Chapter 631: Truthful Lie

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

“Suana, would you like to come back to life?”

I said this out loud in public in front of so many elves. This was no sudden idea of mine, as this was an important part of my overall plan.

This wasn’t for the sake of something small like balancing the moon elves’ power struggles. Actually, the dark elves and Northlands were capable of suppressing the moon elves, so the moon elves wouldn’t be able to cause too much trouble. Rather than the three Northlands moon elf kingdoms which were already scared witless, I was far more worried about Victoria and the dark elves who were becoming more powerful every day.

I had mentioned revival at this time mainly in order to decrease my troubles.

Harloys had been revived and was now alive again? It was a fact that she was now alive. This would pass any magical or Divine Art examination. However, I would need to give an explanation about how the dead person was revived. Otherwise, I would truly have a great deal of trouble.

This wasn’t something ethereal like punishment for breaking taboos. This would be a concrete clash of benefits.

Maybe one day, some Myth-ranked hero would come up to me with an important subordinate of mine as a hostage, demanding that I revive some unfortunate individual who was only a skeleton.

Basically, just the knowledge that I had the power to revive others would become truly troublesome. Even if I was famously known as an “incredibly evil villain”, as long as it became known that I possessed the power to revive others from the dead, one of the most miraculous powers possible, it would still be so much trouble for me.

Many powerful individuals had lost people extremely important to them while they were younger. Even if they knew that time couldn’t be rewound, and that revival would definitely require a tremendous price, it would still be incredibly tempting. It was likely that endless people would start trying to use me somehow.

In that case, rather than those people trying to blackmail me and so on, it would be much better for me to find an excuse and publicize the conditions and restrictions for revival. Even if some still didn’t want to give up, at least the majority would believe this, and I would have far less trouble.

“Suana, I can revive you because you’re a natural undead,” I said out loud in front of all the elves. However, I was no idiot who would tell the truth here. If I had said instead that a sufficient amount of souls and power would be required as equivalent exchange to revive the dead, even if this sounded evil and selfish and as if it was a bad deal, there would always be those who didn’t care about the lives of others. I had already seen countless people among dark cultists and so on who would shout things like “I’m just doing this to revive my beloved, who cares about the lives of ordinary commoners? I’m doing this for the sake of justice!”

Additionally, if I stated the truth that I was capable of reviving any undead whose soul had yet to enter the Cycle of Reincarnation, it was likely that soon, large numbers of tremendous blood sacrifices would appear in Eich. Perhaps I would even receive a nickname like “The Man Who Can Destroy the World with His Words”.

That would be no joking matter. Any powerful individual considered neutral or evil who received the chance to revive the person most important to them would unhesitatingly slaughter entire cities to harvest souls. As for the powerful individuals who appeared to be on the side of good, just how many of them would be able to resist the chance to undo the greatest regret of their lives?

“Revival was an unexpected byproduct of my research. Natural undead and ordinary undead are fundamentally different. The former are closer to the living. That’s why, as long as a suitable physical body is created, I can use my secret technique to repair the inadequacies of the soul and completely revive that person.”

Everything I said was the truth. However, it wasn’t the complete truth. Indeed, natural undead had greater potential than even the living. It would be far easier to revive a natural undead. Yet, this didn’t mean that I was incapable of reviving ordinary undead.

However, those who heard me here would likely misunderstand me. They would believe that I meant Harloys had only been revived because she had been a natural undead.

“Natural undead… Those who still remain in the mortal plane after death, yet without relying on the power of death. There’s probably less than ten natural undead in the entire world. Yes, they are fundamentally different from ordinary undead. They’re not bloodthirsty like them, nor do they require the power of death to power their physical bodies. Their physical bodies operate almost exactly like a living person’s would. From a certain standpoint, a natural undead is simply the spirit of a living person who lost their physical body!”

Arch druid Fenkar’s commentary on natural undead was quite helpful. As an authority on nature and life, Fenkar’s words were completely factual. His expression of sudden realization and his reputation all made this sound even more convincing.

