"Ron, no matter how powerful, glorious, and awe-inspiring you were in life."
"In the end, you still could not block that blade named Time."
The Lich's whisper was full of hatred, bordering on a roar.
"Now you have turned into the dust of history, but the grudge between us is far from over."
"Just wait! Wait until I re-enter the Legendary Domain."
"Your descendants, those heirs flowing with your filthy Bloodline; your subjects, those ignorant lambs who once cheered for you and worshipped you as a god; your kingdom, that filthy land built upon the piled-up corpses of the Butler Kingdom!"
"They must all pay the most painful price for what you have done."
"The hatred of my death, the hatred of my kingdom's destruction! Even if another thousand years pass, even if my Soul is already completely decayed... I, Phillips, will never forget!"
He used his palm, which had only pale finger bones left, to slowly stroke the surface of the crystal ball, which reflected the flickering lights and vibrant scene inside Ximu Territory, completely different from the deathly silence where he resided.
At this moment, if there were a scholar familiar with the history of the Federation here.
Hearing the few words he uttered, they would certainly be shocked.
Ron.
Full name, Ron Lothern.
It was that Legendary existence who almost single-handedly created the Federation and was revered by later generations as the Holy King of Lothern.
And Phillips was the Legendary Necromancer from eight hundred years ago, in that kingdom named the Butler Kingdom which had long been buried by the dust of history, who once made countless enemies tremble in fear.
However, those were all things of the distant past.
The Holy King of Lothern was not born invincible in the world.
On his magnificent path of expanding territory, he had encountered many powerful rivals and resolved countless tricky crises.
The Butler Kingdom was one of the quite tough bones to crack among them.
And with the strong rise of the Holy King, the capital of Butler was finally trampled by the Iron Hoof of Lothern, the kingdom's flag was permanently broken, and its territory was incorporated into the map of the Federation.
Time passed, and the world changed.
Nowadays, the Butler Kingdom has long been reduced to a vague footnote in historical documents, and that Legendary Necromancer Phillips, who once stirred up the winds and clouds and could form an army by himself... had long since fallen under the sword of the Holy King, turning into this Lich body that is neither human nor ghost.
Tracing back to eight hundred years ago, before the Federation was established, it was an era when various countries fought for the rich resources of the Serel Wilderness.
Phillips once used his own power to control the Undead Legion, sweeping across the wilderness battlefield and shining brilliantly.
However, he encountered the young Holy King of Lothern, who had just stepped into the Legendary Domain and was at his sharpest.
Although young, the Holy King at that time had already shown terrifying strength capable of sweeping across all directions and extraordinary military strategy.
In a key battle, the Holy King cleverly feigned weakness, inducing Phillips to lead the Undead Legion deep into pursuit.
When Phillips, eager for victory, slightly exposed his true body hidden in the army formation, the Holy King suddenly unleashed all his hidden power, forcibly breaking through the layers of protection of the Undead Legion with the momentum of a thunderbolt, and finally beheaded and killed this powerful Necromancer!
However.
Although the young Holy King was decisive in killing and his sword pointed at the enemy to take their heads, he ultimately lacked the seasoning and experience he would later possess.
Necromancers often walk on the boundary between life and death, peeking into the forbidden mysteries of life.
Under the fatal attack of the Holy King, Phillips's Physical Body did indeed die, but his existence did not completely end.
Before participating in the brutal wilderness war, this Necromancer had, just in case, secretly forged a [phylactery] to save his life.
The death of his Physical Body instead triggered the Spell he had pre-set.
His Soul was preserved and finally transformed into a Lich, reborn in the form of an undead.
However, this evil transformation was not without cost.
After becoming a Lich, Phillips's Soul became extremely weak due to the Holy King's attack and the consumption of the transformation ritual, forcing him into a long mandatory slumber to stabilize this state of neither life nor death.
This sleep lasted for a full three hundred years.
When his consciousness finally awakened on a deathly silent night more than five hundred years ago, attempting to regain his past glory.
He was stunned to find that the world had already turned upside down!
The Butler Kingdom, for which he had fought and protected, had already vanished into smoke and dust, completely becoming a cold page in historical books.
What was even more terrifying.
