Lich for Hire

Chapter 103: Breeding Living Mercury Slimes

Deep within the desert, Heki Stone was sprawled across an enormous golden throne.

It was clearly a throne built for giants. At just over a meter tall, Heki could not even reach the armrests.

This area had only recently been excavated.

The Golden Kingdom survived via tomb-raiding. Even in war, it never ceased to excavate underground ruins.

Heki Stone had been particularly lucky these past few days. His crews had broken through into a brand-new passageway that led to a vast subterranean city.

Judging by its scale, it had once been a city inhabited by giants. Every object within was oversized, including the gold artifacts scattered everywhere.

Any civilization buried beneath the sands like this must once have enjoyed an era of unparalleled splendor. As a result, these underground cities almost always yielded enormous quantities of gold and magical relics.

Heki had struck it rich. This was a city of giants, packed with gold.

The golden throne alone was likely worth tens of millions of gold, not to mention the warehouses filled with mountains of golden utensils and ceremonial objects.

Just like most ruins excavated before, the city was completely intact—save for one feature. There were no remains. No skeletons, no corpses, nothing at all.

Almost as if the inhabitants had vanished overnight. The entire civilization had then been swallowed by the desert.

Over the years, countless scholars had studied this phenomenon in depth, but their conclusions varied wildly. No one had ever produced decisive evidence.

Of course, that didn't interfere with the physical aspect of archaeology. Tomb raiding was tomb raiding. If the tomb's owner wasn't lying inside, all the better.

That was why Heki Stone didn't hesitate for even a second before agreeing to Ambrose's fee. Two million gold was nothing. He was a wealthy vampire now.

Ambrose, naturally, had no idea what was happening on the far side of the desert. He certainly did not know that Heki Stone was rolling around atop a massive golden throne in giddy excitement, as if he were a tumbling die.

But since Heki had declared himself flush with gold, Ambrose replied without hesitation. [Megaman Tiga: In that case, please send the gold first.]

It was meant as a probe. To Ambrose's surprise, however, Heki really did transfer the money immediately. Not only that, he even sent over the promised gargoyles directly, without even asking Ambrose to cover the teleportation fee.

The continental-wide teleportation array capable of transporting such magical constructs cost over ten thousand gold alone.

At first, Ambrose couldn't understand what was going on. But once he saw the gold that arrived alongside the gargoyles, the reason for Heki Stone's largesse became obvious.

These weren't gold coins. Rather, they were gold artifacts of various shapes and designs. Their intricate engravings even added significant collection value.

It was clear that Heki Stone had unearthed a fortune. Something major had been dug up beneath the desert. Overnight, the vampire had become obscenely rich.

Still, the patterns on those gold artifacts looked oddly familiar.

Ambrose tried to recall where he had seen them before, but he simply couldn't remember. Besides, the gold was too distracting. It was of flawless purity.

"How I envy him," Ambrose muttered. "Why isn't there an ancient civilization buried beneath my castle?"

With that sigh, he sent Heki Stone the intelligence he had promised. [Megaman Tiga: The elven race is equipping its troops with anti-magic weapons on a large scale. This is likely part of the Elven Queen's personal plan. The magical contract I mentioned earlier appears to be tied directly to the elves' overall strategy. A contracted lord who violates it may end up actively assisting an elven invasion...]

Ambrose withheld nothing, not even his own conjectures. The desert dwarves were currently at a disadvantage. If he didn't provide this major client with a helping hand now, they might not be able to afford future "employment fees." And once the elves completed their strategic deployment, Ambrose himself would be driven rapidly into a corner.

Heki Stone was, naturally, skeptical at first. Everyone knew the mass deployment of enchanted weapons was unrealistic. Even at its peak, Alkhemia had lacked such capabilities. But Ambrose's reasoning held up. If the Elven Queen had truly achieved a second legendary ascension, then perhaps it was possible after all.

Alarmed, Heki Stone immediately passed the information to Hoffman Ironfist. Yet faced with such an earthshaking revelation, the King's Hand merely replied with a brief "Understood," offering no further discussion and no invitation for a strategic discussion.

Heki Stone found this strange, but didn't press the matter. Their private relationship aside, matters of state were best kept at arm's length.

Ambrose, meanwhile, did not inquire how the Golden Kingdom planned to counter the elves' anti-magic weapons. He was far too busy renovating his castle. Twenty obsidian gargoyles needed to be situated properly.

Strictly speaking, gargoyles were neither living beings nor undead. They were magical constructs, golems born of magical engineering. These top-tier gargoyles were made primarily from obsidian and reinforced with rare materials such as adamantine and mithril. The raw materials alone were enormously expensive. Moreover, because their forms were directly tied to their internal magical arrays, expert craftsmen had to carve them out by hand.

Each of these twenty obsidian gargoyles possessed over a dozen special properties. The most fundamental—and most important—was magic resistance.

Obsidian gargoyles were highly resistant to all forms of magic. Without drawing upon the power of the Golden Throne, even a spellcaster like Ambrose would have to seriously consider fleeing if faced with five of them at once.

