Just as I was about to close the status window in bewilderment, I noticed another unread notification.
[Warning: Incompatibility between your soul and body is accumulating.]
[If you fail to find a compatible body, your soul’s sense of self will gradually be diluted.]
I stared silently at those words.
Diluted.
In other words, if I remained inside this skeletal body for too long, the person I was would slowly evaporate.
Han Seungwoo would disappear, leaving behind nothing but a wandering pile of bones.
That was different from dying.
Perhaps it was an even worse fate.
“......”
An unexpectedly heavy sensation stirred inside my hollow rib cage.
I could somehow endure being trapped as a pathetic trash mob.
But the thought of my identity being erased required a little more resolve.
For the first time, I reached up and felt my empty eye sockets.
They were nothing but gaping holes.
No one but me knew that a human named Han Seungwoo still existed inside this body.
How much time do I have left?
Naturally, the ever-helpful system provided no countdown or remaining time.
The most annoying kind of timer.
Still, I had to accept the situation calmly.
Whether or not a countdown was running, my objective remained the same: obtain a human body.
Panicking wouldn’t change anything.
Wait.
At that moment, a hypothesis flashed through my mind.
If my soul is embedded in this status window like an item... what happened to my body?
If the system classified my soul as an existence outside the world’s parameters and inserted it into this skeleton, then perhaps my original body...
What kind of game was Dungeon & Empire?
Its developers were deranged fanatics obsessed with world-building.
This was an insane setting where souls and bodies could be separated, turned into items, or even synthesized through alchemy.
If only my soul had been extracted and placed inside this skeleton...
Then my physical body—
Or at least the body of the character I had been playing—
Might still exist somewhere.
Ding.
As if confirming my hypothesis, the system displayed a new message.
[Trait: Player’s Soul]
[Your soul feels extreme incompatibility with its current vessel. It awaits a suitable body.]
Well, yes. I’ve felt incompatible with this body from the beginning.
In any case, the system’s meaning was clear.
This skeletal body was not a suitable vessel for my soul.
Something hot surged within my chest.
I can find it.
I wasn’t destined to live and die as this pile of bones.
If I found my body, I could return to being human.
No—I had to return.
I had no idea how I had ended up inside a game, much less inside its weakest monster, but I felt certain that finding my body would also lead me to the cause.
Now that I possessed a concrete objective, my fighting spirit blazed.
However, I couldn’t move just yet.
Step. Step.
An ominous presence was emerging from the darkness.
I quickly stood and slipped among the other skeletons, pretending to be just as mindless as they were.
A man dressed in black robes stepped into view.
He leaned on a staff constructed from linked vertebrae. His appearance was that of a stereotypical necromancer.
“The Red Wolves have expanded their patrols to the outskirts. At this rate, they might discover the tower...”
The man muttered in a hoarse voice that resembled metal scraping against metal.
Green eyes flashed within the abyssal darkness beneath his hood, sweeping across the assembled skeletons.
A chilling frost seemed to settle wherever his gaze landed.
I immediately adopted the dumbest expression I could manage, stood at attention, and stared straight ahead among the other skeletons.
Not that a skull can make facial expressions.
I had never imagined I would be grateful for not needing to act with my face.
In any case, fleeing now would only get me killed.
Fighting that necromancer in my current condition was impossible.
The man slowly examined the gathered skeletons as though selecting livestock brought into a slaughterhouse.
“More survived than I expected. I’ll select the useful ones. As for the rest... Hmm.”
He lightly waved his staff.
“I’ll use them as materials.”
The instant those words left his mouth, the crumbling skeletons in the front row collapsed.
They were reduced to white bone powder in the blink of an eye.
The powder twisted through the air like serpents before being drawn into the necromancer’s staff.
Holy shit. He really doesn’t waste anything when he recycles.
The man began walking slowly through the ranks.
His gaze lingered on skeletons that limped from their injuries or had nearly half their bones shattered.
“This one is missing an arm. Rejected.”
“Deformed joints. Rejected.”
The wounded skeletons disappeared one after another.
