She lasted three hours. That was the maximum amount of time she could give to see if he would react to the fruits before she started to eat herself.
By this time, Riven had moved away from the grapes and onto other fruits. He recommended what she should eat according to their tastes.
One thing about practitioners is that they eat a lot.
By the time they were done, they had stripped a lot of trees bare.
"This will do for now, but I need something stronger. Meat," Kivara said.
"Maybe we'll find some in the forest," Riven said. He wiped his sticky hand on his ragged cloak.
"I'm not eating any meat from this catacomb," she said flatly.
Riven agreed with her, but he didn't say anything. They were lying on the grass, and if not for the power that filled him, coming from his Sigil, he would have thought he was dreaming.
His thoughts went to the techniques of his rank two Path of the Undying Necromancer. As Kivara explained, he had four techniques he could utilize. How he used them, though, depended on his creativity and how he combined them.
His Burst technique, the one he tried to use earlier on the rottiling, was known as Revenant's Call. It was a pulse of will that would raise four temporary undead.
"...That's the basics of it, but there is a lot of context regarding it. I can't raise that monster earlier, and if it's a strong opponent, then maybe I can only raise two. Maybe the four is for things that are closer to my rank? I should test it out... but where will I see bodies..."
His eyes slid to Kivara, who was staring straight at the sun. The black of her eyes seemed to be drinking in the light.
Riven turned away. "...She's strong and will make a good undead... I wonder when I will be able to make permanent undead... but... wait, is this what being a necromancer is? Worrying about bodies..."
Riven sighed. He couldn't test it on her since she was his ally—for now.
"...Maybe I can kill myself, come back, and raise the body?"
It was tempting, but Riven didn't want to waste his death. "...I'll get plenty of chances to use it later. What I'm more curious about is my Command technique..."
It was called Gravekeeper's Call. It allowed him to open a temporary door to the underworld and summon a Grave Knight, a strong skeletal warrior to fight for him.
Suddenly, Riven stood up. He turned to Kivara, a small smile on his face. "I'm thinking. We will be going into that forest, and it's filled with different monsters. You can fight, sure, but the same can't be said for me. I'm still just getting used to..."
"Just say what you want," Kivara said. She wasn't even looking his way.
"What do you think about fighting my Grave Knight? I want to see how strong it is," Riven replied.
Kivara went still. She turned from the sun to him, and her eyes narrowed. But then she shrugged. "Sounds fine, but I should warn you. I am strong."
There wasn't any pride in her voice, just a simple fact. Riven knew this well. Removing the power difference between a rank, she was also stronger than most at the same rank as her. But that only made his blood warm.
He stood up and moved some distance away from her. "Alright. I'll do it now."
Riven concentrated, then brought out his technique book and flipped it open, his eyes tracing the lines to where his Command technique was.
Kivara snorted. "You'll be dead five times if you do that in a real fight. I know you know this, but I'm reminding you not to be stupid."
Riven nodded without replying as he focused on the foundation of the grave and the language. He opened his mouth and spoke, but his words came out in twisting silence and hisses. The only comprehensible words came at the end when he shouted, "Heed me, Grave Knight!"
His purple eyes flared. The temperature dropped around him, and the surroundings became silent. His shadow leaped away from him and molded into a door that rose out of the ground.
Riven took a step forward, his right hand stretched out as if he were the one forcing the door open. Aura drained away from his Sigil as he kept the door existing in their world.
The door was made of bleached bones and black shadows that squirmed and twisted. Then it swung open without sound, and the Grave Knight reached out. Its armored legs passed over the door and stepped onto the grassy ground.
Its presence came with a chill that spread.
But Riven and Kivara could only stare at the Grave Knight in surprise. It wasn't at all what they expected.
Kivara was the first to break the silence. "This thing is a Grave Knight?"
Riven didn't know how a Grave Knight was supposed to look, so he just stared at it as well. The undead was shaped like a little girl, but her face was mature. She wore a dress made of gray rusted iron, and that face he thought was mature was rotted and half chewed away by maggots.
Her hair was limp on her head, braided with blades that glinted. She turned to Riven, and a heavy smell of decay came from her, giving off a cold aura.
"I think so." Riven could feel the connection between them. It felt as if he were holding an invisible leash. He pointed at Kivara. "Kill her."
It almost seemed as if that was something the undead had been itching to hear. The undead exploded forward, her small frame crossing the distance between them in a blink.
But Kivara was faster. She lurched backward and raised her hand lazily. A thin strand of void aura slashed forward, but the hair on the small undead grew long and coiling. One of the strands latched onto a small tree and pulled her out of the way of the attack.
Then the hair uprooted the tree and threw it at Kivara, who didn't dodge. She simply swiped the tree out of the air with her hand. But the undead wasn't brain-dead because it followed behind the attack.
Kivara smiled when she saw this and raised her hand for more void slashes, but the undead had a little surprise as well. The hairs on her head squirmed, then erupted together with her head!