Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 1

Mortimer Perrywinkle was a rather strange, rather spoiled, rather rich teenager, nearing the end of his senior year in high school. He was about average height, with black hair and very pale skin. His well fitting clothed did little to hide the fact that he was quite skinny, although not quite unhealthily so. Mortimer's parents stepped in anytime he tried to do anything unhealthy. Besides, the cook made good food. He just never remembered to eat it, since he was always reading books or thinking. He had trouble interacting with other people, and was considered rather antisocial. Really, though, he just thought the world was boring. He didn't tell anyone this, because everyone was boring and they wouldn't understand. Well, not everyone was boring.

There was one girl at school named Solara Vail who he thought was not boring. Everyone else probably thought she was, but that's because they didn't really know her. Or maybe because everyone else was boring. Some of the other students picked on her and called her ugly, but Mortimer knew she was beautiful. She just hid her face behind her rather short blonde hair, as well as her glasses. Sure, she covered up parts of her body instead of dressing like a lingerie model who forgot to change out of their work clothes. Anyway, he thought she looked cute in her various sweatshirts. Mortimer knew she was not boring, because he listened to her talk to herself, when she thought no one could hear her. He had very good hearing, and could choose an inconspicuous place to sit. He may have also read her journal which she left in her desk when she went out to eat lunch. Perhaps he secretly followed her around at school at other times. He really intended to talk to her, but he didn't want to interrupt her.

He never followed Solara home or anything, that would have been creepy. Also, he was picked up by his driver, James, every day after school. That may have had something to do with it. Anyway, because of his obsession with interest in Solara Vail, when he found out she was going to be playing Royal Road, he was naturally obsessed with interested in the game as well. Royal Road was an innovative new Virtual Reality game that was immensely popular, all over the world. (Although new may have been something of a misnomer, since it was almost 2 years old now). Unlike many games, there was just one server, or collection of servers, to play on. Even people in different countries could play together thanks to new innovations in the area of automatic language translation. Mortimer, though, was mostly interested in the game for the opportunity to stalk get to know Solara outside of school.

Naturally, Mortimer ordered a capsule right away, and even paid a little something extra for expedient delivery. He had happened to find out the city Solara planned to start in, purely coincidentally while reading her journal. Solara seemed interested in art, based on the doodles in her journal, so her choice of Morata as a starting city made sense. Mortimer was slightly disappointed because he had wanted to be a wizard, and there were no magic guild halls in Morata. Still, he could always choose some other class, he had picked wizard more based on whim than any real desire to use magic.

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Starting up the capsule was a new experience. Mortimer had assumed virtual reality would be boring like real reality, but this was slightly different already. For one thing, there was nothing around him. Then, a voice appeared with an introduction to the game.

“Select your avatar”

“Quietus”

“Select your gender from male, female or neuter.”

“Male” (He didn't really want to experiment with anything like that... right now)

“Royal Road has fourty-nine races. Please select your race from this list.”

“Human” (Morata was a dominantly human city)

“You may alter your appearance”

He fiddled a bit with his appearance, mostly out of curiosity. He did change his eye color from brown to black so that it would match his hair. He also got a different hairstyle, slightly longer and shaggy, but of a style his parents wouldn't allow him to walk around with in real life.

Then, there was an introduction telling him about royal road, before he was allowed to choose his starting location. He chose Morata, of course. That was where Solara was going to be, after all.

Suddenly, there was again the sensation of having the world around him, although a different world than he was used to. He was in the middle of a city, filled with people. It was then that Quietus realized that cities were big. He also realized that he would have some trouble finding any specific person just by looking for them. 'Well, I might as well play the game while looking...' he thought to himself.

He knew that he had to obtain money for food, or he would die. Thus, he wandered around the city, casually observing everything and observing the scenery. 'Hey, that redhead is hot!' he thought, looking at a skimpily dressed bard. Normally, that wasn't his type. Well, normally, just Solara was his type. Still, it was interesting what a change of worlds can do for one's perspective.

He reluctantly pulled himself back to the first task at hand, obtaining a job. He hadn't really done the research on where he could go to find work, but he figured there would be something. He took random turns down streets until he also randomly came upon a sign “Help Wanted”. It was a dark, creepy looking building that could have used some repairs. Obviously, he went in. He literally had nothing to lose except for a canteen and ten pieces of some kind of unpleasant bread. Rye bread, said the game interface.

Inside the building was no less creepy than the outside. It was dark and cold, and smelled like death. Well, Quietus had no idea what death smelled like, but this building smelled awful.

“Yes, that is the smell of death.”

