Hmm?

Who’s that?

My body felt weightless as I fell into an endless abyss of darkness. I could barely make out the figure in the distance of my vision. Which was odd since it should had been impossible to see anything in here.

I tried to ‘approach’ the figure, and as I got closer, I recognized that the figure appeared to be a large skinless ape. With its meaty flesh and bones protruding around, I recognized that this was an undead abomination.

Unlike most undead abomination which are formed by piling corpses and forcing all of them to have a single core of death essence, this abomination was uniquely made by piling hundreds of failed dishes and somehow raising it from the dead.

What was the difference between raising a colony of terrible cooking experiments from raising a half chopped body? Not much. After all, dishes are just bits of dead parts tossed over a fire.

This abomination in particular was raised by someone close to me so I didn’t think twice about approaching it.

“Hey, Rookie?” I called out his name.

The abomination turned its body. Instead of a face, it had a huge fanged skull and a long meaty tongue which functioned like a third arm.

“Y..You…”

It breathed heavily at me, gurgling slightly. At last, it coughed harshly and started pounding its chest.

“Cough! Cough! Dearest me, my deepest apologies, Boss! It appeared that I had a slight sore throat from drinking tea.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? Oh, I was simply testing my magic.”

“In the middle of nowhere? It’s so dark here…”

“Aye, aye! Since it’s so dark here, why don’t I use magic to light up the place?”

“Ma…magic? I…” I kneaded my forehead in vain as I didn’t have a head, but a skull; one without flesh or meat. I had a feeling that something was terribly wrong.

What is it?

Why?

Shaking my head, I decided to lightly slap my face to get my focus back on track. I faced Rookie and gave him a thumbs up.

“Sure, why not?” I nodded.

“Alright, Boss. Be impressed!” Rookie started stretching his arms, and then cracked his knuckles.

No, no, no…

Again with the feeling…What was wrong? I held my head and tried to ignore this pain as I continued to watch.

“I’m going to start chanting now, Boss! Watch me!”

Rookie raised both of his arms and held his palms out. As he started, I noticed that there was no mana in the surroundings.

Huh? Was he trying to cast a spell without mana? The idea sounded very absurd since most mages had the capability of knowing if there was enough mana to cast their magic or not.

It would be awkward if he realized this too late, so I better stop him right now.

“Hey, Rookie…”

In an instant, I froze. How foolish I was. I remembered everything.

“With the power of my beautifully sculpted forearms, I cast Light!” Rookie slapped his hands together, twisted his body slightly and arched his back, creating a pose which emphasized his arms. His muscles shone, brightening the area.

Instead of getting relief from the light, I started to suffer from intense pain from every part of my body. Rookie disappeared and the dark abyss was replaced with a purgatory of biceps. Everywhere, I could see so many muscles closing in on me.

Where..,

Who…

Somebody…

Please! HELP ME!

I CANNOT COMPREHEND THIS!

*

*

*

I woke up with a shaky start. I jerked my body slightly and got my vision back. I tried to steady my breathing but realized that it was unnecessary since I don’t even breathe in the first place. However, if I did have a fleshy body, I would’ve woken up sweating hard all over.

I look straight ahead and saw a child-like face with two black eyes cheerfully starting at my gaping eye holes. I recognize this short-haired pale-faced girl. It was my dwarven vampire whom I had taken in as my maid, Lucia.

I turned my head and was greeted with a black dress. Apparently, I was sleeping on Lucia’s laps. Since she was short, given that she was a dwarf, her face was pretty close to me.

“A-ha! Your lordship is awake! It’s been a while,” Lucia greeted me with a smile. With her grin, I could see that her teeth were as sharpened as ever.

I grabbed her cheeks with my gloved hand and slightly squished her face.

“Yohr wordswip!” She garbled as I inspected her teeth.

“I told you to stop sharpening your teeth. Why do vampires have a habit of sharpening their teeth?” I asked and let her head go from my inquisition.

“Your lordship! This one hasn’t sharpened this one’s teeth in a while! In fact, ever since your lordship ordered this one not to, this one haven’t done so! Teeth just happen to take a long time to return to normal!” She protested as she rubbed her face.

I ignored her and propped myself up. Sitting, I looked around to find out where I was.

“We’re moving?” I noticed that we were on a platform attached on top of a beast, specifically a large demon tortoise named Alph.

“Your lordship was unconscious for quite some time so the group figured that it would go ahead with going towards the Sorcerer City States as your lordship had commanded.” Lucia responded as she got up, still massaging one of her cheeks.

“What?! What date is it?”

“Which calendar? Angolian? Aonian? Sayitsin? Or perhaps Vallen?”

“Erk, nevermind. How long have I been out?”

“Hmm…a few weeks?”

A few weeks?! I was knocked unconscious for a few weeks just because I found out that the greatest sorcerers had turned into the biggest muscleheads in the continent?!

Was the shock too great for me?

