Skeleton

A few minutes later, Su Ming opened his instant noodles and found that they had soaked a little too long. He picked up his fork and was just about to slurp them down when his vision blurred and went dark for an instant.

Puzzled, he looked around but saw nothing unusual. He picked up the flashlight and shook it, but nothing seemed wrong with it either.

Su Ming put the flashlight down, then suddenly felt a weight settle over his body, like the sleep paralysis people experienced in dreams. The sensation vanished in a flash, nearly making him fall.

He hurriedly told White Bone what he had felt and asked what had caused it.

"Oh, number one on the list of ten mistakes every undead beginner makes," White Bone replied. "Don't you have that in your head, rookie mage?"

Su Ming searched through his knowledge and said he didn't.

"How strange. How is your spirit awakening as a holy archmage worse than an ordinary mage's?" The scholar was baffled. "Your rank is low, and you have so little knowledge-what did all that enormous karma go toward?"

Only after White Bone finished muttering to herself did she explain the cause to Su Ming.

"That's Sensory Interference. You've revived an undead creature, and its signals are interfering with you."

"No," Su Ming said. "I didn't summon anything."

"That's why I said it's the easiest mistake for beginners to make. They summon something and then forget about it, or they summon it unconsciously without realizing it."

Su Ming thought carefully. "No, I'm sure I didn't. Haven't you been watching me the whole time? When would I have had the chance?"

"Is that so? Hmm... I understand now. Galio summoned them!" It suddenly occurred to White Bone. "The Spirit Awakening Technique let you inherit them. Hurry and search your sea of consciousness for any activated Undead Marks."

Su Ming hurriedly sent his senses into his sea of consciousness and, sure enough, found a glowing mark. "There really is one!"

"Establish a connection through your sea of consciousness, then unsummon it. I don't need to teach you that, do I?"

"Mm-hm." Su Ming followed his basic knowledge of the undead and tried to connect to the Undead Mark, but failed several times.

"Is your magical talent really that poor, you otherworlders?" Even White Bone was surprised. It was as simple as breathing, and she had never imagined anyone could fail at it. "Live long enough, and you really do see everything," she remarked.

Su Ming wasn't in a hurry. In any case, he had no idea about any of this. He held his breath, focused his mind, and tried connecting again.

A sensation like a barrier breaking came back to him. He finally succeeded in connecting, and his sea of consciousness visibly shrank by a considerable amount. The expenditure had clearly been substantial.

He extended his senses. It was a skeleton.

"Spirit Vision!" This time, Su Ming used it without instruction from the scholar White Bone. He wanted to study it further; mastering even a little more power was always a good thing.

Spirit Vision showed the world in black and white. Living things appeared bright, while lifeless objects were only dim outlines, and Su Ming found it hard to adjust. But it had its advantages too: spiritual vision could easily penetrate obstacles, and he saw many humanoid figures not far away.

"There are a lot of people around it," Su Ming told White Bone. "Oh, it's a skeleton."

"A lot of people? It can't be in the temple knights' camp, can it? No, that's impossible. There are a bunch of clergy there. If there were a skeleton, they'd have turned it to ash long ago."

"How do I find out where I am?"

"Use your senses again. Center them on your own body and sense the direction of the mark's connection."

Su Ming started immediately, but found nothing. The Undead Mark seemed to be connected to empty space.

"Your talent is more than a little lacking." White Bone was no longer surprised.

Su Ming tried a few more times, but had to give up. He controlled the skeleton and made it get up. Clothes covered in dirt and leaves were wrapped around it, along with large clumps of rotting flesh. Clearly, the skeleton had stayed where it was summoned without moving.

Su Ming was immediately filled with guilt over desecrating the dead. He cleaned it up and removed its clothes, but then hesitated, wondering whether he should have it lie back down and bury itself properly, letting the deceased rest in peace.

"Not only are your abilities unsuited to being a necromancer, your outlook is this soft too." White Bone had grown numb to it. "A corpse is a corpse, matter that life has returned to the world."

"The world I come from has great respect for life, including human remains," Su Ming said. "If I'd done this before I transmigrated, I'd have gone to prison for desecrating a corpse."

"A narrow-minded world."

"Narrow-minded? Weren't you branded a heretic here too?" Su Ming shot back.

"Necromancers are victims of factional struggles." White Bone sighed. "The conflict between the dark and light factions goes back a long way."

"So the light faction manipulated public opinion to stigmatize you and cut away the dark faction's support?" Su Ming guessed.

"You understand it well!"

"There's nothing new under the sun, even in another world," Su Ming remarked. In the end, he decided to control the skeleton and go have a look at the crowd, then lie back down and be done with it. He was already here anyway.

The skeleton had risen in a forest. The humanoid figures he saw through Spirit Vision were all gathered on a wide road outside the woods. Among the crowd were some enormous lifeless objects, square and boxy, many of them moving rapidly back and forth.

They looked strangely familiar.

"Your roads are really wide. They're as wide as the expressways where I come from," Su Ming asked White Bone. "Do large creatures often travel on them or something?"

"Wide?" White Bone had seen Earth when the portal opened. She thought for a moment and understood what Su Ming meant by roads. "No, no, no. Our roads are narrow, less than a quarter the width of yours."

Su Ming drew a "confused.jpg" meme in his mind and tossed it over to her.

"What's this trick?" White Bone was intrigued. She had never used mental synchronization to chat before, and this was the first time she had discovered such a trick. "Hmm, you can draw what you see and send it over."

"Oh, right." Su Ming immediately began drawing, but soon realized there was no need. As he drew, he recognized what the boxy things were.

Cars, so many cars!

Su Ming grew excited. This was where he had transmigrated from-that expressway!

This skeleton was on Earth!

The reason he hadn't recognized it immediately was that the scene had been completely transformed. A huge crater had appeared where the wormhole had been, and the area was devastated.

Large numbers of fire engines, police cars, and ambulances were crowded nearby. The firefighters were already putting away their equipment; clearly, there had just been a major fire.

Did something explode? Su Ming wondered. He looked around with Spirit Vision and, sure enough, saw some dissipating souls. Judging by what remained, about seven or eight people had died.

The truck driver from before was among them. Su Ming remembered a dark-element spell he should know-Speak with the Dead. He tried to use it, but found he couldn't invoke the runes across worlds.

When in doubt, ask White Bone.

The scholar was silent for a full three minutes after he asked her for help, so long that Su Ming nearly thought she had gone offline again.