Something Feels Off(1)
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a blond young man in his twenties with a somewhat dull-looking face.
'…Who was this again? He looks familiar somehow.'
As Karnak pondered, a familiar voice reached his ears.
"Um, excuse me… are you the young master, by any chance?"
He remembered.
"So it's you, Baros."
The young man before him was his trusted aide from before he became a Death Knight—back when Baros was still young.
"This is kind of different from what I imagined."
Baros blinked, wearing a dazed expression.
"I thought it'd be something like, 'Hello, my present-day self… a new life begins… my mind goes all fuzzy…' something like that."
Karnak didn't bother to scold him.
"Yeah. Honestly, I thought so too."
Who would've thought that the moment he closed and opened his eyes, everything would already be completely different?
It was so sudden that it didn't even feel real yet.
"Bring me a mirror. I want to see what I look like."
"A mirror? Don't be ridiculous. There's no way we'd own something that expensive at this point in our lives."
For Necromancer King Karnak, who once ruled the entire world, a mirror would've been a cheap, commonplace item—but for the illegitimate son of a provincial noble, it was an unattainable luxury.
Instead, Baros checked his face for him.
"No need to worry. You look exactly like your twenty-year-old self. Skinny build, black hair, black eyes—and even that cocky expression is unchanged."
"…Is my impression really that bad?"
"I told you to soften your expression back then, didn't I? If you stayed quiet, you were handsome, but you always looked like you were full of complaints about the whole world. Tsk, tsk."
Karnak smiled in satisfaction.
"At least one thing hasn't changed."
Even after returning to the past, Baros was still Baros.
"You're still rude as hell."
And he'd kept this rude aide by his side for over a hundred years.
At this point, it was far too familiar to get genuinely annoyed.
"Yeah, I guess I did have a lot of grievances against the world back then."
Karnak looked around.
The two of them were standing inside a dim, gloomy cave.
A small table sat against one wall, with a single book lying open atop it. The only source of light was a small, flickering candle.
Picking up the book—which looked more like a scribble pad than a proper volume—Karnak muttered,
"So this is it. Where everything began."
A book he had discovered by chance deep in his family's storage vault. Calling it an ancient tome was generous—it wasn't even a proper book.
It had no title, and its crude handwriting was chaotic, copied out like a rough notebook.
In other words, it wasn't a published book, but something someone had personally scribbled down.
Yet the knowledge within it was what first set him on the path of necromancy.
"Shall I give it a test…?"
Murmuring, Karnak flicked his finger.
A flame no larger than a fingernail sparked into existence, then grew as it engulfed the old book.
Fwoosh!
In an instant, the flames reduced the book to ash and died out.
"So this is the level of my necromantic power at this point."
Karnak nodded.
"About what I expected. I've only just entered necromancy, after all."
Watching this, Baros flinched and exclaimed,
"W–Wait! Was it really okay to burn that?"
"I already have all the contents memorized. What's the problem?"
The book itself didn't contain any special dark power—it was just a normal book that recorded knowledge.
"And it's not even particularly advanced. Just basic necromancy."
The reason he eventually became the strongest necromancer in the world was because he traveled the globe, continuously acquiring ancient knowledge. It wasn't as though this single book had instantly turned him into a supreme necromancer.
"In fact, that's exactly why it should be burned. This book is what let me enter necromancy in the first place."
If Karnak could enter the path, then some other idiot could as well.
And if someone discovered that he possessed this book, he'd be lucky to get hanged—unlucky, and he'd be burned at the stake.
"There's no need to leave behind a potential source of trouble when I don't even need it anymore."
After brushing away the ashes, he turned his gaze toward the cave entrance.
Beyond it, he could see a faint, eye-stinging light.
"Shall we head outside first?"
Karnak let out a scream.
"Uaaagh!"
Baros panicked as well.
"W–What is this?!"
An overwhelming light was pouring down from above their heads!
A terrifying radiance that looked as if it might burn the entire world away!
Baros muttered blankly,
"Ah… so it's that."
"Huh?"
"Sunlight."
"Now that you mention it… this is what the sun was like, wasn't it?"
The two of them looked around with dazed expressions. Their eyes quickly adjusted, and the world came properly into view.
It was only natural.
They were no longer undead but perfectly healthy humans—there was no reason sunlight would feel like hellfire anymore.
In truth, it only stung their eyes for a few seconds and that was it. The overreaction was mostly psychological.
And yet, there was still more to make a fuss over.
"Oooh!"
"The sunlight is warm, young master!"
"The smell of grass! I can smell grass!"
"I smell dirt too!"
Things every human in the world naturally feels—and usually takes for granted—came crashing into their senses all at once.
Karnak and Baros shed tears of emotion. Then they were moved all over again by the fact that they were crying.
"Look, Baros! Tears! I'm crying!"
"I've even got a runny nose!"
"I've got saliva dripping too!"
"At this rate, do you think we could even pee?"
"Of course we could! We're human again!"
"…Let's stop the gross talk here."
In any case, they had regained it.
Their senses, their emotions, a real body capable of feeling awe and wonder.
In exchange, they had lost absolute power.
No longer the strongest necromancer in human history. No longer the strongest Death Knight.
"Ah, I don't need that crap anyway!"
"Right! It's not like becoming that made us happy!"
Karnak shouted toward his longtime retainer,
"This time, let's really live like proper humans!"
In a forest on a low, rolling hillside, a woodland path bathed in summer sunlight stretched between lush green trees. Two men were walking along it.
Both were dressed in ordinary—almost shabby—travelers' clothes.
The blond young man with messy hair suddenly raised a hand to his brow and looked up at the sky.
