Chapter 5

The lord’s eyes crawled over my body. I’d spent so long confined to a bed. All my muscles had atrophied, and I survived on the healing magic from the holy mages who visited me regularly. The hard labor I did now—running around all the time hunting magical beasts—was unthinkable considering my former situation. Even now, I was thin and scrawny. I’d always longed for a healthy body ever since my past life (of course, just one without the pain racking my entire body was something I was extremely grateful for). The books claimed that the more mutations I went through and the more monstrous I became, the more physical changes I experienced, so I very much wanted to live that long, no matter what it took. Still, though… They sold my corpse, did they? That was new information, but it wasn’t really enough to shock me. I never held any particularly strong feelings toward my family. In life, I’d had my hands full just enduring the agony; I’d had no time to show any other emotion. I didn’t exactly…resent them, either. My family had never come to visit in the last few years, but the regular holy mages’ “nursing” must have cost a fortune, and it was true that their life-extending treatments had been slightly effective. The important thing in battle was reach. I was scrawny, but you could call it a stroke of good luck that I hadn’t died before growing to the brink of adulthood. Even if the nursing hadn’t been done out of consideration for me, it had still definitely benefited me. And regarding how they sold my corpse to Hak—there was nothing to say about that, either. Suddenly, I recalled a piece of basic knowledge about the undead I’d gotten from a book. The undead were said to act based on their regrets. But what drove me was probably not the kind of grudge toward the living that regular undead had, but rather, a survival instinct. Even agonized by endless suffering, death hadn’t been the only thing I’d thought about. I didn’t think it had been, at least. I hadn’t wanted to die. I’d wanted to live, even through death. I’d wanted to hold on to myself. Maybe that raw emotion had granted me the memories of my past life that flesh-men could never have. No matter how I wrapped my head around it, Lord Horos had saved me, and I owed him a debt. I was truly thankful. But I couldn’t let him do as he pleased—not when he had his special privilege over me. In fact, I had one trump card to play. The kind that I’d never be able to use a second time. It wouldn’t give me a surefire victory, but depending on the timing, it could be enough to defeat the lord. The more life I took, the more death I accumulated, the more I stalled for time—the more powerful I became. The more the success rate of a surprise attack increased. I’d said it over and over again, but the timing would be crucial. I’d gather information. The lord’s combat capabilities were an unknown. I couldn’t assume anything from his appearance and age—he was a powerful sorcerer. Sure, I was best in close combat, but there was no being too careful with a knavish magician who had lived to be this age even after breaking a taboo and turning the world against him. As I secretly kindled my dark urges, Hak suddenly scowled. “Come to think of it… It seems the Ender Knights will be coming to Enge in the near future.” “What…? …This isn’t a mistake on your part, is it?” “Of course not. Everyone I deal with is quite tight-lipped, I assure you. Their sense of smell is something else, though. Just to be safe, I may not want to come here for a while after this.” The term sent a difficult-to-describe shock through me. The Ender Knights. They were the world’s most powerful military force, which put an end to the ceaseless darkness. They’d been in books I’d read in my lifetime, as well as in the lord’s own collection. They often appeared as heroes in fairy tales, and every child idolized how they cut down any threat or hardship with their swords of light. Even I’d dreamed of becoming one before I was bedridden. Necromancers—creators of the undead who toyed with souls—were the ultimate enemies of the Ender Knights. A long time ago, when I was still a child, a good portion of the picture books I read were filled with battles between necromancers and the Knights. It went without saying who won. Judging by the lord’s face, which was twisted with anger, their murderous relationship wasn’t just a thing of stories. And…those Ender Knights were my enemy as well, since I was a living dead not meant to exist. Considering how relentless they were, even when depicted in children’s books, they would never tolerate my existence. “Have they followed me…? I hadn’t done any research for years… Damned hunting dogs. I’ll kill them and make them my eternal slaves.” “And I’d rather not be caught in a battle between you and the Knights. I think I’ll withdraw for a time.” “…Wait, Hak. Before you run away, I have a request. End, go back to your morgue.” What did he intend to ask of the man? …It made me curious, but I couldn’t disobey his command. With the most sluggish motions I could muster, I left the room. I ended up not hearing what they discussed afterward. …Which was fine. What I did hear had made my skin crawl, but it was better than proceeding in ignorance. I was running out of time. What did I have to do to survive? After returning to the morgue, I rested my back against the wall, folded my arms, and began thinking. The first thing I needed was a good sense of our combat powers—mine, Horos’s, and the Ender Knights’. I was doubtlessly the weakest of the three. The entire reason I’d been able