50 An Offer in a Snowy Mountain (2/2)
”You have ten seconds to make your demands, ants, before I'll crush you all.” This time, even them could see threads of mana assembling themselves in the hand of the lich, ready to unleash a terrible spell on them. Sweating a lot, the poor human tried to negotiate hope for themselves.
”If we manage to beat you, can we escape unscat …”
HEHEHE KEKEKE KAKAKAKAKA
The lich began to laugh maniacally at the pitiful sentence of the living being. Normally, those inferior creatures just naturally submitted to them and it had been a long time that he really fought. Most of the time, he just supplied mana to the Empress of the Underworld or her Envoy while they invaded planets. So, for the lich to finally have the chance to have some fun with humans, it will definitely not let that chance go away. As for the fact that it could lose, that thought never crossed its mind.
”Nothing, you demand nothing of me, pitiful humans. This world will be ours and ours alone. What my master offered was just a place in it but you refused it. Now, you will have to pay for that. Behold, what millenniums of war produced.”
Without even waiting for the lich to end his threat, both the leader and the half-elf launched their bombs at the undead, quickly followed by four additional bolts. However, this time, instead of magically enhanced iron bolts, they were made of mithril, a metal too rare to be wasted. Those bolts were even more costly than the magical bombs because they had to pay a huge price to convince some dwarves to sell it. But no one thought that it was wasteful to use those bolts right now.
A small tornado of fire englobed the frail undead and a huge explosion resonated nearby. Even from where they stood, the humans could feel the intense heat provoked by the two mighty spells. The snow around them at turned into vapor but that only created a smokescreen, not allowing anyone to see what was the result.
Nodding at the four warriors in front, six humans reached the location where the bombs exploded but met an unexpected obstacle. The same mana shield that was surrounding the silent demon stopped the living beings to get any closer. And to make them even more hopeless, they realized that the lich was completely unscathed by what happened. In fact, it was not exactly true.
A deep hole was visible in the right shoulder of the lich and the three other bolts were broken at its feet. The undead will never admit it, even in front of Malakov, but the bolts were absolutely capable of killing it, something that it didn't expect. Because of this small moment of carelessness, it ended up injured and had to quickly conjure a shield. If that shot was lucky enough to pierce its heart, the fight could have been finished in a second. Based on the components and the enchantments of the previous bolts, they shouldn't even be able to harm it but the recent projectiles were far more deadly than he expected.
But now, those humans won't have any chance of ever harming the undead. Because it had those orders, he could only harm the souls of those inferior beings and not torture them as it wished. Feeling that it had already lost too much time, he quickly ensnared everyone in dark chains, not letting anyone even move a finger. This time, no hidden tricks or surprise devices happened that foiled its plans. Turning to face Ymir, the lich bowed and let him took its place.
The Akûl finally could end the masquerade. This entire ploy was done solely in case of one of the humans decided to betray their organization. Contrarily to what they were thinking, Ymir and the lich would have truly let anyone that talked go, albeit with something more in their body. But they wouldn't have been able to detect it and that would have allowed Davion and Meridiana to contact the underground leaders. But that plan was a failure, once again.
After listening to the reports of those two, the Akûl realized that it was visibly harder to conquer a planet without using sheer strength. Normally, he would have just arrived on a world, killed the two or three strongest being and pacified it in a few weeks if it was as archaic as this one. But because something was definitely fishy around here, they had to lay low for a while, until they knew whether or not something from the Ancients was still alive or even active.
Just keeping the leader and the half-elf alive, the demon began to devour the rest of the humans under the terrified eyes of the two survivors and also, the trolls that were spying the battle from afar. Feeling his hunger finally satisfied, Ymir grabbed the two in two of his arms and left the lich behind in the snow as he performed gigantic jumps and came back to Malakov and the rest. As for the equipment still laying on the ground, it was until a day later that the trolls gathered their courage and took them before turtling inside their camp, not daring to leave for a while.