Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 43

Quietus sat and stared at a pile of bones. Technically, it was a skeleton. It was even sort of skeleton shaped, if you looked at it from the top. However, it lacked a very important thing that skeletons normally had. Or perhaps in a way it had something extra. Human skeletons, which were similar in structure to this giant one, have 206 bones. However, there were over 1000 pieces. Quietus would have been okay with trying to piece together a more complicated skeleton with more bones. Instead, he was stuck with a jumble of broken and shattered bones.

He had fit quite a number of the bones together, but they did not naturally stay together. He couldn’t use any of the repairing techniques he’d learned on zombies, since that was repairing things around the structure of bones. Here, the structure was broken. He was also pretty sure some pieces were missing. He’d spent most of a week in game, throughout several days in real life, just organizing the pieces. Now, he had to figure out how to actually repair the skeleton.

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Mortimer searched the internet for how the skeletons used in classroom settings were prepared, but only came up with general descriptions of the process, not the details he needed.

The small library in his house mostly had history and philosophy books. His parent’s collection was both unknown and off-limits. His own books consisted entirely of science fiction and fantasy books.

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At school, Mortimer was mostly distracted throughout the day. He’d found various titles that might provide the information he needed, and after school he was going to a nearby bookstore that had them.

He wasn’t even paying much attention when he was called on by a teacher in anatomy class, and answered absentmindedly. Some question about the names of something. All he could think about was bones though. He answered with the first things that came into his head. After that, the teacher stopped bothering him.

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At lunch, he sat with Angela and the others.

“You know, Mortimer, you’ve been spending a lot of time alone. At least when you were kids you spent a lot of time with me.”

Mortimer recalled Angela dragging him around everywhere.

“Anyway, I’ve decided that you need to spend more time with people. That’s why you’re coming on the school camping trip.”

“What camping trip?”

“Don’t you listen to the announcements?”

‘There are-”

Angela sighed. “Yes, there are announcements. I know you’ve been there for them. Plus there are posters… anyway. You’re not busy those days, so you can come. I’ll have James remind you… or more likely pack your stuff for you.”

Mortimer held up his finger to protest, but before he could speak...

“Objection denied. Unless you get verifiably sick, you’re going.”

Mortimer put on a small frown, but gave up arguing.

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After classes were over, Mortimer was about to head towards the car, but he saw Dr. Stevenson, the dean of sciences who had dealt with the issues Mortimer had experienced with the football team. He was walking towards him, and it didn’t look like a coincidental direction, so he waited politely.

“Greetings, Mr. Perrywinkle.”

Mortimer grimaced slightly at this. “Mortimer, please. Mr. Perrywinkle is my father. Just… Mortimer.”

The dean smiled. “Of course. I heard from your anatomy teacher that you are doing quite well in their class.”

Mortimer shrugged. “It’s easy. Everyone should be doing well.”

“Oh? I’ve heard quite differently from many students. Perhaps you have a talent for it. I’ve also heard that you’ve written some… interesting… essays in your ethics class.”

“I mostly just write whatever comes to mind. It’s not like there’s a right answer anyway.”

“Of course.” The dean gave him an ambiguous smile. “Don’t forget to keep up with your studies.”

After the dean walked away, Mortimer was again about to head to his car to have James drive him to the book store. He turned to bid goodbye to Alex, who commented, “You know, I haven’t ever had a dean come up to me and comment on my studies.”

“Well, you didn’t almost get in a huge pile of trouble either. I’m sure he’s just checking if I’ve started to get into trouble like them.” Then, he remembered what Angela had said. “Say, are you busy now? I’m planning to head to the bookstore.”

Perhaps if he voluntarily had contact with people he was okay with, such as Alex, it would prevent Angela from wrangling him into future camping trips or similar things. Not that he thought he could get out of the immediately upcoming one.

Alex thought for a short while, then said, “Sure, I’m not busy. I’ve been meaning to get some books anyway. Let me just let my parents know. Do you have a car?”

“James will drive us.”

“Your brother?”

“What? I don’t have a brother. James is my driver. Well, and my butler too, when he’s not driving me places… which is most of the time, really.”

Alex nodded sagely. “Oh. Of course, your driver.”

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Once in the bookstore, Mortimer quickly gathered a small pile of books. It was everything he thought would be useful. Then he went to meet Alex in the fiction section.

“Studying for anatomy?” asked Alex.

“Why would you think that?” Mortimer asked.

“Because the books… nevermind,” Alex said with an eye rolling motion. “Of course you aren’t studying for class.”

The two spent some time looking through the science fiction and fantasy sections, and found quite a few books, some of which they recommended to each other. In the end, they had quite a pile of books between them.

When they got up to the counter to pay, Mortimer grabbed the entire pile and put it on the desk. Then he pulled out a credit card.

“I can pay for my own books, you know,” said Alex.

“You could, but it’s faster this way.”

Alex could have argued that it wasn’t much faster, or quite a number of other things, but decided to remain silent. It wasn’t a necessary argument.

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After they left the bookstore, they went back to Mortimer’s house to hang out for a while.

If Mortimer’s nose hadn’t been buried in one of his new books, he might have noticed the wide eyes Alex had at seeing the house.

James didn’t miss it. “Perhaps I should give your friend a tour of the house while you get settled in.”

Mortimer nodded absently as he wandered towards the house, open book in hand as he walked.

After a while, James brought Alex back to the library, which had comfortable reading chairs.

“You have a nice house, Mortimer.”

Mortimer looked up from the book. “Hm? Yeah, I guess it’s pretty nice.”

Since Mortimer didn’t seem particularly impressed at his own house, Alex pulled out some homework and started working on it. That lasted a short time before the lure of new books was too strong.

For the rest of the afternoon the two sat in the library reading, with Alex occasionally commenting on the book, eliciting a response from Mortimer. Since the conversation was about a book, Mortimer actually contributed more to the conversation than normal.

Once it was evening, Mortimer invited Alex to stay for dinner, but was politely declined. Alex still had things that needed to be done at home, such as homework… and then Royal Road.

Of course, after dinner, Mortimer would be doing the same. More of the latter, though.

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Quietus made a run out of the dungeon to collect some supplies. Before he left, he sealed the secret-secret room, just in case.

He gathered quite a lot of alchemy materials, as well as various wires and metal rods of various sizes. He just hoped he could synthesize something that was close enough to what he needed.

Once back in the dungeon, Quietus ignored all the monsters, who were happy to do the same with him, as long as he didn’t approach too close.

In the secret room, he spent hours mixing various compounds or herbs and other materials. After many tries of different things, he finally had something that satisfied him. A paste that could be moulded, but would then harden into its shape.

With the paste and various wires and rods he set about repairing the skeleton. By the time it was time for him to go to sleep, he had a rib almost done. Some small rods were used as a core for the paste in missing sections, REPLACEed into opposing pieces of bone. Quietus approximated the distances that were necessary. He hoped it would give it enough strength to hold up. It was a long process, gluing and wiring and basically stabbing bones into place, but he began to get the process down.

Then he had to sleep. It would still be here to work on later.

End Chapter 43

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