Exterminating the Undead
On the surface, it all looked perfectly ordinary....
So muttered Rian, hiding his presence as he watched the manor from a tree branch.
Gardeners tending the flowerbeds, maids sweeping the halls, butlers devoting themselves to the upkeep of the estate — a scene anyone could find at any mansion in the land.
But to Rian, this familiar picture looked entirely different.
They're all undead.
Zombies snapping the flowers off their stems, ghosts wrecking the very house they haunted, skeletons shambling about in butler's livery. Whenever Rian closed his eyes, the world as most knew it was flipped inside out.
This was why Rian could sense the undead's presence even without holy power — because he possessed the Mind's Eye, the inner sight that perceived the world as it truly was.
Wouldn't bother me a bit if there wasn't a single living soul left.
His original plan had been to slip past everyone's gaze and meet the lord of the estate in private. Yet nowhere within the manor did he sense a flicker of life.
Which meant this grand mansion had already fallen entirely into the undead's grasp. There was no longer any reason to sneak in quietly.
"This is the estate of Count Frost! A suspicious character like you will never set foot inside!"
"Yeah! Get lost, right now!"
Rian climbed down from the tree and strode boldly toward the front gate. The gatekeepers guarding it jabbed their spears at him as he approached.
They bellowed threats — move one more step and we skewer you — but Rian only smiled pleasantly in return. Flicking the sharp spearheads aside with his fingertips, he kept walking forward.
"Do we look like we're joking to—!"
"You're coming with us—!"
The gatekeepers' fury never ran its course. The moment Rian passed between the two men, their upper bodies tilted sideways and gushed rotten blood.
"Come at me, then!"
CRASH!
Having dispatched the gatekeepers, Rian kicked the mansion's front door open without ceremony. The iron gate tore away hinges and all and rolled across the ground.
The resulting racket flooded into the ears of everyone inside the manor.
"Wh-what was that?"
"The gatekeepers! Where are the gatekeepers?!"
"Killed them both. Very friendly of me, I know."
"Killed them...?"
Only then did the servants notice the dark blood splattered in Rian's wake. Judging him an enemy, they began shedding their human skins.
"I know it's rich coming from someone who broke in uninvited, but I'd really prefer you fight me while wearing your human disguises...."
Unfortunately, Rian's wish went unfulfilled. At the news that a fresh, plump human had appeared, the dead each shed their pretenses.
Soon enough, the undead — dripping with deadly toxins — came hurtling at Rian.
"Ugh. Swarming like cockroaches, the lot of them."
Rian pointed his index finger at the approaching horde. With the realm of Sword Unity at his command, sword aura bloomed from his fingertip.
The moment he drew the short, slender blade of aura through the air, the wind itself split. A thin line appeared across the necks of the charging corpses, and along that line, body parted from head.
The undead stared blankly at their own fallen heads, having no idea what had happened. Then they looked up at the man who had severed so many enemies with a single finger.
His face was utterly calm, as if he felt nothing at all. Clearly human, yet nothing about him felt human — an alien existence. Though already dead themselves, they felt a primal terror, and their eyes closed.
Rian pressed on, cutting down the undead that kept swarming out of the manor. KRAK!CRUNCH!KABOOM!
Flesh was pulverized, bones were shattered, and the interior walls of the estate crumbled away. Emerging as the last thing standing amid a scene more chaotic than any tavern brawl, Rian stopped before the study.
That presence is thick enough to be shouting, right here, come and get me.
The instant he opened the study door and stepped inside, a sword came rushing at his throat. Just before the blade could reach his windpipe, Rian bent slightly at the waist and caught the sword between his teeth.
Sparks flew between tooth and steel, and the swiftly incoming sword ground to a halt. It was only possible because every part of Rian's body was, in effect, a sword.
"Ptui! Gross!"
"......!"
The headless knight — the Dullahan — staggered backward. All Rian had done was spit out the sword he'd been biting, and yet the Dullahan felt as if he'd been shoved back by an iron wall.
"......"
Tension climbed as he faced the unknown. Had he still possessed a head, the Dullahan thought, he would have swallowed hard without meaning to.
"There's a hidden space beneath the floor, isn't there? Which makes you the last gatekeeper."
"......"
Rian deduced the secret chamber without a single clue and asked the Dullahan casually. Headless as he was, the knight couldn't answer directly — but his visible agitation was answer enough for Rian.