to fight the forest’s magical beasts was because I had the lord’s backup. After gaining experience and going through a rank mutation, I’d grown a little, but my physical body’s toughness hadn’t changed much at all since back then. Typically, when a civilian who had never known combat turned into one of the lowest ranks of undead—the famous zombie—it was said that their combat abilities increased. That, too, was due to the undead having no limiters placed on them. Normal human brains had limiters. If a human body tried to use its full strength, the recoil would apparently damage it. Limiters were a safety mechanism that existed to prevent that, and humans lived out peaceful lives because of that function; but at the same time, humans were made in such a way that they couldn’t output their total power. On the other hand, those turned into undead had no such safety mechanisms, nor did they have a sense of pain. A person changed into a zombie would exhibit levels of superhuman might in complete contrast to when they’d lived, without a care for the damage they’d sustain, and would never stop until they were utterly destroyed. They didn’t need their internal organs to survive, so they could keep going even if their heart was stabbed through and their limbs blown off, moving and devouring solely on their residual grudges. I was a flesh-man rather than a zombie, so there were some differences, but being an undead was one of the reasons I was able to fell magical beasts in the forest with a frail body immediately after my resurrection. The other reason, incidentally, was the lord slowing them down with magic and taking charge of healing me. Without that, there was a high chance I would have died before getting accustomed to battle. Now, as a step up from that—a ghoul—I possessed even stronger abilities than back then, but if asked if I could stand up to the Ender Knights, the answer was no. One-on-one, I’d lose with certainty. Even if there were five or six of me, they would kill me with the same ease as one cuts weeds. I’d heard the Knights were the best of the best, having gone through severe training and experiences. Their armaments apparently varied from member to member, but each was as strong as a thousand men, and to make it worse, they were used to dealing with undead like me. Our fighting techniques were on different levels. Our physical abilities were on different levels. And if I was inferior in terms of experience, too, there wasn’t even a slim chance I would win. They were the light. If necromancers were dominators of the dark, they were the exact opposite. And not in the sense that their societal positions were high—or anything like that. The Ender Knights controlled the opposite energy from necromancers. I didn’t understand the precise mechanisms behind it, but according to the books, the energy in this world could be broadly categorized into two groups: positive and negative. You could call it light and dark, or life and death, but all those who lived and were alive possessed positive energy, without exception. And when that was reduced to zero, the living would die and part from this world forever. On the other hand, there was a type of sorcery that broke that rule—and that was necromancy. Their curses repurposed corpses to operate on negative energy. Horos’s magic had done the same to me and turned me into a puppet. The reason my body could move even though my heart wasn’t beating was because he’d altered the power source driving my continued existence. I’d been changed to operate on negative energy instead of the positive energy generated by a beating heart. And unlike positive energy, its negative counterpart didn’t naturally decay. That was why the undead had no lifespan—and why they were called undead. But that didn’t mean they were without weaknesses. My physical body was not invincible. I could move because the lord’s powers had altered me somewhat. If my body was severely damaged and unable to hold its connection to my soul, I’d probably die. And if, for some reason, my energy was reduced to zero, I’d die in that case, too. That much was fairly simple. Anything further was a little more complex and beyond my own understanding—including the reason the undead were at such a massive disadvantage to the Ender Knights. For convenience’s sake, I’ve been describing energy in terms of positive and negative, but that isn’t quite accurate. The positive was energy, but my power source, the negative, was not—it was more like a “state.” What the Knights controlled (technically, what all normal creatures controlled) was the power of light: positive energy. They boasted unparalleled martial prowess, but up against the undead, they did not destroy—instead, with extreme efficiency, they purified. Rather than toiling away to destroy my body, they would add light energy to it, thereby altering my state from a negative to a zero state. The lord’s powers had granted me a functioning body, but the moment this body entered a zero state, I would cease to operate. It would be my second death. This was the biggest weakness that I—no—all undead had. Meanwhile, we undead couldn’t use the same method against them. Negative energy wasn’t energy, per se (this had confused me quite a bit, too), so we couldn’t amass a beam of negative energy and fire it, for example, to reduce them to zero. The fundamental principles of the world made it impossible to remove this weakness. It was truly cruel to think about, especially since I couldn’t win in a straight fight. Of course, even if I hadn’t had this weakness, I wouldn’t