Leech, torch in hand, stepped over the corpse. This tomb... to be honest, it was more like a winding tunnel dug by a rat. The deeper he went, the more it twisted and turned.
Fortunately, the tunnel was simple, with no forks in the path.
Walking for so long had made Leech's legs ache. He strongly suspected he had already reached the border of Porcupine Territory. A little further, and he might even be able to smell the sea breeze.
"Spoiled rotten noble!"
He muttered, rubbing his legs. It was too late for regrets. Turning back would get him nothing, but 'who knows what I might find if I keep going?'
His mind a swirl of emotions, Leech finally reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a spacious stone chamber, where a coffin lay. A large Magic Array was carved on the floor beneath it, but the lid had already been pried open.
'That rotting thing must have come from in here,' he guessed.
He glanced into the coffin, his mind flashing back to the rotting corpse the four farmers had desperately fought to take down.
Inside was nothing but a pile of black, gelatinous matter and the faint white outline of a human figure.
He searched the chamber carefully, unwilling to leave empty-handed. As it turned out, his luck was good. He found a bag.
The bag, sewn from deerskin, was filled with gold and weighed a dozen or so pounds.
Next to the bag lay a book. He couldn't tell what kind of skin the cover was made from, but it was smooth to the touch, like a young girl's thigh.
He stared at the book for a few moments, confirming the presence of fine pores on its surface.
Leech shuddered, nearly throwing the book from his hands.
If the real Baron Leech had been here, he probably would have roared, "Evil! Heresy!" before burning the human-skin book with his torch. But the Leech who had transmigrated here thought differently. He opened the book and began to read by the flickering firelight.
In that moment, he sincerely thanked the late Baron Lierde Clarence. The man's hard-won status as a Knight had allowed Leech to be tutored from a young age. Otherwise, staring at these serpentine characters would have given Leech a massive headache.
The book belonged to a scholar who had defied taboos, studying corpses in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually succeeded, making corpses walk again. But when he presented his techniques to other scholars, they branded him a heretic and exiled him.
He hid in the mountains, dedicating himself to perfecting his studies. He soon discovered that his achievements in the study of corpses had, without him even realizing it, far surpassed his research into life itself.
At the end of his life, this Necromancer had planned to transform himself into one of the undead to gain infinite time. But judging from the corpse outside... he had failed.
The Necromancer's legacy detailed how to transform corpses into mobile undead. His records even noted his success in creating a more advanced, intelligent undead he called a Corpse Ghost. As the Necromancer aged, he created mostly Corpse Ghosts, disdaining to make what he considered cannon fodder. He even fantasized about finding a dragon's corpse, but he died before he could succeed.
Leech read the records with excitement. This was exactly what he needed! Something to save his own skin.
'Studying and controlling corpses is taboo? To hell with the Four Gods!'
'Ten ounces of gold, and salt for the best effect. One complete corpse. Wounds on the body must be filled with gold. Adding rare magic materials might even cause a mutation... but I don't have anything like that. Just gold and corpses. Oh, right, and the Magic Array.'
Inscribing the Magic Array looked complicated; Leech doubted he could replicate it in a day. Fortunately, the late Necromancer had left a ready-made one. The massive Magic Array was right there, underneath the coffin.
"May the Four Gods be praised!"
Leech went back and dragged one of the four farmers' corpses to the chamber. He would have dragged the Necromancer's body over too, but it clearly didn't meet the condition of being a "complete corpse."
He placed the corpse in the coffin, then used a scale he found in the tomb to weigh out ten ounces of gold, which he set on the corpse's chest. He used another pound or so of gold fragments to fill the gash running from the farmer's chest to his stomach. Now was not the time to be stingy with gold. Only then did he put the lid back on the coffin.
He was already panting with exhaustion from dragging the body and heaving the heavy lid.
He recited the incantation. All that was left was to wait.
The incantation was a string of meaningless, strange-sounding syllables. But after reciting a few lines, Leech found they flowed surprisingly well off the tongue, almost like a misheard phrase in his native language.
In the pitch-black chamber, he lost all sense of time.
Suddenly, a vibrating sound came from inside the coffin. Leech got to his feet and, with great effort, shoved the lid aside. The heavy slab of stone fell to the ground with a BOOM. The sound echoed out of the crypt, only to be swallowed by the darkness.
The farmer's corpse opened its eyes, staring blankly upward. The gold had fused with the wound in its abdomen, filling the gash and leaving a golden scar.
He had successfully created an undead!
Leech pulled out the book and found a small spell the Necromancer had developed to control mindless undead. The spell allowed one to direct the undead with one's will, but it required immense Spiritual Power.
Baron Leech, who was counting on this undead to survive, didn't hesitate to try it. Strangely, he didn't struggle with it the way the Necromancer's records described. The entire casting was effortless and smooth. By the time he was done, his consciousness had taken complete control of the undead in the coffin.
'I might be a Magic genius.'
In the East Gorge, it was said that only scholars could study Magic, and even then, only in secret. Delving into Magic and the arcane arts was contrary to the teachings of the dominant faith. In this country, belief in the gods and loyalty to the monarch were paramount—at least, that was the official story.
After a moment of thinking he might learn the fabled Magic in the future, he refocused. He willed the undead to sit up in the coffin. Through its eyes, he saw the young Baron standing by the coffin, holding a torch, his body wrapped in white bandages.
Beneath long black hair were a pair of black eyes, said to be an inheritance from his late mother. His face was handsome, and because his father was the former Baron Porcupine, he didn't look at all frail.
One consciousness controlling two bodies was slightly disorienting, but after a moment of practice, he found it wasn't too difficult to manage.
'Maybe this is a perk of two souls merging?'
With that thought, Leech made the undead climb out of the coffin.
The corpse's movements were clumsy. It staggered forward, slowly growing accustomed to its body.
"Next, my soldier!" he declared.
He had Undead Number One drag another corpse into the coffin. After another agonizing wait, Undead Number Two was ready.
In the time that followed, Undead Number Three and Undead Number Four were also successfully created.
Leech tried to control all four undead at once. To maintain precise control, he let go of his own body, allowing it to slump to the ground in a deep slumber.
But even then, controlling four bodies at once was extremely clumsy. He could only make them perform the simplest actions, like attacking, advancing, and retreating. The fine motor control he had with a single undead, right down to bending a finger, was gone.
He led his four undead back the way he came, stopping to pick up their respective farm tools—a sickle, an axe, a hoe, and a pitchfork.
He stopped at the mouth of the tunnel. After ordering the undead to halt, Leech climbed out.
Day had broken.
He turned to look at the tombstone. Its grooved channel was now completely filled with green moss.
He poured a cup of water, which finally slaked his thirst, but the gnawing hunger in his stomach remained.
Footsteps approached from outside, followed by a knock on the door.
"My lord, I'm here to clean your wounds and change your dressing." The voice was unfamiliar. It sounded like his younger brother Leo's manservant.
'He's not here to help me. He's here to see if I'm dead yet.'
Just as the door was about to be pushed open, Leech called out, "Send for Master Jamie."
"You! You're awake?!" The voice from outside sounded startled.
"Send for Master Jamie!" Leech repeated, intentionally making his voice sound weak. "He's the only one I trust right now!"