Chapter 6

Around that time, eight-year-old Dale had three mentors.

Sepia, the Elder of the Blue Magic Tower, who taught water-element magic. Black Duke, the Lord of the Black Magic Tower who taught dark-element magic, and Dale’s father. Finally…

Hot breath escaped into the frosty, chilly dawn air.

Whoosh!

Dale swung his wooden sword on the spacious training ground prepared for the knights of the Duke’s castle. And parrying that wooden sword was Sir Helmut Blackbear, leader of the Night Raven Knights, the direct command of the Saxon Duke’s household.

The moment Dale swung his wooden sword, Sir Helmut effortlessly applied force to parry it.

Right then.

Dale’s sword, swung toward Sir Helmut’s wooden sword, coiled around it like a serpent and deflected it outward from the center. The art of yielding to overcome strength.

‘Hoo!’

But he, counted among the continent’s Seven Knights, would never fall for such a simple trap. That said, he didn’t need to exert his full strength either.

Lord Helmut deliberately pretended to fall into Dale’s trap, letting go of the sword in his hand.

“Haha, young master! Not bad!”

And as he watched the wooden sword he’d been holding spin round and round in the air, he threw his hands up and laughed heartily.

“Oh, come on, you let me win on purpose.”

Upon hearing Dale’s words, Lord Helmut swallowed hard for a moment.

“…It is truly lamentable that the young master has chosen the path of dark magic.”

With his wife Elena’s consent, the Black Duke formally accepted Dale as his disciple. That was just a short while ago. Dale was, after all, the son of the Black Mage Tower Lord before he was the eldest son of the Duke’s household. Therefore, it was an inevitable conclusion that Dale would walk the path of black magic, guided by his father.

However, to Helmut, the continent’s Seven Swordsman, Dale’s swordsmanship talent was anything but ordinary.

The overwhelming talent he had sensed when sparring with the legendary knight, the Divine Sword, Sir Bader… That very spark of talent was now emanating from the blade of this child, barely eight years old.

Sir Badel, the Divine Sword, who had once been defeated by the ‘Hero’… A raw gem that might rival the sword talent he possessed.

But what good is regret? This child already has the continent’s foremost mage by his side, nurturing magical talent worthy of such a mentor.

‘Why did heaven bestow such conflicting talents upon a single body?’

Though he teaches swordsmanship, hoping that even if they become mages, they will not neglect physical training, once they become mages, they cannot utilize the aura of the dantian.

Just as mages circulate mana around the heart’s circle to process it into ‘magic power’. Skilled knights accumulate mana in their dantian, harnessing it as a form of power called ‘aura’.

Though swords and magic share the same source of power, the bodily organs that harness it are distinct.

Every time he taught Dale, Helmut’s regret was beyond words.

Yet more than that regret, the emotion driving Sir Helmut’s passion was admiration. Ordinary mages are far removed from physical labor. Mages always bring a considerable number of escort knights to the battlefield, compensating for their own physical limitations with external aid.

But was it truly necessary for him to grasp a sword and endure such physical hardship?

Even for Dale, this training would be excessively harsh for an eight-year-old child. But Dale’s way of thinking was different.

‘I don’t want to neglect physical training just because I rely on protective or defensive magic.’

The principle itself isn’t difficult for even a child to grasp.

Yet even veteran mages who have rolled on the battlefield for decades find it hard to truly grasp that principle. Indeed, the majority of mages Lord Helmut slaughtered on the battlefield were those who had fallen into such complacency.

The first clash.

Whether or not a knight can block that single strike determines the life or death of the mage who gave him space. And Dale understood that fact more clearly than anyone.

An eight-year-old child who had never even seen a battlefield!

Swordplay is ultimately the art of killing people. And to Lord Helmut, who had spent his entire life honing this ‘art of killing people,’ Dale’s combat instincts seemed like a gift from heaven.

This only fueled Helmut’s passion as a teacher.

Even if he did not walk the path of the sword, young Dale was the ‘brilliant gem’ Lord Helmut had sought so earnestly.

That afternoon.

The underground of Saxony Castle. The entire vast subterranean cavern was a colossal workshop existing solely for one mage.

The Black Duke’s Magic Workshop.

Right there, Dale was immersed in a new practice alongside his father.

But he wasn’t immediately resurrecting the dead or moving corpses. Rather, when he heard that Dale had mastered such rudimentary necromancy, the continent’s foremost necromancer inwardly scoffed.

‘He doesn’t even know what he’s moving, and he claims to have revived a target?’

For Dale, who had secretly hoped for praise, this reaction was nothing short of surprising. After that, the first thing the Black Mage handed to Dale was a stack of books of staggering thickness.

Medical texts detailing anatomical diagrams of humans and various creatures, along with the mechanics and principles of bones, internal organs, muscles, and such. Knowledge of such a specialized level that only 21st-century surgeons would likely ever encounter it.

Only after thoroughly studying those books to the point of committing them to memory did the Black Mage begin teaching practical magic.

In his workshop, the Black Mage placed the mummified corpse of a goblin upon the altar.

“Let’s start by inducing the disease of the dead.”

