Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 56

Quietus spent the next several days looking for the mummy’s slippers. The only clue he had was that they were taken by adventurers. First, he checked a shop where people would sell their loot. Unfortunately, they had nothing of the sort. Quietus next checked all of the shops and stalls in the area but still found nothing.

At night, he hunted. The most obvious place with enemies was King Suna’s tomb itself. However, there were always people in there, killing mummies and exploring. Quietus didn’t like it. Plus, he figured it would be good to not make enemies of the mummies just yet. He needed information they theoretically had, and he didn’t want to miss his chance. So, instead of in the tomb, there was only the desert.

The desert at night was cold. Quietus didn’t really like that either. Still, it wasn’t too cold, so he tolerated it. Plus, it was easier to warm up, since he was moving around. Out in the desert he found mostly the giant versions of regular desert life. Giant scorpions, giant lizards, giant snakes, and so on. He killed them all, and turned them into undead. Since they were animals, they were still all zombies, but they were quite good. Much better than what he had made before he was a necromancer. Hunting at night was also more efficient, because although monsters grew stronger at night, this trait was shared when they were turned into undead. Thus, Quietus benefitted from an increase in experience with little increase in risk.

After he had a good number of zombies, he actually had them fight while he was busy repairing injured ones. Repairs were different for non-humanoid monsters. It was hard at first, but he eventually learned to deal with it. Scales could be replaced from the bodies of other snakes and lizards. The leathery skin on parts of the lizards could be stitched up. Scorpion’s chitinous armor could be at least partially repaired with an alchemical compound that stuck to a surface and hardened. Quietus brought in a pretty constant stream of experience, adding to his level and his Repair Undead skill.

Quietus still stayed near the battles so that he could recall injured minions and occasionally throw a dark spear into the battle. They were quite powerful, but of course they took more time to use than a dark arrow. They were not good in an emergency, but Quietus was glad to have a powerful ranged attack. If all the undead were in good shape, he would also move into melee combat, since the zombies weren’t good at striking the weak points of enemies. They were more useful for slowly grinding their health away. Since he was nearby, Quietus was also able to get the loot from the battles. Nothing he had was capable of picking up loot for him, so he had to do it himself.

During the second day, when he was in town, all of Quietus’ zombies were killed. Since they were out in the desert, people must have mistaken them for wild monsters. They hadn’t even defended themselves, because Quietus had told them to “stand there and do nothing”. From then on, Quietus had them bury themselves under the sand during the day. He didn’t want to lose minions or suddenly get a murderer’s mark. The sun wasn’t good for them anyway. It slightly sped up their decay, which meant Quietus had to use more preservatives to keep them in top shape.

After checking all of the shops for the slippers, Quietus went around watching and listening to players. Mostly, people were boring. Quietus still tried his best to pay attention whenever the work Mummy came up, but that was quite often useless and generally followed by how many they had killed.

Eventually Quietus found a player who had the slippers. He was lucky to overhear them talking about taking them as a souvenir on their trip back to civilization. They would be leaving on the next caravan back.

From then on, Quietus watched them like a stalker hawk. However, they never left the city area, and there were always people around. Quietus briefly considered just stealing the item from their bag, but he didn’t have the skill for that, and stealing was wrong anyway. Fortunately, Quietus knew when the caravan was leaving, so when it did he was ready.

He followed the caravan from a distance with his inflate horde of minions. He currently had almost one hundred minions, in various states of usefulness. Some things he couldn’t repair, like a broken off claw. Due to his stealth skill and spot, he was able to keep distant enough from the caravan that he thought they wouldn’t notice him following. It was a smaller caravan, with about twenty people in it.

Quietus waited until there were enough people with the telltale strangeness of posture that indicated they were offline. Then, he attacked. He wasn’t really sure whether this would end up with him dead, but he hadn’t gotten any experience for The Power to Accept Death anyway. Everyone appeared unprepared for such a large, sudden attack. After all, the rangers were properly avoiding any monsters.

First went Quietus’ minions. He couldn’t give them much instruction at the start besides “kill everything there”. He snuck in behind the minions to look for his target. After he found them, he made sure to cast soul bind on them. There was no guarantee they would drop the slippers the first time. Then he gave some specific orders to his minions. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any users of holy magic online. Quietus targeted any magic users first, since they had the most potential to wipe out several of his minions at once, with their area of effect magic. He stayed back and threw dark spears from the darkness.

Since the players were outnumbered even before having some members logged off, they quickly fell. So did half of Quietus’ horde. The players who had been remaining weren’t too shabby, but a surprise attack by an enemy who effectively outnumbers you ten to one is not in your favor. A couple of the players may have been able to take out ten of Quietus’ minions alone, but they didn’t have the opportunity.

Quietus looted the slippers, which saved him the trouble of having to kill this person again, and while he was at it took whatever else people had dropped. Mostly, it was junk. The rest were a couple pieces of heavy armor he couldn’t use. He would sell them later.

Then, Quietus set back on his trek in what was hopefully the right direction, after repairing his remaining minions. He also applied a new disguise.

Fortunately for Quietus, the desert was quite flat, and he had a good sense of direction. He took about a day to get back, compared to the half a day he had spent on the way out, but he made it back to King Suna’s Tomb.

He found his way back inside quite easily. He used his crude map to find the area where he’d met the mummy who gave him the quest. Once there, he easily found a mummy.

This mummy, however, was different. Not obviously, but Quietus remembered the bandages being wrapped a bit differently, and being a bit more worn. The obvious thing to do was ask him where the other one was. The mummy at first looked surprised. Then, it responded.

“Ohh, so you’re the one. I didn’t actually believe there was one of you adventurers that wasn’t a complete savage, but I guess John was right. You even brought his slippers? Good, maybe he’ll stop complaining about it now. Sometimes I wish I could cut off my ears with him around, but they’re already gone.” The mummy gestured to the flat sides of its head. Then it showed him to the mummy who was, apparently, named John.

You have completed a quest!

Slippers

Experience received.

The quest gave negligible experience. Quietus had gotten a lot more for slaughtering innocent players the actual partaking in the quest. Still, he what he really wanted was the introduction to the king’s guards.

John was true to his word, and brought him to meet the guards, in front of what was theoretically a throne room, but just had closed doors. The path was long and confusing, and very dark. Not that darkness mattered to Quietus, when he used his darkvision spell. The guards were obviously the imposing figures that were almost seven feet tall and looked to be made entirely out of muscle. Almost literally, since their flesh was otherwise emaciated. Quietus gulped inside, and hoped that they would be friendly.

End Chapter 56

Next Chapter: ???