“Boom—!”
The deafening roar of bursting air resounded.
Scorching flames poured forth from the man’s palm, turning the once-gloomy burial chamber into a surging sea of fire and illuminating everything within in a brilliant, dazzling blaze.
The firelight shone vividly across the man’s face; the lich could even discern a mocking smile on those handsome features.
The air warped; sparks burst and scattered.
Tongues of flame danced with wild abandon.
“Awoo—!”
“No, no—!”
“Human! How dare you—!”
The burial chamber erupted into utter clamor.
Those undead horrors—monstrosities terrifying to ordinary folk—wailed, shrieked, and snarled, scattering in all directions in hopes of escaping the fiery inferno.
Yet no matter how they struggled, they could not evade the rampant tongues of flame, relentlessly devoured by the blaze.
The conflagration lasted three minutes.
Over a hundred undead were completely annihilated. Only lingering clusters of embers continued to burn on the chamber floor, still creeping outward.
Snap!
The man snapped his fingers, and the fire instantly died out.
In just a few minutes, the once-bustling burial chamber had become completely deserted.
Only blackened scorch marks scarred the walls and coffins. The floor was coated in a thin layer of ash, and pale smoke from dissipating necromantic energy drifted everywhere.
“To think there were so many undead.”
“I wonder how much ‘material’ was consumed over all these years?”
The man murmured softly. He raised a hand, and a gentle breeze swept through, scattering the ash to reveal a clear path before him.
He continued deeper into the burial chamber.
Behind him, a tongue of fire slithered like a living creature, slipping into a crevice in the chamber wall to obliterate a pale skull hidden within a secret compartment—a vile magic artifact used to transform human remains into undead.
This “man-eating chamber,” which had claimed countless victims over the centuries, finally met its absolute end at this very moment.
Meanwhile, within Soulweep Castle, the ghostfire flickering in the lich’s eye sockets wavered.
“A sorcerer...”
Beside him, the bone quill continued to write furiously.
“Flame control of this caliber... it is highly likely he is a legendary sorcerer. Bizarre. How could such a human appear in a magical wasteland like Anzeta?”
“The situation is growing worse. Perhaps I truly should enter slumber as soon as possible and hide away for a few centuries—after dealing with this intruder.”
The ghostfire in Orestes’s eye sockets flared as a rotting mist seeped from his frame.
Caressing his cranium with a withered hand, he said in an icy tone, “So what if he is a legendary sorcerer?”
“Nothing more than a mortal.”
“They still cannot escape the fate of death, nor flee their final end—such is the wretchedness of mortal beings, forever unable to compare to an immortal existence like me.”
“You will be my final prey before I sleep.”
The lich stared intently at the man in the scrying projection with hollow eyes as he spoke.
Orestes’s confidence was not unfounded. He had long anticipated that a spellcaster might break in, and had made every preparation in the tomb a century in advance.
Even against a legendary spellcaster, the lich was confident he could inflict devastating losses.
The heavy stone doors opened slowly.
Ahead lay a dark, endless corridor, stretching out like a man-devouring maw, with the howl of wind echoing from it from time to time.
“The Death Corridor.”
Cassius gazed down the corridor, feeling a faint wave of nostalgia.
In his past life, this place had been known as the “Death Corridor,” the most sickening stage in this entire dungeon. Countless traps and necromantic circles were arranged within it, interlocked with ingenious precision.
Even the professional raiding team led by Singo had been wiped out several times before finally clearing this corridor to reach the next chamber.
“Quite nostalgic, really.”
Without hesitation, Cassius strode right in.
Dozens of li away in Soulweep Castle, a certain lich watched everything unfold, waiting for the intruder to be torn to shreds.
Click!
Boom!
Bang! Bang!
Whoosh!
A flurry of clamorous sounds erupted.
Over a hundred mechanisms and traps within the Death Corridor were triggered in succession.
Arrows coated in bone-corroding venom flew through the air; steel spikes capable of impaling flesh jutted from the walls; miasma that caused skin to rot festered all around; pools of acid capable of dissolving a person to bare bone opened on the floor...
Yet this was only the beginning.
Spells were the corridor’s true lethality.
Death circles, Symbols of Fear, and soul-draining formations inscribed across the ceiling and walls could snuff out a passerby’s life in an instant.
Yet Cassius strolled forward with unhurried ease, like someone taking a leisurely walk through a courtyard, unaffected in the slightest.
Arrows, steel spikes, and even venom were all halted by an invisible barrier before they could touch his body, unable to harm him in the least.
The death circles on the walls suddenly flared to life, and an endless death mist surged forth. The ghosts imprisoned within wailed, seeking to reap the intruder’s life.
Yet with a casual wave of Cassius’s hand, the magic circle was erased.
An animate dead spell on the ceiling awakened hundreds of skeletons and corpses within the corridor into undead skeletons and zombies.
Growling, they lunged toward Cassius, only to be reduced to ash once more by flames.
“So noisy.”
“Why does this lich love mob spam so much? He should have gone and designed Dark Souls 12 back in my old world.”
Boom!
Cassius stomped his foot. Every mechanism, trap, and magic circle around him instantly dimmed, then shattered into pieces.
The entire Death Corridor fell silent; all clamor came to an abrupt halt.
The Death Corridor—once called the “most sickening stage in history” by players, a gauntlet unbreached for hundreds of years—was finally destroyed once and for all.
What should have tormented players for days on end, leaving dozens of top-tier professional players frantic and suffering countless casualties, had been breezed through by this “cheater” Cassius without breaking a sweat.
Cassius continued striding forward.
Built along underground caverns, the Death Corridor stretched for several kilometers.
Stone statues depicting men, women, and children at various stages of death and decay lined the walls of the inner hall. Flanking the corridor were dozens of burial chambers where the dead were entombed, from which undead would relentlessly pour—yet none of these were his goal.
His destination was the resting place of Myrkul’s Doom Elder at the deepest part of the ancient tomb—the Tomb of the End.
“H-How... How is this possible?”
“How could he make it look so effortless?”
Inside Soulweep Castle, the lich’s voice was no longer detached and aloof as before. Instead, it had grown anxious, verging on frantic.
Liches were indifferent to the affairs of the living—unless their own existence was threatened.
Small wonder Orestes lost his composure: having cleared the Death Corridor, that mysterious and dangerous man was now very close to his phylactery.
A phylactery was the treasure Orestes prized above all else, the ultimate secret of a lich’s immortality.
“No, no.”
“He won’t find my phylactery.”
“I have set numerous arrangements in the next chamber. Even if he truly is a legendary sorcerer, he won’t emerge unscathed from those spells.”
“Even if he withstands every spell... he still won’t find my phylactery. Besides... I have one final, flawless measure where the phylactery is hidden.”
“These short-lived mortals, their lives as fragile as ants—how could they ever compare to the centuries of preparation I have made as an immortal?”
Chapter 397