Chapter 46 King Malcolm Millen

  Isaac appeared next to the first of the undead abominations that he had seen. With an effort of blade work and hardened shadows, he pinned, cut open, and implanted platinum coins inside of the monster. He had just finished when Shamesh told him that Clark had informed him that Jane had seen some of them falling from well over cloud height.

  Isaac sighed. ‘Tell her to keep track of them and we will try to handle them after we deal with their boss. We need to capitalize on any weakness it has after she hit it with weaponized… everything.’ He sent back through their bond.

  Shamesh did just that and then the trio regrouped two miles out from the target in question.

  “Shamesh, once combat starts, cast Quicken on me.” Lenna told her husband’s retainer. “Isaac, I think it would be a good idea for us to go all out from the beginning.”

  Isaac nodded. “I agree.” He replied and they continued towards the target at a run. “I don’t like how it is still there after Catastrophe, well, Catastrophed it.”

  The three didn’t slow until they were within two hundred feet of their target. What they saw made them all a bit more wary of their opponent. Sitting calmly in the onyx and obsidian throne, was a skeleton draped in tattered black cloth. Platinum enchantment threads hung over open space in some places where the fabric was missing. There was black iron armor with even more platinum enchantments in a few strange places. Usually armor would exist to protect one’s organs, but this armor was almost more decorative than protective. There were pauldrons, bracers, grieves, and a crown. The black iron heavily laced with platinum looked almost gray at a distance, but once they reached one hundred feet, it was clear that the enchantments were just that unreasonably dense.

  Where the lich’s eyes were supposed to be, there were two indigo orbs and there was also a dim indigo glow that came from deep inside of its chest. At its left side was a shield and at its right was a staff, both made of the same black iron and insane levels of enchantments. There were no other undead to be seen as the black iron lich king regarded them.

  ‘Clark just informed me that every surviving undead is on its way here. Walking, hobbling, crawling, or even rolling, they are all trying to box us in. We won’t have to go searching for any of them.’ Shamesh informed Isaac. They were now on a timer, unless they wanted to fight an unknown number of undead monstrosities while trying to kill a lich who was kitted out to the hells and back.

  ‘No matter what happens, save enough mana to fly back to Jane while carrying a burden.’ Isaac ordered his retainer.

  ‘Understood.’ Shamesh sent back.

  “You are not who wiped out my army.” A raspy old man’s voice was projected from the lich in their direction. It was a statement, not a question. “Where are they?”

  “Tell you what, you tell me who you are, I’ll tell you who I am, and if by some miracle of all that is unholy you managed to beat me, I’ll point them out to you.” Isaac quipped as he strode towards the lich. Lenna was half a step behind and a full step to his right and Shamesh was a full step behind her and half a step to her left.

  “Fine then.” The old man lich agreed and slowly rose to his feet. “I am King Malcolm Millen, of the Millennium Kingdom. A kingdom that would have lasted as long as its names would suggest, if that overgrown fucking salamander had just did his dammed duty.”

  ‘Well, that was enlightening.’ Isaac sent Shamesh. They had a name, personality, motive, location of origin, and Gilgamesh could probably even give them a date. If Isaac had to guess, it would have been around the time of the last Dragon Surge. “I am Lord Isaac Wexler, Lord of all that is Dark, favored by the Black Shard of Mannen, blessed by Lua and Zei, and Patriarch Slayer to the V’Nova Drow Clan.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “I am Lady Lenna V’Nova, Lady of Hellfire, blessed daughter of Lua.” Lenna introduced herself immediately after Isaac finished. Her introduction was much shorter but she was also a lot less flamboyant than Isaac.

  “And I am Shamesh, retainer to the Lord of all that is Dark.” Shamesh introduced himself with a slight bow.

  Fallen King Malcolm eyed all three of them slowly, carefully, calculatingly. He did not scoff at Isaac’s claim of being the Lord of all that is Dark, nor did he neglect to take Shamesh into consideration for not having any real titles. Lenna was a mild threat, he knew that just from looking at her and then it was reinforced when she had said her name. The fact that she was walking side by side with a man who had slain one of her clan’s patriarchs meant that she was most likely an Oathbreaker or was somehow a V’Nova who wasn’t a paladin, possible but unlikely. The way that she survived the Oathbreaking probably had something to do with her ‘blessed daughter of Lua’ title.

