Lard came out of the ritual circle floating while snoring louder than two lycans making love. The fragments of the memory were already being distorted around him as he invaded Evergreen’s memory.

“What is this?! What have you done?!” Evergreen shouted with a confused expression on her face.

Still in his sleep, he scratched his belly’s side and tried to turn mid-air while muttering, “Five more minutes, mom…”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Someone actually gave birth to this guy? I thought he was a science experiment gone wrong!

Soon, Lard’s presence started to cause the memory to shatter and he started acting like a singularity within Evergreen’s dream. The prison bars slowly started making loud shattering noises as they broke, slowly being pulled towards Lard’s personage.

“Huh? Is it morning alre-…Uwaaah!” Lard’s scream was added to the increasingly loud shattering noise the whole place was making. Evergreen shot some spells towards me and Lard, which caused him to reflexively raise his arms in front of his face.

As expected, the magic spells were absorbed by Lard, seemingly sinking into his flesh as they hit him. The bars also broke, flying towards him, which gave me the opportunity to take out my sword and charge at Evergreen.

Seeing this, Evergreen made a turn and started running inside the prison. I grabbed Lard and equipped him like a shield as I chased the elf down. Every time Evergreen shot out more spells towards me, I simply raised Lard up to absorb them.

“Stop! Stop! I’m going to be sick!”

“Silence, shield! Weapons are not supposed to talk!”

Since I was holding what could pass as a living mini black hole, I couldn’t just teleport next to Evergreen using magic so I pushed most of my powers into closing the gap between us. Evergreen who was a few steps away from me suddenly became just an arm’s reach away.

I pulled my arm that was holding my sword and thrusted forward, stabbing the elf straight through her stomach. Evergreen was lifted off from the floor and she screamed in pain as she held the blade protruding from her stomach.

I pulled the blade back, letting the elf fall onto the floor on her knees. Kneeling in pain, she spat some blood and winced. She jerked her body upwards and scratched her chest area. It was like a birth of a new horror play as a small humanoid body burst out of the elven body, covered fully in blood.

Evergreen, now a corpse, fell on her back against the cold floor as a fairy struggled to get out of the body. I tossed Lard to the side to free my hand and grabbed the fairy before she could escape.

“So this is your true body, huh?” I commented as I shook the tiny girl.

“H..hey, what is that thing you’re holding?” Lard pointed at the fairy I was holding.

“This is what people call a demon.” I held the fairy in front of Lard as she coughed out blood, dirtying my hand.

“Isn’t that a fairy?”

“It is. For one reason or another, they’re grouped up with the demons now,” I explained while pushing my curiosity on why Lard knew what fairies were.

“Start explaining. You have no more tricks up your sleeves and as you can see, this place won’t last long.” I angrily shook the fairy and used my sword to point at the slowly collapsing prison.

Coughing a bit more blood, the fairy finally gave up and responded, “F..fine. You win, what do you want?”

“The elf body. What was that?”

“Fairies can body snatch. We can bury ourselves into the bodies we killed and take it over. I’ve been snatching the bodies of elven royalty for a long time now.”

“But I thought you’re attached to a tree?”

“I am. I’m always connected to the tree.”

As she said that, I looked under her and noticed a small root attached to her, coming straight from the hole on the elf corpse she emerged from.

“I’ve skillfully learned how to move bodies around, but the distance is always limited.”

As the memory shattered, the prison melted into complete blackness. Lard panicked and hugged one of my leg as the surroundings faded into nothing. I let go of the fairy and watched as the ‘floor’ took root of her and slowly pulled her to a large tree trunk in front of me. Slowly, her lower body sunk back into the tree and looked up to me.

“Who imprisoned you in the first place?”

“It was…” The fairy paused as her face soured, “one of us, but at the same time not one of us.”

“Explanations? I don’t like riddles.”

“It was a human wearing a black coat with white lining. He led a group of knights using shovels as weapons. However, he was different from everyone…from us. I believe he uses cosmic spells.”

“What was his goal? Why would he keep you imprisoned if not dead?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters,” Evergreen, now Satel again, replied with a low, depressed tone. She sighed as if she had given up.

“Satel, will you do anything to become free? Free from your burden, your trauma, and most of all, free from yourself?”

Satel looked up back to me with clear, hopeful eyes. She opened her mouth, but no words came out of her mouth. Biting her lips, she hesitated for a moment.

