Chapter 14 Necromancer, Who?

In the midst of a dense fog that turned everything hazy, the sound of heavy breathing and quickened footsteps filled the air.

Panting, Liam finally stopped running, deciding to sit down and rest against the nearest tree. He tried to catch his breath, regretting how he previously spent most of his time in his workshop instead of exercising.

Once his lungs no longer screamed in pain at him, he lifted his head and scanned his surroundings. Luckily, there seemed to be no sign of his pursuers.

It turned out that the spirit he had met earlier had been correct in saying that this forest was considered a taboo area. His pursuers had stopped following him almost immediately after they noticed him running into the forest.

Although, this did bring to mind some questions, like why exactly the forest was taboo. Was there some terrible monster living in the forest? If so, this would be a case of jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.

Worried, Liam decided to activate his abilities.

He drew his ritual knife from the sheath on his waist, making a quick slash on his palm. Allowing the blood to create a small pool in his palm, he used his other hand to take out a piece of parchment from one of his countless pouches.

On the piece of parchment was a detailed drawing of a rotting corpse, along with an upside down pentacle inscribed with several runic words.

The blood in Liam's palm dripped down and landed inside the middle of the pentacle, causing the image to light up with a purple light.

When the light faded, the piece of parchment had disappeared. In its place stood the corpse from the image, in all its rotting fleshy and maggoty glory.

Liam patted the corpse he called Maggy with a slight look of nausea.

Although he didn't feel too good whenever he saw Maggy, the undead corpse was currently his strongest summon in terms of defense. Despite the rotting flesh that looked like it could fall off its body, Maggy could resist most physical attacks pretty well, and it also had a high immunity to magic spells.

Liam also summoned two more creatures as support. They were bonehounds, skeletal dogs with a high talent in stealth. They were also agile and made great scouts, plus their sharp teeth and claws meant they didn't have a weak offensive ability either.

Liam and his three undead summons set off into the fog, guards and worries raised.

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Lief treaded through the forest silently, boredom filling his brain with random thoughts.

Although Nagisa and Midas had already set off, they were visiting those closer to where they were first. Apparently his forest was rather far, so they probably wouldn't be coming to visit him anytime soon, especially since they would mainly be traveling by boat, and the only body of water near his forest was the thin river that ran through it.

Suddenly he seemed to hear a low noise. It sounded like footsteps, but combined with a strange shuffling sound, like someone with a limp dragging one leg behind them. There was also a slight tapping sound that reminded him of when his tail would accidentally hit against something as he ran.

Because of the early morning fog, a naturally occurring one and not his Dark Fog skill, he couldn't really see far.

He started to walk towards the noise, ignoring the fact that this was the behavior of typical horror movie protagonists, but upon seeing the source of the noise he immediately regretted his decision.

With the mentality of "Nope, I'm out," he immediately turned around towards the direction he came from.

Anyways, there was no warning from Silvester, though only whichever god(s?) was worshipped here knew where that system entity went, so it should be fine if he just ignored it, right?

He wasn't scared by the thing. After all, it's hard to be scared of something half your height traveling the speed of a sloth, especially after he had gotten used to seeing his own reflection.

No, it wasn't fear that he felt but a strange combination of nausea and confusion.

What he saw was a shambling corpse, with maggots squirming through the crevices in its body and flies feasting on its flesh, glassy eyes and a blood filled maw, and clothes half torn apart and stained with dried blood.

In short, a zombie. The kind from the apocalypse movies that he never managed to watch because he had always been too freaked out by the gore and blood.

The digust came from the zombie, but the confusion was from what was behind it.

Following the zombie like it was his bodyguard was a young man with silver hair and bright red eyes. The young man was probably around Lief's age, maybe a bit older. He was dressed in a black robe similar to the robes worn by the fire mages that Lief knocked down previously.

And although his clothes and hair were somewhat messy, Lief could still see the boy's handsomeness. It was the kind of beauty that could get every girl to fall for him with just a glance.

If this were an anime or webnovel, Lief felt that the silver haired boy would be the protagonist. The title would be "Transmigrated into Another World as the Lord of the Undead" or something like along those lines.

As a character who looked like he'd be the antagonist or cannon fodder monster who would eventually be killed by an overpowered level-upped protagonist, Lief felt it would be better to avoid such a protagonist-like character and decisively began walking away.