Chapter 223: 119. Big Eyes -4 (Part One)
Chapter 223: 119. Big Eyes -4 (Part One)
**
“An adventurer?”
A dazed expression floated up on Rudis’s face.
He might not be up to date with all the rumours currently circulating within the continent, but even someone like him had heard about the ‘special’ individual hailing from the Theocratic Empire.
And he also heard about the rumour of the Skeleton King making an appearance in the kingdom of Necromancers, Aslan, as well.
Rudis’s first reaction after hearing that rumour was to scoff derisively.
Just what was the Skeleton King? It was the legendary undead, the strongest evil spirit that only Necromancer King Amon could summon to this world.
The notion of someone actually summoning such a creature? To him, such a thing was a stupid nonsense that could never happen in a million years.
However, the one standing before him would have little trouble summoning the Skeleton King.
More than that, the Necromancers of Nemesis would even start believing that this being was the reincarnation of the Necromancer King himself.
That was why Rudis felt so incensed.
To think that this person, while wearing the head of the noblest of all noble beings in history, unhesitantly referred to himself not as something notable as the Holy King, but as a lowly adventurer!
“An adventurer? You say you’re an adventurer?!”
Veins bulged visibly on Rudis’s forehead.
“Big Eyes, what do you think you’re doing?! Why haven’t you ripped off the mouth of that liar and killed him already?!”
The Big Eyes’ iris quivered greatly.
-I’ll kill him. I’ll definitely kill him!
Tentacles gathered around the demon before shooting towards the target. Their sharp blades and fangs pounced on Allen as if to devour him whole in one go.
-Ku-oooooh!
The holy undead stepped up. The skeleton horses with their large bodies reared up before slamming down their front hooves.
The heavily-armoured cavalry began rushing forward.
They swung their lances to deflect away and impale all the incoming countless tentacles.
The eerie glows underneath their helms were murderously glaring at the Big Eyes.
The ancient gatekeeper demon screamed out and urgently shifted its large eyeball behind it. It found itself unable to retreat due to how all of its flesh were still connected to the building, and could only ungainly flail about.
Rudis shed a bucketful of cold sweat at this sight. The holy undead were far stronger than he had anticipated.
Now that the demon’s weakness, its main body, had been exposed, it was only a matter of time before it got killed off.
His hand began gripping the bone staff harder and harder.
Rudis was now left with no other option but to make ‘that decision’ here.
He wanted nothing more than to witness with his own two eyes the advent of ‘his’ ideal world, where everyone was equal in death. But how lamentable this was – judging from the current flow of events, he wouldn’t get the chance to do that.
“If things continue on like this, our long-cherished dream won’t come true.”
Their cherished wish for the past fifty years...
Rather than watching it fail, he might as well...!
Rudis glanced at the Big Eyes.
The nourishment from hundreds of humans were already stored inside the demon’s body. Meaning, it’d be fine to use it as fuel to maintain the warp gate.
“Oh, Big Eyes,”
The demon’s large eyeball shifted over to Rudis.
“It seems that you and I were destined to become living sacrifices today.”
The Big Eyes’ trembling iris opened wider.
Rudis extended his hand towards the restriction barrier cast around the warp gate and recited an incantation.
His demonic energy entered the barrier, causing it to gradually break apart. The warp gate, which was now no longer restricted, widened much further and began spitting out even more walking dead to the living world. However, it also started behaving like a black hole that sucked in the living things. This also included Rudis and the Big Eyes as they were around the gate’s immediate vicinity.
Rudis spread open his arms wide while still holding the staff. A crazed peel of laughter exploded from his mouth.
-Nooo! Stop, stop!
The Big Eyes desperately shook its body around. The ‘black hole’ had already begun sucking in the demon’s body.
The flesh it had been maintaining through the lives of humans were being ripped apart. Not just its large body, but even parts of the castle were gradually being sucked into the pitch-black distorted space.
-Uwaaaaahk!
“Hahaha! Oh, the walking dead! Turn this world into a living purgatory!”
The restriction barrier completely shattered.
The undead fully emerged from the gate and grabbed Rudis before throwing him into the black hole.
The aged Necromancer’s body was almost instantly ripped apart to tiny shreds. His soul was transformed into an energy source for the warp gate and completely ceased to exist altogether.
Meanwhile, the freed evil spirits began screeching out monstrously.
