Primordial Villain With A Slave Harem - Chapter 1199: There's More?!
Chapter 1199: There’s More?!
“Yes. I might be old, but I’m not senile just yet.” Hozumi seemed to derive the king’s thoughts from a whole duchy away.
Alexios was not in a joking mood; thus, the elder continued. “He used his powerful earth magic to create moving hills that carried his people who engaged their backlines and artillery from their blind spots. When those on the moving hills were cornered, he teleported them to safety. Then he built new ones. The formations kept shifting faster than our troops could adapt. Every time the troops tried to close the distance, they were replaced.”
“That ability… it truly is a headache. Capturing Devil will prove nearly impossible. We’ll need a plan executed to perfection,” Alexios grunted while his hand tightened around the armrest. The stone groaned under his grip but refused to give way.
Hozumi, however, was not finished.
“Yes, my king. And we’ll need much more than a plan. Because next, he saved Black Fang from the Scarlet Lilies who surrounded the wounded woman from all sides, getting the drop on her despite her acute senses. Such was the fragile state she was in.”
“The Scarlet Lilies?”
“Indeed. They traveled a great distance to reinforce our troops, but he appeared out of the ground. I would like to ridicule the man by calling him a mole digging in the depths, but honestly… He just erupted like a volcano, saving Black Fang. What followed was an aerial battle.”
Alexios leaned forward as the man he knew for far too long told the tale. The king knew the Scarlet Lilies. Lilith commanded them, someone who even earned his respect, even if he thought she was too focused on combating monsters.
Nevertheless, she was a woman of skill and discipline. Her unit was balanced, professional, the kind that didn’t falter once battle began. A sturdy tanker, a crafty rogue, a warrior healer, a utility mage, and the Spellblade herself…
Many argued it was the perfect team.
“The Lilies nearly brought them down several times, but the coordination between Devil and Black Fang was too polished. It was as if they’d been secretly fighting side by side for centuries, which allowed them to escape death by a hair’s breadth many times. Then came the mistake. Scar was killed.”
The words dropped between them. Alexios was forced into a state of silence. He did not know what to say. This onslaught of horrible news was just too much even for him.
Elder Hozumi, however, did not give him breathing room. He continued.
“But that’s not all. Devil seemingly claimed her corpse for himself after killing her. Scar now fights under his command as one of his blue-skinned undead.”
Alexios shot to his feet with the urgency none would expect from a man aged 1,000 years old. “He turned a Lily into a blue-skinned undead?!”
“Yes. And that isn’t the end of it either.”
“It’s not?!”
Hozumi drew in a slow breath.
“After the aerial battle, Devil took position behind the stronghold’s barrier. There, he began summoning. Again and again. The undead flooded our backlines. Even after Scar’s spirit was destroyed ten times, he brought her back. He hovered calmly behind the barrier as if nothing strained him. His mana never wavered. Chizuru believes him to be capable of continuously regenerating his mana at an incredibly rapid pace so long as he himself is not in combat.”
“Rapid mana regeneration?!” The Aegis Vanguard standing loyally at their posts exchanged a worried glance. Their king was a man of few words and even fewer physical reactions.
It was extremely rare to receive a strong reaction from the Warrior King, and those who did usually were corrupt subordinates who earned his ire. They would be lectured sternly before their whole families were wiped out.
But this was something else.
There was no unruly subordinate.
Just an enemy that made their king…
Lose it.
“That is not all.”
“THAT IS NOT ALL?!!!” The king’s scream felt like a slap to the guards who heard it.
The steadiest of men losing his composure due to the existence of a being he could not comprehend filled their hearts with doubt.
“… Indeed,” Hozumi grunted. “Every summon he created was used to kill more of our soldiers, whose corpses he then added to his army of death just like he did with Scar. It was a true cycle of death, supported by his bottomless mana reserves.”
Alexios closed his eyes. He remained silent for a good five seconds, forced to collect his thoughts. When he opened his eyes, the frantic urgency was buried. “I’ve never heard of such necromancy. Normally, Necromancers have to take corpses into their lairs and prepare them for an existence of undeath. Is it even necromancy anymore?”
Hozumi’s words were the gravest Alexios had ever heard in his entire life.
“It is not ‘necromancy,’ Your Majesty. It is the ‘One True Necromancy.’
The words struck something in Alexios. His heartbeat stumbled. A memory rushed to the front in his mind.
A system message. Unlike any other he’d seen among the myriad of notifications he received in his long career of murder.
[UNIVERSAL ANNOUNCEMENT]
A threshold has been crossed. For the first time since the inception of timekeeping, an entity has met and exceeded the foundational criteria to access True Necromancy.
Alexios’s hand fell slowly to his sides. His face went pale.
“It can’t be…”
Hozumi’s voice came again.
“The noble Black. The criminal Devil. And the so-called Quinlan Elysiar from the strange announcement… The Primordial Villain. The Harbinger of Ruin. The Godslayer…”
He paused, letting the names settle.
“They are one and the same person.”
“Goddess help us.”
The words came out hollow, as if scraped from the bottom of his lungs. His eyes drifted toward the statue at the far end of the hall. There stood the tall marble figure of the goddess, her hands open in blessing. The soft light from the torches traced the calm curve of her expression.
He stared at her for a long moment.
Then he shook his head. His features hardened. “No. Help comes to those who help themselves.”
He turned away from the statue and stepped toward the communication artifact. “You’ve done well, Elder. Prepare a thorough report by the end of today. I want Chizuru’s and Kaede’s personal insights involved. Add the Scarlet Lilies to it as well.”
Hozumi hesitated. “My king, you mean to-”
Alexios terminated the call and immediately connected it to the necklace his young daughter, Princess Felicity Valorian, wore.
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