Necrowater

After a very long time (well, a LONGER time) of Haalfrin putting more and more Death Aura into his soul realm, Freyya herself actually begins to become alarmed.

"What's wrong?" he asks while their consciousnesses sit across from each other in his Soul Realm.

"Well, I suppose with this situation, I was bound to see things I've never seen before," comes her short reply.

This only confuses Haalfrin more. "What? What's wrong?"

"Your Syl Name has trapped all the death Aura here… which means that after all these years, the amount of deaths has reached…" She counted on her fingers for a second. "About 25 billion Ants die every day while you're 'working'. That makes about… er… a lot of people dying every year."

Once she gives up on figuring the math out, she scrunches her face. "A-anyway, there's never been this much consistent and abundant killing in all the universe."

"So what's your point?" Haalfrin asks.

"The point… is that…" She points over to a corner of his soul realm at a black puddle on the ground. "That's pure Death Aura… though it appears that since it has a physical form now, you can't really call it 'Aura' anymore."

"Oh?" Haalfrin had long stopped paying attention to his surroundings, so he hadn't noticed the black puddle. "I've never seen this substance before. What is it?"

Freyya shrugs to this. "I dunno! I gave you that long explanation about there never being so many people dying together in order to explain why I've never seen Death 'Aura' like this before."

"What should we call it then?" Haalfrin asks in excitement as his ethereal soul form runs over to the black puddle. "I vote for 'Death Water'.

"Ugh," she clicks her tongue. "That sounds stupid. I'll think of something later."

Out of curiosity, Haalfrin reaches his finger out to touch the small puddle, but before he can, Freyya's hand shoots out and snatches his wrist out of the air. "Oi!" she hisses. "You want to hurt yourself that badly?"

She shakes her head. "I'm a Death goddess. I'll try it out."

Freyya sticks her finger in the water, and her face goes stock still. "Hmm… It feels really hot," she remarks. "If I left my finger in for a while, I think it would leave a burn."

Needless to say, Haalfrin would have definitely suffered serious damage had he touched the necrowater.

He watches his wife reach into her pocket, rummage around for a while, then pull out a small, tube-like bottle. She dips the tube in the necrowater and says, "I'll take some of this to Das. I want to see what he has to say about it."

"I'm not going to ask how your avatar is still here," Das says, "so I'll take a look at this thing."

"Hmm…," Das mutters thoughtfully as he examines a tube full of black liquid. He bends down and scribbles a few things in his notebook. "This proves a few theories some friends of mine had been looking into…"

"What theories?" Freyya asks with a frown. Her foot is tapping in agitation, since she doesn't like talking to Das nowadays. However, he's far older, more connected, and more knowledgeable than her, so she felt that she HAD to come to him for answers on this 'necrowater'.

"Oh, some academic circles have speculated that Death Energy is a different form of mana," he explains, "You see, mana has similar properties to matter, despite not having any Drawyn in it."

If 'Dravar' is magic-talk for 'Force', then 'Drawyn' is magic-talk for 'Material' or 'Physical Matter'.

Essentially, Das was saying that mana isn't made up of physical matter; it's a more pure, basic thing. Even still, it behaves similar to Matter in many ways.

"What do you mean by that? In what ways are they similar?" Freyya thinks about asking these questions, but just coming here to Das was already too much of a bother to her, so she doesn't want to make him talk more than necessary.

Alas, Das coincidentally answers her question as he keeps talking.

"Matter," he explains, "can generally change forms between a solid, liquid, and gas. There are rarely times when this is relevant, but mana can also be compressed so densely that it takes on a solid form."

"Yes, yes," Freyya rolls her eyes. "I know that. Isn't the mana around the Death King's palace so thick that clouds of mana linger over his castle?"

Das coughs awkwardly. "Ah… yes… The proper term for it is 'mana vapor'."

In almost every way, 'mana vapor' looks just like steam; it has the same texture and the same white color… The only difference between the two is that mana vapor has a rainbow-colored glow to it.

"Anyway," Das asks, "I assume, then, that you already know all about how mana water and mana stones? – well, the PROPER mana stones, anyway."

All of the mana stones Haalfrin has seen in his life are CERTAINLY NOT what Das would call "proper mana stones". In actuality, they're just normal rocks that were enchanted to hold some mana.

PROPER mana stones are pure mana that has been so compressed that it takes a solid form. Unlike the IMITATION mana stones, the proper ones are pure white, and they have a rainbow glow to them.

True mana stones of any size require such a huge amount of mana to make that Freyya herself has never seen one before, though the Death King testifies that they look quite pretty; apparently, he has one or two, though he keeps them locked up.

So, since Freyya already knows about the different states of mana, what Das was saying about Death Aura being similar made some sense to her.

If mana turns into a gas, then a liquid, then a solid when it's dense enough, then Death Aura must do the same thing.

In other words… "So you have nothing new to tell me?" Freyya asks with an impatient edge to her tone. "I already know what this black 'water' is; it's Death Aura. What I want is for you to tell me how dangerous it is."

"Dangerous?" Das scoffs. "Of course it's dangerous, though it certainly wouldn't harm people like us Death gods… Try to keep Haalfrin away from it, though. He may be a Death god in training, but he hasn't ascended yet."

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The years pass, and the Queen continues to grow fat on the mana stolen from the summoned dead.

Feeling so completely drunk on power, she sometimes arrogantly thinks to herself, "Ha! I can surely defeat that Dakka creature! Even if he wakes up to fight me, it'll make no difference!"

Despite feeling confident in her victory now, the Queen sometimes thinks about whether or not it's time to kill her captive and be done with this farce war… yet every time she gets close to clamping her jaws over his throat, she can't bring herself to do it.

"This man and his powers… They're the only thing that can satisfy my appetite! Even if I leave here, there will never be enough food for me in the outside world."

The local Rehkin populations can't replenish nearly as fast as the Arkin, and they aren't nearly as rich in mana as them either. Sure, the dragons taste better, but the dragons also breed and grow abysmally slowly.

Deep down, the Queen can't deny that the moment Haalfrin dies is the moment her swarm has to go hungry again.

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Somewhere along the way, the small puddle of necrowater had grown into a large pond. By now, even the aloof Arkin are beginning to notice the stuff.

Before any of the Arkin even thought to ask Haalfrin about it, one of them gets really curious, and he dips his hand in it to see what it is.

…And the moment his finger touches the water, everyone hears the man screaming in complete agony.

Haalfrin and his generals notice the commotion, and they come running over. There, they see the unfortunate (some would say "stupid") soldier rolling on the ground and clutching a blackened hand.

"You, you, and you!" Haalfrin sternly barks an order, "Don't just stand there! Take him back to the Death Realm and get him treated!"

"And you all!" he addresses the rest. "Don't ever come near this necrowater again!"

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When Haalfrin hears from the soldier later on, he finds out that the blackened wound never healed… which is pretty terrifying. Arkin ALWAYS heal.

So, realizing that Haalfrin has a weapon now that can harm immortal beings suddenly makes him realize the weight that's on his shoulders.