Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 55

The desert was hot. That was Quietus’ opinion of it. Hot, big, sandy, and boring. All day, the sun beat down on him. Sometimes, there was a wind, but it wasn’t a cool refreshing wind. All it did was stir up sand into his face. Furthermore, one could only see so many rolling dunes before they got boring. Riding on camelback wasn’t the most pleasant way to travel either. Perhaps worst, the caravan hadn’t even run into a single monster so far.

If Quietus had thought about it logically, he would have known that avoiding monsters was part of the point of the caravan. However, he wasn’t thinking about it logically. All he could think about were various ways to use his new abilities. Still, he had to remain with the caravan so that he could reach King Suna’s Tomb. The Desert of Tranquility was the size of a whole country, and Quietus had no navigation skills.

So he sat on his camel and watched various people drift in and out of connectivity. Another reason for caravans was so that people could continue to travel while technically offline. Their bodies could continue to travel with the caravan so that distances of a week could be traveled as a group. Organizing a large group of people to travel somewhere would be almost impossible otherwise. Sometimes, teleportation allowed more efficient travel, but that was more expensive for large groups.

Of course, people were vulnerable when they were not online. Thus, people tried to remain online as much as they could. Generally, the presence of so many players meant there were a decent number of players online at any one time. With proper people leading a caravan, it was a good way to travel.

There was nothing wrong with the composition of the caravan Quietus was in. There were always guards online, as well as at least one ranger or explorer to lead the way. Their rations, although boring, were quite plentiful, and they had a good amount of water to use. There was even a bard on sometimes who played a song to speed the travel of the group.

Still, Quietus wanted to kill something, and he was getting impatient. His chance came when the caravan stopped at an oasis to rest. Of course he wouldn’t kill anyone from the caravan. He had nothing against them, and many reasons not to make any of them angry or suspicious. He wasn’t crazy, he never killed anyone without a reason. No, instead the caravan was attacked by giant scorpions.

One of the rangers on watch actually sighted them in time for the group to hurriedly prepare. Quietus had nothing he needed to do, since he was already off of his camel. Other preparations weren’t necessary, or possible.

Mostly, Quietus watched as the warriors in front got impaled by the scorpion’s tails, or crushed by their claws. Perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, since the scorpions weren’t even that giant. Counting their tails, they weren’t much taller than a person. Well, not so giant that the warriors couldn’t handle it. That’s why they were in that heavy, metal armor. Warriors probably had it much worse than him. It was bound to be hot. Regardless of how uncomfortable the armor was, it did its job just fine. The priests were ready to heal the warriors, and the battle continued just fine, although not perfectly.

A scorpion broke through the front lines and charged straight at Quietus. He hadn’t even done anything. Soon, he was experiencing firsthand the power of the scorpion’s poison.

Quietus looked at his health bar. ‘It’s probably around level 150,’ he thought. The poison wouldn’t be a threat. That didn’t mean he was safe. Well, he wasn’t safe until he climbed up on the scorpion’s back. There, it’s tail and claws were unable to reach him. Furthermore, its entire top seemed to count as its ‘back’ for Backstab. It wasn’t too bad. He briefly wondered what giant scorpion tasted like. He decided he would have to try later, when he wasn’t surrounded by a group of people that might not take kindly to seeing a ghoul.

Eventually, the group had their rest and set off again. Quietus lagged behind a bit. Once nobody was watching, he cast his spell.

“Ye who have returned to the land of living. This black and corrupt land is a dark place. The eternal dark law will never disappear, engrave this upon yourself. Undead Rise!”

Since all of the corpses were scorpions, they could only turn into the basic kind of undead, zombies. It was just a basic animation, with no bonuses to their stats. Still, they also had no penalties to their stats either, besides basic undead properties, which also benefited them some.

Quietus quickly gave them instructions he hoped were simple enough for them to follow. “Follow after the caravan, and kill anything nearby that’s not part of the caravan. Stay out of sight.” As zombies, all instructions had to be simple. Quietus hoped they understood. Then, Quietus quickly went to catch up to the caravan.

Quietus soon discovered that his instructions had worked at least partly.

Your Giant Scorpion Zombie has killed Giant Scorpion.

Experience received.

