Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 48

When Quietus finally came back to life, he was immediately surrounded by ghouls. He hadn’t been sure if they would wait around.

“S-slow.”

“It l-looks not like us.”

“P-perhaps it speaks?”

Quietus wasn’t sure what he should do. He didn’t feel any different than he had before. “I change slowly, but I am one of you now.” He figured he might as well pretend.

“It speaksss quickly. It was dead…”

“... and n-now it is not-dead. Like us.”

“Yeees. It joins us? We h-hunt.”

Quietus had nothing against hunting with the ghouls. They would be very useful for helping him kill things he hadn’t been able to. Of course, he planned to get the last hit on the monsters to get all of the experience.

Very quickly he discovered some obvious differences that would soon make it obvious he was not a ghoul. The very first was appearance. That was easily fixed with a quick disguise, at least enough to make it not obvious. The small cosmetic differences were the easiest to overcome. The way they fought was something Quietus didn’t know how to replicate. They fought with tooth and claw, and he had neither. Their teeth were covered in poison, and sometimes they spit poison at their enemies.

However, the biggest difference was what happened after battle. The pack, or whatever it was properly called, has just taken down another giant lizard.

“We eat!”

“Eat!”

Some of them looked at him expectantly. Quietus wouldn’t have had any trouble eating it if it were cooked, even poorly. It wasn’t, though, and he doubted cooking would be wise. He saw ghouls tearing chunks off of the lizard. He couldn’t do that, but he did cut some off. He decided to slice it thinly. That way, he could pretend it was sashimi. He liked sashimi.

This, however, was not sashimi. Even thinly sliced, it was very tough. It tasted disgusting. It was hard to describe, but it tasted very much like iron. Unfortunately, that was the only good part. The rest tasted like rotting meat smells, except this was fresh.

There was also another slight problem.

You have been poisoned!

Although the giant lizards were probably not an inherently poisonous creature, uncooked it was effectively a poison to humans. Quietus considered throwing up. He’d probably feel better.

He looked around him at the ghouls. Why was he even trying to pretend to be a ghoul anyway? There was no reason, except… very simply, he could never do it in real life. Not without risking actual death.

For the sake of the entire experience, Quietus kept as much of a straight face as he could. The poison wasn’t that bad either. He could survive.

Although he got a lot of strange looks from the ghouls, his methods of eating were accepted. Barely.

After a few more battles, after which the ghouls gorged themselves more and Quietus barely nibbled, he thought of some more ways to act like the ghouls.

First, their poison. Although he didn’t have sharp teeth, he could still spit poison. He didn’t have very much range, but he tried. He also got more experience for his poison resistance skill, since he inevitable swallowed some of the poison he poured into his mouth. He tried to make that part not obvious.

“T-this one is different.”

“Strong.”

“Dark.” In many contexts, that would have been a bad thing, but he felt that dark was good coming from ghouls.

The pack fought all kinds of giants beasts. They only had one tactic, a mad rush to pile on an enemy and take it down. Quietus planned to see if he could make them fight more intelligently.

Whenever the ghouls were injured, they would just eat and then they would be recovered. This was mostly true, but sometimes they didn’t recover properly. Quietus took it upon himself to set their bones properly, and sometimes he needed to stitch up parts of them that were falling apart. The ghouls were in awe of his “magic” and grew in their approval of this strange new ghoul.

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Outside of Royal Road, Mortimer was glad for real food. He appreciated it a lot more than he had before.

He was even glad for a small bit of conversation with people. Not that he minded solitude, but he found it odd to be with a group of people… or whatever the ghouls counted as, and not have conversation. The ghouls just wanted to hunt and eat. Angela, Solara, and Alex all talked about many different things. Of course, there was still a limit on how much interaction Mortimer cared to have.

Mortimer had spent a lot more time lately doing school work. This was mostly because the Plains of Despair were quite dangerous. That meant he spent more time dead. The ghouls seemed to take that aspect of him in stride- obviously he was just very slow to heal.

Then, he received an interesting assignment in class. The assignment was to research the behavior and environment of a people group or animal group in Royal Road (those few who didn’t play Royal Road either had a different assignment or had to do more second-hand research). Eating habits, habitats, sizes, and anything else that could be thought of.

This very much interested Mortimer. Since he hunted the giant lizards the most, he decided to do his research on them. After all, he could work on his anatomy skill and get class credit at the same time.

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To get into the proper hunting mindset, Quietus changed his tactics. First, he put away his dagger. None of the ghouls used one, so he’d have to get by without. Then, he set about learning how to fight things that weren’t humanoid without weapons. Not that he attacked them with his bare hands. That would be quite worthless. Instead, he used his Dark Hand spell, and pretended his hands were claws. The damage was fairly significant, but had a high constant mana cost, slightly offset by the increased mana regeneration from sadism. Still, he grew to like that method of hunting.

Then, he taught the ghouls about stealth. They would never be very good, but they did understand that it was better to pile onto a surprised enemy than one who knew you were coming. Their other combat tactics remained mostly the same. Then, Mortimer received a surprising message.

New Stat: Necrosympathy

Makes undead react more favorably. They are more inclined to help you, and to follow your orders. However, this has the opposite effect for members of most faiths. Spontaneously rises based on the actions of the user. You cannot distribute points to this stat.

He supposed the stat would be useful. He wasn’t sure how long he would hang around the ghouls, but he knew there would be other undead he would find throughout the game. He didn’t imagine he would be giving many orders to them, but he wasn’t disappointed that it would be more effective.

