Little grove areas with stone benches sporadically appeared within the frozen maze, showcasing new varieties of zombified vegetables. Bone white trees that stabbed their branches at you, yellow ferns with razor blades leaves, and a green flower that shot a poisonous dust cloud into the air, to name a few. I found these plants fascinating, but not enough to stop me from killing them indiscriminately.

The undead foliage I enjoyed harvesting the most were these annoying vines I called a ghoul tongue. They were long, black and purple, like a certain ghoul’s slobbering appendage that had seared itself into my memory. The ghoul’s tongue was as common as weeds, and just as aggressive.

Doing its level best to be stealthy, the most recently encountered vine slowly reached out for my foot across the snow covered ground. I hit the mobile plant with Famine and watched sores burst open across its fleshy skin. Pus leaked out of the new holes; but I couldn’t smell it! In fact, because of my new smell masking trait, I had no idea how much these rotters stank.

It was absolutely wonderful.

After a brief pause, the vine continued inching toward my boot. I’d discovered that my new spell did wonders for giving undead plants a rough time, but the magic wasn’t enough to kill them. There were diminishing returns on how much damage repeated castings could do. Three castings were enough to slow them down and weaken their structural integrity as much as I could. However, two spells were the sweet spot doing the most damage in the shortest time possible. Considering I had to wait for my expendable mana to recover, a conservative approach was best.

I hit the vine with another Famine. This time, the vine curled away like a dying spider’s legs. I reached down and used my other level three spell, Degenerating Touch, and the plant froze up. Now weak and unable to fight back, I had my skeleton tear the creeper out of the ground.

The skeleton didn’t need my help, but I used the magic anyway to manage risk. If I didn’t help it out, the unexpectedly feisty plant would try to escape by burrowing. After watching my minion fight one for fifteen minutes, then escape with my mana, I decided not to risk a repeat performance. Besides, my way was quickest.

Five minutes later, I felt the telltale rush of mana into my core.

The undead of the icy garden maze continued to supply me with a steady supply of the stuff. Earlier in the day, after I’d cleared the fourth grove, I’d jumped to tier five. There was a new tier option for an ability called Sense the Horde, which would let me sense the direction of the most concentrated zombies. Had I been a mindless shambler in a mob of undead, that ability probably would have been useful. After all, a lone zombie is easy pickings for a group of adventurers. But since I didn’t need the trait, I joyfully picked up Hardy Bones.

Now, at tier five, I hoped the next advancement would be to level four. Every evolution so far had been a major quality of life change for me, and I was excited to see what new comfort I would get.

Still, unlike my times in the catacombs, I didn’t feel pressed to rush. With my two compatriots protecting me, and the picturesque beauty of the glacial maze, I felt obligated to enjoy leisure time. A normal human certainly wouldn’t have felt the same. I’d had a bit of time to think about my rebirth as a monster, and I knew that my psychological processes just weren’t the same. Having no need for food, sunlight, companionship, and love were profound game changers—the implications of which I only barely understood. The only certainty was that I was doing good. Maybe better than I’d ever been.

I walked through the corridors of soft snow, stopping every so often to peer at the corpses of long dead beasts encased. Guessing what type of monster or animal the creature had been was an amusing detour from chopping up roots. Occasionally, I'd play a matching game, trying to find two skulls from the same animal on opposite walls. So far, that had happened three times for sure. A creature that looked a hell of a lot like what I guessed a dragon’s skeleton would look like was stuck in one wall. There had been nothing else that looked like it, either.

Goofing off got me lost, and it didn’t concern me in the slightest. If I had the inclination, I could spend years of my life mapping out every inch of the maze. I’d never done cartography before, and it sounded interesting.

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Besides, what was there to worry about?

The biggest reason I hadn’t done just that was because I knew I was getting close to the center of the labyrinth. One way I’d been able to tell was because the roof got higher the closer you moved in that direction. From that, I could tell from the curvature that a giant dome encapsulated the structure. Around the edges where I’d started, the stone ceiling had nearly hit my eight-foot knight on the top of its helmeted head. Using that observation as a lodestar made my progress much easier. At present, the distance was at about triple that by my estimation.

