Chapter 237 (6/14): Entrapped

“Enemies spotted. Ten jacks, two lords…” Kagriss murmured, though her voice was loud enough that everyone could hear. At their level, the senses of everyone in the group were phenomenal. “The report mentioned that a total of three lords and roughly fifty jacks were missing.”

The conclusion was clear. Taking out Yazartho and the twenty jacks that had already been dispatched, that left around twenty more jacks unaccounted for, but from the looks of it, those twenty jacks were the group pursuing them from behind.

“It’ll take a while for the ones in the back to arrive, so let’s make this quick!” Elise shouted, summoning her scythe.

Although that’s what she said, no one present thought that could break through before the enemy’s reinforcements arrived. For one, the hall was too small and they were forced to fight all the undeads at once instead of splitting them up into bite-sized chunks to overwhelm, as they had done outside the tower.

Yes, fighting together made them stronger, but that applied to the undead as well, and the advantage gained from teamwork only grew as the number of moving pieces increased.

Without needing to exchange words, the group split back up into smaller teams that were used to working together, with Victoria on her own again. Ismelda followed after her mother as usual.

Of the two lords, one of them was a lich, and the other one was a warrior. Naturally, Victoria headed straight for the lich, while Elise and Ismelda went for the warrior.

When the ten jack-classes rose to stop them, the Violet Blossom guards darted forward to clear the path. Camilla followed close after, easily knocking back a jack warrior that tried to flank Elise.

“That you got this far means that Yazartho died, huh? Serves him right,” the lich lord growled. “Evolution cannot be forced! Only natural evolution is the path to true power!” With an unearthly howl, the lich lord threw up its hands and a wave of black mana exploded from its body before shaping into a wave that crashed toward Victoria.

Victoria created a shell of blood mana around her and charged straight into the wave, obviously planning on blowing her way through the wave, but the moment her shell and the wave made contact, her eyes widened for an instant before the wave crashed over her and washed her shell back.

“You look surprised. Did you think that I’m the same as him?” the lich lord asked. Victoria narrowed her eyes.

“Yes… but I see now that you’re not. You are a brute, I see…”

From that brief exchange, Victoria had seen the difference between Yazartho and this lich lord in front of her. Yazartho was like herself, a mage focused on fine control of mana. However, this lord before her was content with throwing around his massive mana to overwhelm enemies.

Victoria frowned. More energy was naturally more difficult to manipulate, but it should theoretically be possible as long as she was skilled enough. However, the trouble was she doesn’t have the experience, as she rarely ever ran into people with more mana than her. This was something that she’ll have to figure out on the go, and play the battle by ear.

As she backed off, a jack warrior took the chance to slip from the Violet Blossom guards and lunge toward her, but she easily avoided it with an explosive clump of mana she left behind.

Elise deftly handled her unorthodox weapon. The scythe spun around her in a circle of death, one that grew and shrank unpredictably. Elise herself moved as if she was dancing, with graceful steps and even spins, but the opening that would usually have appeared thanks to turning her back on the enemy was nullified by the scythe that struck as if alive.

As a jack-class undead tried to close in on her and lock her weapon in place for another to strike, the scythe merely passed through the sword that the jack-class held up, and then decapitated the other attacking undead.

“Mother… if you fight like that, I can’t do anything to help,” Ismelda said with a grimace as she fought off another undead. “Let’s fight together like we did before.”

However, Elise answered her with a laugh. “No, honey. This is my battle and you’re not strong enough yet to interfere. Go help your friends,” she said. Leaving those words behind, the whirring dancing death crashed into the lord warrior who had been hanging back and watching her fight.

As Elise swung her scythe toward the lord, the undead held up its shield to block her attack. A small smile spread across Elise’s lips, and like before, the scythe passed though the shield and cut toward the undead’s arm. “I’ll be taking that limb…”

Just before the edge of the scythe touched the undead’s arm, the lord-class undead let go of the shield that was no more than a burden now and drew its arm back, letting the scythe cut through thin air.

