The Little Necromancer [LITRPG]

The mist churned around them like it was alive, a will of its own trying to smother them. One by one, more and more wraiths broke through the fog. And one by one, did they fall to Pell's harvester.

Ted.E's claws scraped against the dirt, each heavy step sending a shiver through Enya's body as she tried to hang on. If she was going to keep Ted.E—she was going to need a saddle.

Carl and Digsby flanked close, their skeletal forms vanishing and reappearing in the curtain of fog. One moment beside her, the next swallowed by the gray before snapping back into place. Both avoided killing, as she had ordered. Every death belonged to Pell; right now, he was her battery, feeding her Soul-Energy reserves.

Every kill sent a pulse through her core.

You have harvested Soul-Energy.
Soul-Energy Harvested: 36
Soul-Energy Harvested: 63
Soul-Energy Harvested: 41
Soul-Energy: 561/400

The numbers climbed. Some wraiths offered scraps, others a feast. The surge of power filling her almost drowned out the deathly wails.

Almost.

A wraith slipped past Digsby's guard, lunging for Carl's feet. He was too busy fending off two others to react in time.

"No you don't!" Pell's blade swept in, curving through the shade with a howl of black steel and soul. The wraith split apart, vanishing into mist.

Carl glanced back. The skeleton gave Pell a short nod.

Pell returned it without a word.

Soul-Energy Harvested: 51
Soul-Energy: 654/400

Another surge rolled into her reserves. She was well past her normal limit—over one and a half times her capacity. Dangerously close to the breaking point.

"Pell!" she shouted over the chaos. "I need a couple minutes to expand my container!"

"What—now?!" He cleaved through another pale shade, the mist flaring white around the blow. "This isn't the time for—"

A shape lunged from his flank. Before it could latch on, Carl slammed into it with a full-bodied punch, sending it skidding into the fog.

Enya leaned forward, bracing on Ted.E's upper back ribcage. "It's either I do this now, or my container breaks!"

Her mind flashed back to the crystal spiderling hunt; the agony she felt when she expanded her soul container for the first time. If overfilling it hurt even worse, she wasn't going to find out the hard way.

Pell's skull tilted toward her, soul-flames narrowing in irritation. He didn't argue. Just spat a curse and kept swinging, his scythe sweeping in wide arcs to keep the path open.

Enya closed her eyes and began to pull.

The full weight of her 400 Soul-Energy poured into the fragile walls of her container. The sensation was tense—like stretching glass past its limit—until with a soundless snap, the boundaries gave way and reformed wider, stronger. Her lungs felt heavier, like she'd swallowed more air than her body could hold.

The world drowned out in her ears. A rumbling was all that remained, a dying sound that slowly disappeared completely. She imagined her core, feeling the weight and power of the Soul-Energy within her. Having done it before, this time felt much more familiar. After just two minutes, she spent 400 points of Soul-Energy and expanded her vessel.

System Notification: You have succeeded in expanding your Soul-Energy capacity.
Soul-Energy: 526/800

Her Soul-Energy must have gone up while she was expanding her container. That was good. Pell and the others were still farming more points for her. It was like she had lost nothing.

She let out a long breath.

Then the noise came crashing back. Her eyes snapped open. She was on the ground, dress streaked with dirt, a raw scrape burning across her right elbow. A terrible ache lanced through her body all at once. The wraiths' screams swelled, sharp enough to send a spike of pain behind her eyes.

"Kid! Get up already!"

Pell's voice.

Enya struggled, but eventually stood up and caught her bearings. Pell, Digsby, Carl, and Ted.E were now in a four-crossed formation around her; each of them were dealing with multiple wraiths at the same time.

"W-what happened?" she stuttered. Her hands went to her ears as the screams became louder and louder. She squinted, looking over at Pell. That was when she noticed something. Something bad.

The wraiths—they weren't dying as easily anymore.

She watched as Pell swung his scythe at one, but the blade didn't go all the way through. He targeted the side of its body. It should have cut clean through its chest, severing it into misty halves. Now—it barely went in a few inches.

Enya formed two spell circuits in an instant, in both palms. She held her hands out, targeting the wraith right in front of Pell. A full-powered bone spear shot from the ground, stabbing straight through the wraith.

No—it didn't stab. It just went through the wraith. The monster ignored the spear and continued to slash forward, grazing Pell's forearms as he tried to back up and gain distance.

"W-what? How come I can't hit them?" she muttered. The wails around her became stronger, forcing her to wince.

She turned over to look at her other minions. Carl punched a wraith directly in the face, while another one grabbed onto his arm. He repeatedly punched it in the face until it let go.

"How come they can hit it but I can't?" she murmured.

There shouldn't have been any difference between her summons and the bone spears.

"Unless…" She formed another bone spear circuit. This time, she poured extra soul-energy into it.

