"Hmm, hmm, hmmm~♪"
Alone in a secured chamber deep within the royal palace of Nagan, a solitary figure sat with only her lower legs submerged in a shallow pool of liquid, meticulously sorting through intercepted intelligence feeds.
Three days had elapsed since she successfully occupied the capital. In that brief window, she had already systematically terraformed the vibrant seat of government into a literal city of the dead. Having lost the initial psychological warfare against the Tactician, she had used the mental fragments extracted from the Red Knight's memory to deduce the existence of the "Highlands." Consequently, she abandoned her original offensive strategy, opting instead to execute a prolonged siege defense within these walls. To facilitate this, she had forcibly evicted every remaining living citizen from the urban sector to heavily reinforce the outer battlements. The interior of the fortress was currently undergoing a massive, dark magical retrofitting handled entirely by her and her high-tier subordinates.
While she had initially contemplated converting the surviving citizens into high-density undead thralls, she concluded that the local populace lacked sufficiently high-grade biological components to justify the mana expenditure. Furthermore, orchestrating a mass slaughter of that scale would generate an unsustainable layer of profound hatred from the surrounding nations. Leaving living elements inside the perimeter also introduced severe information security vulnerabilities. Thus, she made the pragmatic executive decision to purge every single living entity from the capital.
However, regardless of how thoroughly she fortified her physical defenses or optimized her counter-intelligence protocols, the strategic reality remained unchanged.
"It is effectively a glorious birdcage converted into a personalized execution arena. The exact microsecond they cross the threshold, the match is already structurally settled... Your strategic mind is truly terrifying, isn't it, Tactician~? But you see, once a subject deciphers the exact nature of your trap, it ceases to be quite so terrifying."
The Necromancer was intimately aware that she was still actively dancing within the palm of the Tactician's hand. However, dancing in absolute ignorance and dancing with absolute structural comprehension were two completely different operational states. Even if the opposing side deployed an entirely new layer of tactical traps, her awareness granted her the cognitive buffer required to prepare an emergency exit from his palm—even if the trajectory led directly into an abyss or triggered a secondary hidden trap. Understanding that the enemy's strategic will was actively influencing the board allowed her to engineer proper countermeasures.
"And this specialized blood bath functions as a vital component of that counter-strategy."
As she spoke, her gaze drifted down to analyze the vast fluid surface expanding before her.
The substance currently rippling before the Necromancer's eyes was strictly consecrated water. It was an exceptionally high-purity Holy Water array, originally installed as a massive ceiling-drop trap designed to flood the primary audience chamber from directly above. By leveraging the survival of the Red Knight and the various body doubles as bargaining chips, she had successfully negotiated their uninjured evacuation from the capital under the explicit condition that 'no further structural traps would be detonated within the capital.' This allowed her to systematically harvest and repurpose multiple high-grade defensive arrays left behind by the garrison.
Among those assets, the Holy Water had immediately captured her operational interest. Under conventional parameters, this liquid functioned as an absolute, highly lethal toxin to any entity possessing an undead signature.
"Which is precisely why I am systematically rewriting its elemental properties."
Muttering softly to herself, the Necromancer smoothly shifted the orientation of her legs. Raising a slender, pale foot from the fluid surface, she allowed it to hover briefly before submerging it once more. From her flesh, a continuous, brilliantly radiant stream of crimson blood was systematically venting into the basin.
Despite its consecrated status, Holy Water was fundamentally nothing more than "enchanted water"—water holding a massive concentration of synthesized mana. It was simply water saturated with a high density of magical energy that had been forced to conform to the Holy attribute, which granted it absolute critical multiplier damage against the undead. To her, the singular hazard was the specific attribute; the fact that it was water and held a massive reservoir of baseline mana was an extraordinary advantage. If she could successfully overwrite that high-density mana matrix and bend it to her own authority, she would secure an absolute strategic asset.