I desperately tried to stand without revealing that one leg was longer than the other because of the Black Hound bones.
I need to look as functional as possible.
Step. Step.
The chilling crunch of dry leaves drew closer.
Then the man stopped directly in front of me.
His black hood cast a shadow as deep as an abyss.
The green eyes within it scanned my entire body.
His gaze bored into every joint like an X-ray.
Damn it.
I mimed swallowing nervously and hunched my shoulders.
He had mercilessly ground down every injured or deformed skeleton he had encountered.
Just look at me.
My left leg had the reverse-jointed structure of a beast, while my right leg was humanoid.
My left arm was the long, crude limb of a goblin, while my right arm was made from a gaunt human skeleton.
I’m getting recycled.
Anyone could see that I belonged in the discard pile.
The end of the man’s staff slowly rose toward my forehead.
“This imbalance... This revolutionary disharmony...”
Should I strike first and run?
I gathered strength in my left leg.
If there was no hope of survival, I might as well struggle until the end—
Crash!
At that moment, an enormous figure standing nearby toppled noisily forward.
It was the Orc Skeleton.
Its heavy frame came crashing toward me.
If it landed on top of me, my fragile rib cage would be pulverized.
But in that instant, the flames inside its eye sockets flickered toward me.
It was as though it were sending me a signal.
Did this guy do that for me?
There was no time to hesitate.
The Orc Skeleton had created a one-second opening.
I reflexively kicked off the ground.
[Skill: Beast’s Leap (Lv. 3) activated!]
Boom!
My body shot vertically into the air.
I cleared the necromancer’s head, performed a somersault, and gracefully landed on the ground behind him—
Crash!—or failed miserably.
My shorter right leg threw off my balance, sending me tumbling awkwardly across the ground.
“......”
Silence.
The necromancer’s staff remained suspended in midair.
I hurriedly recovered my posture and stood.
The Orc Skeleton was still sprawled on the ground, struggling to rise.
Was that not what you intended?
I had screwed up.
I had just performed a cheap circus trick in front of a necromancer.
Since I had no interest in dying like a dog, I reached for the femur dagger and prepared to defend myself.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Slow applause came from somewhere nearby.
I raised my head.
The necromancer was clapping while staring at me with a strange gleam in his eyes.
“Magnificent... Absolutely magnificent!”
“......?”
“This harmony of asymmetry! The revolutionary dissonance created by joints from entirely different species! And that leap just now—you exploited your uneven center of gravity to generate rotational force!”
The man approached me while showering me with admiration.
“Truly beautiful!”
...What?
My jaw nearly fell off from sheer disbelief.
He thought this was beautiful?
This bastard doesn’t understand aesthetics at all.
His artistic sensibilities were completely nonexistent.
I had heard that necromancers possessed high intelligence but terrible taste. Apparently, the rumors were true.
How could he call this clumsily patched-together skeleton beautiful?
True art required the golden proportions of a dragon’s unfolding wing bones or the perfectly balanced structure of a tyrannosaurus.
People like this were always the ones who said things like, “Make it more impactful, but keep it simple,” during client meetings.
“Hehehe. To think such an individual would appear. These bones don’t look as though they were forcibly fused. It’s almost as if they attached themselves willingly.”
The necromancer smiled ominously at me.
Fortunately, he didn’t appear hostile.
His gaze resembled the curiosity of an insane artist more than the hostility of an enemy.
Just then, the Orc Skeleton struggled to rise from the ground.
Clatter—crack.
A thick fracture had appeared across its right arm bone.
It must have supported its weight incorrectly when it fell.
The necromancer’s gaze shifted toward it.
The interest in his eyes immediately turned cold.
“Tsk. It has a large frame, but its durability is pathetic. Useless garbage.”
No.
It was injured because it tried to help me!
I couldn’t stand by and watch.
I quickly approached the Orc Skeleton and tapped the forearm bone hanging from its waist.
A deranged necromancer like this would surely find the situation interesting.
Perhaps it understood my intention.
The Orc Skeleton flinched and grabbed the bone hanging from its waist. It hesitantly held the bone out while maintaining a firm grip, as though warning that it wouldn’t allow anyone to take it away.
