That kingslaying led to her going into hiding for over fifty years. Yes, it all began when that Queen, that person, returned to the land of men. And she did not return empty handed. She came back with a challenge, one directed at none other than Cleon, the near millennial old monarch. A battle to the death above the Parting Sea, that’s what she proposed.
Upon hearing of this challenge, his first thought, and that of his followers, was to laugh at its absurdity. No non-monarch could win against a monarch, certainly not one as well established as Cleon, who had a whole continent as his subjects. Yet they were quick to remember that it was Ariana they were speaking about.
From the confidence she exuded when striking her deal with the representative of the Faith so that the angelic deities would not intervene under any circumstances, it was clear she did not intend to play fair. At the very least, she had not come simply to lose.
They did not assume she would lose easily, but many still placed their bets on Cleon holding the advantage. When they devised their plan to make a vessel of whoever would fall in that battle, most believed it would be Ariana.
What a surprise it must have been for Aurel, Claudiu, and all the others who participated in the mission when they arrived at the scene and found that the one still standing was her, and the one at the brink of death, the Emperor.
What happened next was a thorough humiliation. Almost all of them died in that expedition, with only two surviving, one of whom died moments later from the unremovable curse cast upon him. The worst was easily that it was for nothing. Not only did they fail to secure Ariana’s body, they also failed to secure the body of the dying Cleon.
It was without a doubt the greatest setback they had ever suffered.
Almost two hundred years have passed since then. They finally recovered from that setback. It was then that they received yet another leak, an thoroughly unexpected one.
It claimed that in the citadel, the corpse of the queen who ushered in this new era, the Era of Kings, was dutifully preserved by Theta, the young elven queen and daughter of that queen, as if hoping her mother might rise again.
He, the Messiah, could make that wish a possibility.
In the years following the setback Queen Ariana dealt them, they had of course heard the news of her death. For a long time they did not believe it. Only as decades passed, then a century, did acceptance settle in.
She was truly gone.
Did he think about the body she left behind? Yes.
Did he consider retrieving it? No. He had assumed it had been properly dealt with. After all, she would have learned her lesson from the second king she killed.
She left no corpse behind this time. From the Order King Dorian had established on her behalf, an organization known for leaving nothing behind for him to use as a vessel during their cleansings, whether by mutilating the body beyond salvage or, more often, reducing everything to ash, the Messiah understood that she had figured out what he was capable of with his authority.
So he’d assumed she’d have her body be properly disposed of. What a surprise it was to hear that it wasn’t the case.
Upon receiving that intelligence, he made the necessary arrangements for a mission to recover the corpse. They had recovered from the setback she inflicted upon them and had reached a new peak. Yet they had never secured an asset as valuable as this. With that vessel added to their arsenal, they would be unstoppable.
What a surprise it was when, inside that tower, inside that domain, beneath the ivory tower, they found something entirely different from what they had expected. The eyes were sewn shut. A muzzle, as if melted into the mouth, had clearly been made to restrain the screams and the strangely feral nature of that undead.
He was barely recognizable but there was no doubt. This face was the same one he had seen in those statues that were about everywhere in the One and Only Era. The statues were of Cleon, the One and Only Emperor.
The giant tower fell with a loud thud that shook the entire domain.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Elements of all sorts were unleashed with unprecedented violence. The Messiah and his followers barely managed to dodge the onslaught. Smoke engulfed the area, still pulsing with energy that had yet to dissipate. He sensed another attack coming, a hunch confirmed by his identification skill through a notification.
“Everyone, spread!” he warned as he moved out of the attack’s path.
Each of them evaded in their own way. The angels flapped their wings. Claudiu teleported. Tran relied on his native flight skill. Others used the device known as the Inertial Modulator, an apple sized MD device that allowed anyone to achieve the same speed and controlled flight as someone with a level 6 flight skill. The Messiah himself had no flight related skill, yet he moved with similar precision. Even so, some were caught by the long range claw-like strike.
