The First Lich Lord

Chapter 194

I fell back until I found a small alley going between two buildings, the specter knight hot on my heels with the reapers flooding through the buildings alongside of us. Flesh golems squeezed into the narrow path behind them.

Raven flicked out of a shadow and cut down a cleric who had just stepped into the alley before us. The chaotic nature of the inner part of the compound gave her the perfect arena to make use of her strengths.

It didn’t take long for us to find a path leading back towards the altar. A large number of acolytes were waiting for me, having made sure this passage was protected. Explosions of eldritch magic from the juggernauts tore up the ground in front of us just before we poured out. They’d kept track of my movements to give me the opening I needed. The four massive figures landed with earthshaking force in the fading magic.

Out into the broken bodies and still crackling eldritch magic we charged. Small amounts of eldritch power tore at the specter knight, but it was strong enough to resist. The reapers were not even affected. We turned back towards the center. The reapers, unhindered by physical structures, tore through the field flanking the divine elementals, clerics, acolytes, and other clergy members holding the main path. The flesh horrors poured out one by one and began to wreak their own havoc.

A volley of eldritch blasts hammered into the temple and the front wave of the black-and-white creatures. Infuriatingly, they resisted any attempt on my behalf to scan them. These were clearly quite a bit more powerful. The barrage of eldritch cannons would’ve torn rags through the versions we’d faced before. Only ten of them went down.

I charged towards the stairs. The spectral force following me tearing apart the acolytes. The burning eldritch wounds they left behind were impressive. We reached the bottom of the stairs, and I ordered the flesh horrors to attack the divine elementals. Once the second tier death energy ran out for the Dread Thirteen, they would be done. One point left me ragged, I could only imagine what those two extra points would do.

Friar Brown charged up another set of stairs, and I had no doubt he’d faced his own divine elementals, but his fiery cart had no doubt plowed straight through them. Already he was engaging the terrible black-and-white creatures.

Raven appeared, her sickles glinting as she channeled dark magic into them. Unlike only having two wings like the creatures we faced before, these ones had four, two going up, and two going down. The bodies were also stronger looking, with well-defined muscles across their lanky forms.

The reapers reached them first. The claws of the creatures left slashes of either white or black magic. The attacks left the etheric forms of the reapers damaged. I’d hoped they wouldn’t be affected, but it wasn’t to be. At least their eldritch scythes were surprisingly effective.

These were magical creatures, of course, so even if their magic wasn’t of this universe, the eldritch power would still destabilize it. I paused my charge, reforming Mercy, splitting it in half and forming two shorter eldritch plasma blades. I even laced death energy into the spell blade.

A new song started from Maxwell, “Back in Black” from AC/DC played out across the entire compound. He’d gotten himself set up on top of a building at the foot of the altar. The spell amplified my strength and speed. My entire army surged forward.

The divine elementals were beginning to fall. Othniel was already collapsed to the ground, having expended the second tier death energy far quicker. The spell we had cast had done its job though. Not only had it decimated the defenses of the divine elementals, all of their supporting defenders had either fled or been killed.

Players took to another staircase.

The spectral knight had taken a beating, his attacks less effective against the creatures, but he had held them back. Now I took his place, giving a mental command for him to focus on cycling wounded reapers back.

As I reached the creatures, Raven darted forward diving into shadows. She targeted only the light side of the creatures since her dark weapons would do little against the dark side. My eldritch plasma blades ripped apart limbs and bodies, black-and-white alike.

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My precognition kept me ahead, and the few attacks I took were ineffective. I avoided all of the white claw strikes, and didn’t bother avoiding the black ones. The defenses of my armor turned those attacks aside with contemptible ease.

Suddenly, two more people joined me, Rhea and Tyler.

“I had no idea he could sing like that,” Tyler said as he slammed a creature so hard it flew back and knocked over two more. “Does that guide not have a limit to his vocal range?”

