That’s so distracting, Tybalt thought. That has to be on purpose, right?

  As best as he could, he ignored the shapely objects that seemed to be presented for his inspection and listened to the catgirl kneeling in front of him.

  “... and that is why my body is particularly flexible,” she finished. “The monk class is associated with many beneficial attributes. If Your Holiness would like, I could demonstrate some of these elements.”

  She bobbed her head up and down excitedly as she finished, with no apparent purpose other than making her rather large breasts bounce again—as they had roughly every thirty seconds or so for the entire time she had been speaking.

  “Don’t trouble yourself to call upon us, we will call upon you if you’re needed,” came an icy voice from Tybalt’s right.

  He turned his head and tried not to look amused at the expression on Vidalia’s face. She was restraining her annoyance to some degree, probably because Andric was present, but a little vein throbbed on her temple.

  She’s jealous. It’s surprisingly cute.

  “I was expecting to hear our lord’s thoughts,” said the catgirl on her knees, crossing her arms in front of her chest in a way that only further emphasized her cleavage.

  Definitely on purpose.

  “I know what Lord Necromancer thinks,” Vidalia replied. “He and I are very close. I mean, not as close as he and his lover, here, who you have been ignoring as you spoke—” She pointed at Mariella, on Tybalt’s left—“but I certainly know his will.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “She speaks with my voice,” Tybalt said quietly, keeping to a volume that could only be heard by those closest. He didn’t want to embarrass this catgirl. She was only doing what most of the other marriage-aged women in her village were doing as well as they could: throwing herself shamelessly at the potential future king who had suddenly appeared in their midst. Even though he had already explained he wasn’t looking for wives right now. “Thank you for explaining your class.”

  “Um, yes, sire.” The catgirl flushed slightly, bowed her head, and then withdrew.

  “Are there any other individuals with classes different from those that have been explained already? I know I have monks, alchemists, thieves, and archers in your ranks, but there are no others?” He pointed a thumb back at Kistana, who stood behind his seat—the chair the catfolk had brought out for Tybalt, a throne made of intertwined bone and metal that someone had mentioned was a throne of one of the ancient Beastkings. “I already know the huntress class exists, too, but no one has come forward to explain that.”

  Tybalt sensed Kistana beginning to move from behind him, but Elder Olaf quickly knelt before the necromancer before she could shift to his front.

  “Sire, those are all the classes our people possess,” he said. “Kistana’s class is probably some sort of corrupted variant of the archer class. If you will notice, she looks a bit different from others in the village. She is what we would call a mutant. Likely defective stock.”

  That’s not exactly a nice way of putting it. She does look different, though.

  He could still see many of the flawless features of the catfolk tribe in Kistana, but he had noticed that while most of them had gray cat ears, bushy black and gray tails, and gray eyes, she had orange, almost reddish cat ears, and a similarly colored thin tail. Her eyes appeared to be red, too, though they had been glowing with her red mana every time Tybalt looked at them, so it was impossible to be certain of that. There were a couple of albino catfolk in the tribe, too, and they also had reddish eyes, but they looked less different from the other members of the tribe than Kistana did somehow.

  “I understand,” Tybalt said. “Well, thank you for your view, Elder.”

  Olaf smiled, bowed his head, and rose. “My pleasure, sire. If you are ready for the next corpse—”

  “One moment,” the necromancer replied. He turned his head halfway back. “Kistana, since your class is some sort of unique variant, please tell me about what distinguishes it from the archer class. While you do that, Elder Olaf will have the next body brought out for me.”

  The Elder’s smile faltered slightly. It was barely noticeable before he stepped away, but Tybalt saw it.

  He really doesn’t like her, for some reason.

  Kistana stepped forward and started to kneel in front of Tybalt.

  “No, no,” Tybalt said. “You’re my bodyguard. I already said no more kneeling for you.”

  That would just be distracting, since she was at least as attractive as any of the catgirls who had been flashing their cleavage at him over the last fifteen minutes, though at least she was dressed more modestly. He didn’t want Vidalia to start feeling jealous of this woman who would be around them, completely platonically, all the time going forward.

