Necromancer

A Royal Road Fan Fiction

By: Halosty

Chapter 21

The party of adventurers, and also Quietus, arrived in Twinsburg Heights after a few short hours of travel. Only Quietus was surprised that it was actually two separate cities separated by a small valley. The party talked to each other about finding a magician for their party, and possibly a rogue. Then they were going to take on the dungeon known as the Moaning Mines.

Quietus decided to explore the northern city first, while seeking out the instructor for his class quest. It had fairly typical establishments: a smithery, general stores, a bar, an assassin’s guild, and a bakery. Quietus paused for a second to determine which of those didn’t fit. He almost thought it was the bakery, but then he realized that the assassin’s guild didn’t have their typical sign out front, but just the symbol he had seen above back door of the guild in Morata. This was above the door on a nondescript building.

He decided he would visit this guild, and perhaps see if they had any work for him. Before he could enter the guild, someone spoke to him.

“Hey, are you a rogue? Our group could use one for the Moaning Mines.” The neutral toned voice sounded somewhat familiar. Quietus turned and looked to see a girl with short hair. No wait, it was… Well, it was Maratis actually. Quietus used his expert conversational skills to excuse himself.

“Err, sorry… I’m doing… class quests? Yeah… Then I have some other stuff to do. Really busy. Yep.”

“Oh, well I’m Maratis. If you change your mind, send me a message.” Maratis walked away, and once there was some distance between them, muttered, “Weirdo.”

Quietus wouldn’t have heard him without the listen skill. He took no offense though. Not everyone would prioritize class quests over groups. Quietus went back to what he was originally going to do, and stepped into the door. Upon entering the guild, he was going to introduce himself. However, the man in black by the door had other ideas.

“Oh, it’s you. We heard you were coming. Frank will speak to you.” The man gestured towards a door further to the back.

Quietus was slightly confused. He hadn’t actually told the guild he was going to Twinsburg heights, and he hadn’t really planned to visit the guild there he didn’t know about. He didn’t spend too long dwelling on it, and went to see Frank, who was somehow also in this city.

Except this person wasn’t Frank. He wasn’t really not Frank, but he wasn’t the same Frank from Morata. This man was a bit more heavyset, and had a slightly curly moustache that almost made up for his balding head.

“Greetings,” the man said with a slight smile, “You can call me Frank. We don’t have any jobs for you here, at the moment, but we do have something else you might be interested in.”

These people were very to the point. However, since it was their job to be frank with him, he couldn’t really imagine it being any other way.

“Okay, what’s this other thing?”

“Well, since you aren’t tainted by the training from one of those silly training centers, you are capable of learning the proper methods for our profession. Sure, brute force, and even speed, have their place, but for us they are not enough, and not in the right proportions. Thus, we have our own training halls, although they are quite different. Be aware that there is only one chance to complete this training. So, are you ready now?”

Quietus couldn’t think of any reason not to try right away. “Yes.”

“Good, you’ve passed the first part. As for the second part, my friend over there will show you to a door. There will be another door somewhere inside. Your goal is to go through that door without killing anyone or anything inside.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, although we don’t plan for it to be easy. It is for training, after all.”

Quietus saw no reason to not turn around and follow the other man in black. He wondered if the black color was more useful inside somehow, but he didn’t really know. Maybe they were just impractical or stereotypical.

He followed the man down some stairs to a door, which he stepped through into blackness. It was certainly surprising to him, but not really particularly troubling. He quickly activated his darkvision spell. He appeared to be in a fairly typical, boring hallway. The only real distinguishing features of the hallway were beams that held up the ceiling.

(Imagine the beams are like /-, with the middle part being up around 10 feet and… more to the top of the tilty beams)

This didn’t look particularly dangerous, especially with his bonus from intermediate Dark Magic Mastery. However, it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. He slowly started to walk forward.

A few steps in, he had three darts in his right side. They did negligible damage, but the poison on them wasn’t particularly pleasant. He stopped and drank an antidote. Fortunately, the traps seemed to be activated by movement, probably pressure plates.

For his next steps, he prepared to dodge the darts. He managed to get hit by no darts at all. However, the spikes that came up from the floor hurt quite a bit, and required him to drink a potion to avoid dying.

Quietus stopped moving. He was going to die if he took another step forward, of that he had no doubt. If he took a step back, he might or might not die. Sideways would probably be about the same. Instead, he crouched down, and looked at the floor more carefully.

*ding*

You have learned a new skill!

Search

-Able to find traps, and how to avoid them or disarm them

Quietus wished he’d managed to get the skill back in Seeker’s Den, where he learned The Power to Accept Death. On the other hand, it might have led him to failure.

