The demon ran up to his tongue. It was 2-d on his skin, usually sitting on his chest, smiling widely and showing its teeth as its eyes seemingly stared at onlookers right in the eyes. It moved at a shockingly quick speed, seeming only to be a red flash that disappeared into Alexander’s mouth. The ink melded into Alexander’s tongue, making it slightly redder.

“Killing a human,” it said, “and not only that but being the first to do it in your entire tower batch. That’s an accomplishment! Maybe you’re not worthless after all.”

Kill.

The word echoed in Alexander’s head. It wouldn’t stick no matter how many times he heard it. Whatever part of his brain responsible for comprehension wouldn’t accept it. But he knew it was the right word. There was no doubt what the system message had shown him. He’d killed another human being.

He was a killer.

“Ohh get over yourself, will ya?”

The other people in the tower would probably sneer and find the title disgusting. Who would associate with somebody whot’s done that? He’d have to go through completely alone. That had been the plan, but he didn’t believe it would turn out that way. Not until now.

“Morals,” the demon spat. “You killed two goblins without a problem, but now it’s a big deal.”

They were expected to kill goblins, not getting to survive otherwise. Humans were another thing, and being the first to kill another human was completely different. Even if he got the chance to tell them what happened, something he doubted would happen, they probably wouldn’t believe him.

“Ehh, who needs others when you’ve got yourself, and me of course.”

I’m going to be alone.

“Stop being so melodramatic. Who cares?”

I don’t want the entire tower to be against me.

“That’s already happening. Understand something, kid, all humans are inferior creatures. So don’t bother with them unless you’re planning to kill them, and that title seems to be perfect for that.”

Alexander’s head slumped down as he stared at the boy’s face that grew more pale by the second. This tower was changing him in a way he didn’t like. This was not how life was supposed to be, forced to fight for survival.

The demon didn’t say anything more before disappearing. The goal ahead of him was clear. Clearing this floor wasn’t enough. He needed to become as strong as he possibly could within a short period of time. Then, he could protect himself from the certain attacks that would come from other unit.

That meant taking risks. That meant being ruthlessly efficient.

His attention was brought back to the human corpse in front of him. It turned paler by the second. If he was going to be efficient and gain as much as much strength as possible he couldn’t simply let a corpse like this go to waste, but then, he couldn’t accept simply raising a human and using his body as a tool.

He couldn’t bear seeing that lifeless husk of a face staring emptily at him. It tugged at him, reminded him of what he had done here. And then there were the ideas he had to confront when looking at those eyes. He was taking somebody, another person, and using them exactly like a tool. That face would remind him of it. It would remind him that behind the [Raise Undead] spell, there was a human.

He couldn’t face it. If he was to use this person, the head would need to go, and that could be arranged. He ordered the goblin to pick up one of the pickaxes nearby and get to hacking. He turned around, not wanting to see the carnage, but the sounds made him gag repeatedly. If he hadn’t thrown up what he’d eaten before, he’d have done it now.

The job was not done well. Pickaxes were not a clean method of decapitation but they did the job. Alexander ordered his skeleton to grab the head and gracefully place it away from the corpse. He made sure to close the eyes too.

Then there were the boots the man wore. All the other clothes looked plain and regular, but not the boots. They were shiny and golden and looked like holy class items. If the spell worked whilst he still wore those boots, he’d lose his feet and a good chunk of his legs. That wouldn’t do Alexander any good.

He ordered his goblin to take off the boots. Alexander felt bad for the little creature as it grabbed onto the boots and yellow flames appeared. They burned its hands, but it kept pulling and jerking until the boots fell off. By the time the second boot was off, the goblin barely had hands.

Alexander found it quite gnarly and wondered if he could use it as a shock tactic. It couldn’t scream, or speak for that matter, but the mere sight of it had to frighten other goblins. Either way he turned to the corpse he had prepared.

“Thank you.”

