The Insider System

Chapter 40: Undead Are Ugly

Stepping into the new tunnel, Lake still couldn't see what was causing the noise. "Lake, if you need me to step in just crouch down and I'll dive in front of you." Lake heard her but he didn't respond because he thought he could finally see what was making all the noise. It looked like a sack that was moving around on the floor.

"Joy, what is that?" Joy stuck her head over Lake's shoulder and said. "That's an undead that hasn't gotten back on its feet yet." Lake stepped closer to get a better look, and saw that it wasn't any form of sack now that he was closer he saw it was an old dried body sitting on its knees it was slowly moving its arms around on the ground and that was what was making all the noise.

Lake was grossed out by how it looked. It needed some clothes or something to cover up its gross body. "Lake, go ahead and kill it. This is as good as it gets." Joy was right there was no reason to look at this. "Fire bolt." Watching the bolt slam into the undead's back he wanted a few seconds and when he didn't receive any Exp he shot again. "Fire bolt." [Level up] [Rank up] [Level up] [Level up]

The second Fire bolt had detached the undead's upper body from the rest of it so he wasn't surprised that it had died. Lake went ahead and opened his stats, he also wanted to know what his two new skills were.

Race: Human Lv.3 ( 2/10 )

Job: Fire Mage Lv.3 (16 / 40)

Special: The Insider Lv.0 ( 3/5 )

Stats

Health 30

Stamina 30

Mana 30

Strength 10

Endurance 10

Agility 19

Dexterity 32

Perception 23

Intelligence 54

Charisma 6

Free stat points: 2

Lake saw he had made the minimum to unlock the Appraiser job and was happy but he quickly moved on to his new skills.

Fire Control (R) Lv.1

Increases affinity for Fire to Low.

Immolate (R) Lv.1

Kills using fire magic have a 5% chance to refill mana.

Now that he had seen his new skills Lake wanted to ask for more information on undead. "What was up with that? You said it was yet to get back on its feet. What does that mean?" He understood it was literally not standing on its feet but he wanted to know why.

"Natural undead get stronger the longer they spend soaking in Unholy mana but during the first few days they don't have enough strength to get up so they just wiggle around on the floor. As we go deeper we'll run into older and older undead." Lake hoped they started to get less gross as they got stronger, maybe their skin would rehydrate.

"What do you mean by natural undead?" The name implied that there were man made undead and Lake wanted to hear the details on how it was done. "There's a new job Unholy magic users can unlock that lets them make and control undead but those undead don't get stronger their strength is locked at whatever it is when they are made."

"What's the job called?" Lake could see a few ways he could use a job like this so he wanted to know the name so he could find more info on it later. "I don't know. It's brand new and we've only just started to investigate. Ok lets keep going this isn't the best time for questions."

She was right, Lake had kind of forgotten they were in the middle of a dungeon. Lake started to walk down the tunnel again and a few minutes later he was hearing something. "Stop for a second. I want to tell you something about fighting undead down here." Stopping Lake turned to listen to what Joy had to say.

"This wasn't important until we saw the newly born undead. If we get up here and it looks like a person it's still an undead." Lake was happy she told him that he might have hesitated, not. Lake didn't care who he killed. As soon as he saw something he was gonna blast.

A few seconds later Lake saw some half gremlin looking guy. "Fire Bolt, Fire Blast." Lake was startled when he cast a different spell then he had been trying to. The name had just come to him in the middle of casting his spell and it seemed to be a stronger version of Fire Bolt. Lake guessed he had met the requirements so it had been upgraded to the next tier.

The new spell had blown a hole into the undead's torso and it had fallen to the ground but it was still alive. Waiting for his mana to recharge enough for him to cast Fire Blast again Lake watched as the undead struggled to get back up it seemed to be having trouble getting its torso off the ground and a few seconds later lake said. "Fire Blast."

Lake had aimed for the undead's neck and it seemed magic had a 100% accuracy because it popped the undead's head right off. [Level up] Lake hoped this stayed this easy because at this rate he would max this job out in a few hours. "Hey Joy, is 10 really the highest a job can go?" Lake had asked this question before but the person he had asked had blown him off.

"No, there are a bunch of ways to raise the level cap of jobs. It usually involves making a pact with the god that is associated with the job." Lake guessed the gods got something out of it too, so he wasn't sure how he felt about having to do that. He might end up as some sort of servant to them.

Lake moved on and soon he could see another light source up ahead stepping into the chamber. Lake saw that this was some sort of tomb with coffins built into the walls. "What's this room?" Lake didn't realize this dungeon was actually used to bury people in the past. "This is one of the tombs the Mage guild used to bury members in the past; there's over 1000 of these down here."

"1000, how big is this dungeon?" They had been down here for a while already and he had a hard time believing it was even traversable if it had so many rooms. "It's too big, now that the teleporters are down, especially with the darkness and undead. It's actually against the rules to go too deep unless you have permission because the undead start to get too strong for us guards to kill."

"Is there a cap to how strong the undead can get down here?" Lake wanted to leave if there was a chance they could run into something that could kill them. "Don't worry about running into something dangerous, we have wards to keep them in the tunnel they were born in." Lake found this kind of funny, the tunnels were only a few hundred feet each.

"Are undead intelligent, or are they like animals?" He wanted to know if they started to be like people and could be reasoned with. "The stronger they are the smarter but they're always aggressive so they're only good for Exp." This was what Lake wanted to hear, he didn't want them to try and talk to him while he was killing them.

"Let's go down this tunnel. It leads to a big junction with lots of tunnels where we can check for undead." Lake wondered if Joy had spent a lot of time down here or if she had some way of knowing where they were. "Joy, are there ways to know where you're going or do you just know from experience?"

"If you look closely at some of the doorways leading into tunnels there will be directions to good places to level up." Lake walked closer to the place Joy was pointing at and saw someone had marked the doorway with an x. "Ok lets go." Lake was hoping she was right about there being lots of undead for him to kill; he wanted to see what would happen when he maxed out a job.

Getting to the next room Lake Looked around to count all the different tunnel entrances. "17, that's quite a few. I can already hear stuff moving around in some of them." Joy's statement was spot on there was in fact 17 new tunnels they could go down. "Alright let's get started with that one."

Lake just chose the closest one tunnel he was going to check them all before he moved on. Maybe he would find one on the floor again. Lake moved a little faster than he had been down the first tunnel and sadly found nothing. Returning to the main junction Lake went down the next one and after a few feet he saw one of them crouched down on the floor this one seemed to be stronger than any of the ones he saw earlier because this one looked indistinguishable from a human.