After tidying up the warehouse briefly, sweeping away the more obvious signs of his spell work and hiding the paint cans back where he'd found them, Morris returned to the dormitory with his newly resurrected cat in his arms.
Scott's bed was empty when Morris pushed open their door. He'd probably gone out for his usual morning stroll, perhaps to the corner shop to see if he could convince the owner to give him yesterday's stale pastries for free.
That worked out perfectly for Morris's purposes. He casually walked over to Scott's unmade bed and placed the black cat directly on the threadbare sheets, which were already stained with various mysterious marks from months of use.
The generous Scott surely wouldn't mind a few extra black paw prints adding to the collection, Morris thought with a small, private smile. And if he did mind—well, he'd get over it.
Watching the black cat immediately begin to frolic on the bed, Morris felt a surge of satisfaction. His experiment had succeeded beyond his expectations.
He moved to sit on the edge of the lower bunk, then closed his eyes and focused his thoughts with intention.
The Mage's Book
The next second, the phantom of a book slowly materialized in his consciousness.
The cover was dark—not black, not grey, but some color that existed outside normal perception. The material was indescribable, something that looked like it might be leather but also stone, or perhaps something that had never existed in nature at all. The surface was covered with interwoven patterns of starlight.
But the cover's appearance didn't matter. The contents were what held value.
With a simple thought, Morris flipped it open.
"Undead Creature Transformation Magic Circle"
The title stood at the top of the page in that same script that hurt slightly to read for too long. This was the exact magic circle Morris had just successfully practiced in the warehouse not an hour ago.
"As expected," Morris murmured aloud, opening his physical eyes while the mental image of the book faded back into his consciousness. "This thing isn't my delusion after all."
He'd suspected as much, hoped that he wasn't experiencing some psychotic break, but having concrete, reproducible proof was deeply reassuring.
Morris opened his eyes fully, blinking against the morning light, finally accepting his new reality.
Thank goodness—he wasn't mentally ill. He wasn't experiencing schizophrenia or early-onset psychosis or any of the other disorders that might cause elaborate hallucinations.
The book was real. The magic was real. All of it was genuinely real.
Realizing this, Morris let out a heavy sigh of relief that seemed to deflate his entire body. Tension he hadn't fully acknowledged drained out of his shoulders, and he slumped back against Scott's bed frame.
This peculiar Mage's Book had suddenly appeared in his mind a few days ago, perhaps four or five days before the Hogwarts letter arrived. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment—he'd simply gone to sleep one night as normal, and when he'd woken, there it was. As if it had always been there and he'd only just noticed.
Just like a real book, he could view it in his mind at any time, accessing it with a simple thought. He could flip through the Mage's Book whenever he wished, examining pages in as much detail as he wanted, even taking mental notes.
However, and this was the frustrating part, most of the book's content seemed to be sealed by some unknown force.
At first, Morris could only access the first few pages. But as time passed, he found he could access more and more content.
For instance, the Undead Creature Transformation Magic Circle he'd just used had appeared only last night.
But there was something strange about the book's contents.
Although the tome was called "The Mage's Book"—a generic, broad title that suggested it might contain all manner of magical knowledge—all the currently unlocked content seemed to be exclusively related to undead creatures and curses.
Generally speaking, when a normal person suddenly gains this kind of ominous, death-touched ability seemingly out of nowhere, they'd feel some reservation and unease. Perhaps even horror.
But Morris didn't really care about the moral implications or social taboos.
The knowledge was power. The power was useful. The ethics could be worked out later, situationally, based on how he chose to apply what he learned.
Since he'd obtained this special ability whether through reincarnation, cosmic accident, or some other mechanism—he might as well accept it properly and learn to use it effectively. Refusing the knowledge wouldn't make it go away, and squeamishness served no purpose.
Besides, with his current level of understanding about magic and the metaphysics of this strange world, trying to discover the book's true origins would be utterly impossible.
Better to focus on mastering what he had access to rather than obsessing over mysteries he couldn't solve.
Having mentally sorted through all this, accepting his circumstances, his abilities, and his path forward—Morris climbed onto Scott's bed and happily rolled around with his undead cat.
The sensation of the cat's body was still that familiar cool touch, like holding something made of firm rubber that had been refrigerated. Not unpleasant, just... different.
The last day of July arrived with brutal heat.
A week had passed since Morris received his letter from Hogwarts.
In the afternoon, with the sun beating down mercilessly and the air thick with humidity, Morris was engaged in mandatory weeding activities in the orphanage's neglected courtyard.
Due to long-term neglect as the building's budget stretched so thin that groundskeeping was considered an unnecessary luxury—the courtyard had become thoroughly overgrown with wild grass, weeds, and various invasive plants.
