Lich, Become a Hunter! Episode 1

Prologue

“Damn it… damn it… damn it all!! I was so close… and now those damned whore’s dogs are getting in my way.”

Before a glowing crystal ball in a dark cave.

A single figure watched the crystal ball and gnawed at his own hand. No, to be precise, he was gnawing at the bones of his own fingers.

The one staring into the crystal ball—the lich—ground his teeth as he watched Luderson, the man walking at the very front among those slowly entering with shields engraved with the image of a set of scales.

“Damn fools, believing only the god they worship is the one true god! Do they truly not know that a god of good is still a god, and a god of evil is still a god as well!!”

After cursing at the crystal ball for some time, the lich soon tore his gaze away from it and began carefully examining the magic circle drawn on the floor.

“…At any rate, I have no desire to remain in this wretched world for even a moment longer. With this, I bid this world farewell.”

Even as he muttered so, the lich recalled how little time he had left and meticulously inspected the magic circle on the floor, correcting the parts that were wrong.

How long had he spent fixing the magic circle?

At the sound of footsteps and shouted orders from outside, the lich, who had been repairing the magic circle on the floor, raised his head and looked toward the door as he muttered.

“…Bone Wall.”

The moment his words ended, a wall made of bone surged up from the ground and blocked the place where the door had been.

“Damn it! Lich Arman!! Surrender yourself to the holy light without resistance!! You are already surrounded anyway!!”

“Shut up, you fools. Do you think only your god can be the one true god? I, too, could have ascended to that paltry seat of divinity, if not for your idiotic acts of exclusion! You damned whore’s dogs.”

With the wall of bone between them, the voices of Lich Arman and Luderson grew louder and louder.

“What did I do wrong? I sought to become strong. And unlike other black mages, I did not use humans as sacrifices—I rose to this position through my own research! And yet… and yet, by what right do you stand in the way of my path!!”

“No matter what you have done, the fact that you are a black mage—and a lich at that—does not change. You cast aside the ordained cycle of a human being and forsook the love of god to become an undead. Do you truly dare claim you are pure!!”

“Hoo… Enough. I have no lingering attachment to this place anyway. I thought I might hear you out once before I left for good, but as expected, like the whore’s dogs you are, you measure everything by your own values.”

Boom!!

At that moment, the wall of bone burst apart, and Luderson—a handsome man whose blond hair suited him well, carrying a silver-glowing shield and a drawn sword—strode in.

“Your evil deeds end here.”

“In any case, this is the last I’ll be seeing of you.”

“Ha! Are you finally giving up?”

“When did I ever say I was giving up? Bone Missile.”

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

With the sound of air bursting, missiles made of bone flew toward Luderson.

If ordinary mages had witnessed Arman’s chantless magic, they would have been horrified, but to Luderson, who desired nothing but the punishment of evil, the magnificence of such magic did not even register.

What he wanted was to carry out the justice of the god he believed in.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Deflecting the successive Bone Missiles with his silver-glowing shield, Luderson began advancing toward Arman one step at a time.

Each missile possessed enough power to pierce steel as if it were paper, but before Luderson—one of the few Grandmasters on the Armalddin Continent and the captain of the holy knights blessed by the goddess—they were less than toothpicks.

Starting with Luderson, the holy knights following behind him also drew closer to Arman little by little, and the priests under their thorough protection began casting the goddess’s blessings upon them.

Even without the goddess’s blessings, they had somehow managed to block Arman’s attacks with difficulty, and once those blessings were added, it became increasingly difficult for Arman to halt their charge with his Bone Missiles.

But even in that worst of situations, Arman burned with violet ghostfire and mocked them until the end.

“You filthy whore’s dogs. I no longer have any lingering attachment to this damned world, so I hope you live on shining that light of justice you love so much.”

Sensing something strange in Arman’s demeanor, Luderson abandoned even the act of blocking the Bone Missiles, threw aside his shield, and charged at Arman.

Because he had even cast away his shield and rushed in, he was able to reach right in front of Arman in the blink of an eye—but Arman, ghostfire blazing from his two empty eye sockets, was faster as he snapped his fingers.

Snap! Faaaaaash!

“Krrgh….”

“Then let us never meet again. I’ll live my way, and you live yours.”

The moment Arman snapped his bony fingers, a dazzling light erupted from the magic circle on the floor and began enveloping him.

When the light that had wrapped around Arman’s entire body vanished, all that remained was a pile of bones from which Arman’s soul had escaped.

And so, Archlich Arman, who had left his mark on history through black magic on the Armalddin Continent, disappeared from the Armalddin Continent, leaving behind only a heap of bones.