Lich for Hire

Chapter 473: Lyon's Word Is Worth Less Than A Goblin's

Something about Lyon's current situation didn't add up.

With a border city under enemy occupation and orc invaders staring them down across the river, though Lyon had ships at their disposal, they didn't dare cross over and reclaim their own territory.

It was a grave humiliation, but after enough crushing defeats, the people of Lyon had finally learned that raw courage alone counted for nothing.

The orcs were, if anything, even less afraid of death than Lyon's own soldiers—and when it came to grievances, the orcs had endured Lyon's abuse for years. They were the ones who'd come for vengeance.

And on the matter of pure tactical command, Angus Watson simply wasn't a match for this mysterious enemy general.

After considerable digging, Angus Watson had finally learned the name of this formidable opponent: Urbano Pacheco.

He was a young orc, barely past twenty, who had never set foot on a battlefield before this campaign.

Urbano Pacheco hadn't come from noble stock. Quite the opposite: he was barely a step above a slave, a convicted criminal serving time for theft.

His physique wasn't particularly imposing either. For an orc, it was entirely average. He could hold his own with a weapon and was competent enough as a fighter, but that was it.

His meteoric rise started with a beast-culling campaign, where he'd been deployed as a convict to serve as cannon fodder meant to lure wild monsters out into the open. The usual arrangement was that surviving as bait would earn you a pardon.

But Urbano Pacheco hadn't gambled on luck. Instead, risking a flogging that could easily have killed him, he'd approached his lord directly with an alternative battle plan.

The specifics never came to light, but the outcome was clear. His tactics succeeded spectacularly. And just like that, Urbano Pacheco went from convict to retainer in his lord's household at the age of seventeen.

Two years later, the orcs held a kingdomwide martial tournament, as tradition demanded. Through sheer tactical brilliance, Urbano Pacheco delivered his lord the championship, shocking the entire orcish kingdom.

That particular lord's forces didn't include a single legendary warrior. The lord was the sort of competitor that simply showed up to fill out the bracket.

And yet Urbano Pacheco had somehow seen straight through every opponent, skillfully maneuvering the truly powerful contestants into destroying each other.

By the time the final two orc legends collapsed, utterly exhausted, on the ground, Urbano Pacheco easily walked away with the championship.

That single tournament made him a household name.

Orcs weren't actually mindless. They wanted commanders capable of leading them to victory after victory just as much as anyone. The problem was that previous orcish generals had simply been the tallest among short men: individually formidable, but only capable of leading the charge themselves while howling at the top of their lungs.

Boosting morale was one thing. Coordinating an entire army in large-scale engagements was quite a different matter entirely.

Part of this stemmed from their environment.

The orcish kingdom was a land of towering mountains and unforgiving peaks, terrain that made large-army warfare practically impossible. Combat there had always come down to small, elite squads clashing in isolated engagements. Under those conditions, producing fierce individual warriors was easy enough, but cultivating strategists was a tall order. Without the right environment to nurture such talent, from where would it even emerge?

And even on the rare occasion that a true prodigy emerged, overturning a stronger force with a weaker one remained nearly impossible.

But Urbano Pacheco seemed almost like an emissary personally dispatched by Grush, the orcish god of war. After his tournament victory, plenty of orcs who refused to accept the result demanded challenges. Unless they specifically demanded Urbano Pacheco fight them one-on-one himself, every single challenger lost.

It was only then that the orcs truly understood that Urbano Pacheco had received a blessing from their god: the ability to communicate telepathically with any orc at any distance. The blessing seemed an odd fit for that particular deity's usual style, but its power was beyond any doubt.

The orcs had spent a long time building their war plans around this singular ability before finally launching their counteroffensive.

The results had been spectacular, and left Lyon thoroughly on the back foot.

The Emerald River was wide, certainly, but how long could it really hold the orcs back?

Outmatched in command, outnumbered in troops, and now even out-engineered in military machinery, Lyon was falling behind the times.

Standing atop the city wall, Angus Watson watched the handful of black specks circling endlessly overhead and slammed a fist down on the parapet without thinking.

His knuckles ached, but the pain did nothing to dull the anxiety churning in his chest.

Those things in the sky kept drawing closer by the day. By now, the enemy had almost certainly mapped out every detail of this city's strengths and weaknesses.

When the orcs launched their next assault, Angus Watson genuinely had no idea whether he could hold the line.

That gnawing anxiety ate at him relentlessly until his personal guard reported that a lich's image had appeared in the magic mirror.

"Finally. Finally!"

Angus Watson had never imagined a day would come when he'd find himself anxiously waiting on a lich, let alone feel genuine relief at receiving a reply from one.

Ironic as it was, Angus Watson sprinted straight to the war room and stood before the mirror.

"Master Megaman, are you finally available?"

His voice trembled, audibly, with relief.

