Chapter 506: Start of Battle and Spies

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

“Whatever happened to the adventure of ruins exploring and dating beautiful girls? Why did it become an all-out battle story instead? Whatever happened to the idle days of vacationing? Why did it become a troublesome serious matter instead?”

“…Stare!”

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s not me! I swear that I didn’t do anything this time, nor did I summon all those undead! And I’m really not a jinxer! Nor did I scheme anything this time.”

Everyone had scouts in the area, not just me. Most were currently looking at the direction of the mountains. With so many factions’ scouts in that area, everyone here would soon learn if something was going on.

“The undead have arrived! There’s a battle at the entrance to the mountain path!”

“Bone, bone dragons are in the sky! There’re also gargoyles! It’s the vanguard of the undead army!”

And the next moment, scouts of all the factions reported in simultaneously. The battle was right before them, and then the scouts all paused in surprise on seeing Prince Link’s corpse within the room. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the scouts as all having blank expressions.

“What are the royal troops doing?”

The main supporter of the scheming Marquis Taric, Countess Salima, paused in surprise. Although she had previously communicated with the Death Council, she was still a living person who was only interested in the treasure within the ruins. As a living person, she had no interest in seeing an Undead Calamity.

“…Ruins? What about the ruins, then?”

The knight domain lord Kaen Stark also paused in surprise right after having successfully betrayed and murdered the royalty of the Dukedom that just gave him a noble title. He was someone who had already betrayed his own mercenary group, so he’d never had a speck of loyalty in him to begin with. Now, after having finally eliminated the “evil prince” that “was in the way” of getting “his own treasure”, Kaen suddenly heard such a piece of news which basically eliminated his path to future glory. He felt like he had just been struck by a bolt of thunder.

“As expected of Ro… Brother Karo. Things will never be boring with you around.”

Timlad was the only one who was quite excited as if he really enjoyed such a daily life. I ended up glaring at him as this really wasn’t my fault this time. I still didn’t have the time to do anything yet— whoops, I meant that I hadn’t intended on doing anything!

The undead had just invaded. However, the highest-ranked personage from the Sala Dukedom in this small town was the Second Prince Link, who was now an ice-cold corpse. And, the murderer was the second-highest ranked Dukedom personage in the city, the new knight domain lord Kaen Stark. Meanwhile, the royal Cliff squadron was the strongest military force in the Dukedom, and the Cliff squadron was loyal to the royalty and would fight Prince Link’s murderer to the very last man. Even if the undead, who were enemy of all the living, were present, it would be impossible to avoid a bloody internal conflict between the living.

I and Salima simultaneously glanced in Blaiman’s direction. If this truly was a well-timed scheme, then only the undead and the Death Council would benefit. However, Blaiman nervously stood up while constantly waving his hands no.

“This… we didn’t do this, we knew nothing about this! We would have retreated long ago if we had planned this!”

*Shing!* (Sword unsheathed)

“We? Who are you talking about, we!?”

“Blaiman, explain yourself!”

I took a deep breath during all this chaos, and relaxed myself on my chair. I even placed both my feet onto the table. Everyone still avoided the area around me, even though there was now a huge commotion.

There was nothing else to discuss here. I had truly fallen into such a pitfall here, not to mention it was all voluntary on my part. I didn’t even need to get involved in this meeting in the first place.

I believed that Blaiman was telling the truth regarding not knowing about the Undead Calamity. After all, the Death Council had been working so hard at bringing sacrifices into the ruins in order to open the Dimensional Door to the Death Planes. The Death Council had paid a great price already to see this happen, yet the Dimensional Door had been opened without the sacrifices even arriving. This was most likely due to a sudden change in the situation.

“…The souls within the Sky Tower.”

I suddenly realized what it had to be thanks to Timlad’s earlier story. Actually, the ritual and blood from the sacrifice ceremony wasn’t important at all. The true essence of the sacrifice was how the souls died while filled with agony and hatred. That was the true energy required to open the Dimensional Door. And now that I knew that the ruins were actually a Sky Tower, that meant the Sky Tower possessed plenty of souls to begin with.

The rest of my analysis was even simpler. Either the remaining Death Council members at the ruins managed to open a Dimensional Door, or something happened within the ruin itself.

