“Impossible…… To think you can still get up after taking my Horrid Wilting head-on……”
Though his chest had been crushed in, the lich did not stagger at all as he walked over.
Nor did he seem particularly enraged. Gedenhide frowned as he watched the lich stroll leisurely over and stand calmly before him.
“Your defensive power, at least, is formidable. In any case, you let the intruders escape, so consider that your punishment for it.”
“Sure.”
Seeing the lich answer in such insolent, informal speech, Gedenhide’s mood soured once again. Judging by both his tone and his attitude, the creature clearly did not seem to regard him as a superior. Yet because he was not openly rebelling, Gedenhide could not rashly lay a hand on him. Unlike goblins or mid-sized monsters, whom he could kill without consequence, this opponent was a Guardian personally appointed by Verkis.
‘His mind must have gone strange during the brainwashing process. I must report this to Lord Verkis the moment he awakens.’
In the end, Gedenhide decided to ignore him, as he had done until now. Dealing with someone who could not be reasoned with would only make his own head ache. That was the assessment he had formed after spending five hundred years together with him.
“Return to the lair. I can no longer entrust the outer perimeter to an idiot like you.”
At those words, the lich turned around as if he had been waiting for them. Gedenhide clicked his tongue at the sight.
“There should be several human slaves in the lair. Absorb their life force and restore your body……”
“Sure.”
After saying that, the lich began trudging away. From the look of him, it seemed he had not escaped entirely unscathed. After all, he was walking instead of using spatial movement. As Gedenhide stared at his retreating back, a strange gleam flickered in his empty eye sockets.
“Surely he can’t still be bearing a grudge against me?”
About five hundred years ago, when the lich before him had still been human, there had been resentment between them. Resentment deep enough that it would not have been strange to call them mortal enemies. For a moment, Gedenhide wondered if that was why the lich treated him this way, but he soon erased the thought from his mind.
“That cannot be. Lord Verkis wiped his memories clean and brainwashed him.”
To doubt that fact would be no different from doubting Verkis’s magical ability. For Gedenhide, who could be called Verkis’s loyal confidant, that was something that must never happen.
“I suppose it must be the influence of the mental magic cast on him before the brainwashing.”
Having reached a conclusion, Gedenhide looked at the liches standing blankly nearby.
“From now on, the two of you will guard this place. If humans intrude again in the future, you are to pursue them to the end and dispose of them no matter what. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Watching the liches nod, Gedenhide nodded in satisfaction. At the very least, their attitude was on an entirely different level from that witless lich.
“Then do your duty.”
As he finished speaking, Gedenhide’s body slowly scattered into the air. The liches who had received their orders soon flew back to their positions.
A single shadow was slowly walking along the narrow path toward the mountaintop. A small body wrapped in a black robe. The shadow walking while swinging its fleshless hands was the same lich from before.
His chest had been horribly crushed, but since he was a being incapable of feeling pain, he seemed entirely unconcerned. As the lich slowly moved his feet, a curse suddenly burst from his mouth.
“Damn bastard. Does he think I let them go because I didn’t want to kill them?”
In the lich’s hollow eye sockets, a light of anger flickered.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to let such insane fools leave alive either. To think they would sneak into a dragon’s lair and try to capture a Guardian for the sake of advancement…… Truly absurd bastards. If not for the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art……”
As if something had occurred to him, the lich stopped speaking midway and raised his head. On his fleshless face hovered an expression that seemed utterly unable to comprehend it.
“To think the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art still remains even after I became a lich. Truly astonishing. Though, I suppose it was thanks to that that I was able to break free from Verkis’s brainwashing magic.”
As he recalled the past, complicated emotions rose within him once again. In the lich’s mind, what had happened long ago—more precisely, what had happened five hundred years ago—surfaced in perfect order, as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. From his mouth slipped a low voice, filled with ambiguous emotion.
“Daphne.”
He was now thinking of a young girl. A girl born under a cruel fate, sleeping while turned to stone. To him, she was someone he had to save no matter what. At the same time, another being came to mind, one who had given him an immeasurable grudge. A being that was not human: a dragon. Astonishingly, the lich had retained all of his memories from when he was human.
“Verkis. Wait for my retribution……”
His fleshless fist clenched tightly and trembled. Ironically, the red dragon who was the lich’s master was, to him, an enemy he could not share the same sky with. He was the root cause who had taken away his teacher and the woman he loved. He was also the very being who had turned him, once human, into a lich. The name he had borne when he was human was Damon.
Realizing he had failed to control his surging emotions, Damon raised his head and looked around. Since he was covertly using detection magic to sense his surroundings, there was no possibility that his muttering had been overheard, but he had to prepare for the unexpected in all cases. To hide his true identity, he had to be cautious upon cautious. That was the secret by which Damon had concealed himself for five hundred years.
“Should I call it a blessing in disguise? Verkis turning me into a lich was actually fortunate……”
Damon slowly raised his hand and drew in the surrounding mana. In the blink of an eye, an enormous amount of mana gathered. This was a realm he could not even have imagined in the past. Damon had long since become a great mage who stood among the ranks of the 9th Circle. Though he was in the body of a lich.
“First, I must restore my body.”
Thud.
Sitting down where he was, Damon began restoring his terribly shattered chest with the mana he had gathered. Ordinarily, the proper method would have been to suck out the life force of the human slaves prepared in the lair and restore his body that way. But for him, who was still bound by the restriction of the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art, that was a method he could never even consider. Even now, he still possessed the weakness of being unable to kill people.
Therefore, Damon was attempting to restore his body through his own method, one he had mastered through long research. The five hundred years had not only made him a great mage but had also provided him the opportunity to restore countless dark arts he had forgotten……
Sssssss.
