Lich for Hire-Chapter 1: Your Submission Does Not Meet Our Requirements

Chapter 1: Your Submission Does Not Meet Our Requirements

Within a gloomy old castle lit by dim, flickering candlelight, Ambrose Jenkins cracked open an envelope with his skeletal fingers. The crimson wax seal snapped with a crisp crack, shattering the magical seal bound to the envelope.

Inside was a sheet of parchment. The ghostly blue flames in Ambrose's eye sockets flickered as he read.

Esteemed Master Ambrose,

Your manuscript, “On the Morphological Remodeling of Non-Humanoid Undead Creatures,” has been reviewed by the editors of Legendary Spellcraft. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your paper does not meet the standards for publication in our monthly journal. We recommend submitting it to a magical periodical with less rigorous requirements.

Ambrose's fingertips sparked with blue fire, reducing the rejection letter to ash. He glowered. "My data's solid. My viewpoint is novel. How is this not up to standard? This is discrimination against liches! It's prejudice against necromancy, that's what it is!"

Legendary Spellcraft was the highest-level magical journal in the world, jointly founded by the nine kingdoms and thirteen legendary magicians. Submissions were open to all magicians, regardless of race or nationality.

Since its founding, the journal had played a role in the advancement of magic all across the continent. Over twenty legendary spells had been developed based on the magical theory introduced in the journal.

All spellcasters considered publication in Legendary Spellcraft the highest of honors. In the nine kingdoms, prospective royal magicians wouldn't even get an interview without at least three such papers to their name.

As a respected scholar, Ambrose himself had many successful publications to his name. Yet in the last two years, his submissions had been rejected thrice in a row.

The reason, in his eyes, was obvious. He had recently reincarnated as a lich. And the new editor-in-chief of Legendary Spellcraft was a hardline priest of light who heavily discriminated against the undead.

"There are plenty of paths to achieve immortality. What's so wrong about becoming a lich?" Ambrose muttered, sweeping the ashes of the letter off his desk.

A bizarre skeleton crawled over to tidy up the mess. Its upper body resembled a normal human skeleton, but its lower half sprouted eight spidery bone-legs. Its arms were locked at stiff angles that left it clumsy at most tasks, but its sweeping motions were frighteningly fast and precise.

It was short, could scuttle up walls and under tables, and had clearly been designed for cleaning.

This was Ambrose's own research: non-humanoid remodeling of undead creatures. A spider-skeleton janitor was far more useful than the shambling, slow, humanoid type.

Of course, such modifications didn't come cheap. The experiments alone had drained what remained of his funds. He was starting to regret lichdom.

But the Potion of Youth had simply been too expensive for him to afford. Prices had skyrocketed ever since the Court of the Silver Moon banned the export of two of its key ingredients.

Even legendary magicians weren't made of money. The boon Ambrose had received upon his legendary ascension, Mimetic Soul, allowed him to craft artificial souls out of cheap materials that were good enough to function like the real thing.

With a boon like that, not becoming a lich would've been a waste.

And so, as the price of a single Potion of Youth hit an absurd 500,000 gold coins, he decisively chose to pursue lichdom.

"Damn the elves and the Court of the Silver Moon! Taking advantage of their own longevity to monopolize the market—one day, when I'm rich, I swear I'll short Potions of Youth so hard their entire economy collapses!"

But for the moment, he had a rejection letter to deal with. As a reclusive legendary scholar, most of his income came from publication fees awarded by Legendary Spellcraft. Now that he'd been rejected three times running, his finances were in dire straits.

Sure, a lich didn't need food or drink. But undead experiments cost money. Maintaining a castle cost money. Even proper upkeep on his phylactery—everything cost money!

If things kept going this way, he'd be so broke he wouldn't even be able to afford to patch his robes.

Ambrose tapped his chin gloomily. "...So. How am I going to make money?"

He pondered deeply. Regular mages could get hired as consultants for noble households and pull in a fat salary. But as a legend, he all but needed a position in the royal court; most nobles couldn't afford legendary magicians or legendary liches.

But only two of the nine major kingdoms were even willing to accept liches, and both were a long way from Ambrose. As a newly reborn lich and a seasoned legendary scholar, Ambrose painfully understood that the gulf between two legends could sometimes be wider than that between a mortal and a legend.

His mastery of necromancy was... serviceable, at best. A position was hardly guaranteed, and if he failed, the cost of a transcontinental teleport would ruin him. Damn the Court of the Silver Moon! Those beansprout elves were the ones who'd driven up teleportation costs in the first place!

And leaving home involved more than just travel expenses. One misstep and he could end up in dire straits. Even a washed-up legend was still a legend; who wouldn't want a legendary lich servant?

Ambrose had toyed with the idea of selling the artificial souls that resulted from his legendary boon, Mimetic Soul, but his peers all laughed. A real human slave went for a few dozen copper coins, they said—and those were real souls, not fakes. Why would anyone pay three times the price for his knockoffs?

That stung. He was starting to suspect his legendary boon was a useless trinket.

"I need to ask around and figure out how liches actually make money," he muttered.

He flicked a finger. The Necromantic Codex flew from the shelf to his desk. A delicate skull relief was set into the cover of this heavy grimoire, which the Elegiac Society had sent him after his reincarnation. It contained the basics every lich needed to know. Its most important entry was a godsend: One Hundred Taboos After Reincarnating as a Lich.

Don't throw open the curtains the moment you wake up. Don't use the basic divine spell Illumination for, well, illumination. Don't keep dogs or other pets. These surprisingly practical rules had already saved Ambrose from more than one awkward situation.

But they weren't why Ambrose wanted this grimoire at the moment. He flipped to the very back and wrote in the book with a fingertip in a swirl of magical script: "Friends, may your soulfire ever burn bright. I'm a little short on coin. How do liches actually make money these days?"

The glowing letters didn't fade. Rather, they shimmered like ripples in a pool.

After a moment, a reply appeared.

[Black Rose: Don't you get a lot from publication fees? Becoming a lich should make things cheaper—undead experiments are the cheapest option.]

Black Rose was a lich elder in the Elegiac Society, and one of its core members.

The society was exceptionally mysterious. Every newly reincarnated lich received a copy of the Necromantic Codex from its secretive president; Ambrose still didn't know who its president was, nor how the grimoire had been delivered in the first place.

Liches were at their most vulnerable during their reincarnation. If the president of the Elegiac Society had wished him ill, Ambrose could easily have become little more than a puppet.

There were few members of the Elegiac Society. They kept in touch with each other using their own Codices, and everyone used a codename.

Ambrose's own codename was Megaman Tiga.

[Megaman Tiga: Don't mention it. The new editor at Legendary Spellcraft has rejected my manuscripts three times in a row. That racist scumbag has driven me to the brink of bankruptcy! Lady Rose, how do you make money? Any leads?]

[Black Rose: Oh, the new editor's a priest of light, isn't he? Little wonder he's starting to discriminate against the undead. I usually just catch a drow or two here in the Umbral Depths. With the spiders they raise, their treasured relics, and even their corpses, they might as well be walking gold mines.]

Ambrose replied helplessly, "Lady Rose, the different races in my kingdom do often fight, but the Alchemists' Council certainly won't permit me to kidnap members of other races en masse as research material."

No sooner had he written that than another society member chimed in.

[Dullahan's Crown: Tiga, I urgently need a bottle of living mercury. If you can get me a bottle from the City of Alchemists, I'll pay top coin.]