Undead (1)
I chuckled in disbelief as I assessed the situation.
Honestly, there wasn’t much to think about.
Hans was dead.
The connection was completely severed, so I couldn’t reverse summon him.
While I was meditating and trying various skills, I realized a few more details about the “Avatar.”
If an Avatar dies, it can be regenerated after a certain period.
The newly created Avatar would become a brand new entity, with everything it had built reset to the beginning.
The one that died this time had only been a few days of hard training, so I wasn’t too disappointed, but the bitter taste remained.
It was time to figure out the cause.
How did Hans, who was in a safe village, end up dead?
Even though he had been in such a deep sleep that he didn’t realize he had died?
“Well, it’s obvious if you think about it.”
If it was just an external attack, he would have noticed something.
So what was the problem?
“That old man…”
I grit my teeth without realizing it.
I thought it was lucky.
I managed to face just one leopard in the dangerous forest and topple it, and there was a small village nearby where the village chief was kind to me.
It was certainly complacent.
I had just met them in an unfamiliar land for the first time.
Meeting them in the village didn’t mean they were harmless NPCs like in video games.
But I couldn’t be overly wary and on edge either.
After all, I was the one who went to them first, dependent on their kindness.
“What did I do? Did they slip something into my drink? A sleeping pill? But I didn’t feel anything unusual until I fell asleep…”
Even the drink was shared with the village chief, and there was no special reaction even after a while of drinking.
Maybe I was just misunderstanding everything, and something unexpected happened…
Smack!
I shook off those thoughts and slapped myself to regain focus.
Honestly, my losses were not that great.
It was just Hans’s days of effort and the costs for food, along with the belongings I accidentally lost.
In a way, losing Hans before I could suffer an even bigger loss allowed me to better understand “Avatar,” which was a significant achievement.
But I couldn’t keep thinking positively and being complacent forever.
Isn’t the average return rate for this world at 20% proof enough of its dangers?
If not for the fact that it was the Avatar that I lost this time, I would have died within just two days of arriving in this world if it had been me.
It was time to think of a response.
Should I send another Avatar? The Dimensional Teleportation Circle has a cooldown of a day, making it impossible for the moment.
Moreover, I was hesitant to send someone back to a place where there might be dangers lurking.
Send them elsewhere? I could only teleport to where the previous Avatar had passed.
Even if it were far from the village, it was still right in the middle of the dangerous forest.
Stuck in this dilemma, I was anxiously waiting…
…when I was suddenly reconnected with the Avatar in this world.
*
The first thing I heard was the village chief’s voice.
“Tch… I thought he was a useful guy, but he turned out to be a dud after all.”
“True. He managed to pass through the Forest of Monsters alone, and the way he worked made him seem like he had some skills.”
“But just an Elite Skeleton? I guess my expectations were too high. Let’s move on.”
“Yes, Master.”
As the chief spoke with someone else, his voice gradually faded, and I heard the sound of a door being locked.
I unconsciously tensed up, shaking out my rigid body with a sigh.
“Cling—”
No, it must have been my imagination.
Realizing that my stiff body hadn’t relaxed and I wasn’t even able to sigh, I slowly looked down to check my condition.
《The entity’s race has been changed to ‘Undead.’ You have gained the special skill “Rotten Heart.”》
Staring blankly at the message that appeared before my eyes, I looked down at my own body.
There was a human skeleton model, just like the one I saw in the health room at school.
I examined it more closely. I checked the arm bones and inspected between the ribs.
And I drew my conclusion.
“I don’t have a heart…?”
“Rotten Heart,” huh?
I grumbled about the generic naming that didn’t consider the entity’s characteristics and organized the situation.
The chief was a necromancer, and after killing me, he resurrected my corpse as an undead.
And ‘Hans’ had become an Elite Skeleton, now a moving skull.
– Entity Name: Hans
– Race: Undead (Elite Skeleton)
– Common Traits: “Mind Hub,” “Super Recovery”
– Entity Traits: “Rotten Heart,” “Mana Affinity”
– Special Notes: Reanimated through forbidden magic. Immune to all negative effects such as death, poison, curses, and illusions. No mental contamination occurred due to the influence of “Mind Hub.”
My head hurt. I assume it’s just my lack of a brain.
Still, I stopped my self-pity and decided to assess my surroundings.
I was only surprised by the sudden situation; after all, this Avatar thought it was already dead, so it wouldn’t change anything.
Looking around, I noticed the differences from before.
Despite being in pitch-black darkness, I could see everything clearly.
Well, did I say “see” it?
Just to be sure, I stuck a finger bone into one of my eye sockets.
Yep, it was empty.
Pulling my finger free from the eye socket, I looked forward again.
Even without eyeballs, I faced no issues seeing.
Moreover, unlike humans, who have a limited field of vision due to their eye focus, I could see the entire front view at once.
And I could sense the life around me.
Yep, I distinctly felt a rat scurrying behind me.
That was probably one of the effects of “Rotten Heart.”
