Infected wounds caused by death energy were purified by the domain of life, and its inhabitants were given a boost to their natural regenerative factors so that their wounds healed faster.
Spread out over a large region, the buff's individual effects were small, but they were much better than nothing on this battlefield.
There was no room for error for the battle priestess; as if she made a mistake, Dominik's realm would quickly expand, spelling great danger to the thousands of soldiers fighting within her sphere of influence.
A group of Holy Knights and Adventurers surrounded the girl and protected her, including Kayla and Kuro who were present, courtesy of our resident hero, who knew the undead would never let her be as the very existence of her domain made them at least 25% weaker.
Even though Evan's fighting strength had diminished without them, he still considered it imperative to shield the girl from the stealth-type undead and airborne undead that swooped down, spewing breaths of concentrated death energy.
Besides, he had the high-ranking water spirit Milena with him, and she was definitely a great help when it came to immobilizing enemies.
The skies were covered in dark clouds of smoke from the explosions happening all across the battlefield, the blood of a few unfortunate mages that were defeated by their undead opponents rained down on the ground, along with torn-off body parts and ripped-out innards.
Undead trolls clunked axes and their ogre counterparts swung their large war hammers, all while both physical and magical arrows hissed through the air and pierced their rotting flesh.
Some soldiers and adventures screamed out with both fear and rage, with some others breaking down into sobs at the sheer amount of death and destruction happening around them.
Swords were ringing against each other, the army troops' formations had long been broken, legions of undead knights attacked unfortunate adventurer parties, while powerful mercenaries tore through the Draugrs that charged at them madly.
The septic smell of death hung over the battlefield, further increasing the ambient concentration of death energy in the battlefield and forcing more of the coalition force's combatants to fall back to Eliza's domain to purify themselves.
Priests of the Church of Artemisia and those of the other gods had their work cut out for them, standing strong in their duty despite being one of the highest priority targets for the undead creatures.
As the acrid taste of blood rose up in the mouths of the fighters, the Eighth Finger landed on the floor and silently reduced the size of his domain, as the energy consumption for keeping it up was getting to him, especially in his current state where his stat values were reduced.
He had also expended a lot of energy battling against Grand Mage Czac, and had to resort to using magic stones as energy sources for his spells when Heinr joined the fray.
"Rise, My servants."
While reducing the size of the domain even further, he called forth an additional troop of undead, taking care to avoid the side where it collided with Eliza's so she remained unaware of his actions.
Dominik had kept the domain active for over an hour while summoning tens of thousands of undead and fighting against multiple grandmasters, and despite the fact that topographic-type abilities like this had a huge initial energy cost, after which they consumed little energy from the user and absorbed most from the surroundings, even that was beginning to prove too much.
He stealthily downed a couple of magic potions, clicking his tongue when he realised their effectiveness was beginning to wane from short-term overuse.
"What about Vazgan?"
[I'm done with him…but to be honest, I do not expect much from him unless he's given more time to recover.]
"Unfortunately, we do not have that time, Duke Cheverton is recovering more as we speak and we cannot have that. We need Vazgan to occupy him and force him to expend more energy again."
[Should I come out and join you?]
"No…and reserve your energy too. Something isn't right about this situation.
The person with the soul-damaging ability hasn't shown up, neither has the adventurer who used that strange ice on you when before.
I suspect they still have more forces in store somewhere."
[True…I would keep watch for those two.
Also, we're out of bone wyverns. They were not much in the first place and you gave one to each of the Death Knights so there aren't any left.
Same with the Grandmaster Death Knights and Dullahans, they have also all been deployed too.]
"And yet, we still have not forced them to show all their hands.
They were more prepared than we expected, and that damn Laneford only made things worse.
If it wasn't for him, I would have had more leeway in dealing with these A-rank adventurers, could have even taken out that Paladin with those artifacts."
[No use crying over spilt milk.
We sacrificed those artifacts to hold him back because we had no choice. If we did not, he would have thrown a larger wrench in our plans.]
"True.
Anyway, I'm reducing the domain even further. You be ready to use Demonic Fusion at any point in time."
Zacular just hummed in reply before going silent, while Dominik took a deep breath and absorbed ambient death energy into his body, closely watching the Grand Mage and the Paladin who were retreating behind enemy lines to rest.
'It's like they're changing shifts.'
Those were his thoughts as he gave a side glance in the direction of the Lesser Lich King who was exchanging multi-elemental magic with Tisha, sighing as he placed his hands on the ground and spoke.
"Summon Undead Second."
◇ ◇ ◇
Cabinet Room A5
Royal Palace, Gerfast
Great Western Empire
April 30th
Year 1052
The Emperor of the Great Western Empire sat with his chin on his palm, staring at the nobles' pallid expressions after viewing the sheer amount of undead and the destruction happening on the battlefield.
His wife, Empress Claudia, and children, Crown Prince Richard, and Princess Laurene sat flanking him.
Because of the nobles' unrest over the Emperor's large-scale military mobilisation order a few weeks earlier, they were now watching the battle in the unnamed savannas of the Cheverton Duchy.
They learned about the undead dilemma in Cheverton from numerous sources, but Duke Cheverton restricted the information that they learned.
As a result, they misjudged the severity of the situation and the number of resources needed to address it.
When the Emperor mobilised multiple Army Divisions and even sent a Major General, they raised alarms.
These were officer-ranked personnel who only moved in wartime, so the nobles' concern for the Emperor mobilising them and their divisions was natural.
Many noble's imaginations ran wild with possibilities, the most popular being that the man was using the undead outbreak as an excuse to relocate the army in advance of a conflict with the neighbouring country of Hobha.
They rallied together and demanded an explanation, and on this fateful day, the Emperor summoned them to show them their 'explanation'.
There were obviously far too many nobles in the Empire for all of them to fit into a single cabinet room.
Only the highest and middle-ranking nobles were present, including several with Count titles and above.
These nobles were all men and women who had been in power for decades, old enough that Duke Roger was actually among the youngest nobles present, and the man was 45!
Although they were all master-level entities who had witnessed many battles throughout their long lives and journeys to reach such existence levels, nothing they had ever seen before could compare to what they were witnessing now.
They now understood why the Emperor had mobilised so many soldiers, as even the Holy knights, Adventurers, Mercenaries, and mages of Kasteblum, along with the Emperor's massive army, were barely enough against the hordes of undead that the Eighth Finger spawned every few minutes.
In their shock at how bad the undead crisis was, few noticed that Laurene, the youngest and least experienced in the room, did not bat an eye when she saw the battlefield.
Of course, it was because she had memories of far worse battlefields, but they didn't know this.
The Emperor glanced at his daughter and sighed, displeased that she had made herself a target of the organisation where this necromancer who casually summoned tens of thousands of undead belonged.
He looked at the nobility and coughed before continuing.
Remember that the only reason I entertained your 'request' was because I authorized Duke Cheverton's decision to keep the news of the crisis under wraps so as to prevent unrest in other parts of the country.
You all wanted to know why I had the army move? Well, here's your answer.
The necromancer who caused the calamity in Graugro twenty-five years ago came here to target us...surely that's sufficient to call up our soldiers and three of our Ten Great Swordsmen, right?
Especially considering that everybody knows the undead wouldn't stop at conquering the Duchy if they could.
The nobility had little choice but to agree with him, but they quickly noticed something wasn't quite right about what he said, and a Marquis spoke up to call it out.
"Three? Excuse me, Your Majesty, but I've only seen Duke Cheverton thus far.
If three of the Ten Great Swordsmen were sent, who and where are the other two, and why aren't they fighting?"
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