Rise of the Supreme Necromancer-Chapter 59: The Blessed Blade

Aleric reached out a hand without looking, and the zombie put his staff in. Then, Aleric touched the sword’s blade with the staff’s skull and channeled Dark magic through it.

As soon as the first spark hit the blade, the clashing energies began sizzling and burning. Their force pushed the staff aside until Aleric’s energy was released only into the air.

"Ah! That thing is slippery, master!" Spine Staff exclaimed.

"I know. Maybe like that..."

Aleric tried to press on the blessed sword with the Spine Staff’s handle, but even that was ineffective. The point of contact between two artifacts was too small, and to push any energy into the metal, Aleric had to use too much effort and mana.

It was like trying to mix oil and water!

"This just doesn’t work... Fine, then let’s be more direct!"

With these words, Aleric passed the staff back to the zombie.

Then he grabbed the blessed sword’s handle and channeled his Dark energy into the blade directly!

His hands burned, and the sword’s handle sizzled as the Dark and Light energies clashed inside the metal. But Aleric grit his teeth and held on despite the forces pushing his hands aside!

Sparks of green flew down his hand into the sword, growing more numerous by the second until they became a single stream.

Smoke was coming from under Aleric’s hands. His palms felt as if set on fire, but he didn’t let the sword go.

By now, thanks to Aleric’s innate talent and constant practice, his mana reserve had grown immensely. If one took the weakest spell, Pain, as the measure, then originally Aleric could use it five times in a row without Spine Staff’s help. But now his mana reserve had energy for 250 Pains!

And Aleric poured all this mana into the blessed sword.

Green sparks made trails down the blade that looked like they came from a lightning strike. But the Light in the sword stubbornly held on! Worse, the steel and silver of the sword were protecting the magic within it even now, making most of Aleric’s energy only singe the surface.

Finally, Aleric stumbled back from the sword with a gasp and held out his hands. The skin on his palms was red and blistered and hurt like hell!

And despite all this, the sword still emanated the Light aura.

"You... Blasted thing..." Aleric sneered at the sword. "It’s like trying to break iron gates with a hand hammer! Why won’t you just give in?"

"Master, it’s not sentient, it can’t hear you..."

"I know, Staff!"

"Sorry, master! I didn’t mean to annoy you with useless advice! You still achieved something. The magic inside the blade has definitely grown weaker!"

Aleric let out a long breath.

"By what, a fifth? That’s too little. If I just repeat my attempt five times, no gloves will save my hands. And if I use you to protect myself, it will take me ten... No, twenty times the mana to achieve the same result."

The Spine Staff went silent.

Aleric paced back and forth down the dungeon, nursing his hands.

"I need some ointment for my palms. And to recover mana again. Maybe even take a break?.. No, there’s too much work to do."

Aleric stopped suddenly as an idea hit him, then smiled.

"If you won’t accept defeat, sword, then I will just have to act more... Creatively."

***

"Don’t you worry, Master Fenn. My grandma wasn’t called a village’s witch just for her Dark magic, she made great remedies against all ills!" Rita Leshmann chattered as she smeared an oily-smelling balm over Aleric’s palms. "Of course, as soon as I heard that you needed a healer’s help, I had to come... Lard, honey, and milk—this will help you in no time."

He was still in the same room of the dungeon, but now it had slightly more candles to provide light. Two guards were standing in the corner. The blessed sword was lying on a table, moved to the side. Aleric’s ghost was hiding in the wall, where only Aleric and Rita could sense it.

Aleric himself was sitting in a chair near a wall, with Rita kneeling in front of him and a Spine Staff holder standing near his shoulder.

After applying a thick layer of her homemade burn ointment, Rita wrapped each finger of her master in bandages. Her movements were slow and careful, and the woman was smiling as she did her work...

’The longer I’m busy here, the longer my break is! Just when I thought that I might be done raising the dead, Master Fenn had to go and kill some more! When would this end already?! This is worse than working on a farm from sunrise to sundown!’

Just as Rita tied the last knot, a second pair of zombie guards brought in a gagged prisoner, holding him by his arms.

He was a young man barely above twenty, still dressed in the uniform of Oakdale’s militia, although stripped of his weapons and armor. His face was pale from staying in the dungeons with poor food and overcrowding.

The zombies brought the prisoner to the wall near the blessed sword and attached a pair of shackles to his feet. A second chain was going through them, tying the prisoner to the wall. But even after this, the zombies continued to hold the prisoner’s arms.

Aleric looked at his bandages and stood up.

"You can go back to your regular work, Rita. There are still a lot of corpses to raise."

Rita frantically looked around in search of a way to delay the inevitable.

"But... Ah! You are about to make a human sacrifice, right? Can I watch and learn, please? I can assist! I’m not squeamish about blood, trust me!"

Rita didn’t mention how she vomited upon seeing the aftermath of Aleric’s most recent carnage. Even some undead servants felt queasy from it, and zombies had no gag reflex.

However, Aleric just waved her back.

"No. With your current mana reserve, you don’t need to use torture techniques, anyway. If you must make a sacrifice, open their guts—it kills slowly, and guts can be easily sewn back in without impeding the future zombie."

"Yes, master..."

Disappointed, Rita dragged her feet back to the corpse piles.

Aleric already wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he approached the prisoner, examining him like a prize cattle.

Unlike most older people, this young man’s eyes were still bright with all his emotions as he strained against the hold of the zombies on him. His fear, his desperation—they all were clearly visible and pure. This man still held a bit of childhood innocence.

This made Aleric hesitate.

What he was going to do was cruel even by his standards. But then, he remembered...