Bak Jae-suk, City Manager for the Pyongyang City Core, blinked when he saw an option he hadn’t seen before. Was [Create City Core Coalition] what he thought it was?

It was.

He was even able to find the option [Align Core Coalition with Existing Political Structure].

It wasn’t the only option, but he wasn’t suicidal enough to select any of the others. Finding the option before anyone else did should get him some rewards from the Supreme Leader. He was lucky to have been chosen City Manager; it gave him the opportunity to meet many powerful people he would otherwise never have known.

Bak Jae-suk selected to align Pyongyang’s City Core. He hoped it wouldn’t cause anything like another earthquake, but hopefully it would be noticeable.

What did [Request for Planetary Approval Submitted] mean? Had he just made a choice that affected the entire planet?

Surely not.

No, it was probably asking for permission from the spirit of the World. That made far more sense.

The amount of information Analyze showed was more than Serenity was used to seeing for an unknown variant, but it all made sense. All except for the last line; was “Fascinated” the effect of Serenity’s Gaze?

Well, there was an easy way to test it. The attack was probably random, but it was still worth asking. If the lich was truly under Serenity’s control, it would answer. “Why did you attack?”

There was a slight hesitation before the lich answered. “You let down your guard. Why am I not attacking now? I don’t want to attack, but I know I did earlier?”

The lich sounded confused. Serenity tried again. “Not why did you attack when you did, but why did you attack at all? How did you find us?”

The lich seemed to try to look away, but its attention was inexorably pulled back to Serenity’s eyes. “You command me. You … it is like the one who should have been mine. The one who was mine but was no longer mine. You broke him. I found him wandering, eating in my territory. Without fear. He was once almost mine, he bore my mark, but no longer would he obey me. He did not fear me.”

The lich shook for a moment and seemed to try to look away, but its gaze stayed fixed on Serenity’s eyes. “So I found the one he did fear and I followed you and waited. When you let down your guard, I killed you. Only you did not die. Everything dies to a True Lightning Strike. Why did you not die?”

“You killed Timmat, didn’t you?” Everything pointed to that; this lich did not seem likely to leave something moving that might threaten its power. It didn’t respond, but perhaps it didn’t know Timmat’s name. “What happened to the one that would not obey you, the one who feared me?”

The lich inclined its head in what was probably surprise; interpreting emotions on a skull with no expressions was difficult. “It was disappointing. Even a minor lightning strike was enough to handle him; I gained no significant practice.”

Timmat was truly dead. Serenity supposed that meant Andarit didn’t need to worry about the fact that he was on the loose after all.

It was in a way bad luck that Timmat had led the lich to them, but it might also be an opportunity. Or was it even bad luck? “Were you following him?”

The lich seemed to understand that Serenity meant Timmat. “Of course. He was close. If I wanted to capture him instead of another, I had to be there.”

That answered that; it wasn’t happenstance that a lich was there when Serenity let Timmat go or that the lich searched for Serenity. It might be luck that it found them after they left and came back, but undead were persistent and they’d entered the swamp not far from the point where they released Timmat. It wasn’t luck but it also didn’t seem to be directly related to whatever plot led to the attack on a merchant caravan.

Good enough.

The only thing left was to see if it was actually good luck. It hadn’t escaped Serenity’s notice that the lich used Death-attuned mana, just like the Swamp Rot he’d removed from the three with the merchant caravan and that Timmat had nearly succumbed to. “Where did you come from?”

“The edge of the swamp. I followed you.” The lich didn’t change expression since it didn’t have an expression to change, but Serenity could just imagine the incredulous expression it would have had based on its answer.

“No, I mean originally. What dungeon did you come from?” Serenity wanted to ask the dungeon’s location, but wasn’t certain if the lich would even know.

The lich seemed to stand a little straighter. “I was made by the Lost Battlefield.”

Serenity assumed that meant the Lost Battlefield Dungeon; in many ways, it made sense. Battlefields were commonly affected by Death-attuned mana, since so many died on them. Undead weren’t uncommon, and they could even spontaneously generate liches occasionally, though they tended to be magically weak liches. The most magically powerful liches were Pathed, because they kept their Paths and could continue to grow them. Monstrous liches tended to be more physical.

The one in front of Serenity appeared to be an exception; the weak undead control was fairly normal for a monstrous lich but the lightning magic wasn’t. The fact that it had stayed at a distance implied it was physically weak, but overall it was much stronger than the one that had attacked right before Serenity met Timmat.

On second thought, could Timmat have been why there was a lich there at all? Serenity had assumed that it, like Timmat, followed the “food light” set up by Robert, but if it followed Timmat, that made far more sense. After all, it didn’t attack the caravan.

Knowing the lich came from the Lost Battlefield made sense but didn’t tell Serenity where it was. “Where is the Lost Battlefield?”

The lich visibly shrugged, its bones moving just like a human’s would for the same motion. “Who knows? It is lost. When you leave, you do not know where it is.”

