Chapter 38
“Stop, War Chief!!!”
The Captain of the Royal Guard cried out in horror and threw himself forward to stop the War Chief.
But he was too late.
The War Chief’s feet had already turned to sand.
Once he entered that state, there was no catching him.
The world appeared to slow down in the Captain of the Royal Guard’s eyes.
Beyond his own arm, which was moving uselessly, he saw the War Chief’s bloodshot face.
Enraged at Third Prince Marwan for killing his daughter, the War Chief was raising his arm high to bring his curved sword down.
In another moment, the blade would slash through the prince’s body.
If that happened, Sun God’s Wrath would activate.
Sun God’s Wrath was an automatic defense system the emperor, who styled himself the Sun God, had engraved into his children.
Members of the imperial family could not die.
The light of the sun would appear from Third Prince Marwan’s heart, protect him, and blast away everything around him.
‘Is that your objective, War Chief!’
If his goal was to inflict damage by reducing Marwan’s forces, even if he couldn’t kill Marwan himself, it made sense.
Elite warriors, including the Royal Guard, were currently gathered in this detached palace.
Before anyone knew it, the War Chief had rushed to within arm’s reach of Marwan.
The Captain of the Royal Guard squeezed his eyes shut in dismay.
At the same time, the War Chief’s curved sword began to descend.
But.
The War Chief’s curved sword.
At the very last moment.
It changed direction.
The blade of rage failed to cut Third Prince Marwan and instead sliced through empty air.
His wrist had done it.
Was it because Third Prince Marwan had given him this curved sword?
Because he had appointed a former slave like him as War Chief?
Or because he had been able to appoint his daughter, who was about to be sold to a brothel, as a scribe?
The War Chief was confused.
Hadn’t all those debts already been repaid when his daughter was murdered?
Sshhk-!
The next moment, the Captain of the Royal Guard, who had rushed to protect the prince’s body, grabbed the War Chief by the nape and slammed him into the floor.
Bang!!!!
“War Chief!! I sentence you to death here and now for treason!!!”
The Captain of the Royal Guard shouted, then severed all the War Chief’s tendons, rendering him unable to move.
The War Chief was soon completely bound, and he did not resist.
Third Prince Marwan remained silent throughout.
He showed no sign of surprise.
The same was true when, a moment later, he heard the report a soldier came in to deliver.
Bang!
The door to the conference hall flew open.
“Y-Your Highness...!!”
A soldier kicked the door open and rushed inside.
His face was deathly pale.
The sight of the current scene in this sealed chamber was disturbing enough, but the report he had to deliver seemed no less alarming.
“You insolent wretch! Do you dare enter this place so carelessly?!”
The Administrator shouted furiously, but the soldier did not leave. He threw himself facedown on the floor instead.
“T-The quarters of Lord Alcamus...! There’s been a riot...!”
Alcamus was the necromancer Third Prince Marwan had brought in for his plan to conquer the Demon Tower.
He was also the reason this situation had occurred. The War Chief’s proposal to separate the troops had been the trigger.
Hearing that name, the Captain of the Royal Guard turned and asked,
“What?”
“The screams from the underground chamber wouldn’t stop, so the soldiers on patrol went inside to investigate... but none of those who went in... none of them have come back out...!”
“You came here over something like that? Kill yourself at once.”
“Yes, I shall obey your command... but...”
The soldier trembled as he barely managed to continue.
“If I die... there won’t be a single soldier left to guard this detached palace...”
The War Chief, the Captain of the Royal Guard, and the Administrator stared at him in bewilderment.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the only one who didn’t enter Lord Alcamus’s room...”
Afterward, at Marwan’s command, everyone except the Administrator headed toward the place where Alcamus was.
Yet for some reason, they took the bound War Chief with them.
Along the way, they were able to confirm that the soldier’s words were true.
Corridor. Garden. Stairway. In front of the door.
Not a single soldier could be seen anywhere in the detached palace.
*
In the frigid underground of the detached palace.
In front of the quarters of the necromancer Alcamus.
Creak-
As the iron door opened, the stench of blood and nauseating decay rushed out.
“Chomp. Gnaw. Smack.”
In the middle of the room.
An old man with thick white hair was crouched on the floor, ravenously tearing into something.
They were the corpses of the children the War Chief had given him and the elite soldiers who had guarded the detached palace.
They were piled up in layers across the floor.
Everyone witnessed the gruesome scene.
“Ugh...”
The Captain of the Royal Guard drew his weapon in horror and shouted,
“You crazy old man!! What the hell have you done to our warriors?!”
Alcamus answered with a grotesque grin, blood dripping from his lips.
“Heeheehee. I merely followed orders...”
“Well done, Alcamus.”