Hands made purely out of souls and bones grabbed the eyeball of the Big Eyes and began dragging it in.
The demon’s eyeball was ripped apart and tears of blood began rolling down its flesh.
-Ku-aaaaaah!
The demon used its tentacles to yank away the walking dead attacking it, but dozens, hundreds more descended on the Big Eyes, completely overwhelming it.
The holy undead rushing forward came to an abrupt stop. Allen too had stopped what he was doing to observe the unfolding situation.
The pitch-black space had completely taken over the spot above the warp magic circle drawn on the floor.
It broke the walls down and even began absorbing the ceiling.
In the blink of an eye, hundreds of walking dead were spat out from there. The massive lumps made up of the undead from purgatory had been set free.
The space continued distorting and more eyeballs resembling the Big Eyes began popping up almost everywhere.
Allen looked around him. There seemed to be around ten ‘Big Eyes’ now. He then shifted his gaze back to the warp gate.
Just like how it was with the holy water lake he summoned, the undead continued to emerge from that black space. However, he couldn’t see the source that supplied demonic energy anywhere.
Meaning, the stored energy was maintaining the warp gate right now. It would stay open until all that energy was completely spent.
-Behold, a world of death has come for you.
-We shall save this world from the torment called life.
Several beings wearing jet-black robes emerged at the gate of purgatory. They wielded bone staves and emitted an incredible amount of demonic energy.
Liches.
The liches, five in total, extended their hands but then, the dimensional wall stopped their advances. However, the warp gate continuously weakened the wall that forbade the intrusion of the Liches to this world. They soon managed to cross over.
“Well, this sure has become a big problem.”
Allen shifted his gaze back to the gate of purgatory.
He could even spy the ‘grim reaper’ brandishing a scythe deeper within the hole. However, something must’ve been restricting it as the creature couldn’t force its way through yet.
The ones coming out so far were skeletons, dullahans, and zombies. They walked out from the gate with bodies that were manifested through demonic energy.
Since Liches had made their appearance, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the grim reapers and possibly some other existences far more dangerous than them would pop out soon.
Things would become way too difficult to handle when that happened.
“Get into formation.”
Allen issued a new command and stabbed the greatsword on the floor.
Bone hands sprouted out from his back and twelve muskets were summoned into their grips. He then wielded both Amon’s grimoire and staff in his hands.
“We shall destroy that warp gate.”
The holy skeletons overlapped their shields into several layers.
Holy water rapidly spread out from beneath Allen’s feet. More holy undead were summoned and rose up from the water’s surface.
The crimson-black warp gate met the pool of holy water emitting sacred light; powerful ripples from the resulting collision rocked the castle.
“Kasim.”
Allen extended his hand and summoned Kasim’s body from the item window before dropping it on the floor. The soul permeating the greatsword left the weapon and entered the corpse.
The ‘revived’ Kasim opened his eyes and stood back up, then began making an enraged face while staring at the undead crawling out from purgatory.
-You abominable creatures!
Kasim stepped up to the front and took over command.
The holy undead followed after his lead.
-All those abominations that distort the balance of this world...
Kasim gripped his greatsword tightly as he glared at the group of Liches and multiple Big Eyes.
-...We shall subjugate them all!
“Go.”
One word from Allen, and the legion of Kasim and the holy undead made their moves.
-Undead possessing divinity? You are the disharmonious ones.
The Liches from the warp gate began pointing their bony fingers in an indignant manner.
-Pay for your sins through true death!
They summoned death knights; these powerful undead knights rushed forward to meet the incoming enemies.
Meanwhile, the Big Eyes began thrusting and slamming their tentacles like whips as well.
And so, a war between life and death broke out in this location.
**
(TL: In 1st person POV.)
Divinity and demonic energy viciously whipped about.
The two opposing armies of undead entered into a messy melee.
Ones with reddish-black colours got entangled with the ones emitting pure-white light, and their weapons noisily collided against each other.
-Ku-oooooh!
The heavily-armoured cavalry from the holy undead side rushed forward. They took a detour and tried to get closer to the warp gate, but the Liches used magic to summon a bombardment of flames and ice to rain down on them.
Countless explosions went off and the cavalry was flung away from the shockwaves.
The castle walls collapsed, but the Big Eyes quickly regenerated the broken sections.
