First, to become a lich, one needed advanced magical ability—roughly the Sixth Circle or higher. That was
the first reason; the second was that, in the process of becoming a lich, most lost their humanity and became
cruel undead monsters.
Of course, that meant there were advantages as well. First, one could live forever, and ordinary
blows would not make one budge. Naturally, attacks imbued with holy power would inflict tremendous damage,
but as long as the Life Force Vessel remained intact, one could fully restore the body
later.
Of course, that required draining the life force of many people. And naturally, if the Life Force Vessel
were destroyed, one would have no choice but to have even one’s soul annihilated on the spot. As Damon
recalled the general facts about liches, an uneasy look appeared on his face.
“Could the Demon King have descended?”
Of course, to Damon, there was nothing more terrifying than that. Now that he had stepped onto the path of a black mage,
he had no choice but to obey the Demon King’s commands. If the Demon King gave an order, he might even be placed
in a situation where he had to kill Daphne.
Thinking back to the Dark War of the past, it was entirely possible. And judging from Doyle’s case,
it was clear that he would not be able to refuse an order. But since there was no other choice,
Damon continued racing toward the promised meeting place.
The rear garden had become a complete mess. The flowers Daphne had cherished had all been uprooted
without exception, and the stone bench where the two had sat and talked had been smashed to pieces.
Damon, his mind urgent, hurriedly searched the area. The first thing that caught his eye was the corpses of
the guards scattered everywhere. No matter how hard he looked, there was not a single corpse of an intruder.
“How strange. Are they so skilled as that?”
Suddenly, his senses caught the sound of a fight. Damon’s body reflexively
flew in that direction. After running a short distance, he saw a group of people tangled together in a fierce melee.
It was right in front of the detached palace’s main gate. Judging from the situation, that seemed to be where Daphne was staying.
“Those bastards…”
There, Damon was able to see the intruders. Figures with bodies as gaunt as skeletons
were fighting frantically among the guards. Because their entire bodies were wrapped in black robes,
it was impossible to guess their appearances. They fiercely swung hands tipped with long claws,
engaging the guards in a brutal battle. Seeing that, fire flared in Damon’s eyes.
“Their objective is clear now. The intruders are aiming straight for Daphne.”
Based on his experience thus far, Damon could tell one thing for certain. The gaunt
creatures were clearly preventing reinforcements from entering the detached palace.
If so, there was a high possibility that their main force was inside the palace. And Damon soon realized
why there were no corpses of the intruders.
“Kiyaaaak!”
A black-robed figure pierced by three or four longswords let out a horrific scream. But only
for a moment—the black-robed body instantly turned to dust and scattered. Not even a trace
remained where it had stood. As he ran, a puzzled expression appeared in Damon’s eyes.
“How strange. I heard liches are extremely powerful, but to be taken down by guards…”
At that moment, someone brushed past him and spoke coldly.
“Those aren’t liches. They’re monsters called wights that the liches summoned. You can think of them as
a kind of mutated zombie created by magic.”
It was Helbertron’s voice. After confirming the owner of the voice, Damon stuck close behind him.
“Is Daphne safe? And why weren’t you guarding her at her side?”
Helbertron’s face twisted.
“Damn it. It was a diversion. Two liches attacked, so I took one of them down. Then
I chased hard after the one that fled, but in the end, that bastard was bait. Judging from the situation,
their main force is definitely after the Saintess.”
Damon’s eyes turned bloodshot. The thought that danger might befall Daphne filled him with extreme rage.
The two soon charged into the swarm of wights. Every time light flashed from Helbertron’s sword,
two or three wights were split apart at once.
“Kiyaaaak!”
It was an astonishing display of divine prowess, worthy of his reputation.
Not wanting to fall behind, Damon launched a fierce assault on the nearby wights. But the decisive problem
was that wights had no acupoints, so Damon could not help but struggle considerably.
