novelraw Chapter 323: Holy King! I will insult you harshly!
Chapter 323: Holy King! I will insult you harshly!
"Ron, no matter how powerful, glorious, or awe-inspiring you were in life."
"You ultimately couldn't withstand the blade called time."
The lich's whisper was filled with hatred, bordering on a roar.
"Now you've turned to dust in the annals of history, but the grudge between us is far from over."
"Just wait! Wait until I regain my legendary status."
"Your descendants, those inheritors carrying your filthy bloodline; your people, those ignorant sheep who once cheered for you and worshipped you as a god; your kingdom, that dirty land built upon the piled bones of the Bartlett Kingdom!"
"They will all pay the most painful price for what you did."
"The hatred of killing my body and destroying my nation! Even after a thousand years, even when my soul has completely decayed... I, Phillips, will never forget!"
He slowly stroked the surface of the crystal ball with his hand that only had pale finger bones remaining. Inside it reflected the scene of Ximu Domain with flickering lights and vibrant life, completely different from the deathly stillness surrounding him.
If there were scholars familiar with the Federation's historical origins present at this moment.Hearing the words he uttered, they would undoubtedly be shocked.
Ron.
Full name Ron Lothrian.
Was precisely the legendary figure who almost single-handedly created the Federation, revered by later generations as the Lothrian Holy King.
And Phillips was the legendary necromancer from eight hundred years ago, from the long-buried Bartlett Kingdom, who once made countless enemies tremble in fear.
However, that was all distant past events.
The Lothrian Holy King wasn't born invincible.
On his magnificent path of territorial expansion, he encountered many powerful rivals and resolved countless thorny crises.
The Bartlett Kingdom was one particularly tough nut to crack.
With the Holy King's powerful rise, Bartlett's capital was eventually trampled by Lothrian's iron hooves, the kingdom's flag permanently broken, and its territory incorporated into the Federation's domain.
Time passed, seas turned to fields.
Nowadays, the Bartlett Kingdom had long become a vague footnote in historical documents, and that once-earthshaking legendary necromancer Phillips who could single-handedly form an army... had long fallen under the Holy King's sword, transformed into this neither-human-nor-ghost lich form.
Looking back eight hundred years, before the Federation was established, during the era when various nations warred over the rich resources of the Ser Wilderness.
Phillips once single-handedly commanded an undead legion, sweeping across the wilderness battlefield with unstoppable force, shining brilliantly.
However, he encountered the young Lothrian Holy King who had just stepped into the legendary realm and was at his most sharp and formidable.
Though young, the Holy King at that time had already displayed terrifying power that could sweep all directions and extraordinary military wisdom.
In a crucial battle, the Holy King cleverly feigned weakness, luring Phillips to lead his undead army deep in pursuit.
When Phillips, eager for victory, slightly exposed his true body hidden within the military formation, the Holy King suddenly unleashed all his hidden power, breaking through the undead legion's layered defenses with overwhelming force, ultimately beheading this powerful necromancer!
However.
Though the young Holy King was already decisive in killing, with his sword pointing wherever strong enemies fell, he ultimately lacked the later experience and sophistication.
Necromancers constantly walked the boundary between life and death, peering into the forbidden mysteries of life.
Under the Holy King's fatal attack, Phillips' physical body indeed died, but his existence didn't completely end.
Before participating in the brutal wilderness war, this necromancer had prepared for emergencies by secretly crafting a life-preserving phylactery for himself.
The death of his physical body instead triggered his preset spells.
His soul was preserved, eventually transforming into a lich, reborn in an undead form.
But this evil transformation wasn't without cost.
After becoming a lich, Phillips' soul became extremely weak due to the Holy King's attack and the consumption of the transformation ritual, forcing him into a long compulsory slumber to stabilize this neither-living-nor-dead state.
This sleep lasted a full three hundred years.
When his consciousness finally faintly awakened on some deathly silent night over five hundred years ago, attempting to reclaim his former glory,
He was stunned to discover that the world had completely changed!
The Bartlett Kingdom he fought for, that he protected, had turned to ashes, completely becoming a cold page in historical records.
