Vey doesn’t need to sleep. That’s not how undead work. So why am I lying down in bed with Sera? Vey asks himself for the third time this hour. Honestly, being this close to her is rather nice. His boney body probably just hurts her when they touch, but she’d insisted he hold her from behind, and stay underneath the blanket with her, which admittedly feels pretty weird, but she was very, very happy when he agreed. He has his left arm underneath her body, and his right arm over it, meeting at just above her abdomen in front of her in a sort of awkward hug, except one participant is unconscious. She’d called it ‘cuddling’, when she was awake, but now she’s asleep, so what is it now?
Vey still enjoys it, mostly because over the weeks since Sera has started actively forcing Vey to touch her more, he’s started to enjoy doing so. He hadn’t thought about it when killing and torturing people, but the soft, lively flesh of her body really is quite fun to gently squish and sink into with his hands. He especially likes how her ears seem to perk up and her mood instantly improves when he plays with her hair, and how she unconsciously twitches her ears when he touches her back and stomach.
The fact that Vey doesn’t need to sleep is the only issue he has. Sera had tried to explain how sleep works, and she’d used the phrasing ‘it’s like your consciousness turning off, then back on again when you wake up’ when describing it, and Vey sort of half understood. That sounds a lot like what happened when he underwent his evolution after all, but he hasn’t been able to reproduce the effect since, and certainly isn’t able to now.
Sometimes Sera shifts in her sleep, which is something Vey didn’t pay enough attention to before, because it seems to have a pattern to it. She lays on her left side, which is why she’d asked Vey to hold her from the angle she did, but when she shifts, she faces upwards towards the ceiling for a bit, then, after making some sort of noise, rolls back to her side. It’s sort of cute to Vey, but he feels like there’s something about lying here with her that he’s missing. Vey is aware that it’s probably because he’s supposed to have fallen asleep with her, in this position, and if he had to guess why, its probably a mixture between something related to sex and how generally clingy Sera is when she’s just woken up. Maybe the point isn’t the sleeping together part, but the waking up? Should Vey pretend to have woken up when he sees Sera is?
Still, this is a good time for him to go over all of the pressing concerns floating about in his mind. For starters, Sera’s class. She wants to be a Spellblade, which Vey approves of, mostly because of the magic, but if it turns out to be too difficult to meet the requirements, Vey should probably prepare a convincing argument for her to become a Hexblade instead. She thinks the requirement she’s missing is intelligence based, and Vey would agree. Vey only needed 11 to become a wizard, but wizardry is probably the barebones simplest form of arcane magic, it would be understandable that specializing magic to be cast and applied through combat would probably be quite hard to do, hence a stricter requirement. Vey’s intelligence now is 17, and he feels fully confident that there’s some sort of barrier to what tiers of spells you can cast based on your intelligence and level. He knows that at level 5 right now, he could create and cast a tier three spell, so is a Spellblade able to cast tier three spells right from the start? Probably not, but he can’t discount that possibility either.
The second thing on the agenda is the bandits-because those attackers were clearly bandits-they match all the descriptions of broken men, runaway soldiers, and highwaymen that Vey’s books have generalized to the term ‘bandit’. And if they were bandits, why did they dig through the cave-in? Vey feels he should probably go and check where that tunnel connects to the surface for answers. He’s torn on whether or not to take Sera. He hates having to leave her behind, she clearly doesn’t like that. But Vey also doesn’t want to cause her anymore trauma, or worse, put her life at risk like today. Perhaps he should bring Sera, but tell her to run the moment anything even remotely suspicious happens? That’s a good plan, and Vey decides to stick with it.
Sera tosses in her sleep again, leaving her face-up in Vey’s arms, and he does his best to shift his arms away from touching her breasts accidentally; he knows from experience that she will wake up if they are disturbed, and will wake up angrily if he accidentally claws them while she’s sleeping. He only needed to try and give her a medical examination one time while she was sleeping to figure out both of those things. Actually, his claws are something he should put on the agenda. Rather, finding a more serviceable method of combat than [Cutting Hand] and [Fists of Stone] is.
