Chapter 671: Most Unreliable Alliance

I was still in my familiar old residence, facing another uninvited guest. However, this particular uninvited guest made me really want to shout for help.

Sitting across from me at a tea table was a seemingly sleepy old man whose snow-white beard reached the ground. His scraggly hair made him seem like a homeless old man, yet the magic power within his body was as deep as the ocean.

I could sense his endless amount of magic power as he was sitting directly across from me. Yet, not a single trace of his magic power reached outside this room.

“…Yongye? You’re perfectly alive again.”

He put down his teacup and slowly glanced at the tea within, appearing to be highly satisfied with the tea. However, I knew that countless eyes were staring at me.

Sandro, the “Lord of Withering”. He was the ruler of the Corpse Plane, as well an Undead Emperor even more experienced than Aso. Sandro was also a Senator of the former Tark Republic, and was one of the most powerful Undead Emperors among the ones who came here this time to the mortal plane.

It was also Sandro who had recently displayed the almost inconceivable ability to instantly cast a forbidden spell right in front of the archmages from the Mage Country. However, only those who were familiar with Sandro’s personal research field would know that he hadn’t used a forbidden spell at all. He had only used a regular spell which possessed the power of a forbidden spell.

Sandro should have still been currently facing off against the dragons and archmages in Bardi. Yet, he had suddenly appeared before me without even a warning. Just two days ago, I had received the latest combat report which said that he was still at the frontlines of battle. In that case, either Sandro had the ability to teleport over mega-long distances, or he had managed to fool everyone into thinking that he was still there.

Sandro hadn’t opened his physical eyes even once yet. He seemed just like a doddering old man who was about to fall asleep. Yet, his soul vision saw through everything. His comment on me being “perfectly alive again” probably wasn’t only referring to my physical body, but also my soul.

And as he analyzed me, I was also doing my very best to analyze his existence.

Sandro had numerous nicknames, such as “The Witherer”, “Waterless Dust”, and “Corpse Spider Emperor”. Every Undead Emperor’s success would come from stepping on countless corpses. I didn’t dare to relax my guard one bit against such an opponent.

“…Senior, why have you come to visit me? Revival?”

Sandro was also one of the few natural undead in the world. It would be quite understandable if he came to me for the purpose of being revived.

However, Sandro shook his head without saying anything. His seemingly smiling expression was almost as if he was laughing at me for looking down on him.

“The living belong to the sunlight, while the dead belong to the dust. I’m no youngster who still lives in the past, so why would I be concerned about life or death? I’m here to visit you because of the promise you mentioned previously.”

Promise? I paused in surprise here. It wasn’t that I hadn’t promised anything, but rather that I had promised so many things to various different people before. Most promises I made to enemies on the battlefield were nothing more than ridiculous babble to shake the enemy. I had made plenty of such empty promises back when I was promising friendship to the Tark Republic. I didn’t even know which one Sandro was referring to here so suddenly.

But, I swiftly worked my brain. It was obvious that only something incredibly important would make Sandro leave Bardi and come to see me. Then, there would only be one possibility…

“Land?”

Sandro slowly nodded, confirming my guess. I was now rather surprised.

I had previously promised to give the undead a new land that wasn’t part of the mortal plane. This should have been nothing more than a possible backup option to the Undead Emperors who were absolutely determined to return to the mortal plane. My original expectation was that the undead would finally come to negotiate this with me after they suffered some losses. Currently, the undead army was at its strongest with the arrival of the Undead Emperors, yet they were already searching for a path of retreat?

I didn’t even try to hide my surprise, since I also needed to hear Sandro’s explanation.

“…You’ve done a good job, really. You’ve done well to the point where we’ve split into different factions.”

I felt like I really needed a translator here. Sandro really liked to say things that had no beginning or end, making others guess what he meant. If I guessed correctly, it should have been obvious, but if I guessed wrong, it would make me seem quite foolish.

