novelraw Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Ch.16 Just Make it up However you like
Leah chased Pipi up the mountain.
“Pipi? Where are you going?”
As Pipi nimbly scrambled up with its tiny legs and looked back, tilting its head, Leah fell into thought.
‘Is Pipi actually not a baby Phoenix, but a baby ostrich?’
Shouldn’t a phoenix be a legendary bird soaring through the sky with magnificent, flaming wings?
Though it’s a chick, Pipi runs swiftly with its tiny, ostrich-like legs—Leah, unable to catch it easily, finally resorted to magic.
“Fly!”
Floating midair due to her spell, Pipi looked incredibly cute as it frantically kicked its legs, trying to escape the magic.
“Oh, what are you doing?”
As Leah reached out and placed Pipi on her palm, meeting its eyes…
—Giiive… give me your body!
Something with a chilling voice leaped out from the forest.
A semi-transparent, blurry form.
Where its eyes should be were hollow voids.
An utterly grotesque creature, never seen before, approached with unnaturally bent legs.
“Kyaaak!”
Something she’d never seen in her life.
Leah instinctively realized—they were ghosts.
‘Did the holy magic… wear off?!’
Overwhelmed by instinctive revulsion and fear toward the specters.
Leah felt as if she were facing death itself.
Seeing these alien entities, different in nature from any undead she’d faced before, Leah chanted a spell with a trembling voice.
“Fireball!”
Hundreds of fiery orbs flew toward the ghost, but…
They passed harmlessly through its body, exploding on the ground below.
Hans had cast holy magic on her, but its duration had ended. Unable to inflict effective damage on the ghost, Leah’s face turned ashen.
“Uuu…”
As more ghosts appeared around her, Leah’s face grew increasingly pale.
‘At… attacks don’t work.’
Facing beings belonging to the shadow of death, Leah felt fear.
Ghosts, by definition, exist within death itself.
No matter how many demons she defeated or even the Demon King, she couldn’t overcome death itself.
Leah thought of a spell to escape this situation.
‘W… well, let’s run first.’
“Fly!”
Leah and Pipi soared high into the sky.
The ghosts below stared blankly upward, shouting.
—Give me your body!
—I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!
—Why are you alive? Why are you alive?
Fortunately, the ghosts couldn’t harm Leah in the sky, merely cursing endlessly from the ground.
“Damn it… why did Master want to come to this nightmare?”
Hell…
Shocked by the scene worthy of being called hell, Leah.
When living beings die, their flesh and soul separate, heading to the afterlife.
Though magic can trap souls in dead bodies to create undead, souls themselves are normally invisible.
Souls, after all, belong to the domain of the gods.
But she was now facing souls.
Hundreds of souls consumed by vicious malice and envy toward her.
Wraiths, different in nature from dark magic.
They stretched their hands toward the sky, shouting as if trying to grab her.
—Let me see my son!
—Why are you alive? Why are you alive?
—Just once! Can’t you lend me your body just once?
—Revenge! Let me take revenge!
A scene so horrifying it could be believed as hell manifested in the mortal world. Leah trembled with fear.
She isn’t afraid of death.
She had resolved to die for humanity’s sake.
But apart from that, seeing wraiths with agonized expressions cursing the living and shedding bloody tears would terrify anyone.
Of course, she had fought against once-dead beings like liches and death knights during battles against the Demon King’s army.
But they at least retained some rationality and intelligence, making conversation possible.
They were enemies, but not frightening.
But these are different.
Something resembling human form, yet like unrestrained beasts.
Far too grotesque to be considered the noble souls humans are said to possess.
‘Is this what souls facing death are like?’
Seeing souls grotesquely coveting living bodies after death…
‘Will I… become like this when I die?’
Leah, who had never seriously contemplated the afterlife while alive, felt fear of death for the first time.
***
Melting undead and wraiths as I advanced, I saw a cave.
Below, a large, deeply dug hole and stairs descending along the wall.
“Ugh! Finally made it.”
Levi’s Dagger is down here.
But unlike in the game, having to physically descend stairs into an abyss where the bottom isn’t visible is annoying—but what can I do?
Descending the stairs into the underground.
—Give me your body!
—Bang!
Dealing with ghosts detected by Sixth Sense.
At that moment.
Seeing a skeleton charging down the stairs with glowing red eyes, I shouted,
“Divine Light!”
Bright light flashed from my left hand, granting rest to the corrupted, reanimated corpse.
“This reminds me of exploring the convent with Cecilia before.”
In the DLC ‘King of the Dead’, I knew a wraith hiding in the sacred convent’s basement would lead Cecilia to ruin, so I intervened early.
Of course, I also flirted with Cecilia while doing so.