“....As expected. Your weapon is strange,” the lord warrior said.

Elise huffed a small sigh of disappointment and shrugged. “You saw through the trick?”

“Yes. My name is Benovull. A pleasure to meet you…” The warrior spoke slowly, yet moved with startling speed. Elise nodded once in reply, but did not give her own name. The warrior’s eyes glowed brighter as if angered, and without another word, he charged toward Elise with the same startling speed that did not match his slothful speech.

Holding his sword with both hands, the power of his slashes spiked sharply. When he swung, Elise blocked with her scythe, and the two weapons bounced apart instead of phasing through each other.

Without giving the warrior the chance to attack a second time, Elise slammed the tip of her scythe into the ground and pulled to give herself a boost forward, and by the time she reached the massive skeleton, she had already made a half turn to build up momentum.

“Ha!” she shouted. The scythe screamed as it cut through the air and slammed into the armor that the undead wore… and went right through as if it never existed, directly cutting into the bone of the undead.

However, instead of slicing through the bone, the scythe stopped short. Elise frowned. She hadn’t expected the bone to be so hard.

As the skeleton punched toward her with his free arm, Elise pulled her scythe free and dodged out of the way, creating some more distance between her and the lord warrior. “You’re very difficult to cut.”

A rumbling sound came from the lord warrior’s mouth. Elise chose to interpret it as laughter, though she wasn’t sure what was so funny, at least until the skeleton finally stopped rumbling. “Naturally… Unlike a certain someone, my subordinates succeeded. This is the strongest bone an undead can achieve!”

“... I see…” Elise sighed. She was wrong to expect the enemy to leak actually relevant or useful information in the middle of battle, but it was worth a shot.

Despite being unable to cut through the bone of the undead as she was now, she wasn’t worried. Since her method of phasing her weapon through other things involved partially deconstructing her weapon back into blood bond form, it meant she couldn’t imbue it further with magic.

Since she mastered that technique, she had never lost a battle, but now that technique no longer worked. Perhaps she had grown far too used to the convenience it granted her, but now, finally, she’ll have to return to fighting the old way: peeling the enemy apart bit by bit until she could end the battle in one decisive blow.

As Victoria and Elise took on the enemy lords alone, that left the rest for Camilla and the others. Ismelda reluctantly joined them in keeping the other undeads off of Victoria and Elise, and the undeads seemed to be doing the same with them.

It turned into a game of attempting to interfere with the higher-level battle while preventing the other party from interfering as well, resulting in nothing being done at all. At the end, both sides decided to just get rid of the other party. Camilla had just managed to destroy her fourth jack with the help of Ismelda and Kagriss when Kagriss sighed.

“They’re here.”

“They” naturally referred to the roughly twenty undead that came in after them to pincer them inside the tower. Camilla grimaced at the thought of having to fight so many undead in such close quarters. The hall was too small to split the group and fight a moving battle, but too large to create a choke point. Numbers favored the enemy.

The volume of enemy spells made it difficult to move, and even if the difference in power and her armor of mana made it possible to ignore them to some extent, getting hit was still painful.

There was a bright flash as Ismelda seemed to almost teleport from one spot to another. Between the point of her departure and her destination, a skull lich was split in two. The torso of the lich flew through the air, and before anyone else could get to it, Camilla dashed over and cut it in two down the middle, setting the remains ablaze with her magic.

Sweat dripped down Ismelda’s face.

“Can you still keep it up?” Camilla asked, blocking a spell for her as Ismelda caught her breath.

Ismelda nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry. It’s just getting harder to find an opening, and if I’m wrong…” If she was wrong, then that was a lot of mana wasted, as well as another opportunity for the enemy to read her movement to retaliate.

The first two kills had been easy, and Ismelda managed to catch every undead off guard, but the third one had taken Ismelda two spells to get right, and the fourth kill took three.

Now, their fifth and final kill before reinforcements arrived took a lot of waiting and three attempts.

