Our group soon stumbled upon the entrance of the tomb after a few hours of hiking and we prepared ourselves. Blackhair led the group into the tomb as usual as he entered with a torch.

“Just remember your training and you should be fine,” I casually told the group. I was just strolling into the tomb while the rest of the group were on their edge.

The priestess of the group, Leyna, chanted and a ball of bright white light formed in front of her, probably to supplement the torchlight but also in preparation to throw holy light at the undead.

“Oooh. This is very exciting! The darkness within me stirs!” Lard exclaimed as he held out a rusty sword.

“Wait, do you even know how to use that thing?” I noticed that Lard wasn’t even holding the thing properly.

“Of course. A sword is a one-handed weapon, therefore you use one hand to hold it and let the other hand be used for other things!” He pointed the sword at me and I swatted it.

“You idiot! You don’t even have the proper balance for it! Use both of your hands or use a damned shield!” I took the shield hanging on his back and slammed it onto his face.

“Ow! Ow! Fool! I am a swordmage! I have no use for that and mages cannot use a shield!” He pushed the shield away.

“Use the damned shield! You can even use it as a catalyst for casting spells!” I gripped his hand and forced the shield on him. After some struggling, I managed to get the thing on him.

“Aaaah! This is so un-hero-like!” Lard cried.

“Guys! You’re making so much noise!” Aera shouted at us as we continued walking along a dark hallway.

“Would it matter? By how much we’re already making, the undead would’ve noticed us by now.” I yawned.

“What? There’s no-...” Aera was interrupted by a noise coming down from the other side of the hallway. It was a groan, but not like Lard’s belly rumble which he happened to make every hour or so.

“A zombie!” Blackhair shouted.

“Ughh….perhaps…….we could...settle our differences...with a diplomatic talk….ughhh…?” The zombie groaned.

“It’s groaning in misery! We should put it out of its pain!” Blackhair shouted as he charged the zombie with his sword raised up.

“Wait..we…” The zombie’s head was cut with a swift slash. Soon, more undead started appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

“We’re surrounded!” Aera shouted.

“What a remarkable observation,” I commented.

“Aren’t you worried?!” Aera screamed as she started taking steps back. I looked to my back and there was undead. I looked in front of me and there was more undead. Huh. It seemed that this was a bit worrying….for the heroes.

“Oh Goddess, with your light…” Leyna the priestess threw her ball of light at the undead and started casting another one. The light immediately caused many of the undead in front of us to fall over, unmoving.

Lard and Arrowsky was handling the back while the other four heroes were at the front. I was just standing in the middle while leaning on the wall. The elf pulled his bow and shot his arrow forward, piercing through the soft tissues and brittle bones of the undead.

“Swords are not effective against the undead! I can’t do anything with this!” Lard shouted.

“What? Why not?” I asked.

“Because skeletons are resistant to slashing, duh!” Lard answered as he blocked a punch from a zombie with his shield.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time. If you want to bludgeon a skeleton that badly, grab the sword by the blade and bash the undead with the hilt like a club,” I instructed.

“What? That’s insane! I could cut myself!” Lard cried out.

I felt like talking to him was straining my mental capacity so I just ignored any more of his ramblings. The thing here was the question as to why there was so many undead hanging around this place. I sensed there was nothing special about this place. The essence of death was weak and there wasn’t much coffins around.

If anything, the only reason I could think of why there was so much undead here was that there was….either a necromancer or a lich here.

I pressed my hands on the wall. Perhaps there was a hidden passage somewhere here. I tapped on the wall a few times before giving up. Nope, it appeared that we would have to plow through the undead to get into the main chambers.

“Guys, could we please pick up the pace? Go forward,” I ordered.

“What?! We should be going back, not forward!” Aera shouted as she dodged a swipe from a half-rotted body.

“There’s a lich or necromancer inside here,” I replied.

“A worshipper of evil?! Now, we must press forward! We cannot let that man who probably thinks of nothing less than the destruction of all life escape!” Blackhair shouted as he started slashing through the hordes of zombies with more vigor.

It appeared that this necromancer or lich piled quite a number of corpses. Though, it wasn’t that much as I counted less than 20 undeads. There could be more deeper down. The heroes were taking some time to get through so I walked past the frontline and squeezed through the horde of undead.

“Teacher?! Where are you?!” Blackhair shouted, his words were drowned in a sea of groans and grunting.

“Oh no! I’m being eaten alive!” I screamed as an excuse. In truth, I wasn’t being harmed as I pushed through the mob of undead since the undead left me alone. As I got through the horde, I started searching around the hallway and found stairs going down.

