Reborn with a Necromancer System
Chapter 112: Fusion of the Dead

Chapter 112: Fusion of the Dead

Kai still hadn’t moved.

The words hung in the air like a ghost refusing to pass on.

She spoke.

Ralts spoke.

Her voice had been quiet, feminine but not soft. It held no emotion, and yet it carved through the silence with the weight of something impossible. It was like the dry hiss of wind against graveyard stones, threaded with intelligence. Deliberate. Aware.

"You... spoke," Kai whispered.

Ralts sat on the floor, legs folded beneath her, her hollow eyes glowing faintly. "Yes."

"That’s not-you’re not supposed to be able to. You have no soul. You don’t have... will."

"No," she agreed. "I don’t."

Kai ran a hand through his hair, pacing now. His mind raced, like an unsolved puzzle clicking into place. Only one variable had changed. Only one piece had been different when he’d raised her.

The rune.

The one etched on her forehead.

The Forebearer’s sigil he retraced when he turned her into his undead minion. To Kai, it had no translation, just meaning. Chaos. And he’d carved it into her bones out of curiosity, not knowing what it would do.

"You’re sentient," he breathed, looking back at her. "You think. You feel... Emotion? That rune... it didn’t summon you. It made you."

Silence.

Ralts tilted her head. "The rune holds what is me... together. It is not your power alone that fuels me. I was born in chaos... and shaped by your intent. That was enough."

He swallowed. "Enough to what? Create... life? With necromancy?"

"Not life," she said. "Something else. Something new."

The thought turned his stomach. If she had no soul... what was she? A sentient echo? A fragment of his will, wearing a dead girl’s bones? The memories of the body belonging to Raltia and not the ones that belonged to her soul?

He looked at her. "Why are you still loyal to me?"

Her eyes met his. Unblinking. Not cold, just still. "Because I am yours. Bound not by death, but by creation. I am yours until I am no more."

That should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t.

After a long pause, she spoke again.

"But if you wish to survive the coming storm, you need more than me. More than the liches you granted me use of."

He raised a brow. "What do you mean?"

Ralts stood, brushing phantom dust off her robe. "You waste power. The animal souls clinging to your essence are... inert. They will never evolve. Fuse them. And the skeletal children, too weak. Too many. Join them."

Kai crossed his arms. "You want me to fuse my own army?"

"I want you to strengthen it," she said simply.

He considered it. She wasn’t wrong. Over a hundred skeletal children, all barely capable of wielding a rusted blade. They were numbers, not power.

So, he took a breath and reached into his reserve.

[Access the soul vault?]

"Ah, so that’s what that was. Yes."

Souls swirled behind his vision, wisps of pale white clinging to the thread of his existence. He pulled forth a deer soul.

The soul, much smaller and somewhat pathetic compared to those like Orlin’s or Kleo’s.

From his shadow space, he brought out two of the skeletal children, marked by the magic sigils he’d branded into their sternums, and held them close.

The system echoed in his mind.

[Fusion Available]

[Based on current necromancer rank, soul quality, and sigil infusion, select a fusion result:

Skeleton Warrior

Skeleton Mage

Skeleton Rogue]

He paused.

’I have enough melee troops. And Merri is the only rogue I need. Maybe I’ll give her an elite team of assassins one day, though.’

"Mage."

The skeletons collapsed into white mist, bones swirling upward in a chaotic vortex. The fusion was nothing like raising the dead.

It was violent.

Primordial.

A rupture of raw necrotic energy shook the air, blurring the room into streaks of grey and black. And from the vortex, something descended.

A skeleton landed on the mimic’s flesh, standing calmly. Unlike the others, its bones were pristine, bleached, reinforced, unmarred by time or decay. It wore a faintly glowing cotton robe etched with glyphs, impossible to identify.

[Novice Skeleton Mage.]

[Equipment: Mana-circulation robe.]

Kai knelt down, inspecting it. "What the hell...?"

"This isn’t just necromancy," he whispered. "It’s some kind of... creation magic. Conjuration? Enchantment? Maybe necromancy is a fusion of everything else."

Ralts nodded faintly.

Curious now, Kai selected "Warrior" for the next fusion. The results shocked him again: the newly formed warrior had iron armour: breastplate, gauntlets, helm, and greaves. Each of them forged from a magic that didn’t come from Kai himself. It felt like they were willed into existence.

[Skeleton Warrior]

[Equipment: Mana-tempered iron armour.]

He stepped back.

"This... this feels game-like. Like a system that’s been hidden under everything."

So he worked.

He used the one hundred and nine skeletal children as fuel, refining the best of them into elites. He dug into his soul inventory and began fusing the deer souls he’d collected from countless skirmishes in the forest. Each batch converted into power.

Kai stared at the horde he’d created: twenty-nine gleaming Skeleton Mages and twenty-five polished Skeleton Warriors.

