The rotting flesh and severed limbs embedded in Hunter's body had already burned away. The haze of pain in his eyes gave way to clarity, and he began slowly crawling toward Kailin.
Lucian drew a glass tube filled with white powder from inside his coat, pressed it into Kailin's hands, then lifted her by the collar and set her down in front of Hunter.
"What is this?" Kailin's heart lurched. A painfully familiar feeling radiated from within the tube—the same feeling she dreamed about every night, the one that brought her to tears with longing.
Because of the modification experiments he had performed on his own body, Hunter's sense of touch had gone nearly numb. Gritting his teeth against the agony of the flames, he cried out with the instinctive bond between a necromancer and a bloodline connection: "That's… little Mary's… ashes?!"
"Mary was trapped in the ruins. Before she died, she asked me to bring her home." Lucian didn't go into the specifics. What a young girl had endured alone in the black, white, and gray necromantic realm—the loneliness, the hunger, the pain, the hope that slowly curdled into despair during her final stretch of life—was simply too cruel to recount.
Hunter suddenly began to weep. Two streaks of tears laced with pale yellow corpse fluid rolled down his cheeks, only to be scorched dry by the flames the instant they appeared. "Was it that damned Seal? It didn't just waste over twenty years of my life—it took little Mary from me." His voice was no longer halting; it came with eerie clarity, as though drawn from some final reserve of strength.
"He really did know," Lucian murmured to himself.
Kailin broke into sobs, her cries wracked with soul-tearing grief and regret. Blood and tears mingled on her face as she keened "Little Mary" over and over. She twisted open the glass tube, poured the ashes into her mouth, scattered them across her body, then threw herself onto Hunter to share the embrace of the flames.
"Mr. Evans, thank you—for letting us be together before we die." Kailin cradled Hunter's head, pressing her ash-dusted lips to his face again and again.
Lucian watched the scene in silence, his emotions tangled, but he still asked the question: "Mr. Hunter, you weren't originally from the town of Bourne, were you?"
"My hometown… is in Gibuti… the Principality…" With his daughter's fate now known, Hunter no longer had the will to hold on. He wrapped his arms around Kailin and "Mary," as though he were about to draw his very last breath.
Kailin, who had been burned by the flames for only a brief time, whispered softly: "I don't know why you stayed in the town of Bourne. I don't know why you married me. But I always loved you, and I loved our daughter."
"I… did… too…" Hunter's mind blurred. "I truly regret… studying… necro—"
His voice cut off abruptly. Hunter was truly dead. Kailin held him tight, then pressed the small dagger hidden in her arms to herself and ended her own life.
The flames roared higher. Two bodies slowly blackened and crumbled to ash.
Then a cold wind swept through, carrying away the ash that swirled in shades of black and white. Pinpoints of pale light materialized from thin air, coalescing into the translucent, adorable figure of little Mary. Behind her hovered the fainter silhouettes of Hunter and Kailin.
The little girl spoke without a sound, yet her voice seemed to resonate directly in Lucian's heart: "Thank you, Uncle, for bringing me home. Hehe… I finally get to see Mom and Dad again…"
Most of the light points dissolved into the wind, but a small number of them wound around Lucian's left hand, ultimately settling into a faint, white teardrop-shaped mark.
The moment it appeared, Lucian found that even without the "Resist Undead" Divine Arts enhancement, his body now possessed a remarkable natural resistance to the surrounding necromantic environment and the stench of decay.
"Is this a permanent effect?"
Lucian hadn't expected that the final expression of gratitude left behind by Hunter's family would produce such a change. But with his limited understanding of necromantic magic, he couldn't identify what exactly this was. "Maybe I should look through Hunter's Magic Notes. He should have fairly extensive knowledge of necromantic matters."
According to Kailin, Hunter's laboratory was located within the cemetery itself, so Lucian didn't wait for the flames to die down. He turned toward the castle window where Betty, Simon, and Johanna were watching and shouted: "Deal with the remaining corpse puppets inside the castle—I'm going to clear out this evil necromancer's lair!" The distance was considerable, and he had to shout for them to hear.
"Yes, Lord Evans," Betty and the others answered in unison. In their eyes, Lucian was a powerful Holy Knight who possessed all manner of extraordinary artifacts.
After they arrived, Lucian had only used three supernatural abilities—"Grease," "Fireball," and "Soul Repose." The Grease spell had no obvious visual effect and was cast from such a distance that Betty and the others, unless they were formal knights or mages, would never have realized it was Lucian's own doing. The Fireball had been triggered by a magic item, and "Soul Repose" was even less cause for concern.
Of course, Lucian wouldn't take any unnecessary risks. He would wait and find opportunities to "verify" each of them with "Charm Person" in turn.
…………
The door to the laboratory inside the burning cemetery stood wide open. Hunter had apparently rushed out the moment his experiment "succeeded."
Stepping through the entrance, Lucian felt waves of nausea despite having braced himself mentally. The place was like a slaughterhouse—human corpses lay everywhere, and the air reeked of blood. Most of the bodies belonged to infants, children, and adolescents, dismembered into various parts. Organs, facial features, and other pieces were spread across different laboratory tables.
After surveying the room carefully, Lucian located Hunter's main workbench. Carved into its surface was the Inverted Tree of Life, the most iconic symbol of necromantic magic. The ten circles along its branches were all empty, but next to it sat a black coffin.
After inspecting it, Lucian opened the coffin and was greeted by a startling sight: inside lay the body of little Mary, appearing seven or eight years old, her cheeks rosy as though she were peacefully asleep. He prodded her with a finger and found the unmistakable elasticity and texture of living flesh.
Convinced that Mary's true body had already been reduced to bone and cremated by his own hands, Lucian theorized: "Could it be that Hunter collected all these children's and infants' bodies for the sake of human transmutation? But he clearly failed…"
After searching for a while longer, Lucian finally found two black books in a corner. One was shaped like a notebook, and the other resembled *The Book of Stars and Elements*, bearing three pale words inscribed in the ancient magical empire's script: *The Book of Necromancy*.
After rapidly leafing through *The Book of Necromancy* and Hunter's Magic Notes and recording them into his soul library, Lucian began to study them in earnest.
"According to the records I found in the mage tower, the town of Bourne in the Vorlite Principality is a mysterious ruin shrouded by the Seal. It apparently concerns the whereabouts of several legendary mages from ancient times, including the necromancer Wilfrid's friend, the 'Prophet' Maskelyne. That place certainly won't be as barren as this mage tower—it most likely holds a wealth of magical items and treasures! I need to go investigate!"