In the end, he could not show anything close to Helbertron’s level of performance. With the power of the
Power-Up Gauntlet, Damon barely managed to bring down two wights, then repeatedly
gasped for rough breaths.
“What in the world are those things? To summon monsters like that…”
“I’m not sure, but it seems one of the liches used to be a necromancer.”
“Then does that mean the one who sent them is the Demon King?”
Damon, suddenly seized by chills, asked urgently. Helbertron swung his sword and bisected two
wights, then turned back with a faint smile, as if he fully understood Damon’s worries.
“Probably not. If the Demon King sent them, there’d be no need to summon mere wights, would there? From
the look of things, they’re probably the guardians of the Red Dragon Verkis.”
“Guardians?”
There were many things he wanted to ask, but the situation was urgent, so Damon shut his mouth.
“Eit!”
Magic Missiles formed in his hand and shot out, concentrating all the mana he could draw up.
But the Magic Missiles that had shown fearsome power against medium-sized monsters were, unfortunately,
utterly powerless against the summoned monsters.
Pupupupuk.
The creatures called wights kept moving even with their chests pierced through and holes gaping open,
and even those whose heads had been blown off launched powerful attacks. For Damon, who
aimed solely for vital points, they were opponents who could be called his natural counter.
Only after reducing the whole body to pulp was Damon finally able to bring down one wight.
But while he had barely felled three, Helbertron had already slaughtered most of the wights.
Only then did the guards, able to catch their breath, busily move to collect their wounded comrades. Turning
his head toward Damon, Helbertron shrugged as if to say, See?
“Where did that reputation as the Ogre Hunter go? To struggle against mere wights…”
“We don’t have time for this. Let’s get inside.”
The two tried to enter the detached palace quickly. But their footsteps came to an abrupt stop.
It was after they saw two figures walking out of the building.
A man in a black robe, with an appearance like a skeleton, walked out while holding a woman under one arm
and keeping watch behind him. Perhaps she had fainted; the woman’s head hung limply.
The face revealed between the folds of the robe had not a scrap of flesh on it. It was a skull
itself. Behind him, several knights with swords drawn followed. Seeing that sight,
Damon’s eyes opened so wide they seemed about to tear.
“Da… Daphne.”
The woman held under the skeletal man’s arm. She was Daphne. Seeing Daphne
held captive, Damon was about to charge in without regard for anything else. But he was immediately
stopped by Helbertron.
“Judging from the situation, he’s clearly holding the Saintess hostage. This is not the time
to act rashly.”
Only then did Damon compose himself, a grim resolve appearing on his face. If Daphne
were harmed? If that happened, Damon might truly go mad.
The skeletal man was already tightly surrounded on both sides. Among the knights who had come out
from inside the building were three Sword Masters, and on this side, Helbertron’s eyes
were flashing constantly. It was obvious that, no matter how strong a lich he was, he could not hold out.
Yet he merely looked around leisurely with a confident attitude. The pupils containing
blue ghostly light swept over the knights surrounding him. In the next instant, a strange light entered the lich’s eyes.
It was after he turned toward the side where Damon stood.
“A black mage? Well, this is astonishing. To think there would be a black mage in the imperial palace of Icarotte.”
His chilling gaze swept over Damon’s entire body. A little while later,
a somewhat disappointed voice rang out. It was a sinister voice, as though coming from the underworld.
“A newly contracted chick. Third Circle, and merely a User at that?”
Sparks flew from Damon’s eyes, but he did not act rashly. First, Daphne was in the bastard’s grasp,
and if the opponent was a lich, Damon had absolutely no chance of winning. Naturally,
there was no way a lich’s body had vital points, and given the nature of magic, Damon’s attack magic clearly
would not work. The only opponents his Magic Missiles worked on were living, breathing humans or
monsters.
Unable to bear the lich’s attitude any longer, Helbertron stepped forward.
“Who are you? Why are you holding a maid hostage?”
