Ch. 78 - Cold Embrace

"Damn it, damn it! What the hell was that spell!?"

As a scholar, aside from research-induced frustration that occasionally drove him to claw at his own hair and face, Dais rarely experienced such hysterical moments.

He practically kicked open the door to a darkened chamber.

The stench of blood was heavy, but he'd long since grown accustomed to it—he could even be said to enjoy it.

This was, after all, his corpse-processing workshop.

The blood that had flowed when he severed the adventurer's legs still remained on the crude wooden table, uncleaned.

Because he loved the faint sweetness in blood, just as much as he loved the sour, rancid stench of rotting corpses.

Many people couldn't understand his preferences.

But then, he didn't understand why anyone would like those cloyingly sweet cakes either.

Please—scholarship was always tedious work.

The reason one endured such tedium to study the mysteries of 'life and death' must stem from personal interest at the start—

"The living are always cunning, treacherous, and unreasonable. Their minds are agile, always making you believe they're treating you with sincerity, right up until they've swindled you down to nothing but a stinking loincloth."

"But the dead don't do that. Being with them brings peace of mind."

"Because the dead don't speak."

Before becoming a necromancer, young Dais had already taken many wrong turns and come to realize this truth.

So he frequently desecrated graves.

On one hand, it was for survival—

Eating the food offerings left for the deceased, then prying open their coffins and lying beside them.

This both filled his stomach and provided shelter from wind and snow.

There was even 'companionship.'

On the other hand, it allowed him to live in his own world, refusing to deal with those man-eating, bone-spitting living people.

Until he opened the grave of a necromancer—

Dais remembered that when he discovered that spellbook in the burial chamber, he'd nearly laughed aloud.

He'd never imagined these great figures who studied 'life and death' would one day be unable to escape death's pursuit.

Then what was the goal they'd pursued their entire lives?

Carrying this question, he walked the same path as that necromancer.

Now, he had his answer:

"The soul."

This was also why he'd been guided to reach this tomb.

"Ah, here it is!"

He fumbled to retrieve from the chest a potion containing a thin, deep blue liquid, gulping it down his throat with loud swallows.

Unlike healing potions that accelerated wound recovery.

This *Stress Potion* could help a caster recover more quickly from mental trauma.

For instance, to recover to peak condition normally required approximately eight hours of adequate rest.

But drinking a *Lesser Stress Potion* could shorten that to six hours.

Of course, it was also more expensive—the price of two healing potions.

But Dais couldn't care about that anymore.

Those magic-infused curses still lingered in his mind.

Though he'd mended the bloody hole in his forehead, his head still throbbed with pain.

Mental damage required stress potions to alleviate.

Otherwise, wracked with headaches, he couldn't possibly rest peacefully to recover his completely depleted spell slots.

"Much better."

When his vision cleared somewhat, Dais first breathed a sigh of relief.

Then he left the workshop, snapping his fingers lightly. The torches on the surrounding stone walls burst into brilliant flames in response, illuminating the pitch-black, cavernous tomb—

Aside from a massive stone platform in the center, most of the surroundings were filled with foul-smelling corpses, spread irregularly around the area.

These were the adventurers, grave robbers, lost travelers he'd killed over the years, along with some poor bastards who'd simply died in the wilderness and been brought back by him.

He stepped over these corpses and hurried to the stone platform, pulling back the white cloth covering it.

A perfect torso was thus revealed without reservation.

It lacked a head, but aside from that, there was nothing worth criticizing.

In its hands positioned at the waist, it still gripped a broken sword tightly. A damp, unwilling, yet mournful aura seemed to echo the putrid stench within the tomb.

"Good, no damage whatsoever. I can save some Restoration Gel."

Dais breathed a sigh of relief and recovered the white cloth.

"Then I'll rest for a bit. After six hours, I'll memorize some spells that don't require concentration, and try to shut that mouth up as quickly as possible..."

The method of rest was quite simple.

Just sleep.

When the caster quietly entered dreamland, his depleted mental energy would slowly recover.

Correspondingly, the 'formulas' for spells in his mind would be forgotten.

So whenever waking from dreams, a mage still needed to spend some time searching through their spellbook for the spells they decided to use that day, re-memorizing the formulas.

Dais found the area piled highest with corpses and lay down upon several bodies—

This was his bed.

"Ah..."

A tremendous sense of security enveloped him, like the gradually stiffening, cold embrace of his mother after enduring a frigid snowy night in childhood.

He delved into the world's mysteries of 'life and death.'

He understood that in this world, as long as the soul remained intact, life and death were separated only by an unobstructed bridge.

"So as long as I learn soul magic and find the soul..."

His eyelids gradually closed.

The corners of his mouth pulled into a smile.

It was a beautiful dream.

"..."

Dais didn't remember how long he'd slept.

Only that in his daze, he suddenly heard a crisp "pang" sound.

It was extremely faint, yet acted directly upon his heart, shaking him violently awake—

That was the *Alarm* spell he'd set up in advance in the tomb's corridor.

It was positioned between the temple and the burial chamber, a total distance of no more than two hundred feet.

In other words, running to his location would take less than half a minute—

"Not good!"

Dais cried out, not even having time to think about who had seen through the layers of fog to reach this tomb.

He only rushed back to his workshop, frantically searching through his remaining resources—

Though he'd recovered some mental energy.

He'd also forgotten all his spells!

"I can only use this—"

He painfully pulled out an enormous skull.

It occupied nearly half the treasure chest, a size that required both arms to embrace.

And just as Dais emerged from his workshop, a wide, heavy tower shield had already charged out from the corridor—

Dais couldn't see who was wielding the tower shield.

So he guessed it was a dwarf.

Stonecrusher caught sight of the panicked 'skeleton' at a glance and laughed loudly:

"I'd like to see if you can banish me one more fucking time!"

Racing down the steps, his feet didn't stop as he raised his tower shield high and charged straight toward Dais.

The latter gritted his teeth tightly, throwing the skull he was embracing into the corpse field, obscure incantations pouring ceaselessly from his mouth.

Stonecrusher suddenly realized that the corpses spread throughout the tomb were beginning to writhe toward him.

An enormous, broad shadow gradually covered the tomb's firelight, also obscuring the 'skeleton's' figure.

His spirit trembled, but courage kept his feet moving:

"Shield Charge!"

"Thud—"

The massive impact, along with his tower shield, slammed hard into a gigantic mass of flesh, the rebound force causing his entire body to fly back twenty feet!

Soaring through the air, Stonecrusher couldn't help but shout:

"I fucking hate giants!"

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