Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 601

Robbery had been attempted on five different graves.

After digging up each one, they discovered the same unsettling fact: the wooden coffins had all been shattered.

It seemed the undead had risen underground, breaking free from their coffins and crawling back into the world. Yet, there were still corpses within the graves.

Some did not seem to be in the right state of decay given their date of death, while others seemed to match. There were countless bodies buried in this cemetery, and the faces had all decayed beyond recognition.

“These aren’t the bodies of fallen soldiers,” Ellen said after inspecting the corpses.

Louise nodded in agreement.

Despite the varying states of decay, all the bodies retained some semblance of their original appearance, and their condition suggested they hadn’t been well-nourished in life.

The cemetery had been expanded after the Gate Incident, and most of those buried in this section were soldiers who had fallen in battle. It was unlikely that the soldiers’ bodies would be so emaciated.

“And there are no battle injuries,” Louise added.

“Yes,” Ellen concurred.

Most of these corpses should have shown signs of combat—missing limbs, shattered skulls, fatal wounds from fighting monsters. Instead, the bodies were all malnourished but intact.

“These are definitely from the refugee camp,” Louise concluded.

They were people who died from disease or starvation.

“So... after resurrecting the corpses, they put other bodies in the graves? Why would anyone do that?” Heinrich wondered aloud, but no one had an answer.

Resurrecting the dead was madness, but replacing them with other bodies was just bizarre. The motive was unfathomable.

Ellen dusted off her hands as she climbed out of the pit.

“One thing’s clear: whether it was a grave robbery or something else, someone tampered with these graves, although we don’t know why the bodies were swapped out,” she said.

There were two groups of suspects: grave robbers, or those intent on raising undead.

Even if this was the doing of the robbers, though, swapping the bodies would be excessively strange and utterly pointless.

Exhuming graves to examine the bodies was basically never done, so disguising their crimes by swapping out and replacing the bodies seemed unnecessary.

“B-but... Shouldn’t we cover this up quickly?” Heinrich asked anxiously, knowing that if anyone saw this, it would cause a huge commotion, even if the place was out of sight.

Of course, since they had dug up the graves entirely, filling them back in would still leave traces.

“No, wait a moment,” Louise said, examining the graves with a thoughtful expression.

They had dug up the five graves which had been disturbed, and found that the coffins were broken, and the bodies did not match the original ones.

“It doesn’t make sense for grave robbers to break the coffins and then swap out the bodies. If the culprits we’re chasing resurrected the original bodies as undead and took them away, that part is understandable, but then why put other bodies in the graves...?” Louise said.

The swapping of bodies was too strange and didn’t add up.

“Ellen,” Louise said, looking at her with determination.

“Yes?”

“Can we dig up one more grave?”

“...”

“A grave that hasn’t been disturbed.”

They had already desecrated all the graves possibly linked to the incident, and Louise had offered a shocking suggestion: to dig up an untouched grave without any clear reason.

Ellen nodded in agreement. “Alright.”

***

The disturbed graves were relatively close to each other. This time, Ellen began to dig up a grave farther away.

Both Ellen and Louise started digging, praying that their actions would not disturb someone’s eternal rest.

Quickly, they uncovered the sixth grave.

“This time...”

“It’s intact,” Ellen observed.

Unlike the other five, this coffin, though dirtied by soil, was whole. It wasn’t broken like the others.

“Nothing happened here, right...?” Heinrich asked, his voice tinged with uncertainty.

“Probably...” Ludwig replied, both of them feeling a sense of relief as they stood above the pit.

Ellen turned to Louise, her expression resolute, silently asking if they should move forward.

“Let’s open it,” Louise said.

“Yes,” Ellen agreed.

Ellen gripped the coffin lid, nearly breaking the seal with her strength as she forced it open.

Thud!

With a loud thud, the lid gave way, revealing the contents inside.

Both Louise and Ellen peered in, looking determined. Yet the face of the deceased was unrecognizable.

“This is... a different body as well,” Louise observed, noting the shriveled corpse and intact limbs.

It was clear that this body did not match with the name on the tombstone.

The four of them—Ellen, Louise, Ludwig, and Heinrich—stood in stunned silence, staring at the body.

“What on earth...” Ellen whispered, her face pale with disbelief. “Where did it all go wrong...?”

They were at a loss, unable to pinpoint where the problem began or where it might lead.

***

The sixth grave was unlike the others. This time, the coffin was untouched, but the body inside had been swapped, leading to a chilling realization.

Once they confirmed this, Louise and Ellen climbed out of the pit.

“How did you know?” Ellen asked.

The idea that even a grave beyond the five they had examined might have been tampered with suggested that this wasn’t the work of grave robbers or the forces they were pursuing, but something more sinister.

