Packing was an uneventful affair. Julian didn’t bring any belongings with him into this world other than the clothes on his back, which had quickly been replaced by local stock, and Marge had someone pack his travel bag for him; though, it did take some time to go through every item inside and make sure he understood its purpose, as well as to show him how to properly tie his weapons to the bag. Fortunately, while he was quite out of practice, he had been camping before, so most of the items were comprehensible, and most of the weapons mounting was just learning where best to place the armaments.
Pre-dawn light lit the common room the next morning as Juilan said goodbye to Marge and Daisy. The walking brick gave a bone-crushing handshake, followed by the first true smile Julian remembered seeing on his face. Marge’s handshake was gentler, but that might’ve just been so he would easily fall over when she punched him in the shoulder, his hand slipping right out of her grip as she guffawed.
“Take care of yourself, but not too much care; can’t make a name if you never take any risks!” Marge raised a mug in toast, before draining it dry.
“Good hunting,” Daisy said with a nod.
Julian exited the Miracle, his new undead in tow, and approached his new mentor, who stood in the middle of the road to reduce pressure on residents in nearby buildings. Pressure which continued to increase as he approached, but never quite reached an intolerable level; it was extremely uncomfortable certainly, but eventually his heart acknowledged his lack of impending death, allowing his adrenaline to fade and heart rate to return to something resembling normal. Calming had taken several minutes, but the woman stood patiently, knowing the distraction would fade soon, though never vanish.
Finally, Julian spoke, “Thanks for waiting for me. I…can’t believe I just realized this, but I never got your name?”
The sharp smile returned as the wolf-woman began walking down the street. “Luna,” she said, letting out a small chuckle as Julian failed to hide his reaction to the cliche. “Best we pick up the pace, leaving the Town will take long enough as is.”
And so the pair took off at a light jog, the lupine woman obviously slowing her pace for Juilan’s sake. He had already noted during his training that his general physical fitness seemed much improved from Earth, but the hours of jogging only had him heavily winded, not collapsing as he would have expected. For its part, Jasper didn’t show any signs of anything resembling fatigue; it seemed the undead were inexhaustible, which he looked forward to taking advantage of. The hours passed with no noticeable change in the environment; they were still clearly in the Town of Beginnings. Boredom was kept at bay by a combination of awe at the scale of the settlement and humor at the pedestrians scattering before Luna’s presence; the pressure still made him want to run away when speaking to her or traveling immediately next to her, but he had accustomed to it sufficiently that even at its worst it was resistable.
A full day of running left Juilan utterly exhausted, regardless of his improved physique. While she made him continue to jog well past his comfortable limit, Luna did settle them in an inn several hours before it was strictly necessary to do so, his zombie sleeping in the stables like exotic livestock. They enjoyed a quiet dinner, Julian doing his best not to stare as his instructor ate, no utensils or hands necessary, before settling in for the night. Pre-dawn light accompanied by harsh knocking greeted him the next day, and their trek resumed.
By the end of their second day, keeping a steady jog the entire way, Julian started trying to conjure an image of just how large this Town was. How many people lived here? The trek’s fifth full day without a change in scenery more significant than paint and the names of buildings finally drove him to ask Luna, while they sat in a rustic common room with splintering furniture eating dinner, “Just how big is the Town?”
Her muffled reply came with small chunks of meat and spittle as she didn’t even slow her meal, “Almost a month to cross. Entire universes of people getting teleported here, even with the extreme death rates among new arrivals, give rise to a pretty massive population. Density is kept down by farms and a lack of good building materials, so that population is pretty spread out.”
Julian nodded his thanks at the answer, and kept eating in silence, contemplating her words. It made sense, but it hadn’t occurred to him that new arrivals would largely die off; they had to join an already existing system of limited resources without contacts, without resources, and even without any technology they were used to. It was a sobering thought, but only for a moment; he was mostly just glad for his own luck.
Their voyage continued for twenty entire days, interspersed with only the occasional smalltalk with Luna and the rare pedestrian gaping openly at his undead, with the Town thinning out in the last week before eventually becoming sparse enough it couldn’t count as a contiguous settlement. Julian was surprised when the wolf-kin woman stopped them for lunch, for the first time on their journey, but it made more sense when she started giving him a briefing of their longer-term travel plans.
“We’re a third of the way to the camp we’ll call home, at least until you’re significantly more powerful. Monsters will appear more often in these less populated lands; I will keep my distance from you to let you train against them. They’ll get stronger the further out we get, so if you start to struggle we’ll slow down until you master the area; we’re not in any kind of hurry. That’s pretty much the whole plan until we reach the camp though. Understood?” Luna raised an eyebrow as she asked for the confirmation, staring directly at Julian.
He nodded, “Understood. It’ll be nice to get some Skill levels.”
Her sharp smile flashed. “Good, then let’s get going.”
