I became a legion lich

74 Desperate battle

‘This city is going to be destroyed,’ was Emilia’s honest thought as she watched the front lines turn into the undead. The undead advanced on the living, slaughtering them like fleeing animals.

People panicked and started to flee desperately, but there were too many people in the square, so they ran over each other as they fled towards the gates, making the fallen easy targets for the undead. The captain of the guard repeatedly ordered the people to calmly evacuate while the remaining guards protected the rear, but it was a futile effort.

As a last-ditch effort, he personally led the guards to stop the undead long enough for the people to flee, but that was a mistake. The citizens rushed to the gate and opened it, only for a blast of black fire to incinerate them alive.

The flames spread around the gate, burning all the people nearby and forcing those farther back to avoid being burned. The undead invaded at that moment, killing all the people in agony on the ground after being burned.

The mage skeletons had taken the bells and gates, but they did not immediately invade. They followed the orders received and only killed the guards on patrol so as not to be discovered. The other half of the army was also waiting outside the gate, rushing in as soon as the mage gave the signal.

Monster skeletons were in the lead, with large animal skeletons close behind. Their job was to clear a path through the crowd, allowing the human skeletons to kill them easily.

The skeleton of the wind attribute mage did not get involved in the fight, being responsible for casting the create undead en masse whenever possible, increasing their own numbers and closing the distance with the town’s population.

The populace didn’t stand still, anyone with fighting experience or anyone they wanted to protect fought as hard as they could, using anything they could find as a weapon to clear a path through the undead for the others to pass. They teamed up against the skeletons, using their numerical advantage to kill them.

Several skeletons were destroyed, most notably the cattle that advanced first, but they simply detonated the cores themselves once they had taken enough damage, scattering a black fog and bone shards, killing everyone around them. The mage skeleton took advantage of the darkness released by the explosion, lifting the corpses at no additional cost.

.....

Caught between two undead armies, it was only a matter of time before all the citizens were killed. Emilia knew this, so she remained hidden among the people, biting her lip in frustration until it bled. She was surrounded by screams of pain and fear, but she didn’t step forward to help. At the same time, his body refused to just abandon all these people and run away.

‘These people are going to die, if I step forward I’ll just join them. The best I can do is help Gaius and meet Finn so we can run away together. Communication with him has been lost and hasn’t returned so far, so he must be struggling with something. I have to go before it’s too late.’ Emilia said, but her body refused to obey her.

Emilia was looking at a terrified family just a few feet away from her, a man she assumed was the father struggling with a piece of wood against a skeleton carrying a hoe. The father was an overweight middle-aged man, the kind of person who never struggled in his entire life, but stood firmly in front of the family despite his knees shaking and the look of dread on his face. Behind him, a middle-aged woman was hugging two children, looking worriedly at her husband.

The father hit the undead with the piece of wood and fractured his shoulder, but the skeleton ignored the damage and hit the man’s knee with the hoe, causing him to fall to the ground while holding his leg, screaming in pain. The family called out to the father, but the skeleton lunged at them, deciding that the father would no longer be an obstacle.

...or at least he tried, but the father clung tightly to his leg. determined not to let him get close to his family. The undead raised the hoe and hit him in the right rib, making his father scream in pain, but his grip remained firm. The undead raised the hoe again, but his arm was cut off at the shoulder and his arm fell to the ground helplessly.

The skeleton tried to turn around to locate the enemy, but its head was also severed, falling helplessly to the ground. The family looked at the skeleton in confusion, before running to the father.

‘The situation will not change and they will still die, but I could not bear to let them die in front of me.’ Emilia thought after killing the undead. She conjured two small blades of light in her hand and rendered them invisible before accurately shooting them at the skeleton’s shoulder and neck. It was a useless act, the family would die anyway and Emilia knew it, but her body moved before she knew it.

‘I have to get ahead and run away.’ Emilia thought, using an invisibility spell on herself as she blended her presence with her surroundings, quickly fleeing the scene. She jumped across the rooftops and ran as fast as she could.

...If she had stayed a few more seconds, she would have witnessed the consequences of her choices. The black light in the undead’s orbit didn’t go out and when he realized he couldn’t circulate mana to heal himself, he detonated his own core, just as he was ordered. Emilia thought that decapitation would be enough to destroy the skeletons, but they could still live for several hours even with the head separated from the body.

His body exploded, swamping the family and those close to him in a curtain of darkness that devoured them alive and bone shards that pierced them. The skeleton mage quickly noticed them and turned them into undead, making Emilia’s effort a futile act. No, if Emilia hadn’t intervened, the family would have been beaten to death rather than a quick death, so maybe her actions had some use.

*******

Emilia ran quickly, reaching the favelas in less than two minutes. She looked around, noting that not all the undead were attacking in the town square. Sevenus had separated two groups of undead as soon as he arrived in the city and ordered them to kill the people who weren’t in the square.

Athos and Sevenus weren’t stupid, neither of them believed that all the people would be conveniently gathered in the central square, so this was a necessary measure to ensure that no one survived.

Emilia noticed the group of skeletons wandering near the brothel where Caio should be and accelerated, reaching the roof before them. She broke down one of the windows and used her mana vision to look around, making sure she was alone. She couldn’t see the core of an undead, but mana vision still revealed their presence in the form of a black blur.

‘Hmm? He is not here?’ Emilia thought, not finding anyone inside the brothel. Sensing that something was wrong, Emilia hurriedly ran to Caio’s room, not finding anyone inside. The only things left were a pool of fresh blood on the bed and a hole in the wall that led to another room.

Emilia felt the world around her freeze. She walked slowly to the bed, smelling a pungent smell of iron coming from the bed. Hot tears flowed from her eyes as she recalled some of the moments she spent with Caio.

“Caio-” She touched the bed lightly, but the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end, feeling a large amount of mana approaching. Emilia quickly activated the enchantment on her boots and conjured a shield of light on her right arm, before placing it in front of her body and jumping through the nearest window.

A second after she jumped out the window, a ball of black fire 10 meters in diameter hit the building, sending the whole place flying. Emilia stood up quickly, raising her shield to block the debris flying towards her and used her mana vision to look around.

On one of the roofs near the brothel, three black blots in human form were standing, looking up at the building. Emilia looked at them intently, surprised at what she saw. A knight in black armor was on the left, holding a round shield in his left hand and a greatsword in his right hand, while the skeleton on the right was dressed in normal clothes and an overcoat completely torn over the bones and a dagger in each hand.

The skeleton in the center appeared to be the leader of the group. He wore the order’s enchanted green robe, the robe worn by novices, while holding a wand in his right hand. He looked arrogantly at Emilia, as if she were an inferior being.

Emilia knew she had found the mastermind behind this attack.

*******