Faced with such an exquisite volume of pure mana, there was zero chance she would leave it unutilized.
"And my personal blood functions as the absolute highest-grade catalyst for this specific process."
Utilizing her own blood as a medium, she was systematically forcing the attribute to shift. Her blood, heavily saturated to her absolute limits with concentrated mana, glowed with an eerie, vibrant luminescence. A volume of fluid that would comfortably trigger fatal systemic collapse in a conventional humanoid had already been drained directly into the holy reservoir. By sacrificing an astronomical number of biological specimens throughout her career, she possessed a profound, near-surgical comprehension of human anatomy. By converting raw mana into biological kinetic energy, she was actively accelerating her internal metabolic parameters to continuously manufacture fresh blood at an impossible rate. Any localized organ damage incurred during the high-speed synthesis was instantly repaired via targeted mana arrays.
While her processing speeds lacked the terrifying, instantaneous regeneration metrics displayed by Wraith, she had successfully engineered a highly functional replication of the phenomenon.
"Fufu... Even so, watching the crimson coloration systematically devour the light is an exceptionally beautiful sight, isn't it?"
The fluid surface, which had initially projected a soft, sacred luminescence designed to soothe the human soul, was rapidly being conquered by a deep, dark crimson. She monitored the conversion process, letting out a soft, thoroughly amused chuckle.
The core mechanism of the Necromancer's current array involved blending her specialized blood into the reservoir to effectively transform the entire 300-ton volume of consecrated water into an extension of her own circulatory system. The massive reservoir of Holy Water the Tactician had meticulously accumulated to fuel his anti-undead traps was being systematically rewritten into a high-density sea of her own mana-saturated blood. Naturally, given the sheer, overwhelming volume of the fluid, the manual conversion process was an incredibly tedious, exhausting logistical chore. However, she was an exceptionally elite Necromancer; provided she was granted a sufficient window of time, the project was entirely mathematically feasible.
Once this rewritten fluid—the "Blooded Holy Water"—achieved completion, she could distribute it among her high-tier undead thralls to secure an absolute structural upgrade to their baseline combat metrics. Furthermore, it could be utilized as an absolute emergency insurance policy to guarantee her personal survival.
"And it will serve as an exceptional variable in the upcoming confrontation against that 'Ostrich'."
The primary objective behind her decision to heavily fortify this capital and convert it into an absolute stronghold was twofold: it served as an absolute proof of concept to broadcast the reality that 'I am currently entrenched here,' while simultaneously transforming the topography into a meticulously prepared final battlefield. Having suffered a decisive strategic defeat against the Tactician and failed to secure the physical custody of the King of Nagan, her original grand blueprint of igniting a continental world war was completely structurally dead. Consequently, she had shifted her primary directive to a secondary contingency: fake her death during this upcoming engagement, sever all active tracking parameters, and quietly migrate toward the "Highlands."
However, based on the reports regarding the massive undead suppression sweeping through the Beast Kingdom, the conclusion was absolute: "Wraith," the supreme commander of the ostrich fleet, was hunting her down with extreme prejudice. Furthermore, the Tactician—whose native country she had explicitly insulted by occupying the capital—was undeniably coordinating a parallel execution array.
(Well, considering the sheer scale of the chaos I introduced, this outcome was mathematically inevitable. But if I simply turn around and sprint away across the plains, they will systematically track my energy signature to the ends of the earth, won't they?)
Therefore, executing an absolute, completely flawless fake death scenario was a mandatory requirement. While the Tactician would undoubtedly retain a layer of deep suspicion or potentially decipher the deception over an extended timeline, that outcome was entirely acceptable.
She would throw one hundred percent of her current resource capital into fortifying this royal palace, transforming the capital into an absolute city of the dead. When the hostile forces finally breached the outer perimeter, she would unleash an absolute, desperate struggle, exhausting every single card remaining in her tactical deck to wage a cataclysmic war of attrition. The more authentic, violent, and utterly desperate her final stand appeared, the closer her manufactured demise would slide toward becoming absolute historical truth.