After checking briefly, I found resistances against mental attacks and cold, as well as hate towards living beings and undead infections, included in the general traits of an ‘Undead.’
“I’m fine since I can filter out the negative effects with ‘Mind Hub.’”
The place I was in felt like a large underground warehouse.
As I quickly scanned the shabby basement surroundings, I approached the spot where I sensed the rat.
“Yikes! What are these!?”
Standing in line were other undead beings like me.
There were piles of junk in between, and they stood motionless in the darkness, making me unaware until now.
From zombies to armed skeletons bearing weapons and armor.
As I watched for a while, I noticed the rat scurry up to one of the zombies.
It bit a floppy toe and disappeared into its hole.
“Ew… disgusting…”
As I trembled in disgust, the sight of the zombies caught my eye for some reason.
…There were not only adult men and women but also elderly people and children.
“Are these guys…?”
I dwelled on the memories.
When I entered the village and wandered around the next day, I saw the scenery.
…There were no children anywhere.
The biggest reason I initially thought the village was a transient farmer’s settlement was the uncultivated fields attached to it.
While I was roaming around, offering to help with village work, I didn’t see a single person working in the fields.
At that time, since I didn’t know anything about farming, I overlooked it…
“They’ve eaten the whole village and set up camp!”
My teeth were grinding in outrage.
At the same time, I sighed in confusion about how to deal with this.
“Of course, I can’t actually sigh. Ugh, enough of that!”
This entire village was practically occupied by necromancers.
With undead beings that looked like villagers and knights, they likely disguised themselves as an ordinary transient village to mislead the surroundings and plot something.
I must have come waltzing into the predator’s jaws without realizing it.
Looking back, it felt like the chief’s questions were designed to ascertain whether I was someone whose disappearance would pose a problem.
A day’s grace period was likely for assessing whether eating this person would cause any issues.
“How should I deal with these guys?”
When I realized I had been killed or later discovered that I had become undead, I was indeed annoyed at being blindsided, but it didn’t boil my blood to this extent.
However, realizing that even children had been sacrificed tugged at my own irritation.
They crossed the line and exceeded it by far.
If I had been unaware, I might have let it slide, but knowing what they did, I couldn’t ignore it.
More than anything, now that I was undead, I had nothing to lose.
If I could screw over the ones who betrayed me, great! If I tried and failed, it would be what it is.
“First, I should gather information.”
Time was the only resource I had left.
*
In the following days, I searched the underground warehouse where I was trapped.
It was just a little over a day in Earth time.
It seemed there had originally been two entrances, but one was completely collapsed and unusable.
Effectively, there was only the passage the chief and his disciple used to come and go.
“Wow, how many of these are there?”
Next, I examined the undead that were with me.
The zombies mostly looked like ordinary villagers, but there were quite a few wearing assorted armor and gear.
There were around fifty zombies. When counting the skeletal soldiers, including skeleton knights, there seemed to be about three hundred.
Click, creak—
With the sound of a door opening, footsteps approached closer.
I immediately halted my actions and stood still like the other undead.
Since I became an undead and was trapped here, I learned that the chief’s disciples came down to check the warehouse every two to three days.
“Ugh, how long are we supposed to be stuck in this remote mountain village?”
The one grumbling while looking around the warehouse was someone I had seen when repairing the village’s wooden fence.
Was his name Zephy?
I thought he was slacking off then, and now I realized he was a disciple of the necromancer.
“Hmm?”
Noticing something was off, he looked my way.
Thud!
My heart sank.
Even if I only had “Rotten Heart.”
“What’s this doing here? Ugh, there’s no one doing their job except me. [Move to the other side.]”
At that moment, I felt a force attempted to forcibly move my body with a voice that echoed in my skull.
Then I quickly recognized.
I could completely disregard it if I wanted to.
But it wasn’t the right time yet.
I obediently followed the force trying to control my body, moving to a place where other skeletons were gathered and lined up.
“Well, nothing seems off. But honestly, there’s only us here, so why does he keep making us check? That old man is too fussy.”
Waving around a shining staff while glancing around lazily, Zephy soon left the warehouse while grumbling.
Creak— clunk
Even after I heard the door lock, I remained still for several hours before cautiously moving again.
There was no need to rush things.
It was better to be cautious and diligent rather than being caught off guard.
“Hans” was overflowing with time, after all.
And this time, I made one significant gain.
The power I felt when Zephy tried to control my body.
It was a power I was very familiar with.
That’s right; it felt just like the power I used to move my own body.
The mechanism for moving this undead body was different from that of ordinary living creatures.
After all, there were no muscles in this body.
The power flowing through me now. It was the infamous “Black Magic” that triggered all sorts of actions, replacing sensory organs and muscles.
This must also be one of the basic effects of “Rotten Heart.”
And since I had “Mana Affinity,” I could imitate new uses of this power that I sensed with my body.
“Like how to control other undead.”
Coincidentally, a large number of undead were abandoned right near me.
