Chapter 3765: Little Game (Part 2) *** Distar Household, at the same time. ’I wish I could see Leech’s face right now.’ Orpal’s clone wore the Black Rose armor and wielded the Thorn spear as he walked through the main entrance of the ancestral home of the Distar bloodline. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎 ’He has to pick who he is going to help and who he’s going to let die. I’m sure the old fart Vastor has many tricks up his sleeve and is likely to survive, but also that the new Count Lark and his sister are the simpletons they appear to be. ’Scouting their property was embarrassingly easy, and with a yellow core fake mage as their strongest protector, they are as good as dead. Brinja Distar shouldn’t be much of a challenge either, but after all the trouble her mother put me through, I’m not going to underestimate her.’ The first step of Orpal’s plan had been to punch a hole through the nearby branch of the Mage Association with his Blade Spell, Collapsing Moon. The second step had his Upyrs slaughter the local mages while their king destroyed the Warp Gate. Everybody knew that, for some reason, the Distars had never built their own private Gate and used the one of the Mage Association to travel around the Kingdom. Without it, the nearest Gate was several hundred kilometers away. Even if the King sent the Royal Guards themselves and they flew at their top speed, they would never arrive in time. Killing a human woman and her baby was a matter of a second, and the Dead King had already breached the external arrays. Finding Brinja with Life Vision would take him minutes if he were alone. With the help of the strike team, however, he could find her in seconds, if he were lucky. ’Stupid woman.’ Orpal sneered, walking through the familiar corridors he had mapped three years ago to kill Mirim Distar in her own home. ’So obsessed with her dead mother and her family traditions that nothing has changed since my last visit. ’The layout of the rooms, the enchantments hidden in the corridors, and even the sequence of the defensive arrays are still the same. The new Marchioness has tweaked and altered the magical formations just enough to make my old spells useless, but it’s not enough to stop me. ’My powers are much stronger than they were in the past, and this time, I’m not alone.’ A simple swing of his spear generated air blades that cut deep into the stone of the walls and crashed enchanted hardwood doors like paper. Only the guards tried to hold back the intruders, paying for their courage with their lives. Maids, butlers, and the rest of the house staff ran away screaming like children waking up from a nightmare. They ran so fast that the Upyrs couldn’t catch up with them, too busy digging deeper into the defensive formations of the house and carving a path for their master. ’Frost Soul is so damn powerful, but it’s also so damn annoying.’ Orpal sighed. Once inside the blue mist released by the combined strength of the Upyrs, all of Orpal’s spells, enchantments, and other bloodline abilities were sealed. The air blades generated by Thorn were a testament to his strength as a Divine Beast and to the sharpness of the spear’s Davross edge. The air blades were not magical in origin, but simple byproducts of the masterful swings of the weapon. "Well, this is disappointing." The Dead King stepped over the remains of the door leading to the living room where Mirim had died three years ago. "Killing you in the same place as your mother is boring. "Couldn’t you hide any better? Make this more fun for me? A cat and mouse thing?" "Fun?" Brinja’s sky-blue eyes flared with the little red mana she possessed in anger. "You think this is fun? Killing my mother? Invading my home? Slaughtering my people?" "What do you expect?" The Dead King ordered his Upyrs to form a perimeter as he dealt with the final layer of arrays himself. "Someone as powerful as me can’t eat biscuits and drink tea to pass his time. "There’s no point in accumulating strength if you don’t play with it like any other toy." Orpal charged himself with Life Maelstrom and punched at the last barrier that separated him from the living room, cracking it. "Speaking of toys, what about your daughter? "Even if you loved your mother, you should have loved the little goblin more. You should have run away instead of standing there like an idiot. Your daughter would have still died with you, but you would have bought her a few more seconds." "Don’t you dare speak about my mother and daughter with that foul mouth of yours!" Brinja’s delicate features flushed in anger, and the golden waterfall of her hair trembled along with the barrier as it shattered. "You are a coward! "You attacked my mother when she was at her weakest, and now, you’re targeting a normal woman and a newborn! You’re nothing but filth, Mel-" "My name is Orpal Verhen." His hand whipped around Brinja’s throat like a snake, lifting her in the air and cutting her short. "Say it." Brinja emitted choking sounds and covered Milla’s eyes with her body, but said nothing even when the hold constricting her neck loosened. She took a short breath and used it to spit on Orpal’s visor in defiance. "Wrong answer." The Dead King’s hand snapped close, breaking Brinja’s spine like a twig. "As I said, boring. You got me so angry that I didn’t get to kill the baby in front of your eyes." Without their master’s imprint, the arrays of the house lost their power, their pressure a mere annoyance. "Oh, well. A disappointing victory is still a vic-" A sudden blast of darkness element threw Orpal off his feet, and he turned to face the new threat. Tendrils of earth mixed with darkness magic rose from the floor, wrapping themselves around the Dead King’s limbs. Fire and lightning engulfed him with enough violence to dull his black armor and send Orpal into a seizure. "What’s that supposed to do?" A mere flex of his muscles broke the tendrils, and a lunge of his spear scattered the elemental onslaught. "Distract you." Ainz Distar, Headmaster of the Black Griffon and Brinja’s husband, said as he conjured the tier five Battle Mage Spell, Cruel Sun. It generated a sphere of black fire that engulfed its target, focusing its attack power in a single spot instead of spreading forward. No living being could withstand such heat, and darkness magic was the bane of all undead, Vurdalaks included. Orpal instinctively conjured the darkness element through Night’s prism to defend himself, but the Horseman tried to stop him. ’Stop, you idiot! Frost Soul is still active.’ She said, but it was too late. Orpal’s bloodline ability froze the world energy the moment it was syphoned by the red and black prism. Frost Soul spread its deadly cold throughout the Dead King’s body instead of the darkness that was supposed to defend him. "What’s going on?" Orpal stopped the flow of world energy before it killed his clone on the spot and broke free from the thick layer of ice trapping him with sheer might. "Why can you cast spells and I can’t?"