Werewolf Manor

In the 18th century, it was an age of steam and machinery, an age where swords and firearms coexisted.

It was also an age of slave trading, where human lives were worth less than grass.

At night, the stars in the sky were obscured by polluted gray mist.

Bronk Port, an important port on the southern coast of the Hiliya Federation, was called Mist Port because thick fog lingered there all year round.

In a lavish manor on the outskirts of Mist Port, its master was exceedingly wealthy and kept many slaves—not only the most common black slaves, but several Asian slaves as well.

As for how they had fallen into slavery, no one knew.

Inside the wooden shack where the slaves lived, more than a dozen slaves were crammed into the tiny space of barely ten square meters. A foul stench permeated the shack, while lice crawled through the slaves' hair.

Flies buzzed like alarm clocks at their ears, and rats occasionally poked their heads out in the already cramped space.

Suddenly, one of the slaves—a small, sallow-skinned youth—opened his eyes and spread his palm.

A clump of white powder lay in his palm. As the slave blew out a breath, the powder actually dispersed, spreading until it filled the entire shack.

Whether they had already fallen asleep from exhaustion or were the small animals nearby, all of them lost consciousness amid the drifting powder. Only then did the young slave clutch his head and let out a muffled groan.

"Damn it, the effects of the muddled memories still haven't faded."

Yang Mu was this slave's name. His original name had been Congreve Pyne, a Moonlight Rank undead archmage. During an invasion of a plane the mage world had named the Bewildering Domain—

—he fought the plane's chief god, the Lord of Bewilderment, tearing open an unknown space and causing both of them to perish.

After death, Congreve Pyne's consciousness briefly remained through the Law of Death. But he soon discovered that he had appeared in an unknown world and fused with a youth named Yang Mu.

More accurately, he had absorbed the other's consciousness. Their spiritual strengths hadn't even been on the same level.

However, since he was using the youth's body and soul, he inherited the name Yang Mu as well.

Getting to his feet, Yang Mu stepped over the bodies of the others and left the shack, moving through the night.

He soon arrived at a patchy stretch of earth, sparse in some places and dense in others. The grass growing there was exceptionally lush. As he arrived, the ground churned, and two skeletal warriors rose from beneath it. White bones formed armor around their bodies, and they held bone-forged battle sabers in their hands.

This was the result of Yang Mu's ten days of work. There was no helping it. Though Yang Mu had once been a sixth-level undead archmage, his soul had long since shattered, and the vast spiritual power born from it had naturally dissipated as well.

What he could use now was only the spiritual power of the ordinary man Yang Mu. If he hadn't been an archmage, this meager amount of spiritual power wouldn't have been enough to cast even the most basic Skeleton Resurrection or Bone Armor Armament.

Worse still, Yang Mu's mage talent was poor. No—it was utterly terrible. His spiritual power was merely average, his elemental perception was nearly nonexistent, and he possessed no talent whatsoever.

Even the two powerful talents he had once possessed, Entropy Balance and Endless Modification, were gone.

Entropy Balance forcibly converted half of any negative status affecting him into beneficial status.

Endless Modification gave him enormous bonuses in undead modification. Before reaching Stellar Mage, the undead he modified were twenty percent stronger than those modified by ordinary necromancers.

Those two talents had once been among the pillars of his rise.

Yet after he advanced to become a fifth-level Stellar Mage at the age of two hundred, the effects of those talents had become infinitely close to negligible.

Though he had no talent and poor aptitude, that wasn't a problem for the current Yang Mu. He had plenty of methods to improve his meditation speed, talent, and aptitude.

But first, he needed the strength to protect himself.

The master of this manor was named William James. By Yang Mu's understanding, he should have been a shape-shifting beastman. However, without dissecting one himself, Yang Mu couldn't determine the cause—whether it was a high-level blessing, biological modification, or something else.

Moreover, this condition was hereditary. The entire William Family consisted of shape-shifting beastmen. They normally looked human, but on nights of the full moon—or under their own control—they could transform into werewolves.

And not the frail sort of gnoll-like werewolves, either, but gray werewolves. In many planes inhabited by beastman races, they were a primary combat race—huge in stature, bloodthirsty, and warlike.

Therefore, slaves often died in William Manor. The ground beneath Yang Mu's feet held no fewer than a hundred corpses.

After arriving in this world and spending the first two muddleheaded days here, Yang Mu found this place. Relying on his pitifully little spiritual power, he spent two days summoning two skeletal warriors from this graveyard.

After that, he came every day, strengthening the skeletal warriors with Bone Armor Armament and giving them greater combat power.

Recently, the William Family's third young miss had been looking at him more and more strangely. Given her brutal nature, the day she made a move against him was drawing near.

This third young miss was named William Lossia. She was the most active member of the family in all of William Manor, taking pleasure in torturing and slaughtering slaves.

According to the memories he had fused with, the former Yang Mu had once caught her eye. She wanted to use him as her canvas and paint on his back, claiming that his skin color was closest to paper.

But her painting tools were carving knives of all sizes.

The reason Yang Mu was still alive was that the William Family's steward had persuaded her otherwise, hoping to turn Yang Mu into a breeding slave.

Although Asian slaves were less physically robust than black slaves and far slower at manual labor, they were often deft and skillful. Moreover, their rarity made them extremely expensive.

There happened to be two female Asian slaves among them, so the steward had tried to breed more Asian slaves. An Asian slave child only a few years old could sell for as much as twenty silver coins, which was an extremely high price.

Thus, the third young miss gave up and used another, older Asian slave in his place. Half a month later, Yang Mu personally buried that countryman, who had been tortured beyond human recognition.

It was precisely because of this that Yang Mu had gradually weakened in terror and fused with Congreve Pyne's consciousness, becoming the Yang Mu of today.

Yang Mu had the skeletal warriors drag out the corpses that had been dug up long ago from beneath the loose soil.

Using his thin spiritual power in tandem with incantations and hand gestures, Yang Mu barely outlined a spell model. The instant it formed, the spell model absorbed the surrounding dark elements and became the spell of Bone Armor Armament.

The exposed bones of the corpses on the ground clung to the two skeletal warriors like flowing water, strengthening them.

After finishing the spell, Yang Mu returned to that filthy shack, lay down, and began clearing away the effects brought by the muddled fusion of memories.

By tomorrow, his soul and mind should be stable enough for him to begin cultivating a meditation method.

Before the sunlight had fully awakened, the slaves in the shack woke one after another and began preparing for a day's labor.

Yang Mu did the same. But after he had worked for a while, the steward came for him.

"Yang Mu, come with me."

Yang Mu put down his tools and followed the steward away, only to see the person he least wanted to meet.

The William Family's third young miss, William Lossia.

Armored Skeletons