Natural undead were the dead who had been unwilling to die. The natural undead were able to naturally revive themselves in a state of undeath without any outside assistance. These undead would be far more powerful than ordinary undead, and possess growth potential far more powerful than that of ordinary living individuals. The birth of any natural undead would also represent an extreme grudge or desire, typically born from some major grievance.

There were incredibly few natural undead in the world. Naturally, the first natural undead in the world had been Ayer. As for the natural undead currently in the world who were quite famous, there were only myself, Harloys, and Suana.

I was the “Undying Roland”. This type of undying trait which exceeded even the power of the Cycle of Reincarnation seemed inconceivable to others to begin with. But now, I was saying that it was possible to revive natural undead. This basically gave an explanation to my own “undying” ability—I, Roland Mist, was a natural undead, and I had the power to revive the natural undead, which was why I was undying.

I was probably one of the only existences in the world who simultaneously possessed the powers of Holy Light and Death. Back in the Northlands, I had shown everyone the power to create life by combining these two powers. This was evidence of my unique mastery over life and the soul.

Not to mention, the other person I “revived” had been the natural undead Harloys. This all seemed to be convincing evidence for what I just claimed.

Yep, that was right, my way of dealing with this was to make everyone misunderstand that revival was limited to only the natural undead. It would greatly decrease my troubles.

This was no pure lie. It would be impossible for me to revive any soul which had entered the Cycle of Reincarnation already. Basically, I would be unable to revive anyone who had died too long ago. In that case, someone who could be revived would have to be a recent corpse and soul brought to me, or a container would have to be used to store someone’s soul. This would eliminate more than 99% of those I could revive… Cough, cough, I was getting off topic. Regardless of that, revival was far too miraculous and imbalanced, so it would be better to seal this power away.

“I, I… I?”

Everyone glanced over at the banshee Suana. She was so shocked that half her body became translucent. It was likely that she had never even considered the possibility of coming back to life.

“Don’t be in a rush. You can think things over slowly. Right now, I don’t have the time to perform the revival ritual for you. I can do it for you in the Northlands after the current trouble is resolved. Rest assured, there’s no need to be afraid. It already succeeded for both myself and Harloys. It’s not that difficult to revive a natural undead.”

Everything I said was the truth, as well as intentionally designed to mislead. I also heaved a sigh of relief upon seeing the elves around me nodding in apparent understanding and exchanging glances with each other.

“Life and death are eternal parts of the Cycle of Reincarnation.”

Large-scale revival would definitely break the natural balance of things. Perhaps some Nature Faction powerful individual or God would suddenly try and attack me for it. Occasionally reviving a few might still be acceptable, and druids who weren’t extremists probably wouldn’t try and attack me for it… But when considering how passionate those nature worshippers were and how dangerous their fanatics could be, I felt it would probably be best for me to stay far away from those naked-loving individuals in the future.

“If the druids dare to cause me any trouble, I’ll send out my super anti-druid weapon… Beifeng!”

Well, I didn’t actually say that out loud, as using such a terrible weapon of mass destruction in the mortal plane would likely make me public enemy #1 of the entire world. At this moment, Suana finally reacted and shook her head. It seemed like she intended to refuse.

“…Thank you for the offer, Your Highness. However, I’m already dead, and the rules of nature—”

However, I personally covered her mouth and prevented her from continuing.

“So you mean that I and Harloys should both go dig pits and bury ourselves somewhere?”

“Your Highness, I, that’s not what I meant…”

I patted Suana on the head and touched her body. Her spiritual body felt quite smooth.

“Little girl, don’t be so stubborn. Learn to accept the kindness of your elders. That’s also a type of respect.”

“Elder…”

Suana paused in surprise as she lowered her head. The flashing of her soul body revealed the turmoil in her heart.

“Oh, you probably didn’t know? Your father was previously my first disciple ever. When thinking about it, there’s no mistake in saying that I’m your elder.”

“What?”

