The Free Nation — Freedem, Royal Capital.
As the political and economic center of the largest human trading nation in the southeast, this place should have been filled with constant shouts of merchants, bustling crowds, and endless caravans.
But now, the royal capital was a different world entirely.
The once-clean streets were now drenched in blood and scattered flesh. Corpses roamed aimlessly along the roads, and what was once home to millions of citizens had turned into a paradise for the dead.
At that moment, two uninvited guests dressed in white robes arrived.
They wore white bird-beaked masks, crisp white suits, and white cloaks draped over their shoulders. Not a single speck of dust marred their immaculate garments, whose cuffs and collars were embroidered with delicate golden threads.
On the backs of their cloaks were stitched three pairs of white wings crossed by twin silver swords.
Any undead creature that dared approach them was crushed into pulp by an invisible force before it could get within ten meters.
One of the white-robed men reached under his hood, scratched his messy hair, and said nervously,
"Senior Blood Raven, are you sure it's fine sending just the two of us rookies on this mission? We're talking about the Witch of the Underworld! Three hundred years ago she almost wiped out half of the Ymir Empire!
Even if we combined our strength, we wouldn't even be fit to polish her boots!"
The man called Blood Raven sighed, rubbed his forehead, and said with exasperation,
"Pigeon, you're a squad leader, for heaven's sake. With the power of the Sacred Relic inside you, you could easily destroy half an empire yourself if you tried."
"You're kidding me, right? That's an empire! A nation guarded by holy-rank powerhouses! What would I fight them with — sarcasm?"
"That's exactly my point. The Witch of the Underworld only almost destroyed half the empire — she didn't actually do it. Besides, she never even reached the holy rank back then. After being imprisoned for three centuries, even if she escaped, she's nothing but a stray dog now."
"But, Senior… what if another witch was the one who freed her? You know as well as I do that the seal of the Holy Maiden's Temple isn't something just anyone can break—"
"Enough with the what-ifs. Headquarters already sent word: the Sixth Seat of the Holy Judgment Knights — the Hand of Verdict — will be joining us.
Even if we run into two witches, so what?"
As he spoke, Blood Raven suddenly rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a slender, fair-skinned arm.
The arm was flawless — smooth and radiant, the kind of arm one would imagine belonging to an otherworldly beauty.
Unfortunately, that arm was attached to a burly, two-meter-tall man with a frame like a bear. The sight was… disturbing, to say the least.
"Besides," he said, smirking, "we've both received relic transplants. Even if we face two witches head-on, we're not necessarily doomed.
After all…
this is the power of the gods."
Inside the Heim Castle.
One butler, thirteen maids, twelve manservants, four cooks, two stablemen, thirty-one knights, seventy guards.
Aside from Lily, that accounted for every member of the household staff — all of whom were now dead.
Out of these 133 people, only three had ever been truly loyal to Hel.
Old butler Sebas, who had served the Heim family since Hel's grandfather's time.
Sebas's granddaughter, Anna — a young maid born and raised in Heim Castle.
And veteran knight Arwin, once sworn to Hel's grandfather and now the instructor of Heim's knights.
Of these three, only Anna was an ordinary person with no affinity for magic.
Sebas was a mid-tier rank-two mage, and Arwin a mid-tier rank-two knight.
However, both had only blue-grade elemental affinity — meaning they were unlikely to ever advance beyond the second tier without some extraordinary opportunity.
When creating high-level undead, the strength and potential of the corpse matter greatly.
With their level of power and talent, Hel could at best turn them into mid-level undead, perhaps reaching the third tier if he pushed the limits.
Lily's case had been special. When Hel transformed her, he'd used a Blood Gem infused with the full essence of the Rose Countess's blood — essentially performing a vampire's first embrace ritual.
But there was only one Blood Gem, and it was gone. Repeating that process was impossible.
Which meant Hel had to find a new method.
He still had two freshly harvested elemental crystals in his possession.
When elemental energy merges with the spirit, it forms magic; when merged with blood and vitality, it forms fighting aura.
When a creature dies, its elemental energy condenses in the heart into a crystalline form — the elemental crystal.
To create an undead, necromancers typically corrupt this crystal with death magic, turning its elemental essence into death-aspected energy before proceeding.
But what if—
Hel thought, what if I replaced the corpse's original elemental crystal with a death-element one?
With that thought, Hel took out one of the crystals and crouched beside Arwin's body.
The seventy-year-old knight had died from a clean strike to the heart — a fatal blow. His blood had long dried, faint wisps of deathly energy leaking from the wound.
That was residual death aura from his fighting spirit.
Without hesitation, Hel reached into the wound and, after a moment, pulled out a small ochre crystal — Arwin's elemental crystal, still imbued with traces of his soul.
Theoretically, many necromancers must have thought of this method before — swapping crystals to create stronger undead.
But the problem was that an elemental crystal contains a fragment of the soul. Without removing that piece, the resulting undead's will would be that of the body's original owner, not the necromancer's.
It was like consuming another's elemental crystal and being possessed in return.
And precisely extracting the soul fragment was delicate work — something most necromancers couldn't do.
But Hel, with his many Trait Cards, was no ordinary necromancer.
Such "small matters" were trivial to him.
With ease, he erased the lingering spirit of the Death Knight he'd claimed earlier, then transferred Arwin's soul fragment into the new crystal.
He then pressed the four-tiered crystal into Arwin's chest and channeled the power of the Sacred Coffin of the Dead.
[High-Rank Necromancy: Creation of a Death Knight]
In an instant, torrents of death energy burst forth from the coffin, pouring into Arwin's corpse.
The sheer concentration of death aura chilled the air, frost forming across the floor.
Suddenly, the corpse's eyes snapped open — crimson pupils gleaming with madness and a flicker of hostility toward Hel.
But he did not attack. Instead, he rose to one knee and bowed his head before Hel.
That moment of hostility — was it a side effect of the black trait cards?
And though his strength was formidable, he had not reached the fourth tier — only the peak of the third.
Perhaps, Hel mused, he'd need to swap in some better traits later.