Looking back at it, she should have guessed it wasn't exactly a brilliant idea. Who in their right mind would go spelunking in a cave that just a few minutes before spewed a swarm of giant cockroaches that could spit acid? But maybe she wasn't in her right mind...

Still, she could at least have brought a torch. The thing was, over the walls of 'her' cave grew a common breed of moss, which glowed in a faint blue light, but still enough to illuminate the darkness of the tunnels.

Here, there was none of that. The walls were covered by another kind of green moss, which while it still glowed it wasn't bright enough to let her see her surroundings. Also, the entire cave system was a labyrinth, though her minions somehow remembered the way back, so that wasn't a problem.

The other thing which bothered her was the amount of insects that crawled on the floor and their gigantic counterparts. She had been attacked by at least another handful of acid cockroaches, a couple of nasty paralyzing centipede (though their venom didn't work on her zombies) and even an earthworm as big as Elena. Luckily the worm didn't have any kind of natural weapons like the roaches and centipede, and it was also kinda slow, so they butchered it quite easily.

She had been at it for what she assumed were a couple hours, and so after defeating two centipedes that had tried to ambush them from a side tunnel, she decided it was the right moment to take a break. She tried to raise the newly killed centipede as skeletons, but to no avail; maybe it was because they were insects? Or maybe they were too low leveled to qualify as materials?

She didn't know, so she simply made zombies out of them, and by checking her remaining mana trough the status screen, she discovered she still had two points remaining. The cost for raising zombies went down, which was good for her future plans.

After the short break, she continued the exploration of the tunnels. A while later the place started to change, both in shape and inhabitants. The tunnel widened even further, bringing it at least three meters wide, and she didn't cross paths cockroaches, centipede or earthworms.

Instead, she was greeted by swarms of ants. They weren't as big as the other insects, they barely reached the size of Elena's head, but they were much greater in numbers and viciousness. Also, they slipped trough her minions more often, threatening to bite her flesh off with their small but voracious maws.

Together with her minions Elena fend off dozens of the ants, before she reached the end of a tunnel, where she immediately noticed a door. A door! Not even her cave had one, and here she found a door in good conditions!

As soon as she grabbed the doors brass handle, the ants stopped pursuing them and retreated back in the tunnels. Breathing a sigh of relief, she entered the room, leaving most of her minions to guard the outside and bringing with her only one of her centipede.

She soon found out that was a good decision, as the room was pretty small and couldn't possibly hope to house her and all of her minions. She looked around the room, surprised to find that only a writing desk, together with a chair and a small wooden chest were furnishing it. On top of the desk where a couple books, which she would gladly add to her collection... which she still didn't have time to look trough. She made a note to do that when she got back.

She went over to the chest and immediately opened it, eager to discover which treasures it contained. Looking back at it, that had been a really bad idea. As soon as she lifted the lid, a black liquid was sprayed all over her face, rendering her blind for a few seconds.

She was able to remove the liquid from her eyes, though she was still shedding tears, both because it went directly in her eyes, and also because of the smell it emanated. After she was able to see again, she looked inside the chest, more warily now, and found that a single, small ring was resting on the bottom. She picked it up, and carefully put it on.

She watched the ring sitting on her finger, wondering if it had any magical properties when a though that was not hers crossed her mind.

Empty.

And then, she realized what this small treasure she found was. A spatial ring. An object enchanted so as to be used as inventory. You could store great amounts of things inside the enchanted tool, and not feel the weight of it, at all. It was a great item, that only nobles and rich merchants could afford, and she had found one in the middle of anything.

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She immediately willed all the objects and furniture in the room to go into the ring, so to test how much it could store. Then, after some though, she had her minions help her unhinge the door and she took that with her too.

She resumed the exploration of the cave, with the purpose of finding other treasures. Elena took the habit of gathering the corpse of every monster she found and killed, and kept going, slowly descending into the depths of the earth.

In between all that, she had reached the second level of One-Handed Combat, and the fourth level of her class. This brought her total mana up to 28 and her mana regeneration to 8 points every three hours.

In the end, she reached a wide room, the biggest one she had found yet. As she entered, she noticed it was filled with small white larvae, and there were a lot of ants moving them around. At the other side of the room was another ant, much larger than the rest. This one was twice as big as Elena's centipede and was busy giving birth to larvae and being fed by the other worker ants.

As soon as Elena and her minions were spotted, all of the workers in the room stopped whatever they were doing and moved towards them, rushing towards the invaders. Elena ordered her zombies in a semi-circular formation and waited for the approaching wave to reach them. Then, her biggest roach spat at them, killing ants in the tens, while the smaller ones killed off the ones that managed to evade the acid. One of the centipedes jumped in the fray, writhing its body in sinuous waves and killing a handful of ants at a time with its sharp legs. The other centipede Elena kept near her, to act as a sort of bodyguard.

Then, the Queen acted, probably recognizing the intruders as a threat and started advancing towards the undead that threaded in her home, closely followed by twenty or so ants that were quite bigger than the others.

By then, only Elena's biggest roach and her two centipedes remained standing on her side, but at the same time only the Queen, her guards and a couple of the normal ants were still alive. While Elena finished off the last of the normal ants, her centipedes engaged the Queen guards, and the remaining colossus of a roach (which she promptly named Ro, because the Author was growing quite annoyed of calling it 'the biggest roach' every time he needed to put it into action) smashed into the ants Queen, engaging her in melee.

At the end, only Elena, Ro, the Queen and a mangled centipede remained on the battleground. Ro had suffered quite some injured, having most of its legs ripped off from its body, though it still managed to melt off half of the Queen's face.

Elena too had been injured in the battle, but she still managed to circle around the two insects, still battling in the middle of the battle site and climb on the Queen's back. From there, it was like a walk in the park. A really dangerous walk, that could probably cost you your life if you just so slightly slipped, but... she was still able to pierce the monsters back a few times and make it drop dead.

As soon as she touched the ground, Elena, a notification told her that her class got to level five, and she got a new Mind point to spend, which she promptly put wisdom, so to raise her mana regeneration. It didn't go up by much, but even that single point every three hours could make a difference.

Then she resurrected the Queen, and as many of her guards as possible. She ordered her injured minions to eat some of the corpses, which seemed to have a healing effect on her zombies before, and in the end, she had Ro, the centipede, the Queen, and five of her guards.

[ --- Status Screen --- ]

Name: Elena | Class: Necromancer – Apprentice | Level: 5

Condition: Battered | Mana: 1/31 (9 Mana/3h)

[ --- Stats --- ]

Str: 5 | Cos: 5 | Dex: 8

Int: 8 | Wis: 7 | Per: 7

[ --- Skills --- ]

Common: Basic Farming III | Reading II | Writing I | One-Handed Combat II

Uncommon: Raise Lesser Undead III [Lesser Zombie, Lesser Skeleton]

Rare: Analyze-Self

[ --- End of Status Screen --- ]