The Flight of Jerry: A Progression Fantasy Adventure (Good Guy Necromancer Book 2), page 1
THE FLIGHT OF JERRY
©2025 VALERIOS
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact editor@aethonbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Aethon Books
www.aethonbooks.com
Print and eBook, design, layout, and formatting by Josh Hayes.
Published by Aethon Books LLC.
Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.
All rights reserved.
ALSO BY VALERIOS
Good Guy Necromancer
The Wrath of Jerry
The Flight of Jerry
Untitled Book Three starring Jerry
Road to Mastery
Road to Mastery
Road to Mastery 2
Road to Mastery 3
Road to Mastery 4
Road to Mastery 5
Road to Mastery 6
Want to discuss our books with other readers and even the authors?
JOIN THE AETHON DISCORD!
Calling all LitRPG fans: be the first to discover groundbreaking new releases, access incredible deals, and participate in thrilling giveaways by subscribing to our exclusive LitRPG Newsletter.
https://aethonbooks.com/litrpg-newsletter/
CONTENTS
1. Beauty Pageants and Flying Whales
2. The Cloud Sea
3. New Place, New Shoes
4. Inviting Uninvited
5. Who Digs Holes in Random Places?
6. Storm, meet Storm
7. Giant Wizard Tower
8. Solo Battling
9. Demolishing the Tower
10. Dennis the Farmer
11. The Fishboat
12. Fear is No Excuse for Rudeness
13. Infiltrating
14. Fee-fi-fo-fum
15. Polykratos, the Giant Prince
16. The Prince’s Banquet
17. Battle of Generations
18. That’s What I Said!
19. Die Standing
20. You Just Revealed Mine
21. Celebrating Freedom
22. Leaving the Sky
23. Reaching Land
24. A Volatile Welcome
25. Shoes and Knowledge
26. Reef Fish
27. The Goodest Boy
28. The Warren
29. The Student Becomes the Master
30. Would You Like to Bet Your Soul?
31. Hissing like Steam
32. Makoa Pele
33. Fighting the Salamander
34. One Step Left
35. Mentoring
36. This, Too, Will Pass
37. The Path to War is Paved with Delicious Beverages
38. Sneaking onto Kuakata
39. Entering the Mouth of the Beast
40. Old Habits Die Hard
41. Let Me Cook
42. Duel for Revenge
43. I’ll Cure Them All
44. Melt For Me
45. The Final Straw
Epilogue
Thank you for reading The Flight of Jerry
Groups
LitRPG
1
BEAUTY PAGEANTS AND FLYING WHALES
Jerry leaned forward in his chair, placing his elbows against the airship’s railing. Blue waves rolled below. The clouds were white, the sunshine bright, and the breeze tickled his cheeks. Laughter rang behind him.
Jerry smiled.
“Master, Master!” Boney shouted as he rushed over. “My little Master won!”
“That’s great, Boney. I’m sure he deserved it.”
“Well, yes, but why did you say it like that?”
“No reason.”
Boney raised his hands, in which he held a wooden figurine of Jerry. Axehand’s wood sculpting skills increased recently, and the undead had taken to beauty pageants, where each presented their own, uniquely decorated version of their master.
Boney’s winning figurine was painted in warm and accurate colors, giving Jerry a green tunic, dark hair, and expressive eyes—a technique he’d picked up from the painters of the Akshik tribe. The figurine originally wore non-descript shoes, which Boney had painted into exquisite goatskin boots. Even Jerry had to admire the craftsmanship.
“Oh, Boney, you’re really coming along,” he said. “I could cry!”
“Please don’t, Master, or I’d have to cry too—but I don’t have eyes!”
Jerry chuckled.
“In any case, Master,” Boney said. “This triumph belongs entirely to you. Please accept this humble offering as a token of my eternal servitude.”
“How about eternal friendship, Boney?”
“I could never do that! But okay. Does that mean I can tell the others I’m your favorite undead?”
“I love you all equally.”
“But me more equally, right?”
Jerry tried not to smile. “You can keep the figurine, Boney.”
“Really? Hooray! Now I can place it on my bed stand and worship it in my sleep every night!”
“You don’t have a bed stand, nor do you sleep…” Jerry muttered, but Boney was already gone, telling the other undead that Jerry loved him more equally than them.
Jerry sighed. He looked at the book in his lap, Introduction to Necromancy by Akolateronim, whom he’d coincidentally killed. A bookmark rested near the middle of the book, painted with a gray, cap-wearing skull.
“Soon…” he promised the book before raising his head to greet a stampede of undead heading his way. They all wore shoes, so the sound was much more subdued than usual, but the crimson flames in their eyes remained intimidating. Boboar, Foxy, Headless, and the Billies all presented their figurines of Jerry—in their mouths, hands, or both—and offered them to him.
