Chapter LX (60)- The Necromancer Princess

No loot was worth losing his life over. As the gnome skeletons lunged up at him, Kizu turned and jumped to the side. But as he cast the spell, a bony hand wrapped around his ankle, knocking him off balance and tripping him. As he fell, the spell’s trajectory went wild.

He splashed into the water. Bursting to the surface, he gasped air and coughed up water. He sought out the surface, trying to get his bearings, only to realize the ship’s wooden wall was in the way of his view. As he turned, he realized that he wasn’t just looking at the hull, but in the hull.

On the brightside, at least he didn’t need to worry about that magical creature lurking in the depths of the cove while inside the ship. Unfortunately, if he wanted to get off the ship, he needed to be able to see the shore to make the jump. Otherwise, he risked being magical fish food.

Something heavy smacked him in the back of the head, causing him to see black spots for a second.

“Ow.” He looked up and saw, not a skeleton or a trap, but a girl his age wearing a scrappy academy uniform and wielding a massive leather tome over her head. She crouched on a large wooden crate that stuck out of the water.

“Get talking,” she demanded.

“What?” Kizu said, rubbing the back of his head while treading water. He gave her a glare. That had hurt.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m an academy student. And I am currently treading water.”

“I know that. What’s your name? Who sent you?”

“Kaga Kizu. I took a job from the quest board in town to locate a student lost in Hayashi Forest.”

“Oh.” The fight left her and she looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, don’t startle me like that.”

“Can I get a name?” Kizu asked. It seemed only fair.

She hesitated. “It’s Aoi.”

Kizu blinked. She looked vaguely familiar, but it still took him a moment to remember where he had heard the name before. Then it clicked, she was Basil’s ex. He had transformed into her briefly during their infiltration in the girls’ dorms. But this Aoi looked far more haggard than the one Basil had imitated. Her bangs were disheveled, and her two braids were loose and only half contained.

“Aoi?” Kizu asked. “Like the princess?”

The girl winced. “Barely. But anyway, how did you get down here, Kaga Kizu? Did you bring back-up?”

“I jumped.”

She smiled. “Perfect! That’s exactly the kind of skill I needed. Let’s go back to the academy then.”

“I’ve only learned how to do short range jumps so far. A bit over a hundred meters if I can see the location.”

“Oh,” her face fell. “Well, you can at least get us off the boat, right?”

“Only if you don’t mind facing off against the giant monster lurking in the water under us. Or I could send us straight up, onto the deck where half a dozen skeletons just tried to cleave me open. But I can’t one-hundred percent guarantee we won’t get stuck in the cavern ceiling.”

“You’re not all that helpful,” she said flatly.

Kizu sighed, but he couldn’t argue with the obvious. Still, she didn’t need to be so blunt about it. Instead of responding, he handed her her scrying orb. It took her a moment of fumbling around in the dark before she seemed to realize what it was.

“You found Kyuu!” She sounded delighted as she held up the orb and activated it, illuminating the damp and dreary area. “It’s so refreshing to be able to see again! First thing I do when I get back to the academy is learn a light spell. Maintaining a flame spell is such a pain.”

“How did you end up here?” Kizu asked. “You’re in a hidden cave on a sunken ship. This isn’t exactly where I would expect to find a princess.”

She pursed her lips. He noticed her grip tighten around the tome tucked under her arm.

“It certainly isn’t a holiday spot,” she admitted. But she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she looked around the hull. Eventually, her eyes stopped on the submerged door behind Kizu. “I couldn’t chance trying to swim out without a light before. But with Kyuu here now, I’m not dependent on fire spells.”

She slid off the crate and into the water next to Kizu. Kizu couldn’t help but notice she smelled like mildew but refrained from commenting on it.

“What’s on the other side of the door?” Kizu asked.

“Another storage room. But there’s a hole in the ceiling that leads up to the captain’s chambers.”

“Any skeletons in those rooms?”

“Only one.”

“I’m F ranked in fighting,” Kizu told her.

She closed her eyes and let out a breath. “It’s fine. I think I can handle the skeleton. I just need a few seconds.”

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Kizu shrugged. He supposed if things went south, he could jump back into this room. They both plunged down under the water. Kizu let her take the lead, with her scrying orb lighting the way.

As they swam through the next room, Kizu peeled back a board on one of the many crates, hoping for loot he might be able to sell. Instead, he only found old spare sails that looked to be in even worse shape than the tattered ones hanging from the broken mast above. The rest of the room looked to be filled with various other spoiled supplies as well.

Pushing off the ground, Kizu followed Aoi through the hole in the ceiling. But halfway through his foot got caught on an old fishing line. He tried to kick it off, but it remained, snagging him in place.

Panicking, Kizu looked up towards where Aoi floated. But she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she had created a pocket of air around her head with elemental magic and was reading out loud from her tome.

Kizu looked over his shoulder and realized why she was so focused on reading. A gnome skeleton with gold teeth grinned down at him. It raised its cutlass and swiped at him. It moved at a speed unhindered by the water surrounding it. Kizu managed to raise his hands and blast it with a spell, freezing the water around the undead’s forearm and blade. Unfortunately, the block of ice still slammed him in the face, causing him to cry out and lose all his remaining air in a few bubbles. But it was better than the alternative.

The skeleton tilted its head, looking perplexed by the fact he still lived. Then, as if flexing invisible biceps, the ice shattered and floated up to the ceiling in chunks.

