The Undead Titans’ recollections of what happened after the【Divine Spear of Ice】Mikhail joined the attack on Talosheim were full of holes; they had never known the exact details up until now.
These were the events of what happened when they were killed, what happened before they became Undead and what happened right after that.
They only knew the historical facts, such as that Talosheim had fallen, that the heroes had been defeated and that Mikhail had attempted to destroy the goddess Vida’s treasure that existed below the royal castle but was heavily wounded by Vida’s legacy, the guardian Dragon Golem, and forced to retreat back to the Mirg shield-nation.
『I… Jeena, Zandia-jouchan and I, the three of us, ambushed that bastard in the audience chamber. The Adventurers’ Guild branch that had been built in Talosheim back then told me that I was an A-class adventurer. Jeena was promoted to A-class before the war, and though Zandia-jouchan was still B-class, it was said that she would definitely become an S-class adventurer in the future. Even though that guy had a legendary-class Magic Item, he was an A-class adventurer, just like me. I thought we could do it.』(Borkus)
Two A-class adventurers and a B-class adventurer, a total of three people, fought a single A-class adventurer. The odds were clearly in the favor of the former, and they should have succeeded in defending the chamber.
But Borkus continued speaking.
『In the end, things turned out as you know. I was called the【Sword King.】I had no intention of losing. I received supportive spells from the other two, and with this magic sword, I used my signature move【Dragon Slayer】to try and defeat him. But my magic sword… The magic sword that took the head of a Dragon in one attack was smashed by his spear. Damn it, how dare you – I shouted something like that as I tried to swing a punch at him. But I couldn’t. Heheh, it’s no big deal, I just lost my dominant arm and my magic sword together.』(Borkus)
Adventurers are divided into classes from G to S. This isn’t based purely on fighting strength; adventurers’ success rate in completing requests and their normal conduct are also taken into consideration, and Jobs and possessed skills can have an effect as well. However, there are no overwhelming differences in strength between two adventurers of the same class.
But at that time, Borkus had learned the hard way that the A-class and S-class are exceptions to that rule.
The A-class is the realm of extraordinary people. Something like slaying a Dragon was nothing to them. But large differences in power could exist between A-class adventurers.
People of the B-class are beyond ordinary people but aren’t quite extraordinary. An ordinary person with extraordinary qualities, just a little beyond those of the B-class. That is what the【Saint】Jeena was.
Undoubtedly an【extraordinary person】and a hero, but still an extraordinary【person】in the end, unable to break free of the restrictions of being a person. Falling short of being one of the inhuman figures in myths that were said to be able to reach the domain of the gods who fought against the Demon King’s evil gods. That is what the【Sword King】Borkus was.
And Mikhail was a truly inhuman individual; an A-class adventurer possessing powers worthy of the S-class.
『Because of that, I ended up kissing the floor. And the next thing I knew, I had become an Undead. Then I turned around, and Zandia-jouchan was there. Only one part of her.』
With these words, Borkus pushed open the door of the audience chamber that he had guarded for two hundred years.
Chilling, cold air came from beyond the door.
There wasn’t a single ray of light in the audience chamber, but with their【Dark Vision】, Vandalieu and Nuaza could see inside, clear as day.
The first thing they saw in the audience chamber was a hole, and a pillar of ice covering it. This hole was likely the entrance of the passage that led to the goddess’s treasure beneath the castle.
And frozen inside the pillar of ice was a severed wrist that seemed to belong to a woman judging from how thin… judging from its shape.
「This is…! I had always thought that we had never seen their remains during these two hundred years because you had buried them, Borkus-dono. But this, could it be…!」(Nuaza)
『That’s how it is. Their dead bodies are probably on the other side of this annoying block of ice. Judging from the size of this hand, it’s probably Zandia-jouchan’s. There’s no doubt that she kept fighting that bastard even after I got killed and chased him underground with Jeena, even after losing her hand. And so I’m sure she was killed on the other side of this ice.』(Borkus)
The magical spear, the legendary-class Magic Item that was the origin of Mikhail’s Title, contained powerful ice Mana. It was said to be able to freeze its enemies’ souls, trapping them for eternity.
『I don’t know what was on the other side of this ice. All I know is that there’s no way to melt it. Even if I try to smash it, I can’t make a single crack on it, and pouring oil on it and setting fire to it doesn’t even leave a single scorch-mark. So, can you melt this ice?』(Borkus)
「I can melt it.」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu nodded immediately. He had been examining it while Borkus and Nuaza were talking, and he could definitely feel Mana in the ice.
