The dragon's harem

After casting the contract on Zenia, Sena spared some time to fully heal her body and reinforce her silver chain with her magic.

“I’ve put a tiny worm of my flesh inside your head. It rests right behind the bone of your right eye. No matter what, try to make sure it doesn’t get damaged. Even if your head got severed, as long as the worm is alive, I should be able to keep you alive.”

Sena was washing her hands at the sink in the corner of the room, and Zenia sat up, looking at her hands.

Zenia had never seen a healer as skilled as Sena when it came to flesh mending. She didn’t just cast a healing spell on her and tell her to leave, she had gone as far as to implant several magic crystals into her body. Those crystals would slowly leak healing magic to repair her body and clean it from the necrotic waste.

“I know I shouldn’t ask, but by any chance, are you a necromancer?”

That was a dangerous question, as necromancers are generally hated by most people because they taint the dead and desecrate their corpses. Everyone agrees that the dead should remain dead. If Sena were a necromancer, this could end up pushing her to try killing Zenia to hide her tracks.

But to Zenia’s surprise, Sena laughed. “Sadly, I’m not. I’m a zoemancer; we’re the opposite of necromancers. They manipulate the dead, and we manipulate the living.” She then smiled, “But my older brother Gray is probably the best necromancer in the many worlds.”

“Gray? Where did I hear that name before…” Zenia’s face then paled, “Wait, That Gray? The Walking Dead Gray? The strongest adventurer of the adventurers’ guild?”

Zenia had heard a lot about him, a thin and tall man with a lot of sutures all over his body, walking around in a grey robe and with skin even paler than ash and eyes milky and dead. He is a living corpse, a walking dead man.

What was most terrifying about him wasn’t that he could summon thousands of powerful undead to fight for him, but the fact that he was an accomplished brawler and a swordsman of great renown. There were even tales of him using his own bones as weapons or ripping someone’s spine out to use as a whip.

“That’s him, and he is in the opposite room having a drink with Arad. He showed up while I was working on you.” She sighed, “He sensed someone who defied Death’s will and came to kill them.”

Zenia paled, “Wait, what?”

“You didn’t revive with Raptur’s blood. For all intents and purposes, you should be dead.” Sena looked at her, “Brother came here to make sure you stay dead. As you can see, I trained under the goddess of life, Gracie, the mother of all life. Brother trained under the goddess of death, Gracie, the inevitable death.”

Sena dried her hands and approached Zenia with a stern face, “You should stay here until Arad and I finish the negotiations with him. The fact that death sent him instead of claiming your soul herself means that she is open to making a deal.”

Sena then closed the door and left Zenia alone.

Zenia looked around the room, feeling quite happy and thrilled that Gray was here. But that wasn’t her true feeling; the curse of Raptur still twisted them. She should be terrified, that man was the most infamous adventurer in the whole world.

But, Sena is his sister, and Alice should be his boss; Zenia could only hope those two can speak on her behalf and get something done.

She really wants to go out and see what he wants. But that was also not what she was feeling. She wasn’t crazy enough to dare ask what death herself wanted in exchange for letting her soul go.

She was supposed to be just a soldier, a scout of the outer skirts of the Storm Titan mountain range. How did she end up as a target for death? Why did she have to be the one to fall to the Cronos Raptur? Everyone who got captured beside her is now either peacefully dead or lost to oblivion; only she remains alive, suffering from Raptur’s curse even now.

Minutes later, Sena walked into the room and looked at her, “Gray left, you’re free to remain alive now. But you’ll have to find a god to speak up for you in the land of the dead if you die again. You can’t die faithless now, unless you want to suffer a fate worse than hell.”

Zenia’s face brightened with a large smile and an excited gasp. “Really? Is she that mad that I’m alive?”

“No, from what brother said, that has nothing to do with her. You’ve escaped her grasp. If you died with your soul not being tied to the universe by a god, you’ll get ejected out like an abomination.” Sena looked at her with a sharp glare, “You’ll turn into the same kind of monster as Raptur, an abomination.”

All souls came from AO’s great soul, and death is the binding that keeps them anchored to the world; it preserves the cycle of life and prevents the souls from getting lost through time.

The Goddess of Death has no followers, no worshippers, and no churches to chant her name, but she doesn’t need them to. Life itself is a pilgrimage to death. All living beings are believers of her great power; they’ll understand the finality and inevitability of death and have long since accepted it as a part of their very nature.

No living being is truly faithless, for even the atheists believe in death and worship her even if they don’t know it. Those who claim that nothing comes after death but the endless void are granted that wish by death, their souls turned back into energy and spread through the world. Those who claim that there is no heaven or hell, and instead all living beings are reincarnated into new lives, are granted that wish by death.

“That’s all that brother wanted to say. You’re free to live your new life, but don’t ever think of dying faithless. Find a divine being to pray to and make sure your soul isn’t lost. Otherwise, if you’re dying, just pray: {The Goal of All life is Death.} And Death herself would claim you as hers.”