Lich for Hire-Chapter 80: The Chairman of the Alchemists Council

"What? The druid was kidnapped?!"

By the time the news reached Dippel and Gustavo Flynn, the two remaining council members, they were on the verge of losing their minds.

They had expected difficulties in the ritual, but this went beyond absurd. Not only had the lich escaped, the druid had as well. Worse still, undead were rampaging through the city.

Dippel was furious and nearly lashed out at Gustavo Flynn on the spot. After all, this was supposed to be Flynn's responsibility.

But he also knew that an argument would solve nothing. Suppressing his anger, he said coldly, "We must deal with the undead first. The girl has to be taken back alive. If they kill her, the plan will fail completely."

Gustavo Flynn frowned. "How did he know the druid was tied to the ritual?"

Flynn still had no idea how Ambrose seemed to know everything. It was as if he had seen the ritual in advance and knew how to best destabilize it each time.

There couldn't have been a leak. Only a handful of people knew the full picture, and those who truly grasped every detail were limited to the three remaining members of the Alchemists' Council.

One was Dippel, one was himself, and the last...

Gustavo Flynn turned toward the ritual circle and saw Gold stretching lazily as he woke up.

But how had he woken up so quickly? The potion should have kept him unconscious much longer.

Gold yawned, casually picked at his ear, and shook off his grogginess before finally looking around. He didn't seem to panic despite realizing that he had already been positioned as a sacrifice for the ritual. Instead, he called out across the magic circle, "Flynn, Dippel, what's wrong with you two? You look awful. Did the plan go wrong again?"

Gold's words stabbed at them like knives. If they couldn't fix the ritual, they'd have to start running for their lives.

Dippel asked grimly, "Gold, were you the one who brought those undead into the city?"

Gold looked genuinely surprised. "What does that have to do with me? How would I know those undead?"

"Then explain this!" Dippel snapped. "Why is the undead queen of the Umbral Depths in Alkhemia? Why did she secretly remain in the city, waiting to strike the moment our plan began? She has no grudge against us, and our ritual does her no harm. Opposing us brings her no benefit whatsoever!

"If there wasn't some deal involved, why would she do this? Why would she personally leave the Umbral Depths and come to the surface? The only explanation is that you deliberately brought her here to sabotage the ritual because you didn't want to be sacrificed!"

Dippel's barrage of accusations made Gold burst out laughing.

"Hahaha! So even lofty legends can throw tantrums like children. I don't feel like wasting my time on such a boring question. If you insist on acting like a child, I'll indulge you.

"Dippel, if you truly suspect me, then activate the ritual right now and sacrifice me. See whether I despair. See whether I struggle. Wouldn't that make everything perfectly clear?"

He spoke of his own death so lightly that it made Dippel hesitate. It really didn't seem as if Gold were responsible.

Gustavo Flynn also spoke up. "When we discussed the need for a sacrifice, Gold volunteered of his own accord. He's not trying to back out. Perhaps there was some flaw in our preparations that allowed the lich to deduce our plan. Those undead may have been preparing for this for a long time, forcing us to always be one step behind. Now isn't the time to argue about leaks. What matters is how we regain the initiative."

Dippel frowned. "Killing someone is easy. Rescuing someone is far harder."

Flesh was fragile and could easily be destroyed by any old spell.

That druid girl needed to be sacrificed at the right place and the right time. Otherwise, her death would be meaningless.

They had to retrieve her alive. That was the real problem.

Who could be confident of rescuing a living person from the clutches of an undead queen?

Just as the two of them ran out of ideas, Gold spoke up again. "We're nearing a critical part of the ritual. Shouldn't you stop trying to handle this yourselves? Ultimately, even the three of us—the Second Seat, the Sixth Seat, and the One-Hundred-and-Eightieth Seat—are all but apprentices running errands for the Chairman."

His words made both men look up. They glanced at the Chairman, suspended in midair.

His torturous posture and manic expression were fixed in place, but his consciousness seemed long gone from his body.

"The Chairman has completely fused with the ritual array," Dippel said. "He can't leave it now."

Gold shook his head. "You're underestimating him. He knows perfectly well what's happening. He just hasn't intervened because no one asked. Isn't that right, Chairman?"

The moment he finished speaking, a mass of translucent energy drifted out of the Chairman's naked body, like a soul leaving its shell.

Yet this soul looked nothing like the withered physical form. In his spiritual form, the Chairman was tall and imposing. A faint radiance emanated from him, making him appear almost divine.

This was the Chairman of the Alchemists' Council, the legendary alchemist Gary Watts.

"Chairman!"

Dippel and Gustavo Flynn cried out in unison, but the old man's soul merely waved a hand with faint regret.

