Chapter 5: Chapter 5

We reached the mansion gates soon, and the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon by the time we did. Everyone greeted my lady in fright as she ambled through the main entrance and walked leftward to our deserted courtyard. Instead of entering her room as always, she tried opening the door to my room.

“My lady?” I called out to her because I never let anyone enter my humble abode.

“Open the door,” she said impatiently. I hadn’t locked it, but the handle required expert maneuvers to open it. Something I had to repair sooner or later.

“But, that’s my room.”

“Open the door, Rudolf!” Her voice grew colder, and I acquiesced. This was the problem with serving those in power. They never catered to the feelings of the undead, such as me.

She glanced around my abode, sniffing the aroma of my room that almost rivaled her own. It was great because I had bought a perfume from the apothecary whose fragrance resembled the freshly baked bread. Garlan had introduced it to me, which led me to accept him as one of my own.

Was I bribed? Well, I would say try feeding the next undead you meet with some bread.

“This room stinks!” She said and took a seat on my cot. “Why doesn’t this cot have a cushion?”

“I don’t like it, my lady.”

“And why don’t you like it?”

“Just because.” It reminds me of my mom’s embrace. I left the words unsaid. As embarrassed as I was to accept it, everyone had something they wanted to hide in their hearts. For me, it was the reason why I liked bread and hated cushions.

I wasn’t lying when I said I had forgotten most of my human memories. I didn’t even remember my mom’s face, but somehow these two things had kept me sane over the millennium. Why? Because it gave me a sense of self. I was sure that I was me even when forced to face the grueling storm of time that degraded almost everything.

“Just because,” she repeated my words and leaned against the cot, only to fall asleep in the soothing ambiance of my room. “It’s so unfair that you know everything about m….”

She was talking in her sleep because my lady never used such a vulnerable tone. That redhead eyesore had been an exception, but not anymore. My next step should be some intricate planning to free my lady from the clutches of her family, or stepmother to be exact because the lady of the house had some unsaid grudges to settle. The scar on her face alone spoke in magnitudes about it. However, I didn’t want to involve myself directly because I wasn’t the antagonist of this world. She was, and I was just her aid who obeyed her command as long as she trudged through the road marred with bodies of mortals.

For now, I walked to her room and brought a fresh pair of sheets along with a pillow. I removed the glittering barrette that had kept her smooth hair pinned on one side and placed it atop my table. After removing all hard objects from her vicinity, which included an ink bottle, a pen, some empty books, and my favorite perfume bottle, I tucked the pillow under her sprawled, beautiful black hair. Relative beautiful, since I didn’t have standards to admire things. Everything became stale over the course of many epochs.

I glanced at the glittering piece of hair ornament, lost down the memory lane. It was my lady’s cherished gift, and her mom had given it to her on her deathbed. She was four at the time, crying desperately on her deathbed, calling out to her mom, asking her to wake up. I was silently smiling in one corner of the room, excited to see the development of the story for the first time in a long time.

I could have given her a new life, made her undead, but I would never. Humans lived because their span was limited, and it was the most beautiful gift one could ask for. As much as we liked watching mortals writhe in agony, making them undead was out of the question. Because [Undead] spell was meant to be discovered and not taught.

That didn’t mean I hated my life. Since I discovered transmigration magic, it has been a colorful journey. But without undergoing the tortures of a millennium, it was impossible to learn that magic. For it was the ability to detach from your immediate surrounding and everything else that bound you, helped you transmigrate. In simple words, if I created a family or grew overly fond of anyone in this realm, it would become hard for me to transmigrate until I come to detest them and kill them. That was the reason why my relationships were a clean slate. Sex never enticed me, nor did anything horny that my male counterparts loved.

What about bread? Stupid question, because I absolutely believed that every world had better bread than others.

I made my way out of the room cautiously and locked the door from the outside with [ward]. Only my lady would be able to open it, and not her well-behaved sisters or that loving stepmother. For they were weak mages.

I ambled past the door, spiders glaring at me as I trudged down the dirty corridor.

I won’t clean you, I reassured them, though I doubted they understand the language of the undead.

As always, snickers and chuckles followed me as I walked past the busy maids, for I was the only butler of the mansion and one that belonged to my lady’s mother. Why laugh, then? Because they thought only girls were supposed to be maids, while men should rather fight wars for the kingdom. Bullshit, it was, but I was not the one calling shots. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only butler in the entire world.

