Chương 14: Bonepot?

You have killed a level 4 Bonehunter! No Bonus XP for you! XP gained: 3! You levelled up! You now have: 2 stat points to allocate! 1 skill point available! I split the points between strength and agility. My lecture to the kids about maintaining a healthy balance between strength and speed was just as important for me to follow as it was for them. Local Class Bonecaster General Level 11 STR 16 AGI 11 MAG 26 ARM 24 XP 1/100 Bone Matter: 85/85 My armour had passively crept up another point.

As much as I'd love for it to keep ticking up a point or two a day, within a couple of weeks, all the common bones of my original body and armour would be upgraded to uncommon, and I'd need to boost the skill to higher levels for it to continue working. For now, though, I'd keep getting tougher every day. Dust to Dust, 2/10 Convert Bones into bone dust. You have become fertiliser, grower of crops! No question about where to spend my skill point. I needed the third level of that ability as soon as possible.

Once I got that, my effective power level would snowball. With my millennia of experience and training, I would always be able to punch above my weight class if just stats were taken into account. Once I could synergise the level 3 ability in Dust to Dust with Bone Control, I'd become extremely hard to kill. One more level and my job would get a whole lot easier. Other than the sad fact that Bork was such disappointing villain material. He'd better be doing those exercises he'd been told to start practising.

I began rummaging through the zombie's pockets. The undead often mirrored their habits in life, and most of the ones that still had clothes would fill their pockets with anything shiny that might have caught their eye when alive. My search turned up eighty copper, a rusty dagger, a bottletop and a key. The key was made from shiny, clean steel, and the number ninety-three was engraved on one side.

I added the coins to my pouch, put the dagger in my rucksack next to the summoning supplies, and discarded the bottletop. I had no need of Nuka-Cola. Vaults… where were the vaults in this section of the Moulders? The key was new, so it would likely belong to someone on the east side of the graveyard. I settled down and began dragging sections of skeletons over to myself, dissolving them into powder that I mentally controlled to flow into the open mouth of my Pouch of the Powders.

It took me half an hour, the moon barely moving in the sky as I reduced my former enemies into resources I could use or sell. As the last skull broke down and disappeared as a swirl of dust into my pouch, I rose and brushed off my cloak. Wobbling back into the sky, I flew higher, far enough that I would hopefully avoid gathering another herd. I wouldn't mind farming some more XP, but the possibility of a vault to raid was much more tempting. Ossuaries weren't common in Nadrak, but they weren't unknown either.

If I got lucky, the bodies behind the door that my new key would unlock could be a treasure trove of ossified calcium. The beloved dead sealed away centuries ago, left as a gift of Ancient Bone Powder for me. Deadrats twitched as my shadow passed over them, sending them scurrying into shadowy corners, but I steered clear of the larger undead while keeping an eyesocket open for doombats and winged fiends in the air. The mists glowed ahead of me; the gaslamps formed spheres of light that the damp air swallowed up.

I wasn't the only one who could use this place to level up, and this section would likely be patrolled as well. The need to kill for XP, and the dangers of the shroud, meant that anyone brave enough would come here to get some levels. Landing in an area clear of the shambling dead, I began moving carefully, creeping from shadow to shadow with my hood pulled up to hide my ivory dome. Ducking behind a taller-than-usual gravestone, I froze as voices reached me through the gloom.

Every movement of my bony body was deliberate; I had no muscles to twitch or ache as I kept myself still.

"…Harrow got a potion from Myrtle. Said it cleared right up. Just go to her." It was a deep, feminine voice, and I heard years of command experience in her words. She was used to snapping orders and having them immediately obeyed.

"We're stuck here for the rest of the night, Kell. I'll go see Myrtle in the morning." A male, he sounded young to me.

"You better had. I won't tolerate disease in my squad," Kell replied. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it"It's hardly a disease, just a rash," the man replied defensively.

"Yakob, you know what that rash turns into? You don't want it to drop off. The whores would starve," chuckled a second man. Their good-natured bickering faded away, but I counted to sixty before I moved. They'd be out looking to keep the undead away from the more frequented sections of the Moulders, and I would instantly be classed as a target. My ability to talk wouldn't count for more than an oddity they'd ignore before attacking.

Killing guards was not conducive to keeping my presence in the graveyard secret in the long run. The rows of vaults were low buildings. Not much bigger than my shed in Bork's garden, but decorated with gothic ornamentation. Skulls, strange, composite beasts, and humans in stone-carved armour. The nobility were a martial bunch, and the decor selected for their family crypts reflected it.

Listening carefully, I confirmed there wasn't another patrol nearby and slipped out of the shadows to check the door of the first one I reached. Sixty-two. Sneaking over to the next tomb, I found it was sixty-one. Doubling back, I moved down the line. I had to risk detection every time I went out to check the numbers, and I'd explored the start of two separate streets of mausoleums before I found number ninety-three. It was run down and in bad shape. Stone had flaked away, leaving the murals indistinct blurs.

