Chapter 266: A Precious Memory

With the lich a few inches in front of me, I had a split second to think about what I should do with him.

If I destroyed his main body now, he would only reincarnate somewhere else and continue killing my forces. Besides, there are a lot of questions I had that only he could answer, like why did he reveal Damian’s weakness to Mariah?

Was this important? Possibly.

It could be information that would be crucial to the future, and then again, it could just be the ambition of one man. I had an important choice to make.

In the end, I made my decision and activated my eyes of deception.

With me being so close to him, the lich couldn’t react in time to my incoming claws. My claws smashed through the lich’s skull as if it was made of dried wood. In order to kill this lich, I had to destroy its phylactery, then its main body.

For this particular lich, its phylactery was hidden in his memory. For him to access the memory I had to destroy his main body.

This was the issue I was facing. The issue was that for me to make him remember his memory, I have to destroy his main, which creates a paradox since in order to kill him, I have to make him remember the memory first before I destroyed his main body.

I can’t get to his memory without destroying the main body but if I destroyed I can’t kill him.

The sequence of how things needed to happen and how they could happen seemed practically impossible. This series of contradictions made him seem impossible to kill, yet still, I had to figure out a way to get the job done.

My plan was to somehow find a loophole in all this. Just maybe everything wasn’t as cut and dry as it first seemed. I was banking on this to kill the lich. After smashing the lich’s skull, I lifted him up into the air with only one hand.

Though he was only a pile of bones, he was surprisingly heavy, but still, with my strength, I lifted him up with little effort.

“Pointless…” Suddenly a cold emotionless voice rang out. Since it was a skeleton and didn’t possess any of the organs needed to speak, I figured it was communicating by using its magic. “Your efforts are fruitless.”

The lich spoke arrogantly as if he was confident I wouldn’t be able to kill him. It not only thought that I didn’t know the secrets behind its immortality, but also if I did, I still wouldn’t be able to figure out a way to kill him.

I didn’t react to its condescending words and instead used most of my strength to slam the arrogant lich into the ground. The roof below us cracked, but the force of the impact wasn’t enough to break through to the floor below; instead, it was the lich’s body that gave out first.

Under the force of being slammed to the ground, its bones shattered into several pieces small pieces.

…

The last thing the lich remembered seeing was the face of the man who slammed him to the ground. At that moment, he fully expected that his main body would be destroyed.

Though it was a nuisance, it didn’t matter much; he would be reincarnated anyway. He could feel himself drifting in an endless darkness just as he had done the many hundreds of times where his main body was destroyed.

But soon, a light began to flicker in this darkness. As if driven by madness, he immediately reached for the ball of floating light. The moment he saw the ball of light, his instincts took over, and he felt it in his very being that it was something he must possess.

The ball floated towards him, but still, he felt impatient seeing the speed at which it was moving towards him. He had to wait until the ball of light was finally close enough. That was when he grabbed it.

The moment he touched the ball of light, a flood of memories rushed to his mind. This memory was one of his most painful memories, but yet it was one of his most precious.

This memory was from when he was a boy. It was a memory that was from thousands of years in the past. A time where most of the buildings were made of sticks and stones. A time where men wielded swords and spears instead of modern weapons, and a single tomb took years and thousands of sacrifices to be built.

It was the time of the pyramids when the first ever human civilization was constructed.

What the lich saw was the image of a slave boy forced to work under inhumane conditions. The boy was so skinny that you could see the outline of his ribs. The boy’s limbs were also twisted and his skin was stripping off. This was the form his body developed into after years of harsh labor.

The slave boy laid on the ground on the verge of death after being beaten for stealing food, and just as he thought it was the end of everything, his savior arrived.

A beautiful white-haired woman with horns on her head and eyes the same color of flames. A demon, yet still she saved his life and cared for him just like a mother.

The lich didn’t know who this woman was, yet still he had come to see her as a mother. She even taught him the ways of magic.

Just seeing her face again caused him immense joy, and it gave him the strength to go on living so that one day he could see her face again, but just then, as he took in the face of the woman he considered his mother, the world around him changed.

He was no longer in that darkness; instead, he was back on the rooftop.

…

Looking at the lich in front of me, I could tell that my eyes of deception had worked. I was able to trick him into believing that I had destroyed his main body.

The question now was whether or not this was enough to trigger him to remember the memory.

“Mom… my memory, how did you…” the lich mumbled.

That was it!

That was the confirmation I needed. At that moment, it seemed as if the lich had finally realized what had happened. He tried to retaliate, but it was too late as I quickly signaled Sköll.

“End it.”

With that single command, Sköll sucked in the air around him just like Hati had done, while I held the lich in place. In a panic, the lich squirmed and bashed its staff against my head, but it had no effect. I didn’t even bat an eye at his weak attack or make an effort to block it.

When Sköll had finished sucking up all the air around him, he released it all at once towards me and the lich. The air that escaped his mouth turned into flames as it washed over both me and the lich.

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