Quill was never meant to die here.

  Not in this ash-filled, bloody battlefield surrounded by the crumbling lines of his undead legion. He stared at the white bones protruding from his robes, a testament to his immortality and power as the Night Lich.

  He blinked away the weariness from his eyes. He’d wanted nothing more than a quiet day today. He was supposed to be reading the books he’d raided from a nearby village, but the Circle had found him just before, and they were done sending the lower Gold mages to die by his hand.

  And that was how he arrived here, fighting against the strongest mages in all of Westlands: Jack the Hollow General and Edith the Wind Caller, along with Pormor the Golden Paladin.

  He was losing.

  Quill cursed under his breath. It wasn't going to end here, not while his phylactery still pulsed with the last bit of power. He still had many more things left to study, and he’d be damned to have it all perish by the hand of Sapphire mages.

  He counted his army. There were fewer than a hundred of them left. If he didn't do anything now, then the tide would never shift in his favor. It was going to be a gamble, now that he was pushed this far to the edge.

  He called forth his Bonewyrm.

  It was the last of his sky juggernauts, roaring defiant as it swept over the stormclouds above. The dragon banked low, its shadow looming over Jack’s Hollowed Knights as they carved at Quill's Rotten Scourge. He needed to thin out the opposing army.

  He commanded. At once, Blackfire erupted from the Bonewyrm's mouth, raining down to melt the steel and armor of Jack's army. Quill directed the destruction to the west legion, weakening their hold against his Fleshgiants so the behemoths could flank around the opposing center.

  Then came a in the sky. A wind lance perforated the air, moving faster than sound. It struck Quill's Bonewyrm mid-flight, punching straight through the dragon’s core to send bones crumbling. The beast roared, echoing thunder across the battlefield, plummeting to the earth in a cloud of dust and smoke.

  Quill grit his teeth. There was only one reason why he couldn't freely use his Bonewyrms: Edith. She was always watching the skies, looking out for anything with wings that might fly inside her territory. Numerous Bonewyrms had already fallen to her Wind magic.

  With the last of his juggernauts felled, Quill's line of undead eventually broke against the knights.

  And that was when Pormor advanced.

  He was a giant wrapped in a golden aura, burning through the last of Quill's skeletons left standing. When the battlefield was cleared of the undead, he then swung his golden spear, blurring through the air to appear right in front of Quill.

  “Night Lich,” Pormor sneered, shattering Quill's arm with a thrust of his spear. “I heard so many things about you.”

  Quill stared at his fractured radius. “Aren’t you confident?”

  Another strike took his legs, sweeping him to the dirt.

  “I’m disappointed, really.” Pormor laughed as his leather boot pressed down onto Quill's face. “Centuries of studying the dark arts, and this is all you managed?”

  Quill stared red at the giant. He was mocking his entire life’s work. “You needed the help of the greatest mages just to reach me. You have no right to mock me, let alone humiliate me like this.”

  Pormor raised his spear, its blade gleaming with lethal gold. “A corpse is talking.”

  Quill only laughed. It was nothing but a dry, rattling of bones.

  “I’m a lich, you stupid pig.”

  And then the world went black.

  Quill couldn't tell the passing of time in the void. He was just there, swimming in unconscious eternity until he wasn't, and when he finally opened his eyes again, he found himself staring at a stone ceiling.

  Darkness swamped his vision. Drops of cold water pitter-pattered against his forehead. He pushed off the ground, feeling the hard bricks below grinding at his palms as he turned to sit, and for a moment, he could only linger on that thought before he then realized.

  He turned his gaze out. He was inside a dimly lit tunnel, barely any light seeping through the cracks and crevices from the ceiling above. The rush of dirty water flowed beneath his feet, a canal of some sort that was as rancid to his nose as it was to his eyes. This place was a sewer of some kind.

  Quill turned down before he then raised his hands, staring at the skinny arms and hands attached to him.

  It’d been a long time since he saw skin and muscles on him.

  A faint smile then stretched across his mouth. The Possession spell really worked, and he’d now taken someone’s body as his own. He patted all over himself, a cloth tunic covering his figure. What had once been nothing but bones, there was now a pad of skin that carried meat and organs.

  “What a failure you are, Pormor.” Quill smiled in the darkness. He had cast the spell long before Pormor made his move. He’d been working on the spell for quite some time, but he’d never actually finished it. It was a gamble to use the last bit of his mana on it, but it paid off dividends.

  But it wasn't perfect. The spell worked well enough to transfer his soul into another body, but all of his magic and spells hadn't carried over. He could tell just from the empty feeling in his chest.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He was back to square one now.

  Quill shook the disappointment from his head. It didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. As long as he still lived, he could still rebuild. What was a couple more decades to a century-old lich?

  All the great knowledge and skills he had amassed over centuries were still there right inside his head. Even if he was to start all over again with another Aspect of mana altogether, it wasn't that big of a setback, and given this chance, he was going to use it well–to hunt down Pormor who dared to humiliate him and mock his life’s work.

  All of his words and all of his mockery, Quill carved them to memory. The Golden Paladin was going to fall by his hands. No one mocks a lich, even if that someone was one of the strongest mages on the continent.

  Quill started on his feet. He turned around, spinning to find a light to guide him outside. To his disappointment, there was only darkness as far as he could see, but his eyes then caught something at the edge of his vision.