The vegetation had grown so rampant in its spread, that it had completely submerged the original paths, making them impassable without fighting through knee-high growth.
Naturally, the government wouldn't waste precious funds on hiring actual groundskeepers for such trivial aesthetic matters at a children's home.
Unsurprisingly, this meant the children at the orphanage served as cheap—or rather, free labor for these kinds of tasks. It was presented as "teaching responsibility" and "contributing to the community," but really it was just exploitation that everyone pretended was character-building.
Morris didn't refuse the assignment when his name was called. There was no point in arguing or trying to get out of it—that would only draw negative attention from the caretakers and mark him as a troublemaker. Better to go along, appear compliant, and then find ways to minimize actual effort once supervision was lax.
However, despite the entire troop of children being assigned to this task, nearly half had already slipped away when the caretakers weren't looking. They'd simply wandered off toward the back of the property, climbed the wall, or invented urgent needs to use the bathroom and never returned.
And most of the remainder, the children who'd stayed in the courtyard where they could be seen, were obviously slacking off or horsing around rather than doing any actual work.
This behavior gave a fairly clear glimpse into the general character of the children at this orphanage.
It was truly awful, if Morris was being honest with himself. Discipline was nonexistent, work ethic absent, and cooperation impossible.
As he'd observed many times before, the children who ended up in this orphanage all had significant character issues to some degree—behavioral problems, authority issues, inability to follow rules, aggression, or profound apathy. That's why they were here rather than in more pleasant facilities or foster homes. They were the difficult cases no one else wanted.
He wasn't gossiping behind anyone's back or being cruel. This was simply observable fact.
Environment was the greatest influence on developing minds, and these children had no choice in the matter. They'd been shaped by abandonment, trauma, institutional living, and lack of positive role models. Of course they turned out this way.
Fortunately, Morris had the advantage of being an adult mentally, so he hadn't let this toxic environment twist his own personality.
The two caretakers on duty didn't seem to care much about the poor work quality or the missing children. They merely paced lazily around the perimeter of the courtyard in a perfunctory patrol, occasionally glancing at the kids but not actually enforcing anything. They looked bored and slightly resentful, probably wishing they were anywhere else.
At this rate, with this level of effort and supervision, they probably wouldn't finish tidying the courtyard until the summer holiday ended and school resumed. Possibly not even then.
Seeing this clear lack of oversight and consequences, Morris naturally joined the ranks of the slackers without any guilt whatsoever. He found a spot in partial shade, pulled up a few weeds to establish that he was "working," and then basically stopped.
Of course, while appearing to slack off physically, staring into space, occasionally prodding at the ground with a stick, he wasn't actually idle.
His mind was extremely active.
He could still browse through the Mage's Book in his consciousness, studying its contents without any external sign of what he was doing.
To any casual observer, including the caretakers, he simply appeared to be daydreaming in the heat.
The ability to slack off inconspicuously was every office worker's dream, Morris thought with amusement. How many hours had he wasted in his previous life sitting through pointless meetings, pretending to pay attention? If he'd had access to a mental library then, his productivity would have doubled.
For the past week, ever since discovering the extent of the Mage's Book's contents, he'd been attempting to learn actual spellcasting magic rather than just ritual work.
For example, there was this curse-type spell called the Weakening Curse that had unlocked three days ago. According to the book's description, it would cause the target to experience sudden fatigue.
Unfortunately, actually learning to cast it was proving to be significantly more difficult than he'd initially imagined.
The key to spellcasting, Morris had discovered through study and frustrating trial and error, lay in something the book called "construction."
While incantations and gestures were necessary components, they were more like auxiliary aids, focusing mechanisms.
The true core of magic lay in the precise manipulation of mental power, what the book sometimes called "will" or "consciousness" or "intent" depending on the context.
Simply put, it meant using mental power to construct a complex and precise energy structure in the mental world—the spell model. Like building an intricate machine inside your own mind.
According to the book's theory, as long as he could successfully construct and stabilize the spell model for the Weakening Curse in his mind, he'd be able to cast it successfully.
Thinking about this ongoing struggle, Morris rubbed his forehead with slight irritation. The heat wasn't helping his concentration either.
Even though he'd found some helpful tricks through experimentation, it was still incredibly difficult for him at his current level.
During the process of constructing the spell model, the slightest distraction would result in immediate failure. A bird calling. Someone shouting. His own thoughts wandering for even a fraction of a second. Anything would cause the delicate mental structure to collapse into formless energy, forcing him to start over from the beginning.
He'd tried several hundred times already over the past days, practicing whenever he had private time. And out of those hundreds of attempts, he'd only succeeded in completing the construction once.
Yes, just once.
