As Nedoth strolled through the underground city, he didn't know what he should do. Since he mostly slept the entire time in the coffin, he didn't feel sleepy at all, so there was no reason for him to go straight back to the academy.

"Should I look around here? Maybe I'll find something useful to me." Nedoth pondered.

In a week, he would earn thirty gold coins, however, he didn't have anything he could spend those coins on. He didn't even know, if the stores here that sold magical knowledge even traded in normal coins.

It was very plausible that these stores traded knowledge for knowledge.

And holding on to these thirty gold coins was the last thing Nedoth wanted to do. He was walking around casually in a city full of thieves, holding on to so much money would be a foolish mistake.

He strolled around for thirty minutes before he found the stores he was looking for.

The first store he needed, was in a dark alley, the Umbramancy store.

Although not necessarily a school of magic that was forbidden per se, thieves and assassins most commonly utilized this school of magic. Thus, in a city full of thieves, there was bound to be a shop which specialized in Umbramancy.

As he went inside the shop, two purple laterns that were directly above the door flickered to signalize that a customer entered this shadowy store.

In this store, shadows were longer than was natural and an eerie black mist slowly slid across the floor.

Behind the counter stood a mysterious man in a black, hooded robe. His entire face was covered in a shadowy black mist that never subsided, not allowing anyone to see his real face, creating a spine-chilling atmosphere around him.

"Welcome to my store, what may I do for you?"

The masked figure whispered. It was hair-raising, for Nedoth actually heard him as if the masked man before him whispered directly into his ears.

Nedoth cleared his throat and said "What do you sell?"

"What I sell? Exactly what every magic inclined store sells, information and materials. Of course, I also sell.. different kinds of information too."

"What are these different kinds of information?"

"Oh, nothing major. But I am a specialist in finding out things that people don't want me to know, you know?"

Nedoth lips curled into a barely noticible smile. He could have stumbled onto a jackpot right here.

"Since you are so good at finding out about secrets, can you find out about a certain, maybe not even existing glyph?"

"Hmm? And what would such a glyph do?" asked the the shadowy man.

"Uncover properties of already existing glyphs."

Behind the shadowy mist that covered the man's face, his eyes narrowed. Why would anyone search for such a glyph? It was clear that this customer stole a glyph that he didn't know about, but how does anyone even steal glyphs in the first place?

Mages create glyphs and instantly carve them into their skin or stuff them inside a glyph storage to prevent such a situation from happening.

"Ah." thought the man. He remembered hearing about a particularly eccentric teacher that taught at the kingdom's magical academy. He always gave his students glyphs that they didn't know a thing about and told them to simply use them to find out what they do.

Unsuprisingly, it didn't take long for a student to incinerate themselves under his so called 'guidance'. He was executed shortly after. An amusing story for sure.

He took a good look at the customer before him. The boy wasn't even an adult. Only fifteen or sixteen by the looks of him. His lips curled into a smile.

If such an eccentric teacher was his teacher, then it was understandable why he searched for such a seemingly useless glyph.

He liked this boy. He had some caution and bravery to him. A combination of character traits not many his age had.

He was cautious for he didn't want to be killed because of a stupid teacher and brave because he came to this underground city, which was full of trouble in it's own right.

"I will search for this glyph of yours but it will cost differently, according to the time it needs to find this piece of information."

"I suppose that's fair. Though I will only be able to pay you in about a week, okay?"

"I can wait. Maybe I won't even be able to find the glyph you need in a week anyway. It is, after all, quite unusual."

"You don't need to tell me that. I am aware of it. Oh. And before I forget. I can pay with regular coins, right?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Hm? Of course. The other option that you can pay with is something you probably won't do."

"What is the other option?" asked Nedoth.

The man chuckled. "An Assassination."

"And I take it that the target isn't easy to kill?" asked Nedoth.

"That goes without saying. My rivals and other enemies are all extremely annoying to dispose of. If they weren't, all of them would be dead already."

Nedoth shrugged. "I'll pay with money like a good citizen then."

The masked man chuckled "Is supporting an illegal shop something a good citizen does?"

"I guess not" Nedoth said as he gave the shadowy man a smirk.

"I'll come back in a week." Nedoth said as he turned around and left the store.

As he left the store, he once again wondered what he should do. Would visiting another store be a good idea? A store for necromancy perhaps? He was sure that somewhere in this wonderful city of sin, a necromantic shop would be located.

After a while of pondering about this subject, he decided against it.

The reason was quite plain. He didn't want to. Going around in and out of shops was simply nothing he enjoyed doing.

Especially since he didn't even have any money right now, so it would be pretty damn useless. He already got what he was looking for the most in the Umbramancy shop anyway.

If the glyph did not even exist, then it would drive a thick stake through his plans, but he would manage.

