Bro, I'm not an Undead!



A moment later, Replicus had returned the Paladin Champion to the ship. He slumped back into his seat and took several minutes to process what had just happened.

"Looks like this is going to be harder than I initially thought. That sockethole has a plan with this man," Replicus said.

Oddly, the Paladin Champion looked to be at peace, not knowing that he – as Replicus surmised – was bonded to a particularly powerful Undeath creature for whatever reason. Or perhaps several?

The creature that came out of him insisted that he drop the Champion back into the ocean and make a U-turn for home.

'What's his plan?'

Indeed. That was the question.

What was the masked man's plan?

As things looked now, it might be impossible for Replicus to heal the Paladin and attempt to make him an ally as well as killing him and making him an Apostle.

He had the distinct feeling that as long as the man had Undeath energy within him, even if he died, [Apostle Summon] wouldn't work. Of course, this had only become clear after Replicus verified the man's circumstances.

They were way worse than he had thought.

'Definer of Causality. That's quite the name. To think the masked man has something like this up his sleeve. Does he also have other ridiculous beasts with absurd powers as his undead? Is he saving them for a last wave attack when he inevitably catch up to him?'

Replicus had already considered the masked man a problem, but it seemed his assessment of him was still too reasonable. What made him even more tense was the fact that the masked man probably had creatures like the Definer of Causality before whatever boost he acquired from the millions of souls he had got from the climax of the Premium Age Royale.

Perhaps the Paladin Champion seemingly fighting on par with the masked man wasn't because he was as powerful as the masked man, or perhaps not even because of the peculiar sickness Grim mentioned the necromancer had, but because he had wanted the Paladin Champion intact. Or mostly so anyway.

"I can't believe this is turning out to be as dire as the ascent of a god onto Aigas," Replicus said.

He killed this line of thought and traced his way back to the Definer of Causality.

His thought phantoms were especially rowdy about that topic.

"Higher level concept? This is our first time seeing this right? Higher than Spatial lightning and Stagnant Space?" one of his phantoms said while scratching its skull.

"The word Causality doesn't sit right with me. Cause and effect. The flow of events. Does that mean that creature can control the result of others' actions? Are we already trapped by it in some way?"

"No, no. You're both wrong. First of all, this isn't our first time seeing a Higher level concept. The thing is, I think what determines a higher level concept for [Epiphany] is how long it would take us to learn it, not how just how strong the concept is. And besides, just because a beast has a power with the name Causality doesn't mean it controls what others do and how they are rewarded for it. It might just be like a... uhm...a medium or a mediator!" a particularly riled thought phantom explained with vigour.

"Wait. You're saying there's no link between a very strong a concept and the difficulty involved in us learning it? Those two aren't separate things, they're related!" another accused suspiciously.

"No, no, you sockethole! Listen to me! It's all about relevance. Think about it. Remember how it's easier for us to handle Distorted Gravity when we are in the Hybrid Luman than in the Penetrator form? I think that if our flesh form had [Epiphany], the cost to learn the penultimate secrets of Distorted Gravity would be very low. Why?"

There was a pause.

"Because... the Hybrid Luman form has a core we crafted specifically for adapting Gravity?"

"Exactly! Exactly!" the riled up phantom said, looking deranged as it hung Replicus' shoulder and then began pacing in the air. "So I'm thinking, what if this doesn't just apply to reasonable tangible factors that makes a concept easier for us to learn. I mean, maybe we managed to learn Grand Fire quickly because we were already pretty good at using fire – with the whole [Ungodly Flames of Debauchery] thing – rather than just because we sit in that pool of lava all day. What if this Causality thing – which I'm sure isn't as ridiculous as it seems – is harder for us to learn because well..."

One of the thought phantoms jerked.

"You can't mean..."

"No way. That applies?"

"Yes, yes! What if it's hard for us to learn because we – as it pains me to say – aren't really a prime example of someone in control of their life's trajectory? I mean, as much as we've progressed, our goal leads us back to where we started. To Somanda. Before we beat him, it doesn't really matter what we do if we go and get ourselves killed in the end."

"I don't know. That's a little far-fetched. By saying this, you're already making this Wider Causality concept into something really powerful," a thought phantom argued. "And why would the skill become harder to learn instead of being impossible for us to learn?"

"Look! [Epiphany], [Nullmancer's Royal Raiment of Acclimation] and [Nullmancer's Unforgiving Lancet] are broad skills. They practically have no limit and we own them. We just discovered that our Class may be mirrored after some big shot in the Null Verse, so obviously its abilities must also be ridiculous. We have theorised that these three skills and [Wealth of Spoils] simply have no limit. So perhaps [Epiphany] sets its bounds according to the user, as a sort of restraint mechanism. Like the Flaws..."

There was another pause.

"I still think this is a little too...odd."

"Me too. That would mean our other three Nullmancer exclusive skills have these restrictions too. [Nullmancer's Royal Raiment of Acclimation] can't h—"

"Hold on. [Wealth of Spoils] doesn't allow us to pass on skills to living things. We've had to be shrewd about it, mixing in [Sorcery of Essence] to do that. Would that count as a sort of caveat? A restriction, I mean."

Another one of the phantoms sighed exasperatedly.

"You know what, we can easily find out if [Epiphany] has a restriction for us or not by simply learning Wider Causality and seeing what it does. Maybe it is just more powerful than our other concepts."

"I don't think it's worth it. 80,000 plus Null Life Essence points just to get it t9 sit ungraded in our status? That's a waste we can't really afford right now. To get it to the D rank, we'll need a figure above 100,000. We're cut off from Deign, and it's not wise to hog all that reserve Null Life Essence for something like this."

That seemed fair.

"Damn those Reverse Clusters."

"So do we just remain in the dark about this Wider Causality? It might come to bite us in the back."

"Actually..." it was Replicus who spoke this time.

His finger glinted with a foggy light as he looked at the Paladin Champion.

"Let's see if we can glimpse at the truth with this."