Chapter 334: Sneaking
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
After the Undead Emperors gave the command to move out, the undead armies collectively ended their vacation—it was an emergency, after all. If you were to take the real world to be a minimap [1] 1 , then you would see an unending mass of black dots gathering at a canyon one hundred kilometers away from the wood spirits’ campground. The undead were mobilizing their armies.
Their shouts echoed throughout the skies, while soul wavelengths formed all sorts of connections between the Undead Lords. These Undead Lords were both fearful of the Undead Emperors’ rage as well as secretly snickering at how City Lord Davey was now no longer looked at with favor.
Leading the undead armies to return to this world they originally hailed from and reestablish the Tark Republic was the irresistible dream of every ancient high-level undead. Even Aso was unable to resist the temptations of this dream. However, the Undead Emperors were still unable to descend due to the limitations of the Elemental Tide, which meant this glory fell upon a lowly ghoul like Davey.
Yes, Davey may have been Aso’s prized disciple, but a Ghoul Lord like Davey was still only a ghoul in the end. He was merely a hunchbacked, low-level undead who crawled on the ground, hideous and filled with a rotten stench.
The Undead Lords had their own pride. The great majority of Undead Lords were skeleton mages, liches, banshees, and other such high-level undead species. They viewed ghouls as brainless, low-level slaves, so it was obvious that they were unable to stand that a low-level ghoul was ranked above them.
The majority of the undead world wasn’t at all peaceful. Souls were the foundation for every undead, and devouring souls was the highest representation of the survival of the fittest. The way the undead resolved conflicts was violent and highly efficient: they would simply destroy their opponents—quite simple, really.
Submission? Or death? Those were basically the only two choices that the weak in undead society had to them.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Undead Emperors had forcibly forbidden all internal conflicts between undead in the mortal plane, the other Myth-ranked Undead Lords like Davey would have long sent him an endless series of challenges until he was dead, no matter his strength. And right now, the other Undead Lords were happily deliberating about the ways they could become a burden to Davey so that he would be mired in a disadvantageous combat situation. Only then would the Undead Lords take action to overturn the situation and pull Davey off of his City Lord position with the help of their combat achievements.
Of course, for Davey, although he was being pressured and threatened, he was also quite motivated and knew that this was a chance for him, one he could only receive in a thousand years.
If Davey was able to prove his abilities in this battle, the Undead Emperors would continue to support him. He would officially become the general commander of all undead in the mortal plane, the number one individual ranked just under the Undead Emperors.
Well, these were just the frustrations a general commander like him had to deal with upon having the position suddenly thrust upon him. He had even more frustrations because of all the random assortment of soldiers under his command.
This was the bad habit—or perhaps it should be called unspoken rule—of armies. The Undead Emperors, who were not physically present in the mortal plane to rein in the Undead Lords, could only tacitly allow some disobedience. Of course, this would be Davey’s only opportunity. As long as he could prove his own abilities, the other Undead Emperors would maintain at least the most basic respect and obedience under his command, and Davey would truly have secured his position.
Yet this would also be the most difficult challenge for him. At the very least, Davey was extremely angered by the other Undead Lords’ intentional procrastination.
“Lord Blackwood said he’s having indigestion today. It appears to be food poisoning.”
Let’s not mention how liches couldn’t even eat. Since liches were just a type of skeleton, there were no internal organs to eat with—how would a lich possibly get food poisoning?
“Lord Safesilver said that his wife is giving birth, and requests Milord for his forgiveness.”
Alright then. This headless knight Undead Lord apparently had the power to reproduce, and even had a wife that could give birth…? If it weren’t for the fact that he was just obviously making up a ridiculous excuse, perhaps the story would be XXX-rated.
“Duke Cami said that the sun is shining too brightly today and that it would injure him because he’s a member of the Blood Tribe.”
A Duke-level Blood Tribe member was actually afraid of the sunlight? This could have been the greatest news of the century if not for the fact that the messenger who reported this to Davey was a newly-born novice member of the Blood Tribe. He was standing right in the sunlight, the sunlight that Duke Cami was so supposedly afraid of. Was this the Duke’s way of joking with Davey?
“Lord Graydeath says that an adventuring squad located his main secret base. He’s currently busy moving his entire treasury.”
The Undead Lords’ excuses were so insincere they weren’t even trying to hide their real intentions. It was obvious they just wanted to make things difficult for their new boss. Not only that, Davey, who had just become general commander not long ago, could only tolerate their actions. The Undead Lords made it quite obvious that he would have to prove his abilities. If he forcibly suppressed them with the Undead Emperors’ names, he would seem all the more useless.
The Undead Emperors held absolute authority, and their absence made the Undead Lords’ equivalent statuses quite difficult to accept among themselves. When Yongye “died” back in the day, it was a foregone conclusion that the Yongye army would immediately implode as a result of internal conflict.
Well, there were a few Undead Lords on good relations with Davey as well. They voluntarily came to assist Davey at this critical time, helping him when he needed help the most. Still, the great majority of Undead Lords withheld their forces, giving him the problem of insufficient troops.
He could only take his loyal followers and do the best he could. But when he recalled that the two top-level guests had volunteered to help him fight the wood spirits, he was once more filled with confidence.
