Necromancer
A Royal Road Fan Fiction
By: Halosty
Chapter 2
A quick guide on names in case you forget them easily:
Mortimer Perrywinkle (Quietus is his Royal Road name)- The main creep character. Rich.
Solara Veil- The girl Mortimer stalks and has a crush on. Writes journals. Plays Royal Road.
Jack- An NPC who runs the morgue, and the current employer of Quietus.
The next day on the way to school, Mortimer was tired. He had spent most of the time he should have been sleeping playing Royal Road. After all, he did spend around ten hours in the game, almost two full days of game time. He hurriedly ate a breakfast prepared by the cook, Marie, and did some of his homework on the ride to school. Fortunately for him, he was relatively smart, and had little homework. It also didn’t hurt that his parents contributed an (un)reasonable amount of money to the school. He was sure he could get by... if he at least spent a bit less time playing Royal Road. Mortimer had never known games could be so fun. Everything had been boring, like people. Maybe it had been because he knew Solara was in there, somewhere.
Mortimer was determined to find her in the game. He knew she wrote in her journal at the beginning of lunch, and sometimes left it out on her desk when she went to eat. He didn’t peep or anything, he just... made sure it was safe. Don’t want any strange people looking at it. Sure, sometimes he skimmed, but that was out of concern for Solara’s well being. Plus, he was curious. He really only skimmed because he didn’t know how long it would take her to come back. Otherwise he would have read it in depth and possibly tried to leave some subtle critiques. Certainly nothing creepy.
As luck would have it, Solara did leave her journal behind at lunch that day. He quickly looked around to make sure there wasn’t anyone to falsely accuse him of wrongdoing. Then, he opened it to the latest sections. After reading through the last days, at a quick pace, he was disappointed to find no useful information. He did know that she indeed started in Morata, but she was pretty vague about what she had done. She just mentioned that she had fun trying about the abilities of her class. ‘What class?!’ Mortimer wanted to ask the journal. ‘Where were you?’
He didn’t ask, of course, because journals can’t talk. Plus, he wouldn’t want to make anyone think he was prying into someone’s personal information. Well, he’d surely recognize her if he saw her. Morata was a decently sized city for one person to search alone, and he knew she was still staying in the city. (He didn’t know that it was mandatory to stay in the city for one week)
Mortimer slept through the rest of the classes after lunch, but he was doing better in those anyway, and could afford to slack off. Sort of. After the last bell woke him up once more, and rode home with James. He involved himself in some quick flurrying of homework, and even did a few math problems at home before he hopped on Royal Road. Always a diligent student.
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Quietus found himself just outside the training center. Perhaps he would come back later, though he wished they had something less clumsy than those stupid wooden training swords. He went to go work with Jack at the morgue. He had nothing much better to do, and figured he could earn some money. It’s not like his parents could give him money in the game or anything. Besides, he enjoyed learning things there.
As Quietus cut open the thoracic cavity of a body (for science!) he thought about the scalpel in his hand. Something around this size, easily controllable and precise, would be nice to use as a weapon. He knew there was combat in the game, so he figured he should try to learn how to use a weapon. Quietus supposed a scalpel wasn’t very practical for combat though, too fragile. Maybe just a knife. Or a dagger? He was pretty sure a dagger was slightly better and more likely to be a weapon in this kind of game. Two edges were better, obviously.
After he finished all the work he could help with for that day, he went to a blacksmith intending to acquire a dagger. Quietus asked about the price of one, and was astounded to learn that he couldn’t even afford the cheapest weapon. He wasn’t used to being unable to afford things. He quickly got over it, however, when he realized just how little time he’d spent earning money. The blacksmith did recommend that he go see a carpenter, where he could purchase a practice dagger. He did, and got a wooden practice dagger.
Wooden Dagger: Durability: 10/10 Damage: 1-1
This wooden dagger is made for practice. It is very fragile, and impractical as a real weapon.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Quietus hadn’t really expected anything different for a toy dagger worth not much more than a copper. Hopefully it was at least durable enough to hit those training dummies. He decided to go check.
The wooden dagger was much better for the moves he was attempting to do on the dummies. It didn’t stick out so far past his arm that he got the hit locations wrong. Well, not as wrong. He stared at the dummies for a couple minutes after every strike, trying to think of good places to hit. The dummies provided very little help in that regard, since they were pathetic attempts at real anatomy. ‘Do I stab here? I think there’s an artery, but I can’t tell if I’ve hit it.’ Quietus pondered.
He left after about an hour and less uses of his practice weapon than he could count on both hands. Quietus was trying to decide what to do when fate intervened. He saw the hot redheaded bard going by. Excellent, now he had someone to stalk something to do while waiting to find Solara. He snuck after her kept a respectful distance until she stopped. He waited for her to start singing, but to his surprise she did not. She started dancing! Maybe she wasn’t a bard, but a dancer? She had been singing the day before. Quietus was focused on her, but she wasn’t as enthralling with her dancing as her singing. She wasn’t bad, but it seemed like she didn’t have much practice. In fact, he probably wouldn’t have watched her at all if not for her skimpy apparel excellent fashion. He wasn’t normally into wanton skimpiness, but it suited her.
Quietus wasn’t very good at keeping track of time when he was stalking people focused on a task, so he was surprised when she stopped dancing. She’d been getting better too. Also, he was surprised that it was dark. Coincidentally, she again chose to walk in his direction. That was what he got for hiding towards a main street. He quickly scurried away.
He decided to go back to the training center, to see if it was open at night. He spent quite a few hours practicing his hits on vital spots. The training dummies were very poor for what he wanted, so he spent most of his time just staring at the training dummies trying to guess where their vital parts should be, the parts of them that existed anyway. After around five hours, and not a very many actual attempts to do anything, he got a message.
Agility rises by 1 point. (+1 AGI)
Quietus was surprised, he didn’t know you could gain stats through means other than distributing them at level up. This was an excellent discovery! If only he knew what it was that caused him to get the stat point. Maybe it was after so many swings? That seemed too easy. Plus, he was pretty sure he hadn’t achieve any important numbers. ‘Oh well, if it ever happens again I can compare circumstances’, he thought.
During this time, the instructor at the training center had been watching Quietus. The instructor very much enjoyed hardworking people coming to his training center and working hard to learn the way of the sword, or practice their skills. This is why he stared at Quietus. ‘This guy is so lazy!’ thought the instructor. ‘He stabs at the training dummies with that tiny wooden dagger, and then spends five or ten minute staring off into space! He’s an insult to my training center!’
Quietus, of course, didn’t notice this smouldering glare, because he was concentrating. That was why he was surprised when the instructor came over to him. “You don’t take this training at all seriously! You haven’t even made fifty real swings in the entire time you’ve been here, and you don’t put any effort into them! You are an insult to my training center. Leave, and don’t come back!”
Before Quietus could reply to this, he was lifted off his feet. Seconds later, he was literally thrown out of the training center. Quietus was sitting on his backside pondering what had just happened, when he noticed a figure in the shadows between the training center and the next building over. Oddly enough, the shadowy figure appeared to be laughing. Quietus frowned. He would have a word with this disrespectful shadowy figure!
End Chapter 2
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