Supreme Monarch

On the fifth floor of the west wing in the demon king's castle.

A male figure laid on the bed in one of the rooms in this wing unmoving. As the rays of the morning sun that escaped through the thick clouds in the sky shone on him. The figure slightly squirmed around before slowly raising his head and he sat up. He opened his eyes and his vision was a little blurry but got clearer as he blinked his eyes.

He slowly turned his head left and right as he observed the contents of the room he had suddenly found himself in. The room was almost practically empty but it contained all the essentials that looked to be of rather high quality and was sparkling clean.

As he turned his head around, a sudden ringing entered his ears and he soon felt like there was a loud beating drum in his head.

His vision got hazy and he suddenly began to feel faint.

"You're awake. Please don't move around so suddenly, it will still take some time before you're fully recovered."

With great difficulty, he turned his head to the side as he saw a hazy female figure in a sort of maid outfit sitting beside his bed. At this point, the ringing intensified and his vision went black, his body falling back to the bed as he fainted.

He wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious as he raised his eyelids once more. His head still felt numb but he was still able to learn from his mistake as he opted not to sit up immediately this time. He slowly turned his head to the side where he had last seen the female maid sitting however, his eyes went wide as he saw something amazing, something completely different from last time.

There was indeed a goddess standing over him as she cast her aqua blue blessings upon him. Ah yes, he must've died and gone to heaven. Sure, he hadn't planned on that but the aura she exuded made him feel so calm and relax that he didn't mind dying if this was the result.

Suddenly, the aqua blue light stopped and Zomatsu returned to his senses. What in the world was he thinking. Since when was dying acceptable to him. His body immediately shot up as he narrowed his eyes to glare at the person that had done that to him.

"Oh, you shouldn't move so suddenly. You suffered quite an intense mental attack and healing mental problems is not my specialty."

'Mental problems?'

With a somewhat reserved but mostly calm and soothing tone, she had spoken those words and Zomatsu was unable to tell if she was being apathetic, mocking him, or was genuinely concerned for him. Whatever the case may be, he couldn't just stand here to figure it out. He had no idea where he was so he needed to find a way to escape.

He quickly reached for his waist to retrieve his gauntlet from his medium storage box but to his dismay, there was nothing there. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even wearing pants.

"Please calm down, I'll inform Lord Ty that you've awoken so do rest until he comes."

The calming tone of the blue-haired beauty before him brought a semblance of calm to his mind. He watched the lady walk gracefully out of the room and a young beastgirl walked in and stood by the door.

Zomatsu was sure she was there to keep an eye on him which meant, right now there was nothing he could do, at least not without information on his current location.

After a while he finally felt better so he slowly got up and wore the simple grey pants and the brown T-shirt that was placed next to his bed. The beastgirl didn't seem like she would bother him of he didn't try anything stupid so he walked over to the window in the room and opened the silk curtains. .

The view that came into his sight confused him. Large grey trolls were patrolling the walls at the distance and he occasionally saw small humanoid creatures he believed to be Kobolds moving around the ward checking on their traps.

This place must've been a castle but he wasn't sure why and how he got here. His memories were a bit hazy but he soon began to recall his last memories. There had been a mental attack and he had let his guard down.

He remembered following a group of ogres and beastmen towards the demon king's castle before being attacked and in his attempt to attract the attention of the people within the castle, he had offered a strange man information in exchange for saving his and Bor's life.

'Don't tell me, is this, the demon king's castle?'

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••••••••••••

On the south wing of the castle...

Tyler stood by the entrance of the cell he had placed the undead Duo in as he contemplated on something. The magic library was still locked and he wasn't sure when it would be open again. This was definitely taking longer than the first time so that means the connection between the castle and the library was getting weaker. That meant Tyler needed to maximize his next chance inside the library.

He had realize that he didn't know much about magic aside from a few low-level spells. Sure he understood magic runes way more than most but there were just too many fundamentals he was clueless about.

If it wasn't for the scrolls he had retrieved from the library, that last battle with the trolls would have been a lot more troublesome. He closed his eyes as he examined the contents of his spatial ring. Most of the scrolls he had brought out had already been used and he had also spent five magic crystals in the process of corrupting the closest safe zones to the castle.

The current contents of his spatial ring were sorely lacking. He only had a few scrolls left and a single magic crystal. The one he had gotten from the frozen hide off the magic beast Liz or was it, Snow, had most likely killed in the forest.

Although, the settlement did have a large stockpile of scrolls and beast cores. Most of those scrolls were not as useful to Tyler as they were all just low-tier attack spells and Lifestyle spells and the cores were not something he could use on his own.

