Emil walked down a corridor, passing a couple members of hospital staff along the way. With his possessions at his side, he simply nodded at them and moved on. He tightened his grip around the container, there were just a few more turns left before he reached the exit. From there, it would ideally be just a simple walk back to his camp.

However, as he turned another corner, darkness suddenly flashed across his vision. Emil felt something in his soul, like something had suddenly pushed his spiritual form. For the next few moments, he felt weightless as all sensation left from the body he was possessing. Captain Maynard stumbled to the ground, falling facefirst toward the floor. But just before impact was made, Emil was able to resume control and put out an arm to at least control the fall and protect the captain’s face.

‘What the…’ Emil thought to himself, confused about what had just happened. Steadily, he picked himself off the ground and stood back up. He looked around, but there was nobody within sight. Did his control over Maynard’s body slip and become too loose? It was a possibility, with how deep in thought he had been while walking. No, even he wasn’t that careless.

Glancing around again, Emil leaned against a near by wall, and looked inward. He focused his attention on Maynard’s soul. And what he then noticed with his metephorcal eyes made them metaphorically widen. The captain’s soul had begun to adapt to his presence. Emil was sure that Maynard himself was still fully unconscious, but in some sort of spiritual reflex, it had recognized him as a foreign invader. Even now, he could feel it getting more diffuclut to keep full control over the captain’s body while suppressing his soul.

And as though it had picked up on him giving it his direct attention, the soul sent out another, even stronger wave of resistance to attempt to fully push him out. But this time, Emil was ready and met it head on. He was able to maintain full control over the captain’s body, and managed to fully resist the attempt. However, this was only doable while he maintained full focus on the internal world of his spirit and Maynard’s soul. Meaning that it would be extremely difficult to move around and deal with people at the same time. Especially if its efforts to evict him only kept growing in both frequency and strength.

‘Is it due to the captain’s personality and things he’s experienced? Or would possessing anyone result in the same thing? It probably hasn’t even been more than half an hour since I first took control over his body. Based on what I gleamed from his memories, this hospital is basically on the opposite side of town from where my camp is. With the time it would take to get from here to there on foot, can I even make it before I fully lose out on being able to control this body?’ If he was being honest, Emil didn’t like his chances.

‘I can’t be sure until I test it more, but let’s assume that every person’s soul would act like this. In that case, I more or less have a timer of about thirty minutes. So if I walked quickly, I could possess someone else now, and then swap bodies again when I’m hitting the limit. I think I would then be able to just barely make it to camp in time to drop off my belongings, and get whoever I possess far enough away before I lose control.’ Emil grimaced as he was thinking, as another attempt to push him out had commenced.

‘What I’m doing now is equivalent to just restraining the captain’s soul directly with my own. If I had access to Mana, I could potentially be able to Soul Manipulation to fully subdue his soul. But if I could do that, I don’t know if I actually would. Right now, all I’d be leaving with him with is a mess of paperwork and a lot of confusion. But anything more than that would just be cruel. He seems like a fairly decent person, and at least hasn’t done anything to deserve having his soul twisted just for my own convenience.’

But the truth of the matter was that Emil was working with limited time before he eventually did get forced out. If he had to guess, the captain will likely remain unconscious for some time in whatever spot he ends being in. Meaning that it was likely best to control where that place would end up being, rather than collapsing somewhere random. He returned his attention back to normal world, and began to look around for a decent place to willingly end the possession.

Eventually, he was able to find a room that seemed out of the way and infrequently used. One that also had what he was looking for, a window, one that he promptly unlatched and swung out. He then opened and set aside the container with his possessions, before finally sitting down on a chair. It was then that Maynard slumped forward in his seat as Emil’s ghost exited the body. Emil looked down at the captain. The older guard didn’t immediately wake back up, so he let himself relax a little.

Emil reached inside the container, and pulled out one of the memory orbs, as well as the remaining half of the mayor’s spirit. Staring at it, he began to wonder. Now that the other half was destroyed, would Mayor Duran even be able to move on to the afterlife? And if he could, would it just be some as a lost soul, with all of his personality but none of his knowledge and memories? If so, Emil supposed there was a hint of irony there. That the man who had covered up the truth behind the death of the townspeople’s children, thus leaving them ignorant of the truth, would forever be in dark about his life and cause of death.

So in that sense, Emil’s desire to deal out a punishment on the mayor would remain fulfilled. But on the other hand, that was all just guesswork and a bunch of what ifs on his part. He had never heard of any previous examples of people going to the afterlife with only part of their soul, so he had no real basis on how that would actually work. Perhaps his theory would be correct. Or maybe when the mayor crossed to the other side, that missing half could be restored?

Of the deities that formed the High Pantheon, Manis was the god that managed the afterlife and judged every human who entered his realm. It would be within that god’s power to help the mayor, since his situation was most likely a unique one. But the thought of Mayor Duran actually getting a god’s personal attention and assistance was something that already made him clench a fist around the mayor’s soul. Even if it was just pure speculation on Emil’s part, just the idea of that even being a possibility was enough to upset him. He decided to move on from that train of thought.

'I admit though, part of me is tempted to just absorb this half of his soul into my own. But I haven't tried that yet, so who knows what the result would be. As a ghost, I need to see how feasible it is to collect more death energy. I know that I can at least interact with my memory orbs and the mayor’s soul. When I tried to pull one of the memory orbs out of that storage unit, I could hold onto it like I’m currently doing. However, even though my hand could phase through material objects, the orb could not. Meaning that because of how I’ve compressed them down, they’re now somewhere in between the worlds of the material and spiritual.’