“Oh…”

In that case, two could play this game. Everyone could just guess together! I calmly stated this simple word, and then kept quiet, causing the room to sink into a strange silence.

“Cough, cough, Phil, help me explain things.”

It seemed that Sandro was no longer able to take this staring session. One of Sandro’s subordinates emerged from his shadow. Phil appeared to be a middle-aged gentleman, when in actuality, he was a… mummy?

“Greetings, Your Majesty Yongye. My master hasn’t actually talked to anyone for countless years already, so please allow me to express his meaning for him.”

He hadn’t talked to anyone for countless years already? Indeed, that was understandable. In the Corpse Plane that he ruled, he only needed to use his will to issue commands to all lower-level undead. There were no undead in his plane who were on the same level or higher than he was, and even if Sandro needed to communicate with other Undead Emperors, he could probably also just send his subordinates to do so.

It seemed that Sandro wasn’t the type who loved to give riddles, after all. It was just that he had far too few chances to talk to others, so his eloquence had gone bad? This was quite an extravagant third-world problem. I nodded in understanding, inviting Phil to speak.

“My master means that you’ve done such a wonderful job, to the point where we don’t even dare to believe how well the undead and living are able to peacefully live together. This caused us to recall the most flourishing times of our past Tark Republic. Thus, the Undead Emperors have split into factions on how to treat the living…”

This mummy named Phil wasn’t like most mummies at all. He could speak quite quickly. Thanks to him, I was able to gradually understand what was going on.

As I previously inferred, the Tark Republic Senators weren’t unified in their intentions. Some Undead Emperors strongly desired the reestablishment of the Tark Republic. Some Undead Emperors simply wanted to come harvest flesh and blood in the mortal plane. Some Undead Emperors were quite satisfied with their lives in the Death Planes, so they hadn’t even come to the mortal plane.

Morover, even the Undead Emperors who wanted to reconstruct the Tark Republic differed in their attitudes towards the living as well. This made them very different in their actions…

To give an example for easier understanding, Aso had been one of the main members of the Tark Republic reestablishment faction. Aso’s attitude towards the living had also been relatively moderate as he hoped to create a new Tark Republic where the living and undead could coexist together in peace, which would restore the republic’s past civilization to how it used to be. Undead Emperor Sandro, another one of the Tark Republic’s oldest Senators, had also been alive back in that era where the undead and living coexisted in peace. Thus, Sandro and Aso had similar viewpoints, and were ironclad allies.

Meanwhile, even though Conservation was quite close to Aso, she was filled with enmity towards the living even though she was also a supporter of reestablishing the Tark Republic. Originally, she didn’t have a strong desire to return to the mortal plane to begin with, and only joined due to being Aso’s lover, but recently, she had been focused only on taking revenge for Aso’s death, also taking up his cause for reestablishing a country for the undead in the Tark Republic. Due to her greatly improved personal power level, Conservation had even faintly become the leader of the “slaughter the living” faction.

Now that the Undead Emperors had returned to the mortal plane, their biggest disagreement was whether or not to use Undead Calamity to simply slaughter all the living in their path, transforming the living into the undead.

“Hey, there’s so few of you, yet you can come up with so many different factions and disagreements? That’s a lot of hard work…”

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I was unable to see Phil’s expression due to the mummy bandages he was wearing. However, old Sandro seemed to be quite fatigued as if this situation was giving him quite the headache.

“There’s no helping it. The Undead Emperors are all uniquely powerful…”

I nodded as I naturally understood. Anyone who could surpass the theoretical limitations and become an Undead Emperor would have a particular obsession. Some common traits of the obsessed would be extreme egocentrism along with being incredibly difficult to compromise with.

Not only that, the Undead Emperors were all existences that ruled over an entire Death Plane, meaning that they were the most revered existences in their lands. Plus, Undead Emperors were also mages to begin with, and would look down on the Gods. It would be strange if the Undead Emperors would be easy to get along with after so many years of isolation.