A soul-forged bone spear.

Enya let her spell loose when a third wraith neared Carl. This time it did hit the monster. It stabbed straight into its chest—but it didn't kill it in one shot like she hoped. It staggered momentarily, clutching at the spear stabbed through its chest. After a moment of struggling, it bounded up from it, a wide hole now in its chest. It was damage, but not enough to kill it.

It locked eyes on her. The wails doubled in strength.

Enya dropped to her knees, clutching her head as the shrieks tore through her focus.

"Kid!"

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Pell's voice reached her through void like muddied water, muted and distant. The wails drowned everything else, the pain splitting her skull in two. She pressed her forehead to the dirt, squinting against the throbbing in her temples. It felt like her ears were bleeding—though she couldn't tell if they were.

Soul-Energy Harvested: 51
Soul-Energy: 571/800

She had to act. But every thought was scattered by the noise.

"Stop… screaming!" Enya shouted.

Her hands tore away from her ears and slammed into the ground. The command went out to every summon at once, Pell included. They all jerked to a halt, breaking from combat to fall back toward her.

A massive spell circuit bloomed beneath her palms—eight rings nested together, each pattern locking into the next. She didn't think about form or structure; she just needed silence. And what better way to have some peace and quiet, than to shut yourself in.

Soul-Energy: 488/800
Soul-Energy: 337/800
Soul-Energy: 221/800

Her reserves burst like a dam, flooding the circuit. The earth trembled. Then it erupted.

In an eight-meter ring around them, colossal bone spikes surged upward, angled inward, slowly rotating as they rose. They locked together overhead, sealing them inside. Soul-forged marrow shimmered slightly in the dim light within

The wails cut off, leaving only muffled cries and the heavy thudding of claws against the walls. Relief washed over her as the ringing in her ears faded to something she could endure.

"What is this?" Pell's voice was closer now, echoing in the dark. "It's so damn dark in here."

Pell opened his inventory and took out the glowing bone that Enya had made. She had given it to him once they reached the bottom of the stairs. She didn't exactly have pockets deep enough to hold a femur. A quick flare lit the dome's interior, painting the bone walls in pale silver.

"I couldn't think. The noise was too loud. So… I made a bubble."

Pell's gaze swept over the walls, the sound of pounding outside growing sharper. "Is this thing even going to hold? Because right now, we're sealed in with no way out."

Enya shook her head. "I don't think so. Even now…" Enya activated Absolute Focus. It took a few more seconds than usual. "They're probably a couple of minutes away from breaking the weakest part. They can go through my regular bones, but not soul-forged ones. But its not strong enough to stop all of them."

Enya turned to Pell. "What even happened? Why was I on the ground? And why can't you kill them so easily anymore?"

Pell's eyes narrowed, his tone half bite, half exasperation. "After you decided to do your stupid soul thing, two of those wraiths came right at us from the front. That dumb boarbear of yours couldn't hit them both, so it panicked. Took a hit, and you went flying off its back. Then we had to huddle around you while you were out. I've been screaming for you to wake up this whole time."

She flinched, rubbing her sore elbow. "…And the killing thing?"

"Check your kill notifications."

Enya blinked, pulling her system screen forward. She'd barely paid attention to anything but the Soul-Energy she'd been raking in; the actual kill logs and experience gain had gone ignored. The list stretched down, dozens of entries for Vengeful Wraiths.

System Notification: You have landed a killing blow on the following creatures:
Vengeful Wraith (Level 5).
Vengeful Wraith (Level 5).

The list continued on and on. They had killed roughly 20 different wraiths so far since they crossed the bridge. She read the list until the end.

Vengeful Wraith (Level 25).
Vengeful Wraith (Level 26).
You have received 29,877 EXP.
Your level has increased from level 15 to level 20.
You have gained 1 skill point.
Experience Remaining Until Next Level: 5001/6704

"What?" She was shocked. The wraiths had actually boosted her up to level 20, and even granted her a new skill point.

"Look closer," Pell said.

She glanced at him, then back at the screen. Then, she understood what he was getting at.

"The monsters… they are getting stronger?"

Pell nodded, the upper spinal bone creaking as he did so. "Felicity sent us into a death-trap. If we go any further, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw level 100 wraiths. With how we are right now, we'll probably die to level 40 wraiths easily."

"But… I leveled up too! That means you guys are stronger now right?"

Pell scoffed. "Yeah. Gained a couple levels myself. And I certainly do feel stronger. But those damn things are increasing in level way faster than us the further we go in."

"Then what should we do?"

The banging on the bone dome became louder. They would soon break in.

Pell looked to the side of the place. His soul flames narrowed as he thought. He gave a few suggestions.