Moss hadn't been cleared for years, and the lower half of the structure looked more organic than rock. The brand new key turned in the lock of the rusty metal door, but it swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. The outside was neglected, and the door looked like it would fall apart. It was still sturdy, though. This didn't make sense. Someone had recently been using this vault, but preferred the place to look derelict.

Shady business was afoot, and I moved very carefully as I stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind me. The Torch of Everflame in my hand flickered to life at a mental command. The enchantments would keep it burning for hours, but then it would need to recharge the mana stored in the runes carved into the handle. Holding it above my head, I found no cobwebs or dust. The floor was swept clean. The vault building was there as protection for the stairway that led down into the crypts proper.

There was a large stone table in the middle of the room, between me and the darkness of the steps leading into the earth. Bodies would be placed on it to rest in state while close relatives said their final farewells, before family attendants carried the deceased to their eternal resting place. The small structure was the entrance to an underground expanse of tunnels lined with alcoves of the dead.

Bones, noble bones that had hopefully been in repose for centuries, marinating in the death-affinity mana that flooded all of the Moulders, all ready for the harvest. I resisted the urge to rub my hands together and moved carefully. This room should be safe, under normal circumstances. Traps were generally kept away from the areas that family members might visit, but I moved cautiously anyway. Someone had been here recently. Behind the central slab, a bucket with pitch-soaked torches waited.

This ruled out derbarn, glyfclin, and a host of other intelligent monsters. All of those had perfect dark vision to balance their aversion to sunlight. The steps were worn smooth, a testament to how deep these catacombs must go. People didn't die so frequently that carrying their bodies into the deeps would wear down the limestone slabs, yet these were almost polished, with a slight groove worn in the middle from many feet passing over them. Curiouser and curiouser.

The light of the torch showed me the way, and at the bottom of the stairs, I found the first cryptorium. Empty alcoves lined the walls, shadows dancing on bare stone rather than bones. Shit. Someone had already looted this place. Whoever had done it had taken the bones, which were not generally considered valuable, and respect for the dead would stop most people from touching them.

Most of the nobles able to afford a crypt like this would be buried with swords and fancy armour, things that would appeal to a more traditional tomb raider. I had hoped that the usual bones would have been left behind. The room narrowed to a doorway at the end. The light reached through to reveal more clean-swept floors, but before I entered, I crouched down and ran my skeletal fingers across the stone. Something wasn't right.

One of my small shields flew from my left arm to hover in the doorway, then I slammed it down into the paving slabs hard enough to simulate a heavy footstep. Darts clattered off both sides of the doorway, and tiny holes quickly resealed. I didn't have time for Indiana Jones shit. This place felt huge, and I needed to be back in my shed by dawn and ready for another day of school. The darts were coated in something.

I held one of them up to my face, rotating it slightly so the light caught on the glistening liquid it had been dipped in. Designed to protect against humans, the darts and poison wouldn't bother me, but dart guns hidden in walls weren't the only traps I could imagine being built. While a giant rolling ball of doom was unlikely, collapsing rocks, mechanical spear thrusts from the walls… the list of traps that I formed in my head that could hurt me rapidly became depressingly long.

All four small shields moved away and began banging into everywhere I placed a foot before I got there, and the big ones kept close to my sides, floating protectively next to me. I didn't trigger any more traps, and the next room was much like the last, stripped bare of everything, bones and all. Peering around in the gloom, I saw a flicker of magic on one wall. Four alcoves, one atop the other, were outlined by a rectangle that glowed a sickly green in my arcane vision. Shadow and illusion magic blended together.

Something was hiding here. Using my shields, I began tapping carefully around the edges, along the lines of the spell. When nothing happened, the walls at the back of each alcove were gently probed. The switch was hidden in the top right corner of the bottom one. My shield tapped against it, while I kept a safe distance, and there was a quiet rumbling sound. The section of the wall ground back slowly, then slid sideways. Beyond lay a mad scientist's laboratory.

In addition to the alembics, racks of potions and pickled heads that all such scientists seemed to prize, was my missing treasure. Neatly stacked in one corner were piles of yellow bones. It was a workspace; no one would be insane enough to boobytrap it, but I still checked every footfall in advance. The thing to remember about mad scientists is that they are insane, after all.

A pile of bloodstained sacks sat in one corner, and books lay in neat piles at one end of the central table, next to an alchemy set and an array of ingredients in labelled jars. I ran my eyes over the labels, bloodwort, greasefat, derbarn sweat; it was all geared around one thing and one thing only. Enhancing the undead. The Journal and Works of Antoine de Varlspain. I flicked the book open and read a few sentences. This was the necromancer's personal journal.

His feelings and thoughts were jotted down in blocky, square handwriting. Skimming forward a few pages, ritual diagrams covered the pages, tiny annotations written in the margins. There was a clicking sound behind me, and I turned to find that what I'd thought was the real treasure was dragging itself together, the bones of dozens of bodies merging to create a seven-foot-tall, vaguely man-shaped form that towered over me as it stepped ponderously forward.