Mori closed the door behind her, smiling at the jovial atmosphere she had to leave. Convincing her death knights to accept the necromancers was trivial. They accepted it almost as soon as she proposed it. She wanted to get their opinions on it and used a few leading questions, receiving answers she did not expect. They were all entirely supportive of the necromancers becoming part of their ranks. The only one who had something to say was Jel, who pointed out that death knights could not raise the undead-- a fact apparently learned over long periods of testing-- and that the necromancers would likely rather be raised as liches instead. Mori did not know how to raise liches, but she decided to ask VII before doing anything else; she doubted that death knights could not become liches, but it never hurt to be safe.
That led her to the core room, where VII was, again, reading that revenge novel. “You weren’t lying when you said that you loved that one,” Mori commented, “Anyway, VII, I’ve got a favor to ask.”
VII looked up, looking at Mori, “Oh, sure. Is it about the necromancers?” she asked. Mori nodded, about to speak when VII raised a hand, “You want to turn them into liches. I could guess, since, you know, they’re necromancers. If you’re sure you want to do this, then I’ll explain it to you. The process is really simple for people like us, so listen up.” She placed her novel to the side table and leaned forward, Mori pulling up a chair to join her, “Alright, so the main problem with making liches is that the creator needs to be able to fully encapsulate the soul of the recipient. Of course, this could be through psychic means, magical means, or even physical means if you’re a talented enough doctor to be able to isolate where the soul of the body is physically. Anyway, the problem is that only beings far more powerful than the recipients can do something like this. There are two other ways for it to happen, which is naturally and through a ritual.
“The former happens when a soul reacts to ambient death mana and raises itself with it. Despite that, the type of soul to raise itself is very rare, only one in a billion, so natural liches are uncommon at best. The other method, the ritual method, is to have disciples encapsulate your soul in your own mana, with them controlling it, and then implanting that encapsulated soul into your body. That leads nicely to the way you yourself create liches. Basically, you surround their soul in death mana. Then, you crystalize that mana with some other mana type-- the best one I’ve seen used is something relating to resilience and condensing-- and implant the newly-crystalized soul into the body you want the soul to reside in. Again, the main problem is not knowing where to start and not having enough soul strength to achieve it.”
Mori nodded along, engraving every word said into her mind. “In that case, can I do the same to my death knights?” she asked. VII smiled, nodding, “Good. Because I don’t want to leave any of them behind…”
VII stared for a moment, “You know, I sometimes wonder what would happen if Mother used your leadership style. I have a feeling that incidents like this would not happen often. If ever.”
“I believe they would not,” ATHENA replied, “I believe that you are a good mother, Mom, but I don’t want to think about how you treated the Forgeheart for it to go so haywire.”
“Hey,” VII said, “I wasn’t ever rude to him. All I did was follow Mother’s orders.”
Mori sighed, “VII, your mom gets it, when it comes to free-willed beings. Just apply that to some slightly less intelligent beings and you get the same result; love them and show that love, and you can have faith in them. Anyway, I’ve got stuff to do now, so I’ll get going.”
VII nodded, turning back to her book and laying back to read more. Mori left the room a moment later, only to come face to face with a slightly annoyed Natalia. Mori tilted her head, causing Natalia to sigh, “I’ve… heard about what you’re planning,” she said, “About turning those other people into undead. Are you… good at that sort of thing? Making changes to people, that is?”
Mori shrugged, “I wouldn’t say that I am good, more specialized in necromancy than anything else. Why? Did you get your system taken away?”
Natalia blinked, “WHAT!?” she shouted, focusing on something else for a moment, “You-! This-! I-”
“Hey, calm down. I… may not have mentioned that part. I really didn’t think it was that important,” she said, chuckling, “But! I have something better!”
Natalia did not break her stare, “What is it?”
“Soul spells! How did you think I was able to make the Talonecs do all of their movement, regeneration, and material connection? Soul spells,” she said, only getting a blank stare in return, “Alright, the way it works is that I can target the soul with spells. With that ability, I can give others abilities too. Like the system.” Natalia's eyes grew wide, a wide grin on her face, “Yes, I can give you whatever you want without having to level up or something like that. Of course, I need to adapt the necromancy-based spells to living targets but-”
“No, turn me into a lich!” she said, surprising Mori. The woman grinned, “Hey, I told you, I’m a battle freak. I love stuff like that. And being a nigh-unkillable lich for the low price of eternal servitude? That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun!” she chuckled.
“Wait, listen to me first-”
“Nope. You just made me really excited and I’m not backing down!” Natalia cut in.
