Crystal missed being able to talk to another person already. She hated that she had to kill Damien, one of the few people who had treated her well in the past six years.
Crystal pulled out one of Damien's books. No title. It detailed certain kinds of undead and how to identify them. Crystal didn’t have any convenient items or spells that could just tell her what her undead were, so this book was a boon. That being said, her undead were, unsurprisingly, zombies.
Crystal took her stuff and headed out of the forest. She didn’t necessarily know where she was going, since she never really looked at a map to get where she was, but she was looking for a town or city. Any place where she could pinpoint her location.
Crystal wasn’t sure what her next move should be. She wanted to find her family, but she had no idea where to look. Her first guess was that she needed to find out what even happened to Craw Village. She hadn’t been too successful thus far, but she figured that she might be able to find more information in the capital city. Of course, assuming random people in the capital would know about a village in the boonies was a bit foolish.
Speaking of random people, Crystal spotted a crashed carriage, with dead bodies in it. Seeing this, Crystal jumped at the opportunity. Looting was one of the few joys Crystal had at this point.
Well, she approached the carriage and looted it, but there wasn't much of anything. The only thing of worth was a status plate, and even then every city had one.
Status plates could quantify one's power and put it into words and numbers. It wasn't the most accurate thing, since even your mood can change your effective stats, but it was still a good overview of what someone was capable of. Out of curiosity, Crystal tried to use it, and read her status:
Name: Crystal Stren
Race: Human
Strength: 6
Dexterity: 8
Endurance: 10
Mind: 15
Magic: 20
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Basic Magic
Death(Necromancy): Induce Fear, Raise Dead, Soul Drain
Death(Sangromancy): None
----
Advanced Magic
Death(Necromancy): Mass Raise Dead
Death(Sangromancy): None
----
Titles
Survivor
Wow. The average number in a commoner's status was 5, and most fully trained soldiers have physical stats of 30. From what she recalled, mages need a magic stat of 50 to be recognized as royal mages. So, her guess was that 20 was above a novice but below an experienced mage. Seemed about right. Her title was obvious, but she was surprised that Mass Raise Dead was considered Advanced magic. Also, the fact that Sangromancy showed up was confusing to her. She hadn’t ever read a single Sangromancy spell. Maybe it shows the other half of the magic automatically? Necromancy and Sangromancy were the two halves of Death magic, after all.
All in all, that wasn't extremely helpful, as it didn't reveal any blessings or anything else potentially life-changing, but she could check her status whenever she wanted now. Even if statuses weren't the hard truth, that might come in handy.
Regardless of her status, she was still left without a proper place to study again. If she was going to be studying, she needed a place to study, of course. As she raised the bodies of the people who were once in the carriage, she wondered; what place could a Necromancer even dwell in that isn't some beat-up shack like Damien had? She didn't want to stay there since people knew about it, but if push came to shove. a roof was a roof.
Crystal set out once again. Eventually, she started to get hungry, and it was getting dark out. Damien had food reserves, but since they were dried foods that didn’t spoil easily, she wanted to save them for emergencies. While she was thinking that, she spotted a small village.
Crystal considered her position. If she was too flashy, she'd be hunted down and gutted like a fish by adventurers. Of course, she needed more power and more presence to search for her family, since danger lurked around every corner. She decided to go to the village, as she needed supplies anyway. Plus, she might be able to gain a good standing with the villagers.
Heading over to a hilltop near the village, Crystal observed the village with her now seven zombies. It was night at this point, so it was quiet, aside from the sounds of crickets and toads. There were no buildings nearby, and there were no grand-looking buildings within the village itself. The village did have night lights, stone roads, and nice-looking wooden houses, however. No lights were on inside the houses, so everyone was likely asleep.
It looks like a nice, quiet place, Crystal thought.
She didn't want to go about massacring people without any reason at all. As such, she wanted to try to co-exist with them or avoid it entirely. That said, she had an idea.
She fully intended to pick out the scum of the village for research and development of her skills. It was a necessary sacrifice, but she didn't want anyone to suffer loss as she did. The prison looked to be on the outskirts. That would be perfect, but first, she had to find a place to sleep.
After finding a cave that seemed to be a former bandit hideout, Crystal peered in. It was empty and disheveled. Had the bandits been chased out? The beds were ruffled and bedsheets were everywhere on the floor. There were cells, there was a dining hall, and it was a shockingly complete base for something in a cave. Crystal figured it was likely something else before bandits had infested it if they even had at all.
Crystal lay on one of the beds and retired for the night. She’d raid the prison at a later date. Likely tomorrow night. While thinking about that, she fell into a nice slumber, surrounded by distant sounds of wildlife and the faint scent of rot that she had become accustomed to.
After a much-needed rest, Crystal woke up. She didn't feel like leaving, so she read one of Damien's books. She learned that Necromancers are connected to those they raise, and if one has a sentient undead under their control, they can communicate with them over long distances. Well, that was great and all, but Crystal had no sentient undead. Hell, she doubted that she could make them anyway.
