Felician
"You are a child born to a pitiful fate."
A child abandoned by his parents and left to wander the slums.
As he took in the nameless child, the old man who had forgotten his own name spoke.
"This meeting may also become one of the first signs of the tragedy you are destined to endure."
Parents who were back-alley drifters.
Violence every night.
A hopeless life.
"So, I shall give you a choice."
The old man presented the boy with two things.
On one side, gold coins that would let him leave the slums and survive on his own.
On the other, the old man's empty hand.
"Will you remain here and live in peace, or will you walk toward your tragedy of your own accord?"
The old man did not force him.
The child agonized over the decision for a long time.
It was difficult for him to decide for himself, but the old man never made that choice in his place.
In the end, the boy took the old man's hand.
"Hoo..."
Looking at the boy who had rejected the gold and taken the hand of a stranger, the old man asked again as though confirming it.
Would this truly be alright?
Was he really certain?
The boy said yes.
What he desired was not life, but human warmth.
What starved him was not poverty, but loneliness.
"If that is your choice."
With a conflicted expression, the old man helped the boy to his feet.
"From today onward, you are my final successor."
And so, the boy and the old man traveled together.
They journeyed across the continent, broadening the boy's understanding of the world.
Through endless discussions day and night, he also gained knowledge.
At the end of that arduous journey,
the place the boy finally reached was the harsh and barren land of the north.
The land of Shuhan felt unfamiliar and rough to him, but at the same time kind and warm.
The boy who had starved from loneliness gained friends there, gained a homeland, and gained a name.
The boy's name was Archimond.
Archimond of Winterfall, of the Northern Kingdom.
. . .
"You really are pilgrims, right?"
It was the same in Terchin, and now there was another commotion here too.
After arriving at the checkpoint of Felician, I handed over my family insignia to the guard who still looked at me suspiciously.
"This one's a nun of the Holy Order, and as you can see, I'm from this family."
There was no need to say anything after that.
Sorry for not recognizing you, truly didn't know.
Something about people crossing from the desert, wishing us a pleasant journey, and so on.
"S-so, um... about informing the higher-ups..."
"I won't say anything, so just let us through already. I'm exhausted."
"Ah, yes sir!"
The moment I answered with hollow eyes, the guard immediately let me and the others pass.
"Hoo..."
The five hundred Dullahans and Anghel demanded one thing in exchange for making contracts with me.
'Please return the souls remaining in the royal tomb.'
The mummies spread throughout the upper floors of the royal tomb.
According to them, they were the souls of soldiers who had sworn to guard the tomb together with them.
Well, what could I do?
As a necromancer, I couldn't just ignore wandering souls.
The number of dead I returned that way reached forty-five thousand.
The Milky Way formed by the departing souls was truly magnificent.
Of course, the backlash from overusing demonic energy left me looking half-dead for the entire trip across the desert.
"Thanks for the meal—!"
The capital of the Eastern Kingdom, Felician, reached after a week.
Proper food, a proper bath, and the sheets of an inn bed all felt unbelievably precious after so long.
"Young Master, at least this time you're not collapsing unconscious."
"Grrrgh..."
I answered Arin's question with a groan.
I thought I was doing a little better,
but the moment I relaxed, all the fatigue from the journey seemed to hit me at once.
"Listening to those noises, no one could tell which of you is the undead one."
Meanwhile,
the inn room door opened and Stella walked in, handing me a simple drink.
"You should try being a necromancer yourself. Holding funerary rites for all those souls isn't exactly easy."
I took a sip from the drink Stella handed me and spoke.
"A cup enchanted with cold preservation magic. In the north, this kind of luxury would cost a fortune."
"Why? I'd like to take one home."
Stella stared at the faint rune floating on the bottom of the cup.
"Because there's no need for magic like this in the north."
'Mister, one fresh pollock, please.'
'Here you go.'
'What's this? This is frozen pollock.'
'Huh? It was fresh just a moment ago.'
It was a joke every northerner knew.
'Still, this is better than last time.'
I recalled when I made contracts with the undead in the reformatory.
Back then, I collapsed unconscious for three days and woke up in the orphanage.
Now it only ended with a week-long headache.
Seeing how quickly my body was growing stronger felt absurd all over again.
'Why is my growth this fast?'
Tilting my head because even I couldn't understand it, I estimated the scale of the undead army under my contracts.
Around two thousand Grave Hounds.
Thirty-five thousand Skeletons.
Five hundred Dullahans, plus Anghel, an undead Lich.
Nearly forty thousand undead just from sheer numbers.
And considering I had returned all the souls within the royal tomb, my demonic energy should have been completely depleted.
But...
'There's still demonic energy left.'
At the age of fifteen, I had already recovered thirty percent of the demonic energy I possessed in my previous life.
'I already absorbed all the power from the obsidian ring long ago, and there shouldn't be anything left that could increase my demonic energy...'
Of course, becoming stronger was something to be happy about.
There was a mountain of work to do if I wanted to restore my family.
If my growth as a necromancer was fast, there could be nothing better.
But the problem was that I had no idea why I was growing this quickly.
Talent?
Necromancy wasn't a field where talent could even really be measured in the first place.
Effort?
I couldn't confidently say that either.
Talking with the dead, resolving their grudges, making contracts—
most of my effort went into things like that, not increasing the total amount of my demonic energy.
'If I had to point out the only difference between my previous life and now...'
Thinking that, I stared into my own eyes reflected in the inn room mirror.
'It can only be this.'
My two eyes emitting a faint blue light.
The ability to perfectly reproduce any technique I saw with my eyes.
I thought it only applied to swordsmanship.
Could it be that this power also worked on necromancy?
