Chapter 336: Undead Emperor (Part 2)
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
“Gone missing again? How is this possible?”
Although it was quite difficult for a skeletal face to express much astonishment, the lich Edwin was unable to contain his disbelief at the news he just heard.
This was now the second night after General Commander and City Lord Davey’s armies had started gathering in this canyon. The unbelievable news was that undead were continually going missing in this campground.
If it were only ordinary low-level undead that went missing, it wouldn’t be a big deal, because it was common for them to lose their way. If it were only mid-level elite undead that went missing, it could be understood that perhaps there were adventurers secretly waiting in ambush that took them out. But the missing undead were…
“Yes, the southwest district’s Undead Lord Caben’s camp is utterly empty. The tents, equipment, and even personal items remain, but it’s just that there’s not a single undead left in Lord Caben’s camp!”
The messenger was a ghost, so it obviously had an unclear expression. Yet the fact that it was flickering rapidly indicated that it was the opposite of calm inside.
“How is this possible! This is already the thirty-seventh group that has gone missing. Even with high-level undead patrolling, they still went missing? Right, does Lord Caben know about this already?”
This was such beautiful irony. The undead were meeting a ghost story of their own. The fact that their companions were vanishing without a trace was incomprehensible to them.
Even if there was a sudden ambush, how could there possibly be no signs of anything that occurred? There weren’t even any traces of a fight. If it had been some other species, it might have been the effect of some large AOE mental spell. But all undead were immune to mental magic. How could they possibly disappear en massé like this?
“Lord Caben—Lord Caben was in his camp at the time. He also went missing!”
The lich Edwin suddenly stood up upon hearing this. The soulfire in his eye sockets was flashing—he didn’t really care if some low-level undead suddenly vanished, but all Undead Lords were at the minimum a Legend. How was it possible for an Undead Lord to just mysteriously disappear? Edwin knew that Caben’s power level was definitely equal to his own. If Caben suddenly vanished, didn’t that mean that Edwin himself was in danger as well?
Something or someone that was able to instantly kill an Undead Lord who was on guard? Without leaving a single trace? Despite the fact that several powerful high-level undead were repeatedly patrolling the campground? The lich Edwin hadn’t felt the threat of true death in a very long time. He was now feeling the almost forgotten sensation of a chill running down his spine, faintly feeling as if something was spying on him in the darkness.
“Actually, I do have some clues. I’m just not sure about it yet…”
The ghost’s flickering became even fiercer, as if some secrets were contained within it that made the ghost unable to control itself.
“Just what did you discover! Hurry and tell me!”
Edwin was unable to repress his impatience and faced the ghost directly, grabbing on to its ethereal body as he impatiently shook the ghost.
“That’s, that’s…”
The ghost had yet to finish speaking when it started to disappear. A pitch-black mist filled the room along with the soundless screams of souls. It seemed like some sort of curse had been activated.
“Hurry! I order you to hurry and tell me!”
The impatient Edwin was in a hurry as he approached the ghost and injected a large amount of negative energy through his arm into it in an attempt to maintain the ghost’s body. However, Edwin soon found that something was wrong with the situation.
All the negative energy he injected seemed to disappear, and he soon became unable to retract his arm. Meanwhile, that ghost transformed into a black mist that then transformed into various distorted faces, some familiar to Edwin.
A raspy soul voice echoed throughout the room, emotionless and devoid of warmth.
“Join us…”
“…Why is it you, Caben!?”
The most attention-grabbing face belonged to the recently missing Undead Lord. Edwin knew that he was in a bad situation, so he intended to activate a defense spell. However, his defense spell wouldn’t respond to him at all. And when the black mist finally dissipated, the lich Edwin’s tent was empty. The only sound was the night wind blowing through the still-open window, which caused the diary on the table to flip open, as if the master of this tent was still here.
“Did you hear? Last night, many undead went missing again. How scary. This time, even a lich was among the missing. I heard that not only did he go missing, even his phylactery became empty. There’s actually something out there that can cause a lich and his phylactery to disappear so completely and mysteriously? Truly frightening.”
“What are you afraid of? You’re not an undead.”
