Chapter 56
Five minutes after Hilly was completely annihilated.
Ophir (Duke) opened his eyes.
“Is she dead?”
She won't revive again for real this time, right?
Only after confirming that Hilly had been completely annihilated did Ophir wipe off the makeup that had made his skin look pale.
“Whew. That was cutting it close.”
Before she began the ritual, Ophir had been timing when to reveal himself.
The problem was that she had chosen to cast the spell in a language Ophir had never studied.
Since he did not know when the spell had ended, his performance was one beat late.
Even so, Ophir had learned the ritual's process from fighting the Twilight School countless times, so he was able to avoid arousing her suspicions with a perfectly timed performance.
‘That’s enough for today.’
Ophir changed his clothes and dressed the mummy in his improved hanbok armor.
The owner who had guarded this tomb for the past hundred years.
The former emperor.
If he disguised himself as an ordinary corpse, its weak aura might arouse suspicion,
and if the corpse was Ophir's yet its residual mana was mediocre, it might damage his dignity,
so he had used the former emperor as a substitute.
Ophir did not feel particularly sorry for the emperor, though.
‘This man never had a tomb to begin with.’
An emperor's mausoleum was normally built by his descendants.
Therefore, naturally, no one would build a tomb for the last emperor of a fallen country.
In that sense, Duke truly thought of himself as a kind person.
‘It’s better than being buried somewhere no one knows about, getting rained on, and rotting away.’
This was certainly good karma.
The Karma System would surely judge it that way as well.
Of course, the emperor himself might have had something to say about it,
‘But for someone who went around massacring people on an imperial scale, this is a good enough death.’
Having convinced himself, Ophir patted the shoulder of the mummy dressed in a hanbok in his place.
Crack.
Its right arm fell off.
“Whoops.”
It had been fine when he laid it down, but now that he had sat it up, it could not withstand gravity.
Ophir put the former emperor's right arm back in place and hurriedly secured it with a tendon used as thread.
“There.”
The mummy's appearance was unrecognizable anyway.
Still, he could not let anyone discover that it was the former emperor, so he kneaded its face one more time until it roughly resembled Ophir's.
‘Hmm. Perfect.’
After finishing his work, he returned from Ophir to Duke.
“I’ve planted the plot hook.”
Well, if our paths crossed again later, perhaps he could make another story out of this.
Duke left the stone tomb, feeling proud of himself.
And the moment he began preparing to leave the stone tomb and return to his domain as Duke, his interface window began ringing noisily.
“Hmm?”
[Duke!! I’m sorry! Was your salary too low? Or was the house too small? Come to think of it, I’ve never bought you any equipment!]
“?”
[Let’s talk! I’ll really do better! Just give me one chance!]
[Lord Duke. I’ll ask alongside my master, too. If there’s been a misunderstanding, we’ll clear it up, and if we’ve made a mistake, we’ll apologize.]
Duke tilted his head and examined the interface window.
‘Where did this guy’s panic button get pressed this time?’
Duke was an entirely ordinary person, so he could not understand why an extraordinary human like Rex had suddenly begun vibrating at 8,000 Hz.
He first checked Rex’s location because he wanted to meet him in person and talk.
Then he could not contain his amazement.
‘Wow. What on earth made this bastard set out in person?’
Rex had actually left the mansion and was heading directly for the Sneria Domain.
‘But why all of a sudden?’
The answer to Duke’s question was that this was the result of Rex’s misunderstanding.
Duke had returned to Ophir.
> Duke had been extremely, extremely upset with Rex.
> As it happened, Duke had recently become engaged to the lord of Sneria.
> Aha! He must have seen the city's devastation and gotten furious, thinking it was his lord's fault for giving his future wife only half-hearted support!
Following the logic of miracles, Rex hurriedly assembled an expeditionary force.
It was technically a truce, but he could not send the company commanders responsible for defending the three sides of his domain.
So he had no choice but to go himself with Ari, his escort.
Thus, Rex put aside his stubbornness and headed for the neighboring domain.
After all, with a nuclear missile aimed at his home, saying things like, “It’s dangerous outside the blanket,” was basically saying he wanted to die.
All of these events took place within just two hours of Duke leaving.
Duke, however, had neither the ability nor the will to figure out what had happened behind the scenes.
‘Another misunderstanding story.’
Assuming it was merely an ordinary misunderstanding story that would sort itself out, he went along with the flow.
“Thank you for your support, my lord.”
[I’ll end this war within the winter!]
And so Rex bravely headed for the Sneria Domain.
(Though he personally felt as if someone behind him were threatening him with a sword.)
Afterward, Rex went from battlefield to battlefield inside the carriage, covered in tears and snot,
and a misunderstanding even arose that, after fainting because of an arrow lodged in the carriage, Rex woke up to find that he had defeated the enemy commander.
One month later.
Spring arrived, and under Rex’s command, the Sneria Domain truly secured an armistice.
During that time, Duke nodded in satisfaction.
‘This chapter had plenty of plot hooks, and the ending was good, too···’
Above all···
“Sir.”
“Yes. Now I suppose it’s time to do what we promised.”
He had even saved his favorite.
Duke, who had been striking a pose with one hand resting on his greatsword as usual, turned toward Hana.
Now, if she joined Rex’s command and officially became his colleague, everything would have a happy ending.
She, too, had acknowledged the difference between her abilities and Rex’s and was eager to come under his command.
But the world never unfolded according to Duke’s expectations.
“Sir. You just need to sign here.”
The contract she shyly held out.
Unless Duke’s eyes were deceiving him, it was a marriage contract.
‘···What the fuck.’
Duke could not understand where the story had gotten tangled.
***
Meanwhile, the setting shifted back to Ophir’s (fake) stone tomb.
