Chapter 68: The Mage and Her Important Person!
“Come out!”
Nadia’s majestic voice echoed through the dark forest, shaking the trees. The sound lingered eerily, reverberating around her from every corner of the woods.
“How impressive, Your Majesty the Queen.”
Another hoarse, unsettling voice emerged, its words dripping with deep malice. “Do you really want us to come out? I’m afraid we might frighten you, hahahahaha!”
Two figures, dressed as mages and looking like skin stretched over bone, stepped out from the shadows. They stood in a clearing created by the trees. Their cheekbones were extremely prominent, and their faces were deathly pale, as if they had just been dug up from a grave. Moreover, their faces were identical; they were twins.
They gave Nadia an exaggerated mage’s bow. The one with hair spoke first.
“We are from the Tower of Departed Souls. I am William Jared.”
“I am Martin Jared.”
“We have been waiting for you for a long time!” they said in unison.
The Tower of Departed Souls? Mages specializing in the School of Necromancy?
The concept of mages requires some explanation.
Pure spellcasters are respectfully called “Mage Lords” by players. They are generally divided into three categories: Sorcerers, who rely on Charisma for their magic; Priests, who rely on Wisdom; and Mages, who rely on Intelligence.
Mages are a group of people in the multiverse who explore magic, mysteries, and knowledge. Magic is wild and mysterious, diverse and practical. Its power drives those who wish to control its mysteries to constantly research and explore, with some even craving the power of gods to shape reality at will. Of course, the actions of this group have been collectively suppressed by the gods.
Among them was a most outstanding genius, Karsus. He invented the 12th-circle spell, Karsus’s Avatar, and used it to kill the first Goddess of Magic. Karsus successfully seized her portfolio and power, but he was immediately overwhelmed by the power and knowledge he had obtained… and exploded.
He exploded!
This most brilliant mage in history turned into a giant firework… He blew up.
This act not only led to his own death but also to the fall of a great empire, the Empire of Netheril. The floating cities of the Netheril Empire, which relied on magical power to stay aloft… almost all of them fell to the ground, with no survivors among their inhabitants. Karsus’s family, friends, castle, people… everything was destroyed along with the fall of the floating cities. In that instant, as he was about to die, he witnessed the destruction of himself and his great empire with his final, divine gaze…
Mages live for magic and die for magic. Everything else is secondary. They gain experience and learn new spells through experimentation, sometimes learning from other mages or studying ancient tomes and inscriptions. They even seek knowledge from ancient, magical creatures, such as various fey.
A mage’s life is almost never ordinary. The most “ordinary” life a mage can lead is as a sage or lecturer in a mage’s academy or library, teaching people the mysteries of the multiverse. Some mages sell their services as diviners, serve in armies, or even use their power to commit crimes or dominate others. But the lure of knowledge and power is enough to draw even the most risk-averse mage out of their safe libraries and laboratories and into ruins and lost cities. The vast majority of mages believe that their counterparts from ancient times mastered magical secrets that have long been lost, and that finding these secrets will grant them power far beyond existing magic.
The tradition of studying the art of magic is ancient, dating back to when mortals first discovered its existence. Magic is an indispensable part of this world, and its complex system of study is subdivided into different traditions of thought. The most common arcane traditions in the multiverse are classified based on the schools of magic. For generations, mages have cataloged thousands of spells, dividing them into eight different “schools.”
The eight schools are: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation.
Among them, the School of Necromancy is dedicated to exploring the forces of life, death, and undeath in the universe. In focusing on this tradition, they learn to manipulate the energies that drive living things. As their research deepens, they can destroy an enemy’s body with magic while simultaneously weakening their life force, and transform that life energy into arcane power for them to command. It is precisely because of the School of Necromancy’s close connection to death that most people consider necromancers to be terrifyingly evil. In fact, although the forces they manipulate are considered taboo in many societies, there are still many necromancers who are not evil.
Feeling the thick stench of rot and the even stronger evil aura emanating from the two, Nadia’s brow furrowed even tighter. She said calmly, “Why did you lure me into this trap? And where is my subject?”
The two of them let out an unsettling, strange cry. One of them said, “Why are we targeting you? For revenge, of course!”
Revenge?
“Your Majesty, can you remember how many people you have offended in your long life? How many people you have harmed in your wars?”
She frowned, looking at their mocking expressions. Her face was calm and cold. “I don’t remember, and I don’t care.”
“Where is my subject?”
William, the one with hair, cackled and waved his hand. Suddenly, the forest began to change violently. A giant monster made of piled-up corpses rose from the ground beneath their feet. A thirty-meter-tall giant of corpses, its entire body covered in severed fingers and the heads of various creatures. It opened its massive maw and spat a cage made of bone onto the ground. And Lydia was sleeping inside it.
The monster placed Lydia’s cage beneath its body. If it sat down, Lydia would be crushed without a trace.
Seeing that her apprentice was currently unharmed, Nadia let out a sigh of relief. She withdrew her gaze and looked at the two necromancer brothers.
“What do you want?”
You lured me here, and then you just hand over my student? What is your goal?
“Originally, we wanted you to end your own life, but…”
“No matter how important someone is, it won’t make a legendary powerhouse commit suicide.”
“Who could be that stupid, hahahaha!”
“Exactly, hahahaha!”
The two brothers laughed wildly at Nadia’s calm expression. After a while, one of them said, “So, we would like to ask you…”
“I can.”
What!?
The calm voice interrupted William. Nadia looked at the sleeping Lydia with a gentle smile. She said softly, “As a queen, I indeed cannot abandon the many for the sake of one.”
“No one is more important than my people…”
“But if you had captured him, I might have…”
Martin tightened his grip on his skull-topped staff. He said in disbelief, “You mean…”
Impossible!
Ignoring their shock, Nadia turned back to the two of them.
“At a time like this, if it were him, he would probably say…”
“Do you know… why I’ve been talking to you for so long?”
What!?
They looked in confusion as a cruel smile spread across Nadia’s face. The next moment, they suddenly felt a surge of magical power, as if it had been suppressed for a long time, begin to rise wildly.
“Don’t you care about your subject!?”
Nadia swung her arm in their direction.
“Maze!”
“And then…”
“Meteor Swarm!”
⁂