stand a chance against the Knights given their overwhelming power…but I digress. I was now stronger than ever before. It may seem strange to relate my past life as the epitome of weakness, but since I’d changed into a ghoul, I was better than a human in so many ways: mightier, tougher, and capable of healing my wounds. I’d also gained the ability to transform part of my nails with Sharpen Nails and sharpen my fangs with Hone Fangs. In undead terms, I was a second-year. Unlike flesh-men, ghouls had to eat corpses to keep up their strength, but for reasons such as the absence of anything limiting their extreme might, they were unimaginably powerful. In the rank system, ghouls were typically described as undead who could defeat one or two of the lowest-class mercenaries, but I was a little smarter than the typical specimen. I was confident I could take down three or four. But that wouldn’t be enough to defeat the heroic Ender Knights. The simplest option would be to run away. I held no grudge against the Knights like the lord did, and I didn’t particularly want to fight them. The lord, however, would get in the way of that with his privilege over me. That privilege was a strong one. And in reality, it wasn’t just how he could make me obey any order. I hadn’t found much reading material regarding magic, but even from what I’d researched, I learned the lord had two other facets of authority aside from his absolute commands. Those were the authority to know the general location of any undead he created and the authority to cast specific spells on them remotely. No matter how much physical distance I put between us, we were linked via magical means. It was a kind of safety that wouldn’t go away unless the lord died, and through it, the lord could freely cast magic on me. To put it simply, he could revert me to a corpse whenever he wanted. It wasn’t possible to remove that external authority. Actually, there might have been a way to, but it was too far out of the question. I didn’t have time, either. Even if I wanted to flee, I’d have to kill the lord at any cost. To be honest, I couldn’t decide which would be harder: using the lord to defeat the Knights or killing the lord and running away. I was cornered. Both options seemed nothing short of impossible, but I had to choose one. The day after Hak left, before those worries had any hope of being resolved, I was placed into an even worse predicament. The lord had dispatched countless guards to keep watch over his residence: innumerable owls that silently patrolled the mansion and conveyed every last thing they heard to their master. I couldn’t sneak out during the night anymore, which meant that I, a ghoul, could no longer satisfy my appetite for food. I’d underestimated how careful the lord could be. Actually, you could say that I had only known a sliver of this world. My sole source of information had been those books, and none of them had mentioned anything about surveillance magic. Still, regardless of whether I could have done anything about it even if I had known, I should’ve at least predicted this. The spell the lord used clearly hadn’t been necromancy, but I’d already known he could utilize other things. The swarm of owls that appeared from the strange magic circle he’d drawn were let loose out the window. They scattered into the night forest. Fortunately, he didn’t leave any of the owls inside the mansion. But if I couldn’t get out, then I couldn’t sate my hunger. The lord called Lou to him, then commanded the limp, downcast slave in a sharp voice: “Lou, when they return, feed them. They are familiars—my eyes and ears. Servants who are much more useful and loyal than you.” “Y-yes, of course, Master… I, ah… Th-that is… What should I…give them?” “Meat. Bloody, fresh, and raw. No need to do anything with it.” Lou was frightened, but I didn’t have time to empathize. His eyes and ears. This was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. I didn’t have the skill to slip past the eyes of the lord’s familiars to enjoy a night walk. The skeleton knights patrolling the mansion were excellent guardsmen who lacked any concept of exhaustion, but they didn’t have the intelligence to report on the movements of their allies. They lacked vocal cords, too. But those owls were different. If the lord considered them his eyes and ears, then they’d probably convey anything they saw or heard to him immediately. Going out to hunt at night…would be impossible. It was far too risky. And the lord was already on high alert as it was. My nighttime hunts meant two things to me: accumulating strength to accelerate my rank mutation—and food. The latter was the issue right now. Undead rank mutations weren’t purely increases in strength. They came with new shortcomings, too. The advantages and disadvantages balanced each other out. Ghouls had higher physical abilities than flesh-men, and while they were better than flesh-men in almost every way, unlike flesh-men, they needed food to survive. Food wasn’t optional; it was a requirement, one that only ghouls had—a very powerful hunger. A hunger more intense than I’d ever felt it in my lifetime, a hunger that could completely take over your logical mind. That was likely the biggest reason ghouls attacked people. What I’d experienced at first, after mutating, had been hell. My mind had been on fire, and impulses shook my instincts. The words I want to eat dominated my thoughts, and everything—the lord, Lou, corpses, the other undead—looked like food to me. I had managed to repress that provocation and acquire food only because I had