The dwarven “auntie” Mary was obviously not interested in Betty’s exclamations. Being stuck in this camp for two days meant two days without alcohol for her. Her spiritless face was filled with fatigue. Mary had claimed that this was simply a dwarven habit and that she would feel better after two days, but I knew that this was, in truth, nothing more than an addiction to alcohol, which would indeed get better after two days… Fine, perhaps she wasn’t wrong and it was just that this was the habit of the entire dwarven race.
“…I just finished my marketing channels. Those undead are truly rich, especially the undead with intelligence. I can exchange for so much precious magic information and gold with only some outdated magazines and books. That lesser lich originally promised to introduce his boss, a lich, to me. However, he and his boss ended up disappearing, which ruined all my plans. Ahhh! That bastard still owes me two silver coins! He was going to use an enchanted skull to pay off his debt to me!!”
“…First of all, an enchanted cursed skull is one of the most precious ingredients in undead magic. For you, a True God’s priest, to carry around such an item is no different from desecration. Not to mention that such an item costs tens of thousands of gold coins. You were planning to accept one for just two silver coins? You’re such an evil merchant.”
What should I even say? That it was to be expected of a Goddess of Wealth priest? They were even willing to make money from the undead!
“Right, I can sell guardian charms blessed by the True Gods! Right now, everyone is in a panic—well, all the undead are in a panic—so I’d definitely make a huge profit!”
“Just don’t go overboard and let the undead discover you. Right, did you notice that recently, all the undead around here have become rather dull? They seem to be roaming around rather blankly…”
Alright then. Betty could make money while spreading the teachings of his church and perhaps even obtain some believers from the undead. This newly created method of earning money probably gave him great favor with Beyana. Meanwhile, my research, too, was making progress.
In the center of a room was a broken-down stone sculpted gravestone. Around it were various spell arrays, drawn and maintained by the silly cat.
“How inconceivable. Just this tiny little portion is the core of a graveyard demon?”
Graveyard demons, one of my research results while I was at the Cloud Tower. They were a super undead creation that I based off of the ancients. [1]
They were abnormal magical beasts that were the incarnations of graveyards. The moment one awakened, it would be a Saint at the minimum, a mega undead war machine. Each graveyard demon’s specific combat strength and abilities depended on the area and history of the graveyard that created it.
If it was an ordinary graveyard… well, ordinary graveyards were incapable of creating graveyard demons. Only graveyards that had over a hundred years of history—thus accumulating a high amount of negative energy—would possibly produce a graveyard demon. And if it was a graveyard demon produced from a battlefield, where a bloody battle had been fought over a hundred years ago, then the graveyard demon would be over a hundred meters tall, a literal giant war machine.
Graveyard demons constructed from battlefields with SemiGod or even Low God corpses would give even True Gods headaches. To be honest, a Demon Lord in the Endless Abyss [2] was a graveyard demon as well, although I heard it was naturally born.
Normal undead mages viewed their creations as the natural products of undead magic, without researching as to the fundamentals of why. This was a problem common to most mages. They were used to all sorts of miracles from magical creation and never asked questions. This was conceit, a conceit that arose due to an overly developed magical society. They missed the hidden scenery amid the vivid colors around them.
The most inconceivable thing about graveyard demons was what they were constructed of. Much of their existence was graveyard earth, which contained incredibly high amounts of negative energy. But even though they contained negative energy and some corpses within them, they were still made up of over 99% earth element.
In that case, basic logic of the elements would say that these graveyard demons should have been earth elemental creatures. But every single mage out there would categorize a graveyard demon as a pure undead creature.
This was doubtlessly against the mainstream ideas of undead research.
Unlike my method of researching about the basic nature and foundation of things, most undead mages started with the physical undead ingredients that they could see and touch. They believed that better quality undead materials would create stronger undead creatures. And this wasn’t wrong at all, even according to my own theories. It was only to be expected for a strong soul to require a strong physical body to wield its power, while gentlemanly—er—healthy souls required healthy bodies to hold them. Otherwise, there would most likely be problems. But this definitely wasn’t all there was to undead construction!
A Legendary corpse would be able to create Legendary undead, but this didn’t mean that every Legendary undead required a Legend’s corpse, or even a corpse of a higher level, to be created. Yet almost all undead mages considered this as common sense, indisputable and truistic.
