Chapter 5: The Sorceress from the Past

Interlude: A Bloody New Year

On the outskirts of the city, the scent of blood decorated the surroundings.

Korn, the Sinister Devourer, sat on the red, foul-smelling grass. Behind him, more than thirty corpses lay torn apart across the ground. A squad of agents had found him camping and eating fried fish, so they tried to capture him and claim the glory for themselves.

It did not work.

Their bodies were covered in striking wounds.

Korn decapitated half of the warriors, then tortured the rest one by one. First, he started with their toes. Then, their fingers. And finally, he tore off their skin with a bloody magic spell. To keep their voices from being heard, Korn used a supernatural barrier that prevented any sound from escaping to the outside.

In other words…

No one could help them.

It was a slow, painful, and terrifying death. They remained conscious until the last gram of skin was torn from their dying bodies.

“Are you afraid, agent?”

Korn grabbed the man by the hair and, with a single tug, tore off his scalp. His fingers were sticky from all the blood spilled that day. However, not a single fly or insect came near the corpses. The magical horror taking place there was so intense that not even nature itself dared to touch them.

What a bloodbath.

“No.”

The agent’s answer surprised the two-meter-tall monster, enough to draw an unexpected smile from him.

“You’re the last one left. Very well, I’ll tell you a little secret, agent… This appearance of mine is nothing more than a deception. I use a spell to contain my true power. Did you think I was actually a giant? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but in my ultimate form, there is no opponent who can defeat me. Well, perhaps one warrior here and there, but they shouldn’t know that, right?”

Korn summoned two small daggers in both hands. Then, without a shred of mercy, he plunged them into the poor agent’s eyes. His scream of pain could barely be heard.

The blood was already turning black.

“Killing agents is fun. Maybe I can keep doing it while Aria masters her powers. In any case, I need to speed up the process. If that paladin appears in front of me, I fear my entire plan will go to shit. However, I can’t show myself as easily as before either.”

Korn lay down on the bloody grass. Ideas refused to come to mind, and because of that, he had a hard time coming up with a plan.

Over the past few days, he had been hunting agents.

One after another, they came at him with ambushes and foolish plans, all hoping to defeat such a beast overflowing with power. However, not a single plan worked. The agents kept dying in large numbers, and Korn did not struggle much to defeat them. The only real threat was the paladin, whose presence he could sense from far away. Thanks to that ability, he escaped before running into him.

“It still isn’t time to face him.”

“How can I make Aria grow stronger without attacking her myself?” Korn whispered.

The first thing that came to mind was summoning a magical familiar. Someone of his level should have no trouble doing so.

But then the idea discouraged him.

“The agents would probably kill it before it could make contact with Aria and the mediocre sorcerer. Should I hire mercenaries?”

Once again, the idea seemed absurd.

No mercenary sorcerer would risk their neck with so many agents patrolling the city.

And suddenly, the perfect idea came to mind.

It was a casual thought, one that had gone unnoticed until that moment.

“Necromancy.”

Ninety years ago, Korn had devoured a powerful necromancer and obtained all his abilities at their maximum level. However, he considered that type of sorcery a long-term investment. And since he did not usually stay in one place, he preferred more direct methods to deal with his enemies. But now, he had been forced to remain in a city. He could no longer handle problems himself, and therefore, he needed a magical familiar to do things for him.

“How did I not think of it before? Having too many abilities makes you forget some of them.”

The monster stood up and shook off his laziness. Then he raised both hands toward the sky.

“Necromancy: False Life.”

Korn wasted no time. Instead of testing small spells, such as reanimating recently dead zombies or raising little skeletons, he chose to use one of the most advanced techniques in necromancy.

The infamous spell known as “False Life” was an aberration against nature, a mockery of everything divine, a spit in the face of the world’s religions.

Needless to say, it was forbidden, like all necromancy in general.

The grass filled with black smoke. Korn closed his eyes and tried to visualize the person he wanted to bring into a false life.

“Oh, interesting. This necromancer possessed overwhelming power.”

Unlike weak and novice necromancers, the victim Korn had consumed possessed the power to summon the dead using fragments of their souls, not their bodies. It was a feat only one in one hundred thousand necromancers could achieve. The process was far more complicated than its physical counterpart, since they needed to access the afterlife, steal a fragment of the soul, and return without dying in the attempt.