Top-tier obsidian gargoyles could also regenerate. As long as they hadn't sustained too much damage, about thirty percent or so, they could petrify themselves. As statues, that would fully regenerate within a few days.

They had no weak points. Brute force was the only way of destroying them. Hammering their heads was no different from smashing their feet. The head was purely decorative, not a sensory organ.

Beyond that came their auxiliary abilities: life detection, rending attacks, flight, shadow concealment, and more. Once activated, they would tear into enemies like rabid dogs, pursuing them relentlessly until their death. An ordinary person would be shredded in just a few blows.

If they had a flaw, it was their limited operational range.

Gargoyles weren't roaming units. They were defensive installations bound to their base. Stray too far, and they would rapidly petrify.

This batch of obsidian gargoyles had a maximum mobility of five hundred meters. That was more than enough to cover the castle, but using them to bully others offensively would be difficult.

Fortunately, Ambrose had a solution. He placed ten gargoyles around the castle as permanent guards. The remaining ten he stored within his private space.

At a critical moment, he could open a spatial gate to instantly bring them into the fight.

With the gargoyles installed, it was time for real work. Ambrose had just received the first batch of "employment fees" from Viscount Letterman: iron ore. It had only been roughly processed, but there was enough of it to fill over half the castle's storage vault.

With the ore delivered, he could finally start breeding living mercury slimes.

After searching the castle, Ambrose finally found it in the dungeon running around with a few playmates.

The silvery slime was trailed by a group of smaller, sparkling blobs. They looked like they were playing hide-and-seek, or perhaps dancing.

These small blobs, of course, were the special undead that Ambrose had previously created from sand and glass. He had altered their material properties to form a set of hybrid elemental-undead constructs.

Because Ambrose had not limited their intelligence, their ability to imitate what they saw was surprisingly well developed.

Perhaps because the living mercury slime was the largest, the others had instinctively accepted it as their leader.

They had not noticed Ambrose yet and were fully absorbed in playing.

The living mercury writhed and reshaped itself, sprouting several arms to grab the elemental undead. The little blobs scattered, each showing off their own tricks. One dissolved into sand, spreading flat across the floor before scattering at high speed. One twisted into rope-like strands that slithered like snakes to evade capture. One mimicked the living mercury and formed arms with which to wrestle its leader—only to be slammed into the floor moments later. Another particularly shameless blob simply shoved a nearby spirit down and fled.

They were having a wonderful time, and Ambrose found himself surprisingly engaged just watching them. They had clearly grown more intelligent. Before long, he would test their faith output again. Perhaps he was closer to his dream of golden freedom than he had realized.

After watching for quite a while, Ambrose realized they had no intention of stopping. Reluctantly, he played the role of the spoilsport parent, scooped up the living mercury, and carried it over to the ore warehouse.

He patted the chubby slime. "You've matured. It's time for you to learn how to have children."

The living mercury nodded tentatively and wriggled onto the pile of ore.

With a wet splat, a severely corroded helmet fell out of its body: the ersatz divine artifact looted from the Lyon paladins. Even after days of digestion, it had only managed to consume the outer layer of metal.

Spitting out the indigestible junk, the living mercury dissolved into a stream of silver liquid and began devouring the ore in great gulps. The mound of ore shrank visibly.

Though it digested divine artifacts slowly, ordinary metals vanished at terrifying speed. In just a few minutes, where there had once been over a hundred tons of ore were gone, there was now only a pile of slag.

Even so, the living mercury's size didn't seem to increase at all. It even let out a protesting wail, conveying that it was only eighty percent full—still short of what it needed to reproduce.

Ambrose was shocked. His calculations had been off. Fully feeding a living mercury slime with just ordinary metal ore was far harder than he had anticipated.

Gritting his teeth, he brought out some gold and fed it to the creature. Only then did it reach satiety. The living mercury's outer shell rapidly hardened as it entered its breeding state. When the silver shell eventually shattered, two such slimes would emerge.

This was his first cultivation attempt, so Ambrose was naturally cautious. He stayed by the creature's side, monitoring its vitals at all times.

A full day and night passed. At last, cracks appeared in its hardened shell.

Silvery liquid flowed out, pooling on the floor before swiftly separating into two identical mercury masses. Though slightly smaller than the original, they were fully formed.

"It's a success!" Ambrose cried out.

Mere survival was only the first step for any form of life. To become a true species, reproductive ability was essential.

The two mercury blobs crawled to Ambrose's feet, rubbing against his calves like clingy kittens.

Ambrose patted the indistinguishable little creatures and said, "Children, you eat far too much. One Viscount Letterman won't be enough. It's time we visited some other mines."

The slimes' appetite far exceeded Ambrose's expectations. Waiting for Letterman's second shipment was unrealistic. Better to pick a suitable target and loot it directly. He could also bring the elemental undead along and let them experience real combat. Hunting was, after all, the best way to develop intelligence.

Thinking back, Ambrose muttered to himself, "We ran into followers of the Mistress of Pain last time, didn't we? Unlucky for them."