Lukas woke in a wet tangle of cold limbs. A much-too-familiar metallic taste filled his mouth. He knew it intimately. The clones' memories almost always ended with heavy coppery notes.

Moving proved a challenge. He had spent the past six decades in a body that regularly underwent strict training—through the clones, if not personally. Somewhere along the way, Body Reinforcement magic had also become a regular part of his life. Meanwhile, his new form felt heavy. Just turning his head was a labor and a dull ache pulsed around the right side of his cranium. Lukas wished to know what he looked like and investigate the source of the pain, but the sight of pale, bloody corpses was all he could see.

The world darkened for a moment as something partially blocked the only source of light above. At first, it looked like an amorphous blob trying to plunge the world into darkness, but then the darkness grew, and the shape became more distinct.

That’s a fucking corpse.

Everything hurt, and his stomach churned as Lukas forced himself to roll out of the way. He just about got away before the body landed with a sickening wet thud. It then occurred to him that he was in a mass grave.

Instincts demanded he climb to freedom straight away, but Lukas didn’t doubt there would be a fight waiting for him at the top. He wasn’t going to survive it in his current state. The body was far too weak, and no matter how much he wracked his brain, all the magic that he had learned in the past sixty years remained out of his reach. The transmigration had robbed him of it all.

The journal appeared out of thin air as soon as Lukas thought about it. The pages lit up with the same sapphire light as Lady Silverspine’s eyes. He hurriedly shielded it from above using his torso. The illumination would be a welcome bonus at any other time, but now it was a grave risk. When a couple of groans also sounded among the corpses, he put the journal between his hunched-over form and the wall. Much like him, not everybody in the mass grave was all the way dead.

The Pillars of Self—

That’s a silly name. I’m calling it Power Compass going forward. It just makes more sense.

The Power Compass hadn’t changed. However, new words danced along the margin.

The Great Silver Dragon, Silverspine, has granted you an ability shard.

Fuse it with a Pillar of your choosing and ascend from your mundane life.

Choose carefully. The change is permanent and will shape who you are as a person on Fracture.

The journal rippled as Lukas focused on the message. A finger-long crystal filled with luminous azure motes rose out of the pages. It hummed. When Lukas reached for it, the page flipped, and more words appeared, giving him a clue regarding how to proceed and Fracture’s power system functioned. Meanwhile, his fingers passed through the shard.

The Shard of Duplication can produce the following abilities:

Copycat(Body): Perfectly replicate anything you witness or experience. As long as it doesn’t require shards, equivalent magical capacity, or physiological alterations, anything can be copied. Magic, physical ability, and artisanal skills born of decades worth of practice mean nothing. Proficiency rapidly deteriorates following each use of Copycat, and only one thing may be copied at a time. However, understanding and memories of mastery remain.

Double Trouble(Heart): Burn magic to double any natural characteristic. Strength, speed, toughness, senses, and even proficiency in a skill or trade can be doubled as long as you can bear the cost. Only one quality may be multiplied at a time, and extended usage may cause extreme exhaustion, strain, and injury.

Twice Magicked(Mind): Double the power, range, effects, area-of-effect, or any quality of any spell in your arsenal. Pay only half the enhancement’s cost and skip any additional casting, runework, or any work that might be required. The chances of producing wild magic increase with every quality multiplied after the first. The effects might be beneficial or detrimental to you but your understanding of magic will also improve.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Arcane Clone(Soul): Split one’s soul and wrap the fragment in magic to create perfect physical clones of oneself. They can’t use any Shard abilities but, as extensions of you, have access to all of your capabilities, skills, and magic, and can also dispel themselves if instructed. Once a clone is dispelled or perishes, the soul fragment will teleport to its origin, bringing back all it has learned and the benefits of its experiences. Only two clones can exist at any given time.

So the Shard and Pillar combined decide the ability?

It wasn’t as simple as Lukas had imagined. The available abilities were surprisingly complex. It was clear that the Body Pillar produced mostly physical, yet complex abilities, while Mind’s offerings were magical in nature. Heart and Soul seemed more abstract and needed further study.

A sudden jerk and wet thud gave him pause as another body landed on the pile. An unrecognizable bloody limb slapped the side of Lukas’s head, making him jump.

“Fu—” He just about caught himself mid-yell. It seemed that more than knowledge had blurred and faded. The new body lacked his old calm and put-togetherness. His nerves needed steeling and reflexes tempering.

So, we are starting from scratch in every sense of the phrase. Crap body. No knowledge. Barely any power. Perfect.

“What in Drakas’s name was that?!” A rough, grating voice exclaimed above. It had an almost inhuman quality to it. The sounds weren’t quite right, seeming like a cheap imitation of normal speech.

“The youngins aren’t killing them right, Shamin,” another said. “Sticking their pokies in the wrong place. Not even checking. Fools. Let’s just shoot arrows down the hole.”

It surprised Lukas that he could understand them. It had taken him a long time to get used to all of the languages in his previous realm. English and the little Spanish he knew had proven useless. He only understood Lady Silverspine for the longest time until one of her more senior, and now dead servants took pity and taught him—mostly through the clones. Lukas had them do all the boring work.

“Don’t waste arrows, Softscale,” the first of the pair said. Their voice was deeper and more guttural. It almost sounded like the person was gargling pebbles. “Softscales, the lot of you. Not a trace of experience or maturity among ya. Ancestors dry the chief’s seed. They’ll suffocate once the fledglings bury them. It's not like any of them are going to get out anyway.”

“Or we could have them go down with knives. Dig for gold one last time. Then poke 'em real good?” The second’s tone betrayed their excitement.

“This pit is all servants. No gold. No pretty stones. Bloodletting might be good for the Softscales, though. They need hardening before the first snowfall.”

To err on the side of caution, Lukas almost flattened himself against the wall, trying to make himself as small and invisible as possible. He looked over the offerings once more. Twiced Magicked was arguably the best of the lot. Improving spells or casting more powerful versions of them often demanded extensive research and development and alterations of the runescript and casting process. Bypassing all of it on the fly and saving on magic costs while at it seemed perfect for any aspiring mage. He had hoped to pursue magehood and wizardry in his new life.

However, Lukas didn’t waste any time pondering the decision. Arcane Clone was a part of who he was. The version on offer only produced half the number of the original base spell but came with the knowledge and training inheritance function, which he had taken years to develop. Numbers and the other base abilities would come with time. The transmigration might’ve robbed him of his old knowledge, but Lukas was sure his aptitude remained unaffected. He had full confidence in his ability to figure out Fracture’s magic and tweak all abilities born of it to fulfill his needs.

There will be other shards but I doubt I’ll get a chance to learn a cloning ability again.

The crystal shard dissolved as soon as Lukas touched it, and the azure motes within flowed into his fingers. His insides seemed to glow as they moved through him. The lights travelled up his arm, spiralled around the shoulder, and then worked their way down to just above his navel, where they finally blinked out of existence.

A painful metaphysical shift followed. Lukas couldn’t recall whether he had ever felt that part of himself before. There was no telling whether the Pillars of Self really let someone tap into and manipulate their soul, but he felt a new presence within. It was amorphous and moldable, not quite jelly or playdough, existing as something in between. Along with it came a rush of strength and reinvigoration.

The journal’s page went blank and fresh words appeared within.

The Soul Pillar has awakened! You are no longer a mundane.

Arcane Clone ability has awakened.

The journal flipped to a new page. Artwork of several tiny men fighting and carousing bordered it.

Arcane Clone: Tier 1 | Rank 1