The grasslands flew by beneath us, and Azrael squealed and gripped me tighter as the Windilope leapt into the air.
Honestly, I didn't know why she was so scared. Like she could get any more dead, hah!
She'd wanted to just walk, but I managed to convince her that this was faster by reminding her that she was the one who said "the further the better." She'd also told me that the people who came after us would probably investigate the cave first, and that they'd immediately get suspicious when they saw that there was no domain there. I'd left the Antigo to explain the corpses and hopefully damage the ones who came to hunt us, but there was no chance that they'd assume that Azrael just happened to survive, the adventurer's stuff had just happened to vanish, and the domain had just happened to go away. No, our best chance was to try to get out of the range of their Soothsayers before they realized what had happened. They'd immediately come after the rogue, and when they did that, they'd find me too.
I'd told Azrael a bit more about my situation, specifically that I didn't actually know much about magic and how things worked here, though I'd glossed over the other world business for now. Maybe later, when we weren't in such a hurry.
She'd explained that there were many magic types, but also that there really were only a few and others were just combinations of the others, though that wouldn't show up until my second specialization at level 5, since they all required three types of magic. She was a level 4 wraith, an undead that actually started with a dual affinity for dark and death, Nyx and Necrosis. She'd specialized as a Lethean Wraith, which gave her the ability to mess with people's minds. She used this in tandem with her Nyx magic to create illusions. True illusion magic, or Illunyx, required Nyx, Lux, and Lethe. She did want that, but a Lux affinity was hard to get as an undead, which explained why it had been marked as special for me.
Soothen was another one of these rare combo magics. It required Karma, Spatium, and Chronum. That was why Soothsayers were so strong. They were all at least level 10. Their abilities all transformed to be based solely on information-gathering, which was another thing that was new to me.
Apparently Skills could evolve or sometimes combine, which would also affect all the Boons inside those Skills. Evolved Skills would be set back to level 0, with just a single Boon, though they would be much stronger. You'd likely climb back up the level ladder quickly though, with your knowledge of the base Skill or Skills that formed the new one.
She apologetically informed me that she didn't know too much about how to get the other magic types, as she'd only researched the ones that were immediately relevant to her. That was fine, though. I would find information later.
She also warned me about the Skill level cap. Apparently, once they hit level 5, you wouldn't be able to level your Skills anymore until you also hit level 5. The same happened at level 10, 15, 20, and so on.
I also learned that Azrael was not used to riding animals. To be fair, even if she had been, the Windilope moved way too fast for it to matter. I was only unfazed because I was in complete control of the beast. She, on the other hand, was closing her eyes and gripping me in a way that probably would've made me feel awesome back when I'd been alive. Now, though, I just thought that her cold, dead fingers felt nice pressed against my skin.
We were probably moving somewhere close to 60 miles an hour, which was obviously an utterly ridiculous speed, especially for a creature that literally could not get tired. The Wildilope had been a spur-of-the-moment design, but it had turned out quite well.
Apparently, we were running from a division of the local adventurer's guild equivalent, the Watchers. They specialized in warding against unseen threats, and the higher up the chain you went, the more secretive you were supposed to be. There were only rumors, but apparently the strongest members of the organization had saved entire cities from annihilation without anyone even noticing. Illusionists were important to the Watchers, so they'd accepted Azrael without question. In her previous life, she'd been a "normal girl," and she wouldn't say anything else about it, not to me or the recruiters, who hadn't even known that she was undead, just an aspiring illusionist. They'd known about her affinity for Lethe, but had attributed the rest of her abilities to a Rogue specialization that humans could get.
She'd been doing quite well for herself, but had been lonely. As an undead, it was hard to look at regular people and feel anything other than disgust or hunger. That was why she started hunting undead.
It sounded like she was just murdering her own kind, but really, mindless undead are basically just animals. You might feel bad for shooting a deer, but it wasn't really a person.
Then she'd heard of an undead with a domain forming a lair in the area, and had signed up immediately. Creatures with Domain Skills had a higher chance of being intelligent than normal monsters.
Though she may not have sounded that way, she had been overjoyed to find me. Realizing that the inevitable had happened and she had to run away, though, was a bit of a blow to that happiness, hence why she'd been so snappy before.
We were currently headed North, towards an area she called the "Dead Belt," a line that separated the upper half of the continent from the lower half. When she'd told me that, I'd assumed that meant it was along the equator. I'd also assumed that meant it was hot. When I phrased this as a question, she'd given me a weird look and told me that, no, it was apparently one of the coolest places around. I assumed that had something to do with the dense Necrosis in the area. Apparently, it was so thick that natural undead would awaken there. Few living dared to travel there, making it a haven of eternal undeath.
