It wasn’t a very large room, so the light shone to the back almost immediately.
Against the far wall was a giant pillar that stretched up to the ceiling. Shaped almost like a gravestone, it drew the eyes. But something else drew them even more strongly: the thing immobilized and crucified to it.
The undead’s whole body was bound in chains far thicker than a human thumb, so it was completely restrained. The ends of the chains were secured to the cobblestone floor. Not only that, but huge iron balls were attached to the undead’s hands and feet.
Nothing would have been able to move under those conditions. The incredibly thorough restraints showed how wary the casters were of this opponent. It was why even after seeing those fat chains, some of the members of the party had lingering concerns—thoughts like, Couldn’t it easily break through those chains and escape?
It looked like a knight clad head to toe in black armor, but it definitely wasn’t human.
The first thing one noticed was the being’s hulking physique. It was well over six feet tall.
The next was that black full plate armor. It had a pattern like blood vessels running over it and sharp spikes jutting out here and there like embodiments of violence. Its helmet had horns like a demon and an open face that left its rotting features visible. In its vacant eye sockets, its hatred for living things and anticipation of slaughter burned red.
It wasn’t alive but dead. If it weren’t, the amount of malice toward living things it was emanating would have been impossible.
“The death…knight…”
One disciple who had come to this place for the first time murmured the legendary undead’s name. It was an undead so legendary few had even heard of it.
The red glow in the death knight’s eyes appeared to blink and move to size up the casters. No, they couldn’t know how its gaze was shifting just from the flickers of light. But their shivers told them they were being watched.
The casters accompanying Fluder were a handful of capable ones who could use at least tier-three magic. But even they couldn’t stop their teeth from chattering.
Even with the mental protection magic, the fear that welled up inside them couldn’t be stopped. Still, the magic was probably the only reason they were able to stand there and bear it instead of running away.
“Steel your hearts. The weak will perish,” Fluder warned them and approached the death knight.
In response, the undead tried to stamp its feet as it seethed with murderous intent.
The chains gave an ear-piercing screech, but the monster’s body barely moved at all.
Fluder thrust a hand toward it.
His incantation rang out in the magically illuminated room. It was an original spell of his own creation, an improvement on Summon Sixth-Tier Undead.
“Obey me!”
The spell finished casting, and Fluder’s voice melted away.
But the death knight’s eyes still contained a hatred for the living. Everyone could see the magic had failed.
“So I still can’t control it?” There was audible frustration in his voice; it’d been five years, and he still couldn’t dominate this undead.
The monster had been discovered in a region famous for frequently spawning undead, the Katze Plain.
The company of imperial knights who encountered it were not familiar with the monster type, but they had their orders, so they initiated combat as usual. It was ten seconds later that they realized they’d been both hasty and foolish; the imperial knights, known for their great strength, were awash with fear and despair.
The battle was overwhelmingly one-sided—their opponent was too strong.
Many knights had been mowed down before they finally judged that they had no way to deal with the monster and called for a retreat.
Of course, they couldn’t just leave a monster like that out there. Especially after seeing the fallen knights turned into undead, it was clear that giving their opponent time would lead to serious damage.
Following a clamorous debate among top imperial executives, they decided to play their trump card as their first move: They would mobilize the strongest power in the empire—Fluder and his disciples.
And as is evident from the fact that the death knight was restrained in this basement, the battle ended with Fluder and company’s victory. But the only reason they could win was that the death knight couldn’t fly. They carpet-bombed it, shooting Fireball over and over until its movements slowed, and eventually Fluder, who was attracted by its overwhelming power, was able to capture it.
With it tied up here, he was trying every method that had worked to control normal undead—all sorts of spells and magic items—to conquer it.
“It’s too bad… If I could control his monster, I would be the greatest caster, surpassing even…”
One of the Thirteen Heroes, tamer of the dead Ligritte Belzú Kaurau—he would far exceed her.
Really, Fluder didn’t yearn for power so much. His true wish was to peer further into the abyss of magic. This was just one part of that process.
His disciples didn’t know that. That’s why their attempts to comfort him missed their mark.
“Master, I think you’ve already surpassed her.”
“Absolutely. The Thirteen Heroes are in the past, master. They can’t compete with you where you are on the frontier of contemporary magic.”
“I think you’ve already surpassed the Thirteen Heroes, as well, but if you could control the death knight, you’d be the greatest power in all the empire.”
“They say an individual can’t win against a mob, but that is only true when the individual is weak. This death knight is the strongest individual…”
No one could see Fluder’s little wry smile, because he was standing at the head of the group. All they could see was the hatred in the eyes of the death knight.
“But if even you can’t control it, master… How strong could this death knight be?”
“Hmm…I don’t know. Theoretically, I should be able to. So I must be lacking something. Does anyone have any ideas?”
His query was met with silence.
It was possible to control undead using magic. One of the Thirteen Heroes had done it. With Fluder’s ability, he could dominate fairly upper-tier undead. Maybe he would even be able to control the one before them as well.