"Apologies. I've been swamped lately. You know how it is: the Sea of Volcanoes still hasn't stabilized, and you went and ran off halfway through. None of the other commanders are quite at your level, so the fighting's been considerably less smooth without you around."

Angus Watson's expression shifted. He wasn't as naive as his brother Allen. He could tell this lich had just shifted blame squarely onto him with a single sentence, and a demand for compensation was almost certainly coming next.

Though he hadn't spent much time around this lich, Angus understood his character well enough by now. The lich never passed up an opportunity to demand an outrageous price.

Sure enough, Ambrose's next words were, "I won't ask for compensation out of respect for your brother and your father. Now, you've sent me word several times that Lyon wants to purchase airships?"

Angus Watson's expression darkened considerably. This lich had unquestionably already included the "compensation fee" in the airship pricing. There was no doubt about it. But with no other option available, he forced himself to ask through gritted teeth, "How much are you asking for the airships, Master Megaman?"

In the mirror, Ambrose smiled. "Let's not jump to numbers just yet. I need to confirm one thing first. Are you purchasing on your own behalf, or on behalf of Lyon? Angus, we're old friends by now—I'd hate to see you end up branded a traitor for doing business with me, the way your brother was. That would be terribly awkward for everyone."

Angus Watson felt a sudden urge to use Sacred Slash. In barely two sentences, this lich had somehow pinned the charge of treason on him as well.

No, wait. He was losing his composure.

What possible benefit would framing him for treason serve this lich? That clearly wasn't what Ambrose actually meant.

Unable to fully untangle Ambrose's intentions, Angus was forced to ask, "Master Megaman, surely that detail doesn't matter to you. As long as I can pay your price, the rest is my own concern."

"Now, now, Angus, that's a bit arrogant of you. You've used my airships before. They're a specialized form of undead, after all. Here you are, representing Lyon, of all kingdoms, using undead for reconnaissance. That looks far worse for you than losing a battle outright. I'd really rather not have your fellow Lyon citizens turn around afterward and pin the blame entirely on me, claiming that I corrupted you, then dumping the consequences of your defeat onto my doorstep."

Angus Watson hurriedly countered, "When has Lyon ever done such a thing? Even when dealing with the undead, we have never once leveled a charge against someone that wasn't true."

"Ha! Your young emperor lost to the githarks and crushed his own soldiers in the process. Then he posted a bounty on me for the entire affair."

"T-That's an entirely different matter!"

Ambrose wagged a finger as he addressed Angus with sudden gravity. "As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly the same matter. Angus, I don't care what passes for judicial standards among your people. To me, that was a baseless slander, plain and simple. Tiamat was the one who summoned the githarks. I was nothing but her victim, forced into the role. And yet not one of you dared settle accounts with that Dragon Queen directly. Instead, the blame landed squarely on me.

"I'll just say it plainly, Angus: where I'm concerned, Lyon's word is worth less than a goblin's. If you can't produce proof that the Lyon Empire has formally sanctioned this purchase, I will not do business with you. I have no interest in being double-crossed and then saddled with a fresh batch of fabricated charges on top of it."

Angus Watson nearly drew his blade to invoke Sacred Slash on the spot. In all his years, this was the first time he'd ever heard anyone compare the people of Lyon to goblins, and in terms of trustworthiness no less!

What infuriated him even more was that he genuinely had no rebuttal.

However exaggerated the lich's framing, what he'd said held an uncomfortable kernel of truth.

As a paladin, Angus Watson simply couldn't bring himself to speak a flat lie, even to defend his own people.

Still, Angus had matured considerably more than his brother Allen. He forced himself to calm down and offered Ambrose a wry smile. "Is this how my brother felt, talking to you? Your tongue really is sharp enough to make even the gods think twice, Master Megaman. Does this genuinely concern you at all, though? You've topped Lyon's most-wanted list for some time now. It hasn't slowed you down one bit, has it? As for payment, you needn't worry. I can pay the full amount up front."

"Pay in full, up front? Aren't you worried I'll simply take the gold and never deliver?" Ambrose asked.

Angus Watson said: "You may believe Lyon has no credibility left, Master Megaman, but you seem to value your own reputation quite highly. You wouldn't throw away everything you've built over a sum this small. The loss would be far too great."

"Impressive. So it turns out Allen is the dumbest of James's sons after all."

Ambrose had no real intention of swindling Lyon's gold. Doing so wasn't worth the cost.

But he had no intention of agreeing too readily either.

"Angus, whatever you promise me, I'm not simply going to take you at your word. The orcs are, after all, dear friends of mine. Doing business with you is equivalent to betraying them, in a sense. So not only will the price be steep, I have one additional condition."

Angus Watson asked immediately, "What condition?"

"Have your emperor speak with me personally. Let him tell me himself, in his own words, that this transaction has his explicit approval, and that he will under no circumstances go back on it afterward. That's not too much to ask of you, is it?"