Emil easily navigated his way through the hospital and its hallways. There had been a couple of close calls regarding one of the workers almost seeing him. However, in each instance, he avoided discovery by remaining hidden in the shadows by the ceiling.

Luckily, the hospital employees were almost always looking down at their clipboard when alone. And while with someone, it was while talking to a peer or helping a patient. So without a reason to look up as they walked, nobody managed to actually notice the insectoid roaming the building.

Let’s see here, I’m still not exactly sure where the morgue is. Maybe I could hop out of Theo’s body for a second and possess one of the workers to find out. Emil mused to himself. It would potentially be faster than just looking around until he saw a sign with ‘morgue’ on it that pointed in the right direction.

He turned a corner as he had the thought, and before him was a point that split off into four directions. In the middle of that space, a sign hung from the ceiling. And of course, one of the areas that it gave the direction of was the morgue.

Oh, huh. Maybe not then. Emil thought as he followed the sign and went into the left hallway.

As he traversed down the hall, a sudden pulse emanated from within him. He paused, and wondered what caused it to occur inside Theo’s body. It felt different from the more regular pulses of the undead heart inside it. It was then that a second, stronger pulse could be felt.

But with it, he realized that his initial assumption had been mistaken. It had not come from Theo’s body. No, Emil was now sure that he had felt that second pulse come from his own soul. Hesitantly, he continued to move forward. A third, even stronger pulse throbbed through his spirit as he did.

Emil continued onward, as the pulses also continued to grow more powerful and began to come more frequently. He could now see the end of the hallway, where the door to the morgue was. He felt his soul being pulled toward the room, drawn to it like a magnet. It was then that Emil recognized this familiar sensation.

It was just like when he had created the undead, before he combined it with Theo. When the mass of insects and fake heart had drawn together in a desire to become one. Now, he could feel his own self desiring to rejoin his corpse.

Emil charged forward towards the room at full speed. It was difficult to move so fast. Carrying the half-soul took two legs, and he had been careful about the leg turned into a sharp blade.

As he approached, he could sense that no living beings were inside it with Mana-sense. That fact was extremely fortunate. Because even if there had been a hospital worker, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. Emil jumped down from the ceiling and reached for the door handle with his spindly legs, and forcefully ripped it open.

From inside the morgue, wisps of death slowly oozed out through the open doorway. He entered the room, and above him, a thick cloud of death covered the ceiling. In the time since becoming a Necromancer, Emil had come to find that the substance produced from a living thing’s death had interesting properties.

It felt accurate to describe it as a gas. Since he had observed that when not used or compressed into a memory orb, it would dissipate over time. But at the same time, it also acted like an ooze. One that was sticky and highly viscous. So in a fully enclosed space like this room, it was able to cling onto the walls and ceiling.

He could feel the potential levels of death energy that currently surrounded him. It was the result of who knows how many years of this space being a place for dead bodies before they were moved. However, he couldn’t sense any ghosts inside the room. He was currently the only soul within the morgue.

In one part of the morgue, his eyes rested on what he was there for. A couple dozen fridges lined the wall. Inside each one, gems enchanted with ice magic could keep a dead body cold and slow down decomposition. Underneath the handle of each fridge, there was a tag.

Most of them were blank, but written on some was the identification of the dead body within that unit. But Emil didn’t need to look at any of them. He could feel himself still being tugged toward the fridge that contained his own corpse. He walked up to it. On its tag read ‘Emil Unknown’. It made sense, after all, he had never given out his last name to anyone in the town.

Emil pulled on the handle of the fridge. The sound of it sliding out was the only noise in the otherwise quiet room. He could hear the hallway windows shake from the fierce winds of the now raging snowstorm. Once the fridge was fully open, he crawled on top of it and stared down.

They had been nice enough to clean his body. Now free of the blood and mud that had caked its flesh, he could see where his skull had clearly cracked open. Burnt tissue went across his upper chest and shoulders. His corpse’s eyes were closed, and the skin on his face was tight. His mouth had a slight frown to it. It looked like he was asleep, and simply in the middle of a bad dream.

A final pulse pulled at his soul as he stared down at his body. In turn, his corpse’s chest lurched upward at him. With the blade formed from Flesh Manipulation, Emil stabbed into the chest, and pulled downward to split it open. He then took the half-soul, and pushed it into the newly made cavity.

He then entered the fridge, and had the insectoid legs wrap around his body’s torso. Emil didn’t think about anything as he performed these actions. It simply felt right to him, like it was the correct thing to do. Once fully secured, he tightened the legs with as much power as he could muster. He felt them dig into and puncture his corpse’s flesh.

Emil focused on his own soul, and then channeled the power of Undead Creation on his own corpse. He felt Theo’s Mana drain away into nothing. He felt the unholy fire he had given it dissipate, He stopped hearing the rattle of the windows, and he stopped feeling the icy cold of the fridge.

Emil turned his will at the half-soul, and used Soul Manipulation to break it down. For the first time, he absorbed the power of a human soul into himself. The moment he did, lightning bolts of pure power shot throughout him.

