It has been quite some time since I last updated this fanfiction. I had been busy with school and helping Japtem on the side with translating LMS. Anyways here is the next installment of Sun's adventures in Royal Road.
Death Calls
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The sound of metal scraping along the floor echoed throughout the hall.
“Quickly! We must get there before they escape!”
The holy knights were sprinting as quickly as they could to catch the culprits behind the necromancy. In order to keep up with everyone Sun, Alveron, Calvin, and Alena were being carried by the holy knights.
In order to get through as quickly as possible, they could not fight every undead along the way. Thankfully most of the high level undead and already been dealt with and only intermediate level undead had remained. Using their momentum, they ran through the underground passage while cleaving through the enemies with their swords and shields.
The undead were most certainly a problem that the church could not ignore but the necromancers had a higher precedence. They could always go back and sweep up the undead, however if they didn’t finish off the necromancers then the cycle would ceaselessly continue.
“Is this as fast as we can go?”
The pace that they were moving was relatively fast but, from the distance that he perceived from his elemental sight, the necromancers were still far off. The large culmination of dark element that he was sensing up ahead was far from normal. Though the holy knights had high strength, agility, and endurance stats, they were weighed down by their heavy armor and weapons. Since there were some holy knights that had to carry the priests, the rest of the holy knights had to match their pace so that they don’t get left behind.
“Goddess Freya, grant us your strength. Haste!”
Alveron, who was being carried by a holy knight, chanted a spell over the group. With his high skill proficiency, their movement speed increased by a staggering 60%. Due to the long cooldown he could not multicast it to stack the effects but with his high skill proficiency he was able to mass cast it onto a group. It was more than enough to compensate not stacking the buff.
The distance to the necromancers was rapidly decreasing. After bashing their way through a couple more undead waves, they could finally see their goal ahead. A light permeated from a hole at the end of the cave.
Of course the necromancers were not foolish enough to leave themselves unguarded. There were 4 high ranked undead that were standing guard at the entrance. Each of these undead guards were above level 320 and could each count as a dungeon boss. These undead were unfamiliar to Sun, but they had a slight resemblance to Death Knights. In actuality they were a undead knights known as Vandal Knights.
Though these undead were not to be matched to Chaos Knights, Liches, Bone Dragons and other legendary undead, they were still stronger than most bosses. However they were still a far cry from unique Bosses with titles, such as Vampire Lords. A skilled party of similarly leveled users would still have difficulty fighting a single one of these undead without a dedicated healer and skilled fighters.
That was if it was a normal party of users. In most parties the main force is comprised of a mage, a resilient melee fighter to draw aggro, an archer, a healer, and a agile thief type class. Each of these classes provide an essential role in fighting against enemies.
This was different in this case though. These monster were undead. When dealing against the undead, holy magic was the most effective means to destroy them. So while these may have been high ranked undead, they were far from being unique type undead such as Death Lords and Liches. With a group of holy knights, all of them in their mid 300s, and 3 highly skilled priests with powerful blessing skills, these undead faced complete decimation.
Blowing through the corpses of the Vandal Knights, the holy knights broke into the center of the room.
“Who’s there!?”
Several robed figures yelled out in shock. The necromancers had not been able to sense any holy magic as they had not used any holy element within the area in which they could sense. The holy knights had been relying on their sword skills to beat aside the undead without using any skills as to avoid detection.
Sun took this time to quickly assess how many necromancers were in the room. He had not been able to get a clear number before since the dark element was highly obstructive in his elemental sight.
The necromancers numbered a total of 10. However, none of these necromancers stood out distinctly. Though twisted, necromancers could be considered one of the intellectually minded groups that devoted themselves to research. In organizations such as these, there was usually one guy that looked different, with a spiffy looking robe that says “I’m the leader around here.”
Sun looked ahead and saw that there was another door at the other end of the room. If this was the base of commands then there was no need to have another facility deeper within. Quickly passing his elemental sight through it, he saw another lone figure next to a large mass of dark element.
‘As I expected.’
The person that he saw was most definitely the leader of these necromancers. Furthermore, his expectations had been exactly right. This large influx of dark element was not being used for something as petty as reanimating corpses into undead. Something as simple as that could have been done by their own necromancy powers.
