Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 47

Long lasting food, a bit of cooking supplies, stitching supplies, herbs for potions, and various other useful items. These were the things Quietus prepared for his trip to the Plains of Despair.

At a bit less than level 150, Quietus would find the plains of despair very challenging. In fact, it would have been impossible previously, according to his research. There had been a large battle which had introduced quite a few undead into the area. Although the ones that remained with the army that had fought there had died, a few thousands of undead, still just a few percent of the army, had escaped.

The progress of the undead army had made much of the land unlivable, or at the very least even worse to survive in. The undead also fought the native beasts. The result was generally less monsters except for undead, who were individually weaker than the monsters of the plains of despair. Of course, the dark elves and orcs still lived around somewhere, but it was easier to hide from things that couldn’t smell you.

Quietus had a goal, and some idea of how to get there. It would take some time, since he had to go from the very edge to the center of the Plains of Despair, and he wasn’t sure of the exact location. Thus, he prepared for a long journey. After Quietus climbed over the wall separating the Plains of Despair from the province of Mora, he cast the spell that would be most important to his success or failure. “Soul Bind.” If he died, he would not have to start over at the nearest town. He could continue on.

Before venturing too deep, he decided to hunt monsters near the edge of the Plains of Despair. There were large beasts, mostly giant boars. The boars fortunately didn’t seem to travel together, so Quietus was able to defeat them. Although a charging boar was a frightening sight, with the right timing it could be dodged. Quietus noticed they had a lot of hit points, and it took a massive amount of poison to take them down, even with Enhance Alchemy affecting it. When he could, he would jump on a boar’s back, allowing him a few seconds of safety while he attacked. Of course, then he would get flung off. Occasionally, he mistimed a dodge, and suffered a loss of level for it, but he was still steadily progressing. Since The Power to Accept death leveled up again, he just considered any mistakes training for that.

Besides boars, Quietus hunted at least one of everything he saw, for the sake of his anatomy skill. The gap between his critical hits and regular attacks was becoming increasingly large. The power of a Backstab or Perforate artery, combined with his anatomy skill and a high luck, made his critical hits extremely impressive. Anything else, though, was only really useful if he applied a poison with the attack. Most of the time he did. There were plenty of useful herbs in these plains. Well, none good for healing, or recovering stamina, or restoring mana. Just lots of different kinds of poisonous herbs.

Quietus spent about a week getting used to the Plains of Despair and increasing his level, and another moving a bit deeper.

Further in, he found a giant lizard. It didn’t seem like it should belong in a plains setting, but there it was. He saw it from a distance, and actually managed to properly sneak up on it. With a critical hit from backstab, and a good poison… he soon realized it was much stronger than anything else he’d fought.

For a lizard almost as tall as him, and more than thirty feet long, it moved fast. Quietus couldn’t avoid its claws, tail, and sharp teeth- not all at the same time. He couldn’t run fast enough to escape either. So, before he died, he made sure his soul bind was active. Then, he tried every attack he had at least once. The verdict he reached was that he wouldn’t be able to kill one of them alone. The most effective attack had been his first one, and his spells were practically useless. Sure, he could probably avoid them. So he would have to. When he came back to life, anyway.

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School was awkward for Mortimer. Although he got along fine with Alex and Angela, and somewhat well with Robert, he didn’t interact with many people. Solara was even more awkward to interact with now that he knew she was Ruby. Plus, he’d seen her bare stomach, both as her and Ruby. As Ruby, he’d seen somewhat more. Still, that wasn’t too awkward. It was more the fact that she knew he’d seen her. He’d even touched her (barely) to stitch up her side. That, really, was the biggest part. The doctors said she would have a scar. Quietus agreed to himself that it was likely. It wasn’t because of his stitching- they’d found no problems with that, but just the wound itself.

Mortimer didn’t really know why, but he felt somewhat responsible for it. It was quite irrational, so he always tried to ignore the feeling that he should have protected her somehow. He couldn’t have, since he didn’t know or expect anything would happen. He’d never really wanted to protect someone else before anyway. At least, not before playing Royal Road. Personally, he found it easier to take revenge, but that wouldn’t always be feasible. Plus, it didn’t stop people from getting hurt, which was the problem again. Mortimer hadn’t really cared much about that before.

Before playing Royal Road, Mortimer’s parents had done all the protecting. Not that he minded that, but it was weird to think he wanted to do it himself. He’d been fine.

Either way, it was still awkward to be around Solara. Since she was also Ruby, it turned out she was the only one he’d ever really been attracted to. Liked, perhaps.

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Quietus continued traveling the Plains of Despair. He’d started seeing packs of undead. Ghouls, skeletons, zombies. It would be hard to take on a group of them by himself. Therefore, he avoided those and the giant lizards.

…But he couldn’t keep doing that forever. Mostly because there were too many enemies to avoid. Party because he wasn’t growing stronger this way. Then, there was the very small part of him that just wanted to kill new things.

Thus it was that he found a situation that was to his advantage. A pack of ghouls was attacking one of the giant lizards. The ghouls were attacking the lizard with teeth, claws, and poison. The lizard counterattacked with its own, exchanging poison for tail. Both sides were getting quite injured, but the lizard was losing.

Quietus just waited. Then, when there was an opening, he leaped in and killed the lizards. It gave quite a nice amount of experience. Of course, that left him surrounded by a bunch of half-dead ghouls. He hadn’t thought about that.

He was now surrounded by hungry, albeit half-dead, monsters. However, instead of attacking him, they started eating the lizard. All except one, who spoke to Quietus. “D-Death, life, give it up. We will make you our… f-friend.”

Was this some kind of offer to be allies? There wasn’t a message window, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “Umm… okay?” said Quietus. He didn’t really have a problem with joining up with them, even if they happened to be rotting flesh eating undead monsters.

“Yesss. You… Will join ussss,” said the ghoul, apparently the leader. Then the ghoul lunged forward and bit him in the neck. It hurt. He noticed quickly that there was quite a powerful poison in the bite. Fascinating. He wondered for a moment if he was being stupid, and just died for nothing. Then he remembered, even dying itself was research.

What had he learned? Don’t accept random agreements.

“I’ll be back in three days,” he said. Just in case they weren’t just planning to murder him. Then, the last of his life drained out of him.

You have died.

End Chapter 47

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