For living humanoids navigating the maze, that knowledge would have been invaluable. Dealing with the ever increasing cold and constant monster ambushes would have put them in a race against death. Especially with the ice tunnels that sprung up. Every so often, the gap in the walls would shrink, forcing me to have to slide or crawl. I was sure that the devious mind behind the construction of this place had included these diversions to force explorers to come into contact with the ice. Thankfully, the narrow pathways had never become small enough to impede my skeleton.

Curiously, I hadn’t spotted the grinning face of Thalzaxor decorating the area. His ghoulish face had been so constant a companion since my awakening that his absence was as foreboding as it was conspicuous. His dead scrolls had explained that his primary edicts concentrated on protecting places for the entombed dead. Why his worshippers had built catacombs and temples protecting the exterior of this place alone was a mystery. I couldn’t wait to crack it.

I wasn’t ready for the sudden success when the moment came. I’d just been sliding around another narrow bend when I stumbled down a ramp. Before me, covered in undisturbed snow, was the bowl shaped courtyard of a monumental tower. Ghoul’s tongue vines grew around the building from the base at the ground, to its top at the dome’s pinnacle. The purity of the surrounding ice was a sharp contradiction with the mass of despoiled plants.

Blocking the entryway to the tower was an enormous tree the color of blood. Along the trunk were the hieroglyphic-like carvings of the Zu-Rakan language. Willowy strands of thorny branches hung from the canopy, unmoving but no less intimidating.

Assuming that the plant would attack at my approach, I sent my trusty assistant to tap its way around the perimeter. Every minute that went by emboldened me, and I directed the scurrying claw ever closer. Eventually, it reached within touching distance of the trunk and I decided that approaching was probably safe. I figured that might change if we touched the tree, but I didn’t see the point of risking it. Reading what the tree said was all I cared about at present.

My bodyguard walked in first, because I’m not a huge dumbass. Together, we took a path that ensured its head wouldn’t brush up against the hanging branches. Luckily, nothing exciting occurred.

Turned out, the great tree was a retelling of the life of a woman named Mizrah Kest. In life, she’d been the descendent of one of the vampire queens that ruled their ancient empire. By accounts, she’d been a prodigious mage, forming a core before her seventh birthday. Oran hadn’t even heard of such a feat being possible.

Anyway, she fought in several wars before turning sixteen, and became a master necromancer not long after. The philosophy of the vampiric leaders appeared to be “throw everyone into a blender and see what floats”. Mizrah took everything her imperial overlords threw at her, and when she turned twenty-one, she entered their ranks. As it was the custom of the worthy to join their undead brethren by that age.

Hilariously, they forced those that were unworthy to remain alive as both the living servants and propagators of their noble lines. The old blood queens hadn’t heard of that dude Darwin and doomed future generations to come from their failures.

In time, this made their empire weak, but that hadn’t been what destroyed it. Facing rebellion from non-vampire factions within the empire, and barbarian giants to the north, the blood suckers grew desperate. Mizrah Kast researched and created an experimental spell that called down a space comet on the giants. To cast the spell, they’d sacrificed hundreds of thousands of slaves for their mana.

The epic ritual worked a little too well.

All that mana got sucked into the icy comet, giving it magical properties of its own. When it broke apart in the atmosphere, as objects sometimes do, the ice scattered all over the giant and the Zu-Rakan territories. Worse, somehow the magical ice spread regular snow and frost all over the place, sealing the death of both peoples.

The rebellion that followed in the wake of that catastrophe gave Thalzaxor the power to ascend to godhood. After he cannibalized all the vampires, he built a shrine with Mizrah Kast’s corpse interred within. His followers gathered up a bunch of the ice and all the people and beasts she’d slaughtered to cast her despicable magic. Then they used it to replicate her favorite place in the world, her garden maze.

All as one big ironic, thanks.

Maybe they hadn’t cut off his balls after all.

I couldn’t help but laugh, but I didn’t do it for long. The mass of mana twisted around that tower was calling to me. It was time to level.