The Golem Mage

Inside his palace, Liam was scrolling through the influx of messages flooding the Kingdom group chat, as a growing sense of dread began to wash over him as he began to fear that his domain would be the next to be targeted.

While the human territories along the outer borders were already enduring relentless assaults from the abyssal and sea races warriors, the core domains deep inside remained untouched for the time being.

This safety was purely conditional; as the enemy forces could only reach the inner territories if the outer frontier domains controlled by the humans collapsed entirely.

Although Liam’s kingdom had not yet come under fire, its close proximity to the frontline domains left him feeling exposed, because he was convinced that once any of the enemy race close to his own borders finished absorbing their spoils from the current conflict, the next wave of attack would definitely land directly on his doorstep, his domain could clearly not avoid it.

“Would you stop whining?” a deep voice echoed from behind him.

Causing a sudden shiver to run down his spine as he recognized who it belonged to. Yet, something about the sound felt unsettlingly off, it almost sounded as though two distinct voices were speaking in unison, even though only one person was present.

Perplexed, Liam turned around, only to be even more bewildered by the sight before him.

There stood David, though he was so radically transformed from how he once was that Liam couldn’t help but wonder what kind of secret technique he had used to achieve his current transformation.

Following his narrow escape from Alec, David’s original plan had been to take refuge in Liam’s city and bide his time until he amassed enough power to rally another alliance group, one much larger than the last in order to destroy Alec.

Driven by that desperate, single-minded obsession to see Alec dead, David was prepared to pay any price, however; just as his hope was beginning to fade, a cluster of lower realms suddenly merged into the now Fragmented Origin Realm.

Although the mastermind behind this realm merger still remained unknown to many, however with this turn of events it allowed individuals connected to these newly ascended regions to establish communication with the city lords of their native homelands(cities).

(Because these cubes materialized in the most heavily fortified areas of each city, the first person to touch one was recognized as the city lord. In the capital, the one who claimed it was none other than the old King of the Northern Kingdom himself.)

While most would have been terrified of the mysterious artifact, the old king clearly possessed profound knowledge regarding its nature so he had moved out of seclusion immediately he felt the cube’s aura.

Capitalizing on the moment, David had reached out to his father, the old king, with two distinct requests: one was assistance in obliterating the Gordon clan while they began reconquering the cities, and the second one was access to a secret family technique that had remained dormant and unused for generations.

Under normal circumstances, the old king would have refused to grant his son such a forbidden art—even though it was the very method he himself had utilized to attain his current power. However, upon learning the truth behind Dave’s demise and the dire circumstances surrounding it, the king withheld the knowledge no longer and imparted the secret technique to David.

This ancestral technique granted the ability to devour the physical vessel of a deceased mage, directly transferring their cultivation, innate talents, and attributes to the practitioner.

Although it sounded quite straightforward in concept, however; it was bound by strict limitations, as the most crucial factor was time: the sooner the corpse was absorbed after death, the greater the harvest of power.

Because attempting to assimilate a long-deceased corpse carried severe risks; as one might gain no benefits at all, or worse, suffer a permanent decline in their innate talent and fortune due to the lingering aura of death saturating the deceased vessel.

Furthermore, this forbidden process could only be performed a single time for each person, as a result, the core tudor clan mages were strongly cautioned to reserve it as a desperate resort only after reaching the absolute limit of their natural potential.

Ideally, one would target a cultivator of a far higher realm, refining their physical form into a potent pill to devour their complete inheritance. Yet David had done no such thing. Instead, he had used his twin brother immediately following his demise, and he hadn’t completely erased his soul therefore allowing a lingering strand of his consciousness to live with-in him.

This is what left Liam utterly unnerved and struggling to discern the true identity of the figure before him. Because David’s once-spiky hair had now transformed into an eerie blend of white and black, with the dark strands symbolizing his fallen brother.

Yet, this unsettling physical change was far from the most horrifying aspect of his transformation.

What truly troubled Liam was the unsettling reality before him , as David’s facial features twitched continuously, shifting erratically between his own visage and the countenance of his fallen twin sibling.

It became unmistakably obvious that by refusing to thoroughly purge his brother’s residual soul, it

would affect his emotions and other aspects in some type of way; yet, he appeared utterly indifferent to the chaotic duality tearing at his psyche.

“Our sole objective now is exterminating Alec and his remaining kin stationed at the wilderness region, nothing else matters not even the destruction of your city. Meanwhile, the elite royal guards shall march upon his clan,”

“We shall reduce anything linked to him to mere memory, and once our clan has fully established itself within the Origin Realm, clinging to such insignificant city territories becomes obsolete, because by seizing back control over every city across our kingdom, our lineage will not only be able to have the old king accepted as a king-tier powerhouse, but we can even grant every clan member their own city as lordship under the royal clan,” David declared, laying out his vision and wild ambition.

While David’s talk of the impending five kingdom merger with the origin realm sounded like the ideal path forward, Liam couldn’t shake the feeling that the plan seems to subtly push him to abandon his own city.

David was making it seem as though their clan’s presence here would allow them to establish a true Kingdom within the Origin Realm that would put the old king at the same level of the human king expert of the origin realm like the wilderness king, one with a position far grander and more formidable than the mere royal titles they held back on the Five Kingdoms continent.

Yet, the real issue was that Liam had grown fond of his independence as a lord, and he refused to return to a life where his destiny was dictated by the clan elders, who had long since written him off as a failure after his defeat at Alec’s hands.