That deduction, at least, seemed fairly reasonable to him. So even while dead, it shouldn’t be too hard for him to collect more death energy. Even if compressing it down to being memory orbs required a physical body, that wouldn’t be an issue. After all, normal people couldn’t see that power whenever it hung around fresh corpses. He had already seen that it tended to stick to things. So as long as Emil could gather it up around him, it shouldn’t matter how much of it there was. But there was another problem he had to deal with.

It didn’t matter how much death energy he gathered if he couldn’t actually utilize any of it. Whenever Emil had absorbed it, the energy was simply converted into Mana. Even when he had directly drawn from a memory orb to cast a spell, what was really happening was simply a very quick conversion into Mana. It was effectively the Necromancer equivalent to the staffs some Mages used as a reservoir of power. That was something useful to him when he was alive to get around the wait time of his body storing the energy as Mana. But as a ghost, having the memory orbs or access to more death energy didn’t matter if he couldn’t channel or store Mana.

‘What was it that Alterum told me?’ Emil asked himself. ‘That with time, I would master death and no longer need Mana to fuel my magic? You’d think that being dead would be enough to make that change, but apparently not. I bet Alterum’s laughing at me from inside his prison. I managed to screw up and get myself killed just within the first few weeks of getting these abilities. And what’s worse, with how long that dragon’s been around, that amount of time is probably barely worth a blink to it.’ Emil let out a dejected sigh.

In truth, he did partially regret his hastiness in confronting the mayor and cleric for their crimes. As well as his decision to bring Hadwin to the cemetery, rather than just quickly killing him on the spot and being done with it. But at the same time, when Emil thought back to the looks of thankfulness that the murdered children had before moving on, it brought him some comfort. He had given peace to those kids. And all it had cost was his single life, one that he should have lost back in that dungeon. Emil looked up at the ceiling.

Couldn’t he… just also move on then? To let go of everything in this world and abandon it for the afterlife? For most of his life, he would argue that he had been a fairly good person. Emil brought down justice on two people who would have gotten away with their crimes, and subsequently freed their victims. Surely that would count for something when he was judged? And even though he had accepted the power of an enemy of the gods, wouldn’t they be understanding of his circumstances, especially since he had used it to do some good?

During the time right after making that contract with Alterum, Emil had similar thoughts regarding the gods. It was a pit of doubt and self-pity, one he thought he had climbed out of when he resolved himself to his destiny as a Necromancer under the undead dragon. And yet, he here was again practically able to feel that his mind was in freefall straight down that same pit.

“No! I’m past that now!” Emil cried, hoping that saying the words out loud would make them true. “It’s not just about me anymore. I can’t stand here and wallow in my own misery while hoping that I get a free pass to an easy way out. I chose to make that contract, so now I have to deal with it.”

He was a different person now. Emil was no longer the naive student who left that dungeon, barely able to stand on his own two feet. He had trained with these powers, accepted them, and used them to take the lives of two men. Emil had made his bed and then willingly chose to lie down in it. To complain and feel despair about it now was inexcusable. He could try to run away to the afterlife and hope for mercy. Or he could stare the reality of it all in the eye, and hold his gaze no matter what it throws at him.

“And even if I let it all go and enter the next life, what happens then? People know about that dungeon now. Eventually, someone else may wander in there and find their way to that dragon’s chamber. It’s not as if I’m one of a kind,” Emil began to look past his present circumstances, and tried to expand his view to that of the bigger picture.

“If one of those people happens to catch Alterum’s eye, it might give them these powers instead. But even if the dungeon was resealed and nobody ever goes in there again, Alterum will probably just go back to waiting and biding its time. Besides, as long as the gods can’t figure out a way to kill it, time is on its side. One day, no matter how long it takes, Alterum will be free of its prison. It could be because of an outside element, or that the dragon gathers enough power to break out.” From the little time Emil had spent interacting with the undead dragon, he had felt enough of its power to believe that statement with absolute certainty.

Emil also knew that the dragon would have its revenge upon gaining freedom. It would start is vengeful war against the gods. And considering that all they could do to Alterum was imprison it, then the dragon would probably win if they couldn’t trap it again. But, in that scenario, he also knew what would happen to the humans caught in the conflict. Alterum saw humanity as no more than insects anyway, and to burn down the heavens, why would it care if the anthills on Earth were also swept up in the flames?

In his mind, Emil could picture it. Cities and town razed to the ground. Their former citizens either rotting in the streets, or turned into mindless undead by Alterum. As he envisioned this potential world, Emil’s ghostly form almost seemed to brighten with renewed conviction. That was the reason why he couldn’t just give up, why he had to keep going down this path. He was the only one that could manage the undead dragon’s future war, and minimize its effects on humanity as a whole.

Emil made his decision. He looked at the still asleep body of the captain. He needed a body that he could possess, one that didn’t have a soul that would eventually kick him out. Perhaps a corpse could work. There was always his own body, but with how heavily damaged it already was, he was afraid that it might just fall apart even if he could force it to move. He was also unsure of what exactly would happen if he as a ghost possessed a dead body. But since he was in a large town’s hospital, there was likely a morgue somewhere in the building. Which meant that they potentially had cadeavers for him to use as a test run.