6 - Chapter 6

At about ten o’clock the next morning, Roth finally returned. When he left, he rode a black horse. When he came back, he not only rode the black horse, but also brought back two golden brown foals.

He was holding the horse in his left hand, a bulging canvas bag in his right hand, new long and short swords hanging on both sides of his waist, and a silver harp inlaid with sapphires on his back. After sending the horses back to the stable, he opened the door directly with his shoulders and walked into the mage tower. The protection spells on the tower didn’t work on him at all.

When he found Burris in the study, the mage was sitting at the table with a bitter expression, sighing at an ancient black book that was the length of two spans.

“I received the summon you sent.” Roth turned and sat at the table, stacking everything in his hands in front of Burris. “At that time, I was in a place called Flying Squirrel Town. They have a curfew at night, and they close the city gates to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. Actually, I could have sneaked out by myself, but I carried a bunch of things on my back and I had to bring the horse…I had to wait for the morning before leaving. That place is quite prosperous, not like a small town at all.”

Burris murmured listlessly: “Oh, Flying Squirrel Town… you entered the border of Sago. You went so far…”

“It’s a bit far. Hey, what’s wrong with you? Crestfallen early in the morning.”

Burris did not answer. His eyes lifted from the book and slowly moved to a pile of things on the desk: “What are these?”

“The things I bought. Look, how about this pair of swords?” Roth patted the long and short swords on his waist, took out the short one, and made two gestures in the air. “I didn’t buy it at the blacksmith shop, but at the craft shop. The owner didn’t know the goods and thought they were decorations. In fact, these were antique swords produced by a pair of dwarves! The design of the northern elves and the craftsmanship of the dwarves are not common. You see, it is old but still sharp…”

Burris nodded perfunctorily and stared at the thing protruding from the mouth of the canvas bag: “What is this… chain mail shirt?”

“Soft woven chain armor, the inner layer is made of lambskin. how about it, does it look good?” Roth pulled out the chain mail shirt and put it on himself.

Burris frowned slightly: “My Lord, if you want weapons and armor, there are many in my military factory! There are all kinds of materials and special effects. Even if you want a dragon skin armor, it’s not difficult to get… Why do you have to spend this money? The weapon shop in the border town of Sago is not worthy of its name. They make money by cheating young adventurers who have just entered the country all year round… ”

“I just thought they looked good.” Roth took out a thick pile of dark red heavy silk with gold thread from his canvas bag. “Look, isn’t this also pretty? I bought it for you. I found that the curtains in your lounge are too dark. What color are they called? They are dull shade of gray, without any sense of luxury.”

“My curtains have a good shading effect…” Burris stared sadly at the pile of golden cloth.

Roth opened the heavy silk cloth and tried it against the light: “Well, that’s right. The shading effect is not as good as your curtains. But you can hang double curtains, use this on the outside and the blackout curtain on the inside. Or you can use this as a bed curtain.”

After saying this, he took out a flannel box. In the box lay two cloak pins, each with a blue and a green gemstone.

“Blue moonstone and green dragon’s breath stone.” He took the blue one for himself and handed the green one to Burris. “The blue one is for me and the green one is for you. How about it? It matches well the color of our eyes, right? Yours is the one with the best color in that store. You can see the strong light spots inside even while being indoors…”

Burris took the pin painfully: “My lord…There are a lot of these things in my tower… ”

“But it’s not exactly the same, right?”

“It’s not…”

“Then it’s fine. By the way, I also bought this…”

Next, Roth happily displayed a bunch of things, ranging from tapestries to rose and lychee-flavored essential oils. Among them, a silver harp confused Burris the most. Burris couldn’t play and of course Roth couldn’t either. Burris asked him why he wanted to buy this, and he said that this was a rare dryad style handicraft and should be placed in the mage tower.

