Henry was inside the room when he felt it, one of his strongest beasts had died, the bond had snapped.
He smiled.
"I wonder who could have killed a Chief Ogre..."
A Chief Ogre was no joke. Only A-rank adventurers could kill one in an equal fight and it had taken Henry a full week to tame the Beast under his control.
He assumed that the killer would be at least an A-rank because no one else would be able to kill his beasts but pity he didn’t know that the killer of one of his beasts just happened to be an anomaly that could surpass even an S-rank adventurer.
He looked towards the old women lying on the bed.
"I’ll be back, my beautiful wives."
Henry walked out of the house and noticed something was up, the village was completely silent. No one was walking, talking, running or even playing. Since the day he was born, Frostveil Village had always had a number of people of all ages walking around the village.
Now it was like the entire village was abandoned.
He refused to believe that everyone had left.
He walked down the empty road till he came across a big clearing where he stopped. Dead bodies laid all over the place.
Bodies of all the villagers who had lived in the village for most of their lives. Henry’s eyes landed on one in particular, an old chief who had no life left in his body.
Henry ran to the body, anger bubbling up in his chest. He was an evil man, yes, but these people had always been the ones to support him during his darkest times.
"Isn’t it sad," a calm voice said behind him, "to see all your people die and leave you all alone?"
Henry turned around.
A white-haired man stood behind him, a black mask covering half of his face. In each hand he had two decapitated heads. The man casually tossed four of them towards Henry.
Henry paled when he saw the faces, they were the heads of his four women.
"How can you do this, you monster!?!" Henry’s voice screamed with terror, he had lost almost one hundred people that day.
The white-haired man let out a laugh that sent shockwaves across the ground, making Henry’s bones rattle. His eyes were bloodshot.
"How can I do this? Did you ask yourself that question when you murdered a child in cold blood? Or when you killed all those other people before her? Are you people that stupid?"
John’s voice was as icy as the words he said.
"I always believed in the words: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Henry’s face contorted in anger.
"I’m going to kill you, bastard!"
[Beast Call]
Over a hundred monsters appeared all around them, wolves, goblins, ogres and more surrounded John.
John simply shook his head and raised his hand.
[Shadow Call]
From the shadows on the ground, undead crawled out, dozens of Skeleton Warriors and Rotting Zombies crawling out of his shadow, making a silent army of almost sixty undead.
Henry’s eyes widened in shock.
"What the hell?! Those are undead! Where did you get them, you thief?! These were supposed to be mine!"
John laughed.
"Yours? I haven’t seen your name on any of them. These Skeleton Warriors and Rotting Undead are mine for I am the only true Necromancer."
Henry knew the class name, but no one in Frostveil Village has ever heard of a living Necromancer in over a hundred and fifty years. It was a forbidden class.
Then Henry’s face contorted in greed.
"I’m rich... Thank you for coming here, Necromancer. I’ll drag you back to the guild and collect the bounty myself."
He went on.
"Did you know that Necromancers are hated by everyone? That’s because they can raise dead monsters. Oh... so that’s how you cleared the Undead Lair."
Something was still bugging him. On the bodies of the villagers, there were no claw marks or signs of a fight, Necromancers were weak without their summons, so how?
John noticed his confusion and gave a cold smile.
"Oh, these people were so weak that I simply released my aura and they all collapsed. Call it aura farming if you want. The old man, I simply drained his life force."
Henry had enough hearing of such things.
"Attack!"
His beasts charged the undead and the two sides clashed, several of his beasts breaking through the ranks and charging straight at John.
John simply shook his head.
"Still trying to attack me with these lowly beasts?"
The Azure Soulreaper appeared in his hand in a flash of blue cold light as he grinned.
Four beasts were cleaved in two with one swing, they hadn’t even touched him. In a few seconds all the monsters who had charged at him were dead.
Henry looked at the white-haired man with a mix between terror and excitement... then smiled.
"This is what I’ve been waiting for. Someone stronger than me. You’ll be my stepping stone.
You see... I hit my limit as a human a long time ago."
His voice grew crazier.
"I pursued strength but it was all in vain. I lost my mind and so, I started killing people weaker than me hoping that it would make me stronger. It turned me into this but, I’m glad that I did it. Because now I can fight an anomaly."
Henry was completely insane.
He gestured, recalling the other beasts that had fought the regenerating undead, there was no point in attacking anymore.
As the saying went: Kill the Summoner and the summons fall.
"Round two begins," Henry growled.
[Beast Transformation]
All of his remaining beasts exploded in streams of energy that flew into his body and consumed his body. His form twisted and stretched violently till he stood over ten feet tall, he was a big, ugly beast with many bestial features melded into one and he roared.
John looked up at him with no fear.
"You’re a lost cause, my dude."
He raised his hand again.
[Soul Devour]
A few of the low-level undead were instantly sacrificed and their energy fed into one of the higher undead, reshaping them.
A new figure walked out of the shadows.
"From now your name is Sabría".
She was an elegant female undead, her pale gray skin stretching over her tall and slim body and her long silver hair flowing like water.
Her eyes glowed a cold violet while she wore a dark, torn battle dress with silver embroidery that clung to her figure, and in her hands she carried a long, curved black blade that pulsed with necrotic energy.
Sabría bowed slightly to John.
"As you command, Master."
John’s eyes landed on the transformed Henry.
The real fight was about to begin.