Chapter 409: The Lich Wraps Up
Chapter 409: The Lich Wraps Up
Somewhere in the ocean's depths, in a trench far below the surface...
A thousand meters down, the ecosystem grew strange and fantastical. In a place where sunlight could not reach, the creatures of the deep had evolved into strange and wondrous shapes, as though nature had given up on any consistent plan.
Aiolos lay sprawled in an enormous clamshell, idly turning his fingers. Water gathered around them and spun into tight vortices.
A nearby fish, its mouth wider than its own body, was sucked toward him. It was stripped of its scales by the razor current, its flesh ground to paste, everything soft churned into a thick slurry that flowed straight into Aiolos's waiting mouth.
The fish's pale skeleton drifted slowly downward, sinking into the deeper dark below.
Aiolos had been living in this trench for several days now. It all started when he got lost. He had been swimming through the open ocean, got hungry, chased after a school of fish, and somehow wound up there.
The trench's geography was hopelessly labyrinthine. After circling for hours without finding a way out, he had simply decided to stay.
Still, he hadn't been idle. In those few days, Aiolos had developed a host of new abilities. His control over water had grown significantly more precise. Where he had once only been able to raise great waves, he could now manipulate water pressure directly—enough to crush the deep-sea creatures around him flat. Applied to a living person, that same pressure would reduce them to pulp.
Beyond that, he had even learned to feel the ocean currents and to read the taste of the water. Compared to the Aiolos of a few days ago, he had undergone a profound transformation.
Such was the nature of a divine blessing: it was capable of placing overwhelming power into the hands of even a newborn.
Aiolos decided he had rested long enough. He finished his meal and swam upward, following the current toward the surface.
It took him less than two minutes to travel a thousand meters up into open air. The waves gathered beneath his feet as he rose, forming a surge that carried him rapidly forward.
This time, he would surely find Ariel.
What Aiolos did not know was that he was traveling away from the Ragetide Kingdom. Ariel was not ahead of him; the shagin territories were.
It would likely be quite some time before Aiolos found Ariel.
And while Aiolos wandered the ocean in entirely the wrong direction, Black Rose set out for the Ragetide Kingdom aboard Ambrose's Blacktide.
Hastin and Hares manned the Blacktide with extreme care, not daring so much as a glance toward where Black Rose sat. The two of them had come a long way from Ambrose's expendable muscle to captains of the Blacktide—and yet, captain or not, Black Rose inspired a deep, involuntary dread in both of them.
She was nothing like their master. Ambrose was suffused with an air of eccentricity; Black Rose radiated danger from every direction. Even undead creatures instinctively shied away from her, afraid that a moment's displeasure might see them crushed between her fingers.
Black Rose had reigned over the Umbral Depths for many years. Saying her hands were soaked in blood would be an understatement. It was more as though an endless sea of blood trailed behind her. The undead were exquisitely sensitive to that kind of killing intent, and the brothers, still relatively new to their undead state, found it nearly impossible to stand steady in her presence.
They consoled themselves privately that, compared to Black Rose, their money-grubbing master was actually quite easy to get along with. If they had to serve under Black Rose instead, they'd probably be disassembled for scrap within the week.
Black Rose noticed the two strange undead flinching in fear of her, but paid them no mind. This kind of reaction was far too common to register. Her attention was fixed on the documents Ambrose had given her: comprehensive plans for the transformation of the Ragetide Kingdom, diagrams for alchemical production lines, personnel requirements, material requirements, and specifications for lighting, water access, and facility layouts.
Black Rose had only a passing familiarity with alchemy and had never studied it seriously. The documents were difficult to parse, even for her. Fortunately, Ambrose had anticipated this. Alongside the full technical specifications, he had prepared a simplified version stripped of underlying principles, containing only requirements and demands.
Black Rose only needed to work through that checklist item by item during negotiations.
Still, she found that approach somewhat inadequate. Acting purely on instruction without understanding the reasoning felt unfamiliar and faintly uncomfortable, and was hardly the way Black Rose preferred to operate. So she pushed herself to work through the full documents as best she could to avoid any missteps at the negotiating table.
She had the patience for it. Her daughter Milena emphatically did not. Black Rose handed her the simplest section of the materials; within minutes, Milena was squirming in her seat. When asked, she admitted she hadn't absorbed a single word.
Black Rose could only shake her head. How had her daughter turned out so unlike either of her parents?
"Mother," Milena said plaintively, "I genuinely can't read this. It's as if the words are dancing in the air!"
"If you're like this, how are you ever going to inherit my kingdom?" Black Rose said, exasperated.
The serfs would talk her into going down the mines again within the week.
"Mother, you're a lich! You're not going to die," Milena protested. "Why can't I just be a princess forever?"
Black Rose sighed. "Who said I'm not going to die? Once the plan to destroy Lyon is complete, I'll be leaving this world."
"What?" Milena stared. "Why?"
"Because I will have fulfilled my purpose. The undead don't really feel much to begin with. What keeps me here is my obsession. Without it, I'm no different from a corpse. Once your father helps me complete my wish, it will be time for me to move on. Whether I go to the Hells or simply cease to be, I'll be leaving either way."