Quietus jumped. He wasn't used to people being able to sneak up on him, although he wasn't sure if anyone had actually tried before. He turned around to see a slightly hunched man with bad teeth and an eyepatch.

“Need someone put under? Better get a plot now while it's cheap!”

“Umm... put under? I was just here about the 'help wanted' sign.”

“Oh, well this here's a morgue. M' name's Jack, the proprietor of this lovely establishment.” He chuckled slightly. “You have a strong stomach?”

Although Quietus thought this man was creepy and weird, he figured this job would have low interaction with boring people. “Well, it's as strong as any, I suppose.”

After being given a tour of the “facilities”, as well as a test of his stomach, he was sent on an errand to buy some preserving fluids from a local alchemist. If the mortuary smelled like death, the alchemist's shop smelled much worse, since it mixed many terrible smells together. Quietus managed to not show any open aversion to the smell, which oddly enough got him a slight discount. Apparently those who are best friends with alchemists are the ones who can stand to be around them. Quietus made a joke about the wonderful aroma of the store, and it was taken the right way. It could never hurt to have a little friendship with a NPC, and it was easy enough to pretend to care a little.

After he was done delivering the bottles of foul liquid, he was told that there was nothing else that needed doing that day, and that he should come back in the morning.

He wandered around the city aimlessly until he heard singing around a corner. For some reason, instead of just going to look he peeked around the corner. It was the red-headed bard. She was still singing, but it was getting late and no one was listening. Quietus felt that she wasn't bad, but she could use some more practice. Well, it looked like she was a beginning player too. He watched her for a long time, using the excuse that he was looking around the square for Solara, in case she passed by.

Quietus kept his ears open for people walking up behind him, after all, he didn't want to be mistaken for some kind of creep. Occasionally, someone did pass by, and he did his best to look innocuous standing against the wall.

For some reason, Quietus just couldn't tear himself away from this bard to accomplish his real goal in being in this game. He quickly lost track of time, which is why he was surprised when he realized that it was dark. In fact, he only realized it was dark because the sun was coming up. The red-headed bard had kept him enraptured for an entire night! She didn't appear to get tired of singing, either. However, just as he thought this, she stopped. She then set off with purpose, heading in the direction he was hiding observing from. Quietus decided this was a good time to head back to his job.

When he arrived at the morgue he was greeted by Jack. “To properly do the job of caring for the dead, you've got to learn what makes people alive. That's why today we're gonna cut some people up. It's all part of the process of preserving them and some of the other work we're asked to do.”

Quietus wasn't exactly sure what the “other work” could be, but he didn't really care. He learned that he did indeed have a strong stomach, and he also learned some very interesting things about corpses.

*Ding*

You have learned a new skill!

Anatomy

Your knowledge of anatomy allows you to strike opponents weaknesses more effectively.

Increases critical hit damage when striking a vulnerable location by 10%

'Huh, I learned a new skill, that's cool.' Quietus thought. His knowledge of the game being very limited, he hadn't known how to gain skills. Pretty much everything in the game was a surprise to him.

He then received a message that his satiety bar was low. Once the game mentioned it, he realized he felt hungry, so he ate some of his rye bread. Then, he went back to learning about anatomy. After they finished with the basics, Jack had Quietus help prepare him some preserving fluids. It involved a lot of mixing of smelly ingredients, including the foul mixture from the alchemist. Soon after...

*Ding*

You have learned a new skill!

Alchemy

You can mix various ingredients to create varied potions and poisons.

'Wow, they're just handing out skills all over the place for trivial work!' thought Quietus. The difficulty of the work itself may have been low, but the average person would not have been able to get over their revulsion so quickly to start the actual learning. In fact, most players wouldn't even consider working in such an unpleasant place.

Eventually, Quietus' work was done, and he received his wages for the day. He didn't have any particular goal in mind in the city, except perhaps finding Solara, so he wandered aimlessly for a while. He noticed a strange building with the words “Training Center” on the outside, and he could see inside to a large number of scarecrows. They were hardly anatomically correct, but Quietus decided that he would try to strike some locations similar to the ones he had learned about that day.

He picked up the sword and had no idea how to swing it. He decided to stab some points that would have vital organs not protected by hindering things such as ribcages. His terrible posture and grip made him knock the sword out of his own hands. He tried again a few times, but decided the sword was just too big and unwieldy for him to use. I mean, it couldn't be that he was clumsy or anything.

He gave up, and logged off so that he could get some sleep. He may not have many rules that his parents made him follow, but they did require him to go to school. Besides, Solara would be at school.

End Chapter 1

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