Episode 142: The Selection of Gastal (3)
After issuing the order to kill the man named Victor, Frize made her way to the annex.
Originally, it had been her father’s meditation room, but now the entire annex served as Gastal’s laboratory.
Frize flung open the door and stepped inside.
What had once been a barren meditation space was now cluttered with all sorts of chemicals and corpses.
“Looks like you’re back,” Gastal remarked, turning to face Frize.
In stark contrast to the gruesome surroundings, Gastal was impeccably dressed in a sharp suit.
“Could you wait a moment? I was just about to inject the refined memories.”
Before Gastal stood a large glass cylinder.
Inside, a mysterious green fluorescent liquid filled the chamber, and a middle-aged man’s corpse floated within.
The body was far from intact. Half of its face was covered with a metal plate, limbs were mismatched, and its torso was inscribed with dense black magic circles.
Despite the horrific sight, Frize gazed at the corpse with a face full of longing.
She couldn’t help it. The body was none other than her father, Count Adrian.
The first Swordmaster born to the Almond Count family.
A knight renowned for his mighty sword that could cleave mountains in two.
It was thanks to him that the county had been elevated to a duchy.
But a few years ago, Count Adrian had succumbed to a sudden illness.
After his death, a pack of wolves descended upon the duchy, eager to tear it apart.
The duchy’s authority was severely shaken, and they began to seize various interests through cunning schemes.
If it hadn’t been for Dominico, Adrian’s disciple, ascending to high class, the duchy would have crumbled entirely.
”…I gave Dominico the order to kill that man, just as you asked,” Frize said.
“Thank you for doing that,” Gastal replied, though his tone was anything but grateful. Frize glared at him and asked, “Why don’t you handle it yourself? With your skills, it would be easy.”
“You’re right. I could kill him easily,” Gastal admitted.
“Then why…?”
“It felt ominous,” Gastal said, his gaze fixed on Adrian’s body in the glass.
“My instincts kept warning me not to fight him. I’m usually good at sensing these things.”
Frize couldn’t comprehend it. She knew all too well how terrifying a dark sorcerer Gastal was.
“So… you asked me to deal with it?”
“It would be nice if you did, but I’m not counting on it.”
“Then why give such an order…?”
“At the very least, it buys me time to finish my research.”
The completion of his research.
Frize’s eyes widened at those words. She spoke with a glimmer of hope.
“Does that mean the dark magic you’ve been working on is complete?”
“It’s nearly there. I just need the final materials.”
“Then… Father will come back, right? He’ll return?”
“Hmm?”
Gastal looked at her as if she were speaking nonsense. A seed of unease sprouted in Frize’s heart.
“You told me that once your research was complete, you could bring the dead back to life! That you could revive Father…”
“Oh, that,” Gastal said, as if recalling something he’d forgotten.
“Can’t be done.”
For a moment, Frize couldn’t process Gastal’s words.
“What… what do you mean?”
“Reviving someone is impossible. Even the Holy Order’s High Priest couldn’t do it.”
Gastal spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
The resurrection of the dead.
It was a subject countless dark sorcerers had pursued.
It wasn’t entirely without hope. Dark sorcerers were experts in dealing with souls.
So why not simply reconnect the original soul to the body?
Yet, no dark sorcerer had ever succeeded in such an experiment.
“Then what was all that talk about? You said you could bring him back! You even showed me Father, if only for a moment!”
“That was just a temporary playback of memories.”
“What… what are you saying?”
“A corpse retains the regrets and memories it held in life,” Gastal explained, gesturing to Adrian’s body.
“So I extracted and replayed your father’s memories. It was incomplete, so it could only be shown briefly.”
Frize’s mouth slowly fell open. The realization that Gastal had deceived her began to sink in.
“Why… why would you do such a thing?”
“I needed a lab. A safe place where I could consistently secure research materials. Thanks to you opening the ruins, all my problems were solved.”
Gastal’s lips curled into a satisfied smile.
“Then what exactly were you researching? If not bringing the dead back to life, then what…?”
“Oh, you’re curious about that?”
Gastal chuckled, seemingly pleased with her question.
“My real research was creating a Master-class Death Knight based on your father’s body.”
The goal of necromancers, whether they belonged to the School of Necromancy or the School of Aberrations, was singular.
To create an undead that surpassed the Master class.
Of course, it was no easy feat.
A Master-class warrior was a superhuman, a genius who had dedicated their entire life to training.
Even for a grand dark sorcerer, creating an undead that surpassed the Master class was nearly impossible.
“Turning Father into… a Death Knight?”
“Exactly! Isn’t it a magnificent plan? A Death Knight rivaling the Master class!”
Gastal’s face lit up with a bright smile, as if the very thought filled him with excitement.
“A body that had already reached the Master class! With memories, it was entirely possible! Well… it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped. Do you know why?”
The smile vanished from Gastal’s face in an instant.
“Because the memories were incomplete. Your father had been dead too long, and too many memories were lost.”
When memories were incomplete, they had to be supplemented with others.
