Lich for Hire

Ambrose's senior, Vladimir, had always been an idealist.

Back then, Ambrose was little more than a half-baked alchemist and a lousy mage, the kind of bottom-tier adventurer who only knew a single parlor trick.

Vladimir, on the other hand, had been a noble young master.

Ambrose had just been thrown out of a tavern after being unable to pay for his drink. When he crashed straight into Vladimir, the two of them got to know each other while trading insults.

Then, that penniless nobody dragged the runaway noble heir to a brothel. Just like that, they became friends.

Vladimir had lofty, unrealistic ideals, along with a self-destructive streak born from the sins of his ancestors. In short, he was the sort of fool who was always ready to sacrifice himself to save the world.

Their friendship fell apart after they found that stone slab.

Vladimir had immediately declared, "We now possess power like the gods! We can change this world and make it better!"

Ambrose had replied that he was going to try his luck at the casino.

Just like that, they began arguing about their future and their priorities. Vladimir accused Ambrose of desecrating Fate's gift with his obsession over pleasure and profit. Ambrose shot back that Vladimir, an out-of-touch rich lordling, had no understanding of how ordinary people lived, and was nothing but a self-righteous fool.

That argument led to their wager. In the end, Ambrose won. He didn't have to follow Vladimir around playing the savior, and walked away with a thousand gold to boot. It would be the single biggest windfall of his life for decades to come.

Without that gold, he likely wouldn't have been able to afford his first Potion of Youth at sixty. He would have died of old age in some forgotten corner.

As for Vladimir, it seemed he had spent his entire life serving the Unholy Kingdom.

Ambrose hadn't even needed divination to figure it out. He had to be the one saving the tifling kingdom from Lyon.

Mortals could rarely grasp the limits of the divine, and yet the Hellgates had been built right along the razor's edge of safety. That kind of precision either came from divine guidance... or from a diviner.

"What did guarding that kingdom for so long get you? You've been cast out and turned into a wanted man..."

Vladimir had specified "two months and three days." It was far too precise to be arbitrary. He had clearly foreseen something.

But could Lyon really wait that long before launching its attack?

"That old bastard... Don't tell me he's setting me up again. Does he want me to stall Lyon for two months?!"

He said it dismissively, but deep down, Ambrose already knew that, yes, that was exactly what Vladimir intended. Otherwise, there would have been no message at all.

Diviners tended to communicate with each other in an oblique manner, especially two legendary diviners who shared a complicated past.

But stalling Lyon's advance would be no small feat. It wasn't like Ambrose could just walk onto the battlefield and start releasing poison gas.

After some thought, he took out his Necromantic Codex and sent a message to Black Rose. [Megaman Tiga: Lady Rose, have you tested out the effects of your legendary boon yet?]

She replied quickly.

[Black Rose: I've tested it on the drow, and it works quite well. Why do you ask?]

[Megaman Tiga: I need a favor. Can you use your power to kill someone for me?]

[Black Rose: Of course. Who?]

[Megaman Tiga: The commander of Lyon's southern border, Roger Ángelo.]

Roger Ángelo was a name well known throughout Lyon. The Silvermoon Knight was famed for his individual might; Roger Ángelo was renowned for his brilliance in military command.

During the desert campaign, it was he who truly secured Lyon's victory.

After years of stalemate, Lyon had recalled him from the front lines for a full-scale invasion.

He did not disappoint. He advanced relentlessly, winning battle after battle, often defeating larger forces with smaller armies.

But success bred recklessness. Lyon's high command, hungry for glory, ordered the Silvermoon Knight to bypass the desert's sandstorm barrier and strike at Sweetdew.

Roger Ángelo had opposed it fiercely, warning that such a battle would be meaningless regardless of the outcome. And he was right. The Silvermoon Knight was defeated and twenty thousand paladins devastated. The dwarves nearly reclaimed everything in the counterattack.

Once again, it was Roger Ángelo who stabilized the front, defending the captured cities and securing Lyon's ultimate victory.

When the war settled, he returned to the southern frontier, resuming his post at the city of Lavarun.

In terms of merit, he stood second only to the Silvermoon Knight. He had even been the top candidate for Minister of War.

But he was too unconventional and widely disliked.

His methods were ruthless, and he was a paladin who had sworn an Oath of Conquest.

Many considered black knights who swore the Oath of Vengeance to have questionable morals, but they looked downright innocent compared to paladins who swore the Oath of Conquest.

