"First it was a fucking Laneford, now the child of life wielder?!
Can you life attribute users just stop messing with me?!"
Dominik cursed out in anger, his words causing the eyes of Evan, Eliza and those who heard it to widen in surprise as he inadvertently revealed the identity of the being who had held him back for the past few hours.
'The Laneford Clan!'
The moment Evan heard that; his mind instantly went back to the list of people with power reduction-type abilities he had made earlier, and he singled out the name of the only Laneford clan member on the list.
'The former Matriarch's younger brother!'
Evan did not know if that person purposely chose this day to attack the Eighth Finger, but he was grateful for the Health Stat reduction he had inflicted upon him.
'It would make killing him a lot easier!'
However, before thinking about killing Dominik, the coalition force had his army of undead to deal with as the man's cursing, was just the preamble to him opening up his expansive space and summoning his undead warriors.
The network of energy that was his domain of death, had undead summoning circles weaved into it that enabled him to call out his undead with but a simple thought, from any point within the domain's range of influence.
It did not need to be mentioned that the undead summoned via this means enjoyed numerous buffs and ability boosts, evidenced by the thick amount of death energy that covered even the weakest undead knights.
Once again, tens of thousands of living and undead beings charged towards each other and clashed, with some combatants from each side occasionally falling back into their respective domains to rid themselves of the debuffs that the domains applied to opponents.
As Dominik's domain buffed the undead, it debuffed living beings to balance things out, and Eliza's domain also had a similar effect, only reversed.
Grand Mage Czac and his squad of battlemages took to the skies while the other mages who were active earlier retreated behind the tall wall of earth magic that had been constructed to serve as one of the last lines of defence against the undead to rest.
The Grand Mage himself beelined straight for Dominik, but he stopped halfway and constructed a wide area magic barrier to block the rain of lightning that dropped from the skies, courtesy of the Lich King that slowly descended from within the clouds.
The Lich King's teeth clattered as it waved its bone staff and activated another large-scale lightning magic spell, successfully attracting Sir Czac's aggro and forcing the Grand Mage to take it on instead.
Dominik snapped his fingers and generated two large three-ringed summoning magic circles in the sky, from which a dozen bone wyverns emerged from within, carrying powerful Death Knights on their backs.
With another snap of his finger, the rings of his magic catalyst spun around twice as fast, with more magic circles appearing in the air to spit out grandmaster-level Death Knights and Dullahans.
"Summon Undead Fourth!"
The Deathlord showed the reason why he was called the 'Disaster of Graugro' and 'Nightmare of Many Who Live and Breathe', calling forth gigantic undead variants of a dozen different monsters, with each of them emitting dense amounts of death energy that made many of the weaker combatants to feel suffocated just by being in the same battlefield with them.
Undead blade wraiths, rift mages, doom hounds, trolls, ogres, Gryphons, and even an undead three-headed Hydra!
The Hydra had a large body that was covered in scales with spots of red, green, and blue on them, along with traces of a 'few' barely visible grey lines drawn on its body.
It raised its three heads and spewed out breaths of fire, ice and poison simultaneously, incinerating, freezing and melting the bodies of a hundred unfortunate adventurers with that singular attack.
But before it could charge up another devastating breath, a gigantic golden cross of divinity suddenly slammed down on its enormous body and pressed it to the ground.
"""AAGRRUURAAAAOOOAAOOUGGRRUUUU!!!!!!"""
The three heads screamed out something incomprehensible at the same time, with its voice releasing shockwaves that knocked back Sir Heinr and caused the eardrums of some C-rank adventurers to rupture.
The golden-eyed paladin clicked his tongue as he noticed a herd of nightmare horses trampling atop those who fell after being affected by the hydra's scream, rousing his divinity as he kicked off the ground and blitzed straight towards the creature.
From the sheer amount of death energy that the creature possessed, mere holy magic was not going to be enough to fall it quickly.
The undead Hydra also seemed to realise that its normal breath attacks were useless against Heinr and infused the centre that spewed ice breath with death energy while the other two heads revealed their fangs coated in the same energy and launched themselves towards him.
Heinr dodged the two hydra heads, before jumping up and coating his sword with his aura and shaping the aura into a longer blade to extend the 70 cm long blade of his sword to something that was more than five times as long and as wide.
