With a sudden burst of energy, Liemann conjured a bolt of flame and shouted, "Fire bolt!" The flame shot out from his hand and hit a nearby rock, causing it to crack and sizzle. He wasn't satisfied with just one spell though. Liemann continued to unleash his fiery magic, calling out each spell with increasing intensity.
"Flame blast!" he roared as a wave of fire erupted from his hand and engulfed another rock. He was getting into it now. "Flame...bequeathed unto thee!" he bellowed, his voice echoing off the gravestones.
As he continued his fiery display, Liemann declared himself the "Lord of Flames" and revelled in the power of his spells. But despite his grandiose proclamations, his companion Jim remained unimpressed.
"Goddammit, Jim, you gotta have some sort of reaction!" Liemann shouted. Jim simply groaned in response.
Entering my 8th-grade syndrome phase, you can do nothing about it!
"Fire blaze!" he shouted as he continued experimenting with the layering of different runes on top of each other. He had stumbled upon this revelation of combining runes, which had consumed him ever since. The possibilities seemed endless with a collection of 15 different runes - something like one billion potential combinations.
Liemann had to try them all to see if one of them would give him the power he needed to escape this place.
Now, of course, he was a sane person, so he would never spend that much time drawing out runes and testing each combination one by one - because that would be spending his immortality a little too liberally. As such, he settled with testing out five hundred of them, which Liemann thought could produce something interesting…
The process was intense and experimental, like a mad scientist testing his inventions. He spent hours upon hours creating intricate patterns with the runes, trying to discover something new and interesting. He would mutter to himself as he drew each symbol, eyes darting around the cave as he waited for something to happen.
Despite the chaotic nature of his experiments, Liemann was always in control. He knew that the runes could not harm him, so he allowed himself to go all-out, even if it meant wrecking the cave in the process. The rocks around him trembled as he tested out his new combinations, a manic energy filling the air around him.
"May god, or whatever deity that resided over this world, bless my zombie companions for their faithful service to being test dummies…because they sure as hell went through a lot for me to test out rune layering!"
"Inferno ray!" a brilliant, fiery beam burst forth from his outstretched hand, illuminating the darkened cemetery with its light! This was one of the successes he had.
Liemann called them 'spells' and the sequence of his drawing out runes' casting' because that is what it really is. He was constructing a particular set of characters and fusing them together to create things that affected reality in ways no physicist could explain! So what else could he call it apart from spell casting? This was going beyond mere physics; this was magic, magic!
"This is not delusion," he muttered to himself. "This is real magic! Flammae telum!"
Returning to the topic of matter, the spell he used had four runes layered together. The first was the Dark Rune, followed by the Light Rune, then the Flame Rune, and finally the Wind Rune. The Dark and Light Runes functioned as compressors, while the Flame Rune changed the attack's attribute into fire, and the Wind Rune propelled the resulting fiery ball towards its intended target. Liemann thought to call it "fireball," as it was precisely that, but he felt it was a tad too extravagant for the size of his spell.
Fshooo!
"Fireballs are meant to be big and deadly, a swirling ball of devouring embers that would explode when they came into contact with anything!"
Shooo!
"They're not meant to be these sad, small balls of flames that can barely damage the cave wall!"
Fshaa!
"Ha..ha...haa… I'm tired."
Liemann sat on the ground and rested his mind for a moment, cooling off the invisible steam rising from his head as even an engineer like him felt it had been overused.
"Ha…I don't feel tired because I'm undead, but casting this many spells sure takes a toll on my mind."
One may wonder why he was casting spells at the cave wall when they barely did damage, but Liemann had two excellent reasons to do so!
Firstly, it was the perfect opportunity to practice the 'cast animation,' which was crucial for improving his casting speed. Each cycle he went through increased his speed at casting ever so slightly.
In the beginning, Liemann had difficulty drawing out four runes in a row, as their letters weren't as simple as he made them. Their intricate design, with many lines and crisscrosses, made it challenging to trace between the runes smoothly, resulting in him taking over half a minute to complete one spell…
But! He eventually pushed past the initial phase and got his cast animation down to around 3 seconds per spell, which was a complete game-changer considering that every second mattered for people in combat!
Not so much so for people who watched, however.
Secondly, as Liemann began to cast the spells faster and faster, he noticed he sometimes saw the runes blend together astonishingly. The lines he drew fused together and became another letter, shortening that particular part of the spell!
"Why does it happen? Hmm…is it a way to enhance spells?"
It might be.
The problem Liemann had right now was that his runes were relatively weak…in that their effect of generating things or affecting reality was minimal.
Take, for example, the light rune. He could now draw that rune within half a second, but its luminosity and colour didn't change so much, no matter how fast he drew it.
"Are the runes inscribed onto the knight zombie's plaque just bad? Or am I doing something wrong?" Liemann scratched his head in thought.
If it was with the runes themselves, then he really had no choice but to accept that the knight zombie was either not a very magical man during the time he was alive or just another of those melee muscleheads who couldn't care more about learning magic…
However, what was he doing wrong if it was the latter possibility? It wasn't like he was drawing them out wrong or that they weren't supposed to be layered together, right? What kind of magic system would not support further expansions? No future proofing or anything?
"That is the tell-tale sign of a bad product…tsk. Well, I guess I should be going back to hitting that wall with flare blaze."
It was a problem for later Liemann to deal with. Right now, he just wanted out!
