Klein arrived at the Conwell estate expecting a simple hunting contest, but the moment he stepped out of the carriage, the place already smelled like a trap. Dalton's castle was ridiculously grand. The guests were feasting like nobles at a royal banquet, and the whole event felt less like a hunt than a contest in showing off, staged for greedy branch-family trash.
The real ugliness showed itself when Dalton released his starving dogs into the forest only to shoot them down like toys. And if that was not disgusting enough, he even dared to put a hand on Aren, calling her Klein's pet maid as though he did not value his own wrist. Klein twisted the hand at once and warned him to back off, but Dalton only smiled like a villain who had already written his own death certificate.
Soon after, Klein followed him into the forest alone, and that was when Dalton finally revealed the real hunt. Dog corpses were scattered everywhere. Mercenaries surrounded the clearing. Archers took aim, and Dalton proudly declared that Klein was the final prey. Unfortunately for him, he had picked a fight with the wrong boy. As Dalton mocked the Rheinland family and spat on the future Berkel had died to protect, something inside Klein snapped.
The weak second son disappeared, and the former king of death began to wake. Demonic energy flooded the forest. Skeletons rose out of the ground, and the hunters realized they had never been chasing prey at all. What followed was less a battle than an execution. Klein unleashed his undead army, sending skeletons crashing into the mercenaries from every direction. Arrows became meaningless. Swords shattered, and terrified men were dragged down by the very dead they thought they had buried. One by one, the mercenaries were slaughtered.
Dalton, meanwhile, realized how badly he had misjudged everything. No matter how many times he chopped the head off a skeleton, it simply kept regenerating. Looking at Klein, his bright mind decided that he would simply take Klein out instead. He was finished before he began, because Klein had already seen it coming. Klein used his meteor sword slash, and that was the end of Dalton's sadistic life.
So how did it come to that? To understand it, the story has to go back a little.
For centuries, the name Archmond was enough to send kingdoms into panic. As the strongest necromancer the world had ever known, he commanded armies of the dead and spread terror across the continent. No warrior, no king and no army could stop him. That was true until the legendary hero Berkel Rheinland finally brought his reign to an end by cutting him down.
Or so everyone thought.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the battlefield. He was inside a baby's body. The maids around him were excited, because the young lord had finally made a sound. They tried to make him say mama, and even carried him over to show him his mother, the Duchess. But Archmond's body felt stiff, and before he could understand what was happening, his mouth moved on its own. Instead of babbling like a normal infant, he suddenly chanted a necromantic formula, calling upon darkness, minions and soldiers. The maids were horrified. The newborn baby had just shouted like a full-grown demon summoner.
Fifteen years passed after that insane incident.
In the Rheinland Duchy, the baby had grown into a beautiful young boy named Klein. The maids were stunned by his face and his hair, calling him a masterpiece of the gods. But while everyone around him was busy admiring him, Klein was already tired of the nonsense that surrounded his life.
That nonsense came in the form of Priest Garrison of the Holy Order.
The moment Garrison saw Klein, he started shouting about evil spirits and Archmond again. The man was built more like a muscular demon than a priest, and yet he kept behaving as though he were the holy one in the room. He insisted that Archmond's soul was still inside Klein's body, and that the evil spirit had to be purified again and again. Klein denied being Archmond, and Garrison instantly countered that Klein's face looked exactly like Archmond's.
This annoyed Klein so much that he silently called the priest a crazy bastard over and over again while walking away. But Garrison did not stop. As punishment for Klein's attitude, he ordered another naked holy water bath, which left Klein wondering whether this priest was even human.
Klein thought back to how all of this had started. In his previous life, his head had clearly been cut from his shoulders, and yet somehow he had opened his eyes again inside a baby's body. And because the first words he shouted were Archmond's necromantic spell, everyone had treated him like a demon from the very beginning.
Because of that, he had been locked inside a monastery for seven long years. That was also where he met Garrison, the man who called himself a priest of the Holy Order. From that point on, Klein was forced through all kinds of so-called purification rituals. There were holy water baths, Garrison's prayer song around the clock, and even fire purification. In simple terms, the boy had been tortured in the name of religion.
Now, five years after returning from the monastery, Klein was still being watched.
His personal maid, Aren, only wanted him to live proudly as a proper descendant of the Rheinland family. She even prepared things for him out of care. But when Klein reacted too harshly, he immediately regretted it, realizing that she had worked hard for him with those small hands of hers. Unfortunately, the emotional moment was ruined when Klein found out that the embarrassing hat had actually been made by Garrison. The guilt vanished instantly, and Klein wanted nothing more than to throw the thing away.
Garrison, however, was deeply moved. He decided Klein had worn the hat because he appreciated it. Klein did not care in the slightest, and ripped it off.
Just then Dunkel, the leader of the Red Chariot Knights, arrived and asked whether the purification ritual was finally over. Dunkel reminded Garrison that the rumours about Klein being Archmond were already more than ten years old, and that even the order had said there were no further issues. But Garrison refused to let go of his suspicion. There was always a what if, he said, and before leaving, he told Klein that the next purification ritual was scheduled for Friday.
Klein was completely fed up. After being handed a towel, he told Aren that he was definitely not Archmond anymore. Inside, though, he admitted the truth. He really was Archmond. He simply could not say it out loud, because if he did, there was no telling what kind of torture Garrison would prepare next.
Since he had been reborn, he had lived under constant surveillance. Because of the rumours from his childhood, he had spent seven years locked away in a monastery. He had thought that returning to the Duchy would finally give him some freedom, but instead Garrison had followed him like a curse.
Aren then explained that Garrison was not just some random priest. He was an agent of the Holy Order, a title given only to the strongest members of the order. Unless it were the Duke himself, almost no one in the family could stand against him.
That made Klein realize how powerful the Holy Order truly was. It also reminded him how powerful the Rheinland family was.