Chapter 57
Chapter 57
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 56
Chapter Title: The Popular Final Boss
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Five minutes after Hilli completely vanished.
Opfir (Duke) opened his closed eyes.
"Dead?"
She wouldn't really revive this time, would she?
Opfir wiped off the makeup that had made his skin look deathly pale only after confirming that Hilli had truly been annihilated.
"Whew. The timing was tight."
Before she began the ritual, Opfir had been calculating the perfect moment to reveal himself.
The problem was that she had chanted the spell in a language Opfir had never studied.
He didn't know when the incantation ended, so his dramatic entrance was a beat too late.
Still, thanks to countless battles with Twilight faction members, Opfir knew the ritual's process well enough to avoid arousing her suspicions with a precise performance.
'For now, that's enough for today.'
Opfir changed his clothes and dressed the mummy in his custom-modified hanbok armor.
The master of this tomb who had guarded it for the past century.
The former emperor.
Disguising it as an ordinary corpse might arouse suspicion due to the weak aura, and besides, it was Opfir's own corpse—leaving residual mana at half-strength would tarnish his image.
So he disguised it as the former emperor instead.
Opfir didn't feel particularly sorry for the emperor, though.
'This guy didn't have a tomb to begin with.'
A ruler's mausoleum was typically built by his successors.
Thus, the last emperor of a fallen empire naturally had no one to build his tomb.
In that sense, Duke genuinely considered himself benevolent.
'Better than being buried in an unmarked spot, rotting in the rain.'
This was definitely good karma.
The Karma system would surely judge it as such.
Of course, the emperor himself might have some complaints,
'But for a guy who massacred people on an imperial scale, this is generous.'
Opfir convinced himself and patted the shoulder of the mummy now wearing the hanbok in his place.
Crack.
The right arm fell off.
"Oops."
It had been fine when laid down, but sitting up, it couldn't withstand gravity.
Opfir reattached the former emperor's right arm and hastily secured it with threads acting as makeshift tendons.
"There."
A mummy's appearance couldn't be recognized anyway.
Still, to avoid it being identified as the former emperor, he roughly reshaped the face to resemble his own once more.
'Hm. Perfect.'
With the work done, he switched back from Opfir to Duke.
"I've scattered the bait."
Well, if fate brought them together later, he could spin a whole new story from this.
Duke left the stone tomb feeling satisfied.
And the moment he prepared to leave as Duke and return to his territory, his interface window blared noisily.
"Hm?"
"?"
Duke tilted his head and opened the interface window.
'Why is Rex suddenly vibrating at 8000Hz like this?'
As an utterly ordinary person, Duke couldn't comprehend why an extraordinary figure like Rex was freaking out.
For now, he checked Rex's location to meet and talk directly.
And he couldn't hold back his astonishment.
'Whoa. What wind blew this guy into personally marching out?'
Rex himself had left the mansion and was heading straight to Sneria's territory.
'But why all of a sudden?'
To answer Duke's question, it was all due to Rex's misunderstanding.
Duke had returned to being Opfir.
> Duke had been extremely, extremely upset with Rex.
> And recently, Duke had gotten engaged to the lord of Sneria.
> Aha! He saw the city's devastation and thought his future wife's lukewarm support from her liege was to blame, and snapped!
Following this miraculous logic, Rex hastily assembled an expeditionary force.
Though it was a truce, he couldn't send the captains guarding his territory's three directions.
So he had no choice but to go himself with his bodyguard Ari.
Thus, Rex set aside his stubbornness and headed to the neighboring territory.
It was like saying that with a nuclear missile aimed at his house, staying cooped up complaining about dangers outside the blanket was suicidal.
This entire chain of events had unfolded in the two hours Duke was away.
However, Duke lacked both the ability and the will to grasp the backstory.
'Another misunderstanding.'
Figuring it was just some ordinary mix-up that would sort itself out, he went along with the flow.
"Thank you for the aid, my liege."
And so Rex bravely headed to Sneria's territory.
(Though he felt like someone was holding a knife to his back.)
Afterward, Rex roamed various frontlines in his carriage, a snot-and-tear mess,
and an arrow lodged in the carriage caused him to faint, only to wake up amid misunderstandings that he had slain the enemy general.
A month later.
Spring arrived, and under Rex's command, Sneria's territory truly secured a ceasefire agreement.
During that time, Duke nodded in satisfaction.
'This chapter had solid hooks and a good ending...'
Most importantly...
"Milord."
"Right. Time to uphold our promise."
He had saved his favorite too.
Like always, Duke struck a pose with his hand on his greatsword and turned to Hana.
Once she officially joined Rex's service as a colleague, it would be a perfect happy ending.
Conveniently, she had acknowledged the gap in ability between Rex and himself and was open to joining his service.
But the world never flowed exactly as Duke expected.
"Milord. Please sign here."
The document she shyly offered.
If Duke's eyes weren't deceiving him, it was a marriage vow.
'...What the hell.'