"Ah, come to think of it."
As I was lost in thought,
Stella suddenly held out a letter as though she had just remembered something.
"...What's this?"
I asked as I accepted the letter.
Black stationery decorated with gold embossing.
Only nobles would waste this much money on a single piece of stationery.
"Someone handed it to me at the market. They said, 'Please deliver this to Young Master Leinrant.'"
At my question, Stella—who was chewing on bread she'd bought at the market—answered casually.
"...Wait, what did you just say?"
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Someone approached Stella and asked her to deliver a letter to me?
"Did you check who it was?"
"They said it was from the Felician royal castle. They also said the sender's name would be written inside."
"And you just accepted it and brought it to me?"
I asked in disbelief, but Stella merely shrugged.
"It's noble business. What's a nun supposed to do by sticking her nose into it?"
Forget it.
Getting angry would only be a loss for me.
'The most likely possibilities are assassins after my head... or...'
Thinking that, I unfolded the letter and checked its contents.
[To Young Master Klein Leinrant, Second Son of House Leinrant.]
[To commemorate the visit of the acting head of House Aylasis, a welcoming banquet shall be held at the Felician royal castle.]
[As the Young Master currently visiting our kingdom is a member of one of the Empire's Three Great Ducal Houses, we sincerely ask for your attendance so that the friendship between the Empire and Felician may...]
An invitation overflowing with flowery formalities.
The seal stamped onto the stationery also belonged to the Felician royal castle.
"So they already realized I arrived?"
It hadn't even been half a day since I revealed my identity to the guards, yet they had already prepared an invitation like this.
Which meant they had known beforehand that I was coming.
'There's no way those mage bastards would care about something happening in the Holy Order.'
Felician wasn't the kind of place to concern itself with pilgrimages and such.
The target was probably me.
The man called the reincarnation of Archimond had arrived in Felician, so they likely wanted to see my face for themselves.
And at the same time, probe House Leinrant.
'Actually, this works out better.'
The corners of my lips rose as I set the invitation down.
"If I want to dig into those Archimond cult bastards, I'll have to show up at least once."
I recalled the memories obtained from the cult member in the frozen wastelands.
Several thousand necromancers had secretly relocated.
'After hearing my report, the family dispatched informants, but they still couldn't track them down.'
Someone was hiding them.
A powerful figure capable of blocking even the intelligence network of a ducal house—or an organization with enough strength to do so.
'The Felician royal family... or the masters of the Five Mage Towers.'
If every suspect was a major figure, then this invitation was actually an opportunity.
'Since I'll be attending an official event under the duke house's name, those scavenger bastards won't be able to bother me either.'
I carefully examined the invitation while recalling the information extracted from Count Terein's corpse.
'Location: the Central Administrative Hall Banquet Hall of Felician City.
Attendees include Professor Manshtein, chairman of the Mage Tower Academy, Sky Tower Master Galond Ran, and...'
As my eyes scanned through the guest list, they suddenly froze on one name.
"No, hold on. What the fuck?"
The name placed right in the center of the participant list.
For a moment, I couldn't find the words to speak.
[Lady Siel La Aylasis, Acting Head of House Aylasis.]
Thinking I had seen it wrong, I checked several times, but the name remained unchanged.
Bang!
I immediately shot up from the bed.
"We need to leave right now."
"Leave?"
At my stiff voice, Stella tilted her head in confusion.
"You were groaning about being exhausted just moments ago, so why all of a sudden—"
"There's no time to explain. We need to head east immediately—!"
Leaving the puzzled Stella behind, I immediately opened the door.
And the moment the inn room door opened—
"Klein!"
My fiancée, Siel La Aylasis, stood there waiting for me with a bright smile on her face.
— Kiiiiiih...!
— Kwoooaargh—!
A pitch-black underground chamber.
The sounds echoing from the iron bars lining both sides of the hallway were no longer human.
"Hmm~ hmm~"
A man walked leisurely through the corridor filled with screams and monstrous howls.
As though he were simply taking a stroll.
Relaxed and carefree.
Bang—!
At that moment, a mass of fur and blood-smeared muscle slammed itself against the bars.
It stood on two legs.
Its backward-bent joints resembled those of a horse, while its mane and fangs belonged to a lion.
"Grrrrrr—!"
The monster, its body swollen like an Ogre's, called out the man's name.
"Pallimaaaan—!"
At the resentful roar, Cardinal Palliman El raised his head.
His expression looked as innocent as that of an ordinary young man.
But what filled his eyes was horrifying malice and obsession.
"To still retain your reason even after progressing this far... the results are excellent."
After speaking, Palliman addressed the man walking beside him.
"Wouldn't you agree, Duke Elfran?"
The face hidden beneath the robe was revealed.
A gaunt middle-aged man with black hair hanging loosely around him.
The former head of House Aylasis, Elfran Aylasis.
As though displeased by the creation he had made, Elfran turned his eyes away from the test subject.
"Do not misunderstand. The reason I am cooperating with your experiment is merely—"
"Because you must reclaim the ducal seat, correct?"
Interrupting Elfran, Palliman hummed cheerfully while examining the 'test subjects' lined up on both sides.
"Still... these are truly astonishing results. As expected of Duke Aylasis."
"Kh...!"
As though telling him to look at what he had done, Palliman continuously stabbed at his conscience.
"There is no need to worry, Your Grace."
At the same time, however, he never forgot to emphasize the rewards gained from this undertaking.
He would grant as much as he had received.
That was the greatest condition Palliman had offered him.
"Once Your Grace obtains what you desire..."
Trailing off, Palliman leaned closer to him before speaking slowly.
"You will be able to reclaim the power and youth of your prime."