Whether it would have helped before or not, he now had it, and he would use it. He started disarming all the traps nearby. Some of them he accidentally set off, but the damage was relatively minor. The whole hallways appeared to be glowing blue with traps, except the walls and what he had disarmed.

Then he ran out of mana. He was in no hurry to get himself killed, so he just sat down where he was, on places where he had already disarmed the traps, of course. He would be fine while his mana regenerated. Of the few things he was afraid of, the dark was not one of them.

He was, however, afraid of whatever was making that nice creaking noise somewhere down the hallway. He only had enough mana for a few seconds of darkvision. He quickly activated it, and saw an armored figure walking out of a branch in the hallways.

There was no way he could fight it without seeing it. Even worse, if he defeated it, he would still lose. He wasn’t allowed to kill anything in here. Instead, he panicked. Since he couldn’t run either way down the hallways, he just went to the side, into a support beam. Then, he realized he could go up the support beam.

Finally, he was hanging on a horizontal beam, his arms and legs wrapped around it, completely in the dark. Somehow, his cloak had wrapped itself around his legs, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t hanging down and giving him away too much.

He heard the creaking of the armored figure walking closer, and closer, and closer. Somehow, it wasn’t setting off the traps. That was rather unfair. Of course, it was still coming towards him. Now it was only a few feet away. Then, it stopped.

Quietus used his stealth skill for all he was worth as he clung to the beam. It was amazing how much stamina it took. It was going to be very disappointing when he was stabbed.

Then, the creaking started again, and the figure walked out of hearing range, back the other way.

At this point, Quietus was going to climb down, but he appeared to be completely out of stamina. Then he was down on the floor. Convenient? At least he didn’t land on his head this time. In fact, he barely even took any damage at all!

*ding*

Because of a fall, your health has been reduced by 40%

Well, barely any damage at all related to dead.

Level up: Climb

Beginner level 4

Reduces the stamina cost of climbing, makes climbing slightly easier, and slightly reduces the amount of falling damage you take.

Apparently, climb could also gain experience from failing and falling on your back. This was nice to know. Not so nice to feel, however.

Quietus went back to what he was doing before. He found and disarmed all the traps, very very slowly. Then, when he was out of mana, he listened. It appeared that being quiet and listening on purpose made the skill more effective. Interestingly enough, the armored things always appeared when he couldn't see. He doubted it was a coincidence.

Then, he always climbed. Hanging down, he would hope they didn’t see him, and his arms would tire. Somehow, his cloak always hung over the beam. Then, he repeated this process. At any crossroads, he would pick randomly which direction to go.

--------------------------

Outside the training area, some NPCs were getting bored.

“He’s dead now, right? We can just stop waiting.”

“You know he’s not dead. We’d both know.”

“Okay, then he should be out of that door. Nobody takes this long.”

“Obviously not.”

--------------------------

Quietus looked at a nice big spike pit. It doubtless had traps on the other side. It was blocking his path, and this was the way he had decided to go. What would he do about it?

He considered jumping across and hoping that the traps were mild on the edge. If he were the one who built the pit, they would not be. They would be the worst traps. Like the ones on this side of the pit. If triggered, they would actually tilt the floor toward the pit.

The pit wasn’t too far to jump over. In fact, he could probably jump far enough to be several sets of traps in when he fell on his face and triggered all of them. So he jumped.

Not straight in, of course. That would be stupid. Instead, he jumped for one of the beams that tilted upwards, over on the side. He caught on to it. Fortunately, that still fell under the climb skill.

After that, it was a simple matter to disarm the traps. In this case, simple meant imminent peril. He had to hang upside down, holding on with his legs, to reach the traps on the side. It appeared to use much more stamina than normal climbing. Being upside down didn’t help his manual dexterity much, either, with the blood rushing to his head. Once or twice, he almost pressed down on the pressure plate, just by extending his arms too far. Then… *Click*

Ahh, the wonderful sound of a trap being disarmed. Quietus pulled himself back upright, then almost passed out from the sudden reversal of blood flow. He clung to the beam tightly. Then, he finally lowered himself onto the safe place he had made.

Quietus was glad that, in the real world, it was a Friday. This was taking quite a bit of time.

--------------------------

“Maybe the detectors are broken. He’s just been dead this whole time and we’ve been waiting for nothing.”

“Are they broken? You check them.”

“*Sigh*, No, they’re working fine. Wanna take shifts? I don’t feel like waiting here this long.”

“Shifts it is. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“...Great.”

End Chapter 21

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