Chapter 407: Arthur Lyon Cannot Destroy Lyon

In an unremarkable village somewhere in the Lyon Empire, Cade Watson had just switched off the magic mirror broadcast and was pressing his fingers hard into the bridge of his nose.

The Radiant General had lost in a manner that bordered on humiliation.

No wonder the lich had warned him beforehand to make sure the whole fight was recorded on memory crystals.

Cade Watson looked at the dozen or so memory crystals sitting in front of him, let out a long sigh, and said, "I didn't do this. The magic mirror recorded it automatically. It's got nothing to do with me."

The long-forgotten minor priest began sending the crystals out through the magic mirror one by one.

In a month or two, these crystals would be in front of everyone. What would Lyon look like by then?

Allen would need these recordings, even if they were lethal poison to Lyon itself.

But Cade Watson had no choice. Even if he didn't do it, someone else would. Lyon had already fallen into corruption, and the rot had gone deep into the bone. All he could do was hope someone would use this poison to save Lyon, whether by fighting fire with fire or letting it burn out once and for all.

The task itself would have been simple enough for a child, but once it was done, Cade Watson slumped back in his chair like a man wrung dry, drenched in cold sweat.

His face was a little pale, but strangely, he felt lighter than he had in a long time.

There was no point carrying the past around anymore: that was what his relentlessly and stubbornly optimistic nature suggested.

As the tension drained away, he found his thoughts drifting back to the mysterious paladin who served the lich. His father would likely know something. Was it worth asking him?

Cade Watson was far from the only one curious. Everyone who had watched the broadcast was asking the same question.

Those who didn't know Ambrose well were still busy speculating. Those who did know him had already started counting their gold, reasoning that nothing worked better than simply paying the lich to talk.

After this battle, the world would not soon forget the name of Megaman Tiga, lich and legendary diviner.

Ambrose's plan had largely succeeded. What followed would be a long season of reaping the fruits of his labor.

With his time on the island drawing to a close, Ambrose turned his attention to the question of what to do with Coin Island going forward.

To stage this grand performance, he had overhauled the island entirely, expanding its landmass and laying down an enormous array of magical formations of every conceivable function. Simply abandoning all of that felt like a waste.

He studied the map carefully. Coin Island's location wasn't bad. It was reasonably close to where the Unholy Kingdom had once stood, and though that entire region was open ocean now, the island sat near several major shipping lanes.

It could serve as a transit hub. Raw materials from the overseas dragon clans could be processed here at a preliminary stage before being shipped to the Ragetide Kingdom for further refining, a useful measure for keeping his techniques out of other hands.

Ambrose's alchemical abilities weren't exceptional enough to produce encryption that no one could ever crack, so obscuring things where he could would have to do. Keeping one step of the process secret might buy him a few extra years before someone reverse-engineered his methods.

There was one complication, though. If Coin Island were to become part of his working operation, he couldn't keep too many undead stationed there. Dark magic corruption was simply too pervasive; only materials from bone dragons could be processed in that environment without issue.

In other words, the island would need living staff. There, Ambrose found himself short-handed. Harvey was already stretched thin just managing the desert trade. Isabel was deep in alchemical work with the dwarves. Catherine was an elf, and the drow were responsible for transportation and logistics. Ambrose realized with some embarrassment that, for all his undead forces, he had not a single living subordinate capable of independently running an outpost.

He had plenty of living people working for him, but not enough. Never enough.

"Time to start hiring," he muttered to himself. "Give the news a few more days to spread, and recruiting shouldn't be hard... but finding people I can actually trust is another matter entirely."

Money was not the problem. Ambrose's business was booming.

Grain from the druids, specialty goods from the dragon clans, high-grade armor and rare spices from the former Unholy Kingdom—every product was in high demand, and he had monopolized every one of them.

With that kind of operation, attracting workers would be easy. The question was who to trust with any of it.

Reliable people weren't something you could cultivate in a hurry. If he'd had more time, he might have considered taking in a few children and raising them in his extradimensional space.

Where a day outside was a year inside, half a month would be enough for a child to grow up.

But Ambrose knew he was not a good teacher. He'd had Harvey for a long time now and had never once given him hands-on instruction. All he'd done was point him at books. Isabel was the same; Ambrose had taught her only the most basic of alchemy, and she had gone off and puzzled out the Fountain of Youth entirely on her own.

If he actually brought children into his extradimensional space, he'd probably manage two days of teaching before giving up and leaving them to read on their own.

With that approach, the success rate would be terrible. Who knew if even one usable talent would emerge out of several hundred children?

He was still turning this over in his mind when Black Rose appeared at his side.

