XKARNATION

It's my birthday! 

Hope you enjoy the chapter :)

Victor was bored again—which felt even worse since it was self-inflicted. 'I chose to become an undead since it would make my life as easy as possible... who would have thought having an easy life could be so dull?' Luckily the swarm of flies under his control was intelligent enough to obey a simple command: Kill everything.

"Bleh." Genus spat on the floor and flicked the half-eaten worm dripping in his saliva off the side of the floating platform. Genus looked awful, clearly having lost some of the weight he had regained from consuming his kin. Victor hadn't put much thought into it, as Genus was a side character in his life, but the dragon had shown remarkable willpower to continue following him this far. 

"Just a few more months, and you will finally obtain what you desire," Victor said, and Genus perked up slightly. Some newfound desire to continue sparking in his crystal eyes. Genus grumbled and rested his head back on his crossed paws. "I sure hope so. This journey has been nothing but torture."

Victor had to agree, although in his case, the torture had been the mind-numbing boredom during the most recent floors rather than physical. 'Once you take away the time needed to sleep, eat, and use the bathroom, you are left with a concerning amount of free time to spend on self-reflection and contemplating life.'

Luckily for everyone involved, they were currently on the 70th floor, so only a few hours of travel separated them from the next biome. Unfortunately, the initial joy from the floor's abundant experience points had somewhat dulled after weeks of black mud, disgusting earthworms, and the constant drone of the millions of undead flies encircling them. Nevertheless, Victor was curious about how Alice was doing, so he decided to pull up the party screen.

[Name: Alice]

[Race: ???]

[Body: Darkness Mana Body]

[Level: 317] (level up! x217)

[STR: 335(+217), DEX: 347(+217), CON: 354(+217), INT: 678(+434), WIS: 670(+434)]

(Dulled Emotions)

[Name: Victor]

[Race: Netherborne]

[Level: 827] (level up! x327)

[Stat Points: 800+ Million]

(Life Force Unstable - 926 Days) (Extreme Mana Sickness[-10 stats per second])

[Name: Terry]

[ERROR: CONNECTION LOST]

As expected, the gains on these ten floors had been tremendous. Alice had tripled her level to an impressive 317. She had taken full advantage of this floor's abundant and easy-to-kill prey. Even now, she was a few miles outside Victor's [Annihilating Aura] spell radius, bringing destruction to the land like a wrathful god. Purple fire danced along the horizon, and plumes of thick smoke rose as the dead wood and the few plants native to the land burned.

However, Alice's gains had been impressive but nothing compared to Victor's. Although his system was a sham and provided few benefits as he leveled, his number has still increased an astonishing 327 times, and the millions of undead swarming around him were a testament to that virtual increase. 'Even more hilarious is how my system screen stopped listing my stats and simply says eight hundred million, and even the life force counter has switched to days from hours.'

Victor calculated how many years of life force he had, and it worked out to 25 years on the surface but only 2.5 years down here... 'No wonder Netherbonre go extinct, all of this slaughter for a quarter of a century worth of life.' It was weird to think he went to such lengths to become an immortal creature and escape the ultimate weakness of humans—death—just to have an estimated life span lower than anywhere back on Earth. 

Before Victor could debate his decisions for the thousandth time, a voice spoke in his head: "Master." It was Andrew's voice, one that Victor had become greatly accustomed to and enjoyed hearing, as whenever Andrew contacted him, it was something interesting. "Sorry to bother you, but I believe the people we have been waiting for have finally shown up."

This was the best news Victor had heard all week. Finally, the officials from the guild were at Necron. "What's happening? Tell me the details."

"Ahem." Andrew cleared his throat and continued, "They arrived only moments ago and have already demanded an immediate audience with the mayor and necromancer. I gave my subordinates the go-ahead, so they are on their way here now."

"Excellent. I will be right over." Victor made sure everything was fine around him before anchoring his body to the floating platform and casting [Shadow Magic] to create his avatar. As usual, he used Andrew as a proxy for his magic. Otherwise, it would be like hurling his spell through thousands of miles worth of rock... assuming he could even get through the dungeon's mana-shielded walls. Luckily the black ocean allowed Victor to ignore distance and obstacles, for the most part, so long as one of his undead was there.

Victor utilized Andrew's senses, picked a location nearby, and recreated his avatar. Deciding to maintain consistency, Victor recreated the avatar he used to speak with Eve over a month ago. 

For some reason, Victor was getting a little nervous, like his first job interview back on Earth. Deciding he wanted to give off a powerful first impression, he funneled a million stat points to make the avatar as detailed as possible while maintaining its featureless face, other than teardrop eyes that glowed blue.

Once he was done, his shadowy man bearing a comically large top hat and a well-tailored suit of darkness, strolled out of a crack in space and dusted itself off.

