Chapter 68
Chapter 68
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 68
Chapter Title: Behold, the Dragon Soars Over the Plains Once More. (Last Free Chapter!)
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In most cases, the boundaries between territories relied on natural features like rivers, hills, or mountain ranges—and even those were often ambiguous.
Yet Altbert, for all its vast hill lands, sprawling wheat fields, enveloping forests, and encircling mountains, possessed a firm and unyielding territorial limit.
-Groooar...
At the forest's edge, a single corpse burst through the earth and hauled itself upright. It steadied its shambling form for a moment, then lurched straight into the woods.
-Crack.
The corpse clambered over a shattered tombstone marking the forest boundary. The stones scattered along that line were all weathered by time, broken down to mere stumps.
The guardian stones of Bert Hill. Long ago, High Magus Tristia of King Dane had embedded them along the city's edge to ward off undead and foul beasts. Like all things dragged down from the realm of legend, they now left only faint traces.
Altbert had been born from the death of a hill giant, but it was truly deemed complete when Knight King Dane vanquished the death knights and the Burial Church vanished into history.
Another corpse punched through the soil and rose. They mocked Bert's guardian stones as they shambled past. In this era, when legends were dismissed as stale fairy tales, no one paid them any mind or upkeep. They were mere fixtures in the landscape.
Toward the city of knights.
The corpses were rising. Along the forest boundary, more and more. Some were armed, others mere rotting flesh clinging to bleached bones. But they formed ranks, marching toward the woods, then the plains beyond, and the hills within.
Toward the city of knights.
A legion of five thousand corpses, influenced by the Necropolis. They began their march on the city.
*
'My body feels so light!'
Kirhas stared at her own form vaulting across rooftops, a strange sense of detachment mingling with overwhelming elation. The oppressive presence that had loomed over her head now felt faint. Anything seemed possible. She laughed brightly.
-Thud!
Her turquoise eyes gleamed in the darkness. Like a falcon soaring through the sky, the world blurred past her. Kirhas bounded along the roof edges, laughing all the while.
A deep indigo path stretched before her. The black sky and rain-slick surfaces had no hold on her. She dashed through the downpour without once losing her footing.
-Thud!
The inner castle walls loomed right ahead. The grand gates to the palace were in sight. In that brief span, she had crossed more than half this massive city.
'Was this the view my Silver Benefactor saw every day?'
Fernandez bore the body of a Demonica. Beyond his brilliant mind, his flesh had long surpassed human limits in dynamic vision, endurance, and explosive power.
This indigo path she now saw was surely one he had already trod. No evidence, just superstitious fancy—but she believed it. To her, Fernandez was already half myth.
Thus, the path before her eyes was more than mere physical route.
It was his footsteps. Feeling her heart pulse ever hotter as she followed in them.
'People?'
A crowd had gathered, bowing toward the palace. Kirhas twisted mid-leap to adjust her course, landing before them.
"Wouldn't it be better if everyone just went home and hunkered down?"
Greenish soul-lights drifted beyond the night sky, screams echoing from every direction. Even the dimmest soul had to sense the unnatural air. Kirhas nudged an old man staring blankly at the palace.
"What in the world are you doing here?"
The old man swatted her hand away roughly. Without a word, he bowed deeply toward the palace once more. A crisp, devout prayer. Kirhas shrugged and turned toward the palace. Madmen were everywhere.
...?
She halted upon spotting a body sprawled on the ground. Traces of fierce combat had torn up the pristine castle avenue. At the epicenter lay a knight in black armor.
"...Sir Byemier."
Kirhas flinched for a moment, her face clouding with sorrow. A deep gash rent the knight's throat. The wound's depth and shape screamed dagger—and inhuman strength. Only one soul wielded such a blade that way.
Byemier's rejuvenated face, the horrific imagery etched on his armor. Kirhas pieced together what had befallen him. You couldn't rest easy, after all. She closed her eyes before his smiling visage.
"May you find peace there."
Wherever "there" was—be it the hall of Shiled he believed in, or some silent corridor of the pantheon. She prayed this honorable knight truly found it. Kirhas lifted the sword that had fallen beside him.
Fernandez's trail lay close. She steadied her resolve and stepped into the castle. She had chased his shadow down that long road, across so much time.
But no longer from behind.
The indigo path sliced through the dark castle.
Even if it was mere vision or delusion on her part. She was certain Fernandez waited at its end. Turquoise eyes flashing, Kirhas pressed on without hesitation.
Fernandez would walk alone no more. She would see to that. Byemier's sword weighed heavy, like his will and honor. Kirhas gripped the hilt tight and whispered.
"I am Kirhas. Mouth of the Kalani clan. Kirhas Hearttaker. Kirhas Kalani. Kalani Hearttaker."
She couldn't even guess at the vista Fernandez beheld, the grand tapestry he wove. But she hoped to stride beside him toward the same horizon.
"No longer just baggage."
*
-Crunch.
Fernandez felt the sword's weight tearing into his armor. A fine blade. Even by his judgment, he wasn't some sword prodigy.
He bulldozed ahead on raw strength, reflexes, and layered blessings. A sword sturdy enough to withstand that was more than satisfactory.
-Crack.
