Chapter 501: Blood Wedding

Ambrose only mentioned his impending death in the group chat the once, and never again.

Black Rose told everyone he was working hard to find a solution. The group offered him words of comfort, promising their full support.

But it didn't take long for everyone to notice something odd: the lich showed no sign whatsoever of trying to save himself. He seemed utterly indifferent to the prospect of dying, and instead had thrown himself wholeheartedly into business.

The date for the World Peace Conference had been set two months out.

The timing had been calculated with precision. The winter in Lyon that year was unusually cold, so the Emerald River had frozen over ahead of schedule. Two months was right before the ice would break again.

In other words, if these peace talks fell apart, the orcs would only get one more shot at launching an offensive.

If Lyon could just hold the line against that single assault, the great river would once again serve as a natural barrier, solving the orc problem for good. By rights, the orcs should have objected to those terms, but they didn't. Even throwing every resource their nation had left into the fight, they could only manage one more campaign. If this battle failed to break through the Emerald River's blockade, the orcs simply wouldn't have enough food stores left to keep fighting at all.

So no matter when the battle actually happened, both sides only had one shot.

In the end, the orcs didn't refuse the peace talks. They only insisted repeatedly that the emperor of Lyon attend the conference in person.

Naturally, that was no issue at all. Lyon had already issued an official response confirming their emperor would attend personally.

Up to this point, everything had proceeded more or less normally. But what happened next started to feel distinctly... off.

Well before the conference began, the lich invited a considerable number of prominent figures from various kingdoms onto the island early, citing a need for "security inspections."

Once these dignitaries returned home, they immediately began combing through their national treasuries with frantic urgency, trying to scrape together funds from wherever they could.

There was no helping it. What the lich had put on display was simply too good to pass up.

The line of magical equipment forged from dragon scales, claws, and blood was so dazzling that anyone with any expertise at all simply couldn't look away.

Among the pieces on display, a two-handed axe bearing five separate enchantments very nearly sent the orc envoy present into a berserker frenzy on the spot.

A quick comparison made it obvious why. Lyon's own Blood of Dawn carried only two enchantments, and both of those were specifically anti-undead in nature.

This axe, by contrast, had anti-magic as its first enchantment alone. Any magical barrier, of any kind, might as well have been made of paper in the face of its blade. That included, but wasn't limited to, protective wards, Guardian Chains, and an entire range of priestly techniques, each of which could be shattered with a single swing.

The second enchantment was Blood Vitality. The instant the axe's blade made contact with blood, it would mitigate the wielder's fatigue and provide light healing to their wounds. In the hands of a legendary warrior, this weapon would essentially function as a perpetual motion machine. No number of low-tier enemies could ever hope to stop such a wielder from cutting through them all unopposed.

Compared to the first two, the third enchantment was somewhat weaker. Usable only by orcs, it amplified an orc's berserker rage. Since the effect was exclusive to orcs, it actually reduced the weapon's overall versatility.

The fourth enchantment was much more conventional: it strengthened the wielder's physical stability, adding a resilience effect that reduced the impact of physical blows. A spell like Thunder Wave, which could normally send an enemy flying, would have a good chance of being rendered completely useless against someone protected by this effect.

But the fifth enchantment wasn't the usual Sharpness one might expect from a weapon like this. Instead, it was Thunder's Might. The two-handed axe could summon lightning to coil around its blade, unleashing chain lightning directly from the axe itself, with far greater power than an ordinary Chain Lightning scroll could produce.

By the time the lich finished demonstrating the axe, the orc envoy nearly lost his mind on the spot.

What kind of divine artifact was this? It might as well have been forged exclusively for the orc king himself.

In addition to that axe, there were also full sets of enchanted armor, and an assortment of melee and ranged weapons. Every single piece of all these high-tier equipment shared one defining trait: an unusually high number of enchantments, with not a single wasted or filler effect among them.