Deep within the recesses of his own self, he felt hunger. The swarm of locusts he had trapped rattled against their prison. They strained against the chains wrapped around their locked chest. They were still trapped within at the bottom of the ocean he had imagined inside his mind.

However, if given even the slightest bit of freedom, they would break free and soar out of the water. He couldn’t let them have even that chance. If he did, they would simply take this power and consume it. But Emil couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t want to feed off the half-soul, but instead use it for his spell.

The insectoid flesh that he possessed began to fall apart. The cloud of death energy above and around him swirled. Even with the energy given by the half-soul and the undead body, it wasn’t enough. The spell he tried to cast began to stall out. He needed more! He needed every bit of strength he could get his hands on!

Through his will, Emil reached out for the cloud of death energy. From it, he could feel an imprint of the last thoughts and feelings of every human who had died here. The pain they felt from being stabbed, and the suffering they experienced as disease destroyed them from the inside. But there was one whose last moments stood out from the rest. A person who had felt anguish unlike any other.

Emil felt a spike of pain, then another, and more across every inch of his being. It was hot, like he was being wreathed in flames. But it was far more than just the pain of burning fire. It was like a series of nails were being hammered into him. Only to then be ripped out along with his flesh and bone.

Yet it felt deeper than simply being physical pain. It was like his very soul was being burnt to a crisp before it was torn apart piece by piece. When they were removed, all that was left in each bit’s place was a frigid emptiness. But through the torment, he felt desperation, followed by a sense of resignation.

Then, in an instant, it was over. It took a few moments for Emil to process the experience. It had been far more potent than any other instance of feeling a living thing’s last moments before death. But once he had a little bit of time to recover himself, he was able to understand whose pain and emotions he had just felt.

It was Hadwin, the cleric he had used Unholy Fire Magic on, before Flumdea finished the man off. The murderer’s body hadn’t been near Emil’s own corpse beforehand. But it made sense that it would also be in the hospital’s morgue. Or at least, here would be what was left of Hadwin’s remains following the explosion.

Emil pushed the thought away. That wasn’t important right now. He focused on the mass of death he had just now finished gathering up. Emil concentrated on the strength he take from it, and concentrated its energy into his magic. The Undead Creation spell kicked into its final stages as he resupplied it with the death energy. As it did, a wave of death energy emanated out of his corpse and shot out in all directions.

The wave traveled out of the room and surged across the hospital. Workers paused in their work as shivers went up their bodies. Patients saw the fog of their breath in front of them. They all wondered if a window had been left open to let in the blizzard’s freezing winds. But Emil hadn’t even noticed the wave’s surge as his attention was fully on completing the spell.

His corpse was now covered in a glossy veil of death energy. The dark power began to condense down into tendrils, twisting together like a rope. It was evenly spread throughout his head, torso, and limbs. Then the twisted tendrils wriggled like worms into his flesh, and disappeared as they went under his skin. Theo’s body continued to melt into his body. He felt parts of the insectoid go into his corpse’s damaged tissue and fill in what was missing.

Deep inside, he could still feel Theo’s presence. Emil reached out to the insect, and could still sense its original body right where he had left it. With his will, he commanded it to return to that form of a small roach. Upon doing that, he ordered Theo to crawl out of the now mostly melted insectoid body, and then get away from him.

Once it did, Emil could feel that there was now just one last step for him to take. He too would need to become one with his corpse. To make himself truly undead, it would require a stronger connection than simply possessing its flesh. He figuratively swallowed nervously as some part of him inherently understood what was required.

In a similar vein to what he did with the mayor, he would need to condense his own soul down into a tangible object. And like what happened to the half of a soul he had used to make the mayor, if it were destroyed, then that would be a true death. There would be no becoming a ghost, and no chance to ask Alterum or anyone else for assistance. This would be both his second and final chance.

He prepared himself for that reality, and then did what had to be done. For a moment, everything went dark. Emil felt weightless, like he was floating in a void. None of his senses seemed to work. He couldn’t see anything or felt any kind of sensation. Even his own thoughts felt frozen in place, unable to think or even properly register the nothingness. No, that wasn’t entirely true. There was one thing that he could feel, that his mind could understand. He was cold.

Emil slowly opened his eyes and stared up at the morgue’s ceiling. His lips cracked as he opened his mouth, and took in a breath. But though his lungs were functional, he didn’t feel any different as the air entered his body. He held the breath and waited a few seconds. But as he did so, a notification popped up in his vision. Then another, until there were an entire series of pop-ups in front of him.

System online!

System capabilities updated!

Rank increased: Half-Undead → Undead Human

Max Mana level increased: 250 → 300

Grade updated B → B+

New General Info stat acquired!

Soul Durability

[General Info:]

Mana Level: 0/300

Soul Durability: 100%

Class: Necromancer

Rank: Undead Human

Grade: B+

[Class Info:]

Death Magic: Level 2

Undead Creation: Level 3

Soul Manipulation: Level 2

Negative Magic: Level 1

Spell Manipulation: Level 5

Unholy Fire Magic: Level 1

Flesh Manipulation: Level 1