It took me only a moment to get over the surprise of them being there. Rhea’s restoration spell, which was very familiar, repaired damage done to both me and my reapers. “I think it has to do with his bardic harmonic magic bullshit,” I said, continuing to push forward.

We charged up the stairs as fast as we could, coming onto a leveled section. All three of the staircases merged at a large open area. At the end of it was a second set of staircases. Three stairs initially together into a single larger one going all the way to the top of the altar.

The plateau was covered in the creatures. There was even some of the pure black-and-white ones that were their leaders. Explosions were already ringing out from both sides when we arrived, both the players and the friar had already made their way to the plateau. Behind me, my army was rushing up, the flesh golems leading the way. The juggernauts and giants climbed the side of the ziggurat instead of using the stairs. All of the Dread Thirteen were collapsed.

They had been pulled aside and the grave guard and bone guard wielding pikes had formed a spiky defensive perimeter around them. I wish I could help them, but my task was here.

Though we were the last to arrive, when the reapers were able to spread out their effect was the largest. They cut through the black-and-white creatures, ripping them apart with eldritch scythes. The specter knight, restored by Rhea, commanded and organized the reapers.

Raven went after the pure white commander types. Her sickles shredding them with ease as they clumsily tried to catch the werecat.

I began casting a spell, half of my first tier death energy went into it along with two points of second tier death energy. The spell spread out across the entire plateau and lower ziggurat. Activating it, necrotic energy swept across the battlefield.

Every fallen creature stirred and were up and moving under my control. It hadn’t been a quick spell to cast, and in that time the juggernauts and giants had torn into the ranks as the grave guard flooded up the stairs. Flights of arrows fell down among the ranks of the creatures. The archers in my army had stayed on a lower section of the ziggurat, their attacks coordinated by a spotter up on the plateau. I examined one of the zombies I had just created.

Tainted Twin Elemental Zombie

Level: 101

Created from a creature not native to this universe, this zombie will be very short-lived. In that short life it will expend all of the death energy and magic that has been pumped into it in a futile attempt to preserve its dwindling existence. The power of the former body was great enough that even in its zombified form its wrongness persists. This will not be tolerated in this universe, now that its power is no longer under the control of its soul, action will be taken by the powers that govern all.

This zombie had the twin elemental effects of dark and light in life, and it has retained those abilities in death.

That made me pause. I hadn’t expected to get more details. I had also not expected that kind of detail. The powers that govern had to be Altor, so he was letting me use their bodies for now. I wondered what happened to the corpses of the other creatures, obviously I hadn’t hung around long enough to see.

Maxwell had changed to another AC/DC song, “Thunderstruck,” and he was now making his way up the temple on the back of Snappy. The platform on the back of Snappy had been expanded by bone platforms, and I was impressed that it was stable. Tellkin walked in front of Snappy, his limp preventing him from joining the fight. The warrior was smart enough to know that protecting Maxwell was the best use of his current capacity.

A massive burst of energy drew my attention to the top of the altar of purity. A black-and-white figure stood there and was growing in size. It had six wings and one side emitted waves of white divine power and the other black divine. That had to be another elemental. Olattee was trying to defend his temple, defend whatever his prophet was doing at the top.

The form grew, and when it was the size of one of the giants, it moved. Both of his hands flashed out so fast I could not track them. What I could track were the waves of white and black energy that bore down. My giants had been targeted, which made sense, their physical strength was decimating the creatures on the plateau.

The juggernauts were smart enough to react, partially dodging or blocking with their weapons. The ten remaining zombie giants were not. One moment, they were standing there, the next they were falling sliced chunks. Beams of white and black power fired from the creature at the forces all over the plateau. The barrier flickered and died over where the friar was as he tried to block the attack.

When I tried to scan the creature, all I got was a prompt with basically no information. But the one tidbit it did have made me panic. I thought Olattee would be too distracted with what ever they were trying to accomplish.

Olattee’s Avatar

Level: ???