The macaque jerked under Tybalt’s touch as the necromancer made contact.

  Then it tried to twist its bound body so that it could sink its teeth into his arm.

  But it was positioned to make that difficult, and the necromancer swiftly moved one foot to secure it more firmly. What surprised him for a moment was that the power did not instantly flow into the creature’s body.

  Tybalt frowned for a moment, then understood.

  Right, it’s not only divine energy. Just because Lord Mudo’s strength flowing through me feels really powerful doesn’t mean it’s the only factor. This needs a little bit of me in it too.

  He drew out mana as well, just a small amount, the same specific variety he employed when he used Generate Undead.

  He mixed the Death God’s power with his undeath mana and pushed, keeping his intent firmly in mind as he guided the mixed mana and divine energy into the animal’s body.

  The beast’s face contorted, cried out, and its body writhed in pain as Tybalt overwrote its core essence. He could feel the power working, could sense the macaque turning.

  After ten seconds of this, its body movements began to weaken. By thirty, it wasn’t crying out anymore. Its voice had dropped to a weak whimper. Another ten seconds later, and the macaque’s body spasmed one final time. It went as stiff and flat as a board.

  Then it twitched.

  The beast twitched, pressed its paws against the ground, and pushed itself up. It opened eyes that danced with Tybalt’s green energy before returning to the red that Stanislaw’s corruption had changed them to. It cracked its neck.

  Then it hurled itself at Tybalt.

  Be still, he sent to the creature in midair.

  The necromancer was used to this reaction from certain undead by now.

  Probably not a zombie, then, he thought, a little bit excited. And I made it without killing it. With just a touch.

  He pulled up the monster’s status, not noticing the way that everyone around had been watching his experiment, or the fact that the sparring had paused.

  It’s pretty weak, but it’s a revenant, so the growth is going to be strong. And I wonder if it’s going to earn the same skill that Baldwin got. As for why it had become a revenant, that was no mystery. It had un-died in intense pain after being tormented by both Tybalt and Stanislaw. It probably hated them deeply.

  What was particularly interesting, however, was Tybalt’s own mana reserve.

  It looks like it cost me around 15 mana, which is less than Baldwin took. So corrupting something into an undead isn’t more expensive than creating an undead the old-fashioned way, by killing it first.

  Tybalt communicated with a couple of his undead and then proceeded to turn two more animals from living directly into undead, just to ensure he could replicate the effect. These ones just became regular zombies.

  When he was done with that, another of his undead had arrived for the next stage of the experiment. Tybalt quickly reviewed the sea draugr’s status as he knelt before the necromancer.

  Yes, it does have that skill, I remembered right. Excellent.

  He communicated with the creature again. “Sidon, don’t fight what I’m about to do to you.”

  “Understood… master…”

  Tybalt put his hand on Sidon’s chest and injected the cocktail of mana and divine energy he was used to using, with different intent this time. He used pestilence mana instead of undeath mana, and rather than attempting to change the monster’s race, he targeted Sidon’s skill.

  The sea draugr didn’t move as the energy reached his mana core and touched the nature of his powers. Even as the authority of a god played with his status, Sidon seemed completely comfortable and calm.

  The necromancer wasn’t certain if it was because the monster was already undead or because he wasn’t resisting at all.

  But he felt it when he succeeded. The system confirmed, too, in its way—through a notification.

  Nice. That was very fucking easy. Tybalt smiled at the notification and then reviewed Sidon’s status once more. Mist Veil had changed to Sickening Mist Veil. I successfully infused it with pestilence magic. Now that’s permanently part of one of Sidon’s skills. He’s going to be so much more useful.

  He checked the skill description to make sure he understood correctly

  Sickening Mist Veil: Calls upon a mystical connection to the sea and pestilence magic to conjure a mist laden with airborne pestilence. The specific composition of the mist is dependent on what pestilences the user has been exposed to most recently prior to using this skill. Consumes mana.

  I need more monsters with that skill… I could blanket a larger area with mist and just expose all my enemies to the undeath virus at once, if this can really make it airborne. But Sidon was the only sea draugr my virus created. I’m going to have to do some research and see if there’s a way I can make the specific undead I want to make, on command. Add that to the long list of projects I want to complete before the Army arrives to kill all of us.

  He spent the next ten minutes corrupting a handful of the remaining animals into undead. He had intended for them to fight and be killed by his mummies, but when he looked, he could see that Mariella was still sparring with them and showing no signs of getting tired. That might have been because she wanted to show off her endurance to Kistana, or it might have been because the mummies were trying to take it relatively easy on her.

  Either way, the monsters didn’t need the animals Tybalt had gathered to let them farm experience.

  I’ll save the rest just to see a few more skills in action, the necromancer thought.

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  “Edgard, come over here and show me how your Breath of Decay works,” Tybalt ordered. “Stanislaw, you’ll be next up demonstrating Life Drain.”