  It was an ugly blot on the wall.

  At first glance, it seemed to be a splash of black paint poured over the bricks, but the faint iron smell of it was obvious. It was dried blood. Quill traced it on the ground before he then turned to his boots and tunic, and surprisingly, he found it marred with the same color.

  He understood it then. The Possession spell had chosen a body for his soul to inhabit. He could hardly remember the train of Scripts that allowed him to do so, but he had other things to be concerned about.

  It was only a second later that his question was answered.

  A screech echoed far into the sewers. It echoed on the walls, a sound so desperate and so hungry it almost seemed Quill's curiosity called him to find out what it was, but his common sense begged to differ. He had to remind himself that there was no undead army with him now.

  He turned before building up to a run opposite to where the sound came from. He was in no hurry to die again right after escaping death. He flipped over the corner, stumbling over wet stone and moss before he picked up the pace.

  Another screech travelled through the tunnel. The thing was desperately running after him. When he turned another corner, that was when he finally caught a glimpse of it.

  It was a transfigured outline of a human. An .

  He could tell even in the darkness of the sewers. After all, he was one of the greatest necromancers in his past life. He didn't know why it was chasing after him, but he sure wasn't willing to find out right now.

  He turned another corner before stopping. The tunnel in front of him was blocked with a set of old debris, ruined bricks that had no business being there. There was no way of getting through without a shovel, let alone with nothing but the clothes on his back.

  “I really am cursed.” Quill retraced his steps back, hoping the undead was still far behind. But another screech confirmed his fear. It was close.

  It was just to the far edge of the corner, having no way of going back now without encountering it in his path. With nowhere left to go, stuck between a rubble of rock and an encroaching undead, Quill resolved to pave a path himself.

  He traced his fingers over the brick wall, pulling a loose piece before finding the largest of crevices on the ceiling. He found it just a few meters away, and with the light above guiding him, he immediately rammed the stone against the poor infrastructure.

  The crack crumbled. It opened into a larger hole. Rays of light followed, blinding Quill before he rammed and rammed again. Dust and debris fell to the floor, the sound of rocks breaking off into chunks.

  The monster had heard him, but Quill was unrelenting in his pursuit.

  He winded again before the figure finally surfaced from the corner of his vision. He turned, finding the undead at the far end of the tunnel.

  It was unlike his summons at all. Where his past ghouls were made using magic-imbued flesh, the undead in front of him was already submitting to rot and infection. Maggots squirmed along its skin, and guts were spilling from its stomach.

  A single mushroom took root over its head, the mycelium branching over the face like worms directing commands. It was the work of a Ghoulshroom, a species of fungus that had a pesky reputation of bringing the dead back to life. Quill wanted to take with him a sample, but he was in no condition to do so right now, especially when he had next to no magic.

  The Sporeghoul screeched, its vocal cords churning before it then dropped on all fours and ran. It bridged the gap in a short amount of time before lunging and tackling Quill, pulling his foot, sweeping him off his feet with a hard to the ground.

  Quill's vision blurred. His senses had dulled. A sharp pain surfaced behind his skull–he must've hit his head on the bricks. He’d already forgotten how fragile mortal bodies were, and he had to find out the hard way so soon.

  He stared in confusion as the Sporeghoul pinned him down, ugly teeth and deathly smell bared against him.

  And then it came to him.

  Like a drop in a still pond, a feeling of faint power pulsed in his chest. He was sure his magic was entirely gone now, but somehow he could still feel the faint echo of his Black mana seeping inside this new body.

  Quill clenched his fist. He couldn't second-guess himself now. When the Sporeghoul pulled him along, he opened his mouth to recite a revised Script of Black Application. When he finally finished, he grabbed the monster's face with a hand before pushing decay and rot, and as if music to his ears, the zombie screeched in pain as the skin of its face melted over its skull.

  The spell really worked.

  Quill didn't let the chance escape him.

  He kicked the Sporeghoul away before he then reached for the stone brick on the ground. He then gathered his feet to stand, and with all his strength, he rammed the brick straight through the broken ceiling. The last strike finally broke through to the surface, warm sunlight spilling into the tunnel.

  The Sporeghoul wasn't as thankful for the light as Quill was. It bellowed in pain before fleeing for its life, its skin melting against the outside air as it dashed back into the shadows of the inner sewers. Hopefully, it learned its lesson well enough.

  Quill stared at the sunlight creeping past the hole. The weakness of Sporeghouls was the same as that of the more elusive vampires. He had learned about it when he had compiled many books on the local fauna of some mushroom forest long ago. Who would've thought the knowledge would come in handy now?

  Quill dropped to the stone bricks in exhaustion before staring at his hands. The Black Application had damaged his Mana Channels, owing to the fact that this body was completely different from before. That was why he had revised the Scripts as best as he could, and even then it would take a while for it to heal.

  He then pressed his hand to his chest. As expected, there was still the familiar feeling of Black mana lingering inside him: slick, slimy, and cold to the touch. That was how he was able to cast Black Application even in this new body.

  But it ended there. The ugliness of Black mana was overpowered by a surge of warmth, originating from a different type of mana altogether.

  It was the Aspect of White.

  Quill pressed his lips together.