Chapter 239 (6/18): The Final Obstacle
Camilla didn’t know how long they had flown for, but she could no longer feel any traces of combat coming from behind them. She didn’t want to think about the people she had left behind.
“How long do you think they’ll be able to stall for?” Kagriss asked from in her arms. “Think there’ll be enough time for us to unlock and reverse the spell?”
“Wow, thank you for your vote of confidence,” Camilla said. “Shouldn’t you trust them more? Maybe the ones that should worry are the enemy in front of us, because if they don’t hurry and get rid of us, we’ll have reinforcements coming.” She did her best to squeeze out a smile to make her joke even a bit more funny but putting some mirth into it, but the smile died away as she realized that she was fooling no one. She sighed.
Kagriss didn’t say anything until they landed in front of a set of stone doors that, like the other surfaces all around them, were covered by reliefs. The difference was that instead of depicting scenery and history, it was largely abstract. Ornate swirls and flourishes decorated the door, with a small orb in the center that fed into a pair of wings above it, and more details. It was a sculpture that might have taken hours to take by someone interested in art, but right now Camilla simply didn’t have the patience to do so.
With just a passing glance at the artwork, Camilla walked up, each step bold and fearless. But before she put her hands on the door, she paused and looked back at Kagriss who waited quietly before her. After a moment of hesitation, Camilla took out the little box she had been keeping safe through all the fighting and extended it toward Kagriss.
Kagriss tilted her head.
“I think it will be safer if you were to be the one to keep it,” Camilla explained. She looked away, not meeting Kagriss’s eyes. As the one on the front lines, having to keep the box safe was a burden. In contrast, Kagriss would be the one out of the line of fire most of the time.
“Okay…” Kagriss took the box and hid it away. “Don’t forget that it’s your job to put it all into the box, so…” She didn’t finish her sentence, but Camilla already knew what the last few words would have been.
With a sigh, Camilla placed her hands on the door. A current ran through her then, searing hot. She set her teeth and forced herself to push forward instead of shrinking back, because she knew that if she backed up here, it would only be harder in the future.
The thin torrent of holy magic poured through her. While suppressing the pain that seemed to hurt her very soul, she gathered up her own magic and twisted it into holy magic herself before pressing it into the door, holding back the door’s magic at last. The pain faded to a residual throbbing, and sighing with relief, she pushed on the door…
“Wait, Milla!”
Camilla stopped. “What…?”
“Something’s wrong,” Kagriss said, glaring up at the door. “The formations on the door are all messed up, as if something broke through them but it was hurriedly pieced together.”
Skull king… The words flashed through Camilla’s mind. She closed her eyes and felt the mana pushing against her. It was holy mana and… something else. Holy mana, but not quite the same. There was a trace of darkness within it, and when she let a bit of the mana into her, she realized what was wrong when the pain wasn’t as sharp as it should’ve been.
False holiness. If the undead had a way to twist the holy mana of humans into that twisted mana of the monstrosities she and Kagriss once faced, there was no reason the strongest undead of all can’t do the opposite and disguise undead mana as holy mana. It was only logical.
“That settles it. He’s definitely in there. Be careful.” Camilla pushed against the door with renewed power and conviction. This is where it would all end. Her instincts told her that beyond this door was their final enemy, the last key fragment, and the lock.
“From the looks of it, the king’s an accomplished arcanist as well. At the very least, he is near my level,” Kagriss whispered. Camilla nodded to indicate that she had heard and pushed the door open.
With a low rumble, the door swung inwards. Camilla narrowed her eyes, looking through the gap that became wider and wider with each passing second. There, inside the room directly in front of her, was the largest skeleton she had ever seen.
It was easily twice as tall as the huge skull liches, and the black armor it wore bulked up its figure until it looked more like a wall than anything that should actually be moving. Her breath caught in her throat, but she nonetheless charged in as soon as the gap between the doors were wide enough for her to get through.
Her footsteps rang loud and clear through the chamber, and the skull king looked up from his work, his flaming eyes burning into Camilla’s soul as if it could see right through her.
“Stop! What are you doing?” she demanded as she shook her head, forcibly breaking free from the shackling influence of the skull king’s gaze. It was like a heavy weight had fallen off her body, letting her move freely again. She readied her sword in front of her, ready for anything that the skull king might do.
The skull king did not answer, instead choosing to look back down, returning to what he had been doing. Only then did Camilla notice that he was standing in front of a pedestal upon which a series of empty wing-shaped indentations was carved into stone in a circle. One of the indentations was already filled, sitting quietly in the pedestal, and it looked exactly like the wing-shaped stones in Kagriss’s possession.
The last key and the lock…
But it was right next to the most powerful undead, their final obstacle. The skull king had his hand over the pedestal. A black aura surrounded his hand like smoke and poured down onto the lock, but it was repelled by a spherical barrier that surrounded the whole pedestal.
There was just one problem. The barrier was dim. Way too dim. For something that was produced by the centerpiece of the whole tower, the barrier looked almost transparent, so weak that it looked as if it might break at the smallest gust of wind. Only the fact that the skull king had yet to smash his way right through it suggested a different story.
But it didn’t change the fact that the skull king was destroying the barrier in his own way.
“I won’t let you continue destroying it,” Camilla growled. Golden light covered the length of her sword, seemingly congealing into a flame that twisted and licked the air.
At last, the skull king stirred, looking up once more. His bared teeth seemed to grin at her. “So it seems that you know what I’m doing. While I’ll praise you for knowing that much, I’m afraid that I’ll have to take off some points for your stupidity.”
“...What did you say?”
“Haha… hahahahaha!” The skull king began to laugh, as if Camilla’s question was a stupid one. Camilla tightened her grip on her sword. When the king finally stopped laughing, he rammed his mace into the ground and wiped his empty face as if he had tears in his eyes. “Don’t you know who I am? A mere lord-class, inferior being dares challenge their king! You presume to hold power over me?!” His voice suddenly grew to a loud roar that echoed around the chamber.
With one motion, he lifted his mace and slammed it on the ground at Camilla and Kagriss. A black shockwave tore open the stone floor as it raced forward and Camilla paled.
“Dodge!”
Grabbing Kagriss just in case, Camilla jumped aside just in time for the shockwave to crash into the door behind them and explode. Although the door itself was fine, the floor was a whole other story. There was a crater left behind from the explosion, and small tendrils of darkness rose from the cracked ground.
When Camilla and Kagriss landed again, they wasted no more words. Kagriss took flight to remain on the move while Camilla charged toward the skull king, sending waves of light at the huge undead in order to take back the initiative.
The skull king didn’t seem to mind that his shockwave was dodged, but he could no longer ignore a lord-class coming straight at him for all his proud boasts. The hand that hovered over the last key and lock twitched, and the black aura solidified into a dark barrier that hovered slightly over the holy barrier.
Camilla paled. If she knew that she could get past the holy barrier, but if there was something else in the way, then that was no longer an option until they broke the barrier. The skull king certainly wasn’t careless.
Still, she couldn’t back down here. Facing her fearless charge was the strongest undead, the skull king that readied his mace with a terrifying blow.
“Come! I shall teach you how impudent you really are!”