At the moment he couldn't do anything but wait for hopefully good news to arrive within a week, so he went back to the academy.

When he was out of the underground city, and back in the abandoned house where the secret exit lay, he saw the corpse and decided to reanimate his first undead.

He wanted to know how it was to reanimate a corpse, as he has never done nor seen it before. The most important part of this little 'experiment' was the question whether he could even control the reanimated corpse or if it would attack him.

If he reanimated his first corpse within actual combat and it came out that it would attack him as well as his enemies, then it would be an absolute disaster.

He dragged the body of the dead thief into the middle of the room and positioned himself before the body.

He took a deep breath and concentrated upon the casting of the reanimation spell.

He streched out his left hand and pointed at the corpse.

When he activated the necromantic glyph, a vile green light shone from his palm and onto the dead body.

In the middle of the reanimation, a sudden pressure bombarded his mind. It was as if an entire lake suddenly plunged into his brain.

He almost lost control, nearly resulting in an embarrassing failure.

To assist his reanimation, he also streched out his other hand. He didn't knew, if it would even do anything, but he tried nonetheless, which proved to be a wise idea.

The pressure that bombarded his mind decreased by over a half.

With this, he could focus on the reanimation, allowing him to complete the reanimation.

After ten seconds of concentration, all of the green light produced by the spell, was sucked into the dead body.

First, all of it's skin began to shift to a dark green color. It spread like an infection through the entire body, starting from the torso. With the infection also came twitching. First, the torso started to twitch violantly and then, wherever the transformation went, the twitching followed.

Yet what happened next confused Nedoth, for the corpse stopped twitching shortly after.

After he waited half a minute, he knew what it meant. Failure.

"Why did it not rise up as a zombie?" Nedoth asked himself with a disappointed look on his face. It didn't make any sense. He finished the spell, did he not? He still felt the pressure from the spell, so what happened?

An idea popped into his mind and he spoke a command directed to the corpse. "Rise up".

To his suprise, it actually did what he commanded it to do. It sloppily rose to it's feet. Afterwards it just stood there.

The newly created zombie stood as still as the corpse that it was.

It's eyes were entirely white. There was no sign that the once living human even had an iris or a pupil.

Nedoth now understood even better why many beings, mortal and immortal alike frowned upon necromancy.

It was simply hair-rising just looking at the zombie. How it looked, how it silently stood there and how it obeyed the wizard's every wishes, whether pure or vile.

In Nedoth's opinion, it was one thing, if a sadistic creature wanted to hurt you while reveling in it and it was a complete different case with an emotionless undead.

It was weird how terrifying it was. People could argue when they've never been in such a situation, that because it showed, and had, no emotions, that it would be a less terrifying experience fighting against such a being, but they would be very wrong.

For hatred makes a battle much more enjoyable or more bearable in the case of a good being.

The thing is, you can hate a sadistic murderer but can you hate an emotionless undead that simply does the wishes of it's master? No, you cannot. It is quite the opposite actually. Many would feel pity for the dead body, after all, it didn't want any of this. It didn't want to hurt you. It did because it was raised by a necromancer into unlife.

And what if you knew the person in life or maybe even loved him or her? Many wouldn't even be able to hurt the zombie in the first place in such a case. And even if they could, they would find it terribly heartrending to do so, thus making it easier to kill them for the necromancer, since they would be too distraught in that moment to notice the blade from a different undead creature slash their back.

Just thinking about all the potential for suffering made available through necromancy made his fiendish heart cackle in joy. 

Although it made the experience of being near an undead creature much more enjoyable, it was still a very uncomfortable experience overall.

He hoped that he would get used to it sooner rather than later.

The feeling of discomfort was one of the last feelings that he would like to feel on a daily basis.

Staying on the matter of 'discomfort', the pressure from the reanimation still hasn't left Nedoth's mind.

Nedoth then tried a few things, mostly issuing numerous commands. From 'attack the wall' to 'carry this bucket', the zombie seemed to do anything he was commanded to do without much problems.

The only real problem in the zombie was that it was mindless and thus unable to solve problems through logical thinking and that it did absolutely nothing on it's own. It was still to be seen, if it would react to unforseen problems going on around it, but Nedoth doubted that it would do anything, if it wasn't ordered to do so.

A very simple but useful undead overall.

The last thing that he wanted to know was whether he could order it to die on it's own. He was curious what would happen then. Would it hack itself into pieces or was it clever enough to decapitate itself?

"Die." he said while pointing towards the zombie. Much to his suprise, neither of his predictions happened.

Something much more useful happened instead. The zombie simply collapsed. The rotten flesh was still the same though, it didn't revert back to normality.

As the zombie collapsed, Nedoth's pressure was instantly lifted from his mind, much to his satisfaction.

With this successful little experiment, he went back to his room within the academy while humming a melody, which was a mix between being calm and eerie.