I became a legion lich

155 A new threat

“Captain of the 4th unit, can you hear me?” The 5rd unit captain spoke in the communiqué, snapping him out of his reverie.

“I hear you loud and clear. Is your entire unit okay?” The 4th asked back.

“None of ours made it through and luckily we weren’t discovered, but I didn’t contact you about that. The teams that managed to get in are probably dead at the moment, so it’s impossible to continue the mission the way we are.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t understand what you’re getting at. Are you suggesting giving up the mission?” The 4th asked with dread. Elder Louis was anxious to collect this corpse, so the captain didn’t have the heart to tell him that not only did they fail the mission, but they also lost 3 entire teams without seeing the enemy leader’s face.

“What? No. I’m suggesting calling for backup. The large-scale spell that redirected teleportation was disabled according to the dark elder, but we can still use our own crystals to signal the portal. The dark elder will still be irritated by we lost three teams, but it’s still better than coming back empty-handed.”

“That might work. The total strength the dark elder possesses is more than enough to decimate a single fortress, no matter how many lesser undead they have. Even the undead spirit would be killed easily.” The 4th agreed with the idea, but the 5rd threw a bucket of cold water.

“The dark elder would never send all of his strength into a single experiment, no matter how rare the specimen is. However, we should still receive enough reinforcements to finish clearing the undead and recovering their leader’s remains.” 3rd said with a sigh, feeling tired just thinking about all the insults he would have to hear.

“Haah...let’s meet for now.” The 3rd ended communication and ordered his team to move. The entire unit moved slowly, taking care not to get too close to the fortress or the abominations slaughtering the fleeing army.

Their numbers had been heavily reduced now and only a tenth of their soldiers were left. The soldiers had resigned themselves to the fact that they couldn’t run away and had formed a circle around the last group of mages.

.....

The abominations suffered some injuries and lost bones, but none of them were destroyed.

The two teams of mage slayers gathered as far away as they could, just behind a hill that perfectly hid them from the view of the undead.

Once he confirmed that none of them were seen, the captain of the 4th unit called the dark elder.

A few seconds passed as the call connected, both captains sweating buckets of nervousness.

“I suppose you failed, huh?” Elder Louis spoke as soon as the call connected, surprising both captains.

“As?” they asked in unison.

“The moment the mage stopped broadcasting the battle, an uproar started in the throne room. The supreme commander contacted the order requesting reinforcements or that we at least open portals to rescue the troops that were still alive, so I was informed that the plan failed.” Elder Louis spoke with irritation.

“Obviously I denied his request, but the damn commander was insistent and claimed that I was letting the kingdom’s soldiers die and was forced to reveal that the portals weren’t as good as everyone thought. It was the only way to save the image of order.”

“With all elder respect, but isn’t that a big deal? Revealing one of the order’s secrets like that?” The captain of the 5th unit asked.

“No, it’s not a problem. It had already been decided that the order would implement a network of portals across all three realms, so we would share the information within a month at most. We still kept the crystals’ resonance a secret, but the realm of Mirkor now know that the portals are not as convenient as they thought.”

“Elder, although we failed to assassinate the enemy leader and recover their corpses, I think that if we receive reinforcements it is still possible to complete the mission. The team that entered the city carried both teleportation crystals, but we can open portals once the curtains rise again.” The captain of the 5th unit suggested.

“Hmm...” Strangely, the elder didn’t accept his idea right away, but thought deeply.

‘They don’t know it, but I don’t have troops at my disposal to use as I please. The situation on mainland Doravon is becoming more and more tense and they have already begun to send out scouts and small skirmishes have begun at sea. The entire order is on high alert for a possible invasion, so all mages are on standby and being watched.’

‘It would be a different story if these undead were a threat, but their current power level is just a joke, it’s only their value as material that matters to me.’

‘If I move enough mages to conquer a stronghold, it will be impossible to cover all tracks and keep the quest hidden. The last council of elders declared that they would not engage in any military action until the situation was resolved.’ The elder thought irritably.

He had been the first to go along with suggestion that he not get involved in the kingdom’s situation, and his decision was coming back to bite him now.

Even moving your personal troops would be difficult. Though he had an undead army of his own, the portal network was overseen by the entire order and even he could not open clandestine portals and erase the records.

Perhaps if he had a portal network of his own like the damn water elder or the Ripha family, but that was impossible for him.

“Elder? Is there a problem?” When the silence lasted long enough to become awkward, the 4th unit captain asked anxiously.

“It’s a pity, but it looks like I’m going to have to give up here. Back off immediately-” Elder Louis spoke with regret, but then he remembered something.

The wind elder had recently attacked a city in Brumia, with the excuse that he needed to test a new piece of equipment he had created. No one had questioned him for creating and testing a new weapon with the threat of a continental invasion on its doorstep and perhaps he could exploit that loophole.

Unlike the Wind Elder, he was not a runesmith, but a necromancer and an alchemist. Nobody expected him to runesmithing powerful equipment, but rather to create new necromancy spells and new powerful undead.

If he claimed to have created a powerful new undead and just wanted to test it out in a combat situation, that would be excuse enough to silence any opposition. Undead were any necromancer’s main weapons, after all.

However, there was one thing he needed to do.

‘Who shall I send? All my undead with enough power to clear a fortress are already known, so it wouldn’t make sense to test anything on them. I need an undead powerful enough to destroy a stronghold and not yet known.’ He began to think deeply.

Elder Louis began to think, picking up a ledger of all his most important undead, until his gaze landed on a recently added one. A juvenile red-eyed black dragon.

It came from a failed experiment where the elder tested whether he could transplant magical organs between nearly identical species but with different racial affinities and abilities. In theory, this would allow dragons of opposing elements to use each other’s racial abilities, perhaps even allowing them to use magic of the opposite element, but the experiment was a failure.

The dragons’ bodies rejected the newly transplanted organs. Even without mana circulating through the body, the elemental energy that permeated the dragons’ bodies rejected the organs and extinguished their elemental energy, making them just ordinary organs.

Elder Louis still kept the transplanted organs, hoping that time would make them adapt, but without success. The dragons suffered for days, being forcibly kept alive by the use of potions and healing magic from one of their assistants, but they still died in the end.

He turned the black dragon into a zombie dragon and sold the white dragon’s corpse to the wind elder. They were longtime trading partners and the dragon full of light element would make a terrible undead.

“I will send a zombie dragon to destroy the fortress, but its mission has not changed. While the dragon devastates the undead, find the enemy leader and assassinate him. The zombie dragon has no intelligence and will only obey simple orders and clear as kill all the undead and don’t attack any humans.”

“You need to kill the leader before all the undead are all destroyed, or this whole mission will be a failure. Got it?” Elder Louis asked with an icy look that sent shivers down the two captains.

“Understood. When are we going to start the mission?”

“You will know. Dragon breath is impossible to miss.” The elder spoke irritably, as if saying that was enough to bring back bad memories.

He ended the communication and rose from his chair, walking around the secret laboratory. His secret laboratory was underground and although it was only his personal laboratory, it was almost the size of a small town and a defense that rivaled the royal castle of Mirkor.

With the absurd size of his laboratory, it would take a long time to walk from one end to the other, so Luís just took a teleportation crystal from his pocket and teleported to where he wanted.

His destination was the deepest section of the lab, the catacombs, as he liked to call them. Dozens of gigantic tombstones made of magic steel were arranged at regular intervals, each bearing a symbol of the creature they imprisoned.