"Good."
As if that question had been all he needed, Rian lunged straight at the Dullahan.
BOOM!
Seizing the ornaments fastened to the armor, Rian hoisted the Dullahan bodily into the air and slammed him down into the floor. Then he climbed on top of the knight and began raining punches onto the armor.
A reckless move. The Dullahan's black-iron armor was forged so hard that human fists could never break it. By design, the hammering fist should have ended up shattered instead.
Yet Rian did not stop, and slowly, the Dullahan came to realize something was wrong with him.
Crack!
The armor had split. Worse, with every punch Rian threw, the crack only widened. The Dullahan could hardly believe that a fist was harder than black iron — but after witnessing one particular sight, he had no choice but to accept it.
More than ten blows landed already, and Rian's fist bore not a single scratch. The Dullahan accepted him then for what he was: a monster shaped like a man.
"Time to rest now."
The final blow landed dead center on the crack, and the Dullahan's armor split in every direction. The scattered fragments soon crumbled to powder and drifted away.
He was disappearing. His very existence was fading bit by bit from this world.
And still, the Dullahan felt an inexplicable comfort. He remembered waking as an undead, denied even rest, forced to carry on a slaughter he never wanted. And he was so grateful to Rian — the one who had seen through it all and put an end to his butchery.
Ever since becoming undead, despair had blinded the Dullahan's eyes. Only at the very end did he glimpse the light.
"Roughly around here, I think?"
Having felled the gatekeeper, Rian raised his leg and brought it crashing down into the floor. A hole opened in the pristine study floor, and beyond it, a gloomy staircase descended.
The passage was meant to open through a hidden mechanism — but Rian had simply resolved it the brute-force way.
"Hup!"
Gripping the sunken floor and hauling himself up, Rian set foot on the stone stairs. Following a faint light, he descended the straight flight of steps — and abruptly, his brow furrowed.
The foul stench of rot rising from below would have defeated even the sharpest nose. This place makes me want to burn the whole thing to ash.
Where the stairs ended, at the very bottom of the grand mansion, corpses — the source of the stench — lay piled like mountains. Beneath the bodies was a magic circle drawn in blood, and standing before it was a man in formal attire.
The moment the man's eyes met Rian's, he bowed in welcome.
"Welcome. I extend my most sincere greetings on your visit to my corpse storage vault."
"No wonder it stank to high heaven. A Lich's corpse vault, of course."
"You've already seen through my identity? What remarkable perception."
"What else but a Lich would build a disgusting place like this?"
"Haha! Now that you mention it, quite so. Then I suppose there's little point in concealing my true form."
The man slid his nails under his jaw and peeled away the skin of his face. Beneath the dignified countenance of a middle-aged gentleman appeared a pure white skull.
But unlike any common skeleton, the skull's eye sockets burned with blue flame.
"Ahh! So much better, shedding that stuffy face-skin."
"Just keep it on, would you...."
"I must decline — the humidity collects inside the skull. In any case, might I ask what brings you to my manor?"
"I heard the Tongues Merchant Firm came here. Ring any bells?"
"The Tongues Merchant Firm... you must be referring to the merchants who visited this estate a month ago."
"That's right. I take it you'd been settled here long before that?"
"Yes. It's been two years now since the lord who owned this manor summoned me, wishing to bring his dead son back to life."
"What a lunatic. Inviting a Lich into your own house."
"I won't dispute it. It is true that the lord, through personal greed, invited this calamity you see before you."
Count Frost had been unable to accept the sudden parting from his dead son. Desperate to hear the boy's voice just once more, he had summoned the Lich through necromancy.
Because he could not accept his son's death, he defiled it. And worse, he brought about the massacre of every innocent soul within the manor — a man who deserved every curse thrown at him.
"If you've been here two years, then you're the one who invited the Tongues Merchant Firm's people a month ago? Why did you bring them here?"
"A perfectly ordinary matter of business. As for the contents — surely you've already guessed without my explaining?"
"You caught living people and sold them to this thing?"
"Correct!"
"Goddess Fraana, mercy! There were even more lunatics out there!"
Rian had already dealt with every undead servant in the manor. And yet this vault was still crammed full of human corpses. The reason required no great deduction.
