Not long after sending Ronald off, Hel received another round of visitors.
This time, they were from the Holy Inquisition Church—and Hel recognized one of them: it was Sister Vivian, whom he had met once before.
"Good day, Lord Hel."
Vivian greeted him with a polite bow, then gently took a seat across from him.
She handed him the scroll she had been holding all this time.
"My lord, this is a message from the Duchy's central church. As of yesterday, the Free Nation of Fredem, located south of Heim Territory, has completely fallen. The cause is…"
"...the Undead Plague."
Hel and Vivian spoke the answer in unison as he read the contents of the message.
"The Witch of the Underworld has broken her seal… and unleashed the terrible Undead Plague, huh."
Hel studied the words thoughtfully, while Vivian began to explain what a witch truly was.
"A witch," she said, "is someone whose body has been taken over by a demon.
Each one of them possesses terrifying power.
They hate humanity and will stop at nothing to bring calamity and suffering upon us.
The Witch of the Underworld was a particularly powerful one from three hundred years ago.
The plague of undeath she summoned swept across most of the Ymir Empire—nearly destroying it entirely.
If not for the Holy Inquisition dispatching a squad of Paladins to suppress her, the Ymir Empire would likely be a wasteland today."
"So powerful, huh? But if she existed three hundred years ago and is still alive now—and if the church was strong enough to seal her away back then—why didn't they just kill her outright?"
Hel wasn't sure how strong the church actually was, but if it were up to him, he'd go to any lengths necessary to eliminate a threat like that completely.
"That's impossible," Vivian shook her head.
"Witches are notoriously hard to kill.
That's why the Holy Inquisition can only seal them away, then wait for them to die of old age.
Cases like the Witch of the Underworld—who has survived for over three centuries—are extremely rare."
"Hard to kill, huh…"
Herr scratched his head, recalling his previous fight with the Death Witch.
Looking back, it did seem like his victory had a hefty dose of luck involved.
"Yes, very hard to kill," Vivian continued.
"But you needn't worry, my lord. The Witch of the Underworld will be dealt with by the High Inquisitors themselves.
The church merely asks that all local lords remain vigilant in case the undead cross the Monster Forest."
"I understand," Hel nodded. "I'll issue a state of emergency and have adventurers monitor the forest's movements."
"Then I'll leave it in your capable hands, my lord. The church has other matters to attend to today, so I won't take up more of your time."
Vivian rose, bowed once more, and left the room.
Hel, however, remained seated, deep in thought.
A Death Witch, and now a Witch of the Underworld…
It was hard to believe the two weren't somehow connected.
In fact, it was quite possible that the Death Witch's patron had been the Witch of the Underworld herself.
And if anyone were to discover that the Death Witch had been slain by him...
The consequences would be unimaginable.
Fortunately, the Death Witch had perished completely.
But still, he held several items linked to her—the Coffin of the Undead, the Book of Blood, a Mithril Armor Set, and a Mithril Spear.
It was about time to change their forms.
Hel's method was simple: he could extract the "attributes" or "modifiers" from one object and transfer them onto another.
However, when he finished extracting all the modifiers from the Coffin of the Undead, a new one suddenly appeared:
[Root of the World Tree (Fragment)] – A small piece of the World Tree's root that spans heaven and earth, capable of bearing divine power.
When Hel extracted that as well, the coffin disintegrated into a pile of gray powder that scattered across his desk.
[Ashes] – The remnants left behind after all things perish.
"So this modifier represents the item's true essence, huh…"
Hel mused.
Then he wondered—what if he returned the modifiers to those ashes?
Instead of experimenting with the new divine fragment, he tried it on something mundane—a lump of iron ore.
As he expected, when he reattached the extracted modifiers, the ashes once again turned into iron ore.
But he noticed a limitation:
Each modifier could only affect a fixed volume of ashes.
If he added ashes from a second piece of ore, the result remained the same size as before.
In other words, modifiers only affected a certain amount of material—anything beyond that was ignored.
The ashes themselves behaved much like plaster powder—adding a little water turned them into something nearly identical to plaster.
For Hel, a failed art student in his past life, sculpting with plaster was practically second nature.
Before long, he had sculpted a new pendant modeled after the Heim family's heirloom.
He transferred the original gem from the old pendant into the new one, then reattached the modifiers from the Coffin of the Undead.
Thus, a new artifact was born.
Not the Coffin of the Undead anymore—that name drew too much suspicion.
He would call it the Sigil of Necros instead.
It was an oval-shaped silver locket, its center set with a thumb-sized ruby, and behind the gem lay the Heim family crest—a swastika enclosed within a circle.
Honestly, when Hel first saw that emblem after crossing into this world, his art-student brain nearly had a panic attack—he thought he'd ended up in the wrong kind of story.
Fortunately, this wasn't that world—not the one where a loaf of bread cost 500,000 marks, and corruption and propaganda were a way of life.
The Book of Blood took more work to modify.
Hel didn't preserve it in its original form; instead, he used a bit of mithril from the armor to forge a mithril longsword for Lily, which could both serve as a weapon and cast blood magic—a fine magic sword indeed.
As for Arwen's mithril equipment, that was easier—Hel simply altered its appearance to better match the style of the Knight Empire of Nait.
Now, aside from the two locked storage rings carried by the Wraiths,
Hel had eliminated everything that could link him to the Death Witch.
Those two rings would soon open as well.
He could feel it—if all went smoothly, by tomorrow, he would have fully absorbed the Elemental Crystal from the Wraith, and finally step into the realm of Archmage.