Episode 3. Black Magic, Labs, and Vampires

‘I’ve made up my mind to go, but…….’

I knew I wouldn’t die, but not literally.

I couldn’t imagine what would happen to me.

Of course, I couldn’t run away because I was scared.

It was exactly what I needed right now.

‘I’m still reluctant. I feel like I have to go to work.’

My steps grew heavier as I neared the office.

My dark magic teacher and professor at the Academy, Charon Deflen, was a mid-level professor who, although not famous, had a fairly solid support base.

His characteristic coolness and unflappable calm had been a powerful weapon in concealing his identity as a Black Mage.

But as cool as he was, he wasn’t the type of man to overlook a mistake like mine.

When I arrived at Charon’s office, I saw that the lights were on.

Luckily, he hadn’t left the office yet.

Knock.

“Professor Charon, this is Adrias Cromwell.”

I knocked on the door and waited a moment, but there was no answer.

After a few tense moments, a small voice came from the other side of the door.

“Come in.”

I cautiously opened the door.

There, a middle-aged man with black hair arranged in a ruler-accurate 5-to-5 grama was sitting at a desk, looking at a magic tablet.

The magic tablet, by the way, was a magical tool, akin to a smartphone in my world.

“……, Adrias.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Didn’t I say it was the 11th?”

“I’m sorry, I got the date wrong.”

His icy gaze slid across my body like a snake’s tongue.

An uncomfortable moment passed before he rose from his seat.

He turned and started walking toward the office.

“I don’t even want to bother with you, but you’ll have to be punished.”

“I’ll take it sweetly.”

“I want you to bring me a body from Beinhardt National Cemetery with the name Bayden on it. You have two days.”

As soon as I heard the words, I remembered the Beinhardt National Cemetery.

It would take more than a day to travel back and forth.

Still, I didn’t have the option of refusing.

The moment I refused, I would be used to replace the body.

“I understand.”

“Follow me.”

Before I could respond, he reached for a book in the study.

The books slid aside to reveal a single stack.

“Open.”

With a simple interaction of mana and the light from his ring, the crystal began to fade as it recognized its owner.

As I followed him into the crystal, I could smell all sorts of reagents and rotting corpses.

‘This is weird, even though Adrias has memories of seeing it a few times already.’

There were all kinds of corpses strewn about as if they were in a slaughterhouse.

There were beasts, monsters, humans, and even other races.

“Whoa.”

I suppressed a frown.

I followed Charon a little further in, and this time, there were more neatly arranged corpses hanging from chains.

“This should have been done yesterday, but who cares.”

Muttering to himself, Charon magically lowered one of the hanging corpses.

“What are you doing? Have you not come to your senses yet?”

Charon said to me as I stared blankly at the corpse.

My body reflexively began to gather up the unknown reagents.

It was a familiar movement.

‘This, this is it’s like this.’

As my body moved, memories came flooding back.

First, I poured a little of Mandragora’s blood onto the center floor.

Then Charon began to use his magic to build a blood circle.

‘Now, at this point…….’

Torokan’s root powder was sprinkled here and there.

He placed all the cursed objects and reagents in their proper places and…….

“euscha.”

The corpse was placed in the center and it was done.

‘How complicated was that?’

In the game, I just resurrected the corpses and summoned the undead with a single spell.

I’m already getting a headache.

Once we were ready, Charon arranged the mana and composed the formula.

As I watched the process, I turned around to an unknown gaze.

“…….”

There, in the cage, stood a skinny woman in restraints, staring at me.

Memories of Adrias flashed through my mind at the sight of her.

‘Vampire.’

Wait, Charon, did this asshole have a vampire with him?

Unlike vampires in other games and media, the Vampires of Sin are treated as one race.

As such, they don’t die from sunlight.

Instead, they are incredibly rare and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen one in a game.

‘And every time I’ve seen them, they’ve died, so I’ve retconned them.

Vampires are powerful as individuals.

Their physical strength and unique blood magic make them the perfect balance of combat.

Charon is a strong enough mid-boss, but that’s about halfway through the game.

I wondered how the current Charon was able to hold the vampire in bondage.

