Lich for Hire

Chapter 209: No Contradictions

Ambrose hadn't expected that this was what Catherine thought of him.

Ariel had truly been an accident. At the beginning, he hadn't even planned to trick her into joining him. He had only wanted to bluff her into leaving. Who would have guessed that Ariel would cling to him like glue?

As for the paladins, that had been pure coincidence as well. Who could possibly predict that the Silvermoon Knight would come looking for a lich to help train his troops? That had simply been an unlikely stroke of luck.

But Ambrose knew there was no point explaining. The elven queen already had a fixed impression of him. Prejudice was like a mountain, one that even a legendary lich couldn't move.

He sighed. "If only you used that much imagination under ordinary circumstances."

After muttering that complaint, Ambrose transformed back into the green splaad he had previously encountered. Then he cast another illusion over Catherine, rendering her invisible.

The two of them walked boldly toward the depths of the swamp.

Sure enough, the green splaad held relatively high status. This time, no one tried to stop them.

The so-called "depths of the swamp" turned out to be a wooden settlement built above the water. Though the splaad were amphibious, they didn't spend their entire lives submerged. A small palace had been constructed atop the swamp, and the splaad lord lived there.

According to the memories of the green splaad named Shtubi, the lord usually remained in the highest chamber of the settlement. There was a reason for this: gray splaad had two potential evolution paths.The first was to continue refining their magical abilities until they eventually evolved into death splaad, masters of necromancy.

The second was much simpler: find the carcass of a death splaad and eat it to evolve instantly.

Unfortunately, there probably weren't any death splaad carcasses lying around in this swamp. So the lord of this place, Kakach, instead spent most of its time secluded, studying magic. Only when the splaad needed new hosts for reproduction would it emerge to open a gateway to another world so the splaad could hunt.

The last ritual, however, had gone wrong.

The swamp had connected to a barren ruin where nothing lived. The splaad had wandered through it for a while without finding even a single living plant, let alone prey.

And then Ambrose and Catherine had killed all of them. By now, the splaad lord had surely learned of the incident. It was likely that another spatial link would soon take place.

As Ambrose approached the settlement, the number of green splaad around him increased. When they saw him, many croaked greetings, clearly recognizing him as an acquaintance.

Ambrose, however, dared not respond.

Shtubi's memories contained information about every one of its companions, but to Ambrose, they all looked the same. Even after reviewing its memories, he still couldn't tell them apart.

How was he supposed to greet them? The only option was to lower his head and pretend to be in a bad mood. He silently strode forward without speaking to anyone.

He soon reached the deepest part of the settlement.

The gray splaad lord Kakach, stood on a railing and gazed into the distance.

As Kakach noticed him approaching, it sighed and croaked a long series of sounds. Ambrose quietly cast Detect Thoughts to read the creature's mind.

Detect Thoughts allowed him to hear a target's inner voice regardless of species, though it risked exposing the caster if discovered. Ambrose, however, wasn't worried about failure. His dice of fate could always tilt probability in his favor.

Through the spell, Kakach's thoughts became clear.

That croak had actually been a lament.

"Shtubi, our hunt has gone wrong again. Our brood lives as if we were on thin ice. Do you think we'll ever return to our homeland?"

Ambrose couldn't actually speak splaad language. There was no way he could express something that complex with a few croaks.

So he responded with a short, low "grrk." It was something he had just learned. It meant, "I don't know."

Yes. No. I don't know. Those were the only three phrases of splaad speech Ambrose had managed to learn from Shtubi's memories. They were simple enough; anything more complicated was beyond him.

Fortunately, Kakach hadn't really been asking for advice. It had only been venting its frustration.

Soon it asked another question. "Have the intruders been found?"

The spatial connection had malfunctioned, intruders had killed the splaad sent through the portal, and the gateway had collapsed. Kakach already knew all of this. Shtubi had been one of the green splaad dispatched to hunt down the intruders, and Kakach expected it to have returned with more information.

Ambrose could only answer with another "grrk"—"I don't know."

Kakach snapped irritably. "If you know nothing, why have you returned? Don't you have anything to report?"

The string of croaks that followed was so sharp it hurt Ambrose's ears. The splaad lord was genuinely agitated.

Ambrose had anticipated this reaction. He calmly took out an arrow and handed it to Kakach.

It was one of Catherine's arrows. The specially crafted anti-magic arrowhead made Kakach's eyes bulge.

