It turned out that Lena and Eshen got along quite well. They lived together for more than a month now, and Eshen really was a nice guy. At first, he seemed to be content with just teaching Lena all she needed, and otherwise leaving her alone. But at some point they had started to talk about other things than his teachings, they exchanged stories about their adventures and travels.

To be honest, most of these were from Eshen, as Lena had never really traveled, and her sole real adventures were small hunts around Maryda. Nonetheless, it was pleasant, and Lena one day even told him how exactly she had died.

“The creatures you described, if I recall correctly it must have been Bone shredders. Nasty things, are extremely durable and their physical attacks can be quite dangerous. They can’t use magic but tend to pick up weapons from their enemies. They should be between around rank three undead monsters.” He said as if he had studied this specific monster for years.

“You said that I was a rank six zombie-type monster, shouldn't I be able to kill these shredders easily now?” She asked.

As a human, she and her friends couldn’t even injure these monsters. But now Lena should be able to crush them under her foot. She already imagined her revenge when Eshen shattered her dreams.

“Well no. At least not right now. You just fully learned how to move correctly, and you haven’t even begun to explore your undead abilities. You are currently a powerful rank six monster, but if you don’t know how to use the power that comes along, you would still be killed by these Bone shredders. Right now you are nothing more than a weak zombie with the mana reserves of a rank six monster.”He paused.

“But that brings me to something important I wanted to talk about with you. You know that to create liquid mana you need monster cores, but you don’t know how rare these cores really are.”

“They can’t be that rare; you have hundreds of them, and even more monsters are out there. They should be easy enough to buy no?” she was confused. Seing the look on Eshen´s face she immediately regretted her comment.

“I collected these over centuries. Even if there are millions of monsters out there, you must know that not all monsters materialize a core after death. Most monsters beneath rank four nearly never drop cores, the mana inside their cores will simply leave and dissipate into the surroundings. Only specific monsters or monsters of rank four and above can condense a core after death easily." He paused and made an unhappy face.

"Also you must know how most people slay powerful monsters. They depleat there cores. To slay a monstercan be extremely dangerous and complicated, especially those with potent regeration abilities or natural armor. So people tend to outlast them and wait until they spend most of their mana. That reduces the chance of a core forming wastly. In consequence, monster cores are extremely rare and often bought by nobles or crafters.” He explained.

"Once you leave you won't be able to simply buy cores, at least not without spending a fortune." He said.

“So how am I gonna get enough cores to supply myself with mana?” She knew that he had thought of something. Eshen always knew the answer when he exposed a problem.

“You will have to get the cores at their source, the monsters.” He said with a wide grin.

“You want me to hunt monsters?” She could just stare at him like the dumb zombie she was.

“Exactly, you will become an adventurer, slay plenty of monsters, and collect their cores. That way you can supply yourself with mana and people will be less suspicious of you because you just saved them from a dangerous monster.” His grin exposed his sharp teeth and made it clear how proud he was about that idea.

Lena could only nod, it was so easy, all she had to do was to hunt the monsters directly. She would be able to supply herself, and people would welcome her with open arms. They would never suspect a monster saving them from other monsters, their savior must be a Human. A Human. Lena grinned back at the Elf.

"The only problem is that you will need to kill powerful monsters, and not by exhausting them no. You will have to actively kill them when they are at full mana in order to maximize your chance of harvesting as much mana as possible."

She looked at him, grinning like an idiot. Most people would probably think that it was a terrible idea, but to Lena, it was perfect. It was everything she had ever wanted, except the undead part of course.

“Let’s explore your hidden talents." the elf said.

It turned out that exploring Lena's talents, meant in Elven language, stabbing her in the hand and letting her punch a tree. The first was to check if she had a regeneration ability, she did and it didn’t even hurt. She didn´t even feel that her body had been damaged. Wich was frightening and cool at the same time.

But the second thing, she didn’t know, and it frustrated her.

“Come on girl, blast that tree away.” Eshen said from behind her. She had been punching the same tree for an hour, and her teacher was getting bored.

