They were to head south.

According to Paul, the Order was coming from the north, so it was time to head south, and leave through the south gate.

Vals grabbed his things, and waited with Paul as he had a few undead grab his things, and they left immediately after that.

The two started their trek through the city, finding it too quiet to be comfortable.

"Hey, Paul?" Vals decided to start up a conversation to try to get rid of the feeling of unease that began to grow in the air.

"Hm?" Paul looked a bit back at the remnant from in front of him.

"Why did you only bring these 5 undead? What about all the others?" Vals gestured to the undead around them, 3 were behind him, and 2 were in front of Paul, 2 of the 3 behind Vals were holding all of Paul's luggage.

"Well, I have to explain a bit about how necromancy works for you to understand, is that fine?" Paul then continued once he saw Vals' head bob a bit in a nod. "Necromancy, or the dark art of bringing the dead back to life in an incomplete form, works like a card game, or at least that's how I see it. Now it isn't exact, because I'm not relying on luck and I can change hand size if I get better, but in essence it works.

As a Necromancer, I can bring back as many undead as I want, that's the deck. However! You can only control a portion of the undead that you've summoned. That is the hand. Naturally you would run into problems if that were it, but necromancers- like myself- also have abilities that we naturally gain as we develop our art. One of these, _Aura of Undeath, makes us seem like high rank undead to the undead that are mindless.

But I digress. As I was saying, you can only control a certain amount at a time, so I took these 5, which is my current limit, as they have the best potentials and strength currently." Paul looked at his remnant friend, "Is that good enough of an explanation?"

"Yeah, that makes sense now. I was just wondering why we left everyone else behind. Anyways, are you alright?" Vals looked at the Necromancer, who was pale and sweaty. The man's brown curled hair was plastered to his forehead.

"Huh? What do you mean? Of course I'm fine, I'm just a bit tired is all." Paul dismissed it half heartedly.

"Hmm... well it has been a few hours, there is a place nearby that we can take a break at, come on, I think it's just a few more minutes away." Vals took up the lead, walking a bit ahead of the two armored skeletons in the front.

Vals and co. made a quick stop by the fountain in the little hidden area. It was already a few hours into the long walk, and the only living one needed a break. Vals was certain that the city was big enough that it would take a couple days to actually reach the other side of it from the complete opposite side, so it was good to take breaks, and that was saying that it was a straight line, with no mountain in the middle of the massive, urban, sprawl.

"Whoa, when did you find such a place? This is amazing." Paul couldn't help but keep looking around at the wild garden, and ivy that climbed up the buildings.

"I was just wandering, I did that quite a bit before we met. Ah, be careful about the water, it's all holy water." Vals let out a warning to the necromancer as he approached the fountain.

"Shit, really? That's both amazing and terrifying." Paul looked at the fountain in a new light and shuddered a bit.

"You're telling me, I touched it." Vals chuckled a bit cynically. "I became resistant to holy power for exposing myself to it consistently. Though it did melt my flesh, and still does, just a bit slower now."

Paul looked at Vals with a bit of surprise. "You actually worked to become resistant to it?"

"Yeah, is it that shocking? It's an undeads primary weakness. Though were also weaker to fire, although most material things tend to be weak to fire anyhow."

Paul nodded. "True, it is the main weakness, but that means it hurt that much more when you decided to increase your resistance to it. Takes a strong will power to do it..." Paul now saw the remnant in another light, he hadn't been joking when he said that it was a very painful thing. Holy water, to most things with opposing mana attributes, was like a powerful acid. It could melt most low level undead in just a handful of seconds, and it could inflict major wounds on most undead under high tier.

"I suppose so, but to be perfectly honest, I'm going to be around for a while, I just figured it wouldn't hurt to learn it early and grow from there, ya know?" Vals absent mindedly dismissed it, as it wasn't something he had particularly enjoyed subjecting himself to.

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"I mean I guess...? But I still find it impressive." Paul lay down into the grass, and then continued. "I don't think I could ever put myself through it."

"Well I really wouldn't recommend the experience myself anyhow." Vals responded.

After that the small clearing was quiet for a while, before after about 15 or so minutes, Paul suddenly got up.

"Alright, I rested enough. Let's get out of here."

"Alright." Vals grabbed his bag, and walked over to the man.

*-*-*-*-*-*

Vals threw himself to the side as an axe blade cut where his thigh was just a moment ago. He was pretty resilient, but he didn't really feel the need to test it every battle.

