Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 22

Quietus was currently doing something resembling a one handed pushup. This was because the traps were getting harder to disarm. This particular trap had to be disarmed before the ones just in front of his toes could be disarmed. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that Quietus had to disarm the trap with an injured left hand. Quietus regretted not putting any points in strength before this point. Now, it was too late. He had been disarming traps in awkward positions and holding on for his life to hide from the armored figures. Usually, this meant he was hanging from ceiling beams. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he could increase his strength and stamina by using the climbing skill. He did not like the fact that his muscles hurt. If only Royal Road could just be a bit less realistic.

At the sound of a click, Quietus immediately rolled to the side… triggering even more traps than the one he had just failed to disarm. Miraculously, he was unharmed, but the spikes all around him told him that it was just luck.

Luck rises by 1 point. (+1 LUK)

Well, the spikes and the messages. This appeared to be a very good place to train agility, luck, strength, and stamina. Of course, it was also terrifying, because dying wasn’t an option. Quietus thought back to earlier in the training area.

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Ahead of him was a large pit, with spikes at the bottom. It was too far to jump and catch any of the ceiling beams. It was also the only way forward. Quietus had gone down all the other side passageways and disarmed all the traps. Truth be told, he had not covered all that large of an area so far. However, he was taking enough time that it was very tiring, and seemed much bigger.

He would have to jump across the pit and land on the pressure plates near the edge. Everything was pressure plates, except for the trip wires. And the hidden pits. Plus, there were the walls that seemed to shoot out arrows just by him moving in front of them.

Quietus would have to pick where to land, and hope the particular traps at that location weren’t too deadly.

After he landed, he just had to pick a few poisoned darts out of his neck. The spikes sticking out of the floor to his left were dodged, as he had planned. The darts came at a slightly different angle than he expected, and he didn’t have a lot of room to dodge in. As he was drinking one of his last few antidotes, he heard approaching footsteps. The nearest place to climb up was still too far away. He wasn’t going to risk crossing so many traps to get to it. He had to hide somewhere though.

He looked back in the direction he came from. He couldn’t get a running start to make the jump. He would definitely fall into the pit and die if he tried that. Nothing else in the area was of any use to him. There was just the pit.

This is how he found himself hanging by his fingers into a pit with spikes on the bottom. He probably could have kept the skill up for quite a long time, if he didn’t also have to activate stealth. This made his stamina consumption increase.

His fingers were getting tired before the wandering guardian even got close. It felt like it was walking more slowly than they normally did. Quietus was pretty good at judging time. At this rate, his stamina would run out just after it got near the edge of the pit. However, the rest of the guardians… he figured they might be golems, usually just stopped once their apparently short vision showed there were no enemies that could be hiding in front of their patrol route. This meant that the golem should stop about twenty to thirty feet short of where he was.

The golem was about fifty feet away. Forty. Thirty. Twenty five. It felt like it was slowing down. Twenty. Perhaps it wasn’t. Fifteen. Ten. Quietus was really regretting his decision at this point. Five feet. He didn’t really look forward to having his fingers stepped on.

Silence. Then, it turned around and started walking away. This was good for Quietus, except he didn’t have enough stamina to climb up, especially not quietly. If he could manage to get up, he would make a large amount of noise. Just as he was about to run out of stamina, he let go with his left hand.

*Squelch* was the sound it made. He winced at the sound. However, the sound of the golem continued away from him. This gave him time to scream in pain on the inside.

He now dangled from his left hand, which currently had spikes all the way through it. It took no stamina for him to “hang on” this way. Of course, his hit points were going down. Even that wouldn’t be so bad, but it hurt enough to make him regret his decision to not just die. Death was painful, sure, but it was over quickly.

Finally, the golem was far enough Quietus could climb up with his small amount of stamina recovered.

As he pulled yet more darts out of himself, and chugged an antidote and some of his also small supply of health potions, he looked at his hand. He admired the craftsmanship of the spikes. They had very nice hooks on the end. Barbs like that were very effective in a trap. After somehow disarming the trap that kept greeting him with poison darts, he removed his hand from the spikes.

He heard some sounds he usually associated with old cloth. He was amazed at how easily pain could make someone cry.

You have received a persistent injury. The effectiveness of your will be reduced by 50% until proper treatment is applied.

Quietus poured a healing potion onto his left hand. Apparently, that didn’t count as proper treatment.

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And so, Quietus was lying amid a nice bunch of spears. He hoped there was some reward for this training besides the training itself. Quietus shifted his weight on around, and managed to disarm the trap with his right hand.

Level up: Search

Beginner level 8

At least his new search skill was growing at scary rates, thanks to the seemingly limitless number of traps. He just hoped that he could stay awake long enough to find the door. He had been awake for more than 24 hours in real life, about 100 hours in Royal Road. He had mixed some mildly poisonous herbs together as stimulants to help him stay awake. Fortunately, Angela understood that he was on an important quest he couldn’t log out from, so nobody forced him out of his capsule.

He would just have to push on. He would get through this, and he was not going to give up. So what if everything was starting to hurt. He had to pass this training… although he wasn’t really sure why. Quietus was too tired to remember why. But he had to finish.

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“Seriously, can’t we just send someone in? It’s been a week.”

“Nobody except participants allowed inside. That’s the rule.”

“Fine. I’ll see you in 12 hours.”

The first guard went out for his time off. The second one sighed. He was also sure that Quietus was dead. Falling asleep in the training area would get him caught by a guardian for sure. Not that it was normally an issue, since the training area usually took about an hour to complete, or less to fail.

Then, he heard the door creak open. Behind the door was a fearsome undead monster. White hair hung down in front of its eyes, which were streaked with lines of red. It wore just scraps of armor, and had a ragged cloak. Its left hand had holes with flesh hanging off. Of its right arm, there was no trace past the shoulder. It reached out its arm at the guard and groaned. The guard prepared to stab it, until he recognized words.

“I.. win...”

Then, it collapsed to the floor. Just a corpse.

End Chapter 22

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