Chapter 234 (6/7): Sacrifice for the Greater

As the lord-class skull lich Yazartho did his best to take down Victoria despite being outclassed in his own speciality, the other liches weren’t faring any better. As the leader of an A-rank party, Elise was experienced at fighting in all kinds of situations, and Ismelda wasn’t any worse considering how long she’s lived. While lacking in raw power, the two guards from the Violet Blossoms were no pushovers either, fighting the three skull liches to a standstill, neither side able to gain an advantage over the other party.

Naturally, Camilla and Kagriss did not fall behind.

At the start of the battle, they fell into a familiar, straightforward tactic. Kagriss retreated out of the skirmish while leaving Camilla to take the brunt of the attack, while she provided covering fire and support from afar.

It had been a reliable and powerful combination when they were both weaker, and now that they’ve both evolved, Kagriss was able to reach new heights in her capabilities while Camilla became able to lock down all four skull liches with Kagriss’s help.

As a lich tried to break free from her lockdown, Camilla flapped her wings and moved in front of it in an instant. She drew back her fist and punched forward while unleashing a burst of mana. The lich hurriedly put up its staff to block, but the force of the impact still sent it careening back through the air toward its comrades.

Seizing the chance, another lich decided to fly out in another direction, but before it could get far, it stopped itself from going forward, just in time for a wall of beams to pass in front of it. If it had not managed to stop in time, the magic that Kagriss launched would’ve hit it head on.

The wall toward it steadily, forcing it backwards until it was once again backed up against its fellow skull liches. Despite their efforts of escaping, not a single one managed to get out of the lockdown.

From far away, Kagriss put down her hand. “Milla, still not ready?” she asked.

Camilla huffed. “No. Even if I’m stronger, I can’t get enough power behind my blows in the air, and even if I hit them, they just bounce away.”

“What about that weird spell you used in the dungeon?” she asked.

“Well, that is an option, but it’s also quite annoying to use when fighting strong enemies. I guess I could try though…” Camilla summoned her sword at long last. She had previously used her fist to move faster and to open up her attack options, making her more flexible, but she obviously lacked the offensive power to really deal lasting damage to those liches.

Skeletons really were unfair.

Seeing that sword, Gulthra suddenly made a move. He had been the only undead that had not attempted to escape, so now that he was finally doing something, Camilla gave him her full attention. “Watch him!”

“Yeah, I’m on it,” Kagriss said, already gathering mana in her hands.

Not just Gulthra, but the other three undead as well. As Camilla watched, they put their hands under their rib cages and reached inside, leaving Camilla confused. “What are they doing? Well, whatever it is, it can’t be good.” She wasn’t stupid enough to stand by and watch as her enemies made themselves stronger or recovered.

As if to answer her question, the skull liches pulled out their hands and in their bony palms were four black jewels in total.

Camilla’s eyes widened as she recognized it. “That is…! The undead gem that was being researched…! What are you going to do with it?” She crashed into the midst of the liches in an instant, the edges of her sword cutting through the air with sharp howls. She was like a wolf among sheep, but unlike most, those sheep had horns, sharp teeth, and were much smarter.

The liches scattered away from her, still clutching their gems. Without thinking, Camilla went for Gulthra first. He was clearly the leader of this group of four. As she chased after Gulthra, beating him ragged, Kagriss kept the other three busy with her long range bombardment, keeping them herded in a small area with timely explosions of magic in their escape paths.

A lord-class herself, Camilla was much faster than Gulthra, but when Gulthra did his best to simply escape, there was a limit to how fast Camilla could get her hands on him.

Gulthra’s flaming orbs brightened. “So you know of these. Unsurprising. However, these are different!”

“Hah? What are you talking about?” Camilla growled, slashing her sword at Gulthra after a huge burst of speed that took her behind Gulthra faster than he could truly keep up. The slash took off an arm, but it was the wrong arm. She had merely cut off the arm that Gulthra threw up in defense, and the crystal was still in his possession.

The crystal began to glow in a grim dark light, much like what had happened before it exploded and almost killed Fleur when she overloaded it. But instead of blowing it, the light then faded. Gulthra’s twin rows of inhuman sharp teeth seemed to grin at her.

“I would have preferred to conduct more research with more test subjects just to be on the safe side, but at a time like this I suppose it can’t be helped. Allow me to show you what my colleagues and I managed to achieve! Behold, a power that rivals your own! No, it is even greater!”