Human Souls that were fresh, warm, and full of emotion were being constantly eroded and assimilated by the cold Lich body; his emotions were becoming gloomier and darker day by day, crueler and more violent day by day!
The human way of thinking and emotional logic that once belonged to Phillips.
Like a sandcastle, it constantly disintegrated and collapsed under the washing of the waves of undead consciousness.
He urgently wanted to take revenge while his consciousness was still clear.
However, when the Holy King was alive, his prestige was at its zenith, and the Federation was as stable as a rock.
Phillips knew deeply that with his Lich body, which had not yet recovered and whose Soul state was extremely unstable, rashly appearing to take revenge was tantamount to throwing an egg against a rock and seeking his own death.
He dared not expose his existence.
He could only, like a rat in a gutter, lie dormant for a long time in an inaccessible corner of the Serel Wilderness, relying on intermittent slumber to slow down the speed at which his own Soul was completely assimilated by the undead essence, silently accumulating strength, waiting for the opportunity for revenge.
Until not long ago, the news of the Holy King's fall reached his hidden lair.
He immediately sensed that the Federation, having lost this towering pillar, would inevitably fall into internal chaos and fragmentation.
He decided to no longer lie dormant and would take this god-given opportunity when the Federation's control over the wilderness was reduced to a minimum, to wantonly harvest Souls here, restore his strength, re-enter the Legendary position, and then proceed to implement the bloody revenge he had been brewing against the Kingdom of Lothern for hundreds of years!
"Molten Iron Tribe... Ximu Territory..."
Phillips rubbed the crystal ball surface with his pale finger bones, the Soul fire in his eyes flickering and jumping, burning gloomily.
For undead creatures, the Souls of intelligent life are the finest delicacies, far more nourishing than the Souls of Vicious Beasts and monsters.
Among them, Souls like humans, which are rich in emotion and clear in thought, are the most delicious and nourishing.
The next grade are the monster Souls like Ogres and Gnolls, which possess Elementary intelligence and barbaric emotions.
And the top-tier Soul feast is none other than the Soul of a Dragon! That majestic life Origin and ancient Dragon Soul are enough to make any high-level undead go crazy for it.
The current Serel Wilderness is indeed full of smoke and chaos.
But those places with large gatherings of intelligent creatures are mostly strategic locations heavily guarded by major kingdoms, which are difficult to provoke easily.
And Ximu Territory is an exception.
In the Lich's perception, it is like a bright lamp that suddenly appeared on the dark wilderness, exceptionally distinct and tempting.
Moreover, he had previously conducted preliminary investigations and probes, and could confirm that the Molten Iron Tribe's defensive strength was indeed not weak, with many powerful biological auras, but there was no sufficiently powerful existence sitting in command, unable to stop his Undead Legion torrent.
"Humans, monsters, Dragons."
He greedily scanned every figure inside the crystal ball, as if counting his own property.
"None of you can escape... All fresh Souls are in my pocket, I will not let any of them go!"
"Hehehe... Hahaha..."
Phillips's mouth first uncontrollably emitted a hoarse and twisted weird laugh, completely unlike what a human could make, but immediately, as if he suddenly realized something, the laughter suddenly stalled, and then he deliberately restrained it a little, trying to make the laughter become slightly more normal.
After transforming into a Lich, he found that it was increasingly difficult to control his tendency to use this creepy weird laugh.
This was definitely not a good sign.
This meant that his Soul was accelerating its corruption, and his human part was being constantly eroded by the cold instinct of the undead.
Admittedly, transforming into a Lich endowed the Spellcaster with a near-immortal life form.
But the price paid behind this was heavier than imagined.
Time is the most abundant capital for a Lich, and also the most fatal poison.
The Lich body would continuously and reversely affect and distort his Soul, subtly changing his way of thinking, emotional patterns, and behavioral logic.
With the flowing of the long river of time.
The human memories, emotions, ways of thinking... and even his self-cognition that belonged to Phillips would be eaten away and covered bit by bit by the undead will carried by this immortal shell, until they were obliterated.
Finally.
That Legendary Necromancer Phillips, who once loved the kingdom, studied magic, and had joys and sorrows, would disappear completely, and replacing him would be an cold and pure undead Lich that only followed undead instincts and pursued death and Souls.