But that was simplistic thinking; magically controlling undead was more complex. Domination and destruction of undead was fundamentally the realm of priests, who borrowed the power of the gods. Fluder was trying to shoehorn magic in as a substitute for divine power, so it was no wonder there were all sorts of discrepancies.
“I don’t mean to insult you, master, but…”
One of his disciples spoke up hesitantly, and Fluder gestured for him to continue.
“Perhaps you aren’t powerful enough? For instance, if there were a seventh tier of magic, maybe it could be summoned from that realm?”
“That is certainly a good point.”
“I heard that adventurers give monsters numerical difficulty ratings. What if you thought of it along those lines?”
“I heard that those numbers are really rough and pretty pointless once you figure in age and physique,” another disciple chimed in.
“But even though it doesn’t work for unknown monsters, there’s no easier way to conceptualize difficulty, is there? The numbers are based on adventurers’ battle impressions and a wide range of other data, so they can’t be completely off the mark.”
“Then don’t you think it would be useless for the stuff of legends like a death knight?”
“That reminds me, master. There’s that mysterious volume full of information about monsters. It’s not in there?”
“No, it’s not.” Fluder stroked his beard. “There might be a complete version in Elyuentiu, but the only one circulating is incomplete.”
Puzzled, one of the disciples turned to the one next to him and asked a question. He spoke softly, but the room was a knot o
f silence. It sounded much louder than it was. “What in the world is Elyuentiu?”
“The name of a city!”
“I know that. It just seems like a weird name.”
“Yeah… I looked it up once. Apparently, it means ‘tree at the center of the world’ in the language that was spoken in those parts in ancient times.”
Fluder struck the floor with his staff as a warning to the two disciples who had started chatting without permission. They were in the dangerous presence of a legendary undead—they couldn’t let their guard down here.
They heeded the warning immediately, and silence ruled the room once more. The only sound was the death knight’s chains straining as he tried to break them.
“It’s unfortunate, but I have nothing left to do here—at least for today. Let’s go.”
“Yes, master.”
Several voices containing a hint of relief answered, and Fluder left the death knight’s presence.
Even the mighty Fluder couldn’t keep his footsteps the same speed going in and coming out. With that gaze pounding his back, his footsteps quickened in spite of himself. Of course, that went for his disciples as well.
As Fluder walked through the darkness, he recalled his disciples’ earlier conversation.
Elyuentiu…
The capital of the country the Eight Kings of Avarice had built and the only of its cities still standing. It was also the city defended by the Thirty City Guardians equipped with incomparably powerful magic armor.
If the magic items left behind by the Eight Kings of Avarice are really still there, thought Fluder, I could probably use them to advance my skills. They were fantastic magic items no one could acquire; the only ones permitted to carry any of them were the Thirteen Heroes.
A dark flame flickered in Fluder’s heart.
The Thirteen Heroes. Heroes of old. Even though he should have been powerful enough to stand among them, they were permitted, yet he was not. In what way was he inferior?
Hoping to put out the flame sputtering within him, he summoned comforting thoughts. The position he held, the things he’d built… They weren’t inferior to the Thirteen Heroes’ accomplishments. On the contrary, his position among the empire’s casters surely put him ahead of them.
But once lit, the black fire—envy—wouldn’t be extinguished so easily. He wasn’t jealous of strength, wit, or ability; he envied the pioneers who got the chance to peer into the abyss of magic.
Fluder was an elite caster. Everyone acknowledged that, and probably the only ones who could be considered his equals were the Thirteen Heroes. But he couldn’t give orders to the death knight, and he could only use up to tier six of the supposed (data was not terribly reliable) ten tiers of magic. Those realities rubbed the truth in his face—that he was still far from the abyss.
He was getting on in years.
As he was a psychic caster, one of the trees of supernatural secrets he mastered was forbidden curses. Because it was forbidden magic, it couldn’t be used, but use it Fluder did, and he stopped his aging. Of course, considering the tiers he had mastered, the spell was too difficult for him. He’d forced it to cast by fusing it with a ritual.
Because he had tried to make the impossible possible, there were clear distortions in the power; if he had cast it perfectly, he wouldn’t age at all, but Fluder still felt the effects of time in a lesser way.
For now, things were working out. But the distortions were growing, and eventually the spell would fail.
Yes, Fluder would die before peering into the abyss of magic.
If he’d had a highly skilled mentor, he might have reached this point much sooner. But no one had come before him—he was forced to blaze his own trail.
He took a casual look over his disciples, the ones who were coming down his trail.
This fueled the flame of his envy, and it grew.
He was more skilled than anyone present, but how old had he been when he reached the level his disciples were at now? He didn’t even need to think about the answer. He had definitely been older. What a difference between having a predecessor and not.
Why have I no master?
Fluder tried to crush his usual thoughts with others.
