Free Web NovelChapter 6: First Move Was Genocide
The moment Rian arrived, the first one to greet him was a young maid.
One of her eyes was hidden beneath a white eyepatch, its thread running back around her head, disappearing beneath a cropped grey wolfcut.
She stood just outside the gigantic door with an almost unsettling elegance, and the instant her single crimson eye landed on him, she bowed, gathering the hem of her skirt.
"Great Master."
Her voice was almost like a whisper, and absurdly composed.
"I have successfully eliminated everyone bound by a demon contract. However, raising them as undead has not gone as planned. I’m afraid we simply lack the mana required."
Rian’s gaze flicked from her to the door at her back.
"Thalia, are all the undead you’ve made inside?"
She nodded.
"After the lord of the house fell, I gathered everyone into the grand chamber, dead and undead both. I’ve also instructed others to lay out the corpses in a single place."
She gestured towards the doors.
"Please have a look, Great Master."
"Great work as always."
Rian walked past her without sparing her so much as a glance.
The first thing Rian had done, right before leaving for the banquet, was create Thalia.
In the branches of Dark Art, there was an art which deals with souls.
Practiced by House Sennaroth, one of the five great houses of the Dark Empire.
Soul Art was the branch of Dark Magic that dealt with souls themselves, allowing its wielder to summon, bind, and house the spirits of the dead into a living person.
It was a rather complex Art, one that had taken Rian the longest to master compared to the others.
But once he’d grasped its fundamentals, it became simple enough to weave it together with other branches such as Necromancy.
And Thalia was the product of exactly that.
[Origin Art: Reincarnation]
It was a spell of his own creation, born from the union of Soul Art and Necromancy Art.
The principle behind it was almost laughably simple, once you stopped thinking like everyone else.
Why force a summoned soul into a living body, fighting against the will already inside there, when you could seat it inside an empty one instead?
A corpse had no soul left to resist.
So Rian gave the dead what they lacked, a will, a mind, a self, and bound that soul to him by its truest name.
The result was no mindless puppet like the other undeads.
Thalia could think, speak, plan, and obey not by her compulsion but by the loyalty woven into the very terms of her binding.
She is an undead servant who would never tire, never age, never falter, and never, not in a thousand years would dream of betraying him.
And the most magnificent part of Thalia was, unlike his other undead, who relied on a portion of mana shared from Rian himself, Thalia could draw her own from the surroundings, just as Rian did for himself.
Creak—
She pushed open the door for him.
Rian walked inside without a falter of worry on his face.
The place resembled an open cathedral.
A vast chandelier hung overhead, spilling cold light across the chamber.
A red carpet ran down its center and along both sides stood all thirty maids, butlers, and the guards, who were all undead.
Further in, the red carpet leads towards a heap of dead bodies of several men and women one atop another.
They were the people of House Morgrath Thalia had killed.
As Rian walked the length of the carpet, the undead on either side bowed their heads as he passed.
Thalia followed close behind, watching her great master with quiet awe, the master who had woken her so recently, calling her by her truest name and her will.
She still couldn’t quite believe it.
That anyone in House Orlok had found her grave at all, it was hidden away so carefully after all.
And yet here he was, wielding power enough to call back the greatest ancestor his bloodline had ever produced.
Thalia leth Orlok.
It was... simply too intriguing.
In his past life, there was little the legendary dark mage known as the Angel of Death hadn’t uncovered.
After he became the heir of the house, he’d stumbled upon records concerning Thalia, one of his own ancestor carrying the family’s deepest secret, and ones that had been deliberately hidden away.
Rian doubted even his own father knew they existed.
Thalia had been a great help to him during the war, and she had even played a part in helping him create his Origin Art.
So that after regression, Rian knew where she rested, and how to wake her, why waste time?
He would have her at his side from the very start.
"Is this everyone?"
Rian’s eyes moved across the corpses, each face frozen with its mouth wrenched open in agony.
But the one he was looking for wasn’t among them, the one whose sole existence had driven him to commit this massacre in the first place, the one who would bring ruin down on both empires if left alive.
Thalia responded looking at the corpses.
"Except for the youngest master of House Morgrath, we’ve killed them all."
"Did he run away?"
Thalia shook her head.
"We searched the entire estate. He was nowhere to be found."
Rian clicked his tongue.
"Troublesome."
The youngest of House Morgrath, Lucian Morgrath.
He too carried a demon’s contract, and if he wasn’t here, then that means that one Morgrath was still walking free in the world.
’Don’t tell me he’s already left for Caelistra.’
Rian’s mind raced back.
Now that he thought of it, in his past life, Lucian had arrived at the Academy ahead of every other heir from the Dark Empire.
’...Ah. Shit.’
Which meant he’d have to deal with that thing inside the Academy walls.
If that was true, then this was bad, genuinely, deeply bad.
Step—
"What are you going to do next, Great Master?"
To her unusually polite question, Rian went into thinking.
’Let me think...’
In his original plan, Rian had intended to wipe out the entire house, including Lucian, and then raise him as a servant through Reincarnation.
A Morgrath who carried a demon contract from birth would have made a valuable vessel, perhaps even a second Thalia.
But he had slipped through his fingers.
There wasn’t much left to do here.
The teleportation crystal had already been destroyed, and his undead crows had dealt with the hooded men setting it up too.
Rian almost felt a little sorry for them.
