The Legendary Spearman Returns

Side Story Chapter 146

Side Story Chapter 146

“Wow...” Lilith exclaimed over and over again as she moved deeper into the vault. She had never imagined such a place could be hidden underneath the Palace of Avalon. It was so big that it seemed like it could fit the entire Palace, plus an entire dragon in their real form.

“How many people would it take to dig a space this big? No, even with thousands of people working on it for over a decade it’d be impossible to make something like this...” Lilith trailed off.

-Dragons are called the race of magic for a reason.

“Does that mean... Mr. Crevasse did this?!” Lilith gaped.

Crevasse frowned. “It’s Sir Crevasse to you, human woman. I don’t necessarily want to be worshiped, but I’ve lived a hundred times longer than you.”

“If you’re a hundred times older than me, then you’re at least four thousand years old,” Lilith mumbled in amazement. She was aware that dragons were immortal, but hearing it from a dragon certainly hit different.

“This is not the time for chit-chat.”.

“Pardon?”

“Look in front of you.”

Lilith up, confused, but it was quickly replaced with shock.

“Wh-What in the world...?”

The vault got bigger as one went deeper inside it, but the construction, however impressive, was not nearly as eye-catching as what it housed. Thousands—at least tens of thousands of undead were scattered across the floor in pieces.

“This undead legion you said you’d hidden underground... Were you talking about fragments of them?” Lilith asked. She received no answer, but she could sense that Joshua was equally bewildered by this turn of events.

“I’m sure you’ve already realized, but this is all your son’s doing,” Crevasse quietly informed them.

“Then Prince Kireua is...?” Lilith trailed off, loath to finish her words.

“Joshua Sanders, unfortunately, you may have to give up on your morals today,” Crevasse warned Joshua.

“Wait a second,” Lilith interrupted. She knew what Crevasse was implying. “I get that he’s gone mad, but there might be another way aside from killing him.”

“You’re misunderstanding something here.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not the one who’s at risk of dying. You two are, since you’ll have to fight him.”

Lilith gasped.

“It's too soon to be surprised. There’s more.” Crevasse pointed into the darkness.

Lilith peered intently into the murk for a moment before jerking back, her eyes as wide as full moons. There was something enormous in there, dozens of meters tall at least. The real shock, however, came when she realized what it was.

“...A bone dragon?”

A creature was created by turning a dragon, the strongest creature in the Human Realm, into an undead. Dragon Breath was notorious for its destructiveness, but bone dragons used them with ease. Such a creature was half destroyed, its pieces tossed across the ground.

“This is a shame. We were going to use the dragon for war, but now it’s a mess. Even the Demon Spirit himself wouldn’t be able to restore it with the core completely destroyed. But that isn’t our biggest problem.” Crevasse shrugged.

“...Where is Prince Kireua right now?

Crevasse didn’t answer her.

“Answer me, Crevasse!” Lilith stopped trembling and gathered her composure. She glared at the dragon with cold fury in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have stepped away from him.”

“Are you blaming me for this?”

“Your promise with Joshua isn’t just about protecting this place, is it?” Lilith narrowed her eyes.

The promise between Joshua and Crevasse was to protect this vault and deliver everything inside the vault to the person who would visit in the future.

At that moment, faint explosions echoed out of the depths of the vault.

“...I’m going. If anything bad happens to Prince Kireua, I won’t let it go, even if Joshua doesn’t say anything.”

“How amusing. You’re a feeble human; what can you do?”

“Your great race has been exterminated by a ‘feeble human’.”

Crevasse’s eyes turned cold. “Your courage is remarkable, I’ll give you that. No, should I say it’s reckless bravado?”

Lilith stopped listening to Crevasse’s mockery and sprinted deeper into the vault. It didn’t take long for Lilith to encounter something new.

“Oh my...”

A fierce battle unlike anything else in human history was taking place. On one side there were two death knights who seemed to be at the level of a Master and six high-class liches that looked like to be at least Sixth Circle mages—on top of that, one of the liches was casting Eighth Circle spells with ease. A total of eight undead of unprecedented power were fighting together against a single red-haired man, who was barely over twenty years old.

“Prince Kireua...” Lilith muttered.

-Hahahahahahaha!

“Urgh...!” LIlith’s expression immediately twisted.