“Don’t do it anymore,” Camilla said. “They’ll be watching for it, so give it time and just when they’re no longer expecting it, strike then…”

“I guess that’s the only option…” Ismelda wiped the sweat off her face and gripped her sword again.

As the number of enemies suddenly increased, the battle became harder and harder, and eventually the pattern shifted as the lich lord began to attack the besieged Violet Blossom guards while Victoria did her best to keep them alive.

Even so, they managed to slowly chew through the army, one undead at a time.

Just when Camilla was about to launch a counterattack and crush through a few undeads at once, the undead suddenly fell back, leaving just a few to fight them while leaving the path clear for the lichs to bombard them with spells. Her rhythm was broken in an instant. “What’s going on?”

She parried the heavy axe strike of a warrior before kicking it into the path of a lich spell. Instead of coming back, however, the warrior backed off, only for another warrior to charge at her. The warrior wielded a thin, fencing sword. With swift movements and dance-like footwork, it was a huge contrast compared to the slow and powerful axe fighter from earlier that it took Camilla a while to adjust.

Just when she was about to kill it off, it backed off and another warrior took its place while the liches healed the fencer’s wounds.

“So that’s it…” she growled. “They’re planning on wearing us down…”

“Not to mention it will take us forever to kill them this way. We’re in a hurry too,” Ismelda said. “Why now?”

The undead dragged the battle out. Even the two lord-class undead have abandoned their offense and focused entirely on neutralizing Victoria and Elise. Whenever Elise tried to turn her scythe on one of the jack-class undeads to relieve some of the pressure off the others, the lord warrior was there to defend, or attack either the guards or Camilla’s group, forcing Elise to cover for them. When Victoria tried to help, her opponent would use his overwhelming magic to disrupt the spell.

The battle ground to a halt, with the seven of them surrounded by undead that seemed to be in no hurry to finish them off, seemingly content on just keeping them on their toes…

After repelling another half-hearted attack from the undead, all while wondering how she could quickly defeat these undead and move on, Camilla finally realized what was wrong. “They’re stalling!”

Stalling… that word entered everyone’s minds and all of a sudden, the undeads’ strange movements became clear. Camilla had shouted it out loud, so naturally, the undead heard it as well.

The lord lich began to laugh even as he overwhelmed Victoria’s magic with a powerful wave of undead mana. “So you realized! It took you long enough. But what can you do even if you know?” he asked. He spread his arms at the more-than-twenty jack-class warriors and liches that surrounded the group of seven, as well as himself and his fellow lord-class colleague. “Can you get past us?”

Camilla gritted her teeth. Although she was annoyed at the arrogance of the lich, she had no words to return, because that was indeed the problem that had from the beginning. If they had the ability to break through the undead, then they’d have done it during the earlier battle instead of letting the battle stall out for so long.

She wasn’t the only one who resented the lich’s words that rubbed salt on their wounds, and of the others, Victoria couldn’t hold back her annoyance. Taking a deep breath, she sent several blades of blood flying toward the lich, only for it to be caught in a thick cloud of mist and scattered.

The cloud wasn’t as large or fast as before, which meant that the lich was slowly growing weaker from fighting her in this holy tower, but the rate at which the lich tired was much slower than her own. Well, it was actually roughly the same rate because she could do less with more, but her concentration may not last for so long. With a grimace, she stepped back and watched for any sudden movements among the enemy spellcasters.

Despite them knowing that the enemy was trying to stall them here, there was nothing they could do, and that was frustrating beyond comparison, especially to the old and proud vampires like Victoria and Elise.

The root of the problem was that they could not fight a moving battle, because it was difficult to concentrate on staying ahead while dodging pursuers. A moving battle was naturally disadvantageous to the hunted. While they could stalemate the enemy by carefully standing their ground, that will change the moment they decide to move.

If they failed and died here, then all hope of ending the war with minimum casualties would be lost, and even when the vampires inevitably win in the end when they finally decide to move, the losses will have already grown too high for Camilla to accept.

Camilla gritted her teeth as she was forced to stay in the same spot. “What can we do? Nothing works.”