It seemed strangely different to a curse, but it was similar. If he extinguished the Mana, it was likely that the ice would melt in an instant and open up the entrance leading underground.
『I see. Then please do it. I don’t know if their bodies have become Undead on the other side of this ice, and even if they have, they might have lost their sanity. But I’ll never feel at ease until I say something to apologize to them.』(Borkus)
「I understand.」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu released death-attribute Mana that absorbed other Mana, and the ice began melting right before their eyes, as if it were being exposed to some extreme heat.
In a matter of minutes, Zandia’s hand had been freed and the passage underground had been opened.
「What do you think, Holy Son?」(Nuaza)
「… I don’t see any shadows that might be their spirits. Please wait a moment; I’m going to see if I can figure something out by looking at this hand.」(Vandalieu)
『Hmm? Is this that forensic science thing? I heard that Zakkart had been aiming for that occupation in his original world.』(Borkus)
Apparently the hero Zakkart had been striving to become a forensic scientist when he lived on Earth. He seemed to have been quite the intellectual type.
「No, this is something more occult.」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu raised Zandia’s hand whose brown skin had received much love from the sun, though it was now as cold as ice.
『It would probably be bad if I were to say it’s huge or heavy.』(Vandalieu)
The hand and wrist of the【Tiny Genius】was large.
This was not because Vandalieu was an infant, but simply because Zandia had been a large person.
Of course, as her Title suggested, she was probably small. For a Titan, that is.
The average height for an adult Titan was 2.7m for men and 2.5m for women. It was likely that Zandia was still a young girl, judging from the fact that Borkus called her「jouchan」, but wouldn’t she still be over two meters tall?
So it was difficult for Vandalieu to say that it was thin or small.
『Well, leaving that aside, let’s try to find any residual thoughts.』(Vandalieu)
Death-attribute magic allowed Vandalieu to read a person’s residual thoughts from a part of their dead body. But he could only read such thoughts from corpses, and even if he could read them they often made no sense, he hadn’t had many opportunities to use this ability up until now.
Vandalieu pressed his forehead against Zandia’s cold palm and closed his eyes.
He saw a man thrusting a distinctly sharp spear. Behind him was another man collapsed onto the ground, covered in blood and still clutching the handle of a broken sword.
Zandia collapsed. She was stabbed repeatedly by the spear, as if judgement was being brought down upon her. In the corner of her eyes, she saw another brown-skinned woman who had already been defeated before her. And just before her vision turned dark, she saw a man descending underground.
The man with the spear was Mikhail, while the defeated man covered in blood was Borkus. The other woman was likely to be Jeena.
However, if these residual thoughts were correct, Zandia and Jeena had died here in the audience chamber after Borkus was killed. They hadn’t descended into the underground passage beyond the ice as Borkus thought they did.
But then why were their bodies not here? Even if one assumed that their bodies weren’t trapped in the ice other than this one wrist and thus weren’t preserved, at least their bones should have remained. And Borkus had been revived as a Titan Zombie long before his body turned into just a skeleton. There was no way that he wouldn’t have noticed Zandia and Jeena’s bodies if they had been present.
Had someone taken them away? Had they been disposed of in a way that didn’t even leave the bones? But then why had this wrist and, more importantly, Borkus’s body been left alone?
… Contemplating on his own would yield Vandalieu no answers.
「I saw in the residual memories that the two of them died before Mikhail went underground.」(Vandalieu)
『What?! What do you mean?! So those two aren’t underground?! It’s true that there were no signs of them coming out, but…』(Borkus)
「Then where could the two of them be?!」(Nuaza)
Borkus and Nuaza, who had been peering into the hole leading underground as if expecting Jeena and Zandia to emerge from it, turned around in surprise. But Vandalieu’s reply was,「Who knows? I have no idea.」
「What I saw were the residual memories at the moment that this wrist was cut off. She might have been confused at the moment that this happened, or maybe what I saw isn’t what actually happened, but an envisioned, hopeless future that burned itself into her mind. And even if what I saw is what really happened, it’s still possible that they got up after that and chased after Mikhail.」(Vandalieu)
『So in other words, we won’t know until we go down and have a look.』(Borkus)
「Yes. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know what might be beyond this point –」(Vandalieu)
『No idea. It’s a sacred place, after all.』(Borkus)
「As I thought.」(Vandalieu)
「However, we have no choice but to descend into it to find out what happened. Let us go, Borkus-dono, Holy Son.」(Nuaza)
It seemed that there would be no problem entering the passage below the castle, even though it was a sacred place. Was that because it no longer mattered after Mikhail had set foot into it, or because Vandalieu was the Holy Son?
