Chapter 253: 134. The New Ones (Part One)
Translated by A Passing Wanderer
Edited by RED
**
Charlotte was feeling quite pleased at the moment.
Even if the Seventh Imperial Prince wasn’t very good at close-quarter fighting, she still won the duel. As someone striving to get closer to his realm, she felt that this victory was an important validation of all of her growth so far.
Just as a faint little smile formed on her lips…
The only person in the feudal lord’s residence who showed a reaction to that small, almost inaudible scream was Charlotte.
She flinched in surprise and dashed towards Count Jenald’s office, flinging the door there open. “Your Highness?!” she shouted in alarm.
She feared that he might have fallen victim to a sneak attack, but that turned out to be wrong. A truly horrid stench filled the office and an empty gourd rolled towards the open doorway.
Charlotte looked at that bottle and could only smile wryly.
Did His Highness actually drink this? If so, him screaming like that would be a pretty obvious end result.
An Imperial Prince with not much resistance to speak of willingly drank something that horrible? It was unsurprising to see him screaming out of his mind.
It was at that moment that she heard the loud ringing bells that served as a warning to alert everyone of an undead invasion.
Charlotte furrowed her brows and stared at the corridor.
Many soldiers were rushing about.
Those warning bells sounded far louder and urgent than usual. It seemed that far more dangerous creatures than before had shown up this time.
If it was nothing more than another undead raid on the Fortress of Ronia, then Harman and herself would be more than adequate enough to deal with it, but…
She just couldn’t shake an ominous foreboding.
‘…The Jötunn.’
The giant from the legends that the ex-Third Imperial Prince, Ruppel, had spotted during one of his reconnaissance missions.
It was unknown whether such a creature really existed or not at this stage, but if they existed for real and they were coming to invade, then this battle would be a very challenging one.
“Your Highness, we need to make a move now…”
It was unfortunate, but from the look of things, the Imperial Prince wouldn’t have the luxury of time to recover. Right now, everyone needed his help.
Charlotte shifted her rueful gaze back into the office, but then…
“…Your Highness?”
The boy prince hadn’t blacked out or puked his innards out despite having drunk that… wonder drug.
While calling his name out in a puzzled tone of voice, Charlotte ever so carefully stepped back.
A mysterious and slightly frightening aura was slowly oozing out from the office itself. She then noticed whitish dust particle-like things beginning to dance all around her, and reached out to them.
‘…Snowflakes?’
She quickly realized she was mistaken. These were actually particles of divinity that resembled snowflakes.
Charlotte shifted her gaze back into the interior of the office.
Bones created entirely out of divine power were being constructed rapidly within the office. They tumbled and interlocked like an intricate spiderweb to encase their surroundings.
And the Seventh Imperial Prince was the centre of it all.
He said, “This thing was supposed to have almost no effect on me, but that was completely wrong.”
The golden light of the Aztal Rune was gushing out from his neck, face, and the gaps of his flapping clothes. Fragments of divinity floated up like weightless snowflakes before quietly settling down to pile up in thick layers.
“It’s not that there’s no effect on me, but…”
The Seventh Imperial Prince was sitting in a meditative position in the middle of the bones spread out about him like the spiderweb.
“It was actually a perfect match. Because, I am me.”
His eyes were closed; he was muttering quietly to himself.
“And thanks to that…”
Allen extended his left hand. In his grasp was an ancient Necromancy grimoire he had acquired back in Aslan.
“…Now I can finally activate it.”
His eyelids cracked open just a sliver and he stared intently at the Necromancy grimoire. He calmly flipped through page after page.
Every time he did that, the particles of divine power piled up like snow about him gradually gathered and transformed into bones.
These bones slowly gathered up to form a figure.
The particles continued to dance and radiate in the air as the bone hand, still soft and malleable, as if it was the side effect of being born not too long ago, rose from the floor of the office.
A skull was created, followed soon after by the neck and the spinal column.
A lengthy transparent robe, also created out of divinity, flapped elegantly, and the holy undead slowly lifted itself up off the ground from its prior supine position.
