Episode 148: Master (3)
Thiebo always tried to prepare for the worst.
But who could have predicted an undead invasion that would massacre the entire city?
“Damn it, just when I thought life was getting better. What the hell is going on?”
Thiebo cursed as he swung his weapon at the skeletons.
Meeting Victor and acquiring a trove of artifacts had filled him with dreams of a changed life.
Yet, overnight, he found himself fighting for survival.
The only silver lining was that Thiebo wasn’t alone.
“Stay strong, everyone! Don’t fall!”
A multitude of knights battled the skeletons alongside him. Among them, one figure stood out: Deplis.
One of only two High-Class knights in the Macadamia Kingdom.
Deplis’s prowess was extraordinary. With a single swing of his sword, dozens of skeletons shattered.
The problem was, they kept regenerating.
The skeletons Deplis destroyed reassembled themselves, and fatigue was evident on the faces of Deplis and the knights.
“Ugh, argh!”
A skeleton’s spear pierced Thiebo’s shoulder.
Fortunately, his armor held, leaving him unharmed.
“You bastard! This armor’s an artifact, you know!”
Thiebo shouted, bashing the skeleton with his club.
But no matter how hard he hit, the skeleton wouldn’t break. Instead, it grabbed his club and tossed it aside.
“Shit, shit! Damn it!”
Curses spilled from his lips as fear gripped him.
Suddenly, the light in the skeleton’s eye sockets vanished, and it crumbled into bone fragments.
“What? What the…?”
It wasn’t just the skeleton he was fighting. All the skeletons in the city were collapsing.
Everyone was bewildered by the sudden turn of events.
“We’re saved!”
But the relief was short-lived. People cheered, overwhelmed by the joy of survival.
“Phew, phew…”
Thiebo sank to the ground, exhaling a sigh of relief.
“Victor, is that guy safe…?”
He muttered worriedly.
“H-Hey… Hey…!”
Since Damian infused him with dark magic, Gastal writhed on the ground in agony.
“Stop! Stop it! Enough already! Stop tearing my soul apart!”
“No, no! I was wrong! It’s all my fault! Stop! Please, just stop!”
“Kill me… Please, just kill me… Please… just let me die…”
Gastal’s screams and pleas for death echoed endlessly. Occasionally, he begged desperately for release.
Dominico and the skeletons watched silently.
Being undead, they understood the torment Gastal was enduring.
He was being tortured by thousands of souls in a spiritual realm.
Even knowing he was an enemy, the sight was so horrific it stirred pity. Not that any of them truly felt sorry for Gastal.
Dominico asked, glancing at Damian. Damian chuckled softly.
“Don’t misunderstand. I simply believed they had the right to avenge themselves on Gastal.”
Damian’s voice remained cold.
“Originally, your souls should have been thrown to them as well… Consider yourselves lucky I didn’t.”
Though Damian had given them a chance for revenge, he hadn’t absolved them of their sins.
He simply chose not to condemn them further for choosing to fight Gastal even as undead.
-…You’re right. Our sins still remain.
Dominico looked up at the sky. Unlike the ruined castle, the sky was a brilliant blue.
Dominico stood before Damian, and the skeletons lined up behind him.
As Dominico bowed, the skeletons followed suit.
”…There’s no need to thank me. Go tend to your master.”
Dominico and the skeletons left to find Frize’s body.
The explosion of dark magic had swept it away when the annex was destroyed.
Meanwhile, Damian began cleaning up.
The first thing he secured was a fragment of Erebus.
Despite the powerful blast that could have leveled a mountain, the fragment lay intact on the ground.
Damian bent down to pick it up.
“That’s two pieces now.”
The fragment he acquired this time was surprisingly small. It was hard to believe it had powered a Master-Class undead.
Damian retrieved the Erebus stored in his wrist.
The fragment morphed like a droplet of water, adhering to the blade. The once-short blade grew slightly longer.
Damian swung the staff with Erebus attached, testing it. The extended blade sliced through the air.
“If it grows a bit more, the power of oxidation might awaken.”
Like the power of corrosion, the power of oxidation was one of Erebus’s most formidable abilities.
While corrosion could dissolve matter, oxidation erased magic.
It was a nemesis to mages, and during his time as a Death Knight, Damian had used it to nullify a barrage of spells from archmages.
Next, Damian gathered all the dark magic in the vicinity and stored it in his bracelet. He erased all traces of high-level dark magic usage.
Finally, Damian approached Gastal.
By then, Gastal had stopped breathing. His soul had been utterly destroyed.
“Pathetic scum.”
Damian muttered disdainfully, intending to incinerate Gastal’s body with dark magic.
Then he noticed the magical artifact around Gastal’s neck.
“This is…”
Damian removed the necklace to examine it. As expected, it was an artifact with a pocket dimension spell.
He opened the pocket dimension to inspect its contents. It was much larger than the spatial ring he had been using, nearly three times the size.
“This will come in handy.”
After all, what fault could an object have? Damian decided to keep the pocket dimension necklace.
Instead, he pulled out all of Gastal’s research materials and books, burning them along with Gastal’s body.
Next, Damian’s attention was drawn to the staff Gastal had used.
Fitting for a grand dark mage, the staff was no ordinary item.
“A staff made from a branch of a spirit tree. Where did he get such a rare thing?”
Spirit trees were special trees that grew only in the spirit realm.
They were notoriously difficult to obtain but were known to be unparalleled materials for crafting magical artifacts.
Of course, the world tree cherished by elves was far superior, but acquiring it was nearly impossible.
“This could fetch a good price from mages.”
It was too valuable to discard. Damian stored the staff in the pocket dimension.
