The oppressive silence within the Bone Citadel thickened as the violet soul-fire lining the ribbed pillars dimmed under the Undead Lich King’s possessive wrath, which seeped into the marrow of the hall itself.

At that moment, none dared delay, and a towering Bone Tyrant, its frame forged from interlocked giant skeletons, stepped forward on one knee. Its ribcage was split open, revealing a vortex of rotating femurs and skull fragments grinding endlessly within its chest cavity.

Crowned with jagged horn-spines and bearing a colossal axe carved from an unknown petrified tree, it lowered its head before speaking in a gravel-like rumble.

"Your eminence, the thief is very tricky to deal with, and has not always been worthy of our notice. At first, she had been a mere irritation within the outer perimeters.

"She hunted undead soldiers (Fable Legendary State), ambushed patrols, and erased scouting squads who had been tasked to guard the outer perimeters of the Undead Skyfall Domain."

The Bone Tyrant’s voice tightened as it confessed with great humiliation, "I was only notified by an Undead Commander (Legendary King) when she annihilated an entire minor division of ten thousand Legendary Noble State Undead, and over a hundred thousand Fable Legendary State Undead, without leaving behind a single trace!"

At that moment, a Devourer Matron lifted her veiled skull. Her elongated spine arched like a scorpion’s tail, and countless skeletal arms unfolded from her back, each clutching a different relic of bone, skull, or femur-crafted scepter. Within her hollow abdomen, trapped souls writhed, dissolving and reforming endlessly.

She spoke as her voice was a layered whisper with a hint of fury and hatred, "It wasn’t just the Axe Bone Tyrant’s legions that suffered under the thief, your majesty!

"That cunning pest seemed to know our formations of the legions and their divisions. Once she figured out that the Axe Bone Tyrant was on her, she directly infiltrated my division and started hunting Legendary Lord State Undead Matrons from my legions."

The Devourer Matron bowed lower with embarrassment, yet a terrifying killing intent surfaced in her hollow sockets, "By the time I sent Legendary Kings after her, she went into hiding!"

At this moment, another Quasi-Myth stepped forward. A massive Corpse Wyvern Lord in humanoid form, wings folded like tattered cloaks behind him. His jaw was elongated, fangs protruding beneath a cracked bone helm.

Veins of necrotic lightning pulsed beneath translucent decayed flesh, and his infernal draconic eyes were flickering with cunningness.

"Your majesty, it isn’t entirely Axe Bone Tyrant and Matron One’s fault that they failed to figure out the thief’s true goals.

"The thief has been very careful not to let us get wind of her true motives. But by the grace of His Majesty who has blessed me with a sliver of your wisdom, I quickly figured out her motives once she infiltrated my territory!"

The Axe Bone Tyrant and Matron One’s eyes flashed with disbelief when they heard the Corpse Wyvern Lord’s words. He was supposed to give a general account of the situation with the thief while also admitting their errors. So, they won’t be punished and could also prove to the Undead Lich King that the ’thief’ wasn’t easy to capture.

However, the Corpse Wyvern Lord cunningly manipulated the situation to his own advantage, and instead of admitting his oversight, he sought to please the Lich King. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The Corpse Wyvern Lord didn’t give anyone a chance to interfere and continued without stopping, "Actually, the Thief has been hunting our Undead for their pure ’Death Origin’ which couldn’t be found in any Dark Being Races besides our ’Undead Race’ to cultivate her own Death Law and related Soul Totem!

"That’s why she first targeted the Fable Legendary State Undead, before moving above ranks while always avoiding encounters with opponents who have no use for her at that moment or are too powerful to handle.

"But it should’ve been impossible to simply devour the ’Death Origin’ of our Undead Race, especially because we are all blessed by Your Majesty’s origin, and anyone who dared to devour us Death Origins or dared to use Necromancy to summon Undead within Your Majesty’s dominion will directly become Your Majesty’s loyal subordinate! Unless..."

At this moment, the Corpse Wyvern Lord’s expression turned solemn as even he seemed to be hesitant whether he should continue further or not, while the other Quasi-Myths remained absolutely silent.

"Unless she’s truly acknowledged by the Throne of Death and uses it refine the Death Origin without any backlash. And the Throne of Death is also helping her to conceal her death aura, making it hard for me and all of you to pinpoint her location." The Undead Lich King dismissively spoke at this moment, but the hall seemed to turn even colder.

"Not only that, she’s been using the Throne of Death to infiltrate the Undead minds and getting all the information about my armies, and playing all of you, Quasi-Myths like fiddles for years now.

"Moreover, it wasn’t until she needed the Death Origin of Legendary Kings, which by some miracles you fools moved back to the Inner Region.

"This also made her overestimate herself and enter the Inner Region, where the Throne of Death within her was finally noticed by the ’Higher Being’, which you fools failed to figure out for so long, or don’t consider it important enough to report to me. Is that what you’re trying to say?"

But the temperature in the hall continued to drop, and the Quasi-Myths no longer dared to try to explain themselves because the Undead Lich King knows everything already, especially about their negligence and oversights.

At that moment, the fractured eclipse halo above the citadel pulsed faster, and the Undead Lich King finally rose. The movement alone caused cracks to splinter across the black crystal floor.

His towering skeletal frame cast a shadow that swallowed the kneeling Quasi-Myths whole.

At this moment, he spoke again, but this time his voice carried not fury or blame but execution, bending the air inwardly, "You call yourselves my Dukes of death, yet a single living creature toys with you so long."

The soul-fire in his sockets flared into vertical infernos as the Dukes of Death trembled like tree leaves in the storm, "You allowed her to hunt within my domain. You allowed her to enter my inner region. You allowed her get noticed by the Higher Being!"

Each accusation struck like a hammer against bone, making the twenty-one appalled.

The Lich King’s aura compressed further, suffocating, "The Throne of Death belongs to the Higher Being, and it is also the key to our salvation!"

He stepped down one stair from the throne, and the hall groaned, "You have one death cycle (100 years), the time until the spell cast by the Higher Being will last over this continent, to find her. I don’t care if you break her limbs, or sever her will, just deliver her soul intact for the Higher Being!"

At this moment, the Undead Lich King suddenly paused, and the eclipse halo above flared crimson-black as he declared, "And if you fail...I will personally ensure that each of your souls experiences eternal doom!"

Absolute silence fell as they all knew that the hunt had just become desperate, and then, as one, all twenty-one Quasi-Myths pressed their foreheads to the bone floor.

"By Your Will!"