He cast, [Raise Undead]

[Raise Undead] has leveled up.

Spell has been strengthened.

Alexander found it strange to see a headless corpse rise. So far he had a headless corpse with a hole in the gut, a goblin with a hole in the head and no hands, and a skeleton. His undead army was coming along nicely.

This one undead cost more than both the goblin and the skeleton together and then some, although Alexander could handle it due to the demon within him. So far that deal had paid dividends.

He hated himself for thinking of all the different ways he could use it in combat, but it seemed he couldn’t stop himself. It took more of his mana regeneration to upkeep this unit, but any strike it made would carry much more weight behind it. Also, this one, apart from the others, could probably take a beating.

The headless corpse stood up, reaching almost two meters even without the head. Three units. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m still one hit from being dead. To him, assassins would be as dangerous as long range spell casters.

Ideally he’d put the headless corpse on offence, but if fights got dicey he’d probably need it on defence. For the time being if it was a brawl, he’d keep the large corpse close to him. Its ability to block for him with its body would be invaluable, but if he was on the ambush, like he preferred to be, he’d put all of his units on the offence and try to finish the fight quickly.

“I need to name you guys, don’t I?” Alexander thought out loud. He looked towards his skeleton. “You’ll be Skeleton. Probably going to die soon anyway. I guess death would mean shattering.”

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The skeleton stared lifelessly. He turned to look at the goblin.

“You’ll be, Goblin, and in the event of another goblin joining our forces, you’ll be Goblin 1.”

His mind preferred logical names.

“And you big guy. You’ll be Head-less. Yeah. Headless.”

He made Headless pickup two pickaxes from the corpses surrounding them. It would allow him to strike twice, but if he needed to put all of his weight onto one pickaxe he could drop the other one. In other words it would give Alexander more options and that was always good.

Goblin couldn’t carry pickaxes anymore as his hands were ruined. Skeleton carried one, as it had done. With these three units, Alexanders plan would be to kill as many tiny groups of goblins as possible and grow in strength, but before he did this he checked the map.

Morticous told him that it would be smart to originally try to garner some power, but after he had done that, he should try to take as many goblin corpses/pieces to Morticous. The map would reveal any safe spaces, entrances to Morticous’s crypt, as yellow dots, but there were none in the vicinity, so it would be pointless to carry them.

Also, he wasn’t using his mana bolt spell to its full potential. It could blind an enemy for a moment which would be all Alexander needed to kill them. Compared to ambushing them however, it didn’t really add up.

In the large space he was standing on, there were many different tunnels. He chose the one that lead towards a yellow dot in the distance. He was careful not to get ambushed, making his goblin walk three meters ahead, using him as a trap detector.

He made sure to look and really inspect everything he saw. Not wanting to be surprised by anything, he made sure to keep alert. He didn’t want to fall into that casual state, where he was simply wandering around a tunnel. That could lead to a bad spot.

He also wondered how far the other’s were progressing. The mines had to be pretty huge because he’d only met one other unit. Before he’d died he’d killed eight goblins on his own. Even though Alexander felt that he was getting ahead, he was most likely not.

You have gained the skill [Inspect]

He had a sneaking suspicion there would be a skill like that after he read his the description for his title Eager for Murder. If anybody used inspect on him it would show up, but this was also a great skill for him. He assumed it would give more knowledge at the higher levels which would let him coordinate his units more.

As he walked through the tunnel he inspected everything. Although it barely gave any information whatsoever. The wall simply said wall. The pebbles simply said pebble. Perhaps it would be more useful when inspecting magical objects he didn’t have any knowledge of.

As he passed by a tunnel, he spotted a goblin running away from a human. The goblin ran straight towards him. Quickly he built up a formation with his units. It was V shaped, letting Skeleton and Headless stand in front whilst Goblin stood behind. This would make it especially difficult for the goblin to run past him.

