Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 600

In the early hours of December 3rd, a disturbing discovery was made: the remains interred within the underground tomb belonging to the Order of the Holy Knights had been stolen.

Later that evening, the administrators of the national cemetery noticed signs of tampering at several graves which hinted at an attempted robbery.

In response, the cemetery tightened its security to fend off further intrusions.

The timing of these incidents was suspiciously close, raising the question: if the same culprit was involved, had their plan failed at the national cemetery?

“That’s the place we just visited,” Louise remarked.

“Yes.”

The four of them left the administration office and headed back into the cemetery. This time, however, they weren’t going to Ashir’s grave.

After verifying the location of the disturbed graves with the director, they set off to investigate.

The director had offered to guide them, but Ellen declined. ‘Sometimes, you have to see things for yourself to truly understand.’

After all the time that had passed and all the snow that had fallen, they did not know what they might find. Yet, just as they had uncovered insights by visiting the tomb beneath the temple of the Order of the Holy Knights, they hoped to discover something by examining this other site directly.

“What on earth... What happened?” Ludwig wondered aloud, feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the case and the drastic shift in their investigation.

“Whatever happened, one thing is certain,” Heinrich said, biting his lip. “What we dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic wasn’t just that.” He muttered this in self-reproach, regretting having ignored Dettomorian’s earlier warnings.

“There wasn’t just one thing in common, but two,” Louise observed quietly, her gaze fixed on the snow-covered national cemetery.

“Two?” Ellen asked, prompting Louise to respond briefly, “The cemetery.”

They continued deeper into the section of the cemetery dedicated to fallen soldiers, leaving the administration office behind.

“Both places were places where those with extraordinary power were laid to rest,” Louise continued, “whether through merit earned in war or some other reason.”

They were in a cemetery, plain and simple. But there was something else this place had in common with the other: only select individuals were buried there.

With just one crime scene to work with, many issues had arisen that they had to consider carefully. Now that there was a second crime scene, though, they only needed to examine the connections between them. Whatever they shared in common would be crucial.

Louise exhaled, her breath misting in the cold air. “If they tried to create undead here too, if the same thing happened at both sites... No matter who it was, whether it was heretics within the refugees or demon god cultists, they cannot have been driven by hatred for the Order of the Holy Knights or the Church of the Five Great Gods, nor did they act in order to get some sort of revenge.”

When the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights had been the only crime scene, it seemed plausible that anger against the Order of the Holy Knights or the Church of the Five Great Gods was a motivating factor. Turning the saints’ corpses into undead could have been an act of vengeance.

However, now that the Imperial National Cemetery, which had little connection to the Order of the Holy Knights, was involved, the idea of revenge seemed unlikely.

And then there was the other link. The Tomb of the Saints contained the remains of members of the clergy who had wielded great power in life, while those who had achieved great things in the Great War or after the Gate Incident were buried in the Imperial National Cemetery. Both were places where powerful individuals were interred.

“All other reasons aside, if the same attempt had been made here, the motive becomes rather straightforward.”

Ellen nodded, grasping Louise’s implication without her needing to spell it out. “I see.”

When there are too many threads to follow, the case becomes confusing. But identifying the common threads among them simplified the deduction.

As the common threads tying the two cases together became clearer, they drew closer to the truth.

“The culprits needed powerful undead.”

Anger, revenge, and hatred had lost their appeal as possible motives. The complex interests and possible factions involved in the investigation had momentarily caused the investigation to lose its way. But if they could confirm that the perpetrators who had been at this scene had intentions that mirrored those discovered in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights, then the truth would become evident.

The undead were not a means, but an end.

Whoever had committed these robberies needed undead. Powerful undead. Therefore, their intention was simple: to find graves where the powerful were buried.

That was Louise von Schwartz’s conclusion.

***

Ellen paused in front of a cluster of graves that looked like any other in the cemetery.

“Here it is,” she said quietly.

Five graves stood out among the rest, suspected targets of an attempted grave robbery. According to the initial investigation, the grass covering them had been torn up and disturbed, raising suspicions, though it seemed the robbers hadn’t succeeded in unearthing the remains.

