Chapter 47: (Fake) Necromancy, 1

The corpse lay flat on the priceless Persian rug of the CEO’s office, bathed in the cold, sterile glow of the mana spheres.

Mordecai stared at it in profound silence, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression a turbulent mix of pure disgust and deep, visceral inadequacy.

In his previous life, as everyone knows, Kaito had been an electrician. He knew how to handle a high-voltage cable, he could instantly recognize the acrid stench of burning copper, and he knew exactly how to isolate a circuit so he wouldn't end up electrocuted.

But a corpse? A real, cold, lifeless human (or at least, humanoid) body? That was entirely outside his union guidelines; that's why he felt a great sense of disgust.

In video games, corpses were just graphic sprites or polygonal models that conveniently vanished into the ether after dropping their loot. Here, however, the dead boy lying in front of him was tragically, stubbornly real. His skin was waxy, a trickle of dried blood trailed down from his temple and the back of his head (where he had comically smashed it against a sarcophagus while trying to escape Larry), and his mouth was hanging slightly open in an expression of perpetual bewilderment.

"I don't even know where to begin," Mordecai muttered, dragging a gauntleted hand down his face. "I am not a medical examiner. I have NEVER done an autopsy. If a circuit is dead, you use a multimeter to find the break. But what is the fucking multimeter for a human soul?"

The System interface, sensing his hesitation, flared up in a theatrical, pulsating red.

[SYSTEM SUGGESTION: Use your Class Voice to subjugate the soul of the deceased!]

[RECOMMENDED PROMPT: "Arise. Serve me in life and in death."]

Mordecai rolled his eyes so hard it physically hurt. "Arise? Really? Are you actively asking me to plagiarize one of the most famous South Korean webtoons? Is there not a single shred of originality left in this godforsaken universe?"

[SYSTEM REPLY: YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE IT MORE THAN ONCE.]

"So what? Do you really wanna risk a copyright strike from another universe now? I was nobody back then!"

The System blinked rapidly, recalculating.

[ERROR: COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT DETECTED. YOU WERE RIGHT!]

[THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT OF KOKOA ENTERTAINMENT HAS ISSUED A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CEASE & DESIST ORDER. PROMPT CANCELED TO AVOID MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR LAWSUITS.]

[SEARCHING FOR A NEW SUMMONING INCANTATION...]

"That's enough," Mordecai snapped. His tolerance for humiliation had reached its absolute limit. He turned toward his subordinates, who were currently observing the scene with a mix of religious devotion (Ugo) and maternal pride (Larry). "Everybody out. Out of my office. Leave me alone."

"M-My Leader, is that safe?" Ugo asked, taking a hesitant step forward. "A Major Necromancy ritual can be highly unstable. Please, allow me to stay and assist you—"

"Out, Ugo," Mordecai ordered, deploying the tone of a CEO who did not accept counter-arguments. "And please, close the door. No one enters until I am finished with this circus act. And take that... dog with you."

Ugo offered a deep, sweeping bow. "As you wish, My Leader. Your ritualistic privacy shall be guaranteed."

Then, his gaze moved to Larry, who was scratching his skull. 'Skrik skrik'

"Larry, please, I need other polished spoons. Can you go?" His voice became softer.

Larry gave one final, encouraging thumbs-up 👍, and then Ugo physically ushered out into the hallway with Larry and the dog, pulling the heavy oak door shut with a solid click.

The moment he was alone, Mordecai crossed his arms again and glared down at the corpse. "Okay, System. I am not going to say any edgy catchphrases. We are canceling this stupid quest right now."

[REQUEST DENIED.]

[THE HIGHER REALMS HAVE ALREADY PAID THE SPONSORSHIP FEE. THE RITUAL MUST BE PERFORMED IN THE APPROPRIATE ENVIRONMENT.]

[WE HAVE DELETED THE TIMER TO REDUCE YOUR ANXIETY.]