Peering down into the hole, Vandalieu saw rods of stone protruding from the wall, forming a spiral staircase.
With a Lemure leading the way, Vandalieu, Nuaza and Borkus descended the spiral staircase. At the bottom, there was a passageway that somehow seemed like it was part of a temple.
There were no special traps or trials waiting to hinder them. It was impossible to say whether this was because the goddess had utmost confidence in the Dragon Golem, or because Mikhail had already destroyed every obstruction besides the Dragon Golem.
However, they were surprised to see that there was a door, frozen solid in ice.
「The story I heard is that Mikhail was heavily wounded and barely escaped with his life, but could it be that he actually wasn’t so desperate?」(Vandalieu)
To think that he would seal off the passage with ice in the middle of escaping.
Even as Vandalieu said that, he drained the Mana out of the ice to melt it. It wasn’t very difficult work, but he would grow tired of it if he were to have to repeat it dozens of times.
「He might have been worried that the magic spear that he left behind would be stolen, or someone would finish off the Dragon Golem that he had half-destroyed and take the treasure.」(Vandalieu)
『Hmm? Now that I think about it, this ice and the ice that was in the audience chamber were made when that bastard ran away, wasn’t it? How did he make it? Didn’t he throw his spear at the Dragon Golem and run away?』(Borkus)
「Ah, now that you mention it…」(Vandalieu)
The ice that Vandalieu was melting right now was magic ice that wouldn’t melt even if exposed to the red-hot hellfire. It was difficult to imagine that it had been created through a spell of one of the normal attributes of magic.
And this magic ice was something that could only have been created with the magic spear that had been the Mirg shield-nation’s national treasure.
So then how had Mikhail, who had lost his spear and made an escape, sealed this door and the entrance to the passage in magic ice?
『I know it’s strange for me to say this considering that I never noticed this for two hundred years, but isn’t that strange? What does this mean?』(Borkus)
「What do you think of the theory that this ice was not created through the power if the magic spear, but is the product of a special spell that Mikhail devised himself?」(Nuaza)
「Or maybe the owner of the spear can freely pass through the ice, and he simply created it from the other side to make sure his enemy didn’t follow him and then ran through it?」(Vandalieu)
Nuaza and Vandalieu came up with some theories, but they didn’t seem to fit.
「In any case, the ice has melted, so let us continue. Incidentally, I do not see the spirits of those two.」(Vandalieu)
『Yeah. I’m sure they’ve probably gone off somewhere.』(Borkus)
Leaving the theories and guesswork aside, the three of them continued on. Their objective wasn’t to find out what had really happened back then, but to find the Undead Zandia and Jeena or their corpses and spirits.
There was no end to the questions that piqued their curiosity, but thinking about them could come later.
『By the way, have you taken a liking to that?』(Borkus)
Borkus asked a question as he looked down at Vandalieu, who was clutching Zandia’s wrist in both arms.
「Rather than having taken a liking to it… It would have been bad to just leave it up there.」(Vandalieu)
He couldn’t stand the thought of abandoning it on the floor that was dirty with dust and whatever else, and Borkus and Nuaza had shown no signs of interest in taking it, so he had simply stopped its decomposition and brought it with him. There wasn’t any particular meaning to it.
But Borkus didn’t stop talking.
『So you don’t like it?』(Borkus)
Vandalieu came to the realization that only yes and no were the acceptable answers, so he turned his gaze towards Zandia’s hand and examined it.
The brown skin was smooth and it was a graceful-looking hand at first glance, but there were several calluses on it. They were certainly from Zandia holding a staff in her hands as she fought. The sweet fragrance of blood coming from the severed wrist tickled his nose, even after two hundred years.
「If I had to say whether I like it or not, I’d say I like it, I suppose.」(Vandalieu)
『You don’t like the part around the wrist? She was always complaining that it was too thick or its shape wasn’t nice.』(Borkus)
「Thick? Shape?」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu looked at the wrist again, but… even if it were thick or unattractive in shape, there was no way for Vandalieu to tell. To begin with, the size was too different from what he was used to.