“How large is the scale of the undead army?”

Since things were like this already, figuring out the cause wasn’t all that important. The most important was to deal with the current situation.

“…There’s too many to even count. There should be more than fifty thousand at minimum, with five or six Undead Lords leading them, or perhaps a powerful undead at Myth rank or higher. By the way, there’re even some existences that I can’t comprehend among the undead. Either they’re new undead types that I haven’t seen in my three hundred years of being a hermit, or there’s going to be big trouble here.”

“New undead types? Could you be more specific in their descriptions?”

Undead that a dragon lich wouldn’t recognize? This directly attracted my interest.

“…There’s some strange metallic parts on those undead as if the undead were put together with the metal. I don’t know their combat strength yet, but they have inconceivably powerful soulfire. It’s as if their souls are the strength of one hundred normal souls condensed. You also know that souls are the foundation for any undead’s strength. Also, they seem to have powerful emotions, just as if they were living!”

There was no need for Winlair to say anything else. Something had definitely happened with the ruins. These new undead sounded like half undead and half artificial constructs. It was highly likely that they were indeed a new undead species. This was majorly troublesome.

“Timlad, how many souls would be contained in an average Sky Tower?”

“How many? Every single dead soul from the scholars’ generation had all been put into the seven Sky Towers that I knew of. If those ruins are really an eighth Sky Tower, then the number would be a really high amount. Yep, if it’s really a ‘Scholars’ Generation Reconstruction Plan’ as you surmise, then there would be one million at the minimum. With the population at that time, it might even contain ten million souls. And if I was in charge of reviving the scholars’ generation, I would have invested more than twenty million souls into this Sky Tower.”

Alright then, I really wanted to smash my head against the ground right now. If there were more than ten or even twenty million souls offered as a sacrifice to open the Dimensional Door to the Death Planes, there would be no restrictions whatsoever on what undead could arrive. It would seem that I would have to mentally prepare myself to even face an Undead Emperor.

“Undead Emperor Conservation, is it?”

I had tried to investigate this Undead Emperor named Conservation already. However, either Conservation was the type who kept a really low profile, or my information was outdated as I found out nothing whatsoever about this individual. However, no Undead Emperor would ever be easy to deal with. And, an Undead Calamity with and without an Undead Emperor leading them would be two completely different levels of difficulty to deal with. No matter how powerful an Undead Calamity was, it would still be at the scale of only a local battle. However, an Undead Emperor leading an Undead Calamity would mean that a national-level destructive crisis could appear at any moment. All Undead Emperors would be highly skilled at destroying entire worlds and spreading death.

“I suggest that Countess Salima temporarily takes the position of our acting commander for defense! She should be able to lead us through this difficult time.”

“Agreed!”

“No objections!”

The scouts had brought plenty of information about the Undead Calamity already. Nobody here at this meeting was an idiot, and fighting over the position of authority at such a time would be of the utmost foolishness. Naturally, Blood Spear Countess Salima, who was a general with military experience, was voted as the temporary leader of the adventurers and mercenaries.

“…Can we retreat and run?”

Some people were already shaken and wanted to run at the news of the Undead Calamity. However, not a single person at the meeting responded to them. This wasn’t because of their pride as humans, but rather because this was an area filled with flat plains. It really might not be possible to escape in time. Not only that—this was the only mountain passage leading to the ruins. If this defensible location was lost, everyone would die even more quickly.

Run away? Sure, but that would require a powerful individual to guard this location and stall for as much time as possible. Then, the others would be able to escape.

But, when it came to the battle between the living and the undead, anyone who ran from the undead would have their reputation ruined for life. And with such a mortal enemy before them, even if people were inwardly thinking about how to run away, they couldn’t say it out loud.

“Then, I’ll accept the position of temporary acting commander. Since you all want me to lead, I’ll be blunt with everyone. This current situation isn’t about the Sala Dukedom internal civil war anymore. Ever since the new Dawn Generation of FT, Undead Calamities have already destroyed several countries. Even if you can run, just how far do you think you can run? Don’t let me see any of you running; otherwise, I’ll be the first to kill you mercilessly.”

Salima didn’t even attempt to conceal the killing intent in her single revealed eye. She clearly desired to see fresh blood. Her statement of killing anyone who fled was definitely not just for show.