Even more terrifying.
The fresh, warm, emotional human soul was being constantly eroded and assimilated by the cold lich body. His emotions grew more sinister and gloomy day by day, more cruel and violent with each passing day!
The human way of thinking and emotional logic that once belonged to Phillips.
Were constantly disintegrating and collapsing like sandcastles under the erosion of undead consciousness.
He urgently wanted to take revenge while his consciousness was still clear.
However, while the Holy King was alive, his prestige was at its peak, and the Federation was as stable as a rock.
Phillips knew well that with his unrecovered lich body and extremely unstable soul state, recklessly revealing himself for revenge would be like throwing an egg against a stone, seeking death.
He didn't dare expose his existence.
He could only lurk like a rat in the gutter, hiding long-term in remote corners of the Ser Wilderness, relying on intermittent slumber to slow the complete assimilation of his soul by the undead nature, silently accumulating strength while waiting for the opportunity for revenge.
Until recently, news of the Holy King's fall reached his hidden lair.
He immediately sensed that the Federation, having lost this pillar, would inevitably fall into division and internal chaos.
He decided to stop hiding, to take advantage of this heaven-sent opportunity when the Federation's control over the wilderness was at its lowest, to harvest souls here on a large scale, recover his strength, regain legendary status, and then proceed with the bloody revenge against the Lothrian Kingdom he had been brewing for centuries!
"Molten Iron Tribe... Ximu Domain..."
Phillips rubbed the crystal ball surface with his pale finger bones, the soul fire in his eyes flickering and jumping, burning faintly.
For undead creatures, the souls of intelligent beings were the finest delicacies, far more nourishing than the souls of fierce beasts or magical creatures.
Among them, human souls with their rich emotions and clear thinking were particularly delicious and nourishing.
The next best were the souls of monsters like ogres and gnolls that possessed rudimentary intelligence and savage emotions.
And the ultimate soul feast was undoubtedly dragon souls! That majestic life essence and ancient dragon soul could drive any high-level undead crazy.
Though the current Ser Wilderness was indeed engulfed in raging flames of war and utter chaos,
Most places with large gatherings of intelligent beings were strategic strongholds heavily guarded by various kingdoms, difficult to provoke easily.
But Ximu Domain was an anomaly.
In the lich's perception, it was like a bright lamp suddenly appearing on a dark plain, strikingly vivid and enticing.
Moreover, he had already conducted preliminary investigations and probes, able to confirm that the Molten Iron Tribe's defensive forces were indeed not weak, with many powerful creature auras, but no sufficiently powerful presence was stationed there to stop his undead flood.
"Humans, monsters, dragons."
His gaze greedily scanned every figure within the crystal ball, as if inventorying his own property.
"None shall escape... All living souls are my possessions, I won't let any go!"
"Keke... Hahaha..."
Phillips first couldn't suppress a hoarse, twisted laugh that completely didn't sound like something a human could make, but then, as if suddenly realizing something, his laughter abruptly stopped, then he deliberately restrained it somewhat, trying to make the laughter sound slightly more normal.
After transforming into a lich, he found himself increasingly unable to control his tendency to use this bone-chilling strange laughter,
This was definitely not a good sign.
It meant his soul was accelerating its corruption, his human parts were being constantly eroded by the lich's cold instincts.
Admittedly, transforming into a lich granted the spellcaster a nearly immortal life form.
But the price paid behind this was heavier than imaginable.
Time was the lich's most abundant capital, and also its deadliest poison.
The lich body would continuously inversely affect and distort his soul, subtly changing his way of thinking, emotional patterns, and behavioral logic.
As the river of time flowed.
The human memories, emotions, ways of thinking... even his self-awareness that belonged to Phillips would be gradually gnawed away and overwritten by the undead will carried by this immortal shell, until completely erased.
Ultimately.
The legendary necromancer Phillips who once loved his kingdom, researched magic, and experienced the full range of human emotions would completely disappear, replaced by a cold, pure undead lich that only followed undead instincts and pursued death and souls.
Phillips feared this transformation.
