Lich for Hire

Chapter 216: Harvey's Unfortunate Life

William Harvey's life could be summed up in a single word: misery.

Harvey had been abandoned the moment he was born. Though someone had picked him up and raised him, it wasn't out of kindness—he was treated like livestock. More than a dozen abandoned children had grown up alongside him, but in the end, only Harvey survived.

And he hadn't survived by rising up and killing his tormentor. The old brute simply drank himself to death.

Harvey had been locked inside a cage. He stripped off all his clothes and twisted them into a rope, then used it to hook the key from the old man's corpse. Unfortunately, he had been too slow. By the time he pulled off his escape, none of the other children were alive.

But the misery had only just begun. His survival was, more often than not, out of sheer luck rather than smarts.

After escaping the trafficker's cage came years of wandering.

Harvey himself didn't know how he managed to stay alive. Begging, stealing—he did whatever it took. At the age of twelve, he secretly hid in a monastery and pretended he wished to devote himself to the gods.

Harvey thought he had finally met a good person. The head priest treated him well. He fed him, clothed him, and even taught him how to read.

Harvey loved learning. He studied every character with painstaking care—until the nightmares began. Night after night, he dreamed of a demon with two baboon heads.

That was when Harvey realized he had been tricked again.The monastery was a sham. The "scriptures" he had been reading were actually hymns praising Demogorgon.

Thinking back, there were all manner of strange details he had ignored: followers who entered but never left, warehouses with bizarre odors, and crows circling endlessly above the monastery.

Harvey was always slow to realize when someone had deceived him. But this time, it wasn't too late. He pretended he hadn't noticed anything, fooled the priest, and fled the monastery.

What Harvey didn't know was that the demon was now bound to him.

While wandering in the wilderness, he sometimes practiced the letters he had learned to write his name in the dirt.

What Harvey didn't know was that the priest hadn't taught him the common script of the continent at all. Rather, he had been taught the language of demons.

One day, a pack of bloodthirsty gnolls caught the scent of the evil magic contained within that name. They nearly devoured him, bone and all.

But in his moment of greatest peril, demonic energy gathered in Harvey's palm and exploded outward, blasting the nearest gnoll into powder.

Harvey was sixteen years old when he cast his first spell: an Eldritch Blast, a spell only warlocks blessed by a demon lord could wield.

By then, Harvey had seen enough of the world to understand what being a warlock meant. He knew he was doomed. He couldn't understand what had happened. All he had done was recite a few hymns praising Demogorgon. How had that demon set his sights on him?

Humans marked by demons rarely met good ends, let alone one marked by Demogorgon, Prince of Demons, himself.

That night, Harvey dreamed of Demogorgon again.

Perhaps because he had already survived too many life-threatening ordeals, when he faced the demon prince in his dream once more, he managed to remain calm. He even tried to talk to the demon, hoping it might release him.

All he received in return was merciless laughter.

After that, Harvey spent a period of time living as a warlock.

Though he hated it, he had to admit those were the easiest days of his life.

Power brought wealth, and wealth solved most problems. During his time as a warlock, Harvey ate well, dressed warmly, and even had the chance to study languages and writing again. He learned a great deal.

There were moments when he wondered if this life wasn't so bad after all. It was certainly better than living like a stray dog.

But deep inside, Harvey remained unwilling to accept his fate. Was he destined to become a lump of rotten flesh who would fall to Hell? If that was to be his fate, he might as well have died at birth and spared himself all the suffering in between.

Very few people could maintain such defiance under Demogorgon's influence.

Then again, very few people could catch Demogorgon's attention by reciting just a few prayers.

Harvey was… unusual. Once he resolved to break free from Demogorgon, he devoted himself completely to the task.

His plan was simple: abandon his warlock powers and find a wizard capable of casting Modify Memories to forcibly erase everything connected to Demogorgon from his mind.

But magicians capable of casting such a spell were hard to find. After a long search, he finally encountered a kindly old mage who claimed he was willing to help.

But Harvey was deceived once again.

The seemingly gentle old wizard was actually a necromancer. Not all necromancers were evil, but the proportion of good ones was pitifully small.

Harvey, a warlock favored by Demogorgon, was an extraordinarily valuable specimen. Turning him into a high-tier undead would be easy.

The necromancer had recognized this and planned to trick Harvey into becoming raw materials for his newest creation.

Harvey possessed tremendous talent for spellcasting, far greater than Ambrose's. When it came to understanding people, however, he was far inferior.

He simply had better luck.

While the necromancer was preparing the ritual, Harvey casually picked up a book to read: an introductory guide to necromancy. That was when he noticed something wrong. The ritual the old man was preparing had nothing to do with Modify Memories.

The necromancer never imagined that someone could glance through a beginner's guide to necromancy and immediately recognize his carefully disguised high-tier undead transformation ritual. Harvey's weakness wasn't lack of intelligence, but rather lack of a formal education. Once he learned the basics of a subject, he could instantly grasp its core principles and extrapolate from them.

Realizing he had been tricked yet again, Harvey prepared to run. But he soon discovered the magician's tower had already been sealed. Escape was impossible unless he killed the necromancer.

