"What are you doing?" Damien lifted his head from his books upon hearing the key turn in the lock.
They never locked the door when they were inside. So, Ronan figured he must be confused or startled.
Perfect.
Soon, he would feel something else.
Ronan slowly approached him and greeted him in his usual tone, which he believed sounded friendly.
"Hello, Damien."
Mentally, he ordered his three skeletons to step out of the wardrobe. It wasn’t very big, but since the guys were just bones, they fit along with the few clothes Ronan kept in there.
As Ronan and his three companions approached, Damien began to back away. At first, he looked startled, then somewhat frightened. And as the four of them closed in on him, Damien kept retreating until he found himself with the window right behind him.
Ronan figured he might have intended to move toward the door, but he, along with Bob, Joe, and Tom, had positioned themselves strategically to block his path.
"Well, Damien, tell me about these rumors you've been spreading about me and my lady," his roommate said once he had cornered him.
"I haven’t spread any rumors," Damien replied, looking quite nervous and scared.
"My lady says you’ve been telling people I grabbed you by the neck, which is true, but also that I forced myself on her, which is completely false."
"I never said that!" he burst out, almost in a panic, as he saw Ronan’s serious expression and imagined sinister looks on the skeletons.
"Are you accusing my lady of lying?"
Ronan hadn’t changed his tone—it remained "friendly." Meanwhile, his dark aura loomed over him more intensely than usual.
"I..."
"You know," Ronan continued, "you're lucky. I don’t want to cause her any trouble, so I can’t leave any evidence. I’m going to try something..."
The necromancer closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. He directed his energy, his dark mana, which swirled in tiny, jet-black flames that began to rise from his body.
Damien saw them and shifted in sheer terror, glancing to both sides—but there was no escape.
Ronan opened his eyes, which now seemed to burn with that dark energy. He raised his right hand and directed it toward Damien, aiming at his chest.
The spell was slow, charging bit by bit, struggling to form a microscopic black hole.
Damien got lucky. His instincts kicked in, breaking through the terror that had held him frozen, staring into the eyes of death. He spun around, cast a quick weakness curse on the window—still closed—and leaped toward it.
His body crashed into the glass. He had just enough time to cover his face with his arms before slamming into it, shattering it into pieces. The fall was no joke—they were on the third floor.
Just as he went through the window, Ronan muttered:
"Void."
For an instant, the tiny black hole became real and drifted toward the space Damien had occupied moments before, sucking in the air and shards of glass falling toward it.
Damien was plummeting from the window, gravity pulling him down faster than the minuscule black hole’s pull. Ronan took a step back to avoid being drawn in by his own spell.
A smile formed on his lips. He had failed. Again. But it was a huge step forward. He hadn’t fainted, and for a moment, it really seemed like the spell would work.
He felt happy.
"I finally caught a glimpse of what the spell might be like," he told his skeletons.
It was probably a very basic and weak version of the spell, but it already gave him an idea of what kind of spell it could be.
And as for the fainting…
He had been trying to cast it ever since his imaginary friend told him such a spell existed. His friend didn’t want him to attempt it so soon. In fact, he had shown his disapproval.
But young Ronan didn’t listen to him in that regard. He had to cast that spell—THE SPELL.
At first, he couldn’t even use up any mana. Over the months, as he began to control his mana better, the spell started consuming it. Then, he began to feel his energy being drained by something he couldn’t quite reach—something that did nothing. He was stuck at that stage for years.
And now… now he had just made a breakthrough, caught a glimpse of what he would one day master—what would become his void.
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And he hadn’t fainted!
That said, he was exhausted and had probably lost some HP too.
In fact, he swayed on his feet. Joe hurried to catch him with surprising delicacy for a being made of bones. The tiny black hole, after pulling in a couple of nearby books and a shoe, collapsed in on itself, and everything returned to normal.
Except there was no trace of what had been sucked in.
If Damien hadn’t thrown himself out the window, he would have simply disappeared.
The skeletons helped Ronan to his bed. He lay down and closed his eyes.
Now he knew that if he had killed Damien, the spell wouldn’t have left a body. No evidence. Before, he hadn’t been sure what would happen upon casting it. He had imagined a room blown apart as if by an explosion and a charred corpse. His plan had been to claim it was one of Damien’s failed experiments.
But now he knew it would have been even simpler.
All he would have needed to do was go to sleep, and the next day, if anyone asked about Damien, just say the guy had left early and that he hadn’t seen him since.
So now, Damien might try to accuse him, but if he had any intelligence, even one point, he would have taken the hint and known to keep his mouth shut and leave his lady alone.
Besides, if Damien did try to accuse him, he was the one who had jumped out the window without any help. It would be his word against Ronan’s, who, conveniently, had three witnesses. And two of them could write.
