The Undead King of the Palace of Darkness

Considering the fact that I can evolve and excluding the risk that I could have my freedom stripped, these are the best circumstances I could ever ask for right now. However, I could feel that ‘the time’ for my mutiny was drawing close.

The seed of suspicion will no doubt keep growing bigger inside his mind. Even though the Lord dismissed Roux’s words as lies, they must surely keep pricking him in deep recesses of his mind.

All I need is to determine the best possible time to strike.

I stopped retrieving books from the library every night. I do not think the Lord would lend an ear to a slave, and Roux with her eyes still as dead as ever, had resumed her usual duties. But I thought it would be better to err on the side of caution.

I have already learned all the basics from the books. I must be just as much of a threat to Roux as the Lord.

The Lord increased the time spent on hunting. He ordered me to hunt more monsters than before.

Such an order only made things convenient for me. If I were to happen to get severely wounded on any of my nightly dinner escapades that I cannot recover overnight, the Lord would begin to doubt me. But if it were to happen during the day, the Lord would use his magic to heal me. The Lord may be a master who I must defeat someday, but at the same time, he also made the best possible ally.

My plan had succeeded and I was getting stronger by the day but I was also getting more impatient with every passing day.

I cannot find the chink in his armor. He is still a man of mystery. I am not sure I have the time to find out the strange reason behind why the Lord chose to live so deep into the woods.

If possible, I want to get stronger and when I am certain of my victory, I would like to challenge the Lord. But it would seem it takes a few years to evolve from a ghoul to the next rank. And it’s impractical to wait that long.

In any case, no matter how powerful I become, the Lord still has absolute control over me.

If he were to command me to not attack, then everything ends right there.

The only way I could win against him is by delivering a blow so lethal that it should render him incapable of exercising control over me.

The undead are strong. My regeneration and physical abilities are much superior to those of an adult male. I am not under orders to not cause him harm, so attacking him from behind was possible.

Even for a mage, I doubt he would come out unscathed if I were to attack him with claws that are capable of ripping through the flesh of monsters.

However, failure is not an option. Perchance I fail to kill him in a single strike, I am sure I would be bound by his orders and my second chance at life would go to waste. To me, that is worse than living a life curled up in bed.

I need perseverance and strength. So I persuade myself and quell the rising impatience and wait for the right opportunity.

And so my days passed, with hunting every night on the evil mage’s orders, avoiding the slave and looking for the Lord’s weakness.

At first, I was satisfied having a body with which I could freely move around but now the aforementioned really annoy me.

A taste of transient freedom has made me want to get hold of true freedom. This must be what people refer to as greed.

Freedom. That single word is more alluring than any monster that I have ever devoured.

The Lord was called upon by a visitor, right as I was caught in a dilemma between taking a risk and staying put, and was at a complete loss as to what should be my next course of action.

☠☠☠

The Lord had allies.

Well it only meant no matter how much of an evil necromancer he may be, he could not live a recluse. Once or twice every month, there came a man, called Huck, making his way through the vicious forest accompanied by guards.

He is a man of small-build who always had on a filthy, green cowboy hat. I call him ‘Corpse Carrier Huck’.

As the name implies, the man brings corpses through the forest. The Skeleton sentinels did not perceive the man and his troupe as a threat.

I am not fully aware of the nature of their relationship, but Huck was responsible for food & other supplies and the replenishment of corpses. His job was to provide the Lord with fresh corpses that were dug up from God knows where, for which he was paid either in money or skeletons.

Judging from their conversation so far, Huck seems to be buying skeletons from the Lord for the purpose of using them in battle. The skeletons he required were no ordinary ones, but ones that had accumulated kills and therefore quite strong.

Since the use of undead is forbidden, it was evident that he was no decent individual.

Normally, I am not a part of their business negotiation, but this time curiously enough, the Lord had summoned me.

We were all gathered in the rarely used parlour. Huck with his friendly face and his five guards who were all armed to the teeth.

Huck eyes widen in surprise and his face shows naked curiosity.

“Heh… This one really did manage to pull through huh. I didn’t think it would last that long since it was a diseased body.”

“Well, I suppose corpses of noblemen are different after all.”

The Lord had his eyes on me and his tone seemed to be one of admiration.

I am afraid he was mistaken in that regard. The only reason I managed to persist for so long was simply because of my thirst for life.

The thirst that had taken control of me the moment I was awakened and has not been quenched even the slightest, although I have grown more powerful than before. On the contrary, I feel it has become a lot stronger.

If I were to describe it, I would call it a force that sets my soul ablaze. It was an intense emotion that I had never once felt during my previous life in which I was all but dead.

I would say without a doubt that it was the one big difference that set me part from the other undead.

However, I do not let any of that show on my face as I look at the Lord.

The Lord’s cloudy, glazed eyes search me as if to ascertain my intelligence. But it was only my eyes playing tricks on me. If the Lord was convinced that I could reason, I am certain that he would have more specific orders for me.

“Can you not procure more corpses of noblemen?”

“Cut me some slack please. I don’t see many oddballs coming forward to sell their relatives even if they’re already dead.

“Nonetheless, you did manage to procure one. The corpse that served as the base for End is…”

Huck’s hideous face warped in response to the Lord’s words. His voice seemed to be heavy with censure.

