I became a legion lich

237 Lunar Laboratory

“If you heard the jailor’s words, you should know that the situation has changed. Despite my wish, I cannot punish you anymore. You have discovered an imminent threat, so I would look like a madman if I punished you now.” Thersec spoke, but his look of distaste made it clear he didn’t like the situation one bit.

“Of course, you still attacked two of my personal apprentices, but I’ll let it go this time. Since you were kind enough to publicly shout that you were on a mission under my orders, I’ll take credit for the discovery and in return, I will forget your disobedience. It’s a fair exchange.”

“Whatever. Take the glory or whatever. I’m not in the mood for a political fight right now.” Lukas barely heard what Thersec said, his mind busy thinking about how to arrange a burial for his daughter.

“Let’s go. We have a lot to resolve and important information to share.” Thersec spoke as he led Lukas to an open area and picked up a teleportation crystal to return to the Ripha mansion.

**********

Just as Lukas thought, the order fell into chaos after learning the truth of the dark forests and the undead that inhabited it. No one had heard of a species of undead called the banshee or what they looked like, but they must have been really powerful to dominate a region the size of a kingdom in just a century.

The ones who were most enraged by this news were Canan and Eirin, who felt they had been deceived until now. They always thought that Illum and Kalesi intended to maintain balance between all races and only attacked the Carian empire to keep humans in check, but it seems they were wrong.

They had never been openly involved in other continents, so the human gods were under the illusion that they didn’t intend to be directly involved and just accumulated power silently..

‘This is very irritating.’ Eirin spoke in Canan’s mind, reading Lukas’ report on the banshees for the umpteenth time. They were currently in their incomplete lunar laboratory, observing Elbon from space.

.....

Eirin took at least two hours a day to observe the world, mostly to investigate changes on the continent of Doravon. Despite being a Goddess and her senses being extremely sharp, it was still not enough to see details on the surface of the planet, but the movement of large armies of evolved semi-humans was possible.

Eirin knew that a large army was encamped at the edge of the continent and a second wave of warriors had been sent, even though the first wave had not yet reached the continent of Caprio.

The vanguard of the demihumans would be arriving in 10 days and despite the best efforts of the order and the church, many of the coastal territories were still unprotected or not fortified enough to defend against an army of evolved demihumans.

The demihumans weren’t advancing in a straight line, but changing their routes whenever they passed an island, so the order used this to roughly predict where the undead would appear.

There were a few human cities on the invasion route, but a lot of land was unpopulated areas and entire fortresses would have to be built from scratch to defend themselves.

‘I am also angry, but it was our own negligence that allowed them to settle on the Caprio continent.’ Canan responded as he controlled cinder blocks laced with divine mithril, rebuilding his moon base.

A mithril archway inlaid with teleportation crystals was right behind him, a purple portal permanently open while tons of concrete mixed with divine mithril.

Canan had built his own portal in his under-construction lunar laboratory. Lukas had shared the secret of portal technology some time ago and all the elders were working to build their own portal network, but Canan was the first to succeed.

A crystal arch was built in the royal palace and another on the moon, but Canan had plans to build one in every major city in his empire.

Rather than create another tower of portals and risk being destroyed and losing everything again, they built the portals separately to minimize their losses if any portals were destroyed.

Each crystal arc could keep a limited amount of records from other crystals, but the empire could keep that information separately and easily solve the problem.

‘What’s worse is that at the moment, there’s not much we can do to deal with the problem. Our empires cannot move until the war is over and seeing how many soldiers these demihumans have, the war should take at least half a century.’ Eirin spoke in frustration and Canan nodded.

‘I know. The Darkwood is also at the opposite end of the continent, so getting to them is almost impossible. Do you think Illum ordered them to start their invasion there to avoid our interference or was it just coincidence?’ Canan asked doubtfully.

‘Our master is calculist, but I doubt he ordered something like that. It’s most likely that the Banshees spawned naturally in this region and he just sent support to help them.’ Eirin answered and she was right.

Illum had sent reinforcements and resources through Kalesi, as Selena refused any help from the yggdrasil.

‘Do you think they are in cahoots with the yggdrasil sprout? You know, how Kalesi and Illum allied. That would explain how a forest was able to grow so quickly.’ Eirin spoke bitterly as she thought of her enemies joining forces, but Canan disagreed.

‘Your theory isn’t bad, but I doubt it. Take a closer look at the forest and you will see that there is a land line separating the Darkwood and the sea of trees. If we focus our senses to the maximum, you will notice that they seem to be in conflict with each other.’ Canan responded and temporarily stopped what he was doing to prove his point.

He looked towards the continent of Caprio and conjured human-sized lenses of light over each other and pointed towards the border between the sea of trees and darkwood. The lenses acted like a magnifying glass and magnified the image, allowing them to get a better look at the planet’s surface.

It wasn’t enough to see details, but they could at least make out things on the ground. They noticed that small skirmishes were taking place, so they watched for a while to try to get some detail on the enemies.

Canan easily spotted the zombified beasts coming out of the darkwood, but there was no sign of the banshees, whatever they were supposed to look like. Transparent demihumans were among the beasts and for a second Canan thought they were banshees, but he recognized them soon after as Phantoms.

‘Maybe they didn’t show up now. If banshees ruled the darkwood, they wouldn’t get involved in small battles and let their servants fight in their stead.’ Eirin spoke into his mind half-disappointed.

They watched as elves came out of the forest and cast spells from a distance to try and stop the zombies and phantons. It was a common strategy to use magic against demihumans and zombies to reduce their numbers, so neither of them found the elves’ tactic odd.

‘Hmm? Why are there elves on the side of the undead?’ Eirin drew Canan’s attention to the Darkwoods, where elves astride zombified beasts emerged from the forest’s edge. The Evergreen Elves clearly panicked at the sight of their enemies and started to cast magic even faster, but quickly stopped.

The Evergreen Elves began to fall to the ground as they writhed in pain and the zombified beasts quickly caught up with them, tearing the Elves to pieces. The fight ended so suddenly that Canan and Eirin didn’t even have time to react.

‘What the hell was that?’ Eirin asked in shock, but Canan was just as confused as she was.

‘No idea, but the elves must be the undead we’ve heard about and responsible for this. These banshees seem to be the type that retain the same appearance as they did in life and possess strange powers that we haven’t been able to detect from a distance. Anything else you want to add?’ Canan summarized the meager information they could obtain.

‘There’s not much we can find out from here. Try to view the black forest from above and get some detail.’ Eirin spoke and Canan moved the lens to the top of the forest, but it was in vain. There was a strange fog that covered Darkwood and the most they could see was a dark castle and some buildings in the middle of the forest, but even those had fog around and it was impossible to distinguish any detail.

They had already tried to spy on the continents the first time they visited the moon a few months ago and they knew that it was impossible to spy on the black forest as well as the Nytrer continent.

‘This fog looks similar to what Illum uses to blanket the Nytrer continent, but it looks fainter for some reason. Do you think this is Illum’s job too?’ Canan spoke.

‘This is impossible and you know it. Leviathan’s Mist is very powerful and cannot be diluted or altered. I believe that fog is something that the forest itself emits naturally.’ Eirin replied before changing the subject. ‘Let’s leave the subject of banshees aside for now. What about Eishin? Did he make any movements while I was sleeping?’