The hunter actually just stood there, he looked a bit at the skull and then the surroundings, when he started moving I had the skull catch his attention. He seemed to be curious and didn’t move around much, only moving to touch the carcass of the chameleon, making it disappear.

Honestly it makes sense, I don’t think there’s really anything in this place that can actually threaten him, especially after that little display.

Merlin is getting closer, I tell the floating skull to move and stare in his direction, the hunter quickly gets its intention and turns to see Merlin, who now created a large writing with necrotic mana using his {Writing of The Dead}.

The large text mostly says that he is not hostile, needs to use his mana to talk and wishes to parlay. This might be dangerous, after all this guy can probably kill Merlin very quickly, the problem however is that if he wants to kill me and my undead he will do it sooner or later, and he’s strong enough to not need cloak and dagger tactics.

The hunter looks at it and says something with a deep baritone voice, Merlin writes that he cannot understand it, and neither can I actually, the cat waves towards themselves, signaling Merlin to get closer. As Merling approaches a leather notebook appears in the hunter’s hand and they start to write on it, soon turning to show Merlin, who takes a look at it.

“Are you incapable of speech?” is written there, the words are somehow very legible to me, even without Merlin, again a perk of being a giant piece of magical rock. The lettering is also interesting, it seems almost like brush work, but all the letters have extremely thin lines, interestingly I cannot see a pen or other writing instrument on their hands.

I tell Merlin to respond, I am going to… guide him a little, but I do not want to use him as a puppet, or my voice skull, I think it would be more beneficial for his growth if I just gave him a quick explanation of what I want, or what I think he should respond and let him take it from there. This is going to be his first true conversation after all, with another being that is not me.

Merlin simply responds that he does not speak the language, he can only write in it. Merlin is indeed capable of speech, most undead are, zombies can speak because of the mana in their body, even if their vocal cords and lungs are rotten the magic there allow them to create a weird mimicry of speech, skeletons can do something similar, though skeleton’s generally have whisper voices.

The hunters write in their notebook again, this close I can see the pages are made of paper.

“Can you not just write the words and then read them?”

…

Can you!? Can you actually do that?

Merlin seems as shocked as me, it seems that didn’t pass through neither of our heads. He writes something and tries to say it. I can feel the mana move chaotically on his body as it focuses and clusters on his throat and mouth. Merlin’s voice is like most undead’s, meaning it has a weird timbre as he speaks, almost like when you hear an echo coming back after you shouted into a cave, like his voice is coming from much farther away, or deeper within himself.

As he speaks the hunter talks over him for a second, saying a similar word… Oh he’s correcting your pronunciation, Merlin corrects himself and starts again, and again on the second word the hunter corrects Merlin.

I can actually feel Merlin getting… anxious? Wow I think he is getting performance anxiety or something. His skill is working in weird ways, the words in the skill do not come with proper pronunciation, Merlin is pretty much going on gut feeling for now.

“I am Irax” The hunter writes and says.

“A malgaro” he adds.

Merlin reads it and is able to understand with the help of his skill. The skill both tells him a muddled translation for ‘Irax’ and that it is an actual name, same for ‘malgaro’ which is their ancestry.

“I am Merlin, a skeleton” he responds, his pronunciation this time better, I can almost see a light bulb turn on inside his head.

“Are you a man or a woman?” I can tell there is something going on in Merlin’s mind, this question is going to lead somewhere.

“Man, what about you?” Irax writes back.

“I am also a man, though I have no flesh. I feel like I was a man before too” Wait what.

“You mean whoever this person was before he was raised into you?” I can tell that the word he used, ‘Raised’, is an actual word for undead raising, it seems it can mean ‘awoken’ too.

“No, this body was made purely from necrotic mana, it was always me, even though my mind was weaker and murky when I was born” Merlin writes, and says, his pronunciation getting better.

“I see, so there are no individuals in here? You have found no non-dungeon sapients?” Merlins notices that the individuals there mean… a weird bunch of things, something like ‘Unaffiliated mortal sapient’.

“Only monsters.” Irax simply nods.

Irax seems to think for a second and writes,“Do you know where we are?”

“The greenhouse” Merlin tells him immediately. Ah, I don’t think that’s going to help him.

To my surprise, Irax takes a look at the ceiling, and around the forest and nods.”I guess it is one, probably very expensive, the price to keep this place working…unless”, The last part was actually said, not written yet Merlin clearly got it… Wait. I didn’t get that, I was not able to understand him, but Merlin did, what gives?.

“This place is underground, there is a high amount of mana everywhere”

Irax nods, “Do you know why you have memories from a body you did not have?”.

Merlin simply shakes his head.

“All necrotic energy comes, and goes to, the Downriver, which is the river that flows through heaven, earth and the underworld” Irax pauses shortly and shifts a bit.

