Chương 61: The Season of the Minotaur (10)

Simon's phantom steed was quite the disturbing creature. He had expected a ghostly version of a horse, but while the entity was indeed made of greenish ectoplasm, it took the shape of a frightful equine corpse. A moldy hide stretched over bones exposed through rotten holes, and two unholy flames burned within its skull-face's eye sockets. It was otherwise a normal horse, though, with a saddle and reins, and solid enough to carry him and Cassandra on its back.

Simon's Warmonger Perk intuitively taught him how to ride the creature and guide it as it began to ride across the nightwind. And then they flew. Simon's heart skipped a beat when his steed's hooves stopped touching the ground and began to race across empty air like a mad donkey climbing a mountain. The wind flew upon their faces, and Cassandra clung to him with all of her strength. They rose and rode into pitch black night after waving her father and brother goodbye.

It was such an exhilarating feeling to ascend upwards. The steed couldn't fly all that high, no more than four or five hundred feet, but that was enough to watch trees and farmhouses shrink beneath them. Cassandra cast a fog spell to keep them hidden from sight until they reached Whispermire's outskirts and landed unseen, after which Simon dismissed the horse with a wave of his hand. He had the intuition that it would prove quite useful.

"That was something," Simon mused once they returned to the Midnight Market.

"I liked it very much. It was a nice outing, and a pleasant evening in general." Cassandra smiled at him.

"Thank you for indulging me, Simon."

"You are welcome. It was… nice."

"But something else weighs on your mind," Cassandra noted.

"Is it about what happened with the Dreadnought? Father told me you planned to resurrect him, if possible."

"Yes." Simon crossed his arms.

"I keep telling myself I can bring him back, that his death was unintentional, and that it was necessary to prevent a worse situation later, but he was still a former comrade at the end of the day. I don't like killing friends." Cassandra nodded in understanding.

"I never had a living friend before you, so I cannot say whether you were in the right or the wrong, but I think the fact you are asking yourself that at all means you are not a bad person." I'm not sure a good person would be conducting a ritual to unleash a demon upon the world, even for the purpose of saving the world, Simon thought, although he did appreciate the compliment. It didn't take long for them to reach their quarters.

"Thank you for your kind words, at the very least. I guess this is it for the night then." Cassandra reached for her door, only to hesitate an instant.

"If you do not mind, can I ask you a question?"

"Yes, of course."

"Are you courting me, Simon?" Huh? Where did that come from?

"Why that question?"

"Because my other friend, Nora, asked me the question when I said you brought me gifts and liked to spend time with me," Cassandra replied calmly.

"I have never been courted by a living person, so I didn't know how to answer." Oh. Simon suddenly realized he must have been sending quite a few mixed signals over the last few weeks or so. Was he courting Cassandra? He did find her attractive, and he enjoyed her company enough to seek it out. He had even grown somewhat used to her family's weirder and darker aspects over the last months. They had indeed become friends, and he wouldn't mind dating her.

However, besides the fact that he was technically engaged to the Stone Muse and that she might badly react to her 'beloved' courting another woman, the memory of his time with Anna still remained fresh on his mind. The idea of growing close to Cassandra only for her to treat him as a stranger on the next reign pained him. Then again, this reign might last decades for all he knew, if he managed to survive the Zodiac Parade and whatever else the future held for him.

As much as he missed Anna, he couldn't exactly see himself staying a celibate hermit for over ninety more lifetimes. It would be a nice change of pace to live a full life rather than having it be cut short by assassins or disaster, whether he shared it with someone else or not… Simon had so many conflicting feelings about all of this.

"I wouldn't say we're quite there yet, but perhaps in the future," Simon replied sincerely.

"I have too much on my mind for now."

"I understand. I was just curious." Cassandra nodded at him as she bade him goodnight.

"I hope slumber will help clear your mind." He hoped so as well. Simon spent the next few days in Whispermire keeping watch on the situation. Leonard's body and those of other imperial scouts were returned to town and then to the War Party's forces. True to Duchar's prediction, the death of so many Class users convinced the army that turning the area into a training camp wasn't worth the losses, and the imperial raid was swiftly cancelled. So Louis decided to bomb the Darkwood instead.

