I have never imagined that feeling pain would ever make me happy. What was there to like about pain? Still, I supposed even pain was fine, when feeling it meant one was actually able to feel something again. I just had to endure it hoping that my other senses would follow, so that I could at least check my surroundings out. It was pretty strange though that the only thing I could feel was my bones aching. With the amount of mana I had, I should have been able to sense both matter and magic near me, but I got no reactions. Did the seal really drain me this much? That… could have caused some inconveniences. By the way, did I get teleported somewhere far away? Or was I locked in the void for too long? If it was neither, the others would have already picked me up. Whatever. In that state that might actually have been the case. With how drained I am, it wouldn’t be strange not to notice being carried.

“... the city guards. It should not be our duty to deal with a pile of bones popping out of random rifts.” My hearing seemed to be the first thing to come back. That voice didn’t sound like anyone I knew though. I wasn’t sure whether I should have been glad it was the same language I spoke, or been annoyed that I was just called a pile of bones. I really wanted my mana back.

“I can see where you are coming from, but it’s still better than the professor trying to handle the situation himself. Let’s just hope he remembers to get help after he stops running around shouting like someone who just saw the Lich Demon Lord.” Excuse me?! Did people really react like that to seeing me? Also I really wanted that moniker to get forgotten. It wasn’t me who wiped half of Hellesland out. Yes, I had been there, but no, I didn’t do it. I wasn’t actually a demon lord. I wasn’t even a Demon in the first place.

“I also think we shouldn’t be the ones getting rid of this skeleton.” Did I hear that right? Was there also a girl there? I was starting to fear I was surrounded by boys. Shouldn’t have complained as long as all of them sounded to be pretty young though. They also mentioned some kind of “professor”, so I guessed I was probably at some kind of school. “Its smell… It creeps me out. It doesn’t smell like the skeletons we train against.”

“Your nose creeps me out. Stop smelling everything. You are supposed to be a princess.” Let me get this straight. No clue where I was, but that professor had the nerve to leave cleaning up a skeleton popping up near him to… their princess?

“Brother, he’s being mean to me again.” And their prince, too. I could see heads rolling in the professor’s future.

“He’s your fiancé, Kathleen. You should really stop letting him… ALAN, STEP BACK!” What was this commotion about? Was I that scary when I also had some mana to spare? All praise my high mana recovery rate. “Take Kathleen and get out of here!”

It was time to get my beloved body back. Being just a pile of bones was starting to become boring. My senses were gradually coming back too. I could feel the coldness of the floor below me. The pain of getting stabbed in the heart. Hair touching my cheeks. A layer of cloth rubbing against my skin. Was there an extra one? Oh well, nothing can be perfect. “Could you please stop stabbing me?”

“You can even speak? What exactly are you? Where did you come from? Are you some kind of zombie that got reduced to the bones?”

“Wouldn’t a zombie that’s nothing but bones be a skeleton?” Was me getting up from the floor enough to make you back away? Pathetic. Although not as pathetic as not recognizing a lich after seeing this much. “I’m a lich, obviously. Necromancer at that. Also an Ilehoria, but I guess you could at least guess that much from how I look.” An Ilishwa? No, while he had cat ears and black hair, his eyes were yellow, not blue. That was a surprise. Wasn’t my cute little panther cub supposed to be the last Alnamir?

“Ilehoria were said to have blond hair. You look more like a hybrid of Demon and Tuhina.” I wasn’t a dark elf nor an ice fairy. My ears weren’t even pointed. “Or are our historic records incorrect? If you really are an Ilehoria, you are the first to be seen in over three millennia. According to the legends, the last Ilehoria was the Collateral Queen, sealed away by the Hero of Flames.” I… didn’t like how he just used those two monikers like they did not refer to the same person. He also mentioned one of my cringeworthy monikers before, so I thought using my own name could have caused some problems. Putting that aside, the part that bothered me most was where the Collateral Queen was the last Ilehoria they saw, but they hadn’t seen one of us in multiple millennia. I was just fighting her, so does that mean I was in the void for that long?

