The Extra's Rise
Chapter 635 - 635: Ashen Territories (5)

'Master!' Erebus and Valeria's alarmed voices rang out simultaneously in my consciousness, their panic cutting through my awareness like emergency sirens.

At the same time, I felt Luna's presence stir as she tried to manifest beside me. 'Arthur, it's dang—'

Her voice was cut off mid-warning.

No, not just her voice—the entire world itself seemed to be severed from reality.

Yet somehow, I continued walking forward, my feet moving of their own accord across ground that was no longer the corrupted wasteland of the Ashen Territories. The twisted crystalline formations vanished, replaced by something far more disturbing.

The landscape around me transformed with nauseating fluidity, reality reshaping itself like clay in the hands of an unseen sculptor. Where moments before there had been dark crystals and corrupted vegetation, now I saw gleaming towers of glass and steel reaching toward a clear blue sky.

Cars moved along sophisticated roadways with the quiet efficiency of advanced transportation systems. Children laughed and played in carefully maintained parks while adults moved purposefully along pedestrian walkways, their clothing and manner speaking to a prosperous, technologically advanced civilization.

'I know what this is,' I realized with growing horror as recognition dawned. 'This is New Crestmont. The city the Arch Lich destroyed.'

New Crestmont—home to over one million people, a major metropolitan center that had been a hub of magical innovation and technological advancement. Not the largest city in the Northern continent, but significant enough that its loss had sent shockwaves across the entire region.

'I'm experiencing its final moments.'

The realization hit me like a physical blow as I understood what I was witnessing. This wasn't just a vision or hallucination—I was somehow experiencing the actual memories embedded in this cursed land, reliving the last day of a city that had been erased from existence centuries ago.

The scene around me possessed the hyper-real quality of memories viewed through magical means, every detail sharp and vivid despite the impossibility of what I was experiencing. I could smell the clean air of a healthy city, hear the subtle hum of magical infrastructure operating at peak efficiency, feel the vibrant energy of a million people going about their daily lives with no idea that doom was approaching.

'How many of them knew what was coming?' I wondered, watching families share meals at outdoor cafes, students hurrying toward educational institutions, workers collaborating on projects that would never be completed.

Then the sky began to darken.

It started as a subtle dimming, the kind of gradual change that might herald an approaching storm. But this wasn't natural weather—the darkness spread with malevolent purpose, accompanied by a presence that made every living thing in the city instinctively recoil in terror.

The Arch Lich was coming.

But first, I witnessed another tragedy—the desperate battle that had occurred before the lich ever reached the city itself.

On the outskirts of New Crestmont, a lone figure stood against the approaching darkness. A knight in the ceremonial plate of the Creighton family's elite guard, wielding a massive greatsword with the easy familiarity of someone who had dedicated their life to martial excellence.

'He made it in time,' I realized as I watched the confrontation unfold. 'The Creighton knight reached the city before the Arch Lich could attack.'

He reached with his order. However, his order was already lying dead around him.

The knight fought with everything he possessed—decades of training, magical enhancement, and the desperate determination of someone who understood that a million lives depended on his success. His greatsword blazed with Purelight energy as he threw himself against an enemy that transcended mortal comprehension.

But it wasn't enough.

The Arch Lich's power was simply too vast, too ancient, too refined through centuries of accumulating strength. What should have been an epic confrontation between light and darkness became a brutal demonstration of the gap between mortal capability and undead transcendence.

I watched in helpless fascination as the knight's valor proved futile against overwhelming force. His final moments were spent in defiant resistance, his blade carving through shadow and bone until his strength finally gave out.

The Arch Lich's retaliation was swift and terrible. Dark energy engulfed the knight, and where moments before there had been a noble defender, now there was only emptiness—and a headless corpse that crumpled to the corrupted earth.

'He died trying to protect them,' I thought with sick admiration. 'Knowing he was outmatched, he still fought to the end.'

With the knight dead, nothing stood between the Arch Lich and New Crestmont.

The attack on the city itself was swift and merciless. Panic erupted across the metropolitan area as supernatural darkness descended. Emergency sirens wailed from every district while evacuation protocols activated with desperate urgency, but there was nowhere to run.

The local guild branch mobilized with admirable speed, their response teams deploying under the leadership of Kieran Voss—an eight-star adventurer whose reputation for tactical brilliance had made him the natural choice to lead the city's supernatural defenses.

Under normal circumstances, Voss and his teams would have been more than capable of handling extraordinary threats. His eight-star classification and the guild resources at his disposal should have been sufficient to address most dangers.

But the Arch Lich wasn't most dangers—it was a force of destruction that operated on scales almost no living human could match.

I watched Voss lead his forces against an enemy that transcended conventional categories of threat. Brilliant tactical maneuvers, coordinated magical strikes, and desperate heroism all proved utterly inadequate against a being whose power had been accumulating for centuries.

The battle was magnificent and futile in equal measure. Voss fought with the skill and determination of someone willing to sacrifice everything for his people, his eight-star magic blazing with intensity that could have devastated armies. But against the Arch Lich's accumulated might, even his formidable abilities were like candleflames against a hurricane.

'He never had a chance,' I realized as I witnessed Voss's final moments. 'None of them did.'

The guild leader died as he had lived—protecting others until his last breath, his final spell creating a barrier that bought precious seconds for civilian evacuation efforts that ultimately proved futile. The Arch Lich's retaliation was swift and absolute, Voss's form dissolving into nothingness under the weight of necromantic power that defied comprehension.

Around me, New Crestmont's death accelerated. Buildings crumbled as their magical foundations were corrupted from within. The sky rained ash and shadow while the streets filled with the desperate screams of people who had no hope of survival. One million lives snuffed out in a single night of supernatural horror.

'This is what Uncle Alastor carries with him,' I understood with new clarity. 'The memory of being unable to prevent this massacre, of arriving too late to save anyone.'

The vision began to fade as the last echoes of destruction played out around me. The gleaming towers of New Crestmont collapsed into rubble while the darkness claimed everything that had once been vibrant and alive. Within hours, a thriving metropolitan center had been reduced to the corrupted wasteland I knew as the Ashen Territories.

'One million people, gone in a single night,' I thought as the memory-vision dissolved around me.

But as the echoes of the past faded, I found myself facing something unexpected. Where the ruins of New Crestmont had been, a figure now stood waiting—the same knight I had witnessed dying in the Arch Lich's assault.

He held his massive greatsword with the same familiar grip, his stance speaking to martial prowess that death had not diminished. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries-old guilt and self-recrimination.

"I failed in my duty," he said, his words echoing strangely in the empty space between realities. "As one of House Creighton's sworn knights, I was charged with the protection of this realm's people. I reached the battle in time with my order, but I was too weak to stop the Arch Lich and my order was slaughtered."

'A Creighton family knight captain?' I thought, studying the figure's imposing presence. 'The same one who died trying to prevent the attack?'

"I fought with everything I possessed," the armored figure continued, his massive sword gleaming with residual magical energy. "But my strength was insufficient. The Arch Lich killed me and proceeded to destroy the city I had sworn to protect. One million souls, dead because I was too weak to fulfill my oath."

I looked up at the knight's face, preparing to offer some word of understanding or consolation for his obvious torment.

And realized he had no head.

Where his neck should have supported a human head, there was only empty space above ornate armor that bore the scars of his final battle. Yet somehow, impossibly, he continued to speak—his voice emerging from the void where his head should have been.

'Dullahan.'

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