Chapter 471 - Volume 49 (1/2)

With a single incantation, Bar Khan cast a set of three area-of-effect curses, the range of which covered the entire region.

“We need blessings! Remove the curses, quickly!”

“Where are the priests? Please, we need help right now!”

The users of the Hermes Guild desperately called for priests. Paladins could withstand curses with their innate resistance or blessing spells, but the damage suffered by the other users was more immense than they had imagined, even though they were equipped with gears that were resistant to Black Magic. Beyond simply preventing his enemies from exerting their full strength in combat, the power of Bar Khan’s magic was such that it reduced the victims’ overall capabilities by a couple of notches.

In the meantime, the horde of skeletons, whose number amounted to almost a million, was crawling up the castle walls. Unlike human soldiers who needed ladders, they just used their bony hands and feet to climb up the ramparts ever so diligently. The Hermes Guild users tried to stop them using their attack skills.

“Exploding Slash[1] !”

“Thunder Hammer!”

“The Bow of Gamesh!”

A skeleton that had been strengthened by Bar Khan could even match the power of a Death Knight, but the users of the Hermes Guild defeated the skeleton horde without much trouble taking advantage of their position on top of the castle walls as well as their combat strength.

“You need to make sure their bodies dissipate completely! Just pushing them off the walls won’t do anything!”

“Suppress them!”

Using their powerful skills, the Hermes Guild users liquefied or pulverized the skeletons that had reached the top of the ramparts. The only way to win a fight against the Immortal Legion was to thoroughly destroy every corpse on the battlefield.

“The Doom Knights are about halfway to knocking down the castle main gates!”

“What, already?!”

“Defense units, quickly!”

In order to hold back the advancing Doom Knights, some of the strongest warriors or knights among the Hermes Guild members came forward to face them. Throughout the fortress, there were explosions of divine force or blazing lights from magical spells, an intimidating sight to the invading undead.

“Up in the sky!”

“Careful! Everyone, duck!”

Thirty Bone Dragons were soaring across the sky, spouting out concentrated acid. Soon a number of places in Valkis Castle had become corrupted, and a rotten smell was coming from the ground.

“Krrrrr… rise up, vessels of unbelievers. Every being that possesses life merely exists to commit evil!”

The wailing ghosts were emitting bloodcurdling shrieks, cursing the living around them.

“I’m wounded!”

“Everyone who’s below 60% of their life force, retreat to the rear!”

The Hermes Guild had set up healing posts along the ramparts at every 50 meters. Many priests with divine power were stationed there; the guild had recruited as many as they could from each religious order, using its accumulated contribution points.

From the central tower of Valkis Castle, it could be seen that the treatment of the injured soldiers was proceeding smoothly.

“It’s a tough battle for sure, but we are… doing better than expected. Although, I must say, those skeletons certainly are powerful for such low-rank monsters.”

“Yes. We have the advantage of defending from inside the castle, so we only have to be careful with those Doom Knights.”

“The Immortal Legion has about a million troops. Their numbers will increase by a few tens of thousands when those Doom Knights that have scattered to find more corpses return, but I think we will still be able to defeat them.”

The top rankers and other authority figures of the Hermes Guild had gathered in the central tower, with Myul being one of them.

“I’m a bit concerned about those Bone Dragons rampaging through the field…”

“Right now, any attacks against them are not much more than a waste of our strength. If we cannot take them down in one go, it’s better to just leave them be and concentrate on the low-rank undead. This fight will be over as soon as we get rid of Bar Khan, anyway.”

As their victory seemed more and more certain as the battle went on, the expressions on the faces of the Hermes Guild users became less stiff as well. At first they had been worried about the possibility of the Immortal Legion devastating the whole continent, but now that they had actually faced the undead army they were doing a good job of driving it off. It was of course a tricky fight, as the undead could revive over and over again unless their bodies were completely destroyed. Even when they suffered a considerable loss of life force, with the power of Bar Khan they came back to their full strength in but a second.

The members of the Hermes Guild, the most skillful users of the continent, had joined their strengths to fight against the terrible power of the undead horde, consisting of the dreaded Doom Knights as well as large elite monsters like the Bone Dragons. They annihilated the skeletons crawling up the ramparts and blocked the bone arrows flying from a distance by using protection skills or deflecting them with their swords. The Doom Knights were difficult enemies to deal with, but the users coordinated their attacks to dispose of them one by one whenever there was a chance.

And at the very moment they started to believe that they were proving the strength of the Hermes Guild, as befitted the guild that conquered the Central Continent, about a thousand users who had been standing on the ramparts got almost all of their life force drained at once by Bar Khan’s curse.

They were not instantly killed thanks to their magic resistance, but their lives would be in peril if they continued to fight any longer.

“The power of that curse… He is indeed a legendary monster.”

“Nobody died, though. It seems that skill cannot kill the victim outright, although it is capable of dropping the life force almost down to the bottom.”

“That would be because we have utilized every available piece of equipment that can block curses or Black Magic. Those users would have died if we had underestimated our enemy.”

The Hermes Guild had spent approximately 15 percent of the total wealth they had accumulated in preparation for this battle: they had been collecting an enormous amount of items that could resist Black Magic or curse spells from every possible source, including auction halls, stores and individual users.

‘We can win this. At this rate, we will defeat them.’

‘Even the Immortal Army will fall by our hands.’

The eyes of the Hermes Guild users were ablaze with fighting spirit. They were on guard, waiting for the moment when the formation of the Immortal Army would lift their continued siege and the core units of the guild would penetrate through their ranks to deal with Bar Khan directly.

However, one must not underestimate their enemy until the very last moment when facing a monster as powerful as Bar Khan.

“This land is under the dominance of my commandments of darkness. The eternal power of immortality shall reign over all beings. Dark Rule!”

Bar Khan cast one of his three major spells: a spell of Necromancy that automatically raises every corpse in the region as undead!

The users who had been fighting on the central defense tower, on the ramparts or near the castle gates saw his spell manifest itself.

“There will be no effect, though.”

“We’ve made every preparation for that spell. At this rate, all of the other major spells are as good as sealed.”

There had not been many users who had fallen in battle, while more than 20 percent of the skeleton soldiers had been put out of existence and the Doom Knights had also considerably decreased in number. The users were certainly wary of Dark Rule, which was the highest rank spell of undead summoning, but they predicted that it would not have much effect as they had led the battle to their favor so far.

However, after Dark Rule was cast, the ground around the Valkis Castle’s plaza and castle gates began to shake, as if there was an earthquake.

“Wha, what the…?”

The maximum number of users that could fight on the ramparts and at the gates was 65,000. The rest of the users had been standing by as the reserve force, when they saw hands made of bones erupt from the vacant ground.

“Krrargh.”

“Kwaaaarrrrgggghh!!”

Ancient skeletons with worn-out joints, zombies and ghouls crawled out from the earth and rose up, the last few strands of hair falling off from their skulls. The phenomenon was occurring throughout the entire Valkis Castle, whether it was the marketplace, the town square, or the lord’s estate. Bar Khan’s undead summoning spell was raising the bodies of every single person who had died in Valkis Castle since a long time ago.

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