Chapter 507: The Necromancers join the fray
"What the-?! A Bounded Field, within another Bounded Field?!"
Evan cried out in surprise and Arthur shared this shock of his as he never thought it was possible to overlay Bounded Fields like this.
Typically, the more powerful field would simply obliterate the weaker one and occupy the space, but Idrilla’s case seemed different.
"What sort of people have you been fighting in that future of yours, Evan?"
"Lunatics! That’s what!"
The network of dark magic power spread from Dominik’s feet, sweeping under Evan and expanding to the edges of the battlefield.
Thousands, tens of thousands, of undead creatures of various kinds began to emerge.
Skeleton warriors, wraiths, liches, zombies, bone wyverns, and Dullahans—lots of Dullahans, all rose from the ground, forming an army of the dead, ready to overwhelm the battlefield.
"I see what she meant by quantity."
Just as Arthur said that, a bolt of necrotic energy tore through the air and blitzed straight towards his head, but he turned and halted it in time, before looking to see who fired it.
"Who are-? Oh, you’re that demigod from that Planet in Edward’s home Galaxy. Ugantu, was it?" (Refer to Chapters 147-149)
It was the demigod Necromancer whose mother was one of the assassins sent to kill Arthur in his younger years. However, she never succeeded in her mission and was killed off by the servants of his grandfather, Diablo, when they were searching for the remnants of the assassins.
"Hey, Evan. Looks like I’ve got my own Necromancer."
Arthur called out to Evan and the boy analysed the demigod standing in between rows of death knights while shooting hateful glares at Arthur.
"Why do you two have Necromancers on your kill lists?"
Artemisia spoke as she tossed the head of a random Divine Human on the floor and walked up to them, with Evan providing an appropriate response.
"Because they had us on their kill lists. It was kill or be killed—and we killed them."
"And now they’re back to kill you."
She retorted and the two boys shrugged, not feeling particularly bothered by it. Instead, they asked each other about who ’their Necromancers’ were.
"Mine’s the ’Eighth Executive’ of an organisation trying to break my World’s Dimensional Rift and let the Invaders in.
He attacked a super huge duchy in my home country with hundreds of thousands of undead and tried to kill us all. The fight was tough then, and he wasn’t even at his full power."
"Oh, mine’s an unfortunate guy who hates me because his mum was an assassin who was sent to kill me but failed and got killed by my grandad’s servants. I don’t even know his name.
Randomly encountered him when I was looking for random planets to spend my day on."
While they were talking about this, Artemisia silently placed her hand on Evan’s back. She wanted to touch Arthur, but her instincts warned her against doing so, making her stop her palm a few centimetres away.
"Wise decision."
Arthur knew what she wanted to do, so he removed his multilayer barrier and switched off his progenitor Authority, allowing her to use her power of Evolution on him.
"Queen of Evolution: Evolve Ally; Adaptive Regeneration."
She used those two abilities on both boys, the effects were immediate. Evan saw the representation of the effects via his Level tab, and when he looked at Arthur, he noticed the same as well.
Evan’s Level now showed 653 (+47), while Arthur’s was 793 (+22).
When Idrilla sensed the powers of the two boys suddenly spike, she looked up from her magic circle and cursed, before ordering the two Necromancers to take similar actions.
Dominik raised his hands and used his skills to enhance the power of the demigod’s Death Knights, while the demigod did the same to Dominik’s.
The two of them then sent their undead forward, but contrary to both Dominik’s wishes and Evan’s expectations, Idrilla ordered him to fight Arthur instead.
The demigod Necromancer also found himself pitted against Evan, even though the one he wanted to tear from limb to limb was Arthur.
"That’s an awful lot of Dullahans you got there..."
"Yeah, Dominik likes Dullahans a lot."
Evan responded to Arthur as he readied his sword to face the Death Knights charging at him, while Arthur simply summoned Celestia and asked.
"Dullahan fetish?"
"Maybe."
Artemisia rolled her eyes and let go of the two boys, taking distance from the big battle that was about to erupt.
She felt Idrilla’s gaze on her but acted oblivious as she moved to join up with Beatrix.
’While the boys are busy with the undead, I’d kill those two girls...’