Three days after Leonard's demise, Simon woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of city bells ringing madly and tremors shaking the ground. He only had to take a look out the window to see two War Party airships raining fire down from the sky upon the Darkwood, with plumes of smoke rising from the miasma. They unleashed their fury for an entire night in a blind orgy of destruction that could be observed all the way from Whispermire.

"What the…" Simon choked in horror as he watched a fireball descend upon the woods and explode on impact, a flash of light illuminating the night in response. His skull buzzed with telepathic attempts to contact him from all across his network of allies.

"Duchar?! Hector?! Carrock?!"

"We are being bombarded, Your Majesty!" the old sorcerer replied.

"A fire has started on the third level!"

"My brothers burn from the bitter kiss of flame!" Carrock the Treant roared in fear and fury through his own Brand. Although Simon had had the foresight to give him a Ring of Cursed Flame to negate his kind's vulnerability to fire, he couldn't say the same for his fellow trees. Simon briefly thought it was a calculated attempt to destroy the Hall of the Minotaur, but the airships continued to fly over the forest towards areas without anything important in them.

This was no calculated attempt to cull the monster population or a preparation for an offensive; it was retaliation, pure and simple. Simon cursed himself for not seeing this coming. Of course the War Party couldn't allow a commander's death to go unavenged. They lacked the resources or need to purge the Darkwood with soldiers, but a bombing run on their own turf was a cheap way to both retaliate for Leonard's loss and reaffirm their faction's power to those who may have doubted it.

"Do we retaliate, Your Majesty?" a gargoyle asked, his voice brimming with bloodlust.

"We can fly up and cast them down from the sky!"

"No, no, everyone retreat to the Halls of the Minotaur's Sanctum or to the marshes," Simon ordered his allies and servants. Attacking the airships would only cause Louis to escalate further by sending more ships to finish the job.

"Do not retaliate, I repeat, do not retaliate! They are only passing through, so focus on survival!" Simon then spent the night guiding his followers from afar to safety towards cult-affiliated locations or safehouses. Dozens of plumes of smoke covered the sky above the Darkwood by the time the airships departed.

The forest's muddy, wet atmosphere prevented an all-out fire across the region, but Simon teleported back to the Halls of the Minotaur to find the stonemasonry crumbling in multiple places, with his forces desperately working to put out fires with swampwater or pulling away survivors from beneath piles of debris. He himself spent the better part of the day extinguishing flames with repeated Hellfrost castings.

"Report," Simon asked Duchar while the two of them used spells to prevent a crumbling wall from collapsing and destroying the workshop. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"We have taken severe damage," Duchar admitted. His robes had burned at the edges.

"I do not think this location has been exposed, and the Sanctum has miraculously avoided any major damage, but we are now at considerably less than full strength." That was quite the understatement.

By the time the day was over, the entire western wing of the Halls of the Minotaur had collapsed into a pile of rubble, the courtyard was flooded by the fountain's destruction, multiple rooms were buried under crumbling stonemasonry, and cracked walls had opened new holes in multiple areas, which represented a considerable security risk. Not to mention that the bombardment had disturbed the local fauna and sent it fleeing throughout the region, which would no doubt cause issues.

Even some of Simon's own slime creations and undead servants were unaccounted for. At least Father Rodrigue's cell held firm, so they still had a sacrifice for the ritual.

"Vengeance!" the Stone Muse screeched to anyone who would listen.

"A tide of wood and a flood of terror I shall unleash upon these metal birds' roosts when my bindings are shattered! A hundred heads for every burned root, buried under my temple's new foundations!"

"In due time," Simon reassured her. True to his intuition, the War Party didn't order a bombardment on the next night, or the one after. They had been satisfied with putting the local monsters in their place and now focused their efforts back on their enemies to the east. The danger had passed, for now. Afterwards, Simon spent the last month leading up to the Summer Solstice focusing on reconstructing the Halls, managing the bombardment's aftermath, and keeping track of events in the wider world.

