Chapter 131- The Dwarf’s Request.

Chapter 131: Chapter 131- The Dwarf’s Request.

[Ding~]

[Soul-Forged Undead — Created.]

[Method B — Original Soul + Original Body.]

[Reconstruction Potential — 150% of the original being.]

Notifications poured across Leo’s vision in a rush, one stacking on top of the next before he could even finish reading the last.

[Ding~]

[Hall of the Undead has detected an undead.]

[Ding~]

[Hall Designation: First Born — Frumburinn.]

[Classification: Undead Beast — Soul-Forged.]

[Undead Path: Beast.]

[Bond: Mark of Loyalty — Registered to Leo Stone.]

[Unique Trait — Vargr-kin: Inherited Blood of the First]

[Inherits 90% of a single attribute of the forger.]

[Select Attribute: Dexterity ?]

[Inheritance Bound — Dexterity: 90%.]

[Ding~]

[Please name your first undead.]

[Naming a Soul-Forged Existence anchors its identity and amplifies its attributes.]

A name... Leo scratched at the back of his neck, turning it over in his head. Nothing good came to mind, nothing grand or fitting for something that had just clawed its way back from death itself. wait it’s still dead though... In the end he went with the first thing that surfaced.

"Blacky". Simple. It would do.

[Ding~]

[Name "Blacky" registered.]

[Naming Bonus Applied — All Attributes +30%.]

The moment the name settled into place, something shifted. The undead wolf pushed itself up onto its feet, slow and deliberate, and turned its head toward Leo like it was seeing him for the first time. Then it came closer quietly, almost looked hesitant to approach. But it came forward step by step until its head was pressed gently against his cheek. It had grown so much in those few seconds that it now towered a full head above him. Leo had to tip his chin up just to meet its eyes.

Its tongue swept across his cheek. Its tail swung back and forth, exactly the way a dog’s would.

Sigil and the others could only stand there, mouths half open, unable to find words.

Sigil, if anything, looked even more captivated than the rest of them. "Is that... really undead? It looks alive. It looks like it could just be a wolf someone raised."

Aside from the faint threads of undead mana curling and pulsing around its paws and throat, there was nothing about it to suggest otherwise.

No exposed bone. No rot. Nothing that matched what any of them had expected.

Leo nodded slowly, still not entirely sure he believed it himself. "It’s undead. I can promise you that much."

He pulled up its status window to see for himself.

[Status]

Name: Blacky

Tier: Elite

Level: 15

Soul Tier: Vivid

Race: Undead

Class:..###

Type: Beast

[Attributes]

STR: 88 | VIT: 83 | DEX: 455 | INT: 19 | WIS: 50

HP: 2,540 / 2,540

MP: 460 / 460

STM: ∞

[Vargr-kin Binding]

DEX: 140 → 455 (90% of forger’s DEX applied)

[Threat Rating: D-rank]

[PREVIOUS PROWESS — PRESERVED INTACT]

[Passive Abilities]

Scent of Prey — tracks prey by blood and breath across distance

Hunter’s Ears — filters out surrounding noise; can isolate a single heartbeat from the crowd.

[Active Abilities]

Windborn Legs — a full sprint with the wind pushing at its back, faster the longer it runs +100Dex/2s

Cooldown: 12s | Cost: 15 MP | Duration: 6s

Lone Fang — hunts a single target the way a whole pack would, circling and wearing it down until it breaks.

Cooldown: 30s | Cost: 25 MP | Duration: until target disengages

[AWAKENED THROUGH FORGING]

[Death Qi Aura (Passive)]

A shroud of Death Qi clings permanently to Blacky’s pelt, and it seeps into every wound the wolf opens in the enemy. Healing slows to a crawl. Infection sets in fast. Flesh at the wound’s edge begins rotting within moments. Any living creature caught inside the aura’s radius feels its own strength drain away, its regeneration and recovery choked off for as long as it remains within range.

