[Alert: You can mentally issue commands to the undead you"ve created. You can do so by merely thinking of whatever you wish to order strongly and transmitting it to the creatures you are commanding like when you message the system, or by taking advantage of the new menu that you can access in 3... 2... 1...] The system announced, its voice alerting me to my H.U.D. right as a new symbol appeared on the left side of my sightline.

The symbol was a skull with eyes that seemed to emit some sort of unholy light. The skull"s mouth was open in what looked like a stylized triumphant laugh. While I mentally examined the symbol I began to saunter over to the location of my creation.

I reached it in less than fifteen, long steps. When I was close enough to touch the creature I reached out with my hand to touch the thing. I shivered when I made contact with it and realized that its skin was stiff and cold. The thing meekly looked at me, and there wasn"t a hint of intelligence in its gaze.

I stroked the fur on the deer"s torso. It was stiff but less-so than the creature"s actual skin. However, as I moved my hand away the fur where I had touched fell off of the deer"s body in a hand-shaped clump. I stood in stunned silence for a second and made a mental note not to touch zombies whose skin I was intent on collecting. And then I issued my first order to the zombie.

"Follow me." I told the undead thing, speaking to it mentally in the exact same manner in which I spoke to the system. I looked at it for a second, intent on divining if there was a change to the thing"s face. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, I was certain that there wasn"t. That didn"t prevent me from trusting that my command was received since I knew the system to be reliable even if it wasn"t exactly forthright.

I closed my eyes and studied my almost instantly visible not-so-mini-map. I searched for nearby crosses, intent on accomplishing two things: finding more large animals to reanimate, and finding a number of creatures to reanimate who weren"t members of the same species.

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I studied the map for a few seconds before quickly determining my best route forward. It was a lovely path that took me deeper into the forest than I had dared to go to date, closer than ever to the goblin settlement, but also into uncharted reaches near the edge of my mental map. I was quite excited to begin to trod down it as it brought me into contact with creatures I had never yet encountered.

Some of those creatures were humanoids or creatures called fey. One of them was a thing called a satyr, and another was a goblin. But many of them were ma.s.sive creatures, including something called a "purple-skinned spider". Knowing that I was about to bring such creatures back from the dead was honestly quite exciting.

I turned to look at the deer who I hoped would travel with me, and began to walk backward. I kept my gaze on the creature, studying it stoically until it took its first few steps after me. It hadn"t looked at me until I got far enough from it for it to begin to follow me, at which point its head snapped in my direction mechanically and began to take dispa.s.sionate, almost mechanical steps towards me.

I kept walking while facing away from the thing just to be sure that it was following me, but after a few seconds of watching it walk I was certain that it was on my tail. I turned back around and opened my grimoire by mentally tapping on the book-like symbol in my vision.

[Good afternoon Althos, congratulations on becoming a level one necromancer! Displaying new spells under your control in 3... 2.. 1...

Necromancer spells:

Weight of the dead: This spell causes the effects of gravity on an affected foe to increase dramatically. It can be used to cripple a speeding enemy, to cause flying foes to be violently brought to the surface. It"s especially devastating for swimming creatures who can"t breathe underwater.

Boneyard: This spell is only useable on enemies who are on the ground but when it"s used correctly it causes bony hands to suddenly spring out from the ground and grab enemies. It can paralyze enemies but it can also slow them down. Also, though normally the spell takes control of actual bony hands, when no such bones are readily available it instead conjures spectral hands that do the deed instead.

Plant reanimation: This spell transforms deceased plants into eerie, loyal abominations that serve you unerringly.

Hungry hands: This spell reanimates a specific body part: a hand. It can be used on hands that were just cut off, or on the hands of the dead. Reanimated hands than being to serve you just as any other sorts of undead would.

Heal undead: This spell creates a spark of unlife energy that can be used to repair undead creatures and restore their health.

Disease bolt: This spell fires off a bolt of energy that inflicts those who are struck by it with a random disease. This spell could play a role in enabling you to eventually gain influence over the disease domain.

Cla.s.s feature explanation: Cla.s.s features are abilities that people possess through their cla.s.ses. These are different from spells. Non-deities are limited in how many times they can use cla.s.s features per-day, but deities aren"t. Cla.s.s features are unlocked as you increase your cla.s.s level.

Necromancer cla.s.s features:

Unlife energy channel: This feature allows you to aim and remotely channel unlife energy. Unlife energy is the energy that animates corpses and other dead things into undead creatures. If you aim this energy at a living creature it saps away at their life-force. If this ability kills something the killed thing is automatically brought back to life as an undead creature.

Life drain: This feature allows you to take health from another creature and either give it to yourself or give it to someone else. This power is handy for subjugating enemies.

In order to level up the necromancer cla.s.s, you need to use necromantic cla.s.s features and reanimate various corpses and other deceased things.

While we"re here, we"ll go ahead and inform you of your 1st level Druidic cla.s.s features.

Druid cla.s.s features:

Heal plants: This power allows you to heal plants. In your case, it actually gives your efforts to heal plants an innate increase to their effectiveness.

Heal animals: Much like "Heal plants" this power gives your efforts to heal animals an innate increase to their effectiveness.

In order to level up the druid cla.s.s you need to use druidic cla.s.s features and tend to nature.]

Once I read through the lengthy notification it vanished from view, and I began to get closer and closer to the next corpse I was intent on reanimating.

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After a few minutes of walking through the forest, avoiding the few hostile creatures my tremorsense could detect, and practicing my appraisal power on a.s.sorted plants, I was within view of the next corpse I wanted to raise.

It was a positively enormous, purple spider, one with barb-tipped legs, and venomous ichor dripping out of its recently deceased maw, seeping into and despoiling the ground underneath the thing"s corpse. I stared at it, studying the thing before I rose my hand in its direction and quietly cast "Create Undead".

A sinister beam of purple, unholy energy shot out of my hand and powerfully seeped into the ma.s.sive creature in front of me. The beam was a long lance of energy and it felt different from the energy that shot out of me when I reanimated the deer.

The beam was cold and seemed to sap both the color and the heat out of the air that surrounded it. It was an eerie and terrible sight, but also one that I found quite fascinating and lovely to look at. It was beautiful, in a dark sort of way.

I had made a brave choice while I contemplated what to transform the purple spider into. I was creating my first worshiper. I was transforming the spider into a ravenous, and apparently pious ghoul. And as I did so, I was surprised to receive a notification that asked me an interesting question.

[Alert: Since you are bringing something back as a ghoul, it will possess intelligence. Would you like for it to possess all of its memories? It will still worship you either way, and you"ll be able to communicate mentally with it no matter whether or not you allow it to remember its life.]