About ten meters away, the goblin stopped and desperately looked for any escape. There was none. It was either it would run towards Alexander and his dead troops, or it would turn back and run past the human chasing it.

Now that the human got closer, and Alexander got a better look of him, he noticed that he didn’t have an arm. His right arm had been amputated, and in his left hand he held a single dagger. Whilst the goblin looked towards Alexander, the boy also did so, but when it looked back towards him, he changed his expression into a murderous one, licking his lips with steel, cold eyes.

The goblin made what seemed like the reasonable decision and rushed towards Alexander’s army. A pickaxe promptly found itself wedged between its eyes.

You have killed one common mining goblin.

10 experience gained.

His attention now changed to the boy, who stood still and it seemed analyzed Alexander. Alexander didn’t drop his formation, keeping them standing alert. He could not afford to let his guard down.

“Hey,” Alexander said. “I notice you don’t have any sort of cloak.”

Morticous told him units from the power’s would have tiny cloaks like scarfs around their neck signifying what power they belonged to. There were three colors, white, gray and black. He was told to avoid white.

“I notice you also don’t, Alexander. I shouldn’t be surprised a necromancer would kill so quickly,” the boy said and put away his dagger. If a fight breaks out I’ll run away so bluffing security is the best thing I could do. Also, this was the bastard that took away that title from me. It seems useful.

Alexander cast inspect himself, eager to see what he’d find.

Kiyu

That wasn’t what he expected. “So I see you also have inspect Kiyu.”

Kiyu’s comment had managed to irk Alexander but that was not something he could afford to show. For all he knew this could be an enemy standing in front of him, and he needed to be on guard.

“Ahh, so you know of it. Thought I could manage to frighten you with that,” Kiyu said. He showed his hand, now that his plan had failed, acknowledging it would be a way to move past it. I need to keep my guard up around him.

“So,” Kiyu continued, “were you also dropped for being crippled?”

“I guess so.”

“Birds of the same flock should stick together don’t you think?”

“You want to stick together with a murderer?” Alexander asked.

That’s a good question. Kiyu swallowed. “With our situation I don’t blame you.”

Alexander didn’t know if he would have said the same thing in Kiyu’s position. Although he did feel a sense of comradery to Kiyu due to his amputated arm, but he couldn’t do charity. Not in this situation.

“Listen,” Alexander said. “What’s your class?”

Kiyu picked up immediately on what happened. Alexander wasn’t necessarily interested in teaming up with him. He needed to give information in order to keep the conversation going.

“I’m a mind mage.”

Alexander had not expected that. Truthfully, a mind mage would be a great addition to his team. If he could have somebody disrupting the enemies for him, it would make it easier for his own units to kill them, which meant they could take bigger enemies together. Although something in his gut didn’t quite fit in.

Right! During the selection, the different trainers tried to pick people with attributes that would fit the class. That berserker inspected Alexander due to his rage, and Morticous only grew interested when he realized that Alexander had a good sense for chess.

“Why did your trainer pick you?” Alexander asked.

“She said I had a natural affinity for mind magic..” Kiyu didn’t want to appear too defensive here as he wanted to establish some sort of trust between then. Hopefully he buys that lie. It was my psychopathy that attracted her. Apparently she could smell it. “Why did your trainer pick you?”

“He said I was good at strategy,” Alexander said.

“We could make a pretty good team you and me,” Kiyu threw out the statement. It was really a question, would you be interested in forming a team with me. Now he waited for Alexander to answer it.

“How do I know you won’t attack me?” Alexander said, still skeptical.

“There’s much more to be earned if we work together rather than against each other,” Kiyu said. And then, when I’ve gotten what I want, I can dispose of you. Like taking candy from a child.

Alexander hoped this relationship would grow into a friendship. It would be nice to have somebody sane in this place to talk to, but there was also another part that wondered. It wondered if there was some sort of spell in necromancy that let him resurrect somebody with their abilities.

He chased those thoughts away

Friends. Friends were good.