The power Ritzy had built up in his mana propelled it out of his hand and toward Lenny. The mana ran through the air like a stream of water running on the ground, at least at the beginning.
Ritzy quickly began losing control over his mana as it came into contact with the world outside his body. It quickly lost its speed and momentum toward Lenny, but Ritzy desperately struggled since he had to succeed.
Eventually, with a frown of concentration so deep there were mountains and valleys on his forehead, Ritzy pushed his mana all the way to Lenny, who was watching him with a sharp gaze.
Ritzy felt as if he could sense Lenny’s wariness rise the closer his mana got to the zombie, so when he felt secure in his mana arriving at its target, he opened his eyes and locked gazes with the zombie’s singular red eye.
Ritzy still had half his mind focused on the mana he sent toward Lenny. But since he couldn’t perceive Lenny with his magical senses, he had to use his physical sight and observe what happened and what Lenny would do.
However, even when Ritzy’s mana entered Lenny, Lenny did nothing. And nothing else happened.
Lenny just looked at Ritzy for several tense moments.
Gerhart could feel his muscles start trembling slightly from the stress of having been flexed and on standby, ready to act at a moment’s notice for so long. So, when he sensed that Ritzy had done something from behind him, he felt he had to get Ritzy to tell him about what was going on.
“...Ritzy?”
Ritzy was busy concentrating on his magic and didn’t answer. He had to maintain his control over his mana and try to reestablish his control over Lenny. He was already busy doing that and watching Lenny’s reactions. He couldn’t afford any more brain usage to give Gerhart a status report. He barely even heard what Gerhart said in the first place since he was so focused on the task.
Gerhart gritted his teeth and maintained his watchful position. If Ritzy didn’t answer, there had to be a reason for it. He could only shut up and wait until something happened, and he either fought Lenny or was free to relax and let out sighs of deep relief.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait for long before something happened. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a drastic change.
Gerhart only saw Lenny tilt his head to the side, which looked grotesque with its loose jaw, attached with strips of burned and dried skin, dangling. But Lenny had done that in response to Ritzy, who tilted his head first when he noticed how the mana he sent to Lenny began disappearing.
It was like Lenny was like a bottomless hole for mana, and after it entered his body, it simply vanished.
Ritzy didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t a positive development. He tried to retake control over his mana and use it to establish a link between himself and Lenny as he had done between himself and the Deathbeds.
But the moment his mana entered Lenny’s body and began disappearing like water in the desert, Ritzy lost control over his mana. He couldn’t do anything with it anymore. He could only watch and feel it fade away within Lenny’s body.
Ritzy’s slack hand fell to his side as he stared at Lenny dumbfounded.
“What the shit.”
Gerhart heard Ritzy’s cursing and understood that something had gone wrong. So, for what felt like the hundredth time, he readjusted his grip on the dagger and prepared to fight Lenny.
“Ritzy! What’s going on?”
Urging Ritzy to do something, Gerhart asked him to explain.
Startled, Ritzy also grabbed his dagger properly.
“I don’t know.”
“You need to do–”
Gerhart was about to tell Ritzy to do better when Ritzy interrupted him.
“I think it’s fucked. I can’t control him. My mana just disappears.”
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“Kill it?”
“...”
“Ritzy! Do we kill it?!”
Since Ritzy was the resident expert on undead and was the one who had reanimated Lenny, Gerhart didn’t want to make the decision on his own. But when Ritzy hesitated, he could feel his already paper-thin patience begin to tear.
“Wait a little.”
“For what?!”
Gerhart’s shout startled Ritzy a little, but he still maintained a superficial calm as he began explaining his thought process.
“So far, he hasn’t shown any hostility. He’s just been watching us. Even now, the only thing he’s attacked is Mognog. And honestly, that’s pretty understandable. If someone threw a skull at me, I would also grab it.”
Mognog felt like he should say something to defend his honor and pride, but he could still feel Lenny’s teeth around him and the zombie crouching nearby. So, he held his nonexistent tongue.
“So what? We can’t just stand here and watch it, waiting for it to attack us!”
“I know, I know.”