That was about seven years ago.
There were many wraiths back then too.
But of course…
—Bang!
“Nothing special, just like now.”
Without the Goddess’s Wedding Ring, getting here this easily would’ve been difficult.
Descending underground, I continuously dealt with ghosts and undead using Equality and divine power.
The long, endless stairs made me sigh, but what could I do?
Jumping down recklessly seemed too deep.
So I descended underground.
Soon, I saw the end—an immeasurable pile of bones, and atop it, a coffin.
“Let’s finish this quickly. Heave!”
I climbed atop the massive bone pile.
—Crack.
The bones, quite decayed, broke with a sound, but I ignored it.
After all, they’re just bone fragments, the boss mob’s weapon pile here. A few breaks won’t matter.
Inside that coffin sleeps a priest with a dagger plunged into his heart.
And when I open the coffin lid, he’ll resurrect, using the countless bones scattered here to attack as the boss mob.
Unlike previous undead, he’s immune to divine power and boasts an enormous health pool.
According to lore, he’s a priest who long ago pursued the mystery of immortality and researched Levi’s Dagger.
He’s also a foreshadowing character for the DLC ‘King of the Dead’.
—Creeeak!
As I opened the coffin lid, I saw an uncorrupted, intact corpse.
A man with black hair and handsome features.
Dressed in priestly robes, he looked as if merely sleeping, not like a corpse.
And in his heart, the familiar hilt of a dagger.
“Levi’s Dagger.”
As I firmly gripped Equality and reached for the dagger’s hilt…
The priest’s eyes snapped open.
“Kraaagh!”
Screaming as his eyes flew open, I aimed Equality at his forehead and pulled the trigger.
—Bang!
“Nothing special at all.”
The priest crumbled into a skeleton. I picked up the dagger that fell beside him.
Red hilt and smooth blade.
It looks ordinary, but whoever owns this dagger can turn anyone into undead and command any undead.
It can also create ghosts.
“With this, I can rest easy about the King of the Dead.”
After securing the dagger, I sighed, looking up at the ceiling.
“Haa… when do I have to climb back up?”
At least the ghosts disappeared along with the dagger—thankfully.
Heading toward the stairs, I spread my gear wide.
Now, I just need to quietly slip away.
Searching for an exit to the opposite mountain range without Leah catching me.
***
Imperial Capital’s communal cemetery.
Giovanni intends to purchase cemetery plots and appropriately sized tombstones here.
When a single knight buys plots and tombstones for three people, the cemetery caretaker tilts his head and asks,
“Sir, what happened that you’re arranging funerals for three people at once? Did they perhaps catch some plague?”
Since no plague has occurred recently, the caretaker found buying three plots and tombstones at once suspicious and asked, but Giovanni casually looked around at nearby tombstones and replied,
“Don’t worry about it.”
To Giovanni’s words, the caretaker shrugged.
“Well, you must have your reasons. But what are the deceased’s names?”
To that, Giovanni hesitated.
‘The Saint and the mage know Hans’s name, but the Hero and the Elf Princess don’t know the Baron’s name.’
Having served as a knight and secretary beside Hans, he knew the Hero Party’s relationships better than anyone.
After a brief moment of thought, he said,
‘If I get caught, so be it.’
Even if caught, it’s Hans the legendary womanizer’s fault, not Giovanni’s—so he easily concluded.
“Just engrave all tombstones with ‘Hans’.”
Even if it’s wrong, isn’t everything Hans’s karma?
To the incomprehensible request, the caretaker’s eyes widened.
As a cemetery caretaker, he often saw deaths, but three people with the same name dying simultaneously was rare, so he asked with wide eyes,
“H… Hans, you say?”
“Yes, Hans. But please engrave them as ‘Hans the Benefactor’, ‘Hans the Priest’, and ‘Hans the Sage’.”
Seeing Giovanni speak so indifferently, the caretaker crossed himself with a sorrowful expression.
No wonder—he thought it bizarre that three people with the same name died on the same day.
“How tragic… Were the three related or acquaintances? If they were acquaintances, shall I place their graves close together so they won’t be lonely?”
Briefly imagining Cecilia, Scarlet, and Mia visiting the cemetery and seeing tombstones with ‘Hans’ lined up in a row, Giovanni shook his head.
‘That would be truly the worst.’
Giovanni thought—if things went wrong, he might become their punching bag in anger.
“Please place them as far apart as possible.”
To that, the caretaker replied,
“I’ll engrave the deceased’s names on the tombstones by tomorrow at the latest. By the way, what are their birth and death dates?”
“Just make them roughly late twenties, however you like.”
To Giovanni’s words, the caretaker’s expression turned strange.
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