Chapter 147: The demigod Necromancer I [REWRITTEN Chapter]
Dokpas City
Planet Ugantu
Onerth Galaxy
The city of Dokpas was built amidst the swaying grasses of a windy meadow and is truly an ever-growing display of wonder. Its beauty was matched by the backdrop of rich, luscious fields which helped shape the city into what it was today.
Unfortunately, said fields were now covered in a dark aura of death, with hundreds of half-decayed corpses strewn about on the floor.
And roaming about the strange mist that filled the area, were hundreds of other half-decayed corpses, with their lifeless eyes glowing with an eerie dark red light.
"Damn, the situation here ended up being strange after all."
Arthur spoke up as he used magic to look far into the distance, expressing mild surprise at the number of inferior-stage grandmaster realm undead he saw.
"Considering the strength of the people on this side of this planet, that’s a lot."
The continent they were currently on was one of the less developed ones on Ugantu; this also meant not only their technology and infrastructure, but the average strength of the beings here was also lower.
Low enough that the number of Epic Realm existences in the country they were in could be counted on one hand.
Dokpas itself, only had intermediate stage grandmasters as their strongest combatants, and they were all normal existences with normal levels of power, not nonstandards like the three teenagers from Aeturn.
Looking down, Arthur could see mercenaries and soldiers scattered all over the hastily constructed walls at the city’s outskirts, to serve as a defensive line against the walking corpses in the meadows beyond.
’Is this what the Asphodel Meadows look like?’
That fleeting thought about his father’s domain crossed his mind as he looked at the normal townspeople giving the fighters bowls of food and wrapping bandages around the injured.
The atmosphere was quite dark due to the repeated battles against the undead monsters, especially since the attacks had claimed a lot of lives.
Just when Arthur was considering how he was going to find out what was happening, he sensed multiple presences appear behind him, followed by a stern-sounding voice.
"Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?"
He turned around to see a man pointing a sword at him and the two girls, with five other armoured personnel beside him with their hands on their weapons.
Layla snapped her fingers and five hover guns manifested in the air, pointed at them with magic power glowing in their nuzzles.
As for Nicole, though the girl remained silent, the dozens of water spirits in the surroundings all manifested their physical bodies with expressions of rage, annoyed at the fact that these people dared to raise weapons against her.
Even so, this group of six, the strongest Intermediate Stage grandmasters of Dokpas, did not falter. Although the trio appeared to be just teenagers, there was no mistaking the aura of grandmasters they emitted, something they were not hiding and what resulted in them being discovered in the first place.
On a side note, it was Arthur’s idea, as the boy’s aim was for them to be detected in the first place.
"Hello there, Misters. You can put down your weapon, we’re not here to fight you. As for why we are here, let’s go with the undead who’ve clearly been plaguing your city for a while now.
I’d like to know about the situation and how things ended up like this."
Arthur had zero hostility, yet the man at the forefront did not drop his guard, nor his sword. He was trying to guess as to where the trio had come from, and his brain came up with many ideas, and three had very high chances of being true.
The first was that they were from the capital of their country, a place with more resources as well as people with money to get those resources and use to make their children stronger.
The second was that they were children from the more developed continents, hence their higher-than-normal strengths.
And the third, was that they were visitors from ’beyond the stars’.
In the event the third was the case, then the man’s wariness was going to rise by several levels. After all, the current situation was partly because of one of such visitors from beyond the stars.
A woman who had come here many years ago, and ended up starting a family with one of the men in their city.
However, if only they had known that this woman was being chased by other beings from beyond the stars, then they would have never let her enter their city in the first place.
The man’s little reminisce was cut short when one of the spirits who was surrounding Nicole nearly leapt at him and intended to slice him with its claws. And it would have succeeded if Nicole had not held it back at the last moment.
"You should really get to putting down your weapon already, these guys are getting agitated."
Arthur spoke while gesturing to the other spirits who were glaring at the man and his companions. What’s more, was that their number was increasing, with not only water but light and even darkness-attributed spirits joining the fray.
Eventually, the man had to put his weapon down as the crowd of spirits and the increase in energy concentration they carried along was going to attract more attention to where they were, and he certainly didn’t want there to be any sources of unrest among the soldiers who were already weary.
In the minutes that followed, the trio were taken to the command centre where the strongest combatants of Dokpas gathered, and where they discovered that the Intermediate grandmaster who had led the team of six to surround the earlier was the city lord.
There, Arthur, acting as their group’s spokesperson, told them the reason why they had ended up in their city, and when he mentioned they were from another world, the reactions of the other high-ranked combatants were quite explosive.
But the instant they sent hostile gazes towards the trio, whilst rousing their auras, Arthur used his own aura, mixed with the energy of the law of destruction to pressure them.
The weight of his energy pressed down on their bodies, while the law energy made their souls feel as if they were on the precipice of eternal destruction.
It was a very effective means of showing the power difference between the two parties, even though they were all grandmasters.
With his aura still pressuring the inferior grandmasters, Arthur placed his hands on the table in front of him and looked at the Dokpas City Lord with a smile on his face while speaking.
"Since the interruptions are out of the way, let’s continue our civil conversation now, shall we?"
"..."
The city lord was left momentarily speechless until the groans of pain coming from his men snapped him out of his daze.