It was obvious that they were trying to isolate their opponents and make sure that no one would escape from here.
I looked back at the warp gate.
Those damn Necromancers went and did something seriously troublesome, didn’t they?
Distance-wise, there was about one hundred metres between me and that gate.
‘Should I declare sanctuary here? What about summoning the Skeleton King? No, what about the Bone Dragon...’
The Aztal Rune was still not stable.
If I wanted to successfully declare the establishment of a sanctuary, it must be done in a place without demonic energy and in the most stable environment possible.
Summoning either the Skeleton King or the Bone Dragon just took too much time, too.
If I wasted time trying to summon them, then the warp gate would no doubt open up even more, and the grim reapers and worse monsters would definitely emerge from there.
That would be the absolute worst possible situation imaginable.
“Yup, I gotta personally step up here.”
I decided to make a move. After summoning a skeleton horse, I quickly mounted it.
The undead horse neighed loudly.
“Open the path and provide cover for me!”
I roared out a command and Kasim followed that up with a roar of his own.
-Create a path! Our sovereign is planning to march forward!
The holy undead got into a wedge formation and tried to force an opening. I dashed between their ranks. The holy undead knights riding on their own skeleton horses accompanied me.
The sounds of heavy hooves pounding away resounded out.
Auras of divinity rippled out and began purifying the defiled energy radiating from the surroundings.
Everything would be sorted out as long as I destroyed that warp gate!
-Oh, you foolish ones!
The Liches blocked our path.
Just as they began chanting their next spells, I fired the muskets dangling on my back and shot down the Lichs.
Two of them had their skulls cleanly penetrated through and got destroyed, but the other three barely managed to activate their magic in time.
A humongous fireball landed in our midst while the floor froze up in an instant to trip the skeleton horses’ legs.
The holy undead knights were thrown off from their mounts.
-Be together with death!
The Liches saying that waved their bony hands in a weird way.
When they waved their hands like some kind of an orchestra conductor, the ground surrounding the holy undead knights suddenly melted down to resemble a sticky swamp. The damp-looking ‘swamp’ then easily swallowed up the holy knights.
I rolled ungainly on the frozen floor for a bit before standing up, then hurriedly extended the staff forward.
[Skill nullification]
I managed to nullify one of the Liches’ magic, the swamp.
However, I couldn’t do anything about the fireballs flying in towards me; they collided against my torso.
The bone armour’s surface cracked apart. It felt like my whole being was burning away. Even though I wore the bone armour, the heat was cooking me up inside and caused my blood to start evaporating.
I couldn’t breathe. The pain was threatening to rob me of my consciousness.
‘No, I gotta endure it.’
I barely managed to activate the Aztal Rune and healed my wounds, and even reinforced my body at the same time.
I took a step forward and dug into the Liches’ formation. They freaked out and hurriedly swung their staves.
More swamps materialised all around them and countless hands made out of bones leapt out to envelop me. They grabbed onto my arms, legs, torso, and even my head to try and drag me down.
They acted like chains to steal away my freedom of movement and sucked me into the ground.
The Liches were protecting the rune letters of the magic circle as if it was their mission in life to prevent anyone from approaching the warp gate.
Goddammit! Things will get even more troublesome if the real grim reapers come out of there, just like during my fight against the Lich, Nasus.
-Get crushed to death!
Countless bones from the walls and floor, plus the walking dead that broke through the ranks of the holy undead legion, jumped on top of me and began solidifying into one large lump.
The bones completely surrounded me and began compressing tighter. As the pressure rapidly built up, I put Amon’s staff back into my item window and summoned the greatsword.
“Kasim!”
Kasim’s body suddenly crumbled down during his battle against the undead. His soul quickly flew in and entered the greatsword in my hands.
-...!!!
Just before the Liches could stumble back, I pushed divinity in the greatsword to its absolute max and swung it, hard.
The wind exploded and formless blades utterly shattered the lump of bones into pieces. I slammed my foot on the ground to anchor myself, and spun my whole body around to dissect the Liches nearby in halves.
I then fired the muskets to obliterate the remaining Liches out of existence.
-The path to death has opened.
The warp gate was fully opened by then.
The black hole continued spitting out more undead; the grim reapers were trying to reveal their terrifying aura from among them.
...Sorry, but this place ain’t for as*holes like you!
I threw myself towards the warp gate.