Before moving any forward, I knocked Lard back to sleep in order to prevent him from going insane since what Satel and I were going to discuss were going to be beyond his understanding.

“What does that mean? Is there a way out?” Satel asked me.

“I know a different kind of truth, a simple and straightforward truth. If you’re willing to listen, I will indulge you as long as you want.”

“Tell me.”

*

*

*

“Uwaaa…” I groaned as I emerged out of the door leading back to the entrance of the core of Kreylin, where Satel lived. With me were an unconscious fat boy and a robed little dryad-like girl.

I spotted Kendra tending to the wounded heroes and I called out at her to get her attention. She stopped bandaging Blackhair’s head injury and went straight to me.

“Master? Lard was with you? I saw him being taken by a circle of light so I panicked. And who is that?” She pointed at the sapling.

Simply speaking, the robed figure looked like a young girl made out of roots and wood. I had Satel make a wooden body which she could temporarily use to move around until I find her a suitable fleshy body. That was after I freed her from her curse, of course.

“Freedom…at last…” Satel murmured to herself.

“Erm…this is someone I found inside the core room. Her name is Satel. This is a…dryad, like the tree nymphs. Her job was to clean the floor or something.”

I coughed multiple times while spouting that bullshit. Luckily for me, Kendra just gave the ‘Yeah, whatever’ look and shrugged, before returning to tending to the heroes.

Just before she could reach Blackhair, a wall was broken down violently which made Kendra to put out of her dagger towards the source of noise. Bursting out of the freshly made hole, my companions swarmed inside the room I was in.

“Reinforcements are here!” Daggerless valiantly announced as he entered the room.

“About damned time you guys arrive. In fact, you guys don’t even need to come anymore. I’ve already fix the problem,” I said as I slapped Satel in the back which caused her to jump slightly forward.

“These people are like us?” Satel whispered to me.

“No, they’re normal people. You’re the first one to actually accept my truth.”

“What happens to the people that don’t?”

I looked to the side, and I could see traces of endlessness. Dark humanoid figures standing in the corners, smiling at me. The whispers slowly returned now that Satel wasn’t a problem and the silence in my head had disappeared once again.

“Some questions are best left unanswered,” I whispered back to Satel.

“Sorry, Boss. We got lost trying to get to you so we had to use some strong magic to break through the walls. Luckily for us, Rookie wanted to test his magic skills out.” Daggerless laughed as he pointed back at Rookie who was behind.

“Anyways, what’s going on with the elves? Are they losing?”

“On the contrary, they’re winning against both the rebels, zombies and orcs. They’re just overwhelming them with numbers since elves from nearby bases are flooding in.”

Hearing that, I supposed that now would be a good time to return to my room. I had my companions bring back the injured heroes to the People’s Diplomat Manor. As we emerged from the Kreylin Palace, we could see the aftermath of the battle in the capital.

There were many dead elves everywhere, burning buildings and prisoners being lined against the wall for inspection. I gathered my who were still outside of the Kreylin companions and got some more information out of them.

“We couldn’t find any demons around so the orcs weren’t controlled by the demons,” My lich lieutenant shrugged. Seeing as they didn’t have more information, I walked up to one of the prisoner lines.

There were several orcs being forced against the wall. The elves were checking them for weapons and tying them up. I approached one of the orcs who looked like an officer.

“Hey, you. Why did you attack the elves?”

“Because the elves threatened to take our FREEEEDOOOOMMMM!”

As he said ‘FREEEDOMMM’, the other orcs in the vicinity also started to chant ‘freedom’ which caused nearby guards to hit them in the head to stop them from making a noise.

“Take your freedom? How?”

“The elves are mind controlled by those scum-filled, free trade-hating demons, that’s why! It’s our duty to give others the FREEEEEEDOOOM they deserve!”

Satel tugged onto my robe and explained to me that she was the one that tipped the orcs off since it was part of her plan to escape. She emitted a sort of signal which orcs could perceive even from a long distance which caused the orcs to be enraged with the duty to free others by force.

As soon as Satel was taken under my control, the orcs started to break off and started making their back home through the thick winter snow. Without a doubt, these orcs had good intentions but sadly, a lot of them will die freezing to death. Nobody should attack a place like this in winter.

With that sorted out, I went back to the People’s Diplomat Manor and straight back to my room. I kicked my other companions out since I was mentally tired from all the work I had to do today.