「It doesn’t bother me.」(Vandalieu)
『Ooh, is that so, Jouchan liked older men, but she’d be happy to hear you say that! Well then, take good care of her.』(Borkus)
「… I’m sorry?*」(Vandalieu)
What was this guy talking about?
『Ooh, I’m happy to hear such a good response.』(Borkus)
「No, that’s not what I meant, I’m asking you a question in return. What do you mean, take good care of her?」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu got the feeling that he’d had this conversation before. Feeling a sensation of déjà vu, he looked at Borkus, asking for an explanation.
TLN*: This isn’t the first time this misunderstanding has occurred; this happened in chapter 16 so I’ll copy-paste the TLN from there.
This is “はい？/hai?” in the raw. This is sometimes used to ask the person to repeat what they said in a confused kind of way, so I’ve translated this to “I’m sorry?” However, “はい/hai” also translates to “yes” which has led to this misunderstanding.
『Well, see, you still don’t see their bodies or spirits even after coming all this way, do you? I’d be happy if they somehow miraculously made it out alive, but it’s possible that somebody somewhere just carried their bodies out of here.』(Borkus)
The two of them were heroes, and Zandia was the Second Princess. It was definitely possible that the Mirg shield-nation had taken their bodies back to put their heads on display. Vandalieu hadn’t heard such stories from Kachia, but it was possible that stories about the remains of enemies being put on display simply hadn’t been passed down to the modern age.
『Which means, you’re going to find their bodies for me, right?』(Borkus)
「… Well, I think that will take a considerable amount of time. I don’t plan to return to the Mirg shield-nation for a while.」(Vandalieu)
Borkus’s request had been to release the two of them from the magic ice. Since Vandalieu had indeed melted all the ice, he had the feeling that he could consider the request complete, but Borkus’s eyes were saying,「I’m not satisfied with that.」
And since retrieving the corpses of the two heroes from the Mirg shield-nation didn’t seem like a bad idea, Vandalieu agreed to it. The end of the remaining half of Borkus’s lips rose in a smile.
『Yeah, I’m fine with that. With that in mind, I think an extra reward would be appropriate. So once you get Jouchan’s and Jeena’s corpses back, you can make them yours.』
「I’m sorry?! Are you telling me to turn them into Undead?!」(Vandalieu)
Vandalieu’s surprised voice echoed against the walls of the passageway. However, he was the only one who was surprised by this.
「Oh, what a wonderful idea. I would expect nothing less of you, Borkus-dono.」(Nuaza)
Nuaza was supposed to be a priest, even though he was just an apprentice. But for some reason, he was trembling with emotion. There was no doubt that tears would be coming from his eyes if his body still had water left in it.
「Zandia-sama is Second Princess of Talosheim, and Jeena-sama is the leader of the Church of Vida. A marital union between them and the Prophesized Holy Son will surely bring prosperity and glory to us as foretold!」(Nuaza)
「Err, aren’t you mistaking this with a political marriage or something?」(Vandalieu)
There was a high probability that both of them were already dead, and Vandalieu was currently holding Zandia’s severed hand.
『There’s no problem, right? That hand is the left hand, too.』(Borkus)
「Ooh, even an exchange of rings would be possible.」(Nuaza)
「It might be possible, but what are you trying to say?」(Vandalieu)
That he could marry them? Vandalieu remembered that there had indeed been a culture in Japan, though only for certain families, where unmarried and widowed relatives would be forced to marry. Had Zakkart introduced that culture to this world?
But Nuaza wouldn’t listen.
「If Jeena-sama and Zandia-sama could become companions of the Holy Son and one day help defeat the Church of Alda and its followers, I am sure that they would glad to be revived as Undead.」(Nuaza)
『Hahaha, then it’s a rematch between the three of us and the Mirg shield-nation!』(Borkus)
「Wait, wait, you’ve got a lot of things mixed up. Even if the goddess’s prophecy is true, the prophecy of the Vampire founder has nothing to do with me.」(Vandalieu)
Could it be that because their ears were so high up, these two weren’t able to hear the words spoken by a child?
「What I was trying to ask is, do you not consider that to be desecration of the dead, or tainting of the heroes’ honor?」(Vandalieu)
Even if Vandalieu ignored the values of Alda, the God of Law and Fate, on Earth and Origin there had been a strong notion that reviving dead people as Undead would be defiling them, an act against the will god.
There were no actual Undead on Earth, but there were plenty of myths, legends and folklore where they were considered a religious taboo.