Or, on the other hand, if part of the soul remained on Earth, whether because of sadness, vengeance, or some other emotion, they only had to absorb the essence without interfering with its original nature. For that reason, many aspiring soul necromancers visited haunted places, sites where spirits could not rest in peace for the rest of eternity.

Even so, very few succeeded.

Korn’s body suffered no damage, thanks to his monstrous and inhuman nature.

Necromancy produced irreversible side effects in its users. From the very first contact with this type of sorcery, the skin turned pale, lost its original color, and transformed into a creamy mass that slowly darkened as the days passed. But that was only the beginning. After the first week of contact, hundreds of worms began appearing in the skin. The stench of death became worse than that of an actual corpse. The eyes turned gray, and the voice lost its tone until it became a miserable screech that hurt the ears of the living.

Yes…

The appearance of necromancers was a true nightmare.

Even the most experienced ones suffered these devastating side effects. After all, flirting with death was never a good idea.

And there stood Korn, performing the most shameless, powerful, and unfair spell of them all without suffering any consequences afterward.

What a monster.

That was the only word that could describe him.

A monster born only once every four hundred years. A colossal existence capable of mocking the world.

How powerful was he, really?

Compared to him, the terrifying necromancers of the past seemed like novices.

“Interesting, interesting. This idiot had a soul of great power in his records. Let’s summon her.”

“Trees.”

Korn’s mind traveled into the past, to a different Mexico, without buildings or cars, only green foliage covering everything in its path. In the distance, there stood an enormous canyon with a mighty river running through its center.

“Deeper. I have to go further.”

And finally, he saw her.

A very beautiful young woman, approximately twenty-nine years old.

Hair red as fire, fair skin, green eyes, and average height. The moment he distinguished her features, Korn quickly formed an idea of her identity.

“A Casanova.”

There was no doubt. Only they had those traits.

The Casanovas were a very powerful family of sorcerers in the world. Throughout history, their members had marked a before and after, whether as great heroes or terrible villains. However, the truly terrifying thing about their clan was the special ability they possessed:

The Universal Records.

A superpower that allowed them to access the knowledge of their ancestors, whether memories, spells, or combat techniques. However, this was also their curse, since many members of that family died trying to access their records.

Human perception was not made to last more than one lifetime. If the brain was pushed too far, it would eventually explode.

“What a goldmine he had hidden away.”

Little by little, his consciousness returned to the present.

The mental image began to materialize directly in front of him. Where there had once been a patch of blood-soaked grass, the same woman he had seen now lay there. However, she looked very different.

Her skin had a duller tone, as if she had used makeup to cover imperfections. Her red hair had also lost some of its color, but the girl could still be considered a redhead. She was naked, with her right arm covering her abdomen and her left hand holding her forehead.

“Huh?” the red-haired girl whispered.

Her eyes met Korn’s. When they did, she weakly bent her knees and looked around.

“Where am I?”

“It seems my spell worked. What is your name, woman?”

Korn snapped the fingers of his right hand. Afterward, brown denim pants and a red blouse appeared over the undead woman’s naked skin.

“I-I am María Casanova,” the girl answered, a hint of fear in her voice.

After taking one last look at the surroundings, María stood up and sighed deeply.

“I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be dead. Why am I talking?”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century. It is January 1st, 2020.”

The revelation left María Casanova speechless. Her emerald eyes widened, full of panic and, at the same time, sadness.

“T-That’s impossible. I died in the year 1770. What the hell did you do? I don’t feel well at all…”

María clutched her chest tightly. Something inside her was causing a terrible sensation of emptiness. The old wounds that had caused her death were nothing compared to the pain she felt at that moment.

“I reanimated you through necromancy. You did not return to life. You are still dead, and you will never be able to revive. Your time on Earth is over. However, you are here. You are an unnatural presence. The world does not accept your existence.”

“I see. Then I’m a puppet…”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Korn whispered. “If you were a puppet, you would not have consciousness. You would be a zombie under my control. However, I recovered not only your memories, but also your personality. You are the closest thing to a living being that necromancy can create. But at the end of the day, you are nothing more than another dead woman.”

His words were cruel, but necessary.

María’s tiny hope was shattered without leaving a trace.

For a moment, she believed she had returned to life, that she could pay for the mistakes of the past and start over from zero. But no. Things would not work out conveniently for her.

