The Lady Death Knight Awakens
The necromancer Zern's face twisted with astonishment. "Damn it! What's going on? Answer me quickly!"
The skeleton servant, having been briefed by the situation, relayed the warning in its usual emotionless tone. "Warning, mental binding magic has been neutralized. Immediate action required."
"...Uwaaaaa..."
Elise finally regained her senses. The moment clarity returned, she instinctively distanced herself from Zern and assumed a combat stance. "Crap! Call in all the guys waiting outside! Ludmira, snap out of it!"
Zern urgently ordered the skeleton servant, then extended both hands toward Elise.
—BAM!
"Kyuuk..."
The overwhelming centrifugal force caused Elise's posture to falter, and her brows furrowed in displeasure.
That was all it took. "Damn it! Even with maximum mana for telekinesis, it barely stumbles? My creation, but you're too powerful!"
Zern let out a disbelieving laugh. After hundreds of years of existence in the Church's history, the reins on the Death Knight he had painstakingly recreated had slipped from his grasp.
It was an absolutely desperate situation. From Zern's perspective, no matter how much he poured into it, he could not guarantee survival. "I believed I would never reach out to a demon even in my lifetime!"
The realization of his own predicament drove Zern to let out a sigh, and from his pocket he pulled out a horn-shaped object.
—Thud!
He immediately thrust the horn hard into his own heart. "Kuaaaah! Mephistopheles! Hear my request! Fill me with the infinite power of the abyss's dark mana!"
With the horn still embedded in his chest, Zern chanted the incantation. His eyes, from the pupils to the whites, turned pitch black. The blood vessels around his eyes also blackened like inked ink, writhing in an ominous manner.
Zern had transformed into a figure too horrifying for any human. The demon-possessed Zern reached out a hand toward Elise.
—Sshshshshuk!
Black hands emerged from the floor and began to seize Elise. "Kruuuu..."
The black hands clung to Elise with brutal force, and she let out a low groan of heavy resistance. "My beloved Ludmira! Please come back to me! I cannot lose you like this!"
Zern bowed toward Elise, who was held captive by the black hands, still extending his arm. But...
"...My name... my name is not Ludmira."
Elise, while violently tearing away the black hands gripping her, opened her mouth. "My name is Elise! Elise von Rosenheim!!!"
It was a mana-infused roar of immense power. The black hands holding Elise fell away in an instant due to the overwhelming shout. "Uaaaaaaa!"
With the restraints released, Elise rushed at Zern like a whirlwind. "D-Damn it! No!!"
Zern, filled with terror, turned and fled. His desperate struggle to survive proved futile. Elise, approaching at an unbelievable speed, grabbed Zern in an instant. "Y-You die!!"
Elise, holding Zern, revealed a fierce killing intent as she tightly gripped his face. "K-Kuaak! Save me!"
In Zern's black eyes, filled with the grip, terror reigned supreme. "Die! Die!!!"
Elise, still clutching Zern's face, screamed at the top of her lungs and poured all her strength into her hands— "Kuaak, ku, kuh..." —CRACK, CRACK!—
The force of Elise's grip shattered Zern's skull, causing his face to explode gruesomely. An utterly unbelievable and absurd strength.
—THUD.
Zern's body, having ceased to move, collapsed. Even so, Elise's anger showed no signs of abating. "Uwaaa!! Uwaaaaa!!"
Elise unleashed madness, screaming and venting her fury. She pounded and smashed anything within reach into the already half-dead Zern's torso, then grabbed and tore him apart, horribly mutilating the remains.
Elise's madness only ceased once Zern's corpse was reduced to unrecognizable fragments. "Hah... hah..."
Elise's entire body was drenched in sticky blood and tears. Having ruthlessly torn apart Zern, her mind remained in utter chaos. Who am I? Where am I? How long has it been since the final battle? And why is my skin so pale?
Everything was incomprehensible. Struggling to make sense of her situation while gasping for air, Elise's gaze fell upon an object. What caught her eye was none other than a full-length mirror.
The reflection in the mirror was strange. "Eh...?"
Feeling an anomaly in the mirror's image, Elise stood up and slowly approached the mirror. Her expression before the mirror quickly filled with shock. The figure she had always known was gone without a trace.
The first thing she noticed was her figure. Her height remained around 170cm, but instead of the plainness replaced by muscles, exaggerated voluptuous curves had taken root. The small breasts had grown to an unrecognizable size, while her waist, with a touch of abs, was realistically slim. The hips, buttocks, and thighs were thick, wide, and packed with volume, with slight muscle definition.
