Action Success! Reward!
For your success at action: Overcasting, you have earned the Overcast active skill!
Overcast (Active)
When casting a spell, you can spend more MP than is necessary to increase the spell’s effects. The increased effect/mana required ratio is not linear, but exponential, causing overcasting to become prohibitively expensive beyond doubling a spell’s effect.
Vey mentally waves the notification off and slumps down in its chair a bit. How was I supposed to know that question would cause her to run off crying? It begs whatever gods might be listening, but sits back up after getting no response. Vey had been enjoying her company, even if it would never admit that. Having someone nearby, watching its progress had been a pleasant experience, not unlike the way Vey enjoyed watching its fellows do their training when Vey was too frustrated to continue. It felt the conversation had also been going well, even if it had shared too many of its personal thoughts with the girl.
Then again, wasn’t that the point? Her asking questions of Vey was ultimately making Vey both better at conversing and more knowledgeable about the way mortals think, and it wasn’t like anything it said gave her any advantages to press against it. No. Vey chided itself. It did, now she thinks I’ll let her run away when she’s upset. A foolish mistake, from an objective standpoint, but despite that Vey wondered why exactly it didn’t like the idea of the girl wandering away. It had been told of the concept of loneliness, but Vey hadn’t really thought that would apply to an undead. Now it was beginning to think differently.
Sera doesn’t really understand why that question had set her off either, now that she’s calmed down. In the moment, just thinking about that question felt wrong, as if all of her instincts and experience were begging her not to answer, and then she felt like she was about to cry, so…
She ran. And passed out on her bed. Not her smartest decision, she realized, but she ran back into the living chambers as opposed to trying to escape. That’s probably the only reason the undead hadn’t attacked her. She huddled underneath the makeshift blanket she’d made by crudely sowing roughly half of the furs together, and wiped the tears off of her face the moment she awoke. What is wrong with me? She asked silently, and to no one in particular.
It dawned on her that her new negative Lck stat might’ve been influencing all the mistakes she’s been making, but shook it off in favor of the far more reasonable conclusion that she just sucks at talking to people. People might not be the right word, but Sera doesn’t exactly think she’s much better at anything else, so she tentatively elevates her conclusion to Sera sucks at everything. She feels the tears build up in her eyes again, but finds the courage to stand up and walk it off this time, when she hears a commotion from the direction of the ritual room and hallway beyond it.
She half-walks half-jogs over, a mix of curiosity and dread compelling her closer. The closer she gets, the more the sounds begin to get familiar but different… The distinct sounds of metal on metal, shuffling leather boots and bare bones, she recognizes from the undead’s training sessions, but the sounds of metal clattering on the floor, of the plink sounds coming from the other side of the door- wasn’t that open earlier? She opens it and pushes her head and right half of her body past the half-ajar iron door, and immediately catches a stray arrow in the shoulder.
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Ten Minutes Earlier
Vey finally hit the stone table with its closed left fist in frustration. It hadn’t been working on magic, but was instead going over the section at the back of its spellbook cum notebook labeled ‘Sera’. It had been looking for anything, anything, in its memory it might’ve missed or forgotten to write down about her. Anything that would make getting all of the information it wanted out of her easier so it could end this shit now and just kill her. Vey of course thought itself in circles deeper down more and more frustrating problems until its inevitable outburst just now.
Vey ultimately decided that maybe it needs to change tactics, maybe treating the girl well(by its standards) so that she cooperates had been a bad idea, maybe Vey needs to be more forceful, or more aggressive with her. She had seemed pretty submissive, if not screamy and distraught when the necromancer first brought her here, so maybe that’s it? Just beat her up enough to still be conscious and force her to answer?
Vey stood up, confident in its new decision, and walked out into the hallway, putting the wooden door it took from one of the chambers closer to the entrance in place over the corpse-room. Vey had decided this was the best way to keep her out whenever it wanted her out, and since then had adopted the same philosophy with all of the dungeon's doors that led to places not strictly utilized. Honestly, over 3/4ths of the dungeon is unused, the ritual room, hallway, corpse-room, and living chambers are the only parts Vey even has memorized.
Vey muses on what to do with the other rooms and chambers as it slowly inspects the progress of each individual undead guard. The chamber at the other end of the hallway holds the staircase up to the main level, so maybe it could move its guards to the top of the stairs in the future. The hall leading off of that has three other branches, one at the far end and two on the sides. If Vey recalls correctly, the dead-end chamber on the left had been an abandoned alchemy lab befores the necromancer had dismantled the useful parts to sell- What was that?
Vey’s ears would’ve twitched if it had any, and it turned reflexively towards the source of the approaching noise. It sounds to Vey like at least two pairs of boney feet coming down the stone stairs at an unsafe speed. Shit! Vey’s mind shouts, as it tries to poke the command bond to the patrol group at the upper level, and only gets two responses. All of you, positions! NOW! Vey mentally screams at the undead in the hallway through the command bond, and Vey itself sprints to the iron door to the ritual chamber and slams it shut. Vey grabs the heavy mace off of its resting place near the door, and steals a leather shield from one of the zombies, before standing guard in front of the ranged squad.
Vey’s plan is simple, hide among its fellows until the opportune moment to either use its magic or its notably better command structure to turn the tide. It eyes all of its fellows approvingly as they successfully assemble the formation. The phrase Shield Wall would come to mind, if it wasn’t for the fact that the shields in this case are zombies and the spearmen behind them are skeletons with pointy sticks, but Vey can feel the brief moment of pride it felt at being an [Undead Lieutenant] return briefly as it examines the troops.
As it sees the two remaining patrol skeletons get down to the bottom of the stairs, it mentally commands them to close the doors behind them as they pass. The doors open inwards when coming from the stairs themself, a feature Vey can’t help but admire-it means you can’t peek through the door to use it as cover-for its simplicity. One of the skeletons is missing an arm, and Vey commands it to hide in the corner to the right of the door. It tells the un-damaged skeleton to do the same on the left.
Vey pulls the crossbow wielders to the side of the formation, hoping to use them as a single-shot entry barrage, and as bait for enemy ranged units. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but the best position for Vey in the formation is probably the spearmen, of all things, since that would allow it to best use its currently melee-focused spell repertoire. No time to fix it now. With no more preparations to be done, Vey has all of its assembled undead brace for combat, and gives a single standing order, knowing full well they don’t have the capability to obey it. If we start losing badly… Run.