After finally getting the nerve to get out of bed, she decided to do something bold and walk into the village. She left her undead in the cave, so she was completely vulnerable.
The villagers were wary of her, due to her being a stranger, but were ultimately friendly. Crystal figured the wariness was due more to a fear of the unknown than her appearance. After all, to them, Crystal was a semi-attractive young lady, if not a little too thin.
She waited until the dead of night and approached the prison. It seemed like security was lax, so she entered through the back door that was facing the woods, as opposed to the door facing the road.
The cells themselves weren’t metal but rather made out of plant fiber. Crystal was able to use a knife she had gotten from Damien’s house to cut one of the cells open.
The prisoner inside was dead asleep, and Crystal ordered her zombies to abduct him. His screams became muffled under the rotting skin of her undead’s hands, and they dragged the man away to the cave. Said cave had cells pre-built into it, Crystal had discovered, so she had him tossed in one of them.
Going back to the cave, Crystal saw that the zombies had managed to throw the man into the cell. The man looked at her with a mixture of fear and anger.
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“So,” he said, “what now? Gonna torture me?”
Crystal cracked her knuckles.
“No,” she said. “I just need your body and your soul.”
Crystal had read in one of Damien’s books that she could concentrate the soul absorbed from Soul Drain into her hand, thus making a Soul Stone.
The man went pale, and when Crystal’s zombies pinned him to the ground, he began flailing as fiercely as he could. But, this man wasn’t a very strong person, and couldn’t handle the combined strength of seven zombies. And so, Crystal cast Soul Drain on him, focusing the soul into her hand. What came out was a lumpy, teal stone, with a faint glow. A soul stone.
Crystal gave a faint smile. This was progress, proof that she had room to grow. If she grew enough, she could save her family and ensure that she’d never have anything taken away from her again.
Crystal spent the next few months studying and experimenting. Eventually, the prison ran dry, so she took to kidnapping travelers, merchants, and villagers who wandered out too far. Eventually, she had a couple hundred undead. She wasn’t sure how she was managing to hide them from the village, but to her, she was managing it. Crystal hadn't made anything other than a mindless zombie, even after all that research. At some point, she managed to make a zombie that groaned, but that was about it. It didn't seem like the villagers or travelers knew anything about her village, either. Well, when she was getting burned out, she would just change subjects, and learn some new spells. She spent some time practicing with her knife, but even then she was still a self-taught beginner.
Crystal then used the status plate, to see how she'd grown over the months:
Name: Crystal Stren
Race: Human
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 18
Endurance: 25
Mind: 25
Magic: 40
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Skills
Martial: Warrior's Spirit
----
Basic Magic
Death(Necromancy): Induce Fear, Raise Dead, Sense Life, Soul Drain
Death(Sangromancy): Leech
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Advanced Magic
Death(Necromancy): Mass Raise Dead, Soul Pierce, Raise Advanced Dead
Death(Sangromancy): None
----
Combination Magic
Agony (Death+Dark): Cage of Agony
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Titles
Survivor
Well, her stats had certainly risen. Especially her Magic. Controlling what's now over 200 zombies must be the cause. Her new spells were fancy, but she'd barely used them. Warrior's Spirit, which helped to stave off exhaustion, was proving to be an extremely useful tool for an insomniac researcher. Crystal was surprised that she was able to learn Cage of Agony. Combination Magic, of which 36 kinds exist, was notoriously difficult to learn. Did she maybe have a high affinity for both Death and Dark?
A knock rang out at the door, interrupting her thoughts. She had added a door to the front entrance to try and prevent passersby from having a casual look inside of the cave, though it was very shoddy, since none of her undead knew how to make doors, and she didn't either. At the door were three people; a priest, a middle-aged woman, and a young, spry man. All looked to be noble.
"You honestly thought you could fool us, Necromancer?" the priest asked.
Yep. She had figured that someone would notice the kidnappings or the presence of the undead eventually. Well, while she still has a minor benefit of the doubt…
"I'm not sure what you mean?" Crystal said with an innocent tone.
They weren't buying it. They had condemned her long before coming here.
"You aren't very good at kidnapping," the priest said. "Everyone was aware of what was happening but left it alone because they were scared, and you were kidnapping criminals. But you've begun to kill the innocent, and that is something I cannot overlook."
Crystal cursed at herself. Her greed had come back to bite her.
The priest raised his hand, and suddenly, a strangling sensation went through Crystal's entire body. She was paralyzed.
"Be cleansed, evil-doer," he said.
What the hell? Was this holy magic? Crystal wasn't sure what she should do- no, what she *could* do to stop this. She called out to all of her undead, for someone, anyone, to stop what was happening.
But nobody came.
"Your servants of evil won't help you now. My Holy Magic has made sure to disable them. Everyone in the village has been made aware of your-"
Just as the priest was about to finish his sentence, a loud screech rang out, followed by screaming and the sound of flesh being ripped apart. Crystal didn't know what happened since her eyes were closed. She slowly opened them and saw a very mauled priest and a very hungry Ghoul.
