A cold wind blew.
Lysander strode across the frozen wasteland, staring at the jerky in his hand with a complicated expression. Although he had already resolved every conceivable issue that could arise from the teleportation, he was not an omniscient god. There was one thing Lysander had not anticipated.
He was out of food.
While he couldn't be called pampered, in his previous life, Lysander was a great archmage who had tasted every delicacy imaginable. Even after being reincarnated on Earth, the orphanage's food, though somewhat monotonous, had its own unique charm in his eyes. Once he grew up, Lysander had sampled everything from Chinese to Western cuisine, including that strange roasted chicken from a place called "KFC." For someone who, in either life, had never worried about his next meal, the simple dried meat carried by mercenaries was truly hard to swallow—especially after recalling that this bundle of jerky had been looted from a corpse. It completely ruined his appetite.
If he had known, he should have brought more convenience foods before returning. Even potato chips and instant noodles would have been better.
Though slightly regretful, Lysander didn't dwell on it. After all, he could no longer return to the world where he had spent eighteen years recuperating. It would be foolish to long for it now. Angela, on the other hand, seemed incredibly excited. Of course, Lysander suspected this was mostly due to the Aethel Continent's massive moon, which was clearly visible on the horizon even during the day. Set against the blue sky and white clouds, the enormous moon looked more like a distant celestial structure. To Lysander, this view was so familiar it was unremarkable, a perspective that only changed after he discovered the moon on Earth was barely the size of a coin.
Vampires, this strange species of life, seemed to have some connection to the moon. As a former archmage, Lysander was naturally curious about this, but he had never found any useful information on the matter.
"Stop playing."
Lysander tore his gaze away from the fire lizard before him. The giant reptile, as tall as a man, could breathe fire and was a tyrant of the wastelands. Its scale-hide, impervious to swords and spears, combined with a fiery breath comparable to a fireball spell, was enough to give a squad of well-equipped adventurers a world of trouble. In fact, when the lizard first encountered the two humans in the wasteland, it had treated them like a godsend, excitedly launching a gout of flame at them. But that had also been its undoing. Now, the pathetic creature was missing a leg and an eye, and could only crouch before Angela, trembling like it had met a dragon. Not that one could blame Angela. Who told it to have six legs, four eyes, and breathe fire?
"We have to get moving. By my judgment, the place we teleported to was the Magic Empire's border fortress in the Star-Scarred Wasteland. It won't be easy to reach civilization from here. Besides, the meat of this kind of magical beast isn't very tasty."
"Yes, Master."
Angela stood up with a trace of an innocent smile. At the same moment, a crisp cracking sound came from beneath her small, delicate palm. The fire lizard, its skull crushed, didn't even have time to whimper before it became a pathetic corpse. The little girl didn't spare another glance at the beast she had just killed. After wiping the blood from her hands with a handkerchief, she skipped along behind Lysander.
Innocent, elegant, and cruel.
Lysander had no particular comment on Angela's actions. She was his contracted familiar, and she was useful in many ways. That was enough.
Many ways.
"Master, why is this place called the Star-Scarred Wasteland?"
"A long time ago, legend says a star fell here."
Answering Angela's question, Lysander pointed a hand toward the sunken trench at his feet, a scar in the earth hundreds of meters wide with no end in sight.
"It left a mark like this everywhere it passed, and it finally exploded deep in the wilderness. So, after that, this wasteland came to be known as the Star-Scarred Wasteland."
Lysander was not only answering Angela's question but also revisiting his own past. The memories, long veiled by the dust of time, were slowly coming back into focus through this recollection.
"This was once the border of the Magic Empire. We used to..."
Here, Lysander paused. Although Angela was watching him with a clear look of curiosity, Lysander said no more and simply waved his hand.
"That's all in the past... Also, that thing with four little wings you're holding now is called a feathered serpent. It's highly venomous. One bite is fatal."
"I think it's rather cute."
Angela's crimson eyes couldn't suppress their interest as she stared at the small snake coiled around her palm as if it were a fascinating toy. The snake was pure white with two pairs of small, delicate wings. At a glance, the adorable creature looked more like a noble lady's pet. It was with this harmless appearance that it had lured so many victims.
