New Life As A Level 0 Undead Mage

A chill breeze blew past him, lifting Mat's black garbs into air as he slowly walked out into a larger clearing along the river shore. He carried his fish in the pail he'd constructed, now filled almost three-fourth of its way up to the brim. The pail was just barely large enough to fit the creature's length.

Finding the open area suitable—especially the large patches of grass-less ground—Mat sat down his pail on a new rock, and pulled out the tome of wisdom. The name triggered him again, like he'd looked at it for the first time.

He carefully looked at the magic circle described by the old man, and started tracing it using his mana infused finger that dug lines into the moist soil.

Life Incorporation Spell, as it was, seemed to be a really complicated spell from how it worked, and from how the old man described it. Considering the result it was supposed to provide, it made sense to Mat why it would be so difficult. Thankfully he had an expert on his side.

Mat carefully drew a circle, about six feet in diameter. The diagram in the book indicated that he had to draw two circles that were roughly concentric, the inner one slightly larger than his height in diameter. Once done with the circles, Mat moved ahead to the next step, drawing tens of weird symbols connecting the outer and the inner circle.

The old man didn't explain what those symbols meant, but he did write that they were meant to work as a storage spell that would gradually feed magical energy to the inner circle.

Next thing he needed to do was draw a pentagram in the inner circle, and define the natural elemental symbols the spell needed. First were the key methods that were always present in an organic living being of size larger than one inch. Mulna: The Method of Mind; Solice: The Method of Soul; and Bulsa: The Method of Body; all written in the top left partition, top central triangle, and top right partition of the inner circle's pentagram respectively.

Then, on the second level, he only needed to fill the very central pentagon with Holy, the divine element of holiness and true life. Below the pentagon's level, Sky and Earth respectively filled the bottom two triangles of the pentagram. Below the skewed pentagram was another, smaller pentagram inscribed in an even smaller circle which only had the element of Heaven written on it; the smaller pentagram and the circle were nestled between two last symbols… Divinia and Forcera, the supposed divine force of the world which powered the living.

The old man's notes explained the meaning of these symbols in little detail, only going over the high level concept of their application, and telling him to just 'do as told' in the book.

What are you, some grade school teacher too tired of his wife's complaints so you don't even give kids time of your day to explain them basic concepts? Mat lampooned, certainly frustrated at such artless behaviour.

Shaking his head, he cleared his thoughts and focused back on the spell. The next step was to make use of the clean water and the fresh blood...

He had thought about the fish while he was working on the spell, and decided that its fate was to be his lunch on the first day in this new world. I wonder if boiled fish actually tastes like potatoes..

Mat almost salivated at the thought, but held himself. He had to get a body first, only then could he eat. As he was right now, something inexplicable in his heart told him that he couldn't eat food. Of course he didn't need it to stay alive. Alive, if he was alive in the first place. But delicacies were a different thing. If humanity ate only to survive, there would not be any culinary cultures across the world's continents, would there now?

Mat walked over to his pail of water, and carried it closer to the river stream. He gently put it down and focused on looking for stones he could find on the shore. He planned to make another little pond to keep the fish in, once he butchered it for blood and food. Picking up relatively small stones in the mountain brook, he made another circular area segregated from the rest of the river, and let the water flow carry away the dust he'd disturbed in the process. He also made sure to carefully wash his muddied finger in the water, since he'd be using it to clean the fish.

Finding everything ready, Mat carefully pulled out the fish from the pail, and dropped it in the little pond. Then he made sure to throw out the previous water in the pail, and refill it with fresh water from the river, only to doubly clean it by flushing it with his mana. When the water was purified, Mat fished out the fish from the little pond, closed his eyes and muttered in a prayer, "May you rest in piece. Thank you for offering your life to my aid."

He then enforced his fingers with mana, and put the fish's neck against a river stone. He closed his eyes and twisted them in a fluid, sudden motion, and heard a crack.

Quickly turning to his pail, Mat poured out all and any amount of fresh blood that flowed out of the creature's neck, after which he dropped it in the pond, to let it stay safe and be washed by the river as he worked on the spell.

As far as Mat had learned from the notes, the next step was quite simple, with little complications. Lifting up the pail of water, Mat walked to where he'd readied the magic circle—barely ten feet away from the river shore. The crimson blood swirled in the water, dissolving and fusing along with it, giving the water a sanguine hew.

Mat carefully walked along the edge of the outer circle and filled its shallow groove with the lively water. Once he'd made a full circle, Mat poured the water along the channels in the area between the outer and the inner circle, which connected the magic circuits of them both. As for the inner circle's pentagram, he didn't need to fill those channels. According to the old man's descriptions, he just needed to randomly—albeit uniformly—sprinkle the water inside the circle, and that should suffice; so when he'd covered both the inner and outer circle's circumferences, Mat was left with few handfuls of the water.

