RItzy sighed in relief as the bed moved according to his wishes to the left. Since his previous attempts at using necromancy hadn’t been too conventionally successful, he was worried it would be the same when he tried to move the bed. Fortunately, the only thing that differed from what he expected when using Deathbed was the fact that the target wasn’t transported to a storage dimension, and the bed instead showed up in the real world.
Upon seeing Ritzy’s expression and the fact that the bed moved without Ritzy touching it with his hand, Gerhart and Mognog also let out excited sighs of relief. If Ritzy could move it with his mind, the number of options they would have for escaping and surviving Baron Michmond’s pursuit had greatly increased.
Of course, they still had to find out if it took too much of a toll on Ritzy’s mind and mana for them to rely on it. But based on Ritzy’s relaxed expression, they didn’t have much to worry about.
“Good work, kiddo. Is it taxing?”
Mognog could see that RItzy wanted to continue playing with the bed, but they didn’t have unlimited time, so he followed his own order and focused on the task at hand, which was to figure out what RItzy’s and his Deathbed’s limits were.
Ritzy shook his head.
“Not really.”
“ So, you should be able to keep that up for quite a while, yes?”
“Yep.”
“That’s good. How far can you move it, and how much can you control it?”
Mognog didn’t waste any time as he asked question after question to help Ritzy figure out the limits of his control over the Deathbed.
So far, Ritzy had only shifted the bed back and forth, just like he had done at first when he touched it with a mana-filled hand. But following Mognog’s suggestions, Ritzy first flipped it upside down and rotated it a full circle.
“So that works. Any problems?”
“A little more annoying.”
Ritzy had to exert some effort to spin the Deathbed since it was a little more complicated holding it in place and spinning it on an axis instead of simply flipping it over. But it wasn’t so difficult he couldn’t do it. After doing it a couple of times and getting used to the movements, Ritzy decided to test how far away he could maintain his control over it.
He began by slowly moving it further away from himself. As Ritzy did that, he felt the tether of mana linking him and the Deathbed together grow thinner and tauter.
Ritzy instinctively realized he would lose control if the tether snapped. But it wouldn’t be permanent, and they had to find out the maximum distance at which Ritzy could control the bed.
The bed hovered through the air further away from Ritzy, and Gerhart and Mognog watched on with growing hope as Ritzy could control the bed at a significant distance. However, he had to concentrate quite a bit when it got too far away. It also looked like the Deathbed’s movements became less stable the further away from Ritzy it got.
Eventually, the bed came to a jolting halt, and Ritzy flinched before frowning at the bed.
“Is that your limit, kiddo?”
“No.”
Mognog didn’t quite believe Ritzy since it was obvious he had lost control over the bed.
“There’s no reason to lie, Ritzy. That much is more than good. With this, we should be able to carry Talia with us without any problems.”
Ritzy glanced at Gerhart before looking back at the bed.
“It’s not my limit. If I had more mana, I could strengthen my control.”
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“I guess you’re the only one who would know that, kiddo. But Gerhart’s right. With this much, we should consider getting a move on. Kiddo, can you gather mana while doing other things?”
“...no. Not enough, at least.”
“Okay. Since your magic is going to be essential, you should focus on gathering your mana while Gerhart and I start planning and packing.”
Ritzy nodded and closed his eyes to focus on drawing the mana in the air around them into his body.
“Okay, Gerhart, fill one bag with the short swords and most of the arrows. Keep the rest on you. We don’t need the bows. They’re too much unnecessary weight, but take the string and put those along with most other things in another bag, including the food. Ritzy should carry the Bone Chalk for emergencies. And both of you should have your spellbooks on your bodies. We don’t want to risk losing them if you drop a bag. The clothes are good to have in case you get injured but skip the pants. Too much weight and not a good fabric.”
Mognog got quiet and thought for a few seconds as he watched Gerhart carry out his orders with single-minded efficiency. Gerhart was clearly trying to distract himself from Talia’s dead body by dedicating himself to listening to Mognog. It was a good way to keep calm and endure the feeling of anger, sadness, and loss for now as a way to survive. But it would be easy to forget to remove the lid on those feelings after surviving.
However, Mognong knew it wasn’t the time to care about Gerhart’s future mental state. Just like the kids, he had to focus on the task at hand.
Mognog looked at the dying Lenny, gurgling on the ground not far away.
“Do you know how much mana the kiddo needs to reanimate someone?”
Gerhart shook his head.
“No. I don’t really know much about his actual skills.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just ask him when before we go. Oh, we should also check if he can use several Deathbeds at once. Not having to carry that skeleton with us would be one less burden.”
“He should be able to, right? I mean, it’s meant to be some kind of storage spell for his undead, so it would be pretty useless if he can only carry one, no?”
“That’s right. But don’t forget that he first opened his spellbook less than an hour ago. It’s pretty amazing he’s already gotten the hang of activating and controlling the spell. But if we expect too much based on that, we’re bound to get disappointed.”
“...right.”
Gerhart nodded and continued arranging the shortswords and arrows so that they wouldn’t poke holes in the bag or him when he carried it.
Gerhart put the bags and stuff they would bring with them in one place and threw the other stuff to the side.
“We can’t use this to mislead the people coming after us, Mognog?”
Gerhart pointed at the stuff they wouldn’t bring with them. Just leaving it behind in the dungeon felt a little wasteful. It wasn’t much, just a few bows, a pair of extra pants, and the trinkets they had found decorating the goblin huts.
“It’s good thinking. But we will waste more time setting up anything decent than it will gain us. We should focus on running as soon as we leave this place, and if we find a suitable spot, we can set up a trap to delay or deter the pursuers.”
“...okay.”
Gerhart had finished packing, and he should rest until Ritzy was ready to go. He had, after all, not slept properly since before the morning the young Michmond apprehended him for stealing his purse. And a lot had happened since then, even if it had only been about a day, so he should have been exhausted.
But his mind and body wouldn’t settle down.
Gerhart looked around for something to do and distract himself with, but there wasn’t anything.
He looked at Talia. At her lifeless body. Without anything to distract him, Gerhart’s mind was fixated on the fact that Talia was dead.
Ritzy seemed hopeful that he would be able to bring her back, at least in some way. But Gerhart wasn’t sure he believed it was possible. And if it was, would he really want to see it? Would Talia, the person she had been in life, come back to them unchanged?
Ritzy doubted even the Dark One, the greatest necromancer in recent history, could bring a person back to life. It went against the most fundamental principles of necromancy.
Granted, Gerhart didn’t know what resurrecting a person truly meant or what it would take. But he knew it was something so difficult it was more often spoken about in stories than in real life, despite there being places and items rumored to possess the ability to resurrect people.
The things Ritzy had mentioned were the more famous ones, but Gerhart was willing to bet there were more that rumors claimed could do the same. But they would surely be just as impossible to reach, acquire, or get help from.
The future where Ritzy successfully brought Talia back to life, or even something even remotely similar, didn’t seem like a future Gerhart would experience.
Gerhart held Talia’s cold and lifeless hand to comfort himself. The calluses and the hardiness of her hands were proof of her hard life, her hard work. Maybe it would be best not to disturb her. To let her rest.
Gerhart knew it was more than unlikely for Ritzy to succeed. He also knew that Talia didn’t deserve to have her body desecrated by Ritzy’s attempts at resurrecting her. He knew that he should stop Ritzy if only to let Talia rest honorably. But he didn’t have the resolve. He wanted to see Talia again.