‘And when I killed him, there was no sign of the vampire.’

Of course, we don’t know if this space has been recreated in the game, but it was puzzling that there was no mention of vampires until after his death.

‘Did he try to create the undead with vampires and fail?’

Adrias couldn’t think of anything specific in his memory.

He had only fed the vampires once a month or so.

As Adrias worked his way through his memories, he came to a conclusion that had nothing to do with vampires.

‘So now that I think about it, I was just totally freaking out, huh?’

Adrias.

Now that I think about it, he wasn’t just talented, he was also an asshole.

In his memories, he’d learned very little from Charon, but he’d been scrubbing his backside.

I only learned the basics of command at the beginning of my time under him, but nothing after that.

Whoosh.

An awakening sound emanated from the magic circle.

The magic circle, which had been scattering an ominous red light, gradually absorbed the mana and built up its formation.

Full. Pushes.

As the light intensified, the flesh of the corpses on the ground crumbled into powder.

-Grrr.

What am I supposed to call that?

A zombie skeleton?

But the thought was cut short as the undead crumbled to the ground.

“Failed.”

Charon’s voice was calm.

With those words, Charon began scribbling in his notebook.

“Is this it?

Was this all he had called me in for?

Come to think of it, I’ve been called in for a lot less than this.

Despite the cursing I was doing, my body was actually doing its job, tidying up the dirty room.

“Adrias.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Professor ……?”

“I’m sorry, Master.”

No teaching, no teacher.

But I gave him a loyal glare, like an eager recruit.

“I’m afraid Angela hasn’t been fed in over a month.”

Angela was the name of the vampire in the cage.

“Yep. I’ll take care of that after I get organized.”

“Adrias.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you’d changed, but you’ve gotten even dumber.”

He walked out with those words.

Did he even notice I’d changed?

As I entered Adrias’s body, I changed from my original personality.

Still, he must have wondered how different I was from him.

“I’ll die sooner if I worry about that.”

I muttered to myself and continued cleaning.

I’m a nobody anyway.

The only person who cares about my changes is Charon, at best.

If that’s all Charon has to say about me, I don’t need to be reminded of Adrias’s memory every time I act out.

While I was cleaning up, I tried my hand at using Command, just in case.

The presence of a medium and the remnants of an abandoned magic circle was just what I needed.

[Basic Command: Cast Summon Skeleton].

[Warning! You currently have no summons left to cast].

Oh?

As I was about to use Command, a mana array automatically appeared in my head, as if programmed.

Once the mana was arranged, followed by the formula, the spell was triggered.

It felt like a perk for the player.

‘Isn’t this too much of a burden?’

Honestly, when I was making plans in my room, I was wondering if I should learn the basics of magic again, even for black magic.

In the long run, I was thinking of borrowing books from the library and studying on my own, but this was a relief.

‘It doesn’t change the fact that I still need to learn more.’

In general, black magic cannot be self-taught.

Not for any particular reason, but there was simply no way to learn the relevant knowledge.

In this world, black magic was taboo, so it was passed down in secret in the shadows.

If books or materials were widely available, I would try to learn myself, but there were no black magic books.

……Of course, these are the stories of ordinary people.

I had the conditions for studying on my own.

‘There are black magic books everywhere.’

My first growth plan.

It was Charon’s black magic books.

I can’t sever my ties with Charon until I’m stronger.

Then I might as well make the most of it.

These were Charon’s things that the original Adrias would never have thought to touch.

If even one of these books were to leave, there would be an uproar in the academy and across the country.

For some reason, Charon often left Adrias alone to do his own thing.

Of course, given his past behavior, I can understand his lack of caution.

I finished cleaning up and looked through the things in the lab.

Still, I could see what was there, even though it was said that it takes three years to recite the Lunar New Year.

A little use wouldn’t hurt, right?

I quickly checked out the black magic books that lined one wall of the lab.

An Introduction to Black Magic, A Basic Course for Black Mages, I Can Do It. You too!

I grabbed the most basic-looking book I could find, even though it had a slightly raggedy feel to it, unlike the books I’d seen at the Academy.

As I prepared to begin reading, an intense gaze pierced me.

