Chapter 26: Pay Up for a Legend!

On this continent in which the nine major kingdoms bickered endlessly, the so-called "war between good and evil" was just a matter of sides.

The Lyon Empire, for instance, despised the undead, but that didn't mean that all liches like Ambrose were irredeemable monsters. And though Ambrose viewed the Lyon Empire as a soulless cult of zealots, that wasn't quite the case, either.

It was a matter of stance and perspective.

But hags were a different story entirely. They were pure evil, born twisted and cruel to the bone.

Hags looked like hideous, warped old women, with hearts just as ugly as their faces.

Even their means of reproduction were a crime against nature.

Hags couldn't bear children of their own. Instead, they would steal human babies, sometimes straight from their cradles or even from their mothers' wombs. Then, they would devour the infant and "give birth to" a human-looking girl.

The child would grow up appearing perfectly normal until her thirteenth birthday, at which point she would transform into a creature identical to her "mother."

Generally, most hags would return their "children" to the grieving couple from whom they had stolen them. For more than a decade, those children would live as normal girls in a normal family.

Then, one day, those girls would change. Sweetness would curdle into malice, love into cruelty and coldness. And no matter what their parents tried, nothing would bring their beloved children back. In the end, they would die by the hands of the children they raised.

Their final sights would be their children's faces transforming into the same grotesque masks as the monsters who had created them.

Such cruelty and torture would perforate those mortal souls as they perished, and the hags would exult in the depth of emotion and suffering that they had caused.

That was the nature of hags.

Upon maturing, hags would quickly become masters of dark magic and develop monstrous arrogance. Some even believed that they could one day stand above the gods themselves.

They loved nothing more than toying with mortals. A favorite game was to curse an unfortunate victim with a deadly poison, then appear before that victim's final moments to offer a deal: "Sacrifice the one you love most, and I'll cure you."

They relished the moment when their victims realized the truth of the matter and just what they had done to preserve their own lives.

That was what hags lived for.

In a sense, they were worse than the devils of hell. After all, devils at least kept their word.

Ambrose explained all this to Naomi in painstaking detail. By the end, her jaw had dropped so far it might as well have hit the sewer floor.

"By Sylvanas! Are there really such vile monsters in the world? They eat babies, replace them with monsters, and let the parents raise them? That's beyond evil!"

Just hearing the story made her skin crawl. And if her kin had run into something like that...

Ambrose continued, "Most hags are illusionists. Large-scale enchantments are child's play to them. They cast spells strong enough to deceive whole armies, rip steel apart with their claws, and, worst of all, they never work alone. Hags love turning people into puppets.

"Even a fully armed regiment could take heavy losses fighting one. And if you don't kill her in one go, she'll just keep coming back again and again until you're the one who dies.

"I've even heard of three hags working together to unleash a plague in the elven capital. Entire cities died. Thousands perished before a legendary high elf drove them off."

Naomi's face had gone pale. "Then my kin are in grave danger..."

"What should we do, Master Megaman?" she asked nervously.

Ambrose folded his arms with a grave expression. "It's tough. A hag's not something you deal with lightly. Only a legend can take one down with certainty. Hiring professionals would cost you—what, tens of thousands of gold coins at least? And that was before prices skyrocketed in Alkhemia. These days, you're looking at double that."

Naomi's panic only deepened. Tens of thousands of gold coins? She couldn't even afford a fraction of that. Did that mean her people were doomed?

"But..." Ambrose's tone suddenly shifted.

Naomi blinked. "But what?"

A sly grin crept across Ambrose's face. "But I happen to know a hag-slaying expert. With my connections, he'll do it for a mere ten thousand gold."

"Really?" Naomi frowned. Something about this sounded suspiciously like a scam.

"Of course!" Ambrose puffed out his chest. "If you don't believe me, I'll swear it by the Lord of the Dead himself! This expert can guarantee a kill. If he fails or the hag escapes, you won't have to pay a single coin."

Naomi groaned. "But I don't have that kind of money! I don't own anything worth—"

Ambrose waved her off. "That's fine! Once we rescue your people, I'm sure their belongings together will cover the cost. Druidic gear sells well across the nine kingdoms. Think of it as a service first, payment later kind of deal."

It still sounded off, but Naomi didn't have any better options.

If she could save her people, ten thousand gold would be worth it.

And if she couldn't... well, then it wouldn't matter.

She nodded quickly. "Alright, then let's go find this expert of yours! Where is he?"

Ambrose smiled. "No need to go anywhere. He's already here."

A pale blue glow began to seep from his body.

The young man's dark hair and flesh withered away, his skin receding into bone. A black robe settled over his frame; green soulfire blazed in his eye sockets. Floating above the ground, staff in hand, he was every bit the image of an undead sorcerer of legend.

Naomi's eyes widened. "A lich? You're a lich?!"

Of all the undead she'd imagined him to be—a vampire, perhaps—she hadn't expected that.

Liches were the mightiest of all spellcasters among the undead. No wonder his magic was terrifying.

"Wait," she said slowly, "the expert you mentioned... is you?"

Naomi suddenly felt as if she had been scammed.

"Exactly," Ambrose said confidently, his voice echoing with a magical resonance that reminded Naomi of wind blowing through a graveyard. "I'm very experienced with hags. Don't worry. You're in good hands."

Naomi, however, wasn't quite reassured. "But you said only a legend could defeat one!"

Ambrose twirled his staff lightly. The corpses of the mutant rats around them burst apart, bones knitting together with a series of sharp cracks. Within moments, dozens of skeletal creatures stood ready, awaiting their master's command.

The lich spread his arms wide and declared, with great dramatic flair, "Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am Megaman Tiga, legendary lich!"