Guilt and Punishmen

by Sophia Schmidt

  Suddenly, the communication amulets lit up in unison, projecting Linjos's image.

  "Good morning, dear students. Today's activities will take place just like yesterday, with only one difference. We cannot risk another surprise attack, so I instruct you to go back to your housing after the afternoon call, while the sun is still high.

  Please, do not go out of town as your fallen companions did. I already lost enough students."

  After the Headmaster's hologram disappeared, the dining room resounded with: "Morons!". The students were growing closer to each other and now had a hard time believing that the day before, so many had thrown away their lives just to spite Linjos's orders.

  Lith, Phloria, and Friya were going back to the mine when Kalla approached them.

  "I'm sorry Scourge, but there is little time left. We need to talk. Now."

  Chapter 216 Tough Lessons

  Without waiting for a reply, Kalla Warped Lith to Scarlett's headquarters. It was located in a secret building underground the mining town, kept out of phase with the outside world thanks to dimensional magic.

  "I'm sorry for the rush, but there are many things I have to explain to you and a favor to ask." Kalla explained.

  "What are you talking about?" Lith replied, being still a bit shocked by the sudden turn of events.Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.

  "I know from your smell that you have become a Necromancer too. Also, I learned from Protector about the changes you experienced. I have yet to completely master higher Necromancy, but my teachings could still benefit you greatly, at least to avoid repeating my mistakes.

  "Power comes with a price and responsibilities, though. Are you willing to pay it?" She stared at him, waiting for a reply.

  "What do you mean?"

  "After yesterday's attack, I'm pretty sure that this Balkor guy will make me his primary target. My skills are the perfect counter to his own and now he is aware of my existence. I trust Scarlett, her strategy is sound.

  Yet I want a contingency plan, in case something happens to me. I want you to teach to my children in my stead. I'm entrusting to you the core of my knowledge for it to be passed down to them."

  "Do you mean Nok?" Lith still couldn't make heads or tails of her request.

  "I have more than one, but yes. I'm worried about Nok too."

  "Sure, okay. I like that furball and teaching one or two of them makes no difference." Lith was glad to accept her deal. He couldn't even imagine a fake mage defeating an Awakened one as strong as Kalla. There was little he wouldn't do for power and knowledge, helping the young Byk was nothing to him.

  "First, I have captured and experimented on the thralls of the 'god of death'¡'" Judging by her sneer, Kalla seemed to find the moniker quite hilarious.

  "¡and discovered a great flaw in his creations. A flaw that proves he is a fake mage, not one of us." By waving her paw, she opened a dimensional vortex, conjuring one of Balkor's undead between them.

  It was completely bound and blinded like a pig ready to be roasted.

  "Unlike true mages that mix light and darkness magic when they raise undead, fake mages need a mark to control them." Kalla touched the undead, making several runes made of light appear on its forehead.

  "Yes." Lith nodded.

  "Have you ever tried to add your mark on a creature that already bears one?"

  "No." Lith cursed at his own stupidity for not having thought of it by himself.

  "Try it. Either the fake spell or the one I taught you. Both work just fine."

  Lith did as instructed, using the fake spell to check such knowledge could be useful also to Tista and the other non Awakened. As soon as the second mark appeared, Kalla let go of the creature which started to shiver uncontrollably until it turned into smoke.

  "Undead created with human magic can bear more than one mark. That makes them unable to attack both the new and the old master. Since their nature is to blindly serve, the inner conflict kills them." Kalla explained.

  "Does it work on greater undead too?" Lith's eyes shined with hope. Maybe he had found a way out in case Balkor's creatures managed to reach him.

  "Sadly, no. This applies only on creatures without an ego. A greater undead can use its will to refuse the second mark, sorry." Kalla shook her head.

  "Don't underestimate this knowledge just because you are strong. Imagine if you were weak, alone, against one of those creatures. Do you realize you would still come out victorious? There's no need to destroy them with sword or magic, just a single spell."

  Lith pondered about her words, recognizing their truth.

  "Now I will teach you how to create a greater undead."

  "What?" He couldn't believe his ears. He could solve Solus's problem and his own in one fell swoop.

  "Scarlett told me about the friend you carry in your ring. I'm afraid you will not like what I'm going to tell you. Don't make the same mistake I did. Never create a greater undead. Please, I beg of you."

  "Then why teach me how to do it?" Kalla was not making any sense to him.

  "Because if you don't know how to create them, you can't learn how to destroy them if the necessity arises. Knowledge is power. You and I are similar, we never get tired of accumulating both, but I digress."

  Kalla shook her muzzle putting her paws close to Lith.

  "First, you need a corpse. The fresher it is the better. You can even use it on a live subject, but the only difference will be inflicting them an enormous and useless amount of pain.

  Then, you need to infuse darkness magic, as you have already done the first time we met, but as soon as the blood core starts to form you must stop using darkness magic and inject light magic until the balance is reached."

  Her right paw generated a small sphere of darkness, that became greyer the more light magic the left one infused until the color became uniform.

