Chapter 45
"Elise, I'll check inside."
Chalmers stared at Lofnar for a moment. When it became clear the dwarf had no intention of volunteering, he curled his lip and stepped forward himself.
"Be careful," Elise said with a nod.
She was willing to let a Second-tier Awakened handle it, but the cave's location bothered her.
This was the southernmost edge of the Blythean Empire, and the Pyreflame Woods were notoriously hot and humid.
Bear-type monsters usually denned in caves halfway up a slope—safe from flooding, convenient for hunting.
Yet this Second-tier blue-furred black bear had chosen a cave at the mountain's foot.
Something was off.
There might be something unexpected inside.
Fortunately, the monster itself had only been low-level Second-tier. Chalmers shouldn't be in any danger.
Soon his footsteps echoed from within the cave—receding first, then returning toward the entrance.
"It's a water-attribute magical plant," Chalmers reported as he emerged.
"That explains it."
Elise nodded and followed him inside.
Chalmers led the way, holding aloft a glowing alchemical device. The cave lit up bright as day.
Elise could see the damp ground clearly.
Several yards in, the floor rose into a gentle slope, and where that slope met the wet ground grew several plants with pale-blue leaves.
[Appraisal Skill Experience +11.]
Elise cast [Appraisal] on the spot.
[Magical Plant: Common-grade Second-tier item. Water attribute. Can be used to brew a water-attribute breathing elixir.]
Huh?
A nameless magical plant?
She looked closer and confirmed it: she truly had never seen this species before.
It was a vine with round, serrated leaves. Instead of green, the leaves carried a faint blue luminescence—proof of long steeping in water-attribute mana.
Elise didn't care what the plant was called.
If it had no name, she could give it one later.
Aurelia had far too many magical plants as it was.
What mattered was the use.
If this thing could brew a water-attribute breathing elixir, it might be exactly what she needed.
I'll have to ingest a Second-tier elixir to master a Breathing Technique. Once my constitution improves, my spirit growth accelerates. I need this material.
With that settled, Elise explained the plant's use to Lofnar and the Rosefire mercenaries.
They stared at her in stunned silence.
They had assumed she recognized the plant.
Instead, she had identified its use without even knowing its name.
That was absurd.
You don't even know a magical plant's name, but you know what it's for? Then isn't walking into the forest just like picking money up off the ground for you?
When Elise offered to pay for the plants once they returned to camp, the Rosefire members hurriedly agreed.
Answer secured, Elise relaxed and called an end to the hunt.
The four-team formation resumed its original arrangement, and the column pressed on.
Along the way, whenever her mana refilled, Elise casually loosed a [Holy Light Arrow] for the experience.
Finally, just before nightfall—
[Holy Light Arrow Skill Experience +318.]
[Congratulations. Your Holy Light Arrow level has increased to LV5.]
So Holy Light Arrow made Level 5 before the purification mission after all.
Elise's mood soared.
On her first day in the forest, she had not only hit her target of raising [Holy Light Arrow] to Level 5—she'd also found a potion material that might unlock a Breathing Technique.
An extremely profitable day.
Next came making camp.
The Pyreflame Woods were deadly at night.
Once the tents went up and the campfires were lit, no one had any intention of traveling further.
At this hour, Awakened on the road usually gathered to trade training insights or simply talk.
Elise stayed in her tent, eating and resting with Lina and Lia, using her spirit energy to adapt to Level 5 [Holy Light Arrow] and to draft an experimental breathing elixir.
When she finished, she drifted slowly off to sleep.
While she slept, several miles from camp and deep in the forest, Mona of Ember Shield Mercenary Company was fleeing in blind panic.
Several dozen yards behind her came a humanoid figure.
Anyone close enough to study the pursuer would have realized it was not human at all.
To be precise, the thing chasing Mona was an undead.
It had been raised from a human corpse. The clothes it had worn in life hadn't fully rotted away and still hung from its frame in torn strips.
The black veins stood out starkly beneath its pallid skin. Those veins served merely as components of a magic array; its actual movement still came from muscle and bone.
Yet with that unnatural body, the undead was running a Senior Second-tier Grand Mage into desperate flight.
Its strength was anything but ordinary.
Crack.
Crack.
Mona's boots snapped branch after branch. Thankfully, the magic arrays worked into them granted her tremendous running speed, and the gap between her and her pursuer held at several dozen yards.
Even so, each time she sensed the pursuer's position, cold dread crawled through her chest.
She muttered to herself as she ran, clawing for calm.
"Anarias, the Convergence of Planes has only just begun. You haven't been revived long enough. You can't catch me."
The self-comfort lasted only until she sensed his speed again, and despair came surging back.
She would never have predicted this.
For more than seven thousand years, the Death Sovereign Anarias had maintained a state of "reason" after each revival.
Yet mere months into his eighth revival, he had chosen to fall completely.
An undying lich versed in death, darkness, and Fate magic—one suspected of having once stepped into the Sacred tier.
When a being like that chose to sink fully into darkness, his recovery would no longer creep along as it once had.
At present, Anarias had only just advanced to Senior Second-tier.
But having devoured great quantities of normal spirituality, he had awakened more of his memories than in any previous revival—and his combat strength ran higher, too.
Toward the fleeing Mona, Anarias showed no intention of mercy.
The veins across his face pulsed intermittently with faint light.
But his most striking feature was his eyes.
At a glance, they appeared entirely white.
They had become translucent white crystals—and behind those crystals burned mysterious gray-black flames.
Every time Mona spent mana crystals to trigger the arrays on her transcendent equipment, the flames in his eyes leapt hungrily.
He did not tire.
After chasing Mona nearly six miles, he finally sensed a dense cluster of souls a few miles distant.
The familiar light-attribute energy repulsed him on instinct, now that he was a lich.
Yet his awakened memories dragged images from his days as a High Cleric back into his spiritual world.
Light... I betrayed the Light... No... not betrayal... the Convergence of Planes... four hundred years...
Ellie... wait for me... I will ascend to godhood!
A furious howl tore up from the depths of Anarias's soul.
The flames in his eyes blazed wild.
What burned there was the soul-spirituality of ordinary commoners and innocent Awakened.
It was also the last of his reason and his principles.
If the prize was rich enough, the Death Sovereign Anarias would become a true lich—and cast aside his old understanding with the Church of Light.
When Mona reached the sentries of Ember Shield Mercenary Company, the first words out of her mouth were for Adair: "Anarias has devoured innocent souls. He has fallen completely."
"Light above!"
Adair nearly believed he'd misheard.
Boom!
The sound of battle rolled in from the distance.
Adair rushed Mona toward the camp where the Church team was stationed.
By then, the noise had already woken Elise and the others.
Standing outside her tent, staff in hand, Elise watched the panicked pair approach.
"High Cleric Elise, we found a lich—it's Anarias! He devoured innocent souls! He has fallen completely!"
Adair's words tumbled out nearly incoherent.
Elise's heart sank.
A Death Sovereign who kept to his "principles" wasn't truly terrifying; he could genuinely be treated as a blade the Church kept sheathed in the shadows.
A completely fallen Anarias was another matter.
According to the historical records, he could revive endlessly for as long as a Convergence of Planes lasted.
And at his first death, he had very likely stood at the Sacred tier.
Which meant that for the next four hundred years, Anarias would slaughter indiscriminately to rebuild his strength.
He had become a target the Church of Light had no choice but to destroy.
Which meant...
Elise badly wanted to ask Mona one question.
Did you lead the lich here?