Ambrose stared at the trembling Isabel. He'd been about to praise her for sothing until he realized that, if he so much as opened his mouth, the poor girl might just faint on the spot.
Funny. She hadn't been like this before.
Humans always judged others by appearances.
With a dismissive wave, Ambrose let her bolt from the lab like a prisoner set free, then carefully set two bottles of living rcury down on the lab table.
Soundproofing ward, anti-detection barrier, anti-divination field...
Layer after layer of spells sealed the laboratory completely. Even air couldn't flow freely anymore.
Only a lich could stand that kind of environnt. Any living thing would suffocate in minutes.
Once everything was in place, Ambrose unstoppered one of the bottles, the one worth five hundred gold coins.
It was the size of a human head and full to the brim. Unfortunately, most of it was plain rcury.
Ordinary rcury wasn't cheap, not exactly, but compared to true living rcury, it was a puddle of gutter sludge next to a river of silver.
Ambrose took out his tools, separated the real stuff from the filler, and ended up with a lump of inert living rcury barely bigger than his fist.
"Robbery," he muttered. "Five hundred gold and not a single drop of the real thing."
Still, dead sli was all he needed.
He extended a finger. Power condensed into a faint glow that fell upon the silvery mass.
Necromancy: Command Corpse.
This was a perfect cast, with flawless form and impeccable mana flow. Even a dragon corpse would twitch its eyelids under that spell when cast by a legendary lich.
But the lump of rcury didn't so much as quiver.
The necromantic glow burst apart in a shower of sparks and dispersed without a trace.
"You've got to be kidding . Magic resistance?! That's insane!"
Ambrose had anticipated plenty of ways this could fail, but magic resistance hadn't even been a factor he considered. It was outlandish.
"What the hell have those lunatics in Alkhemia been trying to make?"
Creating life itself was already a near-forbidden obsession, one the alchemists of that city had chased for centuries despite repeated failures.
But to have created a rcury sli with built-in magic resistance...? Had their brains been cursed by the God of Goblins?
Magic resistance was rare and reserved for a few naturally gifted races. Take the high elves, for instance, whom Ambrose absolutely despised. They were born with powerful magical resistance. Most spells barely tickled them, and charm magic simply bounced off.
The sa was true of dragons, too. Only legends' spells would even scratch their scales. The most effective dragon-slaying thod ever devised involved pre-casting Explosion on yourself and waiting for the dragon to swallow you, so it'd blow itself up from the inside. It worked... until dragons learned better. These days, all dragons knew not to eat humans raw. They would cook their food thoroughly before taking a bite.
At any rate, magic resistance was extrely rare. Slis normally had none. So the mad alchemists must've done sothing absurd to force that attribute into them.
"They probably weren't even aiming for a sli at first," Ambrose grumbled. "Then when the experint went south, they pretended it was intentional. What, are they planning to blasphe another god now? Aren't seven towers of crap enough for you lunatics?"
Sohow, Ambrose felt like he'd stumbled into a toxic love-hate drama between Alkhemia and the God of Alchemy. You'd think the god would've smited them ages ago. Instead, he'd let them keep embarrassing themselves for centuries, almost like he wanted to breed his own god-killer.
Truly, divine logic was beyond mortal reason.
Grumbling aside, Ambrose wasn't about to give up. He'd spent thousands of gold on this thing. No way was he letting it go to waste.
He tried several more spells. Each one fizzled uselessly against the sli's resistance. Still, his tests revealed that its magic resistance wasn't as overwhelming as a dragon's. Once he poured in a bit of his legendary aura, he could, in theory, override it.
Even if he was relatively weak compared to most legends, he still had a legend's might. And sure enough, he managed to animate the rcury sli's corpse. Barely.
The spell, however, was a nightmare to control. The sli was nothing but liquid tal—no organs, no structure, nothing familiar for a necromancer to manipulate. Even making it wiggle took absurd effort.
After so analysis, Ambrose arrived at a grim conclusion.
This rcury sli was a total failure. It was a malford, soulless shell, less a creature and more a carcass that hadn't realized it was dead yet.
No, that wasn't even accurate.
It was a machine missing half its parts, a fra with screw holes where the motherboard should be, but no motherboard in sight.
All the slis they'd made were the sa, driven only to devour tal by base instinct alone. With no functioning organs, they couldn't survive long no matter how well fed. They just... slowly died.
A sha it lacked a soul. Otherwise, they'd have mass-produced tornted souls, and liches loved those. In the underworld, a properly tortured soul was better currency than gold.
"It's a pity my synthetic souls are fakes too," Ambrose sighed. "No anguish, no wrath... otherwise they'd be a goldmine."
Still, he refused to waste the investnt. If nothing else, he could try to restore the sli's tal-eating function. Otherwise, how would he explain things to the Dullahan? He'd already taken the deposit. Refunds were not an option.
After several failed approaches and much pacing, Ambrose admitted defeat. He simply didn't know enough about slis to continue. He had a few ideas, but not enough data to determine how feasible they were.
And he didn't have enough materials to be able to waste them recklessly.
"I'll have to look this up," he muttered.
He cracked open the Codex of the Dead, switched to the liches' group chat, and began to write.
[gaman Tiga: Hey, anyone here familiar with slis? I've got a few questions.]
The first reply ca instantly. [Dullahan's Crown: Are you trying to scam with a dud?]
Ambrose: "..."
How did he see through that in one line? For a headless undead, the man was way too perceptive.
Clearly, Ambrose had underestimated the Dullahan's sixth sense for anything that threatened his secret savings.
[gaman Tiga: It's not a scam. I'm trying to finish your order. Alkhemia's economy's gone haywire, and prices are spiking across the board.]
He told the tale—well, most of it, leaving out the part about buying counterfeit materials.
The Dullahan imdiately replied, [Dullahan's Crown: JUST RAISE THE PRICE! I'LL PAY! SPEED MATTERS MORE!]
Ambrose was stunned. Such generosity. Such confidence.
"Just how much gold do you have stashed away from your wife...?"
For the first ti, Ambrose seriously considered finding a bone dragon of his own to live off of.
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