I Revived an Elephant I Never Raised
This was around the time Dohyeon had taken to clearing Floor 6 of the Tower on repeat.
Ding-dong!
A text message had arrived from Song Seogyeon — an employee of the Management Bureau, and the girlfriend of Assistant Manager Lim Seonwoo.
"Whoa! Goldie — you're about to get yourself a really, really big older brother."
Click-click-click!
"Huh?"
Goldie's position was that, having become a Jade Bone Skeleton first, he was the eldest brother no matter who joined the family.
"Is that how it works? Elephants live far longer than dogs, you know... Don't they make it a good sixty years?"
Click-click! Click-click-click-click!
An elephant that had died of old age would have to be sixty at the youngest, but Goldie pressed his case with his own logic: existence as a skeleton was an entirely new life, and in this new life, he had come first.
"Huh... well, you're not wrong. So you'll take the big-brother spot, Goldie?"
Click-click!
Goldie had already resolved to dote on his baffling new elephant little brother and make sure they got along splendidly.
"Hahaha! First things first — let's hurry up and go bring him back!"
Hanging from the neck bone of Goldie, who came bounding out of the house in high spirits, was the summon's tag that had arrived that very morning.
Dohyeon was on his way to the zoo in a vehicle the Management Bureau had sent.
Behind the wheel sat Song Seogyeon.
"You've even got a heavy-vehicle license, Sister-in-law?"
The vehicle she had driven over was a five-ton truck. Apparently the plan was to load the revived elephant aboard and haul him off. At that one remark, offered after a careful read of the mood, Song Seogyeon gave a faint smile.
"I picked it up after joining the Bureau. The support team counts things like that toward your performance record. That said, setting that aside entirely — any cargo vehicle under twelve tons can be driven on a standard Class 1 license."
"Ah... right."
Perhaps he found it fascinating to see a woman his master tiptoed around; tail wagging, Goldie kept his eyes on Song Seogyeon. He was still adjusting, in his own way, to this new arrangement in which his master's heart came through to him loud and clear.
"Though honestly, no ordinary household can keep an elephant anyway. Didn't you drive that truck out here for nothing?"
Dohyeon had a point: even if the elephant was revived and trucked over, there was no keeping him at Dohyeon's place. Nor, contrary to what the Bureau seemed to imagine, could he simply be raised on the spot. Given the animal's sheer size, Dohyeon figured that even with his raised Mana and Spirit, the work would take a month at the very least.
Hoping for a more precise estimate, he asked Song Seogyeon.
"Sister-in-law, what species is he? And how big?"
Steering the five-ton truck with an easy hand, she answered.
"A male Asian elephant, they tell me. A touch on the large side for the species — three meters at the shoulder, six and a half in body length. The bones alone should come to around four hundred kilograms."
"Whoa... four hundred kilos..."
Goldie weighed all of four kilograms these days. If Dohyeon's Mana and Spirit had stayed where they'd been, converting every last one of the elephant's bones to jade bone would have taken 1,500 days.
So even crafting a Jade Bone Skeleton is no small undertaking...
Saving a life with whom he had shared a deep bond of the heart, as with Goldie, was the greatest challenge of all — but even the seemingly simple task of transmuting bones that were already there proved anything but simple. All he could do was hope that his experience making jade bone, together with his grown Mana and Spirit, would tip the scales.
First things first — every stat point I got from hitting Level 6 goes straight into Mana.
Heart tight with nerves, Dohyeon waited for the zoo to come into view.
"This is the zoo?"
The truck had pulled into a quiet lot lined with warehouses.
"This is a cold-storage complex. We had no way of knowing when you'd be able to come, Climber Dohyeon, so the carcass was moved into a warehouse to keep it from decomposing. That's also why I brought the truck — we can hardly leave Taesan in the freezer once he's been revived."
"Ah..."
If he only passed this morning, his soul should still be perfectly whole...
Dohyeon's heart went out to Taesan, who must have watched his own body handled like a piece of freight. He was a man who understood better than anyone on Earth that animals, too, had hearts.
His steps quickened.
"Where is he?"
"That warehouse there. I'll back the truck in."
Dohyeon climbed down from the passenger seat and hurried toward the warehouse. The cold-storage attendant waiting outside took one look at Goldie's jade-pale bones, startled, and scrambled to roll the door open.
Rrrrumble...
"Oh, Taesan!"
Though this was their first meeting, Dohyeon approached calling the elephant by name. The Asian elephant's carcass — tons upon tons of him — lay resting across a set of pallets.
Dohyeon laid a hand on Taesan's chilled body and spoke.
"Taesan. From here on out, death is a concept that will keep its distance from you. And I promise — no one will ever handle you like this again."
Beep— beep— beep— beep—
Set against the backup alarm of the reversing five-ton truck, Taesan's bones began their transformation into jade bone.
Sssaaaa—
First, everything that could not become jade bone — the muscle and flesh, the organs and hide — crumbled away like dust.
Fwoooosh—
Guided by Dohyeon's will, that dust — once Taesan's living flesh — streamed like enchanted sand into the glass jar he cradled against his chest.
