We quickly got to the workshops of the capital’s smithy. The entire hall had panicking goblins and angry guards screaming at the goblins to get to the underground quarters. Dwarves in plate armor were barricading entrances and there were some fire spread all over the smithy. A goblin was cursing while trying to douse out a fire from his behind while a dwarf was bandaging a wound on his arm. We approached the foreman who forsook his yellow mining helmet for a golden plate helmet with black scale armor.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked the foreman. He turned to us for a brief moment before being interrupted by a large scream. A barricaded entrance was torn down from the outside and large shadows charged inside before they started to collide with the dwarven guards. The entrance seemed to go towards the smithy’s mining complex.

“Giant spiders! Eeeeee!” A goblin screamed as he tried to get away but failed as he got chomped by a spider. The goblin didn’t looked like one of the workers, though.

Apparently, a large section of the smithy exploded and caused a large hole to open up. From the holes, a myriad of spiders started to crawl out and attack everyone. We couldn’t feel the explosion from the enchanted forge room because the room was fortified down to the smallest gap. All my companions readied their weapons and as usual, surrounded me to protect me. I raised my hands to prepare my spells.

“Sarjay, cover my left, I’d like to burn these eight-legged freaks.” I readied my stance, slightly lowering my body. Unfortunately, I had forgotten one crucial thing.

“Um. No. Bye.” Sarjay turned and started to dash for the nearest exit. I forgot this damned bastard was afraid of spiders! I stopped my spell to facepalm. I just had to do it.

“Maven! Take Asha with you and get to the palace with Sarjay!” I ordered at Maven. She grabbed Asha and quickly got going. I couldn’t hear Asha’s complains but it wasn’t like I would listen to them anyway. I once again went back to casting my spell.

As the smithy was filled with sounds of battle, panic and death, I was slowly covered with black fog. I noticed that there was a great essence of death coming straight from where the spiders were coming from, and it boosted my spell greatly. The sounds started to die down in my head and was replaced with the sound of wind. Where the sound came from, I couldn’t care. I never bothered studying the madness that takes over when casting high tier spells. I felt like I’ll just go insane and start a genocide of all the races or something if I tried to understand it.

I waved my hand and soon the black fog started to catch fire, forming a spiral of fire. Wherever my hand ordered, the fire would obey. I swiped my hand towards a group of spiders and the fire slashed down like a large sword at them, incinerating all of the eight-legged freaks.

The spiders noticed the biggest threat which was us and started to charge at us. A wave of black, gray and red swam towards us. My companions braced themselves in front of me as I sent a flurry of fire towards the spiders. The moment the spiders smashed against my group, the companions started to push back hard.

Two of my soldiers who were heavily armored with their massive tower shield held the thickest group of spiders. They pushed their feet forward and the wave of spiders were all pushed back, sending some flying. As we tore through the spiders, we started to move closer to the source of the spiders.

The dwarves formed up and moved with us, forming a shield wall to push back the spiders. However, the situation was getting worse for the dwarves. The spiders had the reach advantages as the spiders were faster and larger than the stout and short dwarves. But the arrogant pride of the dwarves wouldn’t allow them to retreat, which kind of reminded me of the old dwarves in a way.

When we reached the mining complex within the smithy, we noticed the massive hole. I let the fire spell die out to cast another magic. Rubbles and any walls that looked like they were going to collapse started shake. I clapped my hands and all of the rubble started to fly towards the hole, slowly covering it. I started to weave a net out of dead spiders and used it to cover what the rubble couldn’t.

Soon, the hole was patched up and the dwarves all cheered. When I looked around, there was dead spiders everywhere. There were many dead or injured goblins and guards lying all over the place as well. However, some of the goblins didn’t looked like workers. I turned when I heard someone clapping.

“Your lordship was very impressive. This one must praise you for it,” The thrall commented as she munched on some popcorn. I forgot about this sack of meat. Where the hell did she even get this? I grabbed some popcorn and walked over to the hole.

The foreman limped next to me. Apparently he survived, but his leg was injured badly. He was using his war pick as a crutch. “Duke Urist’s forces will soon arrive to help us. However, had it not been for you, gentleman, we would’ve found ourselves in quite a pickle, I must say.” He laughed as he took out a teapot seemingly out of nowhere. What’s with that ability to conjure teapots?

“Well, your lordship. What are you going to do now?” The thrall asked as she munched on the last few popcorn. I cursed her in my mind since I wanted to eat more but I digress. I looked at the makeshift cover, then the dead spiders. There’s something off about this. For one thing, the spiders were all undead. There was also that strong essence of death emitting from the hole.

