Witch Troupe and the Undead

The same goes for those mages. They don't need a complicated elemental conversion process; they can simply charge themselves with their own power. As a result, they impacted the power structure of the knights and the world, but this impact was quickly absorbed without fundamentally changing anything.

“Mass production? Maybe in the future, but for now…” Roach pointed to the square at the end, “This is where I’m going to put my magic container. The materials are Titan crystal and star silver sheets.” As for the difficulty of the process, he didn’t even mention it, but Leon knew that the possibility of mass production of this thing was zero.

Using something like Titan Crystal is like pointing to a fusion reactor on Earth and telling everyone that it requires neutron star material; basically, everyone who hears that will immediately dismiss the possibility of mass production and widespread adoption of that stuff.

At least until a technology that doesn't use this material is found, let alone mass production, it would be difficult to even build a prototype. Only someone like Roach, who has a Gold-level witch as his backer, can do this. You have to know that processing and cutting Titan Crystal is also a technical job. Only Livia has the confidence to process dozens of Titan Crystal slices for Roach and inscribe runes on them.

It's true that if you misalign your hand, an entire manor can be destroyed. And to complete the engraving of all the magic focusing lens runes on at least twenty or thirty of these thin crystal slices, only Livia has the skill or confidence to do so.

Other witches or sages probably wouldn't dare to take on this outsourcing job for Roche. If they ruined a few pieces, they'd be lucky to break even, let alone earn the labor fee.

"And what about its power?"

"I don't know, I haven't tested it, but theoretically, the effect is no less than the explosive powder I made before..."

"Tsk, I hope Master Roach will hide this weapon well when you die, otherwise, the continent will definitely be plunged into another bloodbath!"

Among a bunch of divine artifacts and quasi-divine artifacts, Roch's thing is already considered to be of very low power. It's just that it makes a lot of noise. It's not even as good as the Night Glow Fragment. That thing is much stronger than this Magic Orbit Accelerator when cutting down hellish things or similar objects.

However, you can't help it because this thing has no barrier to entry. As long as a seven-year-old child can lift it, he can fire it and blow an infantry battalion into a pile of scrap metal and minced meat in a few rounds.

Leon knew all too well what a "conflict engine" a high-damage, versatile, advanced magical weapon without any requirements or faction restrictions could be.

"I will... and who knows, maybe I'll create something even more amazing by then~"

"Please don't!!!" Leon exclaimed in shock. What you're doing now, if it succeeds, will cause bloodshed on half the continent, and all sorts of adventurers, thieves, evil forces, or mysterious forces will be dragged into it!

Chapter 398 If Only You Had a Little Humanity

After resting for several hours, the sleepy little witch was awakened by a violent tremor. The entire underground palace was trembling slightly, and rubble kept sliding down from the ceiling, hitting the miniature buildings. Even a rather huge glowing crystal fell from above, splitting a tall tower on the side of the bridge like a sharp blade.

“Time is running out. Another layer should have been replaced. The underground space structure here is completely unable to accommodate the suddenly replaced underground palace structure.” Roach said, looking at the collapsed rocks and the suddenly bulging rock walls. The underground palace structure here is beginning to show signs of misalignment and compression, which means that something has been forcibly piled on top of the original underground palace or inside the structure.

“That’s probably the real sealing place, but it shouldn’t have fully entered the real world yet.” Leon also stood at the entrance of the exhibition hall, looking down at the giant camp below, which was showing signs of panic.

"Either we speed up our entry into the seal and kill that thing, or we do nothing and let it come out on its own, then join forces with these monsters to take it down." To the guards here, the sealed object should also be an outsider, so there is indeed a possibility of them joining forces.

"Alright, Miss is awake. We need to negotiate with those giants now, figure out the structure of this underground palace, and then figure out a way to get through that front hall." Roach rubbed his head. Time was of the essence. Even if they couldn't enter the seal to solve the problem, they still needed to reach some kind of agreement or tacit understanding with these "locals".

Because she hadn't rested enough, Livia looked extremely tired, but she still forced a smile and walked slowly to the middle of the group, leaning on her staff.