"Nice weather."
The handsome black-haired young man replied absentmindedly,
"Yeah. The weather's really nice."
The sun blazed brightly, grains of sand sparkling.
It was certainly fresh and warm.
"…Isn't it kind of too hot?"
"And I'm getting annoyed because I'm sweating."
"Yeah. This whole 'having sensations' thing is oddly irritating."
The black-haired young man, Karnak, let out a deep sigh.
"So this is how troublesome having a living body was."
Half a day had passed since they roughly packed their things and left the cave.
He was irritated by the heat, irritated by hunger, irritated by thirst.
The sense of awe was fleeting—before long, he found himself missing his former powers.
That, apparently, was how fickle the human heart was.
"Well, it's not like we can go back now. We'll just have to get used to it."
Grumbling, Baros unfolded a map.
"We should be coming up on Darha Village soon, I think…"
Comparing the map with the surrounding terrain, Baros scratched his head roughly.
"It was so long ago, I can't remember a damn thing."
They had gone back more than a hundred years. Honestly, it would be stranger if he did remember.
"Still, there should be an inn or something there, right? It's a crossroads village."
"There was, or my past self wouldn't have picked this place."
The current time period was when Karnak had secretly left his family estate to learn necromancy for the first time.
This was the very period when he had hidden himself in a cave deep in the forest, avoiding prying eyes, spending three or four months acquainting himself with dark mana.
"Judging by my mana reserves, it feels like about two months after I first awakened necromantic power."
"So it's not exactly the moment you first felt it?"
"We're rewinding over a hundred years. A bit of error is only natural."
Even while learning necromancy, one still had to eat to survive. Expecting supplies in a remote wilderness where hardly anyone passed through was unrealistic.
That was why he had deliberately chosen the low hills near Darha Village.
Darha Village sat on a central trade route of the Kingdom of Yustil.
It was a trading village with inns, restaurants, and shops for merchants, so he would regularly send Baros to buy daily necessities.
"Now that you mention it, I think I kind of remember…"
Murmuring to himself, Baros's eyes suddenly lit up.
"Wait—then does that mean we can finally tear into juicy beef dripping with fat, washed down with strong wine?"
Karnak deliberately ignored the starry-eyed gaze of his retainer and put on a mournful expression.
"There's no way Darha Village has restaurants that fancy."
Even if there were, they couldn't afford them anyway.
"We're broke."
"Well, yeah… we were poor, weren't we?"
Baros lifted the coin pouch at his waist.
"It's got some weight to it. All copper coins, though."
At this point in time, Karnak had no relationship whatsoever with high-grade currency like silver coins.
Gold coins? He'd only ever seen them from afar, a few times at most.
Karnak let out a deep sigh.
"What's the point of being from a noble family when it's completely ruined?"
And on top of that, he was the unwanted bastard of that ruined house.
Thanks to that, the memory of scraping together every last bit of loose change for this secret journey was still vivid—so vivid it stood out even after a hundred years.
"That's why I went crazy insisting on learning necromancy in the first place. Now it really feels like I've come back."
As he walked, Karnak reminisced.
"Come to think of it, does this mean I'll have to see my parents and my two older brothers again? Ugh. I don't like that."
"Blegh, I don't like that either."
Baros grimaced.
A ruined household breeds cruelty. Because the family was already at rock bottom, they were especially harsh toward Karnak.
A bastard child is, by nature, a source of discord.
If they'd had any leeway, they might have shown some mercy—but both brothers were barely getting by themselves. Naturally, they took every opportunity to lash out at Karnak.
Of course, back then Karnak had ground his teeth in resentment whenever he dealt with them.
Would he really be able to face them calmly now?
Thinking of the past, Baros looked worried.
"You won't just charge at them the moment you see them, will you, young master?"
"Come on, why would I? I'll just play along, stroke their egos a bit, flatter them."
"If you could do that, wouldn't things have never gotten that far?"
Recalling the past—destroying the family, killing his brothers, committing all kinds of atrocities—Karnak chuckled.
"I can do it now. I've aged, you know? I'm not some hotheaded twenty-year-old kid anymore."
"Strictly speaking, you are exactly that twenty-year-old kid right now."
"My insides are a hundred years old, though."
Back then, he couldn't stand being looked down on and charged headlong with youthful arrogance. Now, he was confident he could let things slide.
"Looking back, they weren't that cruel."
At the time, he'd thought all the world's misery rested on his shoulders alone—but after experiencing everything, he could see it clearly.
His brothers were just ordinary people too. They were suffering, and they simply dumped that suffering onto him.
"Wait… actually, compared to others, they were pretty bad. Huh? Thinking about it, I'm getting pissed off again."
"See? I told you—your personality hasn't gone anywhere."
"I'm joking, joking."
Waving his hand dismissively, Karnak continued along the mountain path.
In any case, the immediate problem wasn't the distant family estate, but the next meal.
"Still, what do we do about money? Should we just rob some passerby?"
"Didn't you say we were going to live like proper humans?"
"I did. It's just a bad habit—I said it without thinking."
"Robbery is a habit?"
"Don't talk like it's someone else's problem. You've killed more people than I have!"
"And then we revived them afterward."
I revived them. You just killed them."
They continued walking, trading banter that was half joke, half truth, until the forest gradually thinned and open fields came into view.
Beyond them, Darha Village could be seen faintly in the distance.
"Anyway, let's eat something. We'll think after that."
At Karnak's suggestion, Baros's face brightened.
They had to save enough money to return home, but it wasn't so bad that they couldn't afford a single meal.
"I couldn't agree more, young master!"