Kai stared at the shameless elf girl before him—Ysaria, who had clearly kept some mana for herself while healing him.
Unlike when he first saw her just minutes ago, she looked slightly better now.
Her deathly pale skin had regained a faint rosy hue, a hint of warmth that made her look almost human.
"I guess I failed at hiding it, huh?"
She smiled brightly, fully aware that he'd noticed. It was in that moment Kai realized she wasn't as innocent—or as loyal—as she had first seemed.
"Well, you did heal me in the end," he said with a sigh. "But please keep helping me. I may feel better in this body… but I can still sense my first one continuing to crumble. As for the third body... he feels starved. I wonder how I'm supposed to feed him. Although... he did improve a little after receiving some mana."
Kai pondered, thinking that mana absorbed here was somehow distributed between all three bodies.
"I wonder what's wrong with that body," Ysaria replied, tapping her chin. "I doubt it's a normal necromancer from this realm.
We rely on mana to survive here—without it, we basically just disappear. Eternal life is only possible if we keep absorbing it."
She glanced sideways at him, half amused.
"Of course, I doubt you knew that, being a victim and all. Were you a human, possibly?"
She yawned lazily and sat down, having grown tired of standing.
As for Kai, he continued to walk slowly around the room, trying to get used to this new body. His sense of balance felt off. The difference in height confused him—it was like wearing a VR headset for the first time.
"Yes. I was just a student," he said quietly. "I think I was caught while heading home from my part-time job."
Ysaria looked confused.
"Part-time… job?" she echoed.
Kai nodded. "Yeah. I worked a few hours after school. It's a normal thing where I come from."
"It seems we really are from different worlds," she muttered.
"Humans here are basically slaves. They don't have jobs—they wait to be purchased.
If they're lucky, they're made into a necromancer's assistant. But no one gives them qualifications, or lets them enter an institute, unless they have a master's backing."
Her expression grew more thoughtful.
He really didn't know anything. This boy, Kai, wore the body of the great Elandor Gilgrim like a second skin—and yet he had no idea what power that name carried.
She might be able to use this.
If she played her cards right, she could enter The Third Gate—the largest and most prestigious necromantic academy in this entire dominion.
It was where Gilgrim had once taught during his younger years back three hundred years ago, back when he was at the peak of necromancy after that he went into solitude, working on a way to extend his crumbling core caused by an experiment.
That was why she had sworn her loyalty towards him and created a contract—why she had chosen to become his bound slave.
And yet... he had wasted her time.
He had made her do nothing but trivial chores. Twenty-four years gone, out of the two-hundred-year pact they'd signed. She had expected mentorship, knowledge—arcane secrets passed down from one of the most feared necromancers in history.
But all she had truly learned...was how to pour a proper cup of liquid mana for her master to drink.
Now he was just a boy—a boy who had forgotten all the vast knowledge that the great Elandor Gilgrim had once accumulated.
But then again, she had played a part in his downfall.
His broken core—that was all the madman ever worked on, never sparing her a single moment to teach her. He had gone back on his original promise and she was not going to spend a fifth of her life as a maid of some sort, so she did what he had to do.
"It seems you'll need to relearn how to use necromancy," Ysaria said, her tone trying to suppress her joy.
"And as a slave bound to care for her master… I shall follow you. "As for my master's death… we'll need to make it appear like it was caused by a failed experiment."
She stepped closer, her eyes growly like a green neon light.
"As for you—you bear his mana signature, so you'll need to act as his son."
Kai was still trying to process the shock that humans were considered slaves in this world when Ysaria dropped the absurd suggestion. He had been pacing in thought but stopped mid-step, turning toward her in disbelief.
"What do you mean act like a son?" he said, exasperated. "Do you not see how old I look? And what even is a mana signature?"
He held up his arms in frustration, showing his skin which looked like a dried-up raisin.
Kai might have felt better, but his body still looked like it belonged to a frail sixty-year-old—at best.
"A mana signature," Ysaria explained, now seated and looking slightly bored, "is what we use here to prove who we are. It's unique, nearly impossible to fake, and it's usually passed from master to student during formal training."
She gave him a knowing look.
"When a necromancer dies without passing down his legacy… the signature defaults to their immediate bloodline." Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"In this case… that would be you. As for your appearance, that's easy—we'll work on it after getting you stabilized. Hopefully, within a few minutes, the first batch of crystals will be delivered."
Just as she said that, a distant sound interrupted their conversation.
"Well, it seems we won't have to wait after all," Ysaria muttered.
"Let me go fetch them. And you—sit down. You'll only wear yourself out again, and then I'll have to waste even more resources to fix you."
Ysaria stood and quickly left the room.
Kai, now alone, looked around. There were only a few old stools by the workbenches, most of which were covered with strange experiments.
He picked the farthest one in the corner, careful to sit far from a mutilated corpse lying nearby. He didn't even know if it was human—and he tried not to look long enough to find out.
What did I get myself into…
He was slowly adjusting to the strange sensation of managing three bodies at once. His original, human body—though still crumbling—felt a bit better.
The mana must have needed time to circulate through all three of him.
His third body, the one that looked like a vampire, still sat motionless on the distant moon-like world, staring at the sky.
As Kai's awareness shifted toward it, his gaze narrowed on something disturbing.
His vision had warped—like looking through a periscope. He had to physically turn away to avoid the sight in front of him.
He glanced at his hands instead. His nails had grown long and claw-like from hunger. He felt strange as he concentrated on his fangs—they were long now; he could barely close his mouth properly.
Just as he was focusing on these changes, a voice called out nearby.
It was Ysaria again.
He quickly pulled his focus back to the necromancer's body—his second.
"We got lucky," she said. "They sent three boxes. That should be enough to recover at least half your strength. The rest can be done gradually throughout the week—depending on your progress."
Three skeletons followed behind her, each one carrying a large, heavy crate overflowing with mana crystals.
Each box looked to weigh at least fifty pounds—and they were filled to the brim, and then some.
"Gilgrim would have been furious," Ysaria muttered with a small shrug, "but since this is to save you, I didn't worry too much about the cost. It might've burned through a decade of savings… but he lived over a millennium. That's not much, right?"
She gave him a few seconds to respond, then clasped her hands together in preparation.
Placing one hand over the first box and the other over Kai's chest, she prepared the grand scale healing again.
"Let's get this over with," she said. "You don't mind if I take a little, do you? I just need enough to restore my previous strength. About a fifth from each box should do."
Ysaria smiled knowingly, she already assumed the boy inside Gilgrim wouldn't object.
"Sure… just keep healing me. I still feel so weak..." Kai nodded, eyes closing.
All he wanted was to stop feeling the pain radiating from all three of his new lives.
As soon as she cast the spell, a warm wave of mana flooded into him. It was like being hit with morphine—blissful, numbing.
The pain vanished almost instantly, replaced by a dazed, sleepy calm. His mind buzzed, but in a good way.
The only problem was… he could still feel the pain in his other two bodies. Kai figured it would take a little longer for the healing to reach them.
After the first box was depleted, Ysaria moved to the second, then the third—each time repeating the process. With every surge of mana, Kai felt lighter, clearer.
For the first time since awakening in this nightmare, he felt like he could breathe again.