Michael eventually calmed down, easing his mind enough for him to take in a deep breath despite the fact that he had no throat or lungs or any sort of organs. He was simply a skeleton in tattered rags.
That was the least of his problem.
Knowing that his spirit was now inhabiting a skeletal remain of someone was not as frightening as him finding out that he was dumped into a mass graveyard. And judging from the amount of bones above and below him, this place was filled to the brim with the dead.
There were no new rotting corpses to be found, however. Only decaying bones piled up into unending mountains as far as the eyes could see. Despite the darkness, he could see everything as clear as day, not to mention he practically had no eyeballs in his skull.
How he was able to see anything without having actual eyes still puzzled him, but it was not really that much of a concern. He supposed that there were things in this world that did not need a logical reasons or explanations. At least, from the logic of the modern world.
In any case, whoever had used this massive graveyard had stopped using it a while ago. Perhaps they had found a new place to dump bodies. Or perhaps, they stopped because of the growing toxicity level within this blackest chasm.
Around him, the chaotic miasma laced with unfathomable grudges and malice wasn't exactly normal, considering the amount of people were buried here, justly or unjustly. Furthermore, this world wasn't exactly normal, as far as he understood normal.
Magic existed here, and thus, everything within this place was laced with mana in one form or another, including the long dead. Even nonliving things was fused with magic to some extent. Any inert objects could be imbued with magic. Weapons and armors could be enchanted.
There were simply many applications of magic.
Michael pondered how he knew magic existed in this place. It wasn't because of what he had become since that could be explained by the power that brought him here. He quickly realized that he had the memory of whoever this body belong to.
Those foreign memories seamlessly integrated with his own memory that for a brief moment, Michael actually believed himself to be Eric Cromwell, the youngest Sage in history. Possibly the most powerful Sage in a hundred years as well.
In this place, Sage was a spellcaster class. It was considered a higher rank than the Mage class. In order to be recognized as a Sage at such a young age, Eric Cromwell must have been a prodigy.
No. Not just a prodigy but also extremely diligent and hardworking. Hard work would beat talents, and if Eric Cromwell had both, his potential was limitless. That explained why he was beloved by the Source that all spellcasters drawled their skills and abilities from.
It did not explain why Eric Cromwell died so young when he had such a promising future, however.
But Michael knew. Michael had all of the memories belonging to Eric Cromwell from the moment that he was born to the instant of his demise. Michael could also feel the steel spear tore through his flesh from behind and ripped out his heart in that last moment. He could still feel the countless arrows filled his body, sending him plunging into the mass graveyard.
Michael looked skywards, seeing the faintest daylight above. The chasm was incredibly deep, capable of burying millions upon millions of bodies in pitch darkness. He was sure that there were much more corpses than that, considering how deep the graveyard was.
He would need to get out of here to enact his revenge like he had promised the Spellcaster Source. It was more of a trade. He would do this in return for the power to cast magic back in his world.
Unfortunately, getting out of the chasm filled to the brim with deadly miasma was going to be quite a challenge, considering that he was just a lowly undead. An undead without any actual power. Magical or otherwise.
Michael checked whether he still had access to his Domain and all of the abilities that came with that Domain. He glad that he did despite his soul was not with him. It was back in his apartment along with his body. Only his consciousness came along for the ride.
He then wondered what would happen if he were to die in this place, far away from his soul and body, but he was afraid of the answer. It was probably better to stay alive no matter what despite being an undead, more or less.
Michael attempted to switch his avatar for the first time since he had learned about it, wanting to take on the form of the bird, so he could fly out of the chasm and go where he needed to go. Sadly, he did not have any mana to switch his avatar.
Switching to a bird only costed 1 unit of mana, yet Michael did not even have that. And Michael wasn't about to wait around here in this dreadful graveyard for a whole year to generate enough mana to fly out.
Michael questioned whether a year was still considered 365 days within this world, and the memories that was Eric told him no. The same memories also told him that there were ways to acquire mana. It was more correctly to say, magical power.
Undead creatures such as himself currently utilized miasma to cast spell. It was not unlike using mana to do the same. Thus, to that end, Michael began to absorb the surrounding miasma into his person.
He had never done such a thing before since he was never an undead skeleton, but there was the first time for everything. To his dismay, the amount he could absorb into his skeletal form was so tiny that it was not enough to cast even the weakest spell he knew. Spells that Eric knew.
And Eric knew great many spells. He was a prodigy after all, not to mention one of the most promising Sage of the century.
Since Michael could not store any useful amount of miasma into his undead body, he thought that he might be able to store them into his Domain instead.
Despite the fact that Michael haven't disassembled gases and absorbed them into himself before, he was relatively sure that it should work.
Gasses weren't that different from solid objects, and he was in physical contact with them constantly.
Thus, with a thought, the surrounding air rippled and exploded into an ocean of pixels. A multitude of colors blocked out everything before swirling around him and absorbing into his being like a tsunami.
Michael had underestimated how much miasma there were in the chasm. He also underestimated the amount of malice infused into the miasma. And he blacked out as the result of absorbing everything.