"There are humans who devour their own kind — is it really so strange that some would sell their fellow men?"
"I've no interest in defending cannibals, but at least they're better than bastards who hand troops over to the enemy."
"Oh-ho. Which is to say, you regard me as an enemy."
"What did you think, that I came here to dance with you?"
"I had hoped we might at least be conversation partners."
"And once you got bored of that, you'd turn me into an undead too."
"How alarmingly well you know me."
They exchanged words, both wearing pleasant smiles. But a hastily improvised moment of peace never lasts.
SNAP!
The Lich snapped his fingers, and spears of deepest black, wrought from dark magic, rained down upon Rian.
Rian had already been moving. He seized the Lich by the collar with his right arm and shoved him back against the wall.
"Tell me where the Tongues Merchant Firm went."
"Hmm? I don't recall ever hearing about such a thing."
"Don't lie. You'd conduct a deal that vile and then just send them off unharmed? If it were me, the back of my head would be itching. I wouldn't let them walk away."
"What I'm more curious about is why a strong one such as yourself is so obsessed with those people."
"If I tell you, will you tell me too?"
"A trade is always welcome. Though that courtesy does not extend to those who have refused my goodwill."
The Lich's entire body suddenly began to flush red. Its surface bulged like boiling foam, and then a massive explosion tore through the room.
Corpse Explosion — a technique necromancers favored. He had used his own body as the medium of the blast, but as an undead, the Lich simply reassembled himself on the spot.
"Remarkably sturdy. To take a Corpse Explosion head-on and remain unscathed."
"...I take it negotiations are off, then?"
Rian walked calmly out of the blood-red haze that hung thick in the air. Parts of his clothes were tattered and his black hair somewhat disheveled, but not a single wound showed on him.
"Negotiation grants the initiative to the strong, does it not? Prove that you are stronger than I, and the story changes."
"So in one word — beat you, and you'll talk."
"Do you believe you can?"
"Nothing says I can't."
Rian lunged at the Lich once more. Apparently unwilling to simply stand by and watch, the Lich conjured a whole arsenal of black-magic weaponry and hurled it.
Sharp implements came pouring down on Rian, yet not one blade managed to leave so much as a scratch on his body. Then, the moment Rian closed the distance and reached out his hand—
A red magic circle flashed, and the corpses stacked upon it fused into a single mass and hurled itself at him. Transformed with arms like a giant, the corpse golem clenched its grip, intending to crush the human within.
But as if stricken by some strange ailment, it flinched — and then was sliced into fine mincemeat.
"And what do you make of this?"
While the corpse golem bought him time, the Lich had been layering curse upon curse. The instant Rian broke free, he unleashed them all at once.
The curses, fired in the form of black lightning, struck Rian square in the heart. Nerve collapse, suffocation, terror, agonizing pain, even madness of the mind.
A gift set of afflictions — every curse landed successfully, yet not one of them harmed Rian in the slightest.
"The hell was that?"
Having seized the Lich's face, Rian crushed his skull with raw grip strength alone. Face smashed in, the Lich barely tore himself free of Rian's grasp by melting his body into the shadows.
"H-haha! I never imagined there could exist a being my curses could not touch. But then, your attacks don't work on me either — so we're even, aren't we?"
"Can't argue with that. The Life Vessel really is a busted piece of work."
"So you do know of the Life Vessel."
A mage facing death by old age stores his life force separately in a jar, cheating death itself. The undead thus created is a Lich, and the jar holding that stored vitality is called the Life Vessel.
The Life Vessel serves as the Lich's heart — shatter it, and the Lich crumbles into a handful of ash. But turned around, it also meant that so long as the Life Vessel remained intact, a Lich would never, ever die.
"For reference, my Life Vessel is enshrined in a land far, far away."
"Of course it is. Unless someone's a total idiot, what Lich would swagger around flaunting his Life Vessel?"
"What a lukewarm reaction. Do you still fail to grasp your situation? However strong you may be, you cannot defeat me!"
"Says who?"
"Pardon?"
"Who decided I can't beat you?"
"W-well, if a human without holy power wished to kill a Lich, the only way would be to find and shatter the Life Vessel—"
At Rian's tone — one that implied another way existed — the Lich grew flustered and began to stammer. Perhaps it was baseless confidence, or perhaps simple ignorance, a genuine question.