Yet this sinister and terrifying magical beast was now docilely wrapped around Angela's palm, showing no intention of moving closer. It seemed the creature understood perfectly that what was before it was not easy prey, but a monster that held its life in its hands.
Then, Angela stopped walking.
"Found something?" Lysander asked casually. He had known for a long time that vampires possessed senses almost as keen as those of elves.
"The panting of a man and a woman. And it doesn't sound like they're courting."
"This is a rather unromantic spot for that."
Lysander scanned their surroundings, then made a decision.
"Let's go take a look."
The wastelands were dangerous.
Dodging a viscous tentacle, Calvin swung his longsword, forcing the monster before him back. He stole a glance at the young woman by his side. Her long, golden hair shimmered in the sunlight. Her well-trained movements made her seem at ease even as she fought off skeletal soldiers. Bathed in the holy light of her longsword, she looked inviolable... She was the strongest knight among them, but even she seemed to be struggling against the current threat.
"Master, what is that?"
Standing atop a shattered tower, Angela asked with curiosity. Lysander shifted his gaze to the thing battling the two paladins—a creature so thin it was nothing but bones, held together only by the power of magic.
"That is a lich. It's not surprising."
In fact, with Lysander's eye, he could easily discern the lich's current level. He could even deduce the cause of the conflict without asking. Liches were the product of human mages seeking immortality. Judging by the thick necrotic aura around this one, it had clearly been transformed for only a short time. As a rule, the more powerful a lich, the fainter its aura of death, as this indicated its growing mastery over necrotic forces. A lich like this, which filled the air with a deathly aura the moment a fight began, was obviously still an amateur. And seeing that it was summoning zombies with flesh still on their bones instead of true undead warriors to attack the paladins, one could easily guess it had been caught by the paladins for indiscriminately killing innocents in a hurry to increase its own power. Although such a lich was relatively high-level among undead creatures, "high-level" was always relative. Before Lysander, this creature was so low-level it wasn't even worth mentioning. What's more, a mortal always went through a period of weakness after becoming a lich, and this one was currently being cornered by two paladins in broad daylight... a swift end was likely inevitable.
"I mean the female," Angela said, but her finger was pointing unmistakably at the fighting maiden. "She has an aura that makes me very uncomfortable. Can I kill her?"
"That's a paladin," Lysander said, his voice low as he frowned. "You need to be careful, Angela. They are completely different from anything we encountered in that other world. The paladins here are exceptionally skilled at destroying undead and non-human creatures. Even you probably couldn't withstand a single blow from her holy light."
In his past life, Lysander had no great fondness for paladins, but he didn't detest them either. During the age of the Magic Empire, powerful arcane mages had all sorts of connections with numerous gods. In fact, the gods were far from the lofty beings they were made out to be in legends. They had their own wants and needs, things that their mortal followers often couldn't fulfill. Such tasks sometimes fell to the arcane mages. At times, gods would even trade with the mages, sending their chosen wielders of divine power—paladins, priests, or holy maidens—to serve as their guards, or even lovers, in return. Lysander himself had such experiences in his past life, helping gods forge the artifacts they desired and then enjoying the service of the holy maidens they sent. Sometimes, the high-and-mighty gods didn't even mind borrowing the bodies of their followers to descend upon the mortal realm for a tryst with an arcane mage.
Even gods need to relax.
That was something a certain goddess had once said to Lysander.
However, seeing a paladin now did not bring Lysander any comfort. Although several gods had secretly helped him carry out his plan when the Magic Empire was collapsing and his soul was traversing worlds, Lysander didn't fully trust this group that had played deaf and dumb, remaining neutral ever since the crisis began. Moreover, Lysander was almost certain that the gods were inextricably linked to the destruction of the Magic Empire.
Until he got to the bottom of things, he would not easily deal with any organization connected to the gods again.
After observing for a moment, Lysander saw the crest on the female paladin's left shield.
It was a rising sun over a lake that reflected its light.