Deep inside, he still stubbornly identified with his human identity. Transforming into a lich was only a last resort for survival under the Holy King's sword.
He couldn't accept his thoughts being completely changed.
That meant a second, truly complete death - Phillips' death as a human.
More importantly.
He absolutely wouldn't allow himself to forget that deeply ingrained hatred.
If his soul was completely transformed, becoming undead thinking, by that time, he might no longer understand emotions like national and personal hatred that belonged to the living. His revenge would lose all meaning.
Cold undead logic couldn't bear the blazing personal grudges of the mortal world.
But this was an irreversible process.
After all, from the moment he completed the transformation ritual, his life form had been anchored. He was now a lich, no longer human.
The only hope lay in regaining legendary power.
"As long as I return to the legendary realm, my soul essence will be sublimated, becoming resilient enough to better resist the lich body's assimilation."
"Though this transformation will still subtly proceed, the entire process's time dimension will be greatly extended."
"I will have ample time to complete my revenge against the Lothrian Kingdom, to make Ron's bloodline pay the price!"
Phillips took a deep breath of the negative-energy-filled cold air in the cave, as if comforting himself.
Then, he put down the crystal ball, reached his bony hand into his wide black robe, and slowly pulled out a strange staff carved entirely from some unknown creature's pale bones, with a large dark green gem embedded at its tip.
He began waving the staff, chanting hoarse, ancient necromantic incantations, the sound causing ominous echoes throughout the cave.
"O skeletal remains once buried beneath this land!"
"O wandering lost souls that once roamed this wilderness!"
"Awaken!!!"
"Answer your master's call! Tear open the rotten shrouds! Break free from the earth's restraints! Return from your slumber!!"
—!
An invisible yet vast and majestic mental wave filled with deathly stillness rapidly spread out with his chanting and staff waving, sweeping through every corner of the cave.
The originally thick and piercing evil undead aura deep within this massive dark underground cavern became as viscous as substance.
Immediately after.
One... two... three... four...
Star-like points of deep and dangerous lights lit up one after another from near to far in the deepest darkness of the cave.
No!
Those weren't lamps,
Those were the cold, merciless soul fires burning in the eye sockets of undead creatures, the eyes belonging to the undead.
Over the centuries.
Every time Phillips briefly awakened from slumber, he would secretly collect the remains of powerful creatures left in the wilderness or deliberately hunted, concentrating and transporting them deep into this secret lair.
On one hand, he could continuously increase this place's negative energy concentration to nourish himself; on the other hand, he used necromancy to gradually refine and transform these powerful remains into undead warriors obeying his commands, silently accumulating strength for revenge.
He was a lich, but before that, he was first and foremost a grand sorcerer proficient in the necromancy school!
The true power of necromancers never lay in single combat. Their terror came from being able to single-handedly form armies, using war to sustain war, raising overwhelming undead catastrophes, drowning all enemies who dared to block their path with endless seas of skeletons and terrifying monsters!
After centuries of secretly lurking and accumulating.
Beneath this Ser Wilderness that never stopped bleeding and dying, Phillips had quietly amassed an astonishingly large, diverse undead legion radiating terrifying aura!
Centuries of endurance and waiting were all for today's rise!
"Nothing can stop me! Nothing!"
"Keke... Hahaha... Kekekeke... Ron! Just wait! Not only will I destroy everything you protected, I'll also find your burial place, dig up your grave, transform your remains into the lowest undead, and insult you forever!"
Phillips' shrill laughter once again erupted uncontrollably, repeatedly echoing throughout the underground cave.
And as the laughter gradually subsided, he put down the crystal ball reflecting Ximu Domain's scenery, continuing to prepare magical rituals to strengthen and consolidate those newly awakened undead, making preparations for the upcoming battle.
For a lich, a necromancer.
As long as there wasn't a powerful existence among the enemies who could break through countless guards and behead his true body, then he was invincible.
Those dragons in the Molten Iron Tribe clearly didn't possess such power.
He would start from Ximu Domain, raise undead tides that would sweep across the wilderness, then return to legendary status!