The Grave of the Dead (5)
Oscar and the three mages of the Black Tower made their way down the corridor of the dungeon's second underground floor.
"Halt."
The moment Kiri Gloria, standing at the center of the group, raised her fist—
Kuuuuuung!
A tremor shook the entire dungeon to its foundations.
Dropping quickly to press her palm against the floor, she murmured, "It's getting closer. With a quake this strong, it must be on the fourth underground level."
In that respect, they had been lucky. The coffin the creature had lain in, along with its pedestal, was absurdly heavy—which was exactly why it had fallen so deep.
That meant Kilian and Veronica had been granted all the time they needed to find the vessel.
"One thing I'm curious about."
"No time. Ask while we walk—and don't waste my ears with pointless questions."
Unbothered by her frosty reception, Oscar pressed on anyway. "If your purpose in coming here was to seal that thing away, why did only three of you make the trip?"
"……"
Kiri's brow furrowed at the question, as though she'd just heard the one thing she'd been dreading most.
"If you'd rather not answer?"
"Then you'll have a hard time earning my enthusiastic cooperation."
"……"
Three mages against a lich was a burden no matter how you sliced it. After a brief silence, she spat out the answer in a disgruntled voice.
"Because the information we obtained was half-baked."
"Half-baked?"
"That's right. That lich is……"
She hesitated longer this time than before. Irritated by the pause, Oscar finished the sentence for her.
"He was one of yours—a Black Tower mage, wasn't he? Hardly a shock."
"……!"
"……!"
The two of them whirled to stare at him, faces full of stunned disbelief, their expressions demanding, How did you know?
"What's so surprising? The mana that creature commands looks exactly like the mana of your Black Tower."
"…So you noticed."
Kiri let out a self-deprecating laugh and nodded. "That's right. He was one of our mages. And needless to say, he's a thorn in our side now."
She treated the lich not as a predecessor of her tower, but with open, burning hostility—and the reason wasn't hard to guess.
"Is it because he's the one existence capable of toppling in a single stroke the reputation you've all sweated blood to build up?"
"You catch on fast. Our Black Tower has… changed enormously over the past twenty years."
Her clenched fists tightened.
"And we're still changing."
"A work in progress, then. That seems connected to why your intel was half-baked, too."
"You… you really are sharp."
At this point she simply admitted it outright. "Yes. The Black Tower currently has two factions inside it. We're the Reformation Faction—we believe that for a tower despised by the imperial court to survive, we have to show, and prove, that we've changed completely."
"I see."
That faction must have been born sometime in the last twenty years. It was a side of the Black Tower Oscar had never known. The reason people spoke so often of how much the tower had changed was no doubt entirely thanks to their efforts.
"And the other side is the Radical Faction."
"Hmm."
He could roughly imagine their temperament and position from the name alone.
"So it was that side that deliberately buried the information about this lich?"
"Correct."
A cold smirk flickered across her lips.
"Old men trapped in the past always think the same way. They figure that if an awakened lich goes on a spectacular rampage, everything we've built up through years of grinding effort will shatter—and that we'll have no choice but to fall in line with their wishes."
"……So you've been desperately trying to seal him because you can't stand that."
"Exactly. We knew his dungeon was somewhere in this region, but we didn't know the precise location. So we spent over two weeks combing the entire area."
Ah. Now, at last, everything made sense.
"There. Curiosity satisfied? Feel all nice and refreshed?"
"……"
By nature, it was ten thousand times harder for a villain to earn the praise of the masses than for a righteous man to fall into ruin. The Black Tower had very nearly destroyed with its own hands everything it had labored to build over twenty years.
Recalling the words Kiri had used—old men trapped in the past—Oscar smiled wryly.
Was I really so different?
He, too, had been held captive by the past, judging them on the strength of old information.
And yet here, in the Black Tower he was meeting after twenty years, fresh sprouts he had never seen before were taking root and growing.
So Oscar bowed his head to the three of them, sincere and without pretense.
"I'm sorry. I misjudged you."
"…What?"
Met with an apology so blunt it bordered on rude, Kiri looked him up and down as though a chill had crawled up her spine. "Did that lich scramble your brain? Or did you eat something bad?"
"No. When you realize you were wrong, you apologize. It's only natural."
At those words, the two mages who had introduced themselves as Gale and Volg started to nod along, half-dazed—
But Kiri Gloria raised a hand and stopped them cold.
"Don't apologize. And don't you two accept it, either."
"Kiri, why not?"
"Because an apology from a White Tower mage is a rare opportunity."
Then she fixed Oscar with the coldest gaze she'd worn all day.
"This man—and the White Tower—must always stand as the detestable villains blocking our path."
"……"
Only then could they take that hatred and turn it into the fuel that drove them forward.
Oscar nodded back with a bitter smile.
Can't be helped. That's just how our positions are.
The White Tower, which had produced the greatest heroes in history. The Black Tower, which had produced the most horrific villains in history. It was only natural those two towers could never grow close.
Besides, the White Tower had snatched away their chances at elevation to the Four Great Magic Towers time and time again.
"……Halt. Everyone, suppress your mana and keep your mouths shut."
Just then, her expression hardening in an instant, Kiri Gloria raised her fist and gave the order. Their current position, after a long stretch of walking and talking, was the third underground floor.
Boom. Koom.
A violent tremor shuddered up from the very floor beneath their feet. Gale, a 4th-level mage of the Black Tower, spoke without thinking.