Morris had always considered himself someone quite good at concentrating—that had been essential in his previous career in financial analysis, where losing focus on a spreadsheet could mean missing critical patterns. So, this result inevitably discouraged him.
While he was fretting over this problem, mentally reviewing the spell model's structure and trying to figure out where he kept failing, his roommate Scott's voice suddenly called out from nearby.
"Hey, Morris!" Scott was twenty feet away, also supposedly weeding but clearly doing nothing of the sort. "Isn't that your cat over there?"
Morris looked up quickly and followed the direction Scott was pointing.
He immediately spotted his undead cat standing on a section of the courtyard's brick wall. The wall's plaster had long since peeled away in great chunks, revealing the brickwork beneath, and his cat was on one of the flatter sections, looking confident.
The cat was baring its teeth in what was probably meant to be a threatening display, back slightly arched, confronting a much larger and visibly more robust spotted stray cat that had apparently wandered here.
Is there going to be a fight? Morris thought with sudden interest, his frustration with spellcasting was momentarily forgotten.
The undead cat's eyes were sharp and focused, pupils contracted into two narrow vertical lines that gave it a predatory appearance—or at least, an attempt at one.
It seemed to be thinking something along the lines of: Hah! I'm a domesticated cat now with a proper master—how dare a mere stray cat provoke me and challenge my territory?
Moreover, its master had already bestowed upon it extraordinary power, hadn't he?
Filled with this reasoning, the undead cat arched its body, every hair was standing on end to make itself look larger and more threatening. Its lips pulled back to reveal small white teeth.
Then it suddenly pushed off with its hind legs in an explosive burst of movement, lunging at the spotted stray like a black arrow shot from a bow!
And then...
"Smack!"
It was slapped off the wall by the spotted stray with one paw.
"..."
Morris stood frozen, unsure whether to laugh or feel secondhand embarrassment for his cat.
"Your cat really is pathetically weak," Scott commented from the side, arms crossed over his chest, his tone somewhere between amused and speechless. "I mean, I've seen kittens put up better fights than that."
Watching the undead cat lying on the ground, now making pitiful whimpering sounds and looking toward him with those yellow eyes as if begging for sympathy or rescue, Morris suddenly didn't want to acknowledge it as his cat at all.
How utterly embarrassing. His first necromantic creation, imbued with magic and pulled back from death itself, and it got demolished by a random stray in about two seconds.
How embarrassing.
You're a noble undead creature, for heaven's sake.
Losing to a stray cat was one thing, but couldn't it show some backbone?
"It's probably just some random stray cat that looks similar to mine," Morris said with an expressionless face, deliberately looking away from the scene. "Lots of black cats are around here."
"?!"
As if hearing its master's words, the undead cat immediately stopped its performance. It scrambled to its feet and darted toward Morris like a black shadow. It reached his legs and immediately began climbing up his pant legs until it could burrow into his arms and press itself against his chest.
Watching the undead cat vigorously nuzzle Morris's chest with its head, Scott's mouth twitched. "...This cat really likes you. Its name is Tin-Tin, right?"
"Yes," Morris showed a helpless expression.
"Tin-Tin" was indeed the name he'd given the undead cat.
It was meant to commemorate his treasured canned fruit—a precious tin of peaches he'd saved for nearly two months, hiding it in increasingly creative locations to protect it from theft, planning to savor it on some special occasion.
Unfortunately, during a particularly chaotic afternoon three days ago when several of the younger children had been running through the dormitory playing tag, someone had knocked it off its hiding spot on top of their wardrobe. The tin had hit the floor, split open, and spilled its contents everywhere.
Morris had mourned that loss. The cat's name was his small memorial to it.
Incidentally, Morris had also performed additional magical preservation treatment on Tin-Tin according to the undead creature maintenance guide in the Mage's Book.
"Mr. Black, I'm reminding you again—no cats are allowed here," a caretaker approached him and said expressionlessly.
"Yes, sir, I understand," Morris nodded obediently, his face showing a picture of respectful compliance. "But this is just a stray cat that wandered in from the street. Not mine. I was just checking to see if it was injured from that fall."
As he spoke, he gently tossed Tin-Tin away from his chest, sending the cat stumbling a few feet away.
Tin-Tin, apparently understanding the game or at least sensing Morris's intent, moved nimbly. It quickly disappeared behind the wall in a blur of black fur.
The caretaker watched the cat disappear, nodded in acknowledgment, and said nothing more. He turned and continued his lazy patrol.
Morris was already well-versed in the art of dealing with caretakers after years in living.
The secret was simple: as long as he didn't talk back, didn't argue, and appeared to obey orders immediately and respectfully, most caretakers wouldn't give him any real trouble. They were overworked, underpaid, and generally just wanted the children to not cause problems.