This Lich Requests More Remuneration

Chapter 92 - 92 90 Not the Kind of Vampire Youre Thinking Of

?Chapter 92: Chapter 90: Not the Kind of Vampire You’re Thinking Of Chapter 92: Chapter 90: Not the Kind of Vampire You’re Thinking Of As a lich who had no longer any worldly desires, conducting experiments was one of the few entertainment activities for Amberser.

After all, one cannot earn money every day, and when there’s no money to be made, the only thing left to do is to conduct experiments to pass the time. If the experiment related to making money, then Amberser would be even happier.

Theoretically, the ability of the Golden Throne could grant Amberser endless wealth and power.

Combined with Amberser’s Pseudo-Soul and the Legendary Grace of material transformation, a self-sufficient cycle was possible, which, given enough time, could make him the richest man on the continent in the foreseeable future.

However, ideals are beautiful, but reality is somewhat cruel.

It wasn’t that the theory was flawed, but the intelligence of the blank souls created by the Pseudo-Soul was too low.

Before Amberser’s eyes, arrayed in a row, were five types of newly created “undead” minions.

In terms of material transformation, for substances of the same mass, the denser the material, the greater the amount of gold consumed when changing its properties.

The bodies of these five new “undead” were made respectively of books, leather, steel, sand, and gold, each weighing one kilogram, with a precisely injected strength of 100 soul units for their blank souls. This was a soul strength unit standard set by Amberser himself; the souls of ordinary humans fluctuated between 80 to 130 units. The blank souls Amberser created were relatively more standardized, and hence the experimental errors were smaller.

However, when it came to the transformation of properties, the difference in the amount of gold consumed by different materials was significant—the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive was a hundredfold. The one-kilogram gold-cast little skeleton consumed seventeen times its weight in gold when its material was transformed into the “corpse” attribute. Perhaps this was related to Amberser’s lack of proficiency in the operation, but undoubtedly, this cost was unacceptable.

Moreover, the final experiment proved that no matter the material, the faith recharge efficiency produced by the Undead Puppets wasn’t much different—they were all very poor.

Amberser roughly estimated that the Golden Throne, cast with one million Gold Coins, after being fully depleted, would require about several million blank souls of standard strength for prayer to recover within one day.

However, blank souls do have the potential to evolve. The newly created little ones had low intelligence, but as long as Amberser lifted the restrictions on the blank souls, they had the chance to become smarter, and accordingly, the efficiency of faith recharging would increase.

Moreover, the undead were quite easy to maintain; they only needed to hibernate to automatically absorb Dark Magic Power to sustain their vitality, essentially at no cost.

This meant that the more undead there were and the longer the time passed, the more Amberser’s returns would snowball.

After all, the undead are immortal; without attrition from battle, their numbers will only continue to grow.

Given enough time, it was indeed possible for Amberser to achieve “gold freedom” through this method.

The only limitation was the capacity of the Golden Throne, which Amberser guessed had a maximum it could accommodate, although this hadn’t been tested yet. Certainly, it was more than several millions. Legendary abilities also needed continuous exploration and practice to master thoroughly.

With the basic data testing complete, the final question came back to the quality of the Undead Puppets.

While the blank souls were highly malleable, no matter the adjustments, they couldn’t reach the basic intelligence level of humans and needed time to grow.

So, using gold to make puppets was purely a loss, as the density of gold meant that the blank souls had to expend more effort to control their bodies, rendering them both small and cumbersome. They had some advantage in terms of resistance, but without combat power and no advantage in faith output, and an excessively high cost, this material could be directly ruled out.

Perhaps when Amberser later achieves gold freedom, he could make a couple of golden Death Knights just for fun.

However, the “Undead Puppet” made of sand gave Amberser a pleasant surprise. After the blank soul merged with the scattered sand, it actually managed to control each grain of sand and, without any guidance from Amberser, learned to move in a way similar to flowing sand, showing a very good talent for imitation.

This little one looked at its brothers and sisters around it, sometimes changing into the shape of a book and flipping through its pages, sometimes taking the form of that clunky iron piece, rolling back and forth.

Curiosity is the fountain of wisdom, and clearly, this little one made of sand had a higher intelligence than the other four. Even though when commanded to pray, the faith recharge effect didn’t meet expectations, this little one was a promising material.

As for the other four… sorry, but it’s time to cut costs and save money.

In order to test the influence of material form on blank souls, Amberser tried out water, iron filings, and painfully scrapped some gold sand for experimentation.

In the end, he came to an interesting conclusion—apparently, a “corpse” in a loose state really could enhance the blank souls’ intelligence. The gold that formed a little skeleton seemed very stupid, but the one in the form of gold sand seemed livelier. Although it was still too heavy, its perceptive abilities had improved, and it also demonstrated a natural talent for imitation.

This discovery was interesting, but Amberser was unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for it at the moment. He could only speculate that the loose structure of the body increased the surface area of the blank soul’s contact with the exterior, allowing it to perceive more information.

This conjecture might not be reliable and needed more practical experimentation. But the experimental results spoke for themselves; the only issue was that running water was the best option, but water would evaporate. Once it was all gone, the poor little one would cease to exist.

So, after numerous experiments, Amberser finally confirmed two types of materials for the creation of new Undead Puppets.

One was shattered glass, and the other sifted sand.

These two materials had similar densities, their transformation costs were within acceptable range, and both glass and sand were relatively stable, unlikely to deteriorate due to the environment. Amberser made five of each and, like the Mercury Avatars, let them roam free in the castle, planning to observe their growth after a while.