Obviously, they’d found some other Giant Scorpions. Quietus was slightly sad that they couldn’t pick up loot for him, but he didn’t dwell on it too much. However, after a few hours he started getting experience about his scorpions being killed. Well, there was only so much they could do without repairs. They seemed to have taken out more than two other scorpions each. Partly because they were in a group, but also because they were immune to the poison of the other scorpions, Quietus thought. The experiment was at least partly successful, although Quietus wished he could have been there to observe.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity but was really just the expected week of travel, the caravan arrived at King Suna’s Tomb. During that time, Quietus had to log off for sleep and school, but he cast soul bind on himself before going away. He could handle losing experience (temporarily) or items, but it would be very annoying to lose his progress through the desert. Of course, if he died, he would have had to catch up to the group, probably on foot. It wasn’t a problem, though, since they arrived just fine.

There was a nice camp, about the size of a small town, where people had set up their spaces for those who were excavating the tomb, as well as those who came to visit. Quietus mostly ignored the camp, since he wasn’t here to see anyone.

Quietus went straight into exploring the tomb. He snuck past didn’t bother the guards at the entrance, since they were probably just there to keep track of people going in and out. He didn’t need people to be keeping track of him. He did, however, make sure soul bind was active at all times, so that he wouldn’t have to return to a city if he died.

There were quite a few people in the tombs, working, so Quietus went down a corridor that had less people. It would be better to not have people in the way. What he needed was information on King Suna. If he could just find something about Aullet here, he would be done. He was so focused on looking for writing or something that he almost forgot that the tomb was said to hold deadly traps. Well, perhaps it counts as actually forgetting if you’re struck by poison darts. It wasn’t a lousy poison either, but Quietus had antidotes prepared, and good resistance.

From then on, he paid attention for traps. These corridors were dark and full of rubble, and Quietus hadn’t seen anything but a trap for quite some time. Quietus used his darkvision spell constantly, but fortunately it cost little enough that it effectively just reduced his mana regeneration. He didn’t even think about lighting a torch.

Then, Quietus saw a mummy. That was not unexpected. Rather, not seeing one until now was rather odd, since apparently the dungeon was teeming with mummies. The mummy walked with its arms out and moaned as it staggered towards Quietus. It was rather comical, prompting Quietus to say, “What, can’t you talk?”

The results of his quipp were rather unexpected. The mummy’s demeanor instantly changed. Its arms crossed in front of its chest in a relaxed manner, and it stopped staggering. “I can.” It spoke in a dry, dusty voice. “Nobody ever wants to talk though,” it said at a measured pace. “They just try to set me on fire. I hate fire.”

“Yeah, I hate being on fire too, that’s probably one of the top ten worst ways to go.” Quietus nodded sagely. They actually stood there for a few minutes exchanging talk about ways they had died before Quietus realized something was odd. “Wait, you come back to life? Err… undeath?”

“Of course. Do you think the duty of a king’s servant is that easy to shirk? What is a death or two against duty to the king?”

“Duty is nice and all, but what good is it to serve a dead king?”

At this, the mummy got angry, and looked like he was about to attack. “What did you say about my king?! How dare you insult his majesty! He is certainly still alive!”

“But, isn’t this his tomb? That implies that he is dead.”

“Hmph.” The mummy settled down a bit. “It may be his tomb, but the bond of a king and his people is not so light as to let something like that get in the way.”

“Really? King Suna is alive? That’s convenient. I’d like to meet him.”

“You, meet the king?” The mummy basically snorted. “An unknown outsider would never be granted an audience with the king. Especially not with all those rude, uninvited guests roaming the halls.”

“Well, can I earn an audience?” Quietus asked.

“Maybe. I suppose I can introduce you to the guards, but don’t get your hopes up. However, I need you to do something for me first.”

Quietus wondered what kind of thing a mummy would want. “Oh, what do you need?”

“Humph, well. I’ve lost my slippers. They were my favorite pair, but some foolish adventurers took them. It’s just not the same without them.”

You have been offered a quest!

Slippers

Find and retrieve the poor mummy’s favorite slippers.

Difficulty:D

Reward: Introduction to the king’s guards.

Friendship with the Suna Mummies increased.

“Uhh… okay.”

You have accepted a quest!

Quietus had been expecting the mummy to want a number of human hearts or a cursed sword or something, but he was okay with going to get his slippers too. If only he knew where to look.

End Chapter 55

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