"All that remains is to establish a perfectly logical narrative explaining why I selected this specific fortress as my final stand, and then manufacture the physical reality of my clinical demise. Provided those two variables are perfectly synchronized, the survival array will succeed."
Even if the world eventually discovered she was alive down the road, it wouldn't matter. Provided she convinced them that she had suffered a catastrophic, near-fatal defeat that forced her to crawl into the shadows to recuperate for a few decades, it would count as a flawless strategic victory. In actual reality, the moment this operation concluded, she intended to immediately abandon the local theater and march straight into the deep interior of the Highlands, ensuring she would remain absent from the international stage for an exceptional duration. She had already established an immense network of high-security safe houses across the continent, alongside dozens of specialized trigger mechanisms scattered throughout the domestic and international sectors of Nagan.
Had she lacked access to this massive reservoir of Holy Water, she would have been forced to adopt a significantly more conservative, low-yield survival strategy, but that limitation had been thoroughly bypassed.
"Until quite recently, the board was a pure intellectual clash to determine whose cognitive processing limits were superior. But from this point forward, the engagement transforms into a raw, unadulterated meat grinder against an Ostrich to test the absolute limits of our combat output. A thoroughly straightforward equation."
Having finalized her operational directives, she accelerated the structural fortification of the capital's interior zones.
The massive stockpiles of high-yield military explosives the Tactician had covertly installed deep within the subterranean foundations as an emergency self-destruct array had already been completely neutralized, dismantled, and systematically transported to her alternate storage facilities. While there was a statistical probability that secondary hidden traps remained buried within the architecture, such hidden variables were easily solved by deploying the signature strategy of the Necromancer: infinite human-wave sweeps using low-tier thralls to systematically trigger them. Time was fundamentally functioning as her ally. However, given the absolute zero intelligence regarding exactly when the hostile vanguard would cross her outer perimeter, she couldn't afford to lower her operational velocity.
Consequently, she had deployed an immense network of low-tier animal undead into the surrounding wilderness to gather raw intelligence, intending to perfectly calculate the enemy's exact arrival window... and yet...
"...Why on earth are they just sitting out in the middle of nowhere?"
Staring at the incoming tracking data, a massive, profound question mark manifested above the Necromancer's head regarding the ostriches' operational behavior.
Under conventional parameters, her original strategy had explicitly engineered a narrative to lure both the ostriches and the Tactician directly into the heart of the Beast Kingdom. To capitalize on their inevitable return march, she had meticulously established espionage nests and hidden undead scouts within every single city, transit hub, and outpost along the primary regional highway. These scouts consisted predominantly of reanimated vermin like mice and small rodents—biological platforms that could comfortably blend into any urban infrastructure to secure absolute transparency. Even if the enemy deployed advanced anti-magic scanning arrays or high-grade physical barriers, her decentralized espionage web possessed sufficient multi-pronged access vectors to consistently pierce their information security.
(I was absolutely certain this network would guarantee total visibility over their deployment metrics.)
However, that flawless intelligence matrix was predicated entirely on a singular operational reality: the targets actually entering an "urban sector." Small rodent scouts rely fundamentally on physical cover, structural blind spots, and architectural debris to safely harvest data without detection. Conversely, when forced into a completely open, featureless outdoor plain, their capacity to safely observe and gather data plummeted to absolute zero.
(Did the Tactician successfully deduce the exact layout of my surveillance network? Is that the reason their entire army hasn't set foot inside a single city center since they began their march?)
She had already received the data confirming that her vanguard of thirty thousand undead, alongside the massive Carrion Golem they had manufactured, had been thoroughly erased from the board. Consequently, she had enthusiastically booted up her urban espionage grid to track their counter-offensive, only to receive absolute zero actionable data because not a single high-value target was entering the local municipalities. While she could vaguely calculate their approximate geographic coordinates by monitoring the sudden, massive fluctuations in food and livestock procurement metrics across local agricultural markets, she lacked absolute access to high-resolution tactical intelligence.