“I thought we agreed you would never question where I get the corpses from. By chance I came across someone who wanted to sell their relative’s remains. I passed on that information to my special customer, to you, Lord Horus. And you make the decision to purchase it. That’s all there is to it. Nothing more.”

“… Ah yes, I understand that. I suppose it doesn’t matter that it was diseased before. It didn’t look that robust either…”

The Lord looked at me with a scrutinizing gaze.

Well he was not wrong to think that. I was bedridden for the longest time. My muscles had atrophied and I was barely kept alive by the healing magic performed by white mages who called upon regular intervals. That was the kind of life I had led.

Even though I am really active now with hunting monsters and doing other hard physical labor that may have been impossible for me before, I am still as scrawny as ever.

A healthy body… and that too a body that is not tormented incessantly is a blessing in itself. It was something that I had always yearned for. I read that as you keep ‘evolving’, you transform into a monster of a higher level and there are also physical changes. I will do my utmost to survive until that happens.

However, I see… so my body was sold.

The new piece of information was not all that shocking to me.

I guess that proves to show how weak my bonds were with my family. It was all I could do to endure the agony, I had not the luxury to invest in any other emotions.

I do not… resent them either.

My family had stopped visiting me a few years before my demise. The regular ‘care’ I received from the white mages must have cost them an arm and a leg. And it would be no exaggeration to say that that method of life-support was what prolonged my lifespan even by a little.

One’s ‘reach’ is the most important thing in battle. Although I am scrawny, I suppose I should consider it fortuitous that I did not die until I was just a little shy of adulthood.

Even if the special care was not provided out of concern for my well-being, it does not change the fact that it helped me all the same.

And, the same goes for the matter of my remains being sold to Huck.

Suddenly, the fundamentals of undead written in the books came to mind.

The regrets that a person carries to their death are what serve as a foundation for an undead. However, I dare say the strong feelings that made me an undead are not the same as the feelings of ‘resentment’ that typical undead hold towards all living things. But instead it was my ‘desire to live’.

Even if I had lived my life bedridden and had been tormented by never-ending agony, I still never once considered death. At least, I believe I never did.

I… had wanted to live even after death. I wanted to be myself. Maybe these pure feelings allowed me to retain my memories, which is originally impossible for an undead.

My knowledge on the topic of undead is woefully inadequate, so I have no proof to support my theory, but well, proof be damned.

Lord Horus is pretty much my benefactor. I really do feel terrible about all this.

However, I could never allow someone who holds ‘rights’ over me to live.

Truth be told, I still have an ace up my sleeve. The kind of ace that can only be used once and never twice.

It is not exactly the ultimate ace, but if I time it right, it is more than enough to take downthe Lord.

The more lives I snuff out, more death energy I accumulate, the longer I draw this out, the stronger I become. And higher the probability of success of a surprise attack.

I need to gather information. I am still in the dark regarding the Lord’s fighting abilities. The apparent age of a powerful mage cannot be considered as reliable information. I have only ever seen him perform necromancy. I may have the upper hand at close range, but one can never be too careful against a crafty sorcerer.

The most important thing was the right opportunity.

My soul burned with a dark fighting spirit and my face blank when I heard Huck say with a grimace,

‘Speaking of which… I heard that a bunch of Death Knights have recently arrived at Engey.”

“What did you just say…? Don’t tell me it was because you slipped up?”

“Of course not! My clients are all tight-lipped you see. But, the Knights’ ability to sniff things out is the real deal. If I were going to be careful, it would be better for me to not visit here for the time being.”

The Death Knights. I have read about them before death and also found them in books in the Lord’s library.

They are a group of knights that belong to no country. They are the ones that bring about the end to the never-ending darkness. The strongest fighting force in the entire world.

They often appear as heroes in tales. Ones who cut down any and all danger and tribulations with a swing of their sword of light. I looked up to them as a child and truth be told, I had a fleeting aspiration to become one before my disease rendered me unable to do so.

Necromancers who interfered with human remains and created the undead are the worst enemies of the knights. Among the picture books I read as a child, many of them told tales of battles between necromancers and the Death Knights. It goes without saying who emerged victorious.

The Lord’s face contorted in anger unlike I had ever seen before. It seems that the enmity between necromancers and the Knights was not just fiction.

And the Death Knights were also my enemies since I am an existence against nature.

Considering how unrelenting they were portrayed in the picture books aimed at children, I doubt they would allow my existence.

“Are they after me…? If I had a few more years, I would set my experimented hounds on them, kill them and make eternal slaves out of them.”

“I don’t want to get dragged into the fight between the knights and milord Horus. I will pull back for now.”

“… Hold on, Huck! There’s something I need to ask of you besides the usual corpses. End, return to the morgue.”

Although it makes me quite curious as to what he wants to request of Huck, I cannot afford to ignore the order.

I took my sweet time in leaving the room and yet I was unable to hear the details of their conversation.

Well whatever. I did hear some unpleasant things but I suppose it is better than proceeding ignorant.

The time limit has been shortened further. I should figure out what I need to do in order to survive.

Upon returning to the morgue, I lean against the wall, cross my arms and get my mind into gear.