However, it would be very useful for something Quietus had in mind. He’d had enough of studying the giant lizards out in the field. They only traveled in groups of one or two. He had plenty of times to catalog what they ate, what their weak points were, and what kind of organs they had. However, he hadn’t seen where they lived. Thus, he was going to raid one of the (hopefully) smaller dens.

You have entered Large Lizard’s Lair.

You are first to discover the dungeon!

Fame + 50

Double experience in the dungeon for one week.

Apparently nobody had come to this part of the Plains of Despair, or just hadn’t bothered to come into the lair filled with lizards whose drops weren’t very valuable. On that end, although their drops weren’t good, they did drop various kinds of leather armor. Although he couldn’t identify it, Quietus used some of it to replace pieces of his armor that were falling apart. He distributed the rest among the ghouls, who never considered putting on armor. Helmets and gauntlets would be detrimental to their fighting ability, but the rest was rather useful.

Inside the lair, Quietus had the ghouls be as quiet as possible. This was still not particularly stealthy, but at least they didn’t need to breathe. That helped a bit. Quietus scouted ahead down various paths to find the best places. He and the ghouls took out smaller groups first. There were enough enemies to kill that the ghouls increased in level along with Quietus. He couldn’t always get the last hits, and it wasn’t the best option for him to level up alone anyway.

Although there were many twisting passageways, there weren’t any traps. Not that Quietus expected lizards to build traps, but he still looked just in case there was unstable passageway or something of that nature. Near the end of the week, they had cleared all of the rooms but one. It was a large room, with many eggs. Although there were no enemies to be seen there, Quietus was cautious about going in.

The ghouls were not as cautious. As they approached the room, they rushed in, eager to taste the giant eggs. Then, Quietus saw movement.

“Back!” Quietus shouted. Most of them reacted in time, based on their trust in him. The two who were out in front had started to turn around when a much bigger lizard fell on them, crushing them instantly.

Each of the forelimbs of this one were the size of the other lizards. To Quietus, it looked more like a piece of moving terrain than a monster. Above its head, the name Lizard Matriarch floated.

“Charge!” Now that they were out of immediate danger of being crushed, they had to act quickly. “Climb onto its back!”

He and the ghouls scrambled on top of it, although some were unlucky enough to go near the swiping tail. Since the lizard could not reach them with any of its normal weapons, it was forced to resort to trying to fling them off. However, the ghouls had astonishing grips, and latched onto its scales. Quietus held on only because of his climb skill. All this time, the ghouls were clawing and biting, and Quietus used the full power of his dark hand, twice.

Next, the lizard tried climbing upside down on the ceiling. That dropped a few of the weaker ghouls off, but they survived- although not after it returned to the ground to claw and bite them back.

Now, there was a fairly injured lizard and several ghouls and Quietus. The lizard adopted a new tactic, attempting to scrape the ghouls off on the walls and various protrusions. This took out a few more of the rapidly dwindling ghouls.

It was starting to look like the lizard wouldn’t go down first. Quietus had been scratching and using dark hand as much as he could, but he was getting frustrated. He saw a ridge sticking up, and bit it.

At that time, a message window Quietus had no time for popped up. He didn’t care, and just kept clawing and biting at the lizard. He soon noticed bloody trails where before there had only been the marks of his dark hand skill. He hoped it wasn’t his hands bleeding all over, but it seemed likely. His hands hurt, but that could have been just from using dark hand. Bleeding wouldn’t have made much difference. Maybe he was missing some teeth too. However, nothing would stop him from trying his hardest. For some reason, he went up and bit the lizard in the neck. Perforate Artery! Surprisingly, it worked.

After that, Quietus could barely remember what was going on. At the end, all he remembered was his mouth being full of something, and a message that he had leveled up, several times.

He spit. There was a chunk of rapidly dissolving scales and flesh. He looked down at his hands. There were claws on the end. He looked around the room, and the only other “living” thing was the ghoul who had been somewhat the leader, and was the strongest. He had a hungry look in his eyes as he charged towards Quietus.

Quietus prepared to counter, but then the ghoul just kept running, past him. Quietus heard the sound of a cracking. Then, he saw the ghoul buried head first in an egg. He pulled his head out. “G-good! Worth trouble.” Ghouls didn’t have much care for their comrades, they just made the hunt easier.

For the sake of completeness, Quietus tried the egg too. It was good. Out of curiosity, he also tried the flesh of the large lizard. It also tasted good. That was strange. Then, he looked at his clawed hands, and felt his sharp teeth. Finally, he looked at the status window he had missed.

You have gained a new skill!

Undead Mimicry

Through understanding and mimicking an undead, you can take on its traits. You take on both the strengths and weaknesses of the undead type. The effectiveness of the transformation is related to skill level, and some forms cannot be attempted until a higher level.

Mana cost: Varies

Quietus looked at his stats. His physical attributes had increased significantly, but his mental attributes were much lower. Such was typical of ghouls. He canceled the skill, and went back to normal.

After he studied the layout of the eggs, grabbed the loot from the boss, and made sure he had the information he needed, he left.

“See ya later. I’ve got a quest to go do.”

Quietus received a toothy grin in reply. There was blood and giant lizard egg leaking from between the teeth.

There was still plenty of time to compile his research. It wasn’t due until the end of the semester.

The teacher would grade it well, but would be somewhat confused by the details included. Sure, the layout of the lair and habits were all well and good, but what did it matter what the raw meat tasted like?

End Chapter 48

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