Lord of Disease (JP-GL) 388

388: Crimson Eyes

The sound of guards approaching, and I pulled my fist from the corpse’s mouth. I picked up the sword, which had been dropped, its blade still embedded in the book. The saliva on my hand was also broken down, converted into mana, and disappeared. The same with the blood.

…Even in this form, my tastes and preferences hadn’t changed. I still had the sense that saliva and blood were dirty. And the sense that a senseless murder was evil.

As I threw the book from the sword, the guards who had rounded the corner of the hallway raised their voices.

“My lord! …Damn it, my lord is dead. The enemy is an elf! Surround her!”

“Honestly, a misunderstanding. Me, an elf? —I thought they were ‘extinct.’”

Were there still any? Somewhere, the people of Ordregalia who had escaped. Elves who had nothing to do with Ordregalia.

The guards fell silent and, with their short, indoor spears, they advanced down the hallway in pairs. A short sword hung at their hip, and their armor consisted of only a breastplate and a pointed helmet. For an indoor guard, it was rather heavy armor. Guards appeared from the other end of the hallway, and they, too, formed a line of two, raised their spears, and held their ground.

“I need a shield.”

I muttered, and I pressed my index finger to the forehead of the dead ‘lord.’ I didn’t know which domain he had ruled, but since he had called himself a lord and had had ‘me’—this tiara—in his possession, he couldn’t have been unrelated.

The rumor was that an undead created by hand was stronger… well, let’s see what an impromptu one could do. A blue-green light appeared at the tip of my finger, and it seeped into the corpse… and its fingertips twitched.

The ‘lord’ stood up. He was not alive. He couldn’t be. His broken neck was twisted, and his head was hanging limply. And his eyeballs were crushed, and blood was streaming from them like tears. And above all, the thing, which was enveloped in the eerie blue-green aura of an undead, was nothing more than a zombie, a walking corpse whose flesh and blood had not yet rotted.

I gave his back a light push, and the ‘lord’ began to shamble forward.

“…You think a low-level undead can stop us…!”

They shouted, as if to encourage themselves, and their spears were thrust into the walking corpse.

“Their hands are full, aren’t they?”

I thrust my sword from behind him and cut down both spears.

“…”

The guards who had lost their spears were too slow to draw their short swords, and I, who had emerged from behind the meat shield and had closed the distance, was faster. The guards, their necks slashed, collapsed, and the rear guard closed in.

The lord, with the spears still in him, held out his hands to keep them at bay, and he continued to shamble forward, buying time.

The undead were physically difficult to kill. Since they were dead, that was only natural. The standard procedure was to ‘thoroughly destroy’ them, or to burn them with fire magic, or to purify them with holy magic. Ordinary fire was also quite effective. It would be difficult to use fire indoors, but it seemed there were no mages who could use anything other than physical enhancement.

“Hesitate a little. He’s your employer.”

I smiled. A black joke, with a terrible aftertaste. But for some reason, even a laugh like that was better than nothing.

It was common sense—that you shouldn’t talk to an undead. It was a disgusting thing. I had once seen an undead that spoke like a human. It had been an elf zombie. It had said it was confused, and it had pleaded that it was not an enemy, and it had called me—a princess.

And yet, the laws of Ordregalia did not recognize the existence of the undead. It had been an enemy. At that time.

“Maybe ‘that country’… is right.”

I didn’t know if that country—the Listrea Demon Kingdom—was right. There was still too much that was not known about the undead. After that incident, I had researched the undead, to the extent that was permitted for a princess. The knowledge I had gained was about how to ‘make’ them.

Necromancy was beyond the grasp of a human—of an elf. No, it was simply ‘incompatible.’ The long-term use of an undead was difficult, and the risk of them going berserk was too high. It was only natural that they were not used in war.

It was only because I was now an undead that I could so easily use necromancy, which I had never practiced before. …Since I was an amateur, my control over the zombies I was using was weak, and if I had been a living being, they might have turned on me. And besides, I had to be in contact with them to ‘create’ them, and my control seemed to break if I was too far away.

The two guards also rose as zombies. Their movements were nothing compared to when they had been alive, but they repeated the last movements that had been etched into their bodies, and they drew their swords from their sheaths and met the guards who were coming at me from the other side.

In the meantime, I approached the guards who were being held back by the lord—and I pushed the lord. He collapsed, and one of the two who had been lined up fell.

In my past life, I had been young and not very physically strong, but I could cover that with my elven mana. I also had the swordsmanship that had been properly taught to me as a princess. Due to my age, I had focused on a ‘light sword,’ and I was to learn a ‘heavy sword’ when I turned twenty, when my growth had completely stopped. Therefore, my swordsmanship was based on the premise of a light sword, and it was not designed to be used with a heavy, thick longsword, like the one the lord had had.

So, if my past self had faced this number, I might have been able to defeat a few, but I would have succumbed to fatigue and the difference in our numbers.

And yet, my sword now, as if deflecting the thrusting spears, avoided the guard’s breastplate and helmet and sank into his face.

If I held it now, even a heavy sword was a ‘light sword.’

With every one I killed, my body felt lighter. I realized that I had been very hungry. Perhaps the ‘husk,’ the end of an undead that had consumed a large amount of souls, was at the end of this path. I even thought that I should become one, but for now, I had no intention of abandoning my free will.

I finished off the other one before he could get up and gained two more zombies.

It was no wonder that necromancy was a forbidden art, and that necromancers were despised. If I were a human, I could only see a future where I was eaten by the undead I was using.

The moment the difference in our numbers had become meaningless, it was only natural that I, who was superior in skill, had no fatigue, and was not troubled by minor injuries, would win.

—And besides, if I were to be fair, the fact that I was short, and a small target, and that they had not anticipated such a small opponent in their training, should also be counted as one of the reasons for their defeat.

I was standing in a hallway where nothing was moving—no, where no one was alive.

I advanced down the hallway, with the zombies in front of me and behind me, and I suddenly stopped. In the mirror on the wall of the hallway was a figure that looked exactly like the familiar ‘Rebecca Stagnet.’

The only difference—was that the color of her eyes was a deep crimson.

The color of her eyes was the only thing that the three sisters had in common, aside from the color of their skin, the color of their hair, and even their body type.

“…I liked my blue eyes.”