When I walked down the stairs, there was a huge room with a single door. Standing in the middle of a room was a large undead troll. It was pretty big and had a club. This was probably the guard so the door probably led towards the main chambers.

I waved the troll as a greeting and it nodded back before going back to staring at the stairs. I pressed my hand on the knob and it was locked. Well, obviously. Who would leave this unlocked when you know you were under attack?

I took a step back and kicked the door down. The troll was unfazed by this and continued to ignore me. I saw that there was more stairs and started climbing down. At the base of the stairs I heard some voices.

“These undead are useless! I wanted an army, not a bunch of corpses!” A voice shouted. I guessed that it belonged to a man in his late adulthood.

“It can’t be helped. The corpses we bring here are simply what we could scavenge,” Another voice answered, this time from a younger man. Somewhere around early adulthood.

“No, it is YOU who brought those sacks of shit! You are a truly incompetent minion!” The older man shouted.

I finally reached the base of the stairs and saw two men in the room. The room was filled with alchemy tools, books, tables with dead things on it and other creepy things. The older man was wearing dirty black robes while the other one was wearing a black cloak made from high quality material. I took a step off the stairs and they noticed my presence.

“Wh...who are you?! Did you manage to defeat my minions?!” The robed man screamed.

“Eh...no. I just-...”

“It doesn’t matter! You’re dead to me and your body shall be used to further my study in necromancy! Mwahahaha!” He started laughing like a maniac. Were all necromancers this...weird?

The necromancer turned to the cloaked man and pointed at me.

“Now would be a time to fully test your capability! Kill that foolish man that dared to tread on MY tomb!” He ordered.

“As you wish, master,” The cloaked man answered and within a blink of an eye, he was standing next to me. One of his hands had turned into a blade made out of flesh and was heading towards me fast.

I rolled forward to dodge his blade and rolled to the side again as he reacted accordingly quickly as he changed the direction of his sword.

He charged at me while I was still crouching at the floor. With my back turned to him, he probably thought it would be an easy stab. In response, I quickly spun around and threw a kick at him, causing him be knocked back while slamming into the wall.

“You useless whelp! How are you being beaten by that dress-wearing fuck?!” Oi. You were also wearing a robe. That was like insulting yourself.

I stood up and analyzed the person attacking me. The flesh blade and his somewhat pale complexion told me something. I faced my palm towards my shadow. Without a single word uttered, Lucia rose from my shadow then bowed.

“How could this one serve your lordship?” She asked. I pointed at the vampire who was preparing himself up to charge me once more. He bent his body then disappeared from where he was standing.

He quickly got to my side and turned his left hand into a flesh blade. He raised the blade and started swinging down but was intercepted by Lucia’s shadow claw.

“Another vampire...” The cloaked man murmured. He looked down at Lucia to study her. She was pretty small so she had to raise her arm quite a bit for her claw to block his blade.

“What?! He also has a vampire?! This is unthinkable! Kill him and that vampire, too!” The necromancer spat out his orders but all his shouting was starting to become annoying.

“Tell me, bloodsucker. Why is a vampire like you serving him?” I pointed at the raging necromancer.

“It seemed that he stumbled upon my seal by chance. It’s a long story.” He grinned widely, revealing his sharp teeth. I never liked it when a vampire smiles. All their teeth were sharp like they used a nail filer to make it like that. Luckily for me, the dwarven vampires didn’t open their mouth that widely and their mouths were small so they looked like normal teeth. I thought after seeing Lucia and Ellysa, vampires finally had better dental hygiene.

“He has your seal?” I turned to the necromancer who was chanting a spell.

“Indeed.” The vampire pulled away from Lucia and took some distance between us.

“You fool! I may be weak in other aspects but I had mastered the ability to drain life! Take this!” A bolt shot out of his hands darted towards me leaving a trail of black fog from his hand. It pierced me but didn’t affect me much.

“W...what?! What was the meaning of this?! Do you have holy barrier?! I don’t sense you having one! I should be draining your life right now!” He raged.

“Wow. Do you have to handle with this guy’s poor anger management skill every day?” I asked the vampire.

“As he is my master, I cannot badmouth him no matter how much of a droning, babbling rage-induced gorilla he is,” The vampire answered. That is some grade-A passive aggressiveness there.

This vampire appeared to be bound to the necromancer. However, I had a spell to break that. I gathered whatever death essence there was in the room and prepared a spell.

“What the?! You also know how to use the dark arts!” The necromancer shouted. I approached him slowly and he started moving back.

“Maybe.” I approached the necromancer and the vampire once again charged me. Every attempt to strike at me was foiled by Lucia’s defense. Soon, the necromancer was backed against a wall.

