Chapter 163
Chapter 163
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 163
Chapter Title: Creeping Ossuary
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Leyzon had once described him as an imperial necromancer.
He was a prophet who had come from beyond the walls.
Leyzon had already realized that the Creeping Ossuary was a being from outside the walls.
He had also known long ago that the man was a contractor of the Transcendent of Malice.
But he never imagined the man was a prophet, of all things.
'A beast made into an apostle.'
Leyzon had recently encountered transcendents who had become apostles.
Yet a prophet was on an entirely different level—vastly more distant.
"Annoying as it is, those guys are dangerous."
Carmen bit her lip quietly.
Just looking at his actions so far made it clear how perilous he was.
"Do you know what the prophet's goal is?"
Carmen shook her head at Leyzon's question.
"No idea. All I know is that we have to kill every last one of those bastards. Traitors who betrayed their own land while sharing the same earth!"
Unfortunately, that was the limit of Carmen's knowledge.
Still, there was plenty more he could ask.
"Just one last question."
But Leyzon decided not to rush it.
He would have endless opportunities to question her anyway.
For now, he needed to sort through the information he'd just heard.
"Can your kind create dungeons?"
Carmen reacted to the word "your kind."
She stared at Leyzon with a strange look in her eyes.
"...You know about other beasts of the land besides me?"
"I heard about the foreign bug shaman who attacked my undead."
Carmen's eyebrow twitched.
"What happened to the old man?"
"He's dead."
"...I see."
Carmen made a quietly understanding face.
It seemed she had some deep circumstances of her own.
"Well, he was already deep in the black plague, so he probably wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway."
The black plague.
Leyzon realized that was the disease afflicting the foreign bug shaman.
According to Pauli, the bug shaman sprouted black mushrooms after dying.
And right after that, he'd felt his body being taken over.
"What's the black plague? Explain it."
Under Leyzon's urging gaze, she reluctantly opened her mouth.
"...All beasts of the land carry the seed of the black plague within us.
We live not knowing when it might ignite."
It was a story Leyzon was hearing for the first time.
"This is the price that damned prophet paid when he contracted with the transcendent and sold out all the beasts of the land."
She said that and glanced downward.
"It's been over a century now, so we're used to it, but if you die with the black plague active, it turns the area around you into the transcendent's domain."
Transcendent's domain.
The moment he heard that, Leyzon narrowed his eyes.
He finally understood why Pauli's place had become a dungeon.
'Dungeons and transcendent domains aren't different things.'
They were just different names for the same phenomenon.
"The empire's people don't get the black plague, though."
"The parasite nation is immune to it.
Doesn't apply to those already infected, of course."
Leyzon understood what she meant.
"...Because they grew up feeding on the transcendent's corpse."
Even in death, a transcendent was still a transcendent.
The black plague's curse couldn't infiltrate the empire.
"The only way to cure the black plague is to become a prophet yourself.
And that happens when you become the boss of what you call a dungeon."
Leyzon's eyes widened.
He understood everything.
Dungeons were spreading across the empire.
The bosses of those dungeons were treated as apostles of the dead transcendent.
'No, not just the bosses.'
One figure rose in Leyzon's mind.
'The one who moves by prophecy.'
Judgment Lord
The sole angelkin, he was someone who always acted according to prophecy.
So where did those prophecies come from?
Leyzon had once questioned this.
'Could it be the will of the dead transcendent?'
The ones the Judgment Lord executed were, by his own words, defined as evil.
But who exactly had the Judgment Lord executed so far?
Leyzon knew the most recent one.
'The evil dragon.'
The former lord of the dragonkin, whom Jerome Makira had turned into the dragonkin's transcendent.
The Judgment Lord had slain the evil dragon, declaring it was "according to the prophecy."
'The dead transcendent's will didn't want a new transcendent to be born.'
That's why it created the angelkin Judgment Lord and manipulated him through prophecy.
As everything clicked into place, Leyzon felt a chill run through his entire body.
'Then.'
Leyzon looked down at his own hand.
The Judgment Lord had seen Leyzon as a figure of prophecy and tried to execute him.
What did that mean?
'It means I'm also someone the dead transcendent needs to eliminate.'
The root of the empire regarded Leyzon as an enemy.
A hollow laugh escaped Leyzon's lips.
He never thought the day would come when the land itself hated him.
Life was never easy.
'So that's how it is.'
Leyzon slowly revealed a ferocious grin.
It had dragged him into this world on a whim, and now it hated him for it.
Fine.
Since it already hated him, he might as well give it a real reason to.
"Thanks. You've cleared up a lot of my doubts."
"If you're grateful, how about untying me?"
"That's a separate matter."
Carmen tried to float the idea, but Leyzon brushed it off lightly.
Carmen grumbled with a hurt expression.
Leyzon had a rough idea of her situation now.
All beasts of the land lived on borrowed time with the black plague.
But becoming a prophet meant offering up their own life in exchange.
So they crossed into the empire to become dungeon bosses.
They figured it was better to be a prophet of a long-dead transcendent than one for another transcendent.
That was their reasoning.
Leyzon's gaze fell on Carmen.
All beasts of the land carried the black plague.
