Astra, King of the Dead
The Fourth Lord, Astra — King of the Dead.
A necromancer and undead lich, he was a being who embodied his epithet in every possible sense. The King of the Dead, in the truest meaning of the words.
But why...?
Why did that thing suddenly come looking for me?
"He is waiting at the castle gates as we speak."
I let out a deep sigh inwardly and sank back into my chair, sinking into a brief, troubled silence. I had hoped to avoid meeting any of the other Lords until the next council — so why was something like this happening already?
Not like I can just ignore this, either.
This was no ordinary visitor. A Lord had come in person, bringing his true body. He had come to see me, and of course it was only proper that a fellow Lord receive him — which made refusing all the more difficult. This was my own stronghold, and it wasn't as though he could throw a tantrum if I turned him away. But snubbing him outright would certainly earn his dislike, and my relationship with Noehu was already strained enough as it was. Unlike the Tyrant Lord, the King of the Dead maintained amicable relations with every other Lord. Making an enemy of him was something I needed to avoid if at all possible.
Meeting another Lord wasn't some enormous risk I had to steel myself for. I was a Lord myself now — it wasn't as though the other party would attack me on a whim. The problem was simply that I was still far too weak, and any contact with powerhouses of that caliber was bound to set me on edge.
He wouldn't have come without a reason...
Still, among the Lords, the King of the Dead was one of the relatively sane ones. Having made up my mind, I spoke to Ploto.
"Show him in."
I had briefly wondered whether I ought to go out and receive him myself, but he was the one who had shown up unannounced. There was no need to go that far.
Ploto bowed and withdrew. It was only a short while later that he returned, accompanied by someone else.
A black robe trimmed in gold. And visible beneath the hood... a skull. The sockets where eyes should have been were hollow, lit by a faint, eerie blue glow. As that presence stepped into the hall, the quiet atmosphere seemed to fill instead with a creeping, deathly chill. Still seated, I locked eyes with him as he came to a halt at the entrance.
So this skull was the Fourth Lord, the King of the Dead. He looked no different from how he had in the game. In one hand he carried a massive wooden staff nearly as tall as he was — the same staff he had wielded in the game as well.
"Well met, Seventh Lord."
A strange voice resonated in my ears, one that did not seem to issue from any throat. Come to think of it, he was a skull. No vocal cords. How was he even speaking? Magic, I supposed, like everything else about him.
"Do forgive the suddenness of my arrival, without so much as a word of notice. I have come merely to share a few words — may I sit?"
I gestured toward the seat across from me. The King of the Dead approached with measured steps and sat. A brief silence settled over the room.
Sitting face to face like this, the aura surrounding him felt far more distinct. Where Gwangrang had pressed down on my entire body like a physical weight, what radiated from the King of the Dead was a bone-deep unease — as though death itself had taken form and manifested before me.
Forgetting to pick up Emperor's Soul really was a stroke of divine luck.
Without it, I might well have been trembling uncontrollably by now, without even realizing it. Once again, I felt a surge of gratitude for that absolute mental barrier of a skill.
"What's your business?"
I asked it with a feigned indifference. We were meeting for the first time; there was nothing else to talk about. And if I was being honest, I wanted this conversation over as quickly as possible. The King of the Dead was less grotesque than the Black Sea Empress I had seen at the council, but staring at a skull for any length of time was hardly more comfortable.
The blue flames in his sockets flickered as he regarded me steadily. Then a voice that seemed to carry a hint of laughter spilled from him.
"I was quite astonished to hear that the Grand Lord appointed a new Lord then and there at the council. A true pity I was unable to attend the last one."
I said nothing. When no reply came, he pressed on with more idle talk, still not getting to the point of his visit.
"I imagine you know a fair amount about me, Seventh Lord. I, however, cannot say the same of you."
"..."
"Between your encounter with the Chief of Staff and what transpired at the council, I have heard a great many tales. I find myself rather interested in you, personally. That a human should occupy a Lord's seat in Calderic — it has been nearly fifty years..."
"King of the Dead."
I cut him off.
"I don't care for pointless roundabout talk."
He was silent for a moment. Then he laughed.
"Then I shall state my business at once."
At those words, a memory I had completely forgotten surfaced.
Right. That.
Before I escaped the transport ship, hadn't Daypon collected the Fist Saint's corpse? He'd said there was someone who would want it. I had figured that if anyone would want a dead body, it could only be the King of the Dead — and it seemed I had been right.
Well, the corpse of a powerhouse on the Fist Saint's level would be worth coveting.
Necromantic magic — the art of raising the dead and bending them to one's will. When it came to that particular school, the King of the Dead was the continent's unmatched master, a necromancer without peer.