(I even tried deploying subterranean moles to execute high-speed tunneling arrays to intercept data from directly beneath their encampment, but...)
『Digging time~!』
『Waaaa!』
『...Something moved down there!』
『Is it food?』
『No! Stinky! Super dirty!』
『Vaporize it!』
『There's a whole bunch of them! Smush them! Smush them!』
The deployment strategy had been perfectly logical: lead the formation with an undead-reinforced mole to carve out high-speed subterranean tunnels, followed immediately by a rapid deployment of espionage mice through the fresh conduits to intercept acoustic data from directly beneath the camp. Using this methodology, she had attempted to siphon critical intelligence from the ostrich flock currently occupying the outer fields of the town. However, every single deployment vector had resulted in immediate, catastrophic operational failure. The absolute furthest her scouts had managed to achieve was confirming that the primary leadership had spread out a massive outdoor ground cloth to conduct a strategic council—but the exact millisecond they attempted to intercept the audio data, the link was violently severed by an ostrich talon.
Whether they possessed an absurdly refined, highly specialized evolutionary sensitivity to subterranean vibrations or simply a hyper-reactive predator instinct, every single underground asset she deployed was systematically detected and brutally crushed into fine paste within seconds of arrival.
"You truly are an incredibly bothersome individual, aren't you, Tactician~?"
Predicting her exact information-gathering vectors and deploying targeted, hyper-efficient neutralization sweeps to systematically blind her. It was precisely the type of elegant, cold intellectual chess she expected from the premier mind of Nagan... or so she deduced.
Naturally, the reality of the situation had absolute zero connection to statecraft.
◇◆◇◆◇
"Mama~! We found a super weird thing~!"
While we were currently stationary at a local regional hub to secure fresh food supplies and replenish our logistics train, the sudden, booming voice of one of my children—who had been enthusiastically digging holes in the nearby dirt to pass the time—echoed across the clearing.
Under normal circumstances, when they were simply deploying their vocal arrays to demand attention, I would smoothly transition into pretending I was completely deaf or offer a brief maternal acknowledgment before leaving them to their own devices. However, the specific acoustic parameters of his shout carried a highly unusual emotional signature. Furthermore, the phrasing of the report was 'found a super weird thing.' Worried that they had accidentally unburied a localized biohazard or a complex magical anomaly, I immediately shifted my coordinates and trotted over to the excavation site.
"A weird thing?"
"Un! It was super stinky!"
Peering down into the massive crater the chick had systematically hollowed out of the earth, my child began bouncing up and down with immense energy as he delivered his report. Ah, I see. So it was stinky... Looking around the immediate perimeter of the deep trench, I failed to spot any active entities, suggesting the anomaly had already been thoroughly pulverized into microscopic dust or safely processed directly into his digestive tract. We had witnessed a parallel phenomenon during our clash with the undead legions; certain chicks possessed a deeply terrifying layer of biological curiosity that compelled them to aggressively chew on things that were fundamentally, obviously non-edible... The raw scope of their curiosity was honestly horrifying.
That being said, what on earth did they actually dig up? Perhaps a subterranean monster variant I've never officially encountered in my life? The world contained an immense variety of creatures capable of venting evolutionary foul odors; if it was a toxic gas-type offensive variant or a venomous biological platform, handling it would be incredibly irritating... So, what exactly happened to the weird thing? Did you comfortably flatten it?
"Un!"
Nodding enthusiastically, my adorable child raised one of his heavily soiled talons to show me the underside of his foot. Assessing the sheer structural devastation painted across his footpad, it was abundantly clear that he had executed an absolute, maximum-yield stomp directly onto the target. While the statistical probability of our flock contracting an organic infection or a magical disease was functionally zero due to our absurd biological immunity metrics, the primary reason he had explicitly called me over was perfectly transparent: 'I made my foot dirty, please give me a bath.'
