"Stop, Commander!!!"
The captain of the guard lunged in a panic, throwing himself between the commander and his target.
But it was too late.
The commander's feet had already turned to sand.
Once he reached that state, catching him in a footrace was impossible.
The world seemed to slow in the captain's eyes.
Beyond his own arm—flailing uselessly—the commander's face, veins bulging with fury.
He had raised his curved blade high, ready to bring it down on Prince Marwan, the man who had murdered his daughter.
In a moment, the blade would carve through the royal flesh.
And when it did, the Wrath of the Sun God would trigger.
The Wrath of the Sun God was an automatic defense system the Emperor—who claimed the sun deity as his own—had branded into his children.
No one of the imperial bloodline could be killed.
A radiance born from Prince Marwan's heart would shield him and obliterate everything in the surrounding area.
*Is that the plan, Commander!*
Even if he couldn't kill Marwan, it made sense as a way to cull his forces and deal damage. After all, the finest warriors of the guard were gathered here in this palace annex.
The commander had already closed the distance to Marwan in a single rush.
The captain of the guard squeezed his eyes shut in helpless dread.
At that same instant, the commander's curved blade began its descent.
But.
The commander's blade.
At the very last moment.
Changed course.
The furious edge swept through empty air, failing to touch Prince Marwan.
His own wrist had done it.
Was it because this very blade had been a gift from Prince Marwan?
Because the prince had elevated a former slave to the rank of commander?
Because he had allowed a daughter nearly sold to a brothel to serve as a scribe instead?
The commander was lost.
Hadn't all those debts been repaid the moment his daughter was killed?
*Crack—!*
The next instant, the captain of the guard—who had thrown himself forward to protect the royal person—seized the commander by the scruff of the neck and drove him into the floor.
*CRASH!!!!*
"Commander!! I will execute you here and now for treason!!!"
The captain roared the words and severed every ligament in the man's body, leaving him unable to move.
The commander was fully bound moments later and offered no resistance.
Prince Marwan maintained his silence throughout.
Not even a flicker of surprise crossed his face.
The same was true when a soldier burst in the next moment and delivered his report.
*Bang—!*
The door to the meeting chamber flew open.
"Y-Your Highness…!!"
A soldier kicked through the door and came sprinting in.
His face had gone chalk-white.
The scene inside this sealed room was chaotic enough on its own, but whatever he had come to report seemed no less alarming.
"You insolent wretch! Do you have any idea where you are, barging in like this?!"
The magistrate bellowed in fury, but the soldier did not retreat—he threw himself flat on the floor.
"A-Alcamus's chambers… there's been an incident…!"
Alcamus was the necromancer Prince Marwan had recruited for his plan to conquer the Demon King's Tower.
He was also the reason this entire situation had unfolded. It had all started when the commander proposed splitting the unit.
The captain of the guard turned his head at the name.
"What happened?"
"Screaming from the basement—it wouldn't stop. The soldiers on patrol went in to check… and none of them… not a single one has come back out…!"
"You barged in here over something like that. Kill yourself. Now."
"Yes, I will carry out the order… but…"
The soldier trembled violently, barely managing to continue.
"If I die… there will not be a single soldier left to guard this palace annex…"
The commander, the captain of the guard, and the magistrate all stared in bewilderment.
"What do you mean?"
"Of all who serve here… I am the only one who did not enter Alcamus's room…"
On Marwan's orders, everyone except the magistrate was directed toward Alcamus's location.
Yet for some reason, the bound commander was brought along as well.
As they walked, they confirmed that the soldier's words were true.
The corridor. The garden. The staircase. The door.
Not a single soldier remained anywhere in the palace annex.
*
The basement of the palace annex, cold and still.
Before the bedchamber of the necromancer Alcamus.
*Creak—*
The iron door swung open, and a wave of blood-stench and putrid rot hit them like a fist.
"Crunch. Gnaw. Smack."
In the center of the room.
A white-haired old man crouched on the floor, tearing into something with ravenous hunger.
The bodies of the children the commander had been given, and the elite soldiers who had guarded the palace annex.
They were piled in layers across the floor.
Everyone bore witness to that horrific sight.
"Ugh…"
The captain of the guard recoiled in horror, drew his weapon, and shouted.
"You mad old bastard!! What in the hell have you done to our warriors?!"
Alcamus stretched his blood-dripping lips into a wide, splitting grin and answered.
"Heheheh. I merely followed orders…"
"Well done, Alcamus."
Amid the collective shock, the third prince stepped forward with a word of praise.