When he heard that Roth also bought a pair of golden foals, Burris was already lying on the table, feeling hopeless. [1]

It was indeed a mistake to let the Skeleton King go out alone… People who have been imprisoned for too long need to release pressure, and once they are free, it’s easy to forget themselves. Originally, Burris was worried about what the Skeleton King would do… Now it’s alright, it seems that the Skeleton King did not harm common people and he bought a lot of useless things from them. The residents of the town not only will not be afraid of this stranger, they will love him to death.

Seeing Burris lying still, Roth reached out and rubbed his hair: “What’s the matter with you? Have you been unwell since yesterday when I came back?”

Burris buried his face in his arms, and said dully: “You had seen my summon and still didn’t return…but it wasn’t easy to come back and you still bought so many flashy things…”

“Aren’t you rich? “The demigod was outrageously honest.

“You can’t spend money indiscriminately!” Burris slowly straightened his body, pinching his eyebrows. “Forget it…My lord, I don’t blame you, you have been imprisoned in other plane for so long, and you don’t know this world well enough…This is normal…Your excitement and curiosity are also normal. I didn’t handle this matter properly.”

Roth thought about it thoroughly, and asked carefully, “Er… Did I spend a lot of your money? Are the things I bought particularly expensive?”

“Objectively expensive.” Burris said. “but it doesn’t matter, actually it’s not much money.”

“That’s good.” Roth said with a sigh of relief. “Then why are you sad?”

“Because I had some problems casting spells.” And the pile of things you bought added to my sense of despair … Burris didn’t say the second half.

Burris spent a few minutes explaining his problem to Roth, and also briefly described the various tests he tried yesterday and the explanations he found from ancient texts… After listening, Roth patted him on the shoulder: “It’s nothing, don’t worry, you can’t cast high-level spells because your body and soul are not in sync, is not something permanent. It will be fine after a few days. This is like drinking alcohol. If you turn into a 13-year-old, your drinking capacity will definitely deteriorate with the change of your body. As long as you still love to drink and drink a lot, you will be able to regain your current drinking capacity within a year or two. ”

“I understand, but it will cause a lot of inconvenience…” Burris sighed.

Roth shook his head: “Don’t worry. Speaking of which, I am in a more inconvenient situation than you.”

Burris was taken aback by this. Roth grabbed him from his chair: “It’s like this, it’s not just you who encountered the problem of poor spell casting, I’m also having a little problem with my body. I can show it to you. Do you have a training ground for spell casting?”

Burris took him to the middle floor of the tower, which, like the basement, was expanded by space magic into a room larger than the tower floor. The room was arranged like a Colosseum, with stone pillars of different heights and thicknesses standing in the arena to simulate a complex environment.

Burris used to do combat training with the apprentices here. Later, when he got older and the apprentices were still in their prime, they didn’t pay too much attention to damage spells, so the training ground gradually became vacant. Princess Estel had never used the training ground. She was the princess and the only heir of the Empire. Burris was afraid of taking responsibility and hardly taught her fighting spells.

When he arrived at the training ground, Roth looked around: “Do you have any available corpse?”

“Yes.” Burris snapped his fingers, and a demi-hollow servant dragged in a goblin corpse from outside a small door.

Roth looked at the goblin disgustingly: “Not a goblin! Do you have an elven corpse available?”

“Why do you have to use an elven corpse?”

“The goblin is ugly.”

“What are you going to do to it? Why does it matter if it’s ugly or not?”

Burris had no elven corpses, but the king insisted that it didn’t have to be a goblin, and in desperation, Burris asked the servant to replace it with a human corpse.

“Now look at me, Burris,” Roth approached the corpse, “I will cast a spell on it. It will regain its vitality, but will lack intelligence ”

This is a pretty basic necromantic spell. Burris nodded, wondering what the Skeleton King wanted to express.

Roth knelt down and gently picked up the upper body of the corpse. Before Burris’s surprised eyes, he actually lowered his head and kissed the corpse’s lips!

What shocked Burris even more was that his action was indeed casting a spell, and seeing the moment his lips touched, Burris also felt a slight fluctuation when the spell took effect.

"

"

The corpse stood up stiffly and swayed foolishly, as if waiting for orders. Roth gave him a few random commands, and finally told him to go back to rest.

