Escalor took the group of goblins away. While Me and Siarre stayed back.
"I kept two corpses just in case you get really hungry again," she said: I didn't see any corpses though. "And I kept this one hidden here for you to try out your skills." She lifted the same moss covering that was on the entrance and revealed a dead goblin.
Speaking of skills, I hardly asked them about my incomplete ones. Particularly because things were red and I was hungry: I couldn't even focus but-
'When in hell did she?'
How fast was this woman anyway? Or was it that, I was just too busy eating?
Moving on- "How do you use a skill?"
"Generally, you practice for years upon years and gain experience. But some skills come as innate skill that manifest over time. for example, Esck's swordplay. He was blessed with the talent for swords. So, when he tried to practice, he excelled at it."
"Yeah, but my skills don't particularly have full names," I tried remembering.
One was Nec- and the other was Sum-. My skills weren't addition or something was it? 'Fuck math…' Just remembering high school made me want to gag. Not because I hated math but rather because I hated math class. That bastard of a teacher always made me come up to the board and made a laughingstock out of me. That fucking imbecile expected me to come up with an answer despite never teaching properly in the first place. Fucking bastard…
Ahem… "So, what should I do?"
"Place your hand over this body and slowly utter your skill name. While trying to figure out what it means."
It wasn't even complete and I didn't know what it meant. Was Nec even a word?
But if my gamer intuition wasn't lying then I had a feeling what it was. I had the same feeling for Sum too but for now, Focus!
I placed a hand on the goblin's stomach, right next to the arrow that'd pierced the little thing. "Nec-" Ow…
A bit of dark blue electricity streaked out of my fingers into the damn thing- and it almost lounged at me- "WOAH!" And I jumped backwards, shocked.
The fuck.
Its eyes were gone and the skin melted away, it fell with a thud, and thing went back to being dead.
Failure but-
But two new characters dangled in my mind. -Ro-
It was NecRo- meaning there was more and it really was 'necromancy'. I was right.
"As expected," Siarre mumbled. "Try again."
'You had a feeling as well…' This woman was far sharper than I gave her credit for.
I had to remember, these two were veterans. They were only helping me because they needed my help in return. And once that was done-
"Necro…"
Blue light. Dark blue light covered the goblin meat stick and slowly engulfed it, charred it slowly and then melted away the flesh living nothing but the bones behind.
And although I felt a faint connection, I could tell- this too was a failure.
Why? Because the next word came- M. And as a skeleton, it didn't seem very… well… alive.
"Don't try a third time," Siarre stopped me. "If you do, it'll lose control and disappear. It's a shame but we can still use this." She cleared her throat. "The next one must be-" She stared at me, egging me to go on.
"Sum-" My vision completely darkened for a second. "-Mon."
The next words came ringing and the corpse disappeared and reappeared a second later staring at me. It wasn't alive. Far from it. But it was there, waiting. As though a puppet waiting to be puppeteer-ed.
And I say stare, but all it did was point its head at me, and just stood still. The spells were a failure. At least the necromancy ones were.
"Congratulations my lord, your first servant…" Siarre said. "Although it's nothing but a soulless husk right now, eventually you'll have enough mastery of your skills to turn them to conscious soldiers: and with enough practice, you should be able to turn anything into obedient soldiers and maybe even…." She didn't finish.
"I-" I stared at the thing. Its body was different from mine. Unlike me, it didn't have darkness hiding its insides. Everything, or rather the lack thereof, was visible. And it really was… dead. A breath out. "Bow-" I commanded cautiously.
I created it. But I didn't feel very safe about it. I didn't know why. Maybe because of the spell failed a couple of times or was it that I was just afraid of its nature? I wasn't sure.
It bowed. On the ground, on its knees. Exactly as I imagined. 'As I thought.' Even without the ring, it could understand and comprehend my orders. "Now what? It'll follow me forever?"
"Yes. But for now, you can just dismiss the summon. Besides, it costs HP to keep it here. And if it dies in battle, you'll lose a bit of your HP, so do be careful."
Right now, I didn't have much HP to begin with, so I couldn't risk losing more.
"Noted…" I cleared my throat. "Dismissed!"
Escalor had left a while ago. But he was still in sight. In fact, he was waiting for us. The guy definitely knew what we were doing.
"Can we use this covering?" I asked, pointing at the moss bed.
"No. it'll wither without-" She chuckled. "Let us get a move on, my lord. And please be careful with both of those skills. Only certain undead can perform raising dead skills and you should, till you level up a bit at least, keep it hidden."
"Feel free to call me Sean… and… noted."