A hollow laugh escaped me as the situation clicked into place.
There was really nothing complex to consider.
The connection was severed. There was no way to resummon him.
Through my recent meditations, I’d been experimenting with various skills and had come to a clearer understanding of the "Avatar."
When an Avatar dies, it can be regenerated after a certain period of time.
The newly created Avatar is a fresh entity, all its accumulated progress wiped clean.
This one had only been active for a few days, focused on rigorous exercise, so the regret wasn’t overwhelming. Still, I couldn’t shake the bitter taste.
How did Vanguard die in a supposedly safe village?
And how could I have slept so soundly that I didn't even notice his death?
Well, the answer is painfully obvious.
If it had been a simple external attack, I would have woken up. I would have felt something.
So, what was the problem?
"That old man..." The words slipped out, a low mutter.
I had thought I was lucky.
I'd faced a single leopard in a dangerous forest and somehow won. I'd stumbled upon a small, nearby village where the chief had been kind to me.
I had been careless.
We were strangers in a completely foreign land.
The people I met in the village weren't harmless NPCs from a game.
But I couldn't spend all my time being suspicious and guarded.
After all, making the first move and putting myself in their debt wasn't the right way to begin.
What did he do? Poison the drink? A sleeping draught?
But I hadn't felt anything unusual before I fell asleep.
I’d even shared the drink with the chief himself, and he’d shown no reaction in the time we'd spent talking afterward.
Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe it was just a freak accident…
I slapped my cheek, snapping myself out of the useless train of thought.
In truth, my losses were minimal.
Just a few days of Vanguard’s effort and the few belongings I’d sent with him were gone.
If anything, losing Vanguard now, before I’d invested more, had given me a crucial understanding of how the "Avatar" system worked. That was a significant gain.
Even so, I couldn't just dismiss this with positive thinking and continue acting so recklessly.
The other world’s danger was proven by the statistics: an average return rate of only twenty percent.
If my main body had gone through what the Avatar just had, my journey would have ended within two days of my arrival.
Now was the time to plan my response.
Should I send another Avatar?
That was impossible for now. The inter-realm transfer device had a one-day cooldown.
Sending him back to the same village was out of the question, given the obvious risk.
What about somewhere else?
The transfer device could only send an Avatar to a place the previous one had already visited.
Even if I chose a spot far from the village, it would still be in the depths of that dangerous forest.
It was in this state of anxious uncertainty that I reconnected with the Avatar in the other world.
The first thing I heard was the chief's voice.
"Hmph. I thought he'd be useful, but he's just another waste."
"I know. The way he came through the Charnelwood alone, and how hard he worked... it seemed like he was something special."
"Just an Elite Skeleton, nothing more. My expectations were too high. I’m leaving."
The chief’s voice, which had been in conversation with someone, gradually faded. Then I heard the distinct click of a door being locked.
My body had tensed unconsciously, and I tried to let out a sigh to relax my stiffened muscles.
"Ah—" No, that was just a phantom sensation.
I realized my body hadn't relaxed at all. No sigh had escaped me.
Slowly, I lowered my gaze to check my physical condition.
A notification materialized before my eyes.
[The species value of the entity has been changed to 'Undead.' Acquires the special skill 'Decayed Heart.']
I stared at the text in dismay before tilting my head down to assess my body.
Back in school, I’d seen a human skeleton model in the biology lab.
I examined my own form closely, probing the gaps between my ribs with the bones of my arm.
And I came to one conclusion.
But I don't have a heart…
So what was this "Decayed Heart" the system mentioned?
Grumbling internally at the uninspired name, I pieced the situation together.
The chief was a necromancer.
He had killed me, then resurrected my body as an undead.
Thus, ‘Vanguard’ had become an animated skeleton. An Elite Skeleton.
-Species: Undead (Elite Skeleton)
-Common Traits: "Mind Hub," "Rapid Recovery"
-Entity Traits: "Decayed Heart," "Magic Affinity"
-Notable Features: Transformed into undead through forbidden sorcery. Immune to all negative effects such as death, poison, curse, and illusion. No mental contamination occurred due to "Mind Hub."
The thought that I had no brain must have just been a feeling, too.
I stopped my pointless lamenting and assessed my surroundings.
The sudden turn of events had startled me, but I'd already written this Avatar off as dead. In the grand scheme of things, nothing had changed.
As I looked around, however, I noticed some differences.
Despite the pitch-black darkness, my vision was perfect.
Well, ‘vision’ wasn't quite the right word.
Just to be sure, I poked a finger bone into an eye socket.
Hmm, hollow, just as I expected.
I pulled my wiggling finger from the socket and looked forward again.
The absence of eyeballs was no impediment to my ability to ‘see.’
Not only that, but unlike a human, whose sight is limited by the focus of their pupils, I could perceive the entire area in front of me at a single glance.
And I could feel the vitality of things around me.
Yes, I could vividly sense a mouse scrabbling in a hole somewhere behind my head.