The Darkwood's bombing had caused a few monsters outside of Simon's control to flee the forest and ravage the surrounding countryside, which conveniently occupied the local adventurers for the time being. Unfortunately, major parts of the forest had been turned to cinders. The Halls of the Minotaur were thus bereft of a major natural defense, which meant future intruders would have an easier time locating the Dungeon.

Reports from his allies indicated that the situation on the front was slowly shifting towards the War Party's favor. Their Goetia Research Center's sheer rate of Crestone production was simply too great an advantage to overcome, alongside the use of demonic or modified monster warbeasts. They simply produced Class wielders quicker than Euphemia's troops could kill them. Even worse, Scaland once again revolted under Vouivre's leadership and declared its independence from both imperial factions.

Considering it had done so in a previous reign, this implied the dragoness would always travel to that island, whether she was driven off from Telluria or not. Simon noted that information for the future. Scaland was located close to the Berwick Islands and Church Party territory, thus increasing the pressure on them. Silk, true to her promise, had also begun to provide reports on the situation beyond the Dragonsea.

The League of Valne and Lore were planning a crossing with Musan and Illusean support, which Simon already knew from a previous reign. What he didn't know, however, was that they had opened up secret discussions with the Church Party. According to Silk's intel, the White Unicorn and Mastemo had opened diplomatic talks for an alliance in return for Euphemia formally renouncing all claims to Magvolia. It would be a costly political move, if a shrewd one.

Magvolia was firmly under the War Party's thumb, so Euphemia would surrender territory she didn't control anyway and open a second front for Louis to fight at the same time. Simon had no doubt the White Unicorn would accept her terms, although whether or not that peace would last beyond the War Party's toppling remained to be seen. Simon found himself wondering what would have happened if he hadn't claimed the Darkwood for himself.

Would Leonard have pushed forward until he found the Halls of the Minotaur and reported its existence to Louis? Would it have impacted the war at all? Lauriane at least continued to buy monster parts and even live ones that adventurers occasionally captured, so her faction hadn't entirely given up on the region. But otherwise, Simon faced no other incident all the way up to the Summer Solstice.

When that day came, he climbed up the stairs to the Sanctum, had poor Father Rodrigue bound to the altar, and then proceeded with the sacrifice.

"Great trapped fiend, accept this bloody gift, sacrificed on freedom's altar," Simon chanted as he brought down the sacrificial spike on the weeping priest's chest.

"A priest who does not believe in you slaughtered in your unholy name, to herald forth the Summer of Destruction upon your enemies!" Unlike Lorimor, poor Rodrigue let out a wail of pain and fear when Simon ended his life. Red lightning crackled from his open chest and set arcane symbols alight in the air, shaking the temple with a tremor thankfully nowhere near as powerful as the one unleashed by the War Party's bombardment.

A few stones fell from the ceiling, startling Simon's gargoyle guards, but the edifice held otherwise. His vision once again went dark, as it did with the first ritual, followed by the vision of a second chain shattering over the seal. Overwhelming power flooded him with abyssal energies and the thrill of a new level. Level 39 Overlord Perk: Unyielding Essence IV (Passive): You are now invulnerable to non-magical weapons. Interesting.

Simon recalled some of his father's ministers saying they had seen blades shatter against his naked skin. It was good to learn the exact reason why. Nonetheless, Simon was starting to feel the toll of fading experience gains. He could tell the rush of experience granted by this sacrifice only gave him just enough to progress. The gap between two new levels kept growing wider and wider. Then again, he only wielded the Overlord class for a little over a year and a half when factoring in all the consecutive reigns.

It had taken over half a decade of continuous warfare for Louis to reach level eighty or so in the Warrior Class. Simon would need to find new experience sources in future reigns to keep the momentum going.

"So sweet, the taste of freedom is close!" the Stone Muse rejoiced.

"Two more sacrifices and I shall see these bindings broken!"

"The third sacrifice eludes us still, however," Simon replied as he clutched the soul-gem he had extracted from Father Rodrigue. He would relinquish it to Duchar for him to deal with it as he saw fit.

"What would you consider the 'descendant of an enemy?'""Those who have bound me are my foes!" the mad dryad replied.