The giants' camp was structured in three parts: the military camp facing the city gate, the residential camp on the left, and the artisan camp on the right, clearly separated from each other. Inside the residential camp were semi-subterranean buildings constructed from dismantled bricks and stones, all arched in shape, with an entrance covered by a faded rag at the front.

In the center of the camp was a huge cauldron. At this moment, some female giants were gathered around the cauldron, working together to maintain the heat of the stove. They were using some kind of magic to keep the flames burning, while the few underground plants and dry moss mixed with insects and strange creatures caught from the underground river were haphazardly chopped up and thrown into the cauldron.

The thick, simmered paste with a strange, fishy smell was divided into three portions under the supervision of a clearly very old giant. The thickest portion, containing obvious meat, was put into jars and sent to the military camp by cart; the slightly less thick portion was given to the craftsmen, pregnant women, and young children; and the last portion was distributed to the rest of the people.

The entire process involved almost no verbal communication; the allocation was completed entirely through a tacit understanding. Then, on the slope between the living camp and the underground river, a large number of underground plants resembling crops were planted. These plants, which grew by relying on the crystal light, had a translucent pale white color, with slender leaves like orchids and a cluster of translucent, thumb-sized fruits in the center.

After the food was distributed, some of the giants began to move towards the river to fetch water to irrigate their crops and catch the few aquatic creatures in the river. Others went to the opposite bank of the river, near the rock face, to look for insects and worms that had crawled in through the cracks.

The tremor just now seemed to have no effect on the giant camp. After the initial surprise, the artisan camp resumed its normal forging of weapons and manufacturing of metal ingots. The raw materials came from the ores and broken metal weapons that the giants had transported back from the city gate, which were obviously spoils left behind by those pale creatures.

The moment Roach and his companions stepped down the stairs, the two giant guards who were closest turned their heads toward them. Behind their visors, there seemed to be some kind of textile covering them, making them look like black holes without features.

"He asked: Are we messengers of the royal family?" Livia said, looking at Roach, but no one here could hear the giant speaking.

"Hmm, he also asked if we should convey the Night King's new decree?"

"You asked who they are and why they are holding out here?" Livia turned to look at the giant, her small mouth moving slightly as if she were speaking, but no sound came out at all.

The giant suddenly took two steps back, instinctively raising his shield and weapon. Leon also rushed forward, protecting the witch behind him. With only two giant guards, he was quite confident that he could take them down before alerting more giants.

“Wait a minute~” Livia patted Leon’s arm armor and peeked out from behind him. “Hmm, they said they are… the Night King’s eternal guards, and asked who we are, whether we are accomplices of those rebels?”

“Of course not. Just say we came in from outside.” Roach thought for a moment. Rather than making up a reason that his people were unfamiliar with and then being exposed and losing credibility, it was better to tell the truth.

"The outside world?" The giants exchanged glances, none of them knowing how they managed to perform such a precise action while their faces were covered; they could only attribute it to some mysterious racial ability.

They asked: Are we messengers of the successor to the kingdom?

"That's right, anyway, nobody here knows what the outside world looks like."

Livia nodded as if she understood, then turned to look at the giant. After a brief exchange, the two giant guards respectfully made way, one of them gesturing for Roach and the others to follow.

“He’s going to take us to see the three elders.” After passing through the somewhat chaotic military camp, several craftsmen pushed a huge ballista to the front of the camp gate. “He said that there had been several similar tremors before, and each time some strange things would seep in from the outside, as would those rebels. So he doesn’t doubt that we came from the outside. He said we should have come long ago, and the kingdom wouldn’t be indifferent to such things.”

Although the country they spoke of was already in ruins, perhaps it had perished thousands of years ago. The elder was positioned in the center of the camp, facing a large fire pit more than three meters in diameter. The flames in the fire pit had long since died out, leaving only a few dark red charcoal pieces still radiating heat.

Every shack and barracks in the camp had a stone slab hanging on it, clearly a tile pried from the floor of this mini-town and then marked with marks.

The giant guard led them to the entrance and then stopped, gesturing for Roach and his companions to go straight in. This barracks, like the others, was a semi-subterranean structure, with a brightly colored rag hanging at the entrance that seemed to have some patterns on it.

Inside the room was a small fire pit, where three unarmored giants sat around it, their bodies covered in root-like fleshy tendrils. Their faces and features were shrouded in a black rag, and they stared blankly at Livia as she entered, then bowed slightly.

