Chapter 125: 069. Ancient Ruin -2 (Part One)
Tina stared at the skeleton and asked first.
“Are you… a living soul?”
The skeleton tilted its head this way and that at her question. Eventually, it shook its head to say no.
“…What is the substance that forms the basis of you?”
The skeleton used its bony finger to scribble on the ground.
[Divinity.]
That sounded about right.
A normal undead was usually a summoned creature and most of the time, its physical body consisted of demonic energy. That was why Necromancers preferred to utilise the existing physical body to preserve their demonic energy reserve rather than summon a fully-realised undead from the get-go.
However, this story only applied to the ‘physical body’, of course.
“What about the soul?”
The skeleton shook its head and scribbled on the ground with its finger once more.
[We are newly created existences.]
“Meaning, you don’t have a soul? How can you have ego in that case?”
[We are simply ‘will’. Will, which possesses divinity. We merely follow our master.]
The skeleton’s glowing eyes locked on Tina.
[Divinity, Mana, demonic energy, all have ‘will’.]
Tina intently stared at the letters the skeleton had scribbled on the ground. The undead before her eyes was a combination of the summoner’s powers and the divinity’s will responding to his calling.
She sucked in her breath.
There were too many points here that she couldn’t understand with her limited pool of magic knowledge.
Not only was Allen capable of performing Necromancy with divinity, he could also create skeletons possessing ego that didn’t come equipped with souls. In addition, even though she had heard about Priests being able to turn regular water into holy water, never before did she hear about instances of someone creating holy water out of thin air.
It was a method completely in opposition to the established way of commanding the undead which contained human souls dragged out from the depths of the netherworld. And then, he could also create holy water out of nothing that no other Saints in history managed to pull off.
In just about every facet she could think of, he was just too disparate from everyone else. It was as if his powers were not from this world.
‘Which can only mean…’
He was basically utilising the power of the gods, ‘creation’, at will.
When her thoughts reached this far, her reverence of Allen suddenly swelled up even more.
She was right! He was definitely no mere human being. There was simply no way that a normal human could perform acts of miracles like those!
“In that case, could it…”
Tina was about to start asking another question, but then…
“Excuse me, Dark Elf? Are you asleep?”
The voice belonging to Kasal, the mercenary group’s leader, came from beyond the tent’s flap. Tina stood up from the spot while feeling a little disappointed about the interruption.
She opened the flap, stared at Kasal, and asked him directly. “How can I help you?”
The mercenary leader had this troubled expression as he looked back at Tina. “Well, uh, what should I say here… Although I’m not sure a slave can resolve this, but uh…”
Tina frowned a little at that word, ‘slave’. But Kasal simply ignored her reaction and carried on.
“You see, that idiot Hans is getting threatened by your master at the moment. I don’t really care whether he dies or not, but he’s still our employer for this trip, which means that if he’s dead, we won’t get paid later. I wondered if you can somehow persuade your master and have him calm down. Think of it as you doing a good deed of saving a person’s life.”
Tina’s head tilted a little after listening to Kasal’s request.
**
(TL: In 1st person POV.)
“Fuu-woo… Wow! How long has it been since I shovelled like this?”
Indeed, it had been a while since I held a shovel to dig a hole. A skeleton was helping me out at the moment.
While pretending to wipe my sweat away from my brows, I looked behind me.
“Woo-wuhph?!”
Mister Alchemist Hans, currently buck-naked and tied up with a gag in his mouth, was shivering away pathetically on the sand.
I grinned brightly and cheerily waved at him.
My skeletons walked over and dragged his naked body over to the freshly-dug pit, and nicely laid him down in there.
Hans struggled mightily to free himself, but the only thing he got out of all that struggling was the loosely tied gag coming off his mouth.
“P-please don’t kill me, good sir. All I heard or seen today, I won’t tell a soul!”
You don’t have to worry so much, though. I’m not actually planning to kill you. I just want to scare you a little, that’s all.
I suppressed my inner voice wanting to jump out of my mouth and slowly walked over to him with my shovel in hand. After squatting near the pit, I slung the shovel on my shoulder and lightly wiggled my legs around.
I tried my best to imitate some third-rate hoodlum from a gangster movie, then addressed the Alchemist in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Oh, and where’s the guarantee that you’ll keep your mouth shut forever?”
“I swear! I-I’m even willing to swear on my soul…”
“Heh, in that case you can just die today and become an undead.” I clapped my hands and issued an order. “Our guest wants a relaxing eternal slumber, gents. Shall we accommodate him?”