“Pierre!”
They reacted in horror as their comrade was split open by the attack.
Some rushed to help while others retaliated. The Messiah attacked the undead monstrosity to divert its attention, infusing holy elements into his blade. Holy was the element he had the greatest affinity with due to the highbreed nature of his vessel and his class as a paladin. It was also the natural weakness of undead creatures. He and his comrades unleashed long range attacks, not daring to approach too closely. That caution was understandable. Though swollen and bloated, with bones exposed along the ribs as if it might fall apart at any moment, the creature stood atop its five meter frame of rotten muscle like an impregnable fortress. That impression was strengthened by the way it endured their attacks with shocking durability.
Another notification flashed before his eyes.
Countless individual rays shot in every direction like bullets from a rogue machine gun. Though scattered, one beam was clearly aimed straight at the vulnerable Pierre.
With swift reaction, an Archangel shielded Pierre, positioning himself like a vehicle caught in a crossfire. Defense was what these constructs prided themselves on, yet even that barrier thinned like melting butter under the assault.
They all sprang into action, unleashing their strongest attacks upon the grotesque monstrosity. The Messiah struck with holy power. Others released elemental attacks. The angels followed with technologically powered elemental blasts.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The joint assault was powerful, yet he knew it had not taken the creature down. Taking advantage of the moment, he called out, “Are you sure that thing did not have the title of Guardian when you appraised him earlier?”
Something was wrong with this dungeon. No, it had started with the empty mausoleum. No, even before that, he realized.
“Yes, sir. One hundred percent positive. He only had a title.”
“Regent of Putrescence.”
The confirmation brought a realization that did not have time to settle. From within the smoke, the holder of that title unleashed an attack whose reach was far greater than expected.
A wave of malignant energy surged outward. Even with his resistance to unholy attacks, he felt it gnaw at his HP, fast. If it hurt him this much, he could only imagine what it did to the others. He began casting Great Holy Ward and Shard Immunity when another notification flashed before his eyes.
His body tensed. The skill was powerful enough to stiffen even him. He looked on in horror as his comrades fared worse, their bodies locked in place, unable to move. They watched helplessly as the creature’s flying platforms surged toward the nearest target.
“Tsk,” he cursed as tried to break free of the debilitating attack. As he successfully did so, he noticed that the angels were mostly unaffected by Rigor Mortis. Realizing this, he made a decision.
“Shin. Erick. Kuro,” he called out to the three Archangels. “Please stop him.”
“Yes, Messiah,” they answered in their robotic voices.
Without hesitation, the trio moved to assist the two angels, Katrina and Elle who immediately upon it casting its [Rigor Mortis] went to intercept the undead monstrosity.
Wasting no time, he activated every skill in his possession to undo the effects of Rigor Mortis on the others. As soon as they could move again, he ordered, “Gather, everyone.” Then he added, “Claudiu, get us away from here.”
“Yes, Messiah,” Claudiu replied, teleporting them away. More precisely, he transferred them from where they stood to a point about a dozen meters from the dungeon’s exit.
It was then, as he turned back toward the collapsed tower not far from where they had been, that they saw it. A tall pillar of light shot upward, vanishing almost instantly. In its place formed a gigantic sphere of destruction that engulfed and erased everything it swallowed. Blue manacyte rained down from the ceiling, crashing around them. The delayed shockwave reached them even from kilometers away, bleeding their ears, shaking their bones, and lowering their HP despite the distance.
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Their confidence in attacking the citadel had not come from sheer strength. Against a monarch, strength alone meant little unless it was overwhelming. These beings could undo most damage done to them unless their opponent possessed enough power to destroy what made them monarchs in the first place, namely their sigil.
The citadel housed two monarchs, Elven Queen Theta and the elven monarch known to be a close ally of Queen Ariana. Two monarchs meant two sigils that had to be destroyed if they wished to defeat them.
