Chapter 7: The Noble Lord? Who? (2)

Deep within a darkened forest, dozens of torch-bearing pursuers searched every inch of the mountain.

“He’s this way!”

“We found his trail!”

“Don’t let him get away! Whoever captures that demon will be blessed by Alium!”

Far off on the opposite ridge, two young men were sprinting down a winding path.

“Ugh...! Hah...!”

“Master, run faster!” Varos urged, his voice edged with panic.

“Damn it! If I’d known, I would’ve learned how to summon a death steed first!”

Having avoided exercise for most of his life, just a bit of running left Karnak gasping for air. If he could summon an undead steed to carry him, this would have been a breeze, but he hadn’t bothered to learn, thinking it wasn’t necessary.

I didn’t think I’d be running for my life like this...

But there was no choice. Stopping now would mean a swift trip to the pyre. Gritting his teeth, Karnak pushed himself to keep moving.

How did they find out? I made sure to erase every trace of it. I was sure of it!

When he had previously taken care of his father, his stepmother, and his brothers, everything had gone without a hitch. His necromancy had reached an impressive level, and not a soul had guessed that the nightmare engulfing the Zestrad estate was his doing.

I thought all that was left was to seize the estate and enjoy a leisurely life...

But then, out of nowhere, the priests of Alium had appeared, labeling him a necromancer. They hadn’t even given him time to protest.

They were so certain!

Was it because Karnak’s pace was too slow? Suddenly, a group of pursuers closed in from the other side, blocking their escape. They were heavily armored, well-trained warriors, the elite soldiers brought by the priests. Drawing their swords, the soldiers shouted.

“There he is, that demon!”

“You think you can keep running?”

“Face your sins!”

Varos turned to Karnak, his face pale. “Yo-young master!”

“Hmph!” Karnak sneered, spreading his arms wide. His billowing sleeves whipped around as he began to chant. “Perhaps the priests of Alium could deter me, but not a few measly soldiers!”

Dark energy radiated from his body, pooling and slithering like shadows over the forest floor, filling the air with a sinister whisper that floated through the night.

“Come forth, restless souls... Obliterate the fates of the living in the abyssal light...”

The darkness soon twisted and solidified, taking the form of wraiths—ethereal beings draped in shadows, scythes of spectral light gleaming as they glided forward to reap the soldiers’ lives. The soldiers’ faces went pale.

“It’s necromancy!”

“He’s summoning wraiths!”

“Everyone, use your protection charms!”

The soldiers scrambled, hastily pulling something from their tunics—a bronze medallion engraved with a set of scales, a protective charm of Alium, the moon goddess, meant to ward off sinister forces. As the soldiers raised their charms in unison, a shrill, bone-chilling sound filled the air.

Screeeech!

The wraiths glided through the air.

Bang! Bang, bang!

The slightest contact with the wraiths’ energy caused the protective charms to shatter into pieces. The broken shards scattered across the ground.

“What... what is this?”

“The goddess’s protection is ineffective?”

The wraiths descended upon the soldiers. They swung their swords and raised their shields, but it proved useless.The spectral forms passed through them like phantoms, harvesting their lives.

“Ahhh!”

“No! Ahhh!”

In mere seconds, over ten warriors lay sprawled on the ground, coughing up blood.

Karnak smirked coldly, surveying the aftermath. “Good. Now we have some reinforcements.”

With an eerie motion of his fingers, he began to chant.

“Rise, ye who are fallen. Walk upon this earth once more.”

The bodies on the ground began to twitch, rolling their eyes back as they staggered to their feet. Blood trickled from their eyes, noses, and mouths. The newly raised zombies turned around and lumbered back toward the path from which they had come.

“Grrah...”

“Graaaah...”

Watching the retreating zombie soldiers, Varos asked, “Are we safe now, young master?”

Karnak shook his head. “No. They’re just hastily raised puppets, too weak to make much difference.”

Zombies of this level would only have about a tenth of their former strength. It was barely enough to buy them some time. They needed to flee the area quickly. Karnak and Varos resumed their sprint along the mountain path.

Panting, Karnak cursed bitterly as he ran. “I finally got my revenge! Finally took control of the family!”

This was all because of the accursed author of that necromancy book.

“That lying bastard!

No one will notice

? The priests caught on right away!”

Even amidst their frantic escape, Varos couldn’t resist a jab. “He did say no

ordinary

person would notice. Priests aren’t ordinary, after all.”

“He should have specified! It wasn’t clear how it was written!”

These were the exact wordings of the text:

No ordinary person will catch a glimpse of the necromancy. Neither a knight with aura nor a wizard with mana will know.

“See? It says nothing about priests!” Varos shouted.

“Then he should have mentioned it! It’s common sense!”

“If he had common sense, he wouldn’t have studied necromancy in the first place, right?”

Even with their lives at stake, Varos’s instinct to tease was relentless. Karnak shouted in exasperation, “Just shut up and run!”

***

Recalling that chaotic time, Karnak and Varos exchanged nostalgic looks.

“Those were hard times.”

“We thought we’d succeeded, only to spend days and nights being hunted down.”

“That was when the legend of Karnak, the Monarch of Death, began.”

“Oh, hardly. The real legend came much later. Back then, you were just a pathetic third-rate necromancer running around like a cockroach...”

“Varos, you ran with me back then, remember? Don’t act like it was only me!”

Anyway, Karnak of that time had been overly confident in his necromancy. He believed that if he moved in secret, he could take whatever he wanted without anyone noticing. It wasn’t entirely his fault. Given his knowledge back then, that assumption was understandable.

Looking at himself in the mirror, Karnak spoke in a dry tone, as though addressing a stranger. “I can see why he’d be under such a delusion.”