Azrael had wanted to go there, but doubted her ability to make the journey on her own. Apparently, the Watchers had a clause that she hadn't known about, one where they'd hunt down any of their own who ran away. It was supposedly a precaution, so that any forbidden knowledge they held couldn't be spread, but she knew what it really was: control. Not only that, but there were threats such as monsters, wandering Exorcists, and so on. She couldn't handle all of those threats on her own, and so she'd bided her time.
Clearly, she hadn't been banking on being able to move this fast. We'd arrive at the Dead Belt within a couple days, and we had no petty, mortal reasons to stop.
As we traveled, she did her best to share some general information with me.
The northern part of the continent was known as Kerenth, whereas the southern was known as Yalten. They were considered separate continents by the people, but they weren't in terms of land mass. A long time ago, they'd both been ruled by two kingdoms, hence the names, and they'd even formed trade routes across the Dead Belt which, at the time, had been much weaker. However, all good things eventually came to an end. The kingdoms had attempted to merge into a single, greater whole, but the crown princess of Yalten had refused to wed the crown prince of Kerenth, calling him an "old, brutish man-whore."
To be entirely fair, she hadn't been wrong. She was in her late teens, barely considered a woman, and he was a middle aged man who had sired a dozen bastards that historians knew of.
Even if she'd been entirely justified in her refusal, it had sparked a rage in Julysias Kerenth's heart, and he sent assassins after the girl the moment he ascended the throne a bare handful of years later. It was theorized that he'd poisoned his father to accelerate his plans. Cylia Yalten survived, but had been left with terrible scars. The assassins had used acid, of all things. The girl had yet to specialize, but had done so that very night, gaining a never-before-seen Princess of Wrath specialization. Her father had been outraged by the actions of the new ruler of Kerenth, and war had been declared before the sun broke the horizon.
Some believed that the princess had influenced her father somehow with her new powers, but there was no evidence of such happening.
Julysias Kerenth's specialization tree hadn't been recorded, other than a note that it was an unimpressive Leader path that used Lust magic, combining Lethe, Heart, and Life magic into something twisted and disgusting. Cylia's path, though, had been watched with great interest. After becoming a Princess of Wrath, she obtained Heart magic, becoming a Loving Princess of Wrath, and then gained a Karma affinity and became a Princess of Passion. She'd excelled in gathering the support of her people, understanding their desires, and importantly, sending them to war with passion in their hearts.
The war had lasted decades, but the true winner has been the Dead Belt. Empowered by the massive amount of Necrosis generated by the war fought across it, the Dead Belt evolved from a minor inconvenience to a nigh-uncrossable obstacle. Before, all it would do was make people feel sick and bring the dying closer to death, but now, it could outright kill weaker people, and those who died within it would rise again. Thousands of well-armed zombie soldiers had been animated by the wild energies, and an entirely new war had started.
Eventually, the humans lost. The undead never venture far from the Dead Belt, but so many resources had been poured into the war that the first zombie waves had caused the capital cities to collapse. The rulers went into hiding, never to be seen again. The humans had to flee from the Dead Belt, retreating to the freezing edges of the continent, at the mercy of the hoarfrost giants, white dragons, and harsh conditions.
Eventually, humanity made a comeback. Part of it was due to finding a reliable source of obtaining light affinity: the goddess Shamsum. Yet another familiar name. Shamsum quickly became the chief deity in both Kerenth and Yalten, and her followers were blessed by Lux affinity, with the unique property of melting the undead like a hot knife through butter.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The other reason was simple attrition. The undead that spread into the continents were the minority, and many were picked off by monsters, dragons, and so on. Eventually, the humans were able to reclaim Kerenth and Yalten, but the Dead Belt remained impassable. The only trade that passed between the two lands was done by ship, and even that held some risks.
The further into the depths you went, the more abominations the waters held. It was called the Kraken Phenomenon, since the monsters in the depths were generally just referred to as krakens. Apparently, none had ever been killed or found dead by humans, and almost no one ever survived them, so there was no classification system for them.
Also, yes, kraken is one of those words that is actually a combination word. It actually means Sea-Entity, but the context and meaning are close enough to kraken that I decided it would be cooler to mentally translate it that way. Get used to it; this language is trippy and I'm going to use every excuse I can find to fix it for myself. Heck, if at all possible, I'll try to find a way to teach Azrael English. That would be so much simpler.
