Necromancer Of The Black Bible

Shuhwaak!

In an instant, two chains shot out from the ceiling straight toward Eckhart and Ragdares, clamping iron collars around their necks.

Clack!

They couldn’t react to the sudden event.

They seemed not to know what had happened.

A moment later, Ragdares, seeing the iron collar on her neck, was engulfed in rage and roared.

“How dare you! Someone like you!!!”

Ragdares’s spectral form flared up once more.

The flames were much stronger than before.

Dense mana converged and exploded, the blast covering all around.

But after all, it was magic wielded by a spectral body.

Even if it were incantation magic, unless they activated a mana circle or a Dragon Heart, it wouldn’t be enough to affect me.

And the iron collar on her prevents such rampaging.

Click, click, click…

The iron collar tightened step by step, constricting Ragdares’s neck.

Along with that, Ragdares began to feel the genuine pain of her throat being squeezed.

“Gaaah-!!”

It was probably more painful than when I had her by the throat.

The Wheel of Eternity was originally made for that purpose.

It was used to capture souls that escaped the Ethereal Realm and to punish souls who disobey orders.

Once the iron collar is worn, one can feel the sensations from their living days intact.

It’s as if a body is restored and one can use their former strength, but only to the extent permitted by the Wheel’s master.

In the past, the Lord of Wraiths granted Freedom through it, but not I.

I put the iron collars on them to punish them.

-Ceres. Limit this one’s power.

-Yes.

With the short reply, the flames blazing from the spectral body vanished in an instant.

At the same time Ragdares clutched her neck and let out a pained groan.

“Guk! Guhk!!!”

Still, the collar continued to tighten, and she rolled about.

Truly a futile struggle.

Then Eckhart, standing beside her, shouted.

“Get a grip! You still don’t get it! Struggling like that won’t work!”

After that, Eckhart’s eyes glowed red, and at the same time Ragdares’s eyes also glowed red.

It seemed they were exchanging something between them.

Only then did Ragdares, with snot and spittle streaming, kneel before me.

Eckhart took a step back, her face turned pale.

I placed my foot on the back of Ragdares’s head and pressed gently.

At the same time I loosened the iron collar by one notch.

“Kha, kha, kha-”

She breathed heavily as if she were a living person.

Looking down at her, I turned to Eckhart who stood beside watching and spoke.

“You seem to know. The gap between you and me.”

No one answered, but their expressions clearly acknowledged it.

That the fight was already over and the superiority decided.

I pushed Ragdares’s head away with my foot, then summoned a chair.

A chair made of large bones.

It was the fairly decent design I had thought of before.

I sat there, looking between the two, and spoke.

“Then shall I hear your proposal?”

Eckhart was considerably taken aback.

Her last fang, Ragdares, had been subdued so easily.

Although a spectral body, Ragdares’s influence could not be ignored.

She could incinerate most wraiths and had absorbed an enormous number of spectral forms up to now.

Yet the man before them had brought her down so easily.

Ragdares still knelt on the ground, trembling.

Even if partial, it’s not easy for a noble dragon’s spectral form to have its will broken so thoroughly.

The man emitted an eerie greenish aura and spoke again.

“You say you have a proposal, Eckhart? Speak quickly.”

A casual tone as if addressing a subordinate.

Normally that tone would be extremely irritating, but not now.

Something deep in her heart was warning her.

‘Don’t provoke him.’

She had a premonition that if she misstepped it might not end with mere death.

Eckhart knew as well.

That death was only the beginning.

If, as she sensed, the opponent’s identity was a Shadow of God,

he would know how to deal with the world after death.

Realizing this sent chills down her spine.

The recently materialized spectral form had left a cold feeling sweeping through her chest.

Then the man’s voice was heard again.

“That one seems completely ruined. How about cleaning this up now?”

The tone was equally casual but irresistible.

Eckhart called back her last fang.

Then all of the memories and pains that Ragdares had carried became part of her.

At the same time, the iron collar that had been on Ragdares was placed back onto her neck.

Clack!

“Guhk!”

A greater shock than expected pierced Eckhart’s spectral form.

She, who would normally not move an inch, found the sensations of a materialized spectral body all too vivid.

It was as if she were feeling pain in her own body.

The man watched Eckhart trembling with pain with an intrigued look.

The moment their eyes met, she felt something strange.

Normally, when she looked into someone’s eyes, she could glimpse their thoughts.

But she could read nothing at all from the man before her now.

Instead, she felt as if she were being sucked in.

Then once more the man’s question of what she would propose flashed through her mind.

‘You must not hesitate here.’

Eckhart, barely regaining her composure, spoke.

“First, I want to know why you are targeting my successor.”

