chapter_0139

“What’s that thing?”

Could it be that it was a woman in her previous life? More importantly, why was she appearing in this form, wearing a cloak and robe, instead of the usual skull with a hood?

As I stood there, puzzled, the Chairman softly laughed in my head.

“Think about it. Isn’t the Life Vessel an organ akin to the source of life? What would happen if you carried it inside your body instead of outside?”

“……Wouldn’t Elder Lich gain life from that?”

“It’s just an external appearance. Her body is still no different from a corpse. It’s not about resurrecting a dead life, but rather giving the appearance of a living one. We can’t be sure if this is really her true form from before.”

“Meligor…! You traitor who fled to the human world! What business do you have here…!”

‘So that’s why her voice is the same.’

Even though her appearance had changed, her voice was the same as when she was nothing but bones. Her words were still as brazen as ever. If Dullahan had heard what she just said, he would have raged about her audacity.

“Are you blind? Can’t you see that I came here with this child to destroy your Life Vessel? You must have been quite desperate to try to escape in such a pathetic form and fail. It suits you.”

“Shut your mouth……!”

Elder Lich raised the orb. The orb glowed with an ominous black light. The nearby undead began to scream collectively. Thousands of hands emerged from the burnt ground.

“Oh dear. Be careful, demon girl. If you recklessly use your power and end up contaminating the Life Vessel you carry, won’t you have to be more careful?”

“I said shut your mouth……!”

Her expression twisted. The color emanating from the orb intensified, and from within it, undead poured out relentlessly. Each one was as powerful as a knight, if not more so.

If those had appeared on the human front lines, humanity would have been annihilated long ago, with the exception of the Sword Saint.

“Seeing your reaction, it seems it really is her true form. Provoke her with that. It will be quite useful.”

I was surprised to learn that she had been a female demon. It was quite unexpected.

“Isn’t she afraid to use the dimensional door?”

“She could use it, but she can’t because I’m interfering. If she uses it now, she’ll have to rely on luck for the arrival point since I’m interfering. With the Life Vessel inside her, she’ll never take that risk, so rest assured.”

As he said this, the Chairman laughed at Elder Lich as if she could hear him.

“That demon girl is a coward.”

“What did you just say……!”

“Look. She’s already showing her emotions. That’s what carrying life means.”

“Kill them……! Tear those damn things to shreds……!”

Elder Lich, filled with rage, grabbed the armrest of the throne and crushed it, issuing the attack command. The undead, numbering in the tens of thousands, roared and charged at me.

The same was true in the sky. Countless flying undead filled the sky, covering one side. The Chairman spread her wings and prepared to take off.

“I’ll take care of the sky. Be careful, child. Absolutely.”

“Please be careful, too, Chairman.”

“Hehe. Thank you.”

The dragon soared into the sky. The wind pressure from its flapping wings alone caused a portion of the undead army charging at me to collapse. Soon, light and fire flashed.

What happened in the sky was less of a battle and more of a one-sided slaughter. The Chairman effortlessly slaughtered the undead charging at her without a single scratch. I turned my gaze downward to Elder Lich.

“Mira Crate…! I shouldn’t have listened to you back then…! You said Astaroth was a traitor…? Such nonsense…”

‘Did he find out?’

According to Elysier, the Commander who had been the most vocal about interrogating Astaroth after her capture was Elder Lich. Either she had a change of heart, or she had found evidence to prove me wrong.

“That’s right. I shouldn’t have so carelessly revealed the location of your Life Vessel to you. If I didn’t, I could have just gone in alone and destroyed it myself. What a waste.”

“You talk big…! If you had entered my dungeon, your mind would have been torn to shreds and you would have become a wreck…”

“It’s your Life Vessel that would have been torn to shreds.”

As I completed the Mana Breathing Technique, my body gradually turned blue. My body, no longer needing oxygen, released refined mana.

I snapped my fingers, turning the refined mana into the spell Baek Yeom. The undead, which would have been a disaster for ordinary humans and quite a challenge even for knights, burned and crumbled like dry grass.

I set the refined mana to automatically turn into Baek Yeom and aimed Eternity to her, taunting her.

“You look more like a succubus than an Elder Lich. Why don’t you go and ask to be her subordinate? Oh, wait, your breasts are too small, so you probably won’t be popular.”

According to Nika, calling a female demon a succubus was usually an insult. Considering what succubi were, it made sense.

So, I tried it, and Elder Lich was no exception.

“How dare you compare me to those cheap women…!”

Black mist poured out from the orb, creating several large hands in the air that reached for me. I swung eternity, slicing off one of the hands, and dodged through the gap. The hand crushed the undead instead.

I stepped on the void and accelerated, quickly closing the distance. I snapped my fingers, sending lightning, flames, and explosive mana at Elder Lich. The magic exploded in front of the rotten flesh, failing to reach her.

I crushed the Death Knight’s axe under my feet and smashed its head with my knee. As it wobbled, I kicked its back, narrowing the distance even further. Hands and tentacles relentlessly pursued me.

-Droplet flicking.

The principles of Demon Sword Technique burned the tentacles, rotten walls, and hands to ashes. Nearby undead were also caught in the blast. I paused to survey the area.

Death Knights were pouring in to fill the empty spaces, and new tentacles were sprouting like bamboo shoots. While this had brought me much closer to Elder Lich, something felt odd.

