13 Legends of Fiery Glacier

"You're a necromancer?" Jenna asked with a deep frown, and Jakob quickly nodded his head, just as shocked, "Yeah, you're a necromancer?!"

With a death-glare directed at Jakob, Foster tried to somehow get the situation under control. He didn't know why the hell he just said that, but in the end, he did. However, it seemed like none of them really believed it.

"If you're a necromancer, then why are you wearing a fighter's outfit?" Clark asked with a puzzled expression before Aaron kept staring at Foster with his eyes squinted, "All the necromancers I personally know are really damn creepy shut-ins... It's like they're nocturnal."

"And I've honestly never seen a necromancer this cute before. So come on, tell us what's going on. Are you here with the necromancer that created that... thing?" Jenna asked, and Foster looked at her for a moment before scratching the back of his neck embarrassedly.

"I'm not that cute..." He smirked as he looked down onto the ground, trying to somehow buy time to come up with an explanation. Although at least now he knew that necromancers weren't immediately seen as evil... just that they were seen as weird creeps. Better than being killed, at least. So, in the end, if Foster wanted to properly explain it, he had to tell a bit more of the truth.

"The thing is, I'm something of a Martial-Arts Necromancer? Wait, no, that sounds weird... I'm not resurrecting dead martial arts, but I'm a necromancer that uses martial arts." Foster explained to them, and with a laugh as if this was the most ridiculous thing that happened today, Aaron looked at Foster with a slight glare.

"Oh, really? Then come on, show us one of your combat skills, and something that shows us you're a necromancer. You're obviously not a high-level, so if you can show us those, then we can be sure you have a martial-artist type necromancer class." Aaron told Foster, who immediately raised his brows and opened his eyes wide.

"Do we really have time for that?" Foster asked nervously since he wasn't really sure what to show them, and with a bit of a chuckle, Aaron shook his head. "Right, right, sorry about that. Then let's just get rid of this undead and move on to town."

The moment that Aaron held his spear like he was about to attack Jakob and Ernard, Foster grumbled quietly and then nervously yelled out, "Stop!" He exclaimed, "Fine, I'll do it... I'm not sure if this counts as a 'Combat Skill' though..." Foster muttered quietly, and with a broad grin, Aaron looked at the young man as he stepped up to the closest tree, while Clark and Jenna seemed to be weirdly on guard.

Nervously, Foster looked at the tree in front of him. He wasn't sure exactly what was going to happen, but just to make sure, he wanted to use 'Deadly Surge' to send out a pulse of death energy into this tree. Maybe something would happen? That was the closest thing he could think of when it came to the term 'combat skill', after all. And it seemed like death energy couldn't really do much just in the air, so he should use it on something that actually has life inside of it, just like this tree in front of him.

With a deep breath, Foster took on a basic stance so that he could hit this tree without hurting himself too much. He stood on the ground in a stable position and straightened his back, both of his arms by his side, before pushing his right hand forward so that his palm hit the tree rather quickly.

And just before his hand hit the bark, he activated the 'Deadly Surge' skill, and he could feel a slight stinging in the back of his head as his mana decreased by 50.

His hand hurt a little bit after this as well, so he slightly shook it and pressed onto it with his other hand, although it seemed slightly scratched up. With a wry smile, Foster turned around and looked at those three, "Is this enough..?" He asked, but with a deep frown, Aaron shook his head.

"Really? That was just a basic hit, you didn't even do anything. What kind of skill did you activate?" Aaron pointed out, and confusedly, Foster looked at the tree. Sure, outwardly it really wasn't any different, but when Foster activated his 'Life Detect' skill, he saw that there was a small chunk of the Life Energy inside of the tree just replaced with death energy that was slightly mixing into the rest of the life energy in the tree.

"I used 'Deadly Surge'? It's a skill that lets me push death energy out of my hands. The area that I hit just now should be dead, I guess?" Foster pointed out. He was really nervous about what he was supposed to do if death energy just really didn't do anything to something like this, and Jakob and Ernard ended up being killed by Aaron.

Seemingly quite curious, Jenna stepped up to the tree and lightly placed her palm onto the spot where Foster hit it, and quietly whispered something. A few moments later, she pulled her hand away and looked at Aaron.

"There really is death energy in there..." She muttered, "He didn't speak any spell, and as you said, he's not high-level, so..." Jenna said, and immediately, both Aaron and Clark looked at her and Foster confusedly.

"He really is a necromancer that fights in close-range. What the fuck." Clark summed up, and Foster immediately rushed over toward Jakob and Ernard to make sure that Aaron couldn't just kill them anyway.

And with a loud groan, the spearman just turned around to continue walking, "Fine! But what does it matter? You have a weird-ass class. Just come with us. The things we've got to ask you just got far more extensive." Aaron pointed out, and Foster sighed in deep relief as both Jenna and Clark agreed with Aaron and just let the two-headed skeleton come with them.

