After the girl had calmed down I started asking questions of my own. ‘Who are you exactly? I don’t think you would be hidden in this room unless you were someone important.’ She hesitated for a moment before answering. “Our parents are, or were the rulers of this country king Keldian and queen Amelia. We were hidden in this room after the undead managed to break through the castle walls. But since no one came to get us we already guessed it ended the way it did.”

I wasn’t too surprised about their identities. In fact, I had already suspected that it was something along those lines. The circumstances I found them in made it somewhat guessable. It also explained the cave-ins. They were probably caused to protect this room. Since the skeletons inside the barrier wouldn’t be able to find the room and there were no other survivors, the necromancers wouldn’t have a reason to dig through the rubble. The plan wasn’t bad. But it also meant that the people inside would have a hard time getting out without outside help.

I continued my questioning. ‘How old are you? And can you fight? I couldn’t guess their age well since they were the first humans I had seen. And I had seen using a sword, but that didn’t mean she had the strength or the skill to effectively fight with it. “I am 16 years old. My brother is 14 years old. Both of us had to learn fencing. I can also use a bit of magic, but it’s mostly to protect myself” At least they weren’t completely defenceless. But they would never be able to survive on their own.

I thought about my situation a bit. I didn’t have a clear goal. The only aspiration I had was to become stronger and find out about my origins. The former could be achieved by simply defeating undead, but I had no leads towards the latter. After reviewing the facts in my mind I decided: ‘I will help you to get out of here.’

It wasn’t much of an additional burden. I would have destroyed all undead in the castle anyway. And being around these two would be a great opportunity to learn about human behaviour. The information I had on humans was surprisingly lacking, so learning how to handle them was very important for my future. Besides, gaining the favour of members of the royal family was a nice bonus. If I managed to bring them to a safe place, they would surely show their gratitude. For these reasons I offered my help.

The girl smiled and said: “Thank you. I’m really happy to know that we aren’t alone in this situation. And I am sorry if I’m being impolite, but how can you help us? You don’t seem like you can fight against the stronger undead. I know that you managed to disarm me, but I wasn’t prepared for a fight and against the kind of undead that attacked the castle I wouldn’t survive one minute, no matter the conditions.”

She wasn’t wrong about my lacking fighting strength, so I explained to her how I could absorb the undeads crystals and that I could use the strength I gained from that to use better bodies. Since I was already talking about the topic I also mentioned my theory about being able to speak after absorbing a spectres crystal. She seemed intrigued by the idea.

Then the boy surprised me by speaking up “There might be a way to kill a spectre. On the castles central tower there was a construct that we used to fire a fire stream at the undead. The centre of the construct was a magical crystal. It was destroyed during the siege, but the shards should still be up there. You might be able to absorb them, but even if not, you can still kill a spectre with it. A shard would be weaker than a crystal and the range would be short without the construct, but with some preparation it would still work.”

I found the Idea to be worth a try. Just because it was a transparent stone, it wasn’t necessarily the kind of crystal I could absorb, but I wouldn’t lose anything by going for it. ‘Thank you. I will be back later. Is there anything you need?’ “Not right now.”, the girl replied. “But if we have to stay here for a long time we might need additional food and water. This shelter wasn’t equipped for a long stay.”

Luckily I didn’t need to eat. But was that really the case? I couldn’t be sure I didn’t require some kind of sustenance. Only time would show how the situation truly was. With these thoughts I left the room and started walking. I didn’t know the central towers exact location, but I would just have to kill a few wandering skeletons and search their memories. With this plan I started the search.

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Sorry about the late chapter. I didn't have much time on the weekend so it got delayed and is a bit shorter. To compensate, there will be a little extra later in the week. But somesthing more important: I have concluded that I am HORRIBLE at writing this story. Propperly writing the MC of this story is really hard, if I want to convey his charakter correctly. I can only hope it gets better later on. Until then I apologize for my inability.