I Became My Healer Elf Character-Chapter 73: Nhaal

Kurayami glared at the skeletal dragon blocking her path. The thing caused a massive crater in the ground when it erupted from below. Several houses were sinking in, and people screamed, fleeing in terror.

The skeletal dragon's glowing orbs met with Kurayami, and it roared at her, sending vibrations through the air. Kurayami recognized it as a lower form of her own roar. The dragon's might was often enough to scare away many creatures, and against a fellow dragon, the roar was like a signal. It was as if the skeletal dragon was telling her to back off.

Kurayami flapped her wings, hovering in the air. The roar was not even enough to get her to flinch. Kurayami's slit eyes narrowed at the undead creature.

"Normally, I would have a bit of time to play with you. Maybe even use your femur as a chew toy, but today…"

Kurayami inhaled, puffing up her chest. Smoke billowed out of the corners of her mouth.

The glowing orbs of the skeletal dragon widened, their flames filling its sockets. It panicked. It attempted to move, but it was already too late. Its body was too heavy. Too slow.

A beam of black shot from Kurayami's mouth. Black flames became a laser beam, encompassing the entire dragon. Those undead using this gaping hole beneath it were just as unlucky as the skeletal dragon.

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The black beam ripped through an entire platoon of skeletons on the march. It penetrated the ground, ripping through bones and corpses. It turned up dirt and drilled all the way down to an underground spring.

From there, a massive eruption started. Much of the water vaporized, and the rest exploded from the open shaft. It shot into the air like a geyser, blasting the surroundings with scorching hot water.

More rumbles started below the ground. It was as if the black flames heated the entire underground structure. The crust's tummy rumbled and more water pockets became aggravated. Pretty soon, the earth was threatening to shoot geysers all over the city, and possibly turning the place into a lake.

However, a thin golden barrier spread out over the ground and calmed it.

Kurayami suddenly felt a whack to her head. The dragon looked with teary eyes towards her master hovering gracefully in the air with those white wings. "Master, why would you do that?"

The master's face pouted, and she crossed her arms. "Don't play dumb with me. That breath would have caused this entire city to collapse underwater! It would have merged with the ocean!"

Kurayami smiled wryly, unable to deny her master's words. "But you don't understand, Master. That dragon needed to know its place."

Luckily for Kurayami more undead began spawning on the ground, and soon they were flooding into the streets. The master turned her attention towards the swarm.

Black miasma spread out along the surface, and the main boss floated out of the abyss. The necromancer lich king surfaced, and the world seemed to go silent.

Balag Nhaal hovered in the air, holding his black great staff in hand. More of his army surfaced. Skeletons. Undead hounds. Undead raptors. Phantoms. Ghosts. They all poured out like water from a cup. And right next to him there was that rat from before. Though, Kurayami couldn't recall its name.

Kurayami watched the scene unimpressed and crossed her arms. "Hmph, it's always these guys who put on a loud show."

///

In life, the necromancer Nhaal served under his goddess faithfully. He'd not been shunned for being a practitioner of the dark arts, and that was his favorite thing about being her faithful servant.

Across the world, necromancers were shunned. However, he found comfort in Her arms. It seemed the goddess shared his exact thoughts on the matter. How can something that brings the dead back to life and gives them new purpose be evil?

Nhaal worked diligently under her for years. He experimented with the art, seeing if it would be possible to restore people's loved ones in the truest sense. At the time, he might have been the strongest necromancer in the world. He easily resurrected skeletons or zombies as if it were second nature.

In his home kingdom, they hadn't yet outlawed necromancy. His research even called fourth scholars from the West. The Empire's college sent their best and assisted him with the projects, yet no matter what they did, it was hard to find a breaking point.

What was a soul? Where did it come from? And where would they go after they fled their body? All of these questions grew unanswered, and Nhaal knew it must have been in the realms of gods.

Despite this inkling, the research continued, even as the scholars from afar began losing funding. Indeed, after years without results, the Empire pulled its funding entirely. However, it was at this time that Nhaal had a major breakthrough.

He was granted a living specimen—a criminal fit for the chopping block. He hadn't even considered using necromancy on the living. He began to use painful spell after painful spell.

It was like torture to the victim, but for Nhaal, this was a time of enlightenment. At the exact point of death, he'd erected a necromantic barrier around the victim and infused what appeared to be the soul with his own mana. He remembered tales of shamans performing rituals of binding.

Using the same theory, he bound the soul to its body. His mana made the man a subservient puppet in the afterlife. Though, unlike a soulless husk, this one could carry out more complex tasks. It remembered its name.

And perhaps that was the time when Nhaal stopped being human altogether. Every time the kingdom had criminals to execute, the necromancer went knocking. The doors the scholars said wouldn't open began to open one after another.

He found that he could even bind another being's soul to the shell. If one man died, he could fill him with the soul of a rat. Simply trap the alive rat's soul before killing it, and transfer it to the new host upon their death.

It was under this diligence that Nhaal would become the founder of modern necromancy. But things were not all good. People began fearing necromancy even more.

What kingdom wouldn't be scared of the power to erect an entire army? Nhaal realized that he held nearly infinite power in his hands. With this, he could topple kingdoms and empires if he wanted to. The ability to bind souls would make soldiers more intelligent. They'd be able to make complex formations.

As the necromancer grew older, he finally decided to travel westward. With the blessing of his goddess, he made his way towards the empire. His goal was to state his thesis at their university and present the news of his experiments.

However, these ambitions would be his downfall. On his way to the college, his life would be ended by the dagger of an assassin. He hadn't even made it to the city he wished. His life was rendered at the Empire's ocean city.

When he felt his lifeblood slipping away, Nhaal ushered in one last act of defiance. He bound his own soul to his body, and he linked it with his goddess.

While the assassin celebrated his death, Nhaal had already begun returning to life. He clenched and unclenched his hands.

And so it was that Nhaal resurrected. On that day almost 1,300 years ago, Nhaal became the first lich king.

Not only was he the first, but he became instantly renowned. He claimed his first victim in undeath by killing the very assassin who killed him.

There was something new he realized about himself. With death, his sympathy for life had become extinct. There were no more barriers to perform his cruel experiments. His glimmering eyes gazed upon the city as he hovered there.

"Indeed, wouldn't this be the greatest experiment?"

And so he started. Men, women, and their children, no one was safe from his reckoning. Each life claimed was a new soul captured and added to his army. He started with the town square, and in less than in hour, he'd claimed the lives of half the living people in the city.

Each person defeated was a new servant of his goddess, yet his winning streak would not continue. He'd overestimated his own power and ambitions.

The God of Burning Waves would not let this chaos continue. One of his own champions was sent fourth into the city.

The flame champion laid waste to his army with a burning great hammer. When the flames settled it was only two champions left.

Nhaal faced the enemy and spoke the historian's last recorded words. "Try and try again. Even if you kill me now, you will not kill this vessel. So go ahead, the future is already my goddess."

The words didn't deter the flame champion. He burst forward with his flaming hammer and brought it down against his opponent, turning the lich king into ashes with a fateful swing.

At the command of the Emperor, the ashes were buried deep under ground in a tomb. To be locked away forever more.

Over time, the tomb expanded to accommodate more criminal necromancers wishing to follow Nhaal, and they were buried together. Yet when the world erupted into chaos a few hundred years later, History would forget about the tomb entirely.

However, Nhaal never forgot. His ashes became bone fragments, and he bid his time. As a hopeless undead, he could only continue to serve his goddess.