After they kept walking a little while, Foster turned toward Jakob and Ernard with a light smile, "You have no idea how glad I am to see you two..." Foster pointed out, but his smile soon turned rather bitter when he remembered what he had to tell them, "You know, Georg, he..."

"He's gone, isn't he?" Jakob asked, and Foster looked at him pretty confused before Ernard continued, "The boss' body fell to dust. We've seen it happen already, remember? Not like we didn't expect it to happen sooner or later."

"Aye, we're glad we've even made it this long." Jakob added, and Foster slowly looked down onto the ground and nodded his head, "I see... Erm, before Georg died, he told me about a bag he had with him? He wanted me to bring it to his family." Foster told them before the two heads looked at each other for just a moment. Jakob then pushed his arm underneath the cloak they were wearing together and pulled out a bag that they had been 'storing' in the open space where their stomach would have usually been. He then handed it to the young man in front of them.

"Hmm, I see. We'll leave it to you then, aye?" Jakob asked. It seemed to Foster like he tried to somewhat smile, even if he didn't have the muscles or skin to even attempt to do so. "Thanks." Foster replied, although he soon realized a rather fatal mistake in that plan.

"Yeah, about that... Jakob, Ernard, the literally only thing I know about Georg is his name, and the same is... was true on the contrary as well. I think maybe we should go ahead with it together." The young man pointed out, and with a bit of a laugh, Ernard just nodded his head, "Haha, right! That might be a pretty good idea." The undead replied, but before they could speak about this whole 'Georg's last will' thing any more, Clark's pace sped up a bit so that he could walk up right next to Foster.

"So..." He started quietly. Clark seemed like the calmest and generally most collected out of these three, which might be the reason why he seemed the most like a 'leader' of the group. To Foster, his bright smile and inviting demeanor despite his intimidating size really made you want to speak to him about whatever there was to speak about. Although then, he mentioned something that Foster didn't actually want to speak about.

"That's not really your undead, is it?" Clark asked with a friendly smirk, but Foster immediately shook his head. He had hoped that this question wouldn't come, but it was obvious that it was unavoidable. He probably wasn't very good at pretending like these two were his undead, considering that he never saw any other Necromancer interact with their undead.

Well, there was the Lich, but considering that the reason the Lich even created undead was to turn living beings' life energy into death energy to then keep his 'immortality' up a little longer, he was probably a bad example. At least that's what Foster understood from reading through some of the books in the library. There wasn't that much directly relating to this sort of necromancy, but it was enough for basics.

"They're the first undead I've created, so I'm not sure how to interact with them, you see?" Foster pointed out, but Clark just started to laugh with an impressed grin.

"Oh? Is that so? Then you must be some sort of prodigy. Usually, someone at such a low level should not be able to create undead that retain their intelligence. It's pretty obvious, you know?" Clark pointed out, and Foster just stared back at him, confusedly, "R-Really?"

With a broad smile, Clark just kept looking down at Foster, before turning his eyes toward Jakob and Ernard, "I would have usually waited a little longer since these are the types of questions we would have asked at the base, but I'm just too curious..." Clark admitted.

Foster wasn't sure what he was about to ask about, and apparently neither did Jakob and Ernard, but Clark seemed rather nervous about it. Was this something that serious?

"Jakob, Ernard, and Georg... Those are the names of part of a famous... no, legendary adventurer party that disappeared in this area a couple dozen years ago. We literally learned about them in the Adventurer's academy. They were called the..."

"Fiery Glacier." Jakob said with a light smile, "It's been a while since I've said that name. Ain't that right, Ernard?"

"You can say that again." The other skeletal head laughed out loudly, and immediately, both Aaron and Jenna stopped walking in front of them, causing the whole group to stop.

"W-Wait, you're... You're not actually Jakob and Ernard from the Fiery Glacier, right?" Aaron asked with a wry smile, and Jakob scratched the back of his head embarrassedly, or at least he tried to, instead scratching the back of Ernard's.

"Haha, yep, yep. That's us. Or rather, that used to be us, aye?" Jakob pointed out and then looked down at the ground.

"It's pretty tough thinking about it now..." Ernard added, "We're the last ones left. And we're not even fully 'left'."

"But how?!" Aaron asked immediately, "There's no way that you're actually those two!" He protested immediately. But rather quickly, Jakob pushed his hand into the bag that Foster was now holding and pulled out a small metallic card with some writing carved into it.

"Well, here's Georg's old Guild Card if you don't believe us." Ernard explained for Jakob, as the latter handed the metal card over toward Aaron. For a few moments, he just stared at the rusted surface, trying to decipher what it was saying, and then handed it back with a wry smile, "It... It's actually you, isn't it? Those are the old guild cards from over 20 years ago... And it says that the 'currently registered party' is 'Fiery Glacier'."