Slightly less than his monthly play from the good doctor Roth.
“And I’m pretty sure a Necromancer one hadn’t been dropped yet,” she said before Rowan opened his in-game browser, “They’re very, very, very, veeery rare and drop proportionally to the number of good and evil players.”
As suspected. It’d make no sense for loot to be distributed in any other fashion. The few Necromancer pieces he’d bought were probably years old in-game. Last he’d checked, no additional Necro gear had been posted. Flying was off the table. He let out a cool breath, frosty mana churning in his stomach, and forced his mind to brainstorm. Gabrielle didn't seem to be as good of a strategize despite her aptitude in science and math and virtually every other school subject.
Brows jolting, Rowan asked, “How many can your broom carry?”
She gave him a dirty look while slipping on her rings and amulet. “Oh my, Rowan. You can’t wait to get your hands on—”
“Just answer,” he growled. Her shtick was both infuriating and intoxicating. A curse and a blessing.
“Heh. Only me. You’ll fall off without the Broom Riding skill, especially at the higher speeds.” She swayed her hips at the end of the sentence. His body heated in response. She’d done a similar dance when she’d stripped for him an hour earlier.
Rowan breathed and looked away again. At the tombs. At the demonic skull. At the door… which hadn’t been busted open yet by those good players fight with— “Didn’t you say one of the dark players were fighting outside?”
Gabrielle blanked for a moment before her mouth popped open. She puffed to the door in a series of smoky blinks. “Ambiguous is waiting outside! She can mass-teleport us real quick!”
Well, that was good news. No wonder Gabrielle hadn’t shown worry with an ally like that outside. Yet another lucky break. The streak had to be ending soon enough.
She turned back at Rowan after realizing a crucial detail. "Can ya open the door?"
He huffed once and hurried over to her side. Only his Gabrielle would forget about both things so easily. He hadn't figured out if it was an act, true carelessness or both but he didn't care—he liked her exactly like that. "Ambiguous Pain?" he said, holding the keystone to the center. The markings glowed ice-blue.
“Yup!” Gabrielle chirped as the entrance split. “How did ya know?”
“There’s a thread on the forums about us. Cpt LightWind posted it.” Rowan’s nose twitched at the mention of him. “We got lucky. He logged out for a bit after you de-fleshed him.”
“Hehe…”
The door opened and Gabrielle skipped through into the oblong chamber lit in dark-purple light from a mana lamp. Three bodies and a mangled skeleton laid on the black-grey bricks. A brunette girl dressed in green-white robes, an Arcane Mage judging from his sapphire staff, and a Rogue. All in their early twenties, broken bones and deep gashes in their arms and torso. Pools of blood wafted strong iron and sweet salt. A fairly attractive young woman dressed in a kind of revealing indigo and purple robes sat on an oversized red sofa chair, reading a thick tome, her long black hair fluttering in the draft from upstairs.
A glowing, yellow eye appeared on the sofa’s armrest. The mimic. A thin mouth moved at the top of the headrest. “Welcome back, powerful ones.”
Finally some respect from that thing. "Greetings," Rowan drawled.
“Heya you two,” Gabrielle said.
"So," Ambiguous Pain said, clapping her tome close and dropping it into a similar scale pouch, " Mr. Necromancer and his beloved. We meet at last."
The friendly approach caught Rowan off-guard. He had predicted an aggressive or deranged introduction from the dark class player but she was undeniably sane, a calm expression on that tan face. Her voice was lower than Gabrielle’s by an octave or half. She looked maybe twenty-two, the age slider during character creation limited to plus or minus a few years. Normal, in fact. She had to be on the lesser end of the psychopathy spectrum and barely met the requirements for a dark class.
And was his attraction to Gabrielle that obvious? Maybe he shouldn’t stand so close. His arm was brushing against her, his body language quite protective. He ExaminedAmbiguous, nevertheless.
[Player] Ambiguous Pain: Level ?
Health: ?
Mana: ?
Stamina: ?
At least level 170. Excellent.
“Well,” Ambiguous said to Rowan, an expectation in her tone while Gabrielle sucked up the skeleton into her pouch. She hummed a merry tune.
Was he missing something? “What?”
Ambiguous raised a sleek eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to raise the bodies? I saved them from the mimic for you.” She looked at Gabrielle. “And are you going to tell me about your new class and lost levels?”
The two girls began chattering like any other typical teens. Normal. Rowan would’ve assumed they were good-aligned players if he didn’t know better. The corpses and flesh-hungry mimic didn’t bother Ambiguous in the slightest.
Rowan reviewed the Raise skill he’d consumed while Gabrielle had jabbered about her new class.
Active Skill: Raise
Raises a corpse to an Undead minion.
Skill Level: 0, 0%
Skill Tier: 0
Channel duration: 2 seconds.
Mana Cost: 200
Effect: 1 maximum target. Usable on skeletons. Corpse decay weakens the resulting minion.
Tier Effect: Not usable on world bosses or targets of a higher level than yourself. Cannot be used on world bosses of Tier 6 or more. Minion skill tiers are capped at your highest class skill tier.
