Escaping into the Light

When the black flames dissipated and his vision returned, Benjamin saw that the mages had already gathered around him protectively, raising their bone staffs high as a white halo enveloped them all.

For a moment, he did not even react.

"It was... that easy?"

He tried moving his limbs and speaking, savoring the sensation of returning to the world. He had been inexplicably frozen in place for more than ten hours. Though his body showed no abnormalities, he was utterly exhausted mentally.

"How was that easy, Headmaster? Do you know how much effort we put into developing this?" one of the mages beside him said, pointing at the bone staffs.

Benjamin rubbed his head, still somewhat out of the loop.

"What... did you do?"

"It's a bit complicated to explain, but this is what we made from the remains of those three intelligent undead," the mage said quickly. "We extracted the energy capable of burning away elements, then discovered that it could be stored within their staffs and directly commanded by mental power."

Yet Benjamin still found it unbelievable. He looked beyond the halo. The bone dragon stood guard outside, its cold gaze fixed upon him as though it might devour someone at any moment.

—A trace of energy refined from a lich's corpse could stop an undead overlord of this level? He could hardly imagine it.

Another mage added, "We wanted to use this energy against the undead. Inspired by healing magic, we added all kinds of magical materials with powerful restorative properties, as well as a great quantity of light- and dark-elemental energy. In the end, we successfully reversed that energy."

"Reversed it?"

"That's right. We don't understand exactly how it happened either, but we transformed that undead energy into an entirely unknown form of existence," the mage