Reborn with a Necromancer System - Chapter 210

Chapter 210: Test of Domination

“Oh, well, don’t you have the strong willpower!” The lich’s voice rang through Kai’s skull like a hollow bell, each word dripping with mock amusement. Its skeletal jaw didn’t move, but Kai could hear every syllable as if it were inside his head.

“You remind me of him a little. My master, I mean. That tenacity… that refusal to bend. He would have liked you.”

The runes beneath the lich flared, and the throne room itself seemed to vibrate, the walls groaning as if the stones feared the power gathering in the air.

“Okay,” the lich continued, its tone shifting to a slow, cold drawl, “that was just a warm-up.”

The white void of the mental plane shattered around Kai like glass. He was suddenly slammed back into his body, the weight of flesh and bone returning all at once. He staggered forward, gasping, knees buckling.

“KAIIII!” Vepice’s voice cut through the ringing in his ears. She gripped his shoulders, her eyes red, tears streaking down her cheeks. Her hands trembled as they held him.

“You… damn it, you keep doing this! You scare me like that, and I hate it!” Her voice cracked, the usual composure gone. “Every time I think you’re about to die, I-”

Kai caught her wrists gently, forcing himself upright even as his vision swam. “I’m here. Still breathing. But… if that was just the warm-up…”

He glanced past her. The lich was standing perfectly still in the center of the room, its hollow sockets glowing with a pale, icy light. It radiated something that was neither hostility nor calmness.

“What exactly do you have in store for me now?”

The lich tilted its head, the bones of its neck creaking like a door hinge. Then, for the first time, it introduced itself.

“Stop calling me ‘you’. Andorath. That is the name your soul will remember. If you survive.”

It raised one long, skeletal hand, and a ring of black sigils spun into existence around it, orbiting like the rings of a planet. The pressure in the room deepened, crushing the air from Kai’s lungs.

“The true trial, as I mentioned before,” Andorath said, its voice smooth, deliberate, “is this: Take me. Take control of me, utterly and completely. Tear down my mind, overwhelm it, and seize what is mine. Fail… and you’ll rot here, a screaming echo, until my master returns to collect what remains of you.”

Kai clenched his jaw. “Fine. I’ll-”

Before he could finish, the world shifted again. Not into a separate plane this time, but into something worse—his own perception twisting, his body going heavy while his consciousness stretched thin. He could feel Andorath’s essence like a fortress in his mind, walls of black stone guarded by endless chains and runes.

He pressed forward mentally, shadows gathering around his thoughts, coalescing into battering rams, blades, and waves of corrosive necrotic energy meant to burn through the lich’s defenses.

The walls buckled. The chains snapped. For a moment, Kai felt Andorath recoil.

Then, pain.

White-hot, stabbing, real pain. His focus shattered as he was wrenched partially back to his body. He looked down and saw a jagged spike of bone bursting through the floor and into his side, narrowly missing a lung. Blood seeped down his ribs.

“Bone lances?” he hissed through clenched teeth. His barriers had been too weak to catch it.

He hadn’t even sensed it coming.

Andorath’s voice reverberated again, smug and unhurried.

“I never said I would let you win without fighting back. To take me, you must endure me. Break my will while I break your body.”

Kai staggered back, another bone spike erupting where his foot had been a heartbeat ago. He rolled to the side, his vision flickering as he fought to split his focus.

Half of his mind clawing through the psychic bastion of Andorath.

The other half reading the physical battlefield through raw instinct.

His mana sense was useless here, scrambled by the dungeon’s interference. All he had were the more primal tools.

The shift in air pressure before a spike tore free from the floor, the faint groan of stone as bone burrowed beneath it, and the cold displacement of air as Andorath’s essence swelled and warped the room.

Every sense sharpened to a knife’s edge, he sidestepped another lance, his hand pressing to his bleeding side. He funneled a sliver of life essence into the wound, just enough to keep it from slowing him down.

All the while, his consciousness pushed back into Andorath’s mindscape.

The lich’s defenses were shifting now, abandoning walls for moving constructs, towering guardians made of shadow and bone that patrolled its inner sanctum. Every time Kai’s mental blades struck, another guardian emerged, forcing him to divide his strength further.

“Can’t… keep this up forever,” Kai muttered, ducking beneath another lance. His legs were already screaming from the exertion.

Vepice’s voice cut through the chaos, faint and desperate from the far side of the chamber.

“Kai! What do I do?!”

“Just… keep yourself alive!” he barked, wincing as another spike tore up behind him.

Andorath’s voice oozed into his thoughts like smoke.

“You will break soon. Most do. Even the strong ones. Perhaps I’ll keep your shell as a vessel… when your flame goes out.”