He still felt the itch beneath his skin.

It wasn’t enough.

Ralts remained standing, arms crossed. "Stronger. Still. You have the arcane wolf souls. Use them."

He blinked. "Fuse the fused units?"

She nodded. "Push the system. Force it to adapt."

Power hummed just outside his reach, pulsing through the air like a second heartbeat. He could feel the arcane wolf souls, stored deep within his core, twitching and restless. They weren’t like the deer or the children or the scavenged forest beasts. They were predatory, intelligent, filled with ancient hunger and raw, chaotic magic.

He turned to Ralts. "You’re sure?"

"I feel it," she said. "The system yearns to evolve. Break the limits. Fuse higher."

’Is she connected to the system somehow, or is it instinctual. Cladeus was right. She is intriguing.’

He nodded, drawing out the wolf souls one by one. Pale-green flickers of light howled through the dark, swirling above his skeletal army like ghostly storms.

"Alright," he whispered. "Let’s forge monsters."

Kai focused on the first pair of Skeleton Mages. The wolf soul slammed into them, not with elegance but force. A violent storm of bones, fire, and wild lightning. The magic howled as the skeletons were ripped apart, reassembled, and scorched anew. This time, the fusion didn’t blur the air. It fractured it.

The magic in the air seemed to displace everything.

[Fusion Result: Skeleton Magister]

[Spellcasting: Enhanced. Intelligence: Increased. Elemental Affinity: Multi-type. Mana Reserves: Quadrupled. Equipment: Spellwoven Robe, Staff of Splintered Realms.]

"So, this one has... magical artifacts?"

Kai staggered as the new creation emerged. It hovered half an inch off the floor, robed in dark violet thread inscribed with living runes. Its face was nothing but shadow behind a bone mask, and its staff crackled with a storm of ever-shifting elemental energy.

"...Good gods," Kai whispered.

And he didn’t stop.

He fused them all, pair by pair, binding arcane wolf souls to mage skeletons. The chamber pulsed with magic as the army condensed and condensed again.

When the chaos settled, twenty-eight Skeleton Mages had become fourteen Skeleton Magisters.

Kai could barely stand, but his eyes gleamed.

Next came the warriors.

With his life essence dropping quickly, he brought out several vials of soul ichor and downed them. The taste, still something he couldn’t adjust to, made him gag.

With his soul replenished, he continued.

Fusing the skeleton warriors was different. The wolf souls responded to their strength instead of their intellect. The magic roared, moulding bone and iron into living war machines.

[Fusion Result: Skeleton Knight]

[Strength: Multiplied. Durability: Enhanced. Control: increased. Equipment: Graveiron Plate, Wraithbone Shield, Blade of the Final Howl.]

"This one, too?"

The sound of their formation was like a thousand swords clashing in unison. Where mages had become spectral, graceful, these were brutish elegance. Tall as ogres, armoured in soul-bound plate, their swords were more like slabs of silver fire.

By the time Kai was done, twenty-four Skeleton Warriors had become twelve Skeleton Knights.

’It seems that there’s no failure rate? Or maybe it’s because I used souls of appropriate levels?’

Only one mage and one warrior from this batch remained. Kai considered trying to fuse two different types. There were another thirty-eight skeleton warriors in his reserves, and some other specialty skeleton mages that could do with fusing, but he decided against it for now.

His mana was spent, he had more soul ichor to rely on, and he was running out of souls to fuse.

[Life Essence: 109/27,500]

[Souls Absorbed: Winfried Drummond (Greater), Angelica Trunsdale (Greater), Nameless Guards (2, Petty), Nameless Inquisitors (3, Lesser), Iron Bear (13, Greater)]

Kai sat down, breath heavy, eyes hollow. The room was quiet now, except for the hum of his new elite.

Twenty-six undead stood before him, not children, and most definitely not fodder.

Champions.

Elite. Terrifying. Loyal.

His soul winced at the cost. He’d lost one hundred and eight of his creations in the process. He could still feel their essence dissipating from him like ash.

But the result?

Power.

Order.

Precision.

Military Might.

Ralts stepped beside him, observing the formation with something akin to pride. "A fitting army for a lord of death."

Kai gave her a sideways look. "A lord of death, huh?"

"You don’t just raise the dead anymore," she said. "You reforge them."

He glanced at the magisters, silent, glowing, shrouded in impossible magic. Then the knights, hulking, disciplined, deadly.

Something stirred in his gut. A craving. Not hunger, not fear.

Purpose.

He looked toward the south wall of the mimic chamber, beyond which lay the ruins of the Thesiones Academy. Beneath it: the soul forge. The thing the system asked him to use. What he would need to forge the ultimate undead creatures and get him a sovereign soul to consume.

He allowed his shadow space to devour his new undead minions, and left those he considered his A-team out to defend him.

With no more life essence. Spells would be impossible.

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