At this mont, Ed felt a certain way. How could he who appeared to be immortal know to appreciate life? Shouldn't he more than anyone disregard it?
"I am sure you have all experienced misery and death" Whose misery… maybe their own… whose death, most definitely not theirs. Yet, Ed felt that these experiences should have taught them a valuable lesson.
"Life is feeble" ...and that was what made it precious.
For the first ti in a good while, he felt he could rember his past a bit more clearly. To be exact, he rembered his appreciation for life.
'What a bitter feeling…' Ed suddenly felt that the death of his previous identity must not have been a simple one. He couldn't imagine he was run over by a drunk or reckless driver. Nor did he believe he was sent to this world after saving soone from the aforentioned scenario.
If he had, he must have angered the devil with his deeds because the world Ed ca to was definitely so form of punishnt. Or… at so point it had been so form of punishnt, the amount of pain he was subjected to thus far was definitely torturous. It was also tortuous the amount of boredom he experienced.
"When you see soone die you should have learned that life is feeble and therefore precious" Ed said emotionally. He felt emotional because Ed understood the problem very well.
"Actually, I think you all did learn that life was precious" There were two outcos to the lesson taught by hardship.
"You should have learned that all life is precious, but you all learned to think of your own" The resolve to sacrifice one of their fellows for the fear of their own life was… cowardly. It was the epito of cowardice.
"That's why, from now on, you are all under " Ed reiterated his earlier declaration. This ti, with even more conviction. Right now, his heart was feeling heavy, almost sick.
But although he was still feeling sothing, Ed didn't say anything more.
'Round them up, we are heading back ho' Ed transmitted to his minions who all imdiately took action.
The encirclent of the undead rushed forward with unprecedented force. The elven warriors flinched before lifting their weapons. Ed disapproved of this, but he didn't stop them.
While he didn't want to rule by fear, if he was going to he might as well do it right.
'The skeletons I first t were loyal…' They were dumb and were intimidated by his aura.
'The goblins…' Well, Ed didn't interact much with them but the orcs were certainly battle maniacs. They appreciated his strength and eventually took a liking to his reforms. Ed suspected they both awed and feared. This mix of emotions resulted in the orcs holding deep respect towards him.
Then ca the mushroom cavern, a sub set of the marshlands…? There he ford a mushroom kingdom and befriended one of the monsters, especifically an octocrawler.
'Huh… I wonder if octobuddy is still alive…' The events that separated them would suggest not.
As for Ed's conquest of the lizardn… he had to admit they practically handed themselves to him hinging on their faith. They thought of him as a deity and put their full trust in him.
Finally, the present.
While it made sense for Ed who could live many lives to co to disregard it… with the many experiences it provided him it would actually be a miracle for that to be the case. Each floor presented him a new scenario and for each scenario he would take a different or similar approach and always receive a different outco adding to his list of experiences.
With such thoughts occupying his mind, Ed watched silently as the elves were brutally beat to the ground. The undead were understandably rciless.
Ed had to make sure none of the undead killed soone, however. He said he'd teach them to cherish life so killing any of them now would make him seem a tad bit untrusty and very much hypocritical.
After the full subjugation of the elves by his undead, the elves were led to the surface through a passage Ed and the wormllipede created. The elves who were now used to their underground life squinted thanks to the glaring light of the surface.
"Sob... " Quiet sobbing as so now expected to go on a death walk through this desert.
"Where… Where are you taking us?" An unexpected voice mustered the courage to ask. Ed who was mounted atop the wormllipede turned around and put said elf under scrutiny to confirm it was indeed who he believed it to be.
"Oh? Are you done crying?" Ed asked. The brave elf was none other than Riniya who once again regained her vigor.
Well, to be exact, she regained her slyness. Ed could tell she was scheming and planning on holding tightly onto his thigh after being abandoned by the elves.
"Hmph" Riniya said playing coy. This elf was a calculative woman.
'I'm not sure if I admire or detest that part of her' On one hand, he could admire her ability to adjust but from another perspective she could not be at all trusted.
'Not unless you can guarantee that you are always her best choice' Which Ed was confident he could pull off. He was just afraid that putting in the effort to actively show her that was not worth the effort. After all, what could she offer him in the long run?
"I'll take it that you are done crying. How about you explain to what you know about your village and how it ended here?" Ed decided to strike a conversation with Riniya despite his misgivings. He'd keep her around to observe her.
'If I rember correctly the saying was keep your friends close and your enemies closer…' Ed muttered inwardly.
"About the village…?" Riniya didn't expect for the powerful necromancer to ask about such trivialities. She was quickly reassessing her judgent of Ed and making any necessary calculations to how she should tackle him in the future.
This ant it took her a good second to finally respond to Ed's inquiry.
"I… I don't really know much…" Riniya had to shafully admit.
"You should ask the elven council instead" Those were the figures that gave her away to Ed without too much of a fuss. She was reluctant to pass Ed's goodwill to them but she really had no choice here.
"I see" Ed responded.
'No benefit in the short term either' Ed thought criticizing Riniya silently. She raised an eyebrow noticing his expression, however. Her gaze seed to be asking if he was thinking poorly of her.
Ed only nodded to the question she didn't ask leaving Riniya both flabbergasted and angry. If it weren't for her manipulative nature suppressing her anger she would have flipped out.
"I'll ask those elders the questions when we get ho then" Ed said much to the surprise of the elves. They thought they were just going on a death march as so sort of punishnt. The elders who were amongst this death march were now holding onto a faint hope.
Eventually, under the increasingly hot rays of the sun, elves started to collapse from exhaustion.
When the first instance occurred Ed imdiately called for a break. The water mages imdiately got to work in hydrating the group by carefully casting their spells. After this break there were no problems for another good hour.
They had continued to trek through the sands with regained vigor but...
"Ah…" Soone let out a powerless gasp as their friend fell to the ground.
A second break was warranted.
Unfortunately, the water mages themselves seed very much out of their elent. Due to their focus on purity, their physical prowess was extrely lacking. It didn't help that they were entirely out of their elent in the literal sense.
Seeing that most of the water mages including Sanev were out of commission after the simple trekking and break all the elves felt that this was after all a death march. They felt naive for falling for the false hope the necromancer provided.
"You are heartless…" Riniya's uncle muttered, this strong arid elf was glaring daggers at Ed.
Just as this mutter rang out, water fell from the sky.
"What!?!" "Water!?" "Ra- Rain!?" A cacophony of voices. Ed paid especial note to the last one of those voices. The papers he read in the city had confird the existence of weather patterns but Ed found it surprising that soone still knew of it.
Ed thus assessed this person and found them to be the oldest of the elves present. They were surely hundreds of years if not thousands of years old. Ed wasn't clear about the life spans of elves in this reality.
'Due to their reclusive nature, the notes of the monster encyclopedia on elves was rather empty…' Not just that but elves unlike humans were very adaptive. Due to their nature as monsters this adaptation usually ca in the form of a rapid evolution aning elves' attributes were always different.
The elves rejoiced at first but then noticed sothing. It wasn't raining, water just so happened to fall out of the sky!
"Do you all want more?" Ed asked the elves who widened their eyes. The necromancer did it?! So elves asked themselves this question but the more perceptive ones nodded.
"Yes! Yes!" And exclaid that they did indeed wish to be hydrated. Who didn't like living after all?
Ed then followed this up by forming a stream of water out of thin air. This wasn't magic, it was just the remote materialization upgrade taking water from the system space.. But no matter what it was, the elves were mystified.
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