Koyuki, the Necromancing Foxkin

Rose hummed a nice tune as she was helping me clean our corpses. Cassie had provided us with a proper cleaning solution and we were working on the better bodies we had acquired. After we were done cleaning we froze them for transport, the real enhancement and raising would happen back at the academy.

"You know, you can have some corpses if you want your own zombies." I offered.

"Hm, I think I am ok with just helping you raise your undead army." Rose replied. "I might try to turn something with my bite though, if we get the chance."

"Sure, maybe we will encounter a monster, or another ambush." I said.

"Are you planning on any new tier threes?" Rose asked.

I scratched my head and Rose frowned at me. "You need to stop scratching your head when your hands are dirty."

I blushed, feeling a bit embarrassed, somehow I kept doing that. "Uh, is there zombie in my hair?"

We were working in a small lab that Valeria had kindly offered us. It did come with a sink, so Rose washed her hands, then she examined my hair.

"Come over to the sink, I will make sure you are clean."

While Rose was taking care of me I went back to her original question: "So, I am not sure about the tier three. We do have a shaman corpse which could be useful, or an assassin. We will need to see how much mana is left in those corpses and I might have to talk to the headmaster before we raise one."

"Your goblin army could use a goblin general!" Rose suggested.

"We do have Kaito, I suppose he is my butler but nothing stops him from commanding my goblins. Hatsumi is often leading the charge and she can command the undead around her. So far we are doing fine but my horde is growing…" I mused.

My thoughts were interrupted as the door opened.

"Koyuki?" I heard Valeria ask.

"We are here, at the sink." I replied.

Valeria looked at my wet hair but did not ask any questions. "I think I found a snake corpse for you."

"Oh? That's great!" I replied.

"Mother has spent a bit of coin to get one from the adventurers guild. She is really happy with our captive and your demonstration during the battle." Valeria said.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. Please report it.

"Has the captive talked?" Rose asked.

"Our interrogators are working on him, we did get the location of one of their hideouts and found further evidence against some people." Valeria replied. "Lieutenant Camille seems to be connected to them, but it's unclear if she was knowingly working with them or if they used her hatred for the undead. It certainly gives us leverage when it comes to her family. Oh, and she is friends with Captain Cillian."

"We could just feed both of them to the cats." Rose suggested.

"I think that would be politically unwise." Valeria said. "You know, sometimes you are rather relaxed and sometimes you seem a bit bloodthirsty."

"Anyone threatening Koyuki needs to be dealt with." Rose stated.

"My undead are a bit protective of me." I said.

"I often thought tier threes would be more interested in breaking three and had to be tightly leashed." Valeria said.

"If I were bound by Leo, that would certainly be my sentiment." Rose said and shuddered.

I shrugged. "My undead seem to like me. Let's have a look at that snake corpse!"

"Ok, the representative from the guild is waiting outside, I will call him in here." Valeria replied.

It did not take long and an older man with dirt blond hair entered. He looked around curiously and studied the corpses we had been working on.

"Doing some preparation for a raising?" He asked.

I nodded. "Yes, are you a necromancer as well?"

"Ah no, but I worked with one back in my adventuring days! I used to be a decent archer but now I just handle paperwork." He said. "Now where are my manners? I am Bruno, it's nice to meet you."

"I am Koyuki and this is Rose, she is a tier three vampire." I replied.

The man did not react much but he gave her a nod, he had probably been told what to expect.

"My family is paying for the corpse, why don't you show her the nice specimen you have?" Valeria asked.

"Of course!" The man was carrying a bag and after looking around he just placed it on the floor, then retrieved a dead snake.

"This is a black earth viper! You can see the scales are alternating between black and brown. From a distance they are sometimes confused with the purely black viper, however the earth variant is a magical monster which is quite a bit more dangerous! They live underground and strike from the soil at their prey. They use earth mana to harden their scales and have a rather potent venom!" He explained.

I frowned. "The head seems to be missing."

Bruno nodded and retrieved a small snake head from his bag. "The head and the body are in excellent condition! Individually, they are simply not connected right now. The snake was killed by beheading with a clean cut."

"May I?" I asked.

He nodded and handed me the two pieces, meanwhile Valeria looked unhappy. "You told my mother you had a pristine corpse."

"And it is! Surely a renowned necromancer can fix that small problem? Do you know how hard it is to get a proper corpse from a black earth viper? Look, the thing is only a bit longer than half a metre and has tough scales! Often people crush them with hammers and the remains are not usable! Especially since the venom glans are the interesting part anyway, so they care less about the body." Bruno said.

"Regardless, we shall have to talk about the price again." Valeria stated.

Meanwhile I studied the corpse. It seemed to be undamaged, except for the missing head. The head itself was also in good shape and someone had properly conserved the corpse to stop it from rotting. It looked workable, even though connecting the head would be a bit of a pain. The snake itself was about 8 cm thick and definitely short enough that I could wear it around my arm.

"I think this will work." I said.

Bruno smiled. "You see, a missing head is no problem!"

"I didn't say that." I replied. "It will be a bit of a pain to reattach it, I have to decide which type of undead will make that the easiest and the connection will be a weak point. Further, I will need to use some mana for that and the result might be a slightly weaker undead since the corpse can only hold so much mana. The fact that it's a monster helps, they make for better undead than animals."

"We will talk about the price." Valeria said, while staring at Bruno.

"Of course." Bruno replied with a forced smile.

While they negotiated I handed the corpse to Rose.

"It's cute!" She said, while petting the small unattached head. Now I had to decide how to raise the thing.