Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 18

Quietus had a problem. Before him were quite a few bottles of liquid. He was aware of what they said they did, mostly. However, he didn’t actually know what they did. What did this healing potion feel like? How much damage did this poison really do? How fast? He couldn’t really know, in his heart, until he had tested them. Plus, since he had pretty much made them by mixing herbs without quite knowing what they did, there were also unknown effects, at least at his alchemy and herbalism skill levels.

Thus, he did what any reasonable person would do. He drank them. Of course, this would only apply to reasonable people if you really meant something like crazy, or stupid. He did, however, have somewhat of a system. First, he made two doses of each kind. Second, he would only drink a poison directly before a healing potion, and he also prepared antidotes. He wasn’t completely crazy.

What were the second dose of each for? Testing, of course. Wolves were about the right level for him to experiment on. He applied a dose of the poison or healing potion to his dagger, and observed the effects. Sometimes, the healing potions healed different amounts than he expected, and sometimes, as he had observed in himself, the still secret, poisonous effects outweighed any benefits.

He saved the very best mixtures for last. By best, of course, he used the ones with the most potent herbs in them. The poison had a very interesting effect on his health, as it rapidly drained. It was quite a bit better than he had thought it would be. At about a quarter of his life, he drank the healing potion. Then, he collapsed on the ground. His body just wouldn’t hold him up anymore. He tried to reach for the antidote potion he had prepared, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to lift it. He watched the last portion of his health trickle away. Finally, he received a familiar message he had not seen in a decent amount of time.

You have died.

You are prohibited from logging in for twenty three hours.

Because his skill, power to accept death, was level two, it appeared that he shaved a very significant time off of his lockout. Of course, there was the drawback that it only leveled up when he died. He also still lost the experience from death, and possibly items. Then again, he could always regain the items, and the experience would even come back to him at an increased rate. Still, not playing for a time was rather disappointing. He was addicted to very fond of Royal Road.

Mortimer decided to go to sleep right away, so he could stay up a bit later the next day.

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At breakfast, Mortimer chatted with Angela. Well, really, it was more he prompted her, and she chatted about things. He enjoyed that, as long as she was in the right mood, she would let him get away with not talking. Of course, if she had really wanted to know something, she could have easily pried it out of him. That was something he didn’t like about her. She knew too much about him. Well, that had been true in the past anyway. Recently they hadn’t seen much of each other, since they lived a bit too far apart to just go over to each other’s houses to play. It was also more of a childish thing to do, anyway.

It was nice to see her every once in a while, thought Mortimer.

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At school, Mortimer took it back. He really didn’t want to see her this often. What was she even doing at his school?

This was, of course, a rhetorical question. Mortimer wasn’t so dense (at least where his cousin was involved) to not realize she was a student at his school now. The real question was: why? and also why is she in my class? is she in my other classes too? In this case, Mortimer could guess the answers: because she was Angela, because it was his class, and *sigh* probably.

Mortimer was pleasantly relieved when she blatantly ignored him in front of other people. He knew she would probably make him sit with her at lunch, but he could live with that… as long as she didn’t bring other people. He didn’t know whether or not that would happen. At least she seemed to know that he didn’t like having attention given to him, while she obviously did. He also wasn’t tied to her by family name, and at first glance no one would think they were cousins.

For some reason, however, she was bothering Mortimer. It shouldn’t have bothered him that she was being friendly with people, but it bothered him anyway. He thought it was odd, because he didn’t care about anyone. He didn’t really know what bothered her about chatting with some of the girls in the class, but there it was.

Angela kept looking over at him for some reason, although rather subtly. He wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t watching her to try to figure out what was going on, and Mortimer doubted anyone else would notice. She was judging him on something, and that scared him.

At lunchtime he snuck out of the room to go hide somewhere he felt safe. He’d just arrived at a good location when he was grabbed from behind and dragged into a seat in the cafeteria. Fortunately for Mortimer, nobody else was present at this interrogation meeting. Angela asked him a bunch of questions about the girls in class, and he honestly shrugged that he didn’t know most of the answers. After a string of questions, Angela seemed satisfied with his answers, and that also scared Mortimer.

