I died.
Those were the last thoughts I had as Bernard Wayne.
After eighteen miserable years of coughing, choking, and being held hostage by an immune system made out of wet cardboard, dying was… surprisingly mellow.
Frustrating, for sure… who wants their "grand finale" at eighteen or all ages?
But I accepted it more calmly than I ever expected.
My consciousness slipped into darkness, my senses dimmed to nothing, and I just floated.
Ah. So this is death…
I never thought dying would feel like anything. I always pictured it as someone flicking off a light switch. But as you would expect, mysteries get solved every day, even on the way out. That's about as good as my life would get, now that it'd ended.
"…"
"…"
"…"
Huh?
Something felt wrong.
Not painful, not pleasant…just wrong.
Like the sensation of being awake inside a dream.
I didn't know how else to describe it except…
I still felt alive?
Which made no sense.
Reincarnation? Maybe.
But that didn't add up either.
Shouldn't I be memory-wiped by now?
That was the standard deal in fiction.
As my body sank deeper into this dark sea I tried to surrender to nothingness.
If only it were that easy.
Dying turned out to feel exactly like when I tried to sleep during late-night fever attacks: my lungs on fire, my body begging for rest, and sleep pretending it was on the way only to slap me awake five minutes later.
And now… I felt like that again.
"…"
Weird.
I could smell grass.
And a breeze.
Cool wind brushing… no, diving straight into my skull.
That's what it felt like: the wind had direct access to the inside of my head.
Not normal. Not possible.
Not anything that'd be happening if I was a corpse.
My vision quivered back.
And I found myself sitting in a living room.
Not the sterile hospital room I died in… this place looked like the "hunter's cabin" background prop from a low-budget horror movie.
Damp wood. Mold in every corner.
A single window leaking the last rays of sunset.
A cracked table hosting a kettle that probably once held tea in a different lifetime.
And yet… no smell. Nothing.
I tried sniffing harder—only for a LOUD flute to whistle inside my skull.
"Huh?!"
I spun around to search for the source of the noise.
Nothing.
My eyes wandered back over the cabin.
The walls. The floor. The kettle. The window.
Wait… wasn't I dead? The doctors had already pulled the plug, right? So why was I—
Out of instinct, I tried wiping sweat off my forehead.
CLACK.
"Huh…?"
It sounded like tapping a wooden pole with a stick.
I tapped again.
CLACK CLACK.
No sensation of skin. No warmth. Nothing.
I stared down at my hands.
Long. Thin. Bony.
Ske… Skeleton fingers…
"AHHHHHHHH!"
I toppled backward off the chair and smacked the floor with a noisy series of clacks and rattles.
It wasn't just my hands.
My entire body was made of bones.
And not good bones either.
These were the bones you found behind abandoned grocery stores on Halloween.
Dirty. Hollow. Brittle.
"This is insane!"
My hand! My bony, disgusting, Halloween-prop hand flew to my chest.
I touched something hard, smooth, and cold.
Like glass, but tougher. I looked down.
A huge purple gem was lodged in my sternum.
It was glowing magically.
"What in the world is that?"
A flat, emotionless voice replied inside my head—
[PHYLAC-TERY]
I jolted upright.
"Hello? Who said that?"
No answer.
Then a glowing panel popped up in front of me.
Like a hologram ripped straight out of an RPG menu.
It calmly told me a [Phylactery] was a soul-anchor.
That it stored soul shards.
And that gathering soul shards allowed the user to level up and become a world-dominating lich.
"I JUST DIED! I HAVE NO INTEREST IN THAT!"
I yelled at the panel, but it didn't care.
Still… things started clicking.
The no-smell.
The hollow body.
The gem in my chest.
"Fuuuudge. I'm… a lich…"
Back in my old life, I spent an unhealthy amount of time researching fantasy creatures online.
Liches were always one of my favorites, even though a lot of these writers treated them like undead wizards with osteoporosis. Or sometimes add them to the starter pack of monsters getting their asses kicked by the main character who needs to level up.
"Hold on."
I scanned the room.
"I knew liches couldn't smell! HA!"
I pumped my bony fist triumphantly.