It’s fine. My name will go down in history as a pioneer. All the great casters who come after me will owe their success to me. My disciples are my treasures. And if one of them surpasses me, their power will be mine as well.
As Fluder consoled himself, he turned his thoughts to a specific disciple, although she wasn’t with him anymore. I wonder what tier she could have reached…
“Arché Eeb Rile Furt…”
She was an outstanding girl. She’d mastered tier two at such a young age and had already begun tier three. If she had kept going at that pace, she probably would have reached Fluder’s level eventually, but for some reason, she had needed to quit…
At the time he thought she was so foolish and felt only disappointment.
“That was a mistake.”
Maybe he’d let a big one get away.
Where is she now? He almost wanted to try to find her.
If she could use up to tier three, he could probably promise her a decent position.
But he had things he needed to do.
Fluder recited the words to open the heavy door.
Like the disciples surrounding him, once he’d stepped outside, he breathed in and out a few times. The atmosphere in the room, filled with the death knight’s imposing presence, was heavy. Even though they’d been breathing, it didn’t quite feel like the air had been reaching their lungs.
“Master!” A deep, thick voice called out to him. It was one of his leading disciples, who was also a well-known adventurer. Because of his experience, he was made a deputy director of facility security matters.
“What happened? Is it an emergency?”
“No, not an emergency. Some adamantite adventurers are here requesting an audience with you.”
Fluder gave the man a dubious look.
He hadn’t made any appointments. As the top caster in the empire, Fluder had a lot of work to do. Adding to that the time he set aside for his personal magic research, and he had no free time. He couldn’t just nod his head yes because someone said they wanted to see him. The only person in the empire he would see without an appointment was the emperor.
But dismissing them outright would be too hasty. Adamantite-rank adventurers were heroes; despite being individual actors, they couldn’t be ignored—not even by the great caster Fluder. He couldn’t treat them coldly when he might need to request them to procure rare items for him.
“Is it Argenti? Or the Eight Ripples?” He named the two adamantite-rank adventurer teams from the empire.
But the disciples shook his head. “No, it’s a two-person team called Raven Black. They presented their plates as proof.”
“What?!”
Raven Black was the newly famous kingdom team. Although they were only two, they’d achieved hero-level results. Most recently, they’d single-handedly repelled Jaldabaoth, who had been rampaging through the royal capital.
Why do they want to see me? Several doubts surfaced, but his desire to discuss magic with the high-level caster Beautiful Princess Nabe overruled them. He immediately did away with his doubts.
Then he remembered, in his capacity as the emperor’s retainer, that his master, Jircniv, wanted to see him. I guess I can do that after the meeting, thought Fluder as he gave orders to his disciple. “Show them in. I’ll be there as soon as I’m ready.”
3
“Wow, I’m flabbergasted there are actually ruins here. I thought the story seemed fishy when I heard what kind of compensation they were offering, but there are actually unexplored ruins right in the middle of this field. Aren’t you surprised?”
Hekkeran’s teammates were next to him looking at the ruins, and they all expressed their agreement.
The ruins were a tomb, but it was located in a basin, sort of sunken, almost like a
n upper level had caved in.
One of the reasons the tomb was unexplored was probably that as far as the eye could see was grass—there were no remains of old cities to attract adventurer attention. Besides that, the area was dotted with other swells of land, so there was no way anyone would realize that beneath one of them lay ruins.
The roof of the central building stuck out slightly, but even that they wouldn’t have noticed without climbing up this far.
The theory the brains of each team had come up with was that the earth and rock surrounding the ruins had eroded and exposed part of the wall, leading to the discovery.
“It is a surprise. Or more like, I’m so excited. If the ruins really are unexplored, there’s a fairly good chance some amazing items are just waiting in there untouched.”
“I wonder. Well, we’re out in here in the middle of nowhere, but there haven’t been any issues at all. There probably aren’t any dangerous monsters here. The most worrying thing now is how our requester was able to specify where we should pitch camp.”
Their base camp was on an open area of grassland in an ideal location.
No one would be able to see them from a distance, because the surrounding hills blocked all lines of sight. If they were careful with lights, it would be very difficult to spot them.
That was precisely what made it so alarming.
“Really, though, how did the count know about this spot?”
The most likely explanation was that he had been looking for somewhere in the area to pitch a base camp for some reason. If that were the case, a lot of things made sense.
But it also caused new questions to spring up. Why would he, an imperial noble, need to build a base camp in this out-of-the-way place—in the kingdom’s territory, at that?
“I heard there’s a big underworld organization in the kingdom. Pretty sure they’re called the Eight Fingers. Apparently, they’re up to a whole bunch of horribleness.”
“I heard they’re even smuggling things into the empire. A thief I know was grumbling that they’re so powerful in the kingdom that if anyone tries to investigate them, it blows up in their face,” Imina commented after Arché while smoothing her hair, which was blowing around in the wind.
The Invaders of the Great Tomb Page 11