…
A sharp, jarring sound echoed through the cavernous tunnel as a small fissure appeared on the side of a rocky outcrop. Stones and debris tumbled to the floor below, the clattering noise echoing off the walls that seemed to stretch on for eternity in both directions.
As the hours dragged on, the fissure gradually widened, transforming from a shallow crack to a gaping chasm that ran all the way to the ground.
"YES!"
The silence was interrupted by the sudden, deafening cry that erupted from the other side of the opening, hoarse and ragged from hours of shouting. It was Jim, of course, ever the boisterous one.
"LIKE HELL! IT IS I, THE ONE AND ONLY LIEMANN!"
For the past 20 days, 20 days! I have been hitting the same cave wall over and over with that one spell, hoping for something to be on the other side…and here I am!
Indeed, Liemann was delighted with his luck! He randomly chose one side of the cave to begin carving through, hoping to find a passage out of the small underground cemetery that had been his confinement for the past weeks.
He could have blasted his way through the ceiling, but the risk of causing a cave-in and burying himself alive was too great, so he chose the safer and more laborious path. After all, he wouldn't want to cut his second life short, would he?
"Behold! A zombie who can abuse his unlimited stamina! Nothing can stop a man who persists!"
He pumped his fists as a feeling of euphoria washed over his mind!
"Jim! You dumb zombie, we did it!"
Liemann couldn't afford to overlook his stress zombie - the one undead creature that relentlessly trailed him as he carried out his experiments within the cemetery.
"Graa…"
"That's it, we've made our escape from the cemetery!"
"Grrr…"
After a few minutes of screaming his head off and shaking Jim as if the world was ending, Liemann returned to the heap of junk he had gathered within the zombie-free perimeter.
Given that he had no idea what lurked outside the small cave he was holed up in, it made sense for him to equip himself (and Jim) with the necessary gear before embarking on any mission.
"Now, let's see... I have the knight zombie's armor and some scraps of cloth from the royal zombie that might come in handy, but not for bandages, certainly."
As an undead, Liemann had forgotten that wounds were insignificant, unless he valued his appearance, and let's be honest, what zombie could be considered attractive? One would have to be a necrophiliac to even consider befriending a zombie…that was undoubtedly the type of person Liemann wished to avoid.
"Then we have the prisoner rags from all the other zombies that I could use as bags…and the 'iron gauntlets' that I made from the knight zombie's broken helmet…that should be all."
He also wanted a piece of paper or a thin stone tablet to write down the rune sequence he'd discovered, but no zombie here had anything close to that. Liemann doubted any zombie buried here would have such an item, and even if they did, it was unlikely to have survived the test of time, considering the fact that even steel had begun to rust.
Clang, clang, clink, shuffle.
He equipped himself with full plate armour, the loose pieces of metal clanging and clinking as he moved, clipping on the loose pieces of metal and tying those close to falling off with the parts of cloth he ripped from the royal's gaudy wear.
"Well, I'll be damned."
He looked down…and thought he was looking at a clown.
There were bits and pieces of cloth hanging from the seams between the rusted metal; some were red, some were white, and the worst was dull gold. The fact that the knight zombie's armour was a little too large for him also made it look like he was wearing oversized clothing while being fat!
How did this happen? I know I should've tried out the adventurer fit before, but this is unacceptable! The armour was supposed to provide protection, not make me a laughingstock!
As he contemplated how to rectify the situation, he noticed that Jim seemed to share his sentiments.
"Graahh…"
It seemed that Jim also agreed….wait! Jim?
Their build was similar, and their body composition (if he could call it that) was also identical. Would that not mean that they were indistinguishable from each other unless one looked into the tiniest details? Maybe there was a way to use this ridiculous outfit to their advantage. Liemann imagined Jim wearing the clackity clown costume, luring the enemy into a false sense of security while he hid in the shadows, ready to strike.
"You are my perfect doppelganger, Jim. We've rotten so far that it is almost like we were born from the same mother!"
Liemann couldn't help but think that Jim would be his scapegoat for a long time...but he was a zombie without a brain. Why would he care?
"Jim. Listen to me carefully. You will be the clown, and I will be the shadow! You must play your role perfectly, do you understand?! You must act as my bait and nothing else!"
"Grahh..."
"I take that as a yes."
Liemann quickly took off the rusty armour and gave it to Jim unhesitatingly!
Clank. Clang. Clink. Shuffle. Strap!
And then, as if another Liemann had appeared, Jim transformed into the clown he was just moments ago. The sloppily strapped on metal plates, the occasional cloth poking out from the gaps between the armour, and the face that was basically unrecognisable as more than two-thirds had already rotted away!
"Good…now I have another spare life I can use." he patted the clown's shoulder and returned to find something else to wear.
While Liemann did not mind wandering around naked as a zombie, he would rather look somewhat fashionable and mysterious when casting spells like an undead mage of sorts.
"Okay. Let's see here…I have a prisoner's rag, a prisoner's rag, a royal rag, torn knight underclothes, farmer's clothes…huh."
Right. They're all old and worn, so I will look like a homeless man regardless of what I wear…that is a problem.
Liemann spent around a quarter of an hour searching for anything acceptable to wear. Rifling through the pile of fabric and fibre, he picked up pieces he thought worthy, only to throw them away seconds later.
The truth always hits harder than a sledgehammer.
"F**k"
"Maybe scientists and archaeologists should start considering what they wear because I can't find anything good here!"
...
Liemann eventually went with the knight's inner clothing as he found it to be just a little oversized, covering most of his body except his head.