This Lich is a Better Landlord Chapter 103

Deep in the great desert, far away, Heggie Stone was lying on a gigantic golden chair.

This seemed to be a golden chair crafted for a giant; his height of just over a meter couldn't even reach the armrests.

This was a new area that had just been excavated.

The Desert Kingdom's economy was maintained by grave robbing, and even during these years of war, they had never stopped excavating the underground architectural complex.

Heggie Stone's luck was good. While digging downwards over the past two days, they happened to excavate a new passage leading to a massive underground city.

Moreover, it appeared to be a city inhabited by giants. Every object inside was oversized, including the gold products within.

The civilization buried underground must have had an extremely glorious era, which was why large amounts of gold artifacts and magic items could generally be found in these underground cities.

Heggie Stone hit the jackpot this time. Excavating a giant city with massive amounts of gold inside.

Just this gigantic golden chair alone was probably worth over ten million gold coins, not to mention the mountain of various golden utensils piled in the storeroom.

It was just like most ruins excavated before; the things in the city were there, but no remains of any biological creatures were seen.

It was as if the residents of the city had suddenly vanished, and then the entire civilization was covered by the desert.

Over the years, countless scholars had conducted in-depth research on this, but the results were mixed, and no one could produce decisive evidence.

However, not knowing the reason didn't hinder this utilitarian archaeology. Digging graves was the point anyway; wasn't it better if the owner of the tomb wasn't lying inside?

Regarding Ambrose's two million information fee, Heggie Stone agreed without thinking. It was merely two million; he was a vampire who didn't lack money now.

Ambrose didn't know what was happening in the distant desert, and naturally, he didn't know that Heggie Stone was excitedly rolling around on that gigantic Golden Throne like a rolling die.

But since the other party said money was no issue, Ambrose replied directly: [Then, transfer the funds first.]

This was just a test, but Ambrose didn't expect Heggie Stone to actually transfer the money directly. Not only that, but even the top-tier Gargoyles owed from before were delivered immediately, without even asking Ambrose for the teleportation circle freight fee.

That was the Continental Teleportation Array capable of teleporting large magical items; just the cost of this teleportation alone exceeded ten thousand gold coins.

Ambrose couldn't figure it out at first, but when he saw the gold being teleported over, he roughly guessed the reason.

These weren't gold coins, but gold utensils of various shapes. The weight wasn't skimped on, and the exquisite ancient patterns on the utensils added a lot of collection value to them.

These gold utensils also made Ambrose realize that Heggie Stone had struck treasure, probably digging up something good under the desert again, so he instantly became flush with cash.

It was just that... why did the patterns on these gold utensils look a bit familiar?

After recalling for a moment, Ambrose couldn't quite remember, so he simply ignored it. Anyway, the purity of this gold was fine; as long as it was real gold, it worked.

"So envious. Why isn't there an ancient civilization under my house?"

Ambrose sighed, then sent the intelligence he knew to Heggie Stone: [The Elf race is mass-equipping anti-magic weapons. Perhaps it is the Elf Queen's plan. The magical contract mentioned to you before should be related to the Elf race's strategic plan. Lords who sign the contract will actually provide assistance to the Elf race's invasion after violating the contract...]

This time Ambrose didn't hide any inferred intelligence. After all, the Desert Dwarves were at a disadvantage. If he didn't give this major client a hand, they probably wouldn't be able to afford the "hiring fees" for subsequent cooperation. Once the Elves completed their strategic deployment, Ambrose would quickly fall into a desperate situation too.

Heggie Stone didn't quite believe it at first. After all, popularizing enchanted weapons wasn't realistic; even the City of Alchemy didn't have that capability back then. But Ambrose's reasoning made sense: if the Elf Queen ascended to Legend a second time, this might not be impossible.

Heggie Stone quickly relayed this matter to Hoffman Ironfist. However, faced with such a big issue, the Hand of the King only replied with a simple "Understood" and didn't pull Heggie Stone in to discuss countermeasures.

Although Heggie Stone felt it was a bit strange, he didn't press further. While their personal relationship was good, it was better to avoid suspicion in such national affairs.

Ambrose didn't inquire how the Golden Kingdom planned to deal with the Elves' anti-magic weapons either. He was busy decorating the castle. Twenty Obsidian Gargoyles needed to be installed in selected locations.

Strictly speaking, Gargoyles were not living creatures, nor could they be considered undead; they were puppets created by magical construct technology. These top-tier Gargoyles used obsidian as the main material, plus high-level materials like Adamantine and Mithril. The material cost alone was very high, and the carving of the Gargoyle's appearance was related to the design of the internal magic circle, requiring experts to handcraft them.

These twenty Obsidian Gargoyles possessed over a dozen special effects, the most basic and important of which was magic resistance.

Obsidian Gargoyles had extremely strong resistance to various spells. If a spellcaster like Ambrose didn't use the power of the Golden Throne, he would have to consider running away when facing a gang beating from five Obsidian Gargoyles.

Top-tier Obsidian Gargoyles also had self-repair capabilities. As long as damage didn't exceed thirty percent, after turning into a statue state, they could fully recover in a few days.