From the cemetery administrators’ perspective, the mere suspicion of an attempted grave robbery was alarming enough to warrant tighter security.

This was the national cemetery, after all, where war heroes were laid to rest. No matter how many graves there were, each one belonged to a hero. If even one were desecrated, the consequences for the director and staff would be severe.

It was impossible to notice any signs of an attempted robbery with the naked eye, as the ground and the tombstones were blanketed in snow.

Ellen glanced around. The weather had kept most visitors away.

“This spot is pretty secluded.”

“Indeed,” Louise replied.

The graves were tucked away in a corner, slightly hidden by the forest, making them hard to spot from the cemetery’s center. Anyone attempting to rob them or perform some suspicious ritual, especially at night, could go unnoticed.

Ellen brushed the snow off the tombstones, checking the names of those believed to be targets. She turned to Heinrich.

“Heinrich, can you melt the snow?”

“On it,” he said.

They had avoided using their abilities to stay under the radar, but here, out of sight and with no visitors around, it didn’t matter anymore.

Whoosh!

The flames Heinrich conjured radiated warmth, swiftly melting the thick snow around them. Ellen, Louise, and Ludwig felt the comforting heat on their faces.

Some time passed, and the snow melted away, revealing the bare ground under it.

The grass, brown and withered from winter, lay limp, soaked in the melted snow.

Five graves... The ground behind the tombstones was flat, and there was evidence of an attempted grave robbery. Someone had tried to dig up the earth.

Ellen touched the flattened grass, then tugged at it a few times before pulling out a clump.

“E-Ellen...!” Ludwig exclaimed, shocked to see her disturbing the grave with her own hands.

But Ellen shook her head. “I didn’t use much force. It was already like this.”

Grass roots usually intertwine, especially in winter. If the roots were broken, they wouldn’t reconnect.

Ellen had simply pulled out a section that had already been severed, along with the soil attached to them.

“It seems like the administrators did a thorough job. They could have easily missed it.”

After their failure, the robbers must have tamped down the ground to make it look as though the grave had been undisturbed. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss. If one of the cemetery directors hadn’t been observant, they might have overlooked it.

Louise nodded slowly, acknowledging Ellen’s observation. “Visitors could have noticed too. If it were my family or friends’ grave, I’d look more closely.”

“That’s true.”

The director claimed the discovery had been made by his staff, but it was possible a visitor had found it and reported it. The director might have lied to avoid trouble, but it seemed an understandable lie to Ellen.

The earth above the grave had been dug up and then hastily filled in, which would raise suspicions of a robbery among visitors and directors alike. The directors had done their best to restore the place, but despite their efforts, Ellen could still discern a slight unevenness in the mounds of soil.

She had come to see things for herself, not just to inspect the grass.

“Ellen...” Ludwig murmured, his voice tinged with uncertainty.

“I-is this... okay?” Heinrich echoed Ludwig’s sentiment, both of them now understanding Ellen’s intentions without her having to explain.

“It probably isn’t,” she replied, her voice steady.

Blue mana began to swirl around Ellen’s hands. There was only one way to determine if this was a case of robbery or something far more sinister, like the raising of undead.

“But I need to know what happened,” she said, resolute.

She had to see the corpse with her own eyes.

Thud!

Ellen knelt down and began to dig into the earth with her bare hands, determined to uncover the grave.

***

The director had offered to guide them, but Ellen had declined for a reason. Though it was unspoken, everyone understood what needed to be done.

Even if they suspected an attempted robbery, the management wouldn’t dare to do something as drastic as exhuming a grave. However, Ellen had a different suspicion, and she knew she had to see it through herself.

No one needed to assist Ellen in her task. Ludwig, unable to just stand by, tried to help, but Ellen waved him off, insisting he would only get in the way.

Despite the lack of a shovel, the work didn’t take long. Ellen, who had reached Master class and was basically superhuman, wielded her body like a weapon.

She tore into the frozen ground, quickly digging a deep pit.

“There’s a body,” Ellen announced from the bottom of the pit, her voice steady despite the dirt covering her.

