Lich for Hire

Chapter 213: Capturing the Swamp

When the Chairman saw Ambrose's Golden Throne, his eye blinked.

He had never seen such a thing before, but he could immediately tell it was no ordinary artifact. Sitting upon the throne, Ambrose seemed like an entirely different person who radiated an overwhelming pressure.

"No wonder you claim to be able to cast Terraform. Where did this artifact come from?" the Chairman asked curiously.

He considered himself well-traveled and knowledgeable; he could name nearly every famous artifact in the world. Yet this one was completely unfamiliar to him.

Ambrose answered casually, "A little benefit from the God of Alchemy. Otherwise, why would I agree to his deal?"

"Your deal being to exile me?" the Chairman said with a cold laugh.

Ambrose smiled. "But here I am looking for you, aren't I? I tricked the God of Alchemy."

Whether that statement was true or false was impossible to tell. At this point, the Chairman had no interest in settling old scores. A wise business partner did not cling to the past—the best choice, when profit was involved, was to forgive and forget.

Meanwhile, the ruins of Alkhemia continued to shrink as they were converted into raw magical power. Ambrose felt almost bloated from the torrent of energy.

He knew his skeletal body could not contain such a vast quantity of magic. If he didn't release it soon, his body might well explode.The Golden Throne flared with dazzling light. As Ambrose chanted his spell and traced complex arcs of magic with both hands, the enormous reservoir of power burst forth like a breaking dam.

Terraform was a spell capable of reshaping the environment of an entire world.

The strange refraction of the Golden Desert, and the perpetual thunderclouds of the Orc Mountains, were both "wonders" left behind by Terraform.

Now, Ambrose intended to create a wonder of his own.

A strange pink mist appeared around Alkhemia. The mist writhed and shifted as though it were alive, seeping into every brick and stone of the city.

The Chairman, whose existence was already fused with Alkhemia itself, felt the change immediately.

"What… what are you doing?" he asked. His tone was curious rather than alarmed. He could sense that the transformation posed no threat to him.

Ambrose said nothing as he continued to pour magic into the spell. The pink mist thickened, becoming denser and denser. Before long, the Chairman realized what the pink mist could do.

As he extended one of his tentacles, the city trembled. From the edge of Alkhemia, a massive tentacle formed entirely of pink mist stretched outward and upward.

One hundred meters, two hundred, five hundred, three thousand, five thousand—the misty appendage extended to an unimaginable distance until it finally reached the splaad swamp floating high above.

Only then did Ambrose speak. "I once heard the saying that, instead of giving someone a fish, it's better to teach them how to fish." He gestured toward the swirling mist. "Chairman, I've conjured this Chaos Mist for you. You can control it freely with your thoughts. This entire realm is now your fishing ground. Every land fragment is like a fish waiting to be caught. Let's give it a try."

The Chairman extended all his tentacles excitedly. In an instant, the whole of Alkhemia transformed into a gigantic tentacled monster. Every appendage shot toward the swamp, seizing the massive landmass with ease.

Under the Chairman's control, the chaos-tinged tentacles began to retract, dragging the swamp toward the city.

Naturally, the sudden change terrified the splaad.

As the two land fragments drew closer, Ambrose could clearly see the splaad leaping about in panic. But there was nothing they could do. All they could do was watch helplessly as their world was pulled closer and closer to Alkhemia.

Finally, the swamp was flipped over by the Chairman's tentacles and embedded beside the ruin of Alkhemia. As the two fragments collided, the invisible barrier between them sparked violently. Yet with a single sweep of the tentacles, the barrier dissolved and the two fragments fused together.

It was like two soap bubbles merging into one larger bubble.

The swamp was slightly smaller than Alkhemia. Despite the immense scale of both masses, the impact produced far less shock than Ambrose expected.

Ambrose clapped his hands happily. "A success! Looks like my Terraform worked pretty well."

The spell had altered part of the chaos and transformed it into tentacles around Alkhemia that the Chairman could control. The power of chaos could erase the barriers between land fragments, allowing the city to move freely through the realm.

In other words, the Chairman now had unlimited freedom within this space. He could capture other worlds at will and graft them onto Alkhemia.

And as long as there was enough matter available, someone capable of unlimited Wishes could dominate this divine dumping ground with ease.

Ambrose had only just come up with this idea. The Chairman might well become an ally with tremendous potential. The stronger he became, the greater the benefits Ambrose might gain in the future.

