Chapter 164: Rivalry (Part Two)
That Andrea and Tina came back laughing together, thick as thieves, left both Evan and Leonardo utterly baffled. What had happened here? Neither of them could sit still after that, and both started fishing for details through roundabout questions.
Evan used the excuse of preparing dinner to quietly pull Xiaoshuang aside. Once alone in his room, he asked, "What happened between them? One minute they're rivals, the next they're inseparable."
"Wang, I really can't figure you humans out," Xiaoshuang said. "How does something like that even resolve itself? They fought first, and then they asked me — is there anything unusual about your lich? I told them nothing at all, perfectly normal, just like anyone else. They said they'd been led astray by old rumors, that you're really just a man carrying the name of a lich, nothing more, and that they didn't care — they just wanted a fair competition."
Understanding settled over Evan, his rueful smile deepening — though some quiet flicker of pleasure ran beneath it too, one he couldn't quite explain to himself. He let out a breath. "Guess I'll just have to take it one day at a time."
The next day, Leonardo headed back to the market. Evan didn't go — and as it turned out, neither did Andrea or Tina.
The two women had been training together that morning when Xiaoshuang spotted them and showed off her flying sword, joining in on their practice. The little blade caught both women's attention at once — they'd assumed at first it was some natural gift unique to fairies, and only after asking did they learn Evan had forged it for her. Tina thought nothing more of it, but something turned over in Andrea's mind, and before long she'd latched onto Evan about it.
Fortunately, Evan had by now grown unconsciously skilled enough at channeling his spiritual sense that he spent half a day forging her a short sword and teaching her how to use it.
Andrea took the blade straight to Tina to show off, her little scheme entirely transparent to Evan, who — as it happened — had actually forged a matching pair of short swords from the start.
A flicker of quiet sadness crossed Tina's face. Unlike Andrea, she wasn't one to actively demand anything for herself — nothing, except love.
Evan, watching from a distance as Andrea flaunted her new blade, understood she meant to provoke Tina deliberately, implying that Evan favored her more, having crafted this implement just for her. He shook his head at the sight.
Privately, he gave the matching blade to Tina, showing her how to control it. A faint smile crossed her face, and with a soft, quick press of her lips, she kissed him on the cheek. Evan froze. Was this love? He'd spent so long refusing to let himself feel it, convinced a lich had no business with such things. It was almost funny, really — in his past life, Evan had never once fallen in love, and Nicholas had loved exactly once, only to watch his beloved burned at the stake for it, a blow that had driven him to madness. He'd lived over forty years, managed a single love affair, and that had been the outcome — of course he'd sought revenge, and in doing so had suffered a devastating defeat, forced to transform into a lich as his last resort, though the transformation itself had failed at the final moment, leaving the way clear for Evan instead.
Evan let out a quiet sigh, noticing lately how often he found himself doing that. This feeling — love — was genuinely good, filling something in him that had sat hollow before.
The next time Andrea flaunted her blade, Tina let her own short sword slip into view, seemingly by accident. Andrea snatched it up at once, and her face fell — an exact match to her own. She stormed off to confront Evan, fury building — but the moment she reached his door, she hesitated.
Evan had already sensed her arrival from inside, and seeing her freeze at the threshold, unwilling to knock, he let out a sigh. "Andrea. Come in."
She steeled herself and stepped inside, all her earlier fire draining away at once. Evan sighed again. "Andrea, you're a good girl. I'm genuinely moved that you care for me. But you know what I am — a lich is a different kind of being entirely, and turning into one strips away most of a person's desires. A lich can't marry."
"I've heard that some wicked liches have a taste for young girls," she said, fumbling through the words after a long pause.
"Where did you hear that? Those stories that vilify liches have no basis at all. A lich can certainly be evil — tormenting people, torturing their very souls — but what you're describing, I've never once heard of," Evan said.
"Do you love me, then?" Andrea asked, her eyes fixed boldly on him.
"You're too young to understand love," Evan said with a rueful smile.
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"I'm not young at all. I'm nearly sixteen."
"Sixteen is still young. Half-elves live longer than most people to begin with — you and Tina are both letting your feelings get ahead of you," Evan said. In this world, women often married as young as fourteen, but Evan stubbornly held that a woman couldn't properly be considered an adult before eighteen.
"Fourteen's old enough to marry, and you're still calling me young? No wonder you've made it this far without a wife. A beautiful young woman offers herself to you, and you don't even appreciate it — just keep saying I'm too young," Andrea muttered.
Evan had no answer for that. "Ask me again when you're twenty."
"No wonder Xiaoshuang says liches aren't good people. Do you prefer older women, then? Married ones, maybe?" Andrea said, tilting her head, muttering it under her breath.
