Chương 102: The Reward Was Mostly Future Headaches

"No." The thought continued despite his refusal. Zombification could restore movement, reinforce dead tissue, and force biological structures to perform limited functions again. Higher levels might preserve more complicated patterns, although Sieghart had no idea how far that principle could eventually develop. Everything he knew told him that whatever stood afterward would not truly be his grandparents.

Their warmth, thoughts, memories, and personalities could not be recreated simply because mana forced dead flesh to imitate the movements of someone living. That should have made the temptation disappear. Instead, the emotional requirement of Necromancy found the part of him that did not care about those distinctions and turned one impossible wish into something that suddenly felt technically achievable. The thought finally became impossible to avoid: I could bring them back.

Sieghart stood so quickly that his head nearly struck the top of the tent, while his heartbeat accelerated hard enough to become uncomfortable and mana shifted around his hands without conscious command. For one horrible moment, he imagined returning to the graves, digging through the soil, finding whatever remained beneath it, and pouring enough mana into those remains to make two familiar figures stand in front of him again.

Dark mana began gathering faintly around his fingers, responding not to a corpse nearby but to the desire itself. Sieghart clenched both fists immediately and forced his concentration away from the memories before that reaction could develop further.

"No." The gathering mana vanished, yet the temptation did not disappear with it. Outside the tent, Lucia suddenly laughed at something Hernan said, and the ordinary sound of his companions celebrating made the silence around Sieghart feel much colder. He stared at the reddish dust that had once been the corrupted core and finally understood at least part of Mira's warning. Perhaps she had feared this exact possibility, or perhaps corrupted cores could produce consequences far worse than one forbidden path.

Either way, Sieghart had ignored a direct warning, hidden evidence from his companions, and deliberately performed an experiment he knew might be dangerous. He had wanted an explanation, and the corrupted core had certainly provided one. The fragments had contained more than personal experience.

They had carried magical principles shaped by corruption, death, and whatever force had reconstructed the Dungeon Guardian, allowing the System to interpret those principles as something Sieghart himself could potentially use. That discovery was valuable, which somehow made the entire situation worse. Sieghart could not dismiss Necromancy as useless or obviously evil when Zombification granted extraordinary Resistance and represented an entirely new branch of magic worth understanding.

He slowly sat back down and forced his trembling hands to remain still. The spell remained there, available whenever he wanted it, while the emotional requirement remained connected to memories he had spent years trying to control. The most disturbing part was not that Sieghart had unlocked Necromancy, nor that he had disobeyed Mira to obtain it. The worst part was understanding that some portion of him genuinely wanted to use it on the two people he missed most.

It took Sieghart far longer than he wanted to regain proper control over his thoughts. Every time he believed the worst had passed, another memory of his grandparents surfaced, immediately followed by the newly acquired knowledge suggesting ways their corpses might be forced to move again. The problem was not that he genuinely believed Zombification could resurrect them. The knowledge within the spell made its limitations painfully clear.

A zombie was an animated corpse controlled through mana, not a restored person carrying the memories, emotions, or soul it possessed while alive. Knowing that did not completely remove the temptation. The magical knowledge was simply too fresh. It remained close to the surface of his thoughts, constantly connecting memories of death with an instinctive desire to reject it, almost as though the spell itself was teaching his mind how to produce the emotions necessary for activation.

Sieghart suspected every newly learned spell worked similarly to some degree. Fire Magic made certain destructive intentions easier to understand, while healing magic provided an instinctive awareness of injuries and the desire required to correct them. Necromancy was simply worse. Much worse.

"If this is Level One, I don't want to know what Level Fifty feels like." Speaking the words quietly helped more than Sieghart expected. Hearing the situation described aloud made it sound appropriately terrible instead of allowing the newly acquired knowledge to disguise itself as another interesting magical problem waiting to be solved. Zombification would remain sealed. Permanently.

There were plenty of spells Sieghart wanted to train until their levels became unreasonable, particularly whenever each improvement granted permanent parameters. A spell providing three Resistance per level should normally have become one of his highest priorities. This one would not. If repeated use strengthened the knowledge accompanying Zombification, Sieghart had no idea where the process would eventually stop.

Perhaps Level Two would change nothing significant, but perhaps Level Twenty would make refusing death feel more natural than accepting it. That possibility alone was enough. Only someone deeply disturbed could have created a spell that required such an overwhelming emotional rejection of death. Whoever had developed Zombification had probably spent years refining that desire until it became something structured enough to reproduce through magic.

The spell knowledge Sieghart inherited could hardly be separated from that origin. Magic carried intent, technique, understanding, and emotion, meaning the desires of whoever created the method had probably become embedded within the method itself. That realization made the entire thing considerably less appealing. Sieghart had always treated magical knowledge as neutral information.

A Fireball could burn a monster or a farmhouse depending entirely upon the caster, while a Mana Sword could protect someone or remove their head with equal efficiency. Necromancy felt different. Its basic activation condition already pushed the caster toward a specific way of thinking. To improve it, Sieghart would presumably need to reinforce that mentality repeatedly until rejecting death became easier, stronger, and perhaps eventually automatic.