"Ah~, right, of course. Go trot over to the supply soldiers and request some fresh water, then Mama will give your foot a nice, thorough scrub. Make sure you ask for water, okay? Water. Don't forget."
"Water~!"
Hoisting him cleanly out of the massive excavation crater, I extended the tip of my wing toward the logistics perimeter to establish a clear navigation trajectory for him. Whether his working memory would successfully maintain the objective across the journey remained highly debatable, but it was an exceptional developmental window to let him attempt a solo errand. Even if he failed to secure the bath, sprinting across the natural soil would eventually coat his foot in conventional dirt, neutralizing the initial grime. By that point, the chick would have completely deleted the memory from his brain anyway; provided I retained the data, I could simply give him an industrial-grade scrubbing during our next scheduled mass bath.
Water, okay? Water. Make sure you chant the word continuously so your processing queue doesn't drop the data.
"Water! Water! Water!"
Watching the adorable child sprint off toward the supply depot while loudly, continuously screaming the word "WATER" at the top of his lungs, I let out a gentle sigh. I had already issued explicit corporate directives to the human logistical personnel: 'Please attempt to accommodate my children's requests to the absolute best of your operational capacity. If their requests violate baseline logic or actively sabotage your duties, simply look them in the eye and say: Your mother is currently calling for you.' While there was a massive probability that the exact millisecond he arrived at the depot, his brain would completely flush the context of why he needed water—or potentially forget why he was screaming the word "water" in the first place—everything would work out fine.
(He's approaching their sector while generating an immense volume of acoustic noise, and the personnel on duty are overwhelmingly kind-hearted individuals. The system will naturally resolve itself.)
Now then, with that minor domestic incident cleanly processed...
"Shall we officially resume our advanced training sequence, Wraith?"
"Haaai~..."
Prompted by the elegant voice of Amelia-san—the elite Elf who had materialized directly behind my shoulder without a single decibel of sound—I let out a thoroughly depressed groan and began dragging my feet forward.
Wait, what exactly am I doing, you ask?
Remedial lessons, obviously!!!
It was the exact same, deeply humiliating protocol forced upon absolute academic failures who score zeros on their institutional exams—otherwise known as the "Idiot Detention Class"!
"I wonder if 'failing score' is even an accurate baseline metric? I lack the context regarding what the maximum point threshold is or where the baseline passing parameter sits within your native culture, but if a standardized magical examination were administered today, you would comfortably secure an absolute, unmitigated zero. In fact, I am highly skeptical you possess the baseline qualifications to pass the initial admissions interview."
"Ugh...! I-I am thoroughly, intimately aware of my own intellectual deficiencies, so please refrain from twisting the knife, Master-Teacher-Sensei."
As for why I was currently trapped in a continuous, high-intensity remedial tutoring loop under Amelia-san's strict supervision... well, it traces back entirely to my reckless deployment of unassigned attribute magic during the previous undead engagement. Despite the severe, documented risk of triggering a localized mana meltdown or an absolute systemic inversion, I had casually chosen to execute a high-tier spell three consecutive times, manufacturing a permanent, colossal architectural monument on a sovereign landscape. The Tactician had immediately intervened with a smooth economic pivot, declaring: 'Let us formally register this structure as a Regional Landmark and Emergency Reservoir!' while seamlessly integrating Nagan's corporate interests into the asset, which technically shielded me from receiving an official diplomatic reprimand... but from a purely educational standpoint, it was an absolute catastrophe.
(By the way, a beastman minister holding a high-level cabinet portfolio covertly informed me that the entire structural construction, purification, and safety verification budget was being billed directly to the Tactician's personal bank account. Perks of being the Prime Minister, I guess.)