I had previously made my own inferences that since the Undead Emperors were also mages, they probably acted together as an organization similar to the Truth Symposium. Every Undead Emperor would be the greatest authority in their personal research field, so they were naturally obsessive individuals who wouldn’t listen to others. Only mutual benefits would cause them to act together. There would never be something like an overall leader or goal, as nobody would ever be convinced by another.

For other powerful existences, they would typically determine the leader choosing whoever was the most powerful. However, the Undead Emperors were all mages at very similar power levels. Besides, determining the leader by actual power? That would be just like barbarians, whom mages looked down on the most!

Besides, it was quite often that intelligence mattered far more than power level in a mage’s battle. Luck would also be quite important. The order in which you used your skills might be critically important. Two individuals at similar power level meeting again for a rematch might see a totally different outcome than before.

And even if power level was the determining factor, it was quite possible for any Undead Emperor to suddenly achieve another breakthrough in their specialty, greatly increasing their power level. The rankings would constantly change, meaning that determining the leader by power level would be nothing more than a joke.

“The most difficult people in the world to talk to are probably obsessive scientists and authoritarian dictators. Undead Emperors are both. It would be a miracle already for them to be able to peacefully get along with each other. Perhaps they will view the fact that they’re of the same kind with some importance… but, I think there will be fissures I can take advantage of,” I concluded at the time of my analysis.

Based on my analysis, I figured that any alliance of Undead Emperors would definitely be a very loose one, where all of the Undead Emperors had nearly equal status… That was why when I heard that five Undead Emperors were working together in unison to attack Bardi, I was floored with disbelief.

“Five existences similar to myself and Harloys peacefully playing mahjong together? Getting along well with each other? Dream on.”

My guess about what would happen was that each of the five invading Undead Emperors would individually lead their own armies, open up their Dimensional Doors, and attack five different countries. Any land that they conquered would belong to themselves. That should have been the strategy the most suitable for them.

“His Majesty Aso and Her Majesty Conservation are no longer here. The remaining Majesties are unable to even come to an accord about who gets to attack which location. That’s why His Majesty Shupnus came up with the idea for the five Majesties to try and attack Bardi in unison… This is the first time that they’ve ever tried working together. However, judging from the results, this will also likely be the last.”

It turned out that the Tark Republic also had spies among the Northlands undead for all this time. The more moderate Undead Emperors were quite moved by such a sight, so they recommended not to start any battles that would leave too much of a grudge with the living so that peace could be possible afterwards.

However, the violent Undead Emperor Shupnus had immediately started with an Undead Calamity attack, starting a snowball effect.

Shupnus had seen through everything quite clearly. He understood quite well that once certain lines were crossed, there would be no turning back. The more moderate Undead Emperors couldn’t do anything once things became like this. It wasn’t like the moderate Undead Emperors were actually good individuals to begin with, and neither would they be the type to show mercy to their enemies. Thus, the five Undead Emperors teamed up together for a unified attack.

Although their attack was incredibly overwhelming due to their combined strength, their alliance was already falling apart halfway through.

Undead Emperor Anina, ruler of the Darkness Plane, felt that just gaining a few benefits in Bardi was enough. She didn’t want to continue attacking a country as powerful as Bardi, and preferred instead to try and attack a much weaker country to harvest souls from. Her experience was only average among the Undead Emperors. She still needed a tremendous amount of souls to strengthen herself. In a way, she was the only Undead Emperor who desired to do battle for practical benefits.

The second Undead Emperor, known as the Undead General, was also from the Desecration Plane, just like Aso. In a way, he was both Aso’s brother as well as Aso’s subordinate… He had been absolutely furious to hear about the revival of the Great Demon Empire as he had lived through the era of the great demons’ rule. He had wanted to instantly turn around and go attack the great demons. By the way, I should also mention that Sandro also hated the great demons. The oldest Tark Republic Senators had all survived since the bloody battles between humans and great demons. The blood grudge between them and great demons would be impossible to arbitrate. In fact, their grudge against the great demons ran so deep that it would even be one of the main driving reasons reviving them into a state of undeath after death.