"No." He repeated the word whenever his grandparents returned to mind. Eventually, the images became less vivid. His heartbeat slowed, the unpleasant weight behind his chest diminished, and the magical knowledge settled somewhere deeper instead of constantly demanding his attention. Sieghart finally lay back on his bedroll. Sleep remained impossible. Now that he was no longer fighting the emotional influence directly, another problem started bothering him.

It was quieter than the temptation to use Zombification, but logically, it was considerably more important. Why had he learned Necromancy at all? Personal experience from monster cores made sense. Somehow, his System could process the concentrated energy stored inside them and use it to strengthen his body, even if ordinary people apparently could not perform the same process easily. Learning an entirely new type of magic was different.

Sieghart stared at the ceiling of his tent while replaying the System notification from memory. It had specifically foreign magical principles contained within the corrupted essence rather than claiming he had independently discovered Necromancy. That meant something had been there. Infinite Mana was already strange enough, but his System had never previously handed him completely unrelated magic merely because he killed something.

He learned spells through experimentation, understanding, training, or fulfilling whatever ridiculous requirements individual branches demanded. The corrupted core had changed that pattern. Sieghart slowly sat up again. The Dungeon Guardian had been dead long before their arrival. According to everything Mellia explained, dungeons formed when accumulated mana gathered around the remains of ancient creatures and gradually reconstructed them into guardians. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. That process supposedly restored the original creature. Zombification did something else. It forced a dead biological structure to move again by imposing mana and intent upon a corpse. The spell did not truly restore life, and the guardian they fought had displayed exactly that same uncomfortable distinction. Its muscles had been incomplete. Its organs barely existed. It possessed no functioning eyes.

Yet its skeleton continued moving even after Spark disabled what little muscle tissue remained, as though another force had been commanding the bones directly without caring whether the body itself worked. Sieghart frowned.

"That's annoyingly familiar." Their assumption had been that the corrupted core somehow controlled the unfinished skeleton because the dungeon formation process had not completed. After absorbing fragments of that core, however, Sieghart had received magical knowledge specifically designed to animate corpses. That coincidence was difficult to ignore. Perhaps Mellia had been wrong. Perhaps all of them had.

What they encountered beneath Bellhaven might not have been an ancient creature naturally returning as a Dungeon Guardian. Someone could have deliberately transformed the corpse using a form of Necromancy. The idea explained several things too neatly. Its regeneration had been incomplete despite the core possessing tremendous amounts of stored energy. Its movements had remained possible without functional biological structures, and the core itself had been corrupted rather than resembling an ordinary dungeon core.

Even the guardian's strange hunger for Sieghart's mana suddenly looked different. Perhaps it had not merely been absorbing energy to complete a natural resurrection process but consuming mana because someone had designed its undead body to sustain itself that way. Sieghart rubbed his forehead.

The simple bat extermination assignment had already become bandits, hundreds of displaced monsters, an awakening ancient creature, a nearly formed dungeon, and now potentially an unknown necromancer operating somewhere near Bellhaven. Future headaches were accumulating rapidly. There was one obvious problem with his theory. He could not explain how he discovered it.

Walking toward Mellia tomorrow and announcing that their Dungeon Guardian might actually have been a magically animated corpse would immediately invite the extremely reasonable question of why a ten-year-old support mage suddenly knew enough about Necromancy to recognize the distinction. Sieghart could lie. He disliked that option.

He could claim he had read something similar in Lunar Arc's archives, but Mellia had lived at the guild longer than him and might know exactly what information their public collections contained. Worse, Mira could simply ask him. Sieghart was fairly confident that attempting to deceive a telepath about secretly absorbing a forbidden corrupted core would rank among the stupidest decisions he had made during either of his lives. That was an impressive competition. For now, he would remain quiet.

He needed more evidence before accusing an unknown person of creating undead monsters anyway. One strange magical result from one fragmented corrupted core was interesting, but interesting was not the same thing as proof. He could investigate later. Preferably without absorbing anything else that came with emotional instructions regarding dead relatives. By the time sleep finally arrived, the celebration outside had already ended.

The campsite became quiet except for insects, occasional wind moving through the grass, and Sieghart's increasingly unpleasant dreams about red cores buried beneath farmland. Morning came far too quickly. Sieghart woke feeling as though he had spent the night fighting another Dungeon Guardian rather than sleeping. The others looked exhausted as well, although their problems appeared considerably less related to forbidden magical knowledge. Lucia barely spoke while dismantling her tent.

Hernan complained about everything. Kart ate breakfast. Mellia began organizing their departure with the determination of someone who knew that stopping for too long might result in everyone falling asleep again before the carriage even arrived. Nobody mentioned corrupted cores. Sieghart considered that excellent news. The monster remains were packed as carefully as possible, although several of the larger bones had to be tied along the outside of the carriage.