The Goddess of Dawn?
Lysander's brow furrowed.
Originally, Lysander hadn't planned to help either the lich or the paladins. As one of the most powerful arcane mages in history, he had never held any prejudice against undead or non-human beings—as evidenced by the fact he traveled everywhere with Angela. To be frank, most arcane mages were unprincipled and neutral individuals like him. They could do business with the Goddess of Life and have tea with the Lord of Undeath. Therefore, upon seeing the forces of two different powers, Lysander had no intention of intervening.
However, after learning that these paladins were followers of the Goddess of Dawn, Lysander had to change his mind—after all, he once had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with this goddess. Although their interactions were purely on a spiritual level, the goddess had left quite a favorable impression on him.
"Angela, let's go dismantle that bag of bones."
After careful consideration, Lysander made his decision.
Angela was clearly unenthusiastic about his choice, but she nodded quickly and vanished. Lysander then focused his gaze on the lich before him and began to chant a mysterious and ancient magical incantation.
The combatants below all froze.
Both the lich and the paladins sensitively detected the sudden emergence of a powerful, incomparable evil energy. The aura appeared so abruptly that even the lich, which had been gaining the upper hand, hastily recalled its summoned undead soldiers to guard its flank against any potential threat.
Just because you are both evil doesn't mean you are on the same side.
"There!" the blonde paladin shouted. Her longsword, blazing with holy light, slashed through the empty air beside her, leaving a brilliant arc of light—and then stopped.
"Careful now, woman."
Angela appeared there, her two slender, delicate fingers firmly pinching the blade of the longsword as it swung down, still burning with divine power. A hint of displeasure showed in her crimson eyes.
"I am not your enemy."
"This... This is..."
Staring at the girl before them, the two paladins were momentarily dumbfounded. They had never seen such a being. She looked like a young girl on the outside, but her body radiated an evil aura that could rival a demon lord's. She wasn't undead, nor did she have any demonic features. She was a completely human girl. This fact left the two battle-hardened paladins momentarily stunned, and they only snapped out of it when Angela flicked her finger, sending the heavy longsword flying.
Without even a second glance at them, Angela turned her gaze to the lich opposite her. Her eyes held the same innocent cruelty of a child pulling the wings off a bee one by one.
"A dried-up corpse with no reproductive ability? I do hope you can offer me a little fun."
"Die!"
The sharp, vicious, yet fittingly graphic insult instantly ignited the lich's fury. The flames of its soul, burning in its dark eye sockets, blazed brighter with anger. It stretched out its hands, pushed them forward, and began to silently chant a spell. Soon, several bone spikes materialized in the air and shot swiftly toward Angela. If they hit, the small girl would surely be reduced to a bloody pulp.
But facing the incoming bone spikes, Angela merely smiled innocently and snapped her fingers. With a casual wave of her hand, a lace-and-velvet fan appeared from nowhere. Angela opened it and swung it forward in a cutting motion.
With just that single, empty gesture, the flying bone spikes shattered as if struck by an invisible blade. With a crisp, sharp sound, they turned back into the dust of death and scattered into the air. Even the skeleton guards flanking the lich were not spared. The illusory blade sliced them cleanly in two, eradicating the last form these undead held in the world.
"Is that all you have? As expected, if you're lacking down below, you must be soft up top as well, yes?"
Angela gracefully snapped her velvet fan shut with a 'pop' and held it to her lips to hide a smile, her words as venomous as ever.
"You... what in the world... are you?"
Having not even sensed a magical fluctuation before his undead soldiers were annihilated, the lich immediately suppressed its anger. It studied the girl before it cautiously and asked its question in a hushed, careful tone.
"Could you be..."
"While I wouldn't mind telling you... you won't live to hear the answer."
Pure, clean energy, accompanying Angela's words, slammed into the lich's body, effortlessly tearing through its magical defenses. Before the lich could even react, it was incinerated into ash before the flames of pure magical power.
"Alright," Lysander said, clapping his hands as if he had done nothing at all. He stood a short distance behind Angela.
"Work's done. Time for us to go."