**Chapter Eight: Timing**
The environment of Now is the best, aside from the risk of being discovered by the higher-ups that hinders my freedom. However, I felt that the time for rebellion was drawing near.
Once Lord harbored doubts, they would only grow stronger with time. Although Lord dismissed Ruu’s words as lies, those words must have pierced his heart like tiny thorns.
What I needed was to discern the optimal moment.
I decided to stop my nightly excursions to fetch books. I couldn’t imagine Lord—Holos—listening to a slave’s words, and while Ruu was going about her chores with her usual dead-eyed expression, I thought it best to eliminate even the slightest possibility of being discovered. I had already acquired the minimum necessary knowledge. To Ruu, I must be as troublesome as Lord himself.
Lord’s hunting hours had increased. When he took me into the forest, he commanded me to hunt magical beasts even more fervently. This command was advantageous for me as well. If I sustained damage during my discreet nighttime meals that I couldn’t recover from overnight, Lord would feel discomfort towards me; but during the day, I could receive his healing. Lord was a Ruler I would eventually have to defeat, yet at the same time, he was an incredibly reassuring ally.
My plans were progressing well, and my strength was increasing day by day, but at the same time, a sense of urgency was rising within me.
I couldn’t find a clear opening. Lord was an enigma. It was unsettling not to understand why he was holed up in such a forest, and I wasn’t sure if I had the time to investigate. Ideally, I wanted to gain further power and challenge him only when I was confident of victory. Shiki mentioned that the next tier of Mutation would take nearly several years. Waiting for that was hardly realistic.
After all, no matter how much power I gained—Lord possessed absolute authority over me. If he simply commanded me not to attack, that would be the end of it. The only way for me to defeat Lord would be to bring him to a situation where he couldn’t issue commands in one decisive blow.
The undead were powerful. My regenerative abilities and physical prowess in Now far exceeded those of an adult male, and since Lord hadn’t ordered me to harm him, I could theoretically ambush him from behind. No matter how skilled a Mage was, I couldn’t imagine him remaining unscathed after being struck by my claws, capable of slicing through the sturdy neck bones of magical beasts.
However, failure was not an option. If I couldn’t kill him in one blow, I would be bound by his commands, and my second life would be squandered. That was a fate I could not accept, far worse than lying bedridden.
What I needed was patience. Strength. I reminded myself of this, suppressing my impatience and waiting for the right moment.
Night after night, I hunted under the orders of the Evil Mage. I evaded the eyes of the slaves while searching for Lord’s weaknesses. Initially, I was satisfied just to have a functioning body, but now, those two points were what irritated me the most. Having tasted a semblance of freedom, I craved true liberation. Surely, this is what people call desire.
Freedom. Those two characters felt sweeter than the taste of tearing into the flesh of a beast.
The visitor to Lord’s domain arrived just as I found myself caught between risk and reward, struggling to decide my next course of action.
§
Lord had companions. No matter how Evil a necromancer he was, living completely detached from human society would be difficult. Once or twice a month, a man would cross the cursed forest, accompanied by guards. This man was known as Haku.
He was a small, scruffy-looking man wearing a filthy green ten-gallon hat. In my mind, I referred to him as “the corpse carrier Haku.”
As his name suggested, the man traversed the forest carrying a coffin. Even the Skeletons Lord had dispatched for caution did not target his party.
While I didn’t know the details of their relationship, Haku’s role seemed to be supplying living essentials and corpses. He brought fresh corpses, unearthed from who knows where, along with food supplies to Lord, receiving money and—Skeletons in return. From the conversations, it seemed he was purchasing Skeletons as combat personnel. Not just any Skeletons, but those that had gathered death and gained considerable power.
The use of undead was taboo. It was clear they were not ordinary beings.
Usually, I wasn’t present during their negotiations, but this time, I was unusually summoned by Lord. In the rarely used reception room, Haku, with his seemingly kind face, was accompanied by about five fully armed guards.
Haku’s eyes widened with interest as he spoke.
“Wow… I can’t believe you’re still alive. I thought you’d die right away since you were a corpse from a disease.”
“Is it true that noble corpses are different?” Lord looked up at me with bulging eyes, seemingly impressed.
That thought was likely mistaken. The only reason I had survived until Now was due to my sheer thirst for life. And that thirst, which had taken hold of me the moment I regained consciousness, had not diminished even a fraction in this new existence. If anything, it felt even stronger.
It was… yes, if I were to describe it in words, it was an impulse akin to a soul ablaze. A fierce emotion I had never felt during my previous life, where I was essentially living in death.
If I were to point out one significant difference between the original undead and me, it would undoubtedly be that.
However, without revealing even a hint of that, I simply gazed down at Lord in silence. His murky, dull eyes seemed to be trying to ascertain my intelligence. But it was likely just an illusion. If Lord were convinced I possessed intelligence, he would issue more specific commands.
“Is there no other noble body available?”