Duke couldn't fathom where the story had gone off the rails.
Meanwhile, in a different location: the stone tomb of Opfir (fake).
A new guest arrived at the tomb's entrance.
"Is this the place? Where that witch was last detected?"
Knight in pristine white armor emblazoned with a red sun emblem gathered before the stone tomb.
"Yes. The witch vanished here for the last time."
"Sigh... So we have to start tracking from scratch again..."
The Red Sun Holy Knight Order of the Saint Kingdom, located in the continent's north.
After the empire's fall, they had elevated imperial beliefs into a religion, rallying people into a fairly large kingdom.
It wasn't ruled by superhuman lords or kings; priests filled those roles in this moderately corrupt, ordinary theocracy.
However, as a faith-based nation, they utterly loathed heretics, making their tracking skills unmatched on the continent.
"That vile black mage..."
The Red Sun Holy Knight Order particularly despised heretics who wielded black magic.
Here, black magic encompassed
necromancy, curses, poison magic—anything ethically dubious—and any spells challenging priestly authority.
For example, offering free baptisms or healing spells monopolized by priests,
or insidious arts letting commoners defeat holy knights through effort,
or clairvoyance exposing priests' private lives—all such magic.
(Note: magic used by priests isn't black magic.)
Anyway, these black mage hunting specialists had pursued one woman to the stone tomb.
Regardless of their minor corruptions, at this moment, they were knights on a sacred mission.
Hilli the Twilight Warrior's atrocities in the Saint Kingdom were undeniable great evils.
"We'll avenge our comrades."
She had dared challenge holy magic's authority, raising corpses in priest-sanctified lands and destroying several cities.
- "Kyahaha! You guys wouldn't have taken money for the last century just to lie about sanctifying the cemetery, right? Wow, jackpot! Tombs that rise without resistance are rare!"
Daring to challenge the Saint Kingdom's authority.
Because of her, people began doubting priests, slashing the Saint Court's income by ten percent.
Thus, they had to drag her to the stake.
If she died by someone else's hand first, the Saint King would burn these knights in her place.
With resolve, the knights prepared to enter the stone tomb.
Before entering, they created a small angel and sent it inside.
Like piloting a drone, they scouted via the angel.
Soon, the lead knight whispered in shock to his comrades.
"Fuck..."
"A holy knight using such vulgar words..."
"That woman's dead."
"Fuck."
The holy knights' vision darkened.
The pyre already loomed in their minds.
Then, one knight called to his comrades.
"Hey. Wait. That."
They looked where he pointed.
At the tomb's depths: a mummy seated on a stone throne.
They first scolded him for lacking situational awareness, but as he pointed out the mummy's features, they were stunned.
"That's Eastern Ten Nations attire, right? Daoist robes?"
"Slightly different? More like the peninsula style?"
"Remodeled into armor?"
"Red robes layered with black armor..."
"Wearing clothes like that..."
"And harboring this much mana as a mummy..."
No way.
The knights exchanged wide-eyed glances.
"If that's the case..."
Even the Saint King would spare them.
Spare them? He'd open the kingdom's vaults, praise them, and let them take holy magic tomes.
Ecstatic, the holy knights prepared to excavate Opfir's tomb.
The witch reduced to ashes was already irrelevant.
She was dead anyway—what a pity.
The priority was securing that corpse.
But they couldn't enter immediately.
"Wait. Alarm magic at the entrance. Detects passage."
Unlike some idiot woman, they still had the sense to spot the entrance spell.
"Can you disarm it?"
"It's linked somewhere. Disarming would alert them."
"Who do you think it notifies?"
"Whoever Opfir would send alerts to..."
The holy knights paled.
The continent's Twelve Tyrants.
No other candidates besides the former Thirteen Reverse Heavenly Stars came to mind.
The leader swiftly changed plans.
"Hmm... Leave him be for now and report to His Holiness the Saint King."
They had discovered the tomb—that alone was a great achievement.
Thus, they returned home.
In the Saint Court's audience chamber, as the holy knights reported, the Saint King laughed uproariously, forgetting decorum.
"Splendid! You are the Saint Kingdom's pride! As reward, each take three tomes of your choice!"
Three tomes per knight—an extravagance beyond imagination.
The knights shared the king's joy at the generous reward.
"Thank you, Your Holiness!"
"I'll exempt you from duties for now. You need time to master the tomes."
Beside themselves, the knights bowed repeatedly as they left the chamber.
Once they were gone, the Saint King sank into ecstatic delusions, scheming the future.
'Time is infinite anyway.'
The tomb was within the Saint Kingdom's sphere of influence, a barren wasteland with few people.
Build temples around it and slowly tackle the alarm magic.
And in time...
"A seraph made from Opfir...!"
A cherubim infused with ninth-rank power.
Once completed, the continent's hegemony would be the Saint Kingdom's.
Soon, he might be called not Saint King, but Saint Emperor.
"Heh heh..."
The Saint King let out a pleased chuckle, immersed in happy dreams.