Chapter 6: Guilty

As I stood there with a rictus grin plastered over my face, the scratching sounds grew louder.

In the dimly lit tunnel the shapes started moving up towards me. Soon I began to be able to make them out.

There were maybe a dozen of the creatures. Reaching up to my knees they looked like fleshy crabs. With 6 legs each and 2 arms tipped with metallic-looking claws they moved with a scuttling gait. Two eye-stalks sprouted from between their arms and were constantly twitching as they took in the surroundings. On the top of the eye-stalks were dark prismatic orbs that reflected the scant blue light from the lichen.

Scuttling, the swarm came closer, reducing the distance to 20, then 15 and at last 10 meters. There they halted. The crab creatures reared up on their 4 hindmost legs, arms raised in the air and clicking their claws threateningly.

Not feeling the expected fear, only anticipation. I stood still, raising my newly acquired bat. A distant corner of my mind screaming at me to get out of here. An easily ignored voice trying to tell me that I didn't need to kill, that I could survive instead and embrace life.

The creatures scuttled forwards two steps, snapped in the air and then backed off a step. It would appear that me not running away screaming and leaving them a free meal, has them unsure about what to do. Poor simpleminded creatures.

They kept approaching in this back and forth manner for at least a minute or two. Ending up in a arched line 3 or 4 meters away from me. They snapped at me while I stood there with the bat raised, unmoving. Not even blinking I stared at them, waiting. Just a bit further, come on you sacks of life.

One of them took their customary two steps forwards and raised its front body. Having gotten what I waited for I took a quick step forwards and brought my new implement down in a rapid arch, that ended with the tip of the bat squarely between the eye-stalks. A crunching thud was heard as the bat continued a few centimeters into the soft living tissue, denting the ugly creature.

Chime~

Level 1 depth-scavenger killed

experience and 1 honor of Valhalla gained

At the strike the scuttlers shied away, putting more distance between us. Their eye-stalks twitched as they frantically clicked their claws at me and each other.

Wishing to end more life I stepped forwards and struck another one. Gaining the same message as from the one before that. This time however they were in closer formation. The one next to the formerly alive scavenger lunged at me. Swiping the metallic claw into my thigh with a snip.

Distantly I felt the claw encounter resistance as it tore through the muscles. Coldly I turned towards the offender and stared at it. It snipped the air at me with its surprisingly sharp claws.

I raised my bat to prepare to end the offender. Before I had time to do so however my here-before idle minion Bob literally dove past me, arms extended and landed half on the ground, half on the creature. Hands grabbing onto the eye-stalks he jerked. Pulling the eye-stalks free in a spray of blood that reached all the way to stain my shoes. The squelching sound loud in the sudden silence as the crablike beings stilled.

The things exploded into motion as Bob kept tearing into the now blind and panicking scavenger. Scuttling back down the tunnel the disappeared deciding that this meal wasn't worth the risk.

I took a step to follow them but instead fell down as my left leg refused to support me. Looking down I saw a tear in my jeans about 3 fingers wide. Through that tear I could see a deep gash through the muscles. Hell, I even think I could see some white bone in there. Staring at it I saw thick, dark and viscous blood slowly seep out. This got through my mental numbness. That's not natural, shit. The body should not be like that... What the fuck am I?

My thoughts were interrupted by a familiar chime and the appearance of the kill notification as Bob finished off the blind scavenger.

It would appear that my minion killing something counts as me doing it. I wonder if I could crawl after those crab-things and catch up to them? That would be so great, tearing into their succulent still living fl-No! Snap out of it Roger. Stay alive, don't crawl off wounded after monsters.

Making myself stay was hard. Not cause of extremely strong impulses but because the rational part of me that had managed to resurface was so weak. Taking all my willpower to not slip back into the fog that was my mind.

Even the small rational part that remained was strangely numb. Knowing that I should feel grief, fear and pain, but only abstractly sensing where it should be. As if the the emotions were announcing their existance with an impersonal, formal letter.

Realizing I was lying face-down on the cavern floor I heaved myself up with my left arm, keeping the bat clutched in my right hand. Looking around me I saw Bob stand by a mutilated scavenger. Blood and gore dripped down from him and half his left hand missing I saw. The two bloated fingers and half the palm laid next to the slumped claw of the creature.

Next to me were the two crablike creatures that I had killed with the bat. Up close they smelled like decay and salt.

Pulling myself over the ground I gripped one of the creatures and pulled myself up on it. Laying half on it I was content with my position for now. Deciding that I needed to know my status I focused on bringing the window up.