Not only was Suana shocked, even all the other elves had looks of disbelief. The former king of the Tassel Elf Kingdom had been Roland’s disciple? What was this?

“Heeheehee, I was called Roland Blackhand back in the day. Adrian was my disciple. I’m sure that you can find out this information? He even personally killed me back in the day, successfully slaying his teacher. As expected of a newcomer from this generation. He really did a good job. Right, Harloys also taught me my magic, and she helped me greatly in both ice magic and death magic. I truly have such a connection to the elves, heehee.”

I laughed out loud in a proud tone, but received nothing but forced dry chuckles. The elves were evidently shocked and feeling helpless, likely unable to accept this for the time being.

Since I had already revealed that information, I might as well reveal even more. From a certain standpoint, I was truly deeply connected to the elves. Gold Elf Harloys had taught me my magic, and then I used the magic I learned to kill many elves. During the process, an elven disciple of mine had also backstabbed me. To begin with, I took the path I did because of the Mist Kingdom’s destruction, and the elves were also responsible for that… This all felt connected in a roundabout way.

The elves had betrayed Harloys. She was filled with hatred and grudges due to this, and taught someone who became Undead Emperor Yongye. Yongye then caused the scariest calamity to the elves in all of history… The God of Fate had been correct. Sometimes, Fate was just so ironic and dramatic in its arrangements. Everything had been perfectly arranged by karma. The elves’ betrayal had directly caused their own calamity. This invisible chain of karma was so “coincidentally” perfect to the point where I didn’t know what to say.

Oh, right, Adrian killed his own daughter Suana, and then I killed him. It would seem that apart from killing teachers, our generation also had the habit of killing children.

“Stop calculating it all. My head hurts. Are we really cursed…”

It would seem that even the silly cat was no longer able to handle these messy karmic connections.

Actually, we all knew that this was no curse. Adrian and I had only been a disciple and teacher who took advantage of and schemed against each other. It was only natural that we ended up killing each other.

However, I wasn’t exposing my teacher-disciple relationship with Adrian just to convince Suana to accept my friendly intentions. After all, back when I fought Adrian, our teacher-disciple relationship hadn’t helped at all. I was saying this out loud mostly to inform the elves that Suana was under my protection, so they shouldn’t meddle with her.

It was true—I truly didn’t trust the elves. There were far too many obvious differences between short-lived and long-lived species. I was truly worried that if we didn’t suppress the elves, they would cause huge trouble.

Without mentioning anything else, the Mist Alliance currently had a system where all species had equal opportunities. If long-lived species like elves worked together with shorter-lived species in the Mist Alliance’s organizations, the replacement of other species’ individuals wouldn’t be able to compare with an elf who could hold the same position for decades. All the elves simply had to do was wait for their competitors to die of old age, and then they would likely be able to take higher positions for themselves. And when the elves were in higher positions, it was likely that they would only promote other elves.

From a certain standpoint, since all species were unequal, the so-called system of equal opportunities would only create inequality. If ability was related to species, then the final result would naturally be that the longer-lived, more talented species would gain power in the end. Would the shorter-lived species which were more numerous be willing to accept the longer-lived species standing on top of their heads? In the end, violence and infighting would be the expectable result.

Even though an equal opportunity policy seemed fair and equal, it truly wasn’t suitable for a magical world like Eich with tremendous differences between intelligent species. The prerequisite for equal opportunities would be that lifespans needed to be equal first.

“Why think about so much right now? We won’t have any future if we don’t overcome the current trouble before us.”

Harloys’ words made me stop my thinking. I shook my head and stopped thinking about such useless things.

Indeed, the current upcoming demon wave had yet to be dealt with. Worrying about the future of the Mist Alliance was indeed unnecessary right now.

“After this incident is finished with, I should go modify the Codex of Law again, and at least make the Law more flexible…”

“Is this a death flag?”

“No, it’s just confidence that I can survive. We’ve already survived so many difficult situations before, so what could possibly stop us now?”

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