A new visitor arrived at the entrance to the stone tomb.
“Is this it? The place where that witch was last detected?”
Knights wearing pure-white armor engraved with red sun emblems gathered in front of the stone tomb.
“Yes, sir. That witch disappeared without a trace here.”
“Sigh··· Do we have to start tracking her all over again from here···”
They were the Red Sun Holy Knights of the Holy Kingdom, located in the northern part of the continent.
After the Empire fell, it had elevated the Empire’s beliefs into a religion and rallied the people, becoming a fairly large kingdom in its own right.
It was not ruled by a superhuman lord or king, but the priests had merely taken their place, making it an ordinary theocratic state that was moderately corrupt.
However, since they claimed to uphold a religion, they hated heretics to an extreme degree and were unrivaled on the continent at tracking.
“That evil dark mage bastard···”
The Red Sun Holy Knights in particular hated heretics who wielded black magic.
As for what black magic meant here,
it was a collective term for magic that posed ethical problems, such as necromancy, curses, and poison magic, as well as any magic that dared challenge the authority of the priests.
For example, magic that offered free baptisms or healing magic monopolized by the priests,
wicked sorcery that let commoners defeat holy knights through hard work,
or clairvoyance that could expose the priests’ secret private lives—all such magic fell under that category.
(For reference, the magic used by priests is not black magic.)
In any case, these specialists in tracking black mages had pursued a woman to the stone tomb.
Whatever else might be said of them, at this moment, they were knights with a sacred mission.
Even if they were somewhat corrupt, what Hilly of the Twilight School had done in the Holy Kingdom was unquestionably a grave evil.
“We will avenge our comrades.”
She had dared challenge the authority of holy magic, raising corpses on land consecrated by the priests and destroying several cities.
- “Kya-ha-ha! You mean you took money for a hundred years and lied about consecrating the cemetery? Wow, incredible! It’s hard to find a cemetery where the corpses rise with so little resistance!”
How dare she. How dare she challenge the authority of the Holy Kingdom.
Because of her, people had begun to lose faith in the priests, causing the Holy See’s income to fall by a whole tenth.
Therefore, they absolutely had to bring her to the stake.
If she died by someone else’s hand before they could do that, the Holy King would send these knights to the stake in her place.
The knights prepared to enter the stone tomb, resolved to fight to the death.
Before entering, they first created a small angel and sent it inside.
The knights scouted the interior through the angel, as though they were piloting a drone.
Before long, the knight at the very front whispered to his comrades in shock.
“Fuck···”
“If a holy knight uses such vulgar language···”
“That woman’s dead.”
“Fuck.”
The holy knights’ vision went dark.
They already felt as though the stake were looming before their eyes.
At that moment, one of the knights called out to his comrades.
“Hey. Wait. That.”
They looked in the direction one of them was pointing.
At the mummy sitting on a stone throne in the deepest part of the tomb.
At first, they scolded the knight for having no sense of the situation, but then the knight pointed out the mummy’s features one by one, and they were horrified.
“That. Isn’t that clothing worn in the eastern kingdoms? Was it called a dopo?”
“It looks a little different. More like the peninsula than the eastern kingdoms?"
"Was it modified into armor?”
“A red dopo layered with black armor···”
“People who wear clothes like that...”
“If it contains this much mana while mummified···”
Could it be?
The knights exchanged glances one after another.
“If this is···”
The Holy King would spare them.
Would he merely spare them?
He would even open the kingdom’s treasury, commend them, and allow them to take several secret manuals of sacred magic.
The holy knights were filled with joy and immediately began preparing to loot Ophir’s tomb.
The witch who had turned to ash was already forgotten.
She was already dead anyway. Too bad, but what could they do?
What mattered was taking that corpse.
However, they could not enter right away.
“Wait. There’s alarm magic at the entrance. It detects people passing through.”
Unlike a certain stupid woman, at least one of them still had the sense to notice the magic installed at the entrance.
“Can you deactivate it?”
“It’s connected somewhere. If we deactivate it, whoever it’s connected to will know, too.”
“Who do you think that signal will go to?”
“If Ophir has someone he would notify···”
The holy knights’ faces turned pale.
The Twelve Overlords of the Continent.
Aside from those formerly known as the Thirteen Heaven-Defying Stars, they could think of no other candidates.
The leader of the holy knights immediately changed the plan.
“Hmm··· Let’s leave him here for now and report to His Majesty the Holy King.”
They had found the tomb, after all, and that alone was a great achievement.
Thus, they returned to their homeland.
When the holy knights gave their report in the Holy See’s audience chamber, the Holy King forgot his dignity and burst into laughter.
“Excellent! You are the pride of the Holy Kingdom! As a reward, each of you may choose three secret manuals!”
That was three secret manuals for every single knight.
The knights shared the Holy King’s joy at the extraordinarily generous reward.
“Thank you, Your Majesty!”
“I’ll exempt you from your duties for the time being. You’ll need plenty of time to study the secret manuals, won’t you?”
The knights did not know what to do with themselves and left the audience chamber, bowing repeatedly.
After sending them away, the Holy King began designing the future while indulging in ecstatic fantasies.
‘Time is infinite, anyway.’
The tomb happened to lie within the Holy Kingdom’s sphere of influence, and it was a wasteland with very few people around.
They only needed to build a temple nearby and slowly figure out how to overcome that alarm magic.
And as time passed···
“A seraph made from Ophir...!”
A seraph imbued with the power of Tier Nine.
If that were completed, the Holy Kingdom would possess hegemony over the continent.
Before long, he might even be called the Holy Emperor rather than the Holy King.
“Heh-heh···”
The Holy King let out a low, pleasant laugh and sank into a happy dream.