But if you went by the classic method of undead creation, then it would be impossible to explain why graveyard demons, who were 99% constructed out of the earth element, could be so powerful. Why was it that graveyard demons possessed unimaginably strong desecration auras, astonishing combat strength, and were even able to replenish and help the undead to recover? Nor was there any way to explain the source of its supernatural powers.
Perhaps undead mages would try to claim that the corpses within the graveyard demon had such an effect. However, the corpses buried in a graveyard would undoubtedly be only a random arrangement.
If any random arrangement of materials in a graveyard could create such an incredibly powerful top-level undead, then why would we still need undead magic spell formations and undead mages? This type of answer was nothing more than irony.
However, my more unique field, undead construction, could explain it quite clearly. This was also why I was so interested in graveyard demons.
“Only a soul powerful enough will be able to control such a formidable undead creature. After conducting some studies I have confirmed that this graveyard demon doesn’t have much intelligence—no—I should say that it doesn’t possess any memories or knowledge whatsoever. It’s basically like a newborn baby, a blank soul, yet it’s newly-born at a rank above Legends. Inexplicable.”
Naturally, this caused me to recall the River Styx, which was able to make souls reincarnate. After numerous experiments, I arrived at a conclusion which was likely closest to the truth.
This soul wasn’t a single existence that rested in the graveyard. Instead, it was an amalgamation of the countless soul shards left behind by all the dead within it. This entire graveyard’s earth was the graveyard demon’s physical body, while the soul belonging to it was born from this body.
Perhaps the final conclusion seemed completely out of the norm, but I felt that it was rather logical:
Under the long-term corrosion of negative energy, the typical condition of “life changing into death” was reversed. The corpses laying in the graveyard became the catalyst for transformation, while the earth filled with the bodies completed the transformation from the dead into the living. All the souls in the graveyard combined together into a new, collective will. This soul was hence a newborn, which was why it was blank. It required time and knowledge to help it grow into maturity.
Alright then. Even if I learned the basic foundational reason for why a graveyard demon was produced, was there any actual meaning in it? Graveyards that were over one hundred years old were relatively rare, and there were still many unknowns in how many soul shards from separate individuals could come together and form a collective will. It was still impossible to mass produce graveyard demons.
Still, a person would only be third-rate at best if they could only copy the method by looking at the blueprint. True researchers would be able to change the original blueprint based on their fundamental knowledge. If there were insufficient materials, replacement ingredients could be found. It would even be possible to create something far surpassing the original.
“The formation of graveyard demons requires two basic conditions. First, lots of negative energy has to gather into a relatively independent form. Second, many independent souls are required. In a way, an undead army that’s gathered together matches these basic requirements. An undead army is a complete military unit, which also possesses countless independent soul shards.”
Of course, this alone was far too insufficient. There were still too many unsolved mysteries about the production of graveyard demons. Just gathering undead together wouldn’t fulfill the prerequisites for giving birth to a collective will, which was why I did a little trick.
“Does this gravestone contain the soul for that newly-born graveyard demon?”
“No, no. It’s only Little Three’s soul shard, a small portion I cut off for experimentation. A complete Little Three isn’t actually that useful as he already has his own physical body. But this incomplete soul shard before us is different. It desires to be complete, meaning it’ll work towards my goal. It will become the seed for this soul giant!” [3]
All undead were connected to each other. Undead Emperors controlled the Undead Lords, Undead Lords used soul contracts to control high-level undead, and high-level undead, in turn, controlled large amounts of low-level undead subordinates. In concept, this was, indeed, a soul net. This graveyard demon would be one of the mainstays of an undead army.
If you viewed an undead army as a body, then each member was a cell. It was just that each cell had its own independent will. But if one day a collective will was born, which could order its cells to listen to its commands, causing the cells to lose their independent wills—what would happen?
The current “Little Three” was that collective will. What I did was quite simple: I told him that the entire undead army was his physical body, that the soul net between the undead was his bloodstream and nerves, and that it was time for him to awaken!
“He’s awakened and needs a physical body, a sufficient amount of the power of death to be gathered for him. He also needs all his cells to orderly enter a procession according to his will. He’s a prematurely born baby who’s still lacking in many areas. He wants… to be born!”
