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11. Abuse of a Corpse is a Misdemeanor
🕑 Added 2024-09-16 02:03:50 +0000 UTCLevi grabbed the remnants of the men’s corpses. He drew his sword and cut the arms off both of their bodies. Setting them aside, he sliced the spines out of the bodies, including the severed spine. He arrayed the pieces together, connecting the spines directly to the shoulder joints. They laid next to each other. Nothing bound them in place. He added a few more shoulder and rib bones for extra support, then slapped his hand down on it. “Go go, necromancy!”
Green light shone from his palm. The dead flesh and bones knitted together. Tendons wrapped around bones they were never meant to grip. Spines connected to shoulder joints. A horrific amalgamation of corpses laid on the floor.
“Hell yeah! Come to poppa.” Levi gestured, holding his arms out like a hug.
The disembodied arms pushed off the ground and threw themselves at Levi. He spun around, offering his back. The spines wrapped around his body, hugging tight to him. The four bonus arms flexed over and under his shoulders, making a mockery of Levi’s wiry arms. He posed a few times, letting the bulky arms make bodybuilding poses.
Colin chuckled. He shook his head at Levi, trying to force down a smile.
“I’ll be able to fight four times as effectively now,” Levi said, grinning. A second later, he frowned. “No, wait. Three times. Because I had two arms to start out, and now I have six. Two times three is six.”
Colin applauded.
“Don’t applaud. Come on. I didn’t drop out of middle school, just high school.”
Abruptly, sharp pain slammed into his head. It pierced his brains like a railroad spike, and his concentration and mana both wavered. Levi stumbled. He pressed a hand to his forehead.
Startled, Colin rushed to his side.
Levi waved him away. “I just overreached on my active undead.”
He snapped. The kobolds fell back to the ground. They dissolved into dust. In return, he received about half of the man he’d put into them. He took a deep breath, sucking it in. Like a mint, mana flowed around his lungs with a refreshing coolness. His strength returned, and the pain in his head faded away.
“There we go. Just me, my healer, and my arms.” He flexed with all six and grinned.
Colin held up his staff. He shook his head.
“Out of mana? What do you need?” Levi asked.
“Life.”
“Eating those guys didn’t help?”
Colin hesitated, then nodded. Reluctantly, he held up two fingers a tiny bit apart.
Levi nodded. “If we find some more monsters and just chill for a bit, will that help?”
He nodded.
“Right. Let’s go find you some living monsters.”
“Eating those guys did… help my throat,” Colin admitted.
Levi glanced back at him. “Yeah, I noticed. Now it just sounds like you gargled gravel. Some people even find that kind of thing sexy. You know, on singers and stuff.”
Colin nodded. “It’s not so bad.”
“What, you aren’t going to ask?” Levi asked.
“Ask what?”
“If I find it sexy.”
Colin shot him a deadpan look.
Levi grinned back.
“If you do, I don’t want to know about it,” Colin said.
“Nah. It’s really not my thing. More of a female-vocals guy,” Levi said.
Another deadpan look.
Levi shrugged at him. “You said you don’t want to know if I do find it sexy. You didn’t say anything if I don’t.”
“Are we going to go find living monsters or not?”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get moving. Forever downward.” Levi gestured for Colin to follow and marched deeper into the dungeon. His four bonus arms folded close to his back. They crossed themselves to center their weight as close to his center of gravity as possible.
“Is that heavy?” Colin asked.
“Yeah. Not too bad with my strength stat, but heavy enough I need to adjust to it before I use it in battle. Otherwise, I’ll end up swinging twice and falling flat on my face,” Levi informed him.
Colin nodded.
“It’s not like I can just attach extra pieces to my body and instantly know how to fight with them. I need time to practice and adjust. I’m probably not going to get that time, but I can at least get used to wearing them before we go into battle.”
Colin nodded again. He waited expectantly.
Levi opened his mouth again, then shook his head. “No, that’s all. How are those gloves working out for you?”
Lifting his hand, Colin showed a slightly-scorched glove. “Not too bad. I’ll need to swap them out soon, but it’s fine for now.”
“Good. Keep me up to date on those gloves. If you need more, I can always make more.”
“How do you know how to make gloves?” Colin asked, tilting his head.
“Huh? Gloves are easy. You just outline your hands twice, then stitch them together. The stitching part is a pain in the ass but gloves are probably one of the easiest pieces of clothing to make, conceptually,” Levi explained.
Colin paused. He looked at Levi. “Let me rephrase. How many clothes do you know how to make?”
“All of ‘em. It’s a useful life skill. What, did you just buy clothes all your life? Rich bastard. The custom stuff is super expensive to buy, you know.”
“What was your world like? You said it was apocalyptic,” Colin said, taking another track to approach what he wanted to know yet again.
“Huh? Did I? It was kind of a weak-ass apocalypse. Players—you know, people with status sheets—started showing up, and they were all pieces of shit. World went to hell in a handbasket, as you might expect. There were portals, and monsters endlessly shooting through them. Players were supposed to fight those, but mostly they played god-emperor.”
“And you were one of those Players?” Colin asked.
Levi barked a laugh. “Nope. Not for a while. And not properly for a long time after that. How about you? What was your world like?”
Colin shrugged. “Uh, normal. I mean—boring. Strip malls. Highways. High school, college, and a nine-to-five. Nothing as exciting as an apocalypse.”
“Exciting times aren’t very fun when you’re the one experiencing them,” Levi commented.
They lapsed into silence.
The tunnel continued downward. Rocks emanated heat to their left and right. They glowed a faint red, lighting the space. Plantlife clustered around the warm rocks. Hardy, scraggly bushes and dark-leaved flowers clustered close. Levi frowned. “The hell are those things getting UV rays from?”
“Magic?” Colin asked.
“Huh.”
Large lizards and snakes coiled on the rocks ahead. They were smaller than the kobolds, only about a forearm’s length for the lizards, or half Levi’s height for the snakes, but still large enough to pose a threat. They perked up as the travelers passed. Levi rested his hand on his sword, and Colin clutched his staff tight.
Ahead, a single kobold tended to the small bushes. It carried a weighty bucket on one hip, and all the lizards and snakes tracked the bucket as it wandered from bush to bush. It hadn’t noticed Levi or Colin yet, and continued at its duties.
Levi widened his eyes. “Ohhh. Hey, Colin. Have you ever considered that we might just be raiding a kobold… I don’t know what to call it. Village? Warden? Hutch?”
“Village. That guy seems to be farming,” Colin said.
“Right, which does imply a certain level of intelligence. In any case. Do you think, just maybe, we’ve been tricked into entering this ‘dungeon,’ which is actually a kobold village, as some form of pest extermination?”
“But that guy was charging admission,” Colin pointed out.
“What a great idea. Charging admission for pest extermination. I mean, think about it. If not for those Thugs, we probably only would’ve killed a few kobolds. Sure, we get EXP, and normies in this world get mana, or whatever, but it’s not really a proper dungeon. Just a hole in the ground where some lizards live, that some guy had a bright idea to charge people to go kill for him.” Levi shook his head, impressed.
Ahead of them, the farming kobold finally heard them. It whipped around and hissed. All the lizards and snakes drew up on high alert as well, staring at Levi and Colin.
“Well, no point in stopping now.” Levi’s extra arms uncrossed from his back. They punched their open hands as he closed in.
Colin fell back, still holding his staff.
The kobold leaped at Levi, long fangs bared. The lizards and snakes charged him as well.