At last, the hilt snapped free. Fernandez gave it a fleeting look of regret, then tossed it aside. A sigh drifted from Vicente behind him.
"The defendant's defense is rejected."
[That fool wasn't my last minion. You shortsighted mortal. I crossed time beyond your imagining to stand here. Think the deaths I devoured stopped at him?]
The Old King bellowed, swinging his arm wildly. Fernandez had already read the gesture, the mantra, the magic churning through this audience chamber. Necropolis spells were familiar territory.
"Establish, rise, regress, circle, hatred, night. And reinforcement of the core mana circulation in the third independent clause."
[...!!]
Fernandez took a step closer to the glowing sphere hovering at the chamber's heart. A familiar incantation. From the summoning and spatial schools.
Short-range spatial leap technique. Too unstable for living tissue, but corpses could afford some spirit loss, so necromancers favored it.
-Rumble.
He sensed the writhing presences within, parsing the leap spell's emanating magic circle.
"If it were me, I'd have added a triangular compensator in the second clause. Far stabler for mana flow, no?"
[...You—a mage-scholar.]
He almost said "from a modern mage-scholar's view," but chuckled instead. His "modern" meant at least seventy years hence. This was modern by current lights—Necropolis formations even older, ancient magecraft.
Mages wielded mysteries and secrets. The more they spread, the weaker they grew. Unless churning them out like factory goods, as in the empire's mage colleges, or planning to overwhelm leaks with sheer volume.
"Your prattle's grown tiresome, Papfet. Plenty have said the same. Count the survivors after on one hand."
-None, right?
'Did I get them all?'
Surely not every one. Fernandez groaned faintly at Feizashi's words. The Old King jabbed a trembling finger at him and roared.
"If you're a mage-scholar, you know what this spell portends! You and your gods are too late—again!"
The Old King crowed arrogantly.
"My legions have arrived. You're too late! This city falls to the Master's grasp!"
"An army? Walker rabble, ragtag patchwork militia—that's your army?"
He knew a grand necromancy was afoot. This childish ploy was just to buy time. Fernandez narrowed his eyes. Unarmed undead were as pesky as any militia.
"Death comes, Inquisitor. The lion's legions will soon breach the city's bounds. No—even the deaths rising within these walls will prove too much for you!"
"Impossible!!"
Vicente cried out in panic.
"There's no underground burial in this city! No corpses to raise!"
[Hahaha—wishing it so? You know better.]
Altbert's plains had no graveyards. The city loathed undead to its core; funerals were always cremation. Yet intact remains slumbered beneath.
Vicente's face drained white in an instant.
-Rumble!!
A deafening roar shook the palace with violent tremors. Fernandez braced against the quaking floor, glaring at the central sphere. Spatial leap rite. Guaranteed range: three hundred meters at most.
Somewhere inside lay the Necropolis's core circle fueling this magic. The necromancers' heart, piping corpses right here.
And within, no doubt...
[Behold—your era's legend returns!]
The Old King cackled hollowly. Fernandez clicked his tongue. Too ancient a soul; the speech was pure cliché.
-Rumble!!
Through the audience chamber windows, dust clouds erupted from one corner of the city. Vicente and the knights gaped at the sight, moaning in despair.
Dust billowed, pale moonlight flickering through to outline a colossal shadow.
A hand the size of a building. A pale hand thrust arrogantly skyward, scattering clouds like a legendary pillar holding up the heavens.
-KABOOM!!!
A cataclysmic quake ravaged the city. Wrecked buildings stood out starkly. One mere motion—not even an attack—had obliterated an entire district. Vicente groaned.
"The hill... giant..."
[Yes. The child of a god rises anew. Mortals—who has dared stand against such a being since Dain fell?]
The Old King sneered. Fernandez stared silently at the ceiling, its faded murals bursting with vibrant hues.
Statues of dragon and knight.
-CRACK!!
Perhaps from the giant's quake—the ceiling cracked wide. As if it might collapse any second. Fernandez watched, then smiled. Slowly. Deeply.
-RUMBLE!!
A beast's foot, sheathed in dark crimson scales, ripped the roof asunder. Rain cascaded down like a waterfall into the chamber.
[What?!]
The Old King gawked at the gaping sky in shock. Roof torn away, revealing the massive foot: thick, unyielding claws; muscles like marble pillars; dark red scales cloaking it all.
[What...? No. No! Impossible!! I don't remember reviving that!!]
"...Wh-what?!"
Vicente and the Old King shrieked. Fernandez simply stood there, rain drenching him, gazing upward. Through the black mist up high, sapphire eyes blazed.
[So here you were. Things took a strange turn; I couldn't wait any longer.]
"Perfectly timed."
-Rattle.
Black chains slithered from Abelsas's neck, coiling around Fernandez's left arm. Through the domination rite, her mana seeped into him. Shiled's blessing and Demonica blood repelled spells.
Yet this mana draw would devour his lifespan all the same. Fernandez eyed the swaying chains, matching Abelsas's movements, and grinned.
This body's time was down to minutes anyway.
"We'll handle them one by one."
He glanced at the mural depicting a crimson dragon soaring over the plains. Amid the chamber's pillars, between the depictions and frescoes.
Abelsas's feet came into view.