I walked past the fountain, and the decorated lawn, to reach the busy streets of the night. Mostly drunkard men. I shuffled through stores for a while, looking for one thing or other, stopping by if anything unusual caught my eyes. My curiosity knew no bounds despite having lived for a very long time, and I was constantly searching for new knowledge. When you had nothing better to do, even sleeping became a jovial chore.

I reached my destination for the night, a tavern populated by drunkards and brawlers, and women, those with clothes. I ambled to the counter, where an old man was serving drinks to the men seated against the long table, while another waiter was busily juggling a few mugs with her [weightless] spell and hands, all the same. Round tables hung around the room, and the smell of ale lingered in the room, apart from the stench of these sweaty mercenaries.

“Garlan,” I greeted him at his usual spot, at the left corner of the counter. He was talking to the bartender restlessly, and the old man was listening intently, keeping his hands busy.

“Yo, Rudolf!” He raised his mug. “What brings you here, bread lad?”

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“Are you free tomorrow?” I asked, taking a seat beside him and waving at the old man, who had passed an empty mug in my direction.

“If I don’t waste myself tonight, then I’ll be free,” he said and took another sip from his colossal mug. “You need my help?”

“Well, I was planning on taking my lady out of the capital, but I need a high-level mage to tag along. Thought I’d ask you before I reach out to someone else.”

“You got someone else?” He looked hurt, and I gave him a pat.

“Hire someone else, bread lad,” I pacified him, and he chugged more ale from his mug.

“That’s my man. Just like your lady,” he laughed. He asked for a refill while I eyed the old man dangerously. He nodded with a smile and turned to serve other drunkards. “Do you have a license, Rudolf?”

“Nah, it’s too troublesome in my case. I need permission from my lady to do that, and I doubt my lady would let me join either the mercenary or the merchant guild.”

“Your spells seem great,” he said, as if in thought, and continued, “What kind of mission are you looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t involve blood for now. Since morning, my lady’s mood has been terrible, so I thought something uplifting would be ideal. Maybe a delivery job that would give my lady a sense of accomplishment, or a gathering job.”

“The commotion of the morning?” He asked, holding back his stifling laughter. “I even heard a butler got beheaded.”

It surprised me how rumors exaggerated everything. And it troubled me that Garlan laughed at my lady’s misfortune, but for the love of bread, I decided to hold back. The villainess would handle or mishandle him tomorrow, and that would be a sight to behold.

“That beheaded butler is sitting before you,” I told him, without a shadow of a smile on my face. “Have you seen a second butler walking through the gates of the Academy?”

He laughed more to my surprise and patted my shoulders. “So, the dog in the rumors was you!”

“Stop it, Garlan, or I would force you to spew out some of that beer.”

I was indeed an easygoing undead who didn’t get offended easily, but I would, in general, ask you to abstain from making fun of undead. It would bite back at a future date when you least expect it to.

He finally stopped laughing and got to the matter at hand, much to my relief. The professionalism of the man was something I appreciated, even before I accepted him as one of my own.

“I’ll ask around the guild and book a task by midnight. If I can’t find any, you see me at the gates of your manor before sunrise, or else I’ll be at the portcullis at sunrise.”

Not having a watch hurt in this world, as sunrise and sunset were variable each passing day. “Thanks, Garlan. I’ll see you with my lady tomorrow. Add extra guard down there because you might get mishandled.”

“Oh, thanks for the warning. Though, are you sure your lady wouldn’t mind associating with a commoner?”

“Don’t worry. You are nothing more than a mutt to my lady,” I got up and waved a hand at the stupefied man. “And stop drinking already.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Rudolf,” he said and turned to the old man at the counter.

Would he be all right?

I walked out of the tavern, sniffed my clothes to smell for any lingering scent of ale, and when I didn’t find any, I ambled back to the manor, this time not taking stops despite my terrifying urges. The magic lamps in the vicinity burned bright, overshadowing the faint glow of the moon, and guided me through the almost deserted streets. Drunkards or not, most of the people avoided roaming in the vicinity closer to the noble mansions.

The guards at the manor, who I suppose had just woken up, shot me a suspicious look but receded to their respective booths, one on each side of the gate, when they recognized me. They hated me like the maids, for they thought I was a whiny man fit to lick my lady’s boots.

I ignored the trepidation forcing longer gaits and leisurely walked back to our west courtyard.  If my lady had woken up, I was as good as dead meat. And she had.