Finally with some time on her hands, Manasha decided to comfort her little sister Majosha. Yet before she could even get a word in, Numila sent out a distress call: “Dearest, my mana can’t hold out for much longer, quick, get the others to prepare for battle…”
“Alright.” Sweeping my eyes over the battlefield, I found that at least half of the bone pillars were still remaining.
‘Looks like it’s going to be another prolonged battle…’
Thankfully, Numila and Eugenia’s composite magic so happened to be the bane of these undead. As long as we allowed them to recover their mana, they could blast off another sea of flames. Based on past experiences, a couple more should do the trick.
‘The two of them are going to need some time to recover their exhausted mana, I shouldn’t work them too hard in the meantime.’ With that in mind, I immediately had the others prepare for battle.
This time, I planned on taking part as well. Even though my Shadowfang was still in the hands of Habona, rendering me unable to engage in melee, my speciality actually laid in magic so I was still fine on that front. Moreover, my nether flames had shown themselves a potent force to be used against the undead, the only drawback being that they consumed a lot of mana and I simply didn’t have enough to support them for long.
‘If only I could just borrow Flametail from Numila…’ Too bad, so sad. Flametail is sentient now and recognizes an owner…
The proceeding battle was a rather heated one and yet it was also a dry one. Upon recovering their mana, the two harpy witches would act in unison to cast another round of the sea of flames at which point it would be our turn to fight once more and buy them time. Thus, we rotated as such.
Because their rapid recovery required massive amounts of Soul Flames, we wound up spending a long time between rounds, harvesting the Soul Flames of the undead. Thus, our melee engagement with the undead had to be extended as well. Such an extension came at huge cost to our forces, not only did we have to endure an encirclement by countless undead, we had to deal with the stress of our massive losses.
Under those trying circumstances, we repeated this cycle of spell barrage followed by melee, without any rest whatsoever. After half a day, we finally managed to clean up all of the pillars. The fact that we were even able to accomplish such a feat with record timing, was completely thanks to the two harpy witches and their composite magic. Not only did Numila’s and Eugenia’s magic counter them completely, the rotting bodies of those zombies unexpectedly ended up becoming fuel for their flames.
Upon discovering this little quirk of theirs, I specially instructed the troops to gather up the zombie corpses. After lighting up these flammable meat bags, I had the harpies toss them back into the undead horde. Thanks to this stroke of absolute genius on my part, the battle was shortened even further.
Like that, the battle ended up as a victory for us, albeit a pyrrhic one. At least half of our troops died in the battle and of the remaining half, they all carried with them a certain degree of injury, some severe and some even crippling.
All throughout the battle, the number of wounded in the quarantine zone continually increased. From time to time, there would be outbreaks of zombification but these were all swiftly handled by the lizardmen I stationed there. In total, these deaths accounted for over half of our losses this battle…
Thankfully, no one I was close to died except for Harlow. At most there were a couple of minor injuries between all of us. Looking at it from another point of view, wasn’t Harlow just unlucky?
Another noteworthy matter was that, despite having laid there for half a day, Harlow never zombified. As for Majosha, she had no intention whatsoever of leaving his side so she just sat there quietly hugging Harlow’s corpse. She neither spoke nor made eye contact with us. Other than breathing, she seemed to be completely motionless.
It almost seemed like she was making a point with her silence, one that life or death didn’t matter anymore and that she wasn’t going to bother with it.
Watching the last of the bone pillars burn down to dust, I finally heaved a sigh of relief…at last, it was over.
With nothing to feed it, the flames soon died out leaving nothing but burnt corpses and scorched air that burnt our throats whenever we breathed in. However, before we could even go through our spoils and losses, the entire space suddenly lit up. Countless icy white marks sprung out of the ground and formed a formation of sorts. Judging by the pattern and the mana radiating off those lines, we were standing on an ancient magical array.
It was a massive circular array that spanned at least ten km wide. Right in the very center of the magical array was the spot where those hundred bone pillars once stood. Now however, there were three different colored motes of light that were five meters wide and seven meters tall. Looking at them, they kind of reminded me of those dimensional gates in World of Peacecraft. One of them was an eerie green, another was crimson like flames while the last looked more like a mass of black fog.
By now, I was so tired I could barely move a finger. As I tried to swallow a mouthful of spit, the parched air around me immediately assaulted my throat and eyes, forcing me to rub my eyes out of reflex. Pointing at those three strange motes of light, I asked: “Anyone knows what those are?”
“I think they are most likely the teleportation gates of this maze.” The one who answered was Mo En. As always, this lazy bag of bones was busy lounging about on the floor with his tongue hanging out. He was just as tired as I was thanks to his admirable efforts in that battle just now. Being one of the precious few Four-stars in our army, it wasn’t an overstatement to say that his powers carried us through that fight.
“Your highness, I think we should approach and observe it.” She then elaborated on this suggestion of hers: “In order to prevent any accidents, we can have a dogman enter each of the lights. If any of the lights end up being a trap, the dogmen should be able to give us some warning beforehand.”