“Please spare me. Even if it’s a corpse, it’s unlikely someone would come forth to sell the body of a relative.”
“But you did acquire one before. The corpse that became the basis for End—”
At Lord’s brief words, Haku’s grotesque face twisted in disgust, as if scolding him.
“We agreed not to question the origins of corpses. By chance, someone attempted to sell a relative’s remains. I brought the matter to my esteemed master, Holos-sama, and he decided to purchase it himself. That’s all there is to it.”
“…Ah, I understand. He had been bedridden for a long time… unrelated, I see. There was no sign of training either.”
Lord scrutinized my body.
His assessment was correct. I had lived for a long time without stepping out of the bed. My muscles had atrophied, and I had barely survived thanks to the periodic healing magic from the white Mage.
Even now, engaging in heavy labor, such as hunting magical beasts, was unimaginable compared to my previous state, and my physique remained frail. A healthy body—of course, even a body free from the excruciating pain that plagued me was a tremendous blessing—but it remained an object of longing from my previous life. They said that repeating “Mutation” would bring about physical changes, so I wanted to survive until then, no matter what.
But so… my corpse was sold.
Even upon receiving this new information, I was surprisingly unshocked. Perhaps it was because I didn’t harbor strong feelings towards my family. In my previous life, I was too busy enduring pain to spare any emotional energy for anything else.
I held no resentment—none at all.
In recent years, my family had not visited me, but the regular “care” from the white Mage must have cost a fortune, and it was true that those life-extending measures had slightly prolonged my lifespan. In battle, reach was crucial. Surviving until I had grown to the size of an adult male, even if frail, was a stroke of luck. Even if the reason for the care wasn’t out of consideration for me, it had indeed benefited me.
And there was no need to mention the matter of selling my corpse to Haku.
Suddenly, I recalled the basic knowledge of undead I had read in a book.
Undead were said to move based on the regrets of the deceased. However, the intense emotions that made me an undead were likely rooted not in the “grievance” typical of undead towards the living, but rather in a “will to survive.” I had never once considered death, even when I could no longer step out of my bed and was tormented by unending pain. I think I never did.
I wanted to continue living, even in death. I wanted to maintain my existence. Perhaps that pure emotion was what granted the Corpse Eater memories of my past life, which should have been impossible.
My knowledge of undead was severely fragmented, so I couldn’t be certain, but certainty didn’t matter.
Lord—Holos was, without a doubt, my benefactor. I truly felt sorry for him. However, I couldn’t leave him, who held “privileges” over me, unchecked.
In fact, I had one trump card. A card that could only be used once, never to be used again.
Though it wasn’t the kind of card that guaranteed victory, under the right circumstances, I could certainly defeat a Lord.
The more life I extinguished and the more death energy I gathered, the stronger I became, especially as time stretched on. My chances of a successful ambush increased. I needed to gather information. The combat abilities of the Lord were still unknown. The apparent age of a powerful Mage could not be trusted. All I had witnessed was Necromancy. No matter how much close combat was my forte, it would be foolish to let my guard down against a cunning Mage.
Timing was crucial.
As I concealed my dark determination, Hark suddenly frowned.
“Speaking of which… it seems the Knights of the End have recently arrived in Engai.”
“What? …You haven’t made a blunder, have you?”
“Of course not. My trading partners are all tight-lipped. However, their sense of smell is quite remarkable. If you want to be cautious, it might be best to avoid this place for a while.”
The Knights of the End. I had read about them in books during my lifetime, and they were also mentioned in the Lord’s collection.
A borderless knight order. The strongest combat group in the world, bringing an end to the endless darkness. In fairy tales, they often appeared as heroes, cutting down all threats and hardships with their swords of light. They were the embodiment of childhood dreams, and I, too, had harbored a faint admiration for them before I fell ill.
The necromancer, who toyed with corpses and created undead, was their greatest enemy. A significant portion of the picture books I read as a child revolved around the battles between necromancers and the Knights of the End. It went without saying who emerged victorious.
The Lord’s expression twisted with an unprecedented rage. It seemed that the animosity between us was not merely a tale from a book.
And those Knights of the End were—by all accounts—my enemies as a living dead, a being that should not exist. Considering the ferocity depicted even in children’s picture books, it was inconceivable that they would ever forgive me.
“Have they come after me…? In just a few more years, my research would have borne fruit—those hounds, seeking to kill me and make me their eternal slave.”
“I can’t afford to get caught up in a battle between Horos-sama and the Knights of the End. I think it’s best for me to retreat for now.”
“…Wait, Hark. I have a request that doesn’t involve the usual corpses. End, return to the usual morgue.”
What could he possibly want…? I was curious, but I couldn’t ignore the order. I exited the room as slowly as possible, but ultimately, I couldn’t hear what he intended to ask.
…Well, it’s fine. I had heard an unpleasant story, but it was better than proceeding in ignorance. The limit had shrunk significantly. I needed to consider how to survive.
Upon returning to the morgue, I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms, and began to think.