The Grave of the Dead (6)
The corridor of the dungeon was not particularly wide.
Trapped in a space where movement was inevitably restricted, the Lich tilted its skull back to look up at the mechanical golem before it.
"This is…?"
A note of intrigue flickered within the crimson glow of the Lich's eyes.
"A junior from ages past, I see. The soul used in this puppet—is it what I suspect it to be?"
"……Endeavor. Force it against the wall."
The moment Kiri ignored its question and gave the order in a low voice—
CRRAAANG!
Endeavor, the pitch-black mechanical golem, slammed the Lich's head against one side of the corridor.
"Now grind it all the way down."
Hearing its master's frigid command, Endeavor broke into a dead sprint right where it stood.
GRRAAAK!
Skull scraped against wall in a shower of sparks, and the sound of grinding bone filled the corridor.
"…That's incredible."
Oscar murmured blankly as he watched.
Pressing the Lich of all creatures into such an utterly one-sided corner?
Granted, there was that reason too—but what stunned him most lay elsewhere entirely.
That golem doesn't give off any of that aura unique to the undead.
What people commonly called deathly aura or ghostly energy.
It was a power that only those who could no longer breathe—the dead—were capable of wielding.
The problem was that not a single trace of it could be felt from that mechanical golem.
But then… how in the world can such a thing even exist?
A look of confusion crossed Oscar's face.
She called this art Mechanical Necromancy.
Necromancy, at its heart, was the study of the soul.
Which meant that inside Endeavor—a golem that had shrunk to the size of a dot as it withdrew down the corridor—someone's soul had to be residing.
And yet no aura of death can be felt from it at all….
There were only two possibilities.
One: she had lied to conceal the true nature of the technique.
And the other was….
The instant Oscar's face began to harden, Endeavor returned from the far end of the corridor.
Then it flung the Lich—now nothing but a rag of scorched bone—down onto the floor.
"Whew. How violent. Are we finished now?"
Despite having more than seventy percent of its skull ground away, the Lich rose to its feet as naturally as if it felt no pain whatsoever.
Unsurprisingly, none of the four mages watching showed the slightest surprise.
No one had imagined a Lich would die from anything this minor.
A being that had sealed its soul away separately to achieve immortality had no use for pain to begin with.
"It seems I have slept for a very long time indeed."
Tuk-tuk, ttududuk.
As the Lich casually spun its neck vertebrae a few times, the skull regenerated itself with ease.
"To think the juniors of the Black Tower have produced such an entertaining toy."
"A toy, you say?"
Kiri Gloria glared at the Lich with a cold that could have frozen it solid on the spot.
"Watch your mouth just because it's got a hole in it. This is proof of how hard we've struggled—how we've fought and clawed—to set right the sins your generation committed, and to change."
"Hm. The sins my generation left behind?"
The Lich tilted its skull in thought for a long moment—then its crimson eyes stretched wide sideways.
As if sneering.
"Hmm? No matter how I search my memory, nothing comes to mind."
"You shameless—don't you think there's a limit—"
"If your generation is truly suffering for sins we committed…"
The Lich extended a slender finger bone and pointed it straight at Kiri.
And what flowed out of its mouth next was not an apology.
"…then it is because you grew weak."
"…!"
With those words, a sinister wave of mana bore down on the shoulders of all four of them.
"Ugh!"
"No human in this world grovels for forgiveness from a being that could crush them like an insect. Which means that if someone condemned you, it was your own weakness that invited it—so blame yourselves."
Yes. That's it. That's exactly the kind of thing a Black Tower mage of my memory would say without a flicker of hesitation.
The moment Oscar found himself nodding along, the ones who had been secretly preparing their spells shouted out.
"Volg!"
"R-ready!"
The two mechanical golems summoned before Gale and Volg lunged at the Lich in an instant.
The Lich glanced briefly at the charging golems, then spoke.
"Hm. Weaker than the one I faced earlier—and the soul bound inside it is lighter, too."