Unhelpful. Possibly truthful, but rare; Vengeance had been through some dungeons that did similar things. The ones he’d been through had been mapped thoroughly so he’d known if they had a set number of entrance and exit points or were anywhere within an area, but either way the concept was the same. You didn’t always enter and exit at the same point and knowing where you came out often wouldn’t help you get back in.

There was still one more question Serenity wanted the lich to answer, even though he was fairly confident he knew the answer. “Is the Lost Battlefield the source of the corruption that was turning Timmat into a revenant?”

The lich actually started to turn away at Serenity’s question, so Serenity pushed harder on his Gaze of the Origin Skill. His eyes felt strange, but without a proper necromancy ability, this worked well enough.

The lich froze and answered as though the words were individually dragged from it. “All who come to the Lost Battlefield shall be lost. That is what I was told when the dungeon took me.”

“I thought you said you were made by the Lost Battlefield?” Serenity’s mood sunk. He’d felt pretty good up until that answer. The fight was somewhat annoying but exciting and he’d made good progress on figuring out everything he needed from the lich, but knowing it was probably a forcibly converted human wasn’t great. It meant the dungeon probably needed to die and Serenity didn’t know where it was or how to find it.

“I was remade on the Lost Battlefield. I have only scraps of who I was before.” The lich paused, then continued. “That is why I seek lightning. Lightning is all I have left.”

The lich’s voice was emotionless and matter of fact. “I remember the change; I remember losing everything I was and everything I knew. I remember losing everyone. I even remember how it made me feel. Yet I do not remember what I lost. All I do remember is that lightning made me who I was before, so lightning I will keep until I am able to find my way back or finally die. I escaped the Battlefield and thought that was enough, but I cannot leave this cursed swamp.”

Serenity concentrated on the lich in front of him. It had a monster core, but it wasn’t a core appropriate to a Tier Three or Four monster; it was no stronger than a Tier One monster’s core. That gave some support to the lich’s story that it had been a Pathed person somehow converted by a dungeon.

Unlike the Undead Dungeon, the Lost Battlefield sounded like a dungeon that needed to die.

Its power permeated the entire Dead Swamp. That seemed like a rather large clue to where the Lost Battlefield was, but it would take a long time to actually find it.

Serenity reminded himself that he needed to keep moving forward; this wasn’t his responsibility. This wasn’t Earth. On top of that, Rissa was waiting on him. She didn’t even know what had happened; he hadn’t been able to get a message out yet.

All that was left was to deal with the lich. “What do you want now? What should I do with you?”

“Lightning. I want you to show me lightning. The most you can do. You withstood my lightning, even my True lightning strike. Show me what you can do and let me show you if I can withstand it or not.” This lich’s voice was as monotone as ever, but the pace of its words grew faster and faster as it spoke.

“You don’t mind if I kill you?” Serenity wasn’t certain if he could manage it in a single strike or not, but if he had the time to build “the most he could do” with lightning, it was a real risk; his Energy Affinity and Concept were both near 50% and that meant they were strong. It wasn’t much compared to his Death Incarnate, but that didn’t make it risk-free.

A quick check confirmed Serenity’s earlier guess; he’d leveled enough to unlock Fireball but not Cone of Lightning. He probably wouldn’t have used Cone of Lightning here even if it were unlocked; as a Skill, it was regulated to something reasonable and quick to cast instead of being “the most he could do”.

“Kill me? Kill me if you can! I have died once, death holds no fear if it is from lightning. Death from lightning is my desire!” The dissonance of a swift, excited delivery and a monotone tone of voice was extreme but Serenity was still confident he’d understood the lich correctly.

“If it’s what you want, then I don’t see any reason not to. It will take a few minutes for me to build the spell; just stay there.” Serenity relaxed his fierce grasp on Gaze of the Origin, but kept the Skill active. He was far more concerned about the lich breaking free than he had been about Timmat.

It was just as well the lich had asked Serenity to try to kill it. He would have felt bad about simply letting it go; unlike Timmat, the lich was dangerous. It wanted to escape the Dead Swamp. If it did manage to recover some of its lost memories that would be even worse; a corruptive undead trying to reclaim its past without knowing the danger it brought was a recipe for disaster.

Serenity began weaving the spellform for the strongest lightning-like energy bolt he knew then turned his attention towards the tree Andarit was in. “Andarit! You can come down now, but watch out for stragglers!”

As it turned out, Serenity was correct; the lich was reduced to an inanimate pile of blackened cracked bones and scraps of charred cloth by the lightning bolt. It was just as well; Serenity didn’t want to think about what it would take for someone without his resistances to survive a spell he spent the better part of half an hour and most of his mana pool on.

He’d have taken some damage from it himself.

He hoped the lich was happy. For a very brief moment, it had indeed experienced a stronger lightning strike than any it had known before.

It felt like it took longer to get himself clean enough for Andarit to let him back in the flyer than it did to kill the lich. He still hadn’t figured out how to heat the water he created.

At least the soap worked well.