World Tree War (4): The World Tree Awakens

Lahan had no idea what would happen if Guillaume finished that magic circle — so he struck it first.

Astride his Nightmare, he circled the bishop, loosing blades of stone, and whenever a gap opened he hurled a pillar of rock.

"Not a chance."

Bolts of mana the size of bullets erupted from a cluster of lesser circles and knocked the projectiles aside. One of them, loosed a deliberate beat late, streaked straight for Lahan.

"Did you really think an attack that feeble would stop me?"

"Kh—!"

Instead of falling back, Lahan drove his heels into the Nightmare and charged through the hit, closing the distance in a single rush. His spine whip cracked out in the same motion. Guillaume tried to intercept it with a mana bolt, but the whip's path bent mid-swing, and the tip tore a chunk of flesh from his thigh.

The Nightmare twisted away at once, folding itself through a jointless, impossible motion that only the undead could make.

"You're the feeble one. Land one hit and that's enough for you to run?"

"Better to fall back than stand there like an idiot and take every hit whimpering."

A whirlwind of stone blades poured down in the same breath. Every last one of them was swatted aside by mana bolts, the air filling with a rapid, ringing clatter as dozens of blades and then hundreds of mana rounds multiplied into a storm. At first Lahan clearly had the advantage. His blades grazed Guillaume more than once, and each time the bishop groaned in pain.

And yet — by the smallest of margins — Lahan began to lose ground.

Guillaume, blood dripping steadily from his nose, was growing stronger with every passing minute. Faster. More precise.

"Hah — I can't even remember the last time I poured out this much mana."

"Mana, is it."

But Guillaume was not the only one evolving.

Mana. Strangely, Lahan could see it — and yet it did not exist for him. He thought he understood why. The undead could not possess mana. In its place, they felt and wielded the power of the soul with far more immediacy.

Copy his bullets? Fire them the way he does?

No. He wasn't there yet. But he could imitate the principle another way.

His time in the military had left him with a few scraps of knowledge about firearms. You needed rifling — spin kept a projectile stable. You needed a sudden, explosive impulse, like gunpowder, to send it flying.

"Let's give it a try."

He tore off a sliver of his own soul. The pain was like splitting himself in two. He hadn't felt anything like it since becoming undead, and that made it hit all the harder. He did not stop.

If I don't keep moving forward, I'll be left behind.

Necropolis would keep fighting stronger enemies. It would keep taking in new talent. Whether Myungwang wanted it or not, that was the path ahead. If Lahan let himself be overtaken — if he became useless — he would have to take the next step first.

He peeled the soul-fragment free and shaped it into rifling. For a man who could will pillars into existence and hurl them, who could fashion swords and spears from nothing but thought, it was almost easy.

At the end of that rifled channel he compressed soul the way an air gun compressed its charge. Handling soul-force with that kind of precision was nearly impossible. It was a craft only Lahan — who had created countless materials — could pull off.

Then, in a fraction of a second, a pebble no larger than a centimeter snapped into being. The compressed soul released, and the bullet fired with no gap, no delay, no warning.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shot hit like a thunderclap. Guillaume, who had wrapped himself in mana to weather the previous assault, staggered under an impact he could not believe.

"What—?!"

"No penetration, huh."

An attack quieter and harder to predict than a mana bolt. But the material had its limits — the stone bullet hadn't punched through. The moment Guillaume managed to coat his entire body in mana, the rounds bounced off without even leaving a bruise.

Lahan said nothing. He simply conjured bullet after bullet in the air and kept firing. The instant Guillaume thickened the mana around himself even slightly, they stopped doing any damage at all.

"Copying me, are you? Hah. Pebbles aren't going to cut it."

"Who said I was only using stone?"

One bullet punched through Guillaume's abdomen with a wet, tearing sound. Among dozens of stone rounds, a single one had been forged of iron.

"Jumping to conclusions will get you killed."

"Kh— khahaha! You were hiding that from the start!"

Unlike before, Lahan had tempered his skill endlessly while raising the walls of Necropolis. Iron was well within his reach now. It tired him faster, that was all. The speed at which he could create it was incomparable to what it had been.

"Go on, block them. It'd be no fun if this ended too quickly."

Dozens of iron bullets took shape and locked onto Guillaume. He didn't look afraid in the slightest. He smiled.

"No. I'll prove it to you now. My magic. My Lord's grace."

The magic circle ignited. The bullets fired. The circle blazed.

Mana crashed out of the circle like a raging tide and swallowed Lahan whole. Even as dozens of holes opened across his body from the iron rounds, the bishop never lost his smile.

"You undead are profane things. You have no hope of enduring the earth's vitality."

The mana of Life was deadly poison to the undead, whose souls were woven from the mana of Death. No matter how powerful a corpse-puppet forcibly dragged to its feet might be, it could not possibly withstand this. So this attack would end it. Or so Guillaume believed — until he saw Lahan still standing, armor in tatters, soul leaking through the gaps.

"Impossible! How are you still standing in that state?!"

"Look around you."

Around Lahan, countless chunks of masonry lay in ruins. He hadn't shaped them by hand. Even walls that uniform couldn't have been built in a situation this desperate.

"You had a skill like that...?"

"All of it is by Myungwang's grace."

A skill he had acquired naturally while constructing the city walls.

Those walls had taken the first wave. And after that...

"If my will had been even a little weaker, I would have gone down."

"Ha... haha! Hahahaha!"

Guillaume let out a hollow laugh, blood pouring from his ruined body. It was over. The moment that spell had failed, death was all that remained for him. Thinking that, he looked up at the tower where the Archbishop waited.

