Translator: AnubisTL
"Ron, no matter how powerful, how glorious, or how revered you were in life."
"In the end, you still couldn't withstand the blade named Time."
The Lich's whisper was filled with hatred, bordering on a snarl.
"Now you have turned to dust in history, but the feud between us is far from over."
"Just you wait! Wait until I ascend back to the Legendary Domain."
"Your descendants, those successors who carry your filthy bloodline; your subjects, those ignorant lambs who once cheered for you and worshipped you as a god; your kingdom, that filthy land built upon the piles of corpses of the Kingdom of Butler!"
"They will all pay the most agonizing price for your deeds."
"The grudge of my murder, the hatred of my kingdom's annihilation! Even if another thousand years pass, even if my soul has completely decayed... I, Phillips, will never forget!"
He slowly stroked the surface of the crystal ball with his palm, which now consisted only of pale white finger bones. Inside the ball, the lively scene of flickering lights in Creekwood Fief was reflected, a stark contrast to the dead silence of his own surroundings.
At this moment, if a scholar well-versed in the history of the Federation were present.
Hearing the few words he uttered, they would undoubtedly be shocked.
Ron.
His full name was Ron Lothurn.
He was the legendary figure who had single-handedly forged the Federation, later revered by posterity as the Holy King of Lothurn.
And Phillips... he had been a legendary necromancer who struck terror into the hearts of countless foes eight hundred years ago, in a kingdom named Butler, now long buried by the dust of history.
But all of that was a story from the distant past.
The Holy King of Lothurn had not been born invincible. On his epic journey of conquest and expansion, he had faced many powerful rivals and overcome countless perilous crises.
The Kingdom of Butler had been one of the toughest nuts to crack.
But as the Holy King rose to power, Butler's royal capital was ultimately crushed beneath Lothurn's iron hooves. The kingdom's banners were permanently shattered, and its lands were annexed into the Federation's territory.
Time flowed by, and the world changed beyond recognition.
Now, the Kingdom of Butler had faded into a mere footnote in historical texts. And Phillips, the legendary necromancer who had once commanded armies single-handedly and shaken the world... had long since fallen beneath the Holy King's blade, reduced to the neither-man-nor-ghost form of the Lich standing here today.
Tracing back eight hundred years, to the era before the Federation's founding, when kingdoms warred over the abundant resources of the Sierre Wilderness...
Phillips had once commanded an undead legion single-handedly, sweeping across the wilderness battlefields and shining with unparalleled brilliance.
Yet, he encountered the young Holy King of Lothurn, who had just stepped into the Legendary Domain and was at the peak of his brilliance.
Though young, the Holy King already displayed terrifying strength and transcendent military genius, capable of sweeping across the battlefield. In a pivotal engagement, he feigned weakness, cunningly luring Phillips and his Undead Army into a deep pursuit.
When Phillips, eager for victory, momentarily exposed his true form hidden within the army's ranks, the Holy King suddenly unleashed his full, hidden power. With the force of a thunderbolt, he tore through the layers of the Undead Army's defenses and finally decapitated the powerful necromancer.
However...
Though the young Holy King was decisive and lethal, his blade claiming the heads of his foes, he still lacked the seasoned experience he would later acquire. Necromancers had long walked the line between life and death, peering into the forbidden mysteries of existence.
Under the Holy King's fatal strike, Phillips's physical body was indeed destroyed, but his existence did not fully end. Before participating in the brutal Wilderness War, the necromancer had secretly crafted a phylactery as a safeguard.
The death of his physical body triggered his preset spell. His soul was preserved, ultimately transforming him into a Lich, reborn in an undead form.
But this evil transformation came at a price.
After his transformation into a Lich, Phillips' soul—shattered by the Holy King's assault and the ritual's toll—was left utterly frail. He was forced into a long, compulsory slumber to stabilize his precarious state, neither truly alive nor dead.
He slept for three hundred years.
When his consciousness finally stirred on a silent night over five hundred years ago, he sought to reclaim his former glory.
But he awoke to a world transformed beyond recognition.
The Kingdom of Butler, the land he had fought and bled to protect, had vanished into dust, its name now a cold, lifeless entry in the annals of history.
Worse still, the cold, undead essence of his Lich body was relentlessly eroding his once vibrant, warm, and emotional human soul. Day by day, his spirit grew more sinister and gloomy, his nature more cruel and violent.
The human logic and emotions that had once defined Phillips were crumbling like a sandcastle before the relentless tide of undead consciousness.
He was desperate for revenge, desperate to act while his mind was still clear.
Yet, the Holy King's power was at its zenith, and the Federation stood as an immovable rock. Phillips knew all too well that to emerge now, with his strength unrecovered and his soul unstable, would be to strike a rock with an egg—a suicidal folly.
He dared not reveal his existence.
He could only skulk like a rat in the gutters, hiding for a long time in the desolate corners of the Sierre Wilderness. Relying on intermittent deep slumbers, he slowed the rate at which his soul was being completely assimilated by his undead nature, silently accumulating strength and awaiting the opportunity for revenge.
Until not long ago, news of the Holy King's fall reached his hidden lair.
He immediately sensed that the Federation, deprived of this colossal pillar, would surely plunge into a fragmented and chaotic civil war.
He decided to emerge from hiding. He would seize this heaven-sent opportunity—when the Federation's control over the wilderness was at its weakest—to reap souls on a grand scale, restore his power, reclaim his Legendary Status, and then begin the bloody revenge he had been brewing against the Kingdom of Lothurn for centuries!
"Ironforged Tribe... Creekwood Fief..."
Phillips stroked the crystal ball with his pale finger bones, the soulfire in his eyes flickering and burning faintly.
For undead creatures, the souls of sentient beings were the finest delicacies, far more nourishing than the souls of ferocious beasts and demonic creatures.
Among them, the souls of humans, with their rich emotions and clear minds, were the most delicious and revitalizing.
The next best grade of souls belonged to monsters with rudimentary intelligence and savage emotions, such as ogres and hyena-men.
But the pinnacle of the soul feast—the ultimate delicacy—was none other than the soul of a dragon! Its boundless life essence and ancient dragon soul were enough to drive any high-level undead into a frenzy.
(End of the Chapter)
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