3 A Scheming Child (2/2)

That place soon became a bloodbath. I couldn't stick around to see the whole mess but from what I later heard, monsters after monsters came there and overwhelmed the adventurers. Those 8 died, obviously. But, it didn't stop there. The potion continued its work for a long time, attracting hordes of monsters to that spot. That led to the monsters killing each other. It kept escalating to the point that the guild had to issue an emergency quest to all adventurers to team up and stop it.

All in all, it took two days for the whole situation to calm down. However, my purpose was fulfilled that day itself. In that bloodbath that had happened, more than 10 dark wolves had been killed. And since I was responsible for that incident, the system recognized that as me killing those monsters. Henceforth, the quest was completed.

[The God Path - Quest 1: ”Kill 10 dark wolfs in a day” has been completed]

[Your quest rewards have arrived]

There were two rewards. And both were very helpful.

[Quest Reward No. 1: 10 gold coins]

That reward allowed me to pay the 3 gold coins I had to give to that merchant. It also allowed me to use the same strategy again as I still had left 7 gold coins.

[Quest Reward No. 2: Ability ”Necromancy (Rank D)”]

That was the first Dark Art ability I had learned. And it opened the door to becoming a master at quickly rising to top of it.

As soon as I gained that ability, I ran back to 'the sight of the bloodbath'. As it was still the very day that it all had started, things were pretty messy and I couldn't risk going back much deeper. Good for me that I didn't need to go deeper anyway. All I needed was to find the corpse of a monster.

I had checked the ability's description and it went like this –

[Necromancy (Rank D)]

[One of the basic Dark Art abilities. It allows one to control the souls of the undead. These souls can only be controlled if they are extracted from the corpse before the connection between the soul and the body is completely severed.]

As someone who had experienced first-hand what dying was like, I needed no clearance on the subject of souls and the time it took to be severed from the body. I knew I still had time. I knew I could extract the souls of those monsters and make them my puppets.

And fortunately for me, after going in a little deeper into the forest, I started encountering a few corpses. Those were probably the monsters that had gotten hurt, tried to run away, but ended up dying because of their injuries being too severe.

A very irritating extra line in the description of Necromancy was –

[At the abilities' current rank, you can only control the souls of low-tier monsters]

I guess it's something you'd expect to be the case. But, did that make it any less irritating? It did not.

Anyway, since I couldn't get the souls of stronger monsters, there was no point in trying to go deeper into the forests. I extracted the souls from the corpses I had found and returned.

All in all, I had been able to extract five souls.

Two of them were of goblins.

Two of them were of a bird called Wysks, which are basically dwarfed Wyverns.

One of them was of a dark fox.

Easily, the dark fox was the best. I mean, it was no dark wolf but it was far superior to the goblins and Wysks.

[Progress Made Towards Next Stage: 1%]

That was the message the system showed me as I went to sleep that night. For the next two days, the city was in chaos over that incident in the forests around the city.

In those two days, the system didn't show up. And so, I decided to spend my time trying practicing Necromancy, hoping to get a little better at it.

From that point on, I had decided that I would make those undead pawns of mine, who were bound to increase in quantity and quality over time, to do my dirty work – so I could speed through this incredibly hard path.

Yes, making them help me was the idea that had made me choose The God Path.