I didn't have a long time before they arrived in the village, but from what my loyal raven's eyes could tell, they had paused at the edge of town and were consulting amongst themselves. I had two dozen well-armed skellies patrolling the town, and I was pretty sure that they had spotted them and were curious and cautious about this.
If this place was regularly culled, then they would know what to expect, and the fights didn't change here at all, at least not in the months I had been here. Seeing new enemies of a different type might cause them some hesitation, I was hoping. Twenty or so armed skeletons were a significantly higher threat than the zombie villagers, but only when acting together and with me to direct them.
Zombies were slower, but they were significantly tougher. If the skellies were on autopilot in drips and drabs, it should be an equivalent threat or even much lower.
The safest thing to do would be to hide in the basement until they were gone. Still, I didn't want to kill these people, so I wanted to observe their fight so I could cause the skellies to make a mistake in their favour if it looked like they were about to be murdered.
As such, I quickly cast Magic Aura on myself. This was an illusion spell that you normally cast on objects. It could either hide an object's magical nature or create a fake one on a mundane object. In this case, I was hiding my aura.
I had noticed that now that I had magic accumulating and circulating inside of me due to cultivation, small amounts tended to leak out a bit as if I were a magical creature like a fairy or unicorn. I would be noticeable, even if I was invisible if these people had some way to detect that—if they were "cultivators", that seemed highly possible.
The manual I had didn't really include any way to sense Qi except really close to your body, but I assumed that it was possible. It would be incredibly weird if it wasn't.
Another casting of Comprehend Language and Detect Magic followed by, finally, Invisibility when I saw that they were entering the village. Crow followed them and gave me a pretty good image. There were three men, two of them looked in their thirties and had the muscley thews of a Fighter class if I had any guess. They looked rugged and serious and weren't wearing kung-fu robes as I expected but outdoorsman-type clothing, including the conical hats I would expect from rice farmers.
The last was more of a young man, perhaps fifteen years of age. He was dressed more like what I expected and didn't look as rode hard and put away wet as the two older men. His eyes were pitch black, as was his hair, and he had a sword at his waist.
All of them had swords, actually, but the two older men had swords that were much larger and curved, almost like scimitar or falchion.
Seeing them with my eyes instead of my familiars, I noticed that the magic or Qi looked different in each of their bodies. The young man's magic looked similar to mine these days when I looked at myself with Detect Magic while cultivating. I took him for a cultivator, too, and the weight of his energy seemed a little bit stronger than mine, which would have made him pretty weak as I understood things.
The two older men didn't have a continually circulating pattern of energy. Instead, the energy seemed to wax and wane in time with their breathing, dissipating throughout their physical bodies. I didn't know what this was, but I could tell that they had a fair amount of energy accumulated in their muscles, bones and tendons.
I frowned. Would their bones be really strong, I wondered? I shook my head. Bad! I didn't need to know how strong these men's bones were because they were leaving with all of their bones!
At first, I thought the two men were guards for the young man, but they seemed to be working together. In fact, they were treating the younger man kind of like a junior. They had talked about their options and came to the conclusion that they would watch the skeleton's patrols and try to assault one alone to gauge its strength. They'd run if it was freakishly strong, as they already could tell they were faster than the undead.
Not a bad plan. I snuck around to watch in person, being careful not to make any noise.
---xxxxxx---
Xiao Li had volunteered to test the first of these bone puppets, as he didn't want the two Martial Artists he was with to think he was weak. He had enough of that. He had been a cultivation prodigy of the Xiao family until inexplicably his cultivation dissipated slowly, like sand falling through his fingers.
When he dropped from the seventh back down to the first level of the Qi Gathering stage, he was no longer considered a genius. He was, instead, treash. And trash he had been for years.
He had all been kicked out of the family and had been roaming the country, trying to study fleshy Martial Arts. He was shocked one day to discover an old lady's voice in his head one morning.
It turned out that the ring that his mother gave him as a keepsake contained the remnant soul of an incredibly powerful Nascent Soul powerhouse, and she had been, unconsciously, draining all of his Qi in order to reawaken. He had been incensed! Did this Old Grandma not know how much pain and suffering she caused?
In the end, he couldn't stay angry long, especially when she seemed genuinely upset about it and started helping him with his cultivation, sword skills, and alchemy. She had been a renowned alchemist when she was alive. If he was being honest, he was starved for the somewhat affectionate attention of an older person ever since his parents died, and he had already, in his heart, slid his new Master into almost a motherly role.