Trapped and out of air, Kizu prepared to jump back to the cargo room. But he looked over and saw Aoi frantically muttering a ritual, the words muted by the water. He couldn’t simply leave her behind. He needed to buy a few more moments.

This time, when the skeleton lunged at him. He raised his forearms up to block the blow and tried something new. He froze the water again, but instead of focusing it on the undead, he coated his own arms in the thick ice, creating a shield. It cracked as the blade impacted, but it held. Kizu pushed against the skeleton, knocking it backwards a bit.

He finally managed to slip his foot out of the fishing net and squeezed into the room. Lungs burning and arms tingling in pain, he pushed off the dresser beside him and slammed himself into the undead. This time, the block of ice’s already existing crack spiderwebbed out and shattered. Despite losing his shield, the action won him precious moments to reposition himself.

Just as the skeleton lunged toward him a third time, mid-swing it suddenly collapsed.

Its bones slowly sank to the floor in a heap. The golden smile landed face up, still grinning up at him.

Kizu looked over his shoulder at Aoi. With her book in one hand, she pointed down at the pile of bones with the other. She waved her arm and suddenly a bubble of air appeared around Kizu’s head. He gasped in relief. Then immediately started coughing up water.

“Thanks for the help,” Aoi said, her words barely audible through the water.

“Necromancy,” Kizu muttered, his chest heaving. “I should have realized.”

“What?” Aoi asked, not able to hear him.

“You’re a necromancer,” he said, louder.

She winced. “A soul mage.”

Kizu shrugged, his lungs finally recovering. “That’s just another name for a necromancer. Necromancy manipulates the residue of souls left behind on the corpses of creatures.”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know that? Are you-”

“I’m not a practitioner,” he said, cutting her off. “I just know the theory. The crone who raised me had a necromancer associate who used to visit once or twice every year.”

He had actually learned most of what he knew from the zombified daughter of the necromancer. The man brought her with him everywhere. Kizu had learned not to be picky about friends with such a limited supply of kids his age. And she had been in a similar position.

The princess glanced at his green hair. “A crone? Like, as in a witch?”

Privately, Kizu was surprised Aoi didn’t already know about his background. The entire school seemed obsessed with the rumors after his fight. Either her not knowing about him marked a virtue in a lack of interest in gossip, or a vice in her not caring about others enough to remember. But Kizu was grateful regardless. The fewer people talking about him, the better.

“Yes,” Kizu said simply. “So, I don’t care much about judging others for abusing soul magic. The way I understand it, necromancy just uses natural materials left behind. As long as you aren’t killing the people first, I don’t care.”

She stared at him for a minute, speechless. Then she smiled.

“If you’re so open minded about it, why don’t you join me in studying it? I’ll share the book.”

Kizu shrugged. “Honestly, it doesn’t really interest me. I’ve got a thousand other things I need to be studying right now. Plus, to be honest, I think summoning sounds way more useful. I don’t see how necromancy gets me any closer to my current goals.”

“Which are?”

“Finding my sister.” Before she could ask for more information Kizu lifted a hand. “We’re getting off-topic. As much as I love shouting at you while floating in a sunken decrepit boat with only an artificial bubble of air keeping me alive, let’s get to the point. Tell me, what exactly happened here?”

She gestured for him to come closer, to better hear her while she explained.

She launched into a story about how she had met a woman necromancer who had been imprisoned in the dungeons after sneaking into the royal catacombs. Before being put to death by her uncle, the necromancer had taught her the very basics of necromancy. From there, Kizu recalled some of the details from back when he had skimmed her journal, but there were other pieces that she apparently didn’t ever dare put down on the page. Her story filled in gaps. Mainly, it explained why she lived in the dorms, despite coming from one of the richest families in the Hon Empire. It hadn’t been an act of independence, but actually the opposite. After discovering her private studies, her family wanted to limit her freedom by confining her to the academy. They didn’t trust hired staff to watch over Aoi with enough attentiveness, but knew the academy held a near zero tolerance stance for soul magic, only giving special exceptions for familiars.

Kizu listened to this all attentively, only asking for clarification a few times when words got garbled by the water.

“Last week, Professor Kateshi granted me access to the Living Library for a midterm project. There, I found an old scroll on a hidden shelf which told me about this ship. The necromancer is said to have descended into the World Dungeon. So, I thought it would be simple to just walk in, grab anything he left behind, and leave. And it was simple, until I picked up the book.”

That made sense. Hypothetically, undead could stay active eternally. But in practice, they needed maintenance. His childhood friend had to have her father update pieces of her constantly. But if put into a stasis, the necromancer could probably keep the bones preserved for far longer. He explained his theory to her, and her eyes lit up.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking too! Regardless, the skeleton here cut off my escape and I swam deeper into the ship, hoping to find another way out before my air bubble ran out.”

“You’re lucky none of the other skeletons were stored in the rooms below,” Kizu said. “But, speaking of running out of air….”

She took the hint.

“Now that I have this.” She gestured at her book. “We should be able to get out just fine. All I need is for you to buy me a tiny bit of time first.” She gave him what she likely thought was her most winning smile.

Kizu frowned. He swam over to the pile of bones of the golden toothed skeleton and picked up the cutlass. Unlike the weapons held by the skeletons he had seen above, this one didn’t have spec of rust on it. A quick glance with his spell sense showed it to be lightly enchanted. Nothing exceptional, as far as he could tell, just to keep it sharp and free of decay. He didn’t know anything about using a sword, but he figured he’d rather approach the fight armed than unarmed.

He took one more deep breath before pushing the door open.