It should have been one of those two. Yet for some reason, the Lich could not shake the feeling that it was neither.
"Wherever your Life Vessel is, it's connected to you, standing right here, isn't it? So all I have to do is sever that connection."
"What nonsense are you spouting?! Such a thing could never be possible!"
The link Rian spoke of did not exist in the material world. It was an abstract concept, something that could only exist in a dimension apart from reality. The Lich believed it — nothing that did not exist could possibly be cut down.
"Watch me."
...Until Rian declared it with eyes full of absolute conviction.
No human alive could ever work such a miracle...!
Rian raised his hand high, like an executioner about to carry out a sentence. That small gesture filled the Lich with dread.
His eye sockets burned as if hemorrhaging. A crushing pressure clamped around his throat, choking off his breath. And in the vicinity of his heart — which should have been a hollow, empty void — some inexplicable pulse began to rage.
I must stop it. No matter what!
The Lich judged that this was no time to hold anything back. Gathering every scrap of mana, he activated every red magic circle at once.
All the corpses within the vault converged into a single mass, sculpting the face of a giant bearing three pairs of eyes. Blood-red energy condensed in each orb and fired at Rian.
But—
"Too late."
Rian's hand had already come down.
A single slash that cleaved space itself. The crimson energy, along with the corpse-giant's face, was severed in twain.
And at that very moment, something inside the Lich snapped.
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
Wrapped in the blue soul-fire that had reflected his own gaze, the Lich screamed. Uttering the death-cry of a soul at its end, he burned within the flame.
The Life Vessel that had supplied him with infinite vitality had been severed from his body. In the end, the Lich's form could not withstand the soul-fire and began slowly to dissolve.
"Impossible! This is impossible!"
"Hey! Before you die, tell me where the Tongues Merchant Firm went!"
"A human...! A mere human cut down something that doesn't even exist?!"
"Are you even listening to me?"
"It can't be! You can't be human! Who in the world are you?!"
"...Who am I? A human, obviously."
A limp, deflated answer. And because it was a truth without a shred of falsehood in it, the moment only grew more painfully awkward.
In the end, the Lich dissolved away amid despair and emptiness.
"Damn it all. So where the hell did the Tongues Merchant Firm go...."
Rian felt the emptiness no less keenly. He had endured every hardship under the sun, only to part with the Lich having learned nothing at all. His efforts to save the undead within the mansion had come to nothing but foam on the water.
"Hm?"
Just as he was about to leave the cellar empty-handed, Rian noticed the ashes where the Lich had stood. Strangely, the grey cinders traced the shape of a "V."
For an instant his heart lurched — a victory V? — but he resolved to think it over calmly. It might not mean victory at all. It could be an ancient numeral for five.
If the mark meant the number five, as Rian suspected, the Lich's message resolved itself easily: the five o'clock direction. The Tongues Merchant Firm had fled to the southeast.
"...Well. Guess the man had some loyalty in him after all."
It might all be wild overinterpretation. He couldn't rule out that possibility — but with no other clue to go on, Rian decided, for now, to trust the message the Lich had left behind.
Trusting an enemy I was trading blows with minutes ago is pretty funny, but I've got no better option.
Heaving a sigh, Rian turned his steps back toward the staircase that connected to the study. He was just grumbling that the first order of business was washing the blood off himself when his foot touched the bottom step.
Sensing someone approaching from the far side, Rian narrowed his eyes and lifted his head.
"Ah... ah...!"
It was Aleyna, gazing down the stairs with reddening eyes. Rian had never seen her human form before, and the sight of a woman on the verge of tears made him hesitate for a moment.
Only for a moment. The instant he recognized that her hair ornament bore a striking resemblance to the sigil of the Holy Kingdom, his hand moved to his waist.
She was a woman of the Holy Kingdom, a nation hostile to him — but she was also an unarmed woman. Rian's courtesy: he would end it at the level of merely threatening her with the Iron Sword.
Yet his courtesy backfired spectacularly.
"Rian...?"
Following his hand, Aleyna's gaze drifted naturally to his waist as well. That was the place she had occupied, ever since she'd first met Rian, all this time.
But now, sitting in that spot, was some battered old iron sword. Aleyna's most precious memory had been tainted by another blade.
And so her eyes, once so clear and limpid, began little by little to lose their light.