11 People!

Name:Necromancer's Resolve Author:DiceVR
With excitement growing greater inside of his body, Foster kept trying to somehow pull this throne away from the wall. But in the end, while he was able to just so slightly tilt it forward, it still wasn't enough. However, just then, he remembered that his body felt so much lighter when he used one of his skills.

"I guess this is the perfect time to try you out... Come on , do your worst!" He exclaimed to himself as he activated his skill, feeling his skin burn and blister again as his whole body went pale to a deathly level.

What came with that was apparently an immense increase in raw physical strength. Foster soon noticed the sound of the dust that used to be the Lich dropping onto the ground because the seat was tilted.

At that point, Foster knew that he just had to push it a little further. Within a few seconds, the young man felt that the resistance got significantly less, meaning that the center of balance was finally how Foster wanted it to be.

Although, that also meant something else. That 'something else' was that since Foster had been using as much force as he could, since the resistance got less, he was actually using too much force. Once the throne properly started dropping forward, Foster's fingers slipped away, and he ended up kicking himself away from the wall, soon landing in the center of the room.

"Holy fuck!" Foster yelled out instinctively, as he tried his best to catch his fall, and at the same both saw and heard the rock throne drop over onto the floor with a heavy thud.

And what was revealed behind the throne was a bright, glowing tunnel, albeit one that could only be accessed by crawling into it.

"Yes!" With an excited expression, Foster immediately got back up and made sure that his skill was properly deactivated again. He grabbed his backpack and pulled it after himself, swiftly trying to crawl into the narrow tunnel. The further Foster managed to get inside, the more he noticed that he was getting more space around him. The tunnel was slowly expanding in size until he was able to actually stand inside of it to continue walking forward more quickly.

With his backpack now on his back, he started rushing through the tunnel and tried to reach the outside, although soon, the glowing veins wholly disappeared. That meant that Foster was simply left to walk in the dark in this surprisingly long tunnel, something that he really didn't want to do.

Hoping that it would help him at least a little, he placed his hand onto the wall and activated his 'Life Detect' skill, and managed to see some roots of smaller plants growing right around him. This didn't help him directly that much, though, so instead of wasting mana, Foster just carefully continued on in the dark. He tried to move forward as slowly as he could so that he didn't accidentally drop into some sort of hole in front of him.

It didn't take too long until he actually had to start climbing a relatively steep slope upward, although he could then slowly see something in the distance. It was pretty dim, but there definitely was a light right there, Foster was sure of it.

He just kept running forward as he was now able to actually see his surroundings again, and then at some point, reached the surface!

Or rather, that's what he thought would be the case. But instead, the young man was met with a very, very different situation.

Sure, it was bright here, and he could definitely see an exit into the forest just a bit away, but... before he could reach that exit, he would have to pass a group of maybe two dozen Fervent Lunacides, as well as that one giant Lunacide sleeping in their center.

Immediately, Foster just pressed his hand in front of his mouth to get himself to not make any sounds out of pure shock or horror. It seemed like all of these Lunacides were actually asleep at the moment, so if Foster was just quiet, then he could make it outside at least relatively safe. He hoped, at least.

Step by step, he tried to get past the Lunacides without making a single sound. Luckily there were some gaps in between them, and they didn't just sleep right on top of each other to form a mountain or something.

Soon, Foster managed to get close enough to the exit. There was just a group of three Lunacides in front of him that he had to jump past to get out, and after that, he could just sprint as quickly as his body would let him.

But just when he was about to kick off from the ground with his foot, the ground started to shake, and Foster slipped up, his foot sliding backward to make him drop forward. He was luckily able to catch his fall with his hands while doing a semi-split, but his most important parts got far too close to these man-eating monsters than he liked them to be.

Luckily he managed to slowly pull his body back up and now finally stood in front of the exit. The very moment that he thought he was good to go, the ground started to shake a second time. It wasn't nearly as bad as the first time around, although it seemed that the first round already did a little damage to the walls of the cave that the Lunacides were nesting in.

All that the second round needed to do was make use of the damage that the first round did to cause a single small rock to drop down from the cave's ceiling right onto the giant Lunacide.

At first, Foster thought that it would be fine, but the moment that the giant Lunacide's six bright, spotlight-like eyes opened, he knew that that hope was meant to die.

With an eardrum-shattering scream, the giant Lunacide awoke, which in a chain-reaction caused the same to happen to the other Lunacides. And as screams that were probably capable of literally killing Foster if he wasn't careful streamed out of the cave, the freshly-baked Necromancer sprinted forward with the highest speed that he could muster. Although, this nearly made him trip up a couple of times since his maximum speed was much higher than it used to be.

