Lich for Hire-Chapter 59: The World as an Instruction Manual

Creating two high-tier undead right now was not, strictly speaking, a good idea.

The materials would be expensive, but the more important factor was time.

Many humans harbored a fundamental misunderstanding about undead. They thought that a simple Raise Skeleton spell—yanking a skeleton out of a corpse—constituted true necromancy.

In reality, such skeletons would last at most a single day. They weren't undead at all, but rather mere temporary puppets.

Their movements depended entirely on the caster's control, and their souls were fragmentary and incomplete at best.

Creating autonomous undead that could persist long-term and retain most of their original reasoning—especially high-tier undead—was a different matter entirely.

The first step was to determine whether Hastin and Hares' souls still lingered.

Ambrose wasn't worried about Hastin. A cutthroat thief who preyed on his own kind was unlikely to be devout. After death, his soul would remain trapped in his body for a long time, suffering without reprieve.

The real concern was the half-elf ranger. Most elves worshipped the elven pantheon, and those gods were notoriously possessive of elven souls. In most cases, death meant immediate ascension to the divine elven realm. There was little chance that he'd linger behind.

Forcibly intercepting an elven soul was a good way to anger a group of vindictive gods, and hardly worth the trouble.

But to his surprise, when Ambrose examined Hares' remains, he found that Hares' soul was still intact.

"Not a believer in those stingy elven gods?" Ambrose murmured approvingly. "Excellent. That saves me a great deal of trouble."

Low, ominous incantations echoed through the laboratory, like the murmurs of ancient shadows from the abyss. The temperature plummeted as pale frost spread across the surroundings at a visible speed.

A faint blue wisp drifted out of the half-elf's corpse, struggling instinctively to escape—only to be frozen in place by the pervasive cold and left suspended stiffly in midair.

Ambrose traced countless lines of magical light with his hands, weaving them into intricate, dreamlike patterns that imprinted themselves onto the soul.

When the complex ritual was complete, he spoke to the soulfire. "You should be able to speak now. Hares, can you hear my voice?"

The soul flickered, trembling, as a weak sound emerged.

"It hurts..."

"That's merely phantom pain," Ambrose said calmly. "Your soul has been severed from its body. You are no longer capable of pain. Focus. Hold on to the memories etched deepest into you. That will help muster your will."

The soul trembled again. When it spoke once more, its voice was fragmented, but clearer.

"Mom... Please don't die... Mom..."

Ambrose was unfazed. Many adventurers' lives could fill several volumes of melodramatic prose, but only heroes ever had their stories turned into epics.

After calling out for his mother for a long while, Hares gradually regained a sliver of lucidity.

"I... What happened to me...? It's so dark... so cold... Where am I?"

"Darkness and cold, like pain, are illusions," Ambrose replied. "Souls perceive the world differently. You need time to adapt. For now, I've sealed off your external senses. Otherwise, your soul would collapse under the strain."

Without eyes, ears, or a nose, a soul experienced the world less through sensations and more like reading an impossibly detailed instruction manual.

Take Ambrose's experience drinking sour, watered-down ale in a tavern. His tongue couldn't taste anything, but his soul had already tagged the cup with descriptors like "diluted", "acidic", and "disgusting" in advance.

Now imagine holding up a single gold coin and having hundreds of thousands of words of descriptive data erupt into a soul's awareness all at once. Such information overload could rupture a fragile soul outright.

Once, a poetically inclined undead had written, "The world opened itself entirely to me—and I, in cowardice, shut my eyes."

An undead spent its entire existence pruning its perception of the world, reducing the burden on its soul: filtering out trivial details so as not to miss what truly mattered.

And this was only the beginning. Next came learning how to control an undead body using nothing more than the power of the soul.

While the soul controlled the body, the body, in turn, reshaped the soul.

That was why ghosts often resembled their living forms. The soul constantly adapted to the body's shape.

It was also why most undead retained humanoid forms: adapting to one's original body was far easier.

Only Ambrose, with his Mimetic Soul, could freely alter undead forms. He could simply create an artificial soul compatible with a given corporeal form, dramatically reducing the time needed for soul–body integration.

At present, Ambrose hadn't yet prepared a suitable undead vessel for Hares, so his soul remained sealed, capable only of speech and deprived of all other sensory input. Otherwise, Hares would have screamed himself mad for months before acclimating.

Once Hares' soul had steadied somewhat, Ambrose continued, "Did the paladins send you to infiltrate my castle?"

The soul shuddered violently. "It's you—Master Megaman! I remember now! That Dullahan was your construct! You killed us!"

If Gareth truly were Ambrose's creation, Ambrose would already have raised an entire legion and steamrolled the Lyon Empire by now. He'd have hung James Watson from a pyre himself.

"Answer the question, Hares," Ambrose said evenly. "Did the paladins instruct you to come to my castle?"

"Yes," Hares replied. "My brother and I only meant to swindle them for a bit of money, but they forced us to infiltrate the castle. We planned to make a quick circuit and leave."

His tone was thick with regret. Their gamble had ended in genuine death.

Ambrose pressed further for information about the paladins, but gained little. The brothers had barely interacted with Starfall, and only knew that he was a black knight sworn to the Oath of Vengeance.

"A black knight, huh?" Ambrose muttered. "Troublesome. Those paladins have no morals."

As he spoke to himself, Hares seized the chance to beg for mercy. "Master Megaman, this was our fault. But please, have mercy! Spare my brother. I'll serve you willingly. Skeleton, zombie, anything, but please, let Hastin live."

Ambrose asked curiously, "You two seem close. But how does a half-elf end up brothers with a human? Same father, different mothers? Or was it the other way around?"

"Our father was a slaver," Hares replied quietly. "Hastin's mother was a human slave. Mine was an elven slave... In the end, we killed him and fled."

Another miserable tale, but Ambrose had no interest in probing further.

Instead, he considered their utility. That black knight, Starfall, was irritatingly cautious. Why couldn't he be like that fool Allen, charging forward screaming about holy light?

He had to provoke Starfall. He couldn't afford to let Starfall keep control of the situation.

An idea began to take shape. "Right," Ambrose said suddenly, addressing the soul. "You seemed quite attached to your pet. Ever considered reincarnating as a lich?"