“So what? We have to keep trying. Eventually we’ll grind them down,” Kagriss said. Even after fighting for so long, she wasn’t the least bit tired, but at the same time, she forgot that except for herself and Camilla who had tireless bodies, the other five were normal.

For the first time, the Violet Blossom guards gave their own opinions, their voices filled with weariness. They lowered their voices, at the same time using magic to make a small barrier that managed to stop something as small as whispers to leak. “No, even if you can keep going, I’m not sure I’ll be able to last for so long.”

“Are you going to give up?” Camilla asked, unable to believe her ears. She stared at the guard that spoke, but her attention was forced back when an undead lunged at her, trying to catch her off guards. She grabbed the sword, ignoring the blade that cut down to the bones of her fingers and palm, and threw it aside before she stabbed back with her own weapon. Just as her weapon was about to shatter the undead’s skull, a chain wrapped around the undead’s waist and yanked it back before she could kill him.

Camilla’s temple began to thump as the blood in her body pumped faster in her anger, bringing her ever more power. She turned back to the guard. “Well?”

“Don’t misunderstand,” the guard’s partner said, jumping to his friend’s defense. “We’re just telling the truth. If this drags on for much longer, we’ll be more of a burden than an asset…”

Even Elise joined in. “Please don’t disparage my subordinates like that,” Elise warned in a dangerous tone as she locked a metal staff that swung down toward her with her weapon, and then snapped it in two with a jerk of her scythe.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

The guard waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just saying that…” He lowered his voice again, once again manipulating the wind to keep the secret a secret. “I’m saying that since I’m going to be a burden soon, I might as well make myself useful one last time.”

“No. You’re not going… to do that?” Elise asked, gasping, but the guard nodded.

“There’s no other way. If I let them wear me down, then the pressure on you all will increase, and then our defeat will come even faster. I can’t put you in danger, Lady Elise. No, if I must die, then I’m taking a few of them with me.” The guard grinned a savage smile, and in Camilla’s eyes, his form seemed to become bigger and braver.

To think that he was going to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Just like her. He reminded Camilla of how she used to be back then, when all she had in her heart was her mission and justice. With that, the desire to break through the undeads’ blockade flared up. If that guard was to die, then she could not let his sacrifice go to waste.

Then, the guard’s partner raised his raised fist as well.

“Me too! I too will…” Taking into account his own lack of magic that could hide his words from such sharp ears, the guard trailed off, but his meaning was clear.

By now, it was clear. They could not keep dragging the fight on. One way or another, they had to break through and reach the final key fragment and the lock at the heart of the tower. Even if it meant sacrificing a few lives.

Hearing her subordinates’ resolve, Elise took a deep breath, as if she had made up her mind about something.

“In that case, I will too. Let’s break through, while betting our lives!”

Victoria looked up in alarm, and even Ismelda gasped at Elise’s words. Camilla could hardly fault them. Even if the two guards died, the rest of them could still escape— especially Victoria and Elise. After living for such a long time, elder vampires loved their lives too much to easily give it up, and yet Elise was suggesting that she was willing to throw away her own life here…

The lord warrior’s eyes glowed brighter and he backed up a step in caution. Even he dared not underestimate the power of a vampire lord that had resolved to finish a fight at all costs, even if it meant her own death. But the next moment, he stepped forward as if steeling himself as well. “Then I will stop you!”

“Try. Come on, let’s break through!”

“Go!”

Camilla didn’t know who was the one who shouted that last command, but her body moved by itself, charging toward a point where the encirclement was thinnest. Pushing her own reinforcement and shielding spells to its utmost limit, she pointed her sword in front of her.

“Lance of Light!” It’s been so long since she last used a templar art. Ever since she became a vampire, she no longer had any need to limit herself to specific techniques when she could simply incorporate their effects into her fighting style, but this time, she “used” it. She called out its name and dedicated her mana to its effect, brainwashing herself in order to make the Art as powerful as she could manage…

A cone of holy light burst from the tip of her sword as she charged forward, turning her entire body into a massive lance. The leaking holy mana burned her, even charring her skin on contact, but she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes to protect them from damage.