He is a wizard, not a fighter, and the brawl earlier made that clearly evident. Just because his ‘instincts’ and ‘combat sense’ are very good due to the former [Undead Lieutenant] now [Undead Leadership] effect and skill, doesn’t mean his actual stats are good for it. Vey feels that the only reasons he’s been successful in the fights he’s been in is because his opponents were weak and surprised(like with the wagon and carriage), stupid and horribly outnumbered(the adventurers), and outclassed by Vey’s stats and fear tactics(the bandits). None of those are concrete or consistently repeatable. Vey feels that if he had to fight someone of equal power to him, or worse, multiple people of equal power to him, his current arsenal of skills and spells wouldn’t be able to do much.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
So he needs to spend some time designing and working through more combat magic, and actually, he thinks it would probably be a good opportunity to work out all of the good non-combat ideas as well since he can probably make life around the dungeon more convenient and enjoyable for Sera with- No. Combat first. Vey has to remind himself as he remembers the dread he felt watching Sera struggle to hold her own against the bandits. At level five, the biggest barrier to Vey’s progress on spellcraft, which is the complexity of the spells he can actually cast, feels like it has been lifted, and he should be able to make proper tier three spells now, not just the dysfunctional abominations he’d come up with when trying previously.
Lastly, the reason he wants more combat magic. If the bandits had stumbled into the dungeon while running away from something, that something would likely also try to make its way down here as well, eventually. Paired with Vey's own actions potentially garnering ire from the village and society beyond, Vey doesn't think it is unreasonable to assume this could be the start of something more dangerous for his and Sera's home. It won’t be a problem if whoever comes is at the same level of strength and numbers as any of his previous foes, but if they’re stronger, it won’t be enough for just Vey to be stronger. He’ll need better dungeon defenses, and probably will need to find a way to preserve his last few undead companions for true emergencies.
There’s always the option of going on the offensive, ambushing would-be attackers before they get to attack, but that would leave Sera undefended, because there is no way he’s risking telling her to choose between him or the people of her own village, and Vey strongly suspects it’s going to come to that at some point.
--
Sera wakes up as she usually does, by stretching her arms out wide and rolling over onto her right side. Except, instead of peacefully rolling over and then sitting up, her elbow collides with something hard, and she jolts her eyes awake, finally recognizing the feeling of Vey’s arms around her, currently wrapping around his sides and locked behind her back. She looks at her skeleton’s eyes, before wordlessly closing her outstretched arm around Vey’s body and pressing herself to him for a moment. Vey’s ribs rub against her nipples very uncomfortably, but Sera decides it is worth it for the gesture of affection.
“Thank you for trying this, Vey… Did you manage to sleep?” Sera asks in a whispered tone, still not breaking away from the skeleton just yet.
“No. I do not know if I can.” She feels a little bit saddened by Vey’s confession, she had really liked the feeling of someone holding her while she slept, and had even more so liked the idea behind falling asleep with her partner. She feels her ears redden, and the one pressed against Vey’d skull twitches at the realization of what she just thought. “But it was enjoyable laying here. I felt like I laid here for too long, but being able to think while holding you was… nice.”
“Then…”
“Yes, we can do it again, but probably not every time.” Vey’s confirmation is enough of a boost for her to break away from the embrace, and start trying to get to her feet with a smile on her face.
“So what are we going to start with today?” Sera asks while reaching for her undergarments she’d lazily thrown on the table the night before.
“I want to start by searching the tunnel the bandits came from yesterday, I think it’s a good idea to figure out how they got in, and from where.” Sera flinches as Vey’s words remind her of the face of the man she killed, and she only manages to shake it off as Vey continues. “I don’t want to bring you with me, I don’t want to put you into harm’s way again. If you do insist on coming with me, you have to promise me you will run or hide the moment I tell you to.”
“I’ll stay down here and study, Vey, but you have to promise me that you’ll start taking me with you once I’ve chosen my class.” Sera is actually ok with staying behind, since she feels she needs to try and work on studying and researching to become a Spellblade, but she also wants to lay down the groundwork for going with Vey in the future.
“I promise.” Vey answers her, and she turns around to start putting on her oversized shirt-she thinks it came from one of the adventurers in the group that shot her-over herself, and while she hears Vey standing behind her, cannot actually see him before he puts a hand on her head the moment she gets the shirt over herself. She smiles and leans into his hand as it starts stroking her. “I’ll make a meal for you, and I’ll try to be back before long. I’ll have the skeletons bar the door to the outside so that the only way in is the way I’m leaving. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
--
Undead Leadership (Passive)
Undead Leadership is not dissimilar to the leadership skill. It imparts certain knowledge related to leading unminded undead and likeminded sentient undead to an individual, as well as heightening the individual’s base Int, Wis, and Cha on acquisition. Likeminded sentient undead will also find the individual and their will to be more tolerable than others when placed in a subordinate position to the individual.
As your Undead Leadership was earned via the combination of Undead Lieutenant and Awakened through evolution, your Undead Leadership also imparts military knowledge, the ability to innately command unminded undead, and the ability to [Error] said unminded undead once per month.