So Gastal approached Frize to obtain the memories of exceptional warriors.
“The research… was a great success. By forcibly filling the incomplete vessel, it became quite impressive.”
Gastal turned to Frize.
“All thanks to you. I appreciate your help…”
“Gastal!”
Unable to listen any longer, Frize lunged at Gastal, grabbing him by the collar and shouting.
“I won’t… I won’t let you get away with this…!”
Gastal, looking displeased, shook off her grip. He adjusted his clothes as if something filthy had touched him.
“Won’t let me get away with it? That’s convenient. I was thinking the same thing.”
Frize sprang to her feet, shouting.
“You’ve ruined our family, and now you say you won’t let it go? You filthy…”
Crack.
A sound she had never heard before reached her ears. The sound of skin and muscle tearing, of bones breaking.
”…”
Frize slowly looked down. Gastal’s hand was buried in her chest.
“Your memories are the final piece to complete the Death Knight.”
Gastal withdrew his hand, and Frize crumpled to the floor.
With a flick of his fingers, Gastal extracted Frize’s soul from her body.
He forcibly tore her soul apart, extracting only the memories.
-Aaaah!
Frize’s soul screamed in agony, but Gastal’s hand never faltered.
“It’s done.”
With another gesture, the memories extracted from Frize were injected into Adrian.
Adrian’s eyebrows twitched. Gastal’s eyes widened at the sight.
“Oh, oh! The body responds immediately to the memories of its kin! This is it! This is what I was hoping for…”
At that moment, the door to the annex burst open. Dominico rushed in, shouting.
“Lady Frize! You must escape!”
Dominico froze in his tracks, his eyes darting between Frize’s lifeless body and Gastal.
“Hmm? You’ve arrived at last?”
Gastal asked nonchalantly. In that instant, Dominico let out a roar and charged.
He poured all his energy into his broken zweihander, a red aura flaring up around it.
“Gastal!”
Dominico swung his greatsword at Gastal. In that moment, countless spears erupted from Gastal’s shadow.
The black spears shattered Dominico’s sword and pierced through his body.
“Ugh!”
Dominico’s body came to a halt, impaled by the spears, blood spilling from his mouth.
“How… how can you… use aura…?”
“Aura? It’s not that impressive. My creations can use it just as well.”
Skeletons emerged from Gastal’s shadow, each gripping a spear.
Amazingly, the spears they held were enveloped in a dark aura.
“Interrupting such a joyous moment. How rude.”
Gastal looked at Dominico with displeasure.
“Well, I’ll forgive you. You’re the second research material, after all.”
“Second… what nonsense are you…?”
“You don’t need to know. But it’s a bit lonely watching alone. Care to join me?”
Gastal waved his hand through the air, and dark magic gathered to form a mirror.
“This is…”
With a snap of his fingers, an image appeared on the mirror.
Dominico quickly realized what the mirror was showing.
It was the White Kingdom.
“We’re a bit short on memories to activate the Death Knight,” Gastal remarked, opening a pocket dimension and pulling out a staff.
“In such cases, quantity over quality is the way to go.”
Gastal summoned his dark magic, and a surge of black energy shot up, blowing the roof off the annex.
It wasn’t just the roof. The dark magic spread, obliterating everything in the annex.
The only thing left intact was the glass chamber beside Gastal.
Dominico trembled. To see a building destroyed by the mere release of magic—he had never witnessed anything like it.
“Watch closely. See how I gather the numbers.”
Gastal struck the ground with his staff.
Across the White Kingdom, a legion of skeletons emerged.
Damian brushed off the blood that had stained the dawn.
The ground was littered with the bodies of the White Kingdom’s knights and soldiers.
They had charged with all their might, but they were no match for Damian.
“Time has been wasted.”
Just as Damian was about to pursue Dominico, spirits began to rise from the corpses. They wailed at Damian.
-Stop! Don’t go! Leave him alone!
-You cruel monster! After killing so many, you still won’t stop?
The spirits poured out their anger and hatred at Damian.
They hadn’t allied with the dark sorcerer out of personal desire.
It was their loyalty to Frize that drove them to stand in Damian’s way.
Even in death, they tried to stop Damian for Frize’s sake.
“Silence!”
Damian shouted at the spirits.
“You knew about the dark sorcerer’s existence and still concealed it! Not only that, you sent dungeon explorers to Gastal!”
The ruins were perilous, with a high mortality rate.
Many had been sacrificed as research material for Gastal.
And it was the knights and soldiers of the White Kingdom who had kidnapped explorers from the ruins and delivered them to Gastal.
-We acted for the Lady’s sake!
-Do not insult our loyalty!
“That doesn’t erase your crimes. Keep quiet before I obliterate your souls!”
The spirits fell silent under Damian’s murderous intent.
Then, from the direction Dominico had fled, a massive surge of dark magic erupted.
The dark magic spread across the White Kingdom, forming a dark spell.
Watching the scene, Damian clenched his teeth.
”…It’s finally begun.”