We had finished most of the arrows but still had well over 200 left to enchant, but we ran out of time as the army was getting close to the village. We had been moving the entire time and stayed ahead of the approaching army, setting up traps or sending small groups to pepper the army from a distance with spells. The groups would then swiftly retreat before the enemy could organize a retaliatory assault. The traps we were setting up along the way to the village were doing some work in the beginning, but once they realized the area was laced with traps they got mages to scour the front lines for traps in their path and either disarmed them or went around.

The traps were rather nasty too, they were a mix of explosive magic circles that worked like land mines. Some of the landline traps would create explosions, others would make massive jets of flame spread in a massive shockwave until it ran out of mana. The different types that were made were varying degrees of scary. Some of them were downright nasty, such as creating nasty poison that would spread like a fog when the trap was triggered, only to have a second trap go off a few minutes later that would cause the poison fog to blow up violently. I thought we would be able to whittle the enemy down with traps and make them retreat but we weren't that lucky it seemed.

We had arrived at the village with the army only a few minutes march away so we were planning our final assault on the army before retreating to the village walls. The walls themselves had been reinforced with magic and enchanted to resist damage from melee attacks and various magic. The mages had also made a barrier that would block projectiles sailing over the wall, but it had a limited amount of uses before the enchantment ran out.

There was the sound of feet shuffling and someone spoke up, saying "We should hit the army from both sides and pincer them. Both sides should bombard them with aoe spells before retreating." Some people agreed but others denied him, saying that we should wait within the safety of the walls and fight a war of attrition. There was various plans that were talked about and them torn down by others before the elder decided on one in the end.

"We will follow the plan to chase monsters towards the army and then bombard the army from either side. We will also use the arrows that were enchanted as well as the flaming slime." With that everyone got the details sorted and went to tell the other people what to do. My party was going to be with the assault on the army's left side. We were going to be near the front but not at the front lines. Our job was to fire the arrows and keep an eye out on the situation, deciding when would be a good time to retreat.

I thought about how the moon elves would lure a massive amount of monsters over to attack the army but just went about my tasks and got ready for the assault

I snuck off into the forest after making my preparations. I had told the people that I was going to set up some traps. I had helped create some landmine traps during our retreat to the village so it was a believable excuse. Once I was far enough from the village that no one would be able to see me, I put on my trademark necromancer hood and mask. I started to make the bodies I had collected into shadowsoul undead. While the army had been chasing us I had been sneaking around and stealing bodies at night. The army didn't take the bodies and just took the equipment and anything valuable before leaving the bodies in piles that were warded to prevent monsters from going near.

We had dealt quite a number on the enemy and so I now had 75 bodies instead of my original 40. I quickly set to work making them into shadowsoul undead and pretty soon I had 77 shadowsoul undead ready to fight.I then put them into my inventory and used the mist vision to check my surroundings for signs of life. I was calling my ability to use the red mist to check for vitality mist vision as it was annoying not having a name for the ability. I scanned the surroundings and saw that there was nothing other than a rabbit nearby and started to leave. I was halfway back when I remembered my nercon heart might be low so I checked it and saw that it had a crap ton more health and mana than I should.

I had 23,500 health and 19,000 mana in my nercon heart. "Holy shit thats a lot! That reminds me, I need to check my status. It has been forever since I last checked it." With a thought I quickly pulled up my status and checked it over once to see what had changed.

Name Zane Northwood [Age 17] Class Grand Archmage, Grand Necromancer Level 31 Health 2,950/3,100 Mana 4,000/4,000 Strength 91 Agility 35 Stamina 59 Wisdom 450 Skills Lesser Elemental Magic, Mana Drain, Lesser Undead Summoning, Basic Dark Magic, Acting [lvl 3] Titles

Reincarnator [Status is Reset upon reincarnating, allowing you to reincarnate successfully]

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Rapid Learner [Strive to learn quicker. +10% efficiency to learning new skills]

Nercon Wielder [NEW] [A being who has successfully created a Nercon Heart and awakened it by giving it a sacrifice to sate its hunger. Allows greater use of the Nercon Heart]

I finished checking my status and saw a few changes. "Oh my levels gone up quite a bit from last time. Last I checked I was level 23. Hmm, my health and mana both skyrocketed with so few levels gained. Guess thats my classes helping out there." I kept checking and saw that my stats went up a small bit, but my wisdom went up by a shocking 164. That was really going to give me some oomph to my magic spells.

I saw that my previously titled incompetent lesser elemental magic finally removed the annoying prefix and my basic elemental magic was gone. "So I've gotten enough mastery over elemental magic that its now just lesser elemental magic, thats good. My undead summoning also went up a tier from basic to lesser, thats good. Oh I got a new title."

I read the title and winced. The damn Nercon heart had apparently used that person as a sacrifice to awaken. No wonder I had no control over myself. It was forcefully upgrading itself and awakening. That made a lot more sense to me now, but I still didn't feel better about the whole being controlled against my will portion. I was fine with killing someone, it was something I had done before with the bandits so it wasn't shocking to me anymore. It had been the fact that I had done it against my will was what scared me earlier.

I shook my head and cleared my thoughts. I was going to need all of these better stats and whatever the 'greater use of the Nercon Heart' was, I was going to have to find out on the fly. I head back to the village and removed my hood and mask before entering the village. On the way back to the village I had placed a few traps that would light the flaming slime on fire and shoot it up in the air before flinging it into any nearby lifeforms. I used almost all of the flaming slime and set up over 4 dozen traps which was the most I could do with the supply I had.

I rested in the village for a bit but then we were given the call to meet up for the assault so I got up and met with my party. Ronia gave everyone a small brief on what we were going to do. The plan had been simple. The entire group of 50 moon elves was going to wait for the people luring the monsters. Once the monsters were lured towards the army and they attacked the army, we were going to bombard them with the enchanted arrows. After all the monsters died off we were going to keep our distance from them and keep firing arrows, trying to kill off anyone important like the leader. After the enemy got to close the people hiding in the trees, they were going to drop down and land amidst the enemy and wreak havoc with their weapons, and fight before we swiftly retreated once the signal was given.

The plan seemed simple enough and I was gleefully waiting to see what the enchanted arrows would do. I also had my army of undead I was going to toss out from my inventory if need be. Either way this was going to be the last assault we made before the final defensive battle at the village walls.