Necromancer’s Resolve - Chapter 8

Finding himself inside of the infinite black, there wasn’t much that Foster could really do, despite weirdly being completely conscious. It was as if he was sitting inside a pitch-black room. But other than that, there really was nothing there. Foster wasn’t feeling cold or hot, he wasn’t feeling anything, really. There was no surface anywhere, no wind, no sound, Foster didn’t even notice any of the immense pain he had been feeling before.

This continued on for however long. Foster couldn’t really say how long, since every moment felt both like an hour and a second. It was messing with him, actually. For that time, he just had to be there with a pitch-black surrounding, unable to move or make a sound.

And then, at some point, Foster started noticing something. It was like a small dot. That was really all it was, a dot. A speck of pure white that slowly kept growing and expanding the more Foster concentrated on it.

Once it grew to the size of a fist, Foster suddenly started feeling again. He felt his body right underneath him, but instead of actually seeing his body like usual, it was like he only saw his own outlines created with bright white lines.

Slowly, Foster was able to push his hand forward and tried to grasp at the white circle in front of him. The very moment that his fingertip seemed to touch it, the white circle started infinitely expanding in just a split-second. The black space around him turned entirely into a white one. The only black he could see was his own body.

Inside of his pure black body, starting from the center of his chest, white veins began to grow outward, covering his body within a matter of seconds. They grew toward the white space in the form of pitch-black veins, stretching out into the infinite distance until the whole floor became black.

Now, the space was split into two colors, the ground was black, and the sky was white, while Foster himself had both in him, unsure which color was the base.

And just when he started thinking about that, he managed to rip open his eyes and everything came back to him. The feeling of his back pressing against the floor, the cold feeling of the air, the bright light from the glowing veins. All of it.

Slowly, Foster pushed his body back up, or at least he tried to. The moment he pressed his hand onto the floor, he flinched in pain as his hand was still just bloody pulp.

“Wh-What happened?” Foster asked into the room confusedly, before he managed to see the Lich on the throne, just sitting there silently as Foster pulled off his headphones and let them just hang there around his neck while he tried his best to stand up despite the deep surging pain inside of his body.

“Did I pass your stupid trial?” The young man laughed, slowly stepping forward toward the Lich, just kicking away at the books in his way. But the Lich itself really didn’t react in the slightest, so Foster simply kept on walking toward it angrily.

And then, Foster stood in front of the Lich, just staring down at him, and then grabbed him by the collar angrily, “Answer me you goddamn-”

The moment that Foster pulled on the slightly metallic collar, the Lich’s body just broke down into dust, all of its rings dropping onto the ground with clinking sounds while its clothes slowly slid down the side of the throne.

Immediately Foster jumped back in response to seeing this, falling over a pile of books as a slight ringing sounded out in front of him.

[All requirements met. You can now change your class to ]

[Requirements: Know basic hand-to-hand combat techniques; not yet have acquired a class; keep a large amount of necromantic energy in your body; keep the under control]

[Do you want to change your class to ?]

Foster looked at all these messages, carefully reading them through over and over again. However, there was a lot that he didn’t really understand. What exactly just happened here after Foster received that punch from the Lich?

But before he could really try and figure that out, a voice called out to him, “Kid? Kid, you’re awake?” The voice of a disembodied skeletal head asked, and Foster immediately turned around and looked at the source of that sound.

“Georg?” Foster asked, trying to push himself off of the ground again before hurrying over toward the bookshelf that he placed the skeleton’s head onto. But what he saw there was slightly outside of Foster’s expectations. Georg’s head was slowly turning to dust, similar to how the Lich’s whole body did. He kept crumbling, starting around the edges of his eyesockets.

“What’s going on..?” Foster asked confusedly, and Georg just quietly groaned as he answered with a light laugh, “I don’t know what happened myself, but… It seems like I’m done for now, kid.” Georg pointed out, “I guess I was lucky enough to have made it this far anyway…”

“Wait, what do you mean? Are… are you dying?” The young man asked, slowly trying to extend his hand forward toward the skeletal head, although he was trying to be as careful as possible so that he wouldn’t accidentally make Georg’s skull crumble faster.

“I’ve been dead for 25 years, kid. And that is a fact, no matter if you may consider undead alive. To my family, I was killed 25 years ago. They surely moved on already, but…” Georg explained, the more he spoke, the faster he started falling apart, “Bring the bag that I had on my body to my wife and daughter, will you?” The skeleton asked of Foster, and before the young man could even answer properly, Georg’s head entirely fell to dust. And Foster was left alone.

