Her body was a collection of bones perfectly arranged to form a human shape. It had to be Charlotte; everything else had been disintegrated with her last attack. A former powerful warrior who had taught me about this world and made the ultimate sacrifice for me.

Some would say what I was about to do was heresy, a disservice to the file of a brave woman. And I wouldn’t deny it. There was nothing honorable about my acts; they just served a clear purpose: survival.

I had to get stronger, both for myself and for all of those I still had to free from the System. The means didn’t matter as long as I could achieve my goal. And, to me, a dead body had no say over my future.

It didn’t matter who it had belonged to; all I saw was untapped potential. It was an opportunity to have a warden look over my dungeon for all eternity, or until it was killed.

My time here, in Core and Nova, was limited. I could only grow so much by repeatedly spreading corruption. Once I had corrupted all of Nova’s citizens, there was no other way I could further level up.

I couldn’t just raise an [Undead] that I could not control or dialogue with right in front of our base. I had no way of telling which level it would have, and while I thought it was close to impossible that it was as strong as Charlotte had been, I couldn’t risk it.

Several round trips later, everything had been moved far enough from Core. It was still within the dungeon, as that was the whole purpose of the idea, but far enough that it wouldn’t just accidentally reach Core.

It would eventually, and for that, we would have to be strong enough to handle it by ourselves. I looked at the bones one last time, and I moved as far as my sense allowed me. By the time I decided to stop, I had to use 50 energy for a concentrated beam of energy to reach them.

In a split-second decision, I sent a pulse filled with corruption. I treated it as any other object I had seen so far. There was no need to use [Fusion], some bones wouldn’t be able to resist my will.

I was burning through my energy at an alarming rate. Every two seconds, I pulsed to verify if the corruption process was going well, and it wasn’t.

I could see that each bone was being corrupted separately, as if they weren’t all part of the same thing. An [Undead] was not a random collection of pieces, it was a skeleton built of all the necessary parts.

One more pulse hit the bones, enforcing the concept of unity, or a single entity. Another pulse was charged with a command to raise from the dead. Yet another pulse ordered them to ignore the System and the misconception that they were a disjoint set.

You were Charlotte.

I sent one more pulse.

You are all the same.

And one more.

Raise as one!

I was lower than I should have ever gotten. It was my last ditch effort—a pulse with a real layer of compressed energy. My assumption was being proved wrong with every failed attempt. That was not an inanimate object. It was not an [Undead].

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A screech pierced my ears, leaving behind a ringing noise that I didn’t stop even after the high-pitched note dispersed. I had heard it before. I had seen how Charlotte’s roar became a ghostly cry.

[Sorrowful Wraith]

My last pulse confirmed what I had been thinking already. I had not been creating an undead; I had been raising her very soul. A ghost with the appearance of a Charlotte that had already lost her face and skin to my own corruption.

[{The Third Eye of Corruption} has reached its maximum level]

I acknowledged the System dialog, only reading it superficially and ignoring the explanation below, and focused on the impending disaster. The [Sorrful Wraith] had locked her eyes with me.

It was not attacking, physically or mentally. But she stared. My eyes lost in a bottomless pit of darkness, like the crater that Charlotte had created. It was easy to read between lines; she was looking back at me, cursing me for what I had created.

I ran.

I turned around without facing the monster I had created. It didn’t follow me at all, even its interest seemed to wane as soon as I moved further away. Perhaps she only wanted to be left alone.

Or perhaps I had become what I had sworn to destroy. It was my choice, and my actions would bring me power—an empire of my own. This was not the time to commiserate for the dead.

* [ ] I walked back to Core, and I shook my head when I saw Yasmin observing from the top. I didn’t need to hear any words to know what she wanted to ask. She was dying to ask if Charlotte had survived, if my corruption had worked, or if I had brought her back from the dead.

None of that had happened, and no one would ever know. Right when the [Sorrowful Wraith] looked back at me, I had decided that Charlotte had died. She was now one with the dungeon, looking for us from another place. That was going to be my official version.

Not even Yasmin would know the truth.

The walls were charred and destroyed at places, and even some of the exterior rooms had been hit by the impacts. Having an [Administrator] and an [Architect] had paid out, our summoning site had been strategically placed at the centermost of the complex, where it would be safest.

I sent a few [Scout] units back to Nova, to inform everyone that the danger had passed and that normal operations had to be immediately resumed. For most, that meant going back to their normal lives, but not for our army.

Their efforts had to be redoubled. Their forces had to grow exponentially, at least to a point where they could defend against the Fourth. I had plans for them; they would be the spearhead of our expansion and the main force in our conquest of the neighboring cities.

Core had now an unwilling guardian, and anyone who crossed paths with her would die. And, like her, many more monsters would be wandering our dungeons. The trick lied right in my hands—a [Corrupted Class Book] with all the details of what had gone wrong with Charlotte.