Lesser Mass Raise was much better than Raise regarding the tier effect, the single downside being the former lacked levels or tiers. Raise would likely become superior one day. However, both were limited to his character level: 70. He examined the closest corpse, the brunette girl.
[Player Corpse] Shaman: Level 92
Decay: 2%
Hm, they lacked names. Not an unreasonable mechanic. The other two were levels 155 and 164. Too bad. “They’re too high level,” Rowan said, cutting off their exchange, “I need to be at least my targets’ level.”
Ambiguous’ head tilted before she frowned. “That’s an interesting mechanic… Power is more determined by your skill tiers and levels.” She hummed for a second. “But you do get two free tier points every twenty-five levels starting at one hundred.”
Interesting. He hadn’t read that little morsel on the forums. He said, “Most of the town was low-level.”
“Yup,” Gabrielle said, “One of my worker dolls could probably kill most of em.” She looked back at Ambiguous when Rowan didn’t respond, chatting about various things again. Like his past-grouchiness, much to his disdain.
Rowan could raise low-levels from the town save for any remaining guard corpses. The level 1s would fully decay within the next ten or so hours. It could be worth the minion slots. Every two points in control increased his maximum Undead minion limit by one and he currently had 130 unassigned, saved points. 75 minions total if each low-level minion required one slot total. And he currently wore no Necromancer gear…
And the marketplace NPCs were dead. Damn.
Hold on… His face scrunched in confusion. “Where do you two withdraw from the market?”
Ambiguous glanced at him. “Private Market Box that players can use in my house. Market buildings would be crowded in cities otherwise.”
“You have a house?”
She smirked. “Of course. Do you think I live in a cave like Gabby here?”
“Hey… I told ya that was a secret!” Gabby said and whacked Ambiguous on the head. She didn’t even flinch.
Puzzling. Rowan said, “How can you have a house when Gabrielle lives in a cave?”
“Now that’s a secret.”
“She has a mansion in a pocket dimension from one of her Chaos-Mystic ultimates!” Gabrielle jumped to say, pointing at her. “It’s the size of a small moon! Lots of big delicious fish.”
<
br /> Holy crap. That had to be the most overpowered class in the game. With a skill like that, Ambiguous could hide forever without any disturbance… And she didn’t share it with his beautiful Gabrielle. Rowan shot her a glare. “How come you don’t let Gabrielle stay there?!”
Ambiguous’ jaw slacked and Gabrielle’s brows rose.
Oops. Too obvious. Way too obvious.
“Oh wow…” Ambiguous said, “I didn’t think I’d see the day a darkie fall for someone. Especially for Gabby. That’s interes—”
Snarling a long breath, Rowan balled a fist and said, “Just answer. We could all stay there away from the light players.”
Gabrielle did her smoke thing and appeared in Rowan’s breathing room. Those swirling blue eyes studied him, reading him, devouring his clear, growing obsession with her. This wasn’t good.
She suddenly grimaced, the look prodding his chest. She leaned to his ear, reaching with a tip-toe. She whispered, “I’m just your fucktoy and nothing else. Remember that.”
The words stung more than they should have, mana draining into his feet. He wiped off any leaking emotion from his face and slapped on a predatory grin. He grabbed her and squeezed her little ass and whispered back, “You’ve got that right.” He let go, giving her a gentle shove before looking away. The remnants of hurt wouldn’t dissipate.
Though at least she didn’t attempt to manipulate him—if that didn’t count as one. In fact, it was uncharacteristic of her not to. Though Rowan didn’t know her well—less than a day's worth. He swallowed as Ambiguous watched with an exaggerated pitying look. What a bitch. And she hadn’t answered his original question.
Before he repeated himself, Gabrielle said, “We can’t stay in her realm because if she logs out we’ll be stuck there.”
“And most importantly,” Ambiguous added, tapping on mimic’s armrest, “It’s my dimension. Just for myself. I don’t like people going through my stuff or eating my fish. Sane or not. Some of the others are quite… Insane.”
"Yup!" Gabrielle trilled. "And there's nothing wrong with my cave! It's beautiful down there!" She emphasized the word beautiful and giggled.
Now they were both teasing him. Just great. It was impossible to wear his masks or control himself around Gabrielle. She was now his greatest weakness. He sighed and changed the subject. "Why aren't more good players here? It's been—" He checked the system time. 8:42 PM. "Hours since we wiped out the town."
Ambiguous’ lips puckered in thought. “Likely gathering reinforcements to sweep the area. Or they’ve backed off. They know I have mass teleport. They’re not stupid, quite the opposite. We wouldn’t be in constant hiding otherwise. The NPCs are smarter than you think. Though they do dumb stuff like hiding a temple under a starter town every now and then.”
Gabrielle nodded in agreement, a smile plastered on her features.
Reasonable. And logical. Ambiguous was smart at least to some degree. Useful. Her companionship would be valuable no doubt. Chaos-Mystic sounded like a dark variant on Arcane Mages, feasibly also possessing a myriad of powerful utility spells not quite of support tier supremely sought after, her pocket-dimension ultimate indicative of her skill-set. She’d be a valuable addition to his future empire, Rowan decided without additional thought. He silently brushed off their previous teasing, promising to get back at them later, and said neutrally as they murmured again, “Ambiguous. Would you like to join us?”
