Book 2, Chapter 12: A Voice in His Head

[Alen]

A gray colored bucket was thrown aside with a little clack, the chitin nosily clattering against the stone floor. A young man with black hair and emerald green eyes stepped out of the makeshift bathroom with a gray towel around his waist. He pushed the similarly chitin-colored curtains to the side and stepped out of the bath. He waved his hand, and with a concentrated look on his face, the droplets of water covering his body were flung right off. Next, his mana churned as a wave of heat blew over his body from above, drying his skin and hair even further.

Alen grinned at the ease of which he manipulated mana without a program now. While those did make his spells stronger, it was a lot more convenient to be able to use mana for basic tasks like taking a bath and drying himself without having to create a program for it.

He immediately got dressed and sat on a couch he’d found the spare time to create. With a relaxed sigh, he created a glob of water that floated over his outstretched palm. He concentrated further, and slowly, a perfectly circular piece of ice formed at the center of the glob of liquid. He strained his control over magic, leaning forward and watching the sphere smoothen out. Next, it formed tendrils that reached out in all the directions. With another pulse of mana, the tips of the tendrils froze, but still stayed attached to the water. He continued to toy with it, melting, freezing, and moving the water around like playdough.

Finally, he finished his practice with a sigh. The water cooled, and he drank it down in a single gulp. He was getting better at controlling mana without a mana program; something that would surely come useful when he didn’t have the time to create one in a difficult situation. Nodding to himself, he stood up and did some light exercise.

Over a month had passed since he entered the Crawling Canyon for the first time on a broken Galeboat.

In this time, his physique had gone through noticeable changes. While he was nowhere near as strong as a similarly leveled person who invested in physical stats, he was at least fit enough to run for a while without panting like a dog undergoing an aneurysm. The bags under his eyes were almost completely gone, and his person felt a laxness he previously didn’t have. He tapped on the air in front of him and opened his status.

Status:

Name: Alen

Race: Human

Type: Necrotic

Health: 100%

Stamina: 100%

Mana: 96%

Strength: 24

Dexterity: 26

Agility: 21

Constitution: 30

Vitality: 25

Resistance: 22

Intelligence: 58 (+)

Wisdom: 77 (+++)

Control: 64 (++)

Skills:

Mana Programming, Dominate Undead, Deathbolt, Necrotic Blessing, Numb Senses, Numbing Mist, Summon Greater Skeletal Minion, Rotfire Blast, Deathchill Grip, Deathchill Nova, Bone Spear, Skeletal Rupture, Vitality Drain, Drainblast, Blightwater Surge

System Applications:

AutoBone, System Notepad

He grinned. Alen was at the thirteenth threshold now, and looking at the quick growth of his stats made him extremely happy. Over the course of his stay in the canyon, he’d found multiple methods to leave, but he didn’t have enough power to do so. With the buff to Summon Skeletal Minion, his undead were a lot stronger than before upon summoning, but the opposition he faced when he tried to leave the canyon was simply astounding.

The last time he tried to leave through a cave that led out of the canyon, he was riding one of his summoned creatures, a Steelwing Dragonfly. He’d killed one after reaching the thirteenth threshold a few days ago, and hurriedly tried to use it to fly out of the canyon when thousands of insects latched onto the Crawling Canyon’s carapace got off and tried to kill him. He barely escaped by collapsing the tunnel he went through, and that resulted in him losing another way outside of the canyon.

A sigh left his mouth. The canyon was as much a goldmine as it was wasteland full of traps. The deeper he wandered away from his location, the higher the chances of an encounter with a monster he couldn’t win against. Thankfully nothing like the gigantic serpent he’d encountered on the first day, but enough to make him run away covered in injuries. His undead would mostly get wiped out in those situations too.

When was he getting out of this place? He was supposed to be halfway through the Sandsea by now, but he was still twiddling his thumbs in a canyon that threatened to kill him off every time he stepped outside. It was the forest of undead all over again. His friends were off doing their own thing, but he was still stuck here. At the thought of his friends, his face darkened.

Sam and Adam had disappeared completely. He and the rest of their group assumed they were busy for the first few days, but after a week? Two weeks of no messages? His grip on his fists tightened. Anne and Bernard were rushing towards the south in order to locate the last place they were heard of: an old ruin infested by undead that they’d been commissioned to clear out. Alen refused to believe they were dead. James was closer to the area and so, he was headed there as well. He told them he had plans to arrive just a month from now. Jamal meanwhile couldn’t do a thing. His half-year contract with the military stopped him from leaving, lest he incur the wrath of an entire army by being branded a deserter.