Gulthra raised his crystal high and the light had completely disappeared from the crystal. No… it was more like light was being swallowed by the darkness in the crystal. Camilla shot forward, trying to prevent him from doing whatever he had planned, but Gulthra already began to slam the crystal onto his chest.

With a crack, Camilla’s sword crushed through the bones on Gulthra’s arm, then separating the hand and wrist from the rest of his body. But it was too late, and the crystal already touched the exposed bone on his chest.

Even as his hand went flying away, leaving Gulthra without hands at all, the crystal remained stubbornly stuck on his bone, the darkness leaching from the crystal into the pale white surface it was on. The bone was dyed black and the inky color spread over Gulthra’s entire body.

The skull lich began to laugh and the violet flames in its eyes seemingly flickering before turning black as well.

“Milla, watch out!” Kagriss shouted, both out loud and through their bond. Camilla spared a glance at the remaining three skull liches and found that they had done the same thing as Gulthra, having touched their crystals to their chest.

“What the hell is going on?!”

Camilla flew back away from the writhing skull lich, unwilling to remain so close. She wasn’t even sure if it was safe to hit him when she was still so close. This was something she had never seen before, and she had to remain cautious lest she get blindsided by something.

The change was quick. A black substance rose from the bones of the skull liches, looking like some kind of tree sap, and covered the liches’ whole body. The substance grew and grew, taking a form over the bones, as if turning into muscle, filling out the body’s frame. With sharp cracks, the bones themselves broke, but supported by the ooze, they were quickly reconnected, but in a different shape than before.

However, one of the liches that had been trapped by Kagriss jerked and the process halted immediately. The black substance stopped oozing out and the whole lich began to melt as the body fell, disappearing below the treeline.

“Did it… just die?”

“It seems that whatever it’s doing isn’t without risk,” Kagriss muttered. “Still, that reminds me of those monstrosities we once faced.”

That left Camilla silent. The monstrosities they faced had been living things turned into pseudo-undead beings when their mana was corrupted. They were bloated, but they were quick and powerful, and many things did not work on them, as their wounds quickly healed. They had to be utterly destroyed to be put down for good.

Now, it was almost like the process of transforming into a monstrosity was being repeated in front of them, only instead of a normal human, the subject were three already powerful jack-class skull liches. Instead of having to corrupt holy mana, the jewel seemed to directly boost the subject’s strength. Perhaps the only saving grace was that Gulthra were still real undead, and that holy magic will still work.

Camilla’s grip on her sword tightened and she began to channel holy magic into the blade.

The transformation process slowed, and then stopped. Of the four “test subjects,” in Gulthra’s words, only three survived. However, it was clear that such a failure rate was too low, because the mana that Camilla felt from Gulthra was vastly greater than she had before.

It was more powerful than her own, though still not yet surpassing Kagriss.

That aspect reminded her of the monstrosities again.

“So that was their plan. They can’t beat us normally, so they used a last-ditch method to try and win,” Kagriss said. “But I wonder if the cost was worth it.”

Camilla stared at the monstrous being that had once been Gulthra. It was a vaguely humanoid figure hovering in the sky. However, “vaguely humanoid” was the most that could be said, because the ooze had enlarged the torso and gave muscles to the arm. The skull was longer and more bestial in shape, and now long claws graced the strange beings’ limbs.

Even the hands that Camilla cut off Gulthra had grown back over the process of transformation.

From power alone, the experiment was probably successful. Whereas the four liches had no chance before, the three of these monsters were now enough to pose a threat. But… Camilla could not help but think that this was not what Gulthra wished for.

Everything about him told her that Gulthra was someone proud of his intellect. If he truly had been one of the minds behind the crystal, then he would not want to throw away that mind. From that perspective, the experiment was a failure, because Gulthra was probably no longer within that monstrous being.

If he was, then he’d be gloating by now, instead of snarling and drooling black ooze from his bestial mouth. The pitch black eyes of the monstrous beings seemed to focus on Camilla. She readied her sword that had been imbued with holy magic in front of her and positioned herself in front of Kagriss.

“They’re coming.”

Skeletal wings tore out of the monstrosities’ backs before black ooze covered them and solidified into a leathery membrane. Then, the monsters were no longer merely hovering, but were speeding toward Camilla and Kagriss, gaining speed with each flap of their wings.