“Take it easy. Our reflexes might be as sharp as ever, but our senses being dulled has me worried.”
“I totally get it. But still, this beats being a ghost by a long shot.”
Barbara and Hessel strapped on some leather armor and began taking practice swings with wooden swords. They moved slowly and cautiously; it was as though they were afraid their bodies were made of glass.
Their first weakness was that if they were injured, they couldn’t be healed. Even if they were in human form, they were still fundamentally undead. Healing miracles and Transposition didn’t work on them. If they suffered any damage, they needed to revert back to their undead forms and “repair” themselves. On top of that...
“We don’t want Liliana trying to lick away our scrapes and scratches again...” Barbara said, glancing over at the high elf. Liliana wilted slightly.
Their second weakness was that even while in their human forms, they were still vulnerable to light. Barbara had skinned her knee at one point, so Liliana had hopped over to lick it all better...resulting in Barbara’s kneecap being reduced to a charred mess. They had nothing in the way of resistance to light, and the same applied to the sun. Though Virossa’s existence had given them hope—as he was a night elf Swordmaster who was fine in the sunlight while transformed—the sun was unfortunately not so forgiving to undead.
“On the bright side, that means it won’t be easy for Enma to gain immunity to sunlight...” Alex had muttered with a scowl.
“Getting used to this missing finger is a pain...” Taking a practice swing with his wooden greatsword, Hessel shook his left hand, an unhappy expression on his face. As he shook the hand, the little finger waved lifelessly from the first joint.
In order to test their resistance to sunlight, Hessel had sacrificed his nondominant hand’s little finger. Though the project got shut down the moment his finger had shown signs of reacting poorly to the sunlight, it had already been too late. The damage had been done, both to his body and his soul, causing him to lose function in that finger entirely.
Which led to their third weakness: Bodily damage would also directly impact their souls. Lost body parts would, naturally, not function. For ordinary undead, they moved by will, not by feeling. So Hessel could still move the finger in undead form. But once he transformed into a human, the finger was paralyzed.
“Judging by the precedent we have of a devil using Anthromorphy, your soul should go back to normal after a while, but...” Ante surmised that should the head, heart, or any other critical organ become lost, there was a good chance the whole soul would become unable to sustain itself. In other words, a fatal wound in human form would be unhealable, and they wouldn’t be able to just “die” as they had before. Instead, it was very likely their soul would simply cease to exist.
When you put it all together, though they had been returned to “life,” they still had all the weaknesses of being undead, now coupled with the fragility of being human.
That said, not everything was negative. Being undead had its perks too.
“Just be glad it was your little finger. What if you hadn’t been thinking and used your pointer finger instead?”
“True enough. My grip is a bit weaker, but I still have so much dumb strength... Hah!” Hessel swung his blade again, a blast of wind emanating from it to score the wall of the basement a dozen paces away. It was a Swordmaster’s technique.
Since their senses were the same as they had been in life, they could wholly wield their Swordmaster abilities while transformed, with the added benefit of being able to leverage the greatest possible strength from their muscles. There was a chance that overdoing it physically would have ill effects on their souls, so they still had to be careful. But it seemed that unlike losing body parts, muscle and tissue damage from wear and tear had a significantly smaller impact on their soul.
“Okay, we should be able to make this work. Though, it makes me kinda scared for when things really start to heat up.”
“If you were going to lose something, it should have been that huge nose,” Barbara said, poking at Hessel’s nose with a grin. She was making fun of how using Anthromorphy while in the body of a forest elf had greatly altered his appearance. In the same way, Barbara’s canine teeth were now much longer and sharper.
“That sounds awful just thinking about it. What if I lost my sense of smell?” Hessel replied with a snort, getting a laugh out of Barbara.
An unexpected side effect of the transformation was the return of their senses of taste and smell. Of course they also could feel pain again, but since it signified damage to the body, it was pretty essential. And the sensation was dulled compared to what it had been in life, so it wasn’t much of a bother to them.
Hessel continued swinging his sword, each time leaving a deep gouge on the far wall. His specialty, the Linebreaker, usually left him exceptionally exhausted after each use. This made using it in quick succession quite the rarity. But now that he was undead and couldn’t feel tired, he was able to fire it off as many times as he liked. The only issue was...
“Ah, dammit! I’m out of magic again!” Like a marionette with its strings cut, Hessel flopped to the floor, his body unravelling and dissipating into mist as he returned to spiritual form.
Right now, the two Swordmasters had bodies made entirely of magic, similar to devils. It was a huge advantage compared to normal undead as there was no need to have physical bodies prepared everywhere they went. In exchange, their magic consumption was much higher, and their bodies would disappear once they ran out.
“Alex! I need more magic!”
“Like I said before, use the jewel! In a real fight, there’s no telling if I’ll be able to help you!”
“Oh, right.”
Hessel floated over to one of the jewels lined up by the nearby wall—each filled to the brim with Alex’s dark property magic—and touched it, heaving a sigh of relief.
“This dark magic sure is tasty...”
“Hey now, you’re beginning to sound like an evil spirit.”
Alex had started getting used to Hessel’s undead jokes, and was now starting to bite back with jokes of his own. The more he talked with Hessel, the rougher his speech became. It was like the more time spent with the Swordmaster, the more the old Alex started to come out. One that Layla had never known. She honestly felt a little jealous.
Similarly, Liliana watched Alex talk with his old friend with a strange expression. It looked somehow sad, or perhaps worried. It was so starkly different from the expressions she usually wore that Layla found herself calling out to her.
“Liliana?”
“Woof?” But when she turned to Layla to reply, the innocent, puppy-dog face returned in a flash.
Liliana had been made to think she was a dog, and so that was how she acted. However, the truth was that the seal on her memories had been removed long ago. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for her old self to return at any moment. But even if that were to happen, making her way back home afterward would still be difficult. In that case, it would be easier for her to stay this way, wouldn’t it...?