“I’m going down,” I announced. My companions simply shrugged but the thrall was surprised.

“Your lordship? This one is afraid to say that this one is unable to allow you to do that. Her Majesty ordered me to watch over you. What if something down there will kill your lordship?” She warned me.

“It’ll be quick. And besides, only I am going. The rest of you stay. If you want to watch someone, watch them.” I pointed at the rest of my band. I opened up the hole small enough for my to fit and jumped down before I could hear the thrall complain.

As I dropped down, I could see spiders trying to break the cover and climb up the hole. It was a long way down and it took a few minutes for me to finally see something other than spiders. As I saw the floor, I slowed my fall with magic, trying to have the air cushion me. The spiders all surrounded when I landed but dared not to attack.

I took a deep breathe. Well, tried to. I didn’t have a nose or lungs. I just did it out of habit when trying to detect essence of death. Wherever this was, it was full of it. I examined my surroundings and noticed I was in a massive cavern, and it was very deep down underground. My undead sight allowed me to see in the dark clearly and there was an uncountable number of spiders.

I sensed the ground shake as something started moving closer from the back. I looked towards it and saw a spider bigger than the rest of them. It was covered in webs and horribly rotted. It shambled towards me and the spiders all made way.

“Who dares step foot on my territory?” An angry roar shook the cavern, the spiders unfazed. Wait, this fellow sounded familiar. As it got closer to me, it stuck out its ugly head towards me. Its eyes studied me and blinked multiple times.

“Wait a minute…” It moved its head just in front of me then sniffed me. It raised its head in surprise and all the other spiders backed off , too. Another roar sounded around the cave and started to move to my location, as well.

“Az, what are you doing? Now is not the time to play with your food!” Another spider shuffled towards us and stopped in front of me. Then another giant spider came, then another. Soon, I was surrounded by massive spiders all looking down at me.

“No way...that person is…” The last massive spider spoke up..

.

.

.

We left the smithy problem to the dwarves since we already patched up the hole. The thrall insisted that we headed back to the palace and joined Sarjay as soon as we could and since she was being annoying, I headed straight back once I got out of the hole. When we got back to the palace the queen was having tea at her dining table.

“Greetings, skeleton. Would you like to join me?” She smiled at me as she waved her hands. Thralls in maid uniform started to bring over food. I could see all types of dwarven delights being placed, such as grilled lizard, boiled giant earthworm ham and roasted cave chicken. Even I couldn’t help my mouth from drooling. The thralls also went to give food to Asha and Maven who were at the guest hall since we couldn’t let Asha know that we were all undead, including the queen.

“It must have been quite an adventure you had at the smithy. You should indulge me in what occurred there,” She told me as she sipped tea. As I grabbed food and placed it on my plate, I told her that the smithy was attacked by giant spiders.

“Giant spiders? That’s quite an unusual problem. We have giant cave spiders all the time so what makes this one different?” She asked.

“There was an explosion at the smithy.” I answered, “When you mentioned a problem that’s pestering you, what exactly is the problem?” I agreed to help the queen with a matter but I didn’t know what the problem was since I didn’t bother to ask her earlier.

“Hmm...do you know of the demons?” She asked again.

“Yes. I know those. There’s the Hellkins, the succubi, the…” Before I could finish, she interrupted me, “No, no, no. Not those. The types that caused the Dark Tea Party about 600 years ago.”

“What’s a Dark Tea Party?”

“You don’t know? I would have thought an ‘Archlich’ would know, especially since everyone knows about this in legends or history. Well, let me tell you, youngster. The Dark Tea Party was a massive genocidal war started by some demons led by a Demon Lord called the Hostess of the Party. Luckily for the continent, some heroes managed to stop the demons before it became unstoppable” She shrugged as if saying ‘what a moron’.

“What does this have to do with your problem?” I asked.

“Well, you might not know but during that genocidal war, the demons and the vampires also had beef with each other. I was under care of the Vampires of the Western Continent before when the war started, but once I had the freedom to roam as I wished, the war started. The demons cursed the dwarves causing them to negatively react with the one thing they love the most - Alcohol,” She started explaining.

“Gasp! So the dwarves are still cursed and that’s why you made them like this?”

“What? Let me finish explaining, you dolt! How did you even know what the dwarves are before the curse when you don’t even know the Dark Tea Party? Nevermind that. I wanted to have a go against the demons so I decided to cure the dwarves to piss them off. Funnily, the dwarves treated me as some kind of savior and had me as ruler of the dwarves,” She explained proudly, pushing her chest forward and having a smug face.

