Gray-Silver Chest (unidentified name)

One of the basement rooms of the Royal Castle.

The room, where everything in front, left, right, up and down was gray stone, was cold in appearance and temperature.

It was a dark room with no outside light coming in through the ventilation openings, even in the daytime. A few magic lights were installed near the ceiling, dimly illuminating the room.

 

There were a number of bunks lined up in a regular pattern.

One by one, a girl was lying on each bunk.

Some had long hair, some had short hair.

Some were tall, some were short.

Some were well-dressed, some were in badly grafted clothes.

But without exception, they were all girls around the age of 10, and all of them were sleeping as if frozen, having stopped even breathing.

 

It was like a morgue.

Well, it may be similar to a morgue, but this was only a state of suspended animation, and the girls were alive.

 

These girls are René's "Remaining Lives".

They were brought from Wesala during the invasion of the royal capital, but were not used by René in the end.

 

At first, they were kept in the castle, but it was surprisingly time-consuming just to keep them alive so that they could be used in case of emergency.

They took up a lot of space, needed to be taken care of, and above all, they needed food. The food left in the capital and castle was useless for the undead, so there was no need to worry about running out soon, but eventually they would have to procure food.

 

When René asked Everis for a solution, Everis suggested a cryo-sleep using magic.

The girls would sleep like they had stopped time, and they would not cry, be hungry, or get sick.

The only cost would be a small, continuous supply of magic to maintain the spell.

Everis said that the success rate was still about 60%, and in fact about 40% of the subjects died and were discarded, but they had succeeded in putting the rest into a state of cryo-sleep.

 

Well, one of them, the one who was lying on the floor.

 

“Aaaaaaahhhh!!"

 

With a desperate scream,she jumped up and turned into an undead.

 

*

 

"Uhyooo!?"

 

The moment Edgar opened the treasure chest slightly, a mysterious purple phosphorescent mist blew out from inside the box.

It was evil magic that neutralized the life force like water extinguishing fire, causing the death of all living things.

 

Normally, the fog would have spread throughout the area, killing all those around it.

However, the fog swirled out and converged on Edgar in a torrent, like several snakes entwining with each other.

One by one, the charms that Edgar held at his waist burst open, losing their golden glow and turning black and decayed.

 

Finally, it stopped.

There were only two of the many charms left.

Edgar was alive, and the treasure chest was open.

The " Sacrificial Lamb's Necklace", which had done its job, could not bear the load and shattered into tiny fragments.

 

"I thought I was going to ... die."

"Good job."

 

Erminio, who had been watching from a distance, came back to Edgar, who was wiping his cold sweat.

 

*

 

Inside the walls of the castle, in the courtyard of the royal castle, there it was.

 

A huge corpse, curled up like a sleeping cat.

Sharply angled form, scales the color of fresh green, powerful wings attached in place of arms...

The front of the torso, however, was emptied to the bone, and the inside of the abdomen was scarred.

The thing looked like a shell of a wyvern with flesh and organs only removed.

The hard scales, the shell, bones, claws, fangs, and other parts of the wyvern were still there.

It looked like a skeletal specimen of a wyvern wearing its own skin.

 

The wyvern's remains were lying quietly in the hazy moonlight, and a hood was draped over them to keep them out of the rain, but the hood slipped off.

The wyvern's corpse suddenly began to move.

 

The wyvern, which had raised its huge body, flapped its wings, which had lost their skin.

A storm swept through the area, and the wyvern zombie (or wyvern skeleton, or perhaps skull wyvern was a more appropriate term) flew into the air.

Like dragons, wyverns, which were a subdragon species, gained buoyancy from their bio-magic and flew. This was the power of the intangible magic that dragons possessed as a species.

The physical function of the wings was only a support, and even though the wyvern lost its skin membrane, its ability to fly increased as it became lighter due to the "flesh removal".

 

The wyvern fluttered over the castle walls and immediately recognized its master, who had summoned it.

A silver girl ran over the construction scaffolding on top of the buildings under construction spread out around the castle walls.

 

She leapt high as the wyvern zombie approached.

She then magically took flight and approached the wyvern zombie.

 

"Give yourself to me, Schadenfreude!"

 

The silver girl controlled her flight and settled into the wyvern's exposed ribs, which had been drained of flesh and organs.

Then they melted together.

 

*

 

The fluffy buffer cushions were covered with a luxurious crimson fabric that felt good to the touch.

The chest looked like it might hold jewelry or some other extremely delicate and expensive item, but what was inside?

 

"What is this?"

 

Edgar tilted his head.

 

There were two small rose brooches, cheap and commonplace. They were originally silver-colored, but they were smudged like they had been picked up from the ruins of a fire, and the plating had peeled off to reveal the base metal.

And then there was a pile of silver remnants of something tarnished, dirty, and spiky.

 

Both Erminio and Loretta peered over Edgar's shoulder at the treasure chest.

 

"Magic item ...? It doesn't seem to be a magic item."

"Hmm, what's this silver ... thing over here, a remnant of an accessory? This one has a structure ... that looks like a magic item, but it's broken."

 

Edgar cautiously touched the spiky silver object, but was not sure what it was.

It looked like a weapon, like a bellows sword or a whip, or a magical catalyst, but in any case, it seemed to be nothing more than a broken wreckage.

 

Erminio plucked up the brooch and silver piece and observed it seriously, but soon tossed it into the treasure chest with a discouraged look.

 

"Hahhh! Boring. All this carefully hidden stuff, and all that's inside is junk?"

"I remember when I was a little, I used to treasure the snake skins I found in the mountains for a long time."

“Bringing this stuff home is not worth a grain of sand. People will laugh at me like I'm an errand boy."

"But even if it looks like a piece of junk, it might have some important meaning."

Erminio raised his eyebrows.

The situation makes it hard to believe that this was just junk as it appeared to be.

However, Erminio was not sure what the significance really was.

 

Let's say he took it back to Noacurio's army and showed it to them. If they did not understand the meaning either, Erminio might be laughed at.

Perhaps they would think that Erminio had been too cowardly to explore the city and had only been able to bring back some junk that had fallen around, and that he was making up a story about the treasure of the "Rose Princess of Hellrage". Erminio would definitely think so if someone other than himself brought back such a thing.

 

Even so, Erminio thought to himself that it was better than having no loot at all.

If anyone doubted Erminio Drolet, the Drolet family's prestige would be a reminder to him.

 

"I have no choice but to take it back home, ... absolutely. If this is all we can bring back, even the "Rose Princess of Hellrage" is not as qualified as she sounds..."

 

Roar.

The ceiling of the dungeon exploded with a vibration that shook his entire body.

 

"Kyaaaa! What!? What!?"

 

Large and small chunks of rocks flew in and tumbled down. Loretta screamed.

The ceiling, which had been formed by magic and assembled tightly like a monolith, had collapsed.

 

No. It was not a collapse. That was not all.

Something huge had fallen through the ceiling.

 

A silver glint pierced through the cloud of smoke that was billowing up.

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