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“Oh, right, I look different, don’t I? You mentioned zombies before, so you should know how they look different from the people they once were. Same applies here, however my appearance will gradually revert back to normal as my mana recovers.” Hey, just until a moment before that I wasn’t even able to maintain a body, so not being able to mask my Lich traits was a given. Must have slipped my mind. “Give me an hour, and I should be the blonde beauty an Ilehoria is supposed to be. My eyes must have been what looked like a Demon’s to you, those too will become blue soon.” It wasn’t that large of a difference, but an undead Ilehoria really looked just a bit different from an alive one. Our blonde hair became white with a purple tinge, and our blue eyes became deep purple when we turned into undead. Not sure whether it was because I was a lich, but my eyes actually still had shards of their original blue at the edge of my iris. I have seen a bunch of undead, being a necromancer and all, but none of them had eyes like mine. Take Alnamir, like this boy, as an example. No matter whether their eye was yellow or green, an undead Alnamir’s eye would become light brown, without a single speck of their original color remaining. “While waiting for that, let’s introduce ourselves.” It was time to throw out the first fake name I could think of. ”I’m Hilde, Ilehoria Lich. Based on what you told me until now, I seem to be a remnant from three millennia ago. Last of my kind, if undead count.”

“I’m Keith Alakhir, Alnamir, prince of the Siegel Queendom.” Now that was an interesting name. “Swordsman in training at the Royal Academy of Crater. The Academy is where we are right now.”

“I know of no place called Crater or Siegel Queendom, but your surname sounds familiar. I have, or more like had an acquaintance with that name, although she rarely ever used it.” A shame. It was the family name I gave her, but she kept using only her given name. “She had the moniker ‘Last Alnamir’, meaning she must have been one of Your Highness’ ancestors.”

“Please save the ‘Your Highness’ business for the Crown Princess. I might technically be a prince, but all that means that I have a priority seat as a retainer.” The country was called a Queendom for a reason. Should I have pitied him? “Is the one you are referring to as ‘Last Alnamir’ the Founding Queen Clara? We were taught that the one to first use the name Alakhir was her daughter, Queen Hanna. Are you saying it was also the name of the Founding Queen?” That made me really glad I hadn’t used my real name. I knew I should have been happy that unlike me Clara actually lived to have children, but naming your daughter after me of all people? Did you fear I would haunt you otherwise?

“Yes, Clara Alakhir is indeed the one I’m talking about. It’s fortunate that she managed to save your kind from extinction. Not all of this world’s races were lucky enough to achieve the same.” Clara actually killed the last member of one of the races herself. That is, assuming an arrow to the heart was enough to finish that girl. Nothing would have actually surprised me when it came to my sister. Should I have mentioned this? I didn’t think that would have been wise. I wasn’t in the mood for setting flags for her coming back as a lich or something. Liches were a pain to deal with. I could be trusted on this, being one of them.

“The Ilehoria, right? Or are you referring to the demi-human races hunted to extinction?” I didn’t want to go there. Our necromancer clan was responsible for wiping out quite a number of demi-human races. I saw two of those hunts. My father made me kill the last snow leopard cub when I was six. Way to get your daughter a DIY undead instead of a plushie. I was also supposed to kill the last cub they left in the Alnamir capital when I was eight, but suddenly everything behind me burst into flames. Managed to get away from there, but that luck did not extend to my father and our hunters. There were three survivors of that incident. The Alnamir cub, me, and the one who blew the hunting party up. I could not just bring a cub that couldn’t even walk yet into an Ilehoria town, so I got ourselves into the Wingless’ forest instead. Was that the correct decision? It definitely saved us from the calamity that turned the whole Ilehoria territory into swiss cheese.

“Let’s settle for both. By the way, I overheard you and your friends talking about calling the city guards. It sounds like a pain, so can we somehow avoid that?”

“Ah that. Alan would definitely lead them here after the commotion when you started turning into this form. However, if my sister considered you a threat, her reaction wouldn’t have been a simple ‘creeps me out’, so I guess I can try smoothing things over if you agree to cooperate.”

“What would have been her reaction if she considered me a threat?”

“At the least, you would have been surrounded by a few barriers that could send the court mages crying for their mothers yet again, and at the most you would have left the building following the shortest route leading outside.”

“Which is?”

“Right through the walls.”

“Cooperation it is then. Don’t want to deal with guards of a place that has such a scary princess.”

“Did you just… No, nevermind, I can’t really argue with that. Come this way, I’ll get you my sister’s spare uniform, and while you change I’ll grab a skeleton from the training fields.”

And with that, my (after)life full of troubles in the far future began.