Basically, there was a lot he was lacking right now, including manpower. While he had bought himself some time with the Great Five by allowing a scout to escape with inaccurate information. He still needed to make valuable use of that time.

Based on what he had learned from Albert, the Great Five all had spies in each other's ranks, meaning they would suspect each other once news of the deaths of their scouts reaches them and the lack of details from the scout that escaped would only serve to further their suspicions.

They would then have to launch further investigations into each other and even when they come up short. Their next suspects would be the other families and the Behemoths. The whole process should buy him about 3-5 months.

With only that amount of time to work with, Tyler wanted to find a good magic teacher that could teach him more than just spells while also stocking up on scrolls. The castle also had a staggering shortage of supplies and it would be a good idea to replenish it. However, he also couldn't or didn't want to leave the castle without beefing up its security.

On that aspect, he thought about the two undead in front of him and if he could control them by infusing more negative energy into their cores thereby leaving his imprint in them he would, but the problem was.

Tyler raised his left hand. There was a visible crack that occasionally oozed a slight amount of negative energy. He wasn't undead so dealing directly with so much negative energy was dangerous. The crack on his hand was a sign of negative Corruption and he didn't want it to get worse.

Sigh... At this point, it was probably better to create new undead with the bodies of the scouts the girls brought him as it was safer to use an actual spell than deal directly with negative essence.

Although his spell was just a Tier 2 spell, he could always just let his Mana run wild and increase the spell's potency, or even using the over-tier meta magic would achieve slightly similar results.

'Uh, that's not a bad idea I guess.'

As Tyler thought in this direction, he suddenly heard footsteps coming slowly from down the hallway. He turned his head to look but the person was further away than he had expected and their footsteps were getting slower.

Using the skill, Keen eyes of a demon, his vision crossed the slight distance and he saw a female figure walking hesitantly in his direction. Tyler chuckled inwardly as he left his undead knight and walked down the hallway to meet up with the figure before she lost her will and ran away.

It was adorable how someone so strong would be scared of such weak undead creatures. Having walked a considerable distance away from the undead. Tyler finally met up with Erin and she looked relieved to see him. She was probably glad she didn't have to proceed any further.

"Oh Lord Ty, Hi... I was just Ummm... I was just coming to inform you that the scout you brought back from the Forest is finally awake." She said in a slightly nervous tone as her face grew a tint of red, she moved her hands together and awkwardly played with her fingers.

"Oh really, that's perfect timing. Let's now... Mmm... Have Albert wait for me there, I'll head up soon."

"Umm Okay." She nodded and quickly turned around and left with hurried steps. Tyler chuckled inwardly and walked down the hall in the opposite direction that Erin had run off in. He soon came across an open room. Unlike the lab rooms in the North wing, this room was empty and quite small.

inside this room was the undead spy Tyler had kicked to the Greyad plains. Their survivability was certainly impressive as Tyler hadn't had much hope for this one at the time he had kicked it so Albert could handle it.

The undead spy was chained to the ground and a restrictive barrier had been placed on the room by Liz. There wasn't much Tyler could do with this undead as he didn't want to experiment with negative energy. The only reason he was here was to get more details on this undead and if possible learn how to create one of his own.

They were incredibly useful tools he could use to map out the Darknar forest and even the rest of the Darknar region. Although they could probably do more, he didn't want to risk the chances of getting caught by the Great Five simply because he sent them outside the Darknar region.

Tyler then walked closer to the spy that was continuously trying to use some sort of escape skill since the moment it was placed here. He didn't know if the undead had infinity Mana, but this one was surely putting their unlimited stamina to good use.

He used Appraisal on the thing as the information flooded his brain. The only other person in the castle that could use Appraisal magic was Berlin Bungo and he was busy with quite a lot of tasks handed to him by Tyler himself so he had to do this personally.

"Appraisal!"

Shadow Assassin [Undead Creature] Tier 3.

An immortal Undead Rogue of the Third Tier that was created by an Eldar Lich's racial skill.

"Damn it!"

Surprisingly, there hadn't been as much information as he had hoped from the spell even though he had used more mana than the norm. Perhaps this was because this was a low-tier all-purpose appraisal magic as it was more efficient to use a high tiered specialized Appraisal magic for things like this.

However, The spell had still shown him the information he was most interested in and that was more than just the name of the undead.

The shadow Assassin was created by the racial skill of an Eldar Lich and no spell could replicate a racial skill.

So frankly speaking, unless Tyler planned to turn into an Eldar Lich. There was no way he would be able to ever create a shadow Assassin.

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