Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 13

Quietus went to the market to stock up on food. He’d fortunately not needed it in the dungeon, since dying reset his satiety, and he’d died very often. He wasn’t planning to die nearly that often now, so he would definitely need something. He considered learning to cook, but even though he’d been raised on good food, he didn’t really care what he ate. Within reason, of course. He wouldn’t eat grass or anything, but anything that could be legitimately labeled as food was fine with him.

He bought some kind of bread, and some unknown dried meat. Good for traveling, once he had a place to go.

Then, someone bumped into him. The marketplace was pretty crowded, so it was a common occurrence. This time, however, it seemed that someone had fallen into someone else... and then into him. As Quietus pull himself out from under the behind of a heavyset man in nice clothes, he saw the one who had presumably tripped and started the chain reaction. He was apologizing to the other man. Quietus didn’t particularly care about, and was about to ignore it entirely, when the second man walked up to meet with, presumably, his companions.

Normally, Quietus wouldn’t have paid attention to yet another part of adventurers in this city, but something caught his eye. More specifically, his stalker senses were tingling. Red hair. Skimpy clothes. Then there was that feeling of something else that made Quietus interested in her, not just her looks, but Quietus didn’t know what it was. Quietus briefly considered asking to adventure with the party, which appeared to have the bard, and a few others in very different kinds of equipment. Then he remembered that he didn’t like people, and would rather not have to talk to so many people.

While he didn’t want to actually join the party, Quietus had nothing against stalking observing them for a while. He moved a bit closer and tried to blend in with the crowd. They were talking about an area nearby they were planning to hunt in. Not very interesting. Then they started moving, and Quietus got to enjoy a nice game of one-player hide and seek as he followed them down the street, towards the city gates. Then he got to play wait-until-the-party-is-far-enough-out-of-the-city-to-follow, which wasn’t nearly as fun. At least he wasn’t at risk of losing sight of them, since they weren’t trying to be subtle.

As he was following them through the forests...

Level up: Stealth[6]

Leveling up stealth was so easy! It seemed to just happen all the time. He wondered why it was easier than everything else. Of course, since he had been sneaking pretty much continuously since he learned it, aside from part of the journey to and from Seeker’s Den, it wouldn’t have come as a surprise to any other player. For most people, sneaking was done just before encountering monsters, instead of their normal state of being. Quietus hadn’t really been very good when he first started, even though he’d had plenty of practice in real life. The game had given him some very nice instructions on what to do- how to stand, how to use the shadows, and things like that. They sure thought of everything in this game.

Since the party of adventurers was moving at a normal pace, it was hard to Quietus to keep up while sneaking. Since he used more stamina, even walking at normal speed could tire him out. Fortunately, whenever he was out of stamina he used the best sneaking techniques available. That is, just being far enough away that people wouldn’t notice him.

Eventually, the party arrived at the hunting area, which contained mostly foxes and wolves, as expected at their level. They weren’t that much higher level than Quietus, despite the fact that they hadn’t died nearly as much as him, although he thought the bard hadn’t started playing much before him. Perhaps the others were newer- not that he cared about them.

The group attempted to find one wolf at a time, then the warrior, or whatever he was, got hit, the bard danced (so they weren’t just a bard after all?) and sang (as expected). The one from the marketplace appeared to be a rogue, as he wielded a knife and attacked the wolf from behind. They also appeared to have a cleric, or some other healer. Quietus didn’t particularly care about the specifics, he was much more interested in the swaying of the redhead’s hips watching for other monsters.

He found quite a few foxes approaching the party and silenced them before they could bother the bard. Also, her party, technically. Then when the party was resting from battle, he would study the dead foxes, and sometimes pick some herbs. There were some nice poisonous plants around here. He was going to have to work with them to make something he could actually use later. He also used his Dark Hand spell once... with unexpected results. Apparently it counted as touching HIM as well. He didn’t actually take any damage from it, but it sure hurt a lot. It did seem to inflict damage as well as the pain to the fox he tried it on. He supposed he would just have to get used to it.

After a while, he got into a good routine. This fight, two wolves had shown up, but it looked like the bard would be safe... although that warrior might die. Still, they had everything under control, until the third wolf showed up. It was on the other side of the battle, and they didn’t seem to be aware of it yet. The wolf seemed to be waiting for a good opportunity. He wasted no time. It wasn’t dark enough to use his Dark Cloak spell- he would just stand out as a bunch of shadows. Instead he half-sprinted around the clearing the group was fighting in. He slowed down once he was close, to avoid unnecessary noise.

Although Quietus did not know it, the wolf could smell him. Fortunately, he currently smelled mostly like poisonous plants. The wolf didn’t have enough time to determine if there was a danger before he got off a good slash at its throat. He just hoped wolves were very similar to the foxed he had been killing. He got his slash to the jugular, and it was a lot more effective than he expected it to be. With his skills, the foxes had died pretty much instantly. He knew the wolf was much tougher, so he definitely expected it to put up a fight.

Quietus’ cut at its jugular proved to be very effective. In fact, it appeared to be bleeding much more than he would have expected to achieve. Not quite as much as he could have reasonably hoped for, however. Specifically, he hoped it wouldn’t bite at him and try to claw him after that, but of course it did. He wasn’t really used to the attacking movements of wolves- the foxes hadn’t had much chance to attack him, and it was his first time against a wolf.

After the first attacks, which took out almost half of his health, Quietus did a much better job of dodging. He also attempted to use his Dark Hand ability as he tumbled past the wolf. This worked much better than he expected, since it didn’t completely throw off his movement. It did send stabbing pain up his left arm, however. It made the wolf howl in pain, which seemed to aggravate it’s bleeding.

Critical Hit!

Luck rises by 1 point. (+1 LUK)

After a few more passes, Quietus got in a lucky cut on the other jugular vein, on the other side. He’d noticed that he gained luck sometimes when he got critical hits, and agility when he spent time carefully lining up his strikes, such as his opening moves. Quietus congratulated himself, a little prematurely, as the wolf took the opening as a chance to bite him with the last of its strength.

You have gained a level!

Quietus had gotten quite a bit of experience, and that was his second level in this hunting session. Unfortunately, it looked like he was going to have to return to town. Specifically, that last hit had brought him to low enough health that he was going to bleed out. Still, he would be able to earn the lost experience back, so he still smiled as he lay on the ground bleeding.

You have died

End Chapter 13

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