"...A greatsword."

A colossal greatsword of iron hung above him, pointed at his heart. If he had killed Lahan, that blade would have fallen and killed him too. Had Lahan been building it, piece by piece, from the moment the fight began?

From the very start, he had never had a chance of surviving. Whether the spell succeeded or failed, the instant that greatsword was complete, he was already finished.

"You... no. I offer you my respect. You are a formidable warrior."

"Lahan. That's my name."

"A fine name."

A single, crushing impact. With that last exchange of names, the iron greatsword came down and smashed Guillaume to death.

Lahan looked at the corpse for a moment, then turned and bellowed at the zombies.

"You idiots! You still haven't cleaned up the stragglers?! Out of the way — I'll handle them with a stone pillar!"

I had been watching all of it from far behind the eastern front.

"Ohh... yeah, we're definitely winning."

The east had been overrun ages ago — the monster undead had punched through before anyone could stop them, so there wasn't much to say about that. Every other front had collapsed under the officers.

"This really is a world where one strong person beats a hundred."

Yeomje alone was proof enough. He'd broken into the tower, smashed through every wall, and was already pulling the imprisoned dwarves out. He'd said himself that he was stronger in a one-on-one than in a melee — but that only applied when both sides were in the same weight class. He could probably still take a skeleton legion as he was now.

"But if the numbers are overwhelming enough... it stops mattering."

A skeleton legion was a kind of measuring stick. No matter how powerful the enemy, no one could beat an infinite army.

Which is why I should have raised the elves the moment they died.

There was a problem, though. Elves were steeped in the energy of life, and traces of it lingered in their flesh. Raising them as undead took real concentration. Mass-raising them from a distance was out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the question. I figured I'd be able to manage it given a little time, but not yet.

"You son of a bitch! The Endless Land will not let you get away with this!"

"Mari."

"Yes, I'll take care of it."

Aliac — far too weak for a bishop — was trussed up tight and half-bowing under Mari's curse, completely neutralized.

"Urgh... my body feels wrong..."

"This bastard started this whole thing. Why does he look so fine?"

"I don't think he's smart enough to have thought that far."

"Hmm."

His comrades were dying right in front of him, and this was his reaction? Could anyone really be that stupid?

Not like I need to lose sleep over it.

In the end, his stupidity was the reason we'd been able to clean up Uijeongbu this easily.

"It's wrapping up. Let's just kill the Archbishop and call it done."

Night had fallen long ago. The hour of the dead had come, and the battle was already decided. The Archbishop was still drawing his magic circle even though there was nothing left to protect. Kill him, and the war was over.

"Everyone, up the tower. Don't wreck it — we still need to loot the place later."

The instant Yeomje finished extracting every last dwarf, the undead began to climb. All of them, except Lahan — who built a staircase in midair and walked it — started scaling the tower itself. Skeletons stepped on skeletons. They drove swords and spears into the stone and hauled themselves up. Slow, but relentless. The face of the tower began to fill with a legion of bone.

Lahan reached the summit a little ahead of the rest and came face to face with the Archbishop. The man in ivory robes that fell to his ankles spoke first.

"So. Death has come."

"That's a little too grand a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠title for me."

"I wasn't speaking of you. I meant the necromancer behind you."

Me?

Well, someone at the Archbishop's level would have to be able to sense Spirit Descent. He'd noticed even though I hadn't fully descended — I was only sharing Lahan's vision. Not bad.

I went ahead and fully descended into Lahan to speak with him myself.

"Don't you think it's a little late to wipe out the undead now? Surrender and I'll let you live."

"Hahaha! Well. I'm grateful for the offer from the apostle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the Pale ■, but I am an apostle myself. I'm afraid I can't accept."

"The Endless Land, right?"

"Yes. The Cardinal and I are His apostles."

I see. So this one and the Cardinal were definitely a cut above the rest.

That said — even when someone said it out loud, the censored part just crackled and wouldn't come through. Was there some kind of condition to it? The Endless Land seemed to be the same class of being as the Pale ■, judging by the circumstances, but that name came through just fine.

"The circle's pointless now, isn't it? Even if you wipe out the undead, there's nothing left."

I'd already figured out from the dying elves that this was a massive anti-undead spell. Even if he swept them all away now, he'd be the only one left. What was he holding out for?

"Haha. Hardly. This is nothing so trivial."

"Then what is it?"

"The final piece that will fulfill our ultimate wish. And it is already complete. I was only waiting for the right moment!"

The skeletons reached the top of the tower. The magic circle activated.

I returned Lahan's body to him in the same instant his bone whip took the Archbishop's head from his shoulders.

But the circle did not stop. Every element inside it meshed and turned like the teeth of a gear, and the tower began to tremble. He'd been telling the truth — the circle had already been complete. By the time we arrived, there had been no way to stop it.

"Master. All of the Archbishop's mana..."

"I know."

The Archbishop had already poured every last drop of his remaining mana into the circle. He'd been standing there talking on nothing but a thread of willpower.

The circle, having swallowed all of it, was pouring every scrap of that light down into the tower. The vitality was so dense that the weaker skeletons immediately bowed their heads and went limp. Even Lahan — the blue smoke that streamed in place of a head — flinched and drew inward.

"The tower...!"

Before long, the tower began to sink. It wasn't collapsing. The tower was driving itself into the earth.

...No. It can't be.

The tower. The World Tree. The earth. By the time I put it all together, the tower had already vanished underground. And from that spot, something began to grow.

"A tree is growing from the tower — the World Tree is rising!"