“They seem to recognize me…” Livia shrank back a little in fear.

"Oh, what did they recognize about you?"

"Yes, they call me the Commander and the Master of Astrology." Astrology is the predecessor of esoteric magic because the most ancient ritual magic originated from observing the stars. Even today's astrologers and diviners are derived from this most ancient esoteric discipline. People at that time believed that they could interfere with and guide mystical forces according to the arrangement of the stars.

This is why astrology is a required course for all mystical professions. Apart from Roach, a mystic, even alchemists and paladins like Leon need to study astrology.

"Ask them who they are, and what race they are. The reason is that the kingdom has no records of them anymore, it has been too long, and we came to investigate because of the previous anomalies."

Roach immediately fabricated an unfalsifiable reason. After all, so much time had passed that missing records weren't unthinkable, and they were indeed there to investigate. The three elders exchanged glances and remained silent for a while, but Livia said they were arguing and discussing fiercely. After a long while, the one in the center finally nodded to Roach.

"He calls you 'Heavenly Craftsman,' which seems to be a title for some kind of alchemist or a similar profession," Livia said. Then, the little witch seemed a bit tired of relaying messages back and forth and switched to simultaneous interpretation mode.

A girl's slightly childish, high-pitched voice echoed in everyone's minds, "Hmm, this will be faster, but it might be noisier."

Because what Livia heard, everyone can hear now too, which is... a cacophony of noise. Even though the witch tried her best to filter out some unnecessary sounds, Roach and the others felt like their heads were about to explode.

Because everything in this room, except for living beings, was whispering among itself—the stone bricks, the ancient artifacts, even the flickering flames were commenting on them.

The language and wording of these things are completely illogical and unrelated. They might be talking about Roach's face one minute and then jumping to the completely unrelated Leon's armor the next.

It took Roach quite a while to filter out the faintest sounds and reduce the noise to a minimum, thanks to Livia's repeated adjustments. To do this, the witch had to use her powers to issue a silent command, "Quiet!", to silence those who feared her.

However, even so, Roach and his companions could clearly hear the giants' conversations, the greetings and slogans exchanged between the giants outside.

“We are the ‘Eternal Guardians,’ existing to guard the king’s tomb and treasury, and nothing more.”

"Why do you guard the tomb of the Night King?" Leon asked. "Haven't you considered giving up after all this time? And as far as I know, this Night King is not some..."

The voice of the giant elder to the right of the "good man" rang out, "The king has kidnapped the descendant of the progenitor. We must do this, or he will kill the progenitor. This is an oath and a curse."

"But you don't seem to be hostile towards us outsiders?"

"...You are not the king's subjects, and we are powerless to resist. We can only wait for the oath to end, and the king will eventually return."

“You know, the dead can’t come back to life.” Leon frowned, about to say something, when he was interrupted.

"The Night King is no ordinary man; the King will return." No matter what he asked, the giant elder kept repeating this sentence.

"Okay, what's the deal with those rebels?"

“The abandoned ones, they want to desecrate the king’s tomb, and we will guard the tomb.”

How did they get here?

The elder did not answer, but everyone knew that silence was the best answer to this question.

"If we want to go into the tomb, will you stop us?"

"..." The giants whispered among themselves. After a moment, the leading elder shook his head. "No, we will not stop you. You are the messengers of the new king. You have come with a decree. The Eternal Guard will obey the king's decree."

Roach understood something. These giants were not acting willingly, but were forced to guard the kingdom because the Founding Father was imprisoned and bound by some oath or curse. However, they clearly had their own thoughts and knew the loopholes in the oath. Obviously, the Night King back then believed that he was not a mortal. Whatever his confidence was based on, he genuinely believed that he could be resurrected after death and rule the kingdom eternally.

Therefore, this oath has a major problem: it does not distinguish between the person in question and the king. In other words, if the foreign country still exists, the new heir will also be a king, and the two kings are considered equivalent in the oath.

"So, shall I now declare the lifting of your watch?"

"..." The elder shook his head. "Only the King can release us from our oath and make a new one."

