Lich for Hire

Chapter 210: Alkhemia Once More

To ensure that the plan would succeed, Ambrose first went to the edge of the swamp to run a test.

Both he and Catherine had already confirmed that Flight magic could not carry them out of this floating landmass. Yet the other fragments clearly exchanged objects with one another by throwing them across the void. Ambrose suspected the difference lay in velocity.

Flight simply wasn't fast enough to overcome the restriction.

He casually picked up a stone and hurled it toward the surrounding chaos.

His mechanical body, powered by both a magitech reactor and dark magic, possessed astonishing strength. The stone tore through the air with a sharp whistling sound.

After traveling four or five hundred meters beyond the swamp, the stone suddenly slowed, but it still continued forward and eventually escaped the fragment entirely.

"Just as I thought," Ambrose said. "If the speed is high enough, you can break free of the fragment's gravitational pull. But that speed is far beyond the limit of flight magic."

His mechanical body could reach such speeds with the help of a cannon. Catherine, however, definitely couldn't. Stuffing her into a cannon barrel and firing it would likely turn her into paste.

Still, the plan would work.

Ambrose began modifying the crude steel golem they had prepared earlier. It was so poorly assembled it could barely walk. Even if it was only meant as a prop, it still had to look convincing. He repainted it to resemble mithril, then fashioned another roughly humanoid puppet to stand in for Catherine. Finally, he layered illusion magic over both constructs to refine the details.Perfect. Even if the splaad attacked the puppets, it wouldn't be easy for them to notice the deception.

Ambrose turned to Catherine. "Alright, that should do it. Now we need to lure the splaad over here."

The biggest flaw of illusion magic was that it couldn't replicate Catherine's unreasonable charisma. She would have to act out the first part of the scene herself. Only at the final moment—once they "escaped"—would they switch to the puppets. That way, there would be no obvious flaws.

Ambrose planned everything meticulously. Together with Catherine, he worked out where they would start the show, where they would speed up to escape from the splaad, and the exact location at the swamp's edge where the substitution would occur. Every detail had to be arranged so that nothing unexpected would happen during the deception.

Catherine listened carefully while writing notes in a small notebook.

This plan was far more elaborate than the little role-playing scenarios she used to invent. Ambrose had even predicted the emotional reactions of the splaad and estimated at which point in the chase their aggression would peak.

"You really are good at deceiving people," Catherine said with admiration. "No wonder the Lady of Mists said you were destined to help her."

Ambrose snorted. "Good at it? I don't have any talent at all. This is just experience. Anyone who spent centuries as a low-level adventurer like I did would pick up the same skills."

Truly great con artists possessed innate talent: they were naturally silver-tongued and sharp-eyed, as if they had a passive Detect Thoughts ability.

Ambrose had simply met enough people to learn through trial and error.

"That's still impressive," Catherine said enviously. "When will I ever be able to do something like that?"

"Simple," Ambrose replied casually. "Make a few close friends, then watch them die one by one in accidents. Hearing something ten thousand times isn't as memorable as witnessing a friend's death yourself."

The calm tone of those words sent a chill down Catherine's spine. If that was the price of learning such skills, she would rather never learn them at all.

"Alright," Ambrose said. "We're almost ready. Remember the part you're supposed to act. Now we—"

He suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky. Catherine followed his gaze.

In the murky chaos above them, a strange mass of black clouds appeared. As the clouds churned and parted, a ruined city slowly emerged from within them.

Catherine blinked in surprise. "Another floating plane? So that's how these fragments appear."

Ambrose stared at the city for a long time without speaking. Finally Catherine said, "Uh… that city is really ugly. Look at those towers in the middle. They're hideous, and completely out of place compared to the surrounding buildings."

Ambrose nodded. "Yeah. My master's aesthetic sense has always been terrible."

"Master? You mean the God of Alchemy? Wait…" Catherine's eyes widened. "This city… it can't be Alkhemia, can it?!"