"To defeat every last one of my elite soldiers—you truly are the Legendary black mage they say you are."
"Hehehe. You've come as well, Your Highness."
Alcamus waved a severed forearm—still slick with blood—in a casual greeting.
The captain of the guard cried out and moved to stop him, but Prince Marwan caught the captain by the shoulder.
Alcamus spoke.
"A wise and benevolent ruler, as ever. I suppose it was difficult for you to kill your own beloved subordinates directly with the Wrath of the Sun God!!"
Everyone was baffled by those words.
"Haha. Alcamus. You may be right that I'm a benevolent ruler. Even after I cut down his daughter, the commander couldn't bring himself to kill me."
The captain of the guard, listening to the exchange, found himself utterly lost.
But one fact was becoming clear.
*Prince Marwan had deliberately tried to trigger the Wrath of the Sun God.*
Yet no matter how unhinged Marwan was, he could not fathom why the prince would want to kill all of his own elite soldiers.
Marwan gave a tilt of his chin, and Alcamus spoke.
"Shall I kill the rest for you? Hehehe…"
"The commander is already subdued, so there shouldn't be any trouble?"
"I am only humbled that you've lightened my work, Your Highness…"
The color drained entirely from the captain of the guard's face.
The commander, who seemed to have grasped something, said this:
"To be of service to Your Highness even in death—for a slave, there is no greater honor."
He could not say when it had begun.
His obedience to Marwan had long since seeped into his very bones, beyond all reckoning.
But Marwan did not spare the commander's final words so much as a glance. His eyes were fixed on Alcamus.
"Alcamus! Begin!"
"Hehehehe! As you command, Your Highness!"
Alcamus scattered green magical energy across the floor.
*Crack! Crunch—!*
As the mana seeped into the ground, the corpses that had just been devoured by the necromancer began to rise.
Green light kindled in the ruined bodies of the elite soldiers who had fallen before.
"Your Highness! Why are you doing this?! I can still be of use to you! Should we not conquer the Demon King's Tower together…!"
Marwan answered with guileless simplicity.
"Yes! Just as you say. You'll be conquering the Demon King's Tower together with me—from inside."
The captain of the guard went ashen, unable to make sense of those words.
"Hehehehe! Be devoured and die!"
At Alcamus's command, the undead horde surged as one toward the captain of the guard. The way out was already blocked.
"Stay back, you monsters!!"
The captain swung his blade with everything he had.
By this point, the bound commander was already buried under the undead.
*Clang—! Slash—!*
The captain severed necks and carved through flesh. But the fallen bodies, feeling no pain, grabbed at his ankles.
"AAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
The captain screamed, tears of blood streaming down his face. When the arm gripping his sword had been torn to ribbons, Alcamus's shadow fell across his back.
A tendril of black-green mana extended from the necromancer's fingertips, burrowing into the captain's back and piercing through his heart.
"Gkh…!"
The captain of the guard spat black blood from his lips, fixed Prince Marwan with a gaze full of bitter resentment, and then let his head fall limp.
Every breath in the room, save for Marwan and Alcamus, had been extinguished.
Alcamus let out a grotesque laugh and spread both arms wide.
"Now then—it is time for the harvest, Your Highness!"
From the dozens of elite soldiers carpeting the floor, and from the freshly dead bodies of the captain of the guard and the commander, green wisps of heat began to rise.
It was the distilled essence of the martial mastery they had devoted their entire lives to building.
Alcamus swept both hands through the air, condensing every last trace of that energy into a single mass above him.
"Please, enjoy!!"
The enormous clump of concentrated martial power poured like a waterfall into Prince Marwan's open mouth.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Prince Marwan groaned in agony.
And yet, in his eyes, ecstasy was spreading.
*
Quite some time passed.
When Prince Marwan finally raised his head with a ragged exhale, his eyes were incomparably sharper than before.
The air around him seemed to ripple under the weight of an aura that could no longer be contained.
He had absorbed the full martial essence of his soldiers and been reborn as something beyond human.
"With this power, it's possible."
Marwan opened and closed his fist, then smiled—a slow, satisfied curl of the lips.
He wanted to become Emperor.
And for that, he needed power of his own.
The reason the Sahad Empire's Emperor had been able to claim the sun deity as his own was that the Emperor himself had personally reached the Golden Treasury on floor 100 of the Demon King's Tower.
The Emperor was the only one among all who had reached that treasury to have taken the contents of the enormous Golden Chest—the one that, it was said, no one had ever managed to open.
"I march on the Demon King's Tower now, Alcamus."