It took me fifteen minutes to find the position I was comfortable in so I got pissed when someone started knocking on my door. Angrily, I opened the door to find an elven commissar.

“What do you want?”

“Sivyit, comrade. I was tasked with checking the status of the diplomats and the comrade-heroes. Luckily for me, it seemed that you’re all fine with the exception of the Aonian diplomatic mission. They seem to be missing. Do you have any idea in regards to their location?”

I remembered that I had the priestess girl who incited a holy revolution tied up so those diplomats from Aon might be dead. I didn’t want to get mixed in with this affair related to Aon so I just told him that I didn’t know that there were diplomats from Aon in the first place.

“I see. Well, stay safe. Martial law is still in effect. All diplomats are to stay within the People’s Diplomat Manor.”

“Wait, before you go, how’s the premier?”

I tried to play dumb but I knew that he was dead. I wanted to know what was going to happen to the leadership of the elves now.

The commissar coughed harshly a few times before answering, “The premier? What are you talking about? He’s alive and well! He’s not dead! Don’t butt your nose into our affairs, outsider!”

The commissar stormed off angrily and left me, which was fine for me. Well, the battle just ended recently so things like this might take some time. However, the fact that he was so secretive about it might indicate something big was going on.

Oh well. Not my problem.

*

*

*

“Coffee tastes good, doesn’t it?” I said to Satel after sipping my coffee.

“It actually does. Wow, I never knew things could taste so good.”

Why does that sound so sad?

It had been a few days since the attack on Mosovo ended and the heroes have managed to heal most of their injuries. Life had pretty much returned to normal but I could feel tension in the air.

The winter snow started to become light again so I was enjoying a cup of coffee in the Kreylin courtyard, especially since Maven stopped charging me for coffee.

“Excuse me, I’d like to also try some of that thing you are drinking,” Leyna, the priestess girl of the heroes’ party, requested.

“So? There’s a cup in front of you.”

“Yes but…” Leyna looked down on her body, “I’m tied up. I don’t even know why I’m tied up.”

“It’s because you started a crusade! Who even manages to start a crusade in a unionist country?! That’s unheard of!”

“In the first place, a unionist country is unheard of,” Satel made a comment as she took a sip.

“Isn’t it normal to spread the word of the Path to heathens like those sacks of shits marching over there?”

Leyna’s kind and polite eyes turned bloodshot red as she smiled and licked her lips when she pointed at some elves marching in the distance with her chin.

“Oh Goddess of Light, please smite those dogs and let Bahas take them!” She moaned as she continued to bath in her religious fervor.

“Why do you have a defective product in your party?” I grumbled towards Kendra who was studying some tomes I gave her.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t the one who took her in.” Kendra shrugged then went back to reading the tome. It was a book which covered simple necromancy. She took an interest in necromancy after finding out that I was a necromancer.

“By the way, about this part, how do you even sense ‘death’ in the area?” Kendra pointed at the tome. Although the tome’s cover was replaced with a title called, “How to pet cats the proper way”, it still didn’t help that she would randomly ask questions related to necromancy so casually.

Especially right now with the Path’s biggest fanatic next to her, I didn’t know how to feel about it…

“Er…about that, you…” I paused and raised a finger as I sensed a change in the air.

“Satel, come with me,” I ordered Satel as I immediately ran back into my room. Locking it and warding the room to keep anyone from knowing what was going on inside, I sat down in the middle of the room once I was done.

“What’s going on?” Satel asked.

“My companions, when killed, can be called back to the physical world by me. The problem is I’ve used most of my death essence and the mana won’t listen to me at the moment. Add to that, the more recent the death is, the more mana is required. I feel that someone is calling me to summon them back urgently.”

“I see.”

Without me saying a word, Satel understood what I wanted and raised her hand towards me. She opened her palms and faced them words me, feeding me with the mana I needed.

I planted both of my palms onto the floor and raised my intentions towards the surrounding air. At first, it looked like dust was being collected at the center of the room, but eventually it formed a tornado.

Collecting ashes from all over the region and slowly guiding them to this room, the ash tornado started to form a skeletal figure. This companion had recently died; perhaps a few months ago, so reforming him was taking a lot of effort. Luckily for me, Satel was shouldering a part of the burden.

It took me probably an hour of heavy concentration to reform a skeleton. It stood still for a minute before two dim blue lights appeared in its eyes. I stood up and threw a cloak at it, which it instinctively took.