  “Um, understood, Your Holiness,” Kistana said. “My class—”

  “Just whisper it in my ear,” Tybalt said in a low voice. “That way, you can keep your details private, since your class seems to be a bit special.”

  Was that a blush that flashed across her cheeks for an instant?

  It was hard to tell, since she stepped immediately out of his line of sight to stand at his right and whisper into his ear.

  On his left, Vidalia had moved to talk to Mariella, and the two were having a quiet, furiously whispered conversation, which Tybalt tried to ignore. He heard the words, “sluts,” “lover,” and “only you,” but the exchange was mostly lost to him.

  “So, my class is like an archer class, but I don’t just have to use a bow,” Kistana said. Her voice tickled Tybalt’s ears, and he had to restrain himself from laughing at the way it felt. “It’s also a little like the monk class, because I can enhance my body when I’m in a close quarters fight. Actually, I keep it that way most of the time. It’s something I have to choose to turn off, and that would just make me vulnerable. It burns through mana at roughly the same speed as my recovery rate, so as long as I’m not using any fancy attacks, I can maintain it. Anyway, the way in which my class is defective is that it seems to be specialized in dealing with monsters and beasts. The truth is, I’ve never actually killed a humanoid opponent before. I probably wouldn’t do as well against them.”

  “Based on what?” Tybalt asked, also whispering.

  “Um, you know, I’m not sure,” the catgirl said, sounding uncertain. “Most people learn about their classes from their parents or their older siblings, but I… didn’t have that opportunity. I’ve just tried to understand how it works by listening to the Elders, when they deign to give me their advice.” There was something between genuine deference and resentment in her voice, like the relationship between herself and her tribe’s Council of Elders was too complicated to be summed up easily.

  “All right, thank you, Kistana,” the necromancer said. “It sounds like you and I will have to work to understand your class better together.”

  “As you will it, Your Holiness,” she replied, instantly standing up straight and returning to her position behind him.

  That was abrupt. All right. I guess next, they’ll bring out another mummy.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Mariella suddenly stepped in front of Tybalt and then unceremoniously sat down in his lap, positioned so that her body didn’t obstruct his view too much.

  Her breasts were just below his line of sight, but as long as he didn’t look down, he could see what was happening around him.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up into her face. “Um, what’s up?”

  She averted her gaze shyly.

  “Nothing,” she said with a slight edge of defensiveness. “Do I need a reason to be here?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t,” he said. “We’re not in private, though…”

  “No, we’re not. But everyone in the beastfolk tribes already refers to me behind my back and sometimes to my face as ‘the necromancer’s lover,’ thanks to our dear Vidalia. I might as well take advantage of that status sometimes.”

  “You’re taking advantage of it now? How is this you getting an advantage?”

  Was Mariella jealous too?

  “Well, my legs were getting tired, and now I’m taking a rest,” the fire mage blatantly lied.

  “Do what you want,” Tybalt replied, smiling.

  “Yeah, I will,” she agreed, licking her lips.

  Another pair of catgirls presented themselves for his attention, and Tybalt focused on them next.

  They chose to speak from their knees like the previous tribe members to address him, though Tybalt had still not actually ordered anyone to do that.

  Why are all the people they’re selecting to speak to me women? Are they actively trying to get me to choose daughters of their tribe as wives?

  He couldn’t help but wonder whether the women themselves wanted to be on their knees in front of him. They smiled at him and posed in ways that blurred the lines between subservient, cute, and sexually forward.

  “Your Holiness, we wanted to provide an inventory of the bodies remaining, so that you might judge which mummies would be most useful to you…”

  Mariella leaned down and kissed Tybalt on the cheek.

  The catgirl in front of Tybalt unmistakably frowned before she managed to get her expression under control.

  “We have eleven more of the ancient Beastkings preserved here,” she went on.

  Wordlessly, Mariella nuzzled Tybalt’s hair, then pulled it to the side, nibbled his earlobe, and started kissing his neck.

