“What? Are you sure it’s really us?” I asked Kendra as our carriage continued driving down a road.

“Yes! Who could it possibly but your little gang?!” Kendra retorted.

The driver and I remained silent as we pondered about the possibility that the ‘dangerous mysterious group’ could actually be the gang my companions had formed, the Skeleton Crew. Originally meant to be an intelligence network, it quickly turned into an underground organization spanning from the Kingdom of Angolia all the way to the Sorcerer City-States. Unexpectedly, it seemed that the Skeleton Crew had managed to crawl all the way up to Gravia.

“I mean… the possibility is there, Boss,” the driver remarked.

“What do you mean ‘the possibility is there’?! Arrrgh! I give up!” Kendra exclaimed as she threw her arms up in the air.

“Boss Kendra seems to be a wee bit on the edge, isn’t she, Boss?” the driver said.

“Maybe she’s hungry,” I suggested.

“If that’s the case, don’t worry, Boss! We've prepared a feast for you to celebrate your arrival. You better look forward to it!”

“What sort of food is there?”

“A lot of them were provided by Maven, so there’s plenty of roasted potato dishes. Then there’s those Angolian pork brought over by our agents. If I could remember, there’s some exotic birds such as turkey and cassowary…”

“Hey, wait. Did you guys cook my pet cassowary?!” I exclaimed.

“No, no, Boss! We wouldn’t dare cook Sarjay the Second without your prompt!” the driver hastily explained.

“Ah, good. All these talk of food is making me hungry. When are we getting there?” I asked.

“In fact, Boss, we’re here!” the driver said as he stopped in front of a large building. “This is the largest and mightiest headquarters of the Skeleton Crew in Gravia. This'll serve as the base of your operations here.”

When we got out of the carriage, I looked at the ‘mightiest’ headquarters of my undead gang. Words couldn’t express what I felt when I saw the entrance of the building.

“Why is it a cute cafe?!” I retorted.

It was an outdoor cafe with pink walls, pretty blue glass panes covering most of the cafe’s building, and the door was covered with rainbow-colored papers shaped as hearts. The cafe was also named ‘Friendship Cafe’ as evident by the front sign depicting two skeletons hugging each other while giving a thumbs up.

“Well, Boss, we thought that gloomy bars would be too obvious for a hideout so we tried to liven up the place, but in the process we realized how lucrative selling cakes were to the undead…” the driver said as he led us into the cafe.

“Welcome, Master! Come take a seat and order!” a waitress urged.

Lard gasped and blurted, “Ghost maids?!”

“Why are they ghosts?!” I asked.

“We thought that if they were ghosts, customers wouldn’t be able to harass them by slapping their behinds or something…” the driver explained.

“THAT DOESN’T-... Actually it makes sense, but whatever! Just take me to Thyros already!” I ordered.

The skeleton driver led us to the backroom which was guarded by two armored men. They gave me a nod and opened the iron door, revealing a large hall full of food. As my arrival wasn’t much of a big event, they didn’t bother putting up much decoration or put up a surprise party.

Not that I want any of those anyway.

Thyros, with his obvious brown version of my common outfit, limped towards me and greeted, “Boss! So glad to see you here! As you can see, operations are well and in order!”

“Mmhm. Too well, I’m afraid. I talked to the Head Commissioner and he told me that the gang is causing too many problems,” I pointed out.

“You talked to the Head Commissioner?!” Thyros jumped back in surprise before praising, “As expected of Boss! To have connections with the higher ups in this city!”

“No, I just got arrested. Anyway, I want you guys to stop causing so much ruckus. It’s agitating the police and it’ll be hard to campaign if the fact that I’m actually the one responsible for all the current gang wars would come out to the public.”

Thyros sighed and nodded his head. “Understood, Boss. But we were actually planning a big raid.”

“A raid? On who? If it’s one of the criminal gangs of the city, I forbid it.”

The old lich shuffled towards one of the big boards and revealed his plans. “It’s actually not one of those weaklings. On the port, there’s a suspicious ship which we’ve been tracking for some time. We’ve recently confirmed that it belongs to those pathetic Order scums.”

“Ah, the Returned Order? They’re also here? I thought they hated the undead.”

Thyros shook his head and explained, “It seems that they just wanted to transport something or someone across the sea. Whatever the case, we want to smash their faces in. May we have your permission, Boss?”

“If it’s those guys, why not? I bet Head Commissioner wouldn’t mind us beating up enemies of the state anyway.”

“If all goes well, he might even owe you a favor which you could use for your campaign, Boss!” Thyros laughed maniacally.

I raised my hand and added, “Actually, he already owes me. He tried to kill me before.”

“Before?!”

“He’s the God of Death. Well, former. He tried to kill me because it’s his job. I remember telling you guys about this before.”

“It wasn’t a made-up story?!”

“Why would you guys think that?!” I yelled.

Kendra coughed, interjecting, “To be fair, I would’ve thought the same, Master.”

“See? Even Boss Kendra thinks so,” Thyros whined.

In the midst of our conversation, a certain fat boy coughed loudly with a confident and greedy voice. “May I replenish my stores of void energy? My stores are running low and it might cause a breach into the quantum cage which would cause the Eternal Darkness Monster lurking within me, Vakasa of the Darkness, to escape into the mortal realm!”

“Are you speaking Ancient Commons or just normal Commons? Make yourself clear or you won’t eat anything!” I threatened.

“I- I mean… can we eat now?”

I sighed and waved my hand. “Alright, let’s talk about business later. Let’s eat first!”

*

*

*

I can’t believe it…

I don’t believe anything…

The ship that I was supposed to ride to the Sorcerer City-States was burned down because of an accident…

Wait, could ‘a flaming wyvern which also happened to have several explosive barrels attached to it fell onto the ship’ even be calling an accident?!