“How am I supposed to ‘blast that tree away’?” she yelled back. Her voice was nearly normal at that point, but when she was getting upset it still turned out demonic.

“You're supposed to use the power from your core.” He explained for the tenth time.

“I´m trying, but all that happens is that the mana groups up in my hand.”

Lena had managed to direct the mana from her core through the tendrils, and towards her hand. But for some reason, nothing happened. After another moment of frustrated and useless tree punching, she tried something else.

Instead of only moving her mana through the already exiting tendrils, she tried to push it into her body, letting her bones and flesh absorb it. Humans grew stronger by slowly absorbing mana over time, and strengthening their bodies in the process. It took a great amount of time and too much mana could harm them. As a monster Lena didn’t have to absorb it slowly, she could hypercharge her body with great amounts of mana without fearing anything. She grinned as her fist connected with the tree.

***

Eshen wasn’t a monster, so he didn’t exactly know how monsters actually used the power of their cores. But he knew that they did, and if she tried long enough he was sure that Lena would find a way to do it. To be honest, he was impressed, the amount of mana inside her core was massive, even for a rank six monster. Her regeneration ability was to be expected from a zombie-type undead but far more potent than that of a normal zombie undead. Her will to learn was unbroken, even after over a month. Each morning when he woke up, she sat on her chair in the kitchen beside a pile of finished books. Always asking for the next batch to read for the next night.

He was musing about what books he should give her to read next when a loud crash made him focus again. Just in time to see a shattered tree flight against another one, and a smiling Lena. She has actually blasted that tree away. He thought impressed.

“So, what next?” she asked without stopping to smile.

He needed a moment to gather himself, she really was powerful. Her innocent figure made it easy to forget how dangerous she could be, even if her silvery eyes prevented him from ever taking her for a simple girl.

“Well, now we're gonna make you an adventurer. You have the power but you don’t know how to use it correctly. You’re gonna learn how to control your power and use it without blasting something away that you don’t want to.” He looked down at her to make sure she understood.

“You possess great power you need to master it to avoid hurting other people.” The girl nodded.

“Once you have mastered it, I’m gonna teach you swordsmanship. Punching monsters to death isn’t very human.” She nodded again.

“I will learn to control it.” Her determined silvery eyes gave him no doubt that she would.

As time passed Lena and Eshen trained each day, swordsmanship and mana control in the morning, and alchemy in the afternoon. At this point, Lena was able to create her own liquid mana and would be able to supply herself alone if she had the necessary resources.

Even if her sword skills were atrocious at first, she learned fast. Within a month she was able to slay the weaker beasts in the surrounding forest with ease, and would certainly be able to stand her ground against most foes without the help of an entire hunter team.

Eshen of course didn’t tell her that and instead pushed her further. He wouldn’t let her out in the world without having refined her skills the best she could.

One might think that it was cruel to keep her imprisoned inside the forest for so long but he didn’t want her to be slain by some random adventurer as soon as she left. He had grown to like the little undead girl and would be damned if she was killed because she couldn't protect herself good enough. Lena of course had asked him multiple times if she could leave at this point but he had always turned her down. She wasn’t ready yet.

Lena sat in the kitchen and watched Eshen eat. It was a strange ritual that had formed after a test. Eshen wanted to know if the undead could eat regular food, and had given her multiple small dishes to try. The result was unpleasant for her, to say the least. She had been eager to try and had taken a large bite of bread with butter, only to discover that it tasted like ash.

Lena missed the taste of regular food, even if she never had much of it. It was something she had liked, now, every bit of food tasted like ash and made her puke. It had depressed her to no end. So in order to at least remember how pleasant food could be, she had asked Eshen to describe everything he ate. At first, it made the Elf so uncomfortable that he refused to eat if Lena was in the same room, but eventually, they managed to find a way to eat “together”.

“How is it?” She asked eagerly.

“Salty.” he said in a flat tone while taking another bite out of his smoked fish.