Black Rose described her plan with uncanny calm—and even faint anticipation.
Memory gave rise to feeling, and feeling sustained existence. The undead, having lost the majority of their senses for pleasure, could not find joy or emotional resonance in anything but their core obsessions. Lose even that, and there would no longer be any reason to persist.
A lich's body was like a machine that remained functional but purposeless.
They might as well be dead; their souls had grown numb. With her last wish fulfilled, Black Rose would lose all capacity for feeling entirely, and her would be drained of any further will to operate. At that point, there would be no meaningful difference between life and death.
Black Rose was a rare exception among liches. Most who underwent the transformation did so out of a simple desire to survive. Immortality was by far the most common driving wish, which meant it could never truly be satisfied. Such liches endured forever.
Ambrose was the same, in his way. Wealth had no ceiling; the drive to accumulate could sustain him indefinitely, pushing him forward for as long as he chose to exist.
But from the moment Black Rose had become a lich, she had known that she would dissolve alongside Lyon's destruction. Even the certainty of that ending had done nothing to weaken her resolve—if anything, part of her wished she could take the empire down with her right now in shared annihilation.
Nothing in the Umbral Depths had ever truly mattered to her. Wealth, power, subjects—none of it mattered. What she wanted was to dissolve the hatred that had consumed her, to bring an end to the eternal torment she had been enduring.
Milena had never heard any of this before. She sat there for a moment, mouth open in shock. "No! Mother, you can't just leave like that! Even without Lyon, you still have me! You still have Father! Can you really bear to leave us? Can't we become your reason to stay?"
The string of questions brought Black Rose up short.
Unbidden, her thoughts went to the lich who had made her feel something she still couldn't quite name. She still hadn't worked out whether it was because Ambrose was helping her destroy Lyon or simply because of who Ambrose was. Regardless, something in him that had caused a heart long since dead and still to stir.
Looking at Milena's anxious, flustered face, Black Rose smiled quietly. "Milena, I envy you. Your soul is too vivid for the undead. This is too early a conversation to be having—let's wait until Lyon is gone. By then, I believe your father will have thought of something."
She would leave it to him. If he was willing, he would probably find her a reason to stay. And if he wasn't, then what reason would she have to linger anyway?
Black Rose looked back down at the documents, her expression composed, as though the conversation had not impacted her at all.
Milena, however, could not settle down. It had never once occurred to her that her mother might one day be gone. That future was categorically unacceptable.
She frowned in thought. "Mother's obsession is built entirely on hatred. Is there a way to give her a new one, like Aunt Alabastra, who made love her anchor? I need Father to look into this seriously. I won't let Mother leave."
Milena wasn't the sharpest mind, and she knew it. That was precisely why she had decided this was a matter for her father, who was capable of anything. Once these negotiations were done, she planned to stay glued to Ambrose's side and badger him every day until he found an answer.
The Blacktide brought the mother and daughter, each absorbed in thoughts the other couldn't fully comprehend, into the harbor of Stormhaven, the capital of the Ragetide Kingdom.
Stormhaven sat atop a mountain at the center of the kingdom's territory. A city of a hundred thousand people, it was the most prosperous settlement in all of Ragetide, ringed by clusters of islands large and small. For most ordinary citizens of the kingdom, moving to Stormhaven was the highest aspiration they held for their lives.
As such, while the Ragetide Kingdom itself was poor, Stormhaven at least had the look of a thriving city.
The Blacktide had been given permission by Princess Ariel to land directly near the city. It set down on a hillside just outside the walls.
Ariel had received advance notice and was already waiting there with a company of stormpriests to receive them.
The ceremony was modest in staging, but the figures who had appeared were of sufficient standing to make the welcome genuinely dignified.
This was Ariel's first time seeing the legendary undead queen in person. She was struck by how refined and composed Black Rose was. Standing next to her, Ariel felt that she herself was somewhat lacking in aristocratic bearing.
But Ariel wasn't the type to be too bothered about it. She was a daughter of the sea, born to thunder and storm. That was what she pursued, and too noble a bearing would be out of place in the Ragetide Kingdom anyway.
What she didn't know was why the negotiating party had changed. All the preparation she had done was now useless.
She had no sense yet of what Black Rose was like, or how to read her well enough to win more favorable terms from the negotiation.
Ariel had just managed a greeting when Black Rose turned to Ariel with a radiant smile and said, "Princess Ariel, what a wonderful surprise. I have never met a young woman with such a commanding, soldierly presence. You put my own daughter to shame entirely. Would you do me the honor of showing me around? I'd love to see the place where you grew up and let my daughter learn something from your example."
Before Ariel could respond, Black Rose had taken her arm and was already standing close beside her, warm and familiar, as though they had known each other for years.
Ariel blinked. Was this truly the fearsome undead queen she had heard of? There was nothing of the cold cruelty the rumors had promised—she was practically disarming.
The Ragetide delegation stood in collective bewilderment. Only those on Ambrose's side understood exactly what was happening.
Hastin watched the scene unfold with quiet appreciation. "No wonder she's the one who ended up with our master," he thought. "Even the way she reads people and gets them on her side is uncannily similar."