The trek resumed at a somewhat slower jog, the less settled lands already proving harder to navigate than well-trodden and sometimes-paved roads. Luna pulled ahead, leaving behind obvious signs of her passage to keep him on track, and for the first time since arriving in the Town of Beginnings, he was alone; it was nice. A cool summer breeze blew around him, and alien yet familiar natural smells greeted his nostrils; he was glad he kept Jasper continuously downwind of his position. Warm afternoon sun reflected off unending swaths of flattish greenery, interrupted only occasionally by copses of trees and taller bushes.
Julian was enjoying the shifting light as afternoon faded to twilight, when rot suddenly assailed his nostrils, and for a moment he wondered if the wind had shifted behind his undead, but quickly dismissed that thought; Jasper didn’t actually smell like rot, instead filling the air with the bloody and bowel-touched scent of the freshly, violently dead. He took a moment to find the direction the wind blew in from, then looked that way, and was greeted by a horrific sight.
A large dog stood, just at the edge of his vision in the fading light. White fur ran from its large paws up to its neck, which was covered by long, black, human-like hair. Its eyes were little more than clay orbs with holes spooned out for the pupils. Where a furred muzzle should have been, scarred, naked flesh and exposed muscle surrounded a too-flat pink nose just above a set of far too many and far too long human teeth stretched into a smile wider than the creature’s skull.
The sight ripped Juilan’s heart out through his stomach; nausea filled his throat, and he wanted to scream. But in the last month he had grown used to confronting his fear, and the dread inspired by the visage before him was purely his own natural reaction, even if the monster itself was as unnatural as he could imagine. When it began loping across the ground, its forelegs reaching forward to grab the terrain ahead of it in a gross imitation of human hands, he commanded Jasper to attack and readied his own spear, charging just behind his creation.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
His undead met the smiling monstrosity in a fleshy slam, the impact reverberating through the nearby air. In the ensuing exchange of blows, the only thing that kept Jasper mostly intact was the fact that it didn’t care about being hit, while the smiling creature did. Heavy slams came from the zombie, each dodged or deflected, but coming just fast enough to prevent the smiling horror from landing a solid blow. Instead of its gaping maw, filled with a red-tinted void, tearing out whole chunks of muscled flesh with every bite, it only managed to tear at the very edges of Jasper’s flesh, ever-so-slowly wearing down Julian’s creation.
Breaking the unfavorabel stalemate, Julian attacked the monster with his spear, joining the battle with a simple lunging thrust toward its shoulder. As the creature spun to dodge the thrust, it left itself more open to a slam from Jasper, and the zombie finally landed a blow. The monstrosity unleashed a deep bellowing scream, filled with an undercurrent of wind shrieking through metal ruins, and turned back to the zombie with its jaws unhinged. It didn’t quite manage to duck under Julian’s next thrust, which pierced through near its spine, and the mounting injuries quickly led to its death. Breath heavy and mind relieved, the necromancer warily looked about, confirming there were no more of the heart-dropping creatures he could see, before he sat down to recover from the fight.
That had been much harder than the rat battles; if he hadn’t had his zombie with him, he wasn’t sure he could have won, and even if he had he likely would have been injured. On the upside, he had survived, and with more power than the rats came greater xp than the rats, which he would see when he finally went to sleep for the night. He continued on, Jasper handily hauling the corpse behind, determined to reach whatever destination Luna determined sufficient to rest at tonight.
The hour-long sunset witnessed two more battles against the creatures straight from Julian’s nightmares. He was exhausted, fighting taking much more effort than jogging ever did, and his tireless zombie had sustained heavy damage; after the third battle, it had visibly slowed. Too much more of this and their fighting ability would collapse entirely; he was not confident he could handle the creatures by himself should his undead be damaged beyond usefulness. His stress levels skyrocketed at the sight of two more of the horrors on the distant horizon, and in response he retreated to a nearby copse of trees, Jasper dragging the three corpses behind.
Five densely packed trees provided even more cover than he expected, and between the corpses and a large boulder, he was able to narrow the easy approach vectors down to one. They’d need it; even fresh, two of the creatures would’ve been a trial to face, but worn down as they were he simply steeled his determination to the best of his ability and prepared to fight. Luna may come to his rescue, or she may decide he was too weak for her clan; she had made it clear at the interview they believed in surviving by your own might.
The dogs came minutes after he had his cover setup. One rushed the entrance he had prepared, while the other started tearing through one of its deceased comrades which blocked another approach; Julian cursed and charged behind his zombie to engage along the expected route, hoping he could finish off the first attacker before the second broke through. Grisly teeth tore out most of the meat in the zombie’s right shoulder, but the undead’s assault never stopped, pinning the creature in place while Julian ran it through.