“Already asked,” Gabrielle said.
Oh.
“And I already said yes,” Ambiguous said with a grin. Her teeth were also perfect and white. “Dibs on all the lore tomes and scrolls for my class. Also any furniture for my place or animals I like for my menagerie. And maybe some high-end building materials.”
Not too much of a demand. “Fine,” he muttered.
“Good,” she said, satisfied. “Maybe this dark partnership may actually work. I was skepti—” Her silhouette shone in black-purple and her eyes flared with mana.
Rowan tensed, reaching for his… low-level wand. Better than nothing and he did know Tainted Ice Blast now, many times more powerful than Fire Bolt. Gabrielle did similar except with her infinitely more powerful wand. No matter—he'd catch up in no time around these two. He didn't even need to pay them gold directly like the power levelers on the forums demanded. They even accepted dark-class customers for extra and a promise of personal neutrality due to the lack of demand.
“They crossed my wide-area detection ward,” Ambiguous said, her voice echoing, “forty miles to the west by the passage through the mountains. At least seventy of them. Few are high level. Maybe an hour or two away on land mounts.”
“Alright,” Gabrielle said with a tad more seriousness in her voice. “Let’s go! Portal to my cave. Just unlocked the anchor for ya.”
Ambiguous nodded and stood and picked up her staff. She held it upright, both hands, and chanted in the dark language.
Eyeing the three corpses, Rowan considered the dead town. There were at least a couple thousand low-level bodies lying around. Something about letting them go to waste irked him greatly. All those children would go to waste. Not because he felt sympathy but because NPCs didn’t respawn and children lasted longer than the low-level adults and were easier to influence and cajole to Rowan’s side. They could one day make fine subjects in his empire.
And with children, he had leverage. With leverage, he had the power to sway future converted. Either by holding hostage (weak) or asking the children to make fluffy, heart-touching speeches (stronger). A good plan.
Yes, he needed those juvenile bodies.
Mind made up, Rowan strode to Ambiguous and laid a hand on her arm. She stopped chanting in a heartbeat, eyes narrowing at him. “What?” she spat and brushed off his hand.
“Let me raise some of the children in the town first,” he said in an authoritative voice.
Ambiguous threw him a quizzical look. “Hmmm?”
As Rowan opened his mouth to answer, he realized Ambiguous might not be aware of the plan, including his special keystone that doubled as an amulet with an incredible skill modifier. He spun up a partial-lie to avoid questions, "The Necromancer's altar blessed my keystone into an amulet with a charged skill. I'm not sure exactly but it says it rebirths any of Undead minions to a dark and evil version of their previous lives, giving them sentience and free will. The children could be valuable in the future if we build a city with Gabrielle's new class."
Gabrielle exploded in excitement at that. “YEEEESSS!” she jumped in joy. “My dark continent is happening!”
Ambiguous eyed him for a long minute, her face unreadable. “Fine. Be quick.”
Nodding, Rowan ran up the stairs, the girls behind. He dumped every free stat point into Control along the way. He made a note to put future points into Magical Power and Magical Capacity for his offensive spells and Mana Shield. It’d be foolish to all-in on his minions alone. If a Rogue caught him off-guard it’d be over in seconds. And he did want to learn that incredible beam attack that had destroyed the Draconian capital’s spire in Draesear’s vision.
Gabrielle said, stopping as they trudged up the crater, "Oh I forgot! I bought a bunch of gear sets for leveling, a few being Control boosting… As a gift."
Rowan nodded, hiding his surprise that Roth and Gabrielle had prepared so far back. He sighed for of course they would. “Thank you,” he breathed as she fetched the pieces from her pouch.
“You’re welcome.” Gabrielle giggled. “Just don’t forget the promise. If ya disappoint you’re losing your fingers.”
“Oh yeah, just wait once we have time,” Rowan said, surprisingly serious. That part of him hadn’t changed.
“Heehee.” She turned in a smoky swirl.
The girls hurried ahead to gather the right corpses, children, and crafters they could identify. Perhaps the mayor’s family too for leadership. If any minion slots remained, Rowan would include any obvious parents to look after the children if they still needed food. The skill
description wasn’t clear on that part. The school’s roll was less than a hundred so there’d be enough adults to raise the young if needed.
A tight ratio but it’ll work.
After stripping off the generic low-level leather set and equipping the set of rare rarity high-mobility robes, his stats read,
Name: Rowan Black
Title: Powerful One, Bastard Noble Kid
Race: Draconian-Human (focus to expand)
Gender: Male
Level: 70
Class: Necromancer
Boss Status: World, Tier 1 (Hidden)
Fame: 352
Faction: Kingdom of Draconis
Health: 350 (3.5 regen/minute)
Mana: 1350 (135.0 regen/minute)
Mana Type: Ice-Dark
Stamina: 290 (8.5 regen/minute)
Aeon Chronicles Online_Book 1_Devil's Deal Page 22