“Since I’m going to be leader, I’m going to say just three things. First, Link was killed by that idiot. He’s an undead spy, unrelated to anyone else here.”

Right after she said that, some others heaved a sigh of relief. As long as this was the story given, things would be much easier for them.

“Hey… you b*tch, you betrayed…”

Kaen paused in surprise for a moment, and didn’t even get to finish his sentence when a dagger aimed straight for his bank. Even an almost-Legend rank knight like him was unable to react when the major factions’ assassins aimed at him simultaneously.

He wanted to resist, but he felt numbness in his knee that forced him to kneel.

“Bastards! You’re just throwing me away after I served my purpose!”

Kaen cursed and tried to stand up again, but two Legend-ranked assassins held onto his arms. At this moment, there was a sudden silver flash of light.

A silver short arrow had suddenly arrived from an unknown location, directly piercing through his throat. This prevented Kaen from saying any dying words.

‘Impossible…!’

Kaen’s eyes were beginning to go blank. He couldn’t believe that his mission to restore his family’s glory had ended with his own death before it even began.

Kaen clutched at his throat in disbelief, and finally saw a black-clad figure outside the window on the rooftop. A certain dark ranger was now maniacally laughing. Shink’s single eye now contained delight and fervor from having finally taken his revenge instead of the fires of hatred.

The glory and status that Kaen obtained through betrayal was also ended by betrayal. All his schemes and ambitions became nothing.

“Shink…”

Shink was the final person that Kaen saw in his life. The betrayer died due to being betrayed by Salima whom he had cooperated with. The avenger got the revenge that he desired. Through our soul connection, I sensed that Shink was far more approving of our contract than before. However, everyone seemed to be even more on guard against me.

“If I say that all of this was unexpected, would you believe me?”

Alright, they all realized that Shink was my subordinate. Perhaps, what they all saw was that Diyana had been constantly standing by the window in order to open the window for that ranger waiting to ambush someone. As for whom the ranger was targeting, they all figured that it had been someone other than Kaen until the unexpected situation.

Right now, there was no need for me to make a show of force or do anything. That would be seen as trying to steal the position of authority.

However, the power of imagination was limitless. They definitely wouldn’t believe me if I told them the truth. And so, I spoke to Salima, telling her this…

“Actually, I’m only here on vacation, there’s no need to mind me… Cough, alright, I have no objections to Lady Blood Spear becoming the leader. Please continue with your announcement. Time is quite valuable right now.”

She glanced at me but didn’t say anything else. She also knew that now wasn’t the time to start trouble, so she continued with her second point.

“The second thing I wanted to say is that the situation isn’t as bad as everyone thinks it is. The Dukedom’s reinforcements will be arriving here within a week. Link requested reinforcements before his death. The reinforcements include the royal mages, knights, and engineers. Originally, they were coming here to strengthen the blockade, or even construct a fortress, but things have changed unexpectedly. The royal reinforcements will become our reinforcements, fighting for the side of the living.”

Many eyes glanced over at Prince Link’s corpse on the floorboard. Who knew that he had done such a good deed before his death?

“What about the final point?”

Salima’s eye was filled with naked killing intent as she surveilled everyone around her.

“We don’t have the time to slowly toy with any spies. We need to completely eliminate any unstable factors within Starwood City. We need to kill all damned disciples of the Death Council! They might open the city gates at any moment!”

“Haha, well said, yep… Eh? Diyana, why are you nudging me? Why is everyone looking at me?”

I had just wanted to agree loudly to ease the atmosphere, then I looked down at myself and noticed how my black robe’s appearance seemed so attention-grabbing. The fact that I had been widely declaring myself to be an evil undead mage now seemed to be giving me great trouble.

“Wait a moment, this isn’t right! I’m not a member of the Death Council!”

“He, he’s the disciple of a Legend-ranked lich! He’s a high-ranked leader of the Death Council! I have evidence here!”

This hoarse scream came from Blaiman. The Undead Calamity wouldn’t care at all if you were part of the Death Council, and the black market merchant was now scared out of his wits. His so-called evidence was the note I had returned to him in the Laiton demon language.

“F*ck, why is there such a pitfall for me like this!”

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