Sacrificial Formation
Green beamed. He had not expected rescuing Penny to bring such a windfall, and it had also given him a rough idea of how much Psychic Energy apprentice-level Transcendents possessed.
The Outer God's priest had been at the peak of Advanced Apprentice Priest rank and yielded 600 Psychic Energy when killed. Jike and Jones were Intermediate Apprentices, with between one and two hundred each. Les and Old Bill had only just entered Junior Apprentice rank, and each held around thirty or forty.
But after a moment of excitement, Green looked again at the cost of constructing new buildings in the Graveyard or upgrading the Crypt, and his face fell. He was still a pauper after all. With less than a thousand Psychic Energy, he could hardly do anything!
The Abandoned Tower, which could produce ghosts, cost 2,000 Psychic Energy just to build. Upgrading the Crypt required 1,500.
Green suddenly felt fortunate that, dilapidated as the Graveyard had been when it appeared, it had retained its Town Hall and a fully upgraded cemetery. Otherwise, building and upgrading the cemetery at the outset would have bankrupted him.
Setting those thoughts aside for now, Green left the Graveyard and began reviewing what he had learned from the battle.
He had lost three Ghouls in all, a negligible cost compared with what he had gained. But Green had spotted a problem: he himself was too weak. It was a common failing among mages. If the Outer God's priest had pressed his attempt to take Green's head at the start, those Ghouls and Gun Skeleton Soldiers could never have stopped him. Apart from Bone Spikes, Green was little stronger than an ordinary person.
In truth, luck had played no small part in his sneak attack and killing of that priest.
Spotting the problem was easy; solving it was not. In Green's experience, most mages had two ways to compensate for their fragility. One was to learn defensive magic, such as an Evocation Mage's Energy Shield, a water mage's Ice Shield, or an earth mage's Earth Rampart. Necromancers had two similar Second Circle spells, Bone Shield and Skeletal Armor. The other was to acquire a mount: tame a Transcendent creature and bind it by Contract. A mage could use a mount's agility to evade attacks, or rely on its close-combat strength to drive off enemies trying to reach the rider. That was why high-ranking light mages always appeared astride Unicorns bathed in Holy Light, while high-ranking Necromancers, whose very names made people turn pale, always appeared standing atop Bone Dragons.
For Green, neither method could quench his immediate thirst. He knew neither Bone Shield nor Skeletal Armor, the standard defensive spells for Necromancers, and Doctor Wilkins did not have them either. The Mages Association did, but obtaining them required a great deal of money and merit earned within the association. Money was manageable—he could borrow it from Vincent—but merit could only be accumulated slowly by completing the association's missions.
As for a mount, Green wanted one, but where was he supposed to find a Transcendent creature that was both highly agile and strong?
Green rubbed his temples and cast aside his impractical ideas. Improving his strength as soon as possible was more useful than entertaining wild schemes. Then he looked toward the wall the priest had smashed through. The fierce battle had kept him from noticing what lay beyond it, but now he caught the faint scent of blood—thick and heavy—coming from that direction.
"That's a lot of blood. What happened here?" Green frowned. He approached the hole and peered through, then froze at the sight of the room beyond.
The room covered a little over thirty square meters. A brazier burned in each of its four corners, brightly lighting the windows, which had been sealed shut.
At the center lay a Magic Array more than three meters across. Its red lines looked especially mysterious in the flickering firelight. What startled Green most, though, were the three figures laid out neatly in its center—or rather, the naked bodies of three female Elves. They had died horribly. Their bellies appeared to have been cut open while they were alive, and their hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, and kidneys removed and placed at specific positions on the array.
Green had not seen the three Elves at the auction, but he was almost certain these were the same ones. The chances of six female Elves appearing in a small city like Landon City at the same time were vanishingly slim.
So the Elves who disappeared from Baron Lonanks's home really are dead. Were they used as offerings in some Sacrificial Ritual? Is this an array for summoning a Void Yin Spirit? Did it fail? Green thought. He did not approach rashly. Instead, he sent a Skeleton Soldier into the Magic Array to carry out the bodies. Then he cautiously touched one, only to find that none of the three held a trace of Psychic Energy.
Elves were children of the forest, born with an affinity for magic. They were long-lived, averaging a thousand years, so it should have been impossible for their bodies to contain no Psychic Energy after death. For an instant, Green had even allowed himself to hope that the Elves' bodies might hold more than the Outer God's priest had.
Finding none left him deeply disappointed, but he understood why. The people of the Tower of Yin Spirits had gone to such lengths to sacrifice three Elves, most likely to offer the vast amount of Psychic Energy within them to the Void Yin Spirit they served.
But if they sacrificed three Elves, why did nothing happen just now? Surely the Void Yin Spirit served by the Tower of Yin Spirits would respond to an offering. Or did Penny or I interrupt the ritual? No wonder that hulking priest went mad enough to smash through the wall. Green recalled most of his Skeleton Soldiers, leaving only two on guard against any sudden trouble.
About seven or eight minutes later, the whistles of police carriages sounded in the distance and drew closer. Penny then rushed in with a large group of police officers and two local Anomalies Bureau personnel in black trench coats. A generous reward had made them bold: the city government had posted an enormous bounty for finding the Tower of Yin Spirits. The moment they heard Penny's call for help, the police and even the Anomalies Bureau personnel charged in as though they had been dosed with chicken blood. They had not stopped to consider that their opponents were Transcendents. If Green had not already ended the fight, only the two Anomalies Bureau personnel would probably have had a chance of escaping alive.
"Green, are you all right?" Penny asked, her face full of concern. Rather than ask where the people from the Tower of Yin Spirits had gone, she first checked whether he was hurt.
"I'm fine, don't worry." Green gave her a warm smile. But since becoming a Necromancer, his body had undergone further Lichification, turning his pupils faintly green and making his smile look a little strange.
Only then did Penny remember the enemies who had nearly killed her. She glanced around and, seeing no bodies, asked curiously, "Where are their bodies? And the last one who charged in—did he escape?"
"I dealt with the bodies, of course. Don't forget, I'm a Necromancer," Green replied calmly. "I killed the last one too. Unfortunately, Yin Spirit energy contaminated his body. Otherwise, he would have made a fine Zombie puppet."
Penny stared at Green, eyes wide. She had seen that Devil Beast-like giant smash through the wall with her own eyes. He had seemed powerful enough to wipe out an army, yet Green spoke of killing him as if it were nothing. Was she still dreaming, or was Green making things up without even bothering to think them through?
Hard as it was to believe, Penny soon became certain Green was not joking. Shocked, she grew even more curious about him. With her exceptional talent and beauty, she had been praised by students and teachers alike at the Knights Academy as one of the best in her year. But beside Green, a kinsman who had always kept his abilities hidden, she felt like a joke of a so-called genius Apprentice Knight.
At the thought, Penny blushed and fell silent, too ashamed to know what to say.
The Patrol Officer captain leading the group and the two Anomalies Bureau personnel came over to ask a few questions. Once they learned that Green was a Necromancer apprentice and held the title of knight, they gave him no trouble. After a perfunctory inquiry, they let Green and Penny go home.