Academic gathering with Lich colleagues

"Stop playing with the puzzle, the Executioner Court is in session, let's hurry up and join the fun. Why do you care about these bone fragments? Use the backup body to leave! There are dozens of people, and you few are the dumbest of the bunch. Hurry up and leave."

The Fragment Lich nodded.

"I almost forgot the time, so I'll go first! You hurry over there."

After saying this, he tilted his head back and fell to the ground. His body, free from the constraints of consciousness, shattered into pieces, and his soul surged into Andre Castle, reviving from the sleeping skeleton.

……

Lyle arrived at the Executor's Hall in a daze. The once dazzling doors were now empty, and the doors, without any hanging objects, looked heavy and imposing.

Lyle took a deep breath.

This time, I might officially become a lich.

Passing through the reception desk, I turned into the narrow corridor connecting the defense room and the disciplinary room. Andre's light bats seemed to remain largely unchanged. The light bats in the Executioner's Chamber possessed a cool, aloof quality unlike any other light bat. They perched on the doorposts on the other side of the corridor, emitting a bright, cold glow in the dim light. Completely oblivious to their role as light sources, they didn't huddle under their wings like other light bats. When Lyle approached, they raised their heads, like stone statues spreading their wings in a menacing pose, sensing an intruder, their two round eyes fixed intently on Lyle.

The corridor was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Lyle was the only figure in the long passageway. There were no shouts of protest or screams of torture coming from the other side of the tightly closed doors. The Executioner's Hall was eerily quiet. Lyle noticed that he hadn't seen a single lich along the way.

This situation was something that the manipulator had mentioned to him before.

The Final Court of Justice, Andrei's highest law enforcement agency, is headed by the Dean, who serves as both judge and adjudicator. While academic gatherings are a grand event every lich eagerly anticipates, the Final Court is a mandatory attendance for all. Andrei's laws are formulated here, and the most serious cases are handled here. Beyond this, the Final Court serves another purpose.

Punishing members of the Salvation Society.

The deep red gate before him seemed to ooze blood, the patterns of the Grim Reaper's mantle tracing a semicircle along its edge. The enormous Andrei emblem was etched into the runes of the gate. There was no gatekeeper; instead, the gatekeeper was a stone spirit depicted in the relief carvings on the gate. A four-armed skeletal stone sculpture, its upper body protruding from the relief, its slender, spider-like arms reaching towards Lyle. A clicking, grinding sound emanated from the relief as its spine was being pulled out vertebra by vertebra, the chain-like joints reaching two meters in length, their ends connected to a human skull. Its neck rotated, looking at the summons in Lyle's hand from behind.

"May you escape punishment and blame, Physician." Shi Ling's voice was cold; his blessing was hardly fair.

Lyle's heart sank.

"……What's the meaning?"

The slender joints are drilled back into the relief, and the stone spirit's monotonous rhythm is like reciting poetry.

Life will age.

Rocks wear down.

The soul will dissipate.

Time will die.

Punishment and blame await everyone at the final destination.

All you can do is escape this calamity.

It seemed to be a formulaic blessing, without any of those unpleasant implications.

Lyle pushed open the door and looked inside.

The courtroom was ultimately a folded space, much larger than he had anticipated. The judge's bench stood to one side, with the chief judge seated atop a tall chair. The defendant's and plaintiff's seats were arranged side by side. The audience seating was quite different; apart from the judge's side, it was distributed around the court like a sports stadium, and it was already full of people.

The moment Lyle approached the door, an entire section of the hall rose to their feet, erupting in thunderous applause. The liches on the screen were clearly distinguished by their colors—red, white, and translucent. This was the audience of the necromancy faculty, who were overjoyed to see Lyle, as if he had received some great honor.

Lyle kept his head down, feeling everyone's eyes on him. Liches revered chaos and destruction, and the enthusiasm of the Necromancer's homeland symbolized just how much trouble he had caused.

The louder the applause, the harsher the sentence. It seems the death penalty is the starting point now.

Lyle felt utterly humiliated. He looked down at the ground and slunk to the dock under the watchful eyes of everyone. The surrounding commotion ceased, and it seemed as if a serious trial had begun. However, the lich's gaze on Lyle only intensified, leaving Lyle at a loss for what to do.