  “Yes, master,” replied Stanislaw.

  “As you command,” Edgard sent. “After I demonstrate Breath of Decay, may I fight more seriously with the woman? I would still abide by your order not to injure her, of course.”

  “Yes, go ahead and fight her as seriously as she can handle,” Tybalt replied. “You need to get the rust off of your skills as much as you need levels. Her power is over fire, so the two of you will both have to be careful.”

  Edgard nodded.

  Then he approached Tybalt, and the necromancer saw that there was already mana building up inside the chthonic mage, gray aura that the mummy had concentrated in his chest.

  “Watch closely, master,” Edgard said telepathically.

  He’s not bothering with a living target, huh?

  Tybalt nodded for the mummy to go ahead.

  Edgard opened his mouth and breathed out, and a glowing gray fog surged from beneath the bandages that covered his features. Tybalt recognized that this was the attack he had asked to see. He tried to understand.

  Mana infused into the air in his lungs. It’s sort of like my undeath mana, but not quite. And the amount of fog he emitted looks like more than the amount of air he could fit into his lungs. A close range attack, but it’s carrying further than I might have guessed without losing energy. If the wind picked up, everyone nearby would be in the range of its effects. If I used Corruption on the sea draugr again, could I make a mist with this effect?

  As he was trying to pick it apart, Tybalt sidestepped the physical cloud of mana-infused air. Even though Edgard was his minion, he got a slight sense of menace just looking at it. A part of the necromancer wondered if his own flesh would be damaged if it touched the cloud, despite his affinity for undeath.

  All the while, the mummy just stood there, patiently waiting for Tybalt to give him another order or make some comment.

  Tybalt decided that, before he asked any questions, he would try to copy the skill himself, using just what he had observed. He took a deep breath, built up undeath mana in his chest, and infused it into the air inside his lungs. Then he exhaled heavily.

  The air he breathed out glowed in the deep green color Tybalt’s mana always exhibited, but he could tell at once that something was different. It wasn’t spreading out the way Edgard’s mana had, and he didn’t get the same sense of menace from it. The necromancer’s own mana was more life-giving rather than decay-inducing, if Tybalt had to describe the difference based on his intuitive grasp of concepts and the way the two clouds of aura made him feel by looking at them.

  “What did I do wrong?” Tybalt asked simply.

  “Master, when you do something that is the exact opposite of your usual practice, it is bound to be difficult the first time,” Edgard replied. “Your usual mana does not destroy things. It preserves them forever. You must concentrate on trying to produce a reverse effect.”

  The opposite of undeath? It’s not life?

  “I think I get it,” he said slowly. “I’ll try again.”

  Tybalt concentrated and thought about prior uses he had made of mana. Instead of Generate Undead, he recalled the feeling he’d had when he was repairing Baldwin the first time—of finding a thread that could be pulled to completely destroy him as a functioning entity. He thought of Corruption and how it could be used to distort what something had been and replace its nature with something else. And he thought of how Lord Mudo’s energy felt flowing through him. That was key, he sensed.

  The Death God’s essence was to embrace all phases of life and death, in a sense. Tybalt had been harnessing only one aspect thus far, the distortion of the death process that was called undeath. But most of what Mudo did was destruction and restoration, not perversion.

  Flesh to dust, dust to flesh again. Souls bound to the body turning to freely flowing souls that were eventually put through the cycle of rebirth, bound to a new vessel.

  Breath of Decay was meant to turn the flesh to dust more rapidly. Those killed by it would not become undead. It was, in a sense, the opposite of undeath in the same sense that life was the opposite of undeath. Both decay and life were anathema to Tybalt’s usual use of his powers.

  All right. Hopefully I know enough.

  Tybalt took a deep breath. He concentrated his energy in his chest and focused carefully on his intent, accelerating the process of decay and the dissolution of the flesh. He even tried to emulate the energy of the Death God without directly calling on it. He felt that would probably be ineffectual. Edgard hadn’t been using divine power. Tybalt would have sensed it.

  He pushed the energy into the air in his lungs, and he breathed out.

  This time, the necromancer could feel something in the air that spilled forth from his lungs. It wasn’t as big of a cloud as Edgard had created, but he got that sense of danger, gazing at it, that he had been looking for.

  “What in Abadd is that?”

  Tybalt turned and saw Mariella gaping at his attack. Her expression was something like admiration mixed with unease.

  He held in a laugh. “I’m trying to learn the Breath of Decay skill. I wouldn’t recommend going near that cloud.”

  “Don’t you already have enough ways to kill someone once you’re within touch range?” Mariella asked half-jokingly.

  “Clearly not, based on how I performed against the Commander,” Tybalt replied, his slightly jovial mood dampening.

  I got my ass kicked. If I’d had this, I don’t think that would have happened. An air-based attack should ignore armor completely. I don’t think it needs to be breathed to be effective.

