Part 1

Aethas heartbeat raced as he began reading the dreaded grimoire, written by a crazed mage who serve the dreaded Lich King. The first chapter of the [Book of the Dead] give details and a rundown of the forbidden dark arts of Necromancy, based on Kel'Thuzad point of view.

For some reason, after reading the lengthy details of the first chapter alone, Arthas couldn't help but feel that Kel'Thuzad might be a bit overly infatuated with his undead self for writing this chapter, it only mostly detailed his "great" and "supremely" practicality of being one of the undead.

Chapter 1 of Volume 1, article 001 - The Soul of the Living and Dead basic instruction on Necromancy and path to Lichdom.

As Aethas continued to read, he could somewhat hallucinate and picture Kel’Thuzad speaking these words and written it down onto the codex of the unliving in his graspy cold voice.

“The soul of the living, it’s a wonderful mystery of the world, how were they created and born? Does it come naturally? Why does it held so much, raw untapped power?-” Kel’Thuzad commented.

As the bullshit continued with Kel’Thuzad own craze mindset putting into words, a few keys knowledge does revealed itself from time to time, for example- the instruction on how to harvest the lingering essence of death and convert it to mana to supply the user, the next part is how the user can weave those converted mana into disease and corruption spells, along with the basic creation of undead minions, Aethas doesn’t want to touch that area yet as he feared he would lose control of the undead and caused trouble to himself.

Based on the lore of the Warcraft Universe, all undead that hasn’t been fully controlled by a powerful Necromancer tremendous will power or freed by the Banshee Queen, has a chance of being feral and heed to the call of the Lich King himself and bound to his will.

Aethas doesn’t want to mess with the Lich King just yet, he need a minimum amount of power to protect himself first- then he can fuck around with Arthas, or this case, Ner’Zhul since he doesn’t know which one is in control.

Aethas stay up all night, carefully studying and taking down notes about the chapter, by morning, a large stack of parchment was sitting on his table, the candle was long burned out and leaving melted wax on the table where Aethas currently taking a rest from his all nighter.

Outside of his window was a beautiful day awaited, the sun was shining brightly, giving off warm radiants in the land partially infested with undead, bird chirping and mana wyrm loitering around in the grass, suddenly a bird flew in from the window and landed near Aethas, chirping obnoxiously trying to annoy him, much to Aethas annoyance he just used a pillow and cover his entire head.

A disturbing scene happened next, a black smoke radiating energy of death and decay circling around the boy, it doesn’t seem to harm him, just loitering around Aethas- it suddenly shot toward the obnoxious bird and draining the life out of the critter, it only took a second before the previously lively bird lost it life and drop dead.

When Aethas woke up, the first thing he saw was the corpse of the critter, laying there before his eyes, Aethas was shocked- “what in the world just happened?” he was about to reach out and poke the dead critter, but he immediately pulled his hand back as he saw a bluish energy slowly rising from the dead bird floating toward and dancing around his hand.

“Oh this is…” Aethas couldn’t believe his eyes, but the sensation is there. “Fucking awesome!” finding such words coming out of a 10 years is wrong is so many different ways, but Aethas is the exception since he is a reincarnator from another world, the blueish power that currently dancing on Aethas palm, is none other than soul power, more specifically- the soul of the obnoxious little bird that annoyed him.

This brought up a huge question though, how did this little critter- who were previously jumping up and down lively, suddenly ended up dead and it soul flew toward him? Something must have caused it to die! But what? Aethas carefully examine that corpse, looking for any possible cause of death.

“Nothing?” the only striking feature about this corpse was it eyes rolled to the back of it head and foam coming from it mouth, it looks as if the poor bird got squeeze the air out of it, poor bird, no matter if you’re an obnoxious little piece of shit when you’re alive, it’s still a shame.

Aethas threw the incident onto the back corner of his mind and stored the corpse in a small box and buried it outside in the yard and proceed to move on with life, moving on to the soul power that was in his hand, Aethas followed the note instruction and carefully convert the soul into raw power and absorb it into his body, upon doing so Aethas could feel that his mind is getting visibly clearer but not by much, if there’s a comparison it’s like getting a jolt from a cup of morning coffee, it only lasted for a few seconds though.

“Oh this is so corrupted, eating the soul of another living being.” Aethas chuckled, he could imagine the face of his parents if they knew what had just happened, evil as it might be- but the feeling of getting a power boost is quite addicting, more so than the so called mana addiction that the Sin’Dorei is facing, this suddenly gave Aethas a great idea as he looks at the “wanted” notice for cleaning up pest in the garden of the good citizen of Quel’Thalas.

Part 2

Near an Arcane sanctum in the Eversong Wood, a mana wyrmling is currently happily gorging itself on the mana generated by the structure that harvested raw mana from the leyline itself to support the nearby Blood Elves settlement.

These majestic creatures were once helper of mages and sorcerer alike in Quel’Thalas, kept as a pet for the rich and nobility- however alas, after the explosion of the Sunwell, these creatures broke loose from the Elves control and wrought havoc upon the citizens of the kingdom with their ability of eating precious mana- that’s already became scared after the Sunwell destruction.

From out of nowhere, a red marble came flying in and exploded the mana wyrmling, killing it instantly by blowing it head into pieces, the creature shrunk and reverted into a round orb and dropped on the ground.

“That’s number 15, time to collect my reward.” Aethas walked over and quickly siphon any bit of mana that was left on the creature, along with pulling it soul onto his hand and convert it to his own power, after that he pocketed the mana Wyrm core.

Since the day Aethas discover the ability of assimilation soul into power, he has been doing pest extermination “daily” quest around villages for the people, gaining more and more power with each kill, the different might be small, but it does add up over time- it has been going on for 3 years already, to the point where he had built up a small reputation for himself among villages, his service was on the cheap side too.

“Valeera, mind take these back and cashed it out at the guild? I’m going to make a few more trips before sundown today- don’t forget to deposit 50% into our guild coffer, you can keep the rest for your use and make sure to register it into the log.” Aethas handed the beautiful Blood Elf girl companion the bag containing Mana Wyrm core before heading off.

She was none other than Valeera, not to be confused with the famous assassin Valeera, she was one of Aethas original companions since they were still 10 in Professor Sunreach class, she had proved herself to be quite a capable minion during the years, thus Aethas decided to give her more responsibility in the guild, as “His” Secretary of the Treasury.

“Wha-? *sigh nevermind, just make sure to be back on time, or else your mother will give our guild another visit again.”Valeera was flabbergasted by Aethas action, however she quickly swallowed her word and rubbed the area between her eyes, she had known Aethas long enough, it’s part of the job description of being a Maid-secretary to the guild leader- however she still doesn’t understand this boy eccentricity.

She still don’t remember why she choose to follow him around one day after class, might be because of his display of knowledge and understanding in the subject? Or perhaps it was just the fact that she found him to be cute from time to time.

Valeera remember Aethas radiant smile when he helped her during study time.

“Ahh what the hell am I thinking!” she blushed and slapped her cheek before quickly headed back to the guild and quickly cashed out the payment.

“Oh! Aethas! Make sure to study for your graduation exam!!!” she quickly turned around to remind Aethas that there is going to be an exam that’s coming up for Professor Sunreach class.

“Got it~!” was all that the wind managed to carry back to Valeera ears.