Lich for Hire

Chapter 97: Freedom of Religion

[Black Rose: You still want to buy mines? Alkhemia is already a war zone. Why not just seize them outright?]

Ambrose sighed. As expected, Black Rose wasn't a fool.

Within the Elegiac Society, perhaps only the Dullahan was slightly lacking in intellect. After all, he was a knight who relied primarily on brute strength.

Other spellcasters, though, all had to invest at least a few points into intelligence. They weren't quite so easy to deceive.

Ambrose could hardly admit that he was just trying to squeeze money out of her, so he smoothly changed the subject. [Megaman Tiga: Speaking of contracts, elves have moved into my vicinity and forced the local lords to sign agreements for voluntary relocation. The contracts seem to carry some kind of special effect, but my information is limited. I couldn't pry any concrete details out of them.]

[Black Rose: Contracts? Do you know the exact terms?]

Ambrose relayed the clauses he had learned from the Porcupine Knight. The undead queen seemed to have thought of something. She left him only a brief message, "Wait for my word," before falling silent.

Though it was a pity that he had failed to scam any gold out of her, Ambrose still intended to prioritize breeding the living mercury slimes.

The elves were advancing aggressively. The desert dwarves were being beaten into the dirt by Lyon and clearly could not be relied upon. In the end, it would probably fall to Ambrose alone to hold the line.

His living mercury spirit golems were the best high-tier units he had in terms of both combat power or cultivation cost. They offered an impressive cost-to-performance ratio.

Unfolding the map, Ambrose noted three mines near his territory, each belonging to a grand lord.

Unlike the Porcupine Knight, a "country bumpkin" who had risen through sheer martial prowess, these three were ancient noble houses with centuries of inheritance. They were likely connected by blood or marriage to members of the Alchemists' Council. Great noble families tended to produce their share of wastrels and lunatics, but they also had a decisive advantage: accumulated wealth and well-developed territories.

Each of the three commanded more than a thousand soldiers: not hastily trained militia, but real troops. Perhaps not all of them were equipped with full armor, but they were still far stronger than ordinary levies.

Moreover, their lands were dotted with watchtowers and fortified walls, and they likely even possessed a few magitech cannons.

These were lords that no ordinary people would dare provoke. Most of their neighbors, in fact, had to guard against them instead.

The chaotic war had only just begun. These lords were likely biding their time and observing the situation. Once they decided to make a move, they would strike like lightning, sweeping through nearby lands and devouring everything in one go.

But now, Ambrose was about to target them first.

"Which one first?"

He carefully recalled what he knew of the three lords, only to realize he had little impression of them. He usually stayed holed up in his castle running experiments and had little interaction with his neighbors.

All he remembered were their distinctive family crests: one bore a hellhound with three heads, another a thunderstorm, and the third, most interestingly, a humanoid figure wrapped in thorns.

If these crests were tied to faith...

The hellhound needed no explanation. That noble house was clearly a follower of some archdevil of the Hells. The thunderstorm usually symbolized Thanos, Lord of Storms. As for the thorn-wrapped humanoid, that almost certainly marked a devotee of Levitra, Mistress of Pain.

The single common feature of these three faiths was that they were all insane.

The Hells went without saying. By definition, there was no one good there. Evil was their birthmark, and worshippers of archdevils were required to regularly offer blood and souls as sacrifice.

Thanos, the Lord of Storms, was a powerful but utterly unhinged deity. He reveled in war and ruin. His faith was niche, and his followers tended to be crazed warlords obsessed with the destruction of lives and civilization itself.

"To destroy everything in the guise of a storm," was Thanos's creed.

Ironically, Thanos was also an extremely generous god. Perhaps because he had so few followers, he was lavish in sharing his divine power. As a result, there were always many stormpriests under his banner.

He was generous even to lesser gods. The lich god Valarun, for instance, had once been Thanos's subordinate. He had ascended to godhood thanks to Thanos's largesse.

But the oppression of this crazed deity had eventually became too much for Valarun to bear. In his own words, he "did not wish to be worn through like a foot soldier's boot." In the end, Valarun fled and sought refuge under Azoth, the god of mages.

Just what that lich god had experienced was anyone's guess.

Still, the story made one thing clear: the Lord of Storms was truly deranged, so much so that even liches could not endure him.

The last deity, Levitra, Mistress of Pain, was also a heavyweight. To put it simply, she was a goddess of sadists, bullies, and torturers. She adored all forms of torment and suffering. If you could accept pain and even take pleasure in it, you would earn her blessing.

But if you indulged in comfort and rejected pain, Levitra herself would personally teach you what suffering meant.

"Alkhemia really is open-minded," Ambrose muttered. "So much so that followers of these three lunatics can all become great nobles."

No sooner had he finished that thought than he remembered that he himself was a lich. In the eyes of ordinary people, a lich was far more terrifying than these three noble houses. At least they were still human, even if they had unusual beliefs. A lich, on the other hand, stood firmly in the camp of absolute evil.

Seen that way, perhaps the three noble houses' faith wasn't quite so absurd after all.

Alkhemia was truly formidable to have kept all these lunatics coexisting peacefully for so many years. But now that it had been destroyed and its restraints had vanished, the side effects of this freedom of religion were bound to erupt.

After studying the map for a long while, Ambrose decided to start with the followers of Thanos.

The reason was simple: that noble house was the closest.

