24 Slaughter Fes (1/2)

Soon, the rest of the team's member start to join the battle.

Melissa and Rionne chant their magic while being closely protected by both Steven and Alfred.

Sasha and Zohar are defending both sides of the team's flanks, respectively. At the same time, Dina and Luccio supporting them from behind using their long-range weapons to shoot at the Zombies that is getting too close to those two.

The horses are also following too, all of them is being supervised by Aurel, whose races could establish some kind of spiritual cordial relation with some animals.

While the team's rear position is secured thanks to Arno, who is guarding it flawlessly.

They currently try to regroup with Victor and Ryson, both of them already at far ahead. They proceed in a quick fashion as they don't want to get immediately surrounded by the swarm of Zombies which numbers are still in the thousands.

Meanwhile, Victor and Ryson still in the middle of their own fight. The Zombies didn't stand a chance against the combined strength of a Level 2 - Saint and a Level 6 - Grandmaster experts. Ryson had killed many Zombies with his powerful swing and martial skill, while Victor, who was not holding back his strength even for a bit, dealt massive damage to the enemies.

Every time he slams his Warhammer to the ground, dozens of Zombies were immediately turned into a paste. Also, something unexpected happens because of him.

Arno could see it, even from far distance. Victor's powerful aura that constantly radiating from his body is causing a minor interruption to the energia's link between the Zombies and the one who's controlling them, the sealed creature.

The sealed creature's energia is extremely strange, Arno had never seen anything like that before. It was heavily modified and mixed with an unknown form of matter, making it really violent, volatile, and somehow hideous.

He didn't know what it was, but this unknown matter feels rather suspicious. Arno decides to keep a mental note about it.

The creature utilizes it's hideous energia which further amplified by an unidentified technique to powering and controlling the Zombies. But because the creature's insufficient strength and distance limitation, the link is extremely fragile.

Even though it was not strong enough to cut it off completely, Victor's aura able to reduce the amount of control that the sealed creature had on the Zombies. The Zombies movement becomes slower and heavy, their strength is also decreased for a little bit, some of them even stopped their activity completely and just standing still, frozen. All of those effects definitely gave the team a huge advantage.

Victor probably already realized something weird happen to the Zombies by now, but he may not knows what's causing them to be acting like that as he cannot see or sense the energia's link. He was not sensitive enough to found the link.

Actually, besides Arno, Aurel could also felt the link too. As it has mentioned many times before, Aurel is a white elf. She was really sensitive to any kind of mana or energia movements. But she could only sense it vaguely.

Bzzzt!!!

.

Bzzzt!!!

Suddenly, a huge violet thunder grazed across the skies while being accompanied by loud sound.

Duar!!!

Then, the thunder fell and strikes at the Zombies near Victor's position, obliterating outstanding amount of them at once.

That thunder magic was cast by Melissa. She's a thunder/lightning - magician, just like her teacher, the Jetsun Academy's principal, Roger Greyson. Hence, most of her offensive magic has thunder or lightning attribute.

Every living being's mana/energia pattern is unique and different from one another, including their natural affinity with the element.

Elemental attributes are one of the universe laws, and they are extremely important to both mages and warriors. Both mages and warriors need to pick and learned the correct cultivation technique that also has the same elemental attribute as them.

According to the people of Greysia's common knowledge, warriors could learn a cultivation technique that has different attributes as they didn't really need to interact often with the elements, but the future of their cultivation path will be extremely hard and difficult. While mages absolutely couldn't do that, because their future will be completely blocked. Moreover, the basic design of all magic spell that existed in this realm revolved around the usage of elemental attributes. Hence, they need to interact more with the elements, especially the one they had an affinity with.

Most people only had an affinity with one element, but there exist some people who had an affinity with several elements. Arno himself is one of them.

He has an affinity with three elements: Dark, Thunder, and Fire.

That is why, most of his martial technique and skill revolved around those 3 elements, even all of his once-famous sealing skills had something to do with the dark element.

During ancient time, people who had more than one elemental's affinity was highly sought after by many powers and factions to be nurtured as a future strong expert. The reason is that they were extremely versatile in comprehending the universe law, thus, making them able to raise their cultivation ranks more quickly than people who only had an affinity with one element.

But of course, it was not always necessarily like that. After all, the success of cultivation journey still depends on many other important factors, such as; luck, willpower, talents, tenacity and so on.

Currently, there is a lack of people with several elemental's affinities. Arno had found about it when he scanned the realm just after he wakes up.

The team is a primary example of that. They were made up by the people who have only one element, even though basically all of them are individuals with great talents. Putting aside the other members, even the likes of Melissa, Rionne, Victor and Ryson, each of them only had one element's affinity.

Arno does not know the actual reason, but if he tries to guess, it might have something to do with the decrease of energia density all over the world.

That means it was Arno's fault, partially.

--------

Back into the battle.

Arno scanned the whole situation with great interest.

The team already regroup with Victor and Ryson, and now, continuing their breakthrough towards the palace. Along the way, the team members fought the Zombies onslaught with an extreme measure, as they're avoiding to over-extent themselves. Unlike the living being, the Zombies which classified as an undead creature has unlimited stamina, something that is impossible for the members to have. Also, they had no fear at all. Thus, they will not hesitate even against powerful opponents.

That is why, even after the team's overall kill counts had reached staggering numbers, the Zombies didn't care about it and keep attacking them, constantly.

”HAH!!!”

Alfred shouted as he uses his shield to bash a Zombie that has got closer to both Melissa and Rionne's position, and once the Zombie fell to the ground, he quickly cut off its head.

Aurel, who's supervising and protecting the team's horses just behind Melissa and Rionne, was flustered because that particular lone Zombie came from the team's right flank that should have been protected by Zohar.

”Zohar!!! Could you defend the flank like, properly? You just let a Zombie passed through your side!” she complained with a loud voice so that Zohar could hear it.

”Goddammit, elf! I'm doing it well, okay! It's just that... These nasty shits keep coming in... Ugh” Zohar is in the middle of a fight against several Zombies at the same time when he heard Aurel's complain and then he angrily replied back.

On his mind, he believed that Melissa and Rionne are strong enough to defeat a lone Zombie. Besides, there are Steven and Alfred nearby protecting them too. So he thought Aurel was just exaggerating.

But after being reprimanded, he decides to not get complacent, in fact, he is now exuding his entire strength and raise his performance on guarding his side of the flank. He clad his short-bulky body with green fighting aura and keep smashing the Zombies in front of him with his Warhammer.

”Don't you worry, dwarf. You've got this lady's help, after all.” Dina assured him with some jokes mixed in her words.

She was tasked to support him defending the right flank since the start of the battle. She attacks the Zombies with her small crossbow and sometimes, move into a position close enough to allow her using the short sword on them instead. Her hit and run tactic provides great help to Zohar.

”Eihhh... Why did I have to be paired with another elf...” Zohar sighed heavily.

On the other hand, the situation on the left flank was completely the opposite of the right as Sasha and Luccio did an outstanding job on defending the left. The pair are surprisingly able to complement and communicating well with each other during the battle.

Not a single Zombies able to stand against the combination of Sasha's spear prowess and Luccio's arrow.

Sasha's combat movements are extremely elegant and graceful, really different compared to her rude and rather rough normal manners. And she's actually followed the advice that Arno had given her at the academy a few days ago. Instead of radiating her aura all over the place, she's now focusing it on a single point in her spear's head which also aligned with her attack direction. It proved to be really effective. She's able to penetrate several Zombies that are lined up together vertically, with one spear thrust.