I didn’t know just what miraculous changes had happened to Little Three, just as how nobody truly understood how babies obtained their own independent wills and souls. Just what mysterious forces were at work behind this? All I did was fulfill the requirements for such a phenomenon to occur, and it indeed occurred. However…
“…Honestly, I didn’t know what would result from this experiment. But don’t you think that it’s precisely the unknown that’s more exciting? Experiments that are destined to succeed are boring. It’s only the unknown that allures people the most. And as long as this works, my undead construction will have yet another new research result!”
And I had now obtained my research result. In this campground, an undead army came alive as it cleared away impurities within its body and perfected its soul and physical body. It ordered his own bloodstreams, body, limbs, and internal organs to listen to its commands as it crafted a perfect body for itself.
The undead had blank expressions as they walked together, devouring and combining with each other. They couldn’t—and wouldn’t—resist, just like how a physical body would be unable to resist an order from the soul. Only the powerful individuals in the undead army who were strong enough to have Soul Imprints were temporarily able to maintain their own senses of self. However, this only caused the collective will to prematurely come to them and transform them into the body’s nourishment. Since these higher-level undead were also a part of this army, it was only natural for them to be powerless and devoured.
A new soul was being born. As the main experimenter behind everything, I had so many records to write, while my mind was battered with countless flashes of inspiration. I felt as if I was witnessing yet another excellent creation being born. And since this creation was an amalgamation of an army meant for war, I intended to call him “Mars of War.” [4]
Perhaps only Saint-ranked undead, who had their own Soul Worlds, would manage to avoid being classified by Mars as a part of the army of his own body. However, looking at how one unlucky Saint-ranked Undead Lord had become part of Mars, even that might not be sufficient.
Of course, refusing Mars’ summoning was actually quite easy. All an undead needed to do was tell itself that it wasn’t part of the undead army, that it was an outsider. Mars would then be unable to classify that undead as a part of his physical body.
But it was a pity—as long as I didn’t tell anyone, not a single undead would ever think of it.
This was indeed quite unreasonable. But, to use an analogy from the Middle Ages of my original world, if someone prophesized that a large, heavy metal object called an airplane would be capable of flying through the air, then that person would surely be treated as someone insane. Many seemingly unreasonable phenomena were simply because insufficient research had been performed on the topic. Experimental results could help one to reverse engineer the logic behind the result. If I truly succeeded with this experiment, then I would likely be able to theorize the reason for every step of the process that occurred. I would definitely obtain many benefits.
“Um… have you ever considered how to deal with him in the end? He gives me the chills. Aren’t you worried you’ll be unable to control him?”
“Relax, I’ve already thought of everything.”
“You have a completed control mechanism? How did you do it? When did you do it?”
“…I should say that since I have absolutely no idea how to control him, I never intended to control him in the first place. Will a normal parent plan out their child’s future when the child was just born? Let him grow up and mature by himself, free and happy. Yep, judging from his appetite, he’ll be quite a healthy child.”
[He’ll definitely be healthy, but everyone else would become unhealthy! Stop acting like an idiotic parent who’s proud that his naughty child is hyperactive! Can’t you just self-reflect even a little? When not even born fully, he already ate a Saint-ranked undead for his nutrition. Have you ever considered what type of monster he’ll finally become in the end? A body made of high-level undead is clearly much better than earth filled with negative energy. Have you ever considered how strong this undead army physical body of his that’s filled with numerous Undead Lords will become in the end? Combined with the souls, his power will increase exponentially! He’ll be almost limitless in strength! Have you ever considered that there’s a 99% chance that he’ll run out of control? I’ve long since told you that if you don’t stop using undead construction, you’ll destroy the world! System Notification: 5 Justice Points have been deducted for my commenting service. There is no need to thank me. Oh, and do you think it’d be better next time if I use ALL CAPS to roar at you?]
Harloys also nodded with a calm expression—she had long gotten used to how I was.
“…Your Highness, you will definitely destroy this world sooner or later.”
Note:
[1] ED/N: Graveyard demons were previously mentioned in Chapter 308—evidence of foreshadowing!
[2] TL/N: It says Endless Abyss in the raws, so it is probably another name for the Chaos Abyss.
[3] TL/N: “Little Three” is also a Chinese euphemism for an extramarital lover. Untranslatable double entendre.
[4] TL/N: Mars is a reference to the ancient Roman God, Mars, the God of War.