Referring to his past self as if he were someone else, he shrugged.

“He probably thought he could take down someone like Randolph if he used necromancy in secret. And in terms of power, he wasn’t wrong.”

Pretending to engage in a normal battle while secretly cursing his opponent into defeat—this was the typical tactic of most necromancers when fighting publicly. This way, to the average person, it would just look like a typical fight.

“But if I use it that way, it’s just repeating my past mistakes.” Karnak scowled.

While ordinary people might be deceived, priests could sense even a trace of necromantic energy. Those who wielded divine power were acutely attuned to such dark forces. No matter how stealthily one practiced necromancy, priests would inevitably track it down to its source.

That was what had happened to Karnak in his previous life. Priests of Alium became suspicious of the curse that had plagued the Zestrad family. In their investigations, they eventually discovered Karnak’s true nature. He had been hunted from all directions and eventually piled up a reputation as a villain before ultimately abandoning his humanity altogether.

“I went through all the trouble of turning back time just to live like a normal person. I can’t go back to that.”

To use necromancy without being discovered, one would have to erase all traces obsessively, to a nearly paranoid degree. Even the faintest hint of dark magic would bring the priests of the seven goddesses chasing after him like bloodhounds.

“So, basically, you just can’t use necromancy in front of any priests?”

“Exactly.”

“But... this is a trial by combat, right?”

“Right.”

“Which means the priests will be overlooking the duel?”

“Right.”

“Then what on earth was your younger self thinking when he accepted this?”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t know all this at that time.”

“Ugh...”

Varos groaned, deep in thought. Then, suddenly, his eyes lit up.

“Could we delay the duel for, say, six months? That would give me time to train and maybe stand a chance.”

Karnak’s answer came immediately. “I can’t delay it.”

The speed of his response suggested he’d already considered that option.

“Well, what if something happened to delay it? Say, if you, young master, suffered an injury...”

Varos’s gaze drifted to Karnak’s legs with a calculating gleam.

“If we shattered a leg bone, it’d take about half a year to heal. Or maybe we could fake a serious illness that would need a long recovery...”

Karnak chuckled dryly. “This duel is under the priests’ oversight. You think they’ll let that slide?”

The church’s priests had divine healing powers granted by the goddess.

“If I so much as whimpered about being sick, they’d probably heal me on the spot.”

“Oh, right, healing magic. Guess I’ve forgotten about such privileges for the living after living as a death knight for so long.”

Not that clerical healing was a catch-all solution. The stronger a priest’s healing magic, the costlier it became—something only the truly wealthy could afford. Thus, the general public still relied on medical treatments.

“And if we’re a wealthy house with a copper mine, no one’s going to buy that we had to delay the duel because we couldn’t pay for healing magic.”

Plus, even divine magic couldn’t regenerate lost limbs. If a limb was completely severed, like with Paralt, no amount of magic could bring it back.

“Not that cutting off a leg just to buy time for the duel would make any sense.”

Varos’s face lit up with a new idea. “Then what if we cut off Randolph’s leg? Before the duel.”

Maiming Karnak would be a waste. But Randolph? That leg wasn’t nearly as precious.

“We just need to postpone the trial, don’t we? It might actually work.”

Karnak shot his servant a pitying look.

“And who’s going to do that? You said yourself you’re no match for him.”

“Huh? Well, you could curse him or something, right? Or just kill him outright. I mean, you didn’t hesitate to kill your parents and brothers before...”

“Which led to us running for our lives, remember?”

“Ah, right, we’d still be caught.”

It was a classic case of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Karnak of this time might have thought he was being clever by running off to master necromancy. But from his perspective now, it was about the stupidest plan imaginable.

“Ugh. If only we were in a regular territorial war. I could at least try to use necromancy covertly to gain an advantage... Well, no, but I’d be found out eventually, anyway.”

“What about smearing poison on your blade?”

“Priests can just cleanse poisons, Varos.”

“Oh, yeah, so poison’s out. And if they catch us, we’d lose by default, too, right?”

No matter how he looked at it, there seemed to be only one option left.

“Should I just run away?”

Karnak couldn't back down from the trial by combat he’d initiated in the name of Alium. Retreating now would mean facing execution for mocking the goddess herself. The only option, then, was to gather his valuables and wealth and flee, shedding his identity to live as an anonymous adventurer.

“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually,” Varos mused. “With your knowledge of future events, you could live well enough—and even have time to build your strength back up.”

“But the current situation is too good to give up on,” Karnak replied with a hint of longing.

Those loathsome family members had been conveniently dealt with, he now ruled a wealthy estate, and, unlike in his previous life, he had the admiration of his people. It was everything he had once desired.

“I’d rather not throw all of this away...”

“It’s better than dying, isn’t it? The only possible solution was for me to step in as your champion, but that’s out of the question.”

“Well, that’s true, but...”

Watching Karnak wrestle with his lingering attachment to the estate, Varos shrugged. “I’ll do whatever you decide, Master.”

He stood, turning toward the door. “I’d better be off. I have some chores the old steward assigned me. Just let me know once you’ve made up your mind.”

Karnak watched Varos leave, letting out a long, frustrated sigh.

“Ugh...what to do...”

***

The following morning, Karnak summoned Varos once more.

“What is it this time? I was in the middle of doing laundry,” Varos grumbled, hastily drying his damp hands.

Karnak, with a dark expression and weary eyes, replied, “I’ve made my decision.”

“Oh! Should I start packing? I’ve already scoped out where to stash the estate funds and the valuables.”

“Who said anything about running away in the dead of night?”

“What other choice do we have?”

“I came up with a way,” he declared. “It’s risky, but it might work.”