of one of their princesses and note a more genuine layer of both kindness and calmness that fills her. Undead around me are also just naturally drawn to me so I easily attract followers who are distinctly mine and it's not long before social media edits of Arsinoe and I, and of just Arsinoe or myself, begin to flood local social media accounts.
It doesn't take long for the summer to end and for Arsinoe and I go to back to MUU. I return to the familiar campus and am immediately given a dorm room in Castle Sombra, one on the same floor as Ava and Andrew though not the same floor as Arsinoe, as well as an email notice that Professor Cranium is officially extending her offer for me to be a research assistant. I accept this and eagerly get back to work as both a tutor and research assistant, knowing that I'll be spending every other Friday night in the Abomination Area with both new and old friends.
On my first day back one of the first people to greet me is the blue-skinned Frankenstein's-Monster Ava. She is a cute, short little necro-scientist and she spent the summer with her creator and father, a human scientist.
"Good morning! How was your summer?" I ask, as though we weren't regularly texting. The young woman flashes me a brilliant smile even as electricity visibly courses through her.
"It was great! Father and I were in the Molten Mountains, a region far from here in a neighboring kingdom. He gave me some handy upgrades." She tells me before beginning to regale me with tales of the sorts of monsters she encountered, and the few she fought. Creatures like her take upgrades incredibly well so it's not surprising that she enjoys being augmented. Andrew pops his head into the entrance of my dorm room and smiles at me as Ava tells me about her adventures fighting fire elementals.
"Andrew! Looking good, man." I say, greeting him with a smile. He grabs Ava's shoulder lightly as he walks past her and greets me back.
"Lalo you sly dog." He says, and I can see what he's thinking.
"You're not in your true form!" He says, complaining. It's true, I'm currently in my amalgamation form; my human body with hair eyestalks. This reminds Ava of that as well and she flashes me an annoyed look.
"You were teaching me magic and I didn't even know what you looked like! Honestly I was surprised they called you an abomination, but now it makes sense." She says as she approaches me and lightly hits my shoulder. I let out a laugh and invite the two to lunch which they both accept. All three of us are undead but some undead really enjoy eating, and for some like vampires or base zombies eating is necessary.
The semester begins shortly after I reunite with my friends. And the truth is it's just… easy. School, at least at this level, doesn't challenge me.
I gain more fulfillment from tutoring classmates and helping Dr. Cranium with her research than I do from class but literally the entire time I am enrolled at MUU my grades never drop below 95. Even classes I would have struggled with as a human in my native reality are simply not challenging thanks to perks.
One of the best parts of jumpchains are perks, and in some cases the best perks aren't ones that make you… Invulnerable gods of cosmic domains, but things that smooth over regular day to day stuff. My undead condition, my beholder physiology, and my radically enhanced intellect allow me to effortlessly breeze through my classes. When the rival school drawback takes effect for real partway through my sophomore year I ignore it as the drawback doesn't actually affect me in any real way. Pranks happen, sure, but it's just something I ignore. Some drawbacks are essentially free points and that's one of them.
At the end of each school year I see Professor Cranium enter a weird state for a few days. When I come back from summer break she's fine again, and I begin to suspect that something about her immortality is not as perfect as it should be and that it needs regular repair.
I spend my greatly modified "Summer breaks" with Arsinoe's family, though during my second one Ava accompanies us and gets to meet with various undead and interview them to learn about their physiologies. During these breaks, which are annoyingly short thanks to the "School's Out" drawback I become a respected figure and establish a nice foothold in Ankoros. One of the things I do is help with the creation of unique goods that are modified by dwarven sorcery, and as I teach more blacksmiths about it I gain both loyal followers and more knowledge of the stuff thanks to another side effect of "Sage".
Arsinoe graduates from the university before I do, as she's a year older than I am. She moves to Ankoros and begins to slowly make arrangements for me to do so as well while also working in the government. During my final year I work as a full researcher alongside Dr. Cranium, taking mostly online classes and big capstone courses that meet once a week. At the same time monsters begin to appear among the bounty hunters who seek me out, though they also die at my hands since even lacking survival instincts when battle actually pops off I immediately go all in. Slain monsters become servants of mine as readily as essence monsters did a long time ago.
I graduate from the university a year later along with Andrew and Ava, receiving my degree with honors along with various job offers. Several, though not all, of the offers are from the university itself, but in the hours after I graduate and in the short bit of time before I am to depart to Ankoros with Arsinoe and her family I make an important stop.