The Chairman himself was very satisfied with what Ambrose had accomplished. He sighed. "If only you had been willing to join the Alchemists' Council back then. Things might have turned out very differently."

Ambrose chuckled. "There's no need to dwell on the past." He had absolutely no regrets. The Chairman's followers were either dead, bankrupt, or forced into exile. Even the Chairman himself had been banished.

That was the price of pursuing power rather than gold.

Ambrose waved a hand impatiently. "Enough nostalgia. Let's deal with those splaad first. Now that I've equipped you with these tentacles, you can open a passage for me so I can return home. It's a win-win situation, isn't it?"

With that, Ambrose rode the Golden Throne toward the swarm of the splaad.

This time, he intended to use brute force.

The splaad's spatial links were no longer his only option. With the Chairman's help, even if the splaad lord blew himself up, Ambrose could simply have the Chairman dismantle the swamp and convert it into fuel for the Wish spell, then wish for a spatial passage directly.

Ambrose unleashed all his firepower at once.

Hovering in the air, he hurled spells downward as if they cost him nothing.

Lightning Call. Chain Lightning. Lightning Call again. Another Chain Lightning… The splaad possessed decent magic resistance, but they were far from immune. Under Ambrose's overwhelming barrage, the conductive swamp turned into a nightmare. One toad after another convulsed and collapsed.

At last, the gray splaad could no longer remain still. It cast Flight and rose into the air, firing a Finger of Death at Ambrose.

Ambrose raised a Mage Shield, expecting it to block the attack easily.

But the necromantic energy pierced straight through the shield and struck him!

At the last instant, as the deadly spell rushed toward his face, Ambrose spun the Golden Throne around.

The Finger of Death slammed into the throne and exploded in a brilliant flash.

Ambrose shuddered. That gray splaad had had a legendary boon capable of piercing shields.

It had to be a legendary boon. How else would his Mage Shield, empowered by the Golden Throne, have shattered so easily? With his artifact supporting him, Ambrose was confident he would normally be able to withstand even a Meteor Shower.

He had been overconfident. He had never expected to run into a splaad whose legendary boon specifically countered shields. It was the perfect mage killer: how many mages could survive a Finger of Death with their bare bodies?

Fortunately, Ambrose was not just a legendary mage. He was also a legendary ranger. His reflexes saved him at the critical moment, allowing him to use the Golden Throne itself to block the spell.

Without hesitation, Ambrose retreated and unleashed a furious bombardment on the splaad lord.

Rapid-fire Fireballs rained down, drowning the creature in explosions.

Only after returning to Alkhemia did Ambrose extend his senses outward to check on the splaad lord's status.

The splaad lord clearly had not expected Ambrose to survive the attack. Its reaction came a beat too late, and the fireballs struck him head-on. Half its body was scorched black as it fell smoking toward the ground.

It likely never imagined Ambrose's casting ability would be so absurd, as if a hundred mages were casting simultaneously. The sheer firepower had severely wounded it.

If not for the two decent magic items it carried, that barrage alone might have killed it.

Just as Ambrose prepared to finish it off, the Chairman extended one of his tentacles and caught the falling splaad lord.

Those tentacles were able to manipulate an entire swamp. The injured splaad had no chance of escaping.

Thus, the powerful legendary splaad was captured alive.

Ambrose shot the Chairman a disdainful look. "You purposefully chose not to help me, didn't you? You could have intervened earlier."

The Chairman replied without hesitation, "I was curious what that golden chair of yours could do. Now I see that it truly is an artifact, one powerful enough to make even me jealous."

A master could judge another master with a single glance. Ambrose's spellcasting had been utterly outrageous. He was like an entire battalion of mages all by himself.

And the God of Alchemy had just given him that for free? Was Ambrose secretly the god's illegitimate son?

The thought stirred a trace of jealousy in the Chairman's heart. He himself had never even heard a divine oracle from the God of Alchemy. In fact, the development of alchemy had stagnated for centuries under that god's interference. He was the true alchemist here! Why would the god favor a lich?

Still, the Chairman allowed himself to feel only the barest flicker of anger. The Chairman controlled his emotions well. Cooperation with Ambrose was far more important, at least right now.

He dragged the splaad lord into Alkhemia and looked down at the half-gray, half-charred creature. In a solemn voice, he declared, "Submit to me, and I will grant you a new life."

If he wished to become a god, he would need followers.

And his path to becoming a new god would begin with the disgusting toad before him.