Before he could celebrate, fire lanced up from his own left thigh, and he looked down to find the retreating head of the second monster as his leg collapsed under his own weight. On his order, Jasper closed distance with the second monstrosity, and bought precious seconds while Juilan bound his leg in tight cloth from an easy access pouch on his travel bag. The pressure helped the leg take his weight, but as he shakily stood from the moist ground, he witnessed his creation’s head, wrapped entirely in misshapen human teeth, pop like a watermelon, spraying a chunky red mist everywhere. Cursing, Julian tried to impale the creature while it was distracted, but he hadn’t enough distance; the monster was inside the reach of his spear. With little hesitation, he dropped the spear and pulled his dagger, but by then the monster was no longer focused on its meal, instead looking directly at its new prey.
Julian stared back, knife in hand and leg throbbing. The assault came rapidly, and he couldn’t quite respond in time; more pain erupted across his upper legs as the smiling beast tore out visible chunks of his flesh, and he released a scream of mostly rage, the adrenaline dulling the pain for now. Painless or not, his savaged legs were failing him yet again, but in his rage he managed to fall on the monster’s back. A few seconds of struggling, and he finally managed to line up his knife with the back of the creature’s neck; he drove the blade straight down, severing the creature’s spine at the base of its skull.
The battle was over, but he was still in monster-infested lands and now without his undead servant; it was time to retreat, but he had such a bounty of corpses he couldn’t leave behind. Looking around, he saw no evidence any more of the creatures were nearby, and he had only ever encountered them while traveling deeper into the wild; if he stayed still for the hours needed to create a new undead follower, he might be able to bring the bodies with him to whatever safety he retreated to. His logic was far from sound with the ritual taking twenty hours, but to his tired mind the prize was worth the risk.
Monster blood made a good ink for the ritual circle, and he quickly began raising one of the more damaged corpses; best to save the more intact ones for when he’d had a chance to sleep and level up. Luck seemed to favor him, for twenty hours later he had completed the ritual without issue; he immediately seized control of the new undead before it could attack. Mid-afternoon sunlight once again displayed the beauty of the world outside his bloody copse of trees, and the sunlight lent confidence to his gait as he searched for safety, his undead monstrosity maintaining its sinister smile as it dragged the other corpses behind it by a rope tied around its neck.
His search for safety eventually brought him over a small hill, finding Luna waiting on the other side. Patiently she stood as he approached, before she said, with a gently scolding tone, “Settling in for a long-form ritual while so exposed was plain idiotic; I had to interfere to keep you alive multiple times. Never encountered loot-madness over fucking bodies before, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Come on, we’re heading back to an inn so you can rest and try again.”
Even through his exhaustion, Julian managed to blush; even he had recognized the illogical nature of his decision at the time, but he’d let his tired mind convince him the prize was worth it. He’d have to watch out for that in the future. In the meantime, he followed Luna, and while she rolled her eyes when she saw his new undead still hauling the bodies, she didn’t say anything; his decision had been stupid, but wasting the fruits of his efforts would also be stupid.
While civilization had spread out to the point of no longer really being a continuous part of the Town, that didn’t mean they were far from succor; in just half an hour they arrived at a small, wood-walled community with maybe a dozen houses surrounding a small inn. His smiling undead received several sharp looks, but he thought that might be more the corpse he had used than the fact it was an undead; he resolved to ask Luna about that when an opportunity arose. For now, he followed the innkeep to his room, located off a hallway behind the common area, before he crashed on the straw mattress and lost consciousness.
As usual, he found himself in the infinite void, flame-white text displaying his status before him.
[Status]
[Name: Julian Barth]
[Race: Human]
[Attributes: 10 10 10 10 10 10]
[Skills: Create Zombie (10), Control Zombie (10), Corpse Stitching (2/20), Crossbow (1), Dagger (9), Spear (9), Toughness (9), Unarmed (4)]
If he’d had eyes in this space, they might have jumped straight out of his head. He couldn’t believe the progress; all his main Skills were in the 9-10 range! For a mere moment his excitement dimmed as he realized he’d forgotten to take advantage of his ranged option – coming from a world with guns one would assume ranged options would be more instinctual, but apparently not – but the joy at his progress returned quickly. When shit hit the fan, he had relied entirely on his melee weapons and his undead, and he was just fine with that; he’d just have to make sure his ranged option never fell too far behind, in case he ever needed it.
He focused on Control Zombie, making sure his memory of its description was accurate.
Control Zombie (10) [Wit] – Gain complete control over a number of created zombies up to Effect – Current Effect: 20
Oh yes, raising another undead to bring the corpses with him was turning out to be the right decision, if only because Luna was looking out for him this time. He now had four potential minions to animate and bring under his control, though the ones he got to last would be significantly weakened by rot. He hadn’t had the time to grow his forces from the rats in Town; the interviews and Luna’s departure came quickly once his training was complete. Now, however, depending on Luna’s timeframe, his undead army could start to come into its own.
He dismissed his status, and even through the paralysis of sleep, his lips twitched in a smile.