“That's him!” One of the guards pointed to Quill, his teeth seething with anger. It was the man he burned with his Black Application, his leg reduced to bandages with a walking prop to hold his weight.

  Quill’s vision narrowed. His mind churned inside his head, trying to produce any explanations as to why the City Watch was right there in front of his house.

  His gaze then drifted to the woman. She was holding a smile, gesturing a line across her neck.

  Then it dawned on him.

  Those two must’ve reported what happened to the City Watch authorities. More than that, they had spun whatever kind of lies they had to make him out as the perpetrator of the assault. It started to make sense then.

  “Fenith Cranfether.” One of the guards stepped forward before unraveling a scroll. “By order of the City Watch, you are under arrest for the assault, unauthorized magic use, and grievous maiming of a city guard. Come with us, and you will have a proper trial for your crimes in court.”

  Quill wasn't stupid enough to come with them. Even if he was given the right to a fair trial, his words alone were only second to a city guard’s testimony. He was only a gray elf, but more than that, he was poor with no connections or money to back his words.

  Quill pierced the gaze of the woman behind the official. It really had to come to this. They could've just left him alone to do his own thing, but there was no changing the outcome.

  Most pigs in this damn city had to get in his way.

  Quill raised his hand. The five guards unsheathed their swords. He would stand his ground and fight, making use of his White Ball and White Sphere.

  He could do it. He was a competent mage now with four spells to his arsenal. Even though he was nowhere close to his former strength, these Simple Spells were more than enough. Then Yereth came to mind. If he were to kill these guards and run away, what would happen to her?

  There was also the matter of Haref’s offer and the academy going down the drain. A noble wouldn't be willing to sponsor a murderer, and even though the academy was a Circle organization entirely separate from the city, it would make entry and acceptance extremely difficult. There were too many unknown factors that could skew his plans.

  Quill couldn't risk it. The only way out of this without too much trouble was to surrender to the arrest. He needed to let the facts speak for themselves in an honest hearing, and all he had to do was play along and put on their handcuffs and play their game. If he were deemed innocent, then he would get out of this with nothing but a pat on the shoulder.

  But would it really?

  “Come with us.” The official took a step forward, hand ready on the sword by his waist. “No one else has to get into trouble.”

  Quill grit his teeth. He then sighed, raising his hands in the air as a gesture of surrender, before his eyes landed on a bruised and beaten body in the corner of the darkness.

  It was Yereth, lying on the ground behind the boots of the guards.

  A strange feeling welled inside Quill's chest then. It was something he had all but forgotten in his past life as a human, something an immortal lich couldn't have felt.

  It was . His skin was boiling with it. It was different from the feeling of humiliation of losing against Pormor, or the annoyance from the mockery he had endured in this city. This feeling wasn't born out of necessity to prove his worth. It was simpler than that.

  It was a mortal feeling.

  Quill dashed back before raising both his hands, movements scattering in a blur before drawing White scripts in the air. A White Ball appeared from nothing, floating by his side before he sent it flying towards the official.

  “What–” It pierced the man’s armor with a , wedging itself right in between his chest. A hole bore through his skin and bones as blood splattered onto the dirt path. With a whimper, the body limped and fell with a

  “Draw!” The rear guard readied a crossbow, aiming straight for Quill, but he had already finished a second set of Scripts by then. When the arrow flew, a White Sphere manifested around him, a layer of White mana stopping the projectile before a punctured the surface.

  Quill stared at the arrowhead, clicking his tongue. The White Sphere was weaker than he had expected; the arrow was mere inches away from his head before stopping.

  “Come at me then, you stupid pigs.” Quill said, and the three guards charged at him with swords high in the air. From here on out, it was nothing but dirty fighting.

  The first of them wound, raising his sword high before slamming straight down to break the White Sphere.

  That wasn’t going to work.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Quill immediately dematerialized the White Sphere around him, catching the man off guard before he then swung a fist straight for his torso. It came fast, his fist burying straight into the ribcage, prompting a grunt from the man as he spat out saliva.

  For a necromancer who lived for hundreds of years in the protection of skeletons, you would think the practice of hand-to-hand combat was useless. The time spent on practicing melee combat would've been better used to further progress his summoning.

  But that couldn't be any more wrong. Summoners were notorious for being weak at the early stages, unable to attack and defend effectively without the strong or numerous familiars that came at the later stages.

  To counteract this weakness, most summoners study a secondary Archetype. Quill was the same, opting to practice in the close-combat Caster Archetype. All this to say that he had his share of fist fights, and there was one thing to note when it came to making physical contact with a Black Aspect Caster.

  You should always be ready for necrotic damage.

  “What… did you do to me!?” The man curled in over himself, gasping with pain and clutching at the place Quill had just struck. This body’s Strength Attribute wasn't nearly enough to cause such a reaction, but he hadn't mentioned it before.