The demonic, manic laughter gave her a headache. It didn’t take long for Lilith to understand why Crevasse had described Kireua as insane. Kireua’s red hair whipped around him, his eyes were completely black, and demonic power poured off of him in waves. His swordsmanship was unlike anything Lilith had ever seen, even though she was known as the Silver-Eyed Ghost Sword.

However, that was just the beginning of the surprises. Kireua swung his sword and launched an incredibly dense arc of aura at a death knight. The death knight raised its sword to block it, but it wasn’t enough—the death knight went sliding far backward. His sawtoothed greatsword was chipped away, showering him with sparks, despite the protective sheath of demonic power he placed over it. Their battle of strength didn’t even last that long.

Kireua’s strike hit the death knight square in the chest, ripping a piece off of the death knight’s black armor and sending it tumbling to the ground.

“W-Woah. Death knights’ armor is supposed to be hard to destroy even with aura, but with a single strike...” Lilith trailed off.

It was commonly understood that an attack made with a sword covered in mana was more destructive than launching the aura from a distance. However, even that wouldn’t make destroying a death knight’s armor easy—and yet, Kireua had chosen the latter and managed to destroy the death knight’s armor when he was only twenty years old.

However, that wasn’t the most important fact right now. The first issue was that both the death knight and his weapon looked familiar, although it had been decades. Secondly, Lilith had seen the sword technique that Kireua used just now before. The memory made her tremble.

‘...Joshua, I’m wrong, right?’ Lilith immediately asked Joshua. ‘The death knight with the sawtoothed greatsword is surely Duke Altsma, the Wild King, but the technique that Prince Kireua used just now...’

-Dark Moon Slash.

Joshua’s answer hit Lilith like a bell directly in her ear. The Dark Moon Slash was the trademark technique of Duke Aden von Agnus, the Dark God, who had once been called the greatest swordsman on the continent.

-It looks like Evergrant is behind this.

‘Evergrant? Are you talking about Evergrant con Aswald? The first human Eighth Circle mage?’

-He’s now the first non dragon Ninth Circle mage.

“N-Ninth Circle?” Lilith shouted, so shocked that she forgot to use telepathy.

-I heard that it’s possible to resurrect someone who died long ago and place someone’s soul in a different body using a Ninth Circle black magic spell.

“Excuse me?!” Lilith shrieked.

The battle raged on. The Wild King’s armor was shattered, and he had been thrown to the corner. A new death knight stepped in to carry on the fight.

-He’d be better off giving up right now if he can’t overcome this low-level trial.

‘Enough with your nonsense. That death knight won’t hold out for long either!’

-Although Evergrant is the one who started all this, he seems just as unprepared for this as the rest. It looks like he wanted to cause some problems for Kireua, but he ended up eating his own poison...

“Who are you?”

Lilith flinched. She arrived here alone, and Crevasse, her guide, was long gone. Joshua was in her mind, so he couldn’t be seen.

“Ah, um...” Although she hadn’t expected to hear another person’s voice, she was eager to introduce herself to prevent any misunderstanding. “So... Huh?”

It turned out that the person who spoke wasn’t a human. The woman in front of Lilith had chocolate-colored skin and long ears, a surefire sign of a dark elf, a race known to have gone extinct long ago.

-Her name is Aisha Sestropi.

“Aisha... Sestropi?” Lilith whispered.

-She’s called the Assassin King by humans. You should know her too, since she’s pretty famous.

Lilith could guarantee that she had had her lifetime’s share of surprises today. To meet the mysterious Assassin King in a place like this!

“Not many people know me by that name...” Aisha warily said.

“W-Wait, my name is Lilith Aphrodite.”

Aisha tilted her head in confusion for a moment, but her eyes widened. “The Silver-Eyed Ghost Sword?”

“I-It’s an honor. I didn’t think the Assassin King would know me.”

“...Wait, if you’re the Lilith Aphrodite, did Joshua send you?”

“Joshua? Ah, yeah. S-Something like that...”

Aisha’s face immediately brightened. “I knew it. That’s great—we need help, now.”

“Help? Wait, do you mean—”

“As you can see, I was waiting for the right time to join the battle. I’ve been thinking that I won’t be enough, so I would like to ask you for your help, Miss Lilith.”

Lilith’s face moved through a series of strange expressions. Was Aisha asking her to fight the monster with only the two of them? A Ninth Circle lich and Master-level death knights were having trouble defeating the fearsome prince. Despite the clamor of the intense battle, the sound of Lilith swallowing was quite audible.