Nosran arranged Kaden lodging in the house. It seemed there were quite a few empty rooms. Kaden felt this pointed that Nosran had not built it for himself and the building had indeed been there much longer. He had probably just done some renovation. The zombies and whatever constructs Nosran had made dealt with the upkeep silently. Kaden watched them quietly shuffle about and sweeped dust and did other such menial tasks.

Relatively soon Kaden discovered he had to split his time more carefully. While he wanted to get his hands on the black fragments soon, there was no way to rush it. It wasn't all just because he needed to reserve time to rest and heal, but also because the said wounds were making some of the formation building rather difficult.

To use mana properly and in dense enough manner to fill the freshly carved portions, so that it would stay there long term, required some exertion. This was at limits what Kaden could handle with his damaged internal formation. Nosran oversaw most of it. It wasn't even just because it was his lab and someone he didn't know well was building something like formations in there.

In fact, Nosran paid uncomfortably lot of attention. Kaden even could guess why. Nosran was convinced that Kaden was some kind of a chimera. Perhaps it wasn't far from the truth, but his creation was not due to necromancy. Nosran also kept muttering that he still couldn't place what manner of beast Kaden had been merged with.

Kaden made some preparations, if he would have to kill Nosran or at least escape. He wasn't yet sure how he would react, if he ever discovered the truth.

Also, considering the fact that Nosran was often observing, some things didn't go undiscovered. It wasn't just Kaden's beast origins that were matter of concern.

"You are injured", Nosran suddenly said and snapped his fingers. "I was wondering why some tasks that didn't seem tough, specially to someone with body like yours, did seem so."

Kaden stopped working and frowned as he stared at Nosran.

"And?" Kaden said a bit coldly.

"If you are wondering, if I'm going to try anything, you can stop worrying", Nosran told Kaden immediately. "You are a very curious creature. I wish to observe you longer and here I was trying to think of ways to convince you to stay longer. Nor do I have any interest distrupting my work by making enemies. Whatever troubles you have do not concern me and I prefer to keep it that way."

Kaden tilted his head slightly in question.

"The base formation you have made is already extremely useful to me", Nosran started explaining. "Its not even complete yet. I can only imagine how much help it will be to me once it is. Mind you, I'm not pushing you to harm yourself. I'm very patient."

"I know my limits by now", Kaden replied. He was willing to entertain Nosran at least for the moment. "As long as I finish parts between the anchor points, thanks to the materials you gave me, I can do them one by one."

Nosran nodded a few times.

"What I'm saying is that, perhaps you should stay here a longer time", Nosran continued. "Not just take your time finishing the formations, but also work as assistant!"

Now Kaden was a bit surprised.

"You don't flich even a bit when you work around bodies or my minions", Nosran pointed out. "Do you know how hard it is to find people who don't feel repulsed by my work? Not only that, you can craft formations and, even if I'm not an expert, you seem to be knowing what you are doing. Even to point that I'd assume your work to be high quality."

Nosran let his words sink in for a moment.

"If I can get favor of a good formation master by, at his moment of need, providing support and place to stay, it will be a very good deal to me", Nosran said. "With this arrangement I'll also get a helper, who just happens to be chimera of unknown origin. I'll get more research material and observe works of someone else." Nosran was excited. "I just can't see negative sides in this deal that I would be concerned about."

This was unexpected to Kaden. His original plan had been to see how far he could heal while creating the formations for Nosran, but if he took the deal, he could take as long time as he needed. While this he could perhaps arrange some extra personal gains too.

"Does being your assistant bring me any benefits?" Kaden said calmly. He was planning on accepting the deal, but he wanted to see how far he could go with it. He pointed around Nosran's laboratory. "It seems to me you got quite a bit of information crystals, books and scrolls around. I have some reasons why I would like to give a look at some necromancy practices."

"As my assasistant you would obviously come close contact with my work", Nosran answered. "What you see here would be available for you to learn from. In fact, I'd prefer it that you knew specifics of what you would be assisting me with."

This was good! Kaden wouldn't have to make any extra deals with Nosran about his attempts to improve Devour.

"I also see you have a lot of ... meat here", Kaden told Nosran. It had been only a slight distraction to work around such large amount of material Kaden considered edible. "Do you perhaps have some parts that aren't useful to your work, but haven't been 'fouled' in some way?"

"Hmm?" Nosran questioned Kaden's words. "Not all parts can be used. Often they are damaged. My zombies scour the local area for corpses. There are many unfortunate adventurers and other such people. Their ends are in many cases violent. Just how good condition you require these parts?"

Kaden wondered this answer Nosran gave him. He wasn't going to question it, but Kaden felt pretty sure Nosran wasn't against providing these violent ends by himself when chance presented itself. While Kaden was no expert on how many dead bodies cropped up over time, he was almost certain the amount was smaller than what Nosran seemed to gain. Exactly that sort of moral questions were what Kaden didn't really care about and why Nosran was very interested in that particular point.