One of its tenets read, "Your victory must be so overwhelming that it shatters the enemy's will to fight. Blades may end lives, but fear ends nations."

To instill fear in the enemy, to break their will to fight before the battle even begins, was Roger Ángelo's tactical creed. By crushing resistance in advance, he reduced what he deemed "unnecessary" casualties.

After taking a city, other paladin generals would usually send the humans in their newly occupied territory to churches, where priests would "correct their beliefs." The process was long and strict, but generally not lethal.

Roger Ángelo was different. Before battle, he would offer his enemies a chance to surrender.

If they refused, once the city fell, he imposed the harshest possible screening: direct application of Detect Evil. Regardless of whether you were human or not, the slightest trace of evil meant death without exception.

It was well known that only toddlers who had barely learned to walk could register as completely pure. Curse once in your life or harbor a fleeting malicious thought, and the spell would mark you. And once marked, Roger Ángelo would personally take your head.

He was also the most extreme human supremacist in the Lyon Empire. No non-human was permitted to exist in any city under his rule, not even as slaves. In war, he did not consider non-humans prisoners at all, merely "living spoils." They were either sold off to other nations as slaves or executed on the spot and buried where they fell.

The tiflings' urgency and panic in creating so many Hellgates could be traced back, to no small extent, to this nightmarish general.

After all, no one wanted a butcher eyeing their doorstep. Without a few extra Hellgates, how would the tiflings ever feel safe?

When Black Rose saw the name Roger Ángelo, she replied to Ambrose with some reluctance, [Black Rose: I can help, but this won't be easy. Getting his hair or blood without alerting him is no simple matter. A legendary paladin doesn't shed hair easily, not unless I send someone to steal it.]

Holy light was remarkably effective not only at prolonging life and warding off disease, but also preventing things like baldness, stooping, or even impotence.

A legendary paladin simply did not lose hair like an ordinary man. If you wanted a strand of hair, you'd have to rip it out.

But that was no different from an assassination attempt.

A general of Roger Ángelo's caliber wasn't someone an assassin could casually approach.

But Ambrose replied with complete confidence, [Megaman Tiga: Don't worry. He'll start losing hair soon enough. No man escapes the fate of baldness. Roger Ángelo is a workaholic who patrols Lavarun every single day. Just make preparations along his route. Picking up a few fallen hairs won't be difficult.]

Black Rose couldn't make sense of the plan. How exactly was he going to make a paladin lose his hair?

Still, it didn't matter. Everything Ambrose had ever claimed, he had accomplished. All she needed to do was cooperate.

Over the years, Black Rose had planted countless spies throughout Lyon. Though most were eliminated by Detect Evil spells, the sheer number ensured that a few always slipped through.

And with Lyon's rapid expansion in recent years, its tenuous grip over its newly conquered territories gave her even more room to scatter her agents.

Assassination was out of the question, but sneaking into Lavarun to pick up a few stray hairs was eminently feasible.

With Black Rose's cooperation secured, Ambrose immediately got to work.

He activated his Loom of Fate. From that day onward, Roger Ángelo would start losing his hair.

This was the third time Ambrose had used his Loom of Fate. The first had wiped out the House of Cerberus. The second had bound Catherine into his service. And now, the third would be used on this nightmarish general of war.

In theory, Ambrose could simply weave a fate in which Roger Ángelo died a miserable death.

But fate didn't work like that. Instead, it was like a chain of dominoes: prod at something trivial, and the effect of fate would gradually spread outward, amplifying until it achieved the desired result.

Roger Ángelo's existence was too significant. He was a player on the world stage, and to heavily alter his fate would require time and momentum.

It might take ten, twenty, perhaps thirty years.

Ambrose didn't have that kind of time. Baldness would do. If he acted now, by tomorrow, the general would begin losing his hair.

The rest, he would leave to Black Rose.

Having woven the fate of Roger Ángelo's impending baldness, Ambrose set the matter aside for the time being. There were more immediate concerns to handle. Once he headed to the tifling kingdom, he would likely be tied up there for quite some time.

At present, his most pressing issue was neither the drow nor his business operations in the desert.

It was the final divine domain in his possession, the domain of darkness.

As long as he held onto it, he couldn't teleport. Even his extradimensional space was locked.

Ambrose had briefly considered hiding the divine authority somewhere in this underground complex, but in the end, he decided against dragging things out. Better to sell it quickly and be done with it.

The question was, who could he sell it to for a price worth accepting?