chapter 26: Intermission

The Free City Republic

Roughly a week later.

The Council Elder of the free city Republic were gathered for their meeting today, as something unexpected has come up, standing in the middle of the room was Stultus Est, albeit with his face covered up due to complicated reasons.

"What is the meaning of this Stultus?! I thought that we already assigned you an important duty, the duty of inviting the Dark Mage that reside in the Evergreen kingdom and recently made some rumor for himself?!" an Elder with his face covered by a mask shouted out angrily at Stultus.

All the elders, and importance decision makers of the Republic had their identity hidden behind a magically enchanted mask while holding a meeting with personnel that had lower authority than their own, in first and foremost, to kept their safety and secondly, preventing informations about their identity from spreading out, in case someone like Stultus were to be captured (well he's indeed been captured and milked for all the information.)

"Answer us Stultus Est!" another elder slammed his fist down onto the stone table and creating a large crack in the process.

"Uhhhhh~" However, what came out of Stultus mouth was only the sound of moaning, listless and depressed moaning.

"What?" One of the elder questioned again, as he doubts his own ears for a moment that the man was moaning instead of answering the question.

"Stultus! Did you perhaps think this is some type of joke?! If we don't get a good explanation out of this, I will personally skin you alive?!" another enraged elder shouted out.

But once again, to their surprise, the "Stultus" in front of them continued to reply back with a simple moaning sound.

"Get him out of here?!" finally an elder couldn't take it anymore and shouted out loudly for the guards to come inside and drag Stultus out, it only took a moment for a group of four guardsmen to arrived inside of the chamber.

However, just before the guardsman manage to link up their arms and drag Stultus out, something strange happened, Stultus slowly removed his cloak which revealed his entire bare body, tattooed with purple glowing rune and cracks, pulsing like a heart beating, he then pulled out a small round metallic object and showed it to the council of elder.

"What is that? Those runes...and crack...they're pulsing with magic!" one of the council elder asked in interest, as this was his first time seeing such a phenomenon happened to a human body.

"I have a bad feeling about this…" another elder added.

"ZZzzz~ Greeting! To the people of the Free City State Republic." it was then that the small round metallic object Stultus held up to them suddenly spoke and draw in all their attention onto it.

"Who are you! Show yourself!" an eye shouted at the object on Stultus hand while pointing at it with his hand.

"Calm down will you? It's inconvenience for me to show myself since I lived so far away, the only thing I could do is give this dumb fool here, Stultus Est was it? One of my communications tool, so he can deliver you guys a message...a clear message." the voice inside the small metallic object became ice cold.

"But who the hell are you?!" the elder asked again, and was furious was that.

"Oh please, you should know who I am by now, I'm the man that this fool here, was tasked to find and kindly invite to join your so call "Shadow Council." don't tell me that you didn't remember that part...are you perchance...become senile?" the voice spoke in a sarcastic tone.

It was none other than Leonard.

"Stultus! You better give us an explanation...now!" their attention finally turned to Stultus.

"Don't even bother, he won't be answering anything." Leonard voice told the elders.

"What? What do you mean by that?" they question him.

"What I mean is, I killed this fool, what you see before you now is just a zombie I sent over...you guys like it? He looks so ...ALIVE...right? I spent a bit of effort in making him look like that, so you better appreciate it-"

"Impudent!! You are just a mere rogue Necromancer! How dare you speak to the Dark Council in that tone of voice and spit in our face by killing our ambassador!" an old man who sat in the middle, surrounded by the other elder shouted out furiously before Leonard could finish his sarcastic speech.

"Heh? Spit at your face? You should be honor that I even bother to spit at your face...you should have expected this outcome when you sent over this fool to MY domain…" Leonard growled.

"Hmph! You think you can challenge the mighty Shadow Council? We are the existence that rivaled the Church in power! What make you think you had the chance of challenging all of us here and survive!"

"Hahahahaha!!! This is the best cliche I heard thus far, no- it's the best joke ever!!" Leonard laugh sounded out from the ball as it was rolling around on Stultus dead palm.

"My chance you ask?" the laughter suddenly came to an abrupt stop.

"My chance is... I destroyed the foundation of the Church AND the Rosen kingdom- but I doubt you old fool would actually believe in anything that I said thus far...so let me prove it to you."

"Prove it to us?" the elders were now confused by Leonard words.

"Well...behold...my latest creation...the most volatile zombie in existence... I took a great sense of pride in creating this one here... I named him disposable experiment no.1, better known as... Remedium Stultitia! I hope this will cure all your stupidity and make sure you think twice before messing with me." Leonard last words before the communication device went silent, and Stultus swallowed it into his mouth.

After finishing gulping down the metallic ball-like object, Stultus had a wide grin on his dead face as he looked at the council of elders.

"Grrrrrr" Stultus growled menacingly as the runes and crack on his body began to glow brightly of purple, and pulsing rapidly. *Bthump *Bthump *Bthump!

"Everyone! QUICKLY TAKE COVER! IT's GOING TO BLOWWWW!!!!" the leader of the council of elder quickly shouted out loudly as he went down under the stone table for cover, prompting all his comrade too went down as well.

However, it was too late for many of them as the last thing they all heard and felt was a loud bang and a searing pain all over their body.

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

The explosion caused a small earthquake that spreads throughout the entire city block and cause the collapse of the building that the council meeting was taking place.

At the end of the aftermath, there was only rubble and debris, most of the council members were either dead or seriously injured, for the injured if it wasn't for their strong body of a rank six above, they would have already perished, the result was half of the council decommissioned.

******

Somewhere else, In the Evergreen kingdom, new border area settlement.

Leonard was sitting on the balcony enjoying some cakes and roasted beefs that he had previously bought from the Crossroad of World's, of course he did not enjoy it alone- sharing was caring after all, he gave some to Sachi, Ryan, Mavis and of course Luminous as well.

"Say...how do you think they will react to this... I mean...you did try to blow them up after all…" Mavis questioned while she took a small bite from the "heavenly" beef.

"Who know, but at least they will probably be angry at me…" he shrugged.

"At least I know for a fact that my void magic can be mixed with other magic and caused a volatile chain reaction…but damn...that one took so much effort, I had to carve in enchantment rune onto the flesh of the zombie to make it a somewhat stable container for the power...that cost a lot…" he lamented.