“I thought so...” Now I understood the reason why it had ended up as my follower, more or less.
The black skeleton king had originally been manipulated by necromancy. The specific techniques of necromancy were kept secret from outsiders. It was wicked and ordinary people considered it taboo, so it was only taught to disciples. Even so, its inner workings weren’t completely obscure. It was a type of magic, so one could make a broad conjecture of what it was like.
Besides, while it was rarely seen in the open, there were historically a considerable number of incidents caused by necromancers, like this affair with Glydel had been. It would be extremely dangerous to not know anything about necromancy techniques in those instances, so it had been researched to an extent. Of course, it was still forbidden to use it.
Part of that knowledge was communicated to top members of the government. I used to be a member of the Duke’s household and was the next in line. I’d been expected to learn about the grim side of things, thus I knew the basic outline of necromancy.
From what I had been told, the foundation of necromancy was forming a contract with a departed soul and having it serve you. Loosely speaking, necromancers were like Tamers of the dead. Of course, the technical aspects were tremendously different, but they fell under the same broad umbrella. The same went for my <Follower Contract>, since it was also contract-based magic.
There were commonalities. Generally, tamer skills established a contract by making the other party accept the terms through some method, including submission by force. You could make a monster recognize your strength by fighting it, so there was probably a similar method for necromancy. And I had a feeling that I’d done something akin to this.
After all, I’d defeated the black skeleton king. What was more, my follower Cath had defeated Glydel. Had that made the contract between Glydel and the black skeleton king transfer over to me? But I wasn’t a necromancer, so the contract conditions had been revised to fit my skill. Thus it was now my follower through <Follower Contract>. That was the most likely explanation for what was going on here.
Well, I could’ve been completely off the mark, but I definitely thought it was the most convincing theory. I’d just have to work under that assumption for now.
But...this was a huge problem. I could be accused of necromancy for having something like this under my thrall. If it were just a normal skeleton, I could claim to be a Tamer. But this was a unique skeleton king. A skeleton king with dark bones wasn’t something you would see every day.
Plus, the only time one had shown up lately was with Glydel. If it tagged along with me now, people would definitely assume that I was one of Glydel’s confederates. In short, I couldn’t let people see it.
What should I do? I wondered.
“Oh yeah, you did pop out of nowhere just now. How’d you do that?”
It was conceivable that my question might not get any response. But either I’d gotten lucky, or it was inevitable since there was something there, since the black skeleton king reacted to what I said and turned its face to me very slightly. I might not have understood what this meant in any other case. But since I was looking for answers from it, I could understand it. I was able to understand.
“You want to show me? Sure, I don’t mind. As long as you don’t try to kill me,” I joked. The black skeleton king frantically shook its head at that, so I was probably in the clear.
Its reactions are a lot more human than I’d expect... Is its personality different from when it was serving Glydel? Maybe that changes depending on who it’s contracted to.
“Okay, go ahead,” I told it.
The black skeleton king nodded deeply, then its body turned even darker...or rather, it transformed into countless tiny black particles. They stayed in the shape of the black skeleton king’s contour, but after a little while, they started to move like a swarm of millions of bugs. They flew behind me and disappeared, diving into my shadow.
“What the—?!”
The black skeleton king had vanished without a trace. Even its presence seemed to be completely gone.
“Black skeleton king, are you there?” I asked. A black bone arm extended out of my shadow.
“Whoa...so you really just went into my shadow. You can do that?”
If it could go into my shadow, then could it go into any shadow? Or were there other properties that made this possible? I’d need to test it out, but at first look, the latter seemed to be the case.
Well, with this, it won’t be exposed so easily. That’s a relief for the time being. But I can’t leave things this way forever either. If I want to keep it hidden, I’ll need to keep the black skeleton king away from people, but...
I have high hopes for it in combat. If possible, I want to put it to use as a practice partner for Mataza and Liber, and I’d want it to fight with us when we’re facing stronger monsters. So what should I do?
I deliberated over this for a while, but my worries would be dispelled a few days later.