Under the pressure of his gaze, Lyle began to focus on the intricate patterns on the defendant's dock. It was a beautiful pattern of black and red thorns, arranged in the elegant script of Emor. The pattern was indeed beautiful, but the thorns were real. The wood was cursed wood; was it really a good idea to use wood with such ominous connotations? The defendant's dock was so spacious; two people standing together wouldn't feel crowded…

Lyle's thoughts began to stagnate. He silently looked up at the other defendant standing beside him.

A tall, bandaged man with his arms crossed, Mr. Darkness.

Lyle turned his head and glanced at the nameplate on the table again.

The defendant is the literary society.

Lyle understood why everyone was staring at him; it felt no different than if he were dead.

"Haha, sorry, I think I've come to the wrong place. It's all a misunderstanding." After playfully greeting Mr. Darkness, Lyle wanted to find a corner to hide in before his face turned red.

Mr. Dark hooked his arm around Lyle's shoulder, looking like they were best buddies.

"What misunderstanding! We're all brothers! Plague Doctor, you're with our Literary Society, right!" Darkness pulled Lyle's head close and whispered in his ear, "Come directly to our Literary Society. It's a waste for someone as talented as you to stay outside. Help me rule the world. You can easily turn my Dark Legion into holy light idiots and corrupt this world. I'll make you the leader of the Four Dark Kings, second only to me, above all others. The world will be in our hands!"

“George, get your filthy hands off me! What are you doing to my Pure One? Are you looking for death?” Raymond’s roar echoed in the courtroom, the blinding holy light almost blinding everyone.

Lyle eventually arrived at the audience of the Séance School to listen to the executor's accusation against the Literary Society.

only……

“Mr. Raymond, what are you doing sitting in our necromancy school’s audience?” Lyle pointed to the empty seats on the other side. In the huge Holy Light Chapel, the Protoss Lovedy greeted them, while Sister Eliran curled up and turned her head to the other side.

The seats in the Séance School were packed. Besides Séance apprentices like Lyle, there was a professor from the Bone School dressed in white, a professor from the Flesh School dressed in red, a professor from the Soul School whose seat could be seen through his body, and Raymond, who was mixed in with the Holy Light.

Raymond laughed heartily.

"If I were to sit on their side, wouldn't that force you, Plague Doctor, into a difficult position and make you choose sides? As for my condescending to accept a seat from the Spirit Summoning School, such an grievance is nothing compared to your contributions. How could I put you in a difficult position, my brother!"

Lyle's expression twisted as he recalled something painful, and he muttered under his breath.

“I’m already having a hard time, Mr. Raymond.”

Chapter 709 I Didn't Do It

After the lawyer entered the courtroom, the heavy doors slowly closed. He walked to the plaintiff's seat and nodded to the judge sitting on the bench in apology.

"I apologize for my lateness, Your Honor. It took us quite a while to bring the entire literary society to the Tower of Souls. Even though the power of justice has been withdrawn, those bastards are still making a ruckus like grasshoppers with broken wings."

Mr. Darkness gave a soft snort, pulling the bandages that had slipped down his face back up, his mocking gaze hidden beneath the dry fibers.

“Watch your words, plaintiff. Statements filled with personal grudges will lead to a disappointing outcome.” The dean lightly tapped the gavel, the small wooden object, about the size of a fist, producing a sound that sent shivers down one’s spine. Perhaps it had been used as a torture device in the next room before, Lyle thought maliciously.

The dean glanced at Lyle, which made the young man shrink back guiltily, but thankfully his gaze quickly swept over the other listeners.

"The court finally reopened because Mr. Plague Doctor, the president of the Necromancer Figurine Company, caused another lich calamity. In the process, Andrei suffered a considerable blow due to both malicious and unintentional catalysis. Mr. Law, the Executor, hopes to reach some consensus with the participants in this lich calamity."

"Therefore, the charges brought by Andrei against the Literary Society begin in our presence."

"Due to special circumstances, all members of the Literary Society are undergoing spiritual correction. The defendant's seat will be temporarily filled by Mr. Dark, the president of the Literary Society. The members involved who have regained their sanity will arrive here one after another later."

"Plaintiff, please begin your statement."

Law coughed and took out several white stones with shimmering surfaces from his pocket. Lyle was quite familiar with those things; they were memory stones, and the center of the Blood Nest Tree was full of them.

"You all should have already personally experienced what the Literary Society has done. These are memory fragments that I commissioned from the soul tower to be copied from the minds of the Literary Society members by a vengeful spirit, to help you recall what heinous acts of destruction the Literary Society has committed."