They had been gathering dark element from killing humans and creating undead. Dark element was a culmination of matter formed upon the death of living things. If someone died with dark emotions or in a painful way then more dark element would be formed. Dark element was not limited to death either. Emotions could easily form dark element; usually corruption and other insidious thoughts. This is small in contrast to death but still notable when there is enough of it. To deliberately form such a large mass of dark element could only mean two things.
The first was to perform the spell that tore away the necromancer’s physical body and replace it with an immortal undying body of a lich by sealing away their soul into a source of mana, such as it had been for Pink. Such a spell requires many sacrifices and an especially powerful necromancer. However, this process was very lengthy and the necromancers would refuse to cooperate with each other since this process only allowed one individual to become a lich at the cost of countless resources and research.
That left only one other possibility. This was the most plausible but also the most terrifying.
All magic draws power from somewhere. Be it from the gods, nature, or from within oneself. Each with their own capabilities and power. Naturally a god would have infinitely more power than a mere human. But what would happen should a god manifest itself in the mortal realm?
The results would be unimaginable. As destructive as a master magician’s magic may be, it is nothing before the might of a god.
The necromancers were trying to summon a being of darkness.
Demon King. God of Death and Carnage. Destruction and Despair. Disease and Famine.
There were any number of beings that would bring chaos to the world.
The necromancers finally snapped out of their confusion and grabbed onto their staves.
“Kill them! The ritual must succeed at any cost!”
The necromancers were certainly very high level, most likely around level 300 and above. To have summoned such high level undead, in such high quantity, required extremely powerful skills.
Each of the necromancers quickly used their staves to draw magic circles in the air and summon a large number of undead. Many corpses rose from the floor while others dug their way up from beneath the earth.
These undead were not as strong as high ranking undead, but they were in the intermediate level range and high in number.
Around a thousand undead sprang forth from the ground to fight against the holy knights. There were a large variety of undead corpses since the necromancers had been using this place to experiment.
Seeing no need to hide their skills any longer, the holy knights activated all their holy magic blade skills.
The necromancers took this time to drop a multitude of hexes on the holy knights, but it had no effect thanks to the strength of the holy blessings.
That did not mean that they could just leave the necromancers alone. Even if they could not debuff the holy knights, they could buff the undead and lengthen the fight. There was no knowing how long it would take before this ritual of theirs would complete, but it could not be long since the necromancers were so readily willing to fight.
“Light Binding!”
Sun decided to take the initiative before the necromancers had realized that their spells had failed. Throwing on a number of chains onto each of the necromancers, he bound a number of the necromancers and to prevent them from casting spells. Since his light binding skill was not that high level, he was only able to bind 5 of the necromancers.
The bound necromancers struggled to break the chains, but these chains had been forge out of holy light and were capable of binding down giant monsters. The measly strength of a necromancer was nothing before the binding spell.
“Undead! Free us!”
The necromancers commanded a few nearby undead to free them from the constraints. The undead ran up to rip the chains off from their bodies.
“Fwoosh!”
The holy light from the chain reacted against the undead touch and caused holy fire to ignite, repelling the undead.
“Damn it! Forget it then. Bring us the staves!”
When the necromancers had been bound by chains, their staves had been knocked away. Once the necromancers got their staves back, they could use black magic to lift the chains.
Sun took a hold of a few remaining vials of holy water mixed with oil. Taking out his bow of light, he stuck the vial onto a light arrow and shot it towards the few undead that had previously tried to remove the chains by hand.
The vial exploded on impact and burst into flames from the holy fire. The corpses of the undead crumpled to the floor and forced a holy fire wall that blocked the undead from the necromancers.
The remaining necromancer used their spells to free the necromancers from the constraints. However, even though the bound necromancers had been freed, they could no longer cast spells since their staves had been knocked away.
The necromancers that could cast spells used Blink Teleportation to get out of the fire. They wanted to retrieve the staves for their allies, but they could not teleport holding the other Necromancer’s staff as it would create an imbalance of mana and cause the spell to reflux on them.
Throwing the staves at the necromancers would not work either since they were surrounded by a ring of fire. Since the staves were made of magical wood they would burn rather easily.
