Chapter 35: I Emerge from the Shadows

The Legendary Necromancer, Simon Adrian, truly taught the youths from eight hundred years in the future a thorough lesson on what it meant for "a crafty fox to have three dens."

Beneath a bare-bones, unremarkable two-story building was a Magic Laboratory of a considerable scale even by modern standards! And beneath the bronze statue in that very Magic Laboratory lay a hidden shaft leading even deeper underground!

Adrian’s meticulous house layout made Xiahou Yan feel that this senior had great potential for intelligence work. However, setting the voice-activation password for the security system as "virgin" did seem a bit less than rigorous.

Led by the newly resurrected Guard Tom Lawrence, the five members of the Igor Family descended the shaft step by step, gripping the iron rungs on the wall.

As they moved, the Lighting Crystals embedded in the walls sensed the presence of life and flickered to life one by one, bringing light back into a secret passage that had laid silent in darkness for a full eight hundred years.

The shaft wasn’t particularly long, perhaps only five or six meters deep. At the very bottom of the formation, Tom Lawrence soon found his feet touching solid ground.

He unfastened a Lighting Crystal from his belt—one he had just pried off the wall in the Magic Laboratory above—and held it high to illuminate the bottom of the shaft.

Directly connected to the bottom of the shaft was a slightly narrow and cramped corridor, barely wide enough for three people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Several everlasting lamps hung from the ceiling. Fueled by whale oil, the light from these fixtures had grown incredibly dim after eight hundred years of consumption, effectively debunking the absurd rumor that "Deep Sea Demon Whale Oil burns for ten thousand years without extinguishing."

Even Magic Power wasn’t an inexhaustible resource. The so-called "unextinguishable" whale oil was merely an exceptionally durable fuel.

Because of the dim light from the everlasting lamps, the entire underground corridor exuded a murky, eerie atmosphere, forming a stark contrast with the brightly lit Magic Laboratory upstairs. Yet despite being deep underground, the air wasn’t as damp and stagnant as one might expect. Adrian must have installed some sort of ventilation mechanism during his lifetime to allow for long-term stays, keeping the air circulating with the outside world.

The group climbed down the ladder one by one and found their footing at the entrance of the corridor. Just then, a familiar aura surged toward them from deeper within.

Master Victor Laurie shivered, while a sense of familiarity and warmth welled up in the hearts of Xiahou Yan and the three guards.

"Lord Eliot, what is this..." Alice murmured, looking a bit confused as she sensed the surrounding aura.

"If I’m not mistaken, this should be..." Xiahou Yan turned to look at Master Laurie and received an affirmative look in the older man’s eyes.

"It’s Netherworld Magic Power!" the Master replied through gritted teeth. "The air in this corridor is filled with dense Netherworld Magic Power! Lord, do you remember? This infected zone was formed precisely because Adrian’s Necromancy experiments caused an accidental leak of Netherworld Magic Power all those years ago!"

"So..." Xiahou Yan looked down the deep, dark corridor, deep in thought.

"So, this corridor is very likely the original testing site and ground zero for the Undead outbreak!" Master Laurie said rapidly. "Think back for a moment, Lord. Was there a single thing related to Necromancy in the Magic Laboratory upstairs? For a Grand Mage world-renowned for his Necromancy, isn’t that far too strange?"

Xiahou Yan recalled the scene upstairs and nodded in agreement.

The Master swallowed hard in excitement and continued, "From the looks of it, Adrian likely hid all his Necromancy and his most prized possessions on this deeply concealed bottom floor. The Magic Laboratory above was nothing more than a front for storing ordinary Magic Materials and conducting general magical research. This place right here is the true secret sanctum of the Legendary Mage, Simon Adrian!"

Breathing grew heavy among the group after hearing Master Laurie’s analysis.

If the Master was right and Adrian had moved the core of his magical research into this corridor, wouldn’t that drastically increase their chances of finding his Magic Rhythm here?

Wasting no time, they reformed their original marching order and ventured deeper into the corridor.

As the interior environment of the corridor came into view, Xiahou Yan became even more certain of the Master’s judgment. Just a few steps inside, the Lord noticed numerous tall, slender, transparent crystal cabinets, each about the height of a person, lined up against the walls on both sides.

Due to the passage of time, these cabinets—which should have been crystal clear—were caked in thick layers of dust, obscuring whatever was inside.

Piqued by curiosity, the archer Chris walked up to one of the cabinets and wiped away the dust with his sleeve, only to stumble three steps back in sheer terror at the sight before him.

When the Lord leaned in for a closer look, he was shocked to find a hideously shriveled mummy sealed inside!

It wasn’t just this one cabinet, either. Lawrence wiped down several more in succession, discovering that every single one contained a human corpse—male and female, young and old!

These weren’t crystal cabinets; they were Crystal Coffins! Neatly lined up against the walls, this corridor alone housed no less than a hundred skeletal remains!

"This is exactly why Necromancy is considered taboo," Master Laurie said. He looked at this crystal graveyard seemingly without much emotional fluctuation, merely letting out a heavy sigh. "Researching and casting Necromancy inevitably requires a vast number of human corpses as material. Even if Senior Adrian didn’t personally murder these people to create these corpses, buying and selling them as Magic Materials is naturally a violation of imperial law."

Even though they themselves were living dead returned from the Netherworld, the three guards couldn’t help but shudder at being surrounded by so many corpses. The usually fearless Alice bit her lip tightly and subtly sidled closer to the Lord.

"It’s just a shame that even after storing and using so many corpses, Adrian’s experiments still failed," Xiahou Yan said with a sigh.

He could see that the corpses inside the Crystal Coffins bore magical traces of varying sizes on their bodies, proving they had all been used as test subjects in Adrian’s Necromancy research. Perhaps because Adrian had already processed them, these corpses hadn’t been infected by the Netherworld Magic Power and turned into zombies like the townsfolk. Instead, they remained in their post-mortem mummified states.

"The further in we go, the denser the Netherworld Magic Power in the air becomes," Master Laurie said, wrinkling his nose and sniffing hard. "Adrian’s testing site should be at the very end of the corridor. If he really died during an experiment like the rumors say, we should still be able to find his corpse over there."

Xiahou Yan implicitly understood. A Mage’s own corpse was naturally the best source for extracting their Magic Rhythm!

However, just as Xiahou Yan was about to venture deeper, he suddenly heard a burst of heavy footsteps echoing from the darkness ahead.

Footsteps? In a corridor that had been completely empty for eight hundred years?

Before Xiahou Yan could even process what was happening, a gigantic figure wearing a Burgundian-style Black Steel Helmet and clad head-to-toe in pure black Armor charged out of the shadows, barreling straight toward him with thunderous momentum!

Without a single moment of hesitation, relying entirely on his self-defense instincts, the Lord quickly drew the crowbar from his waist and swung it wildly at this ambushing black steel tin can!

Yet the single phrase that rang out from within the tin can’s helmet caused the Lord’s elbow to sink, bringing the crowbar to an emergency halt in midair:

"Boss, spare my life!"