This Lich is a Better Landlord Chapter 15

The rumors are true, liches are evil creatures! So evil!

Isabel fled Ambrose's study, her face beet red. If he had been a human lord, there would have been some unsavory rumors spreading.

But in this gloomy old castle, no one cared about such trivial matters.

A crowd of anxious people had gathered in the main hall on the castle's first floor. Each with their own thoughts, they stared at Isabel on the staircase.

The plan for clearing the land was finally about to be announced. For them, this was a turning point in their lives.

Isabel had never spoken in front of a hundred people before. Despite her best efforts to summon her courage, her words came out haltingly.

"Um... Lord Lich said that we can start clearing the land today... As for the specific arrangements, we'll divide things up based on the number of able-bodied adults..."

She was only halfway through when someone interrupted impatiently.

"What about the land we had before? I had two acres and a house in my old territory!"

"Yeah, I had an acre, too."

"And I had an ox!"

"Weren't we told everything would be better here? If we have to start from scratch, we'll have lost everything!"

...

A clamor of voices erupted, completely drowning out Isabel.

The young girl had never seen such a chaotic scene. Her face went pale with fright, and she stumbled back to sit on the stairs.

As the situation descended into chaos, Isabel began to panic. The crowd was growing more agitated, pressing closer and closer, as if to surround her.

They were fine just a moment ago. Why, on the verge of starting a new life, had these desperate refugees suddenly become so terrifying?

Just as Isabel was about to turn and flee, a piercing screech echoed through the hall, like a sharp blade scraping against stone.

Everyone turned toward the sound. There, in the middle of the hall, stood Raul, his face a cold mask.

In his right hand, he held a large iron hammer. By his left side stood a bizarrely shaped skeleton. The grating noise had been the sound of its scythe-like arms dragging across the stone floor.

This was the Xenomorphic Skeleton, Kha'Zix Model I, created by Ambrose. Many people present had witnessed its power. When they had fled their homes, they were pursued by their lord's soldiers. It was thanks to this strange skeleton that the soldiers had been driven back.

The skeleton looked odd, but its combat prowess was enough to crush a fully armed militia squad.

Raul hefted the large hammer and began walking toward the crowd step by step.

The people who had been on the verge of rebellion moments ago now stood silent as the grave, automatically parting to form a path.

Raul walked without a word, the Xenomorphic Skeleton silently following behind him. The sound of his footsteps and the scraping of bony claws echoed through the castle, somehow louder than the earlier shouting match.

Raul walked all the way to Isabel's side. "Get up, Isabel," he said sternly. "Don't bring shame upon Lord Lich."

Isabel scrambled to her feet. "I'm sorry, I..."

"This isn't the time for apologies," Raul interrupted. "Have you completed the task Lord Lich gave you?"

Isabel was taken aback by Raul's tone. He sounded like one of Ambrose's loyal servants.

Raul helped Isabel to her feet, then turned to the now timid refugees. "Do you have any objections to Lord Lich's arrangements?"

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the menacing, bizarre skeleton. They had completely calmed down now, remembering that the master of this domain was a lich.

Deep within the castle, Ambrose watched everything unfold in the hall through a magical projection. It was he who had sent Raul to help Isabel control the situation. It seemed his personal intervention would no longer be necessary.

Ambrose was quite pleased with Raul's transformation. Once they've tried killing their own kind, even the most docile sheep will begin to turn into a beast.

With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the scrying spell and once again focused on his research.

He had already skimmed through *Research on Ghostly Reproduction*. While he might not have mastered all the experimental details, he had grasped the fundamental principles.

Master Morgan had drawn inspiration from the process of human reproduction.

Humans reproduce, gestating for ten months to give birth to a child. The newborn is naturally endowed with a soul. Setting aside the physical body, from a purely spiritual perspective, two independent souls had, through some method, given birth to a new soul.

By the same token, every race with a soul had some way of increasing its numbers.

These newborn souls had not experienced the death of a physical body, so they were not inherently undead.

As long as one could replicate this one-plus-one-is-greater-than-two process of soul growth through magical means, the new souls could be used to create Effigies, a special type of undead unit that was not vulnerable to light magic.

It sounded simple, but to achieve reproduction through the soul alone, without the aid of a physical body, was harder than a mortal becoming a Legendary.

Master Morgan had spent a thousand years on this, and he finally created a special ritual magic that could achieve reproduction on a spiritual level. Master Morgan named this ritual magic the "Soul Embryo."

The entire book, *Research on Ghostly Reproduction*, was dedicated to explaining this "Soul Embryo" ritual, laying out all the principles in exhaustive detail.

Creation is difficult; replication is much easier.

Ambrose was confident he could reproduce the ritual magic. The only problem was the cost—it was far too high.

To successfully complete the ritual just once would cost nearly fifty thousand gold coins.

And that was just the cost of the newborn soul. Next, a suitable Effigy body had to be crafted for this fragile soul, otherwise the newborn's soul would quickly "die" without a physical body to sustain it.

This "death" didn't mean the soul would dissipate, but rather that it couldn't maintain its "living" state and would rapidly transform into an undead. Only a specially made Effigy could keep the soul active while also having the convenient, interchangeable nature of an undead unit.

And manufacturing the Effigy's body would cost a great deal of gold. If you wanted it to have any real combat capability, the price would be astronomical.

To create an Effigy comparable to a high-tier undead would conservatively cost two hundred thousand gold coins.

Ambrose muttered to himself, "Two hundred thousand gold for an Effigy with the combat power of a high-tier undead? I'd be better off hiring a few high-tier human professionals to fight for me for that price. No wonder this thing never caught on. The cost is too high, it's not practical at all."

But Ambrose wasn't disappointed. On the contrary, he was so excited the soulfire in his eye sockets threatened to erupt.

Because he had realized he could drastically reduce the production cost of an Effigy.

Fabricated Soul. This was the special magic Ambrose had obtained upon ascending to Legendary. He could create different souls according to his needs. The reason his Xenomorphic Skeletons could function so perfectly was because he had crafted custom souls for them. Trying to make a human soul control eight bony claws would have been a terribly inefficient endeavor.

After reading Master Morgan's work, Ambrose estimated that he could use his Fabricated Soul magic to replace the expensive "Soul Embryo" ritual, which would slash the cost.

As for the Effigy's body, Ambrose looked at the large glass jar on his desk—the vial of cheap Living Quicksilver. The Living Quicksilver, a body with high magic resistance but no soul, could be perfectly adapted to house the custom Fabricated Souls he created with just a little modification.

Magical research was a truly fascinating thing. Master Morgan probably never imagined that, centuries after his fall, a lich would receive the Legendary boon of a Fabricated Soul. Nor would he have imagined that the lunatics in the City of Alchemy would create the perfect Effigy material in the form of Living Quicksilver.

And now, Ambrose stood on the shoulders of giants, about to embark on a glittering golden road to riches.

"Master Morgan, if you hadn't fallen, I would have loved to exchange ideas with you."

Ambrose sighed. If that great master were alive today, the City of Alchemy might have actually been able to complete their mysterious god-making project. Such is the power of knowledge.

With his moment of reflection over, Ambrose began to prepare his materials.

The first Effigy creation experiment was about to officially begin