Stuck in limbo for a long time, not knowing where to start, Rino eventually heard something he only saw on farms in his previous life.

The scuttling of feet in between long grass caught Rino’s undivided attention. He craned his neck as much as it would go and spied the little grey creature as it let out a small squeak.

That’s right! Even in abandoned graveyards, there were living creatures. Still, he found it strange. Birds should also be in the area if they were here. Why did he not see a single raven in the sky?

Odd.

Nevertheless, Rino made up his mind quickly. With animals, he didn’t have to be fussy about their appearance. As long as he could make a safe getaway, he would live to fight another day. It would be easier to disguise as an animal in search of his next target. If he didn’t have an ideal body, he could simply make one.

Honestly, Rino preferred birds. The ability to fly was somewhat important for reconnaissance, but he was in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t many options available.

Studying the tiny grey rat nibbling on something that looked like a fruit, Rino was reminded of his bodily functions. He didn’t need to eat, drink or defecate. What about sleep? He tried to earlier, but it might be the hype of things in his new life that made him unable to get any rest. He needed to test it out after he confirmed his holy magic theory.

“Sorry, rat,” he thought and quickly trapped it in a conjured earth cage. He needed this rat to die first before he could imbue a part of his powers into the dead body.

A Lich’s power is proportional to the powers imbued in each body. Many liches grow more powerful over time as the powers in their multiple bodies accumulate after many years of training. Rino did not need a powerful body. He just needed one to test holy magic on.

Offering his apologies and prayers to the test subject, Rino speared it in the head with an earth spike. The rat died with a squeak and hung from the earth spike in the cage. The skull was shattered, but the body was intact without any missing parts. He could make do with this.

Bringing the dead rat over was a slightly more tedious process without air magic. Rino was reluctant to use water magic too. He didn’t want to split his consciousness and feel disgustingly drowned after having his skull split open. One was more than enough, thank you. Hence, the lich designed a mud bridge to roll the corpse over to his little mud hut.

The little grey rat had blood matted all over its fur, but Rino thought he would rather be a rat with a split skull than a lady with knockers on her chest. Something about females didn’t sit right with him. His allergy to females must have been carried to his new life because Rino abhorred the idea of ladies very much even now.

If he recalled correctly, transferring powers to another body required some kind of spell chant. Rino had no clue what sort of spell chants he should use without accidentally activating holy magic. He also didn’t know if chants in his language would work in this new world. So far, Rino only tried using chantless magic.

“Agua!” Rino thought and mustered the mana at the tip of his fingers.

The spell formed even with his thoughts alone, and Rino was thrilled to see a bigger water ball form when he thought the spell out in his language. Although he couldn’t feel the mana branches in this body, Rino was certain that it worked. Maybe he could transfer a portion of his new powers to this grey rat’s body and do a timed holy spell chant from a distance to observe the effects of holy magic on a lich’s body.

In his little mud hut, Rino scribbled the magic circle he often used for summoning souls for questioning. Here, there was a different problem. Blood was often used as a medium for sacrifice. He didn’t want to do a complete soul transfer and had no blood. How was this going to work?

Looking at his current skeleton body, Rino didn’t see any attached hair or pieces of his original body’s self that could be used. Maybe there was something in the grave that would be handy?

Diving back down to the grave he crawled out from, Rino saw how looted it was. The coffin wasn’t closed properly, and most of the owner’s valuables were stolen. There was one dull brass ring with an unpolished rock lying in the corner that the grave robbers must have missed or deemed not valuable enough to steal and Rino rejoiced. That was a common Tourmaline! All crystals and gemstones could be used to store mana. If he didn’t have blood to offer, surely, mana could be a suitable substitute for calling out souls and binding them. In any case, it was worth a try.

The Tourmaline crystal could not hold a lot of mana, but Rino estimated that it should be sufficient to imbue a small portion of his soul to this grey rat’s body. Once the circle was ready, Rino dug more space underground to work with the ritual circle. The rat’s body lay in the centre, and he placed the ring in the sacrificial position before he chanted the spell in his mind.

Nothing happened for a while, but Rino persevered. A minute passed, then two minutes passed. Still, nothing happened. What was going on?

The circle was drawn correctly. The body was present. The ring was in the correct place. What could it be?

The realisation that holy magic might not be part of the lich’s ability struck Rino like lightning. Hurriedly, he chanted the lowest tier of holy magic in his head to see if something would happen.

“Licht!”

Nothing. No light came from his fingers. No floating ball of light to act as a torch in dark places. Absolutely nothing.

Well, what a failure! Rino looked at the dead rat and wondered if he had dark magic as a lich. While he was no expert, holy magic and dark magic were opposites. If the opposite of ‘cure’ was ‘curse’, the opposite of ‘light’ should be ‘dark’ as the basic spell.

“Dunkel!”

Nothing happened, and Rino felt silly for trying. Thankfully, there was nobody around to judge him for that. The lich tried to recall what he knew about dark magic in his previous life.

While holy magic was mostly used to heal and act as a defence, paladins could use holy magic to exorcise and cast divine judgement onto demons. He didn’t know much about dark magic, but there were many complaints and cases of dark magicians doing summoning rituals, mass sacrifices, curses that corrupted the environment and general destruction. Of course, certain species who combined dark magic with their bloodline, like succubi, could charm people using dark magic. Other demons could use dark magic to teleport through shadows and all sorts of cool tricks that regular elemental and holy magic couldn’t.

Hold on! Did that mean dark magic was cooler? Rino couldn’t believe he didn’t pay more attention to dark magic when he was still a court magician. It would have saved him so much trouble!

At least now, he had his answer. Holy magic was not part of his vast repertoire. It was a slight pity but nothing he would miss too much now that he was a lich. Dark magic was cooler, and Rino wanted to exploit his new dark magic abilities to live a comfortable life.

“Schattenseil!” he thought, visualising a rope made from shadows as he aimed it at the rat.

To his absolute delight, the spell worked, and Rino moved the rat around with his newly discovered shadow tendril spell. It wasn’t telekinesis, but it came close. Were there any limitations to this seemingly basic spell?

Rino cast another shadow tendril and moved the rat outside of his shelter. The shadow weakened tremendously under the sun but continued to hold the rat’s body. With a huge sigh, Rino brought the body back in. The sun was truly the enemy of all undead. Why was it so sunny in a graveyard like this? Shouldn’t the abandoned graveyard be a little spookier hidden deep in the woods with lots of fog around? That made a little more sense.

For the next few hours, Rino explored many options of dark magic from what he recalled and understood in his previous life. Shadow tendril was a very useful spell, even though it was very limited. It took the lich a while to understand dark magic’s theory. Unlike light that was fuelled by the caster’s mana source and can be created anywhere, dark magic relied on the external environment to be amplified using a caster’s mana.

In short, dark magic used the negative thoughts as energy and borrowed shadows as a medium for manifestation. Rino was able to use dark magic but with many limitations. He simply wasn’t miserable enough for it. However, when he recalled all the crappy things he had to put up with in his previous life, the shadow tendrils grew stronger even under the sunlight. What a convenient discovery!

Now, to learn if teleportation was possible. He didn’t want to walk all the way to his new build plot. Rino checked the time. It was still midday. He had plenty of time before sunset to figure this out.