This Lich is a Better Landlord Chapter 59

Creating two high-ranking undead right now wasn't exactly a great choice.

Materials were expensive, but the main issue was time.

Many humans misunderstood the undead. They thought casting *Animate Dead* to raise a skeleton from a corpse counted as making a true undead.

In reality, skeletons created by such spells could last a day at most. They couldn't be considered true undead, merely temporary puppets.

Their actions relied entirely on the caster's control, and even their souls were fragmented and incomplete.

To create a true undead that could exist for a long time and possess a self—especially a high-ranking undead retaining most of its normal thought processes—took real effort.

First, checking if their souls still existed.

Ambrose wasn't worried about Hastings. The rogue, who specialized in backstabbing and theft, likely had no faith. After death, his soul would linger in his body for a long time, suffering torment.

The trouble lay with the half-elf ranger. The vast majority of elves worshiped the Elven Gods. Those deities valued elven souls highly; upon death, they usually flew straight to the Elven Divine Kingdom, rarely lingering.

Intercepting an elf's soul deliberately would easily anger those petty Elven Gods. It wasn't worth the risk.

But after Ambrose checked, he discovered that Hales' soul was actually still there.

"You don't worship that stingy pantheon? Good, good. Saves a lot of trouble."

Low incantations echoed in the gloomy laboratory, like ancient shadows murmuring from the abyss. The temperature in the lab dropped sharply, and patches of white frost covered the surroundings visible to the naked eye.

A ball of pale blue ghostly light floated out of the half-elf's corpse. It seemed to struggle, wanting to leave, but was frozen by the pervasive chill, left to float stiffly in mid-air.

Ambrose drew countless lines of mana with both hands, weaving them into a dreamlike pattern that imprinted itself into the soul.

After completing this complex ritual, Ambrose spoke to the soul fire. "Now, you should be able to speak. Hales, can you hear my voice?"

The soul fire trembled and emitted a weak sound.

"Pain..."

"It's just phantom pain caused by the soul losing its compatible body and thinking limbs have been severed. You won't feel pain anymore. Keep thinking. Focus on your most profound memories; this will allow your will to condense."

The soul fire shuddered for a while, emitting intermittent sounds again, though much clearer than before.

"Mom... Mom... don't die... Mom..."

Ambrose was used to this. Every adventurer's life story could fill a few melodramatic novels, but only when they became heroes were these melodramatic stories qualified to be compiled into epic poems.

Hales' soul cried out for his mother for a long time before recovering a shred of reason.

"I... What happened to me... It's so dark... so cold... Where is this?"

Ambrose replied, "Darkness and cold are like pain—hallucinations. A soul observes the world differently. You need time to adapt slowly. I have temporarily sealed your ability to perceive the outside world; otherwise, your soul would collapse from the overload."

Without eyes, nose, or ears, the way a soul perceived the world was more like reading an incredibly detailed, terrifyingly exhaustive instruction manual.

When Ambrose drank in the tavern earlier, he couldn't taste the sour, watered-down wine, but his soul had already tagged the cup with keywords like "watered down," "sour," "disgusting," and a series of others.

Imagine taking out a gold coin. Just its outline alone would suddenly spawn hundreds of thousands of words of description. That amount of information could burst a weak soul.

A poetic undead once wrote: "The world opened everything to me, yet I cowardly closed my eyes."

An undead spent its entire existence filtering its perception of the world to lower the load on its soul. For example, blocking out unimportant information to avoid missing the critical parts.

And that was just the initial adaptation. Next came practicing how to use the soul's power to drive the undead body.

Just as the soul controlled the body, the body conversely influenced the soul.

Why did ghosts appear in forms similar to their living selves? Because the soul had always adapted to the body's changes.

This was why undead were predominantly humanoid; adapting to the original body was naturally much easier.

Only Ambrose, who had mastered Simulated Soul technology, could modify an undead's appearance at will, because he could directly create a Simulated Soul of the corresponding form, drastically reducing the time needed for soul-body integration.

Ambrose hadn't created a suitable undead body for Hales yet, so he temporarily sealed the soul. Communication was limited to speech; no other external senses were allowed. Otherwise, Hales would scream in madness for months before slowly adapting.

Once Hales calmed down slightly, Ambrose continued asking, "Did those Paladins make you infiltrate the castle?"

Hales' soul trembled again, speaking in a terrified tone, "It's you, Master Ultraman! I remember now. That Headless Knight was your puppet. You killed us!"

If Gareth were Ambrose's creation, he would have built an entire legion of them and steamrolled the Ryan Empire, hanging that old boy James Watson on a stake.

"Answer my question, Hales. Did those Paladins instruct you to come to my castle?"

Hales responded, "Yes. My brother and I only wanted to scam them out of some money, but they forced us to infiltrate the castle. We originally planned to just do a lap here and leave."

Hales' tone was full of regret. They just wanted to try an adventure, but the adventure ended them.

Ambrose carefully inquired about intelligence regarding the Paladins, but the gains were minimal. The brothers hadn't interacted much with the Paladin named Starlight. They only knew he was a Blackguard practicing the Oath of Vengeance.

"A Blackguard. That's troublesome. That kind of Paladin has no bottom line."

As Ambrose muttered to himself, Hales seized the opportunity to beg for mercy. "Master Ultraman, it was our fault, but please have mercy. Spare my brother. I can serve you, whether you make me a skeleton or a zombie, but please spare Hastings."

Ambrose asked curiously, "You brothers have quite a bond. But you're a half-elf; how are you brothers with a pure human? Different fathers or different mothers?"

"Our father... was a slaver. Hastings' mother was a human slave, and my mother was an elf slave... Anyway, in the end, we killed him and escaped."

Another tragic story, but Ambrose had no interest in pursuing it further.

He was pondering the utility of these brothers. That Blackguard named Starlight was irritatingly cautious. Why couldn't he be like that idiot Alan and just charge in shouting about the Holy Light?

He had to give this Paladin a little stimulation so he wouldn't continue his calm plotting.

Ambrose thought for a moment and got a rough idea. Then he said to Hales' soul, "By the way, I saw you were quite good with pets. How about reincarnating as a Lich to give it a try?"