After eating the two adventurer, I felt better than ever, my thoughts were clear and my body was strong, the rotting corpses didn't quite hit the spot I guess. Now unfortunately the Barbarian was not very kitted out himself, but I found a decent pair of boots and a nice sleeveless navy blue vest.

Vest Of The Barbarian: Provides minimal protection, along with a magical enchantment to negate it's weight and a strong self-repair capability.

Boots of The Ranger: Makes your footsteps completely silent.

Overall, this whole encounter was far more beneficial than I could have imagined, the downside however is that now 2 adventurers just went missing right outside their little town, so there will likely be people on the lookout now.

I tore apart the camp and did my best to hide my tracks, I also dumped their remains into a nearby river and covered up the blood on the ground, this should be enough to stop any rangers on my tail. As a ghoul my vision was not fantastic, even if I could see well in the dark, so I noticed quite quickly that my eyesight had improved considerably from my ring of awareness, and perhaps my amulet as well, the colors were also starting to seems a little bit more faded, not sure what that was about.

I changed into the Barbarian's trousers and donned his gloves, they were markedly less decomposed than mine, maybe this would allow my blend in as a human if need be? My face was a bit too gaunt due to my lack of fat and water content, but I still retained my human appearance besides that, no new fangs or anything of the sort. Oh yeah, and my skin still looked like I had the stone skin spell cast on me.

I grabbed all of their other goods and threw in a sack over my should and headed back to their town and continued to observe who was coming and going. The main problem, they were leaving in larger groups now, after a full day of waiting not a single group left that was smaller than 3 people.

Then I saw a guarded caravan exit the town, I counted 8 guards and at least 3 merchants were visible, along with a man guiding the horses. There were 3 large cages that I could see, one carried a large Hobgoblin, another a pair of harps, and finally, a young man. The young man had disheveled dark black hair coupled with a pale face and intense dark eyes. I sensed opportunity, so of course I followed the caravan closely.

I saw the young man looking in my direction on multiple occasion, it looks like he sees me, but then he looks away and I am left unsure. Night starts to fall and I see the caravan looking members looking for a place to setup camp. Now was the time to decide what exactly to do. First and foremost I wanted Levels, if I could kill a few of them while they slept, I would gain loads of experience and stand a better chance at taking on properly geared adventurers. Or, I could try and steal whatever cargo they were hauling…. Why not both?

Kill a few tonight, 1 or 2 tomorrow night, repeat until I had free reign over the loot. It sounded like a good plan to me, and so I waited. They wasted no time placing theirs tents and cooking their dinner, and without much hassle they were all asleep within an hour or two. Except for the guard on watch that is.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

At this point it was completely dark out, which didn’t both me in the slightest, but I know it bothered them. And so I crept up on the lone guard, he was clearly drowsy but doing his best to keep a lookout. Sadly for him, he simply couldn’t see out into the dark, and I had no trouble getting within a dozen feet of him simply by approaching from his side. I jumped and swung my axe for his neck, he realized what was happening at the last moment and let out a scream, which was cut off as quickly as it had started.

I stood there still for a few minutes to make sure nobody had seen me. I sneaked into the first tent and decapitated the man without any fuss, and quickly moved onto the second, same story. I exited the tent wiping the blood of my axe real quick with a cloth I had found laying around, and found myself face to face with an older man, mostly undressed and evidently leaving to go to the restroom.

I was far too late to stop the man from screaming, a blood curdling scream it was, you would think he was trying to alert the entire forest. I cursed my luck, but did not let it get in the way of my levelling process. He started to run and I ran after, reaching him with little effort and planting my axe deep into his back, snapping his spine and just about everything else, and dropping him instantly.

I was starting to feel invigorated, and readied myself to face the 5 other guardsmen, and perhaps even the merchants. In shocking cohesion, all 9 members of the caravan exited their tents in varying states of undress, but all with their weapons drawn.

Could I kill them all? Probably not, most of them, absolutely, did I feel like dying for it? No, no I did not.

But then the young man in the cage stood up. “Let me out of here, I’ll help you, I swear it!”

I turned my attention to him, he looked desperate, I believed him. I swung my axe for the padlock, easily hammering through it. He kicked open the door and jumped down with a giggle of excitement.

He quickly started forming a ball of black flames in his hands, before lobbing it into the lumped together group of guards and merchants. The orb arced through the air and landed with a soundless explosion, knocking back the two nearest to the explosion, and washing everyone in flames.

They yelled in pain and fear as they ran from the fire, spreading out into a much looser formation to avoid such explosive attacks. He nodded as if this was his plan and sent out a jet of flames, seperating 2 of them from the rest. The wall of flame persisted, making it impossible for anyone to get through without taking damge.

“I’m not a Wizard, I control these flames, they won’t hurt you.” he told me.

Against every undead instinct in my body, I walked through the flames, and I was unscathed as promised. I smiled at the two terrified guards in front of me and raised my axe menacingly.

One went to thrust at me, which I easily outdistanced and responded with a strike to the arm, and without any armor protecting him, his arm not hanged uselessly at his side, mangled beyond use.

The other took the opportunity to charge me, I deftly avoided this as well and kicked him into the flames as he passed by. I didn’t turn around to observe my handiwork, the other man decided to brave the flames to try and get away, but I launched my axe in his direction, burying it deep into his skull. A skill I had honed over many years… I think?

I ripped the axe of the man’s skull and set my sights on the other group, now only 6 members strong. The warlock was focusing most of his effort on maintaining the thick wall of flame surrounding them. 4 of them had spears, and I was reminded of how I met my end last time, so I bid my time.

I uttered my first words out loud since I had died. “I need more damage on these spearmen.”

The spellcaster nodded at my instructions and let the fire dissipate. He shot 4 tethers towards the spearmen, and the color quickly drained from their faces. They were clearly weakened greatly by this spell, so I took the oppurtunity and leapt across the dying flames and onto the dazed spearmen.

One merchant had the presence of mind to try and charge the spellcaster, but he raised a hand and fired a streak of magic missiles at the merchant point blank. The poor merchant doubled over quickly, grievously wounded. I chopped into my opponents, sending blood flying, they tried to fall back, but it was all over as the caster cut off his tethers and lobbed an even larger ball of explosive flames directly at the group.

The rest was just putting who ever survived out of their misery. I looked up and locked eyes with the spellcaster. He smiled. “Pleased to meet you, my names Timor, what do you go by?”

What a fine question.