She could only hope that behind her, Kagriss was protecting herself.

“Follow me!”

The lancer pierced through the formation, the winds imbued with holy power blowing the things blocking her way aside. Even though her concentration on the spell, she could feel two massive undead signatures jump in her way, screaming something she no longer cared enough to decipher.

The tip of her lance hit something soft… and then broke straight through it, only to be blocked when it slammed into something much, much harder. The tip broke and exploded in a huge explosion of mana that threw Camilla back, right into Kagriss’s waiting arms.

“Milla, are you alright?”

“Yeah.” She groaned. “Forget me— what happened?”

Instead of answering with slow words, Kagriss just shared a snippet of her memory through their bond and through Kagriss’s eyes, Camilla watched as the lich lord created a wall of black chains and mist. As her lancer pierced into the mist and brushed against a chain, the chains began to pull together in order to entangle her and stop her, but in the next instant, the magic in the lance exploded and scattered the magic without showing any signs of stopping.

But right after, her lancer hit the sword of the skull warrior lord and was stopped in her tracks before the whole Art exploded.

The whole memory took only an instant to look through and Camilla looked up to see the aftermath of her handiwork. The armor and robes of the two lord-class undead both looked burnt and they had been pushed back quite a ways. As the skull warrior tried to get up, Elise appeared beside him and kicked him away into his colleague, sending them flipping into the wall behind them.

Her eyes and Camilla’s met. “Hurry up and let’s go!” Elise shouted.

“O-oh, right!” Camilla scrambled to her feet and ran on with the others following close after. The other undead finally came to their senses after the big surprise Camilla gave them and they gave chase, but they were ultimately a step too slow.

The only problem was the lord-class undeads— with their interference, the mob will eventually catch up as well.

Despite Elise’s and Victoria’s efforts at fending off the two lords, the distance between them and the jack-classes slowly shrank since they had to keep dodging the spells that came flying from behind them. And if the undead caught up, then the same thing as before would happen, and this time, the undead won’t be caught off guard by Camilla’s spell.

Elise sighed. “Well, I didn’t say that I wasn’t planning on leaving here alive.” A small smile came to her face as she flourished her scythe. The veins on her body bulged and began to burst, spattering blood all over her face and staining her clothes. Then the blood lifted off and formed weapons that floated around her. “I’ll stop them here for as long as I can. To me!”

“Yes ma’am!” the guards called.

Now was the moment that they had been waiting for. The Violet Blossom guards turned and faced the incoming tide of undead by their leader’s side.

As the lord-class warrior charged them, Elise disappeared, her movement too fast to be tracked. She was even faster than Ismelda. When she reappeared, she was behind the warrior, but her scythe was still in front of him.

Not for long. The scythe followed her and the edge swept toward the warrior, a weapon that reaped lives. The warrior threw up his sword in alarm just in time to block the scythe, but the force of the impact still sent him stumbling back into the chasing jacks to trip and fall with a huge thud.

A giant toppled by a runt.

Still, he was nowhere near dead and Elise knew it. Her smile widened into a gnarled grin. “Time to peel that armor off you bit by bit. There’s nothing they can do to help you!” But as she prepared to attack, a blazing fast spear streaked through the air in front of her and she turned to see the lord-class lich grinning at her with angrily blazing eyes.

All the while, Camilla and Kagriss continued to run, or rather, fly. Camilla took off her armor, spread her wings, and with Kagriss on her back, she began to fly, trusting Elise and her guards to keep the pursuers busy.

For a moment, Victoria and Ismelda kept pace with her, but then they were gone.

One was Elise’s sister, and the other, her daughter. There was no way that they were going to leave her to face those undead alone.

“Elise, wait for me. We’ll hold them together!”

“No, we wipe them out here!”

An explosion erupted from behind Camilla and Kagriss, carrying with it the scent of blood, and the sound of fighting grew more and more distant with each flap of Camilla’s wings. From here on, they were alone.