Do you have a problem with necromancers?

Chapter 77 Lich
The deeper they went into the tomb, the clearer the eerie wailing and groaning sounds became.

Terrified, Dia followed closely behind the group, her eyes darting around and her neck hunching nervously.

The two elven heroes remained remarkably calm, even having time to chat casually.

"Do you think that sound is a form of seduction?" Bersalia asked.

“It will only scare most people away,” Ellina objected.

“In other words, this sound was not intentional, but rather impossible to conceal.” Berthalia immediately concluded, “The lich is in some kind of uncontrollable abnormal state, so much so that even knowing that this sound will attract attention, it has no way to cover it up or disguise it.”

The two talked back and forth, and Daiya listened in a daze for a long time before suddenly feeling no longer afraid.

So that lich wasn't that powerful after all...

She confidently straightened her chest and followed Renn into the main tomb chamber, but her expression immediately froze.

Inside the tomb, scattered bones and pools of blood littered the floor, along with haphazardly drawn, filthy magic arrays.
A coffin was placed in the center, and a dozen or so ghouls knelt around it, kowtowing repeatedly with pained and ferocious expressions—the eerie whimpers that everyone had heard earlier were the wails of these kowtowing ghouls.

"Ah, new offerings have arrived again." A chilling chuckle came from the coffin. "You were sent down by my unworthy descendant, weren't you? From the moment you stepped into this tomb, you were destined never to leave."

Ellina's expression changed slightly. She was about to cast a spell immediately when she found that she could not move her body.

Her gaze quickly moved downwards, and she saw that the soles of her boots were completely soaked with filthy blood.

Clearly, the moment everyone stepped into the tomb and onto the pool of blood, they were afflicted with this curse that spreads through contact—it was a silent and insidious infection, leaving no trace of magic. Such is the secrecy of a curse cultivated to a high level.

Berthalia, whose body was also restrained, looked anxiously at Raine.

She had studied necromancy and knew that even when using a curse to counteract it, it usually required incantations or hand gestures. If Raine was also caught off guard by the curse, then even if he knew how to counter it, he wouldn't be able to cast it—and then everyone would truly be wiped out here.

"Although there is no direct communication, I have reached an unspoken understanding with that unworthy descendant," the voice in the coffin continued. "He regularly sends sacrifices down to die, while I focus on performing the resurrection ritual here and will not go out to cause any more trouble for the family."

"The reason I'm talking to you all this time is because I've had to stay alone in this tomb for the past few hundred years, and it's been incredibly boring."

“That’s your own problem,” Raine suddenly said. “To successfully transform into a lich, you must undergo necrosis while you’re still alive, transferring your soul to the phylactery. You couldn’t bear to part with your body and only started preparing the ritual when you were on the verge of death, so of course you couldn’t survive the transformation process.”

"Aha, I never expected to find someone who knows necromancy!" the voice in the coffin exclaimed excitedly. "It's not that I'm reluctant to part with my own body, but rather that I only obtained the knowledge of the ritual to transform into a lich when I was recovering from a long illness. At that time, my physical condition was already very poor, so I had no choice but to gamble everything on this possibility."

“Then you should actually learn flesh magic first, at least enough to free your body from the limitations of disease, then your success rate in transforming into a lich will be much higher,” Raine commented.

"You're quite arrogant. Do you think flesh and blood magic is so easy to learn?" The coffin was so angry it laughed. "Even if you manage to learn the basics of flesh and blood magic in a few more years, your body probably won't be able to hold on... Wait! You're under my curse, how can you still speak???"

"Your curse skills are passable," Renn sneered, "but your brain isn't up to par. Normal blood would have coagulated long after leaving the body, but you've made this place look like a public bathhouse, covered in blood. Do you think everyone here is an idiot without common sense? That's why I told you to learn flesh and blood magic first; even a little common sense would prevent you from making this kind of mistake..."

The person inside the coffin seemed to have reached their limit, and suddenly a withered hand shot out from within, its sharp fingertips swiftly pointing in Renn's direction:

"Immediate death..."

"Curse Counter!" Raine's casting speed was even faster. With just a snap of his fingers, the green light that was shooting towards him immediately flew back and shot into the coffin along its original trajectory.

The next second, the entire coffin exploded. "You actually dared to use an instant-death curse against a lich?!" The corpse flew out of the shattered coffin, its body flashing with various magical lights. "Foolish necromancer! Watch me..."

Before it could finish speaking, its body exploded a second time, and the words it was about to say were replaced by an utterly desperate "No!!!"

Minced meat fell like rain.

The ghouls around them, still being tortured, finally collapsed forward to the ground as if released, their faces bearing frozen, relieved smiles.

With the complete death of the lich, the people who had been cursed and imprisoned regained control of their bodies.

Bersalia breathed a long sigh of relief, then suddenly asked:
"I didn't understand the last part. Why could the instant death curse kill a lich? Isn't the dead supposed to be unable to die again?"

“I know why,” Dia interjected. “Corpse explosion spell, right?”

“Look,” Renn said, spreading his hands. “I told you long ago that your necromancy skills are lacking. Even Dia is more talented than you.”

Bersalia suddenly realized, "So it was Corpse Explosion... Wait! You clearly sent the curse back the way it came. Most people would think of it as a curse counterattack, right? Who knew you'd sneakily add a Corpse Explosion? You can't blame me for not noticing!"

You are too treacherous and cunning, a born evil necromancer!

Ignoring the sulking Berthalia, Raine simply cast Soul Binding, dragging the lich's soul, which hadn't yet completely dissipated, back from its return to the River Styx, and roughly stuffing it into the body of a ghoul on the ground.

The ghoul opened his eyes in agony, only to find that Raine had one foot on his head and was looking down at him, asking:
"name?"

“Kandjaen Talas,” the other cried out, begging for mercy, “I will tell you everything, just please don’t torture me, let me return to the River Styx in peace.”

“You have no right to bargain,” Ryan said coldly. “I’m asking you, do you know the Florella family?”

“I know,” the ghoul answered honestly. “Our ancestors were once guards of the Florella family.”

"At the end of the Hundred Years' War, our ancestors were turned by the Druid elders, who ambushed and murdered all the direct descendants of the Florella family at a banquet, thus replacing them as the ruling family of Blackwood."

"How dare you trample on the rights of our guests?" Ellina asked in shock.

“Yes,” the ghoul said. “So ever since then, our family has been cursed by the spirits of nature. Almost every member of our family has died young, succumbing to illness before the age of fifty. I had no choice but to become a lich, hoping to break free from this curse that has been placed upon our lifespans…”

“Enough,” Renn suddenly interrupted him. “I have no interest in your family. Where did you leave Aurora Florella’s remains?”

The ghoul was silent for a moment before speaking:
“Right at your feet, sir.”

Huh? Everyone looked down at their feet.

“To avoid deepening the curse, we didn’t dare take their remains out of the tomb,” the ghoul explained. “We just pried up all the floor tiles at the bottom of the tomb, dug a large enough pit, and buried them in place.”

"It's right below this main burial chamber."

(End of this chapter)