The silence felt solid, deafening. Heart in his throat, Elias became hypervigilant of his surroundings. Breathing in a long breath, he let his thoughts run wild.
Haha, figures. Some woman probably saw me sitting inside a blood stained ritualistic circle trying my darndest to keep my eyes shut. And this woman thought it would be hilarious to mess with such a silly harmless guy.
Holding in his breath, Elias felt his lungs shrink from the chill yet he continued his reasoning.
Curiosity killed the crow or something, now I feel strangely compelled to see the face of this woman. I mean what are the odds such a sweet sounding woman took a casual stroll in this graveyard. Outskirts women could get quirky like that, right?
Breathing out, he suppressed a cough as Elias almost started believing his own delusion. Almost.
Surely it’s all a coincidence that I heard this sweet lady's voice just a few meters away from me. Which I’m guessing is roughly outside the rune circle I drew. So many coincidences tonight.
Amidst all that overthinking, Elias realized something else, he couldn't hear anything apart from his breaths anymore.
The creaking echo of the cemetery gates, the mind numbing sounds of the winds were gone.
"Quite the impolite - character, this one," a man remarked, the tone dripping with noble disdain.
“It’s considered rude not to make eye contact when engaged in conversation,” the scolding came from a woman who Elias imagined to be perpetually irked at any and everything.
"Oi, step outta that circle before I bash your bloody head in." came a growling voice, reminding Elias of a proper outskirts thug.
Even amidst the pelting comments that materialized out of thin air, Elias could not shake the feeling of being encircled by a very unwelcomed audience. Another creeping reminder of the ritual’s second rule to keep his damned eyelids shut.
The eerie comments were joined by an entourage of different voices. They grew louder, more restless, each sounding more desperate than the last as seconds flew by. From threatening to begging these ever-changing voices turned into a haunting show with Elias on the center stage. The only lucky thing being these voices no matter the cursing, begging, chiding refrained from.
His hair stood on end realizing these ‘people’ neither closed the distance between them nor did they physically attack him. Drowned in the ghostly voices and scared out of his mind. Elias tried his best to follow the instructions detailed in that cursed book in his lap.
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Tyre looked down on the shriveled corpse with glee. Truth be told he was beyond livid trying to unearth this particularly unlucky corpse. First, he had a hard time finding the grave on account of thick fog, then he found out the central city bastard had gotten himself buried in a sturdy casket. As if all that wasn’t enough, even the whole graveyard turned into a freezing hell; in the middle of sweltering summer!
But it was all worth it for Tyre, his grin carved on his face since he saw the golden glimmer near the corpse’s dried up jaw.
“Hihihi, these gold teeth'll fetch me loads o' big titties.” he rubbed his hands warming them up before reaching out. However right when he was about to touch those golden teeth he saw the desiccated corpse blink.
Tyre flinched before blinking several times. There was no doubt in his mind that this dark shriveled corpse had been dead for a while. So why was it that Tyre felt scared when being stared by those white lifeless eyes.
“Come on, ya dead git. What ya gonna do? Come back from the afterlife to kill me, huh!?” Tyre kicked the bony corpse which making a loud crunching sound. To drive off his own fear he roared with laughter whilst kicking the corpse, each kick further disfiguring the corpse's structure.
After he was through with his one sided violence, only a mangled corpse remained beneath his feet which stared at him unblinking and hollow. Coming back to his senses, Tyre slapped himself mumbling, “The hells am I doing. I-I ain’t scared, just need to take the teeth and leave.”
He reached out for teeth again, this time he held his shovel ready in the other hand to attack at any moment. And he saw the corpse blink again. Once, twice, followed by a sickening crunching of shattered bones moving.
“D-don’t. Don’t!” Tyre fell back in horror as he saw the mangled corpse rise like a marionette pulled up by some invisible strings.
“Don’t come near me!” Tyre yelled at the top of his lungs.
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In spite of his senses dimming to the point where he couldn't feel anything Elias was starting to feel the mana, a hard thing to explain. The runes had changed the air around him somehow, he felt it with each breath. A sense awakened within him with each freezing breath he took. It felt like he could see without opening his eyes. Nay, see wasn't the right word, he could perceive his surroundings with a clarity he never had before. Like an invisible muscle he suddenly regained control of.
This new rising perception of mana overpowered all his other senses, to the point he couldn't be sure if his body was breathing anymore. And with this new perception came the awareness of small illusory particles swirling in the fog that surrounded the cemetery. And even without having to see he could tell the runes he had drawn earlier were glowing bright bringing these particles towards him like a whirlpool in a dark ocean.
“Oh sweetie, you don’t have to be afraid. We are here to help.” The voice of the lady that started the whole ghostly gathering spoke again.
Elias kept mum with a smile on his face. Like hell he would believe any of that bullshit. Whilst he was sneering at the obvious set-up, a man’s scream tore through the silence of the cemetery. Not long after that scream died, a chorus of footsteps rang out all around him, growing distant.
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Elias gulped, he heard at most five different voices asking him to open his eyes before. But the amount of footsteps that echoed were far too many.
With the departure of the sinister voices, the sounds of strong winds and rustling grass returned. Bringing back a serene calmness to the previously threatening cemetery, Elias let out a long exhale, his stiff body deflating as the tension left his body. After the moment of calm he dove back in his practice.
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Gentle light fell upon Elias as the sun marked it's rise. A bit of warmth returned to his body after a long unusually cold night. Even with the sun shining down on his whole body he took a few minutes before daring to open his eyes. And to his relief he wasn't greeted by hundreds of ghosts.
"Thank the go- er, lady death." Elias muttered, better not bring the attention of every god to his attempts at necromancy.
