Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 5

Quietus was excited about the prospect of killing someone. Of course, it was in a game, and therefore not real, so it was okay. Fortunately for Quietus, he didn’t have to ponder what it would be like to kill someone in real life, because then he would have a chance to feel bad. He was nervous, though, because it would be his first combat. Normally players had to play for four weeks inside Royal Road before they got to go outside the city and experience combat. Here he was, just over a week in, and he was going to experience real combat.

Sort of.

He didn’t really plan to make it fair for the other guy. After all, even if he was a merchant, he was probably somewhere above the two levels that Quietus himself possessed, and levels had something to do with strength. They always made you stronger in other games, so there was no reason for this to be different. Thus, Quietus went to the apothecary to buy some herbs. He purchased some that, in his learning of alchemy, were somewhere along the lines of “don’t mix these together that will kill someone instead of healing them”. In layman’s terms, he made some poison.

Quietus made his next stop the blacksmith’s shop. His purchase: a real dagger. The cheapest one they had, unfortunately, but it was still made out of metal. Much better than a wooden one.

Iron Dagger: Durability: 20/20 Damage: 5-10

This iron dagger is made with decent workmanship. It has no particular flaws, but no particular good qualities either.

Now Quietus had to do the part of the task that most assassins disliked the most, finding information on the target’s whereabouts. However, Quietus was not a normal person. Exceptional was not the right way to describe him, however. Just not normal. He enjoyed the thought of finding out about someone, and then killing them. For fun, of course. In game.

Fortunately for him, it was also an easy task. Quietus thought it was logical to check the marketplace for a merchant, and easily found him. Specifically, Quietus was searching through the marketplace, looking for the right face, when he heard a loud argument. It bothered him, disrupting his concentration. He turned to frown at the arguing people. One of them being the Marcus Phinx he was supposed to kill. On second thought, it wasn’t surprising to find him like this- someone obviously already had a grudge against him. While it could have been someone petty, it seemed that this man just had the kind of personality that grates on you.

Quietus stayed away from him, and did his best to remain inconspicuous. He did have some practice doing this in real life, because of his... habits. It also didn’t seem to hurt that the man was pretty much oblivious to his surroundings. An easy catch. However, he did have the unfortunate quality of being very noticeable, which means people would notice very quickly if he stopped being annoying. Then people would blame the man with the bloody dagger. Although most of the people around probably dislike him, they wouldn’t want to kill him. Well, except whoever put out a hit on him. Still, everyone else feels better if they can believe that people don’t get killed by anything but monsters in this game. No one likes a murderer. Or, technically, a PKer, to other players. Because this was a game. Nobody was going to actually die.

Quietus was still quite good at focus. Some might have called it spacing out, but he would have called it focus. He did come into a larger sense of his surroundings when the man started walking out of the marketplace. Thus, he realized it was night time. Quietus had just spent most of a day watching this man, trying to figure out how he moved. Of course, Quietus had no basis for determining the skills or weak points of the man, so he mostly made wild guesses and compared them to things he’d seen in movies, then threw them out. He’d just have to hope the guy couldn’t actually fight.

Quietus poisoned his blade while following the man away from the crowds. Then came the perfect moment. Marcus was walking down a large, empty street with very little light. Nobody was around. Quietus quickly hurried after him, his dagger drawn, but still careful to retain his stealth skill. His palms were sweaty. Because of his abysmally terrible endurance stat, he was even starting to run out of endurance just from walking faster, although his stealth skill was also contributing to the drain on that. Still, all he had to do was slit this man’s throat. That was how it was done, right? Probably. It was usually unarmored, and he knew that throats were very vulnerable. He was now right behind the man, who was fortunately very, very, noisy and oblivious. Quietus reached forward, his dagger going in front of Marcus’ neck, when he tripped.

Quietus actually had a pretty good sense of balance. It wasn’t actually his fault that he tripped. Instead, it was because Marcus tripped, and somehow pulled Quietus with him. They both fell to the ground, and Quietus suddenly worried that this man was some kind of master grappler. He’d been wrong. He was going to die, instead of killing this man. Well, at least it had been kind of fun.

After a few seconds of realizing that he wasn’t dead, he looked at Marcus. Marcus had been oddly quiet, and now Quietus realized why. When Marcus had tripped, his throat and Quietus’ dagger had become well acquainted. That’s how Quietus had fallen with him, since he had had a pretty good grip on his weapon. The fall had confused Quietus enough for him to miss the critical hit notification, gained for striking an opponent’s weak point.

Marcus wasn’t dead, however. He did have enough levels, even as a merchant, to have more hit points than that. He could survive a critical hit from a measly level two newbie. What he wasn’t going to survive, however, was the bleeding it was causing, combined with the poison. His health bar was slowly draining out its last, and he was just sort of staring into the sky, dazed. Then, the last remnants disappeared, along with the health bar itself.

*Ting*

Assassination

Marcus Phinx is dead. Return to Frank.

Luck rises by 1 point. (+1 LUK)

Quietus stared at his hands, covered in blood, and the body of Marcus Phinx covered in blood, and knew regret. Darn, those were some nice clothes. He thought. Now they’re all covered in blood. Still, quality was quality, even if it was a bit less quality than it had been. Quietus began looting Marcus’ body. However, he immediately encountered a problem. He couldn’t take everything. It appeared that all he got was an assortment of items from the guy’s body. I guess the game developers didn’t want to leave dead players without all their gear. Fortunately for Quietus, the assortment of items included at least some significant portion of Marcus’ coin purse, which was not insubstantial.

All in all, it had been good. Not as well executed as it could have been, but successful. Fun. Profitable. Plus, he had somehow gained a point of luck. Ironically, he had to assume that was BECAUSE of luck, because he had no idea how he could gain it otherwise. Strength, of course, is because your muscles work, but is luck gained when you are lucky? Maybe. Only time would tell, or a quick internet search. Still, that sounded like a lot of trolling through boring forums to find answers. He’d find out how it worked eventually anyway.

As Quietus was strolling back, with his loot, to turn in his quest, he saw a guard up ahead. The guard yelled, “Stop, Murderer!” Quietus quickly looked around for this guy who might kill him. He didn’t want him taking his hard-won loot. Then, he realized. He was the murderer. This, about the time he felt the guard’s sword going through his side.

Thus, the first of many deaths of Quietus occurred.

End Chapter 5

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