He carefully sat the pail down—on the border of the outer circle—and splashed water inside by filling it in his palms. Although he was doing it all as instructed on the outside, inside he was exclaiming at the weird sort of ritual. What kind of magic was this? Am I a primitive farmer irrigating his field in time of scarcity?

Not letting the thoughts get to him, Mat emptied the pail, and set it aside. He then stood at one end edge of the circle, and pressed his fingers onto the boundary, letting his mana flow out. It took a little effort in the beginning, but once it started, the circle started absorb his mana on its own.

He wasn't sure how much it would need, or how much it would take. Mat was half worried that it would suck him dry, and he might just die in a fruitless effort to gain an organic body, but he quickly pushed those thoughts to the back of his head. After all, he'd double, in fact, triple checked to make sure that the figures and circuit channels were all just like the old man had described, and there was no anomaly. Maybe he'd be more confident if he'd done this sort of thing before though…

Taking a deep breath, Mat stood there for several minutes as the flow of mana around him directed itself towards the circle, and the temperature of the air slowly dropped. Even without a body, he could feel the gradual chill the air had gained, but he chose to ignore it and focus on the task at hand.

In a few more minutes, the circle was glowing blue that had slowly darkened to oceanic, and the mana it was siphoning off of him gradually died down, until it stopped completely. It is filled, I guess?

Mat assured himself, and started shedding off his clothes, which were mostly just glorified blankets.. and the armour underneath that. He put the clothes on the ground first, after which he placed his pauldrons, and the arm part of the armour on it.. whatever it was called, Mat didn't know. He wasn't so well versed in medieval armoury knowledge. Then he removed his chest plate, and rest of the armour, placed it all on the cloth and wrapped it around the cluster of magical iron.

Feeling ready, he carefully walked inside the inner circle, and laid down in the centre. It was about a foot longer than him in diameter, so it fit him easily. Laying there, he shifted his fingers to find the circumference of the inner circle, and filled it with his magical energy until he felt a response come from the circle. The mana circuits meant to be triggered from the inside connected with the already ready outer circle, and the spell activated.

…

Year 533, Third Epoch, Noxville County, Kingdom of Gothricia

In the verdant forests of Duskendale, River Nyx swept downhill through numerous valleys of grey and black stone, flowing a history defining course that marked the beginning and the end of numerous civilisations along its shores.

In a little clearing in the woods right outside the farmlands of Duskendale, a disturbance occurred in the surroundings as hundreds of birds cried and flew away from the area in panic.

In the centre of the clearing, a little distance away from the river's shore, a vortex of formless energy surged, converging into a little white dot. As the surrounding ambient mana flowed, the dot grew in size and affected the nature around it. If anyone were to look carefully beyond the magical lights, they would barely be able to notice a relatively short, 4 feet long, bony white silhouette lying right below the centre of the growing dot.

As the mana in the air surrounded the area around the skeleton, natural elements felt its effects. The winds blew at haphazard paces, in no particular direction; humidity of the air dropped drastically, the water from the river vaporising quickly to cover for it; the life force of the surrounding vegetation progressively decreased, siphoning off and getting sucked into the expanding vortex of various energies that kept growing in size. The grass and the plants surrounding the area gradually withered and died, leaving only death behind.

The energies mixed for several minutes into the vortex, until the effects slowly died down from outside-in, and the focal point of them expanded all around the skeleton—that laid in the centre—in the shape of a smaller circle. The myriad coloured lights now blanketed the caricature that lay there, and were being slowly absorbed into it!

Suddenly, a gleaming sheen appeared on the old, rough, and dusty bones of the little body, and they were seemingly revitalised! In a moment, a layer of red flesh, blood vessels, and muscles originated from the abdomen of the body—where the original focal point of the energies had been—and expanded outwards across and along the body's length. Just as the layer seemed to have reached all over the person's lengths and breadths, another layer, more the colour of yellow and white expanded from the same point, reaching all the areas, covering some in a thicker, and others in a thinner coat.

As the layers of fat seemed to have settled, a pale layer of skin started forming all over the body in patches, although the largest patch still began from the organism's abdomen, as if that was the centre of all its magical prowess. Along with the skin came little tiny, but insurmountable amounts of black hair, most thin, but some thicker, longer, and more defined in certain areas.

In the duration of several minutes, the skeleton that looked decayed like it had died many years ago, suddenly was covered in new flesh and blood! As the last of the magical energy faded, the ground revealed itself to be cratered in a dead, withered, and gloomy depth, surrounded the sleeping body of a pale looking, young adolescent.

Suddenly, a heart beat rang out in the air, vibrating it at an insignificant amplitude, and the boy sat up abruptly, his eyes looking around in wonder and astonishment!