I don’t understand it!

I don’t understand anything at all!

I was supposed to go to the Sorcerer City-States in hopes that I could get away from those weird knight maniacs but it seemed that now I am stuck in the heartland of the Order’s greatest enemy - the undead!

What was worse was that because I was in such a hurry to leave, I forgot to bring a lot of essentials like food or any form of currency…

I want to cry…

I want to die…

No, actually dying sounds so scary! I don’t want to die!

“Hey, you!”

I should try leaving Gravia, but this place is too huge. It might take me months to even travel to the next city by foot, so…

“Hey, hey! That pale and gloomy-looking guy over there! You’re a mortal, right?”

I finally snapped out of my contemplation and looked at the person talking to me. It was a skeleton wearing a full white suit, and his eye holes held two tiny shining balls of green flame.

“Y-Yes?” I answered.

“Great! Are you a necromancer by chance?”

“N-No. Not at all.”

“Alright, that's fine too!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “We’re looking for some hired hands to help us in something big!”

I silently looked at the skeleton before letting my eyes drift towards the sides. “W-What do you mean? What is this something big?”

“In short, we need someone to assist us in campaigning for the election!”

“Eh?! Campaign?! T-That sounds like something big! I don’t think I could do it!” I rejected vehemently.

The skeleton raised his hand towards me, silencing me. After a brief moment, he pulled out a stack of bills from his coat and waved it around. “All you have to do is hand out some papers. In exchange, you’ll be paid!”

Money! And all I have to do is hand some papers out? Maybe I could work for a while until I could get to a ship to the Sorcerer City-States!

“So, just hand the papers out, right? Nothing else?” I asked with a nervous tone.

“Certainly! If you want, read a bit more about the man you’re helping and advertise him! We’ll give you a bonus if you do!” the skeleton explained.

“I’ll do it! When can I start?”

“Follow me to one of the gathering centers! From there, we’ll brief you on where you should go.”

The skeleton brought me inside a cafe filled with ghosts, but we didn’t spend too much time there. Instead, we went through a door and walked into a large hall filled with all kinds of undead which made me slightly wary. After checking the place out, it seemed that all of these people were campaigning for a skeleton who was titled ‘Boss’... or maybe that was his name?

The helpers were gathered up and quickly briefed on how much leaflets we get and where we were supposed to be at. Once that was done, we should head back to the gathering centers which were easy to tell since they were all branches of the ‘Friendship Cafe’.

Once the meeting was done, we were all given a ‘Vote for Boss’ shirt, a pile of leaflets, and a flag which, for some reason, had the word ‘#1’ printed on it. The helpers were moved out into the streets of the Undying City, including me. The skeleton man who talked to me first was the one that brought me to my spot - a large green park.

“This will be where I will be dropping you off. Come back to the same cafe later and you’ll get paid, understood?” the skeleton said.

I answered with a nod and he quickly left to assist the other helpers. Looking around, I expected that the parks in an undead city would be filled with dead things and graves, but it seemed to be quite lively and orderly, much more so than in most cities.

At first, when I heard that I was supposed to go to the heartland of the undead, I was afraid that I would be horrified at every turn by horrors of every kind, but the only horrifying thing here were the prices of the goods. Anyway, compared to the gloom and darkness of the Order’s headquarters, the Undying City had much more life in it.

“Hey, what’s with those papers?” a voice called out.

“Eh? Me?” I turned to a large hulking undead. Though his body looked like it was stitched up from different monster parts, he wore a clean looking set of clothes. What was much more surreal was that he, like much of the city, didn’t smell of rotting corpses.

“Yeah. What’s up with those, my bro? You bringin’ that somewhere? Can I help, dawg?” the undead asked.

“Oh… U-Um… c-can you take one?” I asked him while giving him a leaflet.

The undead took the leaflet and quickly skimmed over the content. “Whoa? Who’s this Boss dude? He wants to run for presidency?”

“Y-Yeah, I guess.”

“Know anything ‘bout him? Never heard of him.”

“Well, y-you see…” I looked around trying to find a way to answer him. I peeked at the leaflets and looked back at the undead only to find another pair of undead had come up.

“What is this? What’s going on?” one of the newly arrived undead asked.

“Check this out. Some new guy is trying to go fo’ the presidency,” the large hulking undead replied as he let the other undead peek at his leaflet.

“A new guy is running from presidency? I’ve never heard of him before! Hey, you. Tell me more about this guy.”

“U-Um…” I muttered.

For some reason, more and more undead gathered around me, trying to see what was the fuss about. At first, the small group was unnoticeable, but then as the group got bigger, more and more undead had gathered.

Why does this always happen?!

“Well? Tell us!”

“Come on, who is this guy?”

“You’re working for him, right? What do you know of him?”

I looked back at the leaflet and started conjuring something to appease the crowd. “Y-You see, this undead person isn’t just any undead! He’s- um… he’s… an Archlich!”

“An Archlich?!”

“Never heard of those!”

“Are you telling me there’s a higher level of a lich than the President?!”

“N-No! He’s an Archlich! He’s some kind of special undead that… um…” I took a deep breath and tried to think of any generic line which I had heard spoken multiple times by those crazy Order Knights. “This Archlich would bring about a new change in the world that we know!”

“What?!”

“Is that so?”

“Sounds like an exaggeration.”

“Remember, he’s not just any lich! No, not just a lich! An archlich! No, I mean… ARCHLICH!”

What the hell am I saying?!

“I’m not fully convinced, but my attention is there.”

“Hey, this Archlich fellow sounds very interesting.”

“Boss, huh? Maybe we should pay some attention to him.”

I subtly clutched my stomach and continued, “If he becomes the President, you can expect great changes! Let me tell you how!”

What the hell am I doing?!