360 Mindys days at the Dragon Empire (2/2)

But yeah. There were a lot more stuff she saw, liked, and bought. This included airship parts and designs, souvenirs for her friends back home, specialized bird feed for Chirpy [1], and a wall-sized poster of hand-painted scenery.

Since then, Mindy had spent as much time in the Capital as she did in the Undead World. While Darian spent most of his days fighting zombies and collecting mana crystals, Mindy only had three trips with him and Ling Yun so far and had come away with fifteen purple mana crystals and dozens of lesser crystals in the process.

Until now, however, she had yet to find a single red mana crystal. Where the purple ones amounted to roughly 10,000 mana, the red ones were worth 100,000. Just one of those would be worth ten of her purple crystals. According to Ling Yun, you couldn't get them from the Lich group leaders commonly found around the base camp site. If you wanted red crystals, you had to fight Death Knights.

Mindy had never seen a Death Knight, but Ling Yun shuddered when he spoke of them. Basically, they were armored skeletons on skeletal horses, yet despite their similarities, their strength could be multiple times greater than a typical skeletal warrior. Ling Yun dared fight skeletons one-on-one, and he had a decent chance of holding off a Lich at least for a bit. But a Death Knight? All he could do, all he dared do, was run and pray he might luckily survive.

This, of course, only roused Darian's interest to challenge one even more. Still, he retained enough wisdom to do it cautiously. That was why he only ventured farther out from the base camp when both Mindy and Ling Yun were there to back him up. On top of that, he'd started looking into feasible traps they might employ in the Undead World.

So far, they still hadn't met any. All they found were more bands of lich-led skeletons and zombies. Mindy was actually quite happy to keep it that way and accumulate lower level crystals efficiently.

***

Unfortunately, her peaceful days of easy harvest came to a sudden, abrupt end.

The morning after her tea with Rou'khan-dras, Mindy went to meet Darian and Ling Yun at the portal only to encounter an incoming band of Draconian warriors…

They had been badly mauled. Every one of them was wounded, many trying to stop bleeding, several sported what looked like acid burns. Half of them had to be helped along by their fellows, and in four cases, carried in on makeshift stretchers.

Those stretchers couldn't survive the decontamination fires. Emergency crews rushing in to help had to bring in new stretchers before they could haul them to medical care.

”What happened?” Mindy asked Darian and Ling Yun, who were watching grimly from the queue.

Su Jing was there. ”There was a Lich… but this one…” she shook her her numbly.

”A Lich? A Lich did all this?!” Ling Yun could only gape.

”This one was different! We thought it was the same, but… but…” Su Jing shut her eyes. ”The group it led was bigger. There were creatures in it we've never seen before. There was a ghost-woman who screamed… and it tears your very soul…”

”Two Death Knights.” Captain Yang Feng was there too. ”It had two Death Knights at its command. We thought it was just following one of them, but it turned out to be the other way around. That thing wasn't any ordinary Lich. That was something else entirely.”

They had banded together thinking to fight for two red mana crystals. With their combined strength, they should be able to hold off two Death Knights first and clean out the lesser Undead before ganging up and finishing them off. As for any old Lich, well, any of their squad lieutenants could handle one of those on their own.

But it turned out, that 'old Lich' was something older, stronger, and much more powerful than anybody could have anticipated.

”General!” shouts were heard and people instantly snapped to attention all over the Portal Hall.

Like a storm, in strode a tall man in dark steel plate armor. He had an imposing and grim presence that bore down on everyone nearby like a weight. He took off his helmet, revealing a scarred face, ice-cold eyes and short gray hair.

This was Gar'na-dras, General of the First Draconian Legion, commander of the Crown Prince's Honor Guard, the Crown Century. Supposedly, he was the strongest Draconian in the Empire, a man whose strength was estimated to be at the peak of the middle Earth Qi stage.

Middle Earth Qi! Ling Yun could only stare in awe, stars in his eyes. Even Mindy had to admit she was somewhat impressed. Darian though, simply took it in stride.

In Wildlands terms, a Middle Earth Qi martial expert would be a match for any of the Kings of the Wilds. But Darian had a bond with the Wood Emperor, the Great Dragon Kor'ag-dras! At his peak, he had fought and even killed a Tier-8, Emperor-class Spectre! Now that Kor'ag had gone into deep sleep, his power had waned, but even so, he wasn't so easily impressed by the power of Gar'na-dras.

”Withdraw all our forces.” Gar'na-dras ordered. ”Seal the Portal. On my command, nobody is to go through to the other side until after this threat is eliminated. Assemble the Crown Century and have the Second Century take over their escort duties for the day.

”I am going to deal with this myself.”