  Shamesh was almost entirely an unknown factor. What King Malcolm did know was that he was a spell caster. He could feel that Shamesh was at least level twenty, though he felt more like level twenty one just based on perceived mana volume. Shamesh’s presence also brought some validity to Isaac’s title as the Lord of all that is Dark. Speaking of Isaac’s titles, ‘favored by the Black Shard of Mannen’ was not one that King Malcolm had ever expected to hear. Something so preposterous was just arrogance, surely, unless it wasn’t.

  King Malcolm knew that he was not going to have an easy time fighting the three in front of him. Shamesh would try to keep him in check, neglecting Lenna would get him killed or severely injured at least, and Isaac had shown up acting like losing to a lich who had survived whatever cataclysm had just occurred was an impossibility. Whether it was confidence or just arrogance, King Malcolm didn’t know, but the fact that he felt literally nothing from Isaac’s presence at all made him uneasy. Isaac had zero mana signature. He had a physical presence, sure, but magically speaking he was a ghost, a shadow at best, but that might’ve also just been because King Malcolm was actively looking at him.

  —

  “What’s happening?” Jane asked Clark from her position on the ground. Clark was standing and looking through his looking glass at the trio and their enemy.

  “It looks like they’re talking.” Clark said with obvious confusion.

  “Huh?” Jane questioned incredulously. “Who the hells talks to a lich?”

  “Well… you did see what the… the ‘tea guy’ looks like, right?” Clark asked his teacher.

  Jane groaned. “Let me know when it starts. I wanna watch.”

  “Are you sure that they are goi- never mind. It’s starting.” Clark cut himself off. Jane scrambled to get into a position where she could use her own looking glass to see what was going on. She almost toppled over from trying to move too fast while still nauseous but her excitement managed to keep her mind off of her stomach enough for her to begin watching what was bound to be quite the show.

  —

  “With that settled.” King Malcolm spoke. “I am willing to only engage with Gil’gam’esh, if you can get that salamander to come and face me directly. In my benevolence, I will even ignore whoever attacked me first.”

  “That is a very tempting offer.” Isaac told King Malcolm honestly. “I would love to see what he is capable of. In fact, just because you seem confident in winning against him, you have earned my utmost respect as a combatant. But you see, Lua herself arranged for us to fight you.”

  “Then it seems that we are at an impasse." King Malcolm stated and threw his arms wide.

  Isaac appeared behind him with his sword already formed and aimed right for the middle of his back. Shamesh cast Quicken on Lenna. Lenna launched herself forwards while her aura ignited, her sword was drawn, and she began her chant for her Armor of Ire. King Malcolm exploded outwards and a Reality Bubble appeared around him. Isaac was thrown out of the bubble before he could even react. The black iron kite shield picked itself off of the ground and King Malcolm equipped it while his staff floated into his other hand. He raised his staff high.

  There was no point in trying to break through the Reality Bubble in that instant as the King was already up to something. It was much safer for Isaac to wait and react to whatever the King was going to do. Waiting also gave Lenna the time she needed to finish her own spell and she didn’t want to waste too much of her sword’s magic by banging it against a Reality Bubble. It was not a magical construct which meant that it could not feasibly be sharp and hard enough to cut into the Reality Bubble, so she might as well have had a club in her hands as far as the Reality Bubble was concerned.

  King Malcolm slammed his staff down onto the onyx dais. It sounded like a gong across physical and magic space. The Reality Bubble popped on its own as the dais pulsed with unseen magic. A cloak of pure ice crystals fell over the King’s shoulders, green light of the wind wrapped around his boots, orange and green light of physical enhancement wrapped around his arms, armor made of prismatic Reality Shields wrapped around his entire form, his crown cast blue and indigo light across all of his bones under the armor, he lifted off of the ground, his shield was covered in a thick layer of ice that looked so cold that it could have frozen someone just for looking at it wrongly, and a Blade of Oblivion formed at the end of his staff. The shard of space itself was by far the most lethal of the magics wrapping the King and each of the other ones just made the weaponized shard of space itself all the more dangerous.

  It was now very obvious why King Malcolm thought that he would be able to fight Gilgamesh and possibly win. He had certainly prepared for it. What made it worse was that it was practically a guarantee that the King had more reactive and active spells and enchantments that were just waiting to be triggered or used. He had only finished his buff sequence in the third second of combat and Isaac was starting to feel like his own buffs were not going to be able to keep up.