Suddenly, the floor beneath Mordecai’s boots simply ceased to exist.

There was no sensation of falling, only an instantaneous, disorienting spatial shift. When Mordecai opened his eyes a fraction of a second later, he was no longer in his 'luxurious' penthouse office. He was standing in the deepest, most forgotten dungeons of Fort Blackstone.

The room was a deeply unsettling cross between a modern surgical theater and a dark fantasy sacrificial altar. Cold-flame torches lined the stone walls, casting long, wavering shadows, but the centerpiece of the room was a sterile, stainless-steel surgical table. Resting atop it was the corpse of the young adventurer. And right next to the table, arranged neatly on a metal rolling cart (which looked like it had been stolen from a municipal hospital), was the narrative garbage Larry had brought: the [Black Lace Panties], the [Heroic Bra], the [Rotten Legendary Dragon Egg], and—most importantly—the [Heroic Toe Nail].

Mordecai approached the table. His electrician’s brain frantically tried to rationalize the absurdity of the situation.

"Alright," he whispered to himself, pacing the floor. "Necromancy isn't magic. It's just physics applied to an unknown energy field. The human body is just a bio-electric machine. Death is simply a permanent short circuit. The heart stops pumping energy, the electrical resistance rises to infinity, and the soul—which is just an electrical charge stored in the brain—disperses due to a lack of grounding."

He glared at the disgusting, yellowed Toenail, which was currently radiating a faint, deeply ironic holy light.

"If I want to reactivate the circuit," Mordecai continued, gesturing animatedly as if he were explaining a wiring diagram to an invisible apprentice, "I need a bypass. That disgusting piece of keratin contains condensed holy energy. It is a fucking high-voltage backup battery. But I am absolutely not touching that thing with my bare hands. I refuse to do this gross shit."

Mordecai turned on his heel and started walking toward the door, fully prepared to eat whatever penalty the System threw at him rather than stoop this low.

100 AI-generated max-level heroes? Bureaucracy was stronger than them.

[WARNING: REFUSAL TO COMPLETE QUEST DETECTED.]

[THE AUDIENCE DEMANDS ACTION.]

[INITIALIZING NARRATIVE AUTOPILOT PROTOCOL.]

"What the fu—"

Mordecai never finished the sentence. His body locked up completely, and his muscles seized, stiffening as if a thousand invisible strings had suddenly wrapped tightly around his limbs.

With mounting horror, Kaito watched his own right arm lift itself into the air. His hand opened and reached out toward the surgical cart.

'No. Stop. System, you piece of garbage code, give me back my controls!' Mordecai screamed in his mind, but his physical lips remained clamped shut.

His hand closed firmly around the Legendary Hero’s Toenail.

The bone fragment was physically repulsive to the touch—thick, encrusted with two centuries of holy grime.

In the exact moment Mordecai had touched it, Mordecai unlocked a new skill.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: NEW SKILL UNLOCKED--ANALYZE]

[EFFECT: You can now analyze every item you touch and know its history, last owner, and its utility]

[BONUS EFFECT: PERMANENT +0,2 INT PER OBJECT ANALYZED]

"Okay. I'm literally a walking CarFax. My mind will explode." He sighed.

In that moment, a System window appeared before him, displaying the item's description.

[ANALYZE: HEROIC TOE NAIL]

[LAST OWNER: KING FERROS OF AZURA]

[AGE: 200+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE]

[DESCRIPTION: too long, wait for a summary...]

Mordecai politely waited for 5 minutes until the summary appeared.

As he read, this [Heroic Toe Nail] belonged to King Ferros, the legendary monarch of Azura, a kingdom bordering Aethelgard. The official lore stated that Ferros had been a formidable warrior, capable of splitting mountains with a single kick. The reality (which the System helpfully projected directly into Mordecai’s brain as an unskippable pop-up ad) was that Ferros suffered from chronic, severe fungal infections, and a grave robber, furious at finding no actual treasure in the crypt, had simply chopped off the king's big toe to sell it on the black market as the "Amulet of the Divine Kick."

