"The Soul Chanter..."
"Orestes."
Cassius spoke the name aloud.
The trees in the Valley of Bewilderment were tall and twisted, their canopy blotting out the sky as if forever shrouded beneath a dense mantle of shadow.
Deep within this dark forest lay an ancient fortress built of black stone—Soulweep Castle.
And the castle's master was a lich named Orestes.
Centuries ago, this place had not been called the Valley of Bewilderment, nor had there been any so-called Black Forest. There had only been a wizard's tower, and Orestes had once been a respected wizard of this land.
In a magical wasteland like the Northlands, wizards held exalted status, all the more so for an archmage of Orestes's extraordinary talent. People had constructed a towering castle for him, and neighboring nobles had offered thousands of slaves, enabling him to lead an extravagantly luxurious life that treated mortals like grass...
After sinking into such debauchery for nearly a century, Orestes finally made a discovery—he was about to die.
Under the rules of the world, even wizards were merely mortals.
Even with arcane, enigmatic power, death shadowed them constantly. Yet... it was not inevitable.
Thus, Orestes sought a path to immortality at any cost. From an ancient tomb, he unearthed a hidden ritual, struck a bargain with Myrkul, the Lord of Bones, and sacrificed all the thousands of slaves within his castle and territory.
Ultimately, Orestes performed the ritual to bind his soul within a phylactery, drank a transformative draught brewed from venom and sacrificial blood, and had his soul drawn into the phylactery while his corpse reanimated as a lich.
He was dead.
Or rather, he was immortal.
Existing in the world in a new form.
The once-flourishing garden turned into a grim, terrifying black forest; the once-luxurious castle decayed into the gloomy Soulweep Castle; and the once high-spirited wizard degraded into an undead lich.
Yet Orestes was not content with this. A lich's soul remained trapped within its phylactery—and he sought true immortality.
So, he began continuously inscribing magic circles, creating countless skeletons and undead, preparing to sacrifice the souls of the entire Principality of Carter to attain eternity.
This was the Northlands' hidden side quest from his past life—The Soul Chanter of the Valley of Bewilderment.
The questline was rather tedious. Players first had to accept a haunted basement quest from a household in Antonio City, track down the ghost's trail, follow its tracks into the Underdark, and discover the remnants of a mysterious sacrificial circle.
Then, they had to travel to the Great Northern Library, search through tens of thousands of books to find the origin of the circle, learn the true name of Orestes, "the Soul Chanter," and follow historical records to find someone who knew the truth.
Next, players had to scour taverns, administrative offices, the Adventurers' Guild, and various other locations step-by-step, eventually locating an old beggar who knew the history but had long since gone mad.
The old beggar gave the players endless grief, forcing them to complete a series of arduous, bizarre tasks, such as "retrieving fresh chimera dung," "extracting the filthiest tooth from a hill giant," and "snatching food from an ogre's mouth."
—In truth, this was testing the players' strength and trustworthiness.
The old beggar had endured far too much suffering and seen far too many people lose their lives to the taboo of the Valley of Bewilderment. He wanted to kill the lich, yet he did not want innocent lives sacrificed in vain.
Only when all the tasks were finished would the old beggar impart the precious clue, guiding the players toward an ancient tomb.
There, they had to search for clues inside the tomb, bypass layers of traps, endure relentless onslaughts from horrifying undead creatures, and uncover the lich's phylactery in the tomb's deepest recesses.
Only then could the players proceed to the final quest location—the Valley of Bewilderment—to thoroughly dismantle the lich's plot.
The Soul Chanter of the Valley of Bewilderment quest series required players to complete over a hundred difficult quest stages, spending months navigating the lengthy storyline and tracking down hundreds of clues and quest items.
In his past life, players affectionately dubbed this quest series "The Dog Devs' Pure Malice," "The King of Fetch Quests," and "The Hidden Quest Even a Dog Wouldn't Touch."
It was not until the Version 2.0 Clash of Kings era that players finally completed this side quest under the lead of a player possessing both perseverance and skill—that player was Singo.
And even Singo had to assemble fifty professional players, with their party averaging level eleven.
Only then did they barely manage to kill the lich, splitting the generous quest rewards and nearly obtaining a staff worthy of being called an artifact—a clear testament to how absurdly difficult and obnoxious the quest was.
Cassius, however, was different from those players.
He knew the storyline intimately, held absolute control over the surrounding territory, and possessed power sufficient to crush the lich effortlessly.
One could say he had every intention and full confidence of taking the lich for himself; his only hesitation was how to handle the creature.
"Orestes isn't some madman obsessed with the arcane. He's just a selfish coward terrified of death, whose only distinction is his peerless magical talent."
"Greedy and fearful—someone like that is the easiest to manipulate."
"Perhaps... I can make him useful to me."
Cassius narrowed his eyes slightly, firelight flickering within his pale golden pupils. But then, as if recalling something, he shook his head and chuckled with an amused sigh.
"Come to think of it, Anzeta truly is disaster-prone. For such a backwater region, it's positively teeming with 'talent.'"
"Dragons, devils, demons, shadows, giants, vampires..."
"And even a lich."
This was not just Cassius's personal thought; players in his previous life had often joked about it, and a phrase had even circulated on the forums: "Simple, honest folk in the Northlands; bustling talent in Anzeta."
Even in Version 4.0, high-level players traversing the Astral Plane would frequently unearth new secrets from the beginner region of Anzeta.
Yet that was understandable. The Great Anzetta Waste had seen the rule of dragons, giants, and elves, having once fostered glorious civilizations.
It had simply been utterly destroyed by endless wars. Its past grandeur had come crashing down, leaving the local Weave frail and battered, which turned it into a magical wasteland forsaken by Mystra—yet beneath its soil lay buried many relics of ancient civilizations.
The Empire currently possessed a specialized archaeological team featuring quite a few players who worked in related fields in the real world. On the forums, players playfully dubbed this crew the "Fantasy Tomb Raiders."
They excavated across the Great Anzetta Waste, hunting everywhere for lost secrets buried underground to bring more knowledge and treasures to the Cinder Empire.
Cassius turned his head. Through the Cataclysmic Dragon Eye and the All-Seeing Eye, his vision reached an ancient tomb hundreds of li away—the resting place of a former cleric of Myrkul, and the hiding spot of the lich's phylactery.
For mortals, searching for that ruin across the vast wilderness was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But Cassius was the Emperor of the Cinder Empire, wielding supreme authority across the land.
"Orestes..."
"Are you ready to welcome my arrival?"
Cassius grinned, revealing a savage smile. The lich that seemed like a living nightmare in mortal eyes was, to him, like a roast duck already at his beak—his only concern was keeping it from flying away.
Chapter 395