"I'm grateful for your help, bard of Solis—I am Raz Mi'ul Naseer."
Sylvester groaned and asked. "W-What now?"
The giant Emperor Lich raised his right hand and removed the gloves, revealing his skeleton fingers. He initiated some sort of magic as his palm started to shine in green. "Forgive me, but I held back as much as I could. I can not heal your wounds, for the flesh does not concern me. But I can heal your broken bones."
"Thank you." Sylvester silently waited for the treatment. He reckoned that since Emperor Lich was a master of undead and skeletons, so healing bone should not be too hard.
"Argh!" Sylvester grunted as his jaw was healed at first. Magically, it placed itself back in its original place. But Sylvester knew why his jaw was fixed first. It was so he could clench his teeth for the pain that was to greet him soon.
Clack!
Tap!
Tick!
With a series of crackling, almost audible snaps, the bones started to knit themselves together one by one. Sylvester only kept his teeth gritted and jaw clenched as it hurt like hell. With each clack and tap of his bones, he felt a mind-numbing pain.
But sadly, he knew that this torment was the only way to heal himself fast, as the normal method would have taken him weeks to heal fully. So he endured everything without moving.
"Aargh!"
Sylvester closed his eyes and tried to divert his mind by thinking about something else. He thought about home, Xavia and Chonky. He thought about his past life, his wife, and the happiness that still lingered as memories.
Snap!
At last, his spine was mended, increasing the pain manifolds. After that, the minor bones were slowly put to their original places, and by the thirtieth minute, Sylvester's whole bone structure was healed to normal. This was the power of a Supreme Wizard. This was the greatness of a man standing at the pinnacle.
If any other healer had seen Sylvester's mangled body, they'd have cried that it was impossible to fix, but here, without even touching him, the undead Emperor lich did it.
Sylvester still had many deep and bloody flesh wounds, however. But at least he now knew that he wasn't going to die, albeit he felt low on energy, to the point that his eyes were getting heavy.
"Thank you, Lord Naseer." Sylvester thanked the Emperor Lich, shocking Felix, and others who had just arrived, including Aurora and Gideon.
The Emperor Lich nodded its terrifying face with nothing but a giant grin. The being was unsettling to stand beside, but no one dared to fight him. So all just listened to the conversation.
"What's going on here? How do you know each other?" Felix asked aloud.
Sylvester sat up slowly, looked Felix in the eye and dropped a heavy bomb. "Felix, this being here is the one who actually saved you from the Borzol brothers. He sent me a missive through undead birds long before you were even caught. Because of him, by the time you got caught, I had already arrived in the north. If this being here had not informed me, you would have died in that cold dark pit prison."
"What?" Felix was so taken aback that he sat down on the snowy ground. "But, he's a lich. He's supposed to be evil."
"Says who?" Emperor Lich, Naseer asked. "I have lived my entire life as a devotee to the supreme god Solis, so how am I evil?"
"What?!" Aurora exclaimed this time. "You're lying! How can a dark being be the receiver of the lord's bright blessings?"
Sylvester chuckled, raised his right hand in pain, and spewed a lot of light on the lich. "See, nothing happens to him. I don't know who or how he was made, but he's not a dark creature."
Emperor Lich folded his arms and looked at all of them with nonchalance. "I wish no harm to you or the Sol. What transpired today was involuntary, for I was under someone else's control, and the bard of Solis here freed me."
"Then, who are you? How did you get so strong? Where have you been all this time?" Aurora asked him, knowing that for someone to become a Supreme wizard, it requires nearly two hundred years of hard work.
Emperor Lich looked towards the sky, which had started to clear up slowly. "My real name is what I revealed, Raz Mi'ul Naseer. Nearly four thousand years ago, I was a simple farmer in the region you call the Highland Kingdom. Back then, lawlessness was at its peak. This was before Pope Pollux Ragthon, the warrior pope, consolidated the church and spread the rule of faith of Solis across the continent.
"Back then, death from hunger was more common than a robbery. I was one of the unlucky ones, being the eldest of six brothers, with my wife and two children. So I had a lot of responsibility to bear."
The Emperor Lich paused for a few seconds as if feeling emotional from remembering the distant past. The man kept looking at the sky while Sylvester smelled the deep scent of sadness, misery and utter brokenness.