After doing all this, Roth asked again: “Burris, do you have any available prisoners here? Death row prisoners, the kind who are still alive.”

“No, this is my mage tower, not a prison.”

Roth sighed regretfully and went to kiss the body again to rise it. This time he cast a different kind of magic, which can not only give the dead a new life, but also give the dead a certain intelligence and judgment, which is different from those completely dull walking dead.

This spell has a side effect: if the deceased died in an unfavorable manner, he will immediately remember the hatred of the past after the spell takes effect, and will go after the enemy regardless of everything; when the revenge is successful, he will increase his strength greatly, and then he will return to the caster voluntarily and be loyal forever.

After casting, the corpse in Roth’s hands stood up. Maybe this person was really murdered. He rushed to the exit of the training ground, howled and punched the heavy stone gate, eagerly rushing out to find the murderer for revenge…

“How did he die?” Roth looked at Burris.

“He was trampled to death by a bison.”

“So… Is he going to take revenge on the bison?” Roth also walked to the door and explained to Burris on his side as he walked. “Obviously he’s going to have a hard time finding that ox, and we can’t let him run out of the tower, right? So now I have to subdue him and calm him down again…”

“So, what do you want to show me?” Burris became increasingly unable to understand the behavior of the Skeleton King.

Roth grabbed the struggling body and kissed it again. This time, Burris discovered that Roth was casting an instant-death spell, and most of the subjects would lose their vitality permanently after this blow and even their soul would no longer exist. The raised dead bodies were alive, and undead were also creatures, of course they could die again.

Roth’s spell took effect. The corpse fell back to the ground, changing from a fresh and strong peasant corpse to a shriveled one.

“Do you understand?” Roth shrugged. “I have spellcasting problems like you…and I am in a more serious condition. I must touch the subject with my mouth. Probably because I was released by a kiss, my way of expression of power has also changed…”

Burris was stunned: “In other words, you can only use your mouth to radiate power, and you must also use your mouth to touch the subject’s mouth?”

“Yes, it’s very troublesome. It doesn’t work with paws or backs. I tried it against wolves in the wild.”

Burris wanted to know what he had done to the wolves, but that was obviously not the point at the moment: “What about range spells? Like fog barriers or strong winds.”

“I can’t cast ranged spells.” Roth said. “It doesn’t work with ranged defense or attack, nor with burst spells or blast spells… Such as the big fireball that human warlocks love, I can’t cast it. I can only cast spells that have specific targets and target individual living creatures.”

“In short…you have to kiss on the lips?”

“Yes…Oh, by the way, I am not affected when casting auxiliary spells on myself! The ones that involve the outside world are the spells that have been affected.”

“What about teleportation? Teleport yourself.”

“I couldn’t teleport before, only flashes of it, did you forget? If I could do it, that time more than sixty years ago…we wouldn’t have worked so hard.”

Roth suddenly mentioned the past, and Burris couldn’t help but fall in a trance for a while.

The stubborn illness left in those years tortured him for decades, and at the same time, the warmth he experienced in those years has been shining through the rest of his life.

“I understand.” Burris forced himself to bring his thinking back to the present. “The difficulties you have encountered are indeed more serious than mine. My problem is temporary, how about you? It will not be permanent, right?”

“I don’t know, I’ll have to see gradually.” Roth said: “Don’t worry for me, the spells currently available are enough, and I can kill most enemies even if I don’t cast them.”

“I do believe that…”

Roth seemed to think of something again. He strode towards Burris: “By the way, I can also use assistive spells! For example, I can protect you from various elemental energies and improve your control over magic…”

“Don’t!” Burris stretched his hand against Roth’s chest. “You just kissed a corpse! Don’t kiss me!”

“You necromancers still care about this?”

“Why don’t you care? What misunderstanding do you have about necromancers?

T.N:

[1] 生无可恋 : This is a Chinese idiom meaning there is nothing left to live for, life is devoid of meaning.

Thanks to everyone who is reading!! 🙂 😀

If you spot a mistake, please tell me