Lich for Hire

Chapter 509: The Empire's Shame

Not a single Lyon soldier could have predicted that the wedding, so festive just a moment ago, would turn into a life-or-death battlefield in the very next instant.

When the orc king's annihilating strike finally descended, the small villa housing the Lyon delegation was completely swallowed by crimson light. For one brief instant, even the lightning filling the sky above was blotted out entirely by that red glow.

Old William Garrison let out a sigh and hurled himself out the window, shield raised. There would be no time for further conversation with young Allen.

Golden holy light swelled into an enormous barrier, enveloping the entire villa within it.

The moment everyone saw that shield of holy light, their fear eased.

William Garrison, Lyon's Shield, boasted a defense so formidable that he even gave the Silvermoon Knight trouble. Orcs, of all things, shouldn't stand a chance against it.

That shield's sheer weight of presence was enough to reassure anyone... right up until the crimson light struck home.

An indescribable tremor rolled through the air, yet there was no sound of impact to accompany it. It was as though a bomb had gone off with the faintest, muffled whump, and then simply fell silent—followed immediately by a shockwave of unimaginable violence.

Howling winds tore through the area, scouring away several layers of ground in every direction.

By the time the dust settled, the shield of holy light lay shattered beyond recognition. The villa itself was riddled with cracks, teetering on the verge of collapse.

Lyon's Shield, in the end, failed to fully block the terrible force of that blow—though the shielded area still fared far better than the apocalyptic devastation surrounding it.

Fortunately, everyone inside the villa was a powerhouse in their own right, and they'd all evacuated to safety before the building came down entirely.

William Garrison stared, pale-faced, at the towering orc standing before him, his expression grim.

The terrifying orc stood well over three meters tall, his entire body the color of blood-red flesh, gripping a massive axe in each hand. What an ordinary person would need both hands to wield, this orc handled as a pair of one-handed axes, flourishing them with terrifying ease.

This could only be the orc king, Roga. There was no other orc alive who looked like this.

Why had he suddenly appeared here, attacking the Lyon delegation without the slightest hesitation?

Would that lich really dare gamble away the reputation he'd spent so long building, just to sabotage Lyon like this?

All to kill the emperor of Lyon?

It seemed like a reckless gamble, one that made no sense at all. Lyon's people could simply leave at any time. They had teleportation arrays even on their ships; scaling one down into a disposable, portable emergency array wouldn't have been any real technical challenge.

Allen flashed to the young emperor's side and said, "Your Majesty, please withdraw first. I'll go find out exactly what this lich thinks he's doing."

The young emperor glanced at Allen but made no move to follow the suggestion. Instead, his gaze drifted toward the distance.

Deep within the thunder-wracked darkness, countless shadowy figures seemed to be closing in fast.

"Your Majesty!"

Allen tried to press the point further, only to notice that several Lyon paladins had already stepped forward, subtly encircling him.

The young emperor studied Allen carefully for a long moment before speaking. "Allen, do you truly know nothing about this?"

Allen let out a bitter laugh and voluntarily stepped back several paces. "Your Majesty, if I told you I knew nothing at all, would you actually believe me?"

The young emperor didn't answer, but he didn't need to. What the rest of the Lyon delegation had done was answer enough.

From the very start, Allen had never been fully trusted. Now, he'd become the first man they all suspected.

The orc king paid no mind whatsoever to Lyon's internal squabbles. He swung the axe in his left hand back, and then hurled it forward with tremendous force.

That explosive burst of power sent the massive axe spinning at incredible speed, tearing through the air with a piercing shriek, its trajectory locked directly onto the emperor.

William Garrison, Lyon's Shield, still hadn't fully caught his breath, but he raised his shield anyway to protect his emperor from the incoming axe.

The tremendous impact sent William Garrison skidding backward several meters. This strike was far weaker than the one before it, but with his holy light reserves already badly depleted, even blocking this blow proved a struggle.

The great axe spun off, flying dozens of meters away.

Seeing the opening, the other Lyon paladins immediately charged the orc king, hoping to surround and overwhelm him now that he was down to just a single axe.

But to everyone's shock, the orc king simply raised the axe still in his right hand. The other axe, which had just been sent flying, instantly reappeared in his other hand in a flash.

This was a matched pair of artifacts. Even though one axe had been purchased and taken away by Lyon, it could still be summoned back from a thousand miles away through its twin. Lyon's people, of course, had no idea this was even possible.

The two paladins who'd charged in had no time to react and were driven back by the orc king's wild onslaught, sustaining minor injuries in the process.

But the moment they hit the ground, healing spells landed on them immediately, layered with Guardian Chains, blade-warding enchantments, and an entire suite of supporting spells that left the two paladins glowing so brightly they looked like a pair of walking light bulbs.

This was the classic Lyon combination: paladins and priests in conjunction were practically unbeatable.

Buffed with an entire arsenal of spells, the two legendary paladins pressed the attack from both sides, one wielding a colossal blade of light thick as a pillar, the other gripping a five-meter holy spear. Neither showed the slightest fear of an orc towering over three meters tall.

The orc king roared furiously, barely managing to hold the two paladins at bay as his stamina steadily drained away.

"Cowardly, shameless dogs! I knew you weren't true warriors! Come out already! What are you all still hiding for?!"

At the orc king's furious roar, a series of deep, rolling booms echoed through the darkness.

