*Woof*

“You too?”

The boy looked down raising an eyebrow, the corners of his lips slightly curved in a faint smile.

*Ruff*

He scratched his chin, deep in his thoughts, going through the few hundreds of books he read at the orphanage. The languages he learned, the stories he once rode his imagination through.

Then it came to him, an ancient northern European history book flashed in his mind, the packs hunting together on wide icy fields.

“Varg” he muttered, and his second soul could not be happier.

The boy looked down to the kneeling red head he just named and issued his first order.

“Rise!”

“Yes master”

The little Noa was surprised, her voice echoed in his head, but at the same time, the excitement came holding hands with the surprise, he could communicate with her without speaking, which was something he wasn’t very good at.

“Find some clothe, it’s getting cold”

“Yes”

The following weeks that followed were almost the same, the boy wakes up early morning to read and learn more about this world, most of the books were about necromancy and curses, but there were several books and maps mentioning kingdoms, races, magic theory, guilds ...etc.

And the boy started devouring knowledge like a desert devouring rain.

War took care of his nearly endless hunger, going out into the forest and coming back with a prey thrice her size, her strength multiplied a hundredfold after her reanimation, the boys also noticed that she always, unlike most undead, liked fire and hung around it most of the time.

The boy asked Varg not to eat the bones this meal, he wanted to apply the first spell he learned and memorized well.

Bleached white bones came out from Varg, different sizes, and shapes, and as white as the teeth that spat them, they belonged to many species War brought over the several past weeks.

And the boy chanted his first spell in this world.

[Raise Skeleton] a spell of which the necromancer commands his mana to animate the bones into a skeleton and bind it to the necromancer, a beginner spell most novice necromancers learn early.

Bones started to float, twisting, reshaping itself into a humanoid skeleton the height of an average man, the boy grew excited and chanted again, and again and again, until he stood before five skeletons staring at him, clanking sounds filled the cave.

“Left” or ordered and the skeletons moved in unison, “Right” and they obeyed, “Scatter” and they scrambled, moving into each other and falling down like ragdolls, it seemed that more complex commands required more mana to control them.

Noa felt light headed, and he knew that was an indication of his mana pool in near depletion, so he stopped creating more and threw back the bone into Varg for later use.

He also noted that he can store things in the maw and retrieve them later, a little happy he found more use for the jaws in his belly other than chomping.

Another book was opened and another day passed, until a day he opened the Necronomicon after he felt some strange energy coming out of it.

He flipped the first page only to find the soul count the same, one soul, accompanied by a message.

“The bearer be the jailer no more, but mercy shall be granted for mercy, we keep, but not imprison, we end, but not trap, the patient soul shall rule”

Under the message was something similar to an empty pot, the boy didn’t understand what the message meant or what the pot was, so he flipped several pages and discovered that another spell was being carved into the skin of the page, he grew excited but he was patient, an incomplete spell was a useless spell after all.

And finally, the boy almost finished every single book he found and learned several useful spells in the process.

[Animation Mastery]

[Raise Skeleton] An animated skeletal frame with many uses, with a severe weakness to blunt weapons but high resistance to slashing and total immunity to piercing weapons. Requires any form of bones.

[Raise Zombie] a weak, slow, but sturdy undead, capable of taking heavy damage before. Perishing, severe weakness to fire and holy elements. requires a corpse.

[Raise Ghoul] A fast, agile undead, heavy damage and ability to scale walls with its long claws. Vulnerable to fire and holy damage. Requires a fresh corpse.

[Affliction Mastery]

[Dark Binding] A holding spells that roots its victim in place while slowly spreading [Rot] into its body.

[Rot] A vitality eating plague that sucks the life out of flesh.

[Agony] Amplifies the pain of the victim by several times, even the lightest of would feel like a dragon’s bite.

The Maoa forest proved to be an unforgiving place, Shnoot Redmane and twenty-five of his men ventured in search for the missing party that took off a few months ago into the forest on a mission to subdue some crazed necromancer abducting travelers.

That party was led by his niece, Zyona Redmane a B ranked warrior and one of the most promising adventurers in the kingdom of Arud.

Shnoot expected his two-week trip to the forest to be easy, he didn’t keep in mind the dangers of deadly creatures of the forest, the bandits or the increasing orc attacks on the nearby settlements on the forest’s borders, the two weeks turned into months, but they were finally here.

A band of twenty-five strong men, standing in front of a masterfully hidden cave. At the cave’s entrance, stood two robed figures behind fifteen white skeletons. Shnoot Identified one of the figures, the one who didn’t bother to wear the hood, the one with red, flowing hair.

The man froze when he saw her skin, pale as the moon, he knew that the little girl he once held, trained, and loved as his own daughter, was dead.

He took out the large warhammer on his back, and every soldier behind him unsheathed his weapon at the hooded figure next to her.

“YOU, YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS YOU BASTARD!” the elderly Redmane howled at the figure, and the warhammer’s enchantment instantly activated, engulfing the hammer with fire.

The men charged, led by Shnoot who’s with one swing, took down five of the skeletons, which scattered into lifeless pieces of bones on the ground.

The men engaged the rest of the skeletons while Shnoot charged the hooded figure near his niece, and with one heavy swing, the flaming warhammer went flying to his face.

*BANG*

Shnoot’s unpatched eye widened as the hammer was met with a palm, stopping it completely several inches from the hooded figure’s face, his now-dead niece stopped his attack with one hand like she was stopping a tiny stack of hay.

“What?”

A kick to the gut sent him flying back to his men, who nearly finished off the rest of the weak skeletons, his hair’s dirt white, his mouth full of blood rust.

In his blurry vision, he saw her approaching, naked as the day she was born, the robe was hindering her movement, the men joined their leader in the shiver, wondering how exactly powerful is this … “thing” before their eyes.

“Kill”

A voice came from under the hood, and the next thing the men saw is their leader’s squished head under his niece’s foot.

“R-RUNNNN” one of the terrified men shouted, and the men didn’t care if he was in charge or not, they immediately turned around and moved their legs as hard as it could carry them, but their feet didn’t move.

The hooded figure unveiled itself, revealing a demon with a face of a young boy, moving his hand palms down, the ground under them shook and black hands sprouted like flowers of death, shackling the screaming men, spreading death slowly across their bodies.

Several minutes later, the forest went completely silent, not even a bird dared to chirp.

In Front of a cave, there was a boy with a devilish smile on his face, behind him, a woman holding a warhammer as tall as she was wearing an armor that hardly was a fit for her, followed by a small army of skeletons with swords and axes, and ghouls with milky white eyes and sharp claws.

“It’s time” the Boy in the front muttered, walking towards a small village at the edge of the forest, and his small army following in complete silence.