Gary Watts showed no particular emotion toward the two companions he had known for decades. Calmly, he said, "I know what's going on. I'll handle it."

Without waiting for their response, he turned into a spectral blur, passed straight through the thick ceiling of the sewers, and flew toward the surface.

Meanwhile, Ambrose was having a rather pleasant time.

All he needed to do was walk beside Black Rose. There was nothing else for him to worry about.

This was what it meant to be a legend, someone who could only be opposed by another legend. Walking by Black Rose's side, Ambrose truly experienced what invincibility felt like.

Unlike a half-baked legend like himself, Black Rose was a true master of necromancy. Along the way, she didn't lose a single one of her death knights. Instead, their numbers grew: shambling zombies joined them, as did hundreds of commandeered automata.

The most terrifying aspect of an undead siege was that, the more you fought, the more undead there were. Once the snowball started rolling, no one could stop it.

Alkhemia's greatest mistake was failing to drive Black Rose out of the city. As a result, much of its vast, intricate defenses had been rendered useless.

With undead already inside the walls, the city's fall was imminent.

But Ambrose had not come to conquer the city. He was here to seize the fruits of the Wish ritual.

So he didn't waste time fighting in the streets against administrators and golems. He simply took over one of Alkhemia's seven towers, had Black Rose set up defenses, and then hid inside with the druid Naomi Watts.

The tower, created by the God of Alchemy as a divine instrument of shame, was virtually indestructible. Anyone who wanted to take the druid would have to fight their way up level by level.

The tower was long abandoned. Ambrose encountered no resistance as he brought Naomi to the top floor.

As soon as he set her down, Naomi awoke from her stupor.

"Tsk. My mana's weaker than I thought. I lost track of time."

Spell potency depended on mana. After resurrecting, Ambrose's strength had dropped significantly. Even his sleep spell was far less effective than before.

The moment Naomi woke, she scrambled into a corner in panic. She instantly shapeshifted into a black panther and bared her fangs at Ambrose with a furious roar.

"Hey, don't snarl at me," Ambrose said. "I saved your life."

"You—you killed my people!"

"Correction: they were about to sacrifice you. Anyway, since you're awake, let them explain it to you themselves."

Ambrose snapped his fingers. The now-zombified Van Jones walked forward expressionlessly.

Naomi backed away in fear, only to find her back against the wall. She couldn't retreat any further. Choking back tears, she cried out, "Uncle Jones, wake up!"

Van Jones stood still, then spoke in a cold, emotionless voice. "Naomi Watts, you must die."

"What did you say?!" Naomi stared in disbelief. Then she turned angrily to Ambrose. "You're controlling Uncle Jones! I won't believe this!"

Ambrose shrugged. "Believe it or not, it doesn't matter. Just treat it as a story. And don't make trouble for me right now."

Ambrose rummaged around the room, found a stack of parchment, and began sketching on it.

Naomi had no idea what he was doing, but the zombified Van Jones could only obey Ambrose's commands.

"Naomi Watts, you must die. You are a blood relative of Gary Watts, Chairman of the Alchemists' Council. Your sacrifice is key to one of Alkhemia's secret rituals. If the ritual succeeds, Alkhemia will vanish completely, and this land will become the domain of us shadow druids."

"Shadow druids?! No, that's impossible!"

So-called shadow druids were part of an extremist sect utterly unlike the usual druid circles that preached harmony between humanity and nature. They believed that any mortal existence was a blight upon the natural world.

Fairness is an illusion. Where humans tread, nature must suffer.

Unity is a lie. Humans only wish to tame beasts and burn the wilds.

We are thunder. We are the storm. We will wipe out those ignorant, reckless humans to make room for pure new life!

That was the oath of the shadow druids: to wipe out mortals and return the world to nature, before finally returning to nature's embrace themselves.

As Ambrose continued sketching, he sneered. "It's the same old brand of discrimination. Religious fanatics, academic lunatics, environmental extremists... they're even more twisted than us undead."

"No... that can't be true!" Naomi cried in despair. "I was an abandoned baby you picked up! If I were really the Chairman's child, why would I have been abandoned?!"

Her voice trembled. She could not accept this truth. Did that mean all the care and love she had received growing up were fake? Her adoptive parents, her brothers and sisters, all those memories—were they all lies? Had they raised her just to kill her?

Naomi shook violently, fighting the urge to leap at Van Jones and tear out his throat to stop him from speaking.

But before she could act, an elderly voice spoke by her ear.

"Child, everything he said is true. I ordered that you be abandoned."

As the voice faded, a translucent figure passed straight through the tower's supposedly indestructible outer wall and entered the room.

The Chairman of the Alchemists' Council, Gary Watts, had arrived.