Chapter 1729: Ding!
Quinlan’s hand tightened on [Soul Reaper], and the pale flames along the saber’s edge flared.
"[Eternal Damnation]."
Blue fire ripped from the ground far below where Aelindra’s body lay among the fallen, tearing upward through the smoke and plunging into [Soul Reaper] with a hunger that made the blade sing.
The saber released her.
Blue flame cascaded from the steel and struck the air beside Myrasyn, and Aelindra Ael’vyrn opened her eyes. They burned the same cold blue as every soul soldier on the field below.
[Ding!]
A chime sounded behind his eyes.
[Necromantic Tier Ascension --- Tier III]
[Requirement for Rank Up: Possess 1,000 Elite Souls of Rank 5.]
[Progress: 1,000 / 1,000]
[Requirement met! Ascending to Tier III!]
[Undying Flame passive ability unlocked.]
[Undying Flame: Elite Souls now retain Lesser Souls harvested through their kills for up to an hour. Retained Lesser Souls can be consumed to convert into restorative soul energy, healing injuries and replenishing combat capacity. Unconsumed Lesser Souls transfer to the summoner automatically after the hour mark.]
Until this moment, Quinlan’s soul soldiers had bled and died like any other living being.
A wound crippled them.
A killing blow erased them from the field.
Where they differed from mortals was what happened after their deaths, because they could be resummoned.
But bringing one back meant Quinlan had to stop whatever he was doing, channel mana through [Soul Reaper], and recast [Awaken].
It was a drain on his resources and, worse, active casting time that pulled his attention from his own fight.
In a duel against anything worthy of their Master’s time, that split second of distraction was the difference between parrying a strike and eating one.
His Elites had always fought knowing the price of their resurrection was their master’s safety, feeling guilty and dejected whenever they were eliminated.
But that price had just been bargained.
Across the battlefield, Scar felt it first.
The change rippled through the necromantic bond, and a pale blue flame condensed behind her, hovering at shoulder height.
Then nine hundred and ninety-nine more bloomed across the field in the same instant, one behind every Elite.
The soul army that had already been terrifying to face gained a thousand burning shadows at its back.
A dwarven crossbowman on the nearest flank panicked and put a bolt through the one trailing Scar.
The steel passed through the flame without disturbing it and buried itself in the dirt beyond, and the battery didn’t so much as flicker.
"Can’t be hit?!" The crossbowman’s voice cracked.
The batteries couldn’t be struck or be destroyed.
They existed for one purpose only: to feed the soul they followed.
Every kill an Elite made poured into the flame at their back, and when the Elite bled, the flame bled back, closing wounds with the stolen lives of the fallen.
Scar’s wound was the first proof. The gash on her shoulder knitted itself shut as the kill she’d made seconds before fed through the battery and back into her body, and beneath her mask, a big grin materialized.
"Master... Your abilities are getting more and more ridiculous. You’re becoming a monster the denizens of Iskaris can’t hope to contain."
The Elites nearest her felt it next.
A swordsman watched blue fire crawl from his battery across his severed arm and rebuild it. A spearwoman with a punctured lung drew her first full breath since the battle’s second hour.
They didn’t need the master to stop fighting and bring them back anymore. They could keep themselves on the field with their own two hands, as long as those hands kept killing.
The realization and following joy hit a thousand souls at once.
"LONG LIVE THE MASTER!"
The roar erupted from the front ranks and crashed backward through the army, a thousand blue-skinned soldiers with a thousand pale fires burning at their backs screaming their praise toward the man in the sky, and the sound that tore across the battlefield made the living armies on every side flinch, because dead men were not supposed to cheer.
Then their cheers died down, and their gazes refocused on the enemy ranks.
Together, as one, they spoke.
"Now, die."
A thousand pale flames pulsed once behind them, hungry and waiting, and the soul army advanced.
[Ding!]
[Necromantic Tier Ascension --- Tier IV. To ascend, the following conditions must be-]
The notification froze mid-sentence.
The text hung behind his eyes for a long, uncomfortable second, half-formed and flickering at the edges as if the system itself was reconsidering what it had been about to say.
Then the line dissolved, and a new one wrote itself in its place.
[To ascend to Tier IV, first break the suppression.]
’Suppression, huh...’ Quinlan thought inwardly. ’Did the Heavenly Restriction finally start limiting my growth as well, or is this something else?’
He quickly filed such thoughts away when he saw Myrasyn’s staff tremble in her grip.
She’d known that this was coming, for Quinlan had told Myrasyn before the execution.
Aelindra was his property. Subjugated, her soul was his.
It didn’t matter that Myrasyn swung the blade. What belonged to a Primordial Villain stayed with the Primordial Villain.
She’d swung the blade knowing Quinlan would catch what fell.
But knowing and watching it happen were very different things, and the sight of her sister standing whole beside her reached past the queen’s composure and found the woman underneath.
Her gaze moved from Aelindra to Quinlan, and the smile that broke across her face was so bright it made the staff’s crystal look dim, every trace of royalty gone from it.
She hadn’t lost her sister forever, and she was looking at the man responsible.
"Thank you..." The whisper barely left her lips.
The resurrected elf was staring at her own hand. The confusion on her face was raw and animal.
"The Ael’vyrn sisters have traitors to deal with." Myrasyn’s voice was firm again.
"Listen to your sister," Quinlan ordered.
Aelindra’s back straightened instantly.
The two sisters descended together, the living queen in white and the dead councilwoman in blue, and the coalition elves who had watched Myrasyn behead Aelindra not a full minute ago watched the dead woman descend beside her, eyes burning with the Primordial Villain’s fire.
The councilwomen who’d been screaming orders into paralyzed elven ranks went very quiet.
One of them recovered first. "Your Majesty! I voted against your dethroning, the records will show it! I opposed Aelindra and her conspirators at every-"
"As did I!" A second councilwoman stepped forward with both palms raised. "We tried to stop it! On the blood of the First Elf, we swear we fought for your crown in that chamber-"
The regal composure that had held through a public execution, through dissolving a nation from the sky, through watching her sister reform in blue fire, shattered across Myrasyn’s face.
"You swear on her blood?" The disbelief in her voice was so raw it silenced the councilwomen more effectively than any shout.
"You’re marching to kill her child and you dare swear on her blood?!"
Her staff swept across the battlefield below, across the banners and the dead and the formations these women had ordered into position, and the bewilderment on the queen’s face hardened into cold, judicial disgust.
"I don’t care what you voted for in your chambers. You’re guilty of betraying your very race!"
Aelindra’s blue hand closed around a conjured blade beside her sister, and the cold fire in her eyes found the women who had once been her colleagues.
The sisters charged their spells and dove together, white light and blue fire streaking toward the coalition ranks, and below them the paralyzed elven soldiers finally stirred.
Myrasyn’s words carried across the field, and elven soldiers who wept in devotion to a bloodline aura looked at the councilwomen who had marched them here and saw liars.
They had been told the Holy Son was a heretical man who proclaimed himself Luminara’s child.
The first spear turned inward. Then the second.
Councilwomen who had marched thousands to this war found those thousands closing in around them, and the handful of personal guards still loyal locked shields in shrinking circles as the army they’d commanded became the army that came for them.
Sera drifted closer to Quinlan’s side, linking her arms through his like a maiden in love.
"And now," she said, "we kick back and enjoy the show."