In contrast, her calves and ankles below the knees had actually become slimmer than before. The once-unattractive appearance was gone, leaving behind a body that was unrecognizably different. "...Hah?"
Elise, touching her body here and there with her hands, could not hide her confusion. The shock was immense. The face that appeared above her shoulder surprised her once more. Abundant long hair with a color blending white and silver between the original neat brown hair.
A feminine and graceful line that was definitely smaller in size compared to her original form, along with a small face featuring perfectly harmonious features. Finally, long eyelashes and ruby-red eyes. Truly a peerless beauty stared back from the mirror.
And the peerless beauty in the mirror was unmistakably herself. "...This can't be."
Elise touched her face with hands stained by blood and tears. She looked around with a puzzled expression, not understanding why she had transformed into such a beauty.
Continuing to glance around, Elise's eyes landed on Zern's corpse. The traces of Zern, severely mutilated by her madness to the point of being unrecognizable even as a corpse. Elise's eyes trembled as she gazed at Zern's remains.
She had realized the truth. Ah, so this is the work of that old man. Not the blessing of a beauty goddess, but the vile desire of an old man. The beauty reflected in the mirror was dirty beauty from the very roots.
Elise's expression crumpled as sadness began to overwhelm her. "Huu... huuuuuh..."
Her throat choked with grief, and eventually she burst into tears. Although she had clearly cried, strangely, no tears came. "Huaaah... huaaaang..."
Elise, having realized that even tears would not flow after transforming into a Death Knight, sat down in front of the mirror and cried even more bitterly.
How long had it been since she began to sob? Elise's face had now become expressionless, filled with emptiness and hollowness instead of tears. Sitting in a daze, pondering her situation—
—BOOM!
The lab door was kicked open as massive figures entered. Giants clad in pitch-black armor and wielding huge two-handed axes, covered in filth.
The dungeon guards from the dungeon that the skeleton servant had summoned after escaping the lab. "...Who the hell are you?"
Sitting in a daze, Elise raised her head and glared at the guard monsters. The question was meaningless; one of the guard monsters moved first. It swung its huge axe downward with the intent to split Elise's head in half without hesitation. But—
—CLANG!
It was blocked far too easily. The axe blade of the monster was firmly caught in Elise's hand. The fine hand of Elise, who had blocked the descending axe blade, was slightly bloody on the palm but otherwise perfectly fine.
The monster, tilting its head in confusion as it failed to understand the situation. "...Even without using aura, what do you think you're doing swinging it like that?"
Elise muttered quietly toward the monster, then—
—CRUNCH!
Elise thrust her other hand like lightning, piercing straight through the monster's chest covered in armor. On Elise's hand that shot out to the opposite side of the monster's body, a hideous heart still beating with life was clenched.
—BOOM!
Elise pulled back her hand and casually flung the extracted heart aside. The monster collapsed forward, ceasing to move. If it saw its comrade fall in vain, it probably would have taken a different approach.
The monster right beside it swung its axe horizontally without any fear. —CLANG!
This time, the attack was blocked by Elise's casually raised left forearm. Immediately after, Elise's light hook swung and struck the monster's helmet, —CRUNCH!— shattering the helmet along with the monster's skull as if hit by a meteor.
Green blood sprayed from the cracked helmet, and the second monster also collapsed in vain. How long after the second monster fell? —Dudududu.
Monsters of all kinds flooded into the room. Monsters with ugly, broken skin and spiked clubs in three arms each, moving on two legs. Beast-type monsters with eight eyes each, located somewhere between a wolf and a dog. And skeletal soldiers armed with rusty iron swords and shields, among others.
Moreover, this was not the end. The monsters blocking the door showed more monsters beyond, as if the monsters had not yet fully entered the room.
Elise felt a killing intent from all the monsters aimed at her. She picked up the huge axe left behind by the recently defeated monster. Focusing her strength on the axe, instead of the clear blue aura, a green energy enveloped the blade.
A deep green that made her feel uncomfortable just looking at it. "...Since I don't feel good, let's finish this quickly, everyone."
Before her words were even finished, the monsters inside the room all leaped toward Elise at once.
—CLANG.
Elise threw the axe she was holding into a corner of the lab, and the metallic sound echoed. At the same time, the thick green mana surrounding the thrown axe scattered like fog.
A hill of corpses of monsters, enough to number at least two hundred, filled the room. Leaving the carnage behind, Elise walked into the corridor of the dungeon.
Her body, smeared with the blood of monsters of all colors, seemed to have no particular destination. However, Elise may not have known what to do in the long term, but she knew what to do immediately. She had to eliminate this ugly space entirely.