Disappointment

"Galio summoned the skeleton after he crossed over," White Bone finally said. "So it's on Earth."

"It made perfect sense to summon a skeleton to scout around after arriving in another world," Su Ming said. "So, sorry for the trouble, but could you teach me how to use Speak with the Dead? We should also discuss how to make use of it. It's my link to Earth!"

"No, it doesn't make sense. It makes no sense at all!" White Bone grew agitated.

"That's another plane. How did you connect to it? An undead mark would shatter the moment it crossed planes!" As the scholar spoke, she lapsed into thought again.

Su Ming didn't quite understand what White Bone was hung up on. With no other choice, he began making plans on his own.

First, he needed to find somewhere to hide the skeleton.

Finding out what had happened after the car crash could wait, and so could figuring out what use the skeleton might have. It was his link to his original world, and Su Ming couldn't afford to let anything happen to it!

Next was figuring out how to communicate with people on Earth. He didn't think anyone who saw a skeleton would calmly exchange hand signs with it, or watch it write and draw on the ground with a stick.

It would be fine if they screamed and ran away, but if some brave soul charged at it with a weapon, it would all be over.

So he couldn't act rashly!

The woods weren't an option for hiding it. Su Ming also wanted to retrieve a few things, such as the phone he'd never gone anywhere without on Earth. He decided to use the cover of night to control the skeleton and walk it back to the machine shop where he worked.

Su Ming had joined the factory right after graduation and had been there for three years. He normally lived in the factory dormitory too. Other than home, it was the place he knew best.

As for going home and alarming his parents? Out of the question!

He'd looked at the navigation map and had a rough idea of the route. There were still over twenty kilometers left to drive, but following the road signs back on foot shouldn't be too much trouble.

And so, in the darkness, a skeleton set out on its journey.

Su Ming glanced back. In the distance, several large trailers had arrived and were unloading excavators. If Su Ming could hear anything, the noise would surely have been deafening.

It felt like another lifetime.

"Su Ming, I think I have an idea." Just as Su Ming had progressed from making the skeleton take its first faltering steps to walking normally, White Bone reestablished Mind Synchronization.

Su Ming had no affinity for any of the six major elements, but he did have an affinity for a seventh. Galio had helped Su Ming awaken that element, making him a mage who could indirectly cast undead magic and fulfilling the Spirit Awakening Formula's causal requirements.

However impossible it seemed, after all the other possibilities were eliminated, this was the only answer left.

"Wait a moment. I found some clothes. Let me put them on first," Su Ming said.

Actually, he'd spotted a house by the roadside with clothes hanging outside that someone had forgotten to bring in. Su Ming no longer cared about a little theft. Rounding things off, it counted as an emergency measure.

Once he'd pulled on the clothes and put up the hood, the skeleton looked like a person. He no longer had to sneak around and went straight onto the main road.

"Was there anything unusual when you crossed over?" White Bone asked.

"Let me think." Su Ming held out his hand. He remembered how his entire body had turned transparent and insubstantial the instant he crossed over. Looking back, the truck that had crossed over with him hadn't turned insubstantial. He was the only one that energy had swept over.

"Elemental resonance." After listening to Su Ming's description, White Bone gave her conclusion. "When you crossed over, you came into contact with a transparent element in material form, triggering resonance."

"Elemental resonance?" Su Ming recalled how it had felt at the time. "Now that you mention it, that feels right!"

Su Ming already had some relevant knowledge in his head. Resonance-level affinity was something to be envied among mages; there might not even be one in a hundred who had it.

"So I'm not a good-for-nothing after all," Su Ming murmured.

"It's not a question of whether you're a good-for-nothing. With high affinity and resonance both occurring, this transparent element must have been the one forcibly awakened," White Bone said. "So, next, what is it?"

Normally, casting a spell would reveal the answer. Wind was cyan, water blue, fire red, earth yellow, light silvery white, and darkness a shadowy hue. Indirect spells were simulated using one's innate element, so the runic formulas would be mixed with its original color.

But the original color was transparent!

Su Ming felt as if he'd wandered into an unfinished area of a game, where the programmer hadn't even colored the terrain models. He'd stepped on something, but all he could see was empty space!

Of course, being unable to see it didn't mean they couldn't know the answer.

"Space," White Bone said. "It can only be space."

Su Ming's undead magic was essentially powered by the space element, which was why he could cross the barrier between planes and control the skeleton Galio had left on Earth.

He was only wearing the guise of a necromancer. What he'd truly awakened as was a space mage!

Su Ming grew excited. Did having spatial power mean he could return to Earth?

Maybe he could even take White Bone with him and escape!

"How do I control space?" Su Ming hurriedly asked. He couldn't sense the shape of spatial runes, knew nothing about their properties, and had no knowledge whatsoever of the relevant formulas.

"Research. A great deal of research," White Bone replied. "Your undead spells are simulated using the space element, so there must be differences. Observe them, capture them, then establish models and theories, work out the solutions, and repeat the cycle, making progress each time until you finally achieve control.

"That sounds like it'll take a long time?" Su Ming asked hesitantly. It didn't sound like something that could be done in a little while.

"Of course. We know very little about the domain of space. Take the Plane Transfer Magic Array, for example. Countless predecessors captured naturally occurring planar fluctuations to study and carried out an enormous number of experiments, yet only today did we finally succeed by sheer luck."

"...So we definitely won't finish before we're killed?"

A trace of surprise entered White Bone's voice. "Before we're killed? No, no. This is a research plan that would take at least ten years to start with. It wouldn't be strange to spend a great deal of time without making any progress at all."

So he'd gotten excited for nothing. Spatial power was no help with the immediate crisis, and Su Ming was deeply disappointed.

"Then let's explain to them that I'm not actually a necromancer," he suggested. "And then we trade the technology for our lives? Spatial magic is very valuable, right?"

"More than valuable! You're the only one known to exist, apart from the gods!" White Bone said passionately. "The problem is, where's the proof?"

Su Ming thought about it, and it really was a problem. He couldn't cast spatial magic, there was nothing visibly unusual about his undead magic, and his ability to control a skeleton across worlds was entirely his word alone. The temple knights couldn't exactly run over to Earth to investigate, could they?

"My darkness runes are a little pale. Does that count?" Compared with Galio's black runes, Su Ming's were noticeably closer to gray.

"It is a little strange, but all sorts of bizarre tricks keep cropping up in this world," White Bone replied. In a world of PVP combat, underhanded tricks were as numerous as hairs on an ox. For all they knew, someone might be able to change an element's color.

"I'm from another world. Does that help?"