Kai’s eyes narrowed. His breathing steadied. The pain dulled.

And it was not because it stopped, but because he forced himself past it.

“No,” he growled, his mind sharpening like a blade. “I’m not breaking. Not here. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

He hurled himself fully back into the mental assault, ignoring the pain, even as another lance grazed his leg.

Andorath’s fortress cracked. Chains splintered. The lich’s mental presence wavered, for the first time, like a candle struggling against the wind.

And still, more spikes grew from the ground.

Kai’s teeth ground together hard enough to hurt as he felt his control slipping again. His mindscape was fraying, shadows thinning, his consciousness struggling to hold its shape under the combined strain of the fight and Andorath’s relentless assault.

More spikes erupted from the floor and walls. A grazing strike cut across his back, searing pain blooming as his skin split open. His breath caught, his focus wavered, and in that instant, he felt Andorath’s will press back harder. The fortress, once crumbling, began to rebuild.

I can’t hold out like this. Not at this pace.

Andorath’s voice, cold and deliberate, filled his mind again:

“Your spark is dimming. I can taste it. I will let you flicker out slowly, mortal… or you can make this easier. Lay down. Become my vessel, and your suffering ends.”

Kai almost laughed, though it came out as a ragged, bloodied growl.

“You think I haven’t suffered worse than this?”

He knew he was reaching his limit. His body was buckling, his wounds bleeding faster, his focus shattered by every bone lance that grazed him. But then he felt it. His life essence. A bottomless reservoir, coiled deep in his core, accumulated from the thousands of souls he’d taken in Ylthara and beyond.

Kai closed his eyes for just a moment and pulled.

The air around him warped as streams of faint, ghostly light bled out of his chest, spiraling around him like an ethereal vortex. His life essence, his literal years, the thread of his existence, bled away to fuel his mind.

It burned. Like his soul was on fire. He could feel something in him fraying permanently, his body growing colder even as his strength spiked.

Andorath noticed. The lich’s tone sharpened for the first time, a trace of unease creeping in:

“What… is this? You’re consuming yourself?”

Kai’s voice was low, steady, almost detached as his eyes glowed with a faint, deathly blue light.

“If it means ripping you out by the roots… then I’ll spend as much as I need to.”

With that, he hurled everything forward, his will a roaring tidal wave crashing into Andorath’s mental bastion.

The guardians shattered. The chains burned away like ash in a furnace. The fortress itself imploded, the soundless explosion rippling through the mindscape as Andorath’s essence buckled and recoiled, forced to its knees.

The throne room shook violently in the real world, cracks splintering across the black stone floor as Kai’s shadow flared outward in a circle. Bone lances froze mid-growth, twitching in place as the lich itself staggered, its skeletal form trembling like a puppet with cut strings.

Kai kept pushing, even as his vision blurred, his body shaking violently. His breath came in shallow gasps, his heart hammering in his chest like it was trying to break free.

Andorath’s voice, for the first time, cracked.

“Enough…! You’ll tear yourself apart, mortal! You’ll—”

“I SAID…” Kai’s eyes snapped open, glowing brighter, his voice a guttural roar, “BEND!”

There was a soundless snap in the mental plane, like a tether being severed. The lich’s glowing sockets dimmed to faint embers. Its skeletal frame went rigid, then slowly sank to one knee before Kai.

[You have temporarily seized control of Andorath, the Crown-Bearer.]

Kai swayed on his feet, his legs almost giving out. Vepice rushed to his side, catching his arm.

“Kai! Kai! Are you! What did you just do to yourself?!”

His breathing was shallow, each word coming like gravel.

“Burned… years… maybe decades. Doesn’t matter. I can always get more. We have the crown now.”

His gaze shifted back to Andorath, who remained kneeling, utterly still but watching with those faintly glowing sockets.

“Your master’s crown,” Kai rasped. “Hand it over.”

The lich’s voice was quieter now, subdued but carrying an edge of amusement.

“Take it… if you can wear it. The crown does not sit lightly. But for now, you have me, mortal. Until your essence runs dry… or until you can end this control willingly.”

Kai reached out, his trembling hand closing around the spectral, black-metal crown that formed above Andorath’s head. As his fingers touched it, a shock of energy raced through his body, making him stumble and almost collapse.

Vepice grabbed him again, her brow furrowed in fear.

“You idiot. What are you doing to yourself?”

Kai steadied himself, forcing his legs to straighten despite the shaking. His hand tightened on the crown.

“Whatever it takes… to make sure none of this was for nothing.”

The crown’s cold, alien weight settled into his grasp, a faint pulse resonating with his own life force.