The same applied in fiction. There were countless works where attempts to revive the dead not only failed, but also brought ruin upon the one who was trying to revive them. Even when a villain said to the protagonist,「I’ll bring back the people most important to you」, the protagonist might give it some serious thought but always push that temptation aside in the end, looking towards the future.
The protagonist would never reply,「Are you serious?! Please do!」
Since magic and Undead did exist in Origin, that trend was even stronger. Creating Undead was outlawed; even experimenting with them was considered a crime.
The researchers of the military nation who had treated Vandalieu as an experimental animal had a broken sense of ethics in that regard.
And in reality, Vandalieu had no hesitation in creating Undead. If that wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t be trying to revive his mother, nor would he have created Bone Man and the other Undead.
However, he hadn’t forgotten that other people might dislike the idea of creating Undead.
That was why he had thought that the Nuaza, who had been a priest, and Borkus, who had been Jeena and Zandia’s companion while they were alive, would be against raising them as Undead.
Vandalieu hadn’t even thought about doing so because raising them as Undead against their will would worsen his relationships with Nuaza and Borkus. Though he would have recruited them if they were already Undead.
And so he was surprised as Borkus said the exact opposite, and Nuaza not only agreed with him, but happily recommended that he do so.
『Oi oi, just what are you trying to say about Undead?』(Borkus)
「That’s right. The goddess herself raised the fallen hero Zakkart as an Undead, did she not?」(Nuaza)
「Ah… Now that you mention it, you’re right.」(Vandalieu)
But it was true that this was told in the myths. It seemed that the goddess Vida was open-minded towards Undead… though the followers of Vida here were Undead themselves; there was no way of knowing how open-minded Vida’s living followers would be.
Well, Vandalieu would just have to carefully ascertain these kinds of things after he left Talosheim and entered human society.
「Well, if you’re fine with it then I don’t have any complaints.」(Vandalieu)
If not only the【Sword King】, but the【Saint】and【Tiny Genius】were to become his allies as Undead, he could ask for nothing more. As long as they themselves were happy to do so, Vandalieu had no reason to refuse them.
『See, doesn’t it motivate you when you think about how you can get some nice women if you put some effort in? That’s just how men are.』(Borkus)
「I’m not even three years old, though.」(Vandalieu)
『I suppose you could say that whether you’re three years old or a hundred, your soul stays the same.』(Borkus)
「… That’s different from the saying that I know.」(Vandalieu)
「Don’t say that. The two of them were both very beautiful individuals, Holy Son.」(Nuaza)
No matter how beautiful they were, there was a high chance that there was nothing left of them but bones now.
Vandalieu thought of pointing this out, but he knew that anything he said to these two would be pointless, so he decided to keep quiet.
It is said that heroes enjoy sensual pleasures, but could pale colors still be considered sensual?
TLN: First of all, there’s actually a Japanese phrase that implies that heroes like sex, something like “great men are great lovers”. The kanji/word meaning “color” can also have a sexual/sensual meaning and that’s the word used in the phrase, literally “heroes like colors”. The second part of the line is a play on those words, as in, “Vandalieu is pale-colored, but could he still be considered sensual?” I could be misunderstanding something, but this is about as well as I can understand/explain it. I’m regretting spending so much time translating/figuring out such an unimportant line…
As they quietly proceeded through the passage, they came across a door that was enormous even for a Titan like Borkus. Of course, it was sealed off by ice, but one part of the door had crumbled and they could see what was beyond it through the ice.
『That’s the Dragon Golem, huh. As to be expected from something that was able to chase that monster away, even though it only managed to wound him. I’m getting chills just looking at it.』(Borkus)
On the other side of the door was a space so vast that the audience chamber above them would fit inside it dozens of times over. There was an enormous Dragon made of iron standing in its center.
At a glance through the ice, it looked pitiful. Its once-magnificent head and half of its supple, whip-like tail now lay broken on the floor as nothing but lumps of metal. Its right arm was broken off as if it had been gouged out from its shoulder, and there was a spear protruding from the center of its chest.
There were deep cracks all over its body; it looked as if it would collapse at any moment.
「Yes, we should give up on going inside. If I melt this ice, we’re going to die.」(Vandalieu)
However, that Golem was still functioning. And that almost-destroyed Golem was capable of killing all three of them.
If Vandalieu melted the ice on the door, he would die. His【Danger Sense: Death】was telling him that.