A massive shadowy figure came charging out of the night, its entire body wreathed in flames of deep violet-red.

A blazing sword swung in a wide, dazzling arc at the figure's side, sending violet flame streaking outward like cannon fire, hurtling straight toward the gray-haired old man.

A young paladin standing nearby flashed in front of old William, raising his shield against the incoming violet-flame blade.

The instant William Garrison saw that violet flame, he opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he was already too late. The sword, wreathed in violet fire, had already torn straight through the young paladin's shield and pierced clean through his body.

Despite being reinforced with holy light, his shield might as well have been made of paper. Not even his enchanted armor, nor the more than a dozen protective divine techniques layered over him, could stop that blade.

"No!"

Only then did William Garrison's voice finally reach the young man—but by that point, it was already far too late.

The paladin himself couldn't comprehend it. How could he possibly have failed to block even a single strike?

Amid the clattering rattle of chains, the violet-flame blade was withdrawn from the young man's chest. Only then did everyone finally get a clear look at the shadowy figure.

It was a headless knight, clad in jet-black heavy armor, mounted atop a massive eight-legged steed.

Gareth turned to old William, sounding almost pleasantly surprised as he exclaimed, "Huh. I think I've seen you before. Many years ago, in the Mercury City of the Umbral Depths..."

The moment he recognized the figure before him, William thrust the gravely wounded and dying young paladin toward a nearby priest and roared, "Retreat, now! Get His Majesty out of here! I'll hold him off!"

William's hands trembled, but not purely from fear. He'd recognized the headless knight standing before him: the undead known throughout Lyon as the Shame of the Empire, the headless knight who had once single-handedly carved a bloody path straight through Lyon's forces.

He knew this firsthand, because his own ancestor had once taken part in the campaign to hunt down Gareth—and had died at this very headless knight's hands.

Every single generation of the Garrison family had been paladins, and every single generation had counted Gareth as their family's greatest enemy.

Today marked the second time old William had ever laid eyes on this headless knight. The first had been decades ago, when he'd accompanied the Silvermoon Knight into the Umbral Depths to bring down that formidable lich.

That lich had defied the boundary between life and death, violating every ethical principle in existence. He was capable of turning the undead into living beings once more. This was the single most intolerable blasphemy Lyon could imagine, which was why the Silvermoon Knight had led the empire's finest into the Umbral Depths, determined to kill the lich once and for all.

At first, everything had gone smoothly. With the Silvermoon Knight leading the assault and old William providing support, the two of them had swept through the entire Umbral Depths together.

Later, to ensure the lich had no possible escape route, William and the Silvermoon Knight split their forces and advanced on Mercury City from two separate directions.

One side consisted of the Silvermoon Knight alone; the other, led by William, consisted of several thousand elite soldiers, the Silvermoon Knight's most cherished student among them.

The Silvermoon Knight encountered the full undead army of the Umbral Depths. William's side, meanwhile, encountered only a single opponent: the very same headless knight standing before him now.

That single opponent had cut straight through the entirety of the Lyon army in one uninterrupted charge.

William hadn't been able to react in time back then either. He and his shield had been run clean through by that same blazing sword. The mighty Lyon's Shield had been unable to block even a single blow from this man.

Old William remembered with perfect clarity the sensation of that violet flame piercing straight through his chest. And history had just repeated itself.

In the end, the surviving soldiers had barely managed to activate a teleportation spell to evacuate everyone who remained. That was the only reason William Garrison had survived at all.

Lyon's losses in that battle had been catastrophic. Not only had William himself suffered grievous wounds that took him years to fully recover from, the Silvermoon Knight's own student had died at this same Dullahan's hands, trampled into pulp beneath the hooves of his eight-legged steed, without ever having the slightest chance to fight back.

Meeting him again at last, William found his entire body trembling due to that nightmarish figure.

Not merely out of fear, but also from excitement.

William Garrison raised his shield, his aged body squarely between Gareth and the emperor. He drank down a potion that seemed to shimmer like the night sky itself. In an instant, his pale hair rapidly darkened, his aged frame straightening and filling out once more. In moments, he transformed from a man on the edge of death back into someone in the prime of his thirties.

The priest standing behind him layered spell after spell over his body, leaving him feeling several times stronger than before. Intense holy light blazed from his shield, coalescing into a wall of radiant iron that surged forward to meet Gareth head-on.

Back in his youth, William had possessed nothing but raw physical strength, without this overwhelming holy light to back it up. Now, drawing on the power of the Fountain of Youth, he'd reclaimed that youth for a moment.

It was finally time to settle both his family's vengeance and that blood debt from all those years ago.

The wall of holy iron surged toward Gareth in the shape of hundreds of cavalry lances, ready to run him through.

Yet Gareth didn't dodge. Instead, he dug both heels into his steed's flanks and charged straight into the wall of holy light head-on.

This time, he didn't throw his blazing sword. Instead, he gripped the hilt tightly in both hands and swung it directly into the wall of radiant iron with all his strength.

The violet flame, so dense it seemed on the verge of turning to pure darkness, collided head-on with the wall of holy light.

In a single instant, the wall of holy light, forged from the entirety of old William's strength, was cleaved cleanly in two.

William Garrison stared at the wave of darkness bearing down on him, unable to process what he was seeing.

Holy light was supposed to counter dark magic. Wasn't it?