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nChapter 381: Unexpected Advantage

nTranslator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

nIn a way, Cher didn’t tell me the truth about herself. She had only told me half of the truth. Granted, she did mention that her mother was a three-headed dragon, but she neglected to tell me that she had seven additional mothers…

n“If such a thing happened to you, would you tell others that you have ten mothers? And that they’re all identical?”

nAlright then. What she said was so reasonable that I found it impossible to counter.

nIn this small airship, Cher and Evelyn were in the same room. Mother and daughter seemed to be about the same age, so even my few remaining emotions appeared. I wanted to sigh at how the world worked in unexpected and marvelous ways.

nStill, Evelyn’s arrival would save me a lot of trouble.

nI now pretty much understood her status. Evelyn was one of the dragons’ leaders and lived in a cave near the capital city. Evidently, she did this with the Bardi government’s permission. She was mostly the contact point between the dragons and the Bardi government.

nJudging from her smiling expression and well-suntanned skin, the Copper Dragon Evelyn was most likely the one in charge of anything diplomatic. In that case, perhaps I could obtain something useful from her on the Bardi royalty. Copper Dragons were the most eloquent among the dragons, so of course they would make the best diplomats…

n“Nice to meet you all. Hello, I’m Roland’s ex-girlfriend, Evelyn. I’m also Cher’s mother. Cher, be a dear and call Roland ‘Father.'”

n…as long as Copper Dragons could get rid of their terrible habit of joking around and pulling pranks!

n“I…”

nAlright then, my mind was instantly thrown into chaos as I had no idea how to respond.

nEveryone looked at me with strange expressions. In a way, I couldn’t even counter what Evelyn said. She indeed could claim to be my ex-girlfriend. Cher was, indeed, my creation, hence my daughter. But Evelyn phrased it to sound like I was a scumbag man who abandoned them!

nAnd so, when Cher saw that I tacitly admitted to this, she fainted once again despite having just woken up…

n“Don’t look at me like this! I’m truly not a scumbag, I’m still a virgin—er—the hell, whatever! Evelyn, it’s all your fault!”

nAfter the chaos calmed down, our “family” was now complete, with a father, mother, and daughter…

n“We aren’t a family at all!”

nAlright then, let’s leave this matter aside. Although my subordinates and “granddaughter” were looking at me more and more strangely, we should at least first take care of the main issue at hand.

n“We might even go to war. Be serious—be a little more serious! Stop laughing! I’m talking to you, Glina! If you dare to keep laughing… Glina, come here. Evelyn here is your great-grandmother, and Miss Cher is your grandmother. You should at least greet them.”

nAlright then, now everyone was feeling uncomfortable. I nodded in satisfaction upon seeing how Glina had an expression as if her mouth was filled with the food she hated most.

n” Hmph ! You want to compare with me in shamelessness? Even I’m afraid of how shameless I can be.”

n“Grandma, you owe me seventeen years of spending money. Also, please pay up what grandfather owes me.”

nAlright, as expected of my “granddaughter.” She could change to be shameless so quickly. But the pitiful Cher just happened to choose this time to wake up. The moment she heard herself being called grandma, she fainted yet again.

nLooking at the chaos before me, I knew it would be impossible to deal with the main issue before explaining myself. My subordinates were just far too much to deal with.

n“Isn’t this all your fault? You dare to talk about others!? You’re the root of all evil, the source of all sins!”

nThe silly cat’s retort was so logical I had no idea how to counter her!

n“This is Evelyn. Previously, she died, and I created the oldest sister of the Seven Original Sins, ‘Lust’ Cher, in order to revive her. Yep, that’s who Evelyn is. From a certain standpoint, they are indeed mother and daughter. But, the mother is actually Cher, and, in a way, Cher is indeed my daughter… Hey—hey—hey, Cher, could you at least finish listening to me speak before fainting? How many times do I need to tell this? Isn’t the author tired of using the same joke of making you faint?”

nI had hesitated over whether or not to tell everyone about the messy affairs of the past. But one issue made me decide to publicize everything.

n“…At the very least, I can’t make Cher into an illegitimate daughter! She’ll be bullied by everyone else in school!”

n“That’s not the issue at hand here at all! Can’t you be at least a little more normal!?”

nThe silly cat was becoming a veteran retorter. Her ability to instantly retort at anything and everything was unparalleled.

n“Isn’t this all because of you!”

nCough — cough —getting back on topic, my subordinates had seen plenty about how unreliable I was. Omar, who wasn’t here right now, was likely the only one who would have trouble accepting the appearance of the real oldest sibling among the Seven Original Sins. Everyone else soon accepted Cher as Lust. Glina was especially quick to accept all this, as she soon started tugging on Cher and asking for “grandma to give her spending money” once again. This time, Cher managed to stop herself from fainting. It was just that her expression seemed like she wanted to devour me.

nLet us stop discussing family affairs for now. The important issue was still how the Bardi royalty would respond. This was doubtlessly the most frustrating issue, and it just so happened to be that we handed over the right to be proactive—we could only passively respond.

nThat’s right. Whether we were in the right or wrong was meaningless. The right to be proactive was the critical part. Originally, we were the ones invited here to help them, which meant that everything could be decided by us. But now this incident put us under great pressure. At the very least, the Mage Country would be under significant pressure, so perhaps my role as ambassador would be terminated.

