[How did he…?]
Czac had spoken like he was aware of the danger of blocking the Barrier Bullets, with magic barriers. Something that he was definitely not supposed to know considering he did not know of Dominik's existence until a few weeks ago.
The Barrier Bullet rare skill was one that had its damage multiplied when its target attempted to block with any kind of energy barrier.
The magic spheres created by the skill absorbed the energy used to make any barriers that were used to block it upon contact.
Depending on how much energy was used to make the barrier, the damage of the barrier bullets would increase accordingly. The stronger the barrier deployed, the more powerful the barrier bullets would become after absorbing the energy used to make it up.
And that was the reason why Dominik had fired them towards the ground forces, because he knew the mages who had their eyes on him would attempt to block with powerful barriers, and action which would have been disastrous if they did.
However, Czac's warning ruined that little plan of his.
Even so, the Deathlord only considered it a minor setback as he added a few more death cannons to follow the Grand Mage to the ground, before generating three giant summoning circles and calling out three weaker versions of the undead Hydra that Heinr defeated.
**KAAABOOOOMMM!!!!!!
A loud explosion rang out in the distance, followed by two figures that shot out of the mushroom cloud of smoke and flames that rose up to the skies.
"Minor Teleportation."
"Void Distortion!"
The voices of the Lesser Lich King and the Gravity Mage Tisha rang out consecutively as the latter used a gravity spell to distort the space around her, preventing the Lich King from teleporting to her blind spot.
It reappeared about five metres away from her, with the Mage turning in its direction and activating a fire spell.
"Aerial Mine!"
Three balls of flames appeared in a triangular formation around the lich king, however, the instant before they exploded, the lich activated a spell to grant itself temporary incorporeality.
Unfortunately, his opponent was a light mage who had spells created just for usage against incorporeal and ethereal entities.
"Light Magic: Astral Smite."
Dozens of fist-sized light magic bullets emerged from the two-ringed magic circles and shot towards the Lich's body, forcing it to fly out of the way to dodge said projectiles.
Tisha did not let up, releasing another wave of astral smites that forced the lich to discard its incorporeality and activate a teleportation spell to escape the area.
However, Tisha predicted its point of emergence and activated a grounded embrace on the area, using powerful gravity to slam the lich's body down to the ground upon reappearance.
She swiftly transitioned onto the next spell, calling out a chant as she pulled up some random chunks of earth in the area and used gravity magic to compress them into the shapes of large blunt weapons.
Even under the effect of grounded embrace, the Lesser Lich King still managed to move its creaking bones and activate an earth magic spell, causing two gigantic arm-shaped golem constructs to emerge from the ground and swat Tisha out of the sky like one would a fly.
The gravity mage dodged the large hands and used the pressure-crafted weapons she had created to smash through them, but instead of falling back to the ground, the broken pieces of the golem's arms reconstructed into spears of earth that rained down on her and her surroundings.
She reactivated her distorted gravity barrier and spun around, using reverse gravity on the lesser lich king to pull its body towards her while coating her arm in concentrated light magic.
"Purifying Javelin."
A two-ringed light magic circle manifested around her wrist absorbing the concentrated light attributed magic power and spitting it out as a large lance of the same element.
"Perfect Accuracy. Tracking"
She added two more spells onto it before throwing it towards the incoming lesser lich king, however, the undead only turned its red inferno sights towards her and rose its staff, sending out a huge mass of spatial magic that carved through the magical lance, along with the very space around it.
The Lesser Lich King had successfully fended off her attack…is what would have been the case if Tisha did instantly generate five dozen more purifying javelins that shot towards the Lich from all angles.
[You gotta be fucking kidding me.]
◇ ◇ ◇
A few minutes before Dominik summoned the lesser lich king to keep Tisha occupied, the 'Anomalies', along with Duke Cheverton, Guild Master Dasyra and a few high-ranking military personnel were engaged in a heated discussion inside the tent that served as the Command Centre.
The issue on the table was the situation report that they had received stating that there had been hundreds of undead corpses 'exploding' after being defeated or burned with fire magic, something that Evan did not take too long to attribute to a certain Senior member of the Demonic Hand that he had been after for a while.
"It's Methik, definitely the real one."