And now, this two-century-old biological waste was Mordecai’s primary magical catalyst.

Guided entirely by the System’s autopilot, Mordecai raised his hand high. The dark aura of the Supreme Necromancer finally erupted, wrapping his arm in violent, swirling tendrils of purple and black smoke. His eyes (even the blue one) began to glow with a terrifying, abyssal light.

With a motion that was incredibly fluid, undeniably epic, and simultaneously deeply humiliating, Mordecai slammed the Toenail directly into the chest of the dead boy.

ZZZ-BZZZZZT!

There was no organic sound of tearing flesh. Instead, there was the deafening crack of a ten-thousand-volt transformer exploding. The holy energy contained within the corrupted nail violently collided with the concentrated dark mana of the CEO of Ravenloft Holdings.

A shockwave of necro-electric energy swept through the surgical dungeon. Purple and black lightning erupted from the boy’s chest, branching out along his veins like printed circuit boards powering up. The disgusting toenail dissolved entirely, fusing directly into the corpse’s spinal cord, acting as an energetic bypass to ground his fleeing soul.

Then, a single phrase came out from his mouth.

"Return to this world and serve me for your entire eternity, soul." He said, both his eyes glowing with an intense purple.

Up in the top right corner of Mordecai’s peripheral vision, the Higher Realms chat was absolutely losing its mind.

Dibbs57: "I AM DYING! THE CEO LITERALLY STABBED THE KID WITH A TWO-CENTURY-OLD TOENAIL! PEAK NECROMANCY!"

NTR_Lover69: "The lore about King Ferros broke me. A legendary artifact that is literally just a holy fungal infection. Mordecai is the GOAT!"

GoonerKing: "Jin-woo who? I only respect true necromancers who use biological waste to bypass soul circuits!"

CorporateSlave42: "This is the perfect example of corporate recycling. Zero waste, 100% efficiency. Ravenloft Holdings will dominate the market."

The System abruptly returned control to Mordecai. He immediately collapsed to his knees, panting heavily, furiously wiping his hand against his black coat to scrub away the phantom sensation of the fungal nail.

Up on the steel table, the body reacted.

The lethal blunt-force trauma on the back of the kid's head knitted itself back together in a fraction of a second, leaving the skin smooth and flawless. Driven by the sheer overload of holy/dark energy, anime physics immediately took hold: the boy's short brown hair rapidly grew by four inches, becoming appropriately spiky and disheveled, and his irises, visible beneath his closed eyelids, began to glow with a faint purple light.

He was now the main character of a fast-food fantasy novel.

The young adventurer—whom the System had promptly renamed 'Nyalen' in its database—took a sudden, sharp, desperately deep breath and snapped his eyes open.

He sat bolt upright on the steel table.

What followed was a perfect, utterly exasperating satire of a shonen protagonist's inner monologue when they have absolutely no idea what is happening.

While Nyalen stared at his own hands, time in his mind seemed to grind to a halt, dilating infinitely to allow him to process the cosmic emptiness of his thoughts.

"Where... where am I?" Nyalen thought, staring blankly at the stone ceiling. "The ceiling is unfamiliar. The air is cold. I no longer hear the voices of the ghosts. Wait... the last thing I remember... the Crypt of Putrid Whispers! The terror! The running! And then... that skeleton. That horrible, demonic skeleton wearing a yellow apron and rubber gloves!"

Nyalen clutched his head, trembling violently. "I remember the spoons... I touched the perfect spoons. He looked at me. His glowing red eyes... the absolute fury of hygiene! I backed away. I slipped. I heard a crack. And then... darkness. Cold. Was I... was I dead? Yes, I'm sure I died. But then, how can I be here? My hands... I feel coursing with an unknown power! A dark power, but strangely warm, and... and why does it smell faintly of aged cheese?"