“Oh?”
The light gathering at the end of the necromancer’s staff faded.
“A skeleton capable of understanding the concept of repair... I can see the potential for it to become a superior undead.”
Interest returned to the necromancer’s eyes.
In Dungeon & Empire, low-ranking skeletons continued fighting after losing an arm until they eventually perished.
The concept of maintaining or repairing their own bodies barely existed within them.
The necromancer stroked his chin.
“Interesting. Ordinarily, it is more mana-efficient to grind down a damaged skeleton and summon a new one...”
He tapped the Orc Skeleton’s fractured arm with his staff.
“But the two of you are quite fascinating. It would be a waste to use such specimens as disposable materials.”
Hum—
A sticky black liquid emerged from the end of his staff.
It seeped into the cracks in the Orc Skeleton’s bones, filling the gaps like adhesive before instantly hardening.
[You have witnessed “Necromancer’s Bone Restoration.”]
The Orc Skeleton rotated its arm in amazement.
Overwhelmed with gratitude, it lowered its head at the necromancer’s feet.
The man chuckled in satisfaction.
“Consider that a complimentary service—a reward for stimulating my curiosity.”
He turned back toward me.
His sticky gaze felt as though it were licking the marrow inside my bones, sending a chill through me.
“Mutants like you are perfectly suited for my experiments. Come to the Whitebone Tower beyond the western forest.”
The instant he finished issuing the command, black mist enveloped him.
He vanished without a trace, as though he had teleported through space.
Once his overwhelming killing intent disappeared, silence returned to the forest.
The Whitebone Tower...
Why would I willingly go there?
If I did, I would undoubtedly be strapped to an operating table and subjected to a skeleton-dissection show.
Besides, I had absolutely no intention of becoming a test subject under someone with no aesthetic sense.
[Compulsory Command: Travel to the Whitebone Tower]
–Objective: Travel to the Whitebone Tower, the laboratory of the necromancer Malach.
–Time Limit: 24 hours
–Penalty for Failure: Forced Erasure
I raised the middle finger bone of my hand toward the direction in which the necromancer had disappeared.
[Player’s Soul rejects the command.]
Remote detonation or forced erasure would only work if his mental domination affected me.
According to the system, my soul existed outside his authority.
All right. Where should I go now?
According to my original plan, I needed to search for clues about my body.
The most reliable sources of information would be human settlements or guilds.
The problem is how I look.
If I approached a settlement like this, the guards would probably boil me into bone soup.
Pulling a robe over myself wouldn’t solve the problem either.
With a reverse-jointed leg and mismatched arms, I looked like a suspicious monster no matter how much of my body I concealed.
Obtaining a polymorph item immediately would be difficult.
I needed a human appearance right now.
Even if it lasted only briefly, I required a disguise that would let me speak with humans and gather information.
I recalled the game’s map.
Near the outskirts of the Screaming Plains was a hidden dungeon known as the Echoing Cave.
A very special monster inhabited it.
The Chameleon Slime.
Covering myself in its mucus would allow me to imitate a human for a short time.
The transformation wouldn’t be perfect, but a robe should conceal any flaws.
The cave also contained a unique item intended for beginners.
I could accomplish two objectives at once.
I changed direction and headed east, toward the rising crimson moon.
It was the exact opposite direction from the Whitebone Tower.
Something tugged at the edge of my belt from behind.
Clatter.
It was the Orc Skeleton.
It anxiously pointed toward the west, where the tower stood.
As though terrified that disobeying its master’s command would lead to disaster, it clattered its jaw and tried to stop me.
Let go. You and I are going in different directions.
I coldly shook off its hand.
It remained under the influence of mental domination, so it was destined to travel to the tower.
This was where we would part ways.
It was somewhat disappointing, but I already had more than enough problems of my own.
Try to survive. Maybe you’ll become a powerful superior undead someday.
Without looking back, I pushed my way deeper into the forest.
***
How long had I been walking?
There were slightly more low-level monsters along the path leading toward the eastern cave.
Which meant there was also plenty of prey.