“If you had the dwarves cured, then why the hell did they changed?”

“Who knows. Maybe they wanted to copy me. I was raised by other vampires, not dwarves. Perhaps, the alcohol curse traumatized them. Nevertheless, it was fun having some toys to play around and free blood supply so I decided to go along that alcohol was still cursed.” She chuckled to herself.

I paused as I bit down on a leg of a roasted cave chicken. I patted my mouth with a handkerchief and placed the leg down. “You…” I started with a hushed tone as I stood up. My companions also put down their food and started to place their hands on their weapons, but not stand up.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Not so fast. Don’t forget, I could ruin your so-called ‘tour of the world’ with just a snap of my finger.” She waved a finger at me as the thralls moved closer to us. Even the thrall that was with us at the smithy was here, but with a maid uniform.

“I don’t know what you are, but what I know is that whether I win against you or not in a fight, I will still be the winner in the end.” She laughed loudly, her mockery echoing down the palace. Once she had calmed down a bit, she continued, “Besides, skeleton. Aren’t you a being a bit selfish here?”

I sighed as I grabbed the plate of roasted chicken. My companions started doing the same. “I don’t give a shit about what you think. You don’t fuck with my definitions of what the races are, you won’t like what’s going to happen,” I said as I once again munched on the chicken leg.

“That sounded like a threat.” She held down the arm of her chair in anger and it broke. She glared at me threateningly as her red eyes started to gleam.

“Yeah, yeah. Just tell us the problem and I’ll fix it.” I shrugged her off as my companions started standing up with the plates of food.

“Tsk. There’s probably a demon trying to cause something in the capital. Stop whatever it is that demon is doing.” She calmed down and slumped on her chair once again. She took a sip from her tea.

“Consider it done, then,” I said as I walked out of the dining room carrying the plate of roasted cave chicken, followed by my companions who were also carrying food. The thrall who followed us at the smithy followed us, as well.

“Where are you going, Boss?” Sarjay asked me. I looked over my shoulder, at the thrall following us.

“Hey, you. Walk next to me.” I pointed at the empty space next to me with my chin. She obediently moved and I placed the plate of chicken on her head. She skillfully balanced the plate while keeping up with my walking pace.

“What’s your name, thrall?” I asked the maid. Now that she was closer to me, I could examine her much more closer. She had a short black hair covering a bit of her pale face. She had a petite stature, which could mistake her for a somewhat tall child. She gracefully walked, confidently letting the black maid dress flow smoothly. The queen must have liked the colors red and black so much she even had the thralls wear black and red dresses.

“This one is honored that your lordship has interest in me. Before this one became a humble servant of Her Majesty, this one was known as Lucia.” She did a bow while she walked and balancing the plate. Impressive.

“Lucia, huh? Like..light?” I asked.

“Yes. When this one was borned to a wench who had nothing but misery surrounding her life. She had named me Lucia, to give her some hope and light in her life,” She explained.

“Wow. Is this true?” I munched on the chicken leg.

“No, this one lied. This one was borned and raised in a perfectly normal family. This one just happened to have that name. That’s all.” She gave me a mischievous smile.

“You’re quite different from the other thralls, I see. Somewhat more...free in thought,” I commented.

“You flatter me, your lordship. This one is indeed smarter than the rest. Which is why Her Majesty gives this one tasks that the other thralls could not handle. Her Majesty’s trust in this one is so overwhelmingly joyous. Sadly, why does the task she had bestowed upon this one had to be watching over someone like your lordship?” She complained.

“Hmph. You call me lordship and yet you do not respect me as one,” I complained back at her.

“Well, this one serves her Majesty. Your lordship is simply a guest, thus this one does not have to pamper you with the same graciousness that Her Majesty deserves,” She replied.

“You don’t serve me...huh.” I silently chewed on the meatless bone while staring at her. She noticed and tilted her head. Then I thought about the massive leak of death essence. I got an idea.

“Boys. You all are free to go wherever you want. Go tour your hearts out. I’m going to fix the queen’s problem by myself.” I stopped and turned to my companions.

“Are you sure, Boss? You don’t have handle the entire problem yourself, you know?” Sarjay asked me.

“Don’t worry. She’s going with me,” I told Sarjay as I took the plate off her head and gave it to Sarjay.

“This one, your lordship?” She pointed at herself surprised.

“Yes, you. Besides, the queen told you to watch over me, right? Then watch over me. We’re heading back to the smithy to get some clues. You and I are going to have so much fun.” I smiled deviously as I dragged Lucia with me.