As an Archlich, I am the undisputed master of necromancy. One could say that I was quite conservative when it comes to the laws of magic. Sure, I also mastered existential crisis magic which wasn’t traditional in any sense, but…

Musclemancy?

My pondering was interrupted when I heard the sound of heavy boots landing on the platform. Wearing a thick black coat and a fur hood to cover his face, I recognized that this person was my spymaster, Beor.

“It seems you have awaken, Boss. While there was no doubt that you were still alive, we still couldn’t pass the opportunity of making this incident into a hilarious inside joke,” Beor greeted me.

“…I see.”

“Rookie had a panic when you fainted and he’s mulling about these past few days. It took Maven days to convince Rookie that it wasn’t his fault that you fainted over something stupid like this.”

“Look, it’s not my fault that muscle magic was just too much for me.”

“Look at me, Boss! Oooh, so scary.” Beor started flexing his non-existent muscles, given that almost all of my closest companions were just skeletons like me.

“You damned bastard. Are you my spymaster or master of talking-behind-my-back-about-my-ribs?!”

“Aaah…A companionship lasting a thousand years. This one is so jealous. While this one had been a servant of Queen Ellysa for hundreds of years, this one still couldn’t get this sort of banter with Her Majesty. ”

“Wasn’t it because you were a mindless thrall under her?” I retorted.

“Is that so? That would make sense. This one wishes to become closer with your lordship and his companions if possible.”

“First of all, you’re already part of the family whether you like it or not. Secondly, stop sharpening your teeth,” I said as I flicked her forehead.

“Ow! This one had already said that this one doesn’t sharpen one’s own teeth!”

I ignored the petite dwarf and asked my spymaster, “Beor, what’s going on right now?”

“Hmm? Before you went on a coma, you said that we’re going to the Sorcerer City States so we’re going,” Beor answered with a shrug wordlessly asking me, ‘Is that not what you want?’

“That’s fine, but I can still see we are still in elven territory.”

I looked up and watched as snow fell slowly on our platform. The platform was only partially roofed so snow was building up slowly in one side. Lucia noticed and started clearing the snow like a good maid.

“Obviously. Travelling takes time, especially in a vast place like the Great Elven Forests. I swear, this place is nothing but forests, forests and more forests,” Beor complained.

“Though the elves seemed different, they are still elves,” I commented.

“True. Speaking of the elves, the Union is in a chaotic mess. With its head of the state dead, there seemed to be a power vacuum. Every elf is being recalled back to their motherland, including the elf in the heroes’ party, Arrowski.”

“Arrowski left without a word?”

“He said something like, ‘Mm.’” Beor shrugged.

I swear, during my duration of being hired to teach the heroes’ party in order to prepare them to kill the Lord of the Demons, I had only exchanged less than 20 words with that elf.

Best student ever.

“Wait, we left the capital without any problems? Wouldn’t the place be on lockdown for now?” I asked.

“The Angolians sent real ambassadors to replace us, seeing as you and your heroes’ party completed their objective of stopping a full elven-orc war...sort of. The Angolian king wrote to you, by the way. I know you can’t read Angolian so I’ll summarize it to telling you to go seek Kendra’s teacher to learn more about magic. Oh, and Sarjay and his greatest-granddaughter is doing well.”

Ah, my best bud and his ancestor. Sarjay was the ancient first king of Angolia so he did everything to have ass cheeks possessing his bloodline to sit on his throne. If I could remember, his descendant Princess Asha was a blacksmithing freak who was addicted to finding the best ores to make the finest weapons.

I hope she was doing well learning how to rule one of the largest human nations in the continent.

“What’s going on in the Sayitsin capital…Mosovo, was it?”

“Instead of me indulging you, Satel would be better suited.”

Beor pointed in front of us, towards the head of the demon tortoise Alph. On top of his head was a person wearing a dark green coat. The coat was actually made with vines and roots, sewn magically to make it stretchable and resilient.

The person wearing the verdant coat was similarly made from hard bark and vine. Though, calling it a person would be a stretch since this was just a temporary body. It was like a set of plate armor, really. Inside the ‘armor’ was a tiny fairy that could comfortably sit on your palm.

Something caused the fairies of the world to lose their sanity and go on a genocidal campaign, which made the people call them into ‘demons’. Even the actual demons got sidelined by the newcomer demons.

Satel, a fairy who had reached insanity levels of almost becoming divine-like, got kicked back into reality by me after a long, long talk using existential crisis magic. Stranger still, this fairy residing inside a nymph-like body was actually the heart of the oldest tree in Sayitsi.

Hearing her name, she got out of her meditative pose and jumped onto the spot next to me.

“Ho, you’re awake. B-…Boss,” Satel coughed a couple times after hesitating to call my signature nickname.

“What? Don’t like calling me Boss?”

