"You dare!" Ludwig howled as the body seed to refuse Ludwig’s mana.
The refusal wasn’t polite. The ice cracked sharply, a spiderweb of fractures racing outward. Chunks loosened and slid free. A thin mist rose, carrying the sharp, clean sll of cold that made his nose sting.
The ice cracked and began falling apart. The body would begin deteriorating.
Ludwig saw it imdiately, the edges of preserved flesh losing their rigidity, the slightest sag, the faint discoloration threatening to spread. The coffin’s protection was failing, and ti was eager to reclaim its due.
"TAKE IT!" Ludwig howled as more of his mana surged into his body.
He didn’t feed it gently. He shoved. He forced his Undead mana down through the conduit with the sa brutality he used in battle, because subtlety was for people who could afford to fail slowly.
Without a soul of its own, the body’s defenses failed to resist, and Ludwig’s Undead mana forced their way into it.
The resistance buckled. The push turned into invasion. Ludwig felt the shift as his mana found channels, filled them, and claid them.
Black veins appeared on the corpse.
They spread across pale skin like roots seeking water, branching in jagged patterns that looked wrong on a human body. The sight would have bothered a normal man. Ludwig only watched for stability, whether the corpse would hold or collapse.
"Would that not destroy the corpse?" The Knight King’s words echoed from the side.
The voice ca steady, distant, like it was used to watching bodies beco weapons. Ludwig didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on the coffin because the wrong distraction at the wrong second would cost him the entire attempt.
"No, the body itself is already too saturated with mana due to its constitution," Kaiser said. "That’s why it resisted, but thanks to that very constitution it still managed to contain Ludwig’s mana. It is fine," he said.
Ludwig’s hands remained steady above the ice, fingers slightly curled, blood still trailing down in slow threads. The air around his palms felt thick now, ward faintly by mana pressure even as the room stayed cold.
"The blood and the mana are in, now it’s ti for you to move in," Ludwig said as he released Kaiser from the lantern by simply willing it.
The lantern’s presence shifted. Sothing that had been contained loosened. Ludwig felt it the way one feels a door opening in a quiet house.
Kaiser’s soul imdiately dove into the ice and into the body. He couldn’t use normal Rise Undead since this was different.
The entry was quick, decisive, like a blade sliding into a sheath. For a mont, the room felt colder, as if the air itself held its breath.
"Offering for Necros. I wish to make another contract."
Unlike before, when he was forced to speak the chant for the Advanced Necrotic Rituals, this ti he did them himself.
His mouth opened and the words echoed once more in this world.
"By Mana Drawn, The Black Road Opens!
"A living Will, to graves Unbroken!"
"By corpse made Vessel, Nad and Known
"I claim this Flesh, This shattered Throne!"
"By Lich’s Vow, Of Magic and Soul"
"Return to serve the final Toll"
"By Blood of Mine, The Anchor is Set!"
"By the Inevitable Gaze, The Dead is led!
"To you shall serve, to him the price is paid!"
"BY NECROS’s WILL, RISE UNDEAD!"
The chant struck the chamber like a series of iron nails being driven into stone. With every line, the air grew denser, pressure building until Ludwig’s ears rang faintly. The lantern’s light steadied, as if satisfied.
The ice around the corpse imdiately shattered, breaking apart into steam, water, and shards of rapidly lting ice.
Steam surged outward in a warm burst that fogged the air for a heartbeat. Water splashed across the floor in quick, shallow waves, carrying slivers of ice that lted as they spun.
The young man’s body shuddered and opened its eyes, black as the abyss itself, and he took a needless breath.
The breath sounded wrong, too sharp for lungs that had been frozen. It was a reflex that didn’t need to exist, yet existed anyway. The body’s chest rose and fell, and the sound of it filled the room in a way silence hadn’t.
It sat up while Ludwig staggered for a bit, unlike before with the Knight King, this ti Ludwig didn’t fully tap out his mana since the body already had plenty of that. Nor was the body too damaged to be repaired.
Ludwig’s boots slid half an inch in water as he steadied himself. His shoulders loosened slightly, not from relief, Ludwig didn’t do relief, but from recognizing he hadn’t been forced into exhaustion this ti. His hands lowered slowly, fingers flexing as if reminding themselves they still belonged to him.
This body was whole. Almost.
[Necros has blessed your calling...]
[The Lich you created via Advanced Necrotic Rituals has been improved]
[The body will not degenerate nor lose its mortal functions, though it shall be bound to your lantern as its phylactery.]
You have created your first [Living Lich]
[Upon using Rise Undead on a mage class corpse, there is a small chance that it will revive as a Normal Lich.]
The system windows hung in the air, bright and clinical against the wet floor and scattered ice. Ludwig’s eyes flicked through them quickly, reading like a man checking wounds after a fight.
The lich, or Living Lich, moved. It flexed its hands first, tightening them, closing its fist, and opening them again.
The motion was slow, deliberate, like soone learning ownership of flesh for the first ti. Tendons shifted beneath pale skin. The fingers looked normal, too normal, for sothing that had just been forced back from death.
"I... Cough!" It coughed up what looked like water that had probably frozen in its lungs.
The cough was harsh and wet. Water spilled onto the floor in a thin stream. The lich’s shoulders hitched with the motion, and for a second, it looked painfully human, stranded between states.
"I can breathe? I can even feel the cold of this coffin..." he looked at Ludwig.
His eyes, black, empty, too deep, locked onto Ludwig’s face as if Ludwig was the only anchor that made sense.
"Is this life? Or is this rely a fantasy?"
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