Reborn with a Necromancer System-Chapter 236: Uncharged Crystals

The battlefield lay silent.

The corpses of demons, some still twitching, others already dissolving into black vapor, littered the ground. Their blood steamed on the cracked stone, releasing a stench that made even the air taste of iron and ash. Seyren stood a few paces back, no longer the proud demon lord he had been hours before. Now, he lingered with his eyes lowered, bound and branded as a pawn.

Kai ignored him. His attention was on the cluster of crystals piled at the center of the ruined courtyard. He had expected them to radiate with vibrant, dangerous energy, like a furnace threatening to erupt. Instead, they looked… dull. Their edges were chipped, their glow faint and uneven, like a candle guttering in a wind it could not withstand.

They didn't pulse with magic. They only hummed in a faint, almost pitiful rhythm.

Kai crouched and picked one up, turning it over in his palm.

Cold.

He imagined that if they had enough power to rip a hole in space, they'd be warm to the touch with the amount of magic stored inside.

With a thought, he tore open his shadow space, and Orlin emerged from the gloom, his skeletal figure wrapped in tatters of decayed robes, pale green soul-flames flickering in his hollow eye sockets.

"These aren't ready, are they?" Kai asked, lifting the crystal for Orlin to examine.

The lich extended a long, bony hand, brushing the surface. For a moment the green flames in his sockets narrowed to pinpricks, then widened again.

"No," Orlin said, voice a rasp like stone against bone. "Not yet. They are fractured, unstable. They will need sacrifices. Blood. Souls. Death." He paused. "Or…" He tilted his skull toward Kai. "…you could fuel them with life essence."

Kai's decision was immediate.

"Then I'll do that."

The words came too quickly, almost defensively.

From behind him, Vepice stirred. She had been watching silently, her face pale and her breathing shallow, still recovering from the battle. Her eyes flicked from Kai to the lich and back again.

"Sacrifices?" she asked, her tone cautious, edged with fear.

Kai shook his head. "No. I have plenty of life essence."

She released a sigh of relief and said nothing more about the matter.

Kai gripped the crystal with both hands. He closed his eyes, steadying his breath. Normally, he would twist his life essence, shaping it into spells, barriers, necromantic threads of power. But this time, he did not weave it. He poured it raw, unrefined, directly into the waiting stone.

The crystal responded instantly.

It devoured his essence like a starved beast, pulling at him with an almost-bottomless hunger. The pale hum became a thrumming pulse, sharp vibrations crawling up his arms. He grit his teeth as the pull intensified, as though the crystal wanted to drink him dry.

Numbers flashed in the corner of his vision.

[Life Essence: 199,031]

[Life Essence: 142,308]

[Life Essence: 108,452]

[Life Essence: 101,993]

The drain was immense. His stomach twisted, his chest tightened, and sweat began to bead on his brow.

The crystal's glow swelled brighter and brighter, veins of light racing through its jagged body until it looked as though it might split apart from the force within. The dull hum had become a living roar, the sound of energy vibrating so violently that even the ground seemed to tremble.

Kai's knuckles whitened around the crystal, his jaw clenched. But he refused to let go.

Finally, the stone gave a sharp crack, not breaking, but sealing itself, its fractured edges knitting together with sudden clarity. Its glow dimmed, not in weakness, but in stability. For the first time, it felt whole.

The pull ended, leaving Kai swaying slightly on his feet.

He glanced at the numbers again.

[Life Essence: 93,217]

He let out a long, shuddering breath and dropped the now-stabilized crystal back with the others.

"Well," Orlin said, his skeletal jaw twitching in something almost like amusement. "That was… effective."

Kai said nothing, only flexing his fingers, still trembling faintly from the drain. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Vepice stepped closer, worry in her gaze as she looked at him, then at the glowing crystals.

They pulsed quietly in the dim light, no longer dull but alive now..

Kai knew he had fed them more than enough he felt the limits of them get reached. But as he looked at the faint shimmer running along their jagged surfaces, a thought gnawed at the back of his mind.

'Will that seriously only be enough for one trip? And can we take the crystals with us so nobody else can follow us through?' The thought churned in Kai's head as he stared at the dull, humming fragments in his hand. They pulsed faintly, as if sleeping hearts barely clinging to a beat. He turned to Seyren, his expression tight.

"So, we leave now?" Kai asked, his voice edged with impatience.

Seyren's lip curled, but there was no strength left in his arrogance. "If there are more traitors, we could risk the crystals being damaged."

"Not an issue."

Kai opened his shadow space with a flicker of will, the dark rift yawning open behind him. He pressed the crystals toward it, but the moment they touched the threshold, the shadows hardened like stone, rejecting them outright. It was as if his own magic recoiled, a wall forcing him back. He tried again, gritting his teeth, but the result was the same: a shuddering resistance, like trying to force water into an unyielding vessel.

Orlin stepped forward, his tone calm but heavy with knowledge. "What you're doing would actually be an issue. Do you think my people didn't consider grabbing those crystals and leaving the dangers of Muderan behind? We did. Many times. But those crystals are bound to this realm. They belong to it. And…" His sunken eyes flickered toward Kai's shadows. "Your shadow space does not allow living beings inside."

Kai frowned, frustration burning at the edge of his control. "But they're not alive. They're crystals." He glanced down at them again, their dim glow lighting his palms, then back at Orlin.

Orlin shook his head slowly. "You're a necromancer, Kai. You of all people should be able to see it for what it is."

Kai narrowed his eyes, focusing, not just looking, but peering with that part of himself that brushed against the veil between life and death. At first, all he saw was inert stone.

Then… something shifted.

A whisper in his mind. A faint tugging on his thoughts, like brittle fingers clutching at his veins.

And then he felt it.

The crystals weren't stone at all. They were bodies.

Lives.

Countless fragments of something compressed. The echo of a thousand screams folded and locked away into faceted prisons.

They were alive, barely, but stretched into eternity, sustained by something old and cruel.

The realization hit him like a blade through the gut.

His chest tightened, bile rising before he could push it down. He turned his head, coughing once, then doubled over, vomiting onto the stone floor. His stomach wrenched until it was empty, the sound echoing in the dim chamber.

The crystals thrummed on the ground, as if mocking him.

Kai wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, trembling. He couldn't shake the uneasy feeling.

His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts.

"They're alive," he whispered hoarsely. "Gods damn it. They're… alive."

Orlin only gave the faintest nod, his expression unreadable.