Instead of going back to the Xiao family right away, she told him that due to her draining so much of his Qi, he awakened a type of highly Yang physique that had been lying dormant in his body. This was both good and bad. It would let him get twice the results with only half the effort when he cultivated his Divine Solarfire Sutra that Grandma Mei gave him, but at the same time he might explode if he continued cultivating past the second level of Qi Gathering that he was at.
That was a real problem, but Grandma Mei had a number of solutions. It wasn't a huge problem, and she knew at least twelve types of pills that could solve it. That was the reason he had taken the job to clear this anomaly along with two Martial Artists he met at the Mercenary Guild. It was said that a Cool Yin Pseudo-Lotus bloomed in this place. A couple of petals pulled from the lotus would be enough for Grandma Mei to walk him through creating the pill, though.
You had to get there within a day or two of when the anomaly reset, so he wasn't that confident about it. If he was lucky, it would save a lot of time, but if not, then he'd just shift down the list while making some money at the same time.
This time, though, it seemed their luck was poor. Not only had they missed the reset, but there was a new type of monster here. Just skeletons with weapons. He supposed it wasn't that different than before, but it didn't pay to make assumptions.
Grandma Mei said inside his head, "Be especially careful. That raven is not a raven."
He glanced at an especially fat black bird sitting on the roof. He had noticed it sort of following them since they got within a few li of the village. He quirked his head and asked, "What is it, Master?"
"I think it is a tormented soul from one of the first few layers of Hell, shifted through some method into the illusion of a bird," she said confidently, "These skeletons don't seem very strong, but that isn't normal. You are definitely not ready to fight a ghost cultivator, living or dead. Leave at the first hint of something out of the ordinary."
Xiao Li paused, frowning. He wouldn't like to look forward to paying the penalty for abandoning this job, but he was smart enough not to place his head firmly in a lion's mouth. He asked, "Should I leave now?"
"I don't know. Surprisingly, I am not sensing any malice or killing intent directed towards you," Grandma said.
He nodded and pulled out his sword, saying aloud, "Well, let's see how one skeleton is, then."
He then leapt at a skeleton carrying a pretty standard saber as it turned the corner. The monster saw him and pulled its weapon into a low ready position and then, without preamble, chopped out.
He took the strike partially on his own weapon, intentionally testing the strength of the creature with a parry, frowning. It was both strong and weak. Its physical strength and speed were about the level of a Martial Warrior, the type of fighter that studied martial arts and "inner force" instead of cultivating immortality as he did.
Like his two new friends, but they were both already at the Martial Master stage. He had been proceeding down this path after becoming the trash of his family, but now that he could cultivate Qi again, he had stopped. All cultivators should study Martial Arts, but studying this type of inner force was a dead end if you had real cultivation methods—it would be like eating grass when you had perfectly good rice at home.
Something he also noticed was this skeleton's attainments in the Dao of the Saber were awful. He had seen a three-year-old conduct more elegant chops inside the kitchen versus a radish.
He twisted, beat the sabre back and riposted into a clean cut that took the skeleton's head clean off the next time it swung at him. Surprisingly, it still moved. Frowning, he chopped each limb off and only then did it stop moving.
Grandma Mei commented, "Sort of weak, but I think blunt force would work better here. I don't think it's actually dead even now. Try crushing its skull with your foot, or focus more qi into your sword next time. That might disrupt whatever is animating it."
As his two friends approached, chortling, he nodded and focused Qi into the sole of his foot and stomped down, crushing the skull into splinters. Old Gu slapped him across the back and said, "Seems at the same level as what we were expecting."
Xiao Li nodded, "Yes, let's just be careful. These can use weapons. The fat one at the level of a low-level demonic beast might be more dangerous, especially if it has some exotic weapon."
He had read the summary of what to expect in this place, and there was supposed to be a fat zombie at the same approximate level of strength he was at, but the truth was he was much less of a threat due to how stupid it was. While these skeletons weren't very bright, they did know that the pointy end of the sabre was supposed to go into the bad guy, and that was more than the zombies were supposed to know.
Old Gu nodded, "Don't worry. We'll take him together. Let's get going. We shouldn't stay here any longer than necessary." That was true. While his cultivation method and Grandma Mei both could protect him from the chilly yin aspected qi in this place, his two friends relied more on limiting their exposure to stay safe. They shouldn't tarry.