“How’s your new body?”

“I feel quite jolly. Anyhow, I apologize for causing such a trouble.”

“Huh, I recognize this voice. Is this you, Gardener?”

“Quite so, Boss! It just happens so that I need to warn you of something.”

My freshly reformed companion told me how he died, describing how a man with black coat with white lining wielding a shovel attacked him with cosmic spells. As he described more, Satel kept bombarding him with questions which led her to a confirmation.

“The one that murdered him belongs to the organization created by the man that trapped me. It took me hundreds of years to kill the spirit of Kreylin, only for that man to appear and to trap me once more. If only I could strangle him with my own two hands,” Satel turned to me and concluded.

This was interesting development. I didn’t really want to deal with some man that was something like old Satel but now that he had indirectly killed one of my companions, this had become personal.

“Where did you die?” I turned to my companion.

“I believe I was in quite a wondrous place called the ‘Sorcerer City States’.”

That’s it. New destination set.

Also, I remembered that Kendra’s teacher was there so I might as well get some information from her. I ordered my companion to rest before rushing back to the courtyard.

When I returned, Leyna was replaced by Lard, who was fiddling with some metal junk, but Kendra was still studying the tome.

“Kendra, you said that your teacher went to the Sorcerer City States, right?”

“That’s right. Why do you want to know?”

“Give me information on the Sorcerer City States. We’re headed there next.”

“WHAT?! WHY?!” She finally took her eyes off the book and shot an angry look at me.

“It’s important. Besides, we’ve finished our task of stopping the elvish-orc war here. It’s time to move on. It’s…ugh….time to teach the others magic. You know. Broaden our horizons…”

“Look, the Sorcerer City States was once the pride of all intellectual and scholars but now…”

“What’s this I hear about the Sorcerer City States?” A huge fleshly ape-like man interjected our conversation carrying plates of cake. He placed the cake in front of us which was procedurally devoured by Lard.

“Lady Maven’s experimenting on some new recipe and given me the task of giving you some samples. It wasn’t easy smuggling this from the guards. In fact, it wasn’t easy smuggling myself into the Kreylin but the elves are in an uproar. I guess they couldn’t just be bothered to double check me,” Rookie said as he stroked his new disguise. He had a fake beard clipped onto his face which didn’t help in not making him stand out.

“We’re headed to that place next. Tell Maven that once you head back. Also, do you know anything about the place?”

“Know it? I studied magic from it!”

“Ah, right. You used magic to break down the walls? Is that from the Vallen Empire or the Sorcerer City States?”

“It’s from the City States! Do you wish me to demonstrate it? It would amuse you!”

“No! Don’t show me that damned abomination! I’ll…I’ll…Graaah!” Kendra curled her hand into a fist but resigned to just smacking the table in anger.

“Do it. If it’s pissing Kendra off so badly, I want to know.”

“Alright, here it goes. This is magic from the Sorcerer City States. Let’s have a go! I’ll choose a simple spell. How about a fireball?”

“That’s fine.”

“Right-o. Here we go. By the power of…”

As Rookie started his chant, he raised both of his arms and opened his palms. Lard and I looked at him with great interest as a spell from the Sorcerer City States took my interest. This could be a good reference in knowing where this world’s magic was going.

Could magic be going beyond what was known before, perhaps a different direction, one where it wouldn’t lead one to madness? What could the smartest and most reserved people in the continent be up to these thousand of years?

“…PROTEIN!”

Rookie flexed all of his muscles and his outlined became well-defined. As he squeezed all of muscle power, his tones shone and light became concentrated on his biceps. Gathering enough power, he shot two fireballs from his biceps and onto the ground.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Both Lard and I shouted at the same time.

“Disgusting! Disgrace! Musclehead!” Kendra cursed.

“Wait, hold the fuck up. Show me another spell!” I ordered Rookie. It could’ve been a coincidence, right?!

“Certainly! This one is a basic lightning spell. Here we go…By the power blessed upon my wonderful oblique, my defined gastrocnemius from all the leg days, by the protein shake I’ve munched, show me my MUSCLE POWER!”

Once again, Rookie flexed, posing to show off his wonderfully toned back, as if someone chiseled the muscles into his body. Light emanated from the core muscles and lightning shot out from his biceps.

“Ha! Easily done. How is it, Boss?”

…

“BOSS?! YOU FAINTED?! OH DEAR ME!”