It was late at night and I had decided to set up camp in a clearing off the main road. I still hadn't removed my hood or the cloth covering my face since the slaves might be nearby and see my face. That would be a mess. Imagine me being in public and one of the slaves sees me and screamed 'OH NO ITS THE NECROMANCER' and ran away. "Yeah that's not something I want to happen. But these things are rather useful. So much easier than having someone take watch or setting up a zillion traps near camp."

I had finished setting up camp for the night using the equipment that came from the starter kit I got from first entering this world. It came with these handy dandy monster repellant crystals. They just needed mana to be charged into them to work which was totally fine for me. I set up one but decided to set up a few basic traps in case some unwelcome human came by and tried to get lucky with my stuff.

With that done I went back to my tent and went to sleep. Or tried to at least. There were a lot of monsters that made a lot of noise even at night. The occasional growl or roar from a distant nocturnal monster kept me awake. I kept tossing and turning while occasionally catching a few winks of sleep but had a rather restless night. I kept tossing around like this until morning. The sun was rising up and I was woken up by more noise. I got up grumpily and pulled my sword from my inventory and tried to be alert but I was very grumpy and stomped out of my tent. There was nothing immediately nearby but I saw the monster repellant crystal was running out of juice. "Maybe I didn't put enough mana into it? Gotta remember to put more mana in next time."

I surveyed the area and saw something struggling in a nearby tree, dangling around. I cautiously walked over and saw that it was a large rat monster with red eyes. It had been caught in my snare trap and was knawing its way out of the rope that had caught it. "God damnit you damn rat. You woke me up when I had gotten some sleep. I'm so going to gut you alive."

I was about to act on my threat but remembered something I had wanted to test out. My face lit up with the memory and I pulled out the Nercon Heart eagerly from my inventory and activated it. The Nercon started activating and finally to my joy started pulling a very small amount of mana into it along with a small sliver of neon red fog that was health. The rat monster died very quickly and fell limp in the trap, hanging upside down. I was very excited until I checked how much I gained from that monster and was dismayed at the results.

"Only 4 mana and 15 health?! Why so little?! At this rate I'll have to farm forever to get a useful amount. Hold on, I still need to test if different monsters give different amounts. I mean they probably do given that the 2 humans I used this on gave me far more than this rat. Guess it's time to hunt some monsters as I head back to Namph."

With that I packed up my stuff and head out back towards Namph, fighting any monster I came across and using the Nercon on them. I found out that yes stronger monsters gave more mana and health to me and I did gain experience by using the Nercon to kill monsters, but it was far less than normally killing them. I only got around 10% of the experience that I would normally gain which was a bummer as I really wanted to use this as an easy cheat to autofarm exp for me. With my hopes of being lazy dashed I vented my anger on the monsters, killing any that I came across. There were still a lot of ogres and goblins but they were dwindling in numbers back to the normal levels. It would take a bit of time before the numbers were controlled but that just meant more farming for me. I happily slaughtered them all as I went about my day, gaining around 1900 mana and 2150 health. It seemed that lower level monsters gave less mana so I would have to do some more experiments on higher level creatures to see how much more I got from them.

I had travelled a decent distance but I got lazy and decided to go very far off the path and into the forest and then ride on the back of an undead ogre. I strapped myself to its back, hidden out of sight in a leather sack I had stolen from the golem dungeon expedition members. It was uncomfortable but I didn't want to be seen riding on the back of an ogre undead and risk being exposed. Plus I could fall asleep like this and not care. I had ordered my ogre with very strict orders to get me near Namph but not to go anywhere outside of the forest or onto the path, once we were within eyesight of the city walls it was to stop and wake me up. I spent god knows how long making sure it knew what I meant and didn't confuse my orders before trusting it to carry me the rest of the way there.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"God undead can be useful but they are so stupid. I really hope that I can get better undead related skills soon, I really don't want to deal with these morons much longer." I grumbled to myself as I was jostled around while the undead travelled silently towards its destination. I fell asleep even in the uncomfortable circumstances and managed to catch a bit of sleep before being woken up by the undead roaring and punching something. I heard shouting and instantly feared the worst. "Shit, did the numbskull walk right up to the town gates?! God damnit you retard! Didn't I tell you not to go towards the walls?!" I started kicking the back of the undead viciously in anger and heard someone shout something.