After that, they cleared the village just as they planned. The raven still watched them, but neither he nor Grandma Mei could detect any hugely dangerous cultivator waiting in the wings to refine their souls into a spirit tool. That was good.
Thankfully, the fat one... wait, how could a skeleton be fat? The stronger skeleton was easily identified. Its bones were as dark as cheap pig iron and almost as strong. They fought it in the courtyard of the village magistrate's house, and with the three of them together, it was no match. Realistically, he thought he could have taken it by himself.
Old Gu frowned down at the last finished skeleton, "Did he not have a core, then?" That would be a shame. The highly yin-charged monster core was one of the main reasons people took this job, along with salvaging the mostly useless and damaged weapons and tools for scrap iron.
Chen bisected the skeleton's skull with his sabre and grinned, "I thought so! I thought I heard something rattling around in there when it was moving." He reached down to pick it up. It was then that they all noticed that in the corner of the courtyard was a bright white lotus inside a pot, next to a few books—as if someone had just left them out for the three of them to find.
Chen asked, "Is that what I think it is?"
Old Gu said, "If you think it's the Cool Yin Lotus in a damn pot, then yes."
Xiao Li took a few steps forward, inspecting the items. It was incredibly difficult to salvage the entire plant of the Cool Yin Pseudo-Lotus without killing it. Although he had some hope with Grandma Mei to walk him through that he might be able to do it, he was just hoping to pull a few petals off before it died—that was what most people did and it was all the pill recipe required. The value of a live plant was at least ten, maybe twenty times as much.
He reached down to pick it up and heard Grandma Mei's voice yelling, "Kid! Watch out! Behind you!"
He had been so surprised that he didn't notice Old Gu approach him until the man he thought was a friend shoved his sabre into his heart and out the other side.
The last thing he remembered was the man saying, "Sorry, kid. We can't let you have any petals like we agreed. A live plant that we can move and won't die the instant we touch it? This is just too good to pass up. It's nothing personal."
---xxxxxx---
I watched the two older men betray and murder the younger man with a complicated expression on my face. After thinking about it, I thought I perhaps had caused this falling out.
I had put all of the good loot out that one "run" of the village should provide, including dropping one of the cold stones in the skull of one of the Chungi, and setting one of the potted plants next to the cultivation manual in the courtyard.
I did know that the plant was difficult to harvest without killing it, but perhaps I had misjudged exactly how difficult? I succeeded on the third try, but I was a learned master of the mystic arts, not lumberjack swordsmen like those two old men.
I had taken kind of a liking to the young man when I watched him fight all of the skeletons. Not enough to try to stop his friends when they tried to murder him, though, and not enough for me to try to get revenge, either. These guys had to make it back; stronger people would come if it was a team wipe. That's how it worked, I felt, using my intuitive video game and novel logic.
Still, it wasn't like I couldn't do anything. The question was this worth my only diamond?
In the table-top game the third-level Necromancy spell Revivify was restricted to only clerics, paladins and for some unknown reason bards. The same was true with Raise Dead, Resurrection and True Resurrection. Wizards and arcane magic just couldn't raise people from the dead.
It was almost the same in Merildwen's reality. Wizards could get Revivify, but none of the other spells. A suitably trained Necromancer could bring someone back from the dead only in one situation—their soul still had to be available.
A soul left the body pretty quickly. Ten minutes was average, with the max being around an hour. A necromancer could either cast Revivify in that limit or restrain the soul from leaving through a number of ways, after which they could cast Revivify at their leisure while using the soul and the soul's original body, so long as it hadn't decomposed or wasn't too damaged.
It still cost a small diamond, though, and the spell consumed it. After I was sure the two scimitar guys were gone, I rushed out to the young man's body and fished out a couple of copper coins, placing them on his eyelids and quickly casting Gentle Repose. That would keep him from decomposing or rising from the dead in the heightened yin energy.
Following that, I pulled out my ritual dagger and ushered the young man's soul into the soul jar attached to the pommel, along with Jim. Soul jars were generally designed to keep souls in stasis so they wouldn't be aware of anything, much less each other.
They had looted him pretty thoroughly, but unusually, they had left a plain-looking ring that the boy wore on a necklace around his neck. Frowning, I reached out to grab it, and as soon as I touched it, I heard something in my mind.
"Poor Xiao Li. We shouldn't have come here... wait, who are you?"