「What is the likelihood that the two of them are beyond this point?」(Nuaza)
「If they turned into Undead, I think that the Golem would have destroyed them.」(Vandalieu)
『If they’re corpses, they might be inside the ice.』(Borkus)
It seemed unlikely that the almost-destroyed Golem wouldn’t attack Titans who had become Undead, and because the battle between it and Mikhail had occurred within this chamber, there was ice everywhere inside. The corpses of Zandia and Jeena could be inside any of those masses of ice.
「Has there ever been a known method of entering this place without being attacked by that Golem?」(Vandalieu)
「If I recall, I believe the King knew of a way, but…」(Nuaza)
Nuaza shook his head. It seemed that the King had either never become an Undead, or had returned to dust in the two hundred years that had passed since the war.
Even Vandalieu couldn’t talk with the dead if their spirits didn’t exist.
「Well then, let’s postpone searching this room until we’ve become strong enough to defeat that Golem.」(Vandalieu)
『Right. It’d be impossible for me as well, since I’ve lost my dominant arm and my magic sword.』(Borkus)
Even if they were to defeat the golem, there was a high chance that the corpses of those two wouldn’t be inside the chamber. But if they could confirm whether they were there or not, then they could think of the next place to look.
『Well, if their bodies aren’t there, we could use the goddess’s treasure to make them in advance. As for their souls, since you’re a Spiritualist, you’ll be able to summon them using Necromancy, right?』(Borkus)
「I’m not a Spiritualist, so summoning spirits that I’ve never seen before would be impossible, even with Necromancy. By the way –」(Vandalieu)
「Is that really true?! You seemed intimate with Undead like us, so I had believed that you possessed the Spiritualist Job, Holy Son!」(Nuaza)
『Yeah, that’s a real surprise. Then how come you can see spirits and read Jouchan’s memories from her hand?』(Borkus)
「More importantly! … What did you mean by making their corpses with the goddess’s treasure?」(Vandalieu)
『What did we mean, you say… The goddess Vida’s treasure is an incomplete device that resurrects the dead, so what else could we mean?』(Borkus)
Long ago, the goddess Vida had attempted to revive the dead hero Zakkart in order to give birth to the race of Vampires. However, even though she was the goddess who governed life itself, it wasn’t easy to bring the dead back to life.
The goddess performed a significant amount of trial and error for this purpose. The treasure that was here, below the city of Talosheim, was the result of one of those experiments.
She used this resurrection device to try to build a new body and bring back Zakkart with the same appearance that he had while he was alive. But though the body was successfully created, the soulless body was nothing more than a mass of meat, unable to receive Vida’s power.
The only thing that this device was capable of was creating an unwounded corpse of the person that one wished to resurrect. Coming to this conclusion, the goddess sealed the device away. Even though it was incomplete, she believed that it might be of use to her children one day. She personally breathed life into a Golem to guard it so that it would not be misused by the remnants of the Demon King’s servants.
「That’s what’s on the other side of that Dragon Golem… That’s wonderful.」(Vandalieu)
A device that created an unwounded corpse of the person that one wished to resurrect.
If that was true, if Vandalieu were to place the spirit of the person inside the body created by this device, wouldn’t that be a complete resurrection?
「Nuaza, I’m fine with being the Prophesized Holy Son, so can I use that device?」(Vandalieu)
He would obtain it at any cost.
And then he would revive his mother!
“Lich” is a generic term used to refer to any Undead that is able to use the exact same magic that it was able to use while it was alive as soon as it turns into an Undead. Thus, the term refers to both mages who mastered the secrets of magic and willingly transformed themselves into Undead, and others who became Undead by coincidence while retaining their memories, abilities and Mana that are only capable of casting beginner-level magic.
Nuaza is one of the latter, an apprentice priest-warrior in life, but he has not spent all of his time since becoming Undead on training and research. As a result, his abilities are largely same as they were when he was alive.
This makes him an unusual Undead who is stronger when using weapons in physical combat, despite being a Lich.
As he has been mummified, he is covered in wrinkles and looks like an elderly person, but he was in fact a young boy in his mid-teenage years when he died. Thus, the other Undead of Talosheim sometimes refer to him as a youngster.
Incidentally, the【Masonry】skill is something he obtained after his death. After becoming an Undead, he learned the skill while spending the past two hundred years repairing the Church that had been destroyed by the Mirg shield-nation.
To increase in Rank, a Lesser Lich must possess a level 4 skill in a magic-related skill in addition to the generic level requirement.