I Became A Zompirewolf

Ashton's body wasn't the only thing reacting to the gas. His summons as well as Lich's undead soldiers were too. The smoke was empowering all of them, pushing them beyond their limits. But changes were more intense for Ashton than for the rest of them.

On the other hand, the Lich rejected the smoke even if it tried to latch on to him. How was he able to do it and why he did it was entirely a mystery to Astaroth, but at the moment he did not bother with it. All of his interest was in the changes within Ashton's body because of the corpsification gas.

Astaroth was worried that inhaling too much gas might damage the rest of Ashton's genes. After all, only the undead genes should react positively to Ashton, but the rest of them should be in danger. Especially the vampire genes.

However, to his surprise, even if the zombie genes had explosive growth, the rest of the genes did not have any issues.

'Three levels? What is this absurd exp gain?'

Astaroth was worried a bit. Even though gaining exp was a good thing, he was worried at the rate at which he was gaining exp for the undead genes, would ruin the harmony of the genes. If that happened, who knew how would Ashton's body react to it?

A moment later, his worries were rendered unfounded. Just as the undead genes were about to cross the five-level limit, the exp gain stopped and instead his new [Dark Aura] stat started increasing.

For the first time in his life, well, after waking up within Ashton's body, Astaroth was clueless about what was going on. This [Dark Aura], whatever it was, was a new thing even to him.

It was the first time he had seen or heard about it. But since the exp gain halted, Astaroth had nothing to complain about. But he did notice a thing... as the [Dark Aura]'s value increased, the quantity of smoke around them decreased and soon it disappeared entirely.

"That was a peculiar experience..." Astaroth sighed in relief as everything got back to normal.

[Seraph's Flame has completely consumed the <Unknown substance> and converted it into <Dark Aura> for use.]

[Current <Dark Aura>: 9870]

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[Dark Aura]: A stat that's hard to come by and can only ever be achieved by a select few who indulge in the art of Necromancy.  It can be used to lift mana and intelligence restrictions when it comes to managing your Undead summons.

It can also be used to directly expand the limit of the number of summons you can hold within [Valhalla] or empower any other ability related to [Necromancer] class.  It can be increased by consuming souls and <Unknown Substance>.

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'In other words, it kind of mana especially designed to be utilised by the undead? No wonder they are going rampant with it.' Astaroth scratched his chin, 'However, it makes little to no sense something like this was made on a backward planet like earth. Something seems off here.'

Although Astaroth was more or less sure that no one else would be able to manipulate [Dark Aura], it felt like someone, probably another Xyran, was purposefully causing a mess here by testing their basement inventions on a lower civilization.

The blatant disregard of lower lifeforms was one of the many reasons why Astaroth hated his kind so much. They were used to playing around with them in the name of 'helping' them advance into a higher civilization.

These lower civilizations wouldn't even suspect anything wrong and would blindly trust these godly beings. By promising a certain faction of a world, the Xyrans or any other higher civilization would spark conflicts and watch how their 'experiments' worked or not.

In other words, the lower civilizations were nothing more than mere characters in a sickly game for the higher civilizations. They could do whatever they pleased, and no one would be able to top them.

"These damned bastards..."

Astaroth was furious. However, he was kind of please as well. After all, he found a way to bypass the shitty requirements of increasing intelligence and mana to tame more summons.

Also, the moment he thought the [Dark Aura] was harming Ashton, he could simply block it away using his admin privileges. Therefore, there was no reason for him to be worried so much.

But the same couldn't be said for the others...

***

Back in Contingent...

Academy was supposed to be a safe haven for everyone. And it had been, for almost a day... before the undead rushed inside the building. After that, it was pandemonium. The building soon began flooding with the black smoke, just like the rest of the city.

At the same time, thousands of converted undead rushed the building. They were relentless, killing everything that moved in sight. From the scale of the black smoke coming out of the artificially constructed underground air vents, one would think the earth was on fire.

Cough, cough...

"Heal the ones that can fight first," Kakaroff instructed the healers.

He wasn't in a great condition himself. Well, no one was but rather than wasting precious healing magic on a non-combatant mage like himself, it was wiser to heal someone who could fight instead.

Yet the student who was healing him did not stop. After all, Kakaroff was one of the only professors who were still alive and well. His leadership skills were more important than his fighting skills at this point.

Around fifty of them were stuck inside a small locker room. However, apart from Kakaroff, there were only two other professors, both of whom were unconscious.

The rest of them were students. But only twenty of them had actual fighting experience. The rest were newly recruited first-years who stubbornly decided to stay back despite being warned to leave the academy when they had the chance.

"Damn it, what do we do now?" Layla, a second-year student asked Anna, who happened to be on guard duty, "Thousands of those bastards have us surrounded. Also, we destroyed and deactivated the portals so we can't even leave using those."

Anna sighed and shook her head. She, for one, had no idea what they were supposed to do next. Her flames weren't going to last forever and charming those uglies was impossible. To make things worse, it didn't seem like anyone was coming there to help them. They were on their own.

"How did it come to this..." Anna sighed in defeat, she wasn't deluded enough to think any of them were going to make it out of there alive.

However, before she could put more thought into it, the wall in front of the locker room burst open. The pillars holding the ceiling fell off and a pile of concrete poured down. Soon there was a hole wide enough for a gorillan to enter without much trouble.

"Fuck! Everyone, equip the gas masks and get ready to fight!"