#497 Lifeless King vs. Lifeless King

The Emperor got his entire body back...?!

I don’t know where he got that pitch-black cape from, but it makes him look even more like an emperor!

“Mwahahaha! You let your guard down! Don’t think I’ll allow myself to be in such a sorry state forever!”

“His body regenerated!”

I knew Lifeless Kings were immortal, but I never thought they could make such a rapid comeback...

“A Lifeless King’s body is part-astral, after all. As long as mana is present, we can absorb and reconstitute ourselves using it.”

“It’s impossible to regenerate instantly unless the mana is as dense as in a dungeon, though, meow,” explain Sensei and the Professor.

That’s apparently why it took the Emperor two years to recover when he was in Belpgamilia’s attic...

But here on the farm, he regenerated instantly!

“Wahaha! I don’t know about you, but this place is filled with mana as dense as a dungeon! Thanks to you, it was easy for me to rebuild my body! You seem to have brought me here to completely seal me, but instead, it turned out to be a disaster for you! Wahahaha!!!” says the Emperor, laughing triumphantly.

The evil immortal king who brings misfortune to the world has returned because of our farm?!

As the farmer, it’s my responsibility to keep this disaster from spreading!

O’ Dreischwartz! The time in which I must rely on your holy sword powers has come!

“Please wait, Lord Saint,” says Sensei, stopping me. “I implore you to leave this ruffian to me. As I said before, it is a Lifeless King’s duty to correct the misbehavior of immortals. I, too, have recently awakened to my responsibility after teaching the younger generation. I cannot ignore the disgrace of my kind. I’ll lose face in front of my students.”

Sensei is becoming self-aware as a teacher?

I understand. If that’s the case, I’ll leave it to you.

Dreischwartz, false alarm! Sorry!

“Kufufufufu... You want to challenge me to a fight? What a fool.” 

The two Lifeless Kings stare at each other.

In the corner, a cat is grooming its fur.

“We may both be Lifeless Kings, but we have an extremely varied and wide-ranging power. The gap between a novice and a veteran who has lived for thousands of years is hard to fill up. I, the Emperor, who wielded authority as a demon king in my lifetime, have been immortal for 500 years. I’m flourishing with power.”

“Meowww.”

“You, on the other hand, have been an immortal for what, a hundred years? Two hundred? You have the folly to think you understand eternity and challenge someone superior. I’ll make you regret that soon enough...!”

“Meowww.”

This cat’s been awfully loud for a while now. 

Wait, is he doing it on purpose? Is this harassment to spoil the atmosphere of the Emperor’s threats?

“Shut up, cat! Are you trying to pick a fight with me?!”

“To become immortal, knowledge and wisdom are essential. Nevertheless, you keep on exposing your stupidity. It embarrasses me that we’re the same kind; it’s making my paws itch, meow!”

“What is this cat going on about...?”

How about you first question the fact that a cat is talking, Mr. Emperor?

The cat is his alternate form to hide from the world, but he’s actually the Professor, one of the strongest Lifeless Kings highly regarded by a select few!

“My main body is sealed deep inside my dungeon, and I’m just transferring my consciousness to a cat, so I’m far from letting out my full power, meow. However...”  

The air around me changes.

“What? What’s going on...?”

“I can still gather enough magic to crush a young’un like you. It’s like buying one candy with gold coins, meow.”

The cat puts on a predator’s face.

I guess he can also be scary when he gets serious...

“G-Gngh...?!”

The Emperor is overwhelmed.

“Please stand back, Professor. I must crush him.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have intervened, meow.”

The Professor obediently backs away and comes over to me.

He rubs his cheek against my leg, so I pick him up and hold him in my arms.

Sensei is uncharacteristically warlike today. His opponent looks totally overwhelmed.

“You bastards think you’re all so high and mighty...!”

“The fact that you didn’t tremble in fear the moment you saw the Professor shows your limit. You’re no magician; you’re just a mere monster who gave up wealth and power to rely on the powers of a Lifeless King and nothing more.”

“Nonsense! I’ll show you proof that I have mastered the power of a Lifeless King!”

The Emperor’s hand emits a blue glow.

I sense something ill-omened from its azure gleam!

“This is a special spell that a Lifeless King releases by condensing his trapped power of death and evil: Death Miasma! To master this power at will is the proof that you have become the ultimate Lich King!”

“Mastering the Death Miasma, you say?” says Sensei in disgust. “Do you mean to talk about that deliberately condensed aura shaped into a sword?”

As Sensei pointed out, the Emperor had condensed the blue light and extended it into a sword.

Is he planning to slay his enemy with that?

“You amuse me. You treat the omnipotent Death Miasma like a toy. Is that what you mean by mastering it?”

“Silence, novice! My sword of death will slice not only the body but also the soul of anyone it touches, completely annihilating them! It is the ultimate means of destruction! No one can resist its overwhelming power!”

“I admit that I’m still a ‘novice,’ living for only a mere thousand years. There are still many things I do not know, many things I must learn...”

“Wait, what?”

The 500-year-old Emperor Lifeless King is taken aback by Sensei’s words.

“What...did you just say? A thousand years? You’ve been a Lifeless King for a thousand years?!”

“Living with Lord Saint has helped me notice my inadequacies daily. Each day is a new one, even after my death. Even so, I can confidently say that I am wiser than you, who doesn’t know what to do with the Death Miasma.”

The next thing I knew, the fight was over.

The Emperor’s body suddenly began to disappear, along with the blue light concentrated on his fingertips.

“What? My body is disappearing! It’s not regenerating either!”

“The Death Miasma needs not to be blue or condensed. It only needs to be mixed and scattered in the atmosphere. That way, anyone who enters its range will be obliterated in just one snap.”

“This whole area has already been engulfed in Sensei’s miasma, meow,” explains the cat. “With Sensei’s power, he could even engulf an entire country in it. Compared to that, your puny sword is ridiculous in every way, meow.”

Sensei really showed him who’s boss.

The Emperor was under his thumb from the beginning, defeated in a flash as Sensei wanted it.

* * *

Sensei may have achieved a flawless victory, but the Emperor refuses to be obliterated.

“Guohhh! This emperor will never be beaten!!!”

“What a pain in the meow-meow.”

The Emperor is once again left with just his skull, outraged.

The fact that he’s not gone even after being exposed to such a potent spell is truly frightening.

“He’s still an immortal king at the end of the day. If even a single part remains, he can resurrect by absorbing mana from the surroundings.

“As the Death Miasma is a power released by a Lifeless King, it can never completely erase its kind, only inflict some damage, meow.”

And so, we’re back to square one.

“So, the problem is how to deal with this immortal troublemaker, is it?” 

“No matter how thoroughly you break him, as long as there’s mana around, he’ll absorb it and regenerate himself. And since there is no place in this world without mana, it is practically impossible to stop him from recovering.”

“There really isn’t?”

“In essence, there isn’t, but in sporadic cases, it can exist. It will probably take this skull a few hundred years to revive himself if we keep him in such a place, meow.”

The more I listen to them, the more I understand the haphazard circumstances of Lifeless Kings.

“But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to seal a Lifeless King. It has been done in the past.”

“Ah, Sensei...?”

“I will take responsibility for this nuisance. If my idea works out as planned, he will never bother anyone ever again.”

Sensei’s words sound promising.