Chapter 143: So You Thought You’re Free?
As the leader of the revolutionary army of the Dark Elves broke down in lamentation to the accursed fate of her beloved land, the father and daughter duo of Arachne and Loki landed in the throne room of the King of Devils, Arachne slumped to her spider half, feeling relieved that she had escaped a graze of certain death, Loki on the other hand became static, black ooze-like object seeped from his feet to engulf his body into a cocoon.
Arachne ignored such a thing happening to her father for the moment such metamorphosis started, she heard a voice ring out on her head.
[Notice: The requirements for the release of the system restriction to individual [Arachne Darkbringer] has been met through returning in Valentine, unique skill [Continental Omnipresence] re-acquired.]
Arachne smirked as she heard those words, finally, she is once again one of the most potent fighting forces of her father after the system itself sealed all of her powers in the pretext of balancing the world, which is absolute bullshit because of the existence of Urduja alone, and will be useful to him in his future war against Sophia, or at least, that is what she wanted for the moment she received her powers back, she felt an intense itch on her tongue and her body stiffened up for a split second, strangely enough, her father seems not to notice such change.
Another system notification emerged.
[Notice: The requirement for the self-activated enslavement spell has been met by the individual [Arachne Darkbringer] unlocking the unique skill [Continental Omnipresence], from now on, she is not allowed to talk to anyone about the enslavement, she is not allowed to talk about everything she knew about Kamatayan's military and she is not permitted to spy against Kamatayan during her stay in Valentine. She will receive a single order when her queen Sophia Demiurge deems the time right.]
[Failure to comply with the conditions will be punishable by death, the spell is sensitive and any clue given to anyone about the spell will be regarded as a breach of contract.]
Arachne gritted her teeth, she was about to open her mouth in indignation at her peril and was about to shout her current situation, however as if on cue her heart suddenly contracted and expanded a few pumps stronger, it then halted as if a palm is gripping it tightly, all of Arachne's movements stopped at that moment, she looked at one of her legs and there she saw the feet of the person she curses the most, smiling at her.
Sophia, or her illusory projection has one of her hands passing through her back and directly gripping her heart.
"I said shut your mouth, okay?"
After saying that the Sophia beside Arachne disappeared as if it did not even exist.
_God damnit Sophia!_
Such is the curse she can say only in her mind as the fear of death once again gripped her soul, she thought that she had already escaped the shameful fate of being someone who needed sperm to give birth to spiders who could protect her, yet somehow she was once again in the mercy of other people, and what's worse is that she is bound to betray her land!
Arachne looked at her father who is currently in a dark cocoon, her teeth were still on a grit as if wanting to rebel against her helpless situation.
_Father must have some way to dispel this curse, however, the problem is that the enslavement spell is seen as not a magic circle but an itch, how did Sophia even do that? I don't know, but Father surely does... something that Sophia is aware of, that's why she made it as her first absolute order on her enslavement spell is a one-sided non-disclosure agreement between her and me..._
Loki finally breaks out of his cocoon, yet Arachne is not happy at all.
Unconsciously, she has started to regret being a double spy against a person who can match the strategic genius of her father, Loki Darkbringer.
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[Guide] doesn't know nor care about the peril his queen has caused to Arachne, he immediately took the reigns of the commanding duties and asks several undeads to link up with him to provide him visuals of the fight, Luna, who is beside him, weeping is gracefully ignored as if she doesn't exist as [Guide]watched blood, heads, and limbs fly around in all direction of the war front.
To say that the living are not surprised would be an understatement, after all, all people have preconceptions of undeads, that they are reckless fighters who are not afraid of death because of their nigh immortality, and even though they were ordered not to think so as such, they cannot help it, they are just mortals after all, that's why when they saw the undeads retreat, regroup and pursue during the battle all of the living people were momentarily flabbergasted, causing them to be culled easily by such a basic attack.
They shouted and shouted to regroup and consolidate their forces, yet for a while, they were not able to do so and the only saving grace was that they were being covered by their generals, controlling the battlefield, if not, then what could have happened? They don't want to think about it.
But the most tragic part of the first confrontation is that the generals of the living cannot order their people to dwindle the marksmen who are on the left and right of the melee group because they will be confronted by a unit of dark elves each side that are extremely specialized in kiting the units sent to tank the shots of the marksmen and destroy their formation.
The first two units sent to destroy the trench formation were chased away and annihilated back to their lines, what is more, frustrating to the living army is that the reload time of all the marksmen was only a fraction of a second, it was a strange thing to behold, especially so when it was reported by one of the survivors of the unit that got dismantled by the marksmen and the dark elves that they just have to breath into a weird shaped propeller and then the glass in the middle of their weird shaped bow will be glowing, such an act is already good for five round and half a kilometer of range.
All of this arrangement was made for the sake of victory, leveraging the fact that the undeads cannot die by making all the soldiers capable of being able to fend off 1:3 or even 1:4 of their soldiers, if the generals of the two armies did not have the orders from their both sides to control the battlefield, causing them to fly around and kill random people and instead just went on 1v1 against each other, then the living would have been pushed back already.
However, despite this perilous situation of the living, [Guide] was still perplexed as he watched the battle go on.
