Undead.(1)
With a hollow laugh, I grasped the situation.
There was really nothing to think deeply about.
Hans had died.
There was no way to reconnect and resummon him.
Through this meditation, I attempted various skills and came to realize more about the "Avatar."
When the Avatar dies, it can be regenerated after a certain period.
The newly created Avatar becomes a new entity with all its accumulated progress reset.
This time, the deceased had only been focused on rigorous exercise for a few days, so there was not much regret, but the bitter taste couldn't be helped.
Now was the time to figure out the cause.
How did Hans, who was in a safe village, die?
How could he not even realize the fact that he had died, no matter how deeply he had fallen asleep?
'Well, it's a blatantly obvious issue to think about.'
If there had been only an external attack, I could have somehow realized it in the middle.
Then what was the problem?
"That old man..." I found myself muttering.
I thought I was lucky.
Facing only one leopard in the dangerous forest, I managed to bring it down somehow, and there was a small village nearby where the chief was kind to me.
It was indeed careless.
We were strangers in a land completely unknown to us.
It wasn't like encountering a harmless NPC that would appear in a game when we met in the village.
But I couldn't just be on guard and suspicious all the time.
After all, it wouldn't be the right move to go first and be in a position to owe something to the other party.
'What did he do? Did he put something in the drink? Sleeping pills?
But I didn't feel anything unusual before falling asleep... '
Even the drink was shared with the chief, and there was no special reaction even after a while of drinking.
Perhaps I was just misunderstanding, and something unexpected had happened...
Snap!
I slapped myself to snap out of my thoughts.
In fact, my losses weren't significant.
It was just the expenses for Hans's efforts for a few days and the belongings I sent him with that I lost.
It was a significant achievement to have a better understanding of "Avatar" due to losing Hans before suffering even greater losses.
However, I couldn't just keep thinking positively and act carelessly.
The danger of the other world was proven by the statistics of an average return rate of 20%.
Even with what I had experienced this time, if it hadn't been the Avatar who passed away, it would have been the end within two days of arriving in the other world.
Now was the time to think about a response.
Should I send another Avatar?
It was currently impossible due to the one-day cooldown of the inter-realm transfer device.
Sending him back to where the previous Avatar had come from was also hesitant, considering that there might still be risks there.
Should I send him elsewhere?
The transfer device could only send him to places the previous Avatar had been.
Even if it was far from the village, it would still be the dangerous depths of the forest.
It was in this state of uncertainty and anxiety that I reconnected with the Avatar of the other world.
***
The first thing I heard was the voice of the chief.
"Tsk... I thought he would be a useful guy, but turns out he is just useless."
"That's right. Even the fact that he came through the Devil's Forest alone and his work made it seem like he was up to something."
"Just an Elite Skeleton, nothing more. I guess my expectations were too high. I'll be going now."
"Yes, Master."
The voice of the chief, who had been talking with someone, gradually faded, and then I heard the sound of the door locking with a click.
Unconsciously, I must have tensed up, as I let out a sigh while trying to relax my stiffened body.
"Ah—" No, it was just my mood.
Realizing this, I found that my body hadn't relaxed and no sigh had escaped me.
I lowered my gaze slowly to check my physical condition.
At that moment, a notification appeared before my eyes,
[The species value of the entity has been changed to 'Undead.' Acquires the special skill 'Decayed Heart.]
and I stared at it in dismay before lowering my head to assess my body.
When I was in school, I had seen a human skeleton model in the biology lab.
It was here now.
I examined it closely, checking the spaces between the ribs with the arm bones.
And I came to a conclusion.
'But I don't have a heart...?'
What is this "Decayed Heart" mentioned earlier?
Grumbling about the stereotypical naming that didn't consider the nature of the individual, I organized the situation.
The chief was a necromancer.
He killed me and then resurrected my body as an undead.
Thus, 'Hans' had become an animated skeleton, an Elite Skeleton.
<Entity Information>
-Name: Hans
-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."
My head hurts.
It must be just a mood, as I have no brain.
I stopped lamenting and decided to assess my surroundings.
I was just startled by the sudden situation, but since I had thought of the Avatar as dead anyway, nothing would change.
I realized that there were differences from before as I looked around.
Despite the pitch-black darkness, I could see clearly.
Well, should I call it 'seeing'?
Just to be sure, I put my finger bone into the eye socket.
Hmm, it felt hollow, as expected.
I withdrew my finger from the eye socket that I had been wiggling and looked ahead again.
Despite the lack of eyeballs, there was no impediment to 'seeing.'
Not only that, unlike humans who have limitations in their field of vision due to the focus of their pupils, the entire front facing toward the eye socket was visible at a glance.
And I could feel the vitality around me.
Yes, I vividly felt a mouse fiddling with a hole near the back of my head.
This might also be one of the effects of the "Decayed Heart."
After a brief check, I found that the skills included the typical characteristics of 'undead,' ranging from resistance to mental attacks and cold to undead infection and aversion to living beings.
'I can filter out the negative effects with "Mind Hub," so it shouldn't matter.'