Name Roger Peabody Level 4 Paths Semi-Risen Allegiance Health 83% Mana 233/240 Health regen 0.01%/sec Mana regen 0.7/sec Humanity 59% Humanity restoration 0.01%/sec STR 9 AGI 9 END 10 DEX 10 VIT 8 INT 16 Honor of Valhalla 8 Skills Completely unremarkable Conjure corpse-flame 1 Honors of Valhalla Necromancy 1

The health loss was quite a bit lower than I expected from my debilitating condition. It probably had something to do with the low humanity. 59%.... Damn.. No wonder my mind was so odd. Though without that my leg wound might have ended up bleeding quite badly. Which would not have been good. That was probably the reason my health was so high.

I was startled from my musings by my heart beating. Damn, why was my heart beating startling to me now? How long has it been still? Looking at my status, humanity had now increased to 60%. Did my heart stop beating when it fell under 60%? Maybe it did. It wasn't something that had bothered me or which I had tried to keep track of.

Dismissing these thoughts for now I focused on my current situation. Things I had to do was to get back to my little lake safely and find more humans to ki- NO! No killing humans! Okay. Getting back, resting until I'm restored in body and mind and then figure out what's next.

With a plan to focus on it seemed like I was able to keep my mind on track better. Okay, but I probably won't be able to walk very well for a while so anything I could do here first? Oh right.

Opening up my grimoir I once again went to page two and soon had extracted the souls from the scavengers. Afterwards the soul energy number stood at 105. so either I had gotten 15 energy per crab or there was a variance to the number.

I probably should have checked between each extraction. Beating myself up mentally I checked my status again.

Name Roger Peabody Level 4 Paths Semi-Risen Allegiance Health 86% Mana 42/240 Health regen 0.01%/sec Mana regen 0.7/sec Humanity 62% Humanity restoration 0.01%/sec STR 9 AGI 9 END 10 DEX 10 VIT 8 INT 16 Honor of Valhalla 8 Skills Completely unremarkable Conjure corpse-flame 1 Honors of Valhalla Necromancy 1

It seems like I have restored some of my humanity in this time. The health is a bit better too. Checking my leg it oozed a little more blood than earlier, but I could no longer see bone in the wound. Which probably was a good sign.

Pleased I decided that I might as well see what I could use the soul energy for. If I understood things correctly I could use it to get new incantations. Either a tier 1 or a tier 2. Though with necromancy at level 1 casting them would most likely be impossible. More soul energy than I had was required as well.

So my 2 choices were narrowed down to either Curse of doomed meditation or Create ghoul. The curse I had no idea what it did, but it did not sound very useful. Unless those crab things were really into yoga it would have been completely worthless in any of my encounters most likely. The other option was 'Create ghoul'. Well shit, I already had a way to create ghouls. Though going by the soul extraction page I would probably get a lot of useful information from it.

Maybe I could figure out how the magical language works as well as get a way of raising ghouls that wasn't me giving up my humanity. If I could raise them with just an incantation now then I could probably ride them or get carried back at once. No need to wait for me to recover.

Making my mind up I decided to select the create ghoul spell. Having made the choice I realised I had no idea how to put my soul energy into that option.

“Put 100 energy into 'Create ghoul'” As I said that nothing happened. Then I tried focusing like with how I created the corpse-flame. Still nothing happened. Finally I tried putting my finger on the 'create ghoul' text.

Something happened then. A thin circle appeared around the words and at the bottom of the page the words 'cancel' and 'select' appeared. Hesitantly I put my finger on 'select'.

As soon as I did so the numbers next to 'soul energy' and 'create ghoul started changing. Ending with soul energy being at 5 while create ghoul went up to 100/100.

Under create ghoul two new options appeared. 'Create skeleton' and 'create shade'. Each at 0/500

Flipping forwards in the book I found that page 3 was now filled with text and diagrams. Looking around to make sure nothing unexpected was going on I started reading.

Several minutes later I put the book down. Well, apparently even using the incantation I still needed

a corpse-flame. Though included in the new information was a description for how to make corpse-candles from the fat of dead humans that could produce corpse-flames when lit.

The ability to make corpse-candles didn't however change my current predicament.

Moreover the text described what seemed like the ritual where I had become what I now was. A ritual to raise any bodies in an area as stronger ghouls than the quick incantation would give. The downside was the larger amount of corpse-flames needed as well as a much steeper mana cost. The mana cost was a large part of the apparently long chant that the necromancer had used. Giving time for more mana to accumulate.

I decided that there would be no harm in trying out the incantation without a flame to see if I could pronounce it somewhat clearly. The descriptions for how to pronounce it in the text only went so far.