Then there was the lack of weaknesses. To destroy an Obsidian Gargoyle, one could only smash it hard with a hammer. Smashing the head was no different from smashing the foot; the thing's head was just for show and wasn't used to sense targets.

The rest were auxiliary effects like life detection, wound tearing, flight, and shadow lurking. Once activated, they would tear at the enemy relentlessly like mad dogs; an ordinary person would be torn to shreds in less than two hits.

If there was any downside, it was the restricted range of movement.

Gargoyles weren't a unit that could move freely but a defensive device paired with a base. If they went too far from the base, they would quickly turn into statues.

The maximum movement distance for Ambrose's batch of Obsidian Gargoyles was only five hundred meters. Covering the castle was certainly more than enough, but taking them out to bully people would be a bit difficult.

But this didn't stump Ambrose. He placed ten Obsidian Gargoyles in various corners of the castle to serve as guards, and the remaining ten were placed in his personal space.

At critical moments, opening the spatial door would allow these Gargoyles to become his helpers.

With the Gargoyles installed, Ambrose was ready to get down to business. He had received the first batch of ore "hiring fees" from Viscount Leitman. Although it was just simply processed iron ore, the quantity was substantial, filling up more than half of the castle's storeroom.

With the ore delivered, the Quicksilver Effigy breeding plan was ready to be implemented.

Searching through the castle, Ambrose found the Quicksilver Effigy playing with its little buddies in the dungeon.

A silvery-white large blob was followed by a group of shiny little blobs, looking like they were playing hide-and-seek or dancing.

Those little blobs were naturally the special undead Ambrose had created earlier using sand and glass, modifying the material properties to become undead puppets similar to elemental creatures.

Because Ambrose hadn't limited their intelligence, these little guys had very good mimicking abilities.

Perhaps because the Quicksilver Effigy was the largest, the other little guys automatically recognized it as the boss.

The little guys didn't seem to notice Ambrose and were playing on their own.

The Quicksilver Effigy wriggled and changed, sprouting several arms to catch those elemental undead. The elemental undead used their respective abilities to flee; some scattered their bodies directly into sand on the ground and then quickly rolled away; some twisted into a rope, dodging like a snake; some mimicked the Quicksilver Effigy by condensing arms to arm-wrestle the boss, but were immediately rubbed into the ground by the Effigy; and even more outrageously, one pushed a companion beside it down and ran away alone...

The little guys were having fun, and Ambrose was happy watching them. Their IQs had visibly improved. In a while, he could test their kneeling prayer effect again, hoping to achieve gold freedom as soon as possible.

After watching for a while, Ambrose saw they had no intention of stopping, so he had to play the killjoy parent, picking up the Quicksilver Effigy and taking it to the storeroom where the ore was stored.

Ambrose patted the round little guy and said to it, "You are already a mature Quicksilver Effigy; it's time to learn how to have children."

The Quicksilver Effigy understood Ambrose's words and wriggled onto the ores.

With a *pfft*, a heavily corroded helmet fell out of the Quicksilver Effigy's body. This was the imitation artifact captured from those Ryan Empire Paladins. After digesting it for so many days, it had only eaten the surface layer.

Spitting out this indigestible thing, the Quicksilver Effigy turned into silvery flowing water and began to devour the ores in large mouthfuls. The mountain of ore began to shrink at a visible speed.

Devouring the artifact was slow, but the speed at which the Quicksilver Effigy devoured ordinary metal was extremely fast. In just a few minutes, the hundred tons of ore were completely eaten, leaving only a pile of non-metallic slag.

But the Quicksilver Effigy's size hadn't changed at all. It even howled at Ambrose, indicating it was only eighty percent full—not enough energy to have children.

Ambrose was a bit surprised; he had miscalculated. Feeding the Quicksilver Effigy full with ordinary metal ore wasn't easy.

Painfully taking out some gold and feeding it to the Quicksilver Effigy, the little guy finally entered a satiated state. The Effigy's outer shell rapidly hardened, beginning the breeding state. When this silver outer shell shattered, two Quicksilver Effigies would walk out from inside.

For the first cultivation, Ambrose was exceptionally careful, staying by the Quicksilver Effigy's side the whole time, constantly monitoring the little guy's life status.

A day and a night passed, and cracks finally appeared on the outer hard shell.

Silvery-white liquid flowed out from the broken shell. After landing on the ground, it quickly separated, turning into two identical masses of quicksilver. Although their size was smaller than the previous Quicksilver Effigy, they were two structurally complete lives.

"Success!" Ambrose exclaimed excitedly.

As a life form, maintaining vitality was only the first element. To truly become a complete biological population, the ability to reproduce was needed.

The two quicksilver blobs crawled to Ambrose's feet, rubbing against his calves like clingy kittens.

Ambrose patted these two little guys, unable to tell who was who, and said to them, "Children, you eat too much. Just one Viscount Leitman's supply probably won't be enough. It's time to visit other mining areas. It's better to choose a suitable target and rob them directly. I can also bring those elemental undead along to let them try actual combat; hunting is the best way to improve intelligence."

Ambrose recalled and muttered to himself, "The one I met on the road last time seemed to be a believer of the Maiden of Pain. Consider yourselves unlucky."