CRRAAANG!
The two golems that had hurled themselves forward seized the Lich by both arms.
And in that same moment, Endeavor—lying in wait behind them—closed the distance, forging a pitch-black blade in its grip.
"…If this is the full extent of the tricks you can show me…"
SHRRRIIICK!
The arms of the golems gripping the Lich's arms began to corrode and melt away before their eyes.
"…then it's about time we ended playtime with the toys."
"Kuhk!"
"GGUUAAAAAAGH!"
Gale and Volg collapsed screaming in unbearable agony, then rolled their eyes back and went limp.
"Gale! Volg!"
Kiri rushed to her comrades' side and checked on them, biting her lip bloody.
Her eyes blazed like a fire had broken out behind them.
"I won't forgive you… Endeavor!"
Endeavor obeyed its master's command, swinging its blade down with enough force to cleave the Lich in two.
But halted by some unseen power, the blade froze just above the Lich's crown, trembling in place.
"Forgiveness? That's a word I should be saying to you."
The Lich planted its foot squarely atop the fallen, armless golems and continued.
"This puppet—the concept itself was rather amusing, but that's all it was. In essence, it's nothing but trash that denies the very foundations of necromancy and drags its good name through the mud."
HISS, SHRRRIIICK!
The golem's parts beneath the Lich's foot began melting away as well.
At the same time, Gale's complexion began deteriorating rapidly.
"Get your foot off it, now!"
Furious down to the roots of her hair, Kiri completed her black magic.
What she had woven was the very same Thorn of Hatred the Lich had used mere moments ago.
Though its size was barely half as large.
"How adorable."
Mid-flight, her thorn was impaled by an even larger one that erupted up through the floor beneath it.
"Gakh!"
Her mana surging backward, Kiri vomited blood.
Having subdued the Black Tower mages in the blink of an eye, the Lich asked with what seemed like genuine curiosity.
"You have talent. So why waste it building trash like these puppets?"
"…Because I—we—refuse to become the same kind of monsters you are."
Blood dripped steadily from Kiri's clenched lips.
It was from sheer frustration.
Because she couldn't protect her comrades. Because the sight of herself helplessly defeated before an enemy was too pathetic to bear.
Worse still, the one who wielded the very methods they had come to believe were wrong was impossibly, absurdly strong.
The thought made her so furious, so enraged, that tears threatened to spill.
"…Our Black Tower, and our black magic, are not wrong."
She murmured the words almost like a sob.
"In depth and in usefulness as a discipline, we don't yield an inch to any other tower. It's trash like you—like Silgrim Pohnert—that's the problem. The Black Tower was never some school that could only grow strong by sacrificing others."
"But sacrifice another, absorb their soul, and you can grow strong at a speed nothing else can match. That is the overwhelming advantage of the Black Tower—an advantage no other magic tower possesses."
Interest seemingly spent, the Lich replied in a dismissive drone.
"You young ones are weak. This whole mindset of caring what others think of you—such thoughts, such hearts, are pitifully weak. If you want something, seize it. Force others to their knees. Kill. Subjugate. There's no need to abandon the easy road and take the long way around."
CRRAAANG!
The Lich kicked Volg's golem, sending it sprawling lifelessly across the floor.
"Look at the sorry state of you now. So-called black mages and necromancers—pouring their own precious souls into trinkets like these. Have some shame."
"…."
Oscar, who had been listening in silence all this while, felt his gaze sink like a stone.
I knew it.
He had suspected as much from the moment he felt no deathly aura in the golems.
The thought that a living soul resided within them.
I just never imagined they'd be pouring in their own.
Somehow, without realizing it, he had assumed it would be someone else's soul.
But the truth was otherwise. Their secret art harmed no one at all.
It was a technique built so that they alone shouldered every last risk.
And now he understood why Gale and Volg had been reduced to that state from nothing more than their golems being destroyed.
Their souls had taken a direct blow—however partial, it was only natural.