The Dead Soldier. It is called a soldier rather than a dead man precisely because it was not merely a magic that raised corpses.

Just as elemental magic can be customized through formulas, necromancy too can be refined to alter the form of resurrection according to the sorcerer’s intent.

Among these, raising corpses specialized for combat. An unskilled dark mage could only raise an ordinary zombie even with the corpse of a Sword Master, but a dark mage of high attainment could raise a Death Knight from the corpse of a mere foot soldier.

Dale concentrated his consciousness, focusing on engraving the necessary formulae.

Recalling the knowledge from the anatomy books he had studied, he wove threads of magic throughout the goblin’s living tissues.

Necromancy isn’t about truly resurrecting the dead, as many imagine. If one must draw a comparison, it’s closer to the puppeteer’s art of manipulating a marionette.

And through those very threads of magic, Dale stitched together the goblin’s corpse. The formula he inscribed upon it was none other than──.

Hardening. It hardens the outer shell by accelerating rigor mortis.

The goblin’s corpse staggered to its feet. Its movements were stiff, almost unnaturally so.

‘This is different from moving the rabbit.’

The goblin’s bipedal physique was notoriously difficult to master without grasping the principles embedded within it. Necromancy, moreover, was a pure unknown science in which even his past self possessed not a shred of expertise.

That very fact made Dale’s heart race all the more.

“Accelerating rigor mortis to strengthen the goblin’s outer shell was a brilliant idea.”

Watching the scene, the Black Mage smiled with apparent satisfaction. An unmistakable fatherly smile. But it lasted only an instant.

Following the smile, the cold composure befitting the continent’s foremost dark mage swiftly returned.

“But rigor mortis—that is, muscle contraction—has the side effect of restricting the corpse’s movement more than necessary.”

“Are you implying there’s a better method?”

At Dale’s question, the Black-robed Man snapped his fingers without a word.

‘……!’

In that instant, an ominous darkness surged through the room. The hardening formula Dale had added dissolved, and the muscles rapidly relaxed.

Crack! Something twisted with a loud sound.

“Ribs are organs meant to protect the internal organs.”

It was the sound of bones twisting within the body.

“But the dead have no need to protect their internal organs.”

The Black Orb continued.

“──Then what shall we do with the bones that are no longer needed?”

That was the answer the continent’s foremost dark mage offered to Dale’s question.

Crunch!

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the goblin’s belly twisted, and a ‘Bone Blade’ shot from his hand. A white blade imbued with a sinister blue edge. It was part of the ribs that had encased the goblin’s entrails just seconds before.

“Understanding the target’s structure and reconstructing it into a form suited to the purpose.”

He had instantly transformed a section of rib into a weapon. As he said, the dead had no reason to protect their entrails.

The Black Mage flicked his fingers once more.

Squish!

Once again, the goblin’s bones and muscles twisted at bizarre angles, like the jointed specters from horror movies. But Dale could intuit the form of that contortion.

‘It’s reconstructing itself into a body solely for combat, eliminating every element unnecessary for survival.’

A goblin reanimated as a undead soldier by the Black King’s hand. Sharp blades of bone protruding from every part of its body. They served as armor protecting the goblin, and simultaneously as razor-sharp blades to tear apart its enemies.

This wasn’t even a matter of revival. Not a trace of its former life remained.

A complete overhaul.

It was truly a rebirth.

A monster possessing combat power not merely several times greater than in life, but dozens of times greater.

“Do you understand the spirit pursued by the Black Magic Tower?”

At that very moment, the Black Mage spoke.

Dale shook his head without answering. It wasn’t that he didn’t know. Of course, there was no need to pretend ignorance. But the true reason for his silence lay elsewhere.

Simply because he wanted to hear it from his own lips.

“──Truth.”

The continent’s foremost dark mage answered.

“And truth always resides within death.”

At the Black Knight’s words, Dale quietly swallowed. But what followed was utterly unexpected for Dale.

“That is why you must understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“The weight of life required to reach the truth.”

The weight of life.

“……”

Only then did he realize. That the black magic people whispered about in fear as the magic of death was only possible because they had first understood life.

For Dale, who had devoted everything solely to slaughter, it was an irony beyond measure.

For he had spent his entire life, drenched in countless bloodshed, without ever knowing the ‘weight of life’.

He had killed, killed, and killed again.

Several months later.

A woman’s agonized scream echoed through the bedroom meant for the duke and duchess. Dale stood outside the bedroom, looking anxiously out the castle window.

“Your Highness!”

Hearing the old woman’s voice calling him shortly after, Dale rushed into the bedroom without hesitation.

“Dale.”

His father and mother looked at him calmly, smiling. And beside them lay a young life.

A bundle of flesh, whimpering and bursting into tears, was wrapped in a blanket and held tenderly in Elena’s arms.

“She’s your little sister, just like you.”

Elena smiles with the motherly warmth she gained through the pain of childbirth.

“Would you like to hold her?”

With Elena’s help, Dale carefully cradled his little sister. The weight of life he felt for the first time in his life. It was heavy as a thousand pounds, yet light as a feather.