Somewhere during the process, the doors to Andrew's throne room had swung open, and the delegation from the guild had arrived. Everyone present, except Eve, was alert and had their weapons drawn. Everyone's eyes were glued to the shadowy man that had appeared.

A few tense moments followed until Eve stepped forward and gestured towards the shadowy man that looked at them with his smiling eyes. "Guild Master, this is the necromancer you wished to meet. Or at least an illusion of him. As I said in my report, there was a large pressure, followed by the appearance of a man claiming to be the necromancer we had been looking for—"

"Stop it." 

Eve instantly stopped at her guild master's words and awkwardly stood there.

Through Andrew, Victor gazed upon the guild master, who seemed to feel his presence. Victor wasn't sure what he expected from an elusive character such as the guild master, but an overly lofty human-sized, bright orange-furred sloth standing on its hind legs while adjusting golden-rimmed glasses carefully balanced on its snout was the last thing he expected.

The orange-furred sloth remained within his encirclement of guards, each with adamantite plates hanging from their necks. He elongated his neck over a guard's shoulder as if trying to get even the faintest bit of understanding of what he was looking at.

His glasses gleamed with a flash of blue, and the sloth jerked back. Then, deciding to break the silence, the sloth spoke in a very polite and posh accent: "Ahem. My name is Plutus, and I run the merchants guild back in the Empire. Many advised me not to come here, and I hope my decision to ignore their well-grounded advice won't come to bite me in my furry backside..." Plutus chuckled to himself, and his guards tensed up further. "I'm only a beginner mage and an even more pathetic warrior, but what I do have is connections and the knack for business. And what I see here is an opportunity that can benefit all parties!"

Silence.

Plutus laughed nervously and adjusted his glasses as Andrew lazily stared at him, and Victor's avatar just glared at the sloth. 

"B-basically, the Emperor has heard the news of this place, and he wishes to... capture it. But Eve here convinced me that doing so would incur a significant loss to the Empire—both in the death of our armies and loss of potential economic growth.

Silence graced the room once again, and Andrew chose this moment to retrieve a snack. As Victor watched the tiny creature in Andrew's stubby arms being crushed to death and chucked into his open mouth, he noticed that Andrew had grown in size... by a lot. The throne had been expanded already as it was no longer symmetrical with the room, yet the lower third of Andrew's titanic body flopped off the end.

Andrew returned his sights to the orange sloth and burped. Victor allowed Andrew to deal with most affairs involving the surface, which included this negotiation, but he would obviously step in when he felt necessary. Victor believed it was a quality of a ruler to allow one's subordinates to handle small matters.

Feeling silly just standing there, Victor used [Shadow Magic] to construct himself a throne, far more magnificent and foreboding than Andrew's crude one. Then, as he took his seat and leaned his featureless face in his palm, Victor gestured for Andrew to lead discussions.

"Thank you, my lord." Andrew nodded and looked back at the orange sloth, "Guild Master Plutus, my name is Andrew, the mayor of this fine town. We have a lot to offer and would be delighted to enter trade relations with the Empire and Eshnar...."

"That's great!" Plutus said and clasped his hands together. "I will leave all my documents regarding our relationship for you to review, and we can catch up tomorrow. How does that sound?"

Victor was suspicious of this sloth. Usually, a businessman would pressure the other party into accepting a deal, and there was no better time to do so than while they had the initiative. But, had his appearance shaken Plutus so greatly that he had changed his game plan? Victor decided to find out.

"Plutus," Victor spoke through his avatar, and his ancient voice filled the room. "Did the Emperor send you here?"

"N-no... your excellency. I came here on my own accord."

"Hmmm." Victor's shadowy avatar crossed its legs and leaned back on the throne. "Then we have nothing to discuss."

"-What..." Plutus's mouth opened and closed a few times in shock.

Eventually, the orange sloth relaxed, took off his glasses and changed his demeanor. Despite claiming to be a beginner mage, even Andrew raised a brow at the pressure that suddenly filled the room.

"It seems the gentle approach to negotiations has fallen through. A pity, really, but wars aren't started over something as fickle as beliefs but rather over whose pockets need stuffing. Would you happen to agree with me on that point, mayor Andrew and sir necromancer?"

Andrew heartily laughed, and he stroked his goatee. "War is indeed a costly endeavor. Some even claim it could disrupt the balance of power within a nation... depending on which nobles choose to fight."

"Exactly," Plutus replied. "Do we have something of interest to discuss now?"

Victor's avatar stared at Plutus with glowing eyes. However, the orange sloth didn't yield under his gaze this time. 'A shrewd businessman indeed...' Victor liked him; conversing with someone who got straight to the point was always enjoyable. 

"Indeed we do," Victor replied. "Please proceed, Guild Master."

XKARNATION

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