“Alright then.”
As of right now, Elena and her harpies were in the midst of ferrying a boat load of Soul Flames to me for my personal consumption. I reached for one of the nearby Soul Flames and devoured it with a hungry gulp before nodding at Julia. “We’ll let the test dummies approach the lights then, the rest of us will stay somewhere faraway in the meantime.”
“Understood.” Julia acknowledged the order with a respectful bow. Before leaving, I passed her some Soul Flames to help her recuperate as well.
While she went about her work organizing the dogmen, I slowly swept my eyes over those around me. Most of them weren’t doing too well; they were either injured or too tired to move. Perhaps it was the tiredness at work here, but those three harpies sisters weren’t clamoring around me as well.
‘That battle just now exhausted a great deal of our energy, if another enemy were to attack us now, it might just be game over for us…:’
“For you.”
A slightly dishevelled Habona stepped out of the crowd and handed me Shadowfang. Reaching out to receive it, I meekly gazed into her bloodshot eyes: “I’m really sorry, about Harlow…”
“That had nothing to do with you.” She immediately interrupted my self-admonishment. “A warrior’s fate is to die on the battlefield. The moment the battle started, Harlow decided his own fate. Following you into battle was a choice we made ourselves. Thus, we were only following our own will. Even without you, Harlow and I would’ve walked this path but with less people and a much grimmer outcome.”
The Habona standing before me right now was unusually chatty but amidst all that, I could tell that she held no resentment for me. ‘Perhaps she truly felt that Harlow’s death had nothing to do with me…but if I hadn’t encouraged them, the outcome definitely wouldn’t be like this…perhaps it might’ve been a lot worse or perhaps it might not have…”
Even though Habona didn’t blame me in the least bit, my heart refused to calm down. Yet just as I was wallowing in the guilt, a furry, meaty paw slapped me on the shoulders. Habona’s voice, completely devoid of anger, echoed over my head: “Without you, Harlow would’ve died in the harpy’s nest already.”
‘Is that so…I saved Harlow but he also ended up dying in Majosha’s embrace because of me. In that case, was my involvement in his life a good or a bad thing? Perhaps it was really like what she said, without me, Harlow might have really died in that harpy’s nest.”
Not giving me anymore time to wallow, Julia came over bearing an exciting piece of news for us all.
“Your Highness, those motes of light should be teleportation gates…”
Because the dogmen who entered the lights each had their own encounters and these encounters were clearly visible from the outside.
Within the greenish light, a wasteland completely devoid of life was revealed. From time to time, one could see a skeleton or two wandering about. Having spotted a certain dogman running for its life, the skeletons immediately locked onto this piece of meat. Like that, with one side chasing and the other fleeing, the scene became one of a dogman sprinting away on all fours while a growing crowd of skeletons pursued it.
Within the crimson light, an entirely different scene played out. It depicted a river of molten lava with intermittent rock platforms thrown in an almost deliberate fashion. Glimpsing through the light, I managed to spot a dogman panting heavily at the banks of the molten river; it probably couldn’t stand the heat. In fact, it was sweating buckets as it laid there like a cooked dog. I saw it try to get up at times but failed due to the sweltering heat that made it lightheaded…finally, it fell into the molten river in a moment of carelessness, disappearing in an instant without so much as a bubble.
The last mote of light was a rather special one. Within, I actually saw countless vegetation and a dogman busily harvesting a variety of fruits; was that a three meter tall fruit tree I spied?
“Master, that’s Abaddon! That’s where we used to live.” Seeing the dogman harvest fruits, Baccarel excitedly ran up to the light and after confirming once more, said that.
“Those fruits are edible and while I don’t know what are their names, I’ve eaten them before…”
‘So the black light really can teleport us to Abaddon?’
‘The crimson light teleports us to Purgatory. That’s why it’s filled with lava rivers?’
‘As for the green light, that’s Gehenna. Why? Because there are skeletons!’
‘Seems…seems like this is the end, huh…no, rather I should say that it’s our victory! We broken through the limits set by this prison! we survived…’
The moment the news came out that the black light led to Abaddon, everyone went into a frenzy. Some cried, some cheered…no matter what kind of reaction they had however, this represented a successful prison break. In an instant, a multitude of emotions came crashing down on everyone.
With this lifeline laid out before us, the dead no longer mattered that much. Bringing the injured with them, the troops began shuffling into the teleportation gate, watched over closely by the lizardmen.
Including me, everyone’s goal here was to reach Abaddon. The demonic werewolves, the demonic half-orcs, the dogmen, the lizardmen and etc. were all creatures of Abaddon. As for my reason for seeking Abaddon…that was to find Yi Yi. Ferti’nier once said that in order to recover my male body, I had to split off from her soul. For that, we needed to find Yi Yi. That was non-negotiable. Thus, no matter what my reason was for doing so, seeing Yi Yi had become my main questline.