Alen had a bitter expression on his face as he nibbled at a piece of cooked insect meat. His finger tapped on the icon for their group chat.

Egg Chat Room

Alen: Any news on them?

Anne: James?

James: I told you guys, but I won’t be arriving until a month later. I passed an orc tribe that knew who Sam was, but aside from talking about how he helped them out, I’ve gotten zero news from them

Bernard: shit. i hope they aren’t dead.

Alen: Me too.

“Fuck.” He cursed. It was the same as last time. The group chat had been dead for a long period of time. After losing contact with two of his best friends, Alen was in no mood for any lighthearted talk. It was the same for the rest of their group.

The lack of relief he got from talking to them was stressful, but Alen wasn’t the same as before. He had to stop sulking about and get to work. He was the same level as Jamal now, who was perpetually roaming the country he started in with a group of soldiers to take out brigands and groups of monsters that threatened the lives of the ordinary folk. It wasn’t enough. He had to get even stronger, or he could risk getting stuck in the canyon for a long time.

Thinking this, he gulped down his meal and stood up, walking to the exit of his cave with an urgency to his steps. With a groan, he twisted the knob and opened the door that led outside. He stepped out and felt powerful winds whipping his hair about. His home was currently situated in the face of the canyon wall, in a cave he had carved out by himself using Blightwater Surge’s acid-like properties—a spell he’d developed by mixing water element mana with his Necrotic type. It was a good substitute for his undead insects’ poison when casted using Necrotic Blessing too, so it was great to have against monsters that had particularly thick defenses.

He had moved bases after his crevice by the canyon floor had been attacked by a pack of insect-eating desert wolves. Those had a pack leader even he couldn’t beat at the time, so he was forced to escape by the skin of his teeth. He looked down at the canyon floor below.

It was quite steep, and falling from this height would undoubtedly kill him, but he had other means to get down. He felt the threads attached to him—several dozens of them, and sent them commands. He looked down, and the sand below began to churn. Slowly, the forms of dozens of undead, nearly sixty of them, made their way out of the sand. Snakes, centipedes, large wolves and hyenas the size of buffalos, beetles, spiders, and wasps. The sand ruptured in their violent ascent. His undead looked up at him and Alen felt a grin creep into his face.

It wasn’t over yet.

A mound of sand stood behind these undead, and slowly, it began to tremble. A large form gradually began to take shape, sand falling off its form like grainy ribbons. It stood, and with a powerful beat of its four wings, the Steelwing Dragonfly blew away the sand and took flight.

The air howled as the massive dragonfly ascended. It beat its wings incredibly quickly, hovering in front of Alen subserviently. His hair whipped about—as if he was standing in front of a helicopter. The necromancer jumped off the platform that led to his makeshift home and smoothly landed on the insect’s back. There, the insect’s carapace had been changed to form a secure saddle, perched just right behind its head. Alen sat down and looked down below one more time.

With an order transmitted through the strands, his insect undead took flight. His forces advanced, the snakes and canines speeding through the sand while the spiders and centipedes pierced their legs into the stone and crawled along the walls. Each and every one of them had at least the battle prowess of a warrior at the tenth threshold. Some were as strong as the thirteenth, but they were hard to control and cost a lot of mana to make.

While they didn’t possess skills or any of their abilities from back when they were alive, even someone at the fourteenth threshold would have a very bad day if they were unlucky enough to get in Alen’s way.

He was deeper into this part of the canyon now, getting closer to the oasis that was occupied by the lion-like beast he had encountered in his first day inside the valley. Of course, Alen had no intention of tangling with it. Even with this many undead, he’d get stomped into a pile of shit if he tried to fight it. No, this place just meant that there were stronger foes to hunt. Not even a few minutes after leaving his home, which was located in an isolated corner, he encountered his first enemy.

A single mantis, one the color of blood silently held the corpse of a massive ant in its scythe-like arms. Its cold eyes stared up at Alen and his undead, its sharp mandibles chewing away at the ant’s head.

Alen didn’t know what this creature was named, but it didn’t seem like it could threated him. From above, he pointed his finger at the creature, and his undead surged forward. Wolves and hyenas charged, while he felt mana drain from his reserves as the spiders on the walls shot out webs made from the same material his clothes were crafted from. The ant was dropped, and the mantis’s body blurred. It sped forwards, and the webs were split, but the large wolves had gotten close.

One tore into its leg and it let loose a screech. More came in, and before it could counter, a skeletal snake sped in and coiled around its torso, pulling it back. The snake’s bones hissed, and a black ice crept into the surface of its body. The rot caused discoloration in the mantis’s carapace. It thrashed around and slammed the snake into the wall. Two centipedes came down on it.

