The Queen of Scrolls never admits defeat

Chapter 429 The Art of Reviving Corpses

Among several mounds of earth, there was an old man who looked extremely thin, digging at the ground with his hands, again and again.

His fingers were covered in mud and stained with blood, but he kept mechanically digging.

In Moran's eyes, his life force was almost completely exhausted.

Lilith checked the one-way sound-canceling magic circle to make sure the sound wouldn't travel, before speaking: "Is this... a human?"

“It doesn’t look like it! Doesn’t the book say that humans and witches look similar? Young women and witches are even indistinguishable in appearance. This person is so thin, almost like a skeleton, and his hair isn’t even as smooth as fried rice. He doesn’t look like the humans described in the book!” Vasita analyzed.

“He still has necromancy power, could he be a necromancer?” Sylph said. “Only necromancers and necromancers come to the Black Forest.”

Seeing this scene of burying people reminded Moran of her previous life, when she was dying, she had buried other survivors one by one before it was her turn, and she felt a little sad.

As her friends' analysis went further and further off track, Moran's sadness vanished instantly.

"He is human, but a male human, and a very old man. His hair is dry and he is very thin. He must have been starving for many days. Look, he is even using a straw rope to tie his stomach! He must be starving."

As for necromantic power, it didn't emanate from him; rather, it was the necromantic power in the surrounding environment that corrupted his body. He was just an ordinary old man who didn't know magic.

The humans of Valen are quite similar to the humans of Earth. Moran had even seen the picture book and recognized them at a glance.

“A male!” Vasita’s eyes widened. “The male humans in the ‘Atlas of Human Anatomy’ are quite handsome! But they don’t look like this!”

“They’re old people!” Sylph said. “When we witches get old, our bodies also weaken. If we don’t use beauty potions, our skin will become wrinkled and our backs will hunch. Human lifespan is too short. Without magic, we’ll look like this in just a few decades.”

“He looks like he’s about to die. Did the wayfinding spell lead us here to collect his body? It’s a pity his flesh and blood don’t look very good anymore, and I wonder if his skeleton is also beyond repair,” Lilith said.

"..."

Moran was quite surprised by the indifference of her friends.

Although she doesn't advocate meddling in other people's business, especially when you don't know the cause and effect, why would your friends react this way when they first encounter an elderly person who is about to die?

She roughly knew that it was probably her human experience acting up again, and asked them what they thought out of curiosity.

"Save him?" Lilith shook her head. "We can't save him! He's just an ordinary person. Walking into the Black Forest is clearly suicidal. Besides, his body is already in terrible shape. Even if we use magic, it will be difficult to restore him to his full strength."

Ordinary elderly people are too weak. Even if they survive, they need someone to support and care for them. We can save them for a while, but we can't keep supporting and caring for them forever!
The crucial point is that we still don't know what kind of person he is, or why he's digging here.

Vasita and Sylph nodded in agreement.

Vasida even recited a passage from her textbook: "The Ten Witches Shouldn't Save in the 'Travel Guide to the Continent of Valen': Don't save people of unknown origin, don't save people who will put you in danger, don't save bad people who deserve their fate... Moran, you shouldn't have forgotten that, right!"

Moran: "..."

The witches really followed the knowledge they learned in the academy to the extreme; they were almost too obedient.

But that's a good thing.

"I haven't forgotten! Let me use the Tracing Technique to check his memories!"

The words had barely left his mouth when a muffled thud was heard.

The man in the woods collapsed into the pit. "He's dead," Sylph sighed.

"Can the Source Tracing Technique reveal the memories of the dead?" Vasida asked.

Moran shook his head: "But there are still the Corpse Raising Technique and the Soul Return Technique that I can use! He's just an ordinary person, and with my skill level, both of these spells should work."

“Let’s use the Corpse Revival Technique! We can just wake them up and ask what happened. Using the Soul Return Technique on someone we don’t know is too wasteful, and it needs to be combined with follow-up treatment, otherwise they will die quickly,” Lilith said.

The art of raising a corpse can only briefly rouse it to speak, while the art of reviving a soul can bring a recently deceased person back to life.

However, the Soul-Returning Technique has no healing effect; if the cause of death is not resolved, the person will die again even after being brought back to life.

Moreover, in addition to magic power, the Resurrection Spell requires sacrificing one's own lifespan as a price, so it is not a spell that can be used casually.

Even if the lifespan cost of using a resurrection spell on an ordinary human is small, it's still not worth it.

“There should be bodies in those mounds too. Let’s dig them all out and question them one by one!” Moran said.

Even corpses can lie, and mind reading won't work at this point; the only safest approach is to ask several people.

"I'll do it!" Vasita channeled her magic and used the Earth-Turning spell.

In the blink of an eye, the bodies under the mound were turned upside down. Including the old man's body, there were a total of eight bodies, including men, women, and children, all lying straight and side by side on the ground.

Lilith lowered the flying carpet slightly, and Moran and the others jumped into the forest to examine the bodies.

"It seems the earliest death didn't occur more than three days ago!" Moran said.

“Isn’t the state of the corpse a bit off?” Vasita noticed something strange about the corpse’s feet. Upon closer inspection, she found that “the tendons and bones in the feet have been severed.”

An ordinary human, in the dark forest filled with the power of death, even had their Achilles tendons severed.

“They couldn’t have been forced into the Black Forest, could they?” Vasita said.

Realizing these people might have been forced into the forest to their deaths, Lilith immediately took her flying carpet to the edge of the forest to take a look, and quickly returned.

“There are people patrolling and guarding the outside of the forest.”

"Such a small child, here too... It's really... Are humans so cruel to their young?" Sylph felt a pang of pity when she saw the corpse of the human girl, who looked to be no more than three years old.

"Let me ask them what happened!" Moran chose the old man who died last as the first target of his spell and used the corpse-raising spell on him.

He died the latest, so he should know the most.

Since they didn't intend to actually use the Soul Return spell to save them, and might even take their bodies away later, Moran and the others didn't bother to conceal it, only hiding the flying carpet.

After the spell ended, the corpse didn't move at first, and I almost thought the spell had failed.

The next second, the corpse that had been lying quietly on the ground suddenly sat up straight.

The speed of his movements was completely different from that of the old man before.