The boy didn't realize that he wasn't alone in that room and that he was thinking out loud.

While Nyalen spent the equivalent of three full business days lost in this completely useless internal monologue, staring at his palms and panting dramatically, Mordecai simply stood next to him. His arms were crossed, his expression one of unspeakable, mind-numbing boredom. He even inspected his fingernails while waiting for the NPC to finish his stupid emotional rendering cycle.

The system shut his mouth, because it didn't want to interrupt Nyalen's awakening.

Finally, after three agonizingly long minutes of real, awkward silence in the room, Nyalen slowly turned his head to the right.

His eyes locked onto the towering, shadow-draped figure of the CEO of Ravenloft Holdings. The black, messy hair, the black coat covered in belts, and above all, the glowing purple eyes scrutinizing him with glacial indifference.

Nyalen let out a high-pitched, piercing scream that sounded exactly like a tea kettle left on the stove too long. He scrambled backward on the surgical table, slamming his spine against the stone dungeon wall, pulling his knees tightly to his chest.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" the boy shrieked, his voice cracking. "WHERE AM I?! I... I WAS DEAD! WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?! WAS IT YOU?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME, YOU MONSTER?!"

Mordecai sighed—a long, tired sound that encapsulated the entire exasperation of the working class. He took a single step forward.

"Calm down, kid," Mordecai said in a flat, monotone voice. "No one did anything to you. Or rather, I optimized your mortality. My name is Mordecai Von Ravenloft. I am the CEO of Ravenloft Holdings. You suffered a fatal workplace accident in one of my subsidiary branches, entirely due to your own inability to maintain basic balance. I have reinstated you."

Nyalen frantically patted down his own body to ensure he was still in one piece. That was when his fingers brushed the base of his own neck, right below his right ear. He felt a slight, burning sensation.

He scrambled off the table and ran over to a highly polished surgical tray, using the steel surface as a mirror.

Branded into his skin, etched in black magical ink that pulsed with a faint purple light, was a mark. It wasn't an arcane magical sigil. It wasn't a demonic pentagram.

It was a perfectly rendered, undeniable Barcode, with tiny text printed underneath it that read: "Property of Ravenloft Holdings - Renewable Asset No. 001 - Not for Resale."

"WHAT IS THIS?!" Nyalen screamed, scratching frantically at his neck as if trying to tear his own skin off. "YOU BRANDED ME LIKE A BEAST OF BURDEN! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! MY SOUL TO DEVOUR?!"

"I want you to justify the capital expenditures my company just wasted on resurrecting you," Mordecai replied, snapping his fingers. "And I don't have the time to give you the corporate orientation seminar. I have a multinational conglomerate to run and an idiotic Hero to sue. I'm having Human Resources and Logistics handle your onboarding."

Mordecai raised a hand to his ear and activated his magical intercom. "Larry. Come down here."

At the sound of that name, Nyalen froze solid. The blood turned to ice in his veins. He had heard the name in that dungeon.

The memory of pure, unadulterated terror—the fury of hygiene—hit him like a runaway freight train. "No... no, please," the boy whispered, shrinking back against the table, his eyes wide with horror. "Not him. Not the Reaper of Cleanliness. Please!"

The air distorted a few feet away from them. An azure portal ripped open, and the dungeon was instantly flooded with the fresh scent of synthetic pine and lemon bleach.

Larry emerged from the portal. The little skeleton in his corporate coveralls and yellow rubber gloves skipped happily into the room. As soon as he saw Nyalen—the boy who had previously been a corpse and was now strangely alive—the flames in his eye sockets showed absolutely no hostility.

Larry tilted his skull. Scrik scrik. He trotted right up to the surgical table.

Nyalen tried to fuse his body with the stone wall, openly weeping in terror. "STAY AWAY FROM ME! I DIDN'T MEAN TO TOUCH YOUR SPOONS! I SWEAR IT, I'LL NEVER TOUCH THEM AGAIN, SO PLEASE, DON'T KILL ME AGAIN!"