  He turned and watched the cloud for a moment, and a few insects that had been floating nearby dropped from the air as the gas reached them. They disintegrated before their bodies could touch the ground.

  Yeah, it works, he thought. It’s functional.

  “You’ll work on properly mastering it, won’t you?” Edgard asked telepathically.

  “I will,” Tybalt replied, instantly on guard. “But is there something specific wrong with it?”

  “It is missing a specific property. The system will not grant you the skill if you perform it this way. You can still kill with it, but you will need to put thought into it every time.”

  The necromancer nodded. “Thank you,” he said aloud. “I’ll practice it on my own.”

  He turned to Stanislaw. “Your turn.”

  “My lord, please forgive my impertinence,” said Kistana. “But why are you practicing close combat skills? After you fought to protect the fox tribe, I gather you were incapacitated for days. You are a mage, not a warrior class… and your life seems far more important than any of ours. You have me as a bodyguard for that reason as well, I think. And you have recently shown that you have a skill to make the undead in your proximity markedly stronger, channeling the power of our god.” She visibly swallowed. “Um, with all possible respect, should your role not be one of support?” She lowered her head. “Again, I apologize for the impertinent question, Your Holiness.”

  You don’t need to call me Holiness, lord was enough, Tybalt thought, slightly amused.

  “The truth is, Kistana, I will want to keep my close quarters combat to a minimum in serious battles,” he replied after a moment. “But even if it doesn’t make sense, I actually like fighting… I like—I like fighting. Yeah.”

  She simply nodded and looked away, but Tybalt barely noticed.

  He had stopped himself from saying that he liked killing. That was more true than he wanted to admit. It was something he’d gotten used to, and yes, when the person gave him a good fight, a part of him enjoyed defeating them. It was exhilarating.

  With Mariella and Vidalia here, that was all rather awkward to say. The fire mage was partially with him because he represented a force for good in contrast to the Kingdom. And Vidalia was well aware that Tybalt had killed far more beastfolk than he had ever slain humans. He didn’t want to slap her in the face by implying that he had enjoyed it.

  Vidalia walked over from where she’d been standing.

  “I’m going to go home and get dinner cooking,” she said loudly as she approached Tybalt. “Stew takes time to get right.”

  “Would you like help, Miss Vidalia?” asked Kistana immediately.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting my future husband?” Vidalia asked, turning back to look at the catgirl.

  Tybalt didn’t see Vidalia’s expression, since her back was to him at that moment, but whatever it was, it made Kistana wither slightly.

  “Right,” the catgirl said after a moment. “It would be irresponsible. Thank you for your generosity in feeding us.”

  “It’s one of my jobs, just like you’re a bodyguard,” Vidalia said simply. Tybalt didn’t sense any hostility in her words, at least. Kistana still looked chastened.

  The foxgirl turned back to Tybalt.

  She stepped in close.

  “Would it kill you to be nice to her?” the necromancer asked in a low voice.

  “I just don’t want her to think she can join us,” Vidalia whispered, eyes narrowing. “No catgirls, right? With those long, shapely legs and big, round… I’ve seen the way she looks at you. If I gave her even a tiny opening… I saw how all the girls in her village were looking at you. Like a tasty mouse.”

  Wait, what way does Kistana look at me? Is this when I’m not paying attention? I think I would notice if she was interested.

  “That’s not what I came over here to say, anyway,” the foxgirl added, flushing slightly. “I just wanted to tell you, I know what you wanted to say earlier. That you enjoy fighting and killing. Just wanted to remind you that you can always be direct and honest with me, even if you don’t think others can handle it. Because I’m with you no matter what.”

  Tybalt leaned down and kissed her roughly, his hands grabbing at her waist and the back of her head, running through her hair and groping her fluffy ears. She took deep, surprised breaths as he pulled back from her.

  “Are you trying to seduce me, Lord Necromancer?” she asked after a moment, grinning at him with a slightly crazy, clearly hungry look in her eyes. “Because it’s working.”

  “I’m just letting you know,” Tybalt said. “You don’t have to try to protect your position by putting other people down or reminding me of how loyal you are. I know.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Believe how important you are. I don’t have any possession more prized than you.”

  “Y-yeah,” Vidalia said, shaking slightly, visibly flustered. She swallowed hard. “I’ll go and, um, get dinner started.”

  She turned around, and on impulse, Tybalt smacked her hard on the ass. She didn’t look back at him, but he could see from the side of her face that she was grinning broadly. Her tail wagged, and her hips swayed from side to side, as she walked away from the group.

  “Ah hem, master?” Stanislaw asked.

  The necromancer was pulled back to reality by the sound of the mummy telepathically clearing his throat.

  Right, yes? Tybalt said. He noticed that Mariella and William had stopped sparring and were looking his way, and so was Kistana, though she was trying to hide it.

  “I was going to demonstrate Life Drain, but only if you’re still interested.”