It wasn't said directly, but it indicated that it wouldn't work, since it was a bug. That meant that one of the kings needed to be eliminated, making the other the undisputed and sole king, and then, in the king's name, their oaths needed to end, and a new oath needed to be made, or the constraints on these giants' guards needed to be completely lifted.

"Eternal Guardians shouldn't be your name. What is your clan name?"

"..."

"Master Craftsman, why do you ask that?"

"Because I am also a scholar, a historian, it's normal for me to be interested in this knowledge that has been lost to time, right?" Roach was speaking the truth. Regardless of whether these giants had some kind of mind-reading or lie-detecting ability, there would be no flaws in their abilities.

Elder Umbrasol uttered a complex syllable, the same sound everyone heard from giants in reality, like the noise of countless rocks rubbing together, or a booming sound resonating from a copper pipe.

“Shadow Giant…” Livia helped translate the meaning of this ancient word, which was roughly a combination of “shadow” and “giant”. It was a coined word, and only Livia could understand it.

“Born of the shadows beneath the earth, light curses their lives; darkness shelters their souls,” Livia added, suggesting that the elder had likely spoken with her privately about something.

"They are not descendants of the Founding Titan, but servants created by the Founding Titan to protect them from the ancient mists, and they have sworn an oath never to show themselves in the light." So all these giants have their faces wrapped in black cloth, because there is light from the glowing crystals and firelight, and they will only remove this binding in a completely dark place.

“Blackbound Spirit Guards, their other name, exist to protect the children of the progenitor, which is why they were used by the king,” Livia continued, explaining in everyone’s minds.

The Founding Titan created this stable race of giants, but they also had a flaw: they could not be exposed to sunlight and relied on the "conceptual magic" of darkness to hide themselves, thereby avoiding the influence of the conceptual magic of order and civilization.

After all, judging from the divine power and divine realm of a certain lonely old god, dark magic does indeed have this function. After all, there is no essential difference between the magic of order and the magic of great sin; they are both magics of the void secret realm.

Their duty was to protect the children of the Founding Titan, who also used darkness to sleep and hibernate. Roach understood this as a kind of hibernation technology or method, allowing future generations to escape their fate of extinction.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the original giant ancestors harbored some kind of hope, such as having finally adapted to the magic of order after a long period of time, or that the future giant race had developed some kind of ritual or technology to allow these descendants to survive.

However, these children became hostages of the Night King, and worse, judging from the situation in the arena outside, they were probably already dead. After all, they were forcibly awakened from their slumber, and unlike these Shadow Giants or Blackbound Spirit Guards, they could not adapt to an environment of order and civilization. Even with the protection of some kind of dark magic, they eventually became petrified skeletons in the cage.

“This Night King… if he did anything even remotely, he wouldn’t be so utterly inhuman,” Roach remarked. Leon shared the same sentiment, but they dared not tell the giants the truth, for that would be truly inhuman—the life or death of the progenitor’s descendants did not affect their oaths, because those oaths were made under duress, not because of the oaths themselves.

In other words, it would be incredibly torturous for them to continue guarding the tomb of their greatest enemy, burdened by the shackles of their oath, when their "hope" had long since died and they had already betrayed their duty. But now, unaware that the descendants of their ancestor were dead, they could still cling to some hope and, for a more noble purpose, barely endure this constraint.

"So, what's the deal with those 'rebels' outside?"

"Although I had a premonition, but..." After hearing the introduction, Roach still felt that the Eternal Night King should still be allowed to put some good things in the coffin.

Even though his professional ethics as a historian would make it difficult for him to do such a thing, as a person with a conscience, he would still feel impulsive after hearing it.

To put it simply, the king lured his most loyal army, the ones who had accompanied him in his campaigns, to this underground palace, then imprisoned them there alongside the artisans who were excavating the tomb. Before sealing it, he ordered the army to execute all the artisans—of course, for an imperial tomb like this, such an act was not unexpected by the veterans.

However, at the crucial moment when the execution began, one of the craftsmen desperately revealed the secret: they were also "burial goods." Out of caution, the general did not execute all the craftsmen but decided to investigate first. The result... is what everyone sees: they became the underground rebels.

"Does this King of Eternal Night lack a brain?" With such actions, it would be a miracle if the kingdoms on earth didn't collapse. Moreover, these armies are sealed underground; even if they don't turn into rebels, these vengeful spirits can't possibly guard his tomb!