“I always liked smoked fish, the saltiness made it special compared to plain old bread.” she said, thinking about the few times she had tasted smoked fish.

“You could drink one of your special mana potions if you want, at least I wouldn’t be the only one eating.”

“That would be a waste, my core is still topped off. I will have to wait a least a week before I can take another one.” She said a little sad.

“We could try to find other ways to use your core energy, that way you would be able to deplete it faster, and you could eat more often.”

The fact that he called it eating made Lena feel normal, she hated it to be reminded of what she was, even if she could handle it a lot better. Eshen often tried to comfort her by complimenting her efforts and the vast improvements her voice had made. But in the end, it didn’t change her new nature, even if her voice was nearly back to human standards.

“And how should I use it? I’m already using it to fight and for blade skills.” She asked frustrated.

“There is more to magic than just empowering blade skills as I showed you. But sadly I’m no mage, and I can’t teach you external magic. You’ll have to learn that yourself, I only have a few books that could help you.”

He was right of course, Lena possessed a large amount of unused mana, and her possibilities were endless. Burning meteors, giant spikes of ice, Mighty storms of…

Seeing her glimmering eyes Eshen quickly interjected. “No magic inside my tower, no magic near my tower, no destroying my tower, and you sure as hell won’t try to summon stuff.” His voice was a little unsure.

“You know what, I’m going to help you with the basics to prevent accidents.” He said decisively.

After he finished eating they headed out into the forest, to minimize potential damage. They sat down and Eshen began to explain her the basics he knew.

It turned out that magic was different from person to person. Each person had certain affinities for certain types of magic. For example, one person could be really good with stone magic but was unable to light up a campfire.

Undead monsters that used magic, were known to have a high death affinity in their magic. But even two exact same monsters with the same affinity would have slightly different magic. Magic was something unique to every being using it. There existed many general spells of course, that could be learned by almost anyone, but the core of each person's magic would be unique to themselves.

Lena was eager to see what sort of magic she could use. And after over an hour of security advices from books filled with useless “you have to be very careful, please reassure yourself that your immediate surroundings are free from any other person”, “please remember to start with a small amount of mana”, and “make sure that you wear protective equipment”, Lena could begin to cast.

Casting turned out to be pretty simple, one had to direct his own mana outside of the body and press it into a specific form. Later on, one could form complex magic circles to create high-tier spells.

When first casting magic, Mages let the mana form itself, without real guidance from the user. That way the spell would be formed from the mage's affinities alone, helping him to better understand his magic.

Lena compressed her mana in front of her extended arm and watched the spell take form. It didn’t take long before it was ready. She pointed the spell at a nearby tree and let it loose.

A thick black bolt of crackling thunder arched from her right arm into the tree. The tree was instantly turned into a pile of splinters, but the spell didn’t stop there. All around the destroyed tree, the grass turned gray and crumbled to dust, and the surrounding trees lost their strong presence as their rich dark green leaves shriveled and turned brown. In a few seconds, the entire area around the destroyed tree had been turned into a lifeless husk of grey and brown.

Lena looked at Eshen who stood beside her and stared at the dead trees.

“The thunder part was cool?” she said unsure. He had reminded her multiple times that the undead had a powerful death affinity, but until now Lena hadn’t really thought about what that meant.

The Thunderbolt was deadly sure, but the death magic imbued into it, was much more.

“How much mana did that spell cost you?” his voice was wary.

“Not much, I could fling a hundred of them before I need to eat again.” she answered. He looked nearly frightened. Something that she had never seen on him before.

“Why? Is everything alright?”

“I think I might have misinterpreted your nature. You are not a Zombie type undead that focuses on physical enhancement, but some sort of Lich.” He looked down at her.

“Is that bad?” She asked a bit confused. Eshen had explained all kinds of undead-type monsters to her. Mostly in order to find out what type of monster she was. Du to her regenerative abilities and her physical strength, combined with the characteristics of her birth they had identified her as a zombie-type undead.

