The power of Divine Artifacts is very dangerous. I guess there's a lot of tales of mortals trying to use them and ending up being cursed, transforming into inhumane monsters, and then tormenting everyone around them while becoming insane. Fafnir the Dwarf King was one of them, who became the Evil Dragon of Greed and destroyed his own Kingdom in the process. I don't know if he's still alive but there's no tale of him being slain yet. I wonder if we'll ever find him.
And this girl, the Frost Queen, whose real name is Tear, is also like Fafnir in a way, taking the Crown of Skadi and transforming into the Frost Queen, cold hearted and emotionless, with the desire to conquer everything and freeze the world so it becomes her endless domain of ice and snow… she also got a beef against me for some weird reason, probably incentivized by the damn Vampires who are somehow managing to make a mutual benefit contract with her, whatever it is.
"Could it be possible she's in there?" Wondered Ruby. "I know it is far-fetched, but it might be possible for you guys, who are very strong, to find out."
"Yeah, we could investigate…" I said with a nod. "For now, don't tell your team to get farther, I wouldn't be able to live knowing you guys ended killing some of your strongest men just to satisfy my curiosity."
"It is nothing like that, what we are doing is merely just for the safety of everyone… But it might be delayed for later, I suppose more important news would be entering the dungeon and everything else." Said Ruby.
"Veredorr, can you come?" I asked.
I was still too curious about Tear and what happened to her, so to clarify our minds and get better explanations from someone that witnessed it all live, I summoned Veredorr. He wasn't in my shadows as I left him in the village, though I summoned him here while he seemingly was having a nap.
He had grown rather strong, after evolving once he was now roughly Level 50 of Rank B, he was decently strong for his level, probably only slightly weaker than the twin fire ghosts who were approaching Rank A. The same was for most of my "top undead". Meanwhile, the strongest armies of Undead I've got are all B- Rank at minimum, most of them being the monsters from the dungeon we conquered itself, combined with the old Undead we had beforehand.
Only the strongest veterans that have survived many battles have joined the newer armies with B Rank Undead. Undead monsters always rise a Rank below their original Rank while being alive. So all the guys we hunted just now, over a thousand of them in the dungeon I conquered, might become also part of this army… With them joining in, I would have 500+ more B+ Rank Undead.
It is already a sizable army! And with the strongest Generals I have, which are naturally stronger than these generic Undead due to their rare evolutions and races such as Darkbound, Mercury, and Kuro, who are genuinely stronger than even those at their same Rank due to their growth levels, skills, and titles compared to the generic ones, with such differences as tens of times stronger, I've got myself a big enough army that I might even attempt an all-out-war against the Frost Queen and her army of Ice Monsters.
…If that were to happen, which I've already envisioned, these numbers alone shouldn't satisfy me though. I have to get more and more Undead, make an army of thousands of high ranked ones. Thousands of low ranked cannot even amount to less than a hundred high ranked after all. Maybe I could try out some Undead Fusion, and fuse tons of weaker Undead into higher ranked ones. Yeah, but I might do it on another occasion, what's important now is asking Veredorr, the timid and mysterious Dhampir.
"Uwah! Ah? Eh? Ah… I was taking a nap. Master, where am I?" Veredorr asked, looking around timidly. Ruby and Aquamarine almost jumped out of their seats when they saw a bluish ghost emanating a powerful freezing aura emerge out of thin air.
Especially because his very presence froze the entire table and the floor beneath it, and even formed large ice crystals in the table and stalactites in the ceiling… he's always flashy when he shows up, he can't control his ice powers properly yet, so I have to regulate it myself.
"Calm down a bit Veredorr…" I sighed, quickly beginning to manipulate his magic output until his aura of freezing winter stopped.
"Sorry…" He sighed. "Master why am I here?"
I quickly introduced him to all the ladies here, and also the dwarves from our guild. We told him w wanted to hear more about Tear, the Frost Queen. Any information would be useful for the investigation.
"I see… It is a rather difficult topic… I can start from the beginning." Veredorr sighed. "I used to live on my own in the snow lands, inside a small cabin. My mother was a human and my father a Vampire. I never met my father through my entire life, and my mother fell sick due to the cold, and died when I was only ten years of age. Since then, I have been surviving on my own, never knowing what I truly was other than a half-vampire, a Dhampir, a being discriminated by humans and vampires alike."
"A Dhampir…" Sighed Ruby. "You could had come here; you were still half-human. We wouldn't had discriminated you."
"I… I never walked too far away from the lands I was born, so I was never able to find out this Dwarven Country. The only place I knew was Iceland, but I had to hide my features to buy things there, and sometimes I got caught and chased away. Many times I fought for my life and had to kill adventurers that wanted to hunt me down…" Veredorr sighed. "But when I meet them, is when I actually made friends for the first time."