"He already sees himself as some kind of god, or someone who is about to become a god, someone who can rule the kingdom eternally. Why would he care about this?" Roach said quietly. He had seen many arrogant monarchs like this throughout history, both ancient and modern, from all over the world.

They were all so convinced of their own beliefs that they could be resurrected after death, live forever, or rule eternally. Under such circumstances, they naturally didn't care about dying, or even about their old subordinates who might become less loyal and reliable with age.

“Aren’t there many people who think they have absolute power and can do whatever they want just because they have gained a little bit of power?” Alessina also said.

“If absolute power truly existed, then it would be possible, but power is not absolute, only relative.” Roach shrugged. “Human imagination about such things is limited by our understanding of the world, so most people who think this way don’t end up well.”

For example, there are dump trucks that can shatter the void and crack space, carrying tens of thousands of planets over a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers. Therefore, the ultimate power that humans can imagine, or absolute power, is only the ultimate level of things that humans can understand, not the true limit.

"But that doesn't stop them from believing they can do anything!"

“That makes sense…” Leon thought for a moment. Discussing the madman’s rationality was indeed a very crazy thing to do.

Chapter 0 Human Content is Completely Zero

A city gate, with victims both inside and outside. One of the victims is forced to defend the tomb of the perpetrator with his life. What's even more hellish is that they are forced to do this for the kidnapped hostage, who has already been killed. The victims outside know this, and perhaps the ones inside do too? They just cling to some hope, unwilling to believe, unable to believe.

"That Night King is so wicked~" Lulua's eyes showed obvious disgust. She had never seen or even heard of such a wicked person in any story in her entire life.

The worst kind of evil seed she understood were those sinful mages who flaunted the ugliness of human nature and fed on sin and desire. However, even these guys, who could almost be called born evil seeds, probably couldn't achieve the effect that the Night King had casually arranged, no matter how hard they racked their brains.

"Envoy, do you have any orders to convey?"

"Why...why do you call me Commander?" Livia was somewhat confused. She could understand being a Star Master; it wasn't surprising that the elemental blessings and magic surrounding her made her noticeable, and even the way she commanded the elements. But what exactly did "Commander" mean?

“You are the messenger of darkness, there’s no denying it. The power of the Night Maiden shines brightly between your brows. We are all survivors protected by darkness, and we are particularly…sensitive to this kind of power.” The giant elder in the middle said that the reason they did not take action to drive away Roach and the other invaders from the beginning was because several of them had the blessing of the night.

"I need your help to repair those golems. Speaking of which, those golems are..."

"You mean that 'Knight of the Round Table'?" The elder on the right asked, somewhat puzzled. "Even as a master craftsman, you would find it difficult to complete this work, nor could we. It was created during the kingdom's golden age, based on the appearances and postures of the ancient Knights of the Round Table..."

Roach wasn't curious about why the world had the Knights of the Round Table. It was normal; the Knights of the Round Table weren't Arthur's invention. The purpose of using a round table was to eliminate the distinction between superiors and inferiors, representing that the monarch and the knights were equal.

If we have to put it that way, the warrior system of the tribe where Alessina lived was also called the "Warrior Circle," which was also made in a circle around the hearth, representing that the warriors and soldiers of each tribe were equal and brothers in life and death. If the Orc Alliance really completed the feudal reforms based on human kingdoms, then it wouldn't be wrong for them to call themselves Circle Knights.

The difference between them and the Knights of the Round Table is that they just replaced the fire pit circled by a stone with a table. Therefore, when Roach heard that there were also Knights of the Round Table in another world, he only felt a little amused for a moment, but he quickly understood—unless they told him that the Night King or his kingdom really had a founding monarch named Arthur who wielded the sword in the stone, or that there really was a Lake Maiden sword or something.

"The 'Fairy Holy Sword' as a weapon alone is not something that the tribe's master craftsmen could forge, at least not now."

"The Fairy Holy Sword?"

What a coincidence! This trip was on their way home, and the original plan was to meet the fairy girl Titania. If Roach and his group hadn't had this bad luck, there might have been someone in the group who could have answered the question about the story and origin of the "Fairy Holy Sword".