The castle was liberated, wrestled from the clutches of the Wildling Barbarians. I didn't know how many of them were left in the entire island, but I knew that their days were numbered – less than seven, probably, because I definitely wasn't gonna let them live for longer than a week. So, their choices were: suicide or swim all the way back to the mainland, where I wouldn't find them. My skeleton soldiers were busy gathering all the dead in a single place, where I could harness the Necrotic Energies and raise them all up again with [Danse Macabre]. Said place was outside Mormont Keep, because I did not want a repeat of what happened last time.

And there were a lot of corpses to be gathered. I honestly hadn't bothered counting, but there must've been almost two hundred Wildlings here and that was only counting the ones who still had every limb attached. I had no need for undead minions who were already injured to begin with and neither did I wish to reanimate a random hand; what's it gonna do just follow us around, like Thing from the Addam's Family? Heh, you know what? That did sound kind of funny; so, I think I'm gonna go ahead and do just that.

I turned my attention to Halga, who was still asleep. Nightfury had lain her on the ground and then laid down on the Courtyard as well, burping out several bits of bone and other burnt fleshy bits, before falling asleep. It honestly would've been a little cute if Nightfury didn't look as though he'd literally crawled out of hell, after eating the devil. And now, fully grown, it was hard not to feel just a tiny bit intimidated. Here, right before me, was – quite possibly – the strongest creature in the whole of Planetos, unless the gods started walking around or some shit. I doubt even the White Walkers could survive the sustained flame of a Fatalis; their super ice powers would melt eventually. Or, at the very least, Nightfury's fire would fuck up their armies until only the White Walkers themselves remained and what could they possibly do if I dropped several tons' worth of dragonglass over their heads?

Yeah, that's right. Nothing.

They ain't shit.

I could probably take control of their undead, right from under their frozen noses.

I land a hand on Halga's forehead and smiled. Yep, she was getting warmer with every passing moment. That was really good news.

So... what the fuck do I do now?

Well, seeing as there was, quite literally, nothing to do, I sat down on the ground and closed my eyes. It was time, perhaps, for me to get acquainted with the magical forces within myself. Because there was apparently an arcane element to this that I was not aware of. For example, being able to harness Necrotic Energy from corpses wasn't something that existed in Dungeons and Dragons, as far as I was aware, which meant the ROB who threw me into this world made more than a few alterations to the system of power that governed all the cool shit I could do.

My idea was that, since I was a Necromancer, it then stood to reason that I did, in fact, house a rather sizable volume of Necrotic Energy within myself. But, of course, that was just the theory. It was entirely possible that there were plenty of hard limits that I simply could not cross, no matter how much I squatted on the ground and pretended to be monk or some shit. But, once again, I'd never fucking know unless I actually tried; so, I'm gonna go ahead and do that.

I closed my eyes and turned my full attention inwards. I slowed my breaths, but kept them at a steady pace. Of course, at the back of my head, I maintained a constant grip over my undead minions, because these skeletal idiots might just wreak havoc without it; still, that grip was easily put away – not forgotten, but simply put on automatic. What else was there to this meditation thing? At first, I pretty much saw nothing – only that faint, blackish red that was probably the back of my eyelid. I was just about to give up when I noticed... something. Right there, floating in the darkness... were stars. A constellation, in fact. I looked closer and found that the constellation was, in fact, a representation of every single skill within the School of Necromancy. Every star in that constellation was ablaze, because I was an Archmage in Necromancy, which meant every skill was, by default, already unlocked. No surprises there.

What kind of baffled me was that there were other constellations.

Wait... what the fuck?

ROB, you unoriginal fuck, is this the motherfucking Skyrim tech tree?

Because it absolutely was. I mean, design-wise, of course; the actual content was different, but holy shit. This was grounds for a lawsuit if Bethesda found out about it. Eh, whatever. The important thing was that there were, in fact, other constellations, which meant there were other Skill Trees or Disciplines that I had not yet unlocked. The question now was: how do I unlock these babies? Because, I'd really fucking love to.

With my mind, I reached out and sort of browsed through what sort of shit was available. I found the standard Dungeons and Dragons shit, which was Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, and Transmutation. Like I said: standard shit. I knew this because I did sort of take a moment to actually read about DnD lore when I first created my overpowered Necromancer Archmage. I didn't dive too deep, of course, but I skimmed through a lot of things. The reason I picked Necromancer was because I wanted to play the role of a bad guy, who forced the dead to do his bidding, which sounded really fucking cool – commanding my own armies and stuff. That said, I only chose it after I skimmed through the other Schools of Magic. But then, that wasn't the end of it. Because there were other things here that most definitely caught my attention.

These were things I've never even heard of.

Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Obfuscate, Potence, Presence, Dementation, Fortitude, Protean, Dominate, Serpentis, Obtenetration, Chimerstry, Thaumaturgy, and Vicissitude... and Restoration. I had absolutely no fucking idea what the heck any of these were. I've never even heard of them, except maybe for the last one, Restoration, which I could infer had something to do with healing or something. After this list, things just went back to my main Necromancy Constellation, which meant... that was it, I guess.

Those were all the possible Schools of Magic that I could use – never mind all the other stuff that I didn't even recognize. I mean, considering my ROB's general lack of originality, my best guess was that those skill trees were probably borrowed from another franchise or some shit.

Whatever the case, I didn't exactly see an option to unlock another constellation. So, I guess, for now-

Wait, what's that?

I turned my attention to a bunch of numbers on the upper right of the darkness. No, not a bunch. There was only one number there. It literally just says "1" and nothing else. I frowned. What the fuck does that even mean? Hmm... maybe it's like a point that I could spend to unlock a new Constellation?

Eh, it made enough sense in my head.

Assuming that was correct, what new Constellation should I unlock?

The biggest thing that I had to consider was that I didn't actually memorize any of the spells that were in the other Schools of Magic; I skimmed through them to get a general gist of flavor, but that was pretty much just it. Right now, I have no fucking idea what sorts of bullshit I'd actually be getting if I picked Evocation, for example, other than the general memory that it'd allow me to shoot balls of fire from my fingertips. Did I want to do that, though? Clearly, I had enough fire power with Nightfury on my side and I'm pretty sure I could kill just about anything in this world using [Sapping Sting] or [Chill Touch]. So, no, I needed something that wasn't an offensive ability; what I needed, instead, was the ability to heal.

So, I knew what I wanted immediately. I turned my attention back to the Constellation that encapsulated Restoration and... well... I actually didn't know what-

Would you like to unlock the School of [Restoration]? Yes or No

Huh... cool. Yes, I'd like to unlock it.

The constellation lit up and blazed to life, revealing only six stars, five of which were dim, which I figured likely meant I'd have to practice more or something? Because I can't imagine I'd find anything close to a Spellbook in Planetos – not even in the Citadel. Bah, whatever the case, I'd deal with it later; for now, I felt giddy at the thought of finally being able to heal people.

My first spell from the School of Restoration was simply called [Natural Healing] and what it apparently did was bolster the body's natural immune response and regeneration. The magic itself simply supplied all the extra cells and shit to actually allow for such a thing. That was... holy shit. This shit was already better than any healing spell I've ever heard of. If I read that description right and I absolutely did, then it meant it could even be used to cure cancer.

Luckily, it still kind of worked with Dungeons and Dragons spell slot rules, which meant I could assign it to a ninth tier spell slot and heal someone near-instantly that way.

The downside, of course, was that speeding up, in this case, required my constant attention and care. I also couldn't use it to restore lost limbs or regrow burnt patches of skin; all it did was speed up and bolster the body's natural response. Eh, it's good enough trade off, I figured. I'd eventually unlock the higher-tier stuff anyway.

And so, I opened my eyes and found Nightfury's head on my lap... somehow. I mean, the dude's head was freaking huge, which meant only a part of his chin actually fit anywhere. And it would've been adorable if it weren't for all the sharp teeth that were poking out, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, which really wasn't that bad, honestly. Shrugging, I reached out and patted Nightfury on the tip of his nose, causing the giant fucking fatalis to let out something that was almost like a cat's purr, but was closer, instead, to the sound of a rumbling car engine.

"You okay there, little guy?" I asked, still patting the black motherfucking dragon that legitimately thought of me as its mother. Yep, no need for additional firepower when Nightfury could burn entire countries to cinders overnight. A single eye opened up, crimson and blazing, like the sunset. Unlike all the flavor text from Monster Hunter, however, I felt no malice or rage from Nightfury, just some satisfaction and general happiness. Awesome.

Mother's friend sleep. Mother sleep. I also sleep. No need. But feels good.

Halga was close enough for me to test my new spell on her. So, I raised my hand and used [Natural Healing]. Five pillars of yellowish green light emerged from each of my fingers and made contact with Halga. I kept it as a simple Cantrip, this time, since I wanted to see how quickly it healed at its lowest possible level. I wondered, then, if it scaled with my status as an Archmage, like my Necromancy skills. Halga's eyes snapped open about five seconds later.

Eh, didn't need to do much, after all.

"Hey, you, you're finally awake." I said, almost snickering as Halga rubbed her blurry eyes and shook her head. "You were trying to cross the border, right? Same as us and that thief over there."

"What?"

"Haha, I'm just kidding, welcome back to the land of the living, Halga." I said, before turning to Nightfury, whom I know just realized was a fully grown Dragon. And what was every fantasy nerd's wet dream about dragons? I grinned. "Wanna ride Nightfury with me? It'll be fun."

Halga rubbed her eyes. "What?"

AN: Advanced chapters are out on (Pat)reon! Check out the "Factioneer too" tier for advanced chapters, up to Chapter 20.