My Dungeon Life: Rise of the Slave Harem

After taking control of the army, I started to rejuvenate the men.

“Ahhhh! Ahhhhh! It burns!” Screamed an undead soldier.

I snapped my fingers. “That’s right, healing undead kills you!”

I had already cast Refresh and a few other spells on some of the soldiers, but this was the first guy who approached me with some genuine damage. I immediately leaned on a healing spell, which only further exacerbated the situation. I stopped it in time that he didn’t die, but he was looking in worse shape. I was glad I decided to stick to Triage rather than using a blanket Group Heal on the entire army. I might have taken out my entire battalion in a single move.

I had been wondering why the battalion didn’t have any Priests in it to help keep them refreshed and healed, but I ended up with that answer immediately. It turned out that these forces couldn’t afford to have Priests, so they simply got deleted from the narrative.

How exactly did you heal someone who wasn’t alive? That was the question I was asking myself as I looked down at the ailing man while my commanders and lieutenants glanced at each other awkwardly. They weren’t suspicious. It was more like they thought their general was acting weird and was trying to justify his actions in their mind. I quickly schooled my face and pushed my Mimic abilities to the max so that I acted just like the general again. This seemed to ease them.

I tried going through my skills, although I had so many at this point it was very easy to overlook something. My eyes naturally fell on the skill Steal Life, which was offered by both Monster Tamers and Dark Priests. However, where Monster Tamers could only use it on their Monsters, Dark Priests could use it on anybody.

If I stole his life, would I make him more undead, in other words, heal him? I had a feeling I would just finish the job if I even tried. Then again, I could give him life, but giving life to an undead? Wouldn’t that kill him too? In that case, what is life?

I tried to remember everything I had learned. Living creatures were made up of three different things: Mana, spirit, and body. Dungeon monsters had a corrupted form of mana called miasma. Mana and miasma didn’t get along. You could attack mana with miasma, and vice versa. However, mana could also be corrupted and turned into miasma. Then there was someone like Astria who could both use mana and miasma. I could use mana and miasma seamlessly as well, and even convert mana to miasma, although I didn’t seem to be able to do the opposite yet.

Then there was karma, which acted a lot like miasma, but in certain ways was different? It reminded me of light, which functioned as a wave or a particle depending on what you needed it for. Karma and miasma felt similar in composition, but different in implementation. Was karma just the miasmic version of spirit? As a Spiritualist, Miki could do all kinds of crazy things with the souls of the living, from talking to undead, keeping the spirit alive, blocking a person’s mana flow, and trapping their soul from Resurrection. Karma seemed to function the same way in dungeons. So… as miasma was to mana, karma seemed to be to spirit.

You could heal a person by providing them with mana for healing. Since these were creatures composed of miasma, and they were created by the dungeon, then it stood to reason that their bodies, albeit physical, were a manifestation of miasma. So, if I created miasma, and then infused it in his body…

I lifted my hand and black tendrils came out and started to touch him. It turned out to cost me a lot more mana than just tossing a White Mage spell, but I managed to heal the undead soldier. Everyone relaxed as he started to return to a healthy shade of… white.

Taking out some Water of Life for myself, which was probably holy water to the undead, I started to patch up the army. By then, they were ready to move. I began the march.