Chapter 403 Exchanging Hosts

In no time at all, I was already standing out at the entrance of the city again with the Lich King at my side. He wanted to see for himself the end of his people's lives. "Are you sure? I can put them in a barrier for the time being if you wish. We can then wait and see if the effects can be reversed…."

"Will the barrier be able to hold them?" The lich king asked. I smiled and nodded my head as I said: "Move your people back. I will put up a ten layer barrier for the time being. If this doesn't hold them, then I need to train more."

Luckily I thought of this before killing them all off. Because if we were able to turn them back then it would be a huge loss and more blood on my hand than I really want. When his people retreated behind their city barrier, I quickly set up another barrier which surrounded the berserker undead. It went underground as well, so nothing could escape easily. As a final touch, I also added an eleventh barrier that spun for added protection. This was a just in case barrier.

When I was done, I returned to the throne room where a berserker undead was being held. It was flailing about as three undead soldiers held it down with magic. The lich king kindly explained why this was. " We can not go near it, or we will be infected, so we can only use magic to keep it from spreading anything to us."

"I see…. So it can be restrained with magic…." I looked at the skeleton and used appraisal on it.

[Undead Skeleton]

[Level: 467]

[Status Effect: Parasitic Invasion]

"Oh?" I had yet to use appraisal on the skeletons, so I was quite surprised that they showed they were actually controlled by something. I scanned the entire body and found a small worm in the skull. It was latching on to the skeletons' source of life. "Appraisal."

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[Infant Altorian]

[Level: 1]

[Will only mature once it has consumed enough lifeforce.]

"Hmmm…. Let's try this." My eyes lit up as I used dragon speak: "Stop!" I did not use it on the skeleton but on the worm in its head. I smiled when I saw that the worm had actually stopped feeding. "Move out through the nose…."

At my command, it did as I said and slowly made its way to the nose of the skeleton. But just as it was about to exit it, the entire skeleton suddenly combusted into a blaze of blue flames. The skeleton kicked and screamed as it burned into nothing but ash, the same with the worm as well… "A fail safe?"

"Empress Cyrilia, this? What was what?" The lich king asked.

"That was some kind of self induced combustion of the worm inside the skeleton's head. I was using one of my powers to control the worm and was trying to remove it so we could study it. If we can remove it this way, it might return the host back to normal. I never thought it would have some kind of fail safe…" As I explained this, another idea came to mind. I looked at Freidinia and asked: "Did you notice anything?"

"It seemed to trigger once it came into contact with air. But it might not be the case if we can transfer it into a new host we can dissect and examine the worm. The worms themselves do not have much mana or life force, so they can not survive outside the host body for even a few seconds." Freidinia answered. I was quite surprised she got all his information just from a single observation.

"What if we moved it to a monster or something?" I asked.

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"This may be possible, but it might need an undead. I might not be correct on this assumption, but I think these worms evolve with the host they first latch on to." Freidinia's assumption may be right. We all began thinking, trying to figure out what to do next.

"Alright, let's get an undead monster here, and we will use them to test if we can move them from one host to another." I felt it was worth a try. If it didn't work, we could always try some other things out.

"Quickly bring an undead monster here!" The lich king did not seem to mind my not asking his permission for things as he gave orders right away. I know I was being rude by not asking her permission, but I felt this was really worth testing out. It could save all of the berserker undead outside.

But one thing did bother me. "Freidinia, you said it combusted when it came in contact with air, but….. This was a skeleton…."

"Undead have a membrane inside their skulls, especially skeletons. This is how they keep their mana and everything inside them." Freidinia's answer was still confusing since I do not know the undead race all that much, so I will just learn as I go.

Not long later, a skeleton monster was brought back along with another berserker skeleton. "Okay, this time, I will order it to move to a new host. This might be a better command."

"It is worth a try. It may just work out better and keep it from combusting on instinct." Freidinia agreed with my idea. I took a deep breath and said: "Stop and move to the new host!"

The worm inside the skull wiggled before slowly crawling toward the nose. It was slow, but it did eventually arrive at the nose. The two skeletons were face to face as the worm hesitated a moment before suddenly rushing out of its current host and into the other. It was so fast that one would have missed it if one had blinked.

"It worked!" We all cheered and looked at the original host. The skeleton shook its head and sat up, and looked around in confusion… When it saw the lich king, it began to panic and quickly bowed its head. "Your highness!"

"No need to bow. Stand up. We need to ask you questions." The lich king's lips curled up into a smile. With this, we had a way to move the worms to a new host and saving his people. I couldn't help but fist pump on the inside, knowing we had actually made progress.