"The elven thralls of my treacherous sisters have woven wicked spells, and their blood alone may my fetters rust!"

"So we need the descendant of the elven mages that created your seal in the first place?" Simon had a bad feeling about that.

"Do you know their names?"

"Shrouded in secrecy, they came to me, but my faith in you I bestow, Beloved. To the bottom of this matter you shall dig to set me free." In short, she had no idea and intended to saddle Simon with all the hard work. Such were the wages of dealing with bound fiends.

"Gifts I have, my dear, to reward you with," the Stone Muse said with honeyed words.

"Spells most foul and devastating."

"I am still limited to Tier III for now," S imon replied.

"For another level at least, however long it takes."

"Not all spells require Perks to cast. Geomantic and druidic rituals blending nature and miasma, I can share. How to blight the land and invite nature's wrath on civilization, how to spawn monsters numerous and twist paths with no return!" Simon recalled from earlier lessons that geomancy covered magic affecting the very land and terrain rather than individuals. Considering how the current ritual took nearly a year to cast, Simon doubted he would see immediate use for them.

However, since completing a dark ritual like the Seasonal Key was providing him much much-needed Overlord experience, Simon assumed other dark sorcery might let him grow in levels in the future. Knowledge always opened new paths to the bold.

"Very well," Simon decided.

"Do you have anything that could help repair our defenses?" As it turned out, the Stone Muse did know a useful defensive ritual: the Lost Wilds. The complex piece of sorcery apparently cursed an entire forest so that anyone taking the wrong turn would end back at the beginning. It would require some preparation, key supplies, and the help of multiple cultists to complete, but he intended to cast it at the first opportunity in order to better shield the Halls of the Minotaur from detection.

Otherwise, Simon also set Shabram and Odette Kano on researching the elven archmages who had sealed away the Muse in the first place; a search that quickly proved difficult. While the region had been inhabited long before the Darkwood's corruption, Whispermire didn't exist back then as a settlement, and the binding preceded the town's registers; moreover, Magvolia was the most recent of the imperial provinces, and many archives had been lost during the conquest.

The best Odette could provide was a list of local half-elves and their relatives, whom they had no way to confirm whether they descended from an ancient sorcerer or some unlucky local. More worrying news arrived soon after, on top of everything.

"You say a dragon has been sighted in the west, Miss Kano?" Simon inquired.

"I would have dismissed such reports as foolishness if they weren't corroborated by multiple people," Odette confirmed.

"The creature was sighted flying near the Goetia Research Center before disappearing without causing trouble." Could it be Vouivre? No, impossible. She was in Scaland organizing the local scalefolk as part of yet another bid for conquest. She should have killed Casval by now, too. Did she have another sibling to call upon? Or was it merely a large monster local farmers mistook for a dragon? Or did it have something to do with Lauriane's constant demand for monster parts?

The creature was seen near the Goetia Research Center after all…

"Interesting," Simon said as he faked being an inscrutable archfiend.

"I would not worry too much, Miss Kano. If a dragon dares to cross the Dragonsea to threaten us, I will put it back in its place. Gargauth alone could trade blows with my kind, and he is long departed."

"I will put my faith in you, Lord Belias," Odette replied.

"I have two more things to report. First of all, I am extending you a formal invitation for the annual ball celebrating Whispermire's founding at the end of the month. Since important local dignitaries may attend, including our liege lord, Princess Lauriane Magnos, I figured you might be interested in attending it." Lauriane might attend? Simon was wary of being recognized, but using a Fiendmask and Anathematic Secrecy should let him slip in undetected.

Part of him wanted to see how his favorite half-sister was faring in this reign, and Odette had a point, meeting local dignitaries could let him gather important information about the war.

"I will be sure to attend with my finest human skin," Simon mused.

"What else did you want to discuss, Miss Kano?"

"Silk told me that a certain adventurer party secretly affiliated with the White Unicorn will soon arrive in Whispermire, and that its leader may cause you some issues." Simon's jaw clenched.

"Who leads these fools?" he asked, though he already suspected the answer before it arrived.

"A certain Alphonse of Lore."