"…."
Oscar slowly closed his eyes.
Even now, when he shut them, the army of corpses led by Silgrim Pohnert flickered before him.
He heard the final cries of his comrades and subordinates—those who had died fighting them—ringing in his ears.
But.
The Black Tower had changed. They had not run from the sins their predecessors committed.
Instead, they had faced those sins more squarely than anyone.
They had even accepted sacrificing pieces of their own souls, all to change the minds of those who judged them through tinted glass.
…So who is anyone—
—to point at them and call them the descendants of a traitor?
Slowly, very slowly, Oscar's eyelids lifted.
Within his eyes settled a clarity that had never been there before.
Tap. Oscar drew from his coat an advanced potion—not yet released to the public—and set it on the ground.
"This is a high-grade potion made by the White Tower. Feed it to them, and their lives will be safe."
"…What?"
Kiri turned back to him with an expression of sheer disbelief.
Her face asked what he could possibly be saying when they were all about to die together.
"Once they've drunk the potion and come to, get them out of the dungeon. Quickly."
"…What?"
She simply repeated herself like a parrot.
And no wonder—she couldn't make sense of what he was doing.
"Don't tell me you're planning to stall that monster? For our sake?"
"I'm not planning to just buy time."
Oscar said it calmly, eyes fixed on the Lich.
"I'm going to destroy it."
"…Ah. I see. The fear finally broke you, huh. You've gone mad. Lunatic."
A curse slipped out of her before she could stop it.
No wonder she and Veronica get along. They're exactly alike in all the wrong ways.
Oscar smiled inwardly, gave her a sidelong glance, and confessed what was honestly in his heart.
"Kiri Gloria. I like the way you face the sins of the past—the way you carry yourselves. I think it's admirable."
"…Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?"
"So when the kids come to, take them and get out. The Black Tower needs people like you."
At those words, the Lich's shoulders shook with roaring laughter.
"Keh—KHAHAHA! My, my. Listening to drivel is its own form of labor, isn't it? A mere Level 3—"
His words never reached their end.
"You. Shut up."
"…!"
The Lich's crimson eyes flared wide.
When did he—?
Watching the beginner-level mage who had closed the distance in an instant, the Lich flinched despite itself.
This ominous mana—soft on the surface, yet hiding within it a blade sharper than anything else.
It gave him the strange feeling of having known it once, long ago.
"H-hey! Oi!"
At Kiri's voice shouting from behind, Oscar gave a light wave of his hand—
CRRAAANG!
—and stomped the floor of the corridor to pieces.
Then, together with the Lich, he plunged down to the floor below in perfect company.
"…Whew."
The Lich suppressed the irritation threatening to burst out of it.
After all, it had fallen into the very place it had fallen before—and now had to climb all the way back up again.
And above all….
Disgust colored the Lich's crimson gaze as it regarded the young mage.
"Now that I look closely, you carry a most repulsive mana. The mana of the White Tower."
It thought it understood why it had flinched before this child.
That damned White Tower Master, no doubt. He's probably long dead by now, but still.
As the Lich raised one hand, its Thorn of Hatred lifted its head in answer to the gesture.
It would kill the Level 3 mage quickly, then climb back up and escape the dungeon.
Just now, it had felt someone make contact with its vessel.
"One strike, to start—"
At that moment, the Lich suddenly felt as if the whole world had turned upside down.
Needless to say, the world did not simply flip skyward.
"…!"
This was the sensation of itself coming apart.
Its bone-built body had, at some unknown instant, been sliced into hundreds, thousands of fragments—and collapsed.
"H-how… what is…?"
Having restored its body in the blink of an eye, the Lich stared at its opponent through eyes flickering like a guttering candle.
"…."
In the wavering torchlight of the dungeon, no emotion whatsoever rose to the face of the one standing before it.
Only the memory of that fear from long ago—the fear that had forced it to abandon everything and flee into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Just as it had been with Oscar Sage.