He and Paul had been walking along, finally reaching an area that the two men both had never been to before 5ish hours after their break, when they were attacked by a few goblins.

Vals had responded quickly, and immediately had his sword in hand, but the undead that Paul controlled were all a bit slow to react. This resulted in one of the undead being heavily damaged before Vals, or any other undead for that matter, could do anything to help it.

Currently Vals was occupied with 3 different goblins swinging weapons at him, and was struggling to dodge them. Vals stepped back to evade a strike from a rusted over sword that one of the goblins was using, which had him get clawed by the goblin the was approaching from behind him, luckily his bag was pretty sturdy, so it wasn't damaged in the process of the attack.

Vals decided to do something a bit stupid, and swung his sword out in a wide angle, cutting deeply into one of the goblins- the one with the sword- but getting stuck in between the vertebra of the creatures spine, halting his attack, though the goblin died shortly after that.

While Vals struggled to remove his sword from the goblin, the axe wielding one had managed to heave the weapon above itself once again, and tried to strike down at Vals' head, bot striking true however, it instead embedded itself partially into his shoulder, which Vals did not appreciate.

Now down about 30 hp, Vals decidedly ripped the blade out, even though it was damaged a bit, the sword automatically repaired over time anyways. He then shoved the weapon into the neck of the goblin who was still holding the axe, currently attempting to loose it from Vals' shoulder.

With the sound of blood hitting the ground, Vals dislodged the weapon from the torn flesh of the goblin, leaving it to bleed out the rest of the way. He grit his teeth and grabbed the axe handle before, painfully, ripping it out of his own shoulder.

It was heavier than expected, but he could still hold it with one hand. He was sure that the goblin had gotten lucky, and that gravity had to of played a large part in the damahe he took from the weapon. Unluckily for the last goblin, Val's did not have the issues the previous wielder had. He planted the axe firmly through the creatures skull, with a crack an a squelch as some of the brain matter of the mobster was displaced into the air.

Leaving the axe with the now dead goblin, at least for now, he turned to the rest of the battle field. The undead were struggling. He himself had been burdened with only 3 goblins, but each of the other undead had minumum of 4, one of them even had 6 on them! As for Paul, he was hiding behind 2 of the undead with his back to a wall, doing his best to assist, which unfortunately, didn't seem to be too much.

Vals rushed over there first, since Paul was the only sentient creature he'd met so far, and the other undead were at least replacable in terms of numbers.

Vals managed to behead a goblin that was clawing at the neck of one of the armored undead that was protecting Paul, and shortly after pierced the shoulder of another, missing the head due to a sudden movement on the goblins part.

With his help, the goblins were killed in short order. Allowing for the undead to assist each other while he guarded Paul once the goblins surrounding them died.

After a few more minutes of fighting, the undead finally killed the last goblin, leaving 3 undead- Not including Vals- remaining.

"That was a fucking mess." Vals looked at Paul, "You okay?"

"Yeah I'm fine. And it really was a mess. It would've been worse if you weren't here though." Paul then collapsed to the ground against the building side.

"Well I suppose so. Look on the brightside though, we can at least refill on numbers." Vals chuckled.

Paul didn't laugh.

"Hey, you good man?" Vals looked at the middle aged man, his age becoming more apparent with his darkening mood.

"I hate this." Paul said as he looked up at the sky.

"What do you mean?" Vals looked at the man a bit confused.

"I never wanted to be a Necromancer. Before all this..." he gestured out in the general air. "I was just a butcher. I knew I had dark mana, and I had some ideas of it when I was young, but I just wanted to be with my family. I just wanted to live a peaceful life with my wife, and daughters..." At this point, Vals noticed a few tears rolling down the man's face. "Vals, those bastards killed my family. My Wife, my daughters... even my more distant relatives. Cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces..." Paul was now sobbing. "All because I had traces of dark magic! Traces!" The man let out a deep sigh. "Sorry... I shouldn't have burdened you like that."

"Don't be. I'll be honest I don't know much about the world, you know, amnesia and all that, but as far as I can tell, you're a pretty good person. A much better person than a necromancer ought to be if the order should be believed. As far as I'm concerned, the order will get what's coming. It's merely a matter of time, after all, how long have you been a necromancer?" Vals looked to the man on the ground.

"Only about 6 months." The man almost whispered. "I've run from them for almost half a damn year."

"Well, if you're this strong after just 6 months, then I think they're right to try to kill you now, after all what kind of strength will you have in 6 years?"