Perhaps he could strike the old man with an Eldritch Blast while he wasn't looking?

No. Harvey knew perfectly well he was no match for the necromancer.

Talent alone wasn't enough. Magic required years of practice to master. Compared to the old man, Harvey was hopelessly outclassed.

He continued pretending to read, careful not to attract attention. And then, as if guided by fate, he picked up another book: an introduction to divination magic, written by the Elden Lord.

Harvey had never encountered a diviner in his years of wandering, and had barely even heard of them. Yet the moment he began reading, he was captivated. The power of fate was mysterious and profound. The book's descriptions were esoteric, yet strangely illuminating.

Harvey lost track of time. By the time he closed the manual, he had grasped the power of fate.

A die of fate materialized in his palm. Harvey tossed the die at the necromancer.

The power of fate was invisible. It didn't even stir a single strand of the old man's hair. Yet the very next moment, the necromancer stepped on something greasy on the floor, a smear of human fat that had never been properly cleaned and blended into the grime.

His footing slipped, and he crashed into a nearby cabinet of potions.

Glass shattered in a cascade of brittle cracks. Bottles of volatile concoctions exploded, drenching him in chemicals that made his body smoke as he screamed in agony.

It wasn't enough to kill him. Necromancers usually had methods to preserve their lives. But Harvey acted quickly. The necromancer thought Harvey had come to help him up. Instead, Harvey slit his throat.

Silent casting was an advanced technique, and the unfortunate necromancer hadn't mastered it. The magical tools on his body all required spoken incantations to activate. Harvey's blade sealed his fate.

After the throat came the heart, then the liver. Finally, Harvey drove the blade through the eye and into the brain. The necromancer died.

As his soul began to emerge, Harvey grabbed a bottle of potion and splashed it over the body. Even his soul was annihilated.

A single die of fate had allowed Harvey to kill a powerful necromancer and escape the mage tower alive.

Perhaps surviving a great disaster truly brought good fortune. After Harvey left the tower, Demogorgon seemed to vanish from his life entirely.

The two-headed baboon never appeared in his dreams again, and neither did he accidentally unleash Eldritch Blast anymore.

The evil energy had completely left his body. Harvey was no longer a warlock. He had become a diviner. Though he was only an apprentice, his life had been utterly transformed.

At eighteen years old, Harvey set out across the continent once more.

He had learned his lesson this time around. Whenever he encountered something uncertain, he cast a divination first. For the first time in his life, things began to go smoothly. Often, he didn't even need spells like Detect Lies. His intuition alone could tell whether someone was telling the truth.

For a while, Harvey felt as if he had finally reached the peak of his life. At the height of his confidence, he arrived in Alkhemia, City of Alchemists, hoping to advance his knowledge further.

It was there that he met "Elden Lord."

Harvey sighed. His life had always been a series of dramatic highs followed by endless plunges downward. By now, he was almost used to it.

He had been captured so many times in his life that staying in Ambrose's castle actually felt peaceful. While browsing through Ambrose's library, he confirmed the lich's identity.

Intentional or not, Ambrose's manual on introductory divination had truly changed Harvey's life.

Harvey's feelings toward Ambrose were complicated. Perhaps because he himself had once been a warlock, he felt little prejudice toward a lich. In fact, he even felt a trace of gratitude.

Harvey had once considered expressing his thanks. But this master of his was simply too… too… The only suitable adjective Harvey could think of was "greedy."

Despite traveling so widely and seeing so much of the world, Harvey had never encountered a lich who loved gold this much.

Ambrose's desire for wealth was so overwhelming that Harvey didn't even know how to communicate with him. Anything he said would probably matter less than the gold in his pockets. Perhaps the lich would only understand his gratitude if he handed over several million gold.

When Ambrose had handed him the phylactery, Harvey had actually felt touched. For a brief moment, he thought it was some kind of unspoken bond between diviners. But after leaving the castle and entering the desert, Harvey slowly began to think things through.

The phylactery in his hands was probably fake.

Given Ambrose's personality, it made no sense for him to entrust someone with his real phylactery.

Harvey had grown up starved of affection. Being valued by a mentor had moved him so deeply that he hadn't noticed anything strange at the time. Only after several days of travel did the realization dawn on him.

Ambrose's mastery of divination far surpassed Harvey's. Even his intuition had been clouded. Left to his own reasoning, it took Harvey several days to figure it out.

Yet even after reaching that conclusion, Harvey still guarded the phylactery carefully. What if he was wrong? What if Ambrose had truly entrusted him with the real thing?

Even if that was beyond unlikely, Harvey didn't want to risk it.

After all, Ambrose was his first master. Even when Ambrose took advantage of Harvey, he had never deceived him. He always openly stated what he intended to do. That kind of blunt honesty—hardly kindness at all—nevertheless felt like a warm beam of sunlight to someone who had been deceived his entire life.

Childhood trauma made people very easy to manipulate.

Harvey was like that, and Naomi was the same.

Carrying Ambrose's phylactery, Harvey traveled across the desert, hoping to avoid the chaos that would soon engulf Alkhemia.

What he hadn't expected was that Alkhemia would disappear entirely, and that everyone leaving Alkhemia would suddenly become persons of interest.