“It's abnormal. A Lich normally doesn’t have a physical form like yourself. It also means that you have a lot of magical potential, more than I originally thought. If you manage to upgrade your core to rank seven you will be considered an elder lich, which is quite frightening, to be honest. Liches, in general, are already powerful but Elder liches are on a whole other level."

“So, no more magic?” She asked, trying her best to suppress a grin. If even Eshen thought that her magic was powerful, she sure as hell would learn to master it.

“At least be careful with your death magic, I don’t want to live in a Desert.” He said with a small smile.

She laughed and continued to practice. Over the next few days of magic training, it turned out that it was extremely difficult for her to separate her death affinity from the rest of her magical repertoire. Even her barriers were made with a small amount of death magic. Only her blade skills and her meager at best fireballs were not corrupted by it.

In the end, Eshen had asked her to limit her use of magic while she was living in his tower. He also advised her to only use her magic if necessary outside of the forest. Even if death magic wasn’t forbidden people tended to dislike it, for obvious reasons.

Over the years of training with Eshen Lena had learned that using mana could be quite taxing, she was exhausted. At this point, she used mana for nearly every action, even walking. Why? Because it made her faster and stronger. Both things she needed, mainly for her daily training with Eshen.

Their swords clashed together and sparks flew in all directions. She was getting closer, with each day she was getting closer to him. They separated again and observed each other, swords at the ready. Over the years, Eshen had taught her his style of combat. Dual-wielding weapons was complicated but offered many advantages compared to other fighting styles.

During their little training fights, they danced around each other, clashing their swords together in complex patterns, trying to find a crack in the opponent's defense. Lena was clearly physically stronger than the Elf, but his speed was on par with hers. In addition to his fighting experience that vastly exceeded hers, she always lost. But she never stopped trying.

As they looked at each other across the training field Lena pulled her mana from her core and pushed it inside her swords. She grinned, as her blade skill took form. The dark steel blades were slowly covered with a silvery mist that made the air around the weapons bend.

With a quick dash, she was in front of him, bringing one sword down while blocking the Elf’s complex counterattack with the other. The attack connected and she sprung back to dodge the thin blade that was directed at her chest. The shallow wounds over her arms and legs already healed. Lena never got away from such an encounter unscratched, but this time she wasn’t alone.

Eshen looked down at himself and examined the cut over his heart. She had cut through his training armor like paper thanks to her blade skill.

“Not bad, you're getting better.” He said. Signaling the end of the fight.

Lena sat down on the grass to drink a vial of the good stuff, as she liked to call her mana drinks. Fighting took a good amount of mana, and her consumption was up to one vial every week or so. She never fully depleted her core but even with two-thirds of mana remaining she developed a strong need for mana. luckily for her, Eshen had enough monster cores to supply her and she never suffered any side effects.

Their fights had been reduced to one per day, the rest of the time Lena was free to train whatever she wanted. She uncorked the small glass vial and looked back at the elf.

“Good enough for me to leave?” She asked, knowing she would be rejected. Chugging down the liquid she closed her eyes and let the cold feeling spread through her body. When she opened them again she realized that he hadn’t actually answered.

Eshen stood at the entrance of the tower and looked at her.

“Maybe you are.” He said with a complex expression on his face and disappeared into the tower. Lena didn’t know how to react.

As soon as she had mastered how to create liquid mana she had asked him if she could leave, he rejected, for good reasons. That was years ago. She had had asked him multiple times over the years, after her voice was back to normal, after her first real beast hunt in the surrounding forest, and after her first high-tier magic spell. But each time he rejected her request.

Lena never hated him for it, she knew that it would be dangerous for her if she left. She would have to supply herself with mana, alone. Eshen wouldn't be able to help her anymore. It warmed her cold heart that this Elf tried to prepare her as much as possible, to protect her, and she enjoyed the time they spent together.

But over the years she was getting restless, she didn’t read at night anymore, there was nothing left for her to read. Instead, she climbed on a tree outside and stared into the night, imagining her life outside the forest. Thinking about her return to Maryda, about her future.

