As we got to where the funeral was being held, even though the body was not going to be buried until 100 days, remaining perfect with magic, per a sick tradition of the Empire. The ones responsible for holding a memorial that long are either their husband or wife, their parents, grandparents, siblings, and in the absence of siblings or any of the mentioned before, it goes to uncles or nieces, cousins, anyone with blood relation. If they have no family, there will be no burial but cremation instead.
In fact, they won't discover this until 5 years from now, when the Mage's Tower will finally unveil the mystery behind the origins of the monsters that every person who has magic, which is around 98% of this world, has to fight, from low grade small ones to berserk huge monsters that are big enough to devour a hundred of us. It'll be too late. Those monsters are formed from the dispersed magic from dead bodies, which in 5 years will turn the graveyards into dangerous zones, a week after the Mage's late discover.
Everyone should be cremated, that way the magic will go into the atmosphere and will be absorbed by everything that is alive, be it people or nature.
Cremation is the ideal, not just because of the monsters, but because of necromancy, a magic as forbidden as soul magic, that awakens the dead with no soul, turning them into leashed brainless monsters that only obey the necromancer who summoned them, and are extremely deadly and hard to kill even with magic. Monsters that crave for blood regardless of not being conscious anymore, all they do is kill, kill, and kill, and most of that is because of the necromancer, since their will is passed down to the monsters.
The novel itself had a villain and it wasn't the main lead, it was Erik Sixten Cederschiöld, known as Death 16, he remained unknown through out the entire novel. He played Nikolai and made him think he had defeated him, but he hadn't, and it was implied that the Crown Prince killed himself in the end because Death 16 used his necromancy to reanimate Sofiya's dead body and torment him. That was the epilogue actually.
After Eleanor, Maximilianos, Diana, Sofiya, and Nikolai died in the main story, the epilogue was told in a 3rd person pov, it was the shortest of all chapters, I read it in two minutes at best. It told the name of the necromancer, left the Crown Prince's suicide sub-intended, plus the fact that the necromancer had been after the Crown Prince the whole time. Then it ended.
See? I said it was shit ending.
Should I do something about that? Even though I've never met the Crown Prince, he still consistently sent me letters for years, which made him grown on me a bit. I don't want him to die, definitely not to be used by that freak, just like I also don't want my old body to be used by him, given how that would be the way to make the Crown Prince snap in this life, as he got attached to me as Eleanor and not to Sofiya.
My brothers and my parents stayed with me the whole time, probably that anyone could try picking an argument for me being here, given my reputation when it came to me... ugh, I mean, old Diana's when it came to me as Eleanor.
The coffin was dark green with copper details and the top was made of crystal so we could see the body, the colors of Max's house, because of course that possessive psycho would find a way to mark my body as his in a morbid way, even after my death. Just thinking about the sheer idea of having my precious old body buried, it makes me sick. I need to find a way to cremate it, that body has too much magic, if joined with all the powerful bodies within this graveyard, it will make a mess.
I can't let that happen!
Definitely not when the one who died was Yeji, and I know enough from the stupid novel to know, that the body of those who practiced soul magic swapping, willingly or not, are changed and marked in their core. When those people die, their corpses, if reawakened by a necromancer, are even stronger than the normal ones, they make worse damage, when they go berserk and rampage it's extremely hard to take them down, their strength is worthy that of 500 rank A knights, some even more, they are catastrophic. Magical attacks are barely effective on them.
I can only imagine how the apocalypse reigned in the world of the novel after that trash ending, especially when @toallthelonelypeople left sub-intended that the necromancer had reawakened Sofiya, a powerful soul swapper, and would proceed to possess the Crown Prince's body, the men who was titled as the strongest person in the entire Empire, not even Nikolai was a match to him. The necromancer became basically unbeatable with them, and even more if he had been smart enough to reawaken the other three leads.
Which I don't know because it ended like that.
That knowledge now focused on the real world, taking into consideration all the chaos that could break around if the necromancer were to target my body as Eleanor, now that I've been swapped with Yeji, it means I only have 100 days from today onwards to find a way to do that. But 100 days is better than none and having the body buried by the end of today, right? Let's think positively.
Negatively speaking, however, if I were to ponder deeper about this, the necromancer could very much be behind swapping my soul with Yeji's. He was mentioned to have two soul magicians with him in the novel, nothing much on them, he could have been the one. If it was him, he is definitely targeting my body for reawakening, in a way to have a powerful undead slave and to bring down the Crown Prince, who clearly had profound feelings for me, for whatever reason.
Eleanor died at 29 years old in the novel, but because of my changes in the whole things that ended with me married to Maximilianos and him obsessed with me, plus my transmigration awakening the sick interested of Nikolai, it all brought that deadline earlier, and now I died at 22. Or I was supposed to, my body is dead but now my soul is alive as Diana, while Yeji died.
There is a possibility that everything that was going to take longer to happen, will actually happen much sooner than expected. That would be bad, pretty bad, especially if I fail to learn how to fight and how to control my abilities. All because of the butterfly effect of my actions differing from the og Eleanor in the novel.
Ain't no way I was ever going to follow that shit and sickening script that @toallthelonelypeople wrote in the novel, that bastard ain't no God.
"My love," Maximilianos snapped me out of it and I flinched at the familiar voice, instantly noticing it was Max and not Maxim, and as my eyes followed his crying voice, I found him holding onto the coffin, his face swollen as he kept crying. If it's Max, he's probably guilty. "Why did you leave me, my love? Why? Why? Why? Why did death did us part so soon? Why?" His body shook as his tanned skin reddened with the tears, his light brown hair is a mess, and there are dark circles under his green eyes.
Hours ago, I still believe he was my husband, until I realized I had become Diana and my old self was now dead. Even so, looking at him like that, oblivious of me here, and at my body in the coffin, spotless with no sign of physical abuse because he definitely healed all the wounds after I died, not to be condemned for his sins; is unsettling.
Sickening but at same time peaceful.