Larry completely ignored the boy's desperate screams. With a gentleness that contrasted comically with Nyalen’s sheer horror, the skeleton reached out a bony hand wrapped in yellow rubber and gave the boy two light, affectionate pats on the head. (Pat pat).

Then, Larry straightened up, turned to Mordecai, and gave a perfect, happy thumbs-up 👍.

"Larry," Mordecai said, heavily massaging the bridge of his nose, "this is Nyalen. He is the new intern. Take him to Ugo and give him the standard tour of Fort Blackstone. Explain the fire safety regulations to him and find him an entry-level task in the logistics department. If he tries to run away or complain... make him scrub the Minotaur latrines."

Larry nodded enthusiastically and gave his master another thumbs up👍. He turned back to Nyalen, grabbed the boy by the collar of his tunic with a terrifying physical strength that completely belied his scrawny stature, and began dragging him toward the portal without breaking a sweat.

"NO! NOOOOO!" Nyalen screamed, his heels dragging uselessly across the stone floor as tears streamed down his face. "PLEASE, EVIL OVERLORD! LEAVE ME DEAD! I PREFER PURGATORY! NOT THE BLEACH! NOT THE BLEA—"

The portal snapped shut behind them with a soft pop, abruptly cutting off the desperate screams of the new necro-corporate intern.

Mordecai was left entirely alone in the cold dungeon once more. He let out a long, heavy sigh of relief, savoring the absolute silence.

"Good," Kaito muttered, rolling his shoulders. "I lost five minutes of my life to that nonsense, but at least I satisfied those idiots in the Higher Realms."

At that exact moment, the massive golden interface of the Moderators reappeared in front of him, flashing insistently.

[MESSAGE FROM THE MODERATORS OF THE HIGHER REALMS: "Excellent work with the tutorial, CEO Mordecai! Our viewers absolutely love Nyalen, the Traumatized Intern!"]

Mordecai frowned. "Tutorial?"

[However, a commentator with a Divine-Tier Donation has submitted a specific request.]

[HIGHLIGHTED COMMENT: "Do I smell an abyssal trap incoming? A maiden hearted demon? Or perhaps a CEO boss lady type demoness... Ooooh, or a maid. We don't have one of those yet." - Anonymous VIP User]

Mordecai felt a freezing chill violently run up his spine. He slowly turned his head to look back at the surgical cart.

Resting innocently on the cold metal were the remaining "unused ingredients."

The [S-Rank Boss Core] and the [Heart of the Abyssal Demon Lord of Sin]. The [Crimson Blade of the Sun Emperor] and the [Orb of Ultimate Destruction].

And right next to the world-ending artifacts lay the absolute garbage: The [Coupon to Summon Demon Lord Aurora (Epic Tier)], pulsing with an embarrassing pink aura. The [Legendary Rotten Dragon Egg], which seemed to be vibrating and smelling worse by the second. And the [Heroic Bra], glowing with an entirely misplaced divine light.

[MAIN QUEST UPDATED: Create the Supreme Demoness Maid / CEO Boss Lady requested by the audience! The true act of Necromancy begins now!]

[BONUS QUEST: Create as many waifus as possible.]

[REWARD: 1,000,000 EXP, NEW SKILLS, PLOT ARMOR, POSSIBILITY TO FAST TRAVEL.]

Mordecai stared at the magical underwear, the apocalyptic orbs, and the rotten egg. His purple eye developed a severe, uncontrollable twitch. "No. No, please. I would rather face the Demon King. I would rather fight Nick in hand-to-hand combat. Do not make me create a Maid using dirty laundry I found in a dungeon."

But the Higher Realms were not listening, and the Necromancer's shadows had already begun to rise on their own, preparing for the second, truly terrifying act of creation.