The elevator ride down to the bottom of Abomination Area is a trip down memory lane. Every month I've been a student attending classes at MUU I've spent time in this dorm. I lived the last three years in Castle Sombra but my work as Professor Cranium's research assistant has kept me a regular face in this building. Memories flood my mind as I wait for the elevator doors to open. When they do I am greeted by silence and make my way down the hall as I realize that I'm now a graduate and thus free of a major risk to my chain; a drawback that would have made me fail the jump if I didn't graduate.
I reach the entrance to the lab and open it with ease. The lab is packed with silly science things, creations of Professor Cranium or some of her more scientifically gifted students. I look at them, and even see the things I've given the mad scientist. Some of them have been subtly packed with dwarven sorcery and enchanted to be helpful to her. I move through the room and knock on her door.
"Who is it?" Replies a voice, the mad scientist herself, a second later. I tell her it's me and she tells me to open the door and come in. I open the door and am greeted by the sight of a messy room, far messier than it was three years ago.
"Hello… Lalo." Professor Cranium says, her voice slurring a touch. I half wonder if she's drunk but when she suddenly crawls out from behind a couch and I can tell something's going on with her. She's moving sluggishly and she sounds wacked out. I move towards her, instantly crossing the distance and arriving beside her.
"Professor! What's going on?" I ask. She flashes me a sad look and sighs in annoyance.
"I was… hoping you wouldn't see me like this," She confesses. "Every year I need to maintain my immortality and the way I do that is unpleasant." She tells me even as I sit next to her. She moves her head into my lap and looks up at me.
"I'm so hungry. And my hunger is… It's unbecoming of a human." She states, causing me to wonder as to what she really is. The way she's describing her hunger makes her sound like a zombie, a vampire, or even a wendigo.
"Dean Grendel secures my food for me at the start of our short summer breaks. It's part of why I agreed to work here." She tells me, and I begin to run my fingers through her dark hair.
"What is your food Professor Cranium?" I ask, and she lets out a quiet laugh.
"Even now you can't call me by my name. I'm not your professor any more Lalo." She utters, her voice beginning to change. It becomes deeper and more… unnatural sounding. I look into her eyes and note that her brown one is becoming black.
"A long, long time ago I was stuck in a forest with a few other researchers. We got lost and the forest turned against us. And we turned on each other." She reveals, almost sleepily. As she speaks she begins to transform though the transformation is a subtle thing at first. Her nails slowly grow longer and she begins to gradually become skinnier.
"In nature you have to kill… to survive. And we did. At first we killed other things, weaker monsters and mundane animals, but the forest didn't release us. I think we did something to upset it somehow." She remarks, and I watch her hair move back as small horns begin to jut from her head.
"Slowly we grew more and more paranoid. One thing led to another and we turned on each other. Before I knew it my friends were dead and I was alone. They were gone and when I wracked my memories I couldn't remember what happened. It took me realizing my face was covered in blood to begin to piece together the terrible truth." She confesses, and I can see the memory in her eyes. Tears of blood begin to streak down her cheek.
"The forest let me go. But every year on the anniversary of that horrible day I get this… hunger." She tells me, and when her breath washes over my face I can smell the woods on it, the scent of a deep forest and other smaller things like the faint smell of blood.
"And it won't let me die. It won't even let me age, though I do get weaker every year as I get closer and closer to the anniversary of the killing. It's been long enough that right now I'm… I'm pretty weak." She explains.
She looks up at me appreciatively. A transformed hand of hers reaches up and lightly touches my face.
"I'm glad you're an abomination Lalo. I'd feel really bad if you came here to talk to me and I ate you. You're the best assistant I've ever had." She tells me, causing me to actually laugh. I could help her… Frankly I could help her in a range of ways, but as far as her hunger goes I could help her both short term and long term. All it'd take is me doing something I've never done before: dreaming up a living human. Or... Or I could try to be a bit more creative.
"Professor, are you in pain?" I ask quietly. She laughs, hoarsely, and nods. My mind begins to race as I weigh the options in my mind. I could kill and resurrect her, but that feels… It feels wrong. I could feed her, though that also feels wrong but it feels wrong in a different, somehow less terrible way. I retrieve my grimoire and Professor Cranium looks at it confusedly. I head to the back of it and touch an image of a slain bounty hunter, one of the human ones I keep in my grimoire just in case I need a distraction or something. The bounty hunter looks at me and at the transforming professor.