After throwing up, I looked at the bandits with conflicted emotions.
I was surprisingly unaffected by their death. I once thought that the first time I killed someone would feel like shit, but It just felt disgusting because of the gore, I didn't feel anything beyond that.
"I think I saw too many gory movies…" I said, cleaning the rest of vomit from my mouth.
"Yeah. Your generation is really something, but I'm sure most people your age would feel bad when killing for the first time." Sixth corrected me. "You are probably like that because of your lack of social interactions."
What Sixth said really made sense, it felt like when I saw the corpses of those children that died in a terrorist attacks. I never knew them and could care less about their deaths, so it was at most disgusting; but I silently felt guilty for not caring. The difference is that this time I had killed them, and It was a bunch of grown-up bandits.
"But yeah, you were lucky back there. If you hadn't avoided the first attack, you would have died for sure. On the bright side, you got some combat experience and the chance to test two out of five of the spells you learned." He said, looking at me with a smile. Sixth seemed genuinely happy that I got out of that battle safe, his occasional human moments still feel kind of weird.
The spells I used just now were the Bone Arrow and Raise Ghoul spells. The former created sharp bone arrows that can pierce the enemies with the speed of a crossbow bolt, as well as sap the life out of their body, making even a single shot lethal if not taken care of soon, since the arrow would keep sapping life force while it was still in the enemy's body. Raise Ghoul can raise a person that is able to wield mana, it can even raise a Magus if one is found but they would only be able to cast magic after getting a Hot Core. A ghoul's body also becomes immune to rotting, being able to pass themselves as living people. They also retain their intelligence, while losing their memories, being classified as a special undead. A Dread Knight can only raise ten ghouls since they are much more powerful than normal undead.
The other three spells I learned were Death Restoration, that healed undead. Raise Lesser Undead, that raised fast but weak skeletons and sturdy but slow zombies. And Dread Mantle, that created a black mantle that covered my entire body, and enabled me to suck the life of those that died by the hands of my undead, healing myself. The limit of raised undead is a hundred zombies and a thousand skeletons, but zombies and skeletons aren't useful against people who wield Mana or normal people with good armor and skills, since they can only follow my orders and have no intelligence… Unless they have big numbers.
Seeing the still kneeling ghoul, that was constantly leaking black mist from his chest, I made three short gestures with my hands, followed by a longer gesture.
A single vortex appeared on my right hand and formed a gray mist, that entered the Ghoul's chest.
The thorn flesh that was punctured by the arrows started recovering, even pushing the arrows out of the ghoul's chest.
The ghoul was completely rejuvenated, and the previous holes on his chest had disappeared.
Sixth looked at me with a smile and said.
"Okay, what do you do after you kill bandits? That's an easy question."
When Sixth said that, I remembered something important. It was the most common thing that anyone should do after killing a bandit group.
Looting!
I had to loot the corpses, but my heart was still too weak for that. I am probably the first necromancer in this world to be disgusted by corpses, but even still, I ordered Albert to loot them for me. One day I will be able to take someone's guts in my hands, but that day is not today, nor tomorrow, nor in a few years… Maybe never.
After looting the corpses for valuables, Albert returned with twenty-three pouches, including his own.
"Yeah. Even though it was somewhat dangerous, It's still a lot of money for little work." I said, nodding after counting how many coins were in the pouches.
There were twenty-eight gold coins and seventy-nine silver coins, most of them were in Albert's pouch. One gold equals to five silvers, and my wages at Lord Angus' mansion was two silvers a week, so what I received from this one group was equal to more than two years of my wages! It was an astronomical amount for me!
"As expected from a bandit group with a boss that is almost a Martial Artist, they can't be compared to normal people." I said with a dejected sigh.
These bandits probably lived from raiding merchant caravans that passed through the fields. A normal caravan needed to have at least ten armed men with at least leather armor, but It was rare for them to have a martial artist or even a martial artist in training. People like that usually guarded the caravans of nobles or the merchants from guilds, all the guards of Lord Angus were Martial Artists of at least the first level, Enki who is the head of the guard is a powerful third level Martial artist.
"Hey, Kyle. Why don't you raise those sacks of meat and go kill some more bandits? Even though it is unlikely for you to find any other band that has a boss that's almost a martial artist, you can at least get some money and increase your corpse count. It's good to have your minion capacity capped."
Sixth's suggestion really did make sense and having the minion capacity at the limit will really help when I'm in a pinch.
"Okay, why were you useful?" I asked, looking at Sixth suspiciously.
The latter shrugged, looking at me with a look of innocence.
"Simply because it is fun to watch this... And knowing you, I was sure you would have ended up doing that in a day or so." He explained.
He was right. I'm the kind of person that would start farming for loot and XP as soon as I get bored of the main quest.
So, I cast Raise Lesser Undead on the twenty-two bandits. I turned the fifteen dagger-wielding bandits into skeletons and the six sword-wielding ones into zombies.
The raising process was a lot faster than the Raise Ghoul one, and only one vortex was created. The skeleton's flesh quickly rotted to reveal white bones and the zombies got up with empty expressions, but their flesh didn't regenerate, and they had some spots that were already rotten, revealing black flesh.
A single cast of the spell can reanimate as many undead as I want, since it isn't my Necrotic Energy that raises them, it just summons some sort of higher power that does that for me.
I had just acquired a small undead squad, the smell was insufferable and nauseating, but I grew used enough to it, and didn't vomit... More than two or three times.
Usually, it would be stupid to walk around on open plains along with undead, since a Dread Lord would usually be hunted the same moment it is spotted, but that wasn't the case for this world's necromancy.
For non-special undead, that are summoned by Raise Lesser Undead and its higher forms, they can be reduced into cores and summoned at will. A single core can store all the undead of its own kind, such as the Skeleton Core that stores skeletons and Zombie Cores that stores zombies, it also stores whatever they are wearing, so it is incredibly convenient. That doesn't work for undead like ghouls though, since they are something between undead and living, closer to a True Undead, a mythical being that denies death, a legend that is imprinted in the very soul of every necromancer, as the pinnacle of Necromancy.
After transmitting my will to the undead, they all coalesced into two small balls that could fit between my fingers. Those spheres then got increasingly smaller and entered the palm of my hands, then into my body, the two balls were now the size of a cell, and were stored in my left hand's Dread Channel, the protuberance of the Dread Core. (For Magus Souls it would be called Magus channel.)
After that, Albert and I started searching for more bandits.
For some reason, I could only think that I was going to farm coins and XP from trash mobs in the starting area from some RPG.
"I need to treat this world more seriously… It still looks too much like an RPG."