[Unyielding Will (Passive)] — cannot be cowed, controlled, or commanded by anyone except the Forger

[Vargr-kin Agility (Passive)] — 90% of the forger’s Agility woven directly into its stride

[Gravewind Lunge (Active)] — a killing dash wrapped in wind and Death Qi together, the First Born’s signature strike

Cooldown: 90s | Cost: 20 | Death Qi

Reaper’s Mark (Unique) — first of its kind ever recorded; the name alone seals its power within the Hall

[ELEMENTAL ATTRIBUTES]

[Wind: C-grade] — Blessed by the wind, natural born affinity.

[Death: B-grade] — carved directly by the Hall of undead.

[Darkness: C+-grade] — the same dark it had always hunted through.

[Evolution: Requirements Not Met.]

Leo read through the whole list twice, and the second pass left him even more stunned than the first. The wolf wasn’t just strong — some of what it could do bordered on unfair, especially that Death Qi aura quietly choking off anything trying to heal anywhere near it.

He looked back up at Blacky, and this time the look on his face was something closer to awe.

When the wolf first approached Leo, it was like watching baby walk. The wolf’s legs wobbled, uncertain, like it was relearning something it used to know instinctively — how to stand, how to shift its weight, how to walk without stumbling.

But now, it was already running, tearing a wide loop across the chamber before skidding to a stop and shaking its whole body out, like a dog does after being caught in the rain.

Leo and Sigil watched it circle the room, neither of them quite able to reconcile what they were seeing.

"Aren’t undead supposed to be... skeletons?" Sigil asked, still dazed.

"That’s what I thought too," Leo admitted, just as lost as he was.

While the two of them stood there trying to make sense of it, the little girl — drawn across the room by the undead mana which, she seemed to sense more easily than anyone — had already crossed the floor and wrapped both arms around one of Blacky’s legs. The wolf turned, sniffed at her for a long moment, caught the same familiar trace of undead aura clinging faintly to her skin, and simply let it go. It even ducked its head down and licked at her hand.

Within moments the two of them were playing together.

Leo could only manage a wry, slightly helpless smile at the sight.

Blacky was dead in every sense that mattered — no heartbeat drumming beneath that fur, no warmth radiating off its skin. And yet mana still moved through it, circulating endlessly from somewhere deep in its chest and pushing outward through the rest of its body, keeping something that resembled life running just beneath the surface.

Sigil hadn’t moved from the bench where Leo had propped him earlier. He’d watched the entire scene unfold in complete silence, his expression somewhere far away. His knuckles had gone pale and tight against his knees.

Eventually the wolf and the little girl wandered his way. Blacky sniffed at him once, studied him for a long beat with those unsettling green eyes, and something shifted behind Sigil’s gaze.

Leo caught the look too, though he said nothing.

Sigil turned toward him and pointed at the wolf. "Can you do that to me?"

Leo’s eyes followed the line of his finger to Blacky, then back to Sigil’s face. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"Can you turn me into an undead?" Sigil asked, flat and direct, no hesitation in it at all.

For a second Leo simply stared at him, certain he’d misheard. "Can you say that again?"

Sigil pointed at the wolf a second time, patiently. "Can you turn me into an undead?"

Leo genuinely couldn’t wrap his head around where this was coming from. "You want to become an undead? Why would you want to become something like that?"

Sigil looked down at his own palm, his face darkening, as he answered.

"I’m dying. Cursed, poisoned — I don’t fully understand the details myself, only that whatever it is, it’s killing me slowly. Some days it feels like my insides are being torn apart from the inside out, most of the time I feel like thousands of needles pushing through me all at once, over and over."

He finally raised his head to meet Leo’s gaze.

"I don’t have much time left, honestly. And my hand — it’s ruined beyond fixing. I can’t even lift a hammer anymore, let alone swing one. But the passion never left me, not once. There’s still so much I never got the chance to forge. I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to keep living like this either, not with this kind of pain sitting in my chest every waking hour."

