Evil Dragon, Without a Princess, I Had to Transform Myself!

Chapter 67 : Stolen Home

Loranhir was already very clear about it.

The greatest weakness of a lich wasn't its skeletal body, but its phylactery. As long as Oz's phylactery remained in the tower, it wouldn’t go anywhere. If they could just break into the tower, there would surely be a chance to find Oz's phylactery—and then  shatter it.

Now, the only thing that had been restraining her—the undead army—had already been held back by Allen and his holy knights. Oz himself was also busy battling those troublesome holy knights.

The rest was simple. Even a village girl like her could do it.

Loranhir was prepared—either die inside or smash Oz’s phylactery.

The hero was tired of her absurd, powerless life. She desperately wanted to accomplish something—anything at all.

"If you want to leave now, there’s still time."

Standing before Oz tower, Loranhir spoke to Hedica.

"Following me into a lich’s mage tower on a whim isn’t a good idea."

"If we don’t deal with the lich, it doesn’t matter where we go," Hedica shook her head.

Hedica took a few steps forward, and a strange cracking sound echoed.

She didn’t know what was happening, but she decided to charge ahead regardless. With a swing of her blade, the heavy wooden door was shattered into splinters.

The sheer force of the impact even left large cracks in the ground.

"I might not be as strong as Allen, but at least I was once a holy knight," Hedica said with a carefree grin, resting her greatsword on her shoulder. "Alright, let’s go."

Just as Loranhir was marveling at her strength, she suddenly felt something was off. "Wait, aren’t there a few too many cracks here?"

"Cracks?" Hedica followed her gaze downward.

The moment the words left her mouth, the ground in front of the mage tower collapsed, revealing a bottomless pit in its place.

"!?"

Hedica had no time to react. She plummeted straight into the pit, vanishing from Loranhir’s sight in an instant.

"...?"

Loranhir stood at the edge of the pit, peering inside. She even considered tossing a rock in to gauge its depth but thought better of it, remembering the dangers of dropping objects from heights.

"Hedica, are you okay?" she called into the pit.

There was no response.

Loranhir shifted her position, pondering how to rescue the person below, when someone tapped her shoulder from behind.

"What’s in there? Why are you staring so intently?"

Loranhir turned her head to find Elaphia standing behind her, also peering into the abyss.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"The Princess said she was worried about you, so she sent me," Elaphia explained.

Loranhir glanced back in the direction she had come from and fell silent for a few seconds. She now clearly realized the princess had been watching over her all along.

"This is an activated magic trap, isn’t it?" Elaphia said. "Oz must have sensed intruders in the tower. The priority is the mission—we can deal with whoever fell in later."

"It’s probably just a simple containment trap. As long as we move fast enough, we don’t have to worry too much.""Let's go." Loranhir clenched her fist.○Through the warning of magical surveillance, Oz watched helplessly as Loranhir and Elaphia entered the tower.

They've infiltrated my lair!!!

The flames in Oz's skeletal eye sockets flared wider.

Instinctively, the lich tried to teleport back to the tower, but the holy knights before it had completely entangled it in combat.

They buzzed around like flies, occasionally attempting to strike it with divine smites.

The leader of the group was particularly vocal, charging recklessly through its skeletal minions. Some newly raised undead were purified by holy light before they could even get close, reduced to ashes. The knights even used an anti-magic scroll at great cost, attempting to prevent its escape.

Oz knew it had to end this quickly—the traps in the tower wouldn't hold the intruders forever.

Now, it had no choice but to unleash its true trump card.

A scepter wreathed in corrosive darkness struck the ground.

In less than half a second, a rotting bone dragon soared into the center of the battlefield, appearing before the holy knights like the king of the undead.

The bone dragon spread its enormous skeletal wings, each flap stirring violent gusts that swept dust and smoke across the battlefield. It dove abruptly.

Its massive frame, like a moving mountain, crashed toward the holy knights with devastating force.

Allen showed no fear—he had faced flying undead many times before. He raised his weapon and charged forward, but his comrades, who had fought alongside him, were already exhausted, their holy light nearly depleted.

This mission had been rushed; Allen hadn't had time to request a demon-slaying decree from the Judgment Knight Order. He had only brought a pair of loyal, lesser holy knights—enough to handle a lich and its undead army, but a bone dragon was too much.

An eighth-circle lich, now joined by a bone dragon of the same tier, tipped the scales of battle instantly. The holy knights were helpless against the dragon. Even in death, dragons remained unrivaled bullies of their tier, effortlessly overwhelming a group.

With a single sweep of its tail, the bone dragon sent Allen flying, slamming him heavily into the ground. The holy light gathered around his sword had dimmed—the prolonged battle had nearly drained the power of his oath.

The last standing holy knight was also struck down, on the verge of unconsciousness.

Allen, lying on the ground, refused to accept defeat.

How could a mere subordinate of the false hero—just a lich—block his path? How could he ever hope to defeat the unprecedented evil that lay ahead?

If he couldn't even defeat the false hero, the most wicked being in the world, how could he prove that half-breed had truly embraced the path of holy light?

"Finish them off, then hurry back to deal with the intruders in the tower," Oz thought, casting a cloudkill spell over the fallen holy knights.

A sphere of yellow-green toxic mist spread around them as Oz commanded the bone dragon to eliminate these annoying flies once and for all.

The expanding death cloud would kill him at any moment, but Allen clung to the last shreds of his consciousness.

Then, he heard a thunderous roar, like the chaotic cries of crows.

The next instant, a crimson blade of lightning pierced through the bone dragon's spine.The colossal Undead King was powerless to resist as the thunder's force tore it in half, its already fragmented body shattering completely in an instant.

The crimson lightning embodied the supreme aesthetics of violence—unyielding and unstoppable.

In his fading consciousness, Allen caught sight of a nimble figure leaping up from the Bone Dragon's tail.

The girl had golden hair like sunlight, blue eyes, and wore a pure white dress.

The ribbon tying her hair had snapped, leaving her long locks flowing freely like dandelion wisps.