For Eckhart it was the best question.

Because apart from him being a Shadow of God, she knew almost nothing about the opponent.

Why, of all people, was he going after the successor she had chosen?

She also wanted to know why he would go to such lengths.

Eckhart awaited an answer, looking at the man, but he only bore a cold, faint smile.

The man, his chin resting on his right hand, flicked the fingers of his other hand. Then the iron collar on her neck was forcefully pulled down.

Eckhart wanted to resist but couldn’t. Led by the collar, she hit her head on the ground.

Thud-

“Guhk!”

The man’s voice echoed toward her, who had collapsed into a pitiable posture.

“I never permitted you to ask questions.”

“Hahk!”

As her throat began to constrict, Eckhart’s mind filled with a myriad of thoughts.

A moment later.

As the unbearable pain continued, those thoughts unified into one.

“P-please!! S-save me- ugh!!”

“I can’t hear you; speak properly. What did you say?”

In the extremity of pain, Eckhart realized one fact.

That this situation was familiar.

That over more than three thousand years she had experienced this situation many times.

The only difference was that until now she had been in that man’s position.

Realizing this, Eckhart thought that to survive here she must glean hints from the few creatures that had survived her.

In pain that threatened to break her mind, she barely rose and bowed her head before the man.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you!”

The reason didn’t matter.

Here, one must apologize no matter what.

Like all mortals who had faced her until now.

Eckhart kept apologizing and stared at the ground waiting for the man’s words.

When no voice came for a long while, fear seized her entire body.

It was the moment she fully understood Ragdares’s trembling.

And only after quite some time did the man’s voice finally sound.

“Good posture. To survive you should act accordingly.”

“Th-thank you!”

Eckhart’s second move.

It was to thank them unconditionally. Thanking for trivial things pleases the other’s mind.

If they feel good like that, the chance of survival then increases.

She too had spared creatures for this reason.

Silence fell again.

With no voice from the other party, all manner of thoughts bloomed in Eckhart’s mind.

’What should I do next?

’Should I summon the remaining fangs?

‘Summoning is difficult. Even if I summon the other fangs, could I defeat him?’

No matter how she thought about it, it was impossible.

Eckhart’s true body lay in eternal rest. To awaken it would require an enormous number of souls.

For that, one would have to take a guardian’s body, carry out slaughter and collect all those souls.

Because in spectral form one cannot take the souls possessed by a physical body.

‘Even if I raise my true body, it’s a problem. He handles souls. It’s hard to win against such a one.’

Long ago.

Eckhart had met such a one.

It was not a meeting to fight, but to converse.

The opponent was the god Kallios.

At the time he promised Eckhart eternal life in exchange for asking her to uphold justice as the world’s guardian.

Recalling that promise made her whole body shudder once.

Because she had never once honored the covenant made with a god in exchange for immortality.

‘Could it be that he came here as retribution for breaking that promise?’

The more she thought it impossible, the more the thought and suspicion grew in her heart.

Because she knew well the one grand principle upheld in this world.

‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. All creatures in this world will receive as they have done.’

This is the great principle the god established when creating this world.

The so-called ‘Law of Cause and Effect.’

There are no exceptions here for angels, demons, or even dragons.

Only the god can be free from this principle.

She realized this only a thousand years after the god’s death.

Although she had been granted immortality by the god, she realized that Eckhart’s body continued to erode.

For centuries she sought the cause and finally obtained an answer from an ancient elf.

-Your body is entangled in the Thread of Judgment.

-Thread of Judgment?

-It’s a tool the god used to make this world. Everything he made is inevitably influenced by this thread.

It was from that moment.

When she began to take eternal rest.

She abandoned her eroding body and began searching for another way to be immortal.

This was why the covenant with Emperor Sigmund had been perverted for her immortality.

As she recalled this, the man’s voice sounded.

“Oh ho. So those things happened. Now I understand why you’re in this state here.”

Eckhart was struck as if electricity ran through her body.

His tone was as if he’d read all her thoughts until now.

“You’re perceptive. Is it because you’ve lived long?”

Eckhart’s whole body trembled.

She could assert she had never faced an opponent like this before.

Even gods had not been able to read her thoughts so easily.

“Not that I couldn’t, but that I didn’t. At least I trusted you.”

“Th-that is… hahk!”

The man grabbed Eckhart by the hair and tilted her back.

Facing her fully exposed face, the man said.

“Thanks to what you told me, I know now what I must do going forward. And what I must extract from you.”

“Ah, no.”

It was a voice born of her instinct.

The man smirked and replied.

“It will be so. I’ve decided.”

Having finished speaking he snapped his fingers into the air.

Then once again the chains pulled, and she was drawn somewhere.