It was a technique he had mastered while turning Goldie and dozens of goblins to jade bone, and it had grown fluid and sure since he reached Level 6 and invested points in Spirit. Back when he raised Goldie, with no such trick up his sleeve, he'd had to sweep the powdered remains off the floor by hand.
In the blink of an eye, nothing remained of the carcass but bone. Dohyeon had driven his seventeen Mana — every point save the one occupied by Goldie — right to its limit, and Song Seogyeon came to stand beside him.
"Shouldn't he be getting up right about now?"
Song Seogyeon huffed out a breath like a steam locomotive.
"I suppose I'm a rather peculiar necromancer. A month, sometimes two, of work like this, and only then can I finally raise someone. That's how I cleared my way to Floor 5 on my own strength. Haha."
Song Seogyeon folded her arms.
"But if it truly takes that long, wouldn't it be more convenient to keep him at your home and work there until he rises? Shall we have Taesan's bones delivered to your place?"
The bob-haired Bureau employee's tone had gone soft and rounded as well, as though she had warmed to him a little.
Dohyeon shook his head vigorously.
"No, thank you. I'd rather leave Taesan somewhere familiar and come visit every day. He has a heart, too."
The look in Song Seogyeon's eyes as she regarded him was warm.
More than a month had passed since Dohyeon began converting Taesan's bones into jade bone.
Every morning at the same hour, he rode a taxi driven by a driver under contract with Song Seogyeon, shuttling to and from the zoo; in the evenings, once his Mana had recovered, he threw himself into clearing Floor 6 of the Tower again and again.
And so Taesan's jade bone stood complete. All that remained was the raising.
Pwoo...
At some point, Taesan's family had seemed to understand that these bones were Taesan. They gazed steadily at Dohyeon as he approached to use Raise Jade Bone.
Raise Jade Bone!
With others looking on, Dohyeon cried the skill's name only within his mind. Mana flowed out of his body and into Taesan's jade bones.
The soul of "Taesan" has sworn conditional loyalty to its summoner.
Domination stat occupancy has been reduced from 3 to 1.
Dohyeon raised him, committing five Mana and a single point of Domination to Taesan.
The mound of trunkless Asian elephant bones rose upright all on its own.
PWOOOO!
The elephant family watching the scene burst into a great trumpeting chorus.
Click-click.
Dohyeon felt a pang for Taesan, who — unlike his family — could do no more than click his teeth together.
If a skill for that ever comes along, I'm building him vocal cords and a trunk. No question about it.
An elephant's trunk is, at its root, an upper lip grown long. With no bones to shape one, an elephant skeleton has neither trunk nor ears. Thankfully, being male, Taesan at least had his tusks.
Dohyeon rested his hand on Taesan's skull.
"I'll come back in a week. Spend the time with your family."
Click-click!
Taesan said his thanks.
Dohyeon had granted his revived Taesan a week to himself.
Now he was killing time playing with Goldie.
Swish-swish, swish-swish.
Brushing Goldie down with a stiff-bristled brush while thumbing through his StarStar feed, Dohyeon came across a video featuring Taesan.
"Huh? Why, it's Taesan."
The footage showed the elephant skeleton rubbing its body against the living elephants.
The comment section offered up opinions of every stripe.
Right on cue, the official StarStar account run by Seoul Zoo posted as well: a short clip of the dead elephant and the living ones ambling along together in perfect harmony, alongside a handful of beautifully composed photographs.
Dohyeon skimmed through the comments on the zoo's post as well.
"The reaction's better than I expected. Some people even adore it — say it looks like a jewel."
He turned to Goldie, who was idly grinding his skull back and forth across a cushion.
"Goldie. Should we start our StarStar back up?"
Back when Goldie was alive, Dohyeon had run a Dogstagram of his own. Goldie had simply been too adorable, too clever — not showing him off had been beyond him. When the end drew near, unwilling to post the sad news, he had signed off with one short final message and let the account lie dormant.
"No reason we can't pick it back up, right?"
Goldie was already sitting at attention, chin lifted high — as if to shout: point that lens at me already.
"Haha! Alright, alright. Let's get back to it."
Drawing on his old knack for photographing a shaggy coat at its most photogenic, Dohyeon shot the sleek jade-pale skeleton with plenty of style of its own.
"Cut! Beautiful-! Now then, model — this next one's with a chew bone!"
Goldie sank his sharp teeth into the chew bone with a mighty chomp.
Ka-chick, ka-chick.
"Cut! Perfect-! That's an A-cut without even looking! Next up — tug-of-war!"
Dohyeon took hold of one end of the tug toy and raised his phone camera from the same spot.
"Whoa-whoa! Don't actually shake it! You're way too strong these days — your big brother can't hold on!"
Ka-chick, ka-chick.
The tug-of-war "concept shots" barely managed to capture a jade-colored blur.
Ding!
And so Dohyeon's Dogstagram, shaking off its months-long vanishing act, turned its engine over and roared back to life.