I froze. My Detect Magic spell had already expired, so I hadn't thought to examine the item for magic, but as soon as I touched it, I realised what sort of object it was without even having to Identify it. In fact, it was quite similar to the object I had just stored the young man's soul in.
It was some type of soul jar, except that it was designed so that the occupant had some manner of freedom and could extend at least some energy outside of it. In that way, it started sounding closer to a phylactery to me, which scared me to death. Instead of answering, I immediately shifted the ring into my hammerspace. Time didn't pass there, and as far as I knew, nothing could affect me from there.
That lady's voice didn't sound like a lich. She seemed genuinely upset about this young man's passing. Some sort of ghost? Would the possibility of me being possessed never end?
I mean... I could just leave it in there forever. That would be the smart thing.
---xxxxxx---
Over the next two days, I hadn't decided whether or not I was going to waste a limited resource like a diamond on the dead young man, although I carefully used Seal Wounds to heal all of the physical damage to his corpse, including the trauma to its heart before it lost too much blood.
The spell Revivify itself healed the corpse to the point where it wouldn't immediately die again, but not anywhere near what I would call hale and hearty.
As far as the old woman's voice in the ring, I had been studying ritual magic for the next two days, and I thought I had figured out a way to speak with her without giving it access to my body or soul. I was combining and modifying elements of Speak With the Dead and Magic Mouth to create a ritual that should allow two-way communication with the ring without touching it.
It was actually an amazing piece of spellcraft and would have been enough to see me considered a journeyman Wizard in my own right. Modifying and combining spellforms together was the sign of a truly educated person, not merely a dabbler. It was also the cause of most arcane explosions and untimely deaths of young wizards.
Beyond the potential for explosions, this was still not exactly smart because I didn't know if the soul inside could rush out and possess me. So, I took a few other precautions there as well, using multiple casts of Protection from Evil and Good targetted both undead and living souls to give myself protection against possession.
If it could just come out and squash me to death with magical power, I was a bit screwed, but I didn't think it would be taking my body. I was really a bit sensitive about that, I realised, looking down at my too-feminine chest.
My biggest issue, again, was that I still barely spoke the language. Sighing, I held my hand out in front of the centre of the ritual circle and caused the ring to plop down and clank on the ground before activating the magic, which had already been primed and buzzing, just awaiting my unleashing it.
"Can you hear me?" I asked in broken, maybe Chinese.
I heard audibly, "Yes, who are you, and why are you talking like a child?"
"It's complicated. I don't know the language too well, but I'm able to use a special technique to understand you despite that," I explained, or at least tried it. It probably came out like, "Me speak bad, but hear you in helmet."
"Uhh... just a moment. I'm very limited at what I can do in here, but I should have a form of soul divination that I can use to understand you in a similar way," the voice said, and I clenched my fist. She could cast magic from inside there. I should put her back in the hammerspace!
I decided to try speaking in English, then, "Can you understand me now?"
"Yes," she said, before asking, "Why do you still have little Li's body? I promise you, if you defile it by raising it as some manner of corpse puppet, I will find a way to make you pay for it."
I blinked. Did that mean she couldn't make me pay right now? Was she limited on what magic she could use in there after all? She seemed attached to the young man, at least.
I shook my head, although I would have been lying if I wasn't a little curious about what a cultivator zombie might be like. I said, "No. I restrained his soul from passing on and was considering bringing him back to life... uhh... regular life. But it would cost me something of value that I can't easily replace right now."
There was a pause, before the old lady's voice asked, seemingly hopeful, "Is that possible? He won't come back as some sort of yin-monster like a jiangshi?"
I had been waiting to see what her reaction to that offer was. If it turned out that Revivify was the equivalent of some sort of earth-shaking, amazing magic that would shatter the heavens or something, then I was going to immediately put that ring back in my hammerspace and not ever take it out again, unless I happened to be able to throw it into the sun someday.
Sorry, Grandma-sounding lady! I'd like to do the right thing, but my survival is, ultimately, more important. She had sounded a little surprised but not shocked by the offer. That was sufficient to allow me to proceed.
I nodded, although she couldn't see it, "He would be perfectly normal, as far as I know. He'd be weak for about a few weeks to a month at the most." I didn't even know what a jiangshi was.
"We would both be deeply in your debt, me especially. What would you need to compensate you for saving him?" she asked, with some emotion in her voice.
What I really needed was a language tutor and a temporary local guide. But I would settle for as much as they would give me. I grinned, "Well, let's talk about that..."