The resulting vehicle looked like someone had attempted to decorate ordinary transportation using the skeleton of a nightmare. Sieghart approved. At least nobody would mistake them for merchants. They departed shortly after sunrise, leaving the abandoned mine behind while Mellia recorded several final notes about the location. Lunar Arc would probably send another team later to confirm the dungeon formation had completely stopped. Sieghart wondered what they would find. Without the core, probably nothing.

That did not reassure him. Whoever might have created the guardian had already succeeded in hiding whatever method they used. Unless there were traces inside the mine that nobody recognized, the only remaining evidence might currently exist inside Sieghart's System. That thought encouraged another headache. He pushed the matter aside and returned to a far more familiar frustration. Telekinesis. A small pebble rested on his palm while the carriage rolled along the road.

Sieghart stared at it with enough concentration that Hernan eventually leaned slightly away from him. The pebble remained unimpressed. Sieghart had seen Mira manipulate objects without touching them countless times. Her Telekinesis appeared effortless, responsive, and precise enough that she could move several things simultaneously while maintaining an entirely unrelated conversation. Sieghart possessed Arcane Magic. He possessed absurd Mentality. He possessed Infinite Mana.

Apparently, none of those things convinced the pebble to move. He focused mana around it. Nothing. He attempted pulling rather than pushing. Nothing. He imagined invisible fingers. Nothing. He imagined mana threads. The pebble rolled slightly when the carriage struck a hole. Sieghart narrowed his eyes.

"That doesn't count." Lucia glanced over from the opposite seat.

"What doesn't count?"

"Nothing." Lucia laughed quietly before returning to adjusting one of her damaged scout constructs. Sieghart ignored them and concentrated again, surrounding the pebble with the thinnest layer of mana he could maintain. His earlier experiments with Arcane Magic had taught him that brute force was rarely the answer. Mana Transfusion required controlled transfer, Mana Rune demanded precision, and Phantom Image depended heavily upon maintaining structured magical information.

Telekinesis probably followed the same principle. Unfortunately, understanding that did not reveal the missing principle. Sieghart attempted another method, creating four tiny currents of mana around the stone and compressing them from different directions. The pebble trembled briefly before falling from his palm and landing between his boots. He stared downward. Kart glanced at him.

"Progress?"

"No." Kart nodded as though this answer confirmed something important. Sieghart retrieved the pebble. For the next several hours, the carriage continued toward Seraphina while conversations appeared and disappeared around him. Mellia discussed their report, Lucia slept intermittently, and Hernan repeatedly insisted they deserved significantly more money than the original assignment promised. He was probably correct. Sieghart barely participated.

His thoughts kept alternating between Telekinesis and the corrupted core, which was not particularly helpful because one refused to reveal its secrets while the other had revealed far more than Sieghart wanted. Eventually, Mellia began reviewing everything they needed to report once they returned. The bandits, the stolen goods, the enormous bat population, the disrupted mana, and the premature awakening of what everyone still believed had been an unfinished Dungeon Guardian. Sieghart listened carefully.

Nothing she described was technically incorrect based upon what they had known during the mission. The only questionable part was the assumption that the creature's reconstruction had been natural. He nearly interrupted twice. Both times, he stopped. Without evidence he could safely explain, raising the possibility would only attract attention. Better to research Necromancy, corrupted cores, and dungeon formation privately before deciding whether his suspicion deserved to become someone else's problem.

Mira would probably notice something anyway. That possibility made his stomach tighten. Sieghart had never determined exactly how invasive her telepathy could become, largely because asking a telepath how easily she could discover your secrets sounded like something only a guilty person would consider important. Perhaps he should simply tell her.

Then he imagined explaining that he knowingly stole fragments of a corrupted core after receiving explicit warnings, secretly absorbed them inside his tent, unlocked Necromancy, and briefly considered zombifying his murdered grandparents. Maybe later. Much later. Preferably after developing Telekinesis strong enough to move himself rapidly away from the conversation. Sieghart returned his attention to the pebble.

"Move." Nothing happened. He tried again.

"Move." The pebble remained completely stationary. Hernan opened one eye from where he had been attempting to sleep against the carriage wall.

"Have you considered asking nicely?" Sieghart looked at him. Then he looked at the pebble.

"Please move." Nothing happened. Hernan closed his eye again.

"Worth trying." Sieghart sighed and returned the stone to his pocket. Telekinesis apparently intended to remain another mystery, Necromancy had become a spell he could never safely train, and the Dungeon Guardian might have been deliberately created by someone whose identity they did not know. At least he had gained a level.

One thousand experience in exchange for forbidden magic, dangerous knowledge, several new suspicions, and the possibility that an unknown necromancer had operated beneath Bellhaven without Lunar Arc realizing it. Sieghart leaned against the carriage and closed his eyes. He had started the mission hoping to gain useful experience with a proper party. Technically, he had accomplished exactly that. The experience simply appeared to consist mostly of future headaches.