Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 95

Reinhold led the Second Assault Force down into the valley. The terrain certainly wasn’t impassable, but it wasn’t trivial, either. Mostly, they were slowed down by the mages and those with low physical abilities, since they were generally not much above the level of a normal person. It wasn’t like even they were in danger here, it just turned their rate of movement from a march to a leisurely hike.

The valley was rather wide, so to avoid separating anyone, they waited until everyone was at the bottom before continuing across. One of the scouts in front stopped to loot the body of the enemy scout. One of those with keen hearing in the main army spoke up about this point. “What is that rumbling noise?”

Of course, they would soon find out. As the scout placed his hand on the corpse, a skeletal hand grabbed his. At the same time, undead sprung out of the ground in various places around the valley. However, while these took a few moments to emerge, ghosts also rushed out of the ground and attacked. As for why they hadn’t been able to detect the burrowing sooner, they likely would have never guess. After all, most necromancers couldn’t pass on an intermediate level of stealth to their minions. In addition to that, the minions had been waiting below, instead of burrowing in, so the time that they had been moving was quite short.

Although they were surprised, the Second Assault Force reacted rather admirably to undead appearing in their midst. At least, they avoided killing their own members with area spells. However, in the few moments it took for them to form a more organized reaction, dark fog started appearing. This made it so they could not see the full number of their enemies. They could only see what was near them.

The casters took the worst of the initial attacks, since they were easily killed. At least a tenth of the mages died within the first minute. The entire assault force had to contend with the various zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and death knights attacking them, as well as starting to dispel the dark fog, and casting their buffs. It was at this time that arrows and spells started firing into the area. There were also occasional more powerful spells, in the shape of black, evil looking spears of magic.

After a few more minutes had passed, the dark fog had been dispelled, revealing the full number of the undead. On each side of the valley were skeletal mages and various types of undead archers. However, they were actually relatively few in numbers compared to the melee combatants among the army. The magic of the skeletal mages was dangerous, but not as deadly as the dark spears, which seemed to take the life of whoever they struck. “There, kill that one! It’s the necromancer controlling them! If we take him out, his minions will be worthless!”

That was not entirely incorrect, either. Without a leader giving them new commands, mindless undead could easily be counteracted. Alas, their newfound hope and energy didn’t last long, for as soon as they started bombarding the necromancer with spells, his form turned into that of a ghost. Most of the attacks had no effect. As they prepared spells that would work, a terrifying roar came from above.

Before anyone could react, a dragon flew along the valley, occasionally dipping down to grab a soldier, only to fly up into the air and fling them at a group of people. This was still manageable, however the dragon then made a strange move. All that people could see was an area as if life itself was being pulled into the dragon’s mouth, and a group perished, with seemingly no damage done to them. If they were organized, no, even in this chaotic state, the army could likely defeat a dragon. However, as their attacks hit it, they realized something terrifying. The dragon was wearing armor. They had not noticed at first because it perfectly matched the scales on it, but it upon attacking it, they realized it was armored. Moreso, it was magical armor. Though, fortunately for them, the only magical enchantments it had was to reduce weight, allowing the dragon to still fly, as well as one to slowly repair the armor, though it wouldn’t be relevant over the course of the battle.

Still, this was a very skilled group of players. They slew key undead to allow them to organize into formations again, and also targeted the necromancer with spells, ones that could hit ghosts. Even though there were many undead, there weren’t as many powerful undead as there were players. Soon, all the weak undead were slain, freeing up the players to concentrate even more attacks on the necromancer.

Finally, after much work, they saw him fall to the ground, slain. They predicted that the undead army would fall into chaos at this, but the unexpected happened. The undead retreated. It wasn’t a rout, but an organized retreat. Some of them were killed as they left, but the Second Assault Force was in no shape to chase them down. Approximately half of them were dead. This wouldn’t prevent them from doing their mission, but they would be late.

It took some time for them to clean up the battlefield of dropped items of their allies, heal, and recover mana. They couldn’t afford to use potions, since those were needed for when they were in combat. Of course, they kept eyes and ears open for any more undead, in case they somehow came back. By the time they got to the top of the other side of the valley, four hours had passed. It was obvious the necromancer wasn’t going to risk his minions attacking in a way he couldn’t control, so they would be safe from them for a real-world day, four days in game. That would be many times more than they needed to successfully siege the castle.

They weren’t watching the necromancer’s corpse, because they were confident he was certainly dead. They checked for all kinds of feign death skills, and even stabbed the body a few times, thus they had been assured. Sadly for them, they couldn’t have known that he would come back to life here at all. They didn’t notice, though, that just as they reached the top of the valley, at the four hour mark, the eyes of the necromancer’s corpse opened up.

Quietus grinned to himself. He’d died every day for the last year, either to make a destroyer undead, or because of other reasons. Sometimes, he’d died more than once in a day. Now, his Power to Accept Death skill was at maximum level. What did that mean? Instead of the normal 24 hour/4 day (outside the game and in) death timers, he had only a single hour, four hours in game. That is, each level out of the 50 reduced the death timer by half an hour. Except, when a skill got to level 10 of one category and immediately upgraded to level 1 of the next, such as the transition from beginner to intermediate, that only counted as 1 level. Thus, there were really only 46 levels that counted toward that effect. 24 hours - (30 minutes * 46)= 24 hours - (23 hours) left him with a single hour of death timer. Not bad, to say the least.

//End Chapter 95