Dominico and the skeletons returned to where Damian stood.
“Did you recover the body safely?”
“Something urgent?”
Damian looked at Dominico with curiosity.
Dominico led Damian to the underground vault of the count’s castle.
Having been there before, Dominico deftly manipulated the mechanism on the iron door. Slowly, the door slid open.
“A treasury, huh…”
Damian looked at the entrance with interest.
The vault of a family that had produced a Master-Class and been elevated to a duchy. Even Damian couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anticipation.
But when the door fully opened, Damian was sorely disappointed.
”…It’s empty?”
The space was quite large, but there were only a few items left.
Dominico admitted sheepishly.
“But we kept the most precious treasure.”
Dominico led Damian further inside. There, a large sword was displayed.
The blade alone seemed to exceed two meters in length. The handle was so long it would require both hands to wield, with room to spare.
Most striking were the lines etched into the blade’s surface. Dozens of straight lines extended from the hilt to the tip.
Dominico explained as he stood beside Damian.
“The weapon is too large and heavy to be practical in real combat. That’s why my master never used it,” Dominico said wistfully, gazing at the massive sword.
“I’m not sure what it does, but it was kept in the deepest chamber, so it must be valuable. If we sell it later, it could fetch a fortune.”
Damian approached the relic sword. There was only one thing it could be, found in the final chamber of the ruins: the legendary sword crafted by the artisan for a prince.
“I can’t believe it’s here…”
Among the descriptions in the ruins, there were instructions on how to activate it. Damian channeled his magic into the sword, and its crossguard began to glow brightly.
“What the—?”
As the sword came to life, Dominico jumped back in surprise. The relic sword floated into the air, circling around Damian. He imagined a movement in his mind, and the sword followed his thoughts.
“You need a name,” Damian mused, watching the sword orbit him. “I’ll call you Biyun.”
And with that, Damian became the master of the relic sword.
Afterward, Damian left the count’s castle. As soon as he was out, a crowd rushed in, just missing him by a hair.
Next, he headed to the inn and the sixth floor of the ruins to retrieve the artifacts he had left behind. They were too valuable to abandon.
With the chaos caused by the undead, selling the artifacts in the White Kingdom seemed impossible. The black market in the Apple Kingdom would be a better option.
Thanks to the spacious pocket dimension necklace he got from Gastal, he was able to store all the artifacts.
Once he had collected everything, Damian snuck into the inn where Tiebo was staying to take care of one last matter.
“Snore…”
Tiebo lay sprawled on the bed, fast asleep. Damian flicked his forehead.
“Ugh, what the—!”
Tiebo woke with a start, ready to scream when he saw Damian’s face.
“Shh.”
Damian quickly pressed a pressure point on Tiebo’s neck, paralyzing his vocal cords. Tiebo’s scream died in his throat.
“Calm down. It’s me.”
Damian revealed his face, and Tiebo’s eyes widened. Once Damian released the pressure point, Tiebo spoke, astonished.
“Victor? You’re alive?”
“Did you think I was dead?”
“You disappeared without a trace… I thought the worst.”
Tiebo sighed in relief.
“But why come at this hour?”
“I have things to settle before I leave.”
“Leave? What about the ruins?”
“With all this chaos, the ruins are the least of my worries.”
With the undead outbreak, the White Kingdom would soon send inquisitors. Damian wanted to leave before they arrived to avoid complications.
“Before I go, I owe you for your troubles.”
“What?”
“The armor and gloves are yours now.”
Tiebo’s eyes widened at Damian’s words.
“That’s not enough, though.”
Damian handed over a few artifacts he had brought from the sixth floor.
“These should be enough to live comfortably.”
“Victor…”
Tiebo looked at Damian with gratitude.
“As a small price, I’ll need to erase some memories.”
“What?”
Damian placed a finger on Tiebo’s forehead and used dark magic to erase a few days’ worth of memories. It was a precaution against any interrogation by Pandemonium.
The spell’s effect knocked Tiebo out cold.
“Take care.”
With that, Damian left the inn.
Riding a horse he had prepared in advance, Damian left the White Kingdom. After some time, he suddenly halted.
“Come out now.”
As soon as he spoke, the bushes rustled, and shadowy figures emerged. They were the spirits of the White Kingdom’s knights, soldiers, and Dominico.
“Why are you following me?”
After the battle, Damian had lifted the dark magic binding them, turning them back from undead to spirits.
“Your place is in the White Kingdom. Don’t follow me any further,” Damian said sternly.
The knights and soldiers looked to Dominico, who stepped forward.
“Damian, do you plan to keep fighting the dark sorcerers?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Why do you fight them?”
Damian frowned at Dominico’s question.
“I’m not about to explain myself to you. Is that why you came?”
“Use us in your fight.”
Damian paused, taken aback.
“What did you say?”
“Use us as tools to achieve your goals.”
“What are you thinking?”
Dominico gave a wry smile.
“There are two reasons. First, as you said, we haven’t atoned for our sins.”
As Damian had accused, they had captured innocent explorers for Gastal’s experiments. Even if it was for their lord, a crime was a crime.
“Second, we wish to repay the debt we owe you.”
Damian wondered if he had misheard. But the spirits, including Dominico, looked at him with determined faces.
Damian pondered. If he were alone, he would have refused their loyalty. He could fight on his own, and they might only be a hindrance.
But now, Damian had a family to protect. Soon, he would clash with Pandemonium, who would stop at nothing to pressure him.
No matter how skilled Damian was, he couldn’t handle everything alone.
“You’ll regret it.”
Dominico and the other spirits smiled.
“Don’t worry. We won’t.”
They knelt before Damian, like knights pledging loyalty to their lord.