“*It’s close to mi~idnight, and something evil’s lurking in the da~ark…*” After taking care of the evening business, my excitement was reaching levels like those when I had first arrived in the world. Or perhaps I should say reaching levels like those earlier in the day?

Creeping back towards the forest under the light of the twin moons, the long grass swayed around me. Luckily there probably weren’t any trigger-happy trainers around. Like a meerkat I peeked my head out of the grass to look around, before diving into the ocean of plant life to continue to the forest, stealthily singing on my way.

Yes, in the darkness of night the woods put themselves to sleep. Not a sound save for my own footsteps, passing among the underbrush as quietly as possible. Moving further from the edge, eventually I became sure of my solitude. Grinning and rubbing my hands like a child before Christmas. A necromancer before Corpsemas.

“*Merry Corpsemas, Alric!*” In a slightly larger than average clearing, I began laying out the goblin remains. One corpse in excellent condition, the first goblin wounded, and killed; Two in very good condition, one slightly damaged from the brothers’ axes, and the one I killed with a spearhead to the eyeball; three in moderate condition, the final two taken down without much overkill, and the spear user whose skull was mostly crushed; one poor corpse, the sword user whose chest had been caved in, and suffered additional damage from being flung backwards; and one absolutely mutilated goblin, the unarmed one who had foolishly charged straight into the mouth of the beast.

At the moment, I could only create Hand Spiders, but that wouldn’t always be the case. It wasn’t only the bodies making me giddy; earlier in the day, I’d felt extremely ecstatic after finishing off the last of the goblins. A tidal wave of power accompanied that overflowing joy, and thinking a little brought me to my conclusion.

Level Up!

A Level Up!

I was Level 2!

I was Level 2, and now I had the ability [Soul Control]!

That brisk, cold power flowing through my veins, could there ever be a reason to worry? Those of you familiar may wonder why such a low class ability warranted such rejoicing. Think a little harder, why don’t you? It’s not that I finally gained [Soul Control], it’s that I Leveled Up and gained [Soul Control]!

I could Level Up and proceed to gain all associated powers! I wasn’t stagnant at the pinnacle of my abilities as soon as I stepped through, there was an infinity of power stretched as far as the eye could see! I was Level 1, but now I was Level 2; and thousands more waited before me!

Each one a stepping stone to grander abilities, to greater power. In the future my blood would mingle with that of my enemies, but even for just one experience point forward; so long as I could gain one at a time, I could always grow!

Endless exuberance aside, Level 2 was a bit of a dud level.

Sorry for getting your hopes up there; that rejoicing really was all about getting to Level 2 as a concept. It was kind of sucky. I felt a little smarter and stronger, so my stat points for the level were distributed, but other than that my power level really was more or less the same.

Those of you who for some reason don’t love spending your time memorizing every ability of every class to help you run around a grim and apocalyptic medieval hellscape, I’ll inform you about the great [Soul Control].

Necromancers, despite seeming like the sort that would work alone, technically fall under the support caster roll. The only reason they seem like that is because usually there is only one player, they just also make the rest of their party. Out of the flesh and bones of the dead. They’re like natural recycling machines, good necromancers hate waste.

Despite the AI of Underworld classifying as AA(and the only reason it doesn’t get AAA is because of programs built solely for AI with nothing else running on it), just a few dozen high level necromancer would probably be able to crash servers if they decided to spam low level minions. You may get where I’m starting to go with this.

That’s right, [Soul Control] is UoA fancy packaging for saying ‘hey sorry, we can’t have too many undeads running around’. By assimilating the ‘soul’ from slain foes, you would be given a certain amount of Soul Power, essentially experience to divvy up among your minions. If you didn’t devote enough Soul Power to a minion far below your level? Oopsies, you, a great necromancer accidentally crushed your new minny through sheer mental prowess.

The devs weren’t completely heartless towards those who want to scavenge the bodies of the fallen though. Soul Power is returned with no losses when a minion is destroyed, and enemies can drop Aspects, rare enhancements to further boost the undead. Of course, there were penalties and multipliers to different creatures’ Soul Points, meaning necromancers had fewer good hunting spots, usually leading them to conflict.

The long and short of it being, I didn’t have much to kill for Soul Points, didn’t know how well they would translate to this world, and all I had were hand spiders to upgrade. Did I mention that it gets exponentially more expensive to upgrade a minion past yourself? Oh, and that minny would only return an amount of Soul Points as if you were more powerful than it?

Seriously, if you wanted me to play with a party just say so. Well, some necromancers, Anubis, Remmy87(Remmy Ade-zheven in game. See if you can find the stream where I assassinated her with a pirate; my name was Miles DeArvante at the time. Poor Rems thought she was safe from pirates in the desert.), kApRiKhOrNe did make pretty huge armies for a long time, so it can’t be said that it’s impossible to do. Just more difficult. Considering the manner in which the successful usual end up influencing lore, it’s only fair.

[Soul Control] being useless at the moment, my attention was on the bodies. Since access to corpses was surprisingly difficult in this fantasy world, the three least damaged corpses were returned to Inventory. Using a heavy weapon may make fighting easier, but their bones really had been powdered. They were only good for skeletal and flesh Amalgamations, which were a long way off. Since the hands remained intact, that meant I might as well practice making more Hand Spiders.

