Secret Parchment

"Lord Medivh, please come this way. We have prepared a special reception for you!"

After the newlywed couple completed their wedding ceremony, as Medivh rose to leave, a Cat-girl approached him.

Medivh recognized that Cat-girl. She was the great-great-granddaughter of the previous Riddle, highly talented in warlock arts, and a high-ranking candidate for the next Riddle of the Spirit Cat Tribe.

"Alright."

Medivh paused for a moment, then agreed to go take a look.

He didn't think the Cat-people would harm him. He was no weakling—he was a first-tier low-grade Necromancer and a first-tier high-grade Earth Knight.

Scattered throughout the wedding venue, both inside and out, were numerous Transcendental Skeletons, Spirit Cat Skeleton Warlocks, and Spirit Cat Skeleton Warriors who had joined the ceremony.

If he were attacked, a single thought from Medivh would summon a horde of Transcendental Skeletons to charge to his defense.

What would follow would be a massacre—the Cat-people trapped in the city district would be wiped out by the skeletons.

Medivh had done the Spirit Cat Tribe a great favor. With no grievances between them, the Cat-people had no reason to risk the annihilation of their tribe by assassinating him.

After Medivh entered the inner hall, the Cat-girl Warlock smiled, walked to the center of the hall, and gently clapped her hands.

At the signal, several young Cat-girls draped in sheer veils, all with exquisite faces and figures, stepped out from behind a folding screen and began to dance gracefully in the center of the hall.

The veils fluttered in the air, and a special kind of entertainment began.

After relaxing and enjoying a few performances, Medivh did not stay to rest. He planned to return and smelt skeletons.

Skeletons didn't grow out of the ground. The tens of thousands of skeletons in Kurd City were the result of his relentless, day-and-night smelting and reanimation.

Waking up in the dead of night to smelt skeletons was a common occurrence for Medivh.

But the Cat-people didn't know this. When they saw Medivh about to leave, the Cat-girl Warlock quickly changed into a sheer veil and stepped out from behind the screen.

"What is the meaning of this?"

After a moment, Medivh, having grasped the Spirit Cat Warlock's vital point, questioned her about the purpose behind this arrangement.

At first, he had taken it as a gesture of gratitude. After the Spirit Cat Tribe had migrated to Kurd City and begun living well, the affectionate Cat-girls were deeply grateful to him, their lord. In recent days, aside from Queling and the other Cat-girls taken into High Tower Castle by Suixiang and the others, he had often encountered romantic advances while patrolling in Districts Two and Four.

He had initially thought it was just normal gratitude, but now it seemed the Cat-girl Warlock's intentions were not so simple.

"Lord Medivh, is it that my service was inadequate?"

The Cat-girl Warlock, Lingxi, looked up with eyes full of moisture, murmuring a plea for mercy.

"Tell me the truth."

Medivh's grip tightened a fraction, his smile fading.

"Lord Medivh, I heard that human lords take the first night of their subjects' brides. Brother Baichuan and Sister Qingya worked so hard to finally be together. I wanted their union to be complete."

"So, on my own initiative, I found a few sisters to replace Sister Qingya in serving you."

"This was entirely my personal decision. Please punish me, Lord Medivh, but do not take your anger out on the Spirit Cat Tribe!"

Lingxi did not cry out in pain. Instead, with a panicked expression, she begged Medivh for forgiveness, hoping he would not vent his wrath for her offense against the lord's authority onto the entire Spirit Cat Tribe.

"No, where did you hear that?"

Medivh was rather speechless.

He had thought it was some kind of conspiracy, but it turned out to be this.

Since when did human lords need to demonstrate their authority in such a way?

It was true that there were degenerate nobles who forcibly took women or kept certain subjects as mistresses.

But as for that kind of territorial rule—it simply didn't exist.

The former involved only a few individuals, and any scandal could easily be hushed up.

The latter struck at the very foundation of a territory. Any noble who dared to do such a thing must be asking for an arrow in the back.

The Knight path, due to the Blood Refining Technique, granted abundant vitality and strong desires, that much was true.

Noble families were mostly composed of Knights, and gossip about their romantic affairs was constant—it was the norm in noble circles.

But no noble would ever implement such a perverse policy in their territory for the sake of personal desire.

Noble Knights had their own refined ways. In noble circles, they played with high-quality female slaves.

When Medivh was a child, his father had taken him to a slave merchant's auction to buy female slaves. He had grown up witnessing such things.

If a noble Knight needed to satisfy his desires, he could simply spend money at a slave market. Why would he need to undermine the foundation of his own territory?

If he actually did something like that, the Spirit Cat Tribe would likely harbor resentment and stab him in the back before long.

"Ah, it's not like that? The Secret Parchment I read recorded it this way..."

Lingxi's eyes went wide. She had made a blunder, taking some fabricated slander written by her ancestors as the truth.

This wasn't really the fault of the Cat-people's ancestors. Since Cat-people and a few other special races were often targeted by human Slave Hunter Groups, the ancestors naturally had to paint humans in the worst possible light and brand them with an evil label.

"What are you standing there for? Time to atone!"

Medivh was in a good mood and didn't get angry over the misunderstanding caused by false information.

The smile returned to the corner of his mouth, prompting Lingxi to do what she was supposed to do.

"Oh oh!"

Lingxi cheered, grateful for Medivh's mercy.

Once Lingxi's breathing had steadied, Medivh did not get up and leave, lest another Cat-girl with wrong information come running in to offer him a meal.

His energy was limited; when it was time to rest, he would not be greedy.

The next day, when Medivh left, he gave Lingxi a task: to burn the parchment scrolls spreading misinformation and to spread correct information to her people.

Given the current situation, Medivh could snap his fingers and attract several affectionate Cat-girls to show gratitude, so there was no need for false information to cause unnecessary misunderstandings.

Medivh usually stayed in High Tower Castle One. After the Spirit Cat Tribe migrated, he had the skeletons build High Tower Castle in District Two.

High Tower Castle Two was assigned by him to the Spirit Cat Skeleton Warlocks and Cat-man Warlocks.

High Tower Castle Two was the Spirit Cat Warlock Hall, responsible for guiding the tribe's inheritance and development.

The Spirit Cat Warlock Hall would periodically screen tribe members with warlock talent and those suitable for inscribing Inheritance Spirit Runes.

Warlock Apprentices would go to the Spirit Cat Warlock Hall to study, while Spirit Rune Warrior Apprentices would go in batches to receive Inheritance Spirit Rune inscription and completion.

High Tower Castle Two also housed the Combat Technique Hall, where Spirit Cat Warriors could learn various Cat Clan Combat Techniques.

High Tower Castle Two became the Spirit Cat Tribe's transcendent inheritance center.

"Lord Medivh, we've found an ancient battlefield!"

The intelligence provided by the Spirit Cat Tribe proved very useful, and good news kept coming for a while.

Ancient battlefields vaguely marked on the map were successively pinpointed by Skeleton Assassins, and cartloads of high-year Green Bones were transported back to Kurd City by the Skeleton Caravan.

Smelting and resurrecting skeletons was cultivation, and Medivh was full of enthusiasm for this endeavor.

One skeleton after another was smelted into components, then brought back to life under Medivh's hands, rising as skeletons.

"Not bad, keep it up!"

One day in late November, Medivh's spirits lifted and he let out a hearty laugh.

Through diligent work, his mental strength had risen steadily, crossing the threshold of the first-order intermediate level. He was now a first-order intermediate Necromancer.