Seeing that they could not aid their fellow necromancers, they focused on fighting the battle. A large amount of their mana had been spent on summoning the undead so now they focused using their mana on buffing their undead and using what little attack spells that they had.
As intellectually minded necromancers, they had not bothered to advance combat related magic such as Dark Spear. They had other magic spells that they could use but they were rendered useless in front of the priests’ magical protection spells.
There are a number of various categories to priest spells.
Healing, Buffing, Attack Spells, Cleansing Spells, Debuff spells, Revive spells.
There were many different type of spells that priests could use. Once specialized, priests would get a job advance that would allow them to learn even more categories of spells in relation to their specialization.
There was an especially useful field of support spells that only a few priests decided to specialize in.
Barriers.
Barrier spells were support magic that shields against all forms of attacks and depended on the user’s mana to sustain. There were spells that block all damage for as long as the mana held out at a fixed usage rate and then there were also spells that use a fixed amount of mana to block a set amount of damage for a set duration.
It was a very skill based class since choosing barriers meant that they could not become another specialized priest, which usually have more potent healing or buffing spells.
Calvin was such a priest. After reaching level 330, he had chosen the path of the Aegis Priest, which was a priest that specialized in defensive skills. With the helpful use of his barriers, none of the dark magic was able to harm any of the holy knights.
Hacking away at the undead, the holy knights gradually whittled down the undead.Soon enough they clear the room of all of the undead.
Now that they had finished wiping out the undead, they had to deal with the necromancers.
Naturally necromancers were criminals that the church abhorred. But there was a process to these sort of things. They would be sent back to the church as criminals, tried in court, and then punished. Execution was the most likely sentence from the mass murders that they had orchestrated.
Tying up the necromancers, and kicking them in the stomach a couple of times, Sun and the holy knights made their way into the next room.
Standing before a large pit of darkness was a single robed man, who looked to be in his 50s. This man was a clear cut above the rest of the necromancers. He had a distinctly ornate robe and staff, with an atmosphere befitting that of a master mage. The necromancer took notice of their sudden appearance in this chamber, clearly displeased with the incompetency of his subordinates.
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“You dogs of the church have managed to make it this far.”
The necromancer hit his staff against the floor and a large magic circle activated.
“You are already too late.”
The magic circle slowly started to expand, sucking in the vast quantities of dark element.
The necromancer then recited a brief incantation before casting another spell.
“...as death binds down all living things. Gravity!”
Gravity was an immobilization spell that was effective in increasing the weight of its target. It was used to slow down large monsters that did not have good magic defense.
It was particularly effective on the holy knights. The holy knights wore large, heavy armor and had very low magic resistances. The gravity spell hit them hard and knocked them onto the floor.
The priests were not doing any better. Even though they had high magic defense, they did not possess the physical strength to stand up even with reduced effects of the gravity spell.
The entire underground structure began to shake violently from the force of the spell circle. Sun looked up as he tried to get back up.
The darkness oscillated within itself as it began to take form. The distinct appearance of a human being was being formed from the darkness. However, this being was anything but human.
A dark mist permeated from the figure, and the land decayed around him unnaturally. This being was most certainly a darkness god that brought with it death and destruction.
As the violent tremors stopped, Sun and the others looked up to the death god that was floating in the air. If not for the violent unholy darkness that leaked from his body, he would have appeared to have been a normal looking magician. This god was dressed in a black robe and magician hat. A long intricate staff floated behind him as well as several other magical items.
The god looked coldly upon the necromancer.
“Why have you summoned me mortal?”
Though he had only been speaking, his voice was deathly chilling as it spoke into each of their souls.
“Mii-milord! I, your most humble servant, have summoned you into this realm so that you may take your rightful place as its ruler.”
The necromancer managed to utter with much difficulty.
“Is that so? Then do you know who I am?”
The god asked almost as if what the necromancer had said was of no importance to him.
“Of course. You are the God of Death himself, the all powerful Thanatos!”
The god tilted his head back and laughed uproariously.
“Hahahahahaaaa! You think I am Thanatos? To compare me to a weakling like him is foolish.”
The necromancer was clearly shocked. The ritual had been made to summon the god of death Thanatos. So if this was not Thanatos then who could it be?
