Reborn with a Necromancer System - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: The Ruined City of Mirth Chapter 44: The Ruined City of Mirth Kai didn’t stop running.

The pain in his legs had long since turned to numbness.

His muscles screamed, his breath came in ragged gasps, but he kept going.

He had to.

Had to run.

Had to get away.

Had to- ‘If you ever get the sights of the Inquisition on you, head west until you find the ruined mansion.

He will help you.’ A voice from long ago hummed in his mind.

The traveler’s voice.

Kai’s lips parted, breathless.

He barely registered the moment he passed a low, crumbling stone wall.

His steps slowed.

His run turned to a trot.

Then, a walk.

“It’s been so long that I’d almost forgotten…” His voice was hoarse, his throat raw.

“The ruined city Dad talked about…” He lifted his gaze.

The world around him had changed.

The trees had thinned out, giving way to shattered stone paths and half-buried buildings.

The skeletal remains of a city long forgotten.

Everything was dead.

Aged corpses and skeletal figures lay strewn across the roads, their bodies undisturbed.

Untouched.

It was as if the entire city had perished all at once.

No scavengers or looters.

No one had come back.

Kai swallowed thickly.

Unlike the forest near Ylthara, this place was different.

There, the trees had whispered.

The magic touched everything.

Here, though, death hung in the air like dust on an unused bookshelf.

‘This is wrong.

All kinds of wrong.

I shouldn’t be here.

I should turn back.’ Kai felt a faint presence.

Something amongst the ruined buildings.  Kai shuffled back.

He watched and waited.

He readied two shadow daggers and had Shade waiting for his command.

A groan.

Kai’s head snapped toward the sound.

From the doorway of a ruined stone building, a figure stumbled forward.

Its skin was torn and discoloured, its face barely holding together.

Its eyes, rotting, sunken sockets, locked onto him.

Kai stiffened.

“Undead?

But I’ve never seen undead outside of my spells-” The creature lurched forward.

Kai reacted instantly.

“Shade!” The shadow beneath him split apart.

Three smaller figures of Shade surged forward, moving like liquid, twisting through the air.

They swarmed the zombie, slashing through its decayed flesh with razor-sharp tendrils.

The creature fell apart in seconds.

Chunks of rotting meat and exposed bone hit the ground, but they still moved.

The severed pieces twitched and wriggled, as if they were still alive.

Kai grimaced.

“Gross…” He took a slow step forward, careful not to touch the remains.

Ahead, in the distance, he saw it.

A ruined manor.

Impressively large.

Looming.

Its frame was still intact despite the years, standing tall over the rest of the crumbling city.

“The traveler’s words…” This was the place, Kai felt it in his bones, so he pressed on.

Kai moved cautiously through the dead streets.

The silence was unnatural.

Just like the forest of Ylthara, but instead of scaring the animals away, there was no living creature inside the borders of the city at all.

No birds flying overhead, insects crawling on the ground, or distant rustling.

Nothing.

Not even the wind moved.

He stepped over the remains of what once had been a marketplace, the wooden stalls rotted to dust.

The cobblestone path beneath him was cracked, uneven.

And the deeper he walked into the city, the colder it became.

Unnaturally so.

Another groan and some rattling.

To his right, two skeletons stepped out of a broken alleyway.

Their movements were jerky, unnatural.

Rusted weapons still clutched in their bony hands.

A third figure, another zombie and the owner of the moan, crawled from the wreckage of a collapsed building, its body twisted at an odd angle.

Kai inhaled sharply.

‘I can’t hesitate!’ He gripped his shadow daggers and focused.

The blades lengthened until they were the length of machetes.

Kai pointed them towards his enemies.

The first skeleton lunged.

Kai sidestepped, his blade cutting through its spine in one swift motion.

The creature collapsed, its bones scattering across the ground.

It crawled across the ground, attempting to still reach Kai.

‘Bull’s Strength!’ Kai stomped its head into the ground, smashing its skull to pieces, but it still crawled after him.

The second skeleton struck.

Kai caught its attack with a conjured shadow dagger.

He twirled his body like a dancer as he repelled the strike and, after jumping into the air, drove his weapon into the second skeleton’s skull.

The zombie charged.

Kai snapped his fingers.

Shade reacted instantly.

A single tendril shot forward, piercing through the zombie’s head.

It gurgled, shuddered, and then went still.

Mostly.

Kai spent several minutes stomping on the skeletons until the bones were in enough pieces to stop moving and he severed the head from the zombie just in case.

The silence returned.

Kai exhaled, lowering his stance.

“What the hell is this place?” He turned back toward the manor.

Closer now.

Just a little further until I’m there.

But something was wrong.

No matter how much he walked, the manor never seemed to get any closer.

He furrowed his brows.

Stopped.

Looked around.

Everything was… shifting.

The streets had changed.

The buildings were not where they had been.

“It’s moving.” A labyrinth.

Some kind of magic.

Kai’s hands clenched into fists.

He tried again.

For hours, he pushed forward.

Over and over.

It didn’t work.

The city refused to let him through.

The magic was powerful, ancient, deeply ingrained into the very foundation of this place.

His body ached.

His mana reserves had dropped dangerously low.

And still, he was no closer than before.

Kai gritted his teeth, frustration mounting.

But he knew better than to waste more energy.

He needed rest.

With heavy steps, he turned into a half-crumbled building on the outskirts of the city.

It was barely standing, the walls cracked, the roof nearly collapsed.

‘This will have to do.

I’ll leave Joran here to stand guard.’ Kai slumped down against the cold stone floor while Joran stepped out of his shadow.

His body screamed for sleep, but his mind raced.

His thoughts kept looping back to Mari, to his parents, to Peter…

But his exhaustion won in the end.

His eyes slipped shut.

And for the first time in days, he slept.

— The moment the first light crept through the broken walls of the building, Kai woke.

His body was stiff, his life essence no better than it was before.

But he had no choice.

He stood.

And he tried again.

This time, he moved slower.

Studied his surroundings more carefully.

He followed the shifts, the distortions, searching for patterns.

Then, to his surprise, he heard soft footsteps.

Not from a rattling skeleton or a shambling zombie, but from something which could only be a human.

Kai froze.

His breath caught as a gigantic wave of mana surged through the air.

He spun, his senses screaming at him to retreat.

Someone else was here.

And they were watching him.