Chapter 143 Lich’s PoV

Master’s Point of View

If my face could form a sneer, it would be, as I couldn’t help but think of how pitiful the group I was flying toward was. Whatever army they used to kill my generals was clearly left completely crippled. Only a single man in a group of women; they must have had a group ten times that size, and only the women were protected, with a single male survivor making it here while the rest perished. The man disappeared underground while the rest prepared for me.

I was half expecting to see another army, possibly the king and a large group of other men following behind him, but I could wipe out this group by myself, not even needing to resurrect my aerial squad to take them out. It would have been more poetic to let them come to my castle, but if I decided to do that, they might have never even made it to me, and I’d have panicked that the group that wiped out my generals was still in my territory, causing problems when they’d have been dealt with.

I wondered if any of them were even worth turning undead, but I could find that out after I killed them. Attacking them, it was clear that they weren’t pushovers. Their archer was clearly their leader, raining death on my drakes and wyverns before we even began to fight, but once the fighting actually began, it was clear I had underestimated them.

They were making quick work of my flying army, but they were just the transport for me. The real threat to this group was the dragon and me. I fired one spell I favored over any other. It was slightly more mana-intensive than most, but its killing capacity was the best out of my entire arsenal. The death bolts flew faster than an arrow, and with just pointing my finger, I could make sure all but the tanks of most groups fell over dead.

I took out their tank first; the shot wasn’t strong enough to finish her off, but it would be easy to deal with the rest now without expecting a powerful tank skill that might have changed the outcome of the fight if I had left her alive. I kept firing, but my accuracy had never been lower in all my life; they almost seemed to move, sometimes not even under their own control, as they managed to dodge out of the way of my shots.

All of them retreated before I could kill a single one, except for their warrior, whom I left my dragon to deal with while I killed the rest. As I travelled, I was surprised by how flowing the tunnel system was. It wasn’t something a normal person could have done in any short amount of time, which meant that the man must have been here, making this tunnel system, for days before I appeared to challenge them.

This group might only be the forward troops of the real army, and they might be making this underground tunnel system their base in the future fight against my undead legion. If I had a face, I would be smirking right now that I ruined their plans. The little gnome must have been another one of their bigshots. She disrupted me tremendously, managing to take a bolt that didn’t kill her while eating through my shield multiple times before managing to escape.

I almost went back up through the tunnel system to deal with her permanently, but going to the bottom and killing the tank before she got a chance to recover was the smart move. Making my way down to the bottom, I’m sealed in with another tunnel collapse, breaking my shield again.

If I didn’t have an eidetic memory, I might have forgotten how long ago I had a single mana shield break, and today, I had it break multiple times. Still, without their powerhouses, I would make quick work of this group and then could move on to kill the rest once they were separated from the group. Except… That wasn’t the case.

No matter how I tried or thought about it, they were too… Much. Too strong, too fast, too smart, and too lucky. They managed to break it and made me recast the mana shield spell multiple times; every dodge of a death bolt was a huge chunk of mana wasted on nothing. I felt my reserves dip further than they had ever since I cast the wish spell that cursed all of the Dwarves, the spell that required the sacrifice of my mortal body and the lives of tens of thousands of slaves to accomplish.

I felt myself be whittled down slowly, like I was a fucking raid boss or something, and it broke my calm demeanor as I felt myself grow irritated as I hadn’t managed to kill a single one of them yet. It seemed like fate was set to stop their deaths or something. If I believed that fate existed, it would be playing a major part in what was happening right now, but I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them slipped up.

Finally, the high-intensity fighting and close proximity to me meant that they began to take damage. I still hadn’t killed any of them, but it was enough to take them out of the fight; many were injured enough that they might die if they didn’t take two high-quality potions as they fled. But their last linchpin was still alive and fighting. The thief or rogue, their agility-based fighter, was causing the most trouble for me.

She tore through most of my shields and was far more difficult to hit. I cast a shockwave, a spell from my legendary ring that I could only use three times a day, and each use would require a longer and longer time until it became available again. The first use only took a day to recover, the second made it take a month, and the final usage made it take a year.

Finally, I was able to land two clean blows against her, and still, it wasn’t enough to take her down. It was enough to make it easy, but now, the only male finally made his appearance, forming up in front of her, blocking a potential deathblow from striking. Once again, I felt myself grow uncharacteristically angry at having my prey stolen from me. The little rogue girl managed to escape up one of the tunnel systems as the man taunted me.

I almost laughed as he did so. He was clearly one of the weakest of the group, hence why I knew I’d finally get my first kill from him, except… Once again… Through some unreasonable amount of luck, I just couldn’t seem to hit him. Each time he evaded, I felt my anger rise higher and higher. Using the same technique to take down the agile girl, I thought he was done for sure, except he wasn’t; instead, he managed to redirect the attack, burning through another one of my mana shields.

I was beyond frustrated. I couldn’t believe how much effort this group of nobodies was putting me through. My mind was almost going blank as I was only focused on his death. With his death, I knew the deaths of everyone else would soon follow. I needed to kill one of them to break whatever was happening, whatever was stopping their deaths.

I couldn’t believe it. I was so focused on killing him that he managed to crush my body, the damage so extreme it even broke my willpower from the mana backlash of my shield breaking. I couldn’t help it; I felt my anger bubble over for the first time in centuries as I rushed at him to try and strangle him to death. Centuries of planning, all ruined by some fucking idiot using a lumber axe as a weapon.

He planned to take me hostage, and I almost smirked at his naivety. If he did, I could cause my own head to explode, most likely killing him in the process, but before I could even think about it, I was slain. My soul was wrenched back to my phylactery as I began to reform in my new, previously prepared body. As angry as I was at the situation, it was still a good thing that I left; it let me gauge my enemy's strength before the real fight began…

Except, as I finally came to and got full control of my senses again, I couldn’t help but notice the castle was shaking for some reason.