When Logic Sinks In 2 (Patreon)

When Logic Sinks In 2 - or ‘From Soulless Nerd, to Mighty Lich God’ (Pre-Kuroinu, Kin!SI)

So, I have no home.

I have money, I have food, I have the ‘warmth’ provided by the skeletons I could summon at command, and I had a plan in mind- snag Chloe the Dark Elf from her precarious situation of the slavery kind, turn her in my assistant, and then proceed to explore those areas at the outskirt of the ‘nice side of Eostia’ to pursue higher Necromantic education.

I had a map, I had a chariot and I had the funds to supply my endeavor for a time. I expected to double my cash by the time I got to Chloe since her owner was loaded, which is why I had to plan this carefully. I had to make a few stops around Ken and Emelle before learning that Sir John Mandeville was the chief of Iedian.

This was both good and bad- good because I now had a proper location to approach, bad because the small fortress outside the city, which was where the man had made his residence at, was not going to be broken by a few skeletons. I also knew my current abilities were not going to do much in that regard, even if I put some of the maddest plans I could think of to crash the lil’ castle.

I had to improvise, there was no doubt in that as I couldn’t waste too much time in this effort, but… I had something in mind. A tiny bit of curiosity which ultimately turned into a majestic idea.

A necromancer has two natural abilities: ‘Rise’, which is the concept of reviving and ‘claiming’ the undead depending on the user’s capacity to impose their wills on those beings, and ‘Life-Steal’. This last ability is considered the one thing that really frightens people in this world- especially mages.

To put it bluntly, if I stumble on a stupid magician, someone with a high capacity of mana, I can absorb their energy, thus draining their life force, and make it mine. It resulted in a higher lifespan and greater mana reserve for me, but a very dead mage at my feet.

Now, this is where this ability comes clutch for me.

With a noble of this pedigree nearby Iedian, I knew that mages were recruited as protection from the dangers of the nearby forest. Dark Elves were known to sneak through these dangerous woods to raid these places through the means of orcs, so it was fair to say magical protection was very needed.

And I found three mages at the inn I decided to stay at. An old man that looked extremely senile but clearly had some wits to himself as he behaved in a somewhat shift around others- something ‘odd’ as commented by his apprentices. The two women in his charge were the classic ‘bikini armor’ kind of bitches. It was clear this would have been resolved in some NTR situations but… I happened to be a bit worse than that.

The old man was aware something was off around as he had to have perceived my unusual mana pattern. What he couldn’t have predicted was for ‘Tiny Timmy’, one of the town’s poor kids that had a need for money and little understanding of moral decisions, would be his undoing.

The child wasn’t truly that pleased with ‘stabbing a grumpy and mean old man’, but the money I gave him which could be used to pay him and his family a few warm meals seemed to put his heart to it.

I waited for the right opportunity, which was the old man going to check on his ‘horse’ (his cue to go and look into the local brothel from the path he was taking to reach his destination). Timmy moved around like a normal child that was running around, being on a rushed time and stabbing the old man in the ribs just as briefly as he passed him.

The knife was still firmly pressed against his chest when the old fool stumbled near the alley where I prepared a trap. Two ‘masked men’, who were two of my skeletons wearing clothes I bought from ‘home’, pulled him away from sight, bringing him to him while binding his hands and covering his mouth.

He looked shocked, panicking and trying to scream- only for his efforts to die out as I put my hand on his head. Life-stealing isn’t something I practiced, but the nature of it is alluded to in some magic books on how to ‘avoid it’. The Necromancer knows how to summon through magic that was ‘theirs’, but could also recognize the ‘opposite’ as ‘valuable life’.

So, instead of expecting his mana to be like mine, I expected the opposite. Instead of a death-giving touch, I expected a core of pure light. And I found it. Weak, bruised, long mistreated and… welcoming of the passage.

It was odd, really. I would have expected it to ‘fight’ back or something. But life swiftly left the old man and I barely put an effort in the ‘Stealing’. It didn’t feel like a theft but… a long-overdue process.

But this wasn’t where I ended it. The man’s skin had gotten more wrinkles, graying as it lost humanity as his eyes were now dull glassy balls that stared soullessly at me. He was dead, there was no doubt in it, but I proceeded to do something that put a genuine cost on my newly-expanded mana reserves: I snatched the old man’s body and turned it into a puppet.

It worked. The soul was gone, just like it was for the skeletons, but the muscle memory, the knowledge, persisted.

“Can you teach me magic?”

“Yes, master,” The ghoulish mage replied, giving me the hope to learn basic magic together with Necromancy.

As much as I was willing to fully dive to make Necromancy my main tool, I wasn’t going to neglect other aspects of magic.

“Do you know when your former apprentices go to sleep?”

“Yes, master.”

I smiled, and this was where I claimed two more victims. As any noteworthy hentai, these bitches slept with only a protection- the locked door to their rooms. With the old mage using a mild sleep spell on each of the girls through the mana I provided him, I then proceeded to drain the two young women.

Both had little magical potential much to my amusement at the idea these two were clearly set to be easy rape-bait in this cruel world, and yet had plenty of lifespan to provide to my own.

At this point, I was up to live beyond my 100s without any issues.

Once I was done stealing them too to use as ghoul mages, I decided to go to my room and sleep. It would be foolish to mount the assault now, and with a safe way in, I had to prepare for this to work to perfection.