Anyways, gods in this world were different from gods back home. They were actually present, for all to see. Many were actually titanic beings of unimaginable power, though they were bound by certain rules and laws.
For example, Shamsum couldn't go further from a handful of miles away from the North or South poles of the world, though she could teleport between them. God and goddess were actually the same word as well, I'd simply assumed based on the names I'd heard.
Turns out, gods in this world are often so monstrous that sex either isn't a thing for them or is completely incomprehensible. Still, some chose to assign gender to them based on their voices. Shamsum's voice was light and airy, so it was typically assigned feminine grammatical terms when not directly using the "God" sigil/word.
I'd asked if Azrael was a god too, and she'd reluctantly admitted that yes, she was. She. That one was different from my expectations, but I supposed that could only be expected. Azrael was a god that people knew of, but no one directly knew. Mostly, people just knew the name and that they were a goddess linked to Necrosis. Outside of that, there were just rumors.
People still interacted with some of the gods, like Shamsum. All you needed to do to meet her was travel far enough North or South. Many gods had been lost to time, though, as any records of the requirements to commune with them had been destroyed and forgotten.
The ancient war between Kerenth and Yalten was to blame for much of this. Apparently, the requirements of where and how to meet the gods had been stored in sacred libraries, and almost every god that had been discovered at the time had a place in the societies of either Kerenth or Yalten. After the kingdoms had been destroyed, and everyone had become obsessed with Shamsum, the knowledge had been lost. Some gods hadn't been called upon since, and others had only been seen a handful of times.
That was one of the restrictions that was put on every deity. They couldn't share the requirements to interact with themselves or even other gods. The only way to find out the way to call on them was to do everything, but nobody wanted to devote their entire lives to sciencing out something that might never work.
In any case, the Dead Belt was a place of death, which meant it would be perfect for the two of us to hide out and get stronger. Even if the Soothsayer managed to find us, they'd never dare enter the Dead Zone. The Watchers were a powerful organization, capable of taking down even some of the strongest beasts around, but the Dead Belt was an ancient force. Some superstitions even said that it was a living thing, a manmade god. Even those who didn't believe knew of its power. All those fools who dared enter were never seen again.
Even if you could handle the undead, Necrosis was toxic to living creatures, and the death there was so thick that literal rivers of it had formed over the centuries. Sounded like a fun vacation spot for a couple of undead on their honeymoon, huh? I mean, Azrael and I weren't exactly married, but give it time. I couldn't currently feel that sort of stuff, but maybe if one of us took a Heart affinity we'd be able to manage it? It was a fun idea.
Anyways, my first goal was to build a tower. A very, very tall tower. Now, I wasn't certain if I wanted to commit to making this my Spire of Doom, but I still wanted a tower.
That was a bit of an issue. Y'see, building into a cave was easy; the stone was already there. Building up, though? Not so much. My Mold Terrain Boon would lose loads of efficiency, and forcing undead to build my tower would not only result in my tower being poorly made, but it would also take forever. Luckily, I had a better idea.
I was going to destroy a mountain.
I had already checked with Azrael and it turned out that the Dead Belt was generally pretty mountainous. That was somewhat surprising to me, considering that it was in the equator and most places of such high heat are either desert or jungle, but the Necrosis kept it somewhat cool. Still, it probably should have been sandy, what with the lack of plants holding down the vegetation, but apparently that was a non-issue as well.
There were plants with Necrosis affinities. I mean, it wasn't too surprising, considering that I, a lich, had been offered a Life affinity, but at the same time, it was fascinating.
The plants were apparently influenced by the energy as well, and tended to take more deadly shapes. Thorns grew in flowers, trees lashed out with strangling vines, and toxins dripped from fruits. All in all, it sounded like a pretty cool place.
More importantly, the plants in the environment kept the dirt compacted, and prevented it from flying off. Additionally, they tended to be somewhat carnivorous, and preferred fresh death essence over natural minerals. This meant that the dirt was probably the most fertile and moist in this entire world. This meant that sand had not formed. It was also a place of great tectonic activity, meaning that many mountains had formed.
I was planning on spreading my influence over an entire mountain. After that I would gradually use my Mold Terrain to compact it into a single, solid cylinder. I would then carve into that object to form a home for myself, Azrael, and my creatures.
It was a flawless plan
"That's a stupid plan." Azrael broke my non-existent heart in four words.