The other two noble houses were farther from Ambrose's territory, with several minor lords' lands in between and poor roads to boot. Even with teleportation circles, the distance would still be troublesome.

Since all three were lunatics anyway, he might as well pick the nearest one.

Ambrose planned to gather some intelligence first: to find out how many troops the family had, whether they possessed any powerful classes, and so on.

Ambrose glanced inside Isabel's laboratory as he passed by. She was making decent progress. Though she was merely assembling the undead production line step by step, she learned quickly and had not caused any major mishaps.

The only problem was that, the moment she saw him, she rushed over calling out, "Master, Master!" She flipped through her notebook in a furious rush and fired off dozens of questions in one breath.

Ambrose had no choice but to answer them one by one.

And though this would take quite a while, her questions were all related to the task at hand. He couldn't ignore them without jeopardizing his profits.

After he finally finished explaining everything, Isabel took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and said, "Master, thank you for all your guidance. I have one last question I would like to ask."

"One last question?" Ambrose raised an eyebrow. "That sounds a bit presumptuous."

Alchemy was a profound discipline. She would surely be asking countless questions in the future, too.

"N-No, that's not what I meant..." Isabel panicked, took a few more deep breaths, then said, "Master, this question may be a little presumptuous. How does it feel to become an undead? Is it painful?"

Ambrose gave her an odd look. Why was she suddenly asking something like that?

"Have you made up your mind to abandon your pointless worldly desires and reincarnate as an undead?"

If that was the case, he could help her—after the undead production line was finished, of course.

"No, I just..." Isabel's face went pale. In a small voice, she continued, "I've realized I don't really have a choice. If I keep working here, won't I eventually end up becoming an undead, enslaved forever?"

Ambrose shook his head. "You don't need to worry about that. A proper undead transformation ritual is very expensive. If you're unwilling, no one will waste the gold to force you into becoming one."

Transforming her into an undead while preserving her mind would not come cheap. Ambrose himself had spent most of his fortune becoming a lich. High-tier undead that could continue evolving, like Husky, required continuous investment. Sentient high-level undead were very costly.

Isabel's true value lay in her alchemical knowledge. Turning her into an ordinary skeleton would be meaningless. Preserving her consciousness would require enormous expense, and Ambrose had been intending for the ritual to be a reward for her hard work, rather than a punishment.

If Isabel did not want it, he certainly wouldn't pay for it.

But Isabel understood his words differently.

"Master, do you mean that this is all a matter of gold?"

"Of course," Ambrose replied. "Undead have no worldly desires. The only thing worth negotiating over is profit. Your role in this castle is to generate value. The more valuable you are, the more power you have. Remember that, and do your job well."

With that final piece of advice, Ambrose hurriedly left the castle.

He cast Fly and flew toward his target.

The followers of the Lord of Storms—the Letterman house—had existed long before Ambrose settled in Alkhemia. Its lands consisted of one main city and three satellite towns, with an estimated population of thirty to forty thousand.

Such a population could sustain over a thousand full-time soldiers. In most places, that would seem like reckless militarization due to food constraints, but near Alkhemia, it was hardly remarkable. Enchanted seeds were easy to obtain here.

Seeds that boosted yield, resisted pests, and the like, if purchased regularly in large quantities, could produce far greater harvests than ordinary farming elsewhere.

If a territory maintained a certain number of alchemists, they could even refine enchanted seeds that normally degraded after one planting into varieties that lasted four or five cycles.

When Ambrose entered Letterman territory, he immediately sensed the nature of their defenses.

Though strangers were allowed access into their lands, the moment he stepped into one of the outer satellite towns, he felt four gazes lock onto him. The Letterman house was clearly preparing for the coming storm; there were more patrols on the streets than laborers.

"Well-trained indeed. A direct assault would be troublesome. Could I just set up a teleportation circle near the mines and steal the ore instead?"

The Letterman lands were vast and studded with towers and fortifications. A frontal attack would take an unknown amount of time, and undead armies still drained resources. After conquering the place, who knew how long it would take to mine enough ore to break even?

Ambrose was considering cheaper alternatives when a man dressed in noble attire approached him politely. "Greetings, Mage. Have you come to sample our specialty, Thunderfruit Wine? Our lord is most hospitable. When he encounters a guest like you, he always insists on sharing a drink."

The words were courteous, but the guards at the noble's side had already surrounded Ambrose and were ready to fight at a moment's notice.

Ambrose had been planning to speak with the Letterman lord in the first place, to see whether cooperation was possible. Perhaps he could purchase ore at a low price and avoid an unnecessary war.

But he suddenly sensed something amiss. As the guards closed in, another gaze settled on him, one that made him distinctly uncomfortable.

With a brief probe, Ambrose identified the source: an elf clad in the leather armor of a Twilight Warden.

As expected, the elves were not limiting themselves to minor lords like the Porcupine Knight. Their elite squads had already infiltrated various territories. The fact that no Letterman soldiers were guarding this Dusk Warden suggested that negotiations had already been concluded.

Seeing Ambrose remain silent, the noble took a half-step back and continued, "Well, mage? Will you enjoy a cup of our Thunderfruit Wine as a guest of honor, or do we have to go talk elsewhere?"

Ambrose smiled at the Letterman noble. "Of course I'd prefer to sit down with Lord Letterman and share a proper drink with him. I bring a message from the Dwarven King of the Golden Kingdom, one that must be discussed face to face with Lord Letterman himself."