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If Mortimer had been surprised to see Angela when he got home, his future would have been very hopeless. Upon seeing her at school, he had easily surmised that she would be staying in one of the many spare rooms in his house, unlike what he had previously assumed was a simple visit and overnight stay. He was exactly the same level of happy as he was terrified of what this could do to his life. He had settled into a pretty happy routine, and she was bound to throw that off.

He just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Shortly after coming in through the front door, he had been tackled an pinned. He wasn’t really aware that he was probably strong enough to get away, since the interrogation started instantly.

“What city did you start in in Royal Road?”

Obviously he responded as appropriate to the situation. He put on his best confused look. It wasn’t a deceptive look, it was really the only thing he could do.

“Did you forget how to speak English, Mortimer?”

“No… but…”

“It’s very simple, I’m going to be playing and I want to start in the same city as you did. Or whatever city you’re in now.”

“Morata.”

“Really? I would have expected my cousin to pick a better starting place. I bet you didn’t even put any research into it, did you?”

“Well, no. How did you know I play Royal Road?”

“Hey, I’m the one asking questions here. Also, I snuck into your room. I knew you weren’t asleep yet and you didn’t answer my knock. Are you still in Morata?”

“Well, pretty much.”

Then, she was gone. Obviously she had run off to her room to start playing Royal Road. Mortimer got up and brushed himself off, just in time to be tackled again.

“You look like you, right?” A nod. “Okay, go get on now and meet me in the city square.”

After this, he was dragged to his room and almost shoved into his capsule.

“... I can’t log in yet, I died recently.”

“Whaaat? Well, when can you log in again?”

“A few hours. Besides, I always do homework and eat before playing.”

“Pfft, so responsible. Well, I guess I have homework too… *sigh* Royal Road can wait a bit.”

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Mortimer worked on homework for his various classes. He still intended to log on exactly as soon as he could. He didn’t intend to spend a lot of his time, if any, helping Angela, although she hadn’t asked him to either. If she had some plans in mind that would take up a lot of his time, he planned to run and hide- and he was confident he could do that better in Royal Road than in real life.

In terms of what he planned to do in the game, Mortimer really just wanted to level up some at this point. He also needed to train his alchemy, like he had been working on. There were any number of things he could do, but for now, he would try to avoid getting distracted, so that he could increase his abilities. They were certainly a bit low for how long he had been playing.

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Quietus logged into Royal Road, and headed for the town square, after saying goodbye to Jack again. He knew that Angela would already be waiting in the square, but when he got there he had a bit of trouble finding her. He looked around for blonde hair, and finally found what he was looking for. He walked up to his cousin and placed a hand on her shoulder to get her to turn around. However, he was surprised to find a man’s face on the figure. For a moment, he was going to apologize, but then, “Really? A man?”

“What? I’d rather be the knight in shining armor than the damsel in distress. Besides, they don’t even have a damsel class in this game.”

“I’m pretty sure there are other options besides knight and damsel for people to pursue.”

“That may be true for you, but my heart speaks to traditional fantasy. I’m going to be an orc-battling, dragon slaying, princess wooing knight.”

“That’s great, but right now you’re basically a beggar.”

“And you aren’t? At least my stuff isn’t full of holes. Can’t you afford to repair your cloak?”

“This is just how it is, I think.”

“...No, it’s definitely broken. You should take it to someone to repair it. Also, have them patch up your clothes while they’re at it, or at least get some armor to put over them.”

Quietus thought for a while. Was the cloak really given to him broken? That… made a certain amount of sense, actually. He also supposed he should really pick up some armor or something, as long as it was light and didn’t slow him down. He did have some money to spend, after all.

“Oh yeah, Mortimer, be my friend!”

Angelo has sent you a friend request.

“Angelo? Also, in here I’m Quietus.”

You have accepted a friend request.

“Hey, I wanted something I would remember to respond to. At least it’s a real name.”

Quietus had nothing to say to that.

“Well, I’m gonna go do jobs and stuff Quietus. I’ll message you later if I need to tell you anything. Or I’ll just come yank you out of your pod.”

With that, they went their separate ways. Angela Angelo to do… whatever jobs she could find, and Quietus to murder small to medium sized animals train.

End Chapter 18

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