I asked a few questions to the old man about how much influence he had on John Mandeville, and he mentioned he had tutored some of the mages in his payroll and that the two were old friends.

Brilliant. I just had to get some things prepared for the morning.

First, changing my outfit to resemble a proper mage apprentice. Not a big issue considering I had a ‘school uniform’ that I was meant to put on once I had shown my parents I was ‘of good affinity’, but I suppose now it was going to serve me for this infiltration.

Next was the ghoulish mages. They could all use illusions to cover their hideous looks, but the stench may be problematic. Due to the Necromancy power, the rotting was not an issue, but the smell of ‘unlively skin’ was not exactly impossible to notice.

So, perfumes were used. The girls used a specific one, while the old man used another. After all, since the Lord and this old fucker were friends they should know of each other sexual propensity- it made sense for a lecherous mage to have some female’s scent on him after going to the brothel.

Once out of the inn, we approached the castle and, much to my relief, we were allowed inside. After answering the questions posed by the captain of the guards in regard to my presence, and using his influence to push back on the suspicions raised by the guy, we were finally in.

And it was time to raise hell for goodness’ sake~.

—------d-d-d-d—---

In the dungeon of Lord Mandeville’s castle, the lone occupant of the cell the closest to its entrance was nervous.

It’s been a full hour since she heard odd noises coming through the rooms above in a muffled and confusing pattern, but little Chloe knew that there was something really wrong happening within the castle.

Was it orcs? Raiders? The dangerous Dark Elves that Lord Mandeville had told her would have hurt her even more than he ‘loved’ her?

These thoughts left the young girl shuddering for a while, her mind failing to ultimately find the right guess. Then, silence came. The struggle was over. Did Lord Mandeville win? Or maybe someone else was now in charge of everything. Regardless of the result of this unusual event, Chloe doubted it was going to matter for a while.

Maybe, if it had been the victory of someone against Mandeville, she was going to be forgotten. After all, what conqueror would bother to check the dungeons early on?

Her expectations were soon to be crushed in a rather unusual way. A lone figure soon appeared by the dungeon. Approaching from the entrance and accompanied by a decaying mage following his steps in a submissive fashion, the little entity turned to stare at her as soon as he paused in front of her.

Chloe hardened her look, knowing she had to appear thought to this individual as a proper and defiant slave. She wasn’t going to break at all. No matter how much Lord Mandeville touched her body and made that white thing go in her lower body, so she wasn’t going to break to someone else!

“Hi.”

The boy spoke. He had pretty green eyes- enough to make poor Chloe’s tough look falter briefly.

“You are Chloe right?”

She slowly nodded, and the boy hummed.

“My name is Kin. I am a Necromancer in Training,” The fellow child introduced himself. “I heard that John Mandeville was a bad person. He hurt you and others.”

The elf blinked. “A-And?”

She half-cursed her stutter.

“And he is gone!” The boy exclaimed joyously. “Which means… you’re free!”

…Eh?

“L-Liar.”

He pouted, clearly acting up on this. “I am not a liar~! Am I right, Mandy-guy?”

Just as Kin said that, a purplish light manifested beside him. And from it, the familiar frame of a now crooked and deformed Lord Mandeville manifested. A monster? No, it was worse. A shell- a ugly shell that the boy that was close to her age had made out of who once was a powerful lord.

“Yes, Master.”

“And you are scum for hurting someone as innocent as Chloe, right?”

“Yes, Master.”

“See, Chloe,” The boy hummed, turning to her once more. “I am not your enemy, and I am not here to ‘punish’ you as I am doing with those mongrels. I am just doing it with bad people.”

Questions came to mind, but one won over the rest. “Why? Why are you- you doing this?”

Instead of just speaking, the boy unfastened his shirt and… she stared at his body. Crude scars were now impressed on his little body. Lord Mandeville hardly used a whip on her and it never went that far. Her eyes widened in shock at the horrid look and the sad look on the boy’s face.

“I know pain. Not yours, not precisely yours, but I know pain. And I know it’s unfair when it is given without a good reason. When children are to pay for adults’ faults.”

…

“So, I want to give you a deal. I don’t need a slave, I need a friend. Someone that is alive and that I can trust, someone that can understand me as much as I can understand them,” Kin pointed out happily. “I know this may sound a bit sudden, but can I be your friend, Chloe?”

There was much to think about. Freedom- she was actually free. If Lord Mandeville was really dead- and he was, then that meant she was- she was really free and…

And then what?

Chloe was alone. No one would take in a slave but… he would. He killed Mandeville because he hurt her. He gave her a choice that wasn’t that fair, but it wasn’t also unfair. He didn’t want a slave, he wanted a companion- he wanted a friend.

Which would make him her first friend.

Something odd broke within her as she realized this and tears came to her once more. It’s been weeks since she thought she could no longer cry but… she was wrong. For those were not tears of pain.

Those were tears of happiness.

She didn’t speak however as her throat was caught by the emotion. Instead of pressing her on it, the boy had the cell opened, the shackles removed and he just… gave her a big hug. It was a bit awkward, but she abandoned herself onto it, and it slowly gave her a form of warmth she felt needed- it was perfect and… and then she spoke.

“I-I accept. I wanna- I wanna be your friend!”

—---------d-d-d-d—-----------

AN

Cute Dark Elf Assistant and First Friend secured!