"Kiri. Could this be……"
"You idiot——!"
The instant Kiri's face twisted and she turned toward him—
KWAAAAAANG!
The floor where Gale stood erupted. In its place rose a spike that looked like the trunk of a colossal tree.
"Ga—Gale!!!"
Gale couldn't so much as breathe.
Pat, pat! Oscar tapped his cheek. "Breathe. Breathe."
"My—my stomach……"
"It's not pierced. I pulled you out before it hit."
"?"
Only then did Gale look down at his own stomach—and the breath he'd been holding burst out of him. For one blinding instant, he had been certain that massive spike had skewered him through.
He realized now that his life was still his only because of the man standing before him.
"Th—thank you……"
"Think nothing of it."
In truth, a second's delay and Gale would have died impaled on the spot. Oscar narrowed his eyes at the enormous spike.
Black magic—Thorn of Hatred.
One of the black magic arts the Black Tower had once proudly boasted. Even now, with necromancy forbidden, it was surely still counted among their prized techniques.
Sssshhh.
The spike sank back down like a living serpent, and through the freshly bored hole, something rose up.
Goooooh.
"……!"
"……!"
The lich. The being wreathed in the breath of death parted its jaws as it regarded the four mages.
-Move aside… I have somewhere to be.
Gone was the creature's earlier leisure; something faintly desperate had crept into its bearing. Seeing it, Oscar curled one corner of his mouth upward.
Kilian, Veronica—you've made it.
The two of them had reached the graveyard. By now they would surely be scrambling all over it in search of the creature's vessel.
-Out of the way, I said! Out of the way!
BOOM! KWAAANG!
A dozen or more spikes burst from the floor, all aimed at them.
But even if the four of them hadn't known better, they were hardly green enough to take that attack standing still.
-You… you little vermin…!
At last, the creature spread all ten of its fingers wide and drew an X toward them. At the same moment, an alarm bell rang in Oscar's head.
That's dangerous.
The death ray the lich had shown them earlier. It now fanned out from all ten fingers, sweeping the entire narrow corridor.
Somewhere to dodge……
There was none.
"Everyone, get behind me!"
The moment Oscar, jaw clenched tight, threw up a massive shield in front of the group—
Tadadadak!
The sound of something charging in from behind rang out, and—
Kiiing!
A colossal shape planted itself before them and scattered the death rays in every direction.
"That's……"
"You're the one who should fall back."
Kiri Gloria declared, arms crossed, with unmistakable pride. A broad back that looked as dependable as a loyal knight's. A jet-black frame that stood unbowed even after swallowing the death rays head-on.
The thing standing with its back to them was a two-meter mechanical golem—the breakthrough created by the Black Tower after necromancy was outlawed.
"Black magic—Mechanical Necromancy."
The greatest secret art the Black Tower could boast today.
Tap, tadadak!
Veronica and Kilian exchanged not a single word as they raced for the graveyard. Upon arriving, they immediately set about combing every corner of it.
After sweeping the area with a Scan, Veronica bit her lower lip.
Nothing out here feels like a vessel.
But where, then? All she had was a gut certainty that it was hidden somewhere around here—no one knew how it had been hidden.
All right. Let's flip this around and think like him.
If she were that lich, where would she hide her vessel?
The answer was obvious: in the most secret, least accessible spot she could find.
So where would that be?
Just as she was racking her brain over the question, a skeleton burst out of the ground.
"What, some trash-tier monster……"
Veronica's wind arrow punched clean through its skull, and the thing collapsed in a heap. Dismissing the pile of bones, she scurried from one end of the graveyard to the other.
Kilian, meanwhile, stood perfectly still with his arms crossed, watching her through narrowed eyes. It took Veronica a good while to notice, and when she did, twin flames lit up in her glare.
"Hey. What are you doing standing there by yourself?"
"Observing."
"That's exactly what I asked—why are you doing that? Aren't you supposed to be finding the vessel?"
"Hm. Charging around like a headless chicken doesn't strike me as a way to find it."
"……"
Is this guy's whole forest-warrior act just a persona? Was he playing the fool this entire time?
Wiping the sweat from her brow with a dirt-caked hand, Veronica said, "Fine. Did your 'observing' turn anything up? If not, shut up and move like me."
"I found something I don't understand."
Kilian pointed at the pile of bones on the ground.
"That skeletons are popping out of the earth."
"What's weird about that? They kept crawling up and I kept smashing their skulls in, that's all."
"The village elder said these skeletons could only be brought down if the guards all fought together."
"He did. And that they'd get back up soon enough—but that was probably just because there wasn't any mana left to fuel them."
"True. But before we entered the dungeon, Oscar cleaned this graveyard out thoroughly."
"……!"
Kilian would never have needed a weapon to put skeletons down. Naturally, he would have dispatched them all with magic.
"So it is strange that they rose again. But so what? Maybe that lich burned its mana to make more of them just to guard the vessel?"
"And that's what makes it stranger still. It built nothing but this—a handful of scraps—for a force meant to guard its vessel?"
"…Huh. Now that you mention it."
If something as vital as the vessel really had been hidden in this graveyard, the lich would have posted something far more powerful here—not a scattering of skeletons.
"Wait. Then that means……"
"These things are a smokescreen. The real undead guards would be posted where the vessel actually is."
"……"
Seriously—was it all a persona this whole time?