With a minor headache and the need to find a comfy bed he stood right up. He felt tired beyond measure, as if his someone had tied kilos of weight to his limbs. Even so nothing could stop him from getting out of the cursed graveyard. Before making his swift exit, he couldn't keep himself from taking in his surroundings. And the sight made him suck in a deep nervous breath.
Last night, after he awakened he couldn't spread his senses well beyond the runes he drew. Meaning the happenings of last night's visit were a mystery he couldn't put out of his mind the whole night.
But now, he could see. The voices in the night weren't just in his mind. All around the flatstone were a myriad of footprints left in soil. He counted ten? Twenty? His back went cold when he realized just how many surrounded him last night.
Did the whole god damned cemetery woke up to greet me?
Covering the bloodied runes with dirt, he questioned. Just how close did I get to dying last night?
The evidence was pretty obvious for that question but then there was another mystery he needed to uncover. He knew for certain he heard a loud scream, deep in the night. Something that made the horrors surrounding him leave. What was all that about?
Finding the leads wasn't difficult; there were footprints going in a certain direction. Too many in fact. Elias followed them until he stumbled upon a dug up grave, an open casket and a badly disfigured corpse a few inches away.
Elias's stomach churned as he saw the disturbing scene. He felt sick, watching the aftermath of a grave digging scumbag. It was hard to imagine someone was doing this at the same time he was awakening. Thankfully the grave robber took all the attention of the cemetery's denizens.
Will I have to do things like this too? Elias wondered, already doing questionable work like meditating in a cemetery. There was no doubts, the book in his hands promised far more worse.
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Tyre woke up laying on the cold cobblestone of an alley. The sunlight hurt his eyes, rubbing his closed eyelids he sat up with question marks. Tha heck happened last night.
He remembered going to the graveyard yet that's all he could recall. Scratching his aching neck he coughed a few times before he felt his stomach churning. With no control he started puking to the side.
"Ah. Ah the hells." He muttered in between breaths, too exhausted to look elsewhere, his face hung over, facing the rejected contents of his stomach. By chance he noticed something glitter in there, something golden.
"A-Ah, aahaha." He scrambled to his knees. Picking up the golden glittering object like he found treasure. And he wasn't wrong because his fingers held a single golden tooth.
"Damnit, ye son of a bitch. You did it. Ahaha." Tyre pocketed the golden tooth and started searching for the other golden teeth in the alley. He might not remember what happened but if he had the gold, it didn't even matter.
Getting down on all fours he stalked the alley like a dog.
"Eeek, what kind of vile rat have we landed upon?"
Tyre jumped up to his feet after hearing the annoyed shriek. He watched the empty road in confusion, not finding a single soul in its vicinity.
"Indeed this one doesn't seem the brightest of the bunch or the cleanest." Another voice that sounded like some rich noble took a wrong turn from the central city.
Tyre felt his face redden from the insults. He screamed, "Where are ya whoresons, come on out!"
Tyre's shouts were only answered by silence.
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Back in the outskirts, Elias walked while observing the scene. The place was more lively than the area near the gates, people crowded the streets without a care in the world.
Several stalls were set up on either side of the street. He spotted everything from clothes to everyday tools. A little boy and girl ran bumping into everyone among the crowded street with an older man chasing behind them, apologizing to everyone. A family of beast bloods Elias concluded, noticing the furred dog ears on all of them.
His mood soured at the sight. Elias wasn't a human purity supremacist nor was he exactly a racist either. He just had a thing against dog-eared beast bloods, he convinced himself. Shaking his head at that train of thought he took his last piece of spell paper and muttered, "Veritas mea."
Name: Elias Thorn Vitality: 1.0 Strength: 1.4 Agility: 1.2 Intellect: 10.1
Elias froze in place, he eyed the bump in vitality in disbelief. 0.8 meant roughly around 80 years of life span, for it to go up to 1 in one night. As the spell paper burned away in his hands, Elias stopped walking. Bringing his book to the eye level he was at a loss of words. It worked! Holy shit, it actually worked!
Since these low tiered spell paper couldn't a gauge a person's mana. Everyone still used them knowing mana directly affected a person's vitality.
This whole thing from the second he got the black book felt like a fever dream to him. Only now did it feel like it was real, stats never lied, for them to grow out of nowhere, this was undeniably real.
Bringing the book, nay the grimoire to his forehead, he wanted to thank the old bastard. He must have gone crazy, to want to shank such a kind old man. Shame on him.
Still he couldn't believe his luck. Well if he was really lucky he would've ended up with a grimoire with another path not the black magic one messing with the dead but beggars can't be choosers.
The only way anyone could pursue becoming a magus was to apprentice under one. And he had heard his fair share of horror stories of the things those magus did to their apprentices. Well, the ones with no rich families behind them or any solid backing at least.
Immediately he remembered how he used that precious book to beat some hooligans. Cringing at the embarrassing memories he still couldn't help but smirk.
"Oi get out of the way, dumbass." Someone crashed into him from behind since he had stopped in the middle of the road. Elias apologized with a manic grin making the other guy yelp in fright.
Fuck yeah! I'm going to become a necromancer. What's next, grave digging? Bring it on I'll dig every grave in sight! Hell I will even bury everyone in sight!
He practically skipped down the road like the children he saw earlier, chuckling every few steps. The passerby's gave him wide berth as he walked talking to himself.
After an hour of walking he had reached the gates dividing the central city and the outskirts. He watched the abandoned building he used to escape the central city's gang earlier.
He had shook down a small gang, found a grimoire, almost met some honest to gods, ghosts. Only a few days ago if someone told Elias of his future escapades, he would tell them to lay off the drugs.
All that within a day's work. Elias entered the city plotting his revenge.
Lost in his own worries, Elias had no idea a pair of hazel eyes were following his every move. But even the owner of those eyes had their brows knit at the abrupt antics earlier.