“Georg?” He asked with a confused expression, just staring at the fine dust in front of him, trying to see if anything was left at all. But there was no hope. He was gone. Georg was really gone all of a sudden.

Foster just saw a person die. Sure, he may have looked thoroughly and utterly terrifying to him at first, but after speaking to him, he was actually a good guy that loved his family. He just wanted to return to them, that was the whole reason that he tried to screw Foster over in the first place.

“You’ve got to be kidding…” The young man muttered to himself, slowly dropping down onto the ground onto his knees, before slowly turning toward the message still floating next to him.

[Do you want to change your class to ?]

“A necromancer can create undead, right? Then let’s just go for that… maybe I can bring him back?” Foster figured, and the moment that he thought of agreeing with what the message asked him, several other messages appeared in front of him.

[Your class is now ]

[Dyotis Necromancer – Instead of manipulating death, you channel it]

[Class Skill acquired]

[Class Skill acquired]

[Class Skill acquired]

[Class Skill acquired] Wuxiaworld for visiting.

[Deadly Surge][Level – 1]

[Effect – Push a surge of deadly energy out of your hand]

[Cost – 100 Mana][Type – Active]

[Draining Touch][Level – 1]

[Effect – Drain energy out of a target’s body]

[Cost – 10 Mana per 1 drained][Type – Active]

[Dyotis Form][Level – 1]

[Effect – Let’s you use the Dyotis combat form]

[Cost – None][Type – Passive]

[Life Detect][Level – 1]

[Effect – Sense the life around you]

[Cost – 10 Mana per second][Type – Active]

“What…?” Foster muttered as he looked at all of these messages one after another. Sure, they seemed quite useful on their own, but none of them seemed like they were able to help Foster out in this specific situation. “There’s no skill that lets me resurrect something..? What kind of shitty necromancer class is this?” The young man muttered quietly as the messages in front of him swiftly disappeared again.

And then, for a couple of hours, maybe, Foster just sat there on the ground to try and figure out what he was supposed to do right now. Was there really anything that he could do? There didn’t really seem to be a way out of here anyway, so he would just end up being stuck here and starving to death.

He couldn’t try anything with his headphones and regular phone either, because both of them ran out of battery when Foster was using them during… whatever the hell that just was.

But for now, Foster figured he could at least try something else. He could try and pass his time just reading a bit. Maybe that would let him somehow figure out what to do next anyway. And if not, then he would at least have something to do until he started rotting away down here.

And so, the young man slowly stood up and made his way around the room, looking at the titles of the different books in here. He could understand some of the simpler words that were written, but sometimes he did have a bit of an issue doing so. Whenever that happened, and the title looked interesting anyhow, Foster just tried to remember where that book was and looked for a different one that he seemed to be able to at least somewhat understand.

However, even if he could read the title, that didn’t mean that he could actually read the contents of the book. He sometimes had to skip whole sections of what was written and then return back there once Foster’s Arthor Language Comprehension skill leveled up some more.

That actually happened rather quickly, as Foster noticed, so soon, he was even able to read some of the more complicated books.

But something interested him even more than that skill of his leveling up. Once Foster started reading some of the books that specifically seemed to relate to his class, something else happened.

[You are now Level 2. +5 Stat points]

“I… leveled up?” He asked himself quietly, just rubbing his tired eyes a bit before just making the message disappear, “Well, who cares?” Foster muttered, and then returned to look down at his book.

This one actually stuck out to Foster because it had a title that had the word ‘Dyotis’ in it. Since there was that thing about ‘Gift of Dyotis’ that appeared in the messages a bit ago, not to mention it being part of his class-name, Foster figured that it might have a correlation. And seemingly, he was right.

But it was a bit different to what Foster thought it would be. Instead of an explanation about what the Gift of Dyotis was, or why the ‘Dyotis’ part was that important in general, all that was inside of it was the explanation about what seemed to be that passive skill he got.

The Dyotis Form. There were some rough sketches in here, as well as written descriptions about all the different moves. In general, it didn’t seem all that complicated, so Foster might be able to learn it pretty quickly. It wasn’t too different from how he liked to fight anyway.

And so, Foster kept reading some of the different books in here while slowly leveling up.