He let that settle in the air between them before continuing. "I held onto hope for a while — thought there might be a cure somewhere out there. But even the Holy Church told me there was nothing left to try. Death’s the only road left open to me now."

A long silence stretched between them. Leo had absolutely no idea what to say to any of that.

"My passion for forging remains," Sigil said again, quieter this time, like the words cost him something to push out.

"Kill me," he said finally, steady despite everything. "Kill me, and turn me into what you just made over there."

Leo shook his head slowly. "Do you understand what that actually means? You’d be dead. Being undead isn’t some second chance at living — no emotions, no pain, no fear, none of it. You’d be bound to me. Loyal to me and only me. You wouldn’t really be you anymore, not in any way that matters."

He studied the dwarf’s downcast face for a long moment.

"I know," Sigil said, his voice steadier now than it had been all conversation.

"Forging was all I ever really had. My father was our tribe’s chief — the finest smith among us, by a wide margin — and I grew up wanting nothing except to follow in his footsteps. I never cared for politics, never wanted his seat or his title. My brother did, though, more than any of us realized. Unbeknownst to us, He allied himself with a rival tribe, overthrew our father, crushed my hand beyond repair, and cast me out to die alone. Poisoned, for good measure, so I couldn’t even crawl back."

He paused there, drawing one long, ragged breath, as though that single confession had used up everything he had left in reserve.

"After that I was taken as a slave. A broken tool, good for nothing but carrying what others couldn’t be bothered to carry themselves. So let me be a blacksmith one more time, even if it’s like this... That wolf of yours still remembers something of what it used to be — I saw it in the way it moved. I’m not asking you to keep every memory I have. Do whatever you need to with the rest of it. Just let me forge again, even once."

Leo stared at him, utterly unsure what to do with any of it.

Then, almost against his will, his thoughts drifted to the merchant who’d sold him the dwarf in the first place. That bastard scammed me. Said he was just injured, nothing more. No wonder he was in such a hurry to sell him off. No wonder he agreed to my price without so much as a haggle.

Leo’s jaw tightened. Just wait until I get my hands on you. And now I’ve got to kill a— He caught himself before the thought finished. A human? A dwarf? Does it even matter what he technically is at this point?

Before Leo could say another word, Sigil made his way to the table, produced a small pill from somewhere tucked within him, swallowed it without ceremony, and lay back against the table.

"Don’t worry," he said, voice already fading. "I won’t make you do it yourself."

Those were his final words. Foam gathered slowly at the corners of his mouth, and a moment later, without any fanfare at all, his heart simply stopped beating.

Leo let out a long, heavy breath and drew the soul free from the body.

[Ding~]

[Soul collected.]

[Soul receptacle: 23/28]

He sank down onto the floor, head buried in both hands, unsure what was supposed to come next or how he was even meant to feel about any of it.

"Since it’s already come to this," he finally said, mostly to himself, "I’ll turn him into undead. There’s nothing else left to do."

He looked down at the dwarf’s body stretched out on the table. In death, Sigil looked more at peace than he ever had while alive — free, finally, of whatever had been eating away at him from the inside for so long.

"But before I do that, I should fix his hand first. Replace the broken bones, make it usable again." Leo muttered the thought aloud, turning the problem over in his mind. Do I cut it open and pull the shattered bone out piece by piece? Or would it be simpler to take the whole hand off and build something new — metal, maybe, something that could actually hold a hammer again? And how long do I even have before the body starts to Rot?

As if in direct answer to the question—

[Ding]

[Preservation Room: capable of storing and preserving souls and bodies in pristine condition for an unlimited period of time.]

Leo blinked at the notification hovering in front of him.

Lately it feels like the system’s started answering my questions before I even finish asking them.

He opened his chat window and typed out a quick message to Elona. "Do you know any players who work as doctors? Or anyone at all who’s done surgery before — bones specifically, if you know anyone like that."

...