Its wings strained, and with a powerful effort, the mantis lifted itself into the air and let out a piercing scream. The wave of force released after the sound caused the air to ripple, and Alen’s face froze. He immediately cast Numb Senses before the wave swept over him.

Riiiing!

His eardrums ruptured and Alen felt blood drip down his face. The bones in his body trembled from the sheer intensity. He grit his teeth and snapped his fingers, mana flowing into the threads that connected him to the undead wrapped around the centipede.

Skeletal Rupture.

The snake and undead centipedes immediately burst, their bones expanding rapidly and causing spears of reinforced chitin and enamel to stab into the creature. It crashed and sent the undead down with it, the spears coming out of their body disintegrating into grey dust. It wasn’t over yet, though. Alen looked at the canyon walls. Holes. Tiny holes everywhere.

He waved his hand, and a light gray mist surged out, enveloping a wide area around him in a faint coating of gray. Slowly, the forms of numerous heads made their way out of the holes, and before long, hundreds of wasps the size of his fist left their nests. The mist seeped into their bodies, and Numbing Mist took effect, stiffening their limbs and slowing their movements. They charged at him, and Alen suppressed his panic. He narrowed his eyes, and just before they converged on the Steelwing Dragonfly he was riding on, its wings stopped beating.

Air buffeted his robes as they fell, and just above Alen, the insects slammed into each other, gathering in a single place. He pointed his palm upwards and his eyes glowed with a bright emerald light.

Bang! A bright green light exploded above him, signaling the activation of his spell—the variant of Vitality Drain that he’d improved to become pure draining energy—Drainblast. Green motes of light surged into him and repaired his eardrums, and then, he heard the screeching. The wasps shriveled up, weakened by his attack, but avoiding outright death. They sped forward, splitting apart in order to surround him. Alen grinned and activated another spell.

Deathchill Nova.

A wave of black frost exploded out from him, completely enveloping the surrounding insects. It discolored the flesh to a dark purple, before their bodies bloated explosively. Finally, they burst, their rotted insides spilling all over the canyon walls.

Alen felt the mana surge into him. He nodded.

It was a good amount. If he kept going at this rate, it would take him just another two days of hunting monsters to reach the fourteenth threshold. He sent his undead forward once again, leaving the scene of carnage behind in search of more prey. At this rate, he’d end up clearing this section of the canyon of the weaker monsters.

He looked upwards at the scorching sun. The sooner he left, the sooner he could search for his friends.

Alen nodded and continued forward.

It was already dark when Alen returned to his home. He stared down at the sand below, watching his undead slowly dig themselves under the sand to await his next orders. It was a fruitful day. He’d lost a few undead, most noticeably his spiders and beetles, but he’d replaced them with stronger ones. He’d found that buffing the mana-muscles that let his undead move made them harder to control, along with the fact that the strands he’d plucked from their souls sometimes failed to keep up with their stats, reducing their overall effectiveness.

So now that his weaker undead were gone, he could replace them with stronger ones. While increasing their strength to his level caused the amount of undead he could control to lessen, he would rather have an elite force over an army of weaklings.

He opened his status and observed his spell list. He’d come a long way after just a month in the canyon. He’d created a few new spells, but he decided to keep them as-is for now. It was fairly cluttered already, and he wanted to get the hang of using the spells effectively before creating new ones. For now, he’d focus on improving them further. The mana costs for most of them had reached reasonable levels, and Alen could finally afford to toss them around without constantly worrying about his reserves.

The bonus to his mana capacity that he’d gotten from that strange skeleton named Selerius helped, too. Alen knew the skeleton was still in there somewhere, but he didn’t even have any methods to enter his soul’s space, much less get into contact with the skeleton.

It had been silent for the whole month since he’d talked to it in his mental space.

Alen wasn’t comfortable knowing that it was in there somewhere, but he really couldn’t do anything about it. He pulled open his status and viewed his mana programs, scanning the lines of code and trying to find ways to compress them further. Summon Greater Skeletal Minion, or SGSM in his head, helped him summon stronger minions more effectively. The upgrade had come around after he managed to have his undead take flight. Turns out, it wasn’t weight getting in the way, but his magic.

The lines of code in SSM—SGSM before the upgrade—apparently didn’t let the orange and blue strands of muscle memory and mental processing to reach their full potential, causing his undead to take more mana to buff and summon, along with limiting them to some pretty basic movements unless he personally took control of one of them.