“Ah.”

My eyes locked with the Vampire Angela, and I stood up, awkwardly scratching the back of my head.

‘I forgot to feed you.’

His food wasn’t much.

There was already plenty of blood on the ground, and I only needed to give him a little.

I fetched a long hose, as Adrias had remembered, dumped it into a bucket of blood, and handed it over the bars.

It wasn’t much, of course.

Just enough to keep him from starving to death?

Then a cracked voice spoke.

“You…….”

I handed over the hose and looked up, wondering if I’d misheard.

I had misheard.

But just in case, I turned to Angela and asked.

“Now, did you say that?”

She hadn’t spoken once in my memory.

It was the first time in over two years of working for Charon.

But she stood still, staring at the hose in my hand, as if trying to remember when she had spoken.

‘I’m pretty sure she said something.’

I handed her the hose from a distance, and she struggled over to it and sucked it into her mouth.

I don’t know how she got caught, but she had a great will to live.

After finishing her meal like that, I started to read the book calmly again, but I heard the sound of talking again.

“Adrias.”

I turned to find a pair of crimson eyes staring back at me.

“You’re not Adrias. Who is it?”

It wasn’t an illusion.

My skin crawled and my whole body stiffened.

But I didn’t flinch, and I spoke nonchalantly.

“I don’t know what you mean. If I’m not Adrias, who am I?”

“If you were Adrias, you’d be freaking out at the point I said it.”

“Funny, are you finally going crazy from being locked up? What do you want to say?”

“Get me out of here.”

“Huh. You want me to get you out because I’m crazy? What, is this a new way to kill myself or something? I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to die yet.”

“If you don’t let me out, I’ll tell him who you are.”

“Master? I’m sure he’ll believe you.”

“He may not believe it, but he’ll suspect it, and that’s good enough for me.”

Certainly.

If he’s been so silent all this time, it might be tempting for him to suddenly tell Charon that he doubts my identity.

“At least it’s better than letting you go and dying.”

“Are you afraid of being killed by him?”

“That’s one thing, but I can see you’re going to kill me too, so why would you let me go because I’m crazy?”

“I promise, I won’t kill you.”

Her eyes glowed red.

The glow was like the light that lures in prey.

“And I’ll kill him, too. How about that?”

“Cut the crap and suck the blood.”

I say, but I’m tempted.

If he died, this place would be all mine.

I’d have to break the bonds, of course, but that would only require me to take Charon’s ring.

“You’re going to have to let me go eventually.”

“…….”

“If I tell him who you are, do you think he’ll leave you alone? Probably not, and then you’ll have to let me go to live, even if you don’t want to. You’d be better off letting me go now, before that happens, to earn my favor.”

Normally, I would have ignored her, but she has a point.

It’s especially annoying after telling me that Charon has changed.

Eventually, I close the book, put it back, and stand in front of the grate.

“So, have you made up your mind?”

“I can’t open this cage.”

“That’s not a problem. You just need to undo these restraints.”

Undoing the restraints would also require magical dispelling.

Before I could even think about whether I could do it, I demanded an answer.

“You have to swear to me that you won’t kill me before you do that.”

“Yes, I swear.”

“No, you won’t. Swear it on your family name.”

” …… family name?”

“Don’t play games. Not until you swear to the family name.”

Despite his words, I was skeptical.

Vampires have only one family.

And they take it very seriously, and frankly, anyone would sell their family name for their life.

So I’m not sure how to verify authenticity.

“…….”

But Angela paused unexpectedly.

‘No, I mean, it’s just a verbal oath, and you’re pausing?’

To be honest, I had no intention of letting her off the hook.

I was just using it as an excuse to buy myself a little more time to think.

Angela thought about it longer than I thought she would, and finally spoke up.

“I see. In the name of Lucifer, I promise.”

-Ring!

[The condition has been met].

[An evolvable entity has been detected].

Before she could finish, a message pinged.

What the hell is this?

[Angela Lucifer’s Evolution Probability 55%]

[If you let her evolve, there are two possible branches].

[Do you want to evolve?]

Why did this pop up all of a sudden?

And I naturally chose OK.