Chapter 39
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 39
Chapter Title: The Lich's Magic Backfires
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But he no longer had the strength to move. Even if he could, in his weakened state, he couldn't do a thing against the Death Knight guarding his side or the corpse golem that Goldson Vidar had become.
The rest of their forces didn't even bear thinking about.
"Stop!! Please, just stop!!"
"Keh heh heh!! Your grief is so utterly pathetic. Sorrow and despair make the finest seasonings. Is this one precious to you? Endure just a little longer, and he'll taste ecstasy you'll never feel again."
"Uwaaaaaah!!!"
Duke Berli clenched his fists until his nails drew blood, letting out a howl of rage.
He prayed that someone—anyone—would deal with that damned monster.
It was a feeble thought unworthy of a knight order commander, but right now, he was more a father watching his dying son in agony than a knight.
It was just then, as the lich's probe reached out to fully extract Parel's soul.
Crack!!
A shattering sound echoed, followed by an eerie noise from the floating black sphere.
"Huh?"
The lich paused and looked up at the sky.
There, a crimson-black sword aura gleamed, slicing the sphere in half.
Crack!! Craaaack!!
The crimson-black glow soon spiderwebbed cracks across the sphere, as if it had been slashed repeatedly.
Kaboom!!!!
With a final shatter, it exploded into pieces.
And from within emerged Leon, looking perfectly fine.
"No way—you're unharmed?"
The lich muttered, forgetting all decorum.
He'd been utterly serene amid the massive magic circle, untouched. And now this.
The black sphere spell was no prison meant to let the living escape.
Unable to believe his eyes, the lich asked in a hollow voice, but Leon just brushed himself off and walked toward Duke Berli.
"Your Grace, are you alright?"
Duke Berli couldn't speak. He lacked even the strength for words. In this dire situation that even a Sword Master like him couldn't handle, pinning hopes on the still-young Leon seemed foolish.
Yet sometimes, life brought feelings that defied logic.
"You... you're unhurt."
"As you can see. Sorry it took a bit longer than expected."
"Guh... haa... please... my son..."
With those words, he lost consciousness.
In the vast hall, only the lich and Leon remained conscious.
Leon gazed silently at the duke, nodded, and stood.
"Muyoung, release the kids."
Grrrrowl.
At once, a massive shadow spirit wolf emerged from his shadow.
Behind it, the undead they'd harvested here began pouring out in droves.
"Gather all the subjugation force survivors in one spot. Living ones first."
With that command, the undead moved with swift precision far beyond their capture, quickly herding the survivors together.
"No matter how I look at it, it's uncanny. How are you unaffected?"
The lich, regaining his composure, finally asked. And rightly so—Parel had collapsed vomiting the moment he entered the space.
The others fared no better.
Even Sword Master Duke Berli had endured only briefly before crumbling under the stacking debuffs.
Yet...
Amid it all, Leon had been perfectly calm.
"This magic targets those distant from death or the underworld, overwhelming the unworthy with massive strain."
"Exactly."
"So how can a green kid like you walk through unscathed?"
The spell felt increasingly impractical to Leon.
It only manifested in fixed spaces with finicky upkeep conditions.
Plus, it kept biting its own master. To him, a failed experiment.
Still, its effects were terrifying.
"Simple. I just removed myself from the targets."
"What?"
"I'm no ordinary mage, so I took precautions. Mages and their sloppy security—got a bit dicey, though."
He grumbled about how it hadn't been like this before, but ever since regaining memories of the Hall of Spirits, he'd reacted instinctively.
"..."
"If I'd known it was this spell, no need for extra damage. Want me to add myself back?"
As he spoke, Leon snapped his fingers. The black veil cloaking him visualized, then shattered apart.
The magic now applied to Leon as well.
"What trick did you pull? This spell can't be dodged—only broken."
"Can't dodge it? Look at all the unaffected pebbles everywhere."
"..."
"Honestly, I'm more curious. You, those necromancers over there—why do you stray so far from the basics?"