Jerry regarded them warmly, “Don’t worry, guys. I love you all more equally.”
Boney gasped from behind the horde, while the other undead glared at him triumphantly. “Master!” Boney cried out. “You betrayed me!”
Headless threw his head, which bounced off Boney’s and flew over the airship’s railing. The zombie rushed forward, followed by the rest of the undead, only to watch the head sail lower and lower through the sky. It spun, making Headless stagger and fall to the deck.
“Whoops,” Jerry said.
“You probably shouldn’t have done that,” Boney told Headless, who thankfully lacked his head, and so couldn’t listen.
“What’s going on?” a voice came from the door as Marcus emerged from the lower deck. He wore a chef’s hat and polished gloves.
“Headless dropped his head outside the airship,” Jerry said.
Marcus’s eyes widened. “Men! Sailor overboard! To the masts, fast!”
The four Billies dropped their figurines and leaped to the masts like monkeys, while Laura, who appeared on the stairs alongside Marcus, scoffed. “Do you really think you can catch a freefalling head?”
“I will try! No captain lets their sailors die without a fight!”
“This one already died,” Boney said. “His figurine was kind of meh anyway. That’s no way to honor Master.”
Headless shot to his feet, then did a handstand against the railing.
“That’s no way to honor Master either,” Boney said. “Why is he doing that?”
“Birb caught his head,” Jerry said, leaning over the railing.
Marcus shouted, “Men! Nevermind, we’re staying our course!”
The ship angled sharply to the left and down, almost dropping Headless who was still doing the handstand of joy. Marcus’s voice was lost in the wind, and they spiraled downward as if following the turns of a screw. Jerry’s stomach dropped, while the figurines of himself pretended the deck was a trampoline. Birb passed them by in its ascent, carrying Headless’s head by the hair and staring at the ship with confusion. The Billies roared in excitement.
“Make it stop!” Laura yelled, her blonde hair whipping upward, while Marcus barked angry commands. The sails tightened, and the airship smoothly straightened itself as if nothing had happened.
Silence reigned for a while.
“That was fun,” Jerry said, drawing the glares of La
“The food!” he shouted, rushing downstairs, while Laura just shook her head. “I swear to Hydra, if I survived fighting an Archmage only to die by airship, I would be so pissed.”
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, piss us back?” Boney asked. He received blank stares. “Because you’re a hydromancer. Get it?”
Laura rolled her eyes. Meanwhile, Jerry had begun picking up the figurines dropped on the deck—the ship’s previous spinning had pushed them all close to his chair.
“No, Master!” Boney said. “You can’t be doing menial labor!”
“It’s okay, Boney. You painted and decorated these things to show me your love. The least I can do is pick them up.”
The undead rushed to assist. Jerry observed their work. One figurine—Boney’s—was expertly painted. Another had its arms and legs slightly broken and bent to resemble dancing. It was Headless’s figurine, which Jerry found endearing. The Billies had worked together to decorate a figurine with glitter—a remnant supply of their circus days; they still had a bunch stuffed in a bag.
Foxy’s figurine was carved to make Jerry seem like a skeleton, which was oddly macabre. As for Boboar’s, it looked like it had been stomped on, which Jerry received as some odd display of affection.
“Ohh, you guys!” he exclaimed. “These are all amazing. Thank you so much!”
“Nonsense, Master. We should be thanking you for giving us eternal unlife.”
“Speaking of eternal,” Laura said, “how far away is the Cloud Sea? This journey seems endless.”
“We’re crossing the ocean. What did you expect?” Boney said.
“I expected less than a week of travel. Maybe it would be faster if we didn’t almost die every two hours.”
Boney feigned hurt. “I’ll have you know most of us are already dead, and we still complain less than you do.”
“Hey!”
“Calm down,” Jerry said, laughing. “I asked Marcus earlier, Laura, and he said we should have arrived by now. Either we’re very close or we’ve missed it entirely.”
“Do we have enough food to last us the trip back if we’ve missed it?”
“No. Marcus said it’s better to head southwest, towards the Jewel Archipelago, and hope the two of you survive the trip.”
“What!”
“Don’t worry,” Jerry said. “We won’t miss the Cloud Sea. The Billies are excellent navigators.”
Both glanced at the zombies hanging from the masts by their knees, then back at each other. “Okay,” Jerry admitted, “on the bright side, I can just bring you back if you die.”
“What!”
“Please make her mute, please make her mute,” Boney whispered.
Jerry coughed. “He’s just kidding. We love you, Laura.”
Before she could reply, a grunt echoed from the front of the airship. Axehand sat on the prow, calmly sipping on his wine and not budging an inch during the previous mad descent. Right now, one of his axe hands was pointed to the front, where something was visible on the horizon.