As anyone in the trade knew, adding additional magical effects to an enchanted weapon was extraordinarily difficult.

At market rate, a longsword carrying a single enchantment effect typically sold for somewhere between five and ten thousand gold coins. A weapon with two enchantment effects, however, would fetch roughly ten times that price.

The longsword Ambrose had gifted to Allen carried both the anti-magic and sharpness enchantments. Because anti-magic was so rare, that blade alone was worth three hundred thousand gold on the open market.

So what about a weapon with three enchantments?

Blood of Dawn sat at exactly that tier, with undead sensory deprivation, resurrection, and a middling boost to the potency of holy light. Setting aside its special historical significance, that weapon alone would fetch at least five million gold on the open market.

Five enchantments?

No one had ever even heard of such a thing.

Not even the most legendary artifacts recorded throughout history had ever carried five separate enchantments. Among the high-tier equipment currently circulating across the continent, three enchantments was the absolute ceiling. It wasn't a matter of craftsmanship falling short; rather, the real constraint was in raw materials.

One of the single most essential materials for enchantments was dragon scale, or alternatively, dragon blood.

Ordinary metal simply couldn't hold enough magical capacity on its own. Only by incorporating dragon scales and dragon blood, even in the smallest of quantities, could a piece of equipment's magical ceiling be dramatically raised.

Ambrose had materials harvested directly from a full-grown dragon, high-grade metals supplied by the entirety of the Umbral Depths, master craftsmen from the former Unholy Kingdom at his disposal, and, on top of all that, a massive private space where he could freely adjust the flow of time. Put together, that combination was more than enough to produce a substantial quantity of high-tier magical equipment.

Even so, Ambrose still couldn't have forged this particular axe on his own.

This wasn't crafted equipment at all. This was a true artifact, one that had received an actual blessing from a god.

That fifth enchantment, Thunder's Might, had been bestowed personally by the Lord of Storms himself. That was precisely why its power was on an entirely different level.

This artifact, Blood Wedding, wasn't merely equipment up for auction. It was also a symbol.

After Ambrose finished demonstrating the axe's full power, the orc envoy looked ready to throw himself bodily on top of it and never let go, right up until Ambrose revealed the weapon's actual name: Blood Wedding.

"Blood Wedding? That's not a very good name at all."

That was all the orc envoy managed to say. Before he could even suggest a better one, a bolt of lightning shot out from the axe and reduced him to a smoking husk on the spot.

Ambrose, with an air of great reluctance, had to explain to the other orcs, who were on the verge of going berserk themselves, that this was an artifact personally created by the great and glorious Lord of Storms, and that the grievously wounded orc had had the nerve to call its name unimpressive. Blasphemy against a god got him exactly what he deserved.

Of course, Ambrose didn't put it quite that bluntly. Instead, he explained quite tactfully that their envoy had offended the Lord of Storms' dignity and had been punished accordingly—and that the orcs might want to hurry their compatriot home for treatment before he was completely charred. There might still be time to attempt a Resurrection.

While everyone was still reeling from the shock, Ambrose dropped the next bombshell.

The very same day the conference convened would also be the wedding day of the Lord of Storms and the kouto goddess.

At that time, both the Lord of Storms and the kouto goddess would manifest avatars and hold their wedding ceremony right there on the island. Every king and dignitary from every kingdom in attendance would serve as witnesses to this momentous divine union.

The moment that news dropped, every kingdom present was left utterly stunned.

The elves, in particular, reacted with alarm. An envoy from the Court of the Silver Moon came rushing over that very night, none other than the elven king Alderien himself. The young elven king had abandoned every ounce of composure. He grabbed Ambrose by the throat and shook him violently, as if trying to rattle his skull clean off.

"You mad lich!" Alderien roared uncontrollably. "What kind of scheme are you playing at here? Do you have any idea what the Lord of Storms is like? How could you drag him into this?!"

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