Perhaps it was time to start nurturing High-order Undead in the conventional way; Big Black and Husky had been preserved by Amberser, and he planned to continue making bodies for them in the next few days. If it cost a bit to replace bones with different materials, then so be it.

High-order Undead that possessed independent consciousness should provide significantly more in terms of faith recharge.

There was always too much experimentation to do, and never enough Gold Coins. Having organized his experimental records for the day, Amberser opened the Necromancy Codex and sent a message to Withered Rose: “Lady Rose, should we adjust our trade? With the disappearance of Alchemy City, I fear things here will be chaotic for a while.”

After waiting for a while and not receiving a reply from Withered Rose, Amberser glanced at the group chat and noticed that today was surprisingly lively.

[Headless Knight’s Crown: Are those elves really getting ready to move?]

[Pale Little Skeleton: I heard they are, they’ve already started assembling troops. Lucky we came back early, or we might have run into the elf tribe’s army.]

[Headless Knight’s Crown: It’s all because you were decisive and ran straight away, thank goodness.]

Amberser wrinkled his features into a frown. What are you two, husband and wife, doing in a group chat, showing off your love?

But what are these two talking about?

Amberser was about to look at the previous chat history when he suddenly noticed a new user.

[Dislikes Humans: Heh, it’s not just the elves. The desert dwarves are also getting ready to act. As you know, Laine has been beating the desert dwarves like crazy recently, and they’ve lost several oases. Alchemy City is such a big piece of land, and the desert dwarves have had their eyes on it for a while.]

Who is this user called [Dislikes Humans]?

Undead often sleep for decades at a time, and since joining the Elegy Poetry Society, Amberser had never seen this person speak until today. It was time to get to know this person better.

[Diga Ultraman: Senior, hello, I’m a newcomer. Are you a lich, senior? I have a design plan for modifying alien skeletons, and I wonder if you’d be interested.]

[Dislikes Humans: Oh, a newcomer, huh? It’s been many years since we’ve had a new member. But no, I’m not a lich, I’m a vampire, and I usually don’t use skeletons.]

Amberser: …

The name vampire made Amberser feel a bit squeamish, considering the Necromancy Codex chronicled too many vampire-related “cases,” each of which ended tragically because of a love for the food on their tables.

So much so that Amberser instinctively felt there was something off about the XP of any vampire.

Perhaps after a long silence, the senior vampire sent out a message.

[Dislikes Humans: I’m not the kind of vampire you’re thinking of!]

[Diga Ultraman: No, no, no, you’ve got it wrong, I don’t discriminate, really.]

[Dislikes Humans: Look at my name, isn’t it obvious?]

[Headless Knight’s Crown: Haha, aren’t there elves besides humans? There are several cases in the codex of vampires with orcs, or even heart-stealing demons. You guys play even wilder than druids.]

[Dislikes Humans: Bugger off, you who rides bone dragons have the nerve to talk about vampires?]

[Pale Little Skeleton: What’s the matter? You got something against the dragon race? Want me to have my kin visit your place for a few days?]

As it looked like a quarrel was about to break out, Amberser felt a bit embarrassed, as if his silence had sparked a war.

Then, Withered Rose, who had not been replying to messages, spoke up in the chat: [You just said, both the elf tribe and the desert dwarves are mobilizing armies? Are they both heading towards Alchemy City?]

Sure enough, the Undead Queen had spoken, and the others immediately calmed down.

[Dislikes Humans: It’s quite normal, Alchemy City occupies a vast stretch of fertile land, and although the main city is gone, the other areas still have a complete alchemy artisan system intact, who wouldn’t want to seize it? Especially the desert dwarves, they can’t fight back against Laine, so wanting to switch territories makes sense.]

Amberser recalled the maps of the nations, with Alchemy City bordering both the Silvermoon Tribunal and the Golden Kingdom of the desert, whereas the strongest Laine Empire was separated from Alchemy City by an entire desert.

Laine probably coveted the heritage of Alchemy City too but was too out of reach, only watching the desert dwarves take over territory, gaining chances to breathe.

Amberser then curiously asked: [What about the Silvermoon Tribunal? Elf tribes rarely wage wars against others, right? They’ve recently been jacking up material prices like crazy, offending many. Aren’t they afraid of being ganged up on by the other kingdoms?]

[Withered Rose: I’ve also heard news about this. The elf tribe has indeed assembled their army, and their actions in raising material prices seem to have some hidden reasons, not just to undermine other kingdoms’ economies. The Silvermoon Tribunal has recently been under a one-way lock, allowing entry but no exit, closing off all news. I don’t know what exactly happened.]

Entry but no exit?

Amberser vaguely remembered Isabel mentioning that her former teacher went to the Silvermoon Tribunal and then never returned, so she was targeted by the lord. Otherwise, a certified alchemist as a teacher, most lords wouldn’t dare to meddle.

What in the world were those elves of the Silvermoon Tribunal up to? It couldn’t be that they were playing god and ended up collapsing like Alchemy City, could it?

But it probably wasn’t the case, as alchemists could mess up without any deities stepping in, whereas the elves were different. The Elf God’s lineage has a bunch of deities that especially take care of their own, so there shouldn’t be any chance of a major incident happening.

[Withered Rose: Diga little brother, are you still planning to stay in Alchemy City? It’s about to become a battlefield. The desert dwarves won’t back down since it’s a matter of survival, and the elf tribe has always been dominant. They’re bound to fight it out to decide how to divide an empire.]

Withered Rose’s words sent Amberser deep in thought. Although he now held the power of the Golden Throne, elevating him from the bottom of the legendary pecking order, a war between two kingdoms wasn’t something one or two legends could influence. Staying here could indeed cause trouble.

But where could he move to?