Yes, I was now nightmare fuel for children… but at least ONE of the lore debates I'd ranted about for years had finally been proven right.
Let me have this. Please.
I sighed and looked around again.
"Anything else?" I asked the empty air.
A status board materialized.
❖ Character Information
[Name: Subject Unknown (Ineligible)]
[Race: Impure Lich]
[Level: 1]
[Class: Caster-type Mage]
[HP: 8 / 8]
[MP: 4 / 4]
[Soul Capacity: 1/10]
❖ Skills
‣ Brittle Bones: Your bones are severely weakened.
‣ Low-Tier Barrier: Produces a weak protective field that costs two mana points.
‣ Claw Attack (Rank F): Use fingers as claws. Very low damage. Very low durability.
‣ Sense Undead (Passive): Detects minor undead within 10 meters.
ⓘ These are all innate skills.
❖ Other information
‣ Titles: Newly Awakened
‣ Equipment: Phylactery
[Notice! Your Phylactery stores soul shards and prevents true death unless it is destroyed.]
---
"That's… insane."
Not impressive. Not majestic. Not magical.
Just… depressing.
"Impure Lich? What's that?" I asked.
The System answered:
[Impure Liches are the weakest subspecies. They have almost no magic. Very weak bones. Minimal combat capability. Only suited for basic Barrier Magic and claw attacks!]
So basically… worse than the first dungeon mobs in every fantasy story ever.
Great.
Skeleton warriors were bottom of the food chain.
And I was worse than them.
My skull felt heavier the more I read.
Honestly, I'd have preferred reincarnating as a human again. Even a weak one. Even sick.
Being a lich with marshmallow bones was not ideal.
"Worst luck of the century."
I scratched the side of my skull.
At least scratching didn't hurt.
It just made more clacking noises.
I forced myself up from the chair. Walking felt strange but not because I was undead, but because I hadn't walked since middle school.
My legs had betrayed me years ago.
Now they moved fine.
Maybe… maybe being a lich wasn't all bad.
Nah, I'm just trying to cope.
I shuffled over to a coat rack and found a moth-eaten, purple robe. It was ugly enough to scare rats, but at least it covered my ribs. I threw the hood up.
"I am NOT talking to a human looking like this."
Probably better to never talk to anyone ever again.
I wandered outside the cabin.
And stopped.
Behind the house, where a normal person might've kept herbs or compost, was a small fenced patch of land that had now become overgrown, dead grass everywhere, and a ring of stones arranged in a perfect circle.
And inside the circle… three eggs.
Not normal eggs.
One was covered in moss as its leafy green patterns shifted like they were breathing.
One glowed purple with thick silk tightly wrapped around it like some sort of cocoon.
The last one shimmered with a dull light.
It felt like the faint memory of radiance.
The System dinged again.
[YOU OWN THESE.]
"Owned what exactly?" I murmured, staring.
The System continued:
[This is the Grimfen Taming Farm…]
[Sign in to unlock new class!]
If I had eyebrows, one would've shot up.
Farm? My farm?
Curiosity defeated fear, so I hurriedly stepped inside the fenced area.
A warm glow washed over me.
DING.
A new panel opened.
❖ Grimfen Taming Farm Lv. 1
‣ Farm Owner: Unnamed Lich
‣ Type: Dual-Evo Monster Hatchery
‣ Farm Grade: F
❖ Farm Facilities
‣ Hatching Circle: Allows incubation and bonding with Grimfen Beasts.
‣ Soulsoil: Soil that nourishes monster eggs.
‣ Caretaker's Cabin: Your starting base.
❖ Owned Eggs
‣ Direwolf Egg (Rare-grade Beast)
‣ Amaranth Bolt Spider Egg (Epic-grade Beast)
‣ Frostlight Dragon Egg (Legendary-grade Beast)
---
[You've acquired the Tamer-type Class!]
[You've leveled up!]
[+60 EXP]
[+8 HP]
[+4 MP]
[+10 Soul Pool Capacity]
The panel glowed brighter.
I stared at the eggs.
At the farm.
At the glowing text floating in front of me.
"I'm a lich… and a monster tamer?"
This was insane.
Insane… but for once in my miserable existence…
It was kind of awesome.
This unlife was surely worth a try!