The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 117 (Patreon)

Chapter 117 – Into the Mountain

It only took that first night to confirm that the light show coming from Mont Ross was indeed a pillar of Magelight. However, that only confirmed what we already knew from the researchers’ stories. Finding the entrance to the seal was not going to be quite so easy.

Fortunately, I had an army, and was all too willing to use it. The tricky part, of course, was doing this in a way that wouldn’t completely disrupt the wildlife. Unleashing a horde of undead on an area would cause a disruption, even if the undead were on their best behavior. Living creatures tended to dislike being around creatures of Death, and Undead in particular, on an instinctual level. Much like how a rat instinctively shies away from the cat. Even if the cat is no mouser, the rat isn’t going to take that on faith.

So, instead of flooding the island with undead, I sent out my scouts. Roughly twenty ghouls, and as many wraiths. That was the limit of what I felt comfortable sending out, without causing too large a disruption in the ecosystem.

Three days, they searched, while I held an impromptu court in the tent pavilion my engineers erected. Of course, it was no mere tent, since it was supposed to be comfortable for the living, as well. Temporary runes were etched into the stone, creating a field within the tent which kept it a comfortable temperature, and blocked out the elements.

Those runes were of great interest to the mortals in my train, as well as the local researchers. I just smiled as they copied the runes. Just having the image wouldn’t do them any good, of course. You had to carve the runes correctly, in the right substrate, and know where to put the other runes, if you wanted the field to actually work. My students at Athelian Arms could reproduce them, once I showed them what to do, but they had the necessary education, by now, to do more than just ape what others had done.

Just after nightfall on the third day, my scouts returned. Their leader was a female ghoul, Lieutenant Bethia. She’d been a hunter, before Athelia fell, and she’d loyally served in my army ever since I raised her as a ghoul. However, I could never convince her to take a promotion higher than Lieutenant. Too much responsibility, and too little freedom, she always said, which I could respect.

“Your Majesty, we have found what looks to be the entrance to the seal. It is located on the western slope, above one of the gullies formed from meltwater when the temperatures rise enough to reduce the snow covering above.”

“Very good,” I nodded. “What can you tell me of it?”

“An illusion of light covers the entrance, replicating the stone around it. But the scent of magic was different enough from the ambient mana that we could track it to its source, once we were close enough. I forbade the scouts from pressing forward, once we were sure of our find. Not knowing what guardians are in place, and given your orders to preserve the local environment as much as possible, I thought it best to inform you, rather than risk a guardian escaping, and potentially causing problems with the local wildlife.”

“Good work, Lieutenant,” I said, before looking at the assembled group. It was just after dinner for the mortals, so they should be good, for the time being. “I will head out now. Since we don’t know what the guardian is, or how long the fight might take, I suggest that you all remain in the pavilion until I send word. The longest one of these battles has been was three days and nights, after all. No sense in making you all camp out on a mountainside, after all, when we already have this setup prepared.”

No one objected to staying in the warm, well-lit, well-provisioned pavilion when the alternative was spending a night, possibly several nights, on a cold mountainside, on an island where the average temperature was just 4C, barely above freezing. Not that I doubted any of the military types in the group could handle ‘roughing it’ for a few days in the cold. But, just because you could do a thing didn’t mean that it was a smart idea.

With a touch of my ankh, I changed into my armor, and undid the humanform glamour, before slipping the ring that suppressed my power into my pocket dimension. I normally kept myself in a human guise while around mortals, because having the full might of the Lich Queen in their presence made mortals jumpy, unless they had power enough to at least be a threat to me. Oh, that wasn’t something unique to me, of course. All creatures who reached certain levels of power gave off an aura of danger to those who were significantly less powerful than they were. It was just that, well, I had only met two creatures in this world who were not significantly less powerful than me, other than the seal guardians and the Nameless Ones who I’d encountered in the Azores. One of those was an Ancient Dragon who was roughly my equal in strength, and the other was a Primordial, whose power dwarfed mine as completely as my power dwarfed that of a fledgling thaumaturge.

Stepping out of the tent, I summoned a steed for myself and the Lieutenant, as well as twenty-four death knights to act as escort. I could summon more, if the guardian proved a sufficient threat, but the fact that the seal was likely placed within the mountain’s heart meant that room was sure to be limited. Too many allies could be as hurtful as too few, in those situations. And I could always summon more if needed.

Riding through the air, it took us just over ten minutes to cross the twenty-four kilometers between our base camp and the mountain. If we had not been flying, it would have been days of travel, at least, as the terrain was rocky and broken, and the we would have had to travel well out of our way to get to the mountain, thanks to the shape of the land. But that was why we had magic, to dispense with such things.

Lieutenant Bethia guided us to one area on the side of the mountain, and I could sense the rest of my scouts gathered there. All bowed their heads to me as I approached, and gazed upon the illusion covering the cave. It was more than just a projection of light to cloak the opening. Rather, it was an illusion out of what science fiction writers would call ‘hard-light’, or light given enough physical form that one could interact with it to some degree. An impressive bit of spellwork, since it allowed the entrance to more completely hide, especially when put up against the elements. Seeing rain go through a hidden gap, for instance, or watching the smoke from a fire pass through ‘solid rock’? That was a red flag that even the completely mundane could not help but notice. With the projections, however, unless one could sense such things, then they would be sure that this was just another section of mountain.

