Royal Castle Of The Fallen Kingdom.

The being that appeared with an extraordinary entrance. The amount of divine power felt from it is enormous. Above all, the vortex of divine power that surged when it appeared. Proof that it is no ordinary being.

“Are you the one, the master of the divine dragon?”

“…The divine dragon?”

Inside the old audience hall.

Nothing had changed outwardly from before, but the atmosphere was clearly different.

The Death Knight, black smoke rising from all over its body, lay prostrate on the floor, dying without letting out even a single syllable of a scream.

What weighed down the entire hall was killing intent. And it was frighteningly dense and heavy.

“So… the Great Empire’s Wyvern Knights ran away from a lizard whelp?”

“…….”

“Heh heh heh. And you call that a report…? Hm? What?”

Same as before. The only one speaking was the unknown being within the black mist. Each time its killing intent rippled, the mist swayed and a grating voice flowed out.

The Death Knight, lying face-down on the floor with death before it, remained silent to the end.

While the being seated on the dragon throne and wrapped in black mist was deep in thought, the Death Knight, smoke pouring from its entire body, slowly crumbled into dust.

“Say that again…? Hm? Did it die? Tsk.”

Even the light click of its tongue was enough to raise goosebumps.

The moment the mist seemed to ripple, the Death Knight that had scattered into dust rose up in the hall. Whether it was the same Death Knight or not was unclear, but its appearance was definitely unchanged.

“Say it again.”

The moment its body was reconstituted, no words came from the Death Knight lying on the floor. And yet, as if they were having a conversation, it inserted little interjections like ‘Oh?’ and ‘Really?’

Before long, while the being on the dragon throne muttered to itself, the killing intent that had filled the hall vanished, and laughter full of genuine delight spilled out.

“Heh heh heh. A divine dragon, a divine dragon, huh… How interesting, how interesting. I want it…“

The words ‘I want it’ became even more chilling with that distinctive metal-scraping sound mixed with a dazed air.

As the mist rippled, the being that rose up in the hall was that Arch-lich that had appeared before.

“Fine, go and suggest it.”

The Death Knight and Arch-lich vanished as if washed away, and the being left alone in the hall burst into laughter filled with genuine delight.

“Heh. A divine dragon, a divine dragon…“

“You’re the master of the divine dragon, aren’t you?”

“A divine dragon? If you mean Ja-ryong, then I’m its master.”

I stared blankly at the guy who suddenly appeared and started talking about a divine dragon, then nodded.

At my answer, the guy opened his mouth in a tone that sounded genuinely pleased. As expected, it was strange.

My thoughts couldn’t continue. The unpleasant voice of the guy called Zimont pulled me out of my reverie.

“Oh, so it really was you. I’ll give you and your party a chance to live and return.”

“Huh?”

“What, punk?”

I held back the excited members and motioned with my chin for him to continue.

“Go on, recite it.”

“Offer your divine dragon to His Majesty the Emperor. Then His gracious Majesty… Keck!!”

“What a load of crap.”

The guy’s body, its head gone from Froi’s fist as he stepped forward with an unpleasant look, slowly toppled backward.

The party’s gazes as they looked at the guy who fell with a thud were murderous and cold as frost.

“Froi, I wanted to hear more of what he was saying…“

“Huh?”

Proy wasn’t the only one surprised by Arun’s unexpected words.

When the party looked at him as if to ask what nonsense that was again, Arun shrugged and said. Though he spoke like it was a joke, Arun’s face wasn’t smiling.

“No, think about it. When would we ever hear such bullshit again? It wouldn’t have been bad to hear how far he’d go, but you killed him too quickly.”

The members were certain the guy who had been spouting nonsense about offering up Ja-ryong was dead.

Up to now, every undead had died when its head was completely gone like that or its neck was definitely severed, so thinking that way wasn’t wrong.

But!

“Get up. What kind of cheap trick is this?”

“Pardon?”

Arun was, as always, the one surprised on behalf of the party. The other members were the same.

“The corpse isn’t disappearing, its aura is unchanged, and there’s still an enormous amount of divine power moving around it. Isn’t that too sloppy to call an act?”

“Ah…!”

With Hazel’s exclamation, the grating sound of metal scraping flowed out.

“So you’re indeed the master of the divine dragon. To have noticed that.”

‘Ah… This place has that idiot’s way of speaking far too often.’

“Crazy bastard. Keep going.”

After shaking my head and flicking my chin to tell him to continue, the guy’s body slowly rose, like a scene from a jiangshi (zombie) movie. His face had also regenerated.

“Will you offer up the divine dragon?”

Seeing how calm he was, I suddenly thought something was odd.

Was he not afraid of death in a place where enemies surrounded him on all sides? No, it wasn’t calmness based on loyalty like that. It was as if he thought he could get away with anything he did.