"As long as there is any relevant amount of mana left in the flesh, its good", Kaden explained. Indeed, it was time to ask Nosran directly. "If you have some, I would even demonstrate. It ties back to my request to familiarize myself with necromancy."

Nosran didn't seem to do anything, but soon a zombie hauling a bucket of clearly some kind of offal material shuffled into the laboratory area.

Kaden gave a look. Most of the parts were unusable, some probably even from too weak creatures that Kaden wouldn't have cared even if he had personally killed them, but there were some pieces of meat that contained a slightly higher amount of mana. Kaden pulled out a bone that had such fractures it was probably too weak to work with, but it still had some meat on it.

Kaden resisted the desire to give a taste. He was intending to demonstrate Devour afterall. Regardless, he still charred the bone while Nosran observed on the side with a frown.

Then cast Devour and consumed the bone in its entirety. Such a small piece with relatively low mana content wasn't much, but even the little felt good for Kaden.

"This spell allows me to consume material of living things and use it to heal my wounds and take the mana content very efficiently", Kaden explained. "Its called Devour and I found it from certain necromancer's lab years ago. Trohin was his name."

"Trohin...Trohin...", Nosran muttered. "Ah, I recall now. I have heard of such a necromancer, but he went too far and commited some crimes. He should be long dead. As for the spell, it resembles the common Life Leech, but seems far stronger and has wider applications. Interesting. I would like to learn this spell too."

"I can teach it, but I would be careful in its use", Kaden told Nosran. "My current condition is due to its careless use. I used it on a body that had been charged with mana that was harmful to me. Once I absorbed that mana without realizing, it caused havoc in my body. Which is why I'm intending to solve that problem at the very least."

Nosran seemed rather excited and kept nodding.

"I see, I see", Nosran said and then returned back to the original subject. "I take it since we are speaking of this, you are going to agree to my suggestion?"

"Yes", Kaden replied with a single word, but then continued with details. "At least until I'm done with the formations and finish our trade and I'm healed. Until that time I'll assist with your work. So perhaps not long term, but for now."

"Splendid", Nosran said happily. "In that case, please continue with the formations for now. I'll have some other work later when I start some of my experiments. You may also browse my bookshelf whenever you have time, but please, keep the book arrangement in order."

This was very good! Not only Kaden had place to stay, but he would also be able to spend his time far more efficiently than he had expected. This included greater insights into necromancy, even if Kaden wasn't too interested in it. It would be useful at least with Devour and possibly give him insights for life mana that he expected to be in contact in the future. Broadening your understanding was always good.

As weeks passed, Kaden wasn't exactly sure what he had expected of Nosran. The assisting work was mostly for the grisly stuff with body parts. Cutting the parts in right way to allow them to be put together with other pieces better. Then helping put them together so that Nosran could reanimate them or marinate them in some alchemical juices to make them stronger.

If your zombie had misaligned joints, for example, it wouldn't be walking nor shuffling anywhere. It would be useless as it attempts to crawl everywhere. With bad mana conductivity or other problems, that Nosran fixed with alchemy, the result would otherwise be very similar.

Apparently some necromancers found the body part management so tedious that they created zombies that didn't require such work. As far as Nosran cared that was work of amateurs and such creations were inferior nor would those necromancers progress far in their path!

Kaden himself didn't really care, but since his work included this tedious work, he planned to do it right. It even gave Kaden chances to nibble a bit on the leftover meat. Nosran didn't seem to mind, but he surely noticed.

Speaking of consumption of flesh. The work even gave Kaden ample oportunities to try some changes he had made to Devour, if he instead used the spell. It was actually somewhat complicated spell. While its function was relatively simple, it seemed to not be a known spell, even if someone had created similar spell before. Adjusting it seemed to require a bit of work. The good thing was that Nosran was interested in it too. He told Kaden how he wanted to embed the spell into his zombies so they would be able to restore themselves without him having to do it himself everytime they got damaged.

Nosran obviously had better handle on necromancy and his ideas helped Kaden along.

There was also another thing regarding Devour. The spell was still the same he had discovered those years ago. Trohin had developed it only up to some point. As far as Kaden could determine, it, in its current structure, would reach its peak perhaps at Condensation stage. Trohin had not even been that strong so he probably had not even been able to properly test his spell. This was probably one of the reason faults like what Kaden ran into existed.

The spell included several concepts of which Kaden knew three. Tear, consume and digestion. Remaining one was distribution that would allow the raw materials after digesting more complex material to be distributed in efficient way. Kaden shuddered, if he had been able to cast Devour completely. If he had even distributed the justice mana into his most important places...

Kaden knew he had to add some concepts to it. He had some problems regarding that, but if he could find such concept that could tie in with Devour which probably worked due to affinity to life and none of the concepts along with it were ones that his affinity interefered with. It had to be something that his affinity could deal with or intrinsic that his affinity doesn't care about. It was easy to think some ideas, but to actually bring forth that effect and efficiently use the mana. That would require experimentation.

Whatever the case was, Kaden had a lot of work to do. Be it formations, healing or spell design. There was no rush. He had time.