been lucky. My desire to survive was just a tiny bit stronger than my appetite. That was how I desperately held the impulse down and was able to sneak out to the mansion’s food stores before attacking the corpses or the lord. One wrong move, and I’d have transformed into a demon controlled by his appetite, and my desire to survive would never have overridden my hunger again. A ghoul’s hunger wasn’t something you could endure through willpower alone. My already tight schedule had just disappeared almost entirely. In my experience, if I didn’t eat anything, my ghoulish hunger would reach its limit in about three days. After that, it would be a battle against reason. I’d held it together for half a day last time. That would probably be how long I’d last this time, too. But I was defeated the moment I found myself in this state. A ghoul’s strength was inversely proportional to its hunger. My power rapidly decreased the closer to empty my stomach got. I didn’t know how far down it would go, but I probably didn’t have much time to waste. But with Lou doubting me, I couldn’t sneak into the food stores like I did the first time. I went hunting with the lord as he commanded. Even though I didn’t have the energy for it, I was accustomed to hunting the magical beasts, and they posed no real threat. And I had backup. Shoving down my hunger, which smoldered within me like embers, I simply focused on impassively following orders. I killed a hunk of living meat in front of me, then another, then another. I was hungry. Blood splattered, and a warm corpse fell. But I couldn’t lay a hand on them. If the lord knew I’d mutated into a ghoul with intelligence, he’d shackle me. It was no more than good fortune that he hadn’t placed strong shackles on me already. What should I do…? The lord was constantly on his guard by now. I highly doubted a surprise attack would work. Blocking a pebble flung like an arrow with my billhook, I cut a monkey that had been hiding atop the trees diagonally from its shoulder. My only ray of hope…was a rank mutation. If it happened, and I ceased to be a ghoul, I wouldn’t have to be tormented by this hunger anymore. It wouldn’t solve the underlying problem, and it would give me other big issues, but it would at least buy some time. Was it possible? It had been around three months since I’d mutated into a ghoul, a far shorter time than the usual period for a flesh-man to achieve a rank mutation, which was anywhere from six months to a year. But the next mutation was supposed to take years. A miracle—I needed a miracle. I forcibly deflected my thoughts away from my empty stomach and mowed down a pack of surrounding nightwolves with my billhook in a bloodbath. And then, suddenly, the lord said suspiciously, “…End, your movements seem sluggish.” “…” “Has something happened? You…don’t appear to be wounded.” “…” The lord’s clouded eyes inspected me as an artist would analyze their own work. A brief chill passed over me, but after I stood silently for a few moments, he decided it was his imagination and commanded me to seek out the next prey. …How had he sensed something was wrong? For an instant, I felt an indescribable irritation, but I was fighting while resisting my empty stomach with everything I had. It wasn’t the least bit strange for the lord, who had always been close at hand watching me fight, to feel as though something was out of place. I’d been trying to behave the same way as always, but I couldn’t help feeling rushed. Mindlessly, I swung my weapon. And swung. And swung. Blood sprayed, and by coincidence, a droplet went into my mouth. I’d never tasted wine before, but perhaps my current state was comparable to that of a drunken man. An incredible heat rose from the pit of my stomach, ran up my esophagus, and rattled my thoughts. It wasn’t enough. Just blood wasn’t enough. My swelling hunger pounded against my sense of reason, and I nearly stumbled. “What’s wrong?! End, what happened?” The movement had clearly lacked vitality. The lord shouted at me, voice sharp. That single drop of blood had done absolutely nothing for my starvation. I couldn’t. Not yet. I couldn’t let him know. I needed to survive. I didn’t have a goal or a reason. I just—wanted to live. Even if I had to sacrifice everything to do so. Without letting my emotions show on my face, I focused on a point near my navel and overwrote the intractable hunger with rational thought. I endured the frustration that was slowly consuming me like smoldering flames. With that, I managed to get through the day’s hunt without being suspected. I returned to the mansion with the lord. Lou, who never came to welcome us back, was waiting inside. In the darkness, her face, illuminated by the candlestick she held, was exhausted and lifeless, but there was a strange glow in her eyes I’d never seen before. I had a bad feeling about this. The lord folded his arms and looked down at her like someone would view trash. Then, in a hoarse voice, Lou said: “Mas…ter… I… I…found proof that I…was telling the truth…” My hunger clashed with my desire to survive. I was sure I didn’t have any body heat, but I felt like I was burning up from within. I had no time to be bothering with Lou right now, but she was clearly determined to accuse me, someone who had never harmed her before. Lou led us—the lord silently furious, and me enduring my hunger—to the underground room where I spent most of my time. What was it that she said she’d found? There were no traces of me having moved around in the morgue. The floor was stone, and I’d been extremely careful not to leave