Fortunately, the messiah and his people had two advantages. Though monarchs, neither Theta nor her ally had fathered as many subjects as monarchs of similar rank. Their sigils would not be as impervious as that of the Eternal Emperor, who had millions beneath him and could seamlessly draw upon their HP, MP, and SP. Theta and her ally commanded far fewer subjects. Their sigils would not be at optimal strength. That meant they could be destroyed by their ultimate weapons.
The angels and archangels were the culmination of the tyrants’ craft. By shifting their focus from shielding their mechanical components to full offense, they could expend all available energy in a single devastating attack. Archangels were the purest expression of that suicidal design. With three of them unleashing their ultimate assault, the result had been absolute devastation.
“To think someone would invent the equivalent of a nuke in this world too,” he murmured. “Man’s madness truly follows him everywhere.”
Allowing himself a breath at last, he began analyzing everything that had gone wrong. Too many things were amiss. First was the existence of this dungeon, one he had never heard of. Worse still, that was not even the most questionable part. The most troubling question was how no one had noticed its presence. Dungeons were easy to detect. Even if their entrance remained hidden, they passively produced mobs, monsters that spawned in their vicinity. How had no one noticed? More urgent still, why had there been no spawns inside the domain?
Then there was the question of him. How had Cleon ended up here? When he first heard the name, he had assumed the dungeon had recreated him. Dungeons were known, on rare occasions, to replicate existing figures as guardians. Yet the appraisal had shown no title other than Regent of Putrescence. That meant this was not a recreation.
So how had that thing been created? There were only a few ways for an undead to come into existence. It could happen naturally when corpses, often many of them, were left uncremated or improperly buried. Or it could be intentional, the work of someone of the necromancer class.
It was then, as he pieced together the facts and felt his mind leaning toward the latter possibility, that one of them shouted, “Messiah, something is emerging out of the smoke.”
They all winced. “...It’s him.”
A figure flew out of the smoke, mounted atop his platform.
“Appraisal,” he ordered immediately.
“Yes, sir. Right a… How?”
“What?”
“It has been barely affected by that attack.”
“What? How?” he frowned, then the answer came to him. He remembered what had happened earlier with Magister Luke, how he had phased out of reality and withdrawn into a pocket dimension to avoid damage.
They all grimaced at that realization. Yet they had no time to dwell on it, not when the creature began charging at them.
“Retreat,” he ordered.
They all obeyed at once, dashing toward the dungeon exit. Only he remained behind for a brief moment, activating his authority to honor his promise as the Messiah. Then he too dashed through the door that led back to Fiendfell, into the cold cave mausoleum.
It was nothing like they had left it. The place was in shambles. Stalagmites had collapsed on the ground, and stalactites were falling from the ceiling. Among the debris he spotted the impaled remains of Christopher, the comrade who had stayed behind.
Did the shockwave reach this far? he wondered. The ground shook again as if an earthquake were tearing through the cavern, sending more stalactites crashing down. That answered his question. This was not the aftermath of their attack alone. Something violent had happened here.
“Messiah, something’s wrong with this plane,” reported Claudiu, his expression pale.
What now again?
“This isn’t Fiendfell. Well, it is, but it feels restricted.”
“Restricted?”
“Yes. It’s like I…”
Claudiu did not get to finish. The undead Cleon burst out of the dungeon entrance, carrying elemental assaults and wielding a giant battle axe.
“What?”
“He can leave the dungeon,” one of them whined.
Of course he can, the Messiah thought. It had been confirmed earlier that he did not bear the title of Guardian, which meant there was nothing binding him to the dungeon domain.
“Damn it.”
Under the strain of the chaos unleashed by the undead Cleon, the mausoleum roof collapsed violently. They tore their way out of the rubble, the Messiah leading his comrades through the wreckage of the fallen ivory tower and into the sky above the ruined citadel.
He quickly realized that, just like the mausoleum, it was nothing as they had left it. The collapsed tower had already changed much, and the surrounding facilities were even more devastated. Yet the most striking difference lay beyond the prison they had erected. A gigantic golden tree now encompassed the entire area.