“What about the potential changes to your soul? The soul influences the body and the body influences the soul. Changing from living human to lich is a big change! Aren’t you concerned about what could happen? At all!?” Natalia shook her head, a big grin still on her face. Mori sighed, “Just so you know, all of my other undead consider me something like a mother. Are you willing to accept that? Since the raising might do something similar?”
There was a moment of wavering confidence, then she grinned again, “Hey, I’ve had two moms already, what’s a third?” Mori raised a finger, then lowered it. She wanted to argue, she even had plenty of points to make, but she could not muster the energy to do so with the woman; it was a battle Mori was not going to win and she could tell.
“Fine… But don’t get angry at me when it changes you!” Mori replied after a pause, “If you’re doing this… then I guess we might as well go find the necromancers and make sure they know what’s going on.” Natalia agreed, and she followed Mori through the hallways. After a minute of walking, Mori turned a bit to stare at Natalia, whose scorpion tail was swaying as she smiled. “Why do you want to fight so badly?” Mori asked after a moment, “As far as I know, the world’s pretty peaceful on Earth and there isn’t much reason for people to want to fight. Mostly, anyway.”
Natalia, contrary to Mori’s expectations, paused and seriously pondered her question, “If I had to say, I think it came when I was younger. I loved brawling, more than either of my parents approved of, really, but they knew that telling me to keep it in wouldn’t end well. So, they signed me up for martial arts, I don’t remember the style, but I beat the teacher after a few years. That teacher, while publicly saying that he still had a lot to teach, asked my parents to enroll me into another style, saying something like ‘if she doesn’t find something new to learn, she’s going to kill one of the students with her strength.’ My parents, especially my mom, found it a bit concerning that I was so good at fighting, but they enrolled me into another class anyway, mostly because of mama telling mom that it was better that I spend my time learning how to kick ass than actually kicking it.”
Mori nodded, “So, you’re amazing at martial arts,” Mori concluded, “That’s why you want to fight so much? To get that same feeling once more?”
Natalia laughed as they turned a corner, “No, the reason came later, when a friend of mine brought me out into the woods, just out of the city, to shoot a gun he found god-knows-where-”
“Gods,” Mori corrected.
Natalia blinked in surprise, “You really pray to them?” she asked, “I didn’t peg you as someone who prays.”
Mori shook her head, “No, I’m just saying. They’re gods. If we’re going to invoke them, we might as well include them all,” she chuckled. “So, you were saying?”
“Oh, yeah. So, my friend found a revolver from gods-know-where, and invited me to go out and shoot it. It was neither safe, nor legal, but I had a blast, which was when I asked my parents if I could learn how to shoot a real gun. They… didn’t like that. Not one bit. But, after a lot of prodding and a lot of begging, they finally let me go to a shooting class. A few weeks later, I won a shooting tournament. That one netted me a good chunk of change, which I used to pay for more lessons. More so because I wanted to be a bit more independent in the things my parents didn’t really like me doing. They eventually gave up trying to get me to quit and let me do as I wanted.”
Mori nodded, her mask smiling, “Well, you have a fun life story, alright. Do you want to share more, or no? Because we’ve kind of been circling the same few hallways for a few minutes and I didn’t want to interrupt you.” Natalia blinked, her tail going rigid, as she looked around. Mori laughed, leading her to a door, “If you’ve got nothing else, let’s get going.”
Mori opened the door as Natalia nodded, finding the group of necromancers all standing around a table. Mori was seen almost immediately, but they barely reacted, some waving and others saying hello. Oloa, however, was more vocal, “Hello, Mis- Mori,” she said, “Is there anything we can help you with?”
Mori nodded, stepping up to the rectangular table-- at the head, since she was the one talking-- and smiled, “I’ve thought about our arrangement and I wanted to make you guys a counteroffer.” She then went into detail, explaining every aspect of becoming a lich, as well as an undead, and the reasons why she chose to offer lichdom over knighthood. On top of that, she also explained the nature of Mori’s agreement with the gods, and her friendship with the daughter of En’gem’ia. “So, what do you all think?”
There was a moment of silence as they all stared at her. “Mistress…” Oloa muttered, completely ignoring Mori’s previous comments about the title, “We’d love to!” she shouted, the rest of them agreeing with the former guild mistress. Mori had half a mind to put up some sort of rebuttal, but she had a feeling that it would go similarly to when she tried to argue with Natalia. In the end, she accepted, and began to make her preparations, which was mainly enchanting the table with a set-up that would let her contain souls if she lost her grasp of them. It was more than a bit jury-rigged, but she was fine with that. She just hoped that the gods would let her do what she was about to do.