“We’re here?” Laura asked hopefully, only for Boney to snicker.
“It’s the Cloud Sea, Laura. We wouldn’t see it on the horizon.”
“Okay, first of all, that’s wrong. We’d see the—” She trailed off as whatever distant form Axehand was pointing at grew.
“Does anyone else get a sense of deja vu?” Jerry asked.
“How do you even know that phrase?” Laura said.
“My father used to say it a lot. It’s Miliarisian slang for been there, done that, Jerry.”
“I’m pretty sure that last part was just him addressing you, Master.”
“Yes, I did feel stupid when I said it.”
“Excuse me,” Laura said, “can we focus on the whale flying towards us?”
“Right. Sorry. Maybe we can tame it?” Jerry asked.
“It’s already tamed,” a voice replied from the crow’s nest. It was Horace, whose sharp archer’s eyes had landed him the job of lookout.
“How do you know?” Jerry shouted back.
“Because there’s pirates on its back.”
On the prow, Axehand stood and grunted cockily. Boney and the undead took positions around Jerry, who gasped. “We need to learn how they did it!”
“No, you don’t,” Horace replied. As he nocked an arrow, his pale skin and dark features made a stark contrast against the blue sky above. “They’ve grafted ship parts onto the whale. It is enslaved, not tamed.”
Jerry frowned. “That’s not very nice of them. We must free that poor whale. Axehand! Try not to cut its tail this time!”
The double skeleton grunted. Laura arrived beside Jerry, where she was coincidentally protected by his undead. “Do you remember the one we fought over the Dead Lands?” she asked. “The zombie whale. It had rotten ship parts on it and we had no idea how.”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I guess it was a pirate one. These guys aren’t new to the trade.”
“Should we keep one of them alive to interrogate, Master?”
“No need. I have some new tricks.”
The whale pirates, still in the distance but fast approaching, released battle cries so loud they reached Freedom—Jerry’s airship. Even he could see their raised swords and bows. There had to be twenty pirates, all loaded onto a massive blue whale whose flaps glided over the wind, while its tail fin served as steering. The majestic beast had lifeless eyes, however, glazed over by a life of servitude. Thin wooden stakes stuck out of its back, surrounding the wooden platform which served as a deck.
The contents of that deck became clearer as the airship and whale flew directly at each other. Besides the pirates themselves, the deck contained a steering wheel, a mast, and a…
“I knew we were forgetting something!” Jerry said, just as the pirates’ catapult launched a massive boulder. The whale buckled and dropped due to the recoil, but quickly regained its balance.
“I wonder how they plan to raid us if the boulder shoots us down,” Jerry wondered.
The boulder sailed true, heading directly for the airship. Axehand waited on its prow. As soon as the boulder approached, he grunted and slashed at it with both hands. Red steam escaped his bones—the boulder was cleanly sliced in half, flying off the sides of the airship and into the distant sea below.
The pirates’ fierce expressions froze witnessing that. One of them spun the steering wheel to turn the whale around, but the beast was massive and slow. By the time it faced the other way, Freedom was closing in. Two pirates had loaded another boulder into the catapult, while the rest were hurriedly pushing all boulders off the whale, along with anything not bolted to the deck.
“For pirates, they’re not very intimidating,” Boney said.
“Yeah,” Jerry agreed. “Look at them. They came with all that bravado, but one little boulder slice and they’re already running away.”
“Wanna bet on whether they’ll throw each other overboard, Master?”
“Too late.”
One pirate screamed as he tumbled to the distant sea, followed by another boulder cleanly sliced in half. The whale was picking up speed, but Freedom was already close, and an arrow sailed through the wind to pierce the pirates’ sail. That slowed them down and spelled their doom. Axehand launched himself off the prow, shaking the airship but reaching the pirate deck a hundred feet away.
The pirates raised their swords to resist. Axehand flashed among them, faster and stronger than they could ever be. Axes reflected the sunlight—blood spurted from open wounds. Limbs went flying.
The pirates were cut down like saplings.
“That’s a shame,” Jerry said. “I didn’t even get to use my new soul attacks.”
“It’s okay, Master. At least we’re all safe.”
“That’s right. Thanks, Axehand, Horace!”
The ship arrived beside the whale, which had slowed after the pirates’ demise. Just like the one they’d fought in the Dead Lands, it had no visible means of levitation, not even wings to beat the air. Its flaps were more gliding than flying.
“Magic,” Jerry said with a shrug.
“Good news!” Marcus said, coming up from the second deck. “I managed to gather most of the soup. It will taste like wood, but at least we—Why is there a whale next to my ship?”
“We fought some pirates,” Jerry said.