Claudiu recognized it immediately.
“That’s his. That’s the ancestral tree of the monarch who attacked us. He’s…”
“Trapped us,” the Messiah finished.
Claudiu’s teleportation magic was powerful, but it was not almighty. It was vulnerable to specific interference. Dungeons and Ancestral Trees both had the ability to create inner domains that functioned like prisons. Such domains disrupted the point A to point A’ and A to B mechanism of teleportation. There would be no teleporting away from here.
At this point, he had to admit it. Nothing had gone as planned.
Did they find out about our attack in advance? Was it their plan from the beginning to trap us?
His thoughts were interrupted once more as their undead pursuer emerged from the collapsed tower.
“Tsk. Damn it.”
Cleon manifested ten mirrored versions of himself. Each possessed impressive autonomy and an equal measure of rage and malevolence.
As he was chased across the ruined citadel, he noticed the domain was deathly silent. None of the earlier resistance was present, and there was no sign of his people. Then, as he dodged a double swing from two mirror undead, he finally saw them.
Beyond the barrier, suspended in midair, Aurel, his comrades, and the angels were engaged in battle. A red haired figure unleashed light and lightning attacks, assisted by a gigantic red wyvern that moved with unnatural agility for its size.
He recognized the pair at once. Man and dragon.
Licht the Lonely Light, the SSS-ranked adventurer who once challenged the guardian of the Voidborne Catacomb, the oldest dungeon in the world, failed, yet managed the almost unprecedented feat of returning alive.
“What is he doing here?” he grimaced, before remembering that Licht too had been associated with Queen Ariana. The feeling that they were the ones who had been ambushed grew even stronger.
Suddenly, a scream snapped his attention back to the prison they were trapped in. Cleon had caught up to a comrade of his and brought his axe down. The blow bisected the man, killing him instantly.
Just like that, a level 67 Verdenkind was dead.
This did not make sense.
Because of his activities, many factions across the continent viewed him as the leader of a cabal of necromancers. In truth, his knowledge of necromancy was only superficial. The powers he wielded involved little more than the manipulation of corpses. Yet even with that limited expertise, he could tell something was deeply wrong with this undead.
There were many ways for an undead creature to come into being, but one thing remained constant. Reanimating a corpse almost always resulted in something weaker than its living counterpart. Something vital was lost in the transition. Only truly powerful necromancers could defy this rule, and even then only with specific types of undead. Revenants, for example, could preserve much of the personality, strength, and abilities of the person they once were.
But this was not a revenant. And yet it retained terrifying strength. In life, Cleon had been a monarch of overwhelming power. If this version was already weakened, then an even more troubling question arose. If this was the work of a necromancer, how powerful must that necromancer be to revive a monarch and preserve so much of his strength? To accomplish such a feat, they would have to be absurdly powerful.
Was there truly someone of that caliber on the continent, someone so powerful and yet no one had even heard about?
He stopped, turned, and went on the offensive against the mirrored version chasing him. After a brief struggle, he managed to defeat it. By the time he finished, another of his comrades had fallen.
That sight, combined with the night growing brighter under the glow of a moon that seemed far closer than before, forced him to accept a reality he should have acknowledged the moment they encountered this undead.
He called to his three remaining archangels. “Leo. Mikki. Todd.”
“Yes, Messiah.”
Understanding Claudiu’s earlier concern, he activated his power and summoned the souls, the essence, of his two fallen comrades.
“The barrier must fall for us to escape. I am counting on you three. Use the generator. Rope in the others as well. This sigil must fall.”
“Understood.”
They charged forward, fully aware they were heading toward their demise.
Claudiu teleported to his side. “If they do that, they will obliterate everything.”
“I know. Prepare yourself to mimic Cleon.”
With the sigil acting as a prison, the force of the explosion would be contained. If the prison did not break, the energy trapped within would destroy everything inside instead. Both outcomes meant they would be hurt. The latter meant they would be obliterated within the confined space.