Phillips feared this transformation.
Deep in his heart, he still stubbornly identified with his human identity; transforming into a Lich was just a last resort for him to survive under the Holy King's sword.
He could not accept his thoughts being completely changed.
That meant a second, and truly thorough, death—the death of Phillips as a human.
More importantly.
He absolutely would not allow himself to forget that unforgettable hatred.
If the Soul were completely transformed into undead thinking, by then, he might never be able to understand the emotions of national enmity and family hatred that belong to the living, and his revenge would lose all meaning.
Cold undead logic cannot carry burning human grievances.
But this is an irreversible process.
After all, from the moment the transformation ritual was completed, his life form had already been anchored; he was now a Lich, and no longer a human.
The only hope lay in regaining Legendary power.
"As long as I return to the Legendary Domain, my Soul essence will be sublimated, becoming tough enough to better resist the assimilation of the Lich body."
"Although this transformation will still proceed subtly, the time dimension of the whole process will be greatly elongated."
"I will have enough time to complete my revenge against the Kingdom of Lothern, to make Ron's Bloodline pay the price!"
Phillips, as if comforting himself, took a deep breath of the cold air full of negative energy in the cave.
Immediately after, he put down the crystal ball in his hand, reached his bone hand into his wide black robe, and slowly took out a weird staff carved entirely from the pale bones of some unknown creature, with a huge, eerie green gem embedded at the top.
He began to wave the staff, chanting hoarse and ancient necromantic incantations, the sound causing waves of ominous echoes in the cave.
"Oh, the bones of the dead once buried under this land!"
"Oh, the lost Souls that once wandered on this wilderness!"
"Wake up!!!"
"Respond to your master's call! Tear open the decaying burial shrouds! Break free from the shackles of the earth! Return from your slumber!!"
Hum—!
An invisible yet majestic and vast mental ripple, full of deathly silence, spread rapidly with his chanting and the waving of his staff, sweeping through every corner of the cave.
Deep in this huge and dark underground cave, the originally thick and piercing evil undead aura became as viscous as substance.
Immediately after.
One point... two points... ten points... one hundred points...
Starry, deep and dangerous lights, in the deepest darkness of the cave, from near to far, lit up one after another.
No!
That was not a light.
That was the cold and ruthless Soul fire burning in the eye sockets of undead creatures, the eyes belonging to the undead.
For hundreds of years.
Every time Phillips briefly awakened from his slumber, he would secretly collect the corpses of powerful creatures left in the wilderness or deliberately hunted, and transport them collectively to the depths of this secret lair.
On one hand, it could continuously increase the concentration of negative energy here to nourish himself; on the other hand, he used necromantic Spells to gradually refine and transform these powerful corpses into undead warriors who obeyed him, silently accumulating the power for revenge.
He was a Lich, but before that, he was first a great Spellcaster proficient in the Necromancy school!
The true strength of a Necromancer never lies in fighting alone. Their horror lies in being able to form an army by themselves, support war with war, launch an overwhelming undead disaster, and drown all enemies who dare to block them with an endless sea of skeletons and terrifying monsters!
After hundreds of years of dormant hiding and accumulation.
Beneath this Serel Wilderness, which has never stopped bleeding and dying, Phillips had quietly accumulated an Undead Legion of astonishing scale, diverse types, and exuding a terrifying aura!
Hundreds of years of patience and waiting were for today's rise!
"No one can stop me! No one!"
"Hehehe... Hahaha... Hehehehe... Ron! Just wait! I will not only destroy everything you protected, I will also find your burial place, dig up your grave, transform your corpse into the lowest-level undead, and humiliate you forever!"
Phillips's shrill laughter rang out uncontrollably once again, echoing repeatedly in the underground cave.
And as the laughter gradually subsided, he put down the crystal ball reflecting the scene of Ximu Territory, and continued to prepare the Spell ritual to strengthen and consolidate those newly awakened undead, preparing for the subsequent battle.
For a Lich, a Necromancer.
As long as there is no powerful existence among the enemies who can break through countless guards and behead his main body, he is invincible.
Those Dragons of the Molten Iron Tribe obviously do not possess such power.
He wants to start from Ximu Territory, launch an undead tide sweeping the wilderness, and then return to Legendary!