“What do we do, Ritzy?! If you don’t come up with an answer, I’m going to try and kill it.”
Almost as if it could sense Gerhart’s murderous intentions, Lenny’s corpse moved its head to look away from Ritzy and at Gerhart for the first time since Ritzy closed his eyes.
It also seemed like its face changed expressions, but it was difficult to tell due to the damage and disfiguration Lenny’s face had undergone in the fire and reanimation process.
“What if… What if we don’t do anything?”
“What?”
Gerhart could hardly believe his ears at Ritzy’s seemingly suicidal suggestion.
The reanimated Lenny was clearly an undead gone rogue. It didn’t listen to Ritzy’s orders, even if he tried to force it. And it probably wouldn’t obey if Ritzy attempted to annul the reanimation. The corpse also belonged to a person possessing absolute enmity with them both. At least something had gone wrong in the reanimation process, and the zombie didn’t possess any of Lenny’s traits and behavioral patterns.
But it was still ridiculously stupid to Gerhart to leave the zombie be without subduing it or getting rid of it.
“Yeah. We don’t do anything. We just continue walking. We don’t have time to deal with this, anyways.”
Ritzy’s surprisingly logical and sound reasoning stumped Gerhart.
“...”
“Look, both of us are tired and weak. If he attacks or we attack him, we’re bound to get injured either way, right?”
“That’s possible.”
“And, at the moment, it doesn’t look like he will attack us, right?”
“Well… no.”
“So, attacking him first would be stupid.”
“...I guess that’s true.”
“And I can’t do anything to him. That means the only thing we can do is continue moving and hope he won’t do anything to us.”
Gerhart couldn’t refute Ritzy.
“Fuck. So we should just walk along with this thing hanging around us? With an undead out of control following us?”
“If it’s the only thing we can do, it’s the only thing we should do.”
Gerhart rubbed his forehead in frustration with the back of his hand. He even accidentally let his sight wander from Lenny. But his murderous intentions toward the zombie were dispelled, and Lenny returned its gaze to Ritzy.
“Fuck.”
Gerhart swore again as he stared at Lenny as if trying to bore a hole through the zombie’s skull.
“Fuck it.”
Gerhart threw his arms up in the air in resignation.
“If we die because of this thing, just know you’re to blame, Ritzy.”
Gerhart sheathed his dagger and turned around, still tense and prepared for a sneak attack. But when he glanced back, Lenny was still watching Ritzy, so he began grabbing his bags again.
“I know.”
The sudden melancholy in Ritzy’s voice made Gerhart stop for a second before he carried on as if nothing had happened.
Gerhart began walking through the forest as the rain started growing heavier again.
Ritzy cautiously approached Lenny and bent down to grab the shiny skull that was Mognog. Lenny merely watched Ritzy do so without moving an inch. Ritzy couldn’t be sure, but it felt like Lenny, or the creature in his corpse at least, was curious.
Based on how it acted, it was all but confirmed that it definitely was not Lenny’s soul inside the corpse. Ritzy couldn’t understand how it had happened or why. But it was the same for his other attempts at necromancy. This incident with Lenny was simply a new flavor and another thing he didn’t understand.
Ritzy still locked eyes with Lenny after grabbing Mognog and backing away from Lenny until he disappeared behind a few trees whose roots Ritzy stumbled over while walking backward.
When he made sure Lenny wasn’t following them within sight, he added another point to his grand plan of becoming the future greatest necromancer in history and taking over the world to prove it. He had already added Talia’s resurrection to it, but now, he added figuring out his necromancy to it.
Things could be going wrong for a plethora of reasons, and that was only based on what Ritzy knew at the moment. When he traveled the world and learned new things, he would discover other reasons that could be behind his necromancy. But until he figured it out and did something about it, Ritzy would be stuck with the oddities of his necromancy. And so far, even if it wasn’t what he had planned or wished for, it seemed to be working out somewhat.
Mognog, Hotes and Fotes, and the bone club were all proof that it wasn’t all bad. It was just a little strange. With his mind set, Ritzy vowed not to let his unconventional necromancy hinder his path to world domination.