Chapter 237: Adults Are Petty in So Many Ways (4)
"Hm, turning chaos mana back into necromantic energy..." Karnak made a curious expression at Leven’s question. "I never really thought to try it."
After all, he had gone so far as to risk temporal regression just to distance himself from necromancy. Granted, once he regressed, the state of the times had been strange enough that he ended up inching back toward necromancy bit by bit, but it didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about wanting to avoid it.
"Unlike chaos mana, necromantic energy rots the body the more you use it," Karnak explained.
To say it rotted was, if anything, a mild way to put it. More accurately, it slowly killed the flesh, turning it into that of an undead. In fact, by the time Karnak had almost become Astra Shunaph, only about twenty percent of his body remained alive.
"I was practically a corpse still breathing, back then," Karnak said.
Varos nodded. "That’s why we discarded our living bodies without regret. By that point, our flesh was already far gone."
If anyone asked him to turn into a death knight right now, he honestly couldn’t say he’d accept it willingly. Back then, he had already spent so long as a dark knight that his body was halfway dead anyway, so there hadn’t been much to regret. But now, he possessed a body that was fully, vibrantly alive.
Karnak questioned him in turn. "Leven, even you wouldn’t agree to turn into a skeleton right now, would you? No matter how desperate your situation is."
Leven blinked in disbelief. "How did you even end up like that in the first place?"
"I’ve told you before, haven’t I? I kept thinking, this much should be fine, and before I knew it, I’d crossed the line."
For this reason, necromantic energy held no appeal for Karnak now that he had a satisfactory alternative in chaos mana. Still, that wasn’t to say there hadn’t been moments when the lack of necromantic power had left him in danger.
It was always better to have more trump cards. Sure, he had said they could escape if Elezar or Dreltein showed up—but under the assumption they came one at a time.