Although it was hard to find out exactly where the exploding corpses were considering the sheer number of explosions happening across the battlefield, Evan was sure that it was Methik after a few reports from Kasteblum's battle mages came in stating that the corpses exploded, 'after' being set ablaze.
"They most likely tried to incinerate the corpses to prevent the Eighth Finger from reanimating them with a mass raise undead spell, but since they were stuffed with tar and plastic explosives, their flames only served to trigger an explosion that has taken a good number of allies out."
"And whoever this Methik guy is, he has to be watching the battle from somewhere, otherwise, he has some 'great' timing to be able to trigger a corpse explosion on the Death Knight I was fighting against the instant I got into range.
If I didn't sense the magic power condensing right before it exploded, I would not have gotten away with merely a few burns."
The Guild master spoke as she sprinkled a few drops of a healing potion on the burns that covered her left arm, shuddering lightly at the thought of taking a point-blank detonation of a grandmaster-level Death Knight's corpse.
'The sheer amount of death energy in that thing would have been able to kill me almost instantly.'
Duke Charles' lips twisted into a light frown as he unconsciously imagined the consequences of multiple death knights exploding, and the amount of damage it was going to have on the surroundings, shaking his head to clear up those thoughts before turning to Evan and asking.
"Shouldn't you be outside? You ARE the only person capable of telling when that necromancer uses this 'trump card' that you're so wary of."
"I would soon enough, but it's called a trump card for a reason. He's not going to pull it out until he's on his last legs.
Also, you should get ready for a rematch with Vazgan, I noticed his body was missing before I came here.
If I'm to guess correctly, it's the reason Zacular isn't out on the battlefield wreaking havoc. He's tending to Vazgan's 'wounds'."
"Tsk…I should have used the third form at least."
"If you did, you would have been a second late in escaping and would have gotten caught by the Eighth Finger.
I'm sure you noticed that his fist was coated in death energy that instant he landed; it was meant to punch the living daylights outta you."
"Would have said that it would have been a small price to pay to take out a high grandmaster level threat, but considering his reputation, I would not risk it."
"Course you wouldn't.
Also, how's your energy recovery coming along?"
"Enough for a round two against the Dullahan King."
Evan nodded upon hearing the Duke's reply, before turning to Pride and asking the same question.
"That stunt you pulled earlier took a lot out of you, did it not? How far have you recovered your energy?"
"About half of what I spent."
"Better than nothing."
Duke Charles, as well as everyone in the room who witnessed Pride turning Vazgan's deadly attacks into giant iron rods, had various questions they wished to ask the high demon, but after knowing her for the past few days, they realised they were definitely not getting any answers.
Heck, even Evan who she was contracted to still didn't know exactly what she did there.
"Methik's skill requires him or any of his special corpse puppets to be within a certain range to trigger the corpse explosions.
The more corpses he's controlling, and the stronger they are, the closer he has to be to them. So, he has to be within a safe distance where he can control a lot of corpses from, even ones as powerful as that of a Death Knight.
If you were Methik, where on this battlefield would you hide to do such a thing?"
Evan posed a question to one of the military leaders who titled his head and shot a question back at him.
"Why are you working with the assumption that he's in hiding?"
"Do you have the confidence to go out there when you're missing a third of your soul, along with a few of your skills?"
"…No."
"So why would you think Methik who's weaker than you would?"
"…Still, we should not completely rule out that possibility."
"…indeed, we should not."
Evan agreed with the man after a not-so-short pause, about to continue when one of the other military officers slammed the table and shouted.
"Enemy lines!"
"…what?"
"Behind enemy lines.
If I had such an ability, I would be in the one place my enemies would consider low priority when searching for me.
I'd be behind enemy lines."
"You're saying that Methik is behind 'our' defence lines?"
"He's a living human, is he not? Then it's very possible for him to have sneaked past our defence lines along with the troops who retreated to rest earlier."
The military officer's words made sense to everyone present, with Evan clicking his tongue as he racked his brain for how to fish Methik out.
An idea came to his head a moment later as he turned to Pride and asked the high demon to follow him.
"Since Methik is currently weakened, I reckon he'd be with his contracted demon for protection. And you, who is capable of sensing your fellow demons would be the perfect search tool to find him out."
"It could turn out to be a wild goose chase, you know?"
"But it could also turn out to NOT be one."
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