He then spun around and delivered an arcing slash towards the head of the hydra that tried to gobble him up from behind, creating a foothold with his aura to keep himself in the air before jumping up once more and slashing at the second head.
The time it took for all this was enough for the hydra to charge up and fire another deadly breath infused with death energy.
The dark blue beam of light shot out of the hydra's middle head and through the air, straight towards the airborne Paladin who was about to move out of the way, only to remember that there were hundreds of allies who would most defiantly perish from that attack if it hit the ground.
He took advantage of his energy control skill to switch out the aura in his sword for divinity, before using the hydra's left head as a boost to jump straight towards the incoming death-ice breath.
Pulling back his enlarged sword, he drew it back and super-condensed his divinity into a small area around his arm while activating another skill.
"HA!!!"
With a short shout, he thrust his sword forward the instant the breath reached him, with his sword thrust creating a focused blast that collided with the breath and scattered the concentrated beam of energy.
**BOOOOOMMMM!!!!
"GRWAAAA!!!"
The resultant explosion of death energy and divinity was followed by chunks of rotten flesh raining down from the skies as the hydra's middle head was blasted to bits.
Its left and right heads roared loudly before releasing flame and poison breaths towards the life source it detected on the ground a few dozen metres away from its body, however, a large translucent barrier of golden light appeared in front of it and blocked the two breaths.
Seeing its breath attacks had failed, the hydra turned its large body around and used its forked tail to slam into the barrier, shattering it into shards of light with its skill before its left head released another flaming breath towards Heinr.
"Grand Cross."
Heinr activated his unique skill and allowed it to charge up with holy magic, only to cancel the skill activation at the last moment before it was 'released'.
However, the imbed holy magic remained on his weapon and did not dissipate into the surroundings, neither was it absorbed back into his body.
It was just like he infused holy magic into his sword normally, the difference being that any strike with his sword in its current state, was going to be as powerful as his Grand Cross skill, even if it was just a normal attack.
And a normal attack was exactly what he carried out next.
Heinr rose his sword up and released a downward slash with the holy magic-imbued weapon, slicing through the flaming breath of the Hydra and nearly dividing its head into two.
Fortunately for the hydra, it had shifted its head at the last moment and the slash only needed up cutting through its scales and grazing the rotten flesh underneath.
The undead hydra released another enraged roar before activating another skill and launching dozens of spheres of condensed flames and poison towards Heinr.
Since its breath attack was not working, it changed its approach and decided to launch multiple rapid attacks with lesser attack power, but shorter activation time.
As if mirroring the Hydra's actions, Heinr rose up his left hand and created three tier 2 magic circles with a short chant, with each of them releasing a spear of golden light that shot towards the Hydra's huge body.
Some of the spears collided with the spheres of flames and poison, resulting in explosions as the two attacks cancelled each other out, while others reached the Hydra's body, only to be repelled by the thick coat of death energy it had surrounded its body with.
Just when Heinr was about to release another projected slash with his weapon, his instincts warned him of danger and he instantly humped up into the air, just in time to avoid the domain of death that spread out under his leg, along with the two hands of an undead ogre that tried to grab him.
However, in avoiding the undead ogre, he had placed himself as a perfect target for the Hydra's forked tail that swished through the air and tried to pierce his body.
'That tail broke my barrier before…not letting it hit me!'
The paladin flipped his body and swung his sword, clashing with the tail and getting knocked down onto the ground.
But the hydra was not done as it turned its body and swung its tail once more, forcing Heinr who had barely gotten to his feet to jump to dodge once more.
Unfortunately, Heinr had fallen into the Eighth Finger's domain of death, and thus, was within the range of the Deathlord's instantaneous undead summoning.
Dozens of undead knights instantly jumped out of the darkened floor and threw themselves at the paladin, however, he released a burst of aura that knocked them all backwards, while using his sword to slice off the hands of the ones grabbing his feet.
Nevertheless, this seemingly futile effort had kept him in place long enough for the hydra's tail to reach him and slam into his body, sending him flying into the air once more.
As if on cue, a bone wyvern and swept down from the air and released a breath of death energy towards his airborne body, with its Death Knight mount jumped off with its sword raised overhead.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om