Soon, the man continued his story. "We had a severe draught that year, and even after spending all our spare money, we found no respite. We stayed hungry for sixty days and grew as thin as my skeletons. I couldn't see my little siblings and daughters die, but sadly, there was no work to find either.
"Left alone in the misery of madness that was our reality, I tried my best. We ate grass; we ate tree bark; we filled our bellies with water. But that only made us sick. Thankfully, that was when I met a dark wizard passing by, who offered me money in return for allowing him to experiment on me."
Sylvester and the rest already knew where this was going now. Automatically, they felt nothing but sympathy for this ancient victim of what millions of commoners suffer through even now.
Nobody interrupted the Emperor Lich, so the man continued. "He kept me magically enslaved for two hundred years, attempted all sorts of magical horror on me, and eventually turned me into a lich. But, even he didn't know the true discovery he had made. By turning me into a lich, he unknowingly removed the blockers that kept my human body from growing stronger.
"So, I grew strong, wise and old. Eventually, I plotted and freed myself by killing my tormentor. But, I was no longer a human by then, a mere shadow of the man I used to be. I knew I'd be hunted down in Sol, so I took all the research of the Dark Wizard and moved to the desolate north, eventually finding the island beyond the sea. It was so uninhabitable that nobody ever came there. So, I lived and grew stronger there in peace while watching over my descendants in Sol from afar, gifting them wealth and protection."
Sylvester interrupted at that point and asked. "How did you get controlled by someone? You're a Supreme Wizard."
It was unknown if the Emperor Lich breathed, but the man made a sound of a sigh. "It's pitiful. Over the past thousands of years, a few strong Popes have visited me and befriended me. But, this time, I lost. My castle on my island, where I lived in peace, was attacked by twenty-five Grand Wizards.
"They destroyed everything, razed my castle to the ground, burned my laboratory, and all my means of entertainment. They came with an agenda to enslave me again and unleash me upon Sol—Those animals! I was unprepared and overconfident. That was my downfall.
"I was forced to do their bidding. Ruin the crops of the innocent mountain tribes, forced to inflict harm to innocents, a sin I ask for forgiveness to Solis every day. With their strange and powerful magic, they ensured that I could not defend myself or ask someone to free me. But they forgot my ability to use my undead.
"I used them to write the missive and send it to you, bard of Solis. With the ingredients I wrote, you found out its use and freed me today—I am forever grateful."
Sylvester remembered the strange undead bird letter he had received that detailed all the weird ingredients that disgusted him. It took him a lot of time, but he eventually discovered its real use.
"So this was a mess of someone else's making?" Felix muttered annoyedly. "I nearly died because of someone's scheme, and we were all pawns?"
Thud!
Sylvester fell on his back again, lying in the snow.
"Hahaha…!"
Everyone stared at him, worried that Sylvester finally broke down.
"M-Max… You good?" Gabriel asked in worry.
"Hahaha…I knew it!" Sylvester bellowed.
He faced the Emperor Lich and asked just a few questions. "When did they attack you?"
"Twenty years ago."
Sylvester sighed and slowly tried to stand up. Felix was quick and gave him the support of his shoulder. Everyone was waiting to learn what he was trying to point to.
"Lord Naseer, were the attackers from Masan Empire?"
"They were, considering their darker complexion and attire." Emperor Lich replied.
Sylvester, with a big smile, asked one last question. "Was there a man among them named Shadow of Masan?"
"Yes."
Boom!
That was all it took to shake the earth from beneath everyone who had been with Sylvester over the years. But lady Aurora, in particular, was shocked by something much more worrying.
"T-Then… Does this mean that Masan has twenty-five Grand Wizards? Holy Solis! That's more than what the entire East side of Sol has after combining those in the church!"
Sylvester shook his head. "Lady Aurora, they were strong enough to subdue Lord Naseer. That means some of them were at the extreme end of the Grand Wizard ranks, likely level eight or nine."
Thud!
Lady Aurora stopped herself from falling by planting her sword on the ground. Her eyes shook, and her breath became fast.
"T-This… We must inform the Holy Land! What if some of their Grand Wizards ascend to the Supreme Wizard rank? Knowing Masan Empire, they would try to…"
Sylvester finished her words.
"Take over the world!"
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