“This is impossible…”
The necromancer fell to the floor in dismay. This was not the god that the necromancers had contracted with so they had no means of using his power.
“I have no more need of you.”
The god raised his hand slowly and then activated a small but powerful spell circle.
Kuk kuk kuk.
Countless spears of darkness ripped the necromancer apart. The necromancer yelled in pain before collapsing onto the floor in a bloody heap.
A number of screams could be heard from the distance. The god had noticed the necromancers in the other room and had dealt with them as well.
The god looked over to the holy knights.
With the sudden appearance of a god level enemy, the tension among the holy knights intensified dramatically. This was not an enemy that they could beat.
Sun gritted his teeth to try and find a way out of this situation. With the necromancer’s death, the Gravity spell had lost its effect but now they were faced with a much more powerful enemy.
“Hey you.”
The god said as he looked over to Sun.
“What?”
Sun replied reflexively.
“Who are you? You don’t belong in this world.”
The god asked, clearly aware that Sun was not an inhabitant of this world.
“I...I am Sun.”
Sun took a moment to think before answering.
“Hooo, to think that such a coincidence would happen.”
The god was clearly amused at Sun’s answer. Then he took a look at Alena before he came to a realization.
‘So that’s how it is.’
The god charged up some dark element to throw it before noticing a slight magical discharge from his mana. It would appear that he was not entirely stable yet. Using a high powered spell here could cause it to reflux on him. The holy knights were not able to harm him, but if his spell refluxed on him then he could very well kill himself accidentally.
“I will leave for today.”
The god turned away before looking back to say one final comment with a smirk on his face.
“I will see you again, Knight Captain Sun.”
The mage teleported out of the cavern.
Everyone collapsed to the floor from mental exhaustion. Facing a god was no easy task, especially with such a small force and without the protection of the gods.
Sun sat there shocked at the god’s words.
‘I will see you again. Knight Captain Sun.’
This god knew his identity as the Captain of the Twelve Holy Knights of the Church of the God of Light. There had to be some connection between this god and his world.
However, all that mattered now was that they had managed to survive. They had been in front of a god of death and they were still alive.
“Is everyone alright?”
Calvin asked after a few minutes. A few mumbles came as a response.
“We should go back then.”
After thoroughly destroying the necromancer lab, they looked back to check on the state of the other necromancers. They had indeed been brutally killed by the god’s magic, perhaps in an attempt to hide any knowledge of the summoning ritual. Along the way to the surface, they cleaned out the rest of the undead that they had ignored on the way in.
Heading back to the surface, they decided to split up their group.
Calvin and 70 of the holy knights would go on a separate mission to clear away any of the remaining undead in the mountain. Sun and 30 holy knights were escort Alveron back to the town’s teleport gate so that he could return to Somuren Liberty City.
Once they reached the town, they could solve the problem with Alena. They needed to see if they could find her parents or if she needed to be taken in by the church.
The next city that they needed to go to that had an operation teleport gate was the capital city of the Kallamore Kingdom, Senbain.
However this region was extremely dangerous, which is why Calvin had sent 30 holy knights with them. This region was known to be infested with high level monsters. However this would pose no problem to the extremely high level and skilled holy knights.
There were waves and waves of monsters that surrounded this kingdom. Ever since the decline of the Kallamore Kingdom several decades ago, after the loss of their Knight Commander Koldeurim, the region had been infested with high level monsters.
Thankfully they weren’t the only ones fighting the monsters.
The brave knights of the Kallamore Kingdom fought against the monsters on a daily basis to drive them out of their land. Hardened through countless against against high level monsters, the knights of the Kallamore Kingdom were some of the best in the land.
Aside from the Kallamore Knights, there were the users that had joined into the ranks of the Kallamore Kingdom.
Once it had been discovered that fighting monsters in the name of the Kallamore Kingdom would increase the Honor stat, an essential exclusive stat for users of the Knight class.
The Honor stat was a universal stat that embodied the beliefs of the knight class. It increases loyalty among subordinates and it was similar to being recognized nobility. A higher Honor stat increases a knight’s rank. The higher a knight’s rank, the better the benefits.
After a week of traveling and fighting off monsters, they had finally made it to the capital city of Senbain. Since they were members of the Church of Freya, they were immediately given entrance into the city.
