Agrae paused.
His shoulders rose with a sharp breath… then settled.
He turned slowly, stepping back toward the wreckage. As he reached the place where Enna had fallen, he pulled back his hood, revealing a youthful, elegant face—almost delicate in its features, yet marred by something… inhuman beneath the surface.
He stared at the bloodstained earth and spoke, his voice low but resolute.
"In the name of Agrae… I offer you a soul pact. I will bring back Princess Ilyss…"
…
Alec never imagined his luck could be this rotten. He hadn't gotten far with Enna before they ran straight into a roaming undead.
Not just any undead—this one was a stitched abomination, a Rank-9 elite boss known in the game world as Maws of the Devourer. Early-stage Death Knights loved to gang up and farm it. The thing had a nasty habit: it swallowed the arms of enemies it killed and grafted them into its own flesh.
Over time, its body became a writhing mass of half-digested weapons and mangled limbs. Killing it meant scoring a weapon infused with venom or hatred—perfect for boosting your combat rating in one go.
But for a necromancer? This thing was a total nightmare.
Alec knew nearly everything about it. The abomination hadn't originally been from around here—it used to be the main boss of a small town near the ruins of Carbuth.
That town had once been called Silvermere, a peaceful lakeside settlement. But after the entire Duchy of Carbuth fell to undeath, the name was changed to Dreadmere.
The new name wasn't just for drama. When the kingdom began converting its citizens into undead, they hadn't realized that a forgotten hero lay buried beneath the lakebed in a sealed stone sarcophagus.
When the necromantic transmutation array was triggered across the land, that long-dead hero was caught in its radius—and he rose again, now part of Carbuth's army.
But unlike most people twisted into undead, this one retained far more of himself. Maybe he saw his decayed body as too weak to fight, maybe he just snapped—but instead of marching with the others, he turned on them. He started tearing apart the undead villagers, sewing usable limbs into his own.
And so, the fallen hero became something else entirely—no longer a corpse, but a sophisticated monstrosity of stitched bone and stolen muscle.
That was Maws of the Devourer. The very thing chasing Alec now.
But this wasn't a heroic battle. The thing was out of its mind, its intelligence long devoured by madness. Now, it was just a predator that couldn't stop building itself from the bodies it broke.
All Alec had done was pass by. And that had been enough.
The moment it spotted him, it dropped the corpse it was feasting on and charged. Even without Enna on his back, Alec wouldn't have stood a chance. With her? It was suicide to even try to fight.
So he ran.
He took the roughest path he could find, crashing through brush and roots, not caring where it led—only that it might slow the monster down.
Eventually, he burst through a thicket and into a forest. Only then did he realize the road had disappeared entirely.
Despite the spread of undeath across the Carbuth region, the forests around it had somehow remained untouched. The trees here were still thick, the canopies high and green, the undergrowth alive and well.
Deeper in the woods—right in the direction Alec was heading—was a spring. And by its edge stood three men, cloaked in long robes of deep green.
Each of them held a shimmering green crystal, which they hesitantly dropped into the water. Every time one sank beneath the surface, the spring would pulse with light and cast a rainbow across its surface.
Watching the arcs of color dance in the mist, one of the men turned to the eldest and asked in a low voice, "Master... Are we going too far with this?"
"That was the Princess's order," the elder man said sternly. "Carbuth is at the brink. If we don't go through with this, we'll all end up as slaves to the beastfolk. All of us—remember that."
That shut the others up, though neither looked any happier about tossing their crystals into the spring. Their hesitation hung thick in the air, their eyes still fixed on the swirling water below.
That's when Alec emerged from the woods, Enna's body in his arms.
The moment the robed men spotted him, they raised their staves without hesitation. The leader stepped forward and shouted, "Who are you?"
Alec blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected anyone to be here—especially not now.
But it didn't take him long to piece it together. This spring… it was one of the five core nodes powering Carbuth's massive composite necromantic array. In later quests, Clerics were tasked with purifying all five. And Alec, playing as a necromancer, had taken the opposing mission: stop them from doing exactly that.
Which was why he knew this site had always been guarded by three skeletal warlocks.
He'd only come here hoping to preserve Enna's body, to buy himself time.
He hadn't expected to run into the trio like this.
As Alec hesitated, unsure of how to explain himself, the two younger warlocks began to advance. The elder had already started muttering an incantation under his breath.
Panic tightening his chest, Alec blurted out, "I'm the magistrate's son from Maple Hollow. My lover died fighting the beastfolk outside the walls. I don't want her reduced to some mindless skeleton—I want to preserve her here, in the spring."
At that, the younger two froze, uncertainty flashing across their faces.
But the elder didn't lower his staff. He scoffed. "Your lover… is the Commander of Amiria's Royal Guard?"
Alec's blood ran cold. At the mention of Enna's identity, the other two raised their staves again.
"So what if she was?" Alec snapped, eyes flaring. "You got a problem with that?"
The old warlock gave a slow shake of the head. "No problem. But with Carbuth's survival at stake, I can't afford to take things lightly."
"Oh, come on. What's next—you gonna kill an undead and a corpse for the sake of secrecy?" Alec shot back, glancing behind him while tightening his grip on Enna. "That really your idea of loyalty?"
"No need for that," the elder replied. "Even I'm not blind. It's obvious you've already walked the path of necromancy."
He lowered his staff, tone cooler now. "I'm just a minor plague warlock. You're far more advanced than I ever was."
Alec said nothing for a moment, then gave a shrug. "Look… I'll be blunt. I didn't mean to come here. I was running from something—got chased here by accident."
The elder raised a brow, then pointed past Alec's shoulder.
"You mean… him?"