Lich for Hire-Chapter 14: Door to a New World

"Poor Dullahan... Is this what marriage does to a man?"

Ambrose sighed, suddenly feeling very grateful for his lifelong commitment to bachelorhood since crossing into this world.

Who could've guessed that the bone dragon was also a member of the Elegiac Society? That was a shocker. Ambrose had never seen her say a single word in the group chat.

The chat interface at the back of the Necromantic Codex didn't even have a member list—if you didn't speak up, no one knew you were there. Ambrose had only joined recently and recognized four or five names at most. He had no idea how many members the Elegiac Society actually had.

He didn't spare a single moment mourning the Dullahan's fate before diving straight back into work.

As per Black Rose's commission, Ambrose needed to design a new undead unit capable of breaking through the imperial walls of Lyon's capital. A daunting task, to say the least.

The Lyon Empire was humanity's mightiest realm, boasting the greatest number of priests, paladins, and legendary-rank champions in the entire land.

The capital's walls were layered with countless anti-undead wards. Just stepping near them would vaporize a lesser necromancer.

Sure, Ambrose was a legendary lich, but if he so much as peeked into the capital, he'd be blasted to dust before the city's defenders even noticed. The empire's might wasn't mere propaganda. It had been forged through centuries of glorious, corpse-strewn battles.

Any ordinary undead soldier would turn to ash before even getting close.

At first, Ambrose thought of using constructs to bypass the problem of undead.

Among undead units, spirit golems were the odd ones out—not because they were powerful, but because they were... well, technically not undead.

They were a unique form of magical construct first created by the great legendary lich, Master Morgan, whose most famous paper was On the Reproduction of Wraiths.

For years, scholars of necromancy had debated whether souls could reproduce: whether a new consciousness could be born from two existing ones. Countless necromancers had quarreled, argued, and occasionally tried to experimentally prove their theories.

That was, until Master Morgan's On the Reproduction of Wraiths dropped like a thunderbolt, finally settling the debate once and for all.

Yes. Wraiths could reproduce. Granted, the conditions were absurdly strict and the success rate microscopic, but after extensive testing, the results held. And the offspring, these newborn souls, didn't seem to count as undead at all.

Their most astonishing trait? They weren't vulnerable to holy magic. The world's laws didn't classify them as undead.

Using such unique souls to animate a construct produced a spirit golem, the rarest of all undead types, virtually undetectable by holy wards and completely immune to holy purification.

Unfortunately, shortly after creating them, Master Morgan had his phylactery shattered by the Lyon Empire. The empire not only revoked his honors from Legendary Spellcraft but even ordered all research on spirit golems destroyed.

Thankfully, the editor-in-chief of Legendary Spellcraft back then had enough spine to stand up to imperial pressure, safeguarding academic integrity and allowing Morgan's notes to circulate before their suppression. Though the master's manuscripts were lost and many details had to be reverse-engineered, the art of spirit golemcraft survived.

Ambrose had heard of the technique, of course, but he'd never studied it in depth. It was a high-end field, far beyond what a newly ascended lich like him could easily master. But now, flipping through his dusty shelf, he drew out On the Reproduction of Wraiths.

Today, he was determined to devour this foundational text of spirit golem creation whole.

"Oho, it even starts with living reproduction, huh? Wow, these diagrams are... incredibly detailed..."

And just like that, Ambrose was hooked. Learning new techniques was his second-favorite pleasure in life, right after making money.

He'd just finished a few pages when Isabel timidly peeked into his study.

"Master Lich, the Basilisk Oil for land reclamation is ready. My brother brought back one hundred and twenty-three people in total, but... the castle's full, and we're running low on food."

Isabel spoke nervously, carefully reporting her progress.

Ambrose lowered the tome and nodded. "Good pace. You managed to gather over a hundred people in just a few days?"

Over the past week, Isabel's brother Raul had been recruiting runaway serfs for Ambrose. Thanks to the recent tax crisis, plenty of people were fleeing their lords, so when someone offered "land and fair treatment," word spread fast.

After all, if going back meant death, and getting caught meant death, why not take their chances with a lich promising farmland?

The castle's looming silhouette and the wide swaths of empty land behind it, coupled with Ambrose's generous-sounding "equal land for all" policy, even had some of them singing praises to the "merciful Master Lich"—perhaps one kinder than the so-called god of light himself.

Of course, after a few days packed into the gloomy fortress with no sign of this benevolent master, the newcomers' patience was wearing thin.

Doubts festered. Would the land be real? How would they eat during the reclamation? Where were the tools, seeds, or livestock?

Left unanswered, these worries spread like a plague, infecting the whole group with growing unrest.

Isabel, realizing the tension was about to boil over, had finally worked up the courage to report it.

"Good," Ambrose said. "Since the potion's ready, we'll begin reclamation today. Make a list of all the people. Separate the adults from the children. Note any blacksmiths, carpenters, or other trades. I want every skill logged. Then divide the potions according to the land plots, but make them work together. Don't waste time arguing with anyone caught being greedy—hoarding, lying, faking a profession, or grabbing extra potions. Just throw them out."

As Ambrose dictated, Isabel frantically scribbled every word in her notebook. A proper alchemy apprentice never missed a chance to learn from her master. After all, even a passing remark might one day change her fate.

By the time she filled several pages of parchment, Isabel finally noticed just how detailed and systematic Ambrose's resettlement plan was. Was this really something liches studied?

Her impression of her undead lord began to shift. Humans described liches as vile, cruel, and corrupt, but Ambrose had shown little more than a cool, exacting demeanor. He was hardly the monster she'd imagined.

In fact, if she were being honest, he was the most learned, insightful scholar she'd ever met. Even her alchemy master couldn't hold a candle to him.

"Could it be," Isabel wondered, "that the world's been misunderstanding liches all along?"

Her gaze drifted toward Ambrose's desk, curious what kind of grand necromantic theories he was studying right now.

One glance at the open book, and her eyes went wide. The innocent young apprentice, hitherto ignorant of certain worldly matters, stared in stunned silence as if the door to an entirely new world had just been flung open before her.