The law handed the memory stone to Mr. Jing, who was the clerk. Jing picked up the stone, walked to the center of the courtroom, and lightly stomped his right foot on the ground.

A sudden, abrupt sound of water droplets falling filled the air, drawing everyone's attention to the radiating sunburst pattern. The dark red pattern seemed to be fading, while the fine, pale yellow lines stood out sharply, as if about to detach from the water's surface. The dark red pattern eventually faded to transparency, reflecting Mr. Mirror's image. The lines turned jet black, becoming three-dimensional and forming a dark frame. The ring that originally outlined the sun rose, supporting the base of the memory stone. Crystals grew on the sphere's surface, eventually forming a full-around circular screen.

The stored memories began to play.

"My right hand seals the fallen evil dragon; your evil is utterly absurd and laughable compared to mine! Turn into pathetic dust!"

"I don't need a world without XXX! I will destroy this painful world!"

"Any last words? Because you will soon die by my hand!"

"Hahaha, I only need to use a little of my real skills to wipe you all out! Hey?! Don't all attack at once, understand? One-on-one fight!"

In the video, members of the literary society speak in a way that feels very familiar, using the power of holy light to shatter the bewildered lich. A head flies through the air, muttering, "Isn't 1000-7 993? I didn't answer wrong."

Mr. Lyle felt terrible.

He easily identified the source of those lines, as they all came from his own memory, just thinking about how these literary society members had used this kind of antics throughout Andrei. This famous scene, replayed in front of all the liches, was practically a public execution of Lyle's own dark history.

"I really want to travel to another world. I can't stay here any longer."

"Doctor! What's wrong with you! Are you alright? Why are you kneeling on the ground?" Mr. Raymond's concerned voice rang out.

Lyle sat back down and calmly answered the question amidst the liches' stares.

“It’s alright, Mr. Raymond. I was just thinking about the true meaning of those statements, and I got a little lost in thought.”

Raymond cast the blessing of holy light on Lyle, which puzzled the angel of light.

"Even you, Lyle, don't understand what those words mean? But didn't you say that you wrote the entire script for The Flower of Dreams? Aren't these just fragments of your memories? You... have you ever suffered from amnesia?"

Raymond's question darkened Lyle's face. He forced a smile, piecing together a mask of dignity with his last struggle. He frowned slightly, remaining silent for a moment, as if contemplating the possibility of Raymond's words.

Lyle made a somewhat uncertain expression, as if he himself was unsure about what he was about to say.

"I should... not have these memories. I only actively participated in a part of the Dream Flower script; the rest originated entirely from my subconscious..."

"You mean, there are all sorts of messy things in your subconscious? Why?"

Lyle hugged his arm, his gaze drifting.

“I am… the embryonic form of an evil god.”

“I possess a part of what I received from the evil god…”

"Perhaps... these subconscious thoughts are something I inherited from the evil god Triton..."

"Blind, foolish, indescribable, distorted knowledge..."

I'm sorry, Triton.

The professors who had been secretly listening nearby suddenly realized what was happening, and a chorus of exclamations followed.

They quickly came to believe the most outstanding student of séance, because his reasoning made some sense. Moreover, the state of the literary society displayed in the video was too strange, completely contrary to the behavior and logic of normal people. It was not unreasonable to categorize them as the ravings of madmen and fanatical believers in evil gods.

Raymond certainly believed what Lyle the Pure said, but he was more worried about whether Lyle himself was in danger.

"I see. So, does this knowledge of evil gods have any effect on you? Your physical and mental health is the most important thing."

Lyle looked at the central mirror image, his gaze wandering.

"Of course not, I'm already an adult."

The projection in the courtroom came to an end. After enjoying the chuunibyou performance by the literature club, Mr. Law pressed his hands on the plaintiff's table and leaned forward, as if to apply the oppressive feeling along with his body weight to Mr. Darkness.

"Mr. Darkness, what are your thoughts on the atrocities committed by the members of the Literary Society in Andrei?"

Mr. Darkness released his hands, spread his right hand outwards with five fingers, and then pulled it back to cover his face.

"What are your thoughts? Of course, they are..."

The shadowy angel wings unfurled from behind, cascading down to form a flowing cape. Darkness first wrapped its entire body in the wings, then with a powerful flick, felt the exhilarating upward airflow. Its own aura had undoubtedly reached its peak.