Meanwhile, on the other side, a certain person—yep, I’m talking about me—didn’t know about all this. I was actually wondering why there weren’t as many undead as I expected, deeming it quite strange.
“Hey, is it really alright like this?”
In this canyon, which was acting as a temporary undead base, swirling black mist covered a figure clad in a black billowing cape. I was doing my very best to appear like some evil boss in a video game.
Yep, I had snuck in here. I had snuck in here with zero difficulty at all. All I did was simply walk into this canyon.
I had originally expected that I would meet with an organized, tremendous undead army, while the small amount of undead under my command would serve as cannon fodder or an ambush squad. But, when I ambushed a lesser lich, I found out, to my surprise, that this undead army was utterly disorganized. In order to deal with this sudden calamity at their doorstep, the army was willing to literally accept any high-level undead as their leaders.
And so I took some skeleton soldiers of mine and snuck into the undead’s gathering ground. I then discovered that nobody was even keeping track of the undead, so I unhesitatingly brought over every single undead under my command and disguised them as underlings of that lesser lich army sub-commander who was under my control as well.
“Damn—so many undead mages. Just how many Justice Points will this be? How many shiny things can I exchange for?”
And my teammates—fine, garbage teammates—were happily looking at the undead camp around them.
My absolutely perfect undead disguise pack possessed the power of death. Even if undead mages scanned them, they would seem even more undead than real undead. There was absolutely no worry of them being exposed. The prerequisite was that these bastards didn’t act too ridiculously…
“Would you like a drink?”
“Can I? This is red? Is this tomato juice?”
“Ha, you’re such a jokester.”
Hey—hey—hey—Solonor, just because you’re disguised as a Blood Tribe, it doesn’t mean you have to drink actual blood! Are you even able to withstand it? Haha, he spat it out as I had expected. Such a waste.
“What? You want some new false teeth? Actually, I have some gold teeth that I harvested not too long ago. It’s just that I’m going to charge you a hefty price…”
A Goddess of Wealth priest could even earn money from the undead? Damn, I even sensed divine power emanating from Betty. Selling false gold teeth harvested from the undead back to the undead had been recognized as an official way of doing business by Beyana herself? Could this be a brand new market? Hey—hey—hey—could Betty and Beyana have at least a little shame?s!”
“Cheers! Ah Gen, why does it look like you got skinnier again?”
Now then, you dwarven little girl, it’s already ridiculous enough for an undead to drink alcohol and get drunk! That’s not Ah Gen in front of you, that’s just a skeleton elf who has nothing but bones left so of course it would be thin! Stop pouring wine for that skeleton, all the wine is leaking out from its chin! Such a pity… Damn it, why was I so stupid as to disguise myself as a lesser lich? In this form, I, too, couldn’t even drink!
Still, it was no wonder why they were in such a jubilant mood. After all, we had just killed off an Undead Lord. Even without calculating the Justice Points, the loot we obtained would turn us quite the profit.
How did we kill the Undead Lord? The lesser lich I controlled simply took us straight to that unfortunate skeleton general. First, I placed a soundproof barrier, then ambushed the skeleton general and killed it with a single swing of my sword. It was literally that simple.
Just as how Betty and my other teammates never expected there to be undead spies among the living, most undead would never expect there to be living spies among the undead, that too one that would suddenly ambush them of all undead.
I would take over any ordinary Undead Thanes who approached me, like the lesser lich now under my command, within ten seconds. I would then force them into forming a slavery contract with me and transform the soldiers under their command into my own forces.
“We’ve already taken over three Undead Thanes. Won’t it be easy for us to become exposed at this rate?”
“Not a problem. They’re just novices who barely count as high-level undead. They barely even count as Undead Thanes. It won’t have any effect. And this is still quite early—I intend to convert even more cannon fodder before the battle begins. Right, has Ah Gen returned yet? Any news?”
“…No. From the very beginning, I felt that it was a bad idea to let him go out scouting. You should know that his thief skills…”
“Wait a moment, weren’t you the one who told him to go out scouting? That’s what he told me.”
Alright then, Betty and I widened our eyes as we stared at each other. It would seem that the seemingly simple and honest barbarian Ah Gen has his own slyness as well. Not to mention this seemingly honest fellow had no evil intentions when fooling us, so even someone as experienced as me in the ways of trickery accidentally fell for his little lie.
*Boom!*
The loud sounds coming from around us caused us to slightly relax. Ever since Ah Gen had read the book “Robin Hood, the Flying Hero” (Roland edition) that I gave him, he always liked to hop everywhere. On our way here, he had crushed a dozen tents, thirty-something trees, created hundreds of holes, and got stuck in two ditches and had to be rescued. But the most ridiculous of all was that he even discovered a hot spring with one of his hops…
Cough, judging by the sounds, this barbarian thief, who had successfully fooled us both, had managed to survive and return. He must have done a good job with his scouting, too, since he was in a good mood.
“Brother Roland, I met two strong men even stronger than me! I just arm-wrestled them and lost. You have more physical strength than I do, so come and help me regain my lost face!”
“Arm-wrestling? Strong men? Wait a moment! There are other living people here!?”
Notes:
[1] ED/N: A minimap is a miniature map that is often placed at a screen corner in video games to aid players in orienting themselves within the game world (Wikipedia).