"What kind of weapon is this? It gives me chills… It seems extremely effective against spellcasters. Was it taken from the intruders?"

Ambrose quickly shook his head, then let out a heavy sigh.

Kakach seemed to understand immediately. It patted Ambrose on the shoulder. "I see. You found it on one of your offspring, didn't you? Forget it. I understand why you don't want to talk about it. These intruders must be quite troublesome. Shtubi, prepare yourself. Before the next ritual begins, we must find them."

Ambrose immediately croaked, "Yes."

Kakach didn't sense anything wrong. It waved Ambrose away and returned to its chamber.

Ambrose hesitated for a moment. Instead of following Kakach inside and continuing the awkward croaking conversation, he turned around and left the settlement.

Catherine followed him silently. Only when they reached an empty area did she whisper in astonishment, "Are you sure you're not secretly the God of Deception? How did you carry on an entire conversation with that splaad using nothing but croaks? What were you even talking about?"

She was genuinely baffled. How could Ambrose possibly learn a completely alien language in barely ten minutes?

It made no sense. All those croaks sounded identical to her. How could they have expressed anything complicated? And yet he had somehow chatted with the splaad lord so convincingly that the creature even patted his shoulder.

Ambrose ignored the question. Instead, he said calmly, "I've come up with two possible plans for using their spatial link to leave this place. Let's discuss them."

"Two plans already?" Catherine asked, impressed. "What are they?"

Ambrose replied, "That splaad lord said the next spatial ritual won't happen until the intruders are captured. They don't know there are two of us, though. So… you could sacrifice yourself and let them capture you while I secretly learn their ritual."

Catherine immediately exploded in outrage, "Absolutely not! I choose the second plan!"

Those splaad were far too disgusting. Even pretending to be captured by them was unacceptable. She would have nightmares for a year.

Ambrose nodded. "The second plan is for you to disguise yourself as a splaad while I get captured instead. Think you can pull it off?"

Leyla's True Illusion could be cast on multiple people. Ambrose didn't have to be the one in disguise. As a lich, he had plenty of ways to escape even if he were captured.

But Catherine probably couldn't fool the splaad lord. He wouldn't bet on it, at any rate.

Sure enough, Catherine herself lacked confidence in doing so. "Couldn't we just create a fake prisoner with illusions?" she muttered.

Ambrose shook his head. "It's possible, but the chance of failure is high. I fooled people in the Emerald Dreamwood only because I was a guest. No one attacked me. Illusions are still illusions. If the splaad start poking or attacking the prisoner, they'll notice that something is wrong."

After all, if Leyla's illusions were truly perfect, she wouldn't have lost her divine domain and ended up with druids using her corpse to create a magical barrier.

"So those are the only two options?" Catherine asked pitifully.

"There's a third," Ambrose said. "We storm the place, capture the splaad lord, and try to force it to perform the ritual. But don't expect me to read its soul afterward. There's a good chance its soul would immediately ascend to the splaad divine realm."

The real problem was that Ambrose didn't know the splaad language. If someone were to teach it to him properly for, say, two weeks, he was confident he could trick these creatures into selling their own skins to him.

Language barriers were the greatest obstacle for a con artist.

Catherine thought for a long time before finally gritting her teeth. "Fine. I'll sacrifice myself. But you have to promise those toads won't… ugh. Forget it. Arrange it however you want. I trust you won't harm me. After all, I'm supposed to keep working for you until I collapse in tears, right?"

She remembered the last time Ambrose had tricked her into crawling inside a dragon's stomach to place a sealing spell on it. He had used that exact same argument before: until the miserable future he had predicted actually happened, she would remain safe.

Ambrose smiled with satisfaction.

"Heh. I was just testing your resolve. You don't have to be the sacrifice."

Catherine stared at him in confusion. "If it's not you and it's not me… what, are you planning to use Naomi as the prisoner? I won't allow that!"

Ambrose rolled his eyes. "What are you thinking? What kind of ranger sacrifices their own animal companion? Do I look like that sort of person?"

Catherine gave him a skeptical look that was a clear yes.

Ambrose sighed and opened his private space. From inside, he dragged out a crudely assembled construct made of mismatched parts. "We killed all the witnesses. The splaad have no idea what the intruders actually look like. We can just use this thing to fool them." He grinned. "We'll lure the splaad to the edge of the swamp and toss the puppet out there. No one could possibly contradict us."