‘Why isn’t she using magic?’

I was tearing through her subordinates as I approached, yet she wasn’t running away. That was understandable given the situation, but she wasn’t using magic either.

I had heard that Elder Lich, befitting her position, was a very powerful magician herself, even without relying on undead. Yet, all she had done so far was summon a few hands and tentacles.

‘Is she up to something?’

If I continued like this, I would reach her in a few seconds. Her lack of resistance suggested that she had another plan. Just like when I went to the Demon King’s Castle, there were no subordinates there either.

As my mind grew complicated, my body faithfully continued its next actions. I sliced, chopped, and burned the undead in my way, closing the distance to Elder Lich.

Elder Lich was smiling. If she had still been a skull, I wouldn’t have noticed, but thanks to her female demon form, I could see it.

I hesitated for a moment. Should I fall into her plan or was my very hesitation part of her plan? Once suspicion started, everything became suspect.

‘It’s too late anyway.’

If I was going to back out, I should have done it earlier. I steeled my mind and used physical enhancement and the Sword Saint’s acceleration to the extreme. The throne was now right in front of me, and so was Elder Lich.

I grabbed her neck and twisted it. There was a cracking sound as her neck bent at an angle it shouldn’t, and I squeezed her skin. I swung my arm, slamming Elder Lich into the ground. Kwang! The throne collapsed.

Just as I was about to stab eternity into her head and burn her to ashes,

“That’s right…”

Elder Lich placed her hand on my body, and I felt as if my mind was being sucked away.

Everything went white.

“……”

I looked down at my body. The eternity I had been holding, the activated Mana Breathing Technique, all of it was gone, and I was back to my original form. I looked around, but there was nothing.

Elder Lich was laughing a short distance away.

“I wondered what you were up to, and this was it?”

“You noticed, but you still fell for it… Stupid…”

“I fell for it…. So, why did you bring me here? Do you want to try fighting me with your bare hands?”

I had been trying to gather mana, but I couldn’t feel anything. Fortunately, it seemed like the lich couldn’t use magic either, but with my knowledge of this space, I was at a disadvantage.

I clenched my fists and glared at her. She laughed sinisterly.

“Go ahead if you can… This is a space where only the mind exists… Only your mental strength will matter…”

‘She’s surprisingly responsive.’

I didn’t know how things were going, but since she was so confident she would win, she was quite responsive.

‘Is it flowing according to plan?

If a plan didn’t achieve its goal, it would have been scrapped at the planning stage. I decided to play along and see what else I could get out of her.

“Why did you tell you this… Mira Crate…”

“Hmm. I don’t know. So, why don’t you say a little more?”

“Because I needed time… To connect your memories with mine… Time…”

Suddenly, the white space was filled with color. The sky descended endlessly, and moldy brick walls approached. The floor was bloody. A pungent scent of blood filled my nostrils.

I found myself in what looked like a torture chamber, a torture chamber for demons, not humans. I could tell because demons were hanging upside down everywhere.

I touched one of the nearest chains curiously. Clang, the sound of cold metal against my fingertips. It wasn’t an illusion or a hallucination.

“Khehehehe…”

Elder Lich laughed suspiciously.

“You said you were connecting memories… But this isn’t in my memory… It must be yours… Is this when you had a succubus-like body…?”

“How long can you hold out against the pain…? You didn’t even scream once…”

“I have… some circumstances that made me that way. Whose memory is this?”

“It’s the memory of an undead… The pain you will experience millions of times in the future…”

“Oh, I see… Are you showing me the memories of the undead who died and became undead? Is this space created for that purpose?”

“Ho ho… You’ve already deduced so much information… You’re a human with a very strong mind…”

She flicked his finger. A different kind of pain began to assail my body, as if a different direction of pain was pounding my body. If the previous one was about slicing and tearing the body, this one was about burning it.

“But you can’t hold out forever… Since our minds are connected, Meligor can’t touch me… When your mind breaks, that’s when I’ll deal with Meligor…”

As she finished speaking, Elder Lich turned and suddenly created a bookshelf, along with a sofa next to it, as if she intended to read while watching me suffer.

I quietly got up.

The aftereffects of the phantom pain made it feel like my tendons were cut, but I endured the pain and moved as quietly as possible. My body still felt various kinds of pain, but I could bear it without making a sound.

I approached her from behind. She didn’t even imagine that I would get up, as she was still choosing a book.

-Kkwaaaaak!

“Kuh, huh…?”

“What are you doing?”

I grabbed her head and pulled it back. For a moment, her head went backwards, and our eyes met. She looked at me with genuine astonishment, as if she couldn’t understand what I was doing.

“What…?! How…!”

I ignored her and pressed her neck down with my forearm, rolling on the floor. Kwang dang, I ended up sitting on top of her. As I grabbed her hair and pressed her neck down, Elder Lich struggled with her legs.

“Let go, ra…! You filthy human…”

“Do you really think I’ll let you go?”

I put more strength into my forearm. Since she could only use her own strength, her resistance was ridiculously weak. It felt more like she was being playful or rebellious rather than actually resisting.

“You know, I felt it myself, and it’s such a shame to let it go to waste… So…”

The process of interpreting the flow of memories and the flow of interpretation was complete. All that was left to do was to reverse the process and let my memories flow into her.

“You should also look into my memories to be fair. What do you think?”