Knowing at this point that putting mana into the spell shape without practice would lead to great waste, I took my time. After all, was my most costly spell, and the price became even more exorbitant when cast imprecisely. There hadn’t been very many times to practice and get a hang of the spell either.

In the inner recesses of my being, I slowly guided Mana into the spell shape provided to me. The primary structure felt like a cubic frame made of chains, but required a seemingly infinite number of refinements into other nested squares. There was a definite fractal nature to it all, but I couldn’t ‘get close’ enough to see how far down it went. Binding and sturdy, yet freeing, interacting with the spell shape is like dreaming; it has the power to arbitrarily convey certain emotions and thoughts.

Losing myself in the creation of the hand spider, time of indeterminate length passed me by. Getting as close as possible to the optimal configuration of mana, the spell released, and the goblin hands twitched and moved towards each other. I had placed the two a little distance apart because watching the two struggle together looked so amusing.

“*Now I dub thee, Franz!*” Holding my newest minny in the air, I set him down next to Hans. “*You two are now brothers! Rejoice in your companionship!*” Joyfully, the two hopped about through the detritus. Skittering to hide behind trees, wrestling, racing each other in circles...Either hopes and expectations affected them more than previously thought, or there was something inherently different about the nature of undead in this world. Even if it was, it didn’t seem like I’d have to worry about a gravestone cold coup d’etat.

Hans und Franz got all pumped up running around, and I moved on to create the next four hand spiders with just as much care. They became Nails, Cookie Thief (CT for short), Birdy, and Manny in order of seniority. Pulling themselves together, once the mental link between us became established, the hand spiders would begin acting without orders. This really was a puzzle for the ages.

Each of these undead were not mindless automata, though they would immediately cede perfectly to any command given to them. Forming personalities, I didn’t know if they were a result of their name, or if my idea for a name had influenced the spell somehow, or if it was something else altogether. Nails aggressively charged around, pawing at the dirt and pouncing upon CT, trying to assert dominance. Cookie Thief tried taking on more than he could handle, dragging the others into the scuffle, but only getting beaten down. Birdy acted conservatively, jumping into the fray when there were few opportunities for a counterattack, and Manny seemed to only act in response to provocation but mostly stayed by my side.

Having such energetic minnies would make any necromancer overjoyed, a little black skeleton could be seen in the future with no doubt. One of the main faults with gaming classes that create tons of underlings, as well as those necromancers in stories, is that the lack of intelligence is usually easily exploited. A far cry from geniuses, the personality, yet absolute obedience of the hand spiders showed great promise.

With a clap of the hands, the hands rallied up. Having confirmed undead could be placed in the Inventory, the unpredictable stacking meant testing was further required. One by one, they were put through the void into intangible storage. During this, I added a bit of flourish and realized I could slightly change the appearance of the Inventory’s aperture. Only cosmetic, the size could be altered up to twice the standard radius, but couldn’t be decreased to a smaller area than the object needed to pass. Color could change to various kinds of black, void, inky, night sky(some white, starry flecks included) to ominous purples. The fringe could emit particles, or swirling points.

If Inventory had a personality like the undead, it was definitely the purposefully obtuse and inscrutable type.

As for the actual result of the test, none of the undead stacked. It was sad, but not unexpected. That still meant if emptied, 100 minions of my level could be carried around, possibly unable to be detected. So long as stronger minions only took up one slot of inventory, I would hate to presume something of my incredibly arcane Inventory, whose attitude seemed more mysterious than magic itself, possessing more facets than the infinite Dao of Alchemy.

If it wasn’t so confusing though, I definitely would have tried taking over the world with just it. Now that I’ve unraveled just a few of my powers, I’m glad it was out of my reach both in terms of power and conceptually. OP starters definitely made me green with envy then, but in retrospect that period of hardship was fulfilling.

Now my minions had increased to six! Not the strongest, but there was one thing that a creature made of hands is most suited for. Manual labor.

I’d hit upon the idea while thinking of Manny’s name, but I couldn’t be certain if it would work. The idea that hand spiders could go out to harvest alchemical reagents would bring good results, but only if true. What looked to be the biggest problem was...it didn’t have eyes.

How did these things sense each other anyway? I’d already confirmed, and double checked that they could interact with each other behind my back, so they weren’t borrowing my vision. If the method was unknown, than the limits would be as well. Could they actual investigate and bring back the proper resources from a command?

Going off into the forest meant they might be destroyed; if not by predators, even accidents could happen. Once they left my range, there would be no way to control them, or help aid them. They were just idling at the moment, but I was no Weed, I wanted my creations to be happy, even if the fact that they were apparently showing emotions was a surprise.

Okay, so I may be a bit like Weed. I needed my alchemy mats.

Giving the hand spiders their instructions, I paired them up before sending them off. Unaware of how dynamic their identification and classification abilities were, they were given simple instructions to collect three ingredients found on the forest floor, one to each pair. Describing each one in the greatest detail I knew, the manner in which I communicated with my minnies was far from instantaneous. In fact, using the soul connection between us to properly get across the idea took longer than creating them, nor did I think myself capable of communicating with them all at once without a loss of understanding.

More than half the night passed by instructing them to search and deposit the gathered materials in the designated area. Hoping they would all be able to do their jobs safely, I returned to the village to sleep the rest of the night away.

The forest was filled with the soft sound of claws eagerly pawing across the leaf litter that night.

A/N:AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I didn't feel like staying up until midnight, so I just waited for morning. I love you too, AiToHeiwa~