Well, simple for his level, at least. Now that he had SGSM, the difference between his undead from a month ago and now was almost tangible. His undead actually took the initiative to cooperate now, which made a massive difference compared to when he had to command them to link up attacks. Back then, unless given orders, they’d just take turns attacking, which completely defeated the purpose of their large numbers.

After all, what was a large amount of undead if he couldn’t even use them to overwhelm his foes?

He shrugged. The spell was better now anyways. He managed to compress a couple of lines before moving on to the next spell. This one was pretty useful for carving. Blightwater Surge. He’d carved out the cave using it, but with a bit of focus and control, he could conjure smaller amounts of the acid-like water and use it to make little sculptures—the little hobby he started doing in his spare time to keep himself sane enough to not talk to a rock named Will Son.

Speaking of which… Alen looked at his bed. It was a bit crude, but it was soft and comfortable enough. Beside it stood a table where he placed the sculptures he’d made. To be honest, they were pretty shit. His Control stat wasn’t high enough to accurately manipulate something as powerful Blightwater, resulting in somewhat shabby sculptures. They were cool, though. Alen liked them. He even named one Will. The one to Will’s right was named Son.

“This is fucking depressing,” He sighed and moved on from examining Blightwater Surge. He couldn’t figure out any ways to compress it further. It seemed like he would have to re-write the mana program in order to reduce the cost by even more, because something in the way he coded it was definitely stopping him from fixing it.

Next came Drainblast. He liked this spell. It was his first spell that purely utilized energy. It wouldn’t do any physical damage on hit like Vitality Drain’s projectile variant which withered the flesh, but it siphoned a lot more health from his enemies.

He deleted a few lines of code and replaced them with better ones before moving on.

Alen repeated the process for about an hour, stopping halfway through Blightwater Surge’s new program to drink some water. He cooled it with the ice element mana he’d purified and drank, the cool fluid sliding down his parched throat. So far, Alen had cleaned wind, ice, earth, and light type mana of Necrotic mana, which opened up a lot of paths for him. He was aiming to purify lightning next. It would make for a good spell when mixed with his main mana type.

His hand reached into a box and pulled out some dried meat. He could use earth type mana to extract salt, surprisingly. There were some traces of it in the sand and stones for some reason. Since the place was named the Sandsea, Alen shrugged at the existence of saltsand too. It was a fantasy world. He had nothing to complain about.

It took quite a toll on him to eat shitty insect jerky every day, but beggars and starving necromancers couldn’t be choosers.

Well, it wasn’t as if the food was bad anyways. That, or his taste buds had degraded to the point of not knowing what good food was. Maybe his usage of Numb Senses while eating to forget about the shitty taste played a part. It probably didn’t. This meat was tasty, and maybe, just maybe, if he kept telling himself that, it would actually start tasting good. He took a bite.

It didn’t.

Alen grumbled and cast Numb Senses, wolfing down the meat before washing it down with copious amounts of water. This shit was better fried, but he didn’t have oil, much less a metal pan to do it in.

He washed his face with water. He didn’t have a mirror, and he hadn’t cut his hair in a month. He pulled a lock down, and it was enough to cover his left eyes. He was definitely in need of a cut. Alen was never the kind to have good facial hair, but a few hairs had grown on his chin and he wanted them out before he gained the habit of caressing them while cackling to himself. That would just be miserable.

His status screen flared to life, and he checked the chat room again. No news. He was asking almost every day, but he knew it would get nowhere. He had to wait. Wait a month until James arrived at where Adam and Sam were last seen.

The necromancer sighed and pushed his long hair up away from his eyes. He tossed his boots to the side, lying down on the bed and looking up at the ceiling.

It was going to be another long day tomorrow, so sleep was necessary. It was better to have a clear mind in the middle of a fight after all. He didn’t want to run into some absurdly strong creature all muddleheaded and sleepy. Although eternal sleep sounded fairly appealing as an alternative this shithole of a canyon, getting out sounded even better. He was definitely hunting this mountain-range sized centipede down when he got stronger.

He closed his eyes in preparation to sleep when a voice resounded out in his consciousness. He jumped and opened his status. Alen knew this voice. As soon as it rang out, he saw a figure in his mind. A girl, leaping through trees, her hair the color of snow fluttering through the wind as she pulled an arrow against the string of her bow.

“…Alen?” Lynn’s shocked voice rang out in his mind, the voice chat icon glowing to signal that she was in range.

He practically bolted out of the door, jumping down from his home to land on the back of the Steelwing Dragonfly that he’d hurriedly ordered to get out of the sand.

“I’m on my way, Lynn.” He said, feeling the massive smile on his face. He laughed.

This was going to be a long night.