Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Lambert - Ch. 87

I needed somebody to save me.

"Good boy, Lambert." The elder patted my head once I collapsed on the ground. I spent every day the same. She'd drag me out of my confinement early in the morning and set me to work on the church's lands. It was huge though, tens of thousands of acres, all sown with grain, months too late. And if anybody still doubted her being a necromancer, the fields were cultivated by undead workers, only listening to her commands. "All right, it's time for you to rest."

Now she simply dragged me back into the basement of the manor house, and I had to meditate to regain my power by tomorrow morning. If I were to fall asleep and fail to do so, she would start the next day with torture, and I'd have to work regardless. The only other living being that would occasionally show up here was her new right-hand man.

"Finally I understand your spell too. I'm surprised you came up with something like this by yourself." She praised me while walking me on a chain like a dog. I saw her power yet again, there was no way to fight this woman. The best I could do is obey. "I scoured the church library and found nothing. When the Princess and Catherine returned here without you I thought you died. It would have been a shame, you are useful, Lambert. Even if I could finally use the same spell."

Regardless of all the praise, she unceremoniously kicked into my back when we arrived, and locked me up in the empty basement. My food was already prepared, I guess she couldn't have me starve and lose my strength after all, no matter how the rest of my treatment was.

"By the end of the week, the field will be ready for the harvest. My plan will work out, after all, you've done a great job." She talked through the closed door. "And you are not doing this for me, no. About half of Sanctuary would starve to death over the winter without this food, so keep doing your best. You can hate me all you want though."

I could barely hear the last sentence, she walked too far by that point, and after that, everything was quiet. The sun started to set too, each day getting shorter and shorter as the fall was soon to give its place to winter. I couldn't help but wonder, what she would do to me after the harvest ended. She wasn't here all day, just when she dragged me out to work, and let me back inside, but I still couldn't run away.

It was either Stern watching over me, or a bunch of zombies smelling of rot. Still, it was the undead, that was the best company I could get. They wouldn't talk nonsense without ever giving me any valuable information, and they didn't enjoy torturing me either.

"I cannot fathom why the Princess left you behind," I remembered the Captain of the Royal Company saying one day. "When they showed up without you, I thought, that Lambert dude must have kicked the bucket. But they left you with the monsters?"

At least he did tell me something I wanted to know, even if he probably didn't even realize it. At the end of my first week here, he slipped up and inadvertently told me about how things went down when the girls returned to Sanctuary. Back in Nateaser, we could only guess what happened to them since the first time we heard about the humans was when the village got attacked. They did make it back here.

"I was looking for them, but only found you. If that Goddess does exist, and is such a big deal, why didn't they go back to you as well? They simply disappeared, what a pain." He complained, which told me, Cath and the Princess were still alive and out there somewhere. They didn't even try to get any information out of me though. They only needed me to speed up the growth of the grain, and while I have to admit, I did not dare to oppose them, to begin with, I didn't want the humans to starve either. I was willing to let the Elder learn my method through observation, which meant she could toss me aside at any moment.

"If you become too useful, the sooner she will get rid of you," I told myself, once they left me alone. "But if you show her that you are just useful enough so that she's better off keeping you around..."