"Azzy, please, just hear me out–" My whining was rudely cut off by accursed logic.
"No, I will not hear you out. We need shelter and protection. You need a place to put your Phylactery, and I don't want to sit out in the cold rain for months on end while you work on your little passion project. You're making a cave. You can build your little tower later." Her voice was cold as the grave. Heh.
I gave her my best rendition of puppy dog eyes, but she only shoved me forward, reminding me to keep moving.
We'd gotten off the Windilope once we'd gotten to the Dead Belt, now satisfied with our distance and more than happy to take our time. We were walking towards a mountain off in the distance, and would be there in just a handful of hours, but I'd wanted a bit more time to think, and Azrael had wanted to soak in some of the dense Necrosis before we needed to focus again.
It was nice, just walking around. My old cave had been pretty stuffy. At the time I didn't mind, just seeing it as cozy, but moving around was a pleasure, especially with a complete body.
"We should go on more walks in the future," I voiced my thoughts to Azrael.
She gave me a weird look. "You say that as if we had the opportunity to go on long walks like this in the past. We literally met, what, two days ago? And I was on a task force put together to kill you. You're a really weird guy, you know that?"
I just shrugged at her. "I've read a lot of books, and enemies-to-friends is a common enough trope. Though, enemies-to-lovers is even more common."
I'd muttered the last half of that, though she'd clearly heard it since she turned away from me.
Was that a reaction to blushing? Actually yeah, that made sense. She hadn't yet fully grown accustomed to undeath, and had to internalize the fact that her blood didn't circulate, thus making it impossible for her to blush.
It was still… wait, was I about to say it was cute? I stopped in my tracks to do some introspection, ignoring Azrael's squawk of confusion.
I dug deeper into where I'd felt the emotion come from, scouring my soul, but I found nothing. I would have to keep an eye on that in the future. Regaining some of my human emotions would be fine, but if I got all of them back?
Would I even still be a lich?
"Ambrose, are you okay?" Azrael looked down at where I'd bent over. I hadn't actually noticed myself doing so, but I'd bent my knees and hunched my back, staring at my hands.
I looked up at her and felt… nothing. Yes, that was good, no emotions, keep it professional. The marriage thoughts from earlier were entirely academic and not at all influenced by emotional thinking.
"I'm fine, just thought of something. Don't stress about it." I smiled up at her, unfolding myself. "Let's keep going. I'd like to get there before dark."
She nodded back at me, smiling as well. "Let's."
The mountain grew larger and larger over the next few hours, and eventually we'd reached its base. The sun was starting to set, but we weren't in any particular rush, so we stopped to watch it on the horizon.
We found ourselves sitting on the West side of the mountain, and soon, through a momentary war of celestial flame and glory, night overtook the day.
In the darkness, I used my Domain of Undeath's initial Boon, Spread Undeath, and sunk it as far as I could in a horizontal line. Once I'd reached as far as I could, I turned on my Delinear Sight, pushed some Spatium into my Domain, and used Mold Terrain. With the addition of space magic, the land was shaped and pushed around like it was made of sand, compacting and forming a perfect tunnel.
Azrael and I stepped deeper into the land, and I extended my Domain further and further in, until my Delinear Sight let me know that I was directly under the highest peak of the mountain. I then carved a spiral staircase into the rock, pulling Azrael along with me as I pushed it further and further up, creating cylindrical floors at regular intervals as I went.
If Azzy wanted a cave, she'd get a cave, but I would be building my wizard tower.
Eventually, I saw that I'd gone 3/4ths up the mountain, and stopped.
For this final floor, I compacted as much influence as I could. Only once the Necrosis was forming nigh-physical swirls in the air did I stop.
Standing with the staircase just behind me, I raised a hand, and pushed on my currently active Boon.
I felt a liquid power flow out of me, growing physical as it left me, and looked on in wonder as my Phylactery left my body and reformed itself in its unique icosahedron shape. I heard a quiet gasp of awe come from behind me, and knew that Azzy was enjoying the sight just as much as I was. As the energy of my soul fully solidified itself, a shudder echoed through what would soon become the foundation of my spire.
My soul was stored within the Phylactery, and the Phylactery’s Domain was an extension of that. It spread my mind’s influence across its dominion, bringing it under my banner and making it a part of myself.
In other words, I now had complete control over this section of the mountain, and now just had to spread my influence over the rest of the mountain before I could build my tower.
After that? Well, there was a whole world out there.
Someday, it would all be mine.