Those poor fools had died without the faintest idea of what hit them, each of their heads being torn apart by a flock of birds, of all things. If they had a hundred guesses for how they’d meet their end tonight, he doubted pigeons would have made the list.
Still, it was done.
He had stopped demon rampage, and saved hundreds of peoples including his sister.
A faint weary relief tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Turning around he gave Thalia her next task.
"Burn the palace down, but leave the lowest three chambers underground, and the laboratory untouched."
He glanced at the undead maids and servants lining either side of the chamber.
"...Understood," Thalia answered.
"Also Thalia. Lend me some of your mana."
"Ah..."
Thalia’s face brightened.
Without the slightest hesitation, she stepped forward and offered herself before him.
Rian placed a hand against her chest.
[Origin Art: Gluttony.]
He drew her mana into himself, refilling his drained Mana, though he left her half of what she had for her next task.
As capable as she was, Rian knew she’d replenish the rest of her Mana on her own soon enough.
’This should do.’
Once he was finished, he turned his attention to the chamber full of undead.
They had all served their purpose, and once everything here would be finished, he would ask Thalia to release them as a corpse.
Rian started back down the red carpet.
Behind him, Thalia watched his retreating figure, with a proud little smile on her lips, like a fangirl beholding her idol.
Then Rian vanished beneath his own shadow.
. . .
Silence fell over the chamber.
Among the piled corpses, only Thalia remained alone.
She had been given a second chance in life, and by her own blood, no less.
By a descendant born generations after her death.
She still found it all rather intriguing.
But that wasn’t what mattered to her.
From the moment she’d opened her eyes in this borrowed body and heard him call her name, only one thing had filled her mind.
Purpose.
He was the heir of House Orlok.
The same blood that once ran through her own veins, and he displayed a power she hadn’t seen in any of her bloodline since the day she died.
So she would serve him, and would see his will done.
That was her duty now, both as his servant, and as the ancestor of the house she had given everything to build.
"...Hah." A soft, fond breath left her.
"He really is something."
Her single crimson eye drifted over the ruin around her.
The rotten corpses, the disfigured flesh, the heatwrenching silence....
All of it the work of her great master, who hadn’t so much as set foot here in person.
"House Orlok will rise again," she murmured. "Higher than ever before. He’ll make sure of it."
And she would help him do it
Thalia raised a gloved hand toward the chamber, and snapped her finger.
[Curse Art: Hell Flame.]
Blue fire bloomed across the room in an instant, it was hot enough to melt steel.
It swallowed the corpses, the carpet, the furniture, and everything.
The whole estate would be ash before morning.
"Hehe."
She giggled to herself, watching the flames climb higher.
Then, with the easy grace of a maid finishing her chores, she turned and walked out.
. . .
Step—
"...Haah. It’s done."
Rian was back inside the washroom cubicle he’d locked himself in.
He flushed, just for show and stepped out only to be met by Lilly’s glare.
She was leaning against the wall just outside the door, with both her arms crossed.
"What took you so long?"
Rian visibly startled.
’What the hell?’
"Lilly? What are you doing here? Weren’t you with Mara and Juliana?"
Lilly folded her arms tighter and planted herself in front of him like a prosecutor about to deliver a verdict.
"I’m just going to be direct with you."
Rian blinked, not sure where this was going.
"...Sure? I guess?"
"Are you and Mara a thing now?"
"Huh? What absurd road did you take to reach that conclusion?"
He was bracing for nothing, it turned out this was just Lilly being Lilly.
"No, no. You tell me. What kind of magic did you pour into my dear Mara?"
"...The hell? Magic? Why would I do that?"
"Then explain to me why she’s suddenly head over heels for you."
"What rubbish? She is not. Dating would be the last thing on Mara’s mind."
Rian nodded, fully confident in this.
After all, it was Mara herself who’d told him so, in his past life.
She’d been popular among his arm forces back then, to collect a steady stream of admirers and marriage proposals.
And her standard response to every last one of them had been the same...
"If any of you think you’re marrying me, you’re welcome to try. Right after you beat me half to death."
"How can you say that with such confidence?"
Rian ignored her and kept walking.
"Aggh, fine!"
Lilly stamped her foot.
"Don’t tell me, then. I’ll just find out for myself once I join Caelistra Academy with the rest of you."
His foot froze mid-step on the stairs.
He turned around.
"...What did you just say?"
Lilly grinned, flashing an envelope out from somewhere and waving the letter inside it.
"I got one too. Just this morning."
Her grin widened. "It was supposed to be a surprise for you."
It was a surprise, all right. Just not the kind Rian pleased to see.
Rian stared at her.
Because in his past life, Lilly had never attended Caelistra Academy because she was dead.
’.....’
Was this his doing? Had his actions already shifted the future?
The thought sobered him at once.
If even something like this could change, then what would happen the more he interfered?
How many outcomes would turn unpredictable?
He shook his head sharply.
’No. Don’t overthink it.’
It was far too early to start spiraling over every little change.
His goal, and Jeanne’s, came first.
Everything else could be dealt with as it came.
"...Are you not happy?"
Lilly asked, blinking at his silence.
Rian slipped his usual face back on.
"Of course I am. You’ve lived up to the Orlok name, little sister."
Lilly rolled her eyes at that, and the two of them made their way back down the stairs.
.
.
[A/N: Shower some Power Stone if you like the Chapter. Thanks~]
