Chapter 147 (1): Nine-Headed Hydra x Descent of the Death Knight
Wayne stood on the high wall to look at the obelisk in the distance. He had planned to observe from a vantage point to confirm that the Church of Death was capable of transporting the stone tablet before making his move, but unexpectedly, the enemies had set up a surveillance camera in the form of a giant skull, making it impossible to hide.
Since it was impossible to hide, it was better not to try. He would just walk up to them.
Under the wall, Oscar arrived first with his subordinates and an army of skeletons. Architecture built for giants was inconvenient for regular people. Looking up at the towering stone wall, Oscar gestured at the skeleton soldiers to climb up first.
He had seen the soul-devouring crows and assumed that the two enemies were already half dead. He would follow Bishop’s order and take them back alive. Then, Bishop would skin them and peel their flesh off them, turning them into skeleton soldiers in the cruelest way possible.
Fifty skeleton soldiers had climbed onto the wall, but after a sudden gust of wind, something fell. Oscar looked up, seeing only a flash of an afterimage before a shadow plunged to the ground.
Boom!
The ground cracked, splattering shards of rock and soil like bullets. They hit a few members of the Church of Death and left their faces covered in blood.
Standing in the crater of his making, Wayne had converted into an undead, with greyness spreading in his eyes. Through Death’s serenity, his mind cleared pleasantly.
Superhero landing!
The dramatic entrance into the scene shocked Oscar and the others into inaction. They forgot about the wounds on their faces, gaping as Wayne emerged from the crater. When Oscar recovered, he ordered the skeleton soldiers to attack. They jumped off the wall, their lifeless eyes confused.
Wayne had concealed his energy, and since his mana was discreet in nature, Oscar and the others couldn’t tell that he was ‘dead’. Meanwhile, the skeletons saw him as their own kind. With their literally empty heads, they couldn’t carry out the complicated order of attacking a living target who wasn’t actually alive, so they stayed put and awaited another order.
“Take me to your boss. Tell him that the Death Knight’s seeking him out,” Wayne commanded coldly with derision.
“Nonsense!” Oscar huffed out a furious laugh. Since the skeleton soldiers wouldn’t help, he ordered his subordinates to attack. Their target was alone and had been cursed earlier. They would capture him alive!
The dozen more mages disguising themselves as miners were all at the hexagram stage, yet to comprehend sophisticated faith magic and unable to even summon the divine power of Death’s avatars. They hurled elemental magic at Wayne.
The ruined city of giants was rich in elements, but the four elements permeating the air could only be accessed by Silver-rank mages. The mages unleashed a variety of spells with nothing but the elements they had collected through meditation.
A blurry, dark figure flashed through the wall of flames, reaching one of the mages. The moment the figure brushed past him, the mage flew backward like he had been hit by a train. Blood gushed out of his nose and mouth. When he hit the ground, he was already a body exhaling its last breath.
Wayne’s form flickered, moving with an incredible speed that made it impossible for regular people to react to. He hadn’t transformed into the Death Knight to prove his identity, planning to first wipe out the nobodies until the Gold-rank mage became a lone general.
He didn’t consider the Death followers his people just because he was the Death Knight. It had nothing to do with their faction or the divide between good and evil. He had a flexible moral code and had no clearly defined values; he was in no place to call someone a villain.
At the end of the day, the account book of Mayor Wales was simply too bloody. If he tolerated that... he feared that he would become someone like him!
“Return to the embrace of Death...”
The frosty voice echoed in the clearing. Oscar watched the subordinates he had put effort into training drop dead one after another while the skeleton soldiers stood by. Eyes wide with fury, he manipulated the fire elements in the environment and shaped them into a fire serpent with his thoughts.
There was such a great volume of the four elements in the ruins that he could easily summon a large quantity. The resulting serpent spanned over a hundred meters, radiating an incredible heat. When it opened its maw, rolling waves of flames could be seen inside its body like molten lava, posing a great threat.
Oscar didn’t immediately attack. Seeing him, his surviving subordinates scrambled to take cover behind him.
Wayne looked at the great serpent as it lowered its head and breathed out fire from its large maw. “Not bad. At least you did pretty well shaping it. Makes my inner artist itch to do the same.”
He swung his arm, and fire elements flooded towards him like they would rather break than lag behind in this race. A long tail of crimson fire emerged, covered in lifelike arrays of fine scales. The giant python slithered along the ground with swirling mist, raising its head high as its golden eyes gleamed with murderous intent.
That wasn’t the only head, but one of the eight.
The eight-headed hydra Wayne had conjured dwarfed the fire serpent. It was like a moving volcano with a winding body, emitting a suffocating heat.
The two snakes confronted each other, heating the air. Oscar’s eyes went wide with disbelief. How did his opponent summon such a massive snake? Was it a new formula?
The serpent of fire elements didn’t know fear and wouldn’t suffer from low self-esteem just because it was smaller, but when the eight-headed hydra opened its eight mouths, the large serpent that Oscar had conjured crumbled immediately, the waves of flames becoming part of the hydra and creating another head.
A nine-headed hydra!
Oscar was stunned. In his whole life, he had never seen magic betray its user.
“Kekeke—”
Wayne cackled brightly, pressing his five fingers down to command the hydra to give the man a passionate greeting. The nine heads lifted high. The hydra’s scorching red light spread through the dark sky like nine pillars of fire piercing through the ground. The rolling sea of flames blazed with such incredible heat that even the air was ignited.
***
“What happened?”
At the obelisk, Sebastian saw the blazing nine-headed hydra through the surveilling skull in the air. The unstoppable fire elements ravaged the land like they had lost control. Even he wouldn’t be able to use such powerful magic despite the abundance of elements in the ruins, much less Oscar. It had to be their enemy’s doing!
Sebastian’s expression darkened. He hated losing control. Although he had debuffed his enemy, something unexpected still happened. It made him uneasy.
“Knights, cut off the target’s head and bring it to me.”
At his command, the three skeleton riders straightened their backs and rode their skeleton horses westward, leading all the remaining skeleton soldiers.
“Perhaps I’m overthinking.”
The ominous feeling haunting Sebastian only grew stronger. He turned to Mana. “Follow them and see what’s happening. Do what you think is best. You’re allowed to use the divine power of the Executor.”
“Understood.”
Dressed in miners’ clothes, Mana was so thin that he looked like a skeleton wearing human skin. He vanished into the darkness with a few quick steps.
“Hurry. Set up all the magic circles in two minutes.”
Although Sebastian had a feeling that something was going wrong, his priority was to extract the stone tablet sealed in the obelisk. It would take a great amount of the four elements. Even gathering all the elements stored in the ruined city of giants with magic circles would be far from enough.
It wasn’t a problem, though. He had prepared everything beforehand.
He took four rings out of his shirt, each for earth, fire, water, and wind, provided by the Death Knight in the underground catacombs in Palis. The elements had been collected throughout the years, enough to fill Palis thrice over in an instant.
“More than enough!”
Sebastian’s eyes glinted with greed. The Death Knight said nothing about taking the ring back after the mission. That meant that the remaining four elements would be his rewards after the seal was lifted.
Under his shouted commands, the mages set up magic circles as quickly as possible before placing the rings to inject the great volume of earth, fire, water, and wind elements. They climbed up the energy channels covering the four sides of the obelisk and rushed toward the tip of the tower.