“Everyone, gather around Claudiu,” he ordered. “He is our way out.”
In less than ten seconds, all of them gathered around Claudiu, except for Adam, who chose to divert Cleon’s attention at great cost. They watched him get overwhelmed and slain by the giant undead. At the same time, the angels’ detonation erupted at the outskirts of the prison.
Claudiu did what had to be done. He moved them into a personal pocket dimension, a place of nothing but white silence. It did not last. The space shook violently, loud and unstable, making them realize they had underestimated the destruction unleashed. They scrambled to summon shields, but before all of them could fully erect their barriers, the space collapsed.
It imploded, forcing them back into the real world. Fortunately, by then the pressure had been partially released by the collapsing sigil. Even so, the residual force tore through the individual barriers they had cast in an instant, giving them a taste of the devastation.
Ears ringing, the Messiah opened his bleeding eyes. A body fell from midair beside him. A partly burned Claudiu was supporting the one who had shielded him from what would have been certain death.
Through the buzzing in his ears, he suddenly heard a shout from behind. “Messiah, careful!”
A hand shoved him aside. He watched as something crashed into Tran. A familiar curved black blade pierced through and emerged from the other side. As Tran’s body was thrown aside, he caught a glimpse of the attacker’s face.
Silver hair. Youthful features. Elven ears. A beauty mark beneath the eye.
“Wrong lunatic,” the elf laughed, flashing a malignant smile at the Messiah as he withdrew the blade and casually beheaded Tran.
“You…” The Messiah clenched his jaw, ready to charge at the elf he recognized at once. It was the owner of the sigil that had just collapsed, one of the elves who had stood in their way when they tried to acquire Cleon’s corpse.
But just then his instincts flared. Something was approaching fast. He swung his blade to intercept it.
Clang.
A red blade met his, wielded by a young man with red hair. He recognized him immediately.
Licht, the Lonely Light.
The red-haired young man did not stop there. He followed with several more swings, each enhanced with lightning and light, unleashed with effortless precision. The Messiah struggled to block them.
“Hm. Impressive swordsmanship,” Licht remarked.
“Don’t touch him. The lunatic is mine,” the elf barked as he charged toward them.
Before he could reach them, something else did. The undead Cleon swung his longsword horizontally, clearly intending to cut through all three of them at once. They withdrew just in time, escaping the arc of the blade. As he moved, the Messiah could not help but notice the lack of surprise, even the dismissal, in the expressions of the elf and Licht toward Cleon.
“Fucking hell. Who invited this jackass?”
“Sigh. I almost forgot about him.”
“Honey, you handle him. I…”
The elf was about to rush forward again when a voice called out.
“Messiah!”
A faint smile appeared on his face as he saw his friend Aurel flying toward him. He had survived. After everything that had just happened, he had feared he might have been engulfed in the explosion or slain by this duo.
“Tsk. Another unwanted guest,” the elf muttered.
The Messiah exchanged a look with Claudiu. Claudiu understood immediately. He teleported beside him, and the Messiah activated his power to recover everyone’s souls. In the next instant, Claudiu teleported again, this time appearing beside Aurel.
“You were alive,” Aurel breathed in relief.
“I am. I thought you…”
“Where do you think you’re going?” the elf shouted indignantly as he charged again.
The Undead Cleon intercepted him, swinging his blade. Licht blocked the strike.
“Goblin, don’t be too rash. It’s going to bite you back hard.”
As the Messiah had expected, like any conventional undead or monster, Cleon did not regard the two as allies.
“Acting rash? These bastards are getting away,” the elf snapped.
The Messiah finished summoning the souls. They came to him as white threads that coalesced into small marbles in his hands.
“Handle him,” the elf barked as he lunged after them, leaving Licht to deal with the undead Cleon. He pursued with clear intent to cut them down, judging by the way he held his blade.
The Messiah gave Claudiu a confirming glance.
In the next moment, the sight of the razed citadel vanished.
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