“When you die your soul will swim with the river, downwards as you go you will find... challenges, the first one takes away your connection to your body, making it impossible for you to find it again” Merlin can feel that it’s not only ‘find’, being said there, the word seems specific, it seems to mean ‘Loose mortal birthright’, honestly the entire phrase seems to have more than one meaning in his actual tongue, specially the ‘challenges’ word.

“In the second challenge you lose your nerves”, again nerves seems to mean ‘instinct’ or ‘flesh memory’.

“In the third you lose your memory, In the fourth your dreams” I feel something shifting in Merlin, his skill telling him that the dreams mean a mixture of ‘ambition’ and ‘morality’.

“After you have passed all your challenges the river goes up towards the heavens where what happens is unknown”, Irax looks into Merlin’s featureless face, seemingly not bothered by it in the least.

“This is how necromancy was born: by tapping into black mana you tap into the Downriver itself, thus gaining fragments of its scattered memory, like seafoam, this is how undead know how to walk, talk and fight, this is why their knowledge can be so porous, lacking in areas and overachieving in others”

{Writing of The Dead} to {Language of The Dead }

“I understand, I think” Merlin says, his resounding voice sounding much more sure now.

“Good, that was fast. Now then, you are a dungeon creature right?” I can almost hear the smile in his voice. He seems genuinely happy with Merlin’s ability to speak and understand the language, though his voice is still quite gravely and low.

“Yes I am.”

“And the dungeon is not telling you to kill me? Like the other ones surely are?”

“No, she asked the opposite really, should you require assistance, or a place to sleep we may parlay.” Irax stays quiet for a second.

“She does not have a quest to kill me?” He says, soundly oddly neutral… that’s kinda badass not gonna lie. Merlin stays quiet for a second as I tell him that it is okay to give this info.

“No, she only got a notification that you arrived, no kill quest, or quest at all.”

“She does, however, have a quest to kill other cores. She also wishes to know how you got here.”

“I was teleported in by the Hand”

“I did not understand that, ‘The hand of power’?”

“It’s the existence that enables you to have levels and do quests. there are many names”

“What about ‘system’?” Merlin asked.

“That works too” He said, shrugging.

“How do classes work? How doe—”

“I don’t know how the hand works, or why it does, it simply is”, Irax says, his voice easily cutting through Merlin’s.

“Classes though won’t do you that good, they are different from you and me.” He looks up to the sun, which is dimming down.

“Either you, or you Heart want something else besides just talking to me”, Again, said rather neutrally, he either legitimately does not care or he can hide his feelings very well, or maybe he’s just the stoic lone hunter type?.

“Yes, we wish to recruit your help into invading and destroying the dungeon core of the crabs, we are prepared to pay for your services as a bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard? How do you plan to pay me?”. Merlin lifts a hand and three floating skulls come forwards. One carrying forward the bug bow, the other is carrying a container with certain special items I just created.

“We are paying with magic items, we just wish for you to oversee the invasion and protect a certain area and should we decide we need your assistance, we will ask.”

Merlin opens the container and shows a small glass ball with a very dark small sphere in the middle. The ball is about the size of a pendant, around it are arrowheads and throwing knives, and finally a dagger all made of black barghest bone.

I see some kind of ability being used, no visual effect at all just a feeling, and I force myself to not use {Analyze}, I have the feeling this guy could feel it, somehow, not really all that outlandish, back home there were special spells called honeycombs, their sole job was divining whoever new of them, they generally had a specific trigger like their name, whoever had them pretended they were special, valuable spells, and as soon as the spells leaked or were stolen somehow they would know it.

Anyway, what I am saying is that as a mage, I know very well that observing something is an act in itself, sometimes just as bad,or worse, than poking your finger in it.

Irax turns his head, and I notice it is in fact in the direction of the…crab dungeon, wait, wait a moment.

I quickly call for my drones around the area to send me info as I rapidly change from view points. Right now, I really wish my core evolution would let me have more than one point of view.

Irax turns back and faces Merlin.

If I am correct… Irax was not only staring at the crab dungeon, but also looking at some crabs, specifically I can see a few vampire crabs that think they are being sneaky. I wonder if he can also see—

“Why the crab dungeon?” This time I can hear a mild curiosity in his tone? Am I imagining it? Or is he doing this on purpose?

“By our estimations it is the weaker of them, the lizards are not only dangerous but more unpredictable, we imagine it would be too high risk for you to accept, seeing as you do not know us yet and thus does not trust us fully”

“So after this we would go against the reptiles?”

“Unknown” Ah!

“Unknown?” Shit.

I just said ‘I don’t know’ in reflex to Merlin and he went with… that, oooops.

“Unknown as of yet”, Merlin corrects himself, well considering everything it’s pretty impressive that this is the first slip really.

“Right, I will think on it”

“You can have these.” Merlin points at the container before leaving.

“We will leave the skull here, if you want just wave to it to call us”