It was a kind of smokescreen tactic meant to fluster the opponent. But the lich was not
such an easy opponent. A subtle sneer appeared around the lich’s mouth.
“My name is Gedenhide. I am a glorious guardian who serves Lord Verkis. Humans,
do not make hasty judgments by your pitiful standards. At the very least, I can proudly say that
my eye for recognizing the Saintess is far superior to that of you humans.”
At the sound of his name, cries of shock burst from among the encirclement.
“H-Heavens… If it’s Gedenhide, isn’t that the close aide of the Great Demon King Nydelhark?”
“I-It’s true. To think Gedenhide, the former chief strategist of the Dark Legion, is still
alive…”
Most of the shocked cries came from the mouths of mages who had experienced the Dark War. By contrast,
the relatively young knights had no idea what was going on and merely stared blankly.
Gedenhide. To humans, there could be no name more cursed than that. Born
human, yet one who had made bloody tears flow from the eyes of countless people—Gedenhide.
He had originally been a court mage who served the court of a certain kingdom. But because he
became obsessed with improving his magical skill, he took an interest in black magic, and at last
reached the stage of forming a contract with the Demon King. Since he had contracted while approaching the Seventh Circle,
he was able to become an incredibly powerful black mage. But there was no way
his nature would not change accordingly, and in the end he became a cruel demon who did not hesitate at bloodshed
and slaughter.
To the point where he did not hesitate to conduct experiments on living bodies.
Countless innocent people died miserably as tools for his experiments, and in proportion to that,
Gedenhide’s magical ability improved without end. When the kingdoms heard of this,
they dispatched knight orders to capture and kill Gedenhide.
But there was no method anywhere to deal with Gedenhide, who, empowered by black magic,
had already entered the Ninth Circle and become an archmage. The high-circle attack magic he wielded
was something even a Sword Master wearing anti-magic armor could not dare to take lightly.
No matter how much it was anti-magic defensive armor, there was inevitably a clear limit
to the level of magic it could defend against. Gedenhide’s attack magic easily surpassed the level
of the mage who had made the anti-magic defensive armor.
Countless knights and mages lost their lives at his hands. There were even cases where
Sword Masters fell. Gedenhide carried out slaughter as he crossed in and out of the knight orders’ encirclements
as if mocking them. An astronomical bounty was placed on his head, but he showed no sign of being
caught.
In the midst of this, the Dark War broke out. Naturally, Gedenhide joined the Demon King’s army
as if it were only right, and even rose to an important post overseeing all of its black mages
and necromancers. Gedenhide seemed to be riding an unstoppable rise.
But the Demon King’s army was defeated in the final battle. And Gedenhide had no choice but to follow
the retreating Nydelhark into hiding in the Felucia Mountains. After that,
it became known that he had disappeared there together with Nydelhark.
This had happened thirty years ago, and now that infamous figure had become a lich and appeared
once again. In the imperial palace of Icarotte, no less. Therefore, the mages who remembered
him could not help but feel chills run through their bodies. To forget their fear,
the mages each spat out a word or two.
“Detestable bastard.”
“A bastard who should die without even his soul remaining.”
The greatest reason Gedenhide had earned such infamy was that he had been directly involved
in the slaughter of the Saintesses. The large-scale massacre of Saintesses carried out by the Dark Army.
Gedenhide had been the one in charge of that mission, and he killed the discovered Saintesses
in methods so gruesome they could not be imagined. The number of Saintesses who died by his hand
was beyond counting. Therefore, there was no way the gazes directed at him could be favorable.
Of course, the fact that the last Saintess was held captive in Gedenhide’s hands
sent chills down the spines of the surrounding knights. At last, perhaps unable to suppress his rage,
someone stepped forward.
“You bastard who deserves divine punishment. To think you are still alive…”
The one who stepped forward was Shrekheimer. Since he had participated in the Dark War,
he naturally remembered Gedenhide clearly.