Chapter 24: Preparing

The next morning, Jack was standing deep underground. His brass-headed cane was in his hand, supporting his weight. A single tallow candle was on a nearby stone ledge, casting a flickering, pale light over the floor.

On the stone floor, the bodies of the two bandit mages were resting.

Bones had dragged them down here the night before, exactly as commanded. The Fire Mage’s chest was completely crushed from the armored skeleton’s heavy strike. The Wind Mage lay a few feet away, his neck bent at an unnatural angle from Rusty’s brutal execution.

Jack took a slow, deep breath.

He looked down at the two bodies.

If he could reanimate them with their magical abilities intact, the entire dynamic of his fief would change. An undead Fire Mage would be the ultimate industrial tool. It could power the greenhouse furnace endlessly without requiring a single lump of coal. It could provide extreme heat for Barnaby’s forge, allowing the blacksmith to work pure steel. In combat, it would be a artillery piece that never felt fear or hesitation. A Wind Mage would be just as valuable, capable of deflecting arrows from the walls or clearing snowdrifts in seconds.

“You are both Grey Cores,” Jack whispered to the quiet bodies. “I am a Grey Core. We are equals in tier.”

He remembered his disastrous attempt to animate the Iron Core Fire Mage. The residual power of a higher tier had violently rejected his death mana, nearly shattering his own soul. But these two were different. They were low-tier. Weak. Their cores were completely drained of elemental mana before they died.

According to the fragmented memories Jack had inherited from the original John Frost-Grip, this should work. A necromancer could animate the dead of an equal or lower tier.

Jack closed his eyes. He reached into the swirling pool of energy in his chest. He pushed two steady streams of a grey vapor down his arms, directing the death mana toward the two bodies on the floor.

The mist washed over the corpses. It sank into their skin, reaching for their bones and the dormant, empty cores in their chests.

Jack waited for the familiar, sharp tug on his mind. He waited for the grey threads to anchor into his soul.

Nothing happened.

There was no violent explosion. There was no spiritual backlash like the one that had thrown him across the room the other day. Instead, there was just an absolute, empty nothingness.

The death mana washed over the bodies and simply slipped away, like water pouring over a smooth glass surface. It refused to anchor.

Jack opened his eyes, frowning deeply. He tried again, pushing a massive, concentrated surge of mana directly into the Fire Mage’s skull.

The result was the exactly same. The energy dissipated harmlessly into the cold air.

“Why?” Jack muttered, lowering his hands. His brow was furrowed in deep frustration.

He leaned heavily on his cane. The logic was broken. If the tier restriction was the only rule, these two should be standing right now. Was there another condition? Did the bodies need to be stripped to the bare bone first? No, the bodies of other mages were safely preserved.

Or was there a deeper, fundamental law governing uncommon magic that the original Jack simply didn’t know?

The original John Frost-Grip was a sickly, sheltered boy. He had a core, but he had never actually fought a real battle, and he had certainly never killed an enemy mage to practice on. His memories were mostly theoretical, gathered from the rambling stories of his dying father and whatever basic texts he had read as a child.

“He didn’t know everything,” Jack realized, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. “His memories are incomplete. Elemental magic is straightforward, but uncommon magic… it clearly has hidden restrictions.”

Jack looked at the two bodies one last time. Without the ability to animate them, they were useless to him.

“Bones,” Jack commanded mentally, waking the giant skeleton who was standing dormant in the shadows. “Take these two bodies deep into the old, collapsed tunnels. Bury them under the rubble. Leave their clothes and whatever coin they have, but bury the meat.”

The giant skeleton stepped forward, grabbing the two bodies by their collars and dragging them away into the darkness.

Jack turned around and began the slow climb up the stairs. If the inherited memories were flawed, he needed to find the real rules. He needed information.

Ten minutes later, Jack was standing in front of the doors of the castle library on the second floor.

He turned to Karen, who had followed him up the stairs with a fresh cup of hot water.

“I am going to be in here for a long time, Karen,” Jack said, his tone incredibly serious. “Do not let anyone disturb me. Only knock if the castle is literally on fire.”

“Understood, Lord Jack,” Karen said, bowing her head respectfully.

Jack pushed the doors open and stepped inside.

The library was massive, and it was a complete disaster.

Tall wooden bookshelves lined the walls, stretching up to the vaulted ceiling. Many of the shelves were sagging under the weight of heavy tomes. Cobwebs were thick in the corners, and a thick layer of dust was over the large wooden reading table in the center of the room.

Jack walked over to the table, using his sleeve to wipe away a large circle of dust. He set his tallow candle down.

For the next four days, Jack practically lived in the library.

He pulled books from the shelves, stacking them high on the table. He read through tomes on history, geography, and magical theory. He read until his eyes burned and the words began to blur on the yellowed parchment.

He learned a great deal about the world he was now living in.

The world was vast, divided into three known, massive continents. The continent they were currently on was called Bhawan. It was the domain of humanity, ruled by a sprawling, powerful human empire and overseen by the absolute religious authority of the Holy Church.

Across the great eastern ocean lay the second continent, Atera. According to the texts, Atera was a wild, untamed land ruled by partial-humans, beast-kin, and other strange species that the human empire regularly traded with but deeply distrusted.

The third continent, located far to the south, was entirely unnamed in the books. It was simply referred to as the Uninhabitable Land. The texts claimed the air there was toxic, the earth was scorched, and the creatures that lived there were nightmare horrors. No human expedition had ever returned from its shores.

Jack pushed a geography book aside and pulled a thick, blue-bound tome on magical theory toward him.

Magic, the book explained, was divided into two distinct categories.

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The first was Elemental Magic. This was the most common form of power. It encompassed Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Ice, and Metal manipulation. These mages controlled the physical world around them. They were the soldiers, the builders, and the destroyers of the empire.

The second category was Uncommon Magic. This was incredibly rare and highly regulated. It encompassed esoteric abilities like Mind Magic, which could alter memories or compel truth; Transformation Magic, which altered physical forms; Spatial Magic, which dealt with shortening distances and creating storage voids; Blood Magic; and finally, Necromancy, the Grey Arts.

Jack frantically flipped through the pages of the blue tome, searching for the chapter on the Grey Arts.

He found the index. He traced his finger down the list. The Grey Arts… Page 412.

Jack quickly turned the pages. He found the section, but as his eyes scanned the text, his frustration rapidly grew.

The book had dedicated hundreds of pages to the exact temperature variations required for Fire Magic and the complex fluid dynamics of Water manipulation. It offered step-by-step guides for young mages to shape their elements. But the section on Necromancy and the other uncommon magic was nothing more than two vague, dismissive paragraphs.

It offered absolutely no practical mechanics, no rules on core restrictions, and no instructions on reanimation. It merely described the Grey Arts as a “stagnant, inherently dangerous manipulation of residual life force best left untouched by civilized hands.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. He grabbed another book on magical theory. He checked the index, found the section on Necromancy, and flipped to the page.

It was the exact same story.