"Hey it seems it caught a person in the sack! I heard someone screaming and the sacks moving! Hurry! Kill the monster and save them!" I heard more calls of agreement as the attacks continued. I quickly put away my Nercon and my necromantic cloak and got back to regular looking. I wracked my brain and decided to give myself a few cuts on my hands and some bruises. Even if they would heal slowly using my equipment I decided to do so anyways. I barely had any room to move around in the sack and wasn't able to get a good aim before the sack went flying and I then slammed into the hard ground.

I was a bit dazed and stunned from the impact but someone quickly dragged the sack and then I heard a woman call out to me in a panicked voice. "Are you ok?! Are you alive?! Hello?!" The sack shook vigorously and then opened to reveal blinding sunlight and then I heard a familiar voice. "Zane?! It's you?! Oh my god look at you! You're covered in wounds! What happened?!" The woman kept looking me over while I was still blinded by the sunlight. My eyes adjusted quickly and I saw that it was Ronia, looking me over. She had started using healing magic on me and healed most of my injuries that I had self inflicted. I heard more combat noises and saw my undead ogre quickly fall over dead, missing an arm and part of its face. The other adventurers I saw were none that I recognized but there was a hell of a lot of them. Over 50 of them were milling about, checking the surroundings for more monsters or tending to anyone wounded or tired.

Ronia helped me out of the sack and I took a moment to get my bearings. I then remembered Ronia was still there and coughed then replied to her. "Hey Ronia, didn't expect to see you out here in such a fashion. Thanks for the rescue. I was heading to the golem dungeon when there was a rather large swarm of slaves fleeing the dungeon and a bunch of undead as well. I was caught offguard and killed a bunch of the undead but was just overwhelmed. I was about to use an item to recall back to Namph but someone used a spell on me, putting me to sleep." I finished my made up story and hoped it sounded believable.

Ronia looked like she didn't find anything suspicious and just nodded and said "Yeah we also found several fleeing slaves. They said they were former slaves of Sir Erabalt and that a necromancer had come through the place, killing all of his men. The other slaves also said they met you and that you saved them but they were so shaken from fear that they rambled on quite a bit, poor people." Ronia looked over towards a group of people milling about and I remembered that some of them had seen my face before I went full necromancer. I was a bit worried and my mind instantly went to murder before I shook my head.

I wondered how I could even think of murdering innocent people so casually and was about to continue investigating that train of thought when I was interrupted. Ronia looked at me with worried eyes and said "Theres a necromancer lurking around and it seems he has it out for Sir Erabalt. The main force said they met a small force of undead that they repelled but the necromancer himself didn't show up. Two of his men contacted him using magic devices and told him how they fought him. The guild was promptly told about this by Erabalt and we were sent to investigate." I thanked my lucky stars for not being caught and wondered what magic tools the guild and other nobles had that let them talk over distance. Were they like cell phones or something else? I was curious but reigned in my curiousity and stood up.

Ronia gave me a hand and I stretched my arm that had gone numb from sleeping in a weird angle. I wondered what sort of mess this was going to create and how this phantom necromancer was going to be dealt with by the guild. I was also slightly fearful they were going to catch me and decided to make some emergency measures in case I was found out. Once I got back to town I was going to get some emergency plans set up and get an escape route. The last thing I wanted was the be caught with my pants down by the guilds investigators and be executed for being a necromancer. I wasn't going to die off that easily, that I was going to make sure. With my thoughts settled I walked with Ronia as they back to town and I listened to what she had been up to.