The very first thing that they needed to do was to head to the Church of Freya in this town.
At the Church of Freya, they asked for the church’s head priest to get briefed on the latest information regarding the events related to the church.
The information they received had been staggering.
In the time that they had left on this mission, the Hero Weed had undertaken a quest to find the necromancers in the Plains of Despair. There the hero had rallied the orcs against the Dark Elves who had allied with the necromancers. After a brilliant victory, the hero decided to spare the necromancer’s lives and hear their story.
It appears that the necromancers had been working to defeat the Lich Shire, an evil necromancer that had demonized Bar Khan to fall off the righteous path and become a persona of evil. Since then the Lich Shirehad been building an Undying Legion to conquer the continent.
Weed led a coalition army of the Orcs, Dark Elves, Necromancers, and Humans against this army and emerged victorious by killing the Lich Shire.
However, now there were summons for Alveron to return to the church. The church had received a request to investigate the nobility of a fallen kingdom and had passed the quest onto Hero Weed. In order to assist Weed in his investigation, the church had dispatched Alveron to the North.
“I’ll see you again Alveron.”
Sun said his farewells to Alveron. Thankfully he had managed to add Alveron to his friend list so he could speak to him whenever he wanted.
“It was truly a pleasure Grisia.”
Alveron stepped into the teleport gate and warped to the church in Somuren.
The matter with Alena would have to wait since Sun was not allowed to use the teleport gate without Calvin being present. Since the church could not do anything about it, he needed provide her with a place to stay until Calvin arrived. In other words, he had to take care of her.
Sitting in the middle of the town square, next to the fountain, Sun sighed deeply.
‘So it came down to this anyways...’
He had thought that the church would be able to take care of her. However, since Calvin was the representative from the Church of the Citadel of Serabourg, the Church of Freya in the capital city of Sebain would not authorize it. Even if Calvin was here, the task of locating her parents and providing for her well being fell upon the church members that found her. That meant Sun.
He had been abandoned by his fellow church members who had gone off to drink in a nearby bar. Seeing as children were not allowed in bars, and the fact that the task of taking care of Alena fell to him, he was not allowed to accompany them in drinking alcohol.
Now that he was stuck with watching over her, he decided to ask her some questions to get an idea of how to deal with her.
“Alena, do you know where your parents are?”
“?”
She looked at him as if not understanding the question.
“You know. Your guardians, the people that take care of you.”
The young girl looked as if she understood.
“There.”
She randomly pointed into the sky with her finger.
Seeing as that had not helped him in any way, Sun tried to think of what else to ask.
After mulling it over for several moments, he heard a low growling sound.
He looked over to see that it was coming from Alena. Moments later it was followed by the growling of his own stomach.
Sun stood awkwardly for a bit before saying.
“Let’s go get something to eat.”
Stopping by a nearby family restaurant, they ordered a couple of dishes to eat.
This restaurant was rather peculiar as it serves many foods that he had never heard of before.
The main reason for this was because this store was managed by users and not NPCs, something that Sun was not aware of.
Sun picked up his strange sandwich that he had never seen before in his life. It was a sandwich made from bread, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and some sort of processed meat that tasted like beef. It was served with a side of potato sticks and a strange dark carbonated beverage.
There was no problem with the taste so he ate it anyways, but he could only wonder as to what it was.
Alena, who was sitting across from him, had ordered something that looked like a triangular piece of bread and sticks of bread. Except this bread had cheese, tomato sauce, and thin red circles of meat on it.
They simply sat there eating for awhile. Sun was rather hungry so he didn’t bother talking about anything. Aside from that, the taste was exquisite. He had never eaten anything like this in his life before.
Finishing up his meal, Sun decided that it was finally time to ask some more questions. That was until the waitress came by and asked if he wanted to order any desserts.
Soon enough there were some desserts that he had never seen before on the table.
Time passed as they ate the assorted desserts. There were all manners of things that he had never seen before. Things called crepes, brownies, scones, and other sweets.
By the time they were done, it was already nightfall. Since it wasn’t safe to stay around at the streets after dark, he decided to check them into an inn.
The two of them went into the room and went to sleep, rather tired from eating all that food.
After all those distractions, he never did get around to asking those questions.