"We have to either give up and just high tail it out of here, or leave the crypt and go back up to meet Felicity. If she wants us to do this dumb errand for her, then she better equip us with much better stuff. Not everyone can split dimensions and turn a church into an entirely new space. She's probably near level 80 or higher with that kind of power. I wanna give her a piece of my mind but she can probably just snap us out of existence. We really picked a troublesome person to mess with."

"Level 80? That high? You can do what she did at that level?" Enya asked.

"Dunno." Pell reached his hand out and flexed it, curling it into a fist and releasing. "Being above level 50 is practically a new realm for most people. Only maybe 20% of people within each of the first three layers are level 50 or above. The shit she pulled off could have only been from a high-level mage."

He cracked his knuckles. "We're getting off topic," he said. "The only other option is to try and find some shortcut to the cauldron. Maybe find a new path and sneak around all these wraiths. That will be hard with all this fog around us."

Enya crossed her own arms. "Couldn't we just go back a bit and kill the weaker wraith things? And get stronger until we can keep going forward?"

"You wanna be here for the next ten years?"

She winced. "Would it really take that long?"

Another sound drifted in through the barrier—not a wail this time, but a voice.

Pell's flames sharpened. "That hag actually came back?"

Cracks whispered across the dome's surface, bone dust sprinkling down from above. Enya pushed her focus toward the sound, pressing through the muffled wails. Shapes flickered beyond the wall—Elria's translucent outline, lips moving rapidly.

"I think she's trying to say something," Enya murmured.

The harvest scythe spun once in Pell's grip before he set it ready in both hands. "We need to move. If they break in first, we're boxed in. Best chance might be to backtrack and get the hell out. None of us are in shape for another fight."

He wasn't wrong. Pell's frame was chipped and corroded, fragments hanging by splinters of bone. Carl, Digsby, and Ted.E were worse off with splintered joints, missing plates, and now carried slow, jerky movements.

Enya's gaze swept over them, then hardened. "Actually… I think we can take them."

She recast her summon skeleton spell, restoring the missing bones and repairing the damage to all of her summon's bodies. And before the barricade fell, Enya summoned her bonecarver's quill. It fell straight into her palm. "Aright," she said, with one final look at her summons. "Let's see what this new skill can do."

"Argh!" Elria's groan echoed through the mist. She slammed both fists into the soul-forged dome, the blows ringing like muffled drumbeats. "Open up already!"

The thing shuddered under her assault, its spiraled, jagged spikes flexing like the petals of a bone-white rose. Ethereal or not, she couldn't pass through this stuff; it was saturated with soul energy, the kind that stopped beings like her dead in her tracks.

"Knock knock—LET ME IN!" Another series of bangs rattled the dome.

Twenty-odd wraiths wheeled and circled around her in the fog, all vying to penetrate the barrier, their screeches a maddening chorus of desperation. They were nothing but fractured shades, lesser vengeful spirits that attacked anything warm-blooded. Against a living target, they were terrifying. Conventional weapons or spells didn't work against them; only those that targeted the soul could stop them.

This included herself, too. Although she wasn't a wraith, she carried many of the same properties.

"This is so not cool," she muttered. "I went out of my way to grab this for them—" She lifted the chained, metallic sphere dangling at her side, gleaming like a captured moon—"and they lock me out? Probably in there having a tea party."

A sharp boom tore her attention sideways. Bone shrapnel fanned out through the mist; a wraith screeched and dissolved into vapor.

"Go get him, Digsby!" Enya's voice carried out through the new breach.

The nearest wraith surged for the gap—only to be smashed apart by a bony, whip-like tail that cracked through its core.

Looking down, Elria noticed that something was different. The foul-mouthed skeleton that could match her banter didn't look right. He was completely different. Instead of a human skeleton… he was… a rat? He was also… really ugly. More so than usual.

"What in the abyss happened while I was gone?" she muttered, only to see from within the dome, five more figures leaving. She spotted Pell there, walking next to another skeleton, and a giant bear-like thing.

"Ah. Right. Necromancer or whatnot," she realized. "But still… he does look different…"

Enya shouted from atop Ted.E's back, pointing a finger toward the wraiths. "Go and kill them all, Dig! Fetch me their souls!"

The skeletal rat squealed in delight as it ran out, charging toward the approaching horde.

Name: Digsby
Level: 20
Class: Unassigned
Role: Striker
Power Rating: 2133

Re-Role: Striker
Description: A melee-focused combat role that lacks magic. Physical appendages are soul-forged into heavier, sharper, or denser forms that excel at breaking through defenses. Strikers focus on relentless pressure, or strong, single decisive blows.
Passive: Strikes that land with enough force may destabilize a target's mana flow, dispelling active spells or temporarily disabling ongoing ones.
Passive: Consecutive attacks build momentum, a stored force that can be released to amplify a single strike with greater speed, power, and impact. Momentum fades gradually if not used.
Power Rating: 2133