This must also be an effect of the "Decayed Heart."
A quick mental check revealed a host of other skills, all typical undead characteristics: resistance to mental attacks and cold, the ability to inflict undead infection, and an aversion to living things.
I can filter the negative effects with "Mind Hub," so that shouldn't be a problem.
The place I was in seemed to be a large, underground storage room.
After a rough survey of the decrepit space, I approached the spot where I'd sensed the mouse.
Whoa. What are all these?
There, lined up in rows, were undead creatures just like me.
A pile of clutter sat in the middle of the room, and they had been standing so still in the darkness that I hadn't noticed them until now.
There were zombies, skeletons armed with bows, and others clad in armor.
As I watched them, the mouse I’d sensed earlier scurried toward a zombie, snatched a dangling baby toe in its mouth, and vanished back into its hole.
"Ugh… disgusting…"
Muttering to myself, I couldn't help but fixate on the zombies. Their appearance was strangely familiar.
There were adult men and women, the elderly, and even children.
Could these people possibly be...?
I recalled my walk through the village on my first and second days here.
There had been no children anywhere in sight.
And then there were the fields attached to the Village, the very reason I’d assumed it was a farming community.
While I was helping with chores, I hadn't seen a single person working those fields.
My ignorance of agriculture had made me overlook it at the time, but now it was horribly clear.
These bastards must have devoured an entire village and taken its place!
The sheer malevolence of it sent a shiver through my bones.
At the same time, I felt a wave of frustration, a phantom sigh catching in my throat as I wondered what to do next.
Right, can't actually sigh. Enough of that!
This entire village was a front, occupied by dark sorcerers.
Judging by the undead knights mixed in with the zombified villagers, the necromancers must have been posing as simple townsfolk, deceiving anyone who passed by.
I had been the prey, eagerly walking right into the monster’s maw.
Thinking back, the chief's questions had likely been a test to see if I was someone who could disappear without causing a stir.
The one-day reprieve he’d given me was probably a probation period, to see if I was a stray they could devour without consequence.
How am I supposed to deal with all of them?
While I was annoyed about being killed and turned into a skeleton, it wasn't enough to drive me into a blind rage.
But even with "Mind Hub" filtering my emotions, the sight of these sacrificed children was deeply unsettling.
They had crossed a line.
I couldn't ignore this, not now that I knew.
Besides, as an undead, what did I have to lose?
If I could get some payback on the bastards who’d backstabbed me, great.
If I failed, well, there was nothing to be done about it.
"First, let's gather some information."
After all, time was something I had in abundance.
Over the next few days—what would have been barely a day in Earth time—I searched every corner of the underground storage where I was trapped.
It looked like there had once been two entrances, but one was completely collapsed and blocked.
Effectively, there was only a single passage, the one the chief and his disciple used.
"Wow, so this is the whole army."
Next, I took stock of my fellow undead.
Most of the zombies appeared to be former villagers and other common folk, but a good number of the skeletons were armed with various weapons.
There were about fifty zombies, and including the skeleton soldiers, the total force numbered around three hundred.
The sound of the door opening cut through the silence, followed by approaching footsteps.
I immediately froze, standing as still as the other undead around me.
Since being trapped down here, I’d learned that the chief’s disciples took turns checking the storage every two or three days.
"Ugh, how long do I have to be stuck in this backwater hole?"
The complainer, who was now surveying the storage room, had a face I recognized from the village repairs.
I think his name was Grave-Hand.
No wonder he was slacking off back then. He was a dark sorcerer’s apprentice.
Sensing something out of place, he glanced in my direction.
There was nothing for him to sense but the "Decayed Heart."
"Why is this one over here? Nobody does their job right except me. [Get over there.]"
A voice resonated directly in my skull, and I felt a force trying to move my body.
I realized I could easily ignore it if I chose to.
But it wasn't time for that yet.
I didn't resist the command. I let my body move obediently to where the other skeletons were gathered and fell into line.
"Well, nothing unusual. But why does the old man bother checking every time? There's no one here but us. So meticulous."
Grave-Hand gave a cursory inspection, swishing a glowing staff through the air, then grumbled again and left the storage.
Even after the door clicked shut, I remained motionless for a long while before moving again, cautiously.
There was no need to rush.
It was better to be careful than to be caught off guard.
Time, after all, was abundant for ‘Vanguard.’
And I had made a significant discovery.
The power I felt when Grave-Hand controlled my body…
It was a very familiar power.
It was the same energy that now moved my own undead limbs.
The mechanism that animated this flesh was different from that of a living being.
This body had no muscles, after all.
The power flowing through me, which I now knew was ‘Dark Magic,’ was what served in place of sensory organs and muscles.
This, too, must be a basic function of the 'Decayed Heart.'
And thanks to 'Magic Affinity,'
I was able to understand the new application of this power that I had just felt firsthand.
The method for controlling other undead.
Coincidentally, there were hundreds of them standing right here beside me, just waiting for a new master.