If the spell hadn’t worked and Ronan had, as so many times before, blacked out, he had everything planned. His skeletons had standing orders to assist him. They would have carried him out of the room. Tom would have stayed inside, holding Damien off, while Joe and Bob, after getting their master to the hallway, would have banged on other doors for help. It would have looked like Damien had attacked him, and his skeletal friends had saved him.
Either way, he had been wise to assign a zombie bird to keep an eye on Damien. That way, he would know firsthand what his next moves would be.
It was a bird that had died weeks ago. It didn’t smell bad or have decomposing flesh because Ronan had smoked it to dry it out. And since it was still covered in feathers, it could pass for a normal bird—unless you looked too closely and noticed its eyes had sunken in during the drying process, leaving only hollow sockets.
Tom walked over to the window and peeked outside. He sent Ronan a mental image, one that made it clear Damien would be paying a visit to the academy’s infirmary, where they would heal him and fix his broken bones.
"Thanks, guys," Ronan murmured.
He was exhausted. Void had drained all his mana—and it felt like it had taken something else along with it.
He drifted into a deep sleep.
He saw himself in a room with the owner of that voice—his invisible friend, the old man who always told him it was dangerous and that he might end up badly hurt or dead.
In fact, the old man was scolding him furiously.
But Ronan didn’t care. The satisfied smile on his lips didn’t waver.
Now, he was closer to having a definitive spell to serve his lady as she deserved.
That argument seemed to calm the old man. Just a little.
To him, Ronan was far too valuable to die from pushing himself too hard, both in his magic and his body.
And the next day, when the necromancer touched the academy’s stone tablet, this was what appeared engraved on the stone:
Ronan Velbrun
Race: human
Age: 18 years
Level: 8
Constitution: 4-1
Strength: 5
Intelligence: 14
Agility: 2
Wisdom: 12
Health points: 4-1+1
Mana points: 12+2
Magical affinities: darkness (high affinity).
States:
Bonuses:
Vassal of the Bearer of the Legendary Sword of the Queen Mother: +1 HP, +1 Damage.
Vassal Sergeant of the Future Dark Lord: Minor Resistance to Status Effects. Mental communication with the Future Dark Lord and up to 10 lower-ranked vassals under his command.
Weaknesses:
Low-level malnutrition. -10% constitution points.
Skills:
Low-level poison resistance. Passive. +2 points poison resistance.
Minor Resistance to Status Effects.
High-level iron will. Passive. +3 Int, +1 Wis.
Initiated-level acolyte (hidden skill). Passive. The dark god speaks to you. +1 tier to dark curse spells.
High-level scholar. Passive. +3 Wis, +1 Int, +40% memorization speed.
Minor mace mastery: Passive. +1 Stre.
Spells:
Medium-level exhaust. Decreases the target's attack speed and strength for 5 minutes. This effect depends on the target's magical resistance. Without magical resistance, the reduction is 30%. Range: in a circular area with a 20-meter radius, a single target. Due to the effect of the Acolyte skill, Exhaust becomes high-level. 40% decrease for 5 minutes. Range: in a circular area with a 30-meter radius, to all targets within a second circular area with a one-meter radius. Cost: Medium-level: 2 MP. High-level: 3 MP.
Advanced Animate Skeletons. Requirement for necromancy spells: high affinity for darkness. Summons up to a maximum of x skeletons of a creature whose bones or corpse are present and within a 120-meter radius of the animator. x = animator's Int. Cost: 1 MP for every 3 skeletons.
Intermediate Summon Skeletons (evolution of the animate skeletons spell). Requirement for necromancy spells: high affinity for darkness. Summons a skeleton of any creature the summoner has previously animated within a 15-meter radius of the summoner. The skeleton's level will depend on the summoned creature, the summoner's intelligence points, and the summoner's level. The skeleton's level can never exceed the summoner's. Equipment available for the summoned skeleton improves compared to the previous spell level. Cost: 3 MP.
Low Animate Zombies (evolution of animate skeletons spell). Requirement for necromancy spells: high affinity for darkness. Summons up to a maximum of x zombies. Each zombie requires a separate corpse present within a 45-meter radius of the animator. x=animator's Int. Cost: 1 MP per zombie.
High-level life suction. Sucks 1 HP from the target in contact for every 1 MP spent.
High-level life drain (evolution of the life suction spell). Drains 1 HP from the targets within a 10-meter range for each target and MP spent. The total mana cost will depend on the number of targets selected by the user within the range area.
Low-level dark flare. Generates a cone of flames that deals 2 points of damage to the targets it reaches. The cone's reach distance can be regulated, being inversely proportional to the cone's angle. For a 90o angle cone, the distance is 60 cm. The damage is amplified or reduced based on the target's vulnerability to the darkness element and/or its magical resistance.
Initiated-level void. Creates a tiny black hole that sucks in all nearby matter. Range: a circular area with a 5-meter radius. Cost: 10 mana points and meeting the requirements. Requirements: 1- Serve the dark god. 2- Blocked.
