NOVEL WEB Chapter 27 – A lonely wanderer
I must have been wandering aimlessly for over a week by the time I came across a tiny settlement surrounding a young dungeon. Although it could hardly be called a village as it only had a tiny guildhall and a few houses, it didn’t even have a general store or a proper bar that wasn’t run by the guild. I could see a few active construction sites so it looked like the settlement was growing pretty fast but it is still just getting started.
A part of me wanted to just leave immediately as I had no reason to stay here but I was getting tired of travelling without rest for so long and I was running out of funds. I would have to make some money if I didn’t want to starve. The easiest way to do this is to go through the dungeon and collect as much loot as I could so I begrudgingly got in line and waited for my turn.
Ever since I received the Necromancer Job I have been unable to settle anywhere for longer than a month. I have never done, nor will ever do, anything to them but every documented instance of a Necromancer has turned out to be evil so the civilians don’t want to take the risk. I try to tell them that I won’t hurt anyone and the only things I animate are the corpses of monsters but they never believe me.
Only a week after I reached level 5 I got kicked out of the school I had been going to even though they knew me. I ended up running away as I didn’t want to get my family in trouble too and a week later I found a small village that I assumed wouldn’t care about my Job but the only lasted two months when I let it slip that I was a necromancer and they quickly formed a mob that was going to kill me.
Luckily I managed to escape and kept on running for a month this time before I found a new village to try and settle down in. During that time I had fought a lot of monsters and finally reached level 10 but I was so tired that I didn’t leave the inn for two whole days. That time I made sure to not tell anyone who I was and just lied whenever someone asked me why I was there, just saying that I was running away from an abusive ex.
It seemed to do the trick for a while but it was always doomed for failure. See, what I hadn’t known was after I ran away from the school I had received a bounty and the area that they had been spreading my face had been slowly expanding. One day, about four months after I had arrived, a villager saw it and recognised me, forcing me to run away once again. That wanted poster was going to follow me for the rest of my life so when I reached the next town I decided to join the adventurer’s guild for a bit of protection before moving on.
Luckily all I had to do was answer some questions while under a truth spell and since I hadn’t done any crimes I was allowed in. Since the guild didn’t allow criminals into the guild, all I had to do to stop adventurers from trying to bring me in was show them my licence. That was why I joined the guild in the first place, they trust the guild more than prejudice. After that I moved on from that town and haven’t stopped anywhere for more than a week.
On my journey I have found that adventurers tend to be slightly more accepting than commoners as they have been through plenty of experiences that have taught them that not everything is as it seemed on the surface. Thanks to this I don’t have to worry about being kicked out of anywhere that was primarily adventurers but they still knew what travelling with a Necromancer would mean so no one would join a party with me.
At first I was confused about how the stigma around necromancers arose so I did a bit of research and I found that a lot of mages scared of dying gravitated towards necromancy. Unfortunately the only way that they could extend their lives was to steal the years from other people, I expected there were many mages that found this out and didn’t cross that line but they weren’t documented. No, the only necromancers that were remembered were the truly evil ones that crossed the line without thinking about the consequences.
When I found this out I was angry because I had easily found this information after spending just a week in a library but no one has bothered to do the research. I was also angry because if my friends truly knew me then they would know that I would never steal other people's lives for any reason, let alone a stupid one like being scared of dying. I just wanted to live my life in peace without hurting anyone.
I was also angry because everyone is born with a particular form of magic that they have the most compatibility with that dictates what Job they receive, mine just happens to be necromancy. I didn’t choose this life but I wasn’t going to refuse to use my magic, although I doubt anyone would let me live peacefully even if I did. The dead no longer had any use for their bodies so why should I feel bad about using them; I even made sure to only use monster bodies.
I tried to stop thinking about my past as it only made me upset, instead I looked over my ‘companions’ and their attributes. The first one was a large two headed dog with medium length black fur and very intimidating fangs that was laying down next to me. Due to the fact that it was undead and my magic could only slow down decomposing it had lost a lot of its fur leaving areas of flaky, dry grey skin exposed.
I really had to replace it soon, it was even missing one of its eyes. The biggest indicator that it was undead though was a huge gash, caused by one of my old zombies when we had first killed it, that went through its chest to expose a lot of its flesh and organs. After inspecting it I checked its status, as I was allowed to do since I had created it.
Death Dogs were an incredibly fast monster that used its speed to get around its prey’s defences before ripping it apart with its fangs and this was reflected in its dexterity and strength being incredibly strong but its mental stats being weak. Due to this my Death Dog would fight by waiting in the wing as my other undead would create opportunities for it to finish off my enemy.