“Away from me, dog! Go away!” He started throwing random spells at me but I continued to walk towards him with a mass of death essence at my hand. With that hand, I grabbed towards his chest and the hand seemingly went through his chest.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! AAAAGHHH!” The necromancer dropped onto the floor whilst screaming in agony. I quickly pulled my hand back and walked towards the vampire.

“Wait. What have you done?” The vampire asked me.

“Hmm….reassignment of company. Or something like that. In other words, you belong to me now.” I snapped and a ball of black fog formed. It was just a baseball sized ball of...black but it contained this vampire’s seal.

“That’s unthinkable. However, I cannot doubt your words since I feel a change of....ownership.” He turned his hand back to normal and stopped attacking me.

“I do not know why you are sealed but...I think I can free you from this seal,” I told the vampire. Vampires and demons were free to roam around but using an ancient holy ritual, they could be soul bound into a curse or seal.

“That is impossible,” He answered.

“You say that, but you just saw me cut your bond from this guy.” I pointed behind me towards the guy who was clutching his chest while kneeling on the floor breathing heavily.

“....I cannot argue with that.” He shrugged. The spell I used to cut him off from the necromancer was the same I used with Lucia when I cut her off from Ellysa. Ever since I made that spell, I had been making some surprisingly good progress with optimizing it. I wasn’t sure if I could release the vampire from his seal, but I could attempt to do so when I was bored.

“For now….” I turned to Lucia and presented her the black mist ball.

“...Your lordship?” Lucia questioned.

“Take control of the vampire. From now on, he’s your vampire thrall,” I explained.

“This one...Very well. If that is what your lordship wishes.” She took the ball and pressed both of her hands against it, squashing it down.

“Interesting. Why would you give it to your thrall?” The vampire asked.

“She’s not my thrall, though. She’s not bound to anyone,” I pointed out.

“Ah. So you’re trying to create a Vampire Lady of your own.” The vampire nodded while grinning.

“Hello. Introduce yourself,” A voice resounded in my head. This was vampiric telepathy and I recognized that this was Lucia’s voice.

“Greetings. I am Horatio. Am I your only thrall?” Another voice sounded. This must be the vampire.

“Hello, Horatio. Yes, you are,” I answered with telepathy.

“You even know vampiric telepathy? Are you….?” Horatio asked.

“No, I am not a vampire. For now, both of you get into my shadow and shut up.” I grabbed both of their heads and sunk them into my shadow. I ran into a closet and hid inside. I heard a screech coming from upstairs and it probably was the undead troll being slain by the heroes.

As the heroes rushed into the room, they noticed the necromancer who was struggling to get up.

“Evil do-er! Take this!” Blackhair didn’t even hesitate to bash the necromancer with the hilt of his sword. What a stone cold killer.

“There seemed to be a struggle in here. Or maybe this is how every necromancer’s room looked like,” Aera commented.

“Teacher isn’t here either. Where could he be?!” That brown-haired mage Kendra asked.

“I don’t think he could be defeated so easily, after all he….he’s the High Cardinal!” Leyna the priestess shouted, Wait, she still thought I was the High Cardinal?

“What?” Blackhair asked.

“No! Nothing! I didn’t say anything!” Leyna shook her head rapidly.

I climbed out of the closet and performed near-divine short distance teleportation behind them. The spell was instantaneous and couldn’t be detected but took some time to cast.

“Oh, hey kids. You done here?” I asked. They all turned pointing their weapons at me.

“What the?! Where did you come from?” Aera interrogated me.

“.....Nature’s call.” I looked away from them.

“Oh, really? Ha ha. Because the last time I remembered where you were….YOU WERE BEING EATEN ALIVE!” Aera shouted.

“Yes, yes. Tie that guy up and we can go back to the royal palace. I’m getting tired here.” I stretched my back and started walking up the stairs. There, I noticed Lard was sitting on the stair panting heavily.

“Oh. You lived.” I grunted.

“D...do...don’t just say that while...sounding disappointed! You...give me a minute here…..you….where were you?! You were supposed to...haaaa...keep my alive!” He said as took pauses to take in air.

“How did you survive?” I asked him.

“I….dodged with such heroism!” He got up and did a pose. I could see he was drenched in sweat and could even smell him from where I was standing.

“You mean you rolled around the floor while the troll swung his club at you angrily?” I replied.

“No! I was dodging! Not rolling! Dodging! How did you even know there was a troll with a club?!” He groaned as he started walking up.

Well, we managed to finish the task and I got Lucia a vampire thrall. This was a profitable journey for me. There should be some time before the festival by the time we get back so I should know more about Horatio and vampires in general.

Heh heh. The beginning of a new science project!