As everyone stood aghast, the Third Prince stepped forward and praised Alcamus.
“You defeated all my elite troops. Just as the rumors say, you really are the legendary dark sorcerer, aren’t you?”
“Kikikiki. Your Highness came too.”
Alcamus waved around the severed forearm of a soldier, dripping with blood.
The Captain of the Royal Guard tried to stop Alcamus with a shout, but Third Prince Marwan placed a hand on his shoulder.
Alcamus said,
“As expected of a sage king. It seems you found it difficult to kill your beloved subordinates yourself with Sun God’s Wrath!!”
Everyone was bewildered by those words.
“Hahaha. Alcamus. Maybe I am a sage king, as you say. The War Chief couldn’t kill me even after I cut his daughter’s throat.”
The Captain of the Royal Guard found this exchange utterly bewildering.
But he was able to realize one thing.
‘Third Prince Marwan intentionally tried to activate Sun God’s Wrath.’
Yet no matter how insane Third Prince Marwan was, he couldn’t understand why Marwan would try to kill all his own elite soldiers.
Marwan jerked his chin, and Alcamus said,
“Shall I kill them all for you? Kikiki...”
“There should be no problem now that the War Chief has been subdued, right?”
“I’m simply overwhelmed with gratitude that you’ve spared me the trouble...”
The Captain of the Royal Guard’s eyes turned deathly pale.
The War Chief, who seemed to have realized something, said,
“To be able to help Your Highness even in death... For a slave, it is the greatest honor imaginable.”
He did not know when it had happened.
His devotion to Marwan had already sunk into his bones, beyond all measure.
Yet Marwan did not even spare the War Chief’s final appeal a glance. He looked at Alcamus instead.
“Alcamus! Begin!”
“Kikikiki! As you command, Your Highness!”
Alcamus scattered green magical power across the floor.
Creak! Crack-!
As the magic seeped into the floor, the corpses Alcamus had just been tearing apart began to rise.
Green light filled the ruined bodies of the elite soldiers who had lost their lives moments before.
“Your Highness! Why are you doing this?! I can still be useful to you! Shouldn’t you conquer the Demon Tower with me...?”
Marwan answered innocently,
“Yes! Just as you said. You’ll be conquering the Demon Tower with me from within me.”
The Captain of the Royal Guard’s face darkened as he failed to understand those words.
“Kikikiki! Get torn apart and die!”
At Alcamus’s command, the undead horde pounced on the Captain of the Royal Guard all at once. His route of escape was already blocked.
“Don’t come any closer, you bastards!!”
The Captain of the Royal Guard swung his sword with all his might.
By this point, the bound War Chief was already buried beneath the undead.
Clang-! Shrrrk-!
The Captain of the Royal Guard severed heads and hacked through flesh. But a fallen body that felt no pain seized his ankle.
“Aaaaaaaagh!!!”
The Captain of the Royal Guard screamed, shedding bloody tears, and when the arm holding his sword had become a mangled mess, Alcamus’s shadow fell behind him.
A dark green-black strand of magic shot from the necromancer’s fingertips, burrowing into the Captain of the Royal Guard’s back and piercing his heart.
“Kgh...!”
The Captain of the Royal Guard coughed up black blood, stared at Third Prince Marwan with resentful eyes, and then let his head droop limply.
Every living thing in the room, except Marwan and Alcamus, had stopped breathing.
Alcamus spread both arms with a grotesque laugh.
“Now, Your Highness, it’s time for the harvest!”
Green wisps rose from the dozens of elite soldiers strewn across the floor, as well as from the corpses of the Captain of the Royal Guard and the War Chief, who had just died.
It was the essence of the martial prowess they had built over their entire lives.
Alcamus waved both hands, condensing all that energy in the air.
“Please enjoy it!!”
The enormous mass of martial essence poured like a waterfall into Third Prince Marwan’s mouth.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
Third Prince Marwan groaned in pain.
Even so, delight spread through his eyes.
*
It was quite some time later.
At last, Third Prince Marwan raised his head with a harsh gasp, his eyes incomparably sharper than before.
The air around him seemed to ripple with an overwhelming aura he could no longer contain.
He had absorbed all the martial prowess of his soldiers and been reborn as a superhuman.
“With this power, it should be possible.”
Marwan clenched and unclenched his fist, grinning in satisfaction.
He wanted to become emperor.
To do that, he needed his own martial prowess.
The reason the emperor of the Sahad Empire had originally been able to claim himself as the Sun God was that he had personally reached the Golden Vault on Floor 100 of the Demon Tower.
The emperor was the only person among those who had reached that Golden Vault to obtain the contents of the enormous golden chest that no one else had ever opened.
“I’ll march on the Demon Tower like this, Alcamus.”