Chapter 986: Unfavourable Match-Ups

“The casualties were high this time, and those who were wounded are not easy to heal, they won’t be able to fight for at least a month if I had to make an estimate”

“Even if we all work together to heal them?”

“Indeed, we just have no idea how that strange corruption works, so we can only use a high amount of power to forcefully remove it” explained Ioleznta, looking at the many warriors whose bodies had partly been turned into a dark, swampy substances, the numbers of death would have been even greater if the strange corruption had not stopped spreading once night fell and the undeads retreated.

Although the warriors had suffered great loss, Iliz, who had led them had come out of this fight looking relatively unharmed, the minor lord that had been sent to face them this time had been a weird looking one, a thin, frail looking pale corpse with elongated limbs, long dark hair, completely garbed in white and wearing a mask that covered his entire face, which looked like a dark sun, his upper body was like that of a human, but his lower body was more like that of a vile worm made of a dark, foul substances from which countless bones were sticking out.

Despite that rather unsavoury appearance, Iliz had been able to handle the threat rather well.

The minor lord she had faced was Ridfoirn, and he was a mage first and foremost, a head-on confrontation out in the open was not to his advantage to begin with, also, his spells were such virulent things that the very realm seemed disgusted by his every actions, making every of his attempts at casting sneaky spells completely fail as Iliz could also sense the way the realm reacted, letting her know to dodge in advance every single time.

Still, it had instantly clear that the corruptive nature of the undead’s mana was not be underestimated, not to mention that when it spread into the ground, turning into a dark, swamp-like terrain, it enabled Ridfoirn to dive directly into the soil, and appear anywhere else the corruption had spread to in an instant.

Iliz being one who had communed with many different types of beasts, had a lot of tricks of her sleeves however, and was simply able to sprout wings to take to the air, putting a sizeable distance in between herself and the corrupted soil.

Ridfoirn was certainly powerful, but with the limitations his mission imposed upon him, he could helplessly cast spells like a regular mage until the day ended, but before that happened, he swung his staff through the air, and caused, for a short instant, corrupted rain to fall upon the life barrier, severely reducing its capabilities.

So even though the Divine Dancing Priestess was quite successful in her own confrontation, the battle overall held a grim result, although it looked bad, there weren’t many minor lords for them to face and hold out against before they would win the war game Dracula had put in place, although the conditions he had given were not ideal, they were still far better than the alternative of being under constant assault by the empire until they broke and were slain.

At this point, it seemed unlikely that the vampire lord would go back on his words if they actually succeeded in fending off all of the minor lords and their armies, this had all gone on for far too long to be a mere act of deceit.

And indeed, Dracula was not Loimos anyways, he could break contracts as easily as he did not breath, that was an ability the pure undead had due to his unique nature, because every bit of rot was simultaneously him, but he also could only truly inhabit a single body in full at a time, so when he abandoned one body to reform another, all contracts and the likes were rendered null.

This was not something others could do, but that fact was difficult to prove to others, after having experienced the skeleton treachery, Dracula had to go the long way to demonstrate trustworthiness.

The next minor lord to appear was Ourlon, and the living that he would be facing one-on-one was Liliazin…

Although Ourlon was not the sort to fail to fulfill orders, and thus, could have easily taken part of the early battles as he could be trusted not to slaughter his opponent, Ourlon was also considering to be the strongest of the minor lords, and it seemed fitting to let him make a show of strength, though, it would have been preferable if he had had to face a Divine Dancing Priestess instead of an Emerald Herald, on top of that, Liliazin was quick to realise that he was in danger against Ourlon, as in, dire danger of dying.

Unlike most of the other minor lords, he did not possess an innate ability, being purely a user of battle arts, but his talent in that way of power allowed him to be very versatile, not only that, but his sheer talent in it allowed for him to manifest his own original battle arts without having to rely on many conditions to activate their effects.

He had actually learned quite a lot from Storm Of Blade in that regard since she was without doubt, the greatest master of battle arts within the undead empire, only beaten by Loimos, but the pure undead’s literal stashes of limbs and the likes to activate incredibly complicated arts in an instant was not quite fair when comparing him to someone else…

In this confrontation, Ourlon was genuinely trying to murder his opponent, if given the occasion, he would cut Liliazin down without hesitation, he was here to make a show of force after all, but as it turns out, the herald must be quite sensitive to such things as he instantly channeled emerald light with for the full purposes of dodging and evading.

Randomly turning into light to travel at great speeds, or transporting himself directly to where sunlight was striking, melding in attacks fired at random in between, and actually landing a hit on Liliazin instantly became a tall order.

If Ourlon had been ordered to kill him and nothing else, he would have simply forced the herald to act more aggressively by attacking the weaker warriors, but a show of force was not supposed to invalidate the previous efforts made his fellow minor lords, they had their best to show a honourable front despite the fact that each and every one of them could have used far more strength than they showed to commit an absolute slaughter.

‘Mmh… This might not work out as intended…’