“Lis kruethan, zefausten ket krueausten. Sethmak krueausten fi draug. Sethmak kruedraug. Sethmak krueausten”

Feeling the stirring of magic I knew that I was on the right track. Saying the words I thought of how several of them were familiar. Both from the soul extraction spell and from what I could vaguely remember from the necromancer. Kruethan was something he had said to light the candles if I remembered correctly. So maybe it has something to do with candles? Or flames. Since this ritual said it needed corpse-flame and him saying it lit his candles.

Sethmak Krueausten was also something he had stressed in his ritual and was repeated in my incantation as well. So that was probably an important piece. Hmm, 'krue' was repeated a lot as part of words, though the meaning of it escaped me. With more points of reference or experimentation its meaning might become clearer.

Now however was neither the time nor place for such experimentation. Looking down I was mildly surprised to see that my wound had closed until it was almost half the size it previously was. Trying the move the leg I found that it still did not work perfectly.

Anything could stumble upon me here and it was probably time to get moving I thought with more clarity than I'd had since the little girl had hit Bob. Thinking that a small amount of guilt crept up in a corner of my mind. Still ignoreable but actually noticeable now.

I couldn't leave all this material here where something might eat it. I needed them for protection. Maybe it was time to raise them.

Thinking shortly I decided that it was time to see what difference there might be between my old way of reanimating ghouls with the flame, and the incantation.

Focusing on the flame I once again brought it out over my finger. Wanting to stare into it I resisted my urges and instead rapidly moved my hand to the crab thing I was laying on. Willing the flame into it it the flame obliged.

As before nothing happened at once but soon the spasms started. Realizing that maybe a twitching corpse with sharp claws was not the best couch I rolled off it. Seating myself up I leaned against the corpse of the other one I had killed.

The twitching increased, causing it to skid over the floor a little bit before it stilled and I heard the chime.

* A Depth-scavenger has been reanimated under your control.

A level 1 ghoul is now yours to command.*

Said ghoul stood unmoving in front of me. “Scavenger ghoul, come over here” My order seemed to have been valid as it scuttled over to me. Pulling myself up I threw my legs over it. There was a surprisingly stable point at which to sit, legs between each eye-stalk and arm, with my butt at its back.

Some instructions later regarding to how the ghoul should react to me pushing and pulling its eye-stalks I managed to make my new steed move in an approximation of how I wanted it to.

Moving my mount we went over to one of the other corpses I looked down on it. Okay, time to try the incantation.

Summoning my flame again I rapidly started the incantation.

“Lis kruethan, zefausten ket krueausten. Sethmak krueausten fi draug. Sethmak kruedraug. Sethmak krueausten” As I chanted the flame started dancing on my finger before rising into the air. At the finale of my incantation it shot down into the corpse in front of me.

After backing away from the twitching scavenger I was soon greeted by another chime and message

A Depth-scavenger has been reanimated under your control.

A level 2 ghoul is now yours to command.

I didn't know how much better a level 2 ghoul was than a level 1 but I decided that I'd much rather have the level 2 ones. Making sure that the new one also followed orders I moved over to the last crab. Once again I summoned the flame and said the incantation.

Chime~

A Depth-scavenger has been reanimated under your control.

A level 2 ghoul is now yours to command.

Preparing to raise the final body here I wanted to put my current ghouls to work.

“Crab ghoul, guard the entrance.” I said to the most recently raised one. However all three scavengers went to the entrance, including the one I rode on.

Oh boy, this won't do.

“Okay, from now on you are named Snip, Snap and pony” I pointed at them one by one as I named them. Patting my mount as I Said 'pony'.

“Snip, guard the other side” The ghoul without eye-stalks went past me. How it knew where to walk without eyes I wasn't sure of. It just had to be a mystery for later.

Clutching my grimoir and bat down between my legs I gripped Pony's eye-stalks and with some slight difficulty guided it towards the corpse of the girl.

Looking down at her I knew that I should feel guild and grief but they seemed like foreign concepts to me. What good were they when I had something useful in front of me?

Picking up the grimoir again from its resting place I opened the third page and once more started the chant. 200 mana disappeared as the flame shot into the body.

Soon the small body began twitching before the blue box appeared.

A human has been reanimated under your control.

A level 4 ghoul is now yours to command.

Necromancy reached level 2

It's now possible to cast the second tier of necromantic magic and your necromantic spells have been strengthened.

As soon as I finished the first message a second one appeared.

Huh, improved necromancy. That could come in useful. I though as what little activity was possible in my pituitary gland kicked in to produce endorphins.

”Well ghouls. It's time to head back home. Follow me.” I spoke out to my ghouls as I steered Pony on to the dimly lit caverns to follow my trail of breadcrumbs back.