Making her decision, she tuned out the angry ramblings of Dominik and the demigod.
She knew Dominik wanted to kill Evan, but Evan had already bested him before. Evan understood Dominik’s skills and tactics, so there was no point in sending him to get beaten up again.
Similarly, Arthur knew the demigod Necromancer’s methods, but Dominik was an unknown variable he didn’t know existed until 2 minutes ago. Hence, Idrilla paired the unfamiliar Dominik with Arthur and matched the demigod against Evan.
Or rather, she wanted Dominik who had more undead to swarm Arthur with numbers and prevent him from getting to Evan’s aid long enough for the demigod to get to defeat him.
Sadly, her plan failed as the two boys stuck together and didn’t separate.
Arthur and Evan unleashed a relentless barrage of powerful attacks, decimating the undead. Arthur’s sword Celestia attuned well with his destructive energy that tore through Dullahans and Death Knights with ease, while Evan’s prismatic flames and sword strikes incinerated and shattered the undead hordes and giant worms.
While they were busy there, Idrilla used Shadow Step to teleport over to where Artemisia and Beatrix were.
Beatrix’s ’Space Warp’ skill allowed her to teleport and deal AOE spatial damage to all enemies in her departure and arrival zones.
With each teleportation, everything within a 50-metre radius was rent with spatial power and shredded to pieces.
She never spent up to 30 seconds in an area, dropping some Time Bombs and whacking some undead to death before teleporting away.
Suddenly, Idrilla’s figure manifested from behind her, and with ’Reaping Slash’, Idrilla swung her scythe down, intending to cut both Beatrix’s physical body and her soul.
"Beatrix!!"
Artemisia called out to warn her of the danger, but Beatrix was a time manipulator...she had already seen the grim future that awaited her.
If she did not use Spatial Mimicry, that is.
It was an advanced Spatial Manipulation technique that the current Beatrix could barely maintain for three seconds, and she timed those three seconds well.
With it, Beatrix transformed her body completely into space itself, allowing her to occupy the physical third dimension, without a physical form.
And since she had no physical form—
**SWOOSSHH!!
—Idrilla’s physical attack was useless against her.
Immediately Idrilla’s scythe passed through her body, Beatrix released the Spatial Mimicry and used Space Warp, releasing a blast that knocked Idrilla away.
"The heck?"
Never having seen such an ability before, Idrilla was confused. Nevertheless, she regained her bearings and quickly prepared for an attack once more.
However, Evan suddenly swooped in from above, grabbed the two girls by their waists and flapped his wings, taking off to the skies at that same moment.
The Saintess naturally tried to attack Evan, but she sensed a surge of power building up behind her. Upon turning around, what she saw nearly made her jaw drop to the ground.
◇ ◇ ◇
Backtracking a minute earlier, Arthur and Evan had been swarmed by countless undead, with 3 more reappearing for every 1 they killed.
The Notable Adversary Designation only applied to the Necromancers themselves and not the Undead they summoned, so while to Arthur, these Undead were individually ’weak’, their numbers were too much.
Naturally, they could not keep this up forever, and Arthur was getting sick of the smell of corpses, so he decided to clean up the battlefield.
"Evan, get Artemisia and Beatrix off the ground. This might kill them."
"!?"
Evan turned to Arthur in alarm, his eyes widening at the sight of the massive wave of anti-divinity radiating from the Progenitor’s body.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he unfurled his wings and activated his Limit Break skill, dashing through the air to where the two goddesses were.
As Evan rushed to get them, Arthur erected a gravity barrier to fend off the encroaching undead. He then spoke to Celestia, a smirk tugging at his lips.
"Let’s do it like how we did in Nemo, shall we?"
[Oh, you mean the place where you almost got killed? Sure, sure!]
Arthur chuckled wryly as he began to coalesce his time and destruction laws around his blade, forming an eerie purple light, while simultaneously condensing his divinity and his anti-divinity to the utmost limit.
Stabbing his sword into the ground, he whispered.
"Extreme Nothingness: Seismic Surge."
In that instant, the condensed energies infused with the powers of time and destruction laws erupted. The opposing forces, forced into unity, exploded violently, quaking the earth and sending enormous waves of purple energy surging outward in all directions.