The area of his chest gradually returned to its original form. At the same time, Damon recalled the process by which he had been able to become a great mage.
The Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art, which had controlled Damon for many long years. This restrictive art, which fundamentally eradicated killing intent from the one upon whom it was cast, astonishingly possessed an effect that no one had known of. That was the effect of protecting the practitioner’s humanity.
In truth, the effectiveness of the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art had been proven from the time Damon was in the Central Plains. The Tianzi Blood Demon Art, a cursed demonic art said to turn anyone who learned it into a blood-starved fiend. Despite learning that accursed demonic art, Damon had not lost his humanity. That was because of the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art deeply rooted in his mind. And in Truvania, the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art saved Damon once more. It allowed him to break free from Verkis’s brainwashing magic.
A dragon’s brainwashing magic. As the highest-level magic of the 10th Circle, something no human could withstand, it was magic that would mercilessly turn its target into a faithful servant regardless of what willpower the target possessed. Once this magic was cast, the target would become unable to defy the caster under any circumstances. Literally, they would be thoroughly brainwashed to the point that they would willingly throw away even their life for the caster.
The power of the magic was so intense that even Gedenhide, who had once been the right hand of the Great Demon King Nidelhark, could not endure for long and submitted. At the time, Gedenhide had already reached the ranks of the 9th Circle and had been deeply dominated by the Great Demon King Nidelhark, but even he had no way to resist the brainwashing magic.
In the end, he became Verkis’s faithful servant and ended up guarding the lair like a well-trained dog. In other words, if one were human, it was impossible to break free from the brainwashing magic.
Yet astonishingly, Damon had overcome that process. No, to be precise, he had never been brainwashed in the first place.
Verkis, who took pride in his magical ability, went to sleep as soon as the brainwashing process was over, and Damon was moved to another laboratory with his mind fully intact. Waiting for Damon there were Gedenhide and three or four other liches.
Gedenhide had received Verkis’s strict command to turn Damon into a lich. If Damon was to be kept alive until Verkis’s period of sleep ended, that was the only way. As soon as Damon arrived, Gedenhide began the process of turning him into a lich. That was the background of how Damon became a lich.
Remembering that process, Damon’s eyes flashed.
“For me, it was rather fortunate. If I had not become a lich, I would not have lived even six months……”
At the time, Damon’s body had been in a state of extreme weakness, its life force depleted by his repeated use of Haste and by severe burns. Moreover, because of the Touch of Death he had suffered at Gedenhide’s hands, dark mana had seeped all the way into his heart. In a way, becoming a lich might truly have been fortunate for Damon.
For becoming a lich had given him time to grow stronger. As he recalled that time, a faint smile passed across Damon’s face.
“They never even dreamed that I had not been brainwashed.”
With the single-minded desire for revenge, Damon hid himself thoroughly. He wanted somehow to grow stronger, save Daphne, and take revenge.
His efforts eventually succeeded. Though Gedenhide found him somewhat strange, he merely judged it to be an aftereffect of mental magic. After becoming a lich, Damon was incorporated into Verkis’s Guardian corps as planned.
“That was the beginning of the process by which I gained power.”
Despite having become a lich, Damon’s mind remained intact. Perhaps that, too, had been due to the influence of the Sevenfold Severance Prohibition Art. But Damon had no time to dwell on the question and began training in magic. For he had been given the perfect opportunity: an eternal lifespan and the chance to learn magic extensively.
The liches under Verkis were permitted to train in magic in order to improve their abilities. Of course, only up to a certain level. Because of that, Damon was able to access an enormous quantity of magical texts. For Damon, who had been thirsty for knowledge, this could only be called fortune.
Since he was no longer bound by the limits of lifespan, it was no exaggeration to say that Damon could now train in magic to his heart’s content. The monotonous life of a Guardian provided him with free time he could never before have imagined.
After that, Damon learned magic as if staking his very life on it. The five hundred or so years he spent training in magic were not boring to him in the slightest. Since Doyle had already firmly laid the foundation for him, there was nothing to hinder him. Unlike when he had been human and had learned through shortcuts, Damon followed the proper order, steadily building up the process and raising his Circles one by one. He truly learned magic with all his might. Thus, in only one hundred and fifty years, he was able to become a master of the 6th Circle.
However, after that, Damon faced a crisis……
“Verkis did not permit the liches under his command to rise above the 6th Circle. Because of that, I had to suffer quite a bit.”
Among Verkis’s liches, the only one who exceeded the 6th Circle was Gedenhide. He had already reached the ranks of the 9th Circle when he was still human. All the other liches remained masters of the 6th Circle. That level was more than sufficient when dealing with humans……
But the 6th Circle was a level Damon could never be satisfied with. For the sake of revenge, even becoming a master of the 9th Circle would not have been enough for him. In the end, he accepted the risk and began pondering a way to raise his Circle. Recalling that time, Damon gave a bitter smile.
“It was truly fortunate for me that I had not been brainwashed. Because of that, I was able to enter Verkis’s magic library.”
Naturally, in the liches’ magic library, there were no magical texts above the 6th Circle. Nor could he ask Gedenhide to teach him magic, so Damon instead set his sights on the magical texts piled up in Verkis’s magic library.
He believed that if they were a dragon’s magical texts, they would be enough to raise him to the 9th Circle. And so he thought single-mindedly only of a way to infiltrate Verkis’s magic library. For a full forty years. Damon let out a faint chuckle.
“I never imagined entering Verkis’s magic library would be that easy.”
Though the security was indeed strict, sneaking into it was not especially difficult. The problem was the brainwashing magic cast on the liches.