  "Only then you'll make the blood core grow using both the elements at the same time until the undead comes to life." She held the sphere between both her paws, growing it until it was as big as an apple.

  "That's it?" Lith was incredulous.

  "Yes, but it's an incredibly delicate process. One mistake and either you'll create a crazy beast that needs to be put down or destroy the corpse. It took me several tries before succeeding and I spent weeks with greater undead, studying their rituals and cores.

  Do you think you can do any better?"

  Her tone wasn't angry or sarcastic. Kalla reminded him of Elina when she was teaching him how to take care of Tista.

  "Considering that unlike you, I'm not attuned with any element, no." Lith admitted.

  "Do not feel ashamed. Acknowledging your limits is the first step to overcome them." The more Kalla talked, the more she reminded him of his mother.

  "As for the why you shouldn't raise greater undead, you deserve an explanation. During my travels, after I evolved, I met a clan of vampires. I stayed with them for a while, learning as much as I could from them about Necromancy and darkness magic.

  "After witnessing how they turn a human into one of their own kind, I decided to replicate the process, just like I have shown you. After several attempts on the corpses of a group of hunters that had been chasing me, I finally succeeded.

  "My test subject was a horrible person, a deranged human that only brought misery to others. Only one death wasn't enough, so I raised it back. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that unlike vampires, when a Necromancer creates a vampire, it's not the same person it was when it was alive.

  "My hypothesis is that vampires turn living humans into undead, while I raised a corpse. Maybe the soul had already left its shell, or maybe my magic summoned another one with a stronger will to live.

  "Whatever the reason, I immediately understood my mistake. I'm a mother, so when she came back to life, I recognized that feeling. She was na?ve, innocent like a baby, her mind was a blank slate, completely dependent on my life fo
rce to survive.

  "Creating a greater undead is like giving birth. It's a new lifeform entirely, completely unrelated to the corpse's previous existence. I am bound to her like she is to me. I couldn't hurt or kill her anymore."

  "What did you do with it?" Lith shrugged.

  "I adopted her. It's the other child I told you about."

  "What?" Lith was flabbergasted.

  "That's why I advise you not to use that spell and why higher Necromancy will not help your friend. The corpses you would raise will already have a soul of their own, you can't just create an empty vessel. Nature abhors the void, in all of its forms."

  Lith sighed. Suddenly lesser Necromancy was much more alluring. Mindless thralls were much easier to handle compared to sentient undead that would look at him as a father.

  The idea of nurturing such creatures just to dispose of them like trash was cruel even for him.

  "I'm so sorry, Solus." Lith thought. I really hoped to give you a body through Necromancy. Kalla hasn't evolved from long, though. She might be wrong, maybe there is a way to give you a physical form. Are you sure you don't want to try a construct or something?"

  Solus didn't know whether to laugh or cry at Lith's stubbornness.

  "I told you countless times: I already feel like a monster. I have the body of a construct, I feed off your mana like an undead or a construct would. I want to get out of my cage, not exchange it for a new one."

  Seeing that Lith was even more disappointed than she was, Solus embraced his soul with her own. A warm sensation invaded Lith's being.

  "Stop worrying about me. I'm fine, I really am. You are already giving me so much, sharing your life with me, your joy, sadness, and tears. My tower form is slowly recovering, who knows if sooner or later my wisp form will evolve into something more?

  "If you really want to make me happy, live your life to its fullest. Enjoy what you now have with Phloria. It should be most precious to you because it's completely unexpected. That girl is rushing a little too much, but she really cares about you. She's a keeper."¨C

  Lith could agree on the rushing part, but the rest? He had never discussed his love life even with Carl, let alone with another girl. He found most embarrassing that his hormones and loneliness were making him crave for intimacy with Phloria.

  "I guess that not being with a woman for thirteen year and a few months it's really taking a toll on me. I even keep counting. Maybe Phloria is right, I do have a perverted mind."¨C

  "Scourge?" Kalla called him, noticing he was spacing out.

  "Please continue."

  "Another thing I discovered during my travels, is that greater undead can actually be harmed by light magic, but not in the way that you may think. If used directly, light magic works on them like it would on lesser undead. It would feed their hunger, making them stronger.

  "But if you use it on their blood cores instead, you can temporarily fix the unbalance that is their existence. When a ghoul eats living flesh, a vampire drinks blood, or a Wraith drains life force with its touch, they are all doing the same thing:

  "Consuming the light energy that living being possess to keep their blood cores from collapsing. Even if it's an oversimplification, let's just say that undeath at its core is a condition where the body becomes incapable of producing light magic.

  "Without its counterpart, the darkness magic that's naturally produced keeps eroding both the core and the body, needing constant transfusions of light magic from an external source to survive."

  "Are you saying that¡" Lith's hopes were almost restored.

  "Yes, I am. If you use light magic on their blood core, they regain most of their emotions, lose their hunger, and can even eat normally for a while, be they beasts or humans.

  "Yet it comes with a price. As long as their blood core is balanced, they also lose most of their powers, becoming vulnerable and mortal again."

