Do you have a problem with necromancers?

Chapter 24 Resurrection Ceremony
Because he arrived in such a hurry, Poirot only brought two of his family knights with him before rushing across the sea to Iron Harbor to hire men.

He wasn't told the prophecy by his maternal grandmother in person; he only heard her mumble incoherently in her sleep.
"...North of Iron Island, the archipelago stretches like an arrow. Where it shoots eastward, roses lie buried..."

Compared to those obscure and difficult prophecies, this statement is quite simple to interpret:

To the north of Iron Harbor Island, there is a straight line formed by a series of islands. Following this line eastward leads to the burial site of the Rose Queen.

The Rose Queen Berthalia of history mysteriously disappeared, and the various magical items she carried with her also vanished into the river of time.

Poirot consulted historical documents and discovered that Berthalia possessed a magical artifact called "Goldfinger," which was said to have been made from the finger of a powerful ancient wizard. It could turn anything it touched into gold, and therefore it was stored in a pure gold box, and could only be touched or grasped using pure gold tools.

The ancient Rose Queen relied on this artifact to acquire almost inexhaustible wealth and personally built the most powerful Dark Elf dynasty in history.

If Poirot could obtain this artifact, it would mean that he would also possess wealth equivalent to the infinite.

At that time, whether it's seizing leadership of the family, climbing up the imperial aristocracy, and eventually becoming a powerful nobleman; or simply going to the Golden Sands, Frost Plains, or Fjords to build a city and establish oneself, recruiting soldiers and horses to create a power and become a monarch... as long as you have money, you can do it!
Several pearl divers had already dived into the sea to search for the shipwreck, while Poirot and two knights waited on the boat.

Divers in this world do not have the help of scuba gear and oxygen tanks. They can only rely on rudimentary tubes and holding their breath underwater. Therefore, they have to send signals to the surface from time to time so that the people on the boat can pull them to the surface to breathe.

Poirot was quite dissatisfied with their low work efficiency, so he ordered two stronger knights to operate the winch to avoid wasting too much time during the breathing phase.

As time went by, many more ancient artifacts were salvaged and added to the deck.

There were jewelry in the style of dark elves, as well as silver bowls, cups, knives and forks, but they had long lost their original precious luster due to long-term immersion and corrosion in seawater.

According to feedback from the pearl divers who had just surfaced, those below had already passed through the banquet hall of the sunken ship and were beginning their journey towards the master bedroom, which slightly eased Poirot's anxiety.

After a moment, the winch on the ship began to pull again, clearly indicating that the pearl divers below were asking for air.

A knight from the family pulled the winch with all his might, hauling the pearl diver from the deep sea onto the ship. He saw that the diver's eyes were closed, his expression was ferocious, and his skin was an ominous bluish-green, as if he had suffocated due to severe lack of oxygen.

The sailors quickly carried him aside, roughly stripped off his clothes, poured large amounts of strong liquor into him, and vigorously washed his body with the liquor.

Poirot was not interested in the pearl divers' lives or deaths; he simply clung to the deck railing with both hands and continued to gaze at the bottomless depths of the sea.

Suddenly, a horrifying scream came from behind.

Poirot turned around in astonishment and saw the pearl diver who had been pulled ashore pounce on and bite three sailors before being cleaved in two by a sword from Fahl’s family knight.

"Watch out!" The knight's eyes widened as he saw the dark green blood flowing down the blade, and he shouted, "It's the plague of necromancy!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than the three sailors who had been bitten were seen with bloodshot eyes and bruises all over their bodies, launching indiscriminate attacks on their surroundings.

The remaining sailors scattered immediately, ignoring their unfortunate companions who had been captured, and jumped into the sea from the deck to escape as quickly as possible.

The two family knights quickly separated; one rushed forward to slay the plague-infested zombies, while the other stood beside Poirot with his sword, ready to shield him from any attack.

Poirot retreated to the edge of the deck in terror. He couldn't understand why what was supposed to be a simple shipwreck salvage operation had suddenly become so perilous, with even plague-infested zombies appearing!
"Protect me!" he yelled. "Don't let those corpses come near me!"

The family knights did not respond, but focused solely on fighting with their swords.

Fighting plague zombies typically has only three outcomes: killing the zombie without taking damage, killing it while wounded, or being killed by the zombie. If there isn't a priest skilled in life magic or an alchemical potion specifically designed to counteract the poison, the latter two outcomes are essentially the same. This is because the plague toxin takes effect very quickly; victims often don't survive more than a minute.

To make matters worse, neither of the family knights was wearing armor because they were on a ship at sea, which made their fighting extremely difficult.

Poirot watched the battle on deck with fear, then suddenly ordered his guards:
"Cover me up and get me out of here! Aren't there lifeboats at the stern? Take me to one of them!"

"Please calm down," the knight beside him said in a deep voice. "The situation is still unclear. Running away rashly will only turn your back to the enemy and put you in danger..."

Before he could finish speaking, the knight fighting ahead was caught off guard and a walking corpse that was still alive on the ground suddenly grabbed his leg and bit his ankle.

The knight let out a bloodcurdling scream, and his longsword plunged down, piercing the zombie's skull.

Poirot's remaining courage was completely shattered by that scream.

Ignoring the knights' advice and attempts to stop him, he rushed to the stern, jumped onto the lifeboat, and then swung his dagger to cut the anchor cable.

The small boat plunged into the sea, creating a large splash. Poirot clung tightly to the sides of the boat to avoid being thrown overboard by the force of the turbulence.

However, something cold and slippery emerged silently from the seawater and gripped his wrist tightly.

Before Poirot could react, he was instantly dragged into the sea.

The battle on the large ship had also come to a conclusion. Both knights were killed by the onslaught of the undead, and the remaining undead creatures walked to the ship's side, stood in an eerie row, and silently gazed at the sea.

The sea surface gradually began to stir.

The first thing to emerge was a skeleton, followed by countless wet, swollen, rotting hands.

The pearl divers who were originally salvaging the sunken ship underwater have now been collectively infected and transformed into drowning ghosts. They carry the skeleton to the surface and lift it high onto the ship's deck.

The zombies, who had been standing still, began to kneel and prostrate themselves on the ground in a circle around the skeleton, forming some kind of obscure and sinister necromancy.

"Too rough." Renn's voice came from afar.

He climbed onto the deck from the bow, looked at the kneeling corpses in front of him, and commented:
"The design of using toxins instead of magic to perform the resurrection ritual is indeed ingenious. However, the biggest flaw is the lack of stability. The ritual itself is not very resistant to interference. I think that even if it succeeds in the end, it will most likely not turn into a lich, but at most into a skeleton."

"Perhaps it's because she didn't expect to be assassinated?" Dia tried to guess. "A resurrection plan hastily devised in the final moments before death is unlikely to be perfect, right?"

"Don't believe him," Ellina said calmly. "If Bersalia were incompetent and mediocre, why would he have gone to all this trouble to find her here?"

“I don’t deny that.” Renn laughed heartily. “Although she clearly only has a superficial understanding of necromancy, considering that she relies on poison to perform cross-domain operations, it’s barely passable.”

"Ellina, go and clear away those zombies, and don't let the drowned ghosts get close."

“Dia, bring out my ceremonial candles.”

(End of this chapter)