This was the existence that all Necromancers yearned to become in the end. It was also a creature that everyone in Aslan had to bow to in respect and awe.
Charlotte’s brows shot up high as she muttered out, “A Lich?”
An undead lich draped in a lengthy robe was now silently standing tall there. A fog containing a great deal of divinity settled down on the floor and gradually spread out.
Finally, a pair of glowing eyes lit up within the skull.
-How can this be…
A calm voice came from the undead’s jaw. The Lich looked down at its own hand.
-I’ve gained a new body.
The undead creature reached out towards the pool of holy water resembling a pile of snow made up purely of divinity particles.
While its whitish breath whooshed out from its jaw, the creature’s bony hand slipped into the dense pile of ‘snow’ of divine power and pulled something out that was neither a sword nor a magic staff.
It was a musket possessing a long, sleek barrel; the longest firearm in Allen’s arsenal, reaching about two metres in length.
Grasping the weapon like a walking stick, the Lich staggered a little and stood before Allen. The creature knelt down and pressed its forehead on the musket, then bowed its head as if to offer a prayer.
-Oh, my new master…
A sense of puzzlement seeped into Charlotte’s mind. She stared at the Seventh Imperial Prince, and an expression of unrest formed on her face.
Something like this happened every now and then; a swordsman, magician, or even a Priest would sometimes come down with a major epiphany without warning.
They would then go on to acquire a great deal of strength from that awakening process.
The Seventh Imperial Prince was able to wield a truly massive reserve of divinity before now, but his control over it wasn’t what you’d call ‘sufficient’. He’d often use up every single drop of divine power until he was completely drained, and without the aid of the relics, he couldn’t Summon anything stronger than the holy undead knight.
But the story had changed now.
The Seventh Imperial Prince had broken through his own limits and experienced an awakening!
He raised his head, as if finally reacting to the alarm bells ringing noisily outside. “What good timing this is.”
He reached out and placed his hand on the Lich’s skull.
“I’ll be needing your help.”
-Anything you order us, master.
The Lich made a move; it slightly raised the musket gripped in its hands and slammed it down on the floor.
Bang-!
Divinity rumbled and reverberated, causing other existences to slowly rise up from the floor, covered in the snow-like particles of divine energy.
They were skeleton mages, except that they were not holding their usual magic staves, but muskets!
And on these figures of all the Lich and the skeleton mages… the ‘Aztal Rune’ began engraving onto their bones!
[The Aztal Rune’s ‘Ability Transfer’ has been used.]
[Divine Aura has been activated.]
[Muskets are being upgraded.]
The corners of the Seventh Imperial Prince’s lips curled up. He stared at the Lich with a deeply satisfied expression on his face and asked the creature, “And your name is-?”
The Lich raised its head and held its master’s gaze. The glowing light balls in its eye sockets arched like crescent moons. Its jaw came apart to speak its name.
-I am Nasus, master.
This was the moment that the existence responsible for the downfall of the old Aslan was born anew with a new faith.
**
“It’s coming! Dodge it!” one of the convicts on top of the outer wall cried out.
Harman, who was commanding the convicts on the outer wall, reacted to that shout and quickly turned his head.
In the darkened sky where the sun had long set and the blizzard was madly lashing down, a huge boulder was hurtling towards the walls.
‘Is that a lump of corpses?’ Harman’s thought briefly lingered on that possibility.
Back in the battle against the Vampire Count, an army of undead of similar scale did come to assault the fortress. The siege projectiles used back then were ‘lumps’ of packed corpses, mainly comprised of various zombies.
But it wasn’t the same story this time.
“…It’s a normal boulder?!” Harman’s brows shot up high.
The incoming boulder was at least four metres in diameter. Even the sturdy outer walls of the Fortress of Ronia would find it hard to withstand the impact from a boulder of such a size.
“Get away from there, now! Get away from the walls!” Harman urgently shouted out and flung himself away. That prompted the other convicts to hurriedly flee from there as well.
Seconds after that, the huge boulder slammed straight into the outer wall. The solidly-built wall exploded and crumbled down to pieces at the impact.
“H-help me…!”
The convicts still on the wall were thrown aside before getting crushed to death.