any evidence that I had done anything in here. The room was virtually empty; its sole furnishings were the shelves and the stone beds on which the corpses lay. And since the corpses belonged to the lord, I’d been absolutely careful not to touch them. “O-over here, Master…” When we reached the basement room, Lou shuddered, then strode over to the shelves. And I finally realized what Lou had found. My face stiffened. For just a moment, I forgot all about the hunger. Lou grabbed the second drawer from the bottom. It had originally been empty—but now it contained a dust-covered encyclopedia on the undead from the lord’s library. It was one I’d brought here before Lou’s first accusation—and one of my favorites. As far as I knew, neither the lord nor Lou ever touched the shelf in the basement, so I’d grown careless. She’d known I’d been reading books—I should’ve hidden the evidence right then and there. Lou had probably been searching for concrete proof that I’d been moving around ever since the lord had rebuffed her first accusation. To think such an exhausted girl would go that far to deceive me—human malice knew no bounds. As the lord watched in dubiousness, Lou theatrically lifted the undead encyclopedia to him. Both Lou and I were the lord’s underlings. We were the same in that regard. Why was she trying so hard to make me suffer? My fingertips twitched. But I couldn’t move. Not now. “L-look, Master. There shouldn’t be…any books…in here. This man, this undead, he brought this book from the library!! Master, this man has—” Lou made her accusation in a trembling voice. The lord took the book she held out to him, thought in silence for a moment, and then spoke in a low voice that seemed to echo from the pits of hell. “…And where is the proof that you did not bring this book here yourself?” “……Huh?” I’d won. It seemed the lord’s trust in Lou had bottomed out. The lord tossed the encyclopedia to the floor. It had been a dusty thing from the back of the library to begin with, so it probably didn’t have much worth to him. Lou looked up at him, her expression baffled. The lord continued quietly in a voice lacking emotion, concealing his serious anger. “Irredeemable girl… I thought I told you that the next time you reported a falsehood…you wouldn’t get off easy. And you went so far as to use this—to return my favor with ingratitude.” “B-but that’s… I—” “I’ve always thought about how defective the spell for binding slaves is. That I should have forced you into absolute submission like when I control the undead…” Lou fell to the floor on her rear end, white as a sheet. The lord took a wand from his waist with his right hand, stroked it with his left as though to check it, and then took a step closer. An eerie green light shone from its tip. I’d seen him use this light many times before—the one produced from undead creation magic. Regret and terror flooded into Lou’s expression. The strength fled her limbs completely, and she could do nothing but gaze up at the lord and beg for mercy. “F-forgive me—” “Say nothing, Lou. You will be reborn faithful. Though your memories will disappear…” Without listening to her pleas, the lord raised the wand high over his head. The green light illuminated his face and all the wrinkles and anger engraved on it. Lou was so beside herself with fright that she couldn’t even run away. A lukewarm liquid spread around her crotch area—she must have wet herself. I thanked her silently. This was it. The time had come. The lord had his back to me. He was fully focused on Lou. I quashed my hunger and gritted my teeth. Before I was conscious of it, the nails on both my hands quietly extended. It was like my body was demanding that I devour my prey. I was certain: Now was my only chance. I would kill the lord, my savior, my fated foe. My power wasn’t at its peak, but it was enough to slay a soft human. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If I let it slip, I’d never have another shot. I didn’t breathe. My heart didn’t beat. I was a dead man. Silence was one of a dead man’s strong points. My body remembered how to kill a living being. My lord had taught me from the very beginning. The lord focused his mind and murmured two or three magic words. His wand came down at the wretched slave whom nobody believed. Without wasting a fraction of an instant, I swiped my nails at the back of the lord’s defenseless head with all my might. I put everything I had into it. My nails easily pierced the lord’s skull. Lou’s eyes widened in shock at my sudden violent act. But it was too late. There was no excitement. Only a dark pleasure. Perhaps that was proof I’d become a monster after all. I dislodged my nails from his soft skull. Warm blood sprayed, and a smile naturally crossed my face. I’d killed him. Now I was free. I would get out of this forest immediately and then escape to wherever I wanted. I didn’t intend to fight the Ender Knights. I could just live slaying monsters in some other forest like this one. Until I was bored of my new life anyway. And then, suddenly, there was a loud cracking noise. “What—? What…is the meaning of this?” “?!” A voice I couldn’t possibly have heard struck my ears. I didn’t understand. After a few moments, all the hair on my body stood on end. I was sure my nails had pierced his head. He hadn’t dodged it or blocked it or anything. The voice had come from in front of me. The lord, to whom I’d dealt a lethal blow, didn’t change his posture whatsoever and spoke calmly. I’d shoved my nails into his skull as far as they would go—and yet there was no trace of any wound.