The skeletons began carrying back the dug-up soil to the pit.
“N-no! That’s definitely not true! Please spare me, sir! I truly will never tell anyone!”
“Buuuut, didn’t you suddenly tell me that you were willing to teach me your family’s secret alchemy knowledge, which is passed down only to your blood descendants? How can I believe the words of a fool like that?”
Hans quickly responded as his complexion became ashen white. “T-that was the only way I could keep my life! B-besides, didn’t I also present you with an even better item? It isn’t some trivial toy, but a dragon’s scale! An actual dragon scale, sir!”
After listening to him desperately plead his case like that, I took out that onyx-coloured scale in question. At a casual glance, it looked like a piece of really hard black rock.
“T-that scale came from the back shell of a dragon, sir. That little piece alone will fetch an enormous price! Didn’t I say that I know where we can find a treasure trove filled with such items?”
“Oh? And where is this place, then?”
“…”
“Bury him.”
“I-it’s northwest from here, sir!”
Just as the skeletons got ready to completely bury him, Hans desperately cried out.
As I thought, he had loose lips, alright.
My plan initially was to scare the bejesus out of him, but now… I began to seriously entertain the idea of really burying his sorry ass out here in the middle of this vast desert. The possibility of this guy causing me a lot of headaches down the line if I let him off the hook was becoming a bit of concern.
“Uhm, excuse me…?”
Tina and Damon walked up to me.
While the Dark Elf girl alternated her gaze between me and Hans, the former Necromancer walked up to me and whispered in my ear, “The location this man is talking about could be an ancient Aslan tomb, my lord. The odds of it being one are rather good. And if it’s that kind of a location, then it wouldn’t be so surprising to find a dragon’s scale.”
My curiosity perked up from what he said.
A lair where a dragon lived? Could it be a tomb of a previous king or something in reality?
I stared at Damon and asked. “What kind of a place is that?”
“It’s as the title implies, my lord.” He pulled out a book from Hans’s wagon and presented it towards me. “This is a written record of Aslan’s ancient history. It speaks of the palaces of the ancient kings and also about the tombs where those kings were buried after their passing as well. Unfortunately, their precise locations aren’t disclosed. The reason being that there were far too many grave robbers back then.”
Tina and her good hearing must’ve finished analysing the overall mood by now because she quickly butted into our conversation in the next moment. “Not even the successive generations of the kings know about the locations of the ancient Aslan royal tombs, my lord. The records are just too ancient, and most of them are buried underneath the desert sand.”
Damon continued flipping through the book before displaying a certain page before me. It was a drawing of a man sitting on a throne, accompanied by a small dragon next to him.
“There is an old tale of a dragon that is supposedly still protecting its master’s tomb. I suspect that the scale could have come from that dragon, my lord.”
“Huh, so Aslan even reared dragons?”
Tina replied this time. “Back in the ancient times, of course.”
Damon quickly added something else, “Also, if it really is an ancient palace, then it could potentially provide a safe shelter for us to live.”
They wanted to use such a place as their shelter?
I asked Damon for some clarification. “Isn’t a dragon a really powerful creature? I mean, in fantasy novels, they can use all sorts of magic and speak human languages, and can even polymorph into human-like figures too, you know?”
Damon seemed taken aback by that.
“What? Am I wrong?”
“Well, they are known for casting magic, yes, but such instances are extremely rare, my lord. In fact, the majority of them use their Breath, which is far more powerful than any existing magic, and that makes the dragons such dangerous existences to deal with.”
“Mm…”
“However, Aslan’s ancient tomb… Such a place should be safe as a dwelling for us. All sorts of security precautions are installed there to protect the contents within, after all.”
The reason why Tina and Damon were accompanying me in the first place was to find a safe location for the slaves left behind in the temple to stay. And for that purpose, an ancient Aslan tomb would apparently be a pretty good fit.
Was it because I showed some semblance of indecision? Hans shouted out as if this was his last chance at survival, “There are definitely lots of treasures in there. Lots and lots of them!”
I wasn’t tempted whatsoever by the treasures, my man.
This body of mine belonged to an Imperial Prince of the Theocratic Empire, so why would I have issues with not enough wealth in the first place?
I responded back to him. “That place has a dragon living in it, right? Sure, it might be a little different from the dragons that I’m familiar with, but still, I can’t help but get this feeling that it’s going to be a lot of hassle.”
We were talking about a dragon’s nest here. Rashly stepping foot in a place like that would be very dangerous for our health.
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