Chapter 62: Liam's Backstory

There was a reason behind why Liam was called the mad principal, why despite his eccentricities and direct challenges made to the major powers within the tower, no major power tried to seek revenge on him.

The various religious orders and even tier 6 lesser gods spoke of him in hushed tones, not just out of fear for the wrath he could unleash but also because of how cruel the nature of his hidden power was—a power that seemed to defy the natural order of life and death itself.

Long ago, before his name evoked terror and awe, Liam was a scholar, driven by an insatiable curiosity about the world and its mysteries.

His quest for knowledge led him down many paths, but none as compelling as the study of life's ethereal counterpart—death, as ever since he lost his brother to the tower, he tried his best to bring him back, going down many questionable routes to try and revive him, as returning him to life became his only goal.

He read countless tomes, studied countless ancient texts, and learnt many lost languages. However, most of what he learnt seemed to be written by either phony necromancers or cult activists that believed in absolute gibberish.

Regardless, in hopes of reviving his brother, he explored every path and left no trail untrekked if it offered even the slimmest hopes of success.

It was during his time as such an explorer that he found an excavation site in an ancient, forsaken temple on floor 52.

It was a temple not found on one of the explored trails of the floor and hence it was extremely dangerous to explore it, yet, confident of the ancient manuscripts he had uncovered, Liam felt sure that the temple contained an ancient artifact that held the secrets of life and death.

It was inside that temple that Liam stumbled upon the Spectre's Locket, an artifact so sinister, yet so captivating that it seemed to call to him from the shadows.

Crafted during a lunar eclipse by a cult long erased from the annals of history, the locket was said to hold the power to bridge the living world with that of the dead.

It was a thing of beauty and terror, made of a dark metal that seemed to swallow light, with a gemstone that pulsed with an otherworldly glow.

Liam, with his vast knowledge of ancient lore, recognized the symbols carved into its surface. They spoke of the underworld, of spirits unrested, and of power untold.

With reliable friends in the professors, he was convinced of sealing the locket away when he did not need it, as after spending a few months away from the locket, his insanity symptoms improved and he did not behave as eccentrically as he did when he was in contact with the locket.

The other professors always hoped that the day that Liam took up the locket again, never came, however, from time to time there were incidents that drove Liam angry enough to bring out the locket and today's incident was one such moment.

From the second he jumped out of the university window, Maven knew that he had gone to unseal his treasure, and the moment he placed it around his neck, he was bound to become a crazy ghostmancer, the kind that would not stop until he brought those that troubled his students to justice.

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*CLANG*

*CLANG*

*CLANG*

Liam slammed down the concrete pavement of his university quarters as he tried to unseal his buried treasure.

The bloodlust had already clouded his mind, the image of two dead students floating in there constantly, as his frustrations were visible with every hammer strike that he made.

Finally, as his strikes hit an inscripted wooden box, he paused, taking the wooden box out carefully as from within it he retrieved his precious spectral locket.

The moment he touched it, the ravings of the dead began clamoring in his ears as he shouted "QUIET-" to demand their silence.

The color of his pupils markedly darkened as he adorned the pendant, its powers coursing through his veins as he became the master of death once more.