"Get out!" Evan snapped, genuinely exasperated. Andrea stuck out her tongue and darted from the room. Only then did Evan realize he'd been played — he'd been noticeably quicker to anger lately, he thought, frowning at himself.
"Xiaoshuang, you were right — liches really aren't good people. And yet here I am, falling for one anyway. Did he use some kind of magic on me? He didn't even need to — I threw myself at him," Evan overheard Andrea muttering to Xiaoshuang.
Evan sighed. Still just a child, in the end. She's caught real feelings for me, but hearing I'm a lich has left her unsure what to do with them — and then Tina showed up right at that moment and stirred her competitive streak besides. Never mind. Once Robin comes to collect her in a couple of days, everything sorts itself out.
His mind turned back to the coming duel with Boniface. The man had grown considerably stronger since returning from that other dimension — clearly something out there had helped him, since escaping such a place at his prior level shouldn't have been possible on his own. Most likely some devil or similar entity had lent a hand.
Facing him meant real caution was warranted. Boniface alone, Evan felt confident enough handling, even if he couldn't destroy him outright — and Augustin's Creator's Sword had taught him a great deal in the process. He understood now what summoning truly was at its core: the Creator's Sword itself was nothing more than an illusory blade given form within human belief, and if that held true, then every summoned thing worked the same way — appearing stronger than its summoner, when in truth it was all illusion made real through belief, a secret most people never grasped at all.
Boniface himself wasn't what worried him — it was whatever backup the man surely had waiting. What resources did he actually command? Left alone, Boniface posed little threat. Evan turned over the possibilities in his mind, weighing them against what he knew of the man's character, his return from that alternate dimension, and their one earlier clash on the road back from Burk Town — one possibility after another surfacing in his thoughts.
Most of them he dismissed quickly enough — nothing there that could genuinely harm him. What remained was a short list of scenarios that could actually cause real damage, even threaten his life, and these he committed carefully to memory, working out countermeasures for each.
By evening, Leonardo had returned, and Robin and Cecilia arrived to check on Andrea. The mood was a little strange, but manageable overall.
The next day, Evan buried himself in the alchemy lab, working the entire day through, telling no one what he was preparing. By the afternoon of the third day, he slipped away unnoticed by anyone — even keeping it from Xiaoshuang — and made his way quietly to the base of the appointed peak. He scouted the area first with his Wraith Eye, then settled cross-legged at the mountain's foot to wait for nightfall.
Darkness fell. Evan's eyes snapped open, flashing green before fading again. He climbed the mountain at an unhurried pace, settling his own rhythm until it seemed to merge with the world around him, slipping once more into that state of elemental resonance — though "resonance" undersold it; closer, really, to a true union of self and heaven, a phrase from his old life on Earth surfacing in his mind.
He opened his faint sight. Different from daylight, it carried its own particular flavor now. He sensed, with startling clarity, every blade of grass and leaf within dozens of cubits — not merely sight, but something closer to direct impression, imprinted straight into his mind. The night wind stirring the treetops, moving through the forest, seemed to unfold before him in perfect clarity; even the faint twitching of insects registered in his awareness without the slightest distortion.
He made his way toward a particular spot, where a vast reserve of magical energy lay coiled beneath the earth like some crouching, savage beast, a malevolent presence resting atop it — Boniface, unmistakably. Evan drifted forward, feet seeming not to touch the ground at all, and stopped when thirty cubits still separated them.
"I've waited a long while for you. You've finally come," Boniface said, his voice calm as ever, though carrying some deliberate weight beneath it. Evan recognized the affectation for exactly what it was — a performance. He was certain Boniface had only just arrived himself, but he didn't bother calling out the lie. Boniface wanted him to believe he'd been waiting patiently, unbothered, his presence utterly steady — a trick Evan knew intimately, since it was exactly the kind he favored playing himself. Since Boniface wanted to play this game, Evan had no intention of disappointing him.
"I only just arrived myself. Mind if I rest a moment before we begin?" Evan said, stepping casually to one side — positioning himself, quite deliberately, just outside the boundary of the array hidden beneath his feet. Unactivated, it gave off nothing detectable at all.
"Fine," Boniface said. Evan took two more steps and settled onto a large boulder — a spot he sensed marked a critical anchor point just outside the array's range. He had no intention of setting foot within its boundary at all.
Boniface appeared unmoved on the surface, though his composure ran thinner underneath than he let show — one foot shifted slightly, then went still again the instant he seemed to catch himself. Evan, seated on the boulder, spoke up. "There aren't many liches left in this world. As far as I know, it's just the two of us. The world's plenty large enough for both of us to share."
"If you hadn't killed my brothers, the world would be large enough. But you did, and now there's only room in it for one of us," Boniface said.
"A pity," Evan said, slowly rising to his feet.