'This is so damn awesome! I'm faster than people at the Olympics!' Is what Foster may usually have thought in any other situation, although right now, his mind was completely filled with the thought of 'Fuck me I am actually going to die now'.

But that was when Foster heard something else in the distance, soon feeling the effect of whatever happened to cause that loud sound, the third quake. With absolute, apparent anger and annoyance, Foster just kept running forward.

"If I'm going to die, I'll take whatever caused this shit with me!" He yelled out loudly, just continuing to run into the direction that was the source of the sound, although he soon had to stop for a very simple reason.

The thing that caused the sound was the thing of flesh and bones that dragged Foster over toward the well in the first place.

Now, what would Foster rather do? Be crushed by a thing that made him want to throw up just thinking about its mere existence, or be ripped apart by numerous man-eating monsters with blade-like teeth? The answer was... Unknown, because neither of that sounded very great to him.

But then, Foster noticed something else as well. It was a bit hidden by his panic and the sounds that both the herd of Lunacides and the thing of flesh and bones created, but soon, Foster grew sure of it.

"...eeps regenerating! We need to find its catalyst!" A voice yelled out. The person it came from sounded pretty exhausted as far as Foster could tell, and the person that replied didn't seem to well of either.

"Is it a necromancer, or a crystal?!"

"A thing like this has to be controlled by a necromancer, right?!" A whole other person replied, and Foster immediately grew excited. There were people there! Actual people! Once he approached even closer, he could also tell that they weren't animated skeletons this time either, so that was great!

"We immediately need to find the necromancer! Jenna, use magic detect!" The first of the three people said in a commanding voice, "I'm on it, you piece of shit!" The third person yelled back in a rush, but before she could actually do so, Foster reached the clearing they were standing in.

"Who are you?!" One of them asked. He was a rather tall-built man that seemed to be wearing bright-red leather armor, holding a spear in his hand. The blade of that spear was cloaked in bright, hot flames. The actual wielder didn't really seem that affected by it, though. Sure, he was sweating, but his rather long blonde hair always got close to it without any issues, so he doubted there was a problem.

"That has to be the necromancer, right?!" The only woman in the group, who Foster assumed to be Jenna, pointed out. She had raven black hair and eyes and was wearing an outfit that Foster could only call that of a Halloween-style Wizard's outfit. And in this case, it was Halloween-House-Party-style, even reducing the amount of cloth on the outfit by another 30%.

Foster wasn't sure if it was intentional, but it seemed rather dangerous to be walking around with so much exposed skin, especially in a world like the three skelly-bros described to him.

"He's wearing Fighter-Clothes! Probably another adventurer!" The third person of the group exclaimed. A tall, mountain-level at that, man. It was really unnatural, actually! He was wearing thick metal armor and carried a giant tower-shield with him in one hand while a huge Warhammer was held in his other.

There was only one word that Foster could describe him as. Awesome! He was the perfect shield to save him from the mass of Lunacides right behind him! But before then, there was something Foster had to warn them off.

"The thing isn't controlled by a necromancer anymore! He died yesterday!" He yelled out, and immediately, the three people stared at Foster with a bit of confusion, although they seemed to be somewhat perplexed as well. "If that's true, there's no way we can find a core-type catalyst inside of an undead like that! Fuck!" The blonde-haired pretty-boy yelled out in frustration, and Foster slowly turned around just to see the giant Lunacide run toward him.

But when he looked back at the thing of flesh and bones, he noticed that it suddenly stopped moving, just facing in Foster's direction, and soon swung its fist toward him. The same air-current as hit him last time, albeit a lot weaker this time around, hit his body, and Foster felt like he was about to fly away despite his heavy outfit.

Although then, Foster got a pretty good idea of what he could try and do. Noticing that the Lunacides were getting closer and closer toward him and that the thing of flesh and bones was preparing another attack, Foster did something completely idiotic.

Once the giant Lunacide got relatively close, he just started sprinting toward the thing. All three of the people were trying to somehow get the situation under control, even if that was quite hard with the new monsters that were currently approaching.

Trying to utilize as much of his strength and durability boost as he possibly could with his 'Body of Death' skill, Foster faced the giant Lunacide as it was about to ram into him. The timing couldn't be more perfect.

With all the force that he could, Foster tried to jump up as the giant Lunacide's body was about to hit his own. It still actually did so, but at least Foster's robes absorbed a fair amount of the physical damage he took. He was able to roll over its body pretty well.

And just like that, with a third of his health left and a leg that seemed to point in the wrong direction, Foster looked at the scene of the thing of flesh and bone's fist hitting the giant lunacide.