However, it only took a bit of pressure with my staff to cause the illusion to shatter, once I knew where it was. The illusion was designed to conceal from a distance. Defense by obscurity. I knew that there would be other, more lethal, challenges within.

It was only too soon that I was proven correct. A tunnel led into the mountain’s side. Every few feet, we were forced to deal with another threat. A hard-light barrier covering a pit trap with vicious spikes at the bottom. Blades of light that tried to decapitate you, or cut you in half. Spears launching from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Rotating saws that filled the hallway. All of them designed to wear down invaders, causing them to wade through blood in order to advance.

All of them useless against me, and my Death Knights.

Eventually, we made it to a wide chamber, roughly ten meters on a side, with a stone tablet in the center. I did not know the language, off the top of my head, but I didn’t doubt that this was the same message that had been passed along at the other seals. A story of these people, and their creating the Seal of Light to lock away the UnNamed, and a warning of the guardian beyond.

I walked past the tablet, and my eyes fell upon the large stone doors that were sealed shut with runes of warding. Too many runes of warding, actually, for them to be easily undone through mere force alone. I could break through, but it would require strength that I wished to save, in preparation for the fight ahead.

Light was a poor match for me, honestly. While I did not have any particular weakness to Light spells, like some kinds of undead did, Light was more resistant to Death than other elements, despite not being in direct opposition. Much like how Earth could resist Fire, despite the fact that Fire’s true rival was Water.

I had not spoken to my students about elemental strengths and weaknesses, because they really only mattered when you were truly weak, or when you were fighting at the highest levels. If you were fighting beings of your relative strength, then a smart practitioner had things other than their element to rely upon, when it came to combat. Especially if one was in a party with multiple elements, covering your weaknesses.

For this reason, type matching was truly only effective at the lowest levels, where you were too weak to do anything besides use your element, or at the highest levels, where you had likely specialized to the point where your spells of other elements were likely out of practice, at the best of times. Or if you were a solo adventurer. Those were rare, mainly because they usually died quickly, but the ones who survived long enough to rise in power could be quite fearsome. Some even could take down a Hero, if their skills and element were a strong match.

The types tended to be in two ‘circles’, one natural and the other spiritual. The natural circle was Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth. The spiritual circle was Life, Light, Death, and Shadow. To look at Light, it was both strongest and weakest against Shadow, its direct counter. Light was slightly weaker against Life but slightly stronger against Death.

Meanwhile, my Death element was strongest against Life, and Life was the strongest counter against it. Light resisted Death, and Shadow struggled against it. But a powerful enough spell, from any element, could overwhelm Death, especially if it was designed to attack the element directly. More importantly, strong physical attacks could make up for a magical disadvantage. A sword in the gut still hurt, even if it was wreathed in Shadow instead of Life. It is why I had been cautious against the Shadow Dragon, and used my own dragon to help tip the field in my favor. The dragon was physically powerful enough that they might have overwhelmed me in melee, if I had tried to fight it one-on-one.

I put those thoughts aside. All that mattered was the here and now. I had no idea what kind of fight I would be up against. But I knew that, beyond these doors, there was a foe who would be an actual threat to me. They might not be strong enough to actually defeat me. In fact, I doubted that any of the Seal guardians had that kind of strength, unless they had gotten another Primordial to serve as a guardian, but every last one of the remaining guardians were likely strong enough to threaten me if I took them lightly, and did not give them the respect that they were due.

I looked at the puzzle that sealed the door shut. It was simple in its design, but far more difficult than one might think in practice. It was a projection of light in the air, with lights of red, yellow, blue, brown, green, and grey. The lights formed a six-sided cube, with each side of the cube being twenty-one lines across, and twenty-one down, with the different colors mixed in.

I knew this puzzle instantly, and, just as instantly, I knew that I hated the designer of this door more than anyone I had ever known in this world. To get through the door without spending far too much mana breaking through the seals, you had to solve a 21x21 Rubik’s cube, and there was no way to break it apart and put it back together again in the ‘solved’ position. This was as hard a counter to my overwhelming power as I had yet faced in this world, and I hated it.

“Ooh, your Majesty, can I try?”

I looked over my shoulder at Bethia. The ghoul smiled, and said, “I’ve always loved puzzles, even when I was alive. And as an undead, I’ve had plenty of time to practice, when I wasn’t on duty.”

I chuckled, and waved her forward. “The right tool for the right job, as I always say. Work your magic, Lieutenant. But if you don’t get it fast enough, I may just have to finally promote you, despite your objections.”

A look of fake (or maybe not-so-fake) horror shot across the scout’s face. She quickly turned to the puzzle, focusing all her attention on it, looking at the pattern. “On it, your Majesty!”