The place I was in seemed like a large underground storage room.
After roughly surveying the decrepit surroundings, I approached the spot where I had sensed the mouse.
'Oh, surprise! What are these!'
There, lined up in a row, were undead creatures like me.
Some clutter was piled in the middle, and they stood still without any movement in the darkness, so I hadn't noticed them until now.
From zombies to skeletons armed with bows and clad in armor.
As I observed them for a moment, the mouse that I had felt since earlier scurried toward a zombie and, with a dangling baby toe in its mouth, slipped back into the mouse hole.
"Ugh... Disgusting..."
While muttering to myself, I couldn't help but focus on the appearance of the zombies, as if their image was strangely imprinted in my mind.
Adult men and women were there, as well as the elderly and children.
'Could these bastards possibly...?'
I recalled the scenes I had seen while wandering around the village from the day I arrived until the next day.
Children were nowhere to be found.
Additionally, there was the field attached to the village, which was the main reason I thought it was a village for cultivating crops.
As I roamed around to help with the village work, I didn't see a single person working in the fields.
At that time, my lack of knowledge about farming made me overlook it, but now it was clear.
'These guys must have devoured an entire village and settled in!'
The maliciousness of these creatures made me shiver.
At the same time, I sighed in frustration at the perplexity of what to do next.
'Of course, I can't really sigh. No, that's enough now!'
This entire village had essentially been occupied by dark sorcerers.
Judging from not only the village people but also the undead who looked like knights, they must have been the ones pretending to be ordinary villagers in the Village, deceiving the eyes of the surrounding area.
I must have been the prey that eagerly and unknowingly fell into the jaws of the monsters.
Thinking back now, the questions the chief had asked seemed to have been intended to ascertain if I was someone who could disappear suddenly without causing problems.
The one-day reprieve was probably the process of examining whether this guy would be eaten without any escape.
'How can I deal with these guys?'
While I did feel annoyed at the fact that I had been killed and had become undead, it wasn't to the point of extreme anger.
But even with "Mind Hub" filtering my emotions and lessening the impact, seeing the sacrifice of even children was inevitably unpleasant.
They had crossed the line far beyond.
I couldn't just ignore it even if I didn't know it.
Above all, now that I was undead, I had nothing to lose, right?
If I could just get back at those who hit me on the back of the head, well and good.
If it didn't work, there was nothing I could do about it.
"First, let's gather information."
After all, I had time to spare.
***
For the next few days, I searched the underground storage where I was trapped.
Though in terms of Earth time, it would have been barely a day.
There seemed to have been two entrances originally, but one had completely collapsed and was unusable.
In fact, it had to be considered that there was only one passageway where the chief and his disciple had been coming and going.
"Wow, so these are all of them."
Next, I assessed the undead that were with me.
Most of the zombies seemed to have been ordinary people like the villagers, but there were quite a few skeletons armed with various weapons.
There were around fifty zombies, and including the skeleton soldiers, there seemed to be about three hundred.
Creak, squeak—
With the sound of the door opening, the footsteps drew closer.
I immediately stopped my actions and stood as still as the other undead.
Since becoming undead and being trapped here, I had come to know that the chief's disciples would take turns coming down every 2-3 days to check the storage.
"Ugh, how long do I have to be stuck in this backwater place?"
Complaining and roughly surveying the storage was a face I had seen while helping with the village repairs.
I think his name was Jephy.
No wonder he was slacking off back then, I thought, realizing he was a disciple of the dark sorcerer.
"Huh?"
Sensing something strange, he glanced in my direction.
'Did he notice?'
My heart sank.
There was nothing but the "Decayed Heart."
"Why is this here again? There's no one here doing their job properly except for me. [Move over there.]"
Along with a voice that made my skull resonate, I felt a force trying to move my body forcibly.
And I could easily ignore it if I set my mind to it.
But it wasn't the time yet.
I didn't resist the force trying to move my body and obediently went to where the other skeletons were gathering and lined up.
"Well, nothing unusual. But why bother checking every time when there's no one here but us from the start? Old man's so meticulous."
Jephy, who had been roughly swishing his shining staff around while inspecting, grumbled and left the storage.
Squeak—Creak.
Even after hearing the sound of the door locking, I stood still for a while before moving cautiously.
There was no need to rush.
It was better to be cautious and vigilant than to be caught off guard.
After all, time was abundant for 'Hans.'
And there was one significant gain this time.
The power I felt when Jephy controlled my body.
It was a very familiar power.
That's because it was the same power that moved my body instantly.
The mechanism for moving this undead flesh was different from that of a typical living being.
After all, this body was without any muscles.
The power flowing through my body right now, known as 'Dark Magic,' exerted various actions in place of sensory organs or muscles.
This, too, must be the basic effect of the 'Decayed Heart.'
And with 'Magic Affinity,'
I was able to follow the new usage of this power that I personally felt with my body.
'The method of controlling other undead.'
Coincidentally, there were hundreds of other undead creatures left around me, just waiting to be controlled.