_They are at a disadvantage, their strongest is in the back, and one is fighting a tooth-and-nail fight while the other is not appearing as of yet, so why are they not losing morale? I know the elves have a lot of things up their sleeve, but those that are in the frontlines are mostly humans and the elves are in the back hurling magic balls as support fire..._
Not only was the opposing army not losing their morale, but their generals were hurling orders continuously as if they were not losing any numbers.
"Persevere! Attack! Attack!"
"Just a little bit more and they will consolidate their forces and will be watered down!"
Such shouts made [Guide] uneasy, as he changed his perspective into his generals to get a view of the enemies in a much calmer perspective, he saw swords, spears, and magic spells being hurled at Bakunawa, Philo, and Lyra, Ruphas and Bernardo, yet he cannot see anything that might trigger such a bravado filled response of the enemy until he finally saw a sword that has a magic circle on it's hilt that glowed with the user successfully "killed" the undead and then once again dimmed.
_...Fuck._
Such were the words [Guide] can say before a report from the capital rang unto his ears.
"Commander! 30 minutes into waiting for the resurrection of the undeads outside the royal palace, but there is not a soul that appeared!"
[Guide]'s prediction is right! The elves have developed a spell that somehow cancels the resurrection sequence of the undeads!
No race on the planet, not even the literal brainiacs, dodomekis of the Leviticus continent can create such a ridiculous and heaven-defying spell.
_Damn, I go careless! Rather, I am not as careful as Sophia even though I have theoretically the same amount of brainpower as her... but that is not the time to lament over this._
[Guide] started to hurl orders.
"All generals! Heed my call, pick up one sword of the enemy each of you, and make Kabuto deliver it back to me! Soldiers! Retreat and regroup! Change of tactics, one set of legion will fight in the front for an hour straight and will retreat immediately after that, no questions asked, they will be covered by the marksmen who will shift their aim concentration from the front to the side to cover your retreat, after that you will be replaced by the ones at the back!"
The soldiers need not any reason for such a change of tactics, they immediately reformed their rectangles and then retreated, the generals were stunned, for the moment the soldiers at the front retreated the generals pounced at the chasing soldiers and grabbed the weapons discarded by the dead soldiers of the living and then pass it towards an assassin who is silently watching the battle.
The generals looked at each other despite their long distances.
"They have discovered our secret... that in a very short time too."
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[Guide] does not have any time to celebrate the bad look on the faces of the enemy, for he knows that even if they did discover the secret of why the living is so vigorous, it would take even for someone like him a relatively long to before he can decipher it, the only good thing about that is that they have millions of soldiers who have the same competency, which is contrary to the belief of the enemy.
That is also not a good thing, after all, they are still about to have a war against the vampires and devils, which they have predicted to commence right after the 2nd Elven-Undead war is fought if they did not haste it, Valentine might realize that Kamatayan cannot deal a blow to the enemy despite having the numerical advantage.
_Arachne might have known of this already, that's why she did not report this magic circle, but that's all she can do because she was subtly brainwashed by Sophia._
[Guide] did not think more and looked at the weapons given to him by Kabuto.
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All of this commotion happened in only thirty minutes, the strongest of the dark elves broke down, and the undeads adopted a modified hit-and-run tactic that is essentially the first time in their history, that is why all of them did not notice, though [Guide] certainly aware of such happenings when Eleanor popped out of the ground as he made a pathway for soldiers going for hundred thousand in a U formation of the Indio Territory. After that he looked at the battlefield, her gaze seemed to be able to pierce through the battle that was happening and into the central command post of the living army.
"The King of the Underworld, huh?"
Eleanor looked at her hand which had several inscriptions embedded on it, they were like batik tattoos, after which she looked at the direction in which the command post was residing as she once again sank towards the ground, his destination was the King of Tydings, Tydings IV.
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In the command post of the living army, a man in golden armor is in a frown, in his back were the flashes of light and darkness coming from the battle between an ancient and modern calamity while in front of him was the sound of war cries of soldiers and the flashes of the rifles of the undeads and the spells of the elves. Such sounds were like teasing porn in his ears, he was panting heavily.
_I know that the king of the elves said that I cannot interfere in the situation unless all of the wives of Sophia entered the battlefield... but... but can't I just lay waste at least a little to the enemy?_
Tydings IV is restraining himself to the best of his ability, after all, he has finally acquired the power he has longed for a long time, the power to contend against Urduja Tawalisi.
Tydings IV is the second oldest king of the current generation, he dated back way when Urduja was born, and even though he never met Urduja, Tydings IV knew how powerful and charismatic Urduja was, he strived to be like her and alas became a hero, however, even though he seemingly reached the peak of his power, Urduja continued to grow until before he knew it, Urduja have practically made the kings of Gjallarhorn that are the symbol of power at that time mere clowns in her presence.
Tydings' desire to surpass or even just to contend with his one-sided rival who probably did not even hear about him was once again ignited, but alas, he never succeeded, no matter how much he tried, his god, the god of the underworld who did not even have a prophet deemed him unworthy of being his very first prophet.
He started to lose hope, and just when he was about to give up, a ray of light, in the form of Aerendil, the king of elves shone brightly in front of him.
"Do you want to participate in an experiment?"
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Note: New chapter in a few hours