The third Undead Emperor, Shupnus from the Deathmist Plane, was both apparently and actually the youngest Undead Emperor among them. He couldn’t understand one bit why the older Undead Emperors were so obsessed with the great demons. He was quite a chuunibyou, and had a good relationship with Conservation. Both of them wanted to revive the Tark Republic as a country only for the undead, without the living. Shupnus’ current goal was to conquer all of Bardi.

Undead Emperor Sonuma from the Blood Plane was the fourth Undead Emperor. He was the strangest of them all. Not a single person would ever know what he was thinking. Sonuma had suddenly left the battle against Bardi without saying anything at all to the other Undead Emperors. He had only left a clone behind. It was precisely because that Sonuma had left that the Undead Emperors had suffered slightly in the magical battle against the archmages and dragons.

The fifth and final Undead Emperor was old Sandro here. His choice… well, he was already here to talk to me, plus he was one of the moderate Undead Emperors. This was the best explanation for everything.

“All of Their Majesties have such strong personalities…”

Although Phil the mummy was still expressionless, I could tell from his tone that he actually wanted to cry.

Indeed, the five Undead Emperors had all split into their own factions. In fact, most of them were the type who would act ridiculously without caring about their “allies” one bit. Their personalities were indeed strong to the point where I couldn’t even comment.

Well, to begin with, I had already predicted that the invading Undead Emperors would completely split into different factions. Although their unity at the beginning of their attack on Bardi was rather unexpected, the end result was no different from my predictions at all.

“All of you have it so hard…”

It would be so pitiful to be a subordinate of these incredibly selfish bastards Undead Emperors. I spoke quite sincerely, in a tone filled with sympathy and understanding for Phil.

“It, it’s good that you understand. As expected of the newest and only Majesty of this generation.”

The mummy Phil had a grateful expression now as if he saw hope for the future.

“…You finally understand how hard we had it? Do you still remember things back at Sulfur Mountain City in the day?” Harloys said suddenly in my soul connection. Would she ever stop commenting about me? I was at least much better than these Undead Emperors…

Then, I recalled how I was at Sulfur Mountain City in the past. I remembered all sorts of times where I dug pitfalls for others or explosive scenes. Making trouble for my subordinates? I could remember countless times where Diana was angered to the point of spitting up blood. Thus, my words trailed off as I lost the courage to talk back to Harloys…

“Cough, if only Conservation and Aso were still here… If only Aso was still here, I think it would have been possible for all of us to at least hold negotiations.”

Sandro seemed to be feeling quite awkward as he spoke in a helpless tone. In a way, this wasn’t the fault of the Undead Emperors for their lack of unity. Aso was the one who had originally organized the Undead Emperors’ invasion of the mortal plane to begin with. But, he was now dead. Their unity would naturally be terrible without their original leader in name.

I now finally understood. It turned out that it wasn’t the Undead Emperors being decisive when they attacked in full force as five. It was that all of them understood that their loose alliance would collapse soon as time went on. Thus, they might as well all attack together while they were still nominally allies to see if they could have an easy victory if the enemy wasn’t prepared.

However, Bardi had managed to stop their attack with the help of the dragons and archmages. Thus, the five Undead Emperors now had five different ways of thinking and five different courses of action. Even the God of Fate Catio would be unable to see what would happen next.

I was now looking at the silent Sandro in a much friendlier light. Obviously, he didn’t represent the five Undead Emperors, and only represented himself.

The fact that he said that it was excellent how the undead and living got along with each other in the Mist Alliance was the best evidence of his attitude.

This might be a rare opportunity that would only come by once in a thousand years…