  When she said she was going to take advantage, she really meant it.

  “You raised one of the Beastkings from the Dynasty of the Hunters, but we have two other dynasties represented in the Valley of Martyrs.” The girl’s voice turned sort of sour near the end, obviously irritated.

  “This is probably enough of a demonstration,” Tybalt whispered, even though he was enjoying what Mariella was doing. Public displays of affection did not feel very regal to him, and he would eventually have to rise from this throne.

  “As you wish, my lord,” Mariella said in a stage whisper. She pulled slightly back, and Tybalt caught sight of her hair, slightly messy, and her face, extremely red. Then she slumped, curled her body, and buried her face in his chest. “I’ll just lie here until you’re done dealing with official business…”

  “What are the other two dynasties?” Tybalt asked, facing the catgirl.

  “Oh, um—I had not realized Your Holiness was still listening,” she said a little stiffly. “My apologies for underestimating my lord’s attention. The other two are the Dynasty of the Deathless and the Dynasty of the Priestkings.”

  “All right. Get me someone from the Dynasty of the Deathless.”

  “Sire.” She bowed her head low and then withdrew along with the other catgirl who had silently accompanied her.

  Tybalt wondered if they were twins. It was impossible to tell who were siblings or cousins or supposedly non-kin in this inbred tribe.

  Mariella kissed his chest through the shirt.

  “Thank you for not telling me to move,” she mumbled.

  “You guys wanted me to look taken, right?” Tybalt asked, smiling.

  “You are taken,” the fire mage replied very quietly. “It bothers her more than me, but I agree with her at least that if they want to be with you, they shouldn’t just ignore the women who already… belong to you.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her phrasing, then shook his head lightly.

  “I agree. Any woman who wants to get close to me should know, the way to my heart goes through you two.”

  He felt it rather than saw it as Mariella smiled into his chest.

  Poor Vidalia, Tybalt thought. He sensed her standing to the side a little awkwardly. He could tell from her body language that she felt left out, but he also knew that the inches that separated her from being in Mariella’s position were an unbridgeable gap for her right then. She and Victoria were officially unattached but being wooed by Andric. If she suddenly, publicly threw herself at Tybalt, there might be consequences for her and her family’s reputations. It would also undermine her efforts to convince Victoria that Tybalt was the man for them.

  For now, all Vidalia could do was stand and watch.

  “Here he is, sire.” The two catgirls were back with another body wrapped in linen bandages, which they laid in front of the necromancer.

  Tybalt reluctantly picked Mariella up and then set her back down in his throne before he bent down to raise the mummy.

  Just like the previous body, this one rose smoothly, though this one consumed more than half of Tybalt’s total pool of mana, so much that he almost ran completely dry.

  He decided to finally look at the statuses of his two new creatures.

  As he reviewed them, a number of details ran through his mind.

  The fact that one of them had a huntsmaster class that sounded a lot like Kistana’s huntress class. The way the auras surrounding the two mummies resembled her aura and his own respectively.

  The statuses themselves were easily the two most impressive he had ever seen, and they also demonstrated how lopsided class stats could be—a strength-based class like huntsmaster had left William with strength that would overwhelm anyone Tybalt had ever met, but less mana than Tybalt had. Conversely, the chthonic mage class had given Edgard mana and stamina that swamped Tybalt’s, but his agility was low enough that with a few more levels, Tybalt would be able to outrun him—at least until the necromancer ran out of stamina.

  More importantly, I recognize some of the chthonic mage’s skills from Unholy Forces, Tybalt thought. Those are necromancer skills.

  This would require some further experimentation on his part, but it was nothing he would question the catfolk about. Tybalt wanted them to think he was their prophesied savior, not a beginner necromancer.

  And he had the mummies themselves to discuss matters with.

  “I greet the chosen of Lord Mudo,” sent the mummy Edgard through the bond as Tybalt looked at him. “How may I be of service?”

  Patreon, by the way, is now 35 chapters ahead of Royal Road.