Much to his dismay, Arthur had no intentions of releasing them from the suppression effect, even though long-term exposure to the destructive energy may result in soul damage.
The boy only let them go on Layla’s suggestion, prompting the City Lord to send a gratitude-filled gaze towards her.
The rest of the ’discussion’ proceeded smoothly after, with zero interruptions.
From them, the trio found out the undead had appeared a month ago, and they had only started their attacks two weeks ago.
They discovered what the people of Dokpas knew about the undead; that it was the child of one of the previous visitors from beyond the stars who had turned into a Lich and was now terrorising the town.
This explained why they had a hostile reaction when they found out the trio were from another planet, but that did not explain why the supposed Lich was even terrorizing the town in the first place.
Arthur inquired about this, but the City Lord didn’t talk too much about it.
Before he could press for more answers, however, a soldier came in and reported that the undead were beginning to move.
Normally the attacks came at night, but on days when the dark clouds blot out the sun like this, they attacked starting from morning time.
And since they did not tire, the attacks went on till night, exhausting the city’s fighters by the next daybreak.
What’s more, was that the corpses of any one of the Dokpas defenders who died in battle were carried off by the undead, only to return the next day as one of them.
As the City Lord went out to survey the situation of the meadows, the trio followed him and were a bit surprised to see that the number of undead moving about aimlessly had almost tripled.
"Well...it was bad before, and now it’s worse."
Layla let out that comment as she looked at the undead’s numbers that were increasing in real time, noting that they all seemed to be coming out of some caves in a Hill at the other end of the meadows.
When Layla asked about the Hill, the answer she received was exactly as she had expected.
"That’s where the Lich is; the problem is that to get to them, we have to fight through thousands of undead monsters which would leave us exhausted by the time we reach it."
Layla analysed the strengths of the undead, seeing that even the weakest skeleton soldier was an intermediate-stage master realm. Dealing with hundreds of them was going to take a toll on their military force.
Even more so as they didn’t have many grandmasters present.
As she thought about this, she turned her gaze towards Arthur who had been gazing at the Hill silently for the past few minutes.
It wasn’t too big, close to four hundred metres high and had a width of about a hundred metres less than that.
Just as she was thinking there wasn’t anything of note about it, Arthur spoke up with a light chuckle.
"Would you look at that? They told us it was a Lich, they forgot to add the part where this ’Lich’ was a demigod."
"Demigod?"
"Yep, the half-god kind. I really wonder what really happened for this guy to masquerade as a lich."
The City Lord who was nearby did not really understand what Arthur was talking about, but he could not even ask when Lute suddenly appeared beside Arthur and spoke.
"In a way, this whole situation could indirectly be because of you, Lord Arthur."
"The heck? I didn’t even know this planet existed till this morning. How do I have anything to do with it?"
Ignoring the dumbfounded City Lord and the other grandmasters, Lute proceeded to tell Arthur, Layla and Nicole a short story, one only they could hear.
As it turns out, a goddess had once descended upon this planet in the past, and she was one of the spies that was sent by other pantheons into the Hell universe.
Universal Masters sending spies into each other’s territory wasn’t anything new, and even if one tried to root out all of them, more would still come so most of the time, it was best to limit what the spies were able to see.
Diablo had known of this goddess’ location, but he had ignored her existence, leaving only a subordinate to watch her.
She spent many years in Ugantu, moving from continent to continent, and eventually settling down on the one Dokpas was situated in.
The visitor from beyond the stars that the city lord had spoken about, was her, and she had ended up falling in love with a human in their city and had a child with him.
But when Arthur was born and many god race pantheons were scrambling to find a way to nip the potential threat he posed in the bud, she, like many others, was ORDERED to make attempts on the boy’s life.
Attempts that all failed, with most of them being sent back to their respective pantheons ’in very small boxes’ by Cattleya.
This goddess, in particular, had managed to escape and returned to Ugantu to hide. Unfortunately for her, she had been tracked down by Cattleya’s subordinates, and when these powerful deity realm existences descended upon Dokpas and asked for her location, the people of the city did not hesitate to reveal her hiding place.
Due to this, Cattleya’s subordinates attacked and killed the weakened and injured goddess, along with her human husband who was unfortunately caught up in the battle.
The child, however, was not one they knew about, so they left after fulfilling their mission.
Having lost his parents, and discovering that the only reason his mother’s location was discovered was because the people of Dokpas snitched, we arrived at the current situation.
Said child, was now seen as a ’Lich’ who was attacking the people of Dokpas.
"How did you even find all this out?"
"The information was given to me by the person you should know as ’Number Three’. He read the records of the planet using his Authority in knowledge and figured out the whole situation."
"Three’s around? Where?"
"I am afraid I do not know his exact location."
Right after Lute replied to Layla’s enquiry, Arthur’s audible tongue clicking rang out, pulling their attention towards him.
"In no way, can this be said to be because of me, directly, or indirectly.
I didn’t tell them to come try to kill me. It was her decision to come to this universe, hide on this planet, and have a child here. It was all her decision.
It was also her decision to run back here after failing to carry out whatever orders she was given, and the decision of the people of this city to report her location.
As for the ’child’, it was his decision to learn necromancy and try to attack the people who snitched on his mother’s hiding spot.
None of it had to do with me."