They had not done so while she was alive.

Much less now.

That was her bad luck.

“Then what am I? If you only wanted my powers, you could have reanimated me without my consciousness. What’s the point of bringing me back?” María questioned.

“My assistant, of course.”

Korn did not say it out loud, but bringing her back with her memories and personality was vital to his mission. First, because he could not remain near her twenty-four hours a day to manipulate her like a puppet. As long as the paladin remained in the city, his movements could not be reckless or careless. If he focused his attention on controlling a mindless doll, he ran the risk of lowering his guard and falling victim to an ambush.

And second…

Because he knew María’s personality.

She was a good person, someone who would postpone the mission to kill Lucio Atenas until the very last second. There would be no point in attacking him and killing him quickly.

“And what happens if I refuse and attack you? I’m strong.”

“You won’t attack me,” Korn replied without a hint of concern. “As I said before, you are a dead woman whose existence cannot be tolerated by the world. The only reason you are still responding is because the memory of María Casanova persists within the planet’s Universal Records.”

“I don’t understand,” María confessed, her face gradually becoming more melancholic.

“Your current role is to obey my orders. The world does not accept that María Casanova has returned, but it does recognize an undead being with María Casanova’s memories and personality. Necromancy is not magic. It is incapable of performing miracles, and therefore, it cannot break the laws of nature. Go ahead. Try to kill me.”

Without warning, a short sword appeared in María’s left hand.

The girl quickly launched a thrust at the giant sorcerer’s neck.

It was an attack filled with killing instinct and power. However, less than a millimeter away, her arm stopped completely. Not by her own will.

The planet itself had stopped the action.

“What is this? Why can’t I kill you?”

“I already told you. Your role is to be my servant. María Casanova’s life ended, but the existence of the undead María Casanova persists. If you kill me, you would be acting against the natural laws. And of course, Gaia does not find this sort of situation amusing.”

The short sword disappeared as quickly as it had come. Then María took two steps back and finally sat down.

It was true.

An invisible force had stopped her attack at the very last second.

Explaining it with words was unnecessary, since very few beings in the history of the world had ever managed to subdue the will of the entire planet.

And of course, María Casanova was not one of them.

“I hate this,” María confessed. “I don’t feel alive. It’s horrible… Why did you summon me? What do you need from me?”

“I’ll be brief. There is a girl in the city named Aria. She possesses an ability I want to consume, but she has not developed it yet. I need you to go and attack her companion, a mediocre and weak sorcerer. You can kill him, but not the girl.”

“I don’t like killing people. But my opinions and values no longer matter. After all, I’m dead.”

María Casanova’s sad gaze only deepened. Having returned to the world of the living as an undead, and worse, under the command of an evil sorcerer, made her feel even more depressed.

“Do it whenever you want. There is no time limit. It can be today, in a week, a month, a year. I don’t care. I have waited a long time for this moment. I can keep waiting longer. Besides, I have some matters to deal with involving the agents. You are familiar with them, right?”

“Yes, I am,” the redhead replied. “They won’t detect me. I know a camouflage spell.”

“Excellent. Take this.”

The sorcerer gave María a considerable amount of money, almost three hundred thousand Mexican pesos, inside a red backpack.

“The foolish necromancer I devoured was very good at his work. You don’t need to eat to recover energy, but you can ingest food for pleasure. Maybe it will remind you of the life you had before. I don’t know. Adapt to the twenty-first century as soon as possible to make your mission easier.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Resigned to her new role as Korn’s servant, María accepted the money.

“And how am I supposed to know their location?”

“Find them yourself. Here.”

Korn handed her a high-end cell phone. María Casanova held it between her reanimated fingers. To her, such an artifact seemed strange. The screen was like a mirror, but it emitted a bright light that stood out in the darkness of that bloody plain.

“This is a cell phone. Do you know how to read Spanish?”

“Yes. I know the language perfectly.”

“Then you’d better read this.”

The false giant handed her an instruction manual on how to operate the phone.

“Society has changed during the years you were dead. I advise you to find a hotel and stay there for a few days, then change hotels, and so on. It’s better for you to keep moving from place to place so the agents don’t track you. If you have any questions, you can use the phone to contact me. You’ll know how to use it from the manual I gave you.”

“Very well. What is your name? You haven’t told me.”

“I am Korn… the Sinister Devourer…”

End of Interlude