Crystal had used Raise Advanced Dead exactly once, to see if it could further her power. In the end, it didn't work quite as she thought, but she did get an Undead with a bit of a mind, so it was something. Certainly more promising than anything else she's done so far.
Ghouls were special in that they needed to eat, and they enjoyed the raw flesh of Humanoids. Crystal had been feeding it the occasional unfortunate person, but apparently, she hadn't gotten around to it lately. That or Ghouls are just gluttons. Either way, the priest's bones were laid bare, and the other two were just forced to watch as the Ghoul continued to rip the priest apart, messily eating his entrails.
The other two weren't too much of a hassle to take down, as her undead were enough to brutalize them. As their cries of pain rang out, Crystal breathed a sigh of relief and decided that she needed to be more careful. That was a pure stroke of luck, and those wouldn't last very long. She needed to tread carefully since there were still people far more powerful than her out there. In the end, she decided that it’d be better to leave no possible witnesses.
If she was going to eradicate a village, then she would annihilate it. She knew all too well the pain of being left alone, and with some generous use of Sense Life, she would make damn sure that nobody felt the same pain she had. Sure, she was doing comparatively fine now, but those three years of pure agony and isolation were three years spent in what felt like hell.
Crystal’s horde of undead surrounded the village, using the woods as cover, and when night fell, they went in, making a circle that no villagers could escape. Even if they tried to hide, Sense Life would sniff them out.
Crystal was surprised that they didn't try to contact the imperial army. Maybe they were too far out? Regardless, she watched as families were brutally mauled before her. She knew what was going through their heads, especially the children, but she valued her own well-being too much. If she died, who would find her family?
She decided to raise all the villagers as Advanced Dead, and while that certainly solved the problem of her zombies being weak, it created a new issue: Ghoul food.
The village had a population of about 500. Meaning she had about 700 undead now. ~200 zombies, ~400 Ghouls, and ~100 miscellaneous undead she was going to have to check Damien's compendium to identify. The priest in particular was raised as some kind of magic-using undead. Maybe raising a holy caster as an undead causes something special? Crystal wasn't entirely sure.
Either way, she now had a supply crisis. Well, the village had food and carriages, so she had supplies and the means to carry them, but they were limited. While thinking this, she was checking the compendium for the other mystery undead.
Seems that the mystery undead were half Draugr and half Dread Knights. Draugr were capable of raising any creature they killed as a basic zombie, and Dread Knights were undead with physical prowess and the ability to instill fear into their opponents. Crystal thought that child undead might result in something different, but it was just a smaller undead in the end. The priest was raised as a Holy Lich which, to Crystal, sounded like the most unfortunate oxymoron. Regardless, she wanted to run before anyone came by. However…
"How the hell are we supposed to be covert, now that we have almost 1,000 undead?" Crystal asked herself.
She had certainly gone on quite the rampage, and now she wasn't sure why. There were other options, but Crystal had jumped at the easiest one. She had amassed a small army, essentially a battalion of undead, and yet she wasn't exhausted at all. Magic was supposed to exhaust her, right?
She looked at a map she had found in the village. It had a dungeon on it, and Crystal had an idea.
Dungeons are man-made structures that were abandoned and infested with monsters. The kingdom's decree was that anyone who cleared a dungeon had a right to live in that place, but she wasn't all too sure how well that'd work for Necromancers, who are deemed criminals of the state. Well, it was certainly worth a shot, plus Crystal wanted to test out raising monsters as undead. When she thought about it, there was a feeling deep in her chest that she had to go there. Just like the feeling six years ago. Was it a gut instinct, or something more?
"Alright," Crystal said. "I'm no adventurer, nor am I experienced in any of this, but let's see what we can do, alright?"
Obviously, nobody responded. She was standing in an army of what were essentially fleshy dolls, after all.
They headed towards the dungeon. Since Crystal had found carts in the village, she therefore rode one with undead pulling them. Since they were in a low-population area in the southwest of the country, nobody would find them.
The dungeon was, however, quite a ways away, so Crystal had plenty of time to think. She liked the idea of having her own home, but the simple matter was that her ghouls were a huge issue; furthermore, she needed people to reanimate, and she still had a mystery to solve and the power she needed to gain to solve it. It seemed like the dungeon was kind of in the middle of nowhere, much like everything in the southwest, so she wasn't all too sure how all that could even work out.
Well, she would think of something. Worst-case scenario, she gives up all her ghouls and has to wait for a chance to get more test subjects. In the best-case scenario, she learns how to summon an Undead without needing a body. That was some advanced magic and had a whole list of restrictions, but it was apparently possible.
After a couple of days of travel, which was an activity that Crystal had begun to resent before she was able to just rest in a cart, they arrived. It was made faster by the cart since they could continue to travel through the night, as Crystal could just sleep in it while her exhaustless undead pulled it.
Crystal looked upon the dungeon. It was a decent-sized fortress, with crumbling cobblestone walls around it. The pull in Crystal's chest grew stronger. She *had* to conquer the fort.
"Well," Crystal said to herself, "time to get myself a place to sleep."