“It’s just that I don’t like the idea of someone lording over me. I have bad experiences with people above me,” Satel answered, avoiding eye contact with me and facing to the side.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not your superior, right? You’re my companion, Satel. A companion in my tour, that is! Besides, it’s not like you can just call me Bahas or else every follower of the Path would flip out from you casually calling me their God of Death.”

“…Really? I suppose that’s fine. You wanted to know what’s going on in the capital, right? I was actually listening,” Satel asked.

“Eavesdropping on me and Beor?”

“No, as in, listening to Sayitsi. I was the heart of Sayitsi; its core. I made this sea of forests so I am everywhere, listening.”

“Do I have to once over go over the fact that just because you think you’re real, it doesn’t matter that everyone else doesn’t?” I cracked my knuckles, prepared to boost my magic to the level of existential crisis once more.

“No! I meant that I can literally be everywhere in Sayitsi for a while before it no longer recognizes me as its mother! You…” Satel cut herself off, hesitating.

“…idiot,” She whispered with a hushed tone and looked away. Although she said that, she had a slightly visible smile on her face.

After being stuck to a tree, and forced to act as the mother-figure of all the Sayitsin elves, or maybe even all of the forest elves, for hundreds if not thousands of years, I could tell that Satel still carried a sort of loneliness in her.

I guess having a conversation like this could be considered luxury to her. Puh, I’ll let her go this time. I’m such a benevolent Archlich. Yes, I am.

“Back at the task at hand, what’s going on with the Elven Union?” I snapped my fingers towards Satel.

“Oh, right. Let’s see…Because the head of state is dead, the entire government is in chaos. People are panicking and many are outraged that an orc army got into the heart of their motherland,” Satel started to explain.

“Is that a problem?” I interjected.

“Not for you, but for the elves, it is. There’s a new movement rising based on the idea of permanent revolution headed by a bald elf with a goatee named Willowmir Lenin. With the ‘death’ of the elven monarchy, there’s also another movement rising up around the idea of having a free voting system for all peasants, by the peasants, instead of the union system that Sayitsi have right now.”

Hmmm…a radical movement or a radical movement. Oh well, sucks to be an elf right now. Speaking of elves…

“Where’s Maven?” I asked Beor regarding the undead elven chef within my companionship.

“She’s riding your oversized cassowary right now. You want me to call her? She’s trying to learn how to cook while riding right now,” Beor answered.

“I will ignore that for now. I would’ve figured that she would stay to introduce elven cooking to her people so why’s she coming with us?”

“I figured that you wouldn’t find anything appetizing after eating my delicious cooking, of course,” Maven appeared behind me holding a pot. She casually placed the pot on my head and stirred it. She took out a bowl, poured some stew into it and lifted the pot off my head.

“So, I ordered your giant bird to sprint, fly, jump and fight while I cooked this on top of her. I want you to be the first one to try it,” Maven said while handing the bowl to me.

“You ordered around Cass? How did you convince her to do all that while cooking on her back?”

I looked at the stew while thinking about the cassowary I aptly named Cass.

“Simple, I started a fire on her back. How else would I cook?”

Poor bird. Sure, I threatened to turn her into dinner multiple times but I didn’t really want to…maybe. Alright, a giant cassowary dinner sounds very nice. Anyways, I should treat her to some treats later.

Maven, who had trained her cooking through trial and error for a thousand years, did not fail to meet my expectation as I guzzled down on the stew. Satel still couldn’t get used to a bunch of skeletons eating food so she tried her best not to stare.

To be fair, when I became a skeleton, I didn’t expect to retain some level of ability to taste. At least, the food just burns in a barely visible fire within our mouth so food don’t just fly through our ribs.

“How’s Rookie? He’s fine, right?” I asked Maven about our undead abomination.

“Obviously! Since I indirectly made him, he would have some of my traits such as not being a wimp. In fact, he has already forgotten about you and is very excited to reach the Sorcerer City States.”

“Since I am such a nice guy, I will ignore the last part. How far are we from the Sorcerer City States? I can tell we are still in Sayitsi,” I asked everyone.

“We’re close to one of the border towns, Greeningsrad. I heard that if we took the boat from there, we could reach the closest city state in a matter of days,” Beor answered.

“I guess we just have to worry about the boat…”

“Not to worry, Boss. Ever since leaving Mosovo, I regained my mana and I managed to create a sizeable spy network in Sayitsi. My agents are already arranging the boat to leave. It’s also a good thing because it’s starting to get harder to leave or enter the Union…

Speaking of which, there’s Greeningsrad.”

I stood up and looked at the direction that Beor pointed and I saw large trees with buildings molded around them. At the top of the trees were large chimneys which spewed red and black smoke which slowly scattered all over the sky.

Other than the city, I also noticed there large military presence here. I looked down and I saw many elven soldiers marching in lines, heading in and out of the city. I could tell that Greeeningsrad wouldn’t lag behind Mosovo in terms of size.

Beor raised his hand towards the bustling city and announced, “Welcome to Greeningsrad. One of the Union’s largest industrial and military city.”