“If this scene was the work of those we’re chasing, there were things they should have been taken but weren’t,” Louise mused. “They would have taken the bodies with them.”

“And what they wouldn’t take, or rather, show no interest in,” Louise added, “are the burial goods.”

Items buried with the deceased.

“The bodies had been swapped, but there were no items buried with the deceased in any of the graves.”

Whoever was behind the incident in the underground tomb of the Order of the Holy Knights wasn’t interested in a few coins.

If they had resurrected these bodies as undead, they wouldn’t have cared about the treasures buried with them.

All the graves they had just opened shared one thing in common: there were no burial items.

“Even if the items weren’t cherished by the deceased, it’s common to bury weapons and armor together with fallen soldiers. But there were no burial goods, just bodies in burial shrouds, all wearing the same clothes. The common absence of burial items means this wasn’t the work of grave robbers or those we’re chasing.”

“...”

“They must have been like this from the time of burial.”

The swapping of bodies wasn’t the result of grave robbers or the ones they were chasing. The bodies had been switched from the start.

“If the administration office overseeing the burials had embezzled the goods, then the missing items could be explained by greed. But the swapping of bodies can’t be explained that way. The director’s influence would not be enough for such a thing.”

Fearful thoughts began to creep in.

“I can’t naively assume they felt sorry for the refugees who died and replaced the war heroes’ bodies with theirs in this national cemetery,” Louise said quietly.

“Ellen,” she said, looking over at her. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

“Yes?”

“It seems there are too many things involved in this.”

What had begun with the archbishop’s death was spiraling out of control.

The archbishop had been an inquisitor.

There were internal issues plaguing the Order of the Holy Knights.

The murdered inquisitor had been investigating the missing remains of saints, presumably resurrected as undead.

There were bodies being swapped in the graves within the national cemetery, which was seemingly linked to the culprits behind the ransacking of the Tomb of the Saints.

None of the clues pointed to a single conclusion. Each one revealed a different problem. With so many issues, each clue was just the tip of another problem that couldn’t be ignored.

The bodies in the Imperial National Cemetery had been swapped. This was not a mistake by the head of the administration office; it was too big for that.

Such an act must have involved a higher power, requiring permission—direct orders, or at least tacit approval—from someone influential. Without that, it couldn’t have happened.

Checking each grave would turn this suspicion into a certainty.

Ellen murmured, “Is it right to say that the Empire is involved in this...?”

“It must be,” Louise replied, her expression resolute.

But why swap the bodies? What was the purpose?

“Wait... If none of the bodies here belong to the people supposedly buried here...” Ludwig’s eyes widened in realization. “Could Ashir’s grave be affected too?”

At his words, Heinrich and Ellen clenched their jaws. They needed to find Ashir. Only then would they have all the answers.

The bodies in the graves weren’t who they were supposed to be, which meant Ashir was still missing.

They couldn’t confirm that the bodies had all been swapped just by opening a few graves.

Ashir’s grave... That single confirmation would turn suspicion into certainty.

—Hey! What are you doing there?!

Eventually, someone was bound to notice the group digging up graves, no matter how secluded the spot.

***

Where had it all gone wrong? What was the real issue?

The death of the inquisitor, the undead remains of saints, the swapped bodies in the national cemetery—no one could be sure if these clues pointed in the same direction.

Everything seemed like a problem. But if everything was a problem, how could they solve it?

Ellen began digging into the grave, stabbing her shovel into the ground beneath the snow that Heinrich had melted.

The administration office director and the guards looked on, their faces pale. They had been shocked to see the Hero digging up a grave, but Ellen offered no excuses or apologies. She simply instructed them to bring the director and more shovels, then returned to Ashir’s grave.

The Hero was digging up a friend’s grave. The cemetery director, faced with Ellen’s determined expression, could only fret without stopping her.

She had dug up the other graves with her bare hands; with tools, it was easier and faster.

Each time the shovel, glowing with blue mana, struck the ground, the earth gave way.

Ellen quickly reached the depth at which Ashir’s coffin had been buried, and instead of being careful, she wedged the shovel into the coffin lid and twisted, breaking it open.

Crack!

“...”

Inside was a decaying face they didn’t recognize, just as they had feared.

“H-Hero... Why... Why are you doing this...?”

Without a word, Ellen climbed out of the pit and handed the shovel to the cemetery director.

“Cover the grave, and pretend you never saw or heard anything about this.”

She looked around at the other guards, who were frozen in shock.

“Remember this, all of you, if you want to stay alive.”

After digging up a total of seven graves, Ellen was now certain: all the bodies in the national cemetery had been swapped.

She then turned to her companions.

“Let’s go.”

There was nothing left for them at the national cemetery.