If I continued to casually discharge maximum-yield magic whenever the whim struck me, this continent would be systematically reduced to a scarred, apocalyptic wasteland—unlike the sacred Highlands, which possessed a specialized environmental refresh array that cleanly restored the typography to absolute perfection every single morning.
'I am fundamentally not angry regarding your decision to utilize that specific spell at that specific juncture. Your tactical calculation was undeniably the absolute highest-yield solution on the board. However, you must recognize that conventional humanoids reside within the adjacent perimeter. If your ultimate objective is to transform this entire continent into a barren land of absolute death, by all means, continue your current trajectory. But if that is not your intent, you will sit down and refine your control until you possess the capacity to safely clean up your own residual mana signatures.'
It was only a few days ago that she had delivered that intense, thoroughly terrifying lecture, pointing out that the raw volume of mana I had pumped into the array was completely, ridiculously disproportionate to the required structural threshold. Having been thoroughly grounded, I was currently trapped in a continuous, one-on-one manual dexterity training loop with Amelia-san... but...
"...Your precision has actively deteriorated, hasn't it?"
"Uuu, I'm so sorry..."
Yes. Because my baseline, maximum internal mana capacity had inexplicably undergone a secondary growth spurt, my precision control parameters had actively tanked. Until quite recently, the localized "Demon Kings" residing within my internal mana pathways were strictly limited to a five-person cabinet, but before I could even process the data, a sixth Demon King had casually clocked into the office. The sudden, massive expansion of my internal mana reservoir had automatically forced an increase in the baseline compression ratio, completely altering the tactile feedback and sensory parameters of my internal energy manipulation. If the objective was simply to open the floodgates and dump an infinite, thoughtless sea of raw destructive power onto the landscape, I had zero issues. But executing micro-level throttling to restrict the output to a safe, delicate threshold had become an absolute nightmare.
(...Wait a minute. If I construct a localized internal guillotine and systematically execute a few of these Demon Kings, will my control parameters smoothly return to a manageable baseline?)
For a brief, terrifying microsecond, a mental image of six Demon Kings standing in a neat, organized line waiting for the executioner's blade flashed through my mind. However, knowing my luck, attempting to delete them would ten-out-of-ten trigger a recursive multiplication effect—much like throwing water onto dehydrated seaweed, causing them to explode in volume. While possessing a near-infinite reservoir of magical fuel was an exceptional asset in a war of attrition, failing to master basic precision meant I was completely locked out of utilizing dozens of highly convenient, utility-focused spell trees. Please, I am begging my body, stop hiring new Demon Kings.
"There's an entire line of specialized Sound Magic designed to clearly project a user's vocal array across vast distances to communicate with an entire army, alongside Illusion Magic engineered to manufacture highly realistic autonomous duplicates... There are so many incredibly convenient, life-enriching utility spells out there, yet my current output parameters prevent me from accessing a single one... Unyu-nyu."
"Every single one of those utility matrices requires an exceptionally delicate, highly intricate level of micro-mana manipulation. Given the sheer, astronomical volume of your raw reservoir, you technically possess the raw horsepower to force the arrays into stability even without a natural affinity, but the precision threshold is absolute."
"Right~? It's so unfair."
"Furthermore, your baseline output metrics are honestly absurd. Under conventional parameters, the execution of a baseline Fire Magic spell—such as the standard 'Fireball'—explicitly requires the caster to maintain a localized thermal isolation barrier to ensure the residual heat does not backflash into their own physical form. Yet, when you attempted to utilize it, your internal containment failed so spectacularly that your own biological chassis began actively melting from the ambient thermal leak..."
Amelia-san systematically listed my historical failures, her voice heavily laced with an absolute, deeply entrenched layer of exhaustion.
"Well... even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single, foundational step. You possess an incredible layer of youth on your side, so apply yourself. We have approximately ten days of transit remaining before our vanguard officially reaches the outer perimeter of the capital. By the time we cross that threshold, I expect you to have restored your precision metrics to at least your previous baseline."
"Haa~i."