Happy with what I saw I moved onto my next companion, this one was a giant hobgoblin that was much taller than me and has bulging, rippling muscles even in undeath. They carried a huge bastard sword that weighed the same as I did and wore heavy plated mail that completely covered it. Although even underneath the armour it was still in pretty good condition since it was my newest undead, its orange fur was mostly all still there but had turned light grey and it had tons of wounds from when I had killed it.
Hobgoblin Berserkers were incredibly tough melee fighters that would use their overwhelming strength to smash through any enemy in front of them while using its huge constitution to outlast almost anything it fights. This is enhanced even further after I had animated it due to it getting the [Undying] trait that means that even if it runs out of HP it has a chance to not die. It was my strongest ‘companion’ at the moment and had even destroyed two of my previous undead before we took it down.
I now move on to my final undead, the other two are zombies and still had most of their flesh but this one had lost all its flesh as I had turned it into a skeleton. This is because skeletons have more dexterity than zombies so they were better at using ranged weapons. The body the skeleton had belonged to was a disgusting creature called a dretch, it had looked as if a pug had grown to be four feet tall from tail to snout, turned green and lost all of its fur.
The smell was worse though as it smelt like it had already been decomposing for several months even when it was alive, luckily it no longer smelt bad as it had lost all of its flesh. The only sign that the skeleton ever came from it was that it had arms that looked slightly too long for its body and its jaw was extremely squished inward, to the point that I had to wonder how they could even breathe.
Not that anyone could tell by looking at it as it was covered in loose leather armour, a red cape and a featureless mask. Since it was usually behind even me and it didn’t decompose due to having no flesh it was one of my oldest undead, this also meant that it was starting to get too weak so I was looking for a good monster to replace it with. After checking that the armour wasn’t too loose anywhere I checked its status.
Even though I had only been actively adventuring for a total of three months the dretch had already become nothing special when compared to my other two monsters. This is because undead are still dead, this gives them two major disadvantages, firstly they can’t absorb any mana so if they used any to do one of their skills I would have to give them mana from my pool to refill theirs.
Secondly they couldn’t gain levels so they would always stay at the same strength as they were when I beat them, the only way for me to get stronger would be to find stronger monsters to defeat and reanimate. Although the undead would always be weaker than the monster that made them as some of the mana that made the monster’s essence would escape before they could be reanimated. Sometimes they would even lose some of their skills or traits if I wasn’t fast enough.
As I had gone through all of my companions but was still waiting in line I decided to also check my own stats. I am a five foot four, relatively fit, woman and I have about average proportions. I am currently wearing a robe that covered my whole body except my face but that was also covered by a featureless mask, similar to the dretch. Back when I was at school I was told I was quite pretty by a few of the other students but I could never see myself that way.
My face was covered in freckles, I had neat black hair that went down to my shoulders and piercing blue eyes that were the only hint of the Wolfkin blood flowing through my veins. My arcane focus is a small, intricately made, wooden wand that was made out of several pieces of wood to resemble the flowing rapids of a fast river, similar to the one I grew up by.
It was gifted to me by my parents when I got into a magic school and is the last thing I had to remember them by as I could never return to them; I wasn’t prepared to give it up for anything, even if a better wand would make me stronger.
Even though it has been a year since I reached level 5 I am still only level 18, this is because I wasn’t actually hunting anything while I had spent those three months as that would have been the quickest way for someone to figure out what I am. This meant that all the growth I did had to be done each time I was running to the next village. Although my growth has gotten faster since I had decided to give up finding a home and just go on adventures.
As is the same with most mages I was mostly focused on my mental stats and while they didn’t strengthen whatever I animated it did let me control more undead while also making it more efficient to keep them animated. At the moment I could theoretically use four undead at the same time but the Hobgoblin took so much mana that I only had three at the moment, I also didn’t want to constantly be draining my mana as I wouldn’t be able to cast any spells.
I was also naturally growing my Wisdom more than my other stats as having a constant drain on my mana pool exercises that stat all the time. A part of me was annoyed that I wasn’t a true mage as I instead relied on monsters to fight for me but considering I would be alone otherwise I sucked it up and just used them. Just as I finished looking over my stats another party left the dungeon and it was my turn to enter after only waiting for about an hour.
As I stepped through the portal I was thrust into a beautiful twilight forest that surrounded me on all sides. The trees around me were way too tall to climb and blocked all movement while only leaving a single path that was straight ahead of me forcing us to walk down it. The death dog led the way through the path, followed by the hobgoblin, then the dretch and finally me.