  He applied Black Application to his fist, forgoing slow Scripting entirely in favor of manually casting a layer of miasma around his knuckles. It was hard to pull off, but it was faster than normal Scripting, and it was slowly eating away at the man’s skin.

  “We’re finishing this shit!” The woman was next. She thrust her curved sword straight at Quill, barely catching his shoulder before he swayed to the side, the sword following close after him. It was a decent show of swordsmanship, but Quill was seeing through it with his Fast Eyes Trait.

  Quill burned with adrenaline. Dodging a swipe, he closed in with a fist sweeping straight for the woman's head before a hand pushed it away, deflecting the strike–but Quill didn't let up. With the momentum, he reached behind the woman's neck, hooking her down before knocking his knee straight to the woman's face. It was a solid break with a .

  But Quill didn't expect the woman to keep going. She grabbed onto him with her bulky arms, scuffling his hands to his back before throwing him off his feet and locking him down to the dirt, stopping him from moving. This was bad. Quill was entirely immobilized on the ground. His worst fear came with a sharp bite through his back.

  Quill turned. A sword had pierced his shoulder. His eyes found the man with the burned leg above him, smiling through a crooked grin as the blade dug deeper into his back.

  “You fucking monster.” The man spat on his hair. “You really thought you could get away with it? will always prevail, especially against motherfuckers like you.”

  Quill could only laugh. “That’s right.”

  Something whipped through the air, landing a shot straight through the man’s head. His eyes turned white as blood oozed from the wound, and within a breath, the tension on the sword eased before he dropped dead to the ground.

  Quill hadn’t made it obvious. He used the first White Ball he had conjured right from the start, the one that was wedged inside the official’s dead body. He made sure to keep supplying mana to it so that it wouldn't dematerialize. It was only waiting inside the official's corpse all this time before he called it again at the right time.

  Quill took advantage of that moment before he twisted, sweeping the woman off her feet, knocking her off balance before she landed with a to the dirt Carrying the motion, he pinned her down, the woman cursing against his weight now that she was on the other end.

  He wound, and just when he was about to strike, a sharp glint shimmered to the edge of his vision.

  The guard with the crossbow was aiming at him again.

  “You murderer–” The man gasped. In that second, a sword had pierced his neck. Behind the hilt was Yereth, gasping and trembling before she slid the blade deeper down the man’s throat. Blood gurgled with his choking, and with his last breath, he too fell to the ground.

  Yereth took the official's sword and killed a man. But even more than that, she saved Quill's life.

  She dropped to the ground shaking, spatters of blood dripping over her hands. For a second, she mumbled to herself, words too silent for Quill to hear before she then wiped the wet of her eyes. The sword was still rattling in her grip.

  Quill then turned to the woman below. Her expression was the complete opposite of the arrogant confidence she had before all of the fighting. Her nose was bent and broken in an ugly, asymmetric figure. “What happened to your smile?”

  “Please!” The woman cried, tears falling over her face in an attempt to ask for mercy. Quill wasn't going to give her any of it. He had let them go before, and look where it got him now. More people had to die, and Yereth was half-beaten to death. Consequences will surely follow him for killing five members of the City Watch.

  Not again.

  Quill raised his fist before slamming down. The impact between bones split the skin of his knuckles, turning them red with a dull ache, but it didn't matter. He wound before slamming again, this time blood oozing from his hand. He continued back and forth between his two fists, the wailing of the woman growing quieter and quieter until all that was left was silence.

  It was an unnerving silence. Even the sound of the wind didn't come to soothe the static ringing in his ears. Only the shadows were there, cradling him in their arms, hiding the fact that the woman's head was now broken from the beating. Her face was marred with blood, her bones peeking from split skin. Teeth even lined the dirt path.

  Despite the gore right in front of him, Quill couldn’t feel anything. It was as if he just squashed an annoying insect flying around in his room. He might've regained his mortality, but the undeath inside him was always there.

  That wasn't going to change anytime soon.

  Quill sighed before pushing off the body, ignoring the rest of the corpses before starting towards Yereth.

  “Are you okay?” Quill bent over his knee and ran over the bruises on her. They were dark, and splinters on her skin bled red. He waved a set of Scripts in the air before he cast Black Reversal on her, but it was going to take a while. Black Reversal was less effective on others aside from the caster, and along with his low amount of Black mana, the damage the pigs had done to her was too severe.

  “It’s… a weird feeling.” Yereth dropped her head to Quill's shoulder. It was clear to her that this had gotten to her head, even more than the physical wounds she had suffered. There was also a time when Quill felt that way, but that was long buried in the past.

  Quill then turned to the bodies littering the ground all around the dirt path, the smell of blood now starting to loom over the street.

  This really was the worst-case scenario.