She had finally uncovered the remains. Her eyes widened as she looked at it.

Above her, Ludwig, Heinrich, and Louise peered down with somber expressions. They had all faced death countless times and had seen many corpses. Though they felt a pang of guilt, the sight of a body no longer filled them with terror or horror.

If the situation mirrored what had happened in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights, the body should have been missing. But it was still there.

“Wait, then... does this mean the incident had nothing to do with the raising of undead...?” Heinrich wondered aloud.

If Heinrich was right and no undead had been raised, then the director’s explanation made sense: someone had tried to rob the grave but failed. In that case, Ellen had disturbed the grave for no reason, desecrating the resting place of someone who deserved peace.

“No, it’s not that,” Ellen said, shaking her head.

She picked up a fragment of something from the soil she had unearthed.

It was a piece of wood, but not just any piece. It was a fragment of something that had once been whole.

“Is it part of a wooden coffin?” Louise asked, eyeing the fragment in Ellen’s hand.

“Yes, it seems so,” Ellen replied.

The coffin buried in the ground had been broken. Such damage couldn’t have been inflicted from the outside.

“If the body had been raised as an undead, it would have broken the coffin and crawled out. If it were a robbery, the thieves would have dug all the way down to this point.”

If the undead had indeed risen, the coffin would be shattered. But robbers would be after the burial items. Once they reached the coffin, they would have quietly opened it to take the valuables instead of noisily smashing it.

Since robbers wouldn’t have destroyed the coffin, it had to have been caused by an undead breaking free.

“Then why is this body here?”

If the remains had been raised as undead and broken free, then why was the body still there? Whoever had been involved in this had not operated in the same way as in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights, instead leaving the undead buried again.

Robbers wouldn’t have left things like this, so it wasn’t their doing. But if the perpetrator had been after undead, why leave it behind?

“Is it someone else’s body... or something like that?”

Ludwig’s question made Ellen frown.

“I don’t know. But if that’s the case, I can’t figure out why. If they raised the remains as undead then swapped the body, why not do the same thing in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights? Why do it here and not there?”

The idea of reviving the undead and replacing the bodies seemed pointless. It was unnecessary and meaningless. No one would normally dig up a grave just to check the body. And if someone did, they’d immediately suspect the remains might have been swapped.

Reviving the remains as undead and then putting another body in the grave served no purpose as a disguise.

It was odd if the same culprits were responsible for both incidents. They hadn’t bothered to conceal their actions in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights, but they did so here. They either did not take the undead they raised with them, or had swapped another body for it before leaving.

“But... Something feels off,” Heinrich muttered as he studied the body.

“What do you mean?”

He glanced back and forth between the tombstone and the remains.

“This body was buried only this year. Shouldn’t it take longer for it to decompose like this?”

“...?”

Ellen leaned in for a closer look. Louise, prompted by Heinrich’s question, examined the tombstone as well.

“Gordon Schick, a high-ranking knight of Alskern. Buried in October... oh dear...”

It was now December.

“Only two months have passed?”

“Yes,” Louise replied as she sighed, and Ellen frowned at the sight before her.

The body’s eye sockets were hollow, and though she wasn’t an expert on decomposition, it seemed unusually advanced for the cold season.

There was still flesh and muscle on the body, but it looked alarmingly decayed for a body that had been buried only after the weather turned chilly.

“It seems like this isn’t the original body.”

“Indeed...”

Ellen nodded weakly at Louise’s observation. She hadn’t seen any reason for the body to be swapped out, but it was clear now that it had occurred.

This confirmed it wasn’t the work of grave robbers.

“Why... Why would they do such a thing?” Ludwig murmured, bewildered.

Whoever had done this had raised the original occupant of the grave as undead and taken them away, but this time, they had left another body in the grave. What could possibly be the reason for that?

Ellen and the others couldn’t fathom any other explanation. It seemed whoever was responsible had done something both disturbing and senseless.

“We’ll have to dig up the other graves too.”

Ultimately, Ellen decided they had no choice but to exhume a few more bodies.