"How dare a whelp lecture me on fundamentals!"
Not high circle, he couldn't unleash massive firepower or grand rituals.
But tweaking his own active magic circle? Child's play for a 5th-circle necromancer.
"You bastard!!"
As the enraged lich bellowed at the insult to his magic...
Kuuung!!!
The magic circle hummed oddly and reactivated.
The lich staggered, dropping to one knee.
The Death Knight and Goldson Vidar's corpse golem, linked to him, also buckled and collapsed.
"What in the..."
"Your magic debuffs and curses the one furthest from death and the underworld among those affected. Absolute rule. At my circle level, I can hack and toy with it, but not fully dispel."
Leon took a step forward.
"The magic's working fine..."
"..."
"But if it's hitting you now... the positions have flipped."
The lich wasn't too inept to grasp that.
"Nonsense... A human untouched by death... let alone one not even twenty years old... how?!"
"Twenty years, huh? Want a firsthand look?"
The boy before him was young, human.
But what he harbored—what he'd endured—defied his appearance.
The necromantic mana flowing from Leon carried a history.
Remnants of horrors that rendered the lich's centuries "pathetic," traces of eons.
The dominion soaked into it was death incarnate.
Its volume beyond the lich's measure.
Only then did the lich truly peer into Leon's mana.
His jaw dropped in horror.
The one being in the world to glimpse Leon's depths asked in terror.
"What... are you...? Your true nature—guh?! Grk... Impossible. How can a living being embody death itself?!"
Undeterred by the lich's screams, Leon calmly picked up a discarded sword from the floor.
Crimson-black sword aura rippled along its edge.
"Guh... grk..."
For a lich of such long life, his greatest assets were vast necromantic mana and deep familiarity with death.
Sounds convincing, but it boiled down to a tug-of-war: the longer-lived, superior necromancer wins.
In that regard, though I was merely a 5th-circle necromancer, the necromantic mana I'd amassed in the Hall alone crushed him.
My mind had beheld death itself, peered into the underworld's abyss.
The dominion and death imprinted in my mana brimmed with traces of my arduous path to the Death Road.
Against a lich barely past 7th circle?
Compare apples to apples.
He couldn't even cry foul.
Exposed to his own trap, the lich crumbled in real time.
Even at partial 5th-circle recovery, I had no direct means to harm a 7th-circle necromancer.
But his own spell choked his lifeline.
And his nature made him vulnerable to the dominion in true death qi.
"Kill... him!!"
Desperate, the lich commanded his corpse golem, Goldson Vidar. Amid agony, it charged me ferociously.
I spun my sword once, then strode forward without hesitation.
And then—
-Graaaaaah!!!!
Just before its massive fist pulped me, I accelerated.
Craaack!
What blazed on my blade was pseudo sword aura.
Of course, it strained the sword, so I hadn't used my usual Black Night Sword No. 1.
The golem, bisected by the aura, collapsed. The lich recoiled in shock.
"Sword aura?! Sword aura—from you?! Aren't you a mage?!"
Whether pseudo or true, he lacked the knowledge to tell.
A corpse golem should've regenerated swiftly, but with the lich's power suppressed by his own magic, even that failed.
He needed an extreme countermeasure.
"Damn it... I need to retreat."
Escape.
Betrayed by his own spell, even he couldn't dispel it quickly.
But his flight ended with my words.
"Fleeing? You know whose hands the barrier on the safe route has fallen to, right?"
He ground his teeth and extended a hand.
Black mist poured from him, birthing hordes of undead.
All Aura User level or higher.
Many collapsed under the spell's influence, but some endured.
"You... what did you do to the barrier?!"
The roles had reversed from when Duke Berli had shouted desperately and the lich lounged smugly.
"Just tweaked the targets a bit."
"Impossible! No way... Even if possible, not at your level..."
"What's with you."
I smirked chillingly and manifested necromantic mana in both hands.
A casual shake, and the undead froze en masse.
Hmm... Even amplified by the magic circle's backlash, 5th circle has its limits.