Chapter 537
Trou'Bleskamuz roared in triumph. He had endured all those painful spells to make sure that his enemy would end exactly in that corner of the room. Agility and cunning meant nothing inside such a confined space, only strength mattered and he still had enough to uproot trees with just one hand.
The Balor was done underestimating the human. He jumped forward while swinging his giant fists down like hammers on Lith's left and right to cut off his escape routes. At the same time, his blue eye glowed with mana, making the icicles extend further.
The trap was complete, the Ranger's only choice was how he wanted to die, by fist, bite, or skewering.
Lith Switched them at the last second, making the ice spear that had been prickling his back pierce through Trou'Bleskamuz's blue eye, brain, and skull. The Balor's body spasmed several times, gurgling blood from the several puncture wounds the rest of the ice spears had caused.
'That was close.' Lith sighed while cutting Trou'Bleskamuz's head off with the Gatekeeper, just to be safe.
'The Balors are way too strong to face them head on and their eyes are weapons of mass destruction also capable of fine control over the elements. I almost fell for his mindless brute act, but unfortunately for him, I too like to be underestimated.
'Using my own conjured water against me was a smart move, exactly what I would have done in his shoes. That's why I used a tier five spell that used both water and darkness magic.
'Once the water was imbued with his mana it couldn't hurt him, but the darkness was still mine. His lack of understanding of how tier five spells work was the deciding factor in his defeat.'
The barrage of spells Lith had employed while backstepping wasn't meant to harm to the Balor so much as to keep him focused on Lith and not notice the black veins tainting his own spell.
Lith used Invigoration to return to his peak condition while waiting for Ratpack and studying Trou'Bleskamuz' corpse. It didn't turn into smoke, allowing Lith to store him inside his pocket dimension.
'Now let's hope this master is a reasonable guy, otherwise I'll call the army and I'll have them make this whole thing collapse.' Lith thought.
"I found him! I found master!" Ratpack's voice was brimming with joy. He was holding an old battered skull with several teeth missing and cracks along its surface.
"Oh great, another lich!" Lith said while rolling his eyes. The undead had a life force weaker than a regular human while his blood core despite being almost completely red was reduced to the size of a pea.
"Nice to meet you, my name is Scourge. Do you have the strength to explain to me what's going on?" Lith's magical beast name was his best alias available. Even in their evolved forms animals despised undead.
They would never sell out one of their own in case the lich attempted something funny.
"Of course, dear Scarge." Lichs didn't have any brainpower to waste, so they would rarely care for names. Especially if they belonged to an existence as fleeting as a human.
"It's so good to hear a voice which isn't mine or Trouble's. Is he already dead or can I have the pleasure of inflicting him with some pain, Forge?" The red light of undeath animating the eyes stared in delight at the blood spattered on the walls.
"Trouble is dead. Do you mind introducing yourself and telling me what happened?" Lith had a hard time not laughing. Between the lich's weakened state and his memory, Lith's real identity was airtight.
"Right, sorry, Sarge. I'm Zolgrish. As for what happened here it's a bit of an embarrassing story." He said.
Lith noticed that the cracks on the skull were disappearing and the missing teeth were popping up like mushrooms.
"As you surely know, being a lich isn't all fun and games. One of the most annoying things about it, is the need to keep your phylactery at hand." Zolgrish's words made no sense to him, but Lith just nodded and let him talk.
According to Kalla, young liches would sooner or later go mad due to their prolonged isolation or at least lose their common sense until time stabilized their mental condition.
Zolgrish seemed to be a textbook case. Either that, or he had lost it after becoming an undead.
"It holds half of our soul, so the farther we get from it, the weaker we become. I set up this lab at the fringes of my phylactery's range. I was at my full strength and at the same time far away enough to check on the progress of my work.
"This whole complex was supposed to work as a relay point for my phylactery. If my experiment succeeded, I would have been able to expand my area of activity to the entire Kellar region." Zolgrish sighed.
'Dammit! Even becoming a lich is out of the question now. I always wondered why they never disguised their phylactery as a pebble and threw it in the ocean or something. I knew it was too good to be true.' Lith thought.
"Everything was going fine. The mines provided me with all the silver I needed, the arrays amplified the signal, and my immortal minions provided me with an inexhaustible workforce." Zolgrish said.
"Wait a minute. Immortal minions?" Lith echoed.
"Well, yes. Lesser undead are too stupid, greater undead are too dangerous in the long run, while living beings are so annoying. You have to feed them train them, and once they die you need to find a replacement. Rinse and repeat.
"To avoid the issue, I bound their souls to my phylactery, so that whatever happened to me would happen to them. It was the perfect solution. It guaranteed their loyalty and provided for most of their living expenses.
"Whenever of them dies, he is reborn with his memories. Whenever they are hungry, kill a few and let the others feast on the corpse. From farm to table!" Zolgrish maniacal laugh gave Lith the creeps.
'That's why some corpses disappeared upon death while others remained. His device resurrects them only if the body is destroyed, or rather, stripped to the bone. This creature is raving mad. No wonder his minions revolted. The question is: how?' Lith thought.
"Sure, the procedure has a survival rate of 0.01%, but monsters spawn fast and nobody misses them. No harm no foul. Or so I thought. Over time, I took two of my most intelligent minions as lab assistants.
"Dann'Kah the orc and his mastery over magic crystals have proven invaluable for increasing the power of my creations. It took me a while to kill him into submission, but once the deed was done, the sky was the limit for my forgemastering.
"Yozmogh the Balor with his eyes was a perfect amplifier for my spells. Sure, they would explode from time to time, but nothing that a swift death couldn't fix.
"What I didn't take into account is that, since their souls are stored next to mine inside the phylactery, the repeated cycles of death and rebirth allowed them to feel the energy flow, until they became able to manipulate it!