nPersonally, I didn’t really care if I was the ambassador or not. However, if I lost the Mage Country’s support right now, it would make many things far more difficult for me.

n“…Orloss’s intentions? How would I know? I only came here to play with Cher. Fine, fine, don’t look at me like that. I indeed know some rather boring things. Let’s change places to talk.”

nUnfortunately, I was helpless about how Copper Dragons were so unreliable. It was always impossible to know when a Copper Dragon was being serious and when they were joking around.

n“Why didn’t the serious Bronze Dragon or the easy-to-talk-to Silver Dragon come out?”

n“Fourth Sister? She has to control Fifth and Sixth Sisters in order to stop them from rampaging. As for Second Sister, it would probably cause a huge commotion if she came out.”

nI thought about it for a moment. The three-headed dragon would likely be impossible to conceal if she came out. As for the Bronze Dragon Fourth Sister, she seemed quite serious and normal. However, Fifth and Sixth Sister Evelyns were a Red and Blue Dragon respectively, both the type to stir up trouble.

nMeanwhile, the example of the Evelyns once again proved that the physical body would influence one’s personality.

nWe arrived at a much quieter room: the narrow cockpit, where there was only me, Cher, and Evelyn, the ones most involved. Evelyn’s first sentence rather confused me.

n“Actually, Little Orloss is quite grateful to you.”

nI paused in surprise for a moment, but Evelyn continued with her explanation. Although I was now a wanted criminal in the Bardi Empire, I was actually this country’s savior.

n“If it wasn’t for your arrival, the undead would still be suppressing Bardi.”

nThis was indeed the case. If it wasn’t for me unveiling the undead’s scheme, perhaps the capital would be secretly ruled over by Undead Emperor Aso even now. Still, I was somewhat astonished at the situation.

n“The dragons simply sat back and observed the worsening situation?”

n“The undead had hostages.”

n“Hostages? The dragons would care about such a thing?”

n“Of course they’ll care if the hostages are all the citizens of Bardi.”

n“Kasolan’s Tears?”

nSoon, I recalled the undead catalyst ingredient that all the Bardi citizens possessed in significant amounts within their bodies. This was evidently the work of the undead.

n“You knew already, as expected… There’s a special potion where Kasolan’s Tears are the catalyst. As long as the Bardi citizens smell a certain fragrance, they’ll mutate into a new Undead Calamity. The rest will be quite fun to deal with.”

nThere was no need for me to mention what an Undead Calamity was. A small one would be no different from a magic world’s version of Resident Evil and could be taken care of by some sudden heroes, giving people the stage to become stronger. But a larger scale Undead Calamity would be all the living becoming the undead, with everyone becoming ghouls, zombies, and skeletons.

nAs a professional undead mage, I was able to assess this objectively. In a way, Undead Calamities were quite similar to plagues. How much damage an Undead Calamity would cause in the end largely depended on what time it was discovered and how large of a scale it was. If it started out on the scale of a city, then just burning down the entire city would be enough.

nBut if the city in question was a major city with a population of several hundred thousand, then at minimum several million people would end up dying. And if an Undead Calamity started from an entire mega empire with the entire population of several hundred million becoming undead, then… most likely, the entire world would die off together.

nThis was no simple numeric equation. This was just probability to the point of despair. As long as the base number was high enough, high level undead would be born among the low level undead. The rate of high level undead being born compared to low level undead was approximately one to one thousand.

nAnd as long as there were enough high level undead, Undead Thanes and Undead Lords would naturally be born as well. This rate was approximately at one to ten thousand. And as long as there was a sufficient number of Undead Lords… Undead Emperors would naturally be born. But since there were too few examples of Undead Emperors, the odds were impossible to calculate. As for whether or not something more ridiculous would happen, all that was needed would be to calculate with a sufficiently large number of experimental subjects.

nOnce high-level undead and Undead Lords reached a certain number, the newly born Undead Calamity would no longer simply spread itself instinctively. Instead, the Undead Calamity would organize itself into an undead army and begin invasions, further spreading the influence of the Undead Calamity.

nFortunately, even up until today, the largest Undead Calamity in history had never reached the landmark number of one hundred million. But if the Tark Republic undead truly achieved this, perhaps history itself would be rewritten… However, I felt that even if they brought out such a ridiculously large number of undead, the world still wouldn’t be destroyed. That was because it would definitely break all the Gods’ taboos, so the undead would first need to face all the True Gods personally descending. Unless the undead had several hundred Undead Emperors, they wouldn’t be able to win against the combined force of the True Gods.

n“So Bardi now dares to turn on the undead?”

n“Isn’t it all thanks to the fact that you forced Aso to his death?”

n“Aso?”

n“Yeah, as he was the overall commander of the undead invasion. He was also the inventor of this new way of spreading the Undead Calamity with Kasolan’s Tears as the catalyst. After he died, there was no successor who inherited his knowledge. That key to open the door to a new Undead Calamity has now been lost, so Bardi naturally has the courage to go against the undead.”

nI instantly paused here and hesitated before finally telling her.

n“What if I tell you that I possess Aso’s remaining knowledge, including how to create that poison gas which will turn the Bardi citizens into undead? What will Bardi do then?”

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