Catherine had never seen it in person. She had been a reclusive shut-in for most of her life, and by the time she finally left the Court of the Silver Moon, Alkhemia had long since vanished. But she had read about it. According to historical records, when the God of Alchemy punished the city's mad alchemists, he had built seven grotesque towers within their city.

And there they were—the seven towers.

"But why would Alkhemia be here?" Catherine wondered aloud. She didn't know the details of its disappearance and could only assume that some catastrophic alchemical experiment had gone wrong.

Ambrose sighed softly. It seemed the dice of fate had still failed to bring him back to the exact moment he had been hoping for.

But he now understood what this place was. This sea of chaos was where the gods disposed of things they wanted exiled. Whenever something emerged that resembled a cancer upon the world, the gods would simply excise that region and throw it into the chaos of the void.

The splaad were a perfect example of such a cancer. And Alkhemia contained a mad alchemist who had tried to ascend to godhood. The other floating fragments were probably similar, each harboring something dangerous enough to threaten the world.

This place was essentially the dumping ground of the gods, a landfill for hazardous materials.

"Change of plans," Ambrose said to Catherine.

"Huh? We're not acting anymore?" she asked, disappointed. She had taken such careful notes.

Ambrose shook his head firmly. "Plans change. There's no need to wait for that unreliable spatial link. The city above us contains something far more useful."

The Chairman of the Alchemists' Council trapped within was insane, but he did possess quasi-divine power. If they wanted to leave this place, asking him for help would be a far more reliable strategy.

"But we can't fly there," Catherine pointed out. "Flight magic can't overcome the barrier."

"That's fine. I have a way to do so. You can hide inside my extradimensional space. Once I get there, I'll let you out."

"Wow… you really do have a lot of tricks," Catherine said. Then she suddenly froze. "Wait. If I can hide inside your private space… why did we go through all that trouble sneaking into the swamp earlier? You could've gone alone."

Ambrose looked at her in disbelief. "What are you talking about? Catherine, you work for me. Are you seriously suggesting that the boss should risk his life alone while the employee hides safely in his storage space?" He shook his head. "The splaad are dangerous. There's no way I'd have gone in there by myself. If something had gone wrong, I might not even have had the chance to release you to help."

Catherine: "…"

This lich truly refused to suffer even the slightest disadvantage.

Though she was frowning in frustration, Catherine accepted her role as an employee and decided that, from now on, she would stop asking questions entirely.

Ambrose placed her inside his extradimensional space. Then he used some leftover materials to assemble a magical cannon.

Following the same routine as always, he first estimated the distance he'd have to cover, adjusted the angle of the barrel, and then climbed into a specially constructed mithril shell.

A thunderous blast echoed across the swamp as the cannon fired, launching the spinning projectile toward the sky.

After several hundred meters, the shell encountered the same invisible resistance as before. It slowed briefly, but then broke through the swamp's barrier and entered the surrounding chaos.

The void behaved like outer space. With no air resistance, the shell continued toward Alkhemia purely by inertia.

As it approached the city, however, it struck another barrier.

Each floating fragment seemed to possess its own invisible shield, resisting both entry and exit.

Fortunately, Ambrose had anticipated this. He had reinforced the cannon's power so the shell could pierce two barriers in succession.

By the time it broke through the second one, however, the shell had nearly lost all momentum.

But that didn't matter. Once inside the barrier, the projectile fell under the gravity of Alkhemia, dropping toward the ground like a meteor.

Ambrose crawled out of the shell. His mechanical body was completely unharmed.

He opened up his extradimensional space, but instead of releasing Catherine, he switched back into his lich body.

At this point in time, Ambrose had only just finished deceiving the Chairman. He absolutely couldn't let the man discover that he had traveled back from the future.

And Catherine certainly couldn't appear either. The Chairman was no naïve hermit who had spent centuries hiding at home. If he saw the elven queen, he would immediately deduce far too much.

Once he was satisfied with his preparations, Ambrose headed toward the sewer where the Chairman had once ascended to godhood.

But this time, he probably wouldn't be quite so easy to fool.