Chapter 13: From Tough Guy to Married Man

Ambrose must've said a dozen times over that the living mercury wasn't worth the price. And express delivery to a location that required a teleportation circle for living beings built from scratch? The extra fees alone were criminal!

Sure, a tiny vial of the stuff could dissolve millions of gold coins in seconds, but it really wasn't worth it.

Even so, the Dullahan insisted. He slammed down the gold and even tipped extra.

Ambrose tried to find a reason, any excuse to refuse, but the man's determination was unshakable. With no way out, Ambrose had to trudge back to Alkhemia. There, under the astonished stare of the clerk, he paid an eye-watering sum for a genuine bottle of living mercury.

He checked it himself. It was the real deal.

Then he returned to his old castle, set up the teleportation circle, and spent half a day delivering the thing to the Dullahan's vault. In the end, he earned a profit of twenty thousand gold.

It wasn't because he was greedy! The prices had gone up, so obviously his commission had to scale accordingly, right? You could hardly expect a broker to make only three thousand in commissions regardless of whether a deal was worth ten thousand or a hundred thousand.

And teleportation circles weren't cheap either! The materials might not be worth much, but the craftsmanship was worth good gold!

A teleportation array handcrafted by a legendary spellcaster, with labor, logistics, and hazard pay included—two thousand in profit would've been a scam. Twenty thousand was a fair day's work. Ambrose could proudly pat his bony ribcage and swear that no lich charged more honestly than he did across the whole continent.

As he stared at the gleaming pile of gold coins, a deep, soul-stirring sense of fulfillment washed over him. For a lich, satisfying one's obsession was the only real form of happiness left in undeath.

Of course, counting gold while cursing out the beansprouts of the Court of the Silver Moon was even better.

"One day," Ambrose muttered, "those beansprout bastards will learn that price-gouging on potion ingredients will bring them divine retribution!"

With the Dullahan's order wrapped up, it was time to focus on Black Rose's commission.

Crafting a high-tier undead capable of breaching the capital walls of the Lyon Empire was no easy feat. Even sketching the initial design could take weeks of study. Still, since he had a few counterfeit bottles of living mercury lying around, he wasn't about to waste them. Perhaps he could experiment a little.

Now that he had funding, he could afford to get creative.

......

Far to the west, across the sea, in the crypt-dark catacombs of a distant land, the teleportation circle's glow slowly faded.

A towering knight reached out two gauntleted fingers and picked up the vial of living mercury.

Even headless, he was massive. If Ambrose stood before him, he'd barely reach the man's knees.

His armor was thick, black as night, etched with glowing runes that pulsed like the heartbeat of a storm. A cloak hung behind him, embroidered in exquisite silver thread with the image of a bone dragon soaring into the sky.

Husband to the famed bone dragon, he was the legendary Dullahan Gareth Arcanos.

The surname had only been appended after the marriage. Once, Gareth had been nothing more than a nameless human knight, betrayed and beheaded by his own comrades on the battlefield. A war hero turned scapegoat.

Over the century after his death, more than two hundred heads had been hung at the very spot where he'd been executed.

The traitorous companions who had backstabbed him had become war heroes and nobles after their triumphant return. Their lines had flourished into noble houses over the next century—until Gareth returned and personally ended every last descendant of theirs.

That massacre made him the Lyon Empire's most wanted man. An entire legion of the Empire's paladins were dispatched to bring him down.

Gareth cut a bloody path from Lyon to the Golden Kingdom of Sarcoma, over three thousand miles and five years of pursuit. A thousand paladins chased after him; a hundred lost their heads. Cornered and blood-soaked, Gareth ascended to the realm of legend under the dire pursuit, which ended up being one of the worst military humiliations in Lyon's history.

The Emperor of Lyon at the time nearly summoned the dynasty's ancestral dragon armaments, a weapon of power beyond legend, to destroy him.

And then... Gareth vanished. The great Dullahan who had once cleaved through armies simply disappeared from history, only to resurface years later as a married man.

Thankfully, very few knew of this fact. Even among the Elegiac Society, none realized that "Dullahan's Crown" was that same unstoppable juggernaut who once forced the Emperor of Lyon to personally march into battle, sacred relic in hand. The Empire would die of shame if they ever found out.

And now, that same hero who once slew thousands stood meekly in his own home, tiptoeing across the floor, clutching a vial of living mercury like a guilty altar boy.

He tapped three times on a certain section of a wall. Faint runes flickered. His chest emitted a rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk as the wall split open, revealing a shimmering portal.

This was a threefold lock featuring a password, mana signature, and sound pattern. If even one was off, the wall wouldn't open to a secret chamber—it'd open to a roomful of love letters instead.

In case of discovery, the letters would serve as evidence of romantic inclinations, hopefully sparing him from his wife's wrath.

Gareth had truly evolved from a ruthless warlord to a cunning husband. The Emperor of Lyon would weep if only he knew.

Fully focused, Gareth stepped through the portal and emerged into... another room filled with love letters.

Naturally, he had prepared two such rooms.

Even if his wife discovered the first hidden room, she'd still need to find the second secret door before reaching his real treasure vault.

After a maze of twists and turns, he finally entered the true vault, where a mountain of gold gleamed like sunlight.

Ambrose's whole day of effort in Alkhemia for twenty thousand gold was mere pocket change to Gareth.

He uncorked the bottle and set it before the golden mountain.

Then he raised one armored hand.

Dark power surged from his body, staining the gold in waves of shadow. His chest thrummed in a deep metallic boom as he lifted the entire hundred-ton heap of gold with one hand.

Coins burst into the air, whirling into a glittering storm.

Then the coins began to fall, pouring neatly into the little vial with satisfying clinks and clanks.

Each one vanished upon contact, swallowed by the living mercury as if it never existed. A steady golden stream flowed into the glass bottle, until the vast hoard was simply gone.

All that remained in the silent vault was the tiny, glimmering vial. The gold was safely stored in an undetectable alchemical state. Even treasure-sensing magic couldn't find it.

Gareth corked the vial carefully and sighed in satisfaction. "Worth every coin. Tiga's an honest man. I'll definitely buy from him again next time."

He turned to leave—only to freeze. A translucent figure hovered before him, a breathtakingly beautiful spirit with horns curling from her temples.

She was a dragon soul.

Her arms were folded, her tone sharp as frost. "Oh? And just who were you planning to do business with again?"

Clink! The glass vial slipped from Gareth's hand, splattering living mercury all over the floor.

"D-Darling! I... I didn't see you there..." he stammered, utterly defeated. All those safeguards, all those traps, and she had still caught him red-handed.

The beauty coolly opened a necromancer's grimoire, flipped to the last page, and wrote out a single line.

[Pale Little Skeleton: Sister Rose, thanks for the tip. I'll invite you for tea at the Dragon Graveyard next time.]

[Black Rose: You're welcome. Consider it repayment for the two bone dragons you gave me last time.]

[Pale Little Skeleton: Dullahan's Crown is unlikely to respond at any time within the next few years. Don't be concerned, everyone.]

[Megaman Tiga: ???]