Chapter 24: The Resurrection Ritual

Because his departure was so hurried, Polo had only brought two family knights with him before rushing across the sea to Ironport City to hire laborers.

He had not been told the prophecy personally by his grandmother; he had merely overheard her muttering vaguely in her sleep:

"...North of the Iron Isles, islands like arrows. Where they point to the east, the Rose lies buried..."

Compared to those obscure and cryptic prophecies, this one was quite simple to interpret:

To the north of Ironport Island, there was a straight line formed by a chain of islands. By following that line toward the east, one could find the burial site of the Rose Queen.

Historically, the Rose Queen, Besalia, had vanished mysteriously, and the various magical artifacts she carried had disappeared into the river of time along with her.

Polo had consulted historical documents and discovered that Besalia possessed a divine artifact known as the "Golden Finger." It was said to be crafted from the finger of a powerful ancient sorcerer, capable of turning anything it touched into gold. Consequently, it was stored in a box of pure gold and could only be handled using tools made of pure gold.

The ancient Rose Queen had relied on this artifact to amass nearly infinite wealth and single-handedly forged the most powerful Dark Elf dynasty in history.

If he could acquire this artifact, it would mean that Polo, too, would possess near-infinite wealth.

At that point, whether he wanted to seize control of his family, climb the ranks of the imperial nobility to become a powerful aristocrat, or simply run off to the Gold Sands, the Frost Plains, or the Fjords to establish his own city and recruit an army to become a sovereign—it could all be done with enough money!

Several pearl-diving fishermen had already submerged into the sea to search the shipwreck, while Polo and his two knights waited on the boat.

Divers in this world, lacking the aid of scuba gear and oxygen tanks, could only operate underwater by relying on crude air tubes and holding their breath. Thus, they had to signal the surface from time to time so those on the boat could haul them up to catch their breath.

Polo, dissatisfied with their low efficiency, ordered the two stronger knights to operate the winch, hoping to avoid wasting too much time during the air-exchange intervals.

As time passed, more and more artifacts were salvaged onto the deck.

There were pieces of jewelry in the Dark Elf style, as well as silver bowls, cups, forks, and knives, though long-term immersion and erosion by seawater had long since stripped them of their original, precious luster.

According to feedback from a pearl diver who had just surfaced, the team below had passed through the shipwreck’s banquet hall and begun heading toward the master bedroom in the depths, which slightly eased Polo’s anxiety.

A moment later, the winch cable on the boat began to twitch again, clearly indicating that the divers below were requesting a breath.

One of the family knights pulled the cable with great force, hoisting the diver from the deep sea onto the boat. However, the man’s eyes were tightly shut, his expression was hideous, and his skin was a foreboding, bruised cyan—a sign of asphyxiation from severe oxygen deprivation.

The sailors hurriedly carried him to the side, roughly tore open his clothes, poured a large amount of strong spirits into his mouth, and began scrubbing his body violently with the alcohol.

Polo was not interested in whether the pearl diver lived or died; he simply gripped the deck railing with both hands, continuing to stare into the bottomless deep sea.

Suddenly, a terrifying scream erupted behind him.

Polo turned around in shock to see the diver who had just been hauled up lunging at and biting three sailors in succession, before being hacked down by one of Faher’s family knights.

"Watch out!" the knight shouted, his eyes widening as he looked at the dark green, putrid blood dripping from his blade. "It’s a plague of necromancy!"

The words had barely left his lips when the three bitten sailors, their eyes bloodshot and their bodies bruised and purple, began launching indiscriminate attacks on those around them.

The remaining sailors scattered in a panic, ignoring their captured, unlucky companions, and jumped directly into the sea from the deck, fleeing as fast as they could.

The two family knights quickly separated; one rushed forward to hack away at the plague-stricken corpses, while the other held his sword and stood by Polo’s side, ready to intercept any attacks.

Polo retreated in terror to the edge of the deck. He could not understand how a perfectly ordinary shipwreck salvage operation had, without warning, turned so fraught with danger—to the point where plague-stricken corpses had emerged!

"Protect me, quickly!" he yelled. "Don't let those corpses get near me!"

The family knight did not respond, focusing intently on fighting with his sword.

Battles against plague-stricken corpses generally had only three outcomes: killing the corpse without injury, killing it while suffering an injury, or being killed by it.

Unless a priest skilled in life magic or an alchemist specializing in anti-toxins was present, the latter two results were effectively the same. The plague toxin acted so rapidly that victims rarely lasted more than a minute.

Worst of all, being on a ship at sea, neither of the two family knights was wearing armor, making their movements incredibly constrained.

Polo watched the battle on the deck in fear, then suddenly commanded his guard:

"Cover me! Isn't there a lifeboat at the stern? Take me to it!"

"Please, calm yourself," the knight beside him said in a low voice. "The situation is not yet clear. Fleeing blindly will leave your back exposed to the enemy, which will only put you in greater danger..."

Before he could finish his sentence, the knight fighting at the front made a mistake. A corpse, not yet dead, suddenly grabbed his lower leg and bit down hard on his ankle.

The knight let out an earth-shattering scream, his longsword stabbing downward to pierce the corpse's skull.

Whatever courage Polo had left was utterly shattered by that scream.

Ignoring the advice and obstruction of the knight beside him, he rushed to the stern, jumped into the lifeboat, and swung his dagger to cut the anchor rope.

The small boat dropped into the sea, kicking up a spray of water. Polo gripped the gunwales tightly to avoid being thrown out by the turbulence.

However, something cold and slimy reached out silently from the seawater and clamped tightly onto his wrist.

Before Polo could react, he was dragged instantly into the sea.

The battle on the large ship had also been decided. Both knights had been surrounded and killed by the corpses. The remaining undead creatures walked to the ship's side, standing in an eerie, silent row as they looked down into the sea.

The surface of the water began to stir.

First to emerge was a skeleton, followed by countless pairs of slick, bloated, rotting hands.

The pearl-diving fishermen who had been salvage-diving underwater had all been infected and turned into Drowned Ones. They hoisted the skeleton above the surface, lifting it high to carry it onto the ship's deck.

The corpses that had been standing still began to prostrate themselves in a circle around the skeleton, forming some kind of obscure and sinister necromantic ritual.

"Too crude," Ryan’s voice drifted from a distance.

He stepped onto the deck from the bow, looking at the corpses kneeling in a circle, and remarked:

"Relying on toxins rather than mana to construct a resurrection ritual shows some ingenuity in the design. However, its lack of stability is its greatest flaw. The ritual itself lacks strong resistance to interference; even if it succeeds, I suspect it won't result in a lich. At best, it’ll just be a pile of bones."

"Perhaps it's because she didn't expect to be assassinated?" Daia guessed. "At the final moment before death, a hastily designed resurrection plan is unlikely to be perfect, is it?"

"Don't believe him," Elina said indifferently. "If Besalia were a mediocre and incompetent person, why would he have made a special trip to find this place?"

"I don't deny that," Ryan laughed heartily. "Although her knowledge of necromancy is clearly superficial, considering she achieved this through cross-disciplinary operations using poison, it’s a barely passing grade."

"Elina, go clean up those corpses. Don't let the nearby Drowned Ones get close."

"Daia, take out my ritual candles."