  "Why are you researching this field? It's almost impossible to direct mana to a core in battle. We need to use Invigoration to find it first and then send the light energy. It's not like you can ask the enemy to stay still for a minute or two."

  Lith was fascinated by the theoretical implications, but at the moment he found all that chat useless. He desperately needed an edge against Balkor's creatures if he wanted to survive.

  "Because for some undeath is a blessing, for others it's a curse. I don't want my child to live forever in the shadows, hiding from the living like a rabid beast. My goal is to find a way to turn her back to human, giving her a chance to a normal life."

  "Why are you telling me all this?" Lith could understand Kalla being grateful to him for saving Nok. He could also appreciate her seeing a kindred spirit in him, but the knowledge and the burden she was imparting him were too much.

  "Because, just like me, you are different from the others. I'm one of the few magical beasts whose evolution borders with undeath, yet you treat me no differently from before, unlike even those of my own kind.

  "I don't care if you are a human like your friends think, a beast like Protector says, or a new kind of monster like Scarlett fears. You are someone capable of befriending magical beasts without looking down on us, of carrying an unknown life form at your finger and calling her a friend.

  That's why I trust you to teach and care for my offspring like I would."

  Chapter 217 Valor

  Kalla interrupted her lesson briefly, to allow Lith to have lunch and resuming immediately after he had finished. Lith filled several notebooks with his notes, describing all the spells she was teaching him, the feeling it gave when she used them on him or on a test subject, and the differences with his own performance.

  Learning from true magic was both harder and easier compared to fake magic. Lith hadn't to memorize any magical word, accent, or hand sign, but he needed a deep understanding of the how and why the mana had to flow in a certain way rather than another.

  Kalla knew that she couldn't possibly teach him in a day what she had learned in months during her travels or thanks to Scarlett mentoring her. So she imparted him the most solid foundations she could about her work, hoping he could achieve the same results through study and effort.

  ***

  Meanwhile, inside the headquarters, Scarlett was teaching Protector how to use his newfound powers. Unlike Kalla, he lacked an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. After evolving, he had been content enjoying his life with Selia, studying magic only during his free time.

  "Damn, this country bumpkin of a Skoll is like the proverbial frog in the well." Scarlett inwardly cursed. "If after discovering the outside world the frog decided to not give a damn about it, of course. He is by far the weakest of us three, I need to bring him up to speed and fast!"¨C

  Scarlett was dissecting one of Balkor's thralls they had captured, using her enchanted pince-nez to better understand the structure of the spells that kept the undead together along with its abnormal blood core. She would pass it to Protector from time to time, showing him how to recognize a spell's keystones.

  "I knew there was something wrong with Balkor the moment Linjos described to me his creations." Scarlett explained.

  "Lesser undead that requires flesh and blood to work, able to regenerate and ignore arrays. None of it made sense. Necromancy doesn't work like that. Do you see that?" Scarlett pointed to a black piece of flesh right besides were the blood core was.

  "Yes." Protector replied while wearing the pince-nez. "It smells like an Abomination."

  "Because it is one, or at last a fragment of it. This madman must have found an Abomination naturally resistant to magic, captured it, and integrated its abilities with his thralls.

  "Abominations constantly need life force to survive while undead bear the spark of their maker as a mark. He used his own life force to keep together the blood core and the Abomination's unique abilities. This is the secret behind their powers and limited life span.

  "As soon as Balkor's life force runs out, the Abomination fragment goes wild, destr
oying the undead and making impossible a full examination like the one we are performing right now. Whoever he is, this guy is insane."

  "Don't you mean a genius?" Protector was barely understanding half of what Scarlett was saying. "Also, why is this thing still intact? Shouldn't have already self-destructed?"

  "He is definitely insane. He didn't use light magic, but his own life force. It means that with each undead he makes, his life gets shorter. As for your second question, it should, but Kalla's array slowed down the decay process enough for us to collect all the data we need.

  "The good news is that Balkor isn't the one I'm looking for. He isn't looking for immortality, rather he seeks the death of his enemies even if it costs him his own life. The bad news is that now I must add him to my 'to do' list." Scarlett sighed.

  ***

  Blood Desert, Balkor's secret lab

  Despite what Scarlett thought, Balkor didn't consider integrating undead and Abominations as his masterpiece. Finding the array resistant creature had just been a fluke. He viewed it as a sign that the heavens sought justice as much as he did.

  What he considered his magnum opus, the only thing that he deeply regretted not being able to share with the rest of the world, was turning magic crystals into memory crystals.

  They allowed his creations to act as one, learn from each other's experiences, and pass that knowledge to others. With each wave he sent there would be a few undead embedded with a memory crystal, the Controllers, that would keep themselves away from the fight while collecting and sharing the data.

  Without the memory crystals, he would have never managed to give his thralls a hive mind, nor to be so successful in his endeavor. The first wave had been composed of Crawlers, whose purpose was testing the defenders' reaction speed and teamwork.

  He had never expected the Crystal and Earth Griffon's Headmasters to be so stupid to hole themselves up in a confined space, making the number advantage overwhelming and letting themselves get butchered right off the bat.