"That means there are more than just you hiding in the empire."
It couldn't possibly be just Carmen.
At that, Carmen tilted her head back and let out a sigh.
"Not that many, probably. Honestly, I was the luckiest one."
Leyzon felt another puzzle piece slot into place in his mind.
It connected to a hypothesis he'd formed before.
'The empire's knight orders might be fighting something else entirely.'
They hadn't pursued him relentlessly to eliminate him so far.
That was the basis for his assumption.
"The parasite nation blocks our intrusions viciously too."
But at this moment, Leyzon's hypothesis became reality.
And the matter of the Bluebird Knights resurfaced.
'The origin of the Bluebird Knights is the bluebird that ventures beyond the walls.'
Maybe that's why they had to be wiped out—because they learned something from foreign lands.
One question after another was resolved, only for new ones to arise.
"Above all, there's a seriously dangerous bastard guarding the parasite nation."
"Dangerous how?"
"You might not know him, but..."
Carmen shuddered as she recalled the being.
She had shown anger when speaking of the prophet.
For even her to feel fear meant it was extraordinarily dangerous.
"The Millennium Mage."
And out came a name Leyzon recognized.
The skeleton he'd encountered in the Resonance World.
Leyzon had suspected him to be the Millennium Mage.
He was blocking the beasts of the land from infiltrating the empire.
"That guy's the real deal in terms of danger. If we meet again, I don't think I'd survive."
Carmen's face darkened instantly.
The Millennium Mage was a terrifying existence even to beasts of the land beyond the walls.
'The reason there haven't been many traces of beasts of the land in the empire until now...'
It was probably thanks to the Millennium Mage guarding it all this time.
'What the hell is that guy's goal?'
He could predict the motives of the others to some extent.
But not the Millennium Mage.
'On top of that, it's a name I never heard even while playing Dungeon Replay.'
This was the main reason Leyzon found him so suspicious.
His name was the Millennium Mage.
That implied he'd been around for a thousand years.
So why had Leyzon never heard of him?
'I vaguely thought he was some new figure from the last century.'
Everything was baffling.
Leyzon pieced the puzzles together one by one in his mind.
Using his specialty—his exceptional memory—he visualized the entire situation.
The empire's people were parasites born from feeding on a transcendent's corpse.
'What is innate talent?'
Parasites are born atop the corpse.
In other words, talent is the nutrients stolen from the transcendent's body.
An image of the ancient dragon rose in Leyzon's mind.
The dragonkin lord, the ancient dragon, had used the evil dragon to kill off the entire dragonkin race.
'This was undoubtedly the process of gathering talent nutrients and concentrating them in one place.'
In that process, the evil dragon ultimately went mad.
Why did the evil dragon go mad?
'His body couldn't fully assimilate the nutrients he'd stolen from the other dragonkin.'
That's why the evil dragon hid his body within the walls, biding his time.
Until one day he could absorb all the nutrients.
In contrast, what about the empire?
'They seized and gathered all of humanity's talent during the Kaltura Empire era.'
But the Kaltura Empire fell.
Meaning they had failed to become transcendents.
They met the same end as the dragonkin.
No matter how much talent they stole and amassed, it wasn't enough for a parasite to become a transcendent on its own.
The Kaltura Empire perished that way.
Afterward, the Niflheim Empire was founded.
The Niflheim Empire had no desire to repeat Kaltura's failure.
So they invented a new concept.
The Kaltura Empire had stripped humanity of its talent first.
Humanity, as a result, desperately chased new talents.
And where they turned was the dungeons.
'Dungeons are the domains of dead transcendents.'
Those domains retained the talents that had been fully plundered.
The Niflheim Empire seized on this point.
'The ascension system, which Kaltura lacked.'
Pioneers were worker ants.
The imperial royals, the queen ants, granted them the talent of ascension.
In response, pioneers delved into dungeons even more fervently.
As a result, they accumulated skills and experience points in dungeons day after day.
Their empty bodies voraciously absorbed the dungeons' nutrients.
'That's why the empire provides skillbooks—as shovels.'
Only then did Leyzon feel everything connect.
The ascension system, skills.
And the dungeons too.
All of it was part of the grand design the Niflheim Empire was weaving.
'The empire's downfall was inevitable from the start.'
From ancient times, through repeated efforts up to this day, the empire had ceaselessly gathered nutrients.
A single parasite couldn't handle a massive amount of nutrients.
It's like salt—essential for life, but poison in excess.
So they made the entire parasite horde accumulate nutrients.
What, then, was the empire's goal?
'To be reborn as transcendents using the transcendent's corpse.'
It was the mad endeavor that had continued since the Kaltura Empire era—not as parasites, but as transcendents themselves.
A colossal plan, meticulously prepared on the foundation of Kaltura's failure.
And now it made sense why the knight orders desperately blocked the beasts of the land.
'Because the beasts steal nutrients through the dungeons.'
Leyzon's breath caught for a moment.
A single nation reborn as a transcendent—a massive current.
The giant puzzle, pieced together bit by bit, was complete.
A conclusion drawn from stacking countless pieces of information and deductions.
'...They're truly, thoroughly insane.'
The Niflheim Empire had been a mad nation for a long time now.