She jumped up and rapidly followed Eshen inside, she found him in the alchemy laboratory. He stood beside a large chest that she had never seen before. When she entered he turned towards her and smiled.

“You are right, I have kept you inside this damn forest long enough.” he paused. Lena remained silent.

“When I first found you in this forest, I wanted to help you. You were lost and I didn’t want to be alone, also I found the idea of befriending a monster fascinating.” he chuckled awkwardly.

“I would never have imagined that I would get attached to you. I met several sentient monsters in my life, and none of them were like you. Most of them were overly aggressive or completely mad against the world and everything they saw. They were still monsters in the end.” He looked at her.

“You, on the other hand, are more human than some actual humans. The fact that you are a powerful monster hasn’t changed your human self as much as you think Lena. And once you leave I want you to remember that. You might be undead but deep down in your Soul you are still human.”

“I will.” she said. Eshen nodded.

“Before you leave I would like to equip you with everything you need.”

He opened the large chest and took out the most beautiful armor she had ever seen.

It was an elegant black plate armor made of several connected plates of metal that were covered with runes. It was the same elegant armor that Eshen wore during their training but very different at the same time. The Elf’s armor was only a single breastplate to protect his vitals. This one however would cover Lena nearly entirely. She would be encased in hundreds of interlocked dark steel plates, sturdy leather, and protective enchantments.

The most impressive part of the armor, however, was the fact that it didn’t look bulky, quite the contrary it was elegant and smooth and would allow her to move without much hindrance. Lena didn’t see a helmet, but a simple face mask depicting a smiling female elven face, without any holes for her eyes.

“It’s beautiful.” She exclaimed letting her fingers glide over the armor's smooth surface.

“But why is it all black?” Her question was answered by a frustrated Elf.

“Because your blood is also black you dimwit. That way, if you are injured while other people are around your nature will be harder to notice.” He answered, clearly defending his own fashion choice.

“The enchantments on your armor prevent others from detecting your core and mana, but you should still be careful. Especially around archmages. And don’t take off your armor when people are around.”

He really was a little overprotective.

“The mask won’t hinder your view and will help you to avoid unwanted attention.” he explained.

Lena’s face didn’t scream walking corpse but it still looked like she was sick. And her eyes were, with Eshen’s words ‘quite eye catching’.

The next thing he gave her was a ring. A simple silver ring, without any ornaments.

“That’s a storage ring, don’t lose it, and keep it a secret if possible. It contains all your liquid mana, a few spare cores, a bit of money, as well a few other things that might be useful.” He explained.

Eshen was silent for a moment before he continued.

“The last thing that I want to give you is nothing really useful.” he sounded unsure.

He took her hand and placed a small piece of silver inside, not much larger than the ring.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s an enchanted hair clip. You once told me that you had dark brown hair as a human. And you always say that your white hair makes you look old and sick. Well, this hair clip can change your hair color. I thought you might like…” He didn’t get to finish his sentence before Lena was hugging him tightly.

“Thank you.” her words were not enough to express what she felt.

They hugged for a while before Lena released him. Eshen knew that he would miss her. The time with her was nothing compared to the previous five centuries of his life before, but it still felt like he was losing someone important.

Lena had lived with him for nearly six years, years during which they had grown to live together. He would miss her intense stare whenever he was eating something new, her frustrated complaints when one of her spells didn't work as she wanted, or her nagging whenever he disturbed her during a complex alchemy process.

Nonetheless, he had to let her go. He had given her everything she needed to survive, now she had to find her own path through the world. Perhaps they would see each other again.

“Shouldn’t you be on the run already?” he asked.

“It’s getting dark outside, and I don’t wanna get lost.” she said with a serious expression. Lena had a terrible orientation. Apparently, being undead was the cause of this. He laughed. He would miss her.

“Then I would kindly offer you to stay in my tower for another night.” he said.

“I greatly appreciate it you old Elf.” she said smiling.

“Don’t appreciate it too much you walking corpse.” He said smiling back.

Both of them were happy to enjoy a few more hours in the presence of the other.