‘What the hell is so messed up about this bastard.’

The bastard’s strange status information is odd. The mana is also recording fluctuating values, and two conflicting affinities are appearing at the same time. On top of that, one of the talents can’t even be seen.

And that true name… Could it be that Arch-lich?

I signaled Hazel to isolate the surrounding area, then said.

“Hazel, figure out the space connected to that bastard.”

While Hazel concentrated for a moment, I fell into various thoughts while looking at the guy’s status window.

If he was definitely an Arch-lich, which is higher than a lich, then he’d surely have a subspace.

“There it is.”

Bingo. I could now guess why the guy was so calm.

He was so bold because he believed he could never die. He kept a crystal containing life force in his own subspace, and as long as that existed, he could come back to life no matter how many times his head was smashed.

I ordered Hazel to release the isolated space, then approached the guy. The Arch-lich welcomed me like that.

“First, there is something you and your stupid king of a fallen kingdom are mistaken about.”

“Y-you bastard!!”

Unlike before, he was intensely agitated. Which part angered him? Fallen kingdom? King? Stupid?

“You’ve kept losing to us all this time. You haven’t won even once, you know? The 20,000 troops you sent, and the empire’s prized Wyvern Knights too. Later, the Wyvern Knights even ran away and died in vain.”

“Grr!!”

“So you should be offering treasures to us and begging us to spare you, idiot. Well, I guess that’s why you managed to gobble up and ruin the continent’s only empire so easily. Idiots…“

There were no more words from him. Instead, he exuded killing intent and divine power, and a vortex was forming around him.

I held out my palm toward the guy who was just about to do something and sent him a full sneer.

“And the reason you’re this calm is because of this, isn’t it?”

The red crystal Hazel handed me. It flashed red light periodically, as if a heart were beating. That’s that lich’s life vessel.

“Huh? H-how!”

“Of course, I have no intention of telling you how, or why. By the way, your stupid king is watching us through you right now, isn’t he? Tyrant, just wait. I’ll erase you completely!”

Crack—

After finishing the one-sided announcement, I crushed down on the red crystal in my hand.

The crystal shards shattered and scattered far too easily. At the same time, the Arch-lich began disappearing slowly from the legs upward.

“…Tha…nks… careful…“

With a rustling sound, its body jerked violently, and the stripped robe and exposed skeleton slowly scattered into dust while speaking words that didn’t fit.

“Thank me? And smile…?”

The Arch-lich’s final face definitely felt like it was smiling. It seemed the others felt that way too, not just me, as they nodded at my mutter.

“Tyrant… why is this bastard so di… no, is he crazy?”

I almost asked why the tyrant’s behavior had changed so much from before.

He was far too different from before. He was not the tyrant from my previous life who had schemed until the very end and begged for his life.

Even after killing the Arch-lich, the uneasy feeling of having caught the wrong culprit didn’t go away.

“Wow! Boss!!”

Naruan ran up patteringly and bounced in front of me.

At the spot where the Arch-lich died, glittering things were piled up like a small mound, as if her words of thanks had been sincere.

The moment the Arch-lich scattered into dust, the dark space where he had been opened, spewing objects from the air to the floor. Fiercely, like a young man running through a blazing Friday night.

“W, wow!”

“It’s a spellbook!”

“Huh? What’s this?”

“Boss, boss! I-I want this!”

‘S-Sheesh! They’re all Legend-grade.’

My surprise was brief. As I looked over the items the party had sorted and laid out on the floor, more than half were not ‘Legend’ because of their item performance, but ‘relic’—or, because they seemed like things that should only appear in history books, they were classified as the ‘Legend’ grade in the literal sense.

The other items were amazing too, of course. But I found the item I most wanted, and the one I had failed to obtain even in my previous life.

A single old sheet of paper.

“Yes.”

At my assent, the map vanished into light. Then a small map shimmered in the upper-right of my vision.

When I thought of clicking the sparkling map, it enlarged and appeared like a hologram. Like a three-dimensional map.

A map that could be zoomed in and out. A map that displayed detailed descriptions of various traps and locations.

While I played around with it like an adult who had bought a toy for the first time in a while, the surroundings suddenly fell silent and a chilly feeling crept over me. I quickly looked up.

“Hohoho. Companion, what is so amusing? Isn’t that a face you’ve never seen before!”

“Mr. Kim Han. Hoho.”

“Boss! So cute!”

“…Slowly, carefully, clean up quickly. We move out in 10 minutes.”

The members moved at my order, yet still whispered and snickered among themselves.

In particular, Arun kept repeating, ‘Wow, he said to clean up slowly and quickly, and carefully at that…’ and Ja-ryong, nestled in Lee Hyo-ju’s arms, stared blankly at us and shook its head left and right, with the same look it had when looking at Arun.