Hero or Villain, Both

"This intense mana, you must be quite the powerful necromancer!"

The eyes of these young necromancers lit up the moment that they saw me.

I didn't say anything as I walked closer, but it didn't seem like they had their guards up against me at all.

Once I was in front of them, I said, "It's dangerous for you to be traveling through this wilderness on your own like this."

"We can take care of ourselves." The young necromancers said in a confident voice.

But I just shook my head and said, "You were almost ripped apart by wolves and you're saying that you can take care of yourselves?"

There were awkward looks that appeared on the faces of the young necromancers, but they still said, "We were just caught off guard by those wolves. If we were serious, then we would have been able to take care of them without a problem."

These kids really had unfounded confidence as befitting of their age, but they really couldn't back it up.

"What was the Undead Society thinking when they sent kids like you out into the wilderness like this?"

"Undead Society?" The young necromancers looked at me with confused looks on their faces when they heard this.

I couldn't help slightly knitting my brows when I heard them say this before looking at them carefully, trying to figure out if they were being serious or not.

But it was clear by the confused looks on their faces that they had never heard of the Undead Society before.

"I guess the adults haven't told them about the Undead Society yet? They must be the youngest generation that doesn't know anything yet. But in the future…"

I didn't let my guard down even though they seemed genuinely confused.

Instead, I changed the topic by asking, "What are you doing out here anyway?"

When they heard this, it seemed like the young necromancers were incited by something as they said, "We were here on our rite of passage. We were supposed to travel out into the wilderness and find corpses on our own to bring back to form skeletons for the first time."

I didn't say anything, but I looked at the skeletons that were around them when they said this.

As I looked at these skeletons, I could tell that the mana fluctuations that came from them were different from the ones that came from these young necromancers.

It seemed that these skeletons didn't belong to these young necromancers, they had only been told to follow their orders.

It was no wonder they hadn't been able to bring out the full power of these skeletons.

After all, I could tell that with the mana that flowed through these skeletons, they shouldn't have struggled that much against those wolves. They weren't weak enough to be pushed back by the wolves like this.

It was only because they didn't have anyone guiding them properly that they were being pushed around by the wolves like that.

The ones that created these skeletons weren't ordinary necromancers.

They were necromancers that had a certain level of power to be able to create something like this.

"You should come back to the village with us. I'm sure that the adults would be more than happy to meet someone with power like yours." The young necromancers all surrounded me without any fear.

The way that their eyes sparkled showed that they were truly excited about meeting me and taking me back to their village.

However, I didn't agree right away.

After thinking about it, I said with a simple nod, "Alright, I'll come with you to your village."

The young necromancers didn't hesitate at all as they started heading off in a certain direction, but then it was as if they remembered something.

They turned back around and spread out, moving towards the wolf corpses that had been left behind.

I didn't even need to ask them what they were doing since I already knew.

There was only one reason for them to collect corpses like this as necromancers and they had already said that they had come out to collect corpses like this in the first place.

Carrying these wolves on their backs, the young necromancers led the way.

There was a part of me that felt wrong watching these kids carry these wolf corpses, so I had my skeletons go forward to carry it for them. Of course, it was just so we would be able to get to their village as soon as possible.

But they refused my offer.

They just said that this was something that they had to do on their own or there wouldn't be any meaning.

So I could only watch as they carried these wolf corpses on their own.

Even the skeletons that followed them didn't do anything to help them.

After walking for a while, we finally stopped.

I looked around with a surprised look since there was nothing here.

But then I was caught off guard by what appeared.

The thing that had been hiding the village that these young necromancers were talking about was a barrier. However, that wasn't the reason that I was surprised by this.

I was surprised because this barrier was strong enough that I didn't detect a single trace of it.

It was no wonder that this village had been able to exist all this time in the wilderness without anyone harming them.

After the barrier was lifted, I was surprised to find that there was a lush field that appeared in front of us. This was a lush field that really didn't suit the scenery of the wilderness.

Once the village was revealed, there was a group that suddenly came forward to greet us.

They looked excited to see the young necromancers and there were traces of pride in their eyes when they saw the wolf corpses that they were carrying.

But those looks soon changed when they saw me with these young necromancers.

It was only natural that they would look at me like this since I was a stranger.