"Lady Rose, are you leaving with your subordinates?" Ambrose asked.

He had assumed she was coming to reclaim her forces. The construction of Coin Island had depended heavily on her help, and tens of thousands of wraiths were not something anyone but Black Rose could have provided.

But she shook her head. "Never mind those—consider them a gift if you want them. I have a request."

Before he could even react to her generosity, she continued, "Could you arrange for me to meet Arthur Lyon?"

Ambrose blinked. "What brought this on?"

After securing Arthur Lyon's heroic spirit, Ambrose had mentioned it to Black Rose in passing, but neither she nor Arthur Lyon had expressed any desire to meet. Both had seemed content to leave it at that.

Ambrose understood their awkwardness perfectly well.

Arthur Lyon hadn't been married when he became a heroic spirit, and finding himself with a great-great-great-great-granddaughter was not something he could easily come to terms with emotionally. Furthermore, Arthur Lyon was resistant to this era in general and had shown no inclination to interact with anyone.

It was hard to blame him. The man had kept a promise for over a thousand years. By the time he finally re-emerged, his friends were nearly all dead, his enemies had vanished, and his own descendants had become the greatest evil in the world. After all that effort and sacrifice, even eyeing this world a little too long must have felt like being stabbed. Ambrose himself would have become a recluse under those circumstances.

So Arthur Lyon had never asked Ambrose for freedom. He simply remained quietly in Ambrose's private space, most likely still working out how to come to terms with existence.

As for Black Rose, she was a princess who had been driven into exile by the Lyon royal family. The one master who had ever treated her with kindness had been killed by Lyon's forces. She despised everything connected to that name down to her core. The founding Holy King might have had little to do with her own suffering personally, but the wound was still there.

Ambrose had always assumed the two would simply never meet. Black Rose's request caught him completely off guard.

Something felt off about it. He looked at her carefully and asked, "Why the sudden interest in meeting your own ancestor?"

Black Rose did not conceal a thing. "I thought his power had degraded badly and that he wouldn't be much use, but then he went and repelled an entire Lyon army on his own. I want him to stand forward and help me bring down this rotting empire.

"A weak Arthur Lyon would be a fraud, but a strong Arthur Lyon is the real thing, and the real thing could destroy this empire overnight."

"Ah, that's..."

Black Rose tilted her head. "Is there a problem? If it's a matter of payment—"

Ambrose waved his hand quickly. "No, no, nothing like that. After everything you've done for me, Lady Rose, I would never bring up payment. The real reason is simpler: bringing Arthur Lyon out right now would actually have very little effect on the Lyon Empire. If anything, it would give them room to breathe."

"Arthur Lyon wouldn't destroy Lyon? Why not?"

Black Rose's expression shifted to genuine puzzlement. Anyone else saying this to her would have been struck dead for their trouble, but she knew Ambrose well enough by now. He never spoke without purpose, and would not lie to her about something like this.

Ambrose explained, "It's very simple. What you want is physical destruction: the Lyon royal family dead, and the empire itself obliterated. Arthur Lyon will never help you do that."

"He's just a heroic spirit," Black Rose said, with cool confidence. "We have more than enough ways to work with that. Isn't reshaping souls what you do best?"

Ambrose shook his head again. "Setting aside whether a spirit with Arthur Lyon's strength of will could even be altered, even if we could, even if Arthur Lyon came forward fully under our control and declared the current Lyon Empire corrupt and beyond redemption, do you think that would actually destroy Lyon?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Not even close. Lyon is no longer just an empire in the ordinary sense. It has inherited the legacies of ancient heroes and maintained unbroken rulership for over seventeen centuries. Its cultural core is mature, stable, and deeply embedded. Even two consecutive emperors boasting catastrophic incompetence and cruelty wouldn't break the empire, which has powerful mechanisms for self-correction.

"Play this card too early, and you'll only give Lyon time to prepare. What if the young emperor immediately prostrated himself before Arthur Lyon, acknowledged every wrongdoing, and abdicated the throne?

"A tyrant might lose his head, but Lyon would not fall. It would move swiftly to install a new emperor and carry on as before. Even if Arthur Lyon genuinely returned and took the throne himself, do you think a single command could unmake an empire?

"It's impossible. This is an empire of over a hundred million people, a dominion so vast it outweighs every other kingdom in the world combined. If Arthur Lyon were to give that order, his own people would overthrow him within a generation.

"Unless the Lord of Dawn himself intervened and annihilated the empire from above, no single person's influence could bring it down. Attempting to do so would only grant Lyon a new lease on life. Arthur Lyon's rule would give the empire a chance to recover its breath, and might even spark a renaissance."

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