He was a nightmare the first time he showed up as an enemy in the game.
Among Calderic's Lords, there were only two who commanded independent grand armies of their own, separate from the forces of their territories: the King of the Dead, and the Black Sea Empress. His personal strength was formidable enough, but the legion of corpses he commanded was more than worthy of being called an army of one.
But what's this about coming here for that?
Daypon was the one who had the corpse. Why come to me to collect it?
That was what I thought — until his next words made it clear I had misunderstood.
"You were the one who killed the Fist Saint, and so the rights to the corpse belong to you. Would you permit me to take it?"
"..."
Ah. Right. Ownership.
Come to think of it, Daypon had said something about ownership of the corpse as well. So the King of the Dead had come all this way in person to have the rights to the body transferred to him.
I don't even need the damn thing.
He could have just used it without saying a word and I wouldn't have cared in the slightest. From his perspective, though, he had probably come to ask permission just in case I decided to raise a fuss about it later. But now that he had gone to the trouble of coming here and asking so politely... well, it was human nature to suddenly feel like you were giving something away for free.
I simply stared at him. He continued.
"If you wish it, I shall pay a suitable price."
A suitable price. All sorts of things flickered through my mind. Magical items, for instance. He was a mage — surely he had defensive items, the kind I needed most right now?
But that's a little hard to come out and say...
It would be like openly confessing that my defensive capabilities were lacking and I needed gear to compensate. And besides, magical items in this world couldn't be properly used by anyone who wasn't a mage, so they would be useless to me anyway.
I considered for a moment, then probed.
"There's nothing I want from you."
The King of the Dead replied,
"In that case, what say you we leave it as a debt? When the day comes that you desire something of me, I shall repay you a price equal to the value of the Fist Saint's corpse."
I didn't have anything particular to demand right now, and there was nothing wrong with the offer, so I nodded. No point in pushing further. Better to wrap it up here. It was a verbal agreement, and the standard of "help equal to the value of the corpse" was vague at best — but this was a promise between Lords. He would honor it in good faith, I supposed. And if he didn't, there wasn't much I could do about it anyway.
"Is that all you came for?"
"It is. You seem to have little interest in idle conversation, so I shall take my leave at once."
With that, the King of the Dead rose from his seat and drifted unhurriedly out of the hall.
For all the anxiety the visit had caused, the conversation had ended with such remarkable banality that I felt a hollow sort of deflation as I sank back into my chair.
"Hah..."
Behind me, Ashel let out a small, trembling breath. I glanced at her face. She was a shade paler than usual — she must have looked like that the entire time I had been speaking with him. I had been fine thanks to Emperor's Soul, but the deathly aura the King of the Dead exuded had clearly been a considerable burden on her.
Good grief...
Was I going to have to keep existing in the cracks between monsters like that from now on? The short, anticlimactic conversation with the King of the Dead had only left me with a bleaker sense of uncertainty about the future.
Not that I had a choice. This was the path I had chosen. All I could do was grind myself to the bone and gather those hidden pieces as fast as possible.
An undead knight in black armor, waiting before the castle gates, bowed his head as the King of the Dead emerged.
You emerged rather quickly.
A necromancer and his thrall were bound spiritually, allowing them to share thoughts and converse within the mind. The undead knight found himself puzzled by the rare current of pleasure running through his master's emotions.
Astra laughed — a soundless, mental thing.
The new Seventh Lord... is a truly fascinating one.
It had been centuries since he had secured immortality in an undead body. To him, death had long since ceased to hold any meaning — and it was precisely because of this that he, paradoxically, could feel death more vividly than any living soul.
And yet... how long had it been since he had last felt an emotion like this?
...To think I would feel the fear of death.
From the Seventh Lord, he had sensed nothing at all. Not a trace of mana, not a hint of physical might — not a single thing. The man looked for all the world like an ordinary human, utterly devoid of power. And yet he possessed, without question, the ability to kill him.
Since becoming a lich, the only soul who had ever stirred this feeling in him was the Hero of Seintea. Even from the Grand Lord, he had sensed it only as the faintest whisper.
He had come in person both to obtain the Fist Saint's corpse and to take the measure of what manner of man the new Seventh Lord might be. This had turned out